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Web Design Guidelines

Saturday, January 30th, 2010

Designing a website is more of an art although following some simple yet basic web designing guidelines can help even the most non-skilled artist to create a good website design. These tips and guidelines highlighted below are for both starters and experienced web designers.

-Ensure your site content is clear and to the point

There is no shortcut here; web content has to be clear and concise so that your web visitor should know from the home page what the website is all about. For you to be able to target a wide audience, ensure you convey the information clearly without using words that not every person understands.

- The Graphic Design

You probably have come across the common saying ?first impression is always the last impression?, which holds true even when designing a web page. A good and user friendly design will attract many visitors while a complex and ugly one will have many people closing the pages even before a page starts to load. On the other hand, the overall layout of the whole website ought to be consistent and each of the pages ought to appear as part of a united website. This you do by using the same font size, color, and content style presentation on all the pages.

-Avoid unnecessary effects and tools

By the same token, just because a tool is available for free doesn?t mean you should use or install it. A probable source of irritation that you should avoid is using effects such as fade-ins and outs, as they are known to slow down the loading pace of web pages.

-Reduce the use of plug-ins

Components that will expect a web surfer to download an extra plug-in in order to view a webpage should be avoided under all costs, because no one really likes to download such things, and besides, the download process may take a lot of time, and many people are always rushing against time. Other components however such as ActiveX, flash components, shockwave, Java Applets, are quite common today, and are even becoming the standard for any web design and development.

-Reduce the use of graphics

Lots of graphics and heavy images are known to slow down the download pace of web pages. It goes without saying that a slow website will irritate someone either on a fast or a slow connection, it doesn?t really matter. Worse still, no search engine indexes the text found in graphics and images, so why should you use them?

- Keep an up-to-date website

If you surely want visitors to keep coming back to your site on a regular basis, which am sure is your main aim of creating a website, you have to keep updating your site with fresh and relevant content every now and then. This is more of a common sense point of view because why should someone come back to a website if the information they left there last year is still there?

-Strictly follow HTML Coding Standards

The right coding standards have to be followed to enable cross browser compatibility. For instance, a lot of people today don?t use alt tags for images which might discourage people who have slow internet connections to open the pages as they may not end up viewing the images after all.

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Qualities of a Bad and Good Website Design

Friday, January 29th, 2010

Very little information is available out there as to what can clearly be described as a good website design and a bad one. Of course the reason is simple as what may be good to you may not necessarily be good to someone else just the same way people have different opinions on what is beautiful and what is not. However, many people seem to be in agreement concerning the following qualities of good and bad website design.

Qualities of a bad website design

Hard to read text where the font used is small and is placed on a dark background or indecipherable use of fonts placed against beautiful backgrounds.
Any design that slows down the speed of web pages loading is perceived as bad. Note that many people browsing the net are very impatient and many will close a webpage that takes more than 3 minutes to load, or pages whose plug-ins have to be downloaded separately to allow one to view page content
Unclear mission statement on the home page. A good website, according to net surfers, is one that clearly explains what the site is all about at the front page. Many people, as mentioned above, are impatient enough to read through a number of pages before getting what it is all about.
Unclear instructions on the homepage that will explain how one can get vital information and navigate through the site.
A home page that expects a visitor to click on something else before accessing the website. This is known as a portal page. Why would anyone waste time to enter a home page twice?
Dead links, confusing organization, and poor site navigation
Non-informative web content.

Qualities of a good web site design

Easy to read and understand text. This may include the use of bold fonts and text over a well lit complementing background.
Rapid download speeds – a good web design should avoid attention grabbers like flash graphics as they tend to make pages load slowly. Equally, if your site will have photos, why not group them together in one section so that people can expect that section to load slowly.
A descriptive and clear mission statement well presented in the homepage
A guide in the homepage that talks about what is contained in the other pages
A well organized structural website
Any good website should grab the attention of the readers by use of entertaining and informative content and information.

While web design professionals are qualified enough to bring out your personality, mostly, they will use the same designs in almost all of their projects, hence your website will not be able to stand out of the crowd. It is advisable, if it is possible, to do it yourself but if you cannot, you can always seek the services of a professional web designer, with the hope that over time you will be able to pinpoint the areas that need changing and then implement the changes personally, thus some basic knowledge in web designing is advisable.

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What to look for in a professional Web Designer for Your Site

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

When in search of a web designer, there are a number of things you can implement to help you get the best possible value for your money. By talking to the web design professional team and looking at their work portfolio, you can always tell the level of professionalism, creativity, and talent inherent in the web design?s team. It can also be helpful to talk to past and current clients of the design team you are thinking of doing business with, to be able to know what to expect of their work.

On the other hand, people you know can give you referrals that will help you locate a good web designer. One place where many webmasters fail to look at is the web designer?s own website. The website should act as a mirror of what one should expect from the firm. The main things to look at the site of the designer are the aesthetic part of it, the design format, the layout, the colors used, etc. These things should give you an idea of how your website will appear and even though the color schemes can be more of personal tastes and preferences, many people can be in agreement as to whether the colors of a given website are welcoming and warm or not.

Another thing to look at is the consistency level from one page to another. How easy is it to navigate through the site, to find information, is it easy to locate other web pages within the same site or one has to go through complex menus to get something they are looking for. Be advised that an easy-to-navigate website will help keep and maintain traffic while a complex one will drive traffic to your competitors.

The other thing to look at is the content on the website. How easy to understand and how informative and relevant to the keywords and theme is it? Is the web content centered or placed hidden on the side bar? Is there a lot of content that will mean having to scroll through pages and pages to find what you are looking for? If for example your website deals with the sale of products and services, the content part is very crucial because many people who will be visiting your site will want to find direct explanation of what you have on offer and not millions of details to read through.

Other things to look out for include well descriptive title tags, well marked sitemap and many other basic site necessities. With a poor sitemap and poor title tags, an otherwise good website will have a problem to get indexed by the search engines. By evaluating what a design firm does for itself, it can give you a clearer understanding of what the firm is able to do to your site.

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What to look for in a professional Web Designer for Your Site

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

When in search of a web designer, there are a number of things you can implement to help you get the best possible value for your money. By talking to the web design professional team and looking at their work portfolio, you can always tell the level of professionalism, creativity, and talent inherent in the web design’s team. It can also be helpful to talk to past and current clients of the design team you are thinking of doing business with, to be able to know what to expect of their work.

On the other hand, people you know can give you referrals that will help you locate a good web designer. One place where many webmasters fail to look at is the web designer’s own website. The website should act as a mirror of what one should expect from the firm. The main things to look at the site of the designer are the aesthetic part of it, the design format, the layout, the colors used, etc. These things should give you an idea of how your website will appear and even though the color schemes can be more of personal tastes and preferences, many people can be in agreement as to whether the colors of a given website are welcoming and warm or not.

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Web Design Guidelines

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

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Qualities of a Bad and Good Website Design

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

Qualities of a bad website design

Hard to read text where the font used is small and is placed on a dark background or indecipherable use of fonts placed against beautiful backgrounds.
Any design that slows down the speed of web pages loading is perceived as bad. Note that many people browsing the net are very impatient and many will close a webpage that takes more than 3 minutes to load, or pages whose plug-ins have to be downloaded separately to allow one to view page content
Unclear mission statement on the home page. A good website, according to net surfers, is one that clearly explains what the site is all about at the front page. Many people, as mentioned above, are impatient enough to read through a number of pages before getting what it is all about.
Unclear instructions on the homepage that will explain how one can get vital information and navigate through the site.
A home page that expects a visitor to click on something else before accessing the website. This is known as a portal page. Why would anyone waste time to enter a home page twice?
Dead links, confusing organization, and poor site navigation
Non-informative web content.

Qualities of a good web site design

Easy to read and understand text. This may include the use of bold fonts and text over a well lit complementing background.
Rapid download speeds – a good web design should avoid attention grabbers like flash graphics as they tend to make pages load slowly. Equally, if your site will have photos, why not group them together in one section so that people can expect that section to load slowly.
A descriptive and clear mission statement well presented in the homepage
A guide in the homepage that talks about what is contained in the other pages
A well organized structural website
Any good website should grab the attention of the readers by use of entertaining and informative content and information.

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The Major Constituents of Effective Web Design and Marketing

Wednesday, January 27th, 2010

Target Audience – this is the basis of web marketing for you to record any success online. You have to establish who target audience is, their wants, needs, level of knowledge, goals, among other nitty gritty so that you can create an effective and impactful website at either e-commerce or lead generation.
Subject matter or core message – once you have identified your target audience, you have to put your message across succinctly. The subject matter ought to deliver what you want to say in a compelling and very clear way. Be advised that the subject matter is not your strategic plan summary or your mission statement; rather, it is a list of the reasons why people should prefer you over your competitors.
The structure of your website – this is where you put yourself in your target audience shoes and ask yourself how easy it is to navigate through the site. A good website should be easy to navigate, and should have a step-by-step guide whereby the message has to be delivered in a comprehensible sequence and at the end, the web visitor has the choice of making the next step at will.
The Call to action step – once a visitor gets to your website and browses through what you have on offer, a good website should provide viable options at the end to help them make an informed decision. Call for action may include such things as ‘contact us’, ‘sign up today’, ‘join our mailing list’ etc. Note that a lot of visitors get excited by simply being guided over the process of assessing a service or product hence if you tell clients to sign up for a trial period, many of them will gladly do it.
Lead Capture – thanks to advent technology, today it is very easy to capture the accurate contact information from leads. All that you need is an off-the-shelf database and a simple web script. Further, you can set up an automated response, which of course will save you a lot of time and effort, so that useful energy can be channeled towards qualified leads.
Effective use of graphic design – sadly, majority of web masters today spent over 90% of their total budget on graphic design and the remaining 10% on the other stuff. A good graphic design work should entice your visitors while at the same time establish credibility. Once credibility is established, many visitors will take the time to go through your core message.
Web Promotion – once you optimize your site to be able to maximize conversion rates with the abovementioned strategies, you should apply site promotion techniques effectively to drive targeted traffic towards your site. This may include search engine optimization techniques to increase search engine rankings and printing the URL on your business cards. Some of the most cost-effective promotion strategies worth a look at include reciprocal linking, email marketing, and search engine marketing and submission.

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The Significance of a Good Logo

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

The opportunity of influencing possible customers to form an opinion of a business within seconds is by designing a logo. A business logo is of very great influence as it is mostly the first thing that a client will see. Additionally, the moment the logo becomes visible to the public, it will always be associated with your company name, and the company name be associated with the logo. This gives you reason enough to give a company logo a lot of thought.

Typically, any good logo has to be recognizable, simple, and very effective at passing across the desired message. Every nitty gritty of a logo?s design has to be analyzed carefully to make sure it conveys the message across effectively. The style of the logo, size, color, font (in the case of a logotype), shape, etc each plays a crucial role in how the final logo design will appear hence should be considered carefully.

Taking an example of a restaurant, it will mostly use colors to affect the clients perception of how appetizing a meal is. By the same token, your logo color is very important as it will be the main reason why a client will opt for our website over that of your competitor. A financial institution like a bank will mostly go with potent conservative colors like dark reds, blues, deep browns, etc with the aim of conveying success, stability, and trust.

Colors aside, the style of the logo equally has an important role to play in the visual effect it will have on a client. This is because the style will determine how clients will see the business ? is it trendy, is it conservative, expensive, formal, casual, exclusive, friendly, low-priced etc. If a logo will have the name of the company in it, the type of font used forms part of the logo style hence will also have an effect on a client?s overall response to your logo.

Size is of equal importance. Keep in mind that the same logo will be used both large-scale and small-scale in case of store-fronts, advertisements, and billboards in large-scale while website, email communication, corporate stationery, and business cards will function as the small-scale use. With that in mind, a company logo has to be designed in such a way that it will be easily recognizable and very effective regardless of the size.

Generally, an attractive and effective logo forms a crucial role in the success of any business hence tends to be much more influential than many people assume. Because many people are often unaware of the impact logos have on their decision, chances of them being aware of how influential a well-designed logo will have on their business are very minimal. By spending more time in evaluating the different parts and facets of a logo, you can ensure that your enterprise logo creates a very huge impact.

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Importance of an SE Friendly Website Design

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

An SE friendly website design, short for search engine friendly website design, is a very crucial component that will ensure your website gets targeted traffic from the search engines. While a good website should be designed with the consumer and target audience in mind, it also has to be very appealing to the search engines. This is because the search engine spiders have a way of locating and ranking websites as per their relation and relevance to the keywords entered by people in the search boxes.

Designing an SE friendly site is quite simple, and some rules are even common sense. First and foremost, you should look at the font, which ought to be simple. While fancy large fonts are pretty and visually appealing, they might not be very pretty to the search engines. Ensure you use normal font, plain color, size 12, Arial, courier, or Times New Roman. Your main focus should be the subject matter and not how to present that subject matter.

Step two involves arranging the text as naturally as possible with the use of paragraphs, bullets, etc to break up the content and put emphasis on the main points. However, you should be easy with the use of exclamation marks, capital letters, etc as they may not be decipherable to the search engines. The word count of a typical webpage should be between 250 and 700 words, so that the search engines can be able to rank you close enough, if not at the top of the search results list.

Flash media and complex graphics should be avoided. This is because in addition to distracting the attention of clients and making pages load slowly, search engine crawlers interpret picture and graphics as blank spaces. Needless to mention, no blank space can give a website any rank, no matter how optimized to the keyword it might be. On the other hand, ensure all pages make use of specific keywords linked to the product or service you’re dealing with so that you can attract targeted traffic. As far as search engines are concerned, text is the king.

A spam design should equally be avoided when creating a SE friendly website design. This shows up on your website in form of hidden text in the HTML code. Rather, ensure your HTML code has Meta Tags and even though they are not as effective to attract the search engines as they were a few years back, they still work. Of equal importance to pay attention to for a SE friendly site is the site layout. Dead links and poor navigation on a site will not only annoy the visitors but will equally confuse the search engines.

It is advisable to have a sitemap and ensure that the hierarchy of the web pages is as they appear physically. For a big website, a Google site map will do, only that you should make sure the site navigation tools and specific and terse. Even though the key elements of se friendly web designs put much emphasis on simplicity, hence appear to be very simple and one-dimensional, ignoring them you will only have yourself to blame. The moment you make your site as friendly to the search engines as possible, you can rest assured that targeted traffic will be coming to your site within no time.

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Enhancing the Appearance and Feel of a Website

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

The internet and web site are two very important mediums in communication, product promotion and selling. Websites in particular represents most enterprises today. Information can easily be spread and promotion be done successfully over the web. As such, every person involved in online marketing or product selling tend to ensure that their site remain as unique as possible inform of design, appearance, and visibility in the search engines. Read More

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