Web Design Tricks

Who Is Your Audience?

2012-07-28T02:00:00.000-07:00

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site's general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

Is It Easy to Create our own Website? What is HTML?

2012-07-27T02:19:00.003-07:00

Is It Easy to Create our own Website? What is HTML?

Creating a website is not so much a feat, if we compare it to the education of other technical skills. Most people tend to give up and pack their bags as soon as they hear the word “programming” and “technical”. They think it`s too much of a hassle to actually learn a whole computer “language”. HTML, the most basic computer language in building websites, is actually pretty simple to understand, as long as we have the interest in learning new things.

What is HTML?

HTML is the acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. For learning purposes, just think of it as a language that the computer understands. For example, as humans, we were taught different languages; i.e. HTML as a language, is mostly and specifically used to create a website. The web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, will then decipher and interpret the code or rather, language(HTML), and display it in a way we can understand it, just like in a basic webpage.

Coding.

Coding the HTML language might be a bit tough for some people, so we can actually purchase programmes, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver, or even Microsoft Frontpage. These programmes are solely created to help individuals in designing professional webpages/websites.

Furthermore, one could also gain access to online web-builders, website builders that are inbuilt and can be directly controlled from the net. There are many different and specific builders online.

Books and magazines contain guides that can help in offering tutorials and ways to put up our own websites. Even online tutorials are credible, as in the modern world, information technology is the best and most cost efficient way in retaining knowledge, especially in this particular field.

So, you could start and build one right away. If you enjoy coding, it might even become a favourable past-time.

The Key to Better Websites #2

2012-07-27T02:18:00.004-07:00

[A] Navigation
Introduction

Importance of the latter :

One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority. For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it’s content viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth. It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think, do and react.

1 ) Navigation

As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way your visitors think.

Situation A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well planned in terms of placement, and design.

Situation B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the navigation buttons/bar.

In Situation A, a visitor will always want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters the particular product information page.

As for Situation B, a visitor stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types, the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found, (example : home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few more clicks] > product information ).

Analysis : In both situations, wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more rewarding ergo better?

The Key to Better Websites

2012-07-27T02:17:00.003-07:00

Design Introduction

Importance of the latter :

Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design into perspective, imagine a when we are purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well most people do, other than the material factor. But let’s assume the all other factors are constant, wouldn’t the design or looks, become the key aspect then?

2 ) Design

Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.

Situation A : A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.

Situation B : A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)

Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures and designs will somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression.

As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly welcoming, is it?

Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to always plan your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least maintain an impressionable website.

Website Customization: What can we do?

2012-07-27T02:16:00.005-07:00

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This would also be the case in web designing.

Every individual would definitely want their website to look good, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few things we could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.

When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs.

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

Most Successful Social Media Tricks for Businesses

2012-07-27T02:16:00.002-07:00

Social Media Optimization

“Facebook has maximum market share”. “Twitter has millions of fan followers”. “LinkedIn is rising high in terms of business connection”…….Aren’t these topics selling high over global business community? Certainly yes! Social networking sites are a buzz in today’s world and almost every Internet user has a keen interest to have an account with at least one of the many social media sites.

Leaving aside the use of networking sites for social interaction, the websites have become an effective tool to boast over the online business operations. By analyzing various business websites over the Internet, you will find most of them to be connected with social media sites. A good number of entrepreneurs prefer using social media sites for understanding the market trend and on-going demand of the targeted consumers.

If you believe that social media can boost your business globally, then check out some tricks to use social networking sites for your business purposes

Facebook Fan Page for customer service:

Apart from advertising your products and services over FB, you can also think about creating a Fan Page for your customers. Ask your customers about their queries and take the delight in replying to them over the same page. This kind of customer service from your end will create brand loyalty for your business.

Participate in real-time conversation:

These days, twitter is playing wonders in the online world. From celebrity section to common people to business giants, everyone enjoys to tweet “What’s Happening’ in their surroundings. You can dedicate some of your time to introduce your business over this social media site and attract more number of potential customers.

Expand your connection with LinkedIn:

LinkedIn is a dedicated social networking site for business entrepreneurs. Make the decision to create a company profile over this site and take pleasure to announce your on-going and upcoming business plans before your connections. Within a short span of time, you are sure to count your fans in thousands.

To take unlimited advantage of social media sites, you can think about designing your business websites with social media plug-ins. At Red Chilli Media, the experienced professionals take least possible time to deliver tailor-made website design services as per the specific business requirements. How about contacting them for web services?

2012-07-27T02:15:00.001-07:00

Know About CSS Layout Types and Their Uses

WHich is the ideal width of web sites ?
Most of the new designers have this common question. So i decide to write about this topics to gives them idea aboutwidth of web sites.Theres are variations in monitor display resolutions. We designers need to decide first How i am gonna represent my site content to users.To do this we need to know first that there are three primary layout types available to design a website. After reading this article any of you can decide which one you can use for your design.

1. Fixed-width Layout (Using pixel-based units for the dimensions of the page)
2. Liquid or Fluid Layout (Using %-based units)
3. Elastic Layout (Using em-based units)

Lets start seeing more details with examples to undetstand what those means.

1. Fixed-width Layout

As the name suggests fixed layouts stop the web browser from having the freedom to format text as it sees fit, This is one of the most popular techniques on the web, with websites such as facebook and theBBC applying the design. This basically means that the width your content is contained and stays fixed no matter what, this is typically achieved using something called a wrapper, or container, which holds all the content within it. The fixed width design can be set to the left, center or right of the a page, very easily.

The real bonus of working with a fixed width design is that you can set imagery and design around the consideration that your width will always be the same. This is a real positive if you want a banner image, for example, which needs to be 900px, you will not have to problems when resizing, issues which you would encounter with a fluid design.

The downside of a fixed design however is the dead space that you are left with where your design does not fill the page. A fixed-width design can also force designers to prioritize. As a site grows and content competes for top placement, it must still fit within a specific width.

2. Liquid or Fluid Layout (Using %-based units)

The most relaxed method of providing a dynamically expanding or contracting design makes use of the ever-popular percentage (%) unit measurement.

This layout type has gained mass popularity because it is the ultimate way of allowing the total opposite of a fixed layout where the content will simply take whatever space is available to it.

Absolute LayoutsPercentages require careful calculation as you can’t give more than 100% without issues!

The limited guarantees you hold on the viewport being used goes beyond screen resolutions (imagine your site on a 6-inch screen versus a 100-inch screen, even just at 80% width).

Though it goes without saying that a liquid layout is useful in almost every web-based situation because it adjusts its width depending on how big or small the user’s viewport is — so it’s definitely worth looking into.

3. Elastic Layout (Using em-based units)

An elastic layout scales with users’ text size.

More accurately, an elastic interface scales with browser text size—commonly a default of 16px—which users can change if they wish. Some people make a permanent change for accessibility reasons, others use the UI controls to increase text size if they need to.

Elastic design uses em values for all elements. Ems are a relative size, written like this: 1em, 0.5em, 1.5em etc. Ems can be specified to three decimal places like so: 1.063em. “Relative” means:

1. They are calculated based on the font size of the parent element. E.g. If a

has a computed font size of 16px then any element inside that layer —a child— inherits the same font size unless it is changed. If the child font size is changed to 0.75em then the computed size would be 0.75 × 16px = 12px.
2. If the user increases (or decreases) text size in their browser, the whole interface stretches (or shrinks.)

5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back

2012-01-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

5 Important Rules in Website Design

2012-01-18T11:32:00.000-08:00

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.