All About Web Design

Ways To Improve your Website Design

2010-10-12T07:56:00.000-07:00

Halt then and there if you intend to do a blunder with your web design !!!

You must be aware of the fact that a website is a mirror to your identity. It is the determining factor to the fact of your standing in the endless list of websites.

Get ready to attract more and more customers to your website by improving your web design. Don't forget that your customer is one click away from 'EXIT'.

Therefore, it becomes really important to keep in mind a few simple steps to make way for an improved web design, which are as follows:

1.Transparency:

Provide enough transparent information so that your visitor is not confused about the purpose. It should not be obscure and difficult to understand, even if unintentionally.

2.Style:

Just make sure that the typography that is, the font size, font style, spacing, and other such details match the theme of your website.

3.Subtle:

Try and follow a subtle approach to your web design. If you tend to load your web design's background with loads of colours, graphics and texture, it ultimately results in the diminished overall effect of the main purpose of the site. The visitor would loose the focus.

4.Keep it Light:

Try to intact your heavy visual graphics, large images because they tend to slow down the loading tome. The more it takes to load a page, the more it increases the chances of a visitor to leave your site.

5.Graphics:

You logo, which is a brand recognition; title bars, images, navigation menus are often anticipated by the visitors. They tend to enhance the value of your site. Unnecessary overuse of such graphics would tend to take away your potential customers.

6.Easy Navigation:

It becomes very important in a web design to generate easy and simple navigation menus. Just keep in mind the familiarity people tend to follow.

7.Vertical is your call:

Don't think that visitors would like your so-called use of horizontal scroll bar. People just hate it and it becomes very annoying when they are not able to find the whole set of information on a single screen in front of their eyes.

Last but not the least, it is by far the most important aspect of the advice that try and think with the eyes of the visitor. Put yourself into their shoes and then, get started with your web designing. I hope, it would help a lot.

19 Things NOT To Do When Building a Website

2010-10-12T07:51:00.000-07:00

I’ve compiled a small list (or rant) of some very basic and fundamental rules that all webmasters must learn and respect when developing a website that needs to make actual money. This list can also be used by companies looking to hire a web development firm or to evaluate an already deployed website project.
I’ll start off slow and easy…

1. DO NOT resize the user’s browser window, EVER. I know you can, I know you feel really coolwhen you put that little Javacrap on your page and like a little miracle the browser window resizes to your wishes, but NO. You see this atrocious web technique mostly with spam sites and when “designers” design websites. That is, someone in the photo/video/art industry who “also makes websites” (see #6 for more on that), but in reality has no idea how to make a successful ecommerce website.

2. If your website requires the visitor to load your home page, and then “launch” your real website in a pop up, YOU LOSE. Pack it up, send it home, start over. If your website doesn’t load immediately on your home page and deliver your message within a couple of seconds it’s pretty damn hard to keep people along for the show (not matter how cool and Flashtacular it is). I see this technique mostly with Flash web developers, who for some reason think all flash websites must load in a pop up window (assuming it can get past pop up blockers), and have 30 second loading sequences and look curiously like 2advanced.net
3. If your website asks the user which version they’d like, high bandwidth or low, HTML or Flash, you ALSO LOSE. See above for the explanation on this one as they’re related. It’s like asking your customer if they’d like to enter your crappy store or your better store (but the ‘better’ store requires special glasses and a little 30 second wait…um NO THANKS), what you’re really asking them is “do you want to leave and buy from my competitor because I’ve put up a crappy roadblock before you even know what I sell?”.

4. If your website is ALL Flash, FIRE your web development company, and if you made it, add it to your portfolio under “Useless web projects I’ve done” and start over. Flash it just a tool, a wonderful powerful tool for delivering animation, video, interfaces, shopping carts, functionality etc. the list goes on, it kicks ass. This DOES NOT MEAN you need to create your entire website in Flash, and if you do you will be at a severe disadvantage to your wiser competitors. Look at it this way, evenMacromedia/Adobe, the maker of Flash doesn’t have an all Flash website, do you think there’s a reason why? Oh yeah, they want to make actual money and don’t listen to ‘designers’.
5. DO NOT try to reinvent the website navigation. Put it on the top, the left, hell even the right will work but do not try to reinvent the way people interact with digital interfaces while trying to actually sell your product or service. People will get confused, then annoyed, then pissed, then gone.
6. This one is going to get me in trouble. If you are a print designer, and “do websites on the side”, STOP DOING websites and providing “advice” to your print clients about web design. Print design to web design is like designing an ad for a race car, and actually building and racing that race car. Don’t get me wrong, print is great and all, you make pretty pictures and wonderful messages crafted with great copy, but when it comes down to it, it’s still just a picture. People cannot buy the product with a print ad (yet), they can’t communicate with your business through a print ad. I can already hear the grumbling coming from the print world, and look, it’s not that I don’t see a purpose for print advertising, just stick to print and don’t nose you’re way into a medium which you do not know and wouldn’t understand (same goes for general “geeks” who do websites ‘on the side’)
7. If you do not have sufficient copy, or any REAL TEXT on your home page (not in an image), and to a lesser extent your whole site, hire a copywriter and fire your webmaster NOW.Content is King, repeat after me CONTENT IS KING. Search engines don’t index fancy graphics and Flash, they index text. Good ol’ reliable text. If you don’t know how much text, or how to write good text, hire somebody who does (it’s essential to your ranking and to selling your product or service).
8. If your website does not work in Firefox, welcome to 2007 DUMBASS. Yes in most markets Firefox only commands at most a 10-15% market share, but for some sites it’s much higher (my other site Oomny.com has 80% Firefox users). Furthermore, if the morons you hired didn’t make your site and functionality compatible with Firefox they obviously have no idea what they’re doing, and aren’t up on their game. I have no idea why you would need a website, or functionality system that is so dependent on IE that it simply can’t work in Firefox, and frankly it doesn’t matter because there is no good reason. The lack of Firefox knowledge by a webmaster shows they aren’t of the Internet culture, and that’s a bad sign if you’re a business owner.
9. Commandment 9 is a collection of small issues that have been beaten to death other places, and are quote common principles, but bear repeating. No blinking text, no Frontpage, no pop-ups (even requested), no scrolling text, no font downloads, and no Flash intros. If your product or service needs a flash intro to sell, it probably sucks.
10. If you use music on your site make sure the user can stop it, and it BETTER NOT start on page load without the user requesting it. Same goes for video with audio (*cough ESPN *cough), many web users surf from work and don’t enjoy their speakers lighting up with your horrible and intrusive taste in music while their boss roams the halls looking for some ass to bust.
11. Text navigations are better than images, this isn’t a big deal but it’s better to use text for your nav with some clever CSS, than to export a large and bloated mouseover image navigation. I know Dreamweaver makes it so super simple, but you’ll benefit in a lot of other ways without it. Images wisely used, just like Flash are excellent, but don’t rely always on mouseover graphics to deliver your image, design is more about content than designing the interface (do you know any of your friends that raves about the iPods elegant interface? No, and that’s the point, it just works)
12. A well thought out site map with logical sub sections is better than using “drop downs”.Simply put, drops downs never work quite right, and only a few of the ones I have seen actually are usable. Furthermore, the use of drop downs usually means that the person organizing the content did a piss poor job of it. If you have the mother of all sites and need people to access hundreds of pages, you’re probably Microsoft or CNET and you’re ignoring me anyways.
13. If your site needs a search engine for users to find information, it’s time to start over and fire the guy who came up with the site map (and those slick drop downs on your nav). Search engines are wonderful, and play a great role on some great sites, but if you lean on it for users to find content you’re pissing 50%+ of your customers off. Some people like to browse, they also like to search if they NEED to. Give them a logical browse option and they won’t need to search, but leave search there for the advanced users really digging into your vast amount of content (and you do have LOTS of content to be indexed right? If not see #7)

14. Load time is still a factor for over 50% of American web surfers. Even though you live in the wonderful world of Cable and DSL, half of America does not and hates you for it. If you design your site for only broadband users you’re sending a message, â€œEvery other customer can bite meï¿½?. Bloat is simply NOT ALLOWED on the home page, but it can be used deeper in when users request it specifically.
15. This one seems obvious but isn’t to some people *cough Designers *cough. Do not HIDE your message, and don’t OBSCURE what you want the user to do. Home page design is like a billboard, hit them with a message and a desired path (buy now) in 1-2 seconds, but provide information for people who want to dig deeper and research.
16. If you lead the user through a pre-determined path in order to deliver a message or demo, it’s time to get an ANT farm and take your controlling wills out on some species that will actually like it. The web is about modular content, it’s not an “experience” or a “wonder tour of magical enchantment”. If you have to have a slideshow, put thumbnails there too so people can get the content they want when they want it. If you’re demo has 20 pages, give them a table of contents or at least some next/previous buttons so they can fast forward (they’d be wathcing broadcast TV if they wanted content shoved down their throats at a pace decided by the man). Pushing people through a demo, no matter how complex 1 step at a time is a mistake and will lead to the inevitable; annoyance. And if you’re purpose of reloading the page to deliver the next slide in a slide show is to increase your ad impressions, you should DIE (see SI.com, Time.com and CNN)
17. If you’re delivering video, it better not ask the user which bandwidth or version of video they’d like. Real Player, 100K, Windows Media Player, Quicktime, WMV, 300K, AVI, Cable, DSL, Dial-Up? NO THANK YOU. Deliver your video in an embedded player in Flash. I’m sorry, Flash won this battle a long time ago (see YouTube), it has the install base, the lean interface and isn’t trying to get you to join “their world” of media player fantasy where they place system tray icons and launch helpers and pop up every time you pop in a CD or DVD. Flash is cross platform and cross browser compatible, something none of the other providers can say.
18. This is a small one, but if the user has to mouse over your graphic or small image to know what it is, or where it will take them if its a link, quit your job and be a magician or a blackjack dealer, making web interfaces is not for you.
19. This final commandment is related to many of the above ideas, and is a good guiding principle for web geeks that are excited about new tech and want to use it. Just because a technology is new, or you just discovered it does not make it suitable to put on a business website, JUST BECAUSE you can. This happened with Flash, Java, and is now happening with AJAX. Yes new technology is cool, but only integrate it on a business site if it improves the customers experience or sells more product/service. Technology for the sake of technology is silly and only belongs on your personal show-off site, or your own computer where not one will be exposed to its horrid creativity except you.
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One might say that if you followed all of my commandments, the web would be a boring, dry and conformist web of sites only engineered for 1 thing; selling. And you’re right, but thankfully the world is full of plenty so called “creative” people and they keep it interesting for the rest of us.

Make Your Website Design Work For Your Buisness

2010-10-11T07:24:00.000-07:00

Having a great website design is good. But until and unless it works to boost your business it cannot be termed as a success. The essential purpose of a website is to portray an online face of the business concerned and generate new channels for the same.

Here are some tips about how you can make your website work for your business and fuel its success:

Consistency

It is one of the critical elements in website design and development. Your website should well be consistent with your brand and business. Make sure the website reflects your brand identity and reflect the corporate image of your business. All your marketing communications should well be in tandem with the website look so as to maintain a consistency in all your business endeavors.

A consistent look and feel goes a long way in establishing a strong presence in the audiences' mind and reaffirms your brand identity time and again.

Usability

It is another element that holds vital importance in website design. Your visitors should be able to find your website on the internet with as much ease as they should be able to navigate within. Good usability means visitors would be able to make the most of their time on the website.

Make sure the navigation is simple and logical and all links work properly. Set right any broken links or the ones that lead to wrong pages or show a 404 error message. The information on all the web pages should be correct and the forms should be working correctly.

Text Legibility

The fonts on your website should be of the right size so that they function well on different browsers andplatforms. Also, allow your visitors to resize the text according to their preferences so that they can read through at ease. Make sure the text on the site is a tint darker than the background shade to promote easy readability. On the whole the text should be easy to read and laid out in logical format so as to break the monotony. Moreover, it shouldn't interfere with any images or graphics on the site.

Design Style

The website design should put forth your message to the audience. The design should well be in tandem with your brand identity and reflect your business objectives. It is advisable to hire the services of a professional web development company to formulate great looking and functioning websites.

Speed

As important is it for your audience to find your website easily, so important is the website to load quickly. In addition the navigation pathway should also be well defined and quick to function. Make sure the graphics and images on your website are optimized properly so that they don't take much time to load. Always remember that visitors find it easier to leave the website altogether than wait for it to unleash at snail's pace.

Search Engine Friendly

No website is good enough until there is good traffic inflow. And to guarantee steady traffic to your website you need to make sure that it figures in the top slots of search engine results. Here are some tips to make your website search engine friendly:. Code your website in HTML rather than embedding images and graphic elements. Use ALT tags for all images and graphics in addition to Meta tags and description tags. Submit your website to online directories. Get relevant links from others on the internet.

About the Author:

Maneet Puri leads LeXolution IT Services, a reputed India web design firm that provides powerful web solutions and KPO services to its client base. He leads his team of custom website designers to create customized designs for their corporate clients. For more information about the author and his company visit www.lexolutionit.com

Why Do Visitors Leave Your Website?

2010-10-11T07:17:00.000-07:00

Visitor traffic is one of the most important factors that determine the success of a website on the Internet. However, something more important that attracting visitors is to retain them on the website. By keeping your visitors on the site for longer times, you can increase the number of page views as well your chances of them performing a desired action. Often you may notice that though your website gets a huge number of visitors, they tend to leave abruptly. This may be because there is something on your website that they don't like. By knowing the reason why visitors leave your website, you can seek to make adjustments and thus improve the website. Here are some common reasons why people exit websites.

Poor Accessibility

No matter how great the website is, it is completely useless if the visitors are unable to access it. They have no option but to leave. Browser incompatibility is one of the prime reasons why website fail to be accessible. Make sure you check for compliance at the design and development stage itself so as to avoid any future issues.

Unintuitive Navigation

Navigation is a determining factor of how visitors browse through the website to find information. However, poor navigation can frustrate them and cause them to leave abruptly. Therefore, devote plenty of time and attention to design your navigation system. It should be logical as well as intuitive. If your website is fairly large, you should include a sitemap.

Over Advertising

Advertisements are an essential revenue generating source for websites. But some businesses take it overboard and paste their websites with ads all over. This highly irritates the visitors and makes them leave out off frustration. Therefore, try to limit the advertisements on your website. Avoid using overtly flashy ads that tend to distract the visitors.

Inadequate Information

Visitors come to a website looking for some or the other information and when they don't find what they are looking for, they just choose to leave. It is very important to understand your industry audience and know their needs and requirements. Armed with this knowledge, you can cater to them more effectively and provide them with what they need.

Slow Loading Pages

This is probably one of the most common reasons why visitors leave a website. Internet users are an impatient lot. They like to find instant information and would not wait till the website loads completely. A much easier way for them is to look for information on another website. The connection speed of users also influence this. Therefore, it is important that you design pages that load easily even on slow Internet connections. Use Google Analytics to determine the percentage of users who have slow or fast Internet connections.

Automatic Audio and Video Play

Audio and video features are fast becoming popular. However, even though they are effective means of communication, leave the option for the users to decide. Don't start music automatically and even if you do, provide an option to turn it off. Visitors can often get irritated with the uncontrolled music and videos and leave the website altogether even if the website was good enough.

About the Author:

Kabir Bedi is a senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a professioanal web development companythat has a team of skilled Web developers India. The company offers a plethora of web services includingweb development services & web design services.

Custom Banner Design vs. Template

2010-10-11T01:27:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of websites that allow you to create a free banner by providing you with several free templates. All you have to do is to select a template, add your text and literally create your banner design in a matter of seconds only. However, the down side is that the company (that provides you with free templates) also uses their URL or company name on your banner. Now, I wonder why people wonder why their banner designs are not giving them the results they are striving for. Well, if your market is thinking of you as a cheap business that can’t even afford a banner, then why will they buy your products or show interest in acquiring your services.

Now, it is very clear that the best practice should be to create a custom banner design instead of using a template. However, to ensure that people truly understand the power of customized banners and why they should avoid using templates, we need to explore this subject in great detail and take a look at some important factors that can totally break your banner and ruin you marketing campaigns. So, let’s take a look at these important factors now.

Personal Touch:

To make your marketing campaigns successful, you have to give them a personal touch. Copying and using someone else’s ideas will never help you succeed in the world of marketing and you will end up ruining your credibility. Hence, it is crucial that you give a personal touch to your banner to help you correctly represent your business model. If your banner is unable to tell your market that what your business is about, you will have trouble winning their trust. Therefore, people will avoid clicking your banner and your CTR or click thru rate will go down. No clicks mean zero visitors to your site.

Don’t Look Cheap:

If you are selling expensive products but are using a free template to create your banner design, then know this, you will soon end up ruining your business image. Your market will think of you as unprofessional and amateur. If you can’t spend a few bucks to create a custom banner design, then will you spend to provide quality products to your customers? Well, this is the question that your market will want to know. Of course, they won’t contact you to find out. They will simply ignore you and go elsewhere.

Don’t Look Like a Copycat:

The problem with templates is that they are widely available and anyone can use them. If you consider your business to be unique in its own way then your banner design should be unique as well. Using a template will make you look like a copycat without any creativity at all. So, ensure that your banner is always customized.

See, using a customized banner will allow you to give it a personal and unique touch. It will allow you to convey your message in a powerful way because your designer will even change the colors and layout according to your message.

So, the best thing is to go for a custom banner design instead of a template.

eCommerce Website Design

2010-10-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website.

Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.

2. Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.

3. The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the statistics they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at a specific book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well.

An eCommerce web design is also about the layout. One important aspect is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced eCommerce web designer will know how to create designs to meets those demands.

If you are about to open an eCommerce website or you are already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with eCommerce websites.

Casino Affiliate Program: Building Your Websites

2010-10-10T09:06:00.001-07:00

If you have been struggling to work out why so many people are making money from the Internet and wonder how you can do likewise, you could do no better than joining an affiliate program. Unlike the so called 'get-rich-quick' schemes you may have read about or even signed up to affiliate marketing is one of the few to be proven to be successful time after time. There are no gimmicks, no risks and best of all no money to part with. All that is needed is a website, a subject and a good affiliate program. There are no details to work out, no difficult customers to deal with and all the accounts are managed automatically so there is no need to even keep a track of any of the customers.

The affiliate programs are usually based on a click and sign-up basis. The most successful affiliates choose to combine their sites with the largest online businesses and industries. Few of these online sectors can match that of the new virtual casinos. These online gaming forums have been hugely popular since they were first launched and their popularity has never wavered. In fact for the most part participation and the monetary revenues have been increasing year after year. So backing such a huge industry is a great way to make sure that your site earns money and attracts right number and type of clientele that you are looking for.

Once you have decided on your industry as a website owner you must then go about the content of your site. Making it as relevant to the subject of online casinos, or gaming of some kind, can guarantee that you are attracting the right people. If you have a site about music or flowers, the likelihood of visitors being interested in joining an online casino are far smaller than if it is about a group of casinos or even just the online industry that has made the businesses possible. The way in which you present your information can also be a tool in making people decide to try one of your links and join up to a site. If you make an offer sound too good to be true or make the online casinos appear to be hugely exciting and potentially lucrative you can hope to lure in a few extra clients. If you simply churn out the boring facts without any enthusiasm or interest it will show and readers are going to be far less motivated to click on your links and make you money.

Converting hits into money may be as simple as using professional graphics and emotive language, but the problem really lies in attracting people to your site in the first place. To make money in the casino affiliate program you really have to have a large foundation of customers. Some may win, some may quit early but others will lose and play over a long period of time. Therefore the more people you have on your books the higher the possibility of striking affiliate gold. But attracting people is a problem that all websites face, including the very same sites that the affiliates represent. It is for this reason that any successful affiliate makes sure that they are as visible as possible, utilising every trick to make sure that they are top of search engine lists. SEO documents, forum postings and even emailing with special links with an embedded URL unique to your site. All these are options and widely available utilities at even the smallest website owner's disposal. With marketing tools and imagination anybody can master their own online business in the casino affiliate program.

Why Good Website Navigation Is Important ?

2010-10-09T10:22:00.000-07:00

Web surfers are basically an impatient bunch and if a website is hard to figure out because the links are not obvious, they will click away never to return. Website navigation is one of the most crucial elements in determining the effectiveness of a website. This article discuses the basic principle of designing website navigation.

To be effective website navigation must first and foremost make sense to the average person. While there is always room for creativity, well-designed websites tend to have similar navigation layouts.

As a web designer you must always keep in mind the basic purpose of the website and the intended audience when designing navigational elements. Most websites exist to either inform the visitor about a product or service or to actually sell the product or service. Therefore there are some basic guidelines to follow:

Make sure all navigational elements are clearly links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text or changing color on mouse. Resist the temptation to use clever or ambiguous names for links.

When using non-conventional links, explicitly tell the visitor that this is a link. For example, suppose you design a web page where you want to use a map showing several different cities and want to let the user click on the city name to pull up information about that city. Just make sure you tell the user to click on the city name to get more information about that city.

Remember the “Three Click Rule” that most professional web designers use. Studies have shown that most users will not click more than three links to get to the information they want. So every page on your website should be reachable within three clicks.

I do not recommend using a flash movie or other type of splash page on your website. Keep the web page design simple yet attractive. But if you do decide to use one, make certain you use the META REFRESH tag to take the visitor automatically to your home page after a few seconds and provide a clickable, clearly marked button or link so the visitor can skip the entry page and go directly to your home page otherwise a large percentage of visitors will just click away never to return. Remember most visitors are looking for information not entertainment.

Navigation Element Locations

Top Menus – a top of the page menu bar is usually located directly below the page header graphic that contains the site logo. These menu items may be single links, drop down menus, or expanding menus. Each menu item can be represented by a graphic or just text. In ether case a hyperlink is associated with each item that the visitor can click on to get to the information described.

Left Side Navigation – left side navigation is typically implemented as either a column or text area on the left top portion of the webpage. Like the top menu, each item can be a single link or an expanding menu.

Right Side Navigation – right side navigation is not used that often, but when used, it is implemented as a column or text area on the top right side of the webpage. Most designers use this area for advertisements rather than site navigation.

Bottom Menus – bottom menus can be either a menu bar or footer. Menu bars use either graphics or text links while footers almost exclusively use text links.

Important Navigation Elements

Internal Page Links – Every page on the website should be within two or three clicks from the home page. Important pages should be ONE click away. The type of website will determine which links are more prominently displayed.

Login Boxes – login boxes should be prominently displayed. Common locations are top left, top right or inside the page header.

Shopping Carts – if you use a shopping cart to sell your products, you should prominently display a view cart button on each page. The most commonly used location is the top right side just below or as part of the header.

Order Buttons – if you use individual order buttons they should be large and visible. The fewer clicks it takes to get to your order page, the more orders you will get.

Breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs are both links and a graphical representation of where you are in the site. Breadcrumbs are usually located at the top left of the page just under the header. Each word is a link back to the previous page. They are in the form

Home-> Articles-> Marketing

External Links – external links can be used anywhere but are most frequently used inside the text areas on a website. They may be references to more information located on another site, to recommended products, or to almost anything else.

Advertisements – advertisements are usually either a graphic or text with an associated hyperlink. Ads can be placed anywhere on a webpage but are usually used just under the header banner, down the right hand side of the page, under navigation elements on the left margin, across the bottom of the page or even interspersed within the test areas of the page. Studies show that ads “above the fold” are more effective.
(“Above the fold” refers to the area of a webpage that is visible without having to scroll.)

Downloadable Items – if you offer downloadable items such as audio, video or pdf files, make sure that you tell the user haw big the file is and whether they need an application to use the file. If they do an application, provide a link to the application. For example, provide a link to the free Acrobat reader if you offer pdf files.

Site Map – A site map is a good way to layout your entire site for your visitor. (Search engine spyders like them too.) It is just a hierarchical listing of every page on your site with a clickable hyperlink to that page.

Summary

A good navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed by each visitor. This in turn can increase signups, customers, sales, members or whatever it is your site is designed to do and make your website more successful.

3 Elements of SEO That Are Best Run Alongside Website Design

2010-10-09T09:22:00.000-07:00

Find out why it can be beneficial to start SEO work early in a websites development.

Ensuring that a website is properly optimised for search engines is one of the most important steps that an online business will take. Until a business manages to become renowned online (such as amazon, ebay, etc) a huge amount of their traffic will be derived from search engines. Due to this it is vital that the website appears near the top of search engine results pages. Despite the fact that most business owners are aware of the importance of achieving a high ranking in the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and Live) a huge number of them don’t even consider search engine optimisation until they have either launched a website or are preparing to. This article aims to explain why it can be hugely beneficial to start an SEO campaign at the same time as, or slightly before, the website is being designed.

Keyphrase Selection

One of the most important steps in the search engine optimisation process is the selection of keywords. There are several important aspects to look for in a keyphrase that is likely to prove successful. Firstly it is vital that enough people actually search for a particular term. Secondly it is necessary to analyse the competitors that already hold the page one rakings for that phrase. If the top 20 results in the major search engines are held by dominant authority sites with high pagerank ratings it is extremely unlikely that a new website will be able to have a strong impact. Finally the keyphrase has to be considered in relation to how well it relates to the page that it will be linked to. For example, for businesses it is integral that they not only generate traffic but also that the traffic is likely to convert to sales. Typically highly generalised keyphrases will generate traffic that is looking for information rather than products or services so it is worthwhile looking into more specific long-tail keyphrases.

When designing and building a website it is enormously beneficial if the keyphrases have already been selected. This allows the developer to tie the different sections of the website (or product categories for e-commerce sites) to the keywords making each of these sections far easier to optimise for in the long run.

On-site SEO

One of the first steps that an SEO specialist will take when beginning to optimise a website is to analyse the website and create a list of recommendations on what can be improved to give the site the best chance at achieving high rankings. While often these changes are relatively straightforward to implement after a website is completed it makes far more sense if these recommendations are made early to allow the designer to implement them on their initial build. By doing this the owner of the site can save the considerable amounts of time and money that would have been incurred by writing and then rewriting the code and content on each page.

Copywriting

Another reason for starting SEO before a site is completed is that the copy on the site can be written with search engines in mind. While it is obviously important that the website is written for its human visitors first and foremost there are some straightforward SEO techniques (such as utilising the keyphrase within the text and linking to other relevant pages on the site using keyphrase appropriate anchor text) that can help boost a websites ranking. By figuring out the keyphrases early and writing SEO friendly content from the start a lot of the time and money that is often spent redrafting content can be saved.

Ultimately while it is perfectly possible to embark on an SEO campaign after a website has been completed it usually makes far more sense to start it early and then build the site with the SEO in mind. This can save the considerable amount of time that rewriting Titles, headers, descriptions, content, etc can take and result in a website that is ready to launch with the highest potential to rank highly.

Web Design: Is your Website User Friendly?

2010-10-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

It is important to pay attention to little details that make the site easier to use by visitors. Sometimes small details make the difference, and the user likes our site better than other sites, just because he feels comfortable navigating it, and finds what he wants easily. Of course, it depends on the audience you expect for your website. For instance, if you have a website for professional designers, then you do not need to keep it that simple. Users will find their way and probably enjoy that sophisticated and strange menu system that is a piece of art. But if you expect a general audience, it is better to keep things nice and simple. The site usage should be intuitive. This is a list of several aspects you should consider:

· Let the user adjust the font size, avoid using fixed font sizes in your stylesheet. If you use fixed fonts, at least make them big enough so they can be read by people with sight problems.

· Make the forms clear and avoid crowded pages. Insert text hints when necessary so users always know what they have to input in each field. You may also use a small help icon next to the form field that users can press to get a pop-up with more information about the field usage.

· If you use menus, make sure they are easy to use. It is better if they are not too sophisticated if the site is for a general audience.

· Use the ALT and TITLE attributes in images. This will also help you with positioning your site in search engines.

· Make sure the site content is easy to access. This means that you placed the pages in the logical menus or submenus. Try to think as the user would think. You may ask someone else to use the site and give you feedback, since it is hard to realize if content is easy to access for others.

· Minimize the number of clicks to get to destination pages. Try not to nest pages inside menus, then submenu, then submenu… .Two or three levels should be enough for most cases.

· Contact Us page should be accessible from all pages. Include a form in the page so users can send you comments. If they found trouble using the site, they will probably tell you and you can fix the problem for future users. It is also a good idea to include a "Comments about this website" link in all pages footer so users can send a message to the webmaster.

· Choose the colors wisely. Different color schemas may help identify different areas of the site, for example.

· Make sure text is easily readable. Do not use too similar colors for text color and background.

· If you have long pages, insert Back to Top links in the page body.

· Keep design consistent throughout the site. This also helps you define an identity for your website.

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website's Legibility

2010-10-08T11:26:00.000-07:00

Websites that make their customers work to read them are not the best way to get business. Miniscule fonts, text in colors that make it hard to see against the background color, and lines that are piled on top of each other are problems, but they're easy to correct. Let's jump right in and look at five easy fixes:

1. Format your text using CSS.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the way to go - use one style sheet and control how text looks on your entire site. Make a change to the style sheet and your whole site is updated. It makes life a lot simpler.

2. Make the font size big enough to read.

Consider your target audience. Even if they are a group of teenage girls looking for new shoes, it's never a good idea to use tiny type. It doesn't have to be enormous, but up to a point, larger type is better. 12-pt Verdana is better than 8-pt Verdana.

3. Make the text contrast with its background.

The more contrast, the better. Black-on-white or white-on-black are examples of the highest contrast you can get. Use colors if you like, but if you squint at the page and your text basically vanishes, there's not enough contrast.

4. Give the lines room to breathe.

Don't stack lines on top of each other. Use the line-spacing directive in CSS and give it some space; I'll often set line-spacing to 140% of the height of a typical line.

5. Break text up into chunks.

No matter how good a writer you are, people don't want to read endless pages of text. Break it up by using headlines that reflect the subject of the paragraph(s) to follow so people can scan down to the parts that really interest them, or use bulleted lists to change the pace of the writing and slow down the scanning.

And finally (not one of the 5 Easy Ways to Improve Legibility but still quite important) check your spelling. Nothing irritates me more on a web page than spelling errors - it simply makes you look like you don't care enough to get it right. Use that ubiquitous spellcheck tool.

Making your website's content more legible is easy. It doesn't take a lot of time, mainly common sense. The payoff will be text that's more readable, customers that stick around long enough to get your message, and improved credibility with your visitors.

Website Templates

2010-10-08T08:47:00.000-07:00

Website templates are web page designs created by professional web designers that are sold to others for their use. Templates normally have dummy content used as a placeholder so you can see what a finished page will look like. A template is an easy way for a novice to create a good-looking professional quality websites quickly and easily.

Most of the commercially available templates can be found in a variety of themes and color schemes. Theme templates come complete with appropriate graphic for each theme. If you have some graphic or web design skills and a knowledge of HTML, you can create a customized professional looking website at a fraction of the time it takes to create everything yourself. Just remember you don’t own the copyright to the design.

Before selecting a template, you will need to identify the goals you have in mind for your website so you can select the most appropriate template.

Advantages of Using Website Templates

There are several advantages to using templates such as:

Templates provide the basic webpage layout.
Templates can provide a consistent look and feel for the site.
Most come with professional quality graphics.
Most allow you to customize the graphics if desired.
It is usually easy to add your content using almost any HTML editor.

Disadvantages of Using Website Templates

It can be difficult to make any web design changes unless you are skilled in both HTML and can use a graphics program like Photoshop.
Although features like a login box may be part of the template design, the programs needed to make them work are not included.
Any interactive features have to be integrated into the template.
You do not own the copyright to the design unless you actually purchase it from the designer.

Features of a Quality Website Template

The following items are things to look for in a well-designed web template. A template should:

Be easily editable.
Be compatible with most HTML editors.
Upload easily.
Come with complete html files.
Have header graphics provided in psd format for easy editing.
Have their both the fla and swf files if the template uses flash.
Download quickly after the content is added.
Retain the original design no matter how much content is added.

Customizing an HTML Web Template

If you want to customize a web template but don’t have the necessary skills to do it, most template designers and other web designers offer template customization services as reasonable prices. These services usually involve minor design changes, customizing header graphics, adding logos, removing unneeded unattractive elements, etc.

Many web developers will be happy to integrate any interactive features into your template. Please keep in mind that the developer will either need to write the necessary scripts or modify existing scripts to make the interactive features work. If an existing script is not freeware, the web developer will have to add the cost of purchasing a license for the script to his labor charges.

Customizing a Flash Web Template

If you want to do anything more than just add text or substitute a graphic file in a flash template, you will either need have expertise in creating flash programs or hire a flash programmer to modify the template.

If the fla files came with the template, you can modify it using a flash editing program such as Macromedia Flash or Swish. If the fla files are not available the first thing that needs to be done is to decompile the movie since the swf files are movies. Once the movie is decompiled, the necessary changes can be made and the flash movie recompiled in any flash editor.

Summary

A quality web template can allow a novice webmaster create a professional looking website quickly and easily at a reasonable cost. Since the templates came in a variety of industry specific themes and color schemes, you should be able to find one that is right for your website.

Web template can offer the professional designer a lost cost alternative to creating the web design, header graphic, logo and all of the other graphical elements, which will allow them to charge less for their work. In either case, it is important to purchase a quality template.

Banner Design Success Techniques

2010-10-08T00:40:00.000-07:00

Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.

Teasing your curiosity

“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!

Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.

Simple integrated design

When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?

Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.

Take part in the action

Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.

Back to Black and White

Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.

Get Out of the box

Have you heard about the milliondollarhomepage.com? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.

What about the next trends

What the next trends of banner design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It’s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.

Don't Make Them Wait

2010-10-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that many web sites are trying to portray themselves as if they were a TV network. They put top-notch graphics and sound into their web page. What these companies are missing is that their visitors are not watching TV. This works fine for those with broadband high speed connections. The fact is, most are viewing your web site on a screen that is between 15 and 19 inches wide, can only see 216 colors, and can only download at 28.8 kb per second.

What does all this mean?

You as a web site owner, designer, CEO, or any one who has control over a web site should follow a simple rule. Are you ready? Here is the rule: make sure you are on a 28.8 connection; type in the URL for your web page; hit enter, and hold your breath. If you needed to gasp for air before the page was fully down loaded you really need to cut down on the size of the page. I'm sure some of you can hold your breath for a long time. So I will give you all a suggestion that your web page should be no larger then 50K. I would shoot for less than 30K. The number one visited web site home page is under 21k. That's right, Yahoo's home page is only 20k. This might seem like very little but you really can do a lot within that size.

How can I get it under 50K? 30K?

First, all your graphic images should be as small as possible. Try to get them smaller than 4k. Going up to 6k is reasonable. When designing a graphic for the web site keep in mind the number of colors being used. I know, as a graphic designer, it was hard for me to go from millions of color to only 216. Yes, 216 is the number of colors you have on a web safe color pallet. Use solid colors when designing your image. PhotoShop has made the gradient such a popular tool. It looks good to fade things in and out. I always see a background border made up of this gradient. I always right click on that image to see the size. The 8k-12k is not worth the space. The problem with the gradient is it uses many colors and dithering. Both take up big time K. The more color you have in an image the bigger it's going to be.

Use design more, graphics less. For a web page to be successful it needs to download quickly and look good. Here is the dilemma download quick or look good? Instead of designing graphics and taking pictures and turning them into jpgs to make your web page look good, try using color schemes. Use cell colors to make boarders. Use the negative space on your web site. What is not there is just as important as what is there. Remember sometimes less is more. When in doubt think of a typical visitor coming to your web page. Would that extra graphic sell them or keep them coming back again and again. If the answer is yes, by all means keep it. If the answer is "well maybe" or "it just looks good there", yank it. Viewers will appreciate not waiting more then they have to. The web is here to make our life easier not to sit in front of a screen waiting for heavy web pages to download.

Web Page Optimization

2010-10-07T08:45:00.000-07:00

We all want to have the most attractive website that leaves a visitor wide-eyed and completely dazzled. Usually an extremely attractive website design involves lots of graphical elements, increasing the overall page size which causes the page to download slowly to the browser. This article will provide some useful tips on how to keep your website design attractive but still downloads quickly.

As the average internet bandwidth rate per computer is raising, more and more webmasters allow themselves to develop complex websites laden with heavy graphic elements. In extreme cases you can find websites that take as much as a few minutes to load their content in your browser. Of course the user will never wait that long for a website to load, and will move on to the next website in his search results.

So why are webmasters still developing slow loading bloated websites? Primarily due to a lack of knowledge of simple graphic optimization techniques that will allow them to maintain an attractive website while keeping the page size smaller.

How many of you are aware of the fact that a box with rounded corners can be achieved using CSS code only, without the need for any graphic image. Well it is possible! Before those of you familiar with CSS say that it cannot be done for every type of browser and a relatively high level of programming is required, I say that dealing with the most common mistakes web designers make regarding optimization can have simple solutions.

Never limit the web designer by placing any restrictions that impact the final outcome. You might make the claim that what a web designer can do with graphic software is impossible to implement by code. I disagree. When the design is finished and you are ready to slice it into small images to be used in the html code, your creativity is been tested. Everything you do at this stage will affect the total page size. If your design contains rounded shapes that overlap each other or areas with color gradients, then you must slice it carefully so the outcome is a small file size.

Let’s look at what efficient slicing means:

1. Do not make large slices that contain lots of different colors. Use a small number of slices where each slice contains a limited number of colors.

2. Do not make a large slice that contains the same graphic structure. Slice a small portion of it and duplicate it in your code. This is a very common mistake that webmasters/programmers make when dealing with gradient color background.

3. Do not use JPEG file format all the time. In some cases a GIF format will be much smaller in size. A rule of thumb – a slice with high number of colors will be smaller in size using the JPEG format rather than the GIF format, and the opposite is also true. Check each option separately. Every 1KB that you reduce from the image file size will eventually add up to a significant reduction in page size.

4. If you have text on a solid color background, do not slice it at all. Use code to create the background instead. Remember that you can define both the font style and background color of the area using CSS.

Advanced Techniques

Graphically optimizing a website is more than just knowing how to do image optimizations. There are some advanced techniques that required a high level of programming. CSS2 has much more to offer then CSS does. Although not all browsers have adopted this standard yet you should be ready for when they do. JavaScript also gives you a set of options to create some cool effects without needing to overload the page with Flash. Using limited tools like JavaScript compared to an advanced application like Flash to create the desired effects can be difficult. However think about the outcome. For a onetime effort you can differentiate your website from others. You will have an attractive professional looking website that loads quickly.

Back to the Future

As PDAs, smart mobile phones and mini laptops are used with wireless internet connections for internet browsing, publishing fast loading web pages will enhance the browsing experience not only for those using wide bandwidth connections but also will make the browsing experience user friendly (or may I say, bandwidth friendly) to the wireless clients.

For those who insist that web design optimization is not necessary because everyone will have high bandwidth connections eventually, I agree up to a point. However, the software companies are creating applications that use more bandwidth because they know it is available for them to use. Get used to writing well optimized web pages because this cat and mouse game will never end, and it is better to learn the rules of the game then it is to be bitten.