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Most Recent Articles
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- Web Design – The Importance Of Design Simplicity For Business Websites
Search engines don’t care about web design. People do. While search engines will not index a website for its great layout, but for the content, people will forget the website that has nothing distinctive about it. No visual impact, no interest! Now, if you are a serious online entrepreneur and want to have a website that sends the right message to the visitors, you must know that there are some web design techniques simply inappropriate for a business website.
Many web design companies promise websites that respect the web standards, are usable and search engine friendly. Yes, that’s how any website should be. But these are simple tools. A professional company will mention them, but it will also let you know how a website will increase revenue, reduce expenses, bring more customers and so on. A professional web design firm will not fashion a website “out of the blue”, but conceive a design after understanding your corporate values, after analyzing the target market and respecting your brand image. That’s what you should care about when you choose a web design company. - The Basics Of Website Design
When you are on the Internet, you cruise websites for certain kinds of information. You may know of a website that you are familiar with, or you may have to type in a keyword, to find the website that you need. No matter what website you find, the premise is the same, you find information on it and your browser displays this information. How does your browser know what to display? It goes by code. Your browser was created to recognize HTML (HyperText Markup Language). This is code is what the browser recognizes. When you type in the web address (URL) of the website you want to see, the browser finds the web page and reads the code associated with that page. It then displays the results on your screen.
HTML is basically a list of commands that tells your browser what to show on your monitor and where everything should be placed. The code tells the browser what colors to use, where the images are located, where to place them on your screen, what sound files to load, etc. - Web Design And The Psychology Of Colors
Web design is not an easy task, especially if what you need is to create a business website in plain HTML, with a very simple layout, easy to navigate, fast loading and, above all, distinctive. To reach this purpose web designers don’t have too many options. Typically all they can do is blend colors harmoniously to create an appealing website that combines attributes of simplicity and logic while providing valuable content.
It is therefore important for any designer to know what colors mean and what subtle message hides within every tone. - Web Design – Is It An Art?
Web design is an art. There’s no question about that. The question is: how many websites designed by real web designers are out there? With the amount of crap that purely invades the Internet and suffocates the users nowadays, there are serious reasons to doubt that web design is an art in its own right.
So called web designers create terrible made for AdSense sites, or those awful personal pages that have nothing to say. But the Internet is a World and you should expect to find, as in the real world, tones of nonsense and digital rubbish. Such websites have no real value, are full of grammatical errors, respect no design techniques, blend colors, fonts and graphics irrationally, display flashy banners, annoying gifs and so on. Sites like these make people believe that it is ok to put up a website even if it is lousy. Anyone can start a website, but, can anyone design a website? Obviously not, since new websites appear online every day that are not good at all. - Web Design And Navigation
As people “browse” the Web, they “land” on a page and “navigate” on a website. To find their way around they need a “navigation” system. Navigation is as important for web design as for a real life drive: when you drive on a new road you want to see clear marked destinations, exits and parking lots. You want to know where you are and where you go. So do your visitors. Fail to provide a clear road map and they will go back to where they came from. Navigation should be clear and simple. Or better: standard. That means: don’t go around renaming buttons. Use “home” for your index; not “back to base”. Although this “back to base” is rather clear, not all the web users are in the mood for riddles, nor do they have the time to start learning your rules, your style, or your symbols.
There are three major types of navigation: global, local and hierarchical. - Designing For Web Browsers
Web design is always a challenge: new web browsers make website owners to turn to web designers to redesign their web pages; different web browsers display websites in different ways, leading to the same problem: redesign. This is costly, needs time and if the job is not done right, the release of a new web browser may lead to the same trouble. Moreover: a non-standard-compliant website is not a user friendly website (obviously!) and it might damage your business, by driving your visitors away.
To avoid the inconvenience, ask your web developer to create an “all browsers compatible” website. - Web Branding Matters – Part Two
Brands grow in time. They appear over night but they can die as fast if you fail to address at least four of the crucial aspects of the branding process:
1. You need to understand your clients, their needs and the market. When you write about your products don’t write something like “buy this product because it is good”. Write “this product is good because…” and start naming its features. And ask yourself: is this product really necessary? - Web Design: A Three Second Impression
"We find that Web sites have three seconds to make an impression." - Jeff Rosenblum, Questus
According to a 2005 report on holiday shopping conducted by Questus, it was web design and function that held the most meaning to online visitors. Roger Park in a report based on those findings said, “70 percent of online shoppers consider web design as a key role in 2005 online holiday spending.” - The Basics Of Web Design: Gimmicks Don’t Sell
Some website developers make the mistake of believing their visitors are stupid. Now, they may not say it directly, but they allow visitors to come to that conclusion every day.
Some ecommerce websites want your business so badly they reprogram the back button on their site to bring pop-up advertisements to your screen without actually sending you to a previous page. In most cases you need to eliminate the page completely and start your Internet program again just to have the opportunity to continue looking at other sites. - Web Branding: Nobody’s Perfect – And That’s Good
Web branding is antithetical to the notion of perfection. Sometimes the best web branding advice is to let your humanity leak onto the web page. Life’s messy and perfection is not a trait known to mankind.
If you make a mistake admit it, laugh about it, make fun of it, allow others to comment on it – in the process you will find prospects looking at your website or blog with an appreciation for the voice of common humanity. - The Upside Down World Of Web Branding
Some of the best ideas for web branding defy logic. For instance, if you were to develop an ecommerce site you might well seek to establish your business name as the primary branding feature. What if your business name is less important than you think?
Developing a catchy slogan seems to be an important step in branding? What if your site visitor is mostly interest in what you do or what you have to offer? - Web Design: Non-searchable Text
Web design pulls from many different schools of thought in the development and implementation of the pages ultimately designed. It is possible to use creative graphics imposed over text for a creative look, but in the end it will not help achieve positive site rankings. You can employ Flash design and still find a lackluster response by search engines. You can even develop beautiful brochures that are downloadable by Portable Document Files (pdf) and have little positive gain in site rankings.
Why does all this work seem fruitless? The answer lies in the title of this article. In each case the information presented is absolutely unsearchable by search engines. - Web Design A Website For All
How many customers are you losing every day in your ecommerce website? I suppose every business owner expects some customer loss, but did you know you could be losing more customers than you may have realized?
Tim Berners-Lee is credited with creating the Worldwide Web and he always envisioned an online experience that would be useable to all online visitors. This vision included individuals with a variety of handicaps.
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