Custom Search

Ideas for Web Design

Posted: Friday, November 26, 2010

Whenever a web designer gets a web design project, he or she will require to take a step back and go through the research process in order to complete the job. The research process is a tedious process, it determines how well, and successful will the result of your web design. Ideas for web design will share with you how to go through that research process smoothly and obtain results.

One fine day, you received a call from some client and he requests you to design a website for his company.

RETREIVING THE DETAILS:
After meeting up with the client, you get a lot of details that will assist you in your design process. This details applies even when you are designing a personal website.
1. Nature of the Company
2. Client Preferences (Example websites?)
3. Target Audiences (kids? Young adults?)
4. Platform (Flash? Html? Php? Asp? )

1. What are you going to design?
2. What style of design are you approaching?
3. Whom you should design for?
4. How will your design work?

DETERMINING THE STYLE:
For a start, you should base on the client’s description of his company, his nature of the company to give a rough gauge on the design style.
Web Hosting business >> High tech web design, sleek and professional design
Example 2:
Dolls and Toys business >> Kiddy, Girly, Colorful, Fun design

COLOR THEMES:
Having a good and suitable color theme on your web design will give users a pleasing experience while surfing through the web site you designed. One of the important techniques is to get a color chart from your local art store or use some color chooser tools to aid in your color selection. Your color theme will affect the mood and feel you want to create.

Colors also have their own meanings. For example, white is clean, blue is cool and corporate, having a white and blue color theme gives you a clean and corporate web design. Orange and yellow are warm and friendly colors, Grey is cool, combining a Orange-Grey theme will give you a friendly and fun mood. Dark colors are also popular among many, because they easily matched other bright colors. Whether your color theme turns out successful depends heavily on the first step “Determining the style” of your website.

PHOTOS & GRAPHICS:
After getting the colors done, its time to think about the graphics and images. Searching in Google for “stock photos” will give you plenty of results on this. Having a mid-range camera should do the trick as images for website are all on low resolution. 3. Creating Graphics Images – A web design will always need custom-made graphics images. You will need some skills in creating the graphics of your needs, or you will feel stuck while designing. Learn about vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks.

INSPIRATION AND REFERENCES:
Reference sites will give you ideas on usability, color theme, ideas on relevant images, navigation, features and many more guides to work on your web design project. Always consider them as useful references to help you whenever you need inspiration and ideas for your web design.

A. What YOU Should Know Before Getting A Web Site!
Everyday thousands of new businesses make the leap and take their business on line, what about yours?
1. What do I expect my web site to do? There are many types of web sites out there from purely selling products, to purely informational and everything in between. Do you need a one page online resume, portfolio, bio, or online brochure to really get your company’s information in front of the public? No two sites are exactly alike, and because of that, the prices for your web design can fluctuate. This question is one you must ask yourself before you hire a web designer!

2. How much will a web site cost me? What is your budget for your web site? Remember, this is your virtual store front. Honestly, you can find web site design from $35 (if you get this for a quote, and you have any hopes of ending up with a professional site…WALK AWAY!) to $10,000 (good for huge companies that can afford it, but not the best bet for a new business). Realistically, expect to spend from $85-$200 for a one page resume, bio or brochure site and from $300-$1,800 for larger full featured sites, and expect to pay either half or all of it upfront depending on your designer.

Aside from that there are monthly hosting fees that range from $10-$40 per month for a descent sized site. Ask your designer if they offer hosting in addition to designing your site? You will usually get a much better deal, and you already trust them to design your site (I’ll go more into hosting plans and options another time). (example: www.thebestmoms.com) If not, ask your designer if they can get you one? A lot the time, if you are buying a decent sized design job and hosting from them, they will throw in your domain name for free-although, you will have to pay the renewal fee each year which can range from $19-$35 (ask your designer).

3. What’s my web address going to be? People easily forget the hyphens when they remember the address, and you don’t want to be sending business somewhere else. D-using correct spelling; it is fun to play with the spelling of a word, but take in to consideration your audience’s ability to remember the way YOU spelled it as opposed to their natural urge to spell it correctly. It’s your job to get them to your site, not their job to find you, so make it easy. I suggest .com, or .net for selling (ecommerce) sites, but it’s up to you!

4. How long will it take to design my site? If you take longer to get your information (or your words for each page and pictures) it will of course take longer for your site to be up and running. Also, the more complicated your site, the longer it can take-though I’ve not seen a site construction take longer than 8 weeks. Make lists, and write out your ‘blurbs’ (text) for each page. If your designer does not offer writing as a service (ask), you can hire a creative writer online and sometimes you can even barter (trade your products for their services) with creative writers looking to build their portfolio. A lot of work goes into web site design, and so what seems like a minor change in the design plans to you may actually be a major change in the overall design, and some designers will charge you for this because your initial quote is based on their expected design hours. Like any other store, you have to market your site.

One great tool is search engines. Now, how do you get listed on search engines? You want to give your designer a two sentence description for each category or page, and a list of 20 words you think some one would use to find your site for each category. I suggest you ask your designer if they submit your site to search engines automatically or if there is a small fee for this? Simply submitting will not guarantee you top spot on the search engines; especially if you are in an already crowded field-even if you pay the $300 fees some search engines charge.

You can also market your site by putting the web site address on everything-return address labels, business cards, t-shirts, your car, your email signature; put it in your signature on message boards, etc. Most designers have policies about updates, from a monthly update fee only for the months you require updates, to an hourly fee per update. After answering these questions, you are ready to talk to your designer about the fun stuff-the design.

B. Are You Being Scammed By Your Web Design Company?
Does your web design company own you? This may be possible if you've allowed them to host your web site for you and also register your domain name for your company. Web design companies have a lot of control over their clients. This power is usually exercised when a client of a web design company finds a better deal on hosting for their web site and they simply want to switch their hosting provider, or when the "client" wants to upgrade their web site for a better rate than their current web development provider is offering.

- Current web design company sends their client a hefty bill for switching
- The web design company cancels their client’s account
- They may point the domain name to another place

Too much power is given to the web design company. I truly believe there should be a law against web design companies that can be summarized as such: For any domain name registered by the web design company on behalf of their client, the domain name may not be disputed or need to be disputed, the domain name is automatically owned by the client and is automatically bound by their web development contract.

If you are reading this and are in the process of searching for a web design company, please ENSURE that you have a contract drafted, outlining everything you are entitled to and that you have sole rights to your domain name.

See what most business owners fail to realize is that their domain name is as important as registering their business name itself. The same applies for your domain name. It is as important as owning your own company name. How to avoid this "Power Stricken" disaster:

The best solution is to go out and register your domain name BEFORE you hire a web design company. This ultimately gives you the power over your domain name. At any given time, you can go back and log into your "domain name registrant" in order to switch your web site to any hosting company you choose.

95% of all web design projects don't need a large hosting package that costs between $150-$500 a year. You only need a large hosting package if:
- Your web site is 1000+ pages in size

Ask questions when shopping for a web design company! - If you register my domain name, will it state in my contract that I own the domain name under all circumstances?
The FTP allows you to hire another web design company to go in and update your website at any time. Without the FTP information, no one can update your website besides the original web development company or hosting company that you hired.

In Conclusion:
Be weary of web design companies that don't provide contracts for all of their projects. Be careful with your domain name; make sure that in the end, you own all rights to your domain name, not someone else.



Architectural Outsourcing

Posted: Monday, November 22, 2010

The outsourcing industry worldwide is booming.
The question arises, that when everybody is jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon for obvious benefits, then why not the construction and real estate industry. One aspect where the real estate industry can immediately benefit is in outsourcing designing of 3d models or renders of their present and future projects. Today, architects and builders recruit in-house designers who design 3d models for them. But then most of these people are not 3d specialists, not at least specialists in designing 3d models for real estate ventures.

To achieve this purpose one needs the help of civil engineers, architects and designers working in tandem. For an architect or builder to outsource such work to these specialist companies, is a proposition of significant benefits. Also, the architectural expertise and the design expertise of 3d modeling companies

can be combined to create life-like models which would be utilized on the project website, brochures and other sale materials. Many architects have already realized this and a significant amount of work is being outsourced.

A. Architectural Rendering Software
A software is a tool that can single handedly perform the tasks of scores of specialists in a short span of time and thereby enable us to save in terms of money and man hours. Imagine you are a proprietor of an architectural design company. To run your business, you need an office building, a number of architects, designers, technicians, and computer specialists to do commuter-aided designing, video grapplers, and a host of technically trained personals to create various architectural designs. It means a great amount of hard work and sleepless nights.

You can use an architectural rendering software program to draw plans with correct graphs and diagrams. This software is a reservoir of huge data needed and you can select any item within seconds. You don’t require multi faculty skills to make use of the tools contained in the software. While software eliminates many hassles and headaches and works great in ordinary situations, it cannot replace the creative genius of a human mind. New innovative techniques are coming up in every field of human knowledge and so also in architectural rendering, which cannot be easily incorporated in the software. More over, handling software of a magnitude that contains thousands of library images requires specialized training.

B. Talking About Architectural Rendering
Architectural rendering basically refers to preparing and presenting a proposed design of a building structure so that the person who is responsible for constructing the building can easily approve the design. With the existence of computer aided design and multimedia related architectural techniques, there has been a vast change in presenting schemes for new developments to planning officers and potential buyers.

A computer generated architectural rendering are specific in their presentations and they even use real life textures, materials, color and finishes. A computer generated architectural rendering also called as photo real rendering are used for purposes relating to still renderings, panoramic renderings, virtual tours etc.

Through various combinations of architectural rendering techniques on the computer screen, now it is possible to give realistic shapes to your visual presentation based on what you require in a building. A computer architectural rendering service are mainly designed to meet the needs of architects, house builders, developers, planning consultants and property marketing agencies.

Though a 3D rendering service, it becomes easy to change the surface materials whenever required. In order to create accuracy, 3D renderings, use topographical surveys and site plans as reference points. With this information, actual slab heights and roof lines can be created for visual representation purpose. The 3D architectural renderings can be certainly considered as a cost effective solution.

The 3D computer architectural rendering service incorporates powerful conceptual tools into the required design process. With 3D architectural rendering service, one show roads, landscaping, neighborhood, required ambience and also multiple design options can be explored and resolved before the actual building begins. So, a computer architectural rendering can easily customized a given construction plan based on specific client requirements, much before the actual construction take place in reality.



How Relevant is your Ecommerce Web Site Design?

Posted: Thursday, November 18, 2010

Ecommerce web site design can spell either success or doom for any business. Your website’s ecommerce design must be relevant to all the different elements needed for designing a good website.

If you want to add a personal touch to your site, you can design your own site. However you can also get professional help from the numerous website designing companies to get your online business site designed. Select a good web design company which has high credibility to design your ecommerce web site.

The purpose of any ecommerce site is to generate business for a product or to promote a service. Ecommerce web site designing is not an easy task and is not done overnight. The purpose of an ecommerce site is to generate business leads, and if online surfers using different browsers and operating systems cannot even view your site properly, you will lose out on a significant number of prospective clients. Pictures have a very strong ability to portray strong emotions. Put up relevant pictures on your site to put forward an idea.

Color combination of a website is very important. Choose the color to be used in your ecommerce web site design only after a very careful consideration. The navigability and the functionality of ecommerce web site design are of big importance. Your site may be the best visually looking site ever made, but if it does not have proper functionality and navigability, no one is even going to give your site a second glance. No visitor is going to wait and search for information in your site if it is not properly navigable and functional.

Take care of the contents in your ecommerce web site design. Good and relevant content is a great means of bringing visitors to your site. Make your best effort in satisfying the visitor to your site. Take care of the user and try to satisfy his or her needs in your ecommerce web site design.

A. Professional Website More Affordable Than Ever
Nothing makes people trust a company more than them having a professional website. A professional website is a necessity for these companies. After all, anyone can build a website anymore, but if the site is anything but a professional website than people may start to lose confidence would could lead to lost sales which can be devastating for any company.

Website designing companies offer a professional website to anyone who is willing to pay their fees. The fees website designing companies charge are based on the amount of work that must go into the professional website, just like any other industry in the world. A professional website can be as simple or complicated as the customer wants. Sometimes, a customer wants just the basic informational site, very basic by design and easy for website designing companies to create thus the fees would be lower.

On the other hand, a professional website that must have functional parts, links and other concepts a website uses may cost much more as the amount of work that will go into it is great.

Website designing companies have professionals on staff that can create a professional website from a bare page. It is important to note that website designing companies hire people who are constantly learning as new concepts, codes and features are invented and released. For a better grasp of what a web site designing company does, check out their web sites.

Most times, these companies have constructed sample sites to help educate new customers on what is possible and what is best for them It helps the designer to know exactly what the customer wants and having a website for comparison makes the task all that much easier. This also aides the professionals in being able to provide an accurate quote on what the website will cost. When searching for a website designing company be sure to check with the BBB.

B. Most Useful Tips To Reduce Your Web Designing Costs
In order to design a website for personal and business use, you need to apply the tools that can not only make your web site attractive but user-friendly as well. One of the best way to make your website unique and attractive is to use flash web design work on your website.

Best deals on flash web design
There are a number of service providers to choose from if you want affordable flash web design for your web site. You can get a professional flash web designer to do the job. As the Internet can provide you with a wealth of information on flash web design services, searching for the best deals will only require a small amount of research and canvassing.

Another option is to outsource your web design work to India. MiracleStudios is a professional web design companyin India, which can help you reduce your costs by providing high quality web designing services at marginal price.

Building an effective web site need not be expensive.


Useful Information on Choosing a Graphic Design Agency

Posted: Sunday, November 14, 2010

Why choose a design agency for your project?
With the wide variety of design houses, ad agencies and printers out there, choosing the right supplier for your creative needs can be a daunting prospect. should you employ an in-house designer? Many types of company offer graphic design. Printers no longer just print, even many photographers are offering graphic design as a service, as are stationery suppliers, IT companies and many other businesses.

What is a design agency?
So what is a design agency, as opposed to these other options? A design agency is a specialist in creative design as a core business. At the other end of the scale, there are advertising agencies. Should you use an advertising agency for design work that is not advertising? The reverse situation is equally true, most design agencies will not be appropriate for producing broadcast or press advertising, and especially where media scheduling and buying are a factor. The set-up of a design agency can be very effective for some advertising, but usually for limited campaigns aimed at niche target audiences.

The right design agency?
• Is the agency doing many more web projects than design for print? Are the designers qualified designers for print, or web designers who outsource the print design?
• Is the agency willing to give references of satisfied customers other than pre-printed testimonials?
• Can the agency provide quantitative results for work, what evidence can they provide for return on investment and accountability?

Web site design has now become a standard part of a design agency’s portfolio and it is a natural progression for clients’ to expect their web sites to have the same level of branding as any other marketing communications tool.

The main benefit of using a design agency to design your web site is that a graphic designer can integrate your site’s branding with that of all your other marketing items. It is true that many design agencies have to buy-in technical back-end functionality for their sites, but this is only like using a printer to print a brochure that has been conceived and designed by a design agency.

In-house versus Agency?
Many businesses have taken the decision to employ graphic designers for themselves as in-house creative teams. Using a design agency has certain key benefits over an in-house creative studio. Design agencies work in a competitive environment, their designers must constantly deliver the highest standards of work, as clients have a choice of suppliers who will often compete on a project by project basis.

As in football, to maintain a ‘first team place’ it is in the interests of all design agencies to constantly come up with exceptional creative for clients as there are consequences for not doing.

In house designers very seldom have that competitive pressure to drive up their creative efforts. Unlike in-house studios, where the projects may only involve the products and services of one company, designers within an agency work for many different sectors and business types. This constant variety leads to many fresh ideas and the honing of cutting edge creative talent.

This variety benefits the client as the designer in the agency is far less likely to become stale over the longer term. Experiences with new design challenges and constant use of the imagination for new products and services, means that when the designer comes around to working back on a certain client’s project, he has all the experiences from other client’s work to bring to the table.

Although the trend for in-house design will continue due to pressure on budgets, working with a good design agency may still be the better option, as long as your agency can deliver cost-effective services, and offer you a measurable return on investment.

A. Classic Album Cover Design - 'Dark Side of the Moon' by Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon was initially released on March 24th 1973, and has since gone on to become one of the biggest selling albums of all time, consistently appearing in top ten bestseller lists, regardless of source. Since its release, the cover and its design have become an instantly recognizable icon, with subtle variations upon its theme having being used for re-releases and anniversary additions.

The front cover design itself shows a refracting prism against a black background, onto which a single beam of light is being shone with a spectrum of color emerging from the other side. It is highly minimal and neither the band's name nor the album's title are displayed anywhere.

The design was the idea of Storm Thorgerson, a member of the British art collective and UK graphic design bohemians, Hipgnosis; who'd designed the covers for all the Pink Floyd albums from A Saucerful of Secrets onwards. It came about after band member and keyboard player Richard Wright requested something that was less pictorial and more iconic. As this album saw the completion of Pink Floyd's transition from the Syd Barrett-era psychedelic band into the (perhaps a little too) serious prog-rockers that would go on to fill stadiums worldwide, it is perhaps fitting that the cover should have become ingrained in the record-buying public's consciousness.

The concept of the prism refracting the light was in reference to the light shows that were always a staple part of Pink Floyd concerts. The band was presented with seven conceptual roughs, detailing the Hipgnosis collectives' ideas for the prospective cover.

B. Graphic Design Pricing - Free Pitching and the Public Sector
In my day job I run one of the country's myriad of graphic design companies - I'd like to think that we are 'small but beautifully formed', employing six people including myself and enjoying the patronage of a variety of customers, big and small, across a range of business sectors.

One of the imponderables of running graphic design agencies concerns graphic design pricing - after all, how much is creative talent worth? Of course if you are fortunate enough to be a Saatchi & Saatchi or Ogilvy & Mather of the world you can more or less name your own price, there being an almost inherent snob value of being able to say that "one has Saatchi's as one's agency".

Their challenge is in maintaining their market share, for my company, Brackenhill, we don't begin to register on any market share measurement and so we have a much more mundane challenge; Namely to win enough work to firstly pay the staff, secondly pay the bills, thirdly pay me and finally (and hopefully) make a profit and grow. The benefit that the bigger agencies do have is the availability of resource to prepare pitches on a speculative basis knowing that they're going to be invited to enough pitches that by the law of averages they'll win their fair share and thus give them a return on the investment.

For smaller agencies, free pitching is anathema, in the first place the 'free' bit relates to the prospective client only! Consequently you can have say 60 or more hopefuls completing arduous tender documents and preparing some design ideas as to how they would represent a certain facet of the creative brief.

More significantly though, if you can't evidence previous experience of working with a public sector client then you're 'pushing the boulder up the hill'. As an example of how ludicrous this process can be, before I bought the company, Brackenhill had applied to be a graphic design supplier to a local Metropolitan District Council.


The Right Cleaning Tools Make Your Job Easier

Posted: Wednesday, November 10, 2010

There’s nothing like walking into a house that’s just been cleaned. Ahhhh….that clean, bright smell. In that regard, cleaning is therapeutic. Various cleaning tools offer different advantages – from sheer cleaning and scrubbing power, to sanitary qualities, to their ability to do specific jobs, such as picking up hair and lint. Well, when it comes to surfaces such as ceramic topped stoves, cleaning may be overlooked because they are such a pain to clean. Maybe it’s time to get serious about investing in the right tools to get the job done.

Tools That Make Cleaning Easier
1.Microfiber cleaning cloths.
These cloths are miracle workers. They make cleaning a snap and shine like nothing else. Tired of spraying gallons of window cleaner on your granite surfaces and using two rolls of paper towels to make them shine? Microfiber cleaning cloths shine and brighten granite, glass, chrome or metal, and work WONDERS on ceramic stovetops.

2.Cleaning cloths.
When it comes to dusting or overall cleaning, nothing can compare to a good quality cleaning cloth. No, your husband’s old undershirt is not the tool of choice for dusting. Besides that, who WANTS to clean with an old t-shirt? Old clothes are for the trash, not for cleaning. Purchase a set of 10 white dish or cleaning cloths to be used only for cleaning.

These should be used for three different distinct purposes:

1.General cleaning, such as windows, mirrors, and polishing metal

2.Furniture dusting and polishing

3.Scrubbing, such as counters, walls, floors, etc.
Now, to keep your interest in cleaning, make sure to keep your cloths clean by washing them regularly in HOT water. Having a clean cloth to begin with will keep you interested in cleaning and WON’T spread more dirt and grime around.

4.Electrostatic mopping/dusting cloths.
Do yourself a favor and follow vacuuming with an electrostatic mop! It does an amazing job.

5.Baby wipes.
No, these versatile cleaning cloths are great from removing everything from eye make-up to messy faces.

6.Paper towels.
Cleaning toilets is a nasty job, but one of the most important when it comes to having a clean house. Keep a spray cleaner such as 409 or Pine Sol in a cabinet close to the toilet with a roll of paper towels to clean when needed. Use the paper towels to clean the seat and outside of the bowl. Ick.

7.Toothbrush.
Keep a toothbrush around to clean corners of grout, stained tops of woodwork, or any nook and cranny that needs a scrubbing.

8.Wastebasket liners.
Keeping trash cans lined is another “clean” idea that keeps can nice and clean.

9.Telescoping duster.
Get a telescoping duster to help you reach into high corners, dust chandeliers, or tops of bookcases.

10. The Right Paint.
Strange as it seems, paint can be your best friend when it comes to cleaning. If you have flat paint on your walls, you will have a very difficult time cleaning your walls of fingerprints and other stains. Your painter may kick and scream, but the next time it comes to paint a room, choose egg shel or other paint finish that can be cleaned.

11.Brush for scrubbing.

12.Squeegees.
These are essential for cleaning windows. Yes, windows. You’ve got to clean them, too. A squeegee will help you clean windows without having to wipe everything completely dry or use up fifty rolls of paper towels. Use a cleaning cloth to wipe any excess liquid.

13.Tall broom & mop.
Mops and brooms are often too short for you to really apply adequate pressure for cleaning. Select brooms and mops from janitorial supply stores or home improvement centers, like Lowe’s, to find brooms that are heavy-duty and industrial-sized.

A. The Ultimate Design For The Single Woman
You don't get to forty years of age without your fair share of disastrous relationships - and I've had more than my fair share. There was the time the cat died and I had to bury her myself. Picking up the cold, stiff body of something I loved so dearly should have been a man's department (or a man!).

Last night's incident involving a cork screw and a corked bottle of wine just tipped me over the edge and I feel the need to act. I believe a new design is called for. One that doesn't scratch, moan, snore, grow a beer belly and demand full power over the remote control.

I have contacted a company that can help with my new product design. At our first consultation, we sit and discuss my idea, formulating a design that my consultants believe we can eventually patent and mass produce with industrial design adaptations.

A 3D image first produced needs a little work, I have to say. A little larger across the chest please, a little leaner in the leg please. The company eventually produce a product design a little closer to what I have in mind. It looks like a man and will be programmable for all the jobs a man can do without the socks to wash and the random toenails left in the carpet.

The company manufacture my new model from metalwork. All he needs is the occasional oil and wipe with a soft cloth, none of this meat and two veg business. Firstly my product design, and I will be calling him Gerald from now on, will be programmed with a few key phrases. What else do I need?

General daily activities are programmed into Gerald, bin days, wash day, ironing etc. Also essential is the necessary inbuilt toolbox for car maintenance. Next is the added extras: the electronic corkscrew on the hand, spare sockets in the chest for extreme ironing anywhere in the house and the extra padding that can be applied to the hands for foot massaging.

B. Career Fields That Use AutoCAD
So you are the master of AutoCAD, you know it front to back, you know it like the palm of your hand, you could use it hung upside-down blind folded and with one hand. I wrote an article about Earning Money with AutoCAD, but what if you want a career? Industrial design is more about improving a product for mass production. Although you might think that you don't need AutoCAD for industrial design, you would be wrong.

(Sorry) Architecture is such a broad term, but CAD is defiantly used for the layout of buildings in architecture, whether it is a house or an office. The designing of houses and house layouts is a field that interests me and I suggest you check it out as well because it is really fun designing a custom house for everyone to see and hopefully buy.

The last field I will look at is Engineering. Engineering is another broad term. There are many types of engineering, such as electrical, architectural, civil. Engineering deals more with the actual forces on different types of materials or structures. This field would probably not use AutoCAD as much, but the other programs run on the same concept so it is a great start.

Just to recap, the three main career field you could look in are Industrial Design, Architecture, and Engineering.I really wanted to address students who do not know what they would like to do as a career yet but have skills in AutoCAD.


How to Design a Search Engine Friendly Web Site

Posted: Saturday, November 6, 2010

Many web site designers don't design their sites for the search engines. Your beautifully designed web site may have cost you thousands of dollars but it still needs to attract visitors tobeprofitable.Here are 12 highly effective strategies for designing a search engine friendly web site: Use the keyword research tool, Wordtracker (wordtracker.com) to research the mostpopular keywords that pertain to the subject matter of your web site.

1. Create a list of approximately 100 keywords or keyword phrases that you can include within your web pages. Aim to please the search engines as well as your web site visitors.
2. Optimize meta tags - the most significant meta tags are the title and description meta tags. Include your keywords within each of these meta tags. The title meta tag should be a shortsentence about the purpose of your site. Your keyword meta tag should include the most frequently used keywords contained within your web page. Within the descriptive text of these header tags you should include the keyword phrases placed in the same order as your keyword phrases that are within your keyword meta tags.
3. Optimize images using the alt tag - write a short description for the alt tag of your image. The alt tag has purposes: search engines only spider text (not images), therefore this could help your site's rankings.
4. Reduce image size - too many images or very large images on your web page will slow down the loading time of your web site.
5. Find incoming links (backward links) - web sites that link to yours raise your link popularity. Search for web sites that are compatible with yours and have a PR 4 or more to do a link exchange. Write optimized articles and include them on your web site. Create absolute links (ie http://www.domainname.com) from all your internal pages to your home page.
6. Use Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to implement a clean design throughout your web site. This will reduce the time to implement a consistent text (or layout) style for your web site.
7. Place any script code into external files - when using javascript (ie for swapping images on your navigation bar) it creates a lot of code between the header tags, pushing down the text that search, engines would spider first.
8. Insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of every web page. A DOCTYPE ( “document type declaration”) informs the validator which version of HTML you’re using for your web pages. [!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"]
9. Write clean html code - web site editors often write extra code. This can increase the loading time of your web pages. You now have built a profitable search engine friendly web
site.

A. 7 Web Design Tips For A Professional Looking Niche Web Site
Web site design is a critical element in niche marketing. If you want to build your reputation as a Professional in your niche, you need to project a professional image from the moment your visitors reach your web site. Your web site is the only way that visitors can judge you and your product. To avoid this happening to you, here are ten web design tips to help ensure that your niche web site projects a professional image.

Avoid distractions like Flash presentations, animated gifs and audio which loads as the page opens.
1 - Visibility - Design for a screen resolution of 800x600 pixels and a maximum page width of 760 pixels so that your web site visitors don't have to scroll from side to side to read your content.
2 - Graphics - Keep your graphics down to one or two smallish ones and optimise them to load quickly (You can optimise your graphics at www.netmechanic.com who offer a free facility to do this).
3 - Load time - Aim to have your pages load in 8-10 seconds on a 56K modem.
4 - Use CSS - CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets. CSS enables you to define the look of your web site with various style elements like font type, size and colour, backgrounds, Hyperlinks and a lot more. By linking your HTML pages to a Cascading Style Sheet you can reduce the amount of code on your web pages and speed up load times. "You are here >> Home > Widgets > Redwidgets" In this case Home and Widgets would be linked back to the relevant pages.
5 - Site Map - Include a Site Map on your web site listing the title of each page with a short description and a link back to the relevant page.
6 - Readability - Avoid dark backgrounds and fancy font styles, if you have a lot of stuff to read on your web pages it is better to stick to a white background with black print as that is less fatiguing to read.
7 - Test - Test your design in as many browsers as possible. For example if your site is about golf, don't include links to a dog training site (unless it's about training dogs to find lost golf balls:-).

B. Web Site Design Tips – Templates
This tip is really more for the person designing the web site than for the people who will be visiting that site. Web site design is tough enough without making things harder on ourselves. Templates are a quick and easy way to get multi page web sites done in a flash. For the most part, you can design a template and use it for every page of your site with no problem.

Designing a template is actually very simple. Most standard web pages are composed of a header, a navigation bar, and the main body of the page. For example, let's say you had a simple four page site with a main page, articles page, products page and contact page. The header might read something like "John Doe's Web Site" on each page with the minor modification of including the topic of the page in each header. The template would be the generic header and from that you would create each individual page header.

If you use individual GIF or JPEGS for your links, simply create a blank design and then fill in the page name, articles, products, etc. as you need them. This also is a great time saver. Plus, if you add pages to your site over time, you simply have to take your blank templates and add the additional page names to them. It's efficient, it's easy and it makes web site design very flexible.



Some Golden Rules of Corporate Web Design

Posted: Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Are you looking for a new website? Or wondering what separates the cheaper websites from a professionally written website?

There are some web design
differences from one website to another that make a difference both in quality and website price. For example, professionally designing a website will help a website be more search engine friendly and thus result in helping a business achieve more website traffic. In addition to having your website perform well in search engines, here are some golden rules of web design services.

Make it easy to read! Your website developer should have an eye for making a clean looking and easy to read website. You may know what content you want displayed on your website, however, your website developer should help you with a layout that allows your information to be clearly read by your customers. An easy to read website will also appeal to readers of all ages, unless you are targeting a certain age demographic.

Make it easy to navigate! Appropriate web design includes making your website easy to navigate. An easy to navigate website also includes not having too many sub-pages. Website design can also become costly with too many pages added. Your website should be easy to find! A professional website developer will properly code a website to perform well in search engines. Having a website developer understand your business and the customers you are targeting is a plus.

A developer providing complete web design services will help your website attract related customers and related searches for the services and/or products you are offering. Excluding basic marketing services for your website, such as local city listings and affiliate websites, your website should make it easy to contact you as well. Consider comparing your web design to that of a retail store. You should boldly display all of your contact information on the home page for your customers to read.

Your website should have NO errors! Your website's web design should include optimizing your website to display quickly. Develop a company logo that is easy to read and easy to remember. Keep consistent graphics, colors, text, and sizing throughout your whole website.

A. Corporate Web Design - The Two Second Rule
When it comes to corporate web design, what is the most important aspect to consider? Is it the overall, immediately apparent design? Security? Interactivity? Compatibility? Accessibility?

No individual element of the design should be considered any less important, and no one element considered separately from the others. A good, effective website is one which successfully combines each of these aspects of design in a fluid, cohesive solution.

If you think your business needs a website because, well - that's just what businesses do, then you're already tramping up the wrong path. Not all businesses do have a website, although certainly the vast majority have got an online presence. However, simply considering that your business needs a corporate website so that it is a fully paid up member of the online business community is a little like saying that you need a peanut vendor on the fourth floor because several other businesses have them. Apparently!

Clearly, the nature of your business will play a large part in determining the real reasons and advantages of having an online presence, but simply having an expensive business card online, containing your logo, slogan and contact details, is hardly likely to be of any benefit. In fact, a poorly designed website that fails to live up to expectation is more likely to cause harm.

A poorly designed, unplanned meandering website with bad coding, lazy graphics and compatibility issues will very likely cause visitors to become disgruntled with your company, and disappointed to the point where they consider going elsewhere. Having no website at all would, in many cases, be preferable to having a poor one.

After all, if your website suggests a sloppy, thoughtless attention to detail, what does that say about your company overall? Something worth bearing in mind is that the average website visitor spends about two to three seconds deciding whether to stay on that particular page, or go back to their search results and try another. If a customer comes wandering into your shop, you might have several minutes to persuade them to buy something. If the purpose of your website is to convey to the visitor the quality of your goods, or the efficiency of your service, the reliability of your after sales care or the competitiveness of your prices, you can start to feel the rest of the design process falling within a perceivable focus.

This doesn't mean to say that having decided on the purpose of your business website, the rest of the corporate web design process will be easy. Remember, only about 15% of visitors have no need for any accessibility specialization in order to appreciate your site fully.

B. Corporate Website Design: Way to Advertise your Website
Organizations have now understood the special meaning of having a customized website to knock the doors of their ultimate users with extreme ease and ease. With this affordable source of internet, an organization can reach conveniently to millions of users and provide them 24x7 accesses.

Benefits of Corporate Website Design
A web site can do wonders if prepared with a business point of view. A corporate web site helps a user to access all the relevant information about the company and its latest offerings. A corporate web design helps a business to become versatile in nature and helps it to attain adaptability in today's fast growing life.
• Photo Albums
• Guest Books
• Message Boards
• Contact Page
• Links Page
• Site Map
• FAQ Page
• Customer Feedback Form
• Auto Responder
• Mailing List / Newsletters
• Calendar
• Articles & Press Releases
• Careers


Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...