Archive for the ‘Web design’ Category
Tips For Novice Web Designers
Web designing has improved through the years since the internet came to existence. We can notice the changes of how a website designed and created a decade ago would differ from the one designed and created today. Before, most web designs are built in pure HTML and looked simple and plain. But during these days, website design is more attractive and catchy and has clearly gone up at a much higher level. Animations can already be incorporated in web design. But sadly, sometimes, web designers tend to overdo the designing wherein too much animations are included causing a certain web site to load at a slower rate. So here are 5 things that a web designer should avoid when it comes to designing their website.
1. Don’t be obsessed with Flash
Every web designer would like to show off how much they know about Flash and brag about it to everyone with their designs and projects. But as mentioned above, the use of too much Flash animation in a web site is not good. Why? Because again, it will surely slow down the loading of a web site and that is not what the visitors would want to experience upon visiting your web site.
2. Don’t play with ads
Instead of hiding the ads, it’s better to just allot a space for ads to be posted. It’s not really cool to have slide out ads and pop up ads. It’s actually a waste of time and effort on the part of a web designer because visitors are usually annoyed with pop-up and slide out ads. They won’t even bother taking a look at the ad and just close it right away or in most cases, they already have a pop-up ad blocker so your effort for creating those kinds of ads is just not worth it. Just keep the appearance of ads simple by putting up a banner for it.
3. Don’t clutter around
A good web designer can also be judged on how good he is by how organized his web site is. Remember that visitors would always want a web site that is easy to navigate through. They don’t want to look at their monitor screens with their foreheads wrinkled and wondering where they could find what they are looking for.
4. Don’t abuse glassy, reflective effects
This was made famous by the company of Apple. But if it’s too famous and widely used by web designers then people will tend to get sick with it and you might even get negative comments about it. If you really want to use that kind of effect on your design, use it creatively and don’t scatter it all over your web site.
5. Don’t name your Web 2.0 company in a weird manner
Be smart instead of using names that either lack a vowel or have excessive use of vowels. Web designers don’t have to go with this trend and stick to using names that are as smart as their web designs.
A Graphics Artist Way to Save on Gifts this Holiday Season
Share something different this Christmas – share your talent. As an artist you could create your own designs to boast and make your family, friends of even bosses proud of your creation. They say that time is the best thing you could give to someone, and devoting some time creating something different will without a doubt be appreciated.
Here are few ideas to help you get started:
- Enhance an old picture of your parents and turn into something really different, change the scene perhaps or write a thing or two that will surely melt their hearts.
- Create your own Christmas or postcards powered by your creativity. Make it as unique as possible.
- If you have an extra bucks, design something you could print on:
- Aprons
- Bags
- Hats
- Mouse Pads
- Mugs
- Pillow Cases
- T-shirts
- Create a Calendar or a notepad
- Just in case you have more time, compile photos, songs, or even recipes and create a unique packaging.
- Some graphic artist are web designers as well, why not create a unique space on the web for families and friends.
There are various ways to save on gifts this holiday season, in fact, anyone who knows how to tinker with photoshop, gimp or any design software could create his/her unique presence for the coming Christmas. It’s about gift-giving, anything will do as long it comes from the heart, so why not spend time and create a personalized gift that will surely leave an impression.
The good thing about this is that, you don’t only share your talent but you market them as well.
Happy Holidays!!!
How to Create SEO Website Design Friendly
A website should be eye catching to attract visitors. It should also be very search engine friendly. What matters aside from being user friendly is that it’s searchable on the web, otherwise, your website is useless.
How do we create an SEO friendly web design?
If you use flash on the entire website, you will have to put double the work to make it search engine firendly. Search Engine (SE’s) ignores Flash, therefore, you will also need a non-flash version of your website. If you really need to use flash, make sure that you have an alternative textual description that can be understood by SE spiders. Otherwise, you can also use web 2.0 technology to put your content first before your flash designs.
When using images, be sure to fill-in “name” and “alt” tags. The graphical image itself cannot be seen by SE spider, it is through this tags that SE spider interpret your website. Use relevant description only and do not try to deceive SE spider.
Avoid using frames, SE spiders have no way to interpret content on a frame.
Use CSS navigation and style sheets, doing so makes your navigational menu crawl-able and indexable by SE spider. Using Javascript and Flash do not have the same result – it is unseen by SE spiders. So if you have javascript or flash on your site, you also need to have simple texts of the same message you put in Javascript or flash.
Though it’s not a requirement to use CSS stylesheets, it will help your site to load faster.
Conduct a Keyword Research to use on your meta tags and contents but also avoid keyword stuffing, suggested keyword density is 3-5%. For the title tag, characters should be at lest 70 and 150 for the description. Have at least 5-8 important keywords listed in your keyword tag.
Also, use keyword researched on your anchor text, H1, H2 and H3 as much as possible. This will help you rank in Search Engine Result Page (SeRP).
Create SEO friendly URL, incorporate your keyword related to your web page. Use dashes to separate words.
Structure your site up to 3 levels deep; Google only sees three-levels deep.
Provide useful content and make sure to have at least 250 words each web page since some SE spiders requires at least 250 to analyze your site. Make it a point as well that content on your site coincide with keywords used, else, SE spider will find it of little value.
Lastly, provide a site map.
Having an optimized site works well with your SEO campaign, the second step now depends on you.
If you like this article you may want to read 10 Tips on Search Engine Optimization
Effective Logo Design
A logo is a graphical representation of what a company stands for. Basically, it is used for immediate consumer recognition. This may sound simple but it’s actually a part of your branding strategy and it entails careful analysis before creating a logo. It plays an important factor on how a company wants to be uniquely recognized among the crowd of competitors - positioning.
The logo speaks for itself, it can stand on its own. Delivering the wrong message can weaken brand recognition. Without careful analysis on the design, it could send a wrong message to the consumers. Nobody wants that to happen.
To have an effective logo, it should portray company values and goal and be uniquely identifiable.
During inception, it should be clear what the company wants to portray and deliver. The colors, fonts, and icons/ graphics should be cautiously decided. The Brand Promise however may or may not be included in the design.
Colors – Use color that represents your brand promise and avoid multi-color design. Ideally, two colors is enough. Simple is better.
Fonts – It should be unique, easily identified as your own and not mistaken for other brands. Logos do not have to be an icon or graphics it could be a simple text like Nike, Mc Donalds, DELL and IBM. But make sure it has a strong presence.
Icons/Graphics – avoid using icons or graphics that literally represents a company. If the company is clothing line, the logo does not necessarily need to have clothes on it. If the company provides service, do not illustrate the kind of service delivered – be creative in delivering the message to attract consumers. Just imagine funeral and cremation service if you adopt literally the design on the logo. 
Additionally, a logo should not be dated, meaning it only caters to the consumers of today. A company logo should be consistent with what it represents, regardless of the current trend.
An effective logo has a strong presence in the market. So if you think your logo do not denote what you represent then it’s time that you reposition your company through branding strategy.
Remember that a logo does not need to be flashy. It only needs to be eye-catching and uniquely identified.
Important Factors of a Good Web Design
Name me a person that do not know what a website is, perhaps even the elderly knew about it. It’s actually the page you browse on the web, just like the establishment or stores you walked-in to. It’s a visual representation of a company, store or even organization. It’s an important investment for every industry and even for professional practitioners like doctors and lawyers, but not everybody has all the factors to develop loyal clientele.
Having access to the World Wide Web makes the impossible possible, just look at meeting conducted online, businesses surviving after the recession and shopping without literally leaving your home. I am probably one of the million people who could not live without an Internet connection. It makes life a little bit easier for me, I could learn without literally staying at home – FREE. But what makes a good website design, what people would actually love to see and experience in your site. Technology is changing so fast, HTML – PHP – CSS – CMS, gadget and all sort of things that could be utilize and integrated in your site. Sometime we get carried away and adapt to what we see is better but forgetting the simple goal why the website is created after all – user experience regardless of the physical design.
What are the essentials of a good web design? First and most important factor is the Cross-browser Compatibility. It simply means the website runs in whatever browser visitors used to navigate the site. The best thing webmasters should do is make the site WC3 compliant.
User-friendly Interface is the next on the list. Basically it is the navigation to the sites’ interface. Users usually want a straightforward approach to a websites’ navigation. It’s a good practice to keep in mind that some users do not have the time to study how to navigate within your site; they are just there to get what they want and not figure out how to make it work.
Another thing to consider is the loading time. Flash designs and creative images are very impressive provided that they load fast, but if visitors to your site would have to wait 3-5 minutes before it loads, I don’t think it helps attracting potential clients.
Privacy and Terms of Use should also be integrated to the site specifically if it is a corporate site. This provides a certain impression that users are protected. This is the page in the site that details how information is collected and other information with regards to user security and privacy.
Lastly, accessibility, a good website design not only caters to the general public. It’s one factor commonly disregarded but could help reach out to wider audience.
Having a website is indeed very important nowadays, aside from cutting operational cost, it reaches a wider market without spending millions. So if you’re spending on website or would like to have one, be sure to remember that the site is created NOT for YOU but for your VISITORS, NOT for SPIDERS but for USERS.
Advantages of Client Forms
A website form (such as a contact us page or a price request quote form) proves to be a useful tool for collecting client data such as email and phone numbers so that qualified leads can be cultivated via newsletters, mailings, etc.
However, most people do not prefer to fill out forms. They are tedious and time consuming. So, making your forms easy and quick to fill out will ensure they are done so that a company can collect the data to their advantage.
To keep the form efficient, try to collect only what you need. Really, the main items of interest are names, telephone and email contact information. Also, a postal code should be enough for your user tracking statistics. This keeps your form easy and more likely that it will be completed.
If you are using drop down boxes, keep the choices simple or use an enhanced text field that incorporates an autocomplete function so that the user can enter a couple of keystrokes and retrieve the city they are looking for without having to scroll down a multitude of choices.