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Effective Web DesignTasneem Rangoonwala D.zigns dzignerwebs The Basics Before starting on how to design a website effectively, how about clearing some basic web design concepts Designing Effectively Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality. Use of graphics and content Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying. Layout and design While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout: Text that is too small to read Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read Large graphic files that take forever to load Multiple things that blink Unclear navigation; over complex navigation Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once Graphics that dont fit on the screen assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels Animations that never stop Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd: Stay away from bad design features listed above. Background does not interrupt the text Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use Good use of graphic elements photos, subheads, pull quotes to break up large areas of text A large site has an index or site map Link colors coordinate with page color Every graphic link has a matching text link Animated graphics turn off by themselves Pages download quickly All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels Planning Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan: what colors do you want to use Are these colors complimentary What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages What layout do you want Look at other websites and then decide. Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.
| | | | RELATED ARTICLES The Basic Facts About Business Web Hosting There are a number of hosting options, from free to dedicated servers. Let’s spend a few moments and look over the options. Score BIG With The Search Engines - Maximising Your Sites Potential I often get asked, "How do I improve my sites performance in the search engines." or "I have a small budget, how can I compete with the larger sites." It can seem daunting when you type in your key search term and you see Google returning 200,000 results! Over the course of this article I am going to teach you some techniques that you can use to improve your sites ranking in the major search engines. These are not in any particular order but you should try and cover all of these if you want to perform well. Choosing a Web Host Based On Price Dont! Its tempting.There are so many companies offering cut-rate hosting – loaded with astounding post-futuristic techno-gizmo features ! – that it just makes sense to save a few dollars, right How to find good Web Hosting for your site! When building your first site the main things that you will probably think about is what types of content you will be adding to your site, how you are going to get visitors to your site and how you are going to generate good revenue from your site. Web usability: The basics What is web usability & why is it important Enhance Your Website With A Yahoo-Style Directory Does your website have a links/resources page Flash Deadly Sins that can kill your web business Looks like every client wants a Flash site these days but the reality is...as flashy as these sites may look, there are many negatives you may want to consider before delving into Flash. Are your SEO efforts going to waste Search engine optimization SEO is a long and complicated process that can be highly rewarding if done correctly. SEO is not a waste of time, but can be if your site doesn’t appeal to visitors or function properly. Your potential customer will be turned off if your site lacks trustworthiness, an eye pleasing color scheme and easy to use navigation. Why lose visitors and possible sales because of a small design flaw or unappealing color scheme Those visitors could have resulted in sales if those small imperfections were fixed. The Secret Benefit Of Accessibility Part 1: Increased Usability Web accessibility has so many benefits that I really do wonder why such a large number of websites have such diabolically bad accessibility. One of the main benefits is increased usability, which according to usability guru, Jakob Nielson, can increase the sales/conversion rate of a website by 100% and traffic by 150%. Web Hosting: 4 Factors in Choosing a Hosting Company When choosing a web hosting company there are a whole lot of different factors that should go into your decision making process. One of the biggest factors should be: What The Muscle Power of Audio Can Do for Your Site. How Audio can Influence Sales Reasons Why You Should Have A Weblogger Installed On Your Web Site I dont know about you, but when I built my first web site three years back I dont know anything about the webloggers. One day when I checking the features of my web host control panel after two months of uploading my first home page I saw the link Webstats. That was the first time I get to know that I can know how many people are comming to my site. Metrics Matter! Recently, I talked with a speaker about her "extremely successful" Website.She based this opinion on the fact that she was selling several e-books every day and generating "some calls".When I asked if she was reviewing her traffic analysis, she said "No, why should we - its clearly working - we can tell that from the sales".I didnt ask if she knew how her sales and calls compared to the actual visitor numbers for the site - I suspected that shed have been shocked to learn how many more opportunities she was losing. Affiliate Alternative; Google Adsense The Rise and Fall of Affiliate Programs Domain Names Security : How safe is yours The security of domain name registrations is an increasing concern for domain name registrants and registrars. However, there are steps you can take to increase the security of your domain name registrations. What is Blogger.com In the late 1990’s three San Francisco based web developers came up with the idea of being able to share information about anything on the web. The terminology they used was called blog. Its use was considered a mix of web page / personal journal. Its original usages were vast and wide, but more and more people came to use them as a personal tool that is available anywhere the Internet is. The three friends would eventually create Blogger.com one of the largest blogger sites on the Internet today. Blogger, which stands for Web Logger, has increased in popularity over the past three years. There has been so much interest in what capabilities it holds Google.com purchased them. Eventually, Google assimilated their technologies and imported them into the popular plug-in, The Google Toolbar. Optimizing for Visitors not Search Engines Most people feel that optimizing is to target the search engines alone. In my opinion, this is not the only case. Optimization requires a balance of traffic enhancements and a user friendly atmosphere that provides clear navigation. Most will agree it would be much better to have people accept offerings from a Site, rather than masses of people who do nothing. Here are some general tips and thought to make pages user-friendly. Web Templates: Replacing Designers I’ve seen articles and websites that suggest you can buy a website template and skip the expense of hiring a professional website designer. Recently, I read several testimonials from the very satisfied customers of a website template vendor that mentioned how quickly they were able to get their sites done. The template vendor commented that he/she had known people to complete their websites in around two hours. Basic Design Principles Part 1 There are some very basic design principles that are important to know whether you’re a graphic designer, web designer, or even a photographer. Certain very basic design principles apply to all artistic fields and are necessary for the artist and valuable information for the consumer. Why Arent You Using CGI The very name CGI used to send chills up my spine. For years I put it in the too-hard-basket. But like most things in life, CGI is not as scary as it seems. If you have a cgi directory on your website and you know how to FTP files, chances are you can have a CGI script up and running in less than 20 minutes. |
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