Important Rules in Website Design
When designing your website, great care should be taken to ensure every last detail of the site performs at an optimum level and actually serves its purpose. Here are five simple rules of good web design that anyone would do well to remember when considering building or designing a new website.
Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.
Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!
Avoid using background music on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it – volume or muting controls would work fine.
Is There Such a Thing As Free Web Design?
Free Web Design – does it exist?
The simple answer to the question “is there such a thing as free web design”, is no. So why read the rest of this article? Because there are lots of free things that can help you with web design.
Free is good. We all like free. But why should we expect anyone to expend time, training, and ability to give us something. Especially if we are perfect strangers.
How is it possible that we can find free tools that will truly help us to design our web sites? To understand the phenomenon of free that we see so often on the Internet we need to look at the Internet History.
The Internet has been grown like a garden lovingly cared for by people who are nuts about computers. These people, by their very nature love to experiment and discover new stuff they can do with computers.
The products of these experiments would die a sad and lonely death on desktop computers and leave their creators unfulfilled if they were not offered to others and put into use.
These developers of so many useful tools find it far more fulfilling to see their work used on the Internet, so many of them offer these tools for free.
Why don’t they sell these web design tools instead of offering them for free?
There are a number of reasons why developers offer web design tools for free. Some of these developers have more sophisticated versions of the tools which they sell. By offering the simple web design tool for free, they hope to interest you in purchasing the more powerful version.
Other developers might offer several free design tools while selling one tool. Others simply have created one specific web design tool for their own use and decide to offer it to others for free.
Many of the developers of free web design tools earn their living as developers, so the development of a single tool that performs a specific task is just not important enough to warrant their time or money to market.
When you select a free tool to use for your web design and you discover that this tool is very handy and effective, you should ‘pay’ the developer. You can do this by simply sending him/her an email saying thank you, or you can give them credit and a link on your web site. While few of these developers ask for this payment, all of them appreciate it.
How do you select a free web design tool?
Care should always be taken when choosing to download anything from the Internet. For as many good guys who are developing handy web design tools there are an equal number of bad guys who are developing virus and other bad juju for you to download and cause your computer to go belly up.
When searching for free web design tools, always choose web sites that you know are safe and download only from them.
– Mickey Dodson
Incorporating a Custom Web Site Design into Your Business Plan
Using a Custom Web Site Design As Part of Your Marketing Plan
Writing an internet business plan needs to include how you will use your custom web site design in the marketing of your small business. While this plan has a few different components to consider, it is well worth the effort to investigate how you can capitalize on the opportunity that the internet provides for your company to reach a larger market than you would if you operate your business solely offline.
Part of your marketing strategy can work wonderfully online; you can automate your customer service responses to purchases and distribute promotional material on a certain schedule as well. But in addition, it will serve to promote your business offline in several ways, for instance, when you run print advertising of any type, include your website address. This will not only let customers know that you have an online presence, but support their needs for convenience when they are ready to shop.
Offer to send free information about your service or product when they visit your site. This affords you an avenue to communicate with these prospects many times.
Custom Web Site Design and Multimedia Applications
Custom web site design can really be worked to a high level of performance through the use of visual images. If your business offers products that consumers prefer to see, using multimedia in your design will bring a level of interactivity to your web site visitors that accents your product offering. Streaming video and audio applications work wonders for web sites that offer apparel, music, art and travel products and services, allowing visitors to feel that they are part of the experience.
– G. Uma Bennett
Custom Web Site Design – Necessary or No
Must you have a Custom Web Site Design for your Ecommerce Site?
How important is it for your web site to have a custom design?
This is a question asked frequently by entrepreneurs who are considering their first ecommerce venture. It is a valid question that directly relates the costs that will be expended for that first web site design.
First we should define the difference between a custom web site design and other designs.
What Does Custom Web Site Design Mean?
Much of what is done on the Internet is accomplished using what we techies call templates. In simple terms a template is a structural document which allows the user to simply fill in the informational areas.
The result of using a template is that all documents (web pages in this case) generated in this manner will look alike.
Even custom web designers use templates when developing web sites. Once they determine a structural design of a web site, using a template guarantees that every page will meet the standard of that design.
What makes a custom web site design different, is that your designer will develop logos, page layouts, color schemes, and possibly advanced technical mechanisms for your web site. These elements ‘brand’ your web site specifically to your company and become identifiers to your customers.
Using a template design such as those offered at shared hosting providers, or offered as themes in one of the WSISYG editors (Frontpage themes for example) generally do not allow your web site to have those special ‘branding’ elements.
While some of the templates offered allow you to insert your own logo images, and Frontpage themes can also be changed using your own images, this actually makes the web site more of a custom design.
Keep that in mind when determining how important a custom design will be to your Internet Store. Making those small changes to a template can have the effect your desire at a more reasonable cost.
When You Really Need a Custom Web Site Design
It is when you require those advanced technical mechanisms on your web site that you will definitely need the help of a custom web site designer.
If your ecommerce venture requires data base connectivity allowing your customers to enter and you to store personal preference, shipping, and payment information, you need the assistance of an experience design professional to assure that your data base is developed correctly.
Have you ever visited a web site where you are required to fill in a form and there are spaces that require information that does not relate to you. When you fail to enter data in those spaces the form generates error messages. Such a form is an excellent way to drive your potential customers away. Such forms have been designed by people who lacked the knowledge or experience to make them work for all your customers.
There are a number of other technical aspects available for your Internet store, but none of them will have a positive effect if they are not designed correctly. In fact, non functioning bells and whistles on your web site will reflect very negatively on your business.
Consider what is best for your Internet store. Consider your budget. Then decide whether or not you need a custom design.
– Mickey Dodson
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Web Design Graphics Resources for Your Online Business
Why Does my Online Business Need Web Design Graphics?
If you are planning to design and build a web page for your online business, graphics will be an important aspect of your site. Graphics are one of the fundamental elements of any well designed web site. Graphics can include, but are not limited too images, backgrounds, buttons and navigation bars. They are a powerful tool to make your web site more visually appealing and oftentimes easier to navigate.
Where Can I Find Web Design Graphics for my Online Business Web Site?
There are many sources available to you in finding graphics of all sorts for your online business web site. One good place to begin is with your web hosting provider. Depending on which company you work with, many will offer you excellent tools and graphics to assist you in building your web page free of charge with your service.
If your web hosting provider does not offer free graphics and accessories for your web site, or you are still seeking more, there are other resources available to you as well. There are many web sites on the internet that offer an abundant variety of web design graphics, many of them free of charge. One site to begin with is www.animationfactory.com. This web site offers a plethora of animated images available for use on your web site, some of them free although many require a membership fee.
Another web site that you may find useful is www.flamingtext.com. This site contains some free images, and is also a development tool that will allow you to design and build banners and other graphics for your web site.
What if I want to Design my Own Graphics for my Web Site?
If you wish to design your own graphics, there are many many options available to you. If you are Windows user, one of the first ways to begin is through Paint, a standard feature on Windows operating systems. This will allow you to create Bitmap files which can be utilized with your web page. BMP extension images are not the most commonly used images on the internet, however. The two most common file extensions for internet images are GIF and JPG.
These are both highly compressible formats which allow you to host quality images while keeping the file size as low as possible. File size is an important aspect of web graphics, as you are often limited in storage space and bandwidth traffic, and smaller image sizes also allow for faster page loads.
In terms of quality, JPG format files will be able to handle higher quality images in its format. This format generally also takes up more room than a GIF, however. A GIF can only handle 256 colors, but if you are working with an image that does not contain very many colors then a GIF is most likely the right format for that image. GIF images can also be animated and made transparent, two functions lacking in JPG format images. Two good programs to utilize in designing web graphics in these formats are GIF Animation Factory and PhotoShop.
Walter Stevens
Web Designing Companies in New York
There are a lot of web designing companies in New York which can provide web solutions for your business. This article focuses on some of the reliable web designing companies in New York.
10e20 Web Design – a Web Designing Company in New York
10E20 Web Design (www.10e20webdesign.com) is a professional web site designing and Internet marketing company. The company was founded in the year 2001 and offers web solutions to small businesses. It has it’s headquarters located in the city of New York. The company provides web designing services at affordable prices.
Some of the major services provided by the company include domain name registration, web site design, web site redesign, Flash web design, web site hosting, ecommerce solutions, logo design, and Internet marketing. The company has a team of professionals from different parts of the world. The various web site hosting plans provided by the company include Basic Plan, Professional Plan, and Ecommerce Plan. Let us see the major features offered by these plans.
The major features of Basic Plan are no setup fee, 200 MB disk storage space, bandwidth up to 5 GB, 5 email accounts, unlimited email responders, unlimited mailing lists, unlimited email filters, unlimited Ftp accounts, support for anonymous Ftp, PHP, Perl, CGI, protected directories, custom error pages, file manager, FrontPage Server Extensions, Web Statistics, raw access logs and error logs.
The major features of Professional Plan are no setup fee, 500 MB disk storage space, bandwidth up to 20 GB, 5 domains, 5 sub domains, 5 MySQL databases, unlimited email accounts, unlimited email responders, unlimited mailing lists, unlimited email filters, unlimited Ftp accounts, support for anonymous Ftp, PHP, Perl, CGI, protected directories, custom error pages, file manager, FrontPage Server Extensions, Web Statistics, raw access logs and error logs.
The major features of Ecommerce Plan are no setup fee, 1000 MB disk storage space, bandwidth up to 40 GB, unlimited email accounts, unlimited email responders, unlimited mailing lists, unlimited email filters, unlimited Ftp accounts, support for anonymous Ftp, osCommerce, PHP, Perl, CGI, protected directories, custom error pages, file manager, FrontPage Server Extensions, Web Statistics, raw access logs and error logs.
Majestic Designs, Inc. – a Web Designing Company in New York
Majestic Designs, Inc. (www.majesticdesigns.com) is a professional web designing company located in New York. The company provides web solutions to small and medium business houses. The company specializes in web site design, web site redesign, web site hosting, and Marketing. The company provides quality, reliable, and affordable web site hosting plans that suit your business. The major web site hosting plans provided by the company are Basic Web Hosting Plan and Professional Web Hosting Plan.
Some of the major features common to both the plans include unlimited email accounts, unlimited email forwarding, unlimited sub domains, support for PHP, CGI, and control panel for account management. The company has a very large client database. Some of the major clients of the company include Sony Style (www.sonystyle.com), Sony Music (www.sonymusic.com), American League KBH (www.kabh.org), NYC Glass (www.nycglass.com), and Ako Stores (www.akostores com).
Web Designing Companies in New York by Praveen Jayaraj
Ecommerce Web Site Design
Linking Ecommerce Web Site Design with the World
One of the nicest things about any ecommerce Web site design is that once you’re up and running, the World Wide Web kind of absorbs you and melds your existence with the rest of the Web. Search engines will eventually crawl across your pages, indexing them for the use of surfers. Your associates will all bookmark your online brand identity and email its online location to friends and family so they can show off their workplace.
Experts in your industry might refer to your site in articles that promote the both of you, provided you provide useful content and prod them to access it. And even your enemies will be more able to watch your business grow!
For example, if you’re a big chemical conglomerate, you can be sure that DearDeerSave.org, LetUsSaveTheLettuceCrop.org, and BobSwankandSonsEnvironmentalLawyers.pro will all be linking to your site. You may even get saddled with a link from a really eccentric conspiracy group like, MutantSasquatchWatch.com!
There really isn’t much you can do about this issue. If you provide industry content and company data, even your foes are going to link to it for all its worth. This is the gift and the curse of the Internet. We are all neighbors. You can’t avoid us.
Avoiding Frotage in your Ecommerce Web Site Design
When someone invades your personal space, getting so close that they rub up against you, they may be “catching a feel,” so to speak. Naturally, this kind of thing happens accidentally, so it may seem innocent enough under certain circumstances, such as tightly packed elevators and getting in line in boot camp.
Culturally, when we experience dense social packing such as we do in many of our urban areas – Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, etc. – our required personal space gets worn down. We just learn to not care as much about people standing 12″ away from us. But, those of us living out in the boonies, or living galloping lifestyles out on the wide open plains, are more likely to have an expectancy of about 30″ of personal space.
Violating this range may not set off immediate alarms, but the person is aware their space is being moved into. The citizens of China have almost no sense of personal space. When shopping they will cram up to the counter tightly.
On the Web, the world is as dense as we can make it. In fact, as a business, you want to experience the virtual equivalent of dense social packing. You want visitors to squeeze into your site! If you need to upgrade your traffic allotment because you’re getting too many visitors, that’s a good thing!
You just have to accept that when someone you don’t like wants to reach out and touch your site, you can’t do much about it. Just keep in mind the old notion that even bad press is good press.
How Does Your Ecommerce Web Site Design Use Space?
Ask yourself this. If you place a story on a single page of your ecommerce Web site design, and someone trying to damage your company links to it, will it appear out of context? In other words, are you allowing some of your content pages to be posted like single page documents?
If you want to control information on your site, then you need to control your use of space. If a page can be externally bookmarked, and the data or news is not accompanied by summaries of links to related information, someone may not be getting the whole picture! If you just post a document on its own page, without developing its relationship to the bigger corporate picture, a link to just that document may put the information in a different light.
Someone coming from a site that claims you frequently produce evil chemicals and place them in dump sites for years to come might link to a news piece that announces your company just built a new waste chemical repository. While the repository would normally be seen as a positive act, showing mature business practices, you can be sure that if you haven’t placed it in a larger context, then its going to appear criminally supportive of the linking site’s claim!
Don’t just drop information and content into your site structure like you’re archiving used chemicals. Provide supporting links and summaries of other information so people can quickly get a broader picture.
Ian Hess
Web Site Design for the Beginning Webmaster
Web Site Design for the Beginning Webmaster
Okay, so you’ve learned HTML, and you’re ready to design a web site with all your nifty articles and images. Now it’s time to learn about structure.
Structure in Web Site Design
The first and most basic thing to remember is that you always need a home page — a page through which you can reach the rest of your website with fewer than two or three clicks. No one wants to click forever to reach the content they want, and if you want to keep your viewer happy and at your site you have to make it easy for them.
Hang major portal pages from your home page: that’s pages to content, pages to information about you, and contact pages. Build a contact page that your user can fill out online, rather than opening his own email account with a click. Group all like items together — if you have a magazine, for instance, make your current issue accessible from one page, and your archives accessible from another. If you have complex information, consider including a search engine in your web site design.
File Structure in Web Site Design
When first designing your web site, ensure that your images fall in one folder, your pages in another, and your applications — search engines or other programs, in a third, with flash animation and other items falling in their own folders as well. This makes it easier to re-use different items on your web site. Design your file structure on complex sites so that like items have subfolders — if you sell shoes and you have men’s, ladies’, children’s, and socks, create a subfolder in each applicable folder so that your file structure looks like: Pages — > Shoes — > Men’s.
Design Your Web Site for Simple Browsing
There is nothing so frustrating as a website that is so complex as to make it impossible to browse easily. I like to be able to shop around in a web site, to go from the shoe section to the stationery section in one or two clicks, preferably without using a search engine. Sound impossible? With proper design planning, it’s not.
Make sure you have navigational buttons to the major sections of your site on each page, and make sure they look alike on each page. If you have more than seven major sections, try to categorize them so that you can have no more than seven buttons with drop-down menus to each sub section. Set up navigation to major sections at the bottom of each page as well, and make sure you have a way to get to the contact page.
In a complex page, at the top of each page deeper than two clicks from the home page place a navigation map — something that looks like Products — > Shoes — > Men’s — > Athletic — > Adidas. Each item in the map should be hyperlinked to the higher level page it refers to.
Lastly, but most importantly, ask people who don’t have anything to do with either your company or your website to test it. Real customers can give you the best feedback.
by Jamie Wilson
Web Design Made Simple
What Exactly Is Web Design?
The first thing we need to do to make web design simple, is to explain what it is. The concept is really not so difficult, we all know what design is, and designers. We see home and office designers all the time on TV, we even hire them ourselves. They are the people who take care of the look and feel of our home, or our office. Web design is similar, but rather than dealing with a physical location it is dealing with an online web site. Rather than hanging a picture or painting a wall, a web designer will create a background or post an image on the web site.
How Can I Learn About Web Design?
The basis of most web pages is the computer language HTML. This stands for Hyper-Text-Mark-up-Language. When you look at a web page and see .html at the end of it, that means that the page was written in HTML. This is the language of the majority of web pages we see. However, there are other elements to web sites as well, for example JavaScript, which is often written within HTML, or Java, or cgi, or asp. These are all different things that have functionality online, with varying degrees of difficulty.
Online Web Design Tutorials
Fortunately there are hundreds of sites on the internet that are designed specifically for those who would like to learn about HTML and how to make their own web pages. These sites are not difficult to find, simply type in “learn web design”, or “learn HTML” or “learn JavaScript” into a search. You will find many resources available to you, absolutely free of cost. These tutorials will give you a basis to understanding the elements needed in designing a web page and writing into a code which will be readable by browsers across the world. Your local library also makes an excellent resource.
What Other Options Are There?
If you are not the most technologically savvy individual, or do not have the time and inclination to begin teaching yourself HTML and the variety of other things you’ll need to know in order to design your own web pages, this is not the only option. You can hire someone else to design your web pages for you, although this can often be prohibitively expensive, but it will guarantee you a professional looking site built by someone who knows what they are doing.
There are also programs which you can buy that will help you develop your web page without having to know a lot of fancy computer languages, such as graphical HTML editors. You can find these for free, although they will not contain as many extras. Oftentimes web hosting companies who will offer you space to host your web site from will also give you many great tools to design your web site without having to know a lot of technical jargon when you purchase their services.
There are many different ways to go about fulfilling your web design needs.
by Walter Stevens
