Website Designs some forethoughts

Having a business endeavor; logically demands that one should have a website to advertise the business that they are into. The reason behind the thriving need for a website is that in this computer driven jet age, all the things are highly mechanized and are truly geared towards the machines. A small little child is turning out to be more technology (computer) friendly than a middle aged person! That points towards the rising trends of this era. Therefore; the necessity of the websites designing companies becomes imperative and crucial in this scenario. However before getting involved in the process of designing, one should take a few things into consideration. First of all it should be considered and planned as to what the site should look like? This entails a widespread research analysis to be done to see the competitors' websites or related links to gauge how they have highlighted their products.

By doing so, it would give an insight into the marketability and one would also be able to determine the pros and cons of the website and move ahead with a richer experience and analysis of the whole scenario. By doing this kind of analysis they would also be able to appropriately analyze the market that the website would be targeting at. Keeping the end target in mind and also appropriately analyzing the target users, the creative web designs would be able to depict the products appropriately with their intelligent designs. The designs should be such that they are able to portray the products in the right light. For example, a site meant for financial services should be designed in accordance to its services and should not be mistakenly designed to carry the interface of an e commerce site. Now this would entail intelligent designing, and also design oriented towards the right target audience. Along with sensible designing, there should also be a realization that the site should be logical and utility driven towards all the visitors that come to the site.

This entails that the site should be visually appealing and at the same time it should be also easily navigable to all the pages. After all, if the site is not easily accessible to the users they would not take any extra pains to reach any particular pages they would simple move towards the exit button to see another related site from the Search Results. Website designing company Delhi, that is amongst the best in their field; further say that the utility of the site towards the users should be of primordial concern for everyone. Even if the designing companies spend a fortune on the design, but the user is not able to derive any benefit from the site it is not able to find the relevant information that they are looking for then the entire drill is useless. Therefore it becomes imperative that the interests of the users in kept in mind before initiating the designing process.

Source:

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2810973

Web Site Design, Chicago Website Design

NASA CIO Conducts A Web Experiment

NASA CIO Linda Cureton has conducted an experiment in IT leadership via her blog on the space agency's Web site. Cureton wrote about online reputations, then she responded to every comment made by readers. Her conclusion: "Listening changes the listener."

Cureton was promoted from CIO of the Goddard Space Center in Maryland to NASA's' agency-wide CIO eight months ago. For the past two years, she has used her blog to write about leadership, innovation, and IT transformation, among other topics. "One of my reasons for blogging is to use this Web 2.0 capability as a leadership tool," Cureton wrote in her latest post, titled "The Connected CIO."

Cureton said she blogs as a way of connecting with stakeholders and making them more aware of NASA activities and her role there. The Obama administration, through its open government initiative, has mandated that federal agencies engage the public through technologies that promote interactive dialogue. But Cureton, in her blog post, said she has come to realize how one-sided blogging can be, and that she wasn't sure her investment in it had made her more connected.

Cureton, who describes herself as an introvert, used to find comfort in "hiding behind" technology, but came to realize that having a one-way dialogue undermined her reasons for blogging. "I lamented that blogging wasn't as interactive as I thought," she wrote.

In an effort to get past that, Cureton conducted a little test. She blogged about managing online reputations, then responded to every comment made by about a dozen readers.

Cureton said the experience made her feel more connected with people who have an interest in the space agency and gave her a sense of what NASA represents to people.

"As I read and contemplated the comments to my blog," she wrote, "I could feel the passion and purpose of a global citizenship that is connected to me and to NASA in ways that perhaps I can only just begin to understand."

The point to be drawn from Cureton's experience is that other IT leaders should look for ways to use the Web to engage in two-way interactions with their staffs, employees, and customers.

Source:

http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=224400882&section=news

Web Design Firms, Chicago Website Design

Find Out How to Make a Great Web Design

So many people are browsing the computer looking for products and services. If you are looking to share with the world some services, products or just to get your point across then you need to be sure your website is a site that a visitor will remember and revisit. If you are wondering how to make a great web design you will need to follow some important tips.

First, you will want to know your audience. What type of people will be interested in your product or service the most. These are the people you will want to design your website so it will intrigue them. You will need to keep this target audience in mind when you are writing content for your website.

When you are learning how to make a great web design, you should know to keep your pages short and to the point. You want your audience to get the information they need while not having to scroll through a number of pages to find what they want to know.

When people are browsing the web, navigation of a website determines how long that user will stay on your site and come back again. You want to have a table of contents on your site. You need to keep the user mind when developing navigation. Having a table of contents help with navigation and provides the user easy access around your site without getting lost. They can jump through your website with ease.

An important factor when learning how to make a great web design is how long it takes your website to load. Graphics is a reason why a web page takes a long time to load. To resolve this problem, keeping the pictures small will help. Remember to make sure the image you have is in the correct format also.

Pay attention to the colors you are choosing for your website. Depending on the colors, backgrounds, etc. Some content may not be visible or may be hard on the eyes to read. For example, yellow is hard to read and many times is not visible. While you are choosing the color for your text, it is also good to note, not to add too much text. Web browsers do exactly that, they browse, they do not read all the content, they skim it. A good tip is to have the wording bigger than the average font type and keep it short. Don't forget to check your spelling. Readers will suspect your site is not professional since you couldn't put the effort in proofreading how much effort do you put into your products and services then.

For More Read...

http://ezinearticles.com/?Find-Out-How-to-Make-a-Great-Web-Design&id=3584176

Web Design Firms, Chicago Website Design

Website Design - How to Choose a Proper Color Scheme For Your Websites

Does color play a crucial role for your internet business? From my experience, color sure does play a crucial role for your internet business. By choosing a proper color scheme for your websites you can directly captivate your visitors on their very first visit and a proper color scheme can contribute a great deal on how you want your visitors see what your internet marketing business is all about.

So, what kind of color combination should you use for your business websites? It all depends on what kind of niche or on what kind of image you want to build. Here are the most common colors that you can use for your websites:

- Red: this color signifies passion, courage and guts. Red color can easily makes visitors to take notice directly. Therefore, you notice that most of the headline color in a salespage is red. However, you should remember that putting a red text on a black background is a bad idea, because doing that will make your visitors' eye to be iritated and to be tired easily.

- White: a color that signifies purity and cleanliness. This color is fit to be paired with any color, and it is usually used as a background for dark and black colored texts for easier reading for visitors.

- Black: usually associated with firmness, elegance and exclusivity. At times, the color black can also mean something secretive. If you want to sell an exclusive product in a limited edition, then using this color is advisable to add a little bit of mysterious spice on your sales page.

- Green: as you all know, green is the color of nature. Most websites and internet business models that sell natural-based products use this color to help their internet marketing businesses. This color scheme is also often used for herbal and weight loss product merchant websites.

- Blue: usually means calm and trustworthy. This is a good color scheme to build trust with your clients and consumers. Most banks use this color scheme for their websites.

So, have you find the proper color combinations and scheme for your website design?


Source:

http://ezinearticles.com/?Website-Design---How-to-Choose-a-Proper-Color-Scheme-For-Your-Websites&id=4094838

Web Design Firms, Chicago Website Design

Intel Launches Core i7 Mobile Processors

Intel on Wednesday introduced Core i7 quad-core processors for laptops, bringing to market its highest-performing mobile chips to date.

The new products, which include an extreme edition for gaming systems and professional workstations, were unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. The Core i7 chips are based on Intel's current 45-nanometer Nehalem microarchitecture.

Codenamed Clarksfield, the latest processors bring Intel's turbo-boost technology to laptops. The feature increases the clock speed of individual cores in a processor to dynamically meet workload demands. The core frequency is increased at intervals of 133 MHz until the upper limit is reached.

For example, a Clarksfield processor running at 2 GHz can be upped to 3.2 GHz using turbo boost, Dadi Perlmutter, executive VP and general manager of the Intel Architecture Group, said during his IDF keynote Wednesday. During the speech, Perlmutter showed a new Core i7 Extreme Edition running a gaming system from Alienware.

The new processors include two-channel DDR3 1333 MHz memory support and 1x16 or 2x8 PCI Express 2.0 graphics. The chips are used with Intel's new PM55 Express Chipset.

Computer makers shipping products with Core i7 mobile processors include Asus, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Toshiba. Based on quantities of 1,000 units, the Core i7-920XM, 820QM, and 720QM cost $1,054, $546, and $364, respectively.

Looking ahead, Perlmutter said Intel would release early next year Arrandale, Intel's first 32-nm mobile processor. The dual-core chip is based on Westmere, the 32-nm microarchitecture that's a variant of Nehalem. Later in the year, Intel plans to release a whole new 32-nm architecture, codenamed Sandy Bridge, which will be the first to include on-die integrated graphics.

For handheld devices, including smartphones, Intel is scheduled to release next year Moorestown, codename for a platform that comprises a system on chip, codenamed Lincroft, which integrates a 45-nm Atom processor, a graphics processor, memory controller, and video encoder/decoder. New features in Moorestown include a technique called "distributed power gating," which reduces power at the transistor level.

In 2011, Intel expects to introduce its third-generation platform for handhelds. Codenamed Medfield, the product will be a single-chip 32-nm system-on-chip design. Because of its ability to fit into even smaller devices than Moorestown, Medfield is expected to extend the chipmaker's reach in the smartphone market.

Finally, Perlmutter demonstrated a high-speed optical cable that Intel plans to release next year. Codenamed Light Peak, the cable connects mainstream electronic devices, such as laptops, high-definition displays, cameras, video players, and docking stations, and delivers 10 Gb per second of bandwidth. Intel claims the technology, which uses optical fiber rather than copper wire, can be scaled to 100 Gb per second over the next decade.

Source:
http://www.techweb.com/article/showArticle?articleID=220100951&section=News

Chicago Website Design

Why You Need to Use a Small Business Web Design Company

When it comes to small business Web Design, you need someone that understands your personal needs. Small businesses will have different needs from that of a larger business. You need a Web Design Firms that understands these differences and can help you meet those needs.

Here at dzinestand.com we understand your needs because we have experience providing service for small businesses such as yours and because we even began as one ourselves. Creating a web design that can meet your needs and make you proud of your web presence is our specialty. We have successfully accomplished this for many small businesses in the past.

You need to make the most of your web presence by understanding your customers' needs and being able to give them that through a quality website. If you are a small or home based business, you know that your website can mean a great deal when it comes to bringing in new customers and communicating with existing customers.

When you need a professional, affordable web site for your online business, you need to work with a small business Professional Web Design company that is compassionate to your needs and will help you get the job done in the best and most efficient way possible. You need someone considerate to your needs and knowledgeable in the industry.

Finding a Chicago Website Design that is knowledgeable in the industry and considerate to your small business needs is the key to success. You need a company that can be compassionate, but at the same time be efficient in providing you with a web design that can help you accomplish your goals.

We understand that as a small business you need a web design company that can work with you, evaluate your needs and design a plan to fit your individual needs. We know that what works for other small businesses may not work for yours. Therefore, we have several plans that prevent you from being locked into one choice that is not right for your business.

Whether you need help designing, managing and maintaining your presence on the web, you can get help from a certified and qualified small business web design company. You can choose the plan that best meets your needs and start making your web presence known today. Put your best business foot forward and show your customers that you care.

It doesn't matter if you need help designing a new business or restoring an old one, a certified and experienced small business web design company can make a big difference in the amount of success your business can enjoy.

5 Important Keys to Website Design

As people come to your website for information, or looking for a solution to a problem, your website must be easy to navigate through, and look professional to make that first impression for people coming to your website, here 5 important keys to Professional Web Design.


1) Avoid using intro pages

When people come to your website, you want to make it easy for them to access, by using an intro page for them to click again to access your website, makes it more easier for the person to exit your website, because they arrived at a page that didn't relate to what they were looking for. Intro pages normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that. 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 intro page.

2) Using too many advertisements

When they arrive at your website, and see banner after banner, and advertisement popup, and other advertisement gimmicks out there. You will lose your potential customer, and in most cases happen to everyone that comes to your website. People are automatically trained to ignore banner, or popup, in most cases, and think that what they were looking for in the first place isn't here, instead, provide more valuable content and add relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.


3) Easy Navigation

Your website needs to be so easy to use that even a young child should 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. Keep it simple throughout your website. Don't make hard for people to find what they are looking for; buy spending 10 minutes looking for link that take them to the information.

4) Track your visitors

An important part of your website is to track where the people have come from, to click to your website, and where they spend their most time. A great tool to do this is called Google analytics, and it will track every last detail of where people are spending the most time at your website, and where the website traffic is coming from, this is a very important key to Web Design. every online website uses the best tracking tool in world, which is Google analytics tool, and best part about using this great tool, is that it's FREE to use on as many websites as you like.

5) Killer Content

To have people come back to your website, you have to provide valuable free content, that people will love reading and get something out of what you have to offer, building relationships with people come down to great content, so they love your content, and keep coming back to your website for more content day after day, and trusting you in the long run.

So there you have 5 important keys to Web Design Firms, if you follow these 5 tips, then you will have visitors for a long time coming.

12 Website Design Decisions Your Business or Organization Will Need to Make

You may be on your first website. But more likely you're faced with redesigning a Web Design that isn't functioning as well as it should. I see 12 vital decisions involved with developing a website, and I want to explain them with you in mind:

* You're the owner or marketing director of a small business and know that getting your website to pull its share of the load is vital for success. But your budget is severely limited!

* You've just been assigned the task of redoing your company's website. Congratulations, now you can be blamed if things don't work well. :-)

* You've volunteered to take on your church or organization website and make some sense out of it -- without offending the person who built it in the first place.

* This time around you've decided to outsource the job, but you have no idea of how to supervise a Professional Web Design company to make sure it does what you need. Good luck!

I want to help. When I built my first website in 1995 at the very beginning of the commercial Web, I didn't have a clue how to proceed. In those days there was no one to guide me. I've made every mistake you can think of -- some more than once, I hate to admit.

Since then I've built and assisted with dozens of online stores and hundreds of websites for all kinds of businesses and organizations, from mom and pops to major corporations and international organizations. I don't design websites for others these days, but I actively develop and maintain my own site.

There are twelve critical places in building a website where you must make the right decision, or you'll have to repeat this task again and again until you get it right. I won't be talking about how to write HTML; I want to help you with the mindset, the basic approach. I want to take you by the hand and lead you through the critical decisions. The better you grasp these essential points, the better your website will work and the happier camper you'll be.

Okay, let's roll up our sleeves and get started. By the way, why don't you print out this document and then mark it up with your thoughts and ideas as you read. It's designed to serve as a worksheet to clarify your thinking and provide direction at various stages of the project. If you decide to outsource the project, you'll want to share a copy of your marked-up copy of this document with your website designer. Print it out! 1. Determine Your Website's Chief Purpose

When you begin a website, you must have your main purpose clearly in mind. I say this because it's easy to have conflicting purposes.

* If you're a Web Design Firms, you may want to show off your high tech goodies with your client's site as the showpiece.

* If you're an employee stuck with this task, you may want to look good for your bosses and not do anything for which you can be blamed -- you've got to protect your backside.

* If you're a volunteer, you may just want an excuse to tinker and be praised for it.

* If you're a business owner, you probably care about the bottom line. You're wondering, How much this will cost? and Will it be worth it in the long run?

Dear friends, recognize your own needs -- they're legitimate. But to build an effective website, you've got to look at the business's or organization's needs and make those primary. From the organization's perspective, what must this website do in order to be successful?

Let's look at some common website purposes. Put an X next to all that apply.

* Build your brand. Create an online brochure that will help potential clients, customers, and partners learn about your company and look at it in a favorable light. You're trying to enhance your brand or organization image. I've heard people disparage this kind of website as "brochure-ware." But this is very legitimate for some kinds of companies, especially local businesses or organizations that aren't trying to conduct national or international commerce. You want people to know who you are, what you do, where to find you, and how to contact you.

* Provide product information to drive local sales of your products and services at dealer locations. Auto sites are a good example. Many manufacturers don't sell on their sites, but point people to retailers who carry their products.

* Sell advertising. A few sites are designed to sell advertising -- Yahoo!, Google, and other portal sites are examples. But these days, there's far too much advertising space and not nearly enough money to fill it all. Internet advertising is improving, but is still under-priced. You may be able to sell a little advertising if you're a portal site for an industry, or perhaps put some Google AdSense ads on your site. But these aren't big money-makers. Look at advertising sales as a hopeful bonus, not as a sure thing.

* Sell products or services directly over the Internet. You want to conduct e-commerce and sell to a national or international market. You'll have some kind of ordering system for one or more products, or perhaps an extensive online catalog. You may offer an online service that can be delivered over the Internet or that can be initiated online.

* Earn affiliate commissions for sales and leads generated through links on your website. Savvy marketers are building microsites designed to generate search engine traffic for a particular hot product or service. When a visitor clicks on one of their links, he is referred to an e-commerce site, and, if a sale results, the affiliate gets a commission. Perhaps a form on your site generates leads or subscriptions for another company.

* Provide customer service and support. Websites are a great place for troubleshooting guides, FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions), technical information, etc. You can generate Return Merchandise Authorization (RMA) labels. You can provide multiple ways for your customers to contact you (see under Point #9 below).

* Save money by means of online efficiencies. Companies have used the Internet to save billions of dollars. Taking orders online with real-time credit card authorization saves paying call center operators and cuts entry errors.

Online catalogs save lots in paper, printing, and distribution costs. Online FAQs and knowledge bases cut the number of customer service personnel you need. And I'm just scratching the surface here.

What's the Web Design decision here? To be clear and focused about your site's objectives and purposes.

Basic Ecommerce Website Design Principles which we have already mentioned

E Commerce Web Design has become very popular today. All sorts of companies, small or big, are building their ecommerce websites to expand their businesses because they know that an electronic store can offer owners and clients many advantages.

They are similar to a traditional shop where sellers and buyers meet to exchange products for money. fore visit to:- http://www.dzinestand.com/ One of the main advantages of ecommerce Professional Web Design is that you can perform several different activities apart from selling. If you are thinking about the basic principles of good ecommerce Web Design Firms, you must include the right tools, a reliable pay system, shopping carts, and other elements which will make it safe and useful for your customers.

Remember that your ecommerce website will be open around the clock; therefore clients will have enough time to check your site and to compare prices with other companies. Navigation is a key word for any ecommerce website design. Make sure that your site is navigable. Remember that your clients come from different sectors of society, so some of them will have great ability to purchase online and others will not. If people cannot immediately see what they are looking for, their perception will be negative and they will leave.

The whole website should have clear information to lead the visitors to the correct page. Images can be very useful to assist customers during the purchase process. Making money from ecommerce over the Internet is a dream that can become reality for different kinds of organizations. To fulfill this ambition, it is necessary to follow different or others that can come from your creative mind. It is vital to remember that these sites function as the online storefront of traditional shops.

Therefore, it must be attractive to make visitors stay and come back to buy more products. It is also imperative to offer absolute security for the transactions which are performed using credit and debit cards. Finally, shopping car software cannot be out of this small summary about basic ecommerce website design principles. It is an operating application that offers customers to buy products and services and store them during the process.

more visit to:- http://www.dzinestand.com/ Literally, they can push their cart along an online store. When they see a product they want to purchase, they put it in their cart only by clicking on it. It is like a real store. The Internet is saturated with E Commerce websites that are not useful for customers or owners. Do not make yours be part of this category. Use all the basic
E Commerce principles which can be appropriate for your business and be ready to enjoy your own success.

Few things to improve your online marketing existence

In the competitive world of today companies spends a lot of money on making Designers
Web Design site for the expansion of their business around the globe but poor online marketing plans wipe out their dreams to establish a great business venture. They spend money on bad internet marketing as they are not aware of the real tactics of online marketing that is how to benefit from the search engine marketing. In rare cases, a site will benefit from hundreds or thousands of word-of-mouth recommendations.

Promoting a website is just like promoting a business online so that target visitors / every potential customer come to know about their products and services. Thats why effective online marketing is a crucial part for your marketing strategy. If you want to make progress in the internet marketing than you must set some time aside each day. Ask any marketing expert where he or she would spend their search engine optimization efforts and they will undoubtedly say "Google". You must make some marketing plan to promote your site online by one or more of the following ideas.

Professional Web Design

1. Unpaid assistant for Online Interviews: The Online Volunteering service connects development organizations and volunteers over the Internet and provides guidance to all the needy people those who want help regarding internet marketing. Pod casts, Web casts, blogs, RSS feeds and newsletters (ezines) are all venues for online interviews or discussions. You should approach the publishers who regularly conduct interviews with guests of your caliber by searching general search engines (such as google.com) or directories as podcast.net, ezinehub.com etc.

2. Categorize 10 bloggers in your group: First of all categorize the bloggers in your groups and after that send them the information about your products and define the specialties about your products and offer them to use it as a free sample. Later they give response to you in the blog about the products. Through that blog you can get the feedback of your products and services.

3. Draft a Press Release: While giving an idea to somebody, there is way you must leave your link with your idea or article. With this you advertise your site and also tell your potential customer about your product and services. This is one of the simple and effective techniques for online advertisement through the article submission.

4. Start Surveying Your Website Visitors: With the help of survey you come to know about your customer needs that are what they want or what type of change they like. Visitors would come to know about the merits and demerits of your product. So according to the interest of the customer you can able to modify your web site or your product quality. If you survey your visitors then they must give you wonderful and amazing idea how can you change your site or product qualities. Thus this type of surveys helps you in online marketing and best way to improve your online marketing.

5. Put Your Product's or Company's Creation Story Online: You should display your product creation story in the front of the visitors through online marketing. What is the proper manufacturing process of your product and which type of raw material you used for the manufacturing of the product? What is the success story of your company- also describe about the founder of the company and, about management so that visitors can come to know about the company, its strength and popularity.

6. Join an online network: In the internet there are so many sites regarding the online network means if you join online network then your friends provide the information which you utilize to improve your business. Same business categories person come to you and share their business views with you and then you tell them about your business and site and which type of product and services you provide. You can also ask for their suggestions.

7. Analysis your few Closest Competitors' Websites and Online Marketing Activities: Its better to go through other successful business sites and observe their internet marketing plan. You might get some idea on how you shall improve your own internet marketing for your site. For more accurate idea go through your competitors site then you come to know that which type of ideas of internet marketing they adopt to become successful in the world of internet marketing. Better to observe their online marketing tactic then try to adopt the positive concepts in your business. If they get more advertisement through any particular tips then it must good for you to adopt same.

8. Making blogs and forums facilities on your website: If you like to improve your site or like to become famous in world wide then you must provide some blog and forum facilities in your site. It increases your web site traffic and popularity of your business. Every visitor visits your site and they must comment your blog and like to fill the forum in their favorite categories. And take information from your site or give some suggestion for the required person on a particular issue.

9. Modify your site according to your business analysis: Your site must be according to your business standards. You should display your success story in the front of the visitor with a new look that what you achieve in a particular period and what is the vision and mission of your business. A regular visitor can note down the positive points of your success and also like to discuss with their other social group about your site and your services. So every one who is in online business wants to improve their online marketing must modify or update his site according to new changes so that your visitor can enjoy your work and get new information about your product and services.

10. Provide accurate information to the visitors: You must try to give the accurate and fair information about your company to the visitors as transparency and trust are the important factors which attracts visitors and your company success certainly depends upon it. These are the internet marketing tips and techniques which any online business venture must adopt to survive and to have existence among target audience in cyberspace. About the Author.

Alex Roderick

The author is Business Head for The Web Design Firms, http://www.dzinestand.com/ It deals in web site design, website redesign, flash, animation, logos, Banner Adds etc.

Top Tips for Web Design

Professional Web Design is never straight forward and web design has the additional unpredictable complication of technology thrown in. This means that you need to consider the consequences of your design decisions and how it will effect the most important people who see your site, the users themselves. The following tips should help you consider this and have a positive effect on your site and its users.


1. Navigation & Functionality

You should never sacrifice overall functionality for artistic extravagance. It is highly unlikely your site will ever achieve its purpose if the people who visit it cannot clearly and easily navigate around it.

Your site should look good but first and foremost consider how someone who knows nothing about the site would think when they landed there.

Something occurring in website frequently these days is Mystery Meat Navigation. This is a term coined by Vincent Flanders and it is used to describe site where navigation structures are so obscure and difficult to process that users cannot identify them at all and end up running there mouse across whole sections of a screen just to identify hyperlinks.

2. Images

People say images are worth a 1000 words and in Web Design that's true in 2 ways. Firstly an image can do a lot more than text in some situation but secondly they are much, much bigger files with a higher download time.

It is widely accepted users will click away from a page that takes longer than 5-10 seconds to load and every time you put an image in a page you are increasing the likelihood of this happening. Additionally each image you imbed into a page design activates an additional HTTP request to your server so dividing an image into smaller ones or using lots of small images across a page does not solve the problem.

ALT Tags should also be factored into the code of a website. They are a huge help to people who have either images turned off in a browse, mobile broswers that cant read the images or a random error preventing the image from showing. They also hold a small SEO benefit.

3. Tables

It is advised that you use CSS and not tables to format a document but in some cases tables can be necessary. Remember one thing however, a table cannot be displayed until it has fully loaded. This can potentially cause a huge problem for users as they wait for the page to load, nothing appears then out of nowhere the whole page is done. Someone is much more likely to click away when nothing is loading than when they can see progress.


4. Fonts

Dont design sites to use fonts only you have, chances are they will be converted into some dull font and ruin the effect you were trying to achieve. Save special fonts for specific headers and convert them to images. Make the rest of your site in standard fonts so that as many browsers as possible will see it in the way you meant it to be. Recommended fonts for high scale compatibility are Arial, Verdana, Courier, Tahoma and Helvetica.

5. Plug-Ins

Plug-ins hold a lot of potential for both users and designers but it can easily be misused and misguided.

Plug-ins have a many forms and uses, the most popular being Java and Flash Player. I have heard a lot of people say that these plug-ins are safe and that everyone has them but this is simply not true. Every plug-in has a stack of different versions and connects differently depending on the browser the user is surfing with.

Think if your users will really want to browse to other sites to download a plug-in, restart the browser then navigate back. If the answer is no use other tricks at your disposal to make your page unique and save the big guns that are Flash and Java for times where it is essential.

6. Tags

The tags I am referring to hear are meta keywords and description, title, alt and h1 tags. Together these tags help manage your sites search engine optimisation (SEO) potential and this is defiantly something not to overlook. Helping people find your site will bring more traffic in and more conversion if you are a retail site.

The higher search engines rank you the more traffic will filter down and the more successful your site will be. Try to keep a constant theme running through all your tags but do so in a subtle way. Splashing the same word 1000 times on your page will only have negative effects so make sure you strike the correct balance between informative and spammy.

7. Browsers

In a perfect world everyone would use the same browser and your website would look the same on everyones screen but unfortunately this is not the case. Every browser has its own specific functions and styles and learning to make you code cooperate with both can present some serious problems.

The three you really need to concern yourself with are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. These make up a good 95% of the browser market at the very least and while there are some additional popular browser I would not recommend you spend time optimising code for the rest.

The only thing you can do is do your best and stay away from browser specific functions, youll never make someone get a new browser.

8. Pop Ups

Something that is very important to remember is that the user should be in control of their browser and desktop. Do not place unnecessary pop ups and window opening links everywhere and the user will feel they have lost control of the site, become annoyed and close the windows.

There are some exceptions to using the (_blank) attribute but I would steer clear whenever possible.

9. Text Layout

Text is part of your design to and positioning it correctly on the page is very important. Try to get all the copy you need as early in the design process as possible. This means you will be able to design around the copy instead of trying to cram it into smaller spaces because someone wrote twice as much copy as they said they were going to. Use the right alignment for the right situation, remember 99% of people will prefer left align and while justified look aesthetically better it can be very difficult to read in longer bouts.

10. Site Search

In this day and age finding what you want on a website in paramount. After you have followed the first tip on navigation you should also provide a search bar on your site so that a visitor who cannot immediately see what they are looking for can search. Many internet studies have seen the success of these smaller additions to your site and free ones are available from Google and many other SE operators.

Conclusion

Taking these 10 tips into account will help you design ( Web Design Firms ) a more user-friendly and successful website, sometime it may seem like they are hindering your grand design but failing to take notice may result in your site being a very pretty stop sign for browsers. Just because you can find your way around your Flash menu system that takes 6 minutes to load doesn't mean Mrs Smith who needs the product can.