Web Design Development Articles

Most online business owners start with little or zero money. They have to do a lot of things themselves starting from generating a product, creating a marketing strategy, and building a website to promote their product. As their business grows they will see that their home made website is not sufficient anymore to effectively promote their product. The challenge they face is to whether hire a website designer or take it upon themselves.

If this sounds familiar familiar to you then chances are, that you are one of the people that started with zero money too. You are probably a lot less likely to pay someone for designing a website for you.

Whenever you hire a professional website designer to create a website for you, you are allowing your business to grow. By paying a little money, you can have a professional focus on the design and structure of the website and you can have more time to spend and be more focused on your actual business and marketing strategy. The most important things about a website is that it has to be attractive. The first impression that your visitors get are the ones that count the most. The website is a true representation of your business. The better the website, the more chances you will have to grab that visitor’s attention and possibly his wallet too.

Also as everyone knows problems always arise. By hiring a professional web designer, you can rely on them to fix it for you in a timely manner, as opposed to you getting to it when you have free time.

In the end, for a small investments you will get a professionally designed website that is search engine optimized and this in turn will drastically grow your business.

Trust is, perhaps, one of the most valuable on-line commodities. It doesn’t matter whether you are hosting an informational site, or whether you are hosting an e-commerce site; if your site visitors have no reason to trust you they have no reason to stay on your site, purchase from your site, or believe the information detailed on your site. This is especially important when a full 65% of Internet users don’t trust the information they receive on the Web (according to a survey cited by Gerry McGovern. Pretty daunting number, eh? This is why it is so important that you pay real close attention to the information you present, your on-line practices, and your presentation.

Elevate Your Visitor’s Perception Of Your Site

You might wonder how to begin earning the trust of a skeptic in the first place. After all, isn’t it difficult enough to win someone over when you’re working with them face-to-face and able to use all forms of communication? How much more difficult is it to earn someone’s trust when only two to three of the five senses are being used? This is why people hire professionals to design their site.

Sure, you could go out and utilize one of those free hosting companies, save yourself some bucks, and eventually upgrade to a paying hosting service, but you’re starting out three miles down instead of swimming at the surface by doing so. No, the first step towards earning your potential customer’s trust is to develop a professional-looking site. Whether you hire a professional Web designer, or you’ve the know-how to do it yourself, just make sure that it is crisp, easy to navigate, and presents your message without distraction, delay, or unnecessary frills.

When you consider that your average visitor will decide within 5 seconds whether they want to stay, or move on, you’ve really got to pay attention to what you’re presenting hot off the grill. The professionally designed site will do more for you in keeping potential customers on your site than almost any other initial marketing. Your customers will recognize that you’re serious about your offering; so serious that you’ve invested either the time, or money, to build something that presents nicely, and they’ll be more likely to respect you for it than if you hadn’t. You’ve just elevated their perception of your offering.

Accurately Portray Your Offering

Now that you’ve captured their attention, you’ve got to keep them there, right? Trust can only be earned if they value your offering, and your offering can only become valuable should you make sure the following points are met:

• You’ve done your research;
• You’re honest in your presentation;
• You are not derogatory or mean in your presentation;
• You can back it up with facts.

I recently spoke with a university professor who stated that they don’t allow their students to utilize the Internet as a resource on their papers unless the student can accurately back up the qualifications of the Internet Source, and then they are only allowed to use two maximum Internet resources! This is happening when that same report cited above states, “By far the leading metaphor for the Internet, in the public’s mind, is not a ’shopping mall’ or ‘banking and investment office,’ but rather ‘a library…’” and where else do you go to find information but at a library? Again, this is a derivative of the level of trust in the information available on the Internet. Provided you’ve upheld your end of things we might be able to get this turned around, and how nice would that be for all of us?

Do Your Research, and Back It Up

When presenting information of any sort to your customer base you’ll want to make sure that you’ve done enough research to back up your claims, and that means providing your readers the opportunity to debunk your claims by giving them reference to your sources. If someone feels you are trying to hide something, they’re quick to leave, but the more reference you can use, the more an individual realizes that you are not only well-read and educated, but not afraid to stand behind your claims, and that’s more value than you can spit at.

Be Honest

You’ve no idea how many times I’ve come across claims on-line that just don’t sound viable let alone reasonable, and after further research you discover that they were made out of ignorance. Please, please, please, please, please…if you don’t know, don’t make something up. We’ve a joke that runs around the office on occasion, being recycled as necessary: 99.5% of all statistics are made up, including this one. While the joke makes people smile, there’s that underlying truth to the statement that is unfair to the research industry, but was born from the contagion of falsehoods and half-truths rampant on-line. If you don’t know, say you don’t know, but then find out and become the expert.

Be Nice

If you’ve ever watched an election process you’ve been privy to some pretty underhanded messages aptly called Negative Advertising. You know the kind: Candidate A did not vote for proposition 3. Candidate A does not believe in the value of the traditional family unit. Candidate A does not…blah, blah, blah, yada, yada, yada. The results of such advertising are still up in the air, but when applied to the Internet it can be more impactful, and not necessarily in a good way.

An article published in the Journal of Advertising, December 22nd, 2007 titled Psychophysiological and Memory Effects of Negative Political Ads: Aversive, Arousing, and Well Remembered states, “Although this study further confirms that negative advertising is perceived as negative and contributes to short-term disgust with campaigns…” It goes on to state that it doesn’t suggest that negative advertising increases cynicism or citizen apathy, the quoted part is what I feel pertains directly to your Web site. That’s the part I want you to focus on because the very nature of your hosted site is one of permanence, and unlike a television advertisement which is usually followed up directly with another spot to sell you something, or a feel-good movie/television show losing its impact, your site will remain in front of the viewer for an undeterminable amount of time (especially if you’ve done your job right). If you’re presenting negativity, the perception for your site is more likely to be negative.

Does this mean not to point out when someone is doing something wrong, or treating someone in an ill manner? No, but make sure you aren’t muddy when all is said and done.

All in all, hooking the big fish is only the first step. After that you’ve got to reel it in, land it, and then fry it up and eat it. You’ve got all the potential in the world of becoming the greatest Web fisherman we’ve ever seen, but it will take some dedication and hard work to accomplish this. I’ve no doubt you’re up to it though.

Thanks for the chat. Get started building that trust by using a reliable host. Check out my ranked list of top ten hosting companies here!

Hosting a site is the easy part. Designing the site and, subsequently developing it, is the hard part. Hate to break the news to you, but this is a major pitfall for most people. What they wind up designing is as much a detriment to their potential customers as if they’d never attempted to offer the service in the first place.

Seeking Zen

What I’m going to outline might seem simple until you start to apply it. That’s when you’ll realize why the professionals exist. There are some really effective methods for delivering a usable website design.

• Intuitive Flow
• Purpose Clarity
• Efficiency
• Simplicity
• Being Memorable

Intuitive Flow

In the Western and European World, the human eye is automatically drawn to the top left portion of the screen. That’s where we begin to read. We’re taught this practically from the time we first take a breath so it pretty much becomes intuition. It is no different with your site design. Your customers are going to dart their little peepers right up to that focal point and from there, you’ve got to draw their attention to the right. Why? Because it is the natural flow of things, and the more natural you make something, the more likely it is to take place.

From there you need to refocus their attention on the left side of the screen and start the process over again until they’ve worked their way down the page. Graphics, content weight, movement…all of these will help you with this process, and once you’ve mastered this you can work at drawing their attention to the calls to action you’ve placed on the page. Now that’s effective design.

Purpose Clarity

You’d be surprised at how many times people visit a site only to spend longer than necessary in determining what it is about. Make sure you clarify what your purpose is in the first sentence of your site content, in your domain name, in your graphics, everything. Content is the meat of your site, don’t serve up less than Grade A meat.

Efficiency

Don’t fluff. Plain and simple. Don’t take up valuable real estate with items that don’t pertain to your site’s purpose. It distracts. It degrades the value of your site. It’s poor etiquette.

Simplicity

You may have a PhD in English, but that doesn’t mean that your customers will. If they have to look up a word you’ve lost them. Simplicity also applies to the navigation of your site, the layout, the features, etc. If you make it too complicated people will give up and go to your competitor. Don’t be patronizing, but keep in mind that not everyone is an expert in your offering and you’ll do just fine.

Being Memorable

There are hundreds and hundreds of millions of sites available to Internet users. You’ve got to do something that makes it stand out. This begins with the domain name(s) you choose and carries through the design to the features and content of your site. You’ve got to do something to set yourself apart from the crowd. Yes, this is the time you want to be the one everyone points at and whispers about. So find that marketable uniqueness and run with it!

Over all, you need to approach your site as though you weren’t the owner of it. A good test would be to have your parents navigate it. If they can do so without problem, you’ve likely done a decent job.

Thanks for the chat. Now go out and visit my list of top ten ranked hosting companies so you can get started!

Website designing is an important segment for a thriving online existence. Internet has become the vastest source and gigantic channel through which we can have the access to immeasurable information. Besides being profound means of information, it has become an indispensable portion of the corporate sector. They not only have to operate locally but also to maintain an online way of communication.

This online existence has become very vital to the repute of the every company, organization or even an entrepreneur striving to make his products and services available to people through every possible channel. Websites are the bridges that connect the visitors to the different organizations and serve as the online means of communication. Website designing becomes of vital importance if seen in this context.

Websites are the faces that are being used to project or to voice different types of information. In order to maintain a highly attractive and interest engaging outlook, designing becomes of immense importance. The design including graphics, content, tags and layout plays a major role in making or breaking the total image of the organization. Secondly, it is also important to capture the attention of the visitor. There are millions and millions of sites that open with just one click. The availability of so many choices has created a fierce competition. Incase, the outlook of your website is not fully able to attract the visitor, he or she will definitely navigate from that site without wasting a second.

In order to make the viewers and the visitors to stay on your website, its outlook will count a lot. This is the reason; successful organizations and emerging businesses tend to have a separate department for this function who design the perfect layouts and graphics. There are many freelancers and such companies available that do the refurbishing and decorating of the websites. It has become essential to portray and project such face look that will be strong enough to lure the viewers in exploring more and more about that site, its features, segments and its offered services and products. There are many folks who end up gaining the required information in a very successful manner and become the permanent visitors of that website to acquire the related facts.

An impressive website design should be created keeping in mind the interest and feasibility of the viewers. It should be designed in such a way that it caters well to the easy accessibility. Users should not face any problem while operating any function related to that site. The subtle use of colors and graphics, the static or dynamic style and the layout in which the whole design along with the content is supposed to fit in; all these factors should be chosen carefully as it will contribute a lot to the success of your website and business.

Many coaches have told me that one of the most daunting challenges you face as a non-techie who wants a website is the prospect of finding and developing a working relationship with a website designer. So if you want to know more about how to find the right website designer for you and how to develop a win-win working relationship with them, take a look at these four tips…

1. It is perfectly possible to discuss website design in plain English

Just because website designers specialise in a particular field with its own technical vocabulary, it doesn’t mean that they can’t talk with you in good old plain English. And if there is a technicality that’s best explained by a jargon word, a good designer will be able to describe to you, in simple terms, what the jargon means.

As I explained in my free bulletin, I do believe that it’s important for you to acquaint yourself with a few of the most frequently used website words, just to put yourself at ease. But it’s even more important for you to find a designer who is capable and willing to develop a relationship based on open and clear communication with you. Some designers use jargon with conscious intent to bamboozle you. Some just bamboozle you anyway, without even realising that they are doing it. Avoid both! As a coach you know the importance of clear communication. Don’t settle for anything less when it comes to choosing your website designer.

2. The price you pay is related to the amount of preparation you do

Most coaches don’t have a large budget for your website. And many of you are very concerned about being overcharged for something that doesn’t meet your needs. I also know that a lot of you are so busy working that you don’t have time to devote to developing your website. But the old equation applies… if you haven’t got much of a budget to throw at your website, you need to give it your time and attention.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that the first step you have to take along your website path is to find a designer. If you take the time to prepare your requirements first, you will have clarity on what to talk with potential designers about, and you’ll end up with a far superior website, saving yourself a lot of money along the way too.

The best way to prepare is to produce a project description containing your style, structure and content specifications, along with your technical and practical requirements. Having all your copy written in advance makes a huge difference too. So before you even start looking for a website designer, get thinking, planning and writing.

3. Beware of website design ‘package deals’

All you need to pay for when you get your website designed is the design of the website! That may seem obvious, but there are plenty of design companies who bundle their website design offer with some form of ongoing maintenance or hosting fee. Yes, you need hosting and your website will need maintenance too, but these elements should not be mixed up with the design part of the deal.

These package deals usually involve the design company retaining some form of ownership over your website. This goes totally against your interests, so be very careful before you lock yourself into any kind of ongoing deal. It’s perfectly okay to ask about ongoing maintenance and hosting, but make sure these are kept separate from your design contract. And, most importantly of all, make sure you retain control of your own website.

4. Website designers are not marketing experts

The truth is that what most website designers do best is design. They may operate at the more technical end of the spectrum or the more arty end, but either way, they’re not marketers. Their job is to design a website for you (a) that looks good on screen and (b) that works - technically.

Of course you need both of those elements. But it’s every bit as important for you to make sure you create a website that gets you clients. A website that does the business of marketing your services to your target market effectively. So do, by all means, ask your designer for advice, but don’t forget that although the advice they give may make perfect design sense, it’s entirely possible that it will be less valid when it comes to marketing your coaching services.

If you can find a website designer who does know their marketing stuff, fantastic. Otherwise, educate yourself as far as you can on how to use a website to get clients and make sure your website designer builds it into the design for you.

This is the age of online communication and electronic commerce, with communication convergence the dynamics of information delivery has taken a new shape. Now World Wide Web is the major mode of information delivery and product promotion. In this competitive global business scenario, web presence indeed matters and for yielding better benefits from e-commerce each and every business requires a strong web presence. There are several cheap web design companies who employ skilled website designers to provide comprehensive web based business solutions.

Web Design involves processes like conceptualization of a particular business needs, planning the web based solution, modeling, and finally execution of the website designing process with the purpose of suitable interpretation of information. Web designers are aware of several internet technological aspects and graphical user interfaces. As per the business goal of the clients, the website designers initiate the web design process. Reputed web design companies maintain a strict deadline and follow the system development life cycle or SDLC. While planning for web presence, it is wise for the small and medium shaped firms to select a cheap web design provider. The medium small and medium sized firms can offer cheap web design.

Deciding about the quality and content of the web site is indeed essential and the desired font and the aesthetic looks should be mentioned to the website designer. Many businesses offer insight regarding presence of multimedia elements. With the use of Flash and similar animation software the websites can be made more attractive. Website designers have a sense of visual attractiveness and they develop alluring web portals that attract the browsers. In the web portals it is mandatory to use the company’s logo. The logo actually provides authenticity, and arrangement of the colors, graphics and pictures with prudence indeed makes an added advantage.

The prime difference between web based and conventional medial like television and radio remain in terms of interactivity. As companies emphasize on website design, they can afford to sell products and services after the site is ready. Again, the company can make necessary changes and can regularly inform the visitors regarding the products. Nowadays different cheap website design companies offer website hoisting at much cheaper rate and as a result all sorts of businesses is getting facilities to make their online presence. So, now it is feasible to sell products to distance countries by taking the payment online.

As requirement of web design is uphill, job opportunities for the web designers increasing and now it is a highly sought after profession. Selection of a proper website design company truly matters as all of the web designing companies cannot offer similar quality. Self research and analysis on the cheap web design companies can yield positive result. Selection of an improper web design firm can be wastage of bucks. The reputed and certified website design companies employ well trained and experienced web designers and as a result they can offer better solutions to the clients. It is advisable to disclose all the requirements to the web designer and on the basis of the client’s requirements the web designers design the sites beautifully.

So, you want to make money designing websites. You’ve got the know how, you just need the business. So how do you get started? There are many options for designers that are just getting started. Following are a few options.

- Offer your services for free. With so many choices out there, it can be hard to break into the field and find new customers who are willing to hire you. One option is to offer your services for free. There is one catch - the website you design will contain an advertisement for your business. While there may be no cost to your client, not only will you get free advertising for the life of the website you design, you’ll have a reference and a site to add to your portfolio as well.

- Do freelance work. There are many freelance websites out there that focus on matching up providers of services with businesses who need those services performed. Find a site to bid on web design work and get to it! Keep in mind that as you start out you may be offering your services for less than you normally would. The goal at this point is simply to get experience and references. Once you’ve built up your customer base, you can easily and reasonably raise your prices.

These are just two options on how to make money designing websites. There are many more options out there, if you put your thinking cap on. The goal is simply to focus on building up a customer base before you can make your first million.

Website is a handy and trendy marketing tool for business. For a good website, the visual web design must be attractive and must be able to grab the attention of more number of visitors. Web designing is an art and has to be done with interest and involvement. When done with involvement, the user-friendly feature will automatically get incorporated in the design. Stunning web design with good programming and marketing strategies will greatly increase the visibility of the website to the Internet browsers. From this introduction it can be understood easily that web design is the key aspect of a website. For designing a user-friendly website here are a few tips which I gained through my experience in web designing. These useful tips, when implemented, will yield good user-friendly web designs. Here we go.

1). What does the website convey? - Your answer to the question will lead you all the way to a good and meaningful web design. For designing a website, one should have a theme. On getting to know more of what the website is about, as a designer or as a Webmaster, it will be easy for you to design accordingly.

2). Planning for the web design - Planning makes work proceed smoothly. The first step in planning is research. Surf through the web to find sites similar to yours. Do a simple yet meaningful research to understand the pulse of the visitors. On doing so, your first impression of the website through your web design will always be the best impression.

3). Setting theme and layout - After your research and planning, the vital part of your web design is the collection of assets. The first step will be theme selection and webpage layout. There may be personal websites, informational websites, ecommerce websites and service providing websites. It is all in the hands of a designer to select a matching theme to satisfy the need and implement it attractively.

4). Web Page Design - Neat and informative web pages will be the most visited pages in the net. To design such a web page, the important elements to be taken note of are the header, footer, text area and the navigational area. Avoid using animated/flashy headers and navigational icons. Use uniform header and footer to give a professional look to the website. These, when designed with care and when followed, will result in good web design.

5). Site Map and Navigation - In web designing, the term navigation is very much apropos with user-friendly. Navigation within the website should very clear and easy. Always try to implement normal links to move around and avoid animated buttons. The column to the right of the webpage should have good navigational links. The site map is another important and easy way for finding web pages in the website. So, never forget these as these are the principal tips to be remembered while designing.

6). Usage of images and text - Web designing is all about expressing the ideas of the business to people. For it to be a success, use of correct images for communicating the content of the website to the visitors is a must. The text in the webpage must be search engine optimized and must convey the message clearly.

7). Page Size and Download Time - After placing the images, links and the text, the complete page should not exceed 30 KB. This size will ensure that the page is downloaded quickly within 5 to 6 seconds. This time is crucial time because either it may bring visitors or divert them to another website of the same type.

The above are a few important tips to be considered while designing a website. You can follow them or modify them to suit your need. But the fact is that designing is about presenting the information in an elegant, decorative and user-friendly way.

A website is a marketing tool, designed ultimately to boost your company’s sales. Yet so many web designers (and the companies that employ such web designers) neglect to use basic marketing principles to benefit the website.

The focus for web design/websites seems to be around two things;

• getting a stunning web design
• getting visitors to the website.

For many business websites (I have found small businesses websites to be particularly guilty of this) there is little thought to basic marketing principles. Such marketing principles are used elsewhere but for some reason many do not seem to use them when designing websites. So the question is, what marketing principles should you adhere to when designing a website?

Well the number one issue to consider is what message do you want to give to customers? This is also known as a positioning statement.

In my experience this is probably the hardest part of developing an website marketing strategy (or any marketing strategy).

To start you really need to define the type of visitors you want to attract to your website, consider:

• how old are they?
• what do they like?
• what problems / reservations do they have regarding similar products to yours?

You then need to create a message that appeals to them (sounds obvious but many neglect this). Personally I like to look at the problems customers may associate with similar products and then create statements to counter them. The statements are then written for the target web audience. For example if I am writing a message for a younger audience I may use different language to if I am writing for an older audience.

Next choose the most important reservation and counter argument, this will be the one to base the website around. Many try and use many statements on their website and in my experience this does not work. Delivering one message in a website usually works better than trying to pack your website with numerous statements.

How you deliver the message will depend upon your web design and the intended audience, but remember website visitors are lazy and do not like reading text, so use images where possible. Finally you must remember to back your statement up! Any website can claim anything, web users know this, so try and backup your statement. Do you have testimonials, case studies or some other way for the visitor to see how good you are?

Hope you find this useful!

We often put web design and marketing hints and tips on our blog http://redspiderwebdesign.wordpress.com so feel free to pay it a visit.

In the world of Web designers, a major error in website design is the incorrect use of colors. Poorly-defined color palette reflects the work of an unprofessional designer. When choosing colors, the principle must be the ‘choice and taste’ of masses as it will be viewed by them only, in large numbers. So, picking a color palette should be done very cautiously. The most common colors used in web design include:-

Blue - One of the most popular colors used on the Internet. It belongs to the category of so-called “safe” colors. The blue color is associated with such concepts as peace, serenity, reliability, credibility, honesty, purity, clarity. However, for example, light-blue color can symbolize depression. So while choosing blue color for your web pages, it’s advisable to be very cautious.

Green - It has always been associated with nature. It symbolizes the nature, health, future and youth. However, in some cases Green may be correlated with distrust and danger.

Yellow - It is the color of joy, happiness, friendship. Among the negative associations Yellow may suggest cowardice and disease. Do not use too dark yellow.

Orange - It is a symbol of warmth and energy. A very good color for focusing prominently on something.

Red - Red is the most appropriate color for capturing instant attention of the visitor. You can use it in the pages/text/images/logos that demand instant attention.

Violet - It is a mysterious color that suggests creativity, normally used for giving special elegance to the website.

Pink - It is the most feminine color. It is also associated with children and childhood.

Black - Black is a symbol of force, darkness and evil.

Colors

Different shades of colors, well applied in different situations are the identity of a sound web designer. It must be understood that, depending on the subject site, you should be limited to a certain combination of colors and shades. For example, the use of bright pink in the development of a business website will look, to say the least, strange. The same goes true for example, with the use of red color in the development of a website associated with medicine, which not only suggests visitor’s distress, but rather draws an association with blood and danger.

Colors compatibility with OS

When choosing a color palette, it must be remembered that on a variety of operating systems colors may look differently. For example, if a visitor will have a Mac operating system, it is unlikely that he sees the colors in the same way as he would see in MS windows.The factors influencing the different display colors include the installation monitor, the operating system, the type of monitor, graphics card, resolutions, etc.

When you change colors, you must guarantee the contrast between the background and plain text. For example, visitors may not have an ideal vision, and hence it may be difficult to read the light gray text on a white background. Some combinations of colors can cause irritation, for example, green text on a red background.