Web Design Development Articles

Much has been said about website design. The topic itself opens a lot of ideas between internet savvies and website designers. In as much as every internet user wanted to have their own page in the web, webmasters can only provide them a pseudo-personalized form called web hosting. This page has a given set of functionality to enable users to download/upload files, post messages for individuals and groups, or design the page according to their preferences. Popular examples are blogging platforms and social networking pages. But these functionality are only limited to some sort of webmaster’s purpose in creating the page and cater only to the basic demand of majority of users.

Such backdoor encourages anyone to make and design their own website according to their preferences. However, getting a bad website design is far worse than the limitations of hosted sites. Not to mention making your own website needs payment versus free service of a hosted site. Having your own website could just be anything, but a successful website is really something. The following were just basic areas of consideration in conceptualizing a website design :

1. Purpose

The reason why a website has been created is a foremost consideration in website designing. In fact, every inch of a website and its sub-domains will reflect its purpose. The website purpose can range from business oriented, open information site, directory listings, blogging site, and even to extremely personal. This purpose will also control on what stuff the site is made of and even to its most subtle modifications later.

2. Organization

After the purpose has been established, the organization of the site will be composed of flow of operations on how every single user will interact with the page. Sometimes, it is called the blueprint of the website where placement of banners, main menu buttons, and topic tabs will be selected. The goal of website organization is the enhancement in navigating streams of data found on the site. Some even fortified it with an advanced algorithm scripts. Regardless of software applications to be used, a highly organized website will always enable users to land on the page where they wanted to be.

3. Color Scheming

Some may have been not so careful with this aspect but it can be as important as the website’s organization. After all, website designing is still both art and science. Appropriate color selection for every square inch of a webpage matters a lot in supporting the purpose and organization of the site. Aesthetically speaking, some vibrant colors may become insignificant in some sorts of combination in the same way as a dimmer hue can become a sound choice for a particular spot. Although noone could tell at what extent a certain color may become redundant or significant. Some website designers often used simulations on different color combination and at different levels of shade. In this way they can evaluate the visual appearance of the page in the web.

4. Size and Space

Different data types correspond to a certain size or space in the page. A size refers to the amount of memory a certain data type could consume while a space is an area occupied by a certain data type. A text can be the simplest and the smallest among data types but it can also occupy a considerable amount of space just to convey specific information. A picture, on the other hand, could paint a thousand words but it is likely to be static and cost more size than text. Video files offer great interactivity with the user but they consumes a lot of memory and takes time to be loaded in the page. Thus, a significant balance in using different data types must exist somewhere for a website designer to discover.

5. Promotional Features

Aside from the purpose of why a website has been created, every website designer should always anticipate the promotional features of the site. After all, why make a site when you can’t broadcast it? Website designers often incorporate the sites capacity to attract search engines since a significant number of internet users browse over search engines for every particular topic. In onsite search engine optimization (SEO), proper placement of topic words over the page will make it to be “crawled” by search engine robots called spiders. Conventionally, the more your website talks about a particular topic in a non-spammy way could make your site land on the primary search engine results pages (SERP’s). SERP rankings indirectly determine the number of users visiting your website.

Although website designing involves a lot of hard decisions to make highly successful websites, it is still so fun doing it. Imagine being a digital artist and your website is your masterpiece. The more you spend a little more time on every area of consideration, the more it will become detailed. It will also reflect on the way how you make your site more effective on whatever ends.

To those who know how it’s done, website design and development are simple and straightforward. To those who don’t, creating a website for their business looks like a complex, overwhelming task and they don’t know where to begin. Fact is, website development is both. Website designers can quickly create new sites for their customers that look great and are tailored to their clients’ needs. But starting from scratch can be frustrating and time-consuming, and the learning curve is pretty steep. Let’s see how an individual or small business without technical experience would go about setting up a successful website.

The purpose of most websites is creating a presence on the web. This presence can be to inform others of your services, to provide content and entertainment, or to sell product. At the most fundamental level, all websites are the same, ranging from small vanity websites all the way up to huge corporate sites: You need to have a name for the website, and that name, called a domain, must then be registered with one of the many entities that do website registrations (they are called registrars). You need to arrange for room for the files that make up your website on a server, either on your own equipment or through a website hosting company. You then need to design the website itself and upload it to the server. Finally, you must make sure that people find your website and come visit it. This last step is very important and relies in part on website promotion and marketing, and in part on a technique called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. SEO means that a website is designed specifically so that search engines like Google can easily catalog it. This way, when people search for the product or service you offer, your website is more likely to come up high on the list.

Now how does one go about creating the site? First, you need to have a realistic idea of what kind of website you want, and how much you’re willing to spend. You can buy website templates for just a few dollars or even download them for free, but that only helps if you already know what you’re doing, and those templates are usually little more than a pretty front page. You can spend a bit more and engage an outfit that will create a custom website for you, but keep in mind that you will get what you pay for. Many so-called website developers will simply send you a bunch of files with a bit of customization, and then you’re on your own. That, again, can help if you’re already familiar with the web design process as you may be able to use the files as building blocks or for new ideas. However, it won’t help if you really need an entire site set up from scratch.

For many small businesses that need a website but do not have the resources to create their own, the best way to go is engaging an experienced turnkey website developer who will take full charge of the registration, design, development and implementation of the site. Depending on your needs, they can also set up hosting arrangements, administration tools, and even create the database systems you need to run your online business. In technical terms, most such sites will use standard HTML, PHP and perhaps ASP, but they may also include Flash and a variety of add-on systems, such as content management or customer relation management. Any site should always be built using search engine optimization techniques. Some website developers offer just basic SEO whereas others also provide link building, directory submissions and general website marketing and promotion.

Bottom line is this: if you need a website, get one. You can’t do business today without a good web presence. You can create a website yourself if you’re willing to invest the time in researching how it’s done and learning the tools, or you can hire someone to do it for you. If you hire someone, look for an experienced website developer with a good reputation, have realistic expectations of what it will cost, and make sure you clearly communicate what you need.

As the World Wide Web becomes the one-stop resource for anyone who is looking for information about anything, it is now a must for every business to have a website. If you have your own site, you can reach your target audience and keep it open for the viewing public all-year round, 24 hours a day. However, it is important to note that the competition is fierce, with millions of websites aiming to outdo each other in reaching their target audience. You need to take important steps in order to improve your site and make it memorable and interesting to visitors. One of the ways that you can do is to have a custom web site design.

The overall design of your site says a lot about your business. Visitors will know right away if you are serious about what you do or not. It is important, therefore, to have a web site design that is both visually appealing and useful to visitors. Also, you should have a web design that is suitable for your business or whatever you are promoting online. If you are an expert in a particular area, make sure that your site design reflects your personality as a professional and exudes the impression that you are much better than other experts in your field.

A custom web site design can also help you in establishing your personal brand. As the representation of your business or the services you offer, your web site design should highlight your best potential so visitors will remember you amidst thousands of other websites.

You can create your own web site design or have someone do it for you. If you choose the latter, inform the web designer / web design company about your objectives, target audience, and unique features of your business that can make your site stand out from the rest.

Make your presence known online by having a custom web site design. Opt for a website that stands out from the crowd so you can secure your place online and be memorable to your target audience.

First Things First

If you are an employee it’s easy to get confused about consultant or freelance rates. The thing to remember is freelancers can only charge for the time they are actively working for a client. However, they are not necessarily active for a client for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks of the year. Therefore their rates have to take into account all the time they are not billing a client and their running costs. It’s all explained below.

Why Have Freelancers and Consultants?

Freelancers play a vital role in the economy. Without freelancers companies would have to hire and train all their own staff. Can you imagine hiring a member of staff to carry out a specific specialised task that only needs doing once or twice a year?

How Day Rates Work

Companies providing services in many industries such as web design, SEO, engineering etc base their charges on day rates. These can be the source of confusion or contention for the companies who need to hire firms using day rates as the headline rate can seem high.

Often, when evaluating rates, people will take the headline day rate, multiply it by 261 (the number of weekdays in a year) and assume they are being ripped off. For example, a day rate of £325.00 is made to look like a salary of - 261 x £325 = £85k! Nice money if you can get it.

In fact this is a nonsense. In simple terms day rates are calculated thus.

Number of weekdays in a year = 261

Less - 25 Holidays

Less - 8  Bank Holidays

Less - 5 days allowance for being ill

Less - 24 days of non billable time

Less - 10 days for marketing and business development

Total - 72 days

Total billable working days in a year = 261 - 72 = 189 Days

Now the per person costs for running the business

£500 - advertising

£500 - Hardware and Software

£1000 - Servers etc

£100 - Affiliation costs (professional bodies etc)

£2000 - Client visits etc

£150 - Insurances etc

£500 - Accountancy fees etc

£2000 - Phone/Office etc

Total = £6750.00

This equates to a daily overhead of £35.71 (overhead divided by billable days)

Now the required salary including Employers NIC etc

A well qualified and experienced consultant salary = £40k (£44475.52 with NIC etc)

This gives a day rate of £235.32 (salary divided by billable days)

Next comes profit and 20% is an accepted level of profit = £54.21

Now add it all up - £35.71 + £235.32 + £54.21 = £325.24

So the day rate of £325 gives the consultant a salary of £40k and the company a profit of £10k, not what you might call earth shattering and  this assumes the company don’t get thrown a curve ball.

Don’t use standard conventions. Use ridiculous looking formats that no one has ever seen before and that can’t be easily understood.

Write lousy content. Copy your content from other sites. Write boring content. Don’t update your site on a regular basis.

Making the look and navigation of every page different so your readers don’t even know if they are on the same site as they go from page to page. Take extra time to confuse your readers.

Use labels for links that are confusing and don’t give any indication of where the reader will end up if clicked.

Make sure the links don’t open in another window. That way when the reader is done and closes the window, they close your site also.

Don’t include a way for your reader to search the site.

Write only about you. Write about how wonderful you are. Write about how wonderful your company is. Don’t offer any content that can help your reader.

Make a lot of grammatical mistakes in your writing and, while you are at it, misspell words and don’t use punctuation correctly.

Make your site one big image. Don’t use any text on the site. That way it will be impossible for the search engines to find the site.

Use only buttons and drop down menus for navigation. Don’t use any text links so the search engines can’t spider your site.

Make your text hard to read. Use small and/or fancy fonts. And make the text color similar to the background color.

If you are thinking about pursuing a career in Web Design, there are important web design tools and applications available that you will need to learn how to use. There are important new web design tools and applications available for web designers to use to create web sites which include some of the following programs and languages discussed in this article.

Dreamweaver is the leading website development tool. This Web authoring tool from Macromedia gives developers a graphical interface used for creating web pages.

Photoshop is a powerful professional quality digital imaging tool is from Adobe, and it is used for image editing and graphics.  You can work very fast, with html shortcuts and many other tools. The program is so popular and widely used that it’s name has become a verb, as in “Photoshop this”.

Flash is used for high quality animation, it is Flash for fast design, downloads, and simple interactivity.  This software will allow the user to create web design animation programs that fit the full screen, or can be scaled for a browser window.

HTML is an acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language.  It allows creation of a Web page through text-based information, including links, headings, lists, paragraphs and more, and to integrate interactive forms such as embedded images and object.  Text is surrounded by specific pairs of angle brackets. Embedded scripting language can be included.

PHP is a web design language that gives developers the ability to create dynamic content that will interact with databases.  It is frequently used with MySQL.

MY SQL is a management system for relational databases.  It stores information for web design data separately rather than in one large table, which increases speed.  SQL is an acronym for Structured Query Language.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) and PERL (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language) are programming languages that work together for scripting and processing data from HTML forms.  It is used to update user accounts, synchronizing databases, generating reports, and more.

.Net Framework from Microsoft is a programming model that allows users to build applications that are visually stunning, and give the user of the website seamless and secure communication.  It is designed to work with Windows programs.

Visual Studio is another program form Microsoft and this is used to develop console and graphical user interface applications.  It includes a code editor and debugger.  It has built-in design tools, including one for forms, websites and databases.  It can support virtually any programming language.

Using these tools and languages can make designing your website easier and give it a very professional look. It will be well worth your time to learn them.

There is every reason today to build a website for your transcription business and no reason not to. Take your business Global! With the many resources available online for choosing templates, simple web design instruction, and easy to learn search engine submissions, you simply must have a website.

And why limit yourself to just your geographical location when prospective clients all over the globe are as easy to access as signing on to the Web? If you haven’t already done it, get moving, build a website and get more clients!

Here are some tips to help you build a website that’s professional and effective:

• Don’t, and I repeat DO NOT design a cutesty website with little animated teddy bears or singing flowers. These scream “Amateur!” from the rooftops! Build a website that says, “I’m a professional and I am serious about my business!”
• Include a little bio page about yourself and why prospective clients should choose you for their transcription projects. Give a brief history about your work experience or even a page with client testimonials.
• Be detailed about your services and rates, if you want to advertise them on your site. You may feel more comfortable having potential clients contact you by email or phone for a quote. That’s up to you.
• Provide your full contact information as you did on your business cards and in your brochure. You want people to know that the site is owned by a REAL person.
• Do not, and again I repeat DO NOT try and create a professional business website on one of those “free website” places on the ‘Net. You will not benefit from them and it could be a total waste of your time, let alone it could adversely affect your credibility before you’ve even had a chance to establish it.

So what’s wrong with those free websites? Oh, there’s plenty wrong if you’re trying to maintain a level of professionalism. Let’s go through the list of negatives:

• Free subdomain names: You won’t get a real domain name that looks like this http://www.yourdomain.com. You will get something that looks like this: http://thefreedomainhost.com/thenameoftheirserver.html/yourname.biz.Now if that’s not long and confusing, I don’t know what is! What would your clients think?
• You get “Free” hosting. But now let’s take a look at just how “free” that hosting really is:
  • You get banner ads across the top of every page of your site. The ads have nothing at all to do with your business. Do you think your potential clients came to your site because they were interested in dog food or the latest hip-hop songs to hit the charts?
  • And how about pop-up ads? So annoying, aren’t they? I don’t think you want to subject your clients to those.
  • And what happens if that “free” website company decides it can’t give away its services anymore but they don’t let you know. That’s right. They may shut you down for nonpayment and now you’ve lost your website, which probably wasn’t getting much traffic anyway, because…
  • Most free sites aren’t found by the search engines anyway. And why not? Remember that long, convoluted domain name? Most search engines pretty much ignore those, no matter how much you try to optimize the keywords.

So really, how free is all of that anyway? Not very, because it cost you time to build it. Time is money. So you’re actually paying for a “free” site but getting nothing in return for the work.

The absolute best way to guarantee that the work you put into your website will pay off - pay for it. There are some great website hosts out there that don’t cost a fortune and still have great site templates that are extremely easy to use.And if you know enough HTML to build a site offline in FrontPage, Dreamweaver or another html editor, most of the paid hosting sites have FTP availability so you can upload your own HTML files. So create your domain name. That’s what your URL will be - www.yourdomain.com Simple, short, easy to remember and the search engines like them a lot better than - well, that other long thing. And get your domain name registered, which you should be able to do through almost any hosting service. Build a website using their templates or do it yourself with an html editor. Upload and voila - you’re on the Web!