October 23rd, 2009 by admin

The Most Common Mistakes When Designing a Website

 Author: Robert Palmer When a person visits a website, they will make snap judgments about it based on its appearance and their experience there. These judgments will play a large part in determining if the user stays on the site, so making sure that you don’t have anything immediately putting them off is important. The first aspect to consider is the text on the site. The most successful websites have text split up into short, easily understood and absorbed sentences. Paragraphs may consist of only one of these sentences. This is due to the way that people approach content online, but the reasons behind that are beyond the scope of this article. Users also tend to look for information that they can identify with or believe is genuine, rather than something filled with pithy marketing slogans. This means that a well-designed website will make the information users want readily accessible. Being overly verbose is a mistake. The second point to consider with regards to the writing is the stylistic aspect. Font color, style and size, as well as the background it is written on, are all instantly taken in by the user. If it’s too difficult to read then people will leave. Maintaining consistency with the rest of the internet is more important than many people think. A user expects links to be underlined, and may even expect them to all be in blue as well, due to blue, underlined links being so prolific. Users will expect forums to generally have the same set up across the internet, as well as search engines, sidebars and image galleries following similar formats (no next or previous button in a gallery leads to frustration). Browser compatibility is less of an issue nowadays, but ensuring that a website works on, at least, Firefox and Internet Explorer is a must. Most users will not load up a separate browser to view one website, instead, they go elsewhere. Again, it’s less of an issue nowadays, but sites covered in GIFs or Flash elements don’t tend to impress. Occasionally, a site will be produced that is Flash-based and works very well, but most of them do not. The final mistake here is asking the user to jump through too many hoops. If they have to create a login to access the information they want, fill in a large number of questions, or even click too many times to find what they need, they can easily just go somewhere else. The information may be useful to the site owner, but not having any visitors is not a price worth paying. When designing a website, it’s essential that the user experience is thought of at every turn. They are the ones who will visit the site, and they are the ones who decide whether to close the window without giving you an opportunity to convince them not to. The amount of things that can put a user off is huge it does not take much for somebody to stop browsing a site.

Technorati Tags: building a website, mistakes in building a web site, things to avoid when building a website, web site building

building a website, mistakes in building a web site, things to avoid when building a website, web site building

October 10th, 2009 by admin

By: W. Longacre | Posted: 09th October 2009

One of the basic and fundamental features of any quality website is navigation or usability. Once you get visitors to your site, you cannot allow them sit around staring at a page attempting to figure out what to do. It’s your task to make it easy for visitors to quickly, with little or no thinking, see what information is available and where to go to find what they’re looking for.
Before you go blasting NAV links all over the place you should first consider the style and placement location on the page. There are two primary possibilities for link style – Buttons & Text links.

Buttons – This style of link is most suited for visual appeal or aesthetics. The button size determines how much text can be placed on the button as a description. Typically you are limited to one or two short words.

Text links – This style of link is suited for providing a more detailed description of the link. This style also has a huge benefit as an SEO element.

After considering the style of the link, the next critical factor is placement. Where NAV links are placed varies from site to site, the most common place is either vertically on the left top side of the page or horizontally across the top of the page. While there are other places for NAV links I would suggest that one of these two locations be used. Most people are use to finding links on the left or top so why rock the boat? Remember you want to make navigation as easy as possible. However no matter where you place the site NAV links, it’s of the highest priority to consistently place those links in the same location on each and every page of the site.

Here are 3 additional tips for improving site navigation.
Some sites place NAV links in unusual places. The most common place is across the top or down the left side of all pages. However there are three other areas for placement of NAV links that will aid visitors when visiting your site.

1) In the page footer. It can be frustrating to get to the bottom of a long page then have to scroll back to the top to find the NAV links. Having NAV links in the page footer is a nice convenience for the user.

2) In a sitemap. A sitemap should contain links to all pages within the site. This makes it easy for a user to quickly and easily find all information or pages on the site. The sitemap NAV link is typically located in the page footer. BTW – A sitemap aids search engines in finding and indexing the pages of your site.

3) Within the flow of text. If you have vital pages that you want your visitors to see you can make additional access easy by placing a NAV link in the flow of content or text. Users, when reading, can simply click the link without having to traverse the web page to find the NAV link to get to the page of interest – very cool! You can also gain benefit with search engines by using the keyword of the page being linked to as the text for the link.

For sure navigation is important for the success of your website. The easier you can make it for a visitor to travel around the site the happier they will be. This alone does not guarantee a customer will buy your product or service but it does help to ensure they won’t leave frustrated.

This article provided by Woody Longacre. We invite you to visit the Web Hosting Goods Store for Internet Web Design Services.

Technorati Tags: design tips, Site Navigation, Web Design

design tips, Site Navigation, Web Design

October 9th, 2009 by admin

By: David Ephraim | Posted: 09th October 2009

A quick review of the website design process.

A quick guide on how to build and design a website, efficiently. The following web site design process will ensure your website is a top your industry now and for years beyond.

Please note that there are an infinite amount of variables that can change how a web site is developed and delivered. Website design projects are never perfectly clear cut and therefore the process/sequence must vary from time to time based on requirements, changes, and customer expectations. Los Angeles web design clients who work in Hollywood may be far more critical than say someone from North Dakota who owns a small motel. A store with one product will have fewer website design needs than the Los Angeles Dodgers. This guide will get you started on the right path.

Step 1: Meet and Greet

One will want to start a website design project with a client meeting. Together, the website designer and the customer need to establish what needs to be done, who is responsible for what role (content, images, logo files, design approval), who are all points of contact on both sides, and other specific customer and developer expectations.

Step 2: Brainstorming

As part of the meet and greet, brainstorming is vital. What is the web site for? Who are the competitors? Who is the top competitor? Who are we trying to beat? Who is the target demographic? What is important and what is not? What needs to be on every page of the website? Is this a Website for Los Angeles Website customers only or do people from all over the world come to this site?

Tip: A flowchart is a great tool to use here. Create the home page and stem from that to create all pages you need. Include all features per page that you need such as customer login, clickable PDF files, interactive forms, photo gallery applications, etc.

Step 3: Wireframe or Hand Drawing

Many people have no idea what a wireframe is but in website design this is very important for a designer. A wireframe is a sketch or skeleton drawing of the website pages showing all of the elements and functions the web page should have once designed. A wireframe will include the header (with elements needed), the navigation with all of the buttons required, specific body/middle area sections of the page such as an area for flash animation or segmented marketing boxes for different user types, and footer information.

A wireframe does not need to include graphic design elements. It is used to solve, at the get go, any problems or missing elements and acts as the blueprint for your design, content, and coding.

Step 4: Content Planning

With a wireframe and page breakdown it is now time to write the content that needs to go onto every web page. Generally, the client or an outside content writer will put together the content and send to the website design team. Writing content is the largest workload for the client during a website design project and can take a lot of time. ATAK Interactive suggests that you closely look at competitors to make sure you include everything they do best and then beat them.

Step 5: Initial Design

While the customer works on step 4, the website designer can work on the home page design which, once approved, will serve as the canvas/template for the rest of the site. It is best to design the home page first and once the client approves move on to the rest of the pages.

Step 6: Client Feedback

The customer must view the website design files (home page only) and approve or offer corrections. The customer needs to check that you are meeting expectations and headed in the right directions. This is the time for the customer to offer their expert industry opinion.

Step 7: Design Rework

A little back and forth is required here. A website designer should expect to do a few revisions to each page and the customer should expect an opportunity to provide feedback. Generally, a website design company is responsible for setting the ground rules on how many revisions will be included and at what point extra fees will be required.

Step 8: Client Approval

The client must approve the home page design once the necessary work and additional work after feedback is complete. The confirmation process in a main responsibility of the client.

Step 9: Additional Page Design

The home page will serve as the skeleton for all inner pages. Once the home page is approved the website designer or design team should then design all inner pages for the website.

Step 10: Confirmation

After doing a little more back and forth (revisions) the client must approve all page designs. This approval must happen before moving on to actual coding because design changes beyond this point take more time to update than they would before coding begins

Step 11: Build the HTML and the CSS…Don’t forget SEO!

A website designer can now begin to build the actual HTML and CSS…converting the designs into a working web site. Make sure to include appropriate build for search engines and include title tags, keywords, and searchable content.

Step 12: Client Presentation

Once the website is ready, the client needs a final opportunity to review and offer any feedback or correction needs so the website is perfectly polished for launch.

Step 13: Test

This is the last hard step. Test, test some more, and test again. Check code, check keywords, check all text to make sure there are no misspellings or inaccuracies. Check cross browser functionality (i.e. Internet Explorer and Firefox) to make sure the website design look good across all mediums.

Step 14: Launch

Go Live! Now is the time to launch the website to the public. Be sure to check the site every day for about two weeks to make sure nothing funky is going on and perhaps ask some of your colleagues or family members to review as well.

Step 15: Revisit

A good website design is one that is always current. Keep updating, tweaking, and improving. The search engines change their rules too so make sure you are on top of your game, or your web designer is. A good tool to install (free) is Google Analytics which helps you monitor user interaction with the site.

As a result, a good web design will attract more and more internet visitors. And Los Angeles Web Design is among the best ones to build such a site.

Here the author, David Ephraim has listed down steps as to how a site can be built and how it can be made effective and attractive too. Plus he would suggest you to consult Los Angeles Web Design for more details.

Technorati Tags: build a site, design tips, web colors, Web Design

build a site, design tips, web colors, Web Design