Luko 2.0

August 11, 2010

Good Web Design Solutions Can Make You Website Stand Out From the Crowd

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — admin @ 10:57 pm

When people search for a product or service on the Web, they normally visit several websites before they come to a decision which company to buy from. Therefore, it’s important that your website remains on the user’s memory at first sight. Apart from the look, your web design has to be equally striking. Your web design should provide good content and load quickly. However, you should ensure that your web design looks different from your competition. Otherwise, people may not want to choose you and instead secure their services.

It is sometime tempting to look at your competitors’ websites and assume that yours should have the same web design and content. It can certainly be useful to look at your competitors’ websites. But if your website has a similar web design, then there is no reason for people to pick you instead. In fact, there’s a real danger you look like a cheap copy of them. Your business should have a unique selling point (USP), which separates you from your competition. For instance, your items might be cheaper, your delivery might be quicker or you may even have a better product range than anyone else.

So, make sure that this USP can fit well into your web design and across your website. Your visitor wants to know why they should choose you over anyone else. It’s your job to make sure that your web design answers this question clearly. Making a good web design is a skill that requires both creative flair and technical knowledge. It is as well time consuming. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a way to add web pages to your website without worrying about the web design? Well, there is a solution to this. An easy way to edit pages is through the content management system (CMS). CMS is used in web design to allow the website owner to add content to his website without the need to know HTML.

Moreover, through good web design solutions, the website owner can log on to a password protected web page to make the changes he wants. As such, the web design industry can provide some cheap CMS packages such as Adobe Contribute which runs as an application on a computer. Simple CMS packages might only let you edit words and headings on existing web pages. More complex CMS packages are readily used in web design to add pages or even upload images. In web design, setting up a CMS is more complicated than creating a web page. Unless you are an experienced web design professional, you may need to hire one to effectively set up a CMS for you.

A huge advantage of having a CMS is that anyone within your company can update your website. You could even assign various people different sections to update on your website. This said, it is clear that web design is improving at fast pace and will keep on improving during years to come. In other words, good web design technologies can make your website run faster and at the same time prove to be more profitable to you.

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Sanjou is the web design articles author at one of the leading web design company in the UK.

July 18, 2010

Good Web Design Could Still be Available to Beginners Like You

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 3:26 am

Web sites have been in existence for more than a decade and the idea of web design has changed considerably during the years. In the nineties, you could find web pages with web design as simple as text for its entire body with a graphic or two strewn here and there. Such web design was perfectly acceptable then and frequently relied only on tools as simple as notepad to create. Nowadays, most web sites require considerably more advanced web design, often calling for entire teams of web content creators to make them. If you’re new to the field of creating web sites, how do you learn to make web sites that you would truly like to visit?

First of all, you need to visit many web sites and be critical of them. Ask yourself what elements of their web design impressed you? What elements of their web design did not seem too functional or were just plain ugly? By knowing what it is that you want, you could be taking the first steps to becoming a really good web master.

Next, you just need to learn the basics. Much of web design coding during the nineties for these web sites still function as the basics for these new more colorful web sites. Yes, web design still relies on good old HTML. Visit any tutorial online and after an afternoon, you’re sure to be acquainted enough with HTML to make your own site, albeit a very simple one.

Now, with this knowledge of the basics of HTML, you can revisit your favorite web sites and see how it is that they were created. Use the browser’s ability to see the coding for these sites and you’ll find out what web design tricks they employed. Did the site use fancy moving graphics that responded to your mouse’s clicks? Then it might just have used flash in its web design. Did it have music embedded into it as mp3? Then find out just how the web master did this using your browser’s view layout feature. Any of the best web sites’ web design tools are always just there, ready for you to see how they were put to use.

After this, the next step would be to emulate the sites’ features. It’s not too difficult as you can just copy anything using copy and paste. Place these codes into the site you’re trying to create. Don’t be greedy and copy every feature from every site all at once. You need to start small with one feature at a time. That way, if a feature does not work, you’ll know just where the problem is.

It’s not all about using the web design features, though. You should only use web features that are useful for your sites’ purposes. Are you building a site only for yourself? Then try to have web design that expresses your self. Are you building a site for your families’ company? Then maybe you could keep it simple and straight to the point, just giving the company’s details. After uploading your web site, give yourself a couple of days rest and look back at it. That way, you’ll have a fresh take on your own web design; good luck.

John Mahoney is a freelance author who writes about various technology

realated subjects. For more information about John visit his website
www.techstore.ie.

July 15, 2010

7 Basics of Good Web Design

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — admin @ 4:19 am

Use these 7 Basics of Good Web Design to improve your web site and make it stand out from the competition.

Whether you are just starting a web design project, looking at revamping an existing site, or just wanting to double check the usability of your current web site you should consider these 7 Basics of Good Web Design.

These Basics are aimed at new visitors/customers, your repeat customers will be judging your web site on different values. Just like wearing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, these basics will help you pick out the “look” of your web site so that you make a good first impression.

1. Fast Loading Web Site – Any way you look at it, a fast loading page should be your number 1 concern. The web is all about speed, fast searches, fast purchases, fast information. You can’t have any of that with a slow loading page. Ask yourself this question, have you ever been on Google doing a search for something important and a link you clicked on didn’t open up immediately? What did you do? Patiently wait for the page to open or move onto the next link on the list? My favorite sites open almost immediately.

So, a few suggestions: Make sure that your images are properly optimized. Don’t use very many large images, save those for a different page. Keep any auto-running multimedia to a minimum, offer links to run media instead. Check your code for anything else that could affect your page loading times. Since text loads almost instantly go ahead and use all the text you want, just keep everything else under control.

2. No Meaningless Splash Page – Do you appreciate a fancy animation page that doesn’t tell you anything and you have to wait for before the web site will open? Neither do I. The last thing I want once I find an interesting site is to wait through some animation before getting to the first page. This doesn’t mean that I don’t want multimedia on a site, I do. I just don’t want an animation before the first page that forces me to wait for it to finish before getting onto the site. Its like having to wait for a salesperson to finish their memorized speech before you can ask them a question. No thanks! I like animation, just in the right place and at the right time. Plus if I am a returning customer I will have already seen that animation and don’t need to see it again.

My recommendation is to use a smaller animation contained in your main landing page which also includes your main message and links to the rest of your site. It will make for a faster loading page (smaller file) and your visitors can go ahead with accessing your site without having to wait for the animation to finish.

One final note, never, ever put your logo as the only content on your landing page with a link that says “Enter Site”. This just screams Unprofessional and will drive away potential visitors in droves. The last thing I want to do is to click on another link just to get into the site. This is a total waste of my time. I usually will skip a site if I see this.

3. No Annoying Web Gimmicks – Now that you have your visitor on your site quickly the one thing you don’t want to do is to drive them away just as quickly. So, don’t put anything annoying on that first page. No loud background music that makes them quickly hit the volume control or the back button on their browser. No flashing animations while they are trying to read your content. No popup, flyout, expanding ads that cover your home page. Basically leave the gimmicks alone until you are sure that your visitor will stay on your site. Most casual visitors will leave your site in just a few seconds, no sense on driving them away more quickly.

Multimedia is great on a web site, just don’t bombard your visitor with it first thing. If you want audio then put in a nice picture with a link, like a picture of yourself with text saying something like “Let me tell you how to make $50,000 this month!” If they are interested they will click on the link and listen to your message, if they are not interested in audio then you should be using a different pitch anyway.

Also, monitor what advertisers are putting on your site if you sell ad space. I am sure you have seen those ads with the animated dancing figure, cute the first time you see it. But after seeing it 10,000 times with every imaginable character I have added the company to a list I keep of companies I will never do business with. So their animation has gone from “look at me” to “you annoy me” in my mind. Ads like these will impact your visitor’s experience. So even if your site is perfectly designed, one misplaced ad can ruin all of your hard work.

4. Have a Clear Message – Too many web sites are a mish-mash of content. This is especially true of blog pages. Certain types of sites lend themselves to stream of consciousness content, but most don’t. Make it easy for your viewer to understand what your web site is about, don’t make them guess. Have a clear topic headline, followed by clear and concise text. This is also where a picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture directly pertains to your message.

You want your visitor to be able to quickly understand what your message is. If they like your message they will take the time to read the rest of your page and look around your web site. If they don’t like your page, then it won’t do you any good having them stay on your site anyway. So, don’t make your visitors guess, let them know what you are about quickly and cleanly and you will have happy visitors. And when thinking about a sales page, a happy customer is a buying customer.

5. Coordinated Design – This one should be self evident, but it is surprising how many sites change their design for every page. You want your visitor to be comfortable in your site and one way to achieve that is by having a coordinated web design. Having a consistent logo, using a consistent color scheme, keeping your navigation in the same place. All of these help to create a coordinated design. This does not mean that you can’t change colors or the “Look” on different segments of your site, but if you do, the changes should not be so drastic that it feels like you have moved on to a different site.

If you select one place for your logo, one place for your navigation, one look for your buttons or other common graphic elements and stick with those then you will be well on your way to a coordinated design. If you change colors for a different section, but keep the same logo location, the same navigation location, the same button shape then your visitors will not become lost as they move from page to page.

6. Easy Navigation – Once you have grabbed your visitors attention you want them to be able to easily move around the different areas of your web site. This is done with easy to use navigation. There are three standard, accepted locations for navigation elements on a web page: along the top, on the left side, and at the bottom. I will usually put my main navigation either along the top or along the left side. I will then put text based navigation at the bottom of the page, this text based navigation is more for the search engines than anything else, but it also makes it easy for your visitors to move to the next page when they have reached the bottom of the current page.

Most people start reading a page from the top left and then read towards the bottom right. So navigation at the left or top will be seen as soon as someone enters your page. Also navigation at the left or top will not move or change position if the browser window is adjusted in size. The worst thing you can do is to put your main navigation on the right side of the page and have your page set for a large screen size. Let’s say that your page is set for 1024 across with the navigation on the right, and someone v
iews your page at 800 across, they will not see your navigation at all. The left side of your page will show perfectly, but the right side will be hidden outside of their viewing area. Of course by using floating or popup menus you can overcome some of these design limitations and keep your navigation visible at all times.

Unless you know that your audience will enjoy it, don’t use Mystery Navigation. This is where your navigation is hidden within images, or spaced around the web page in some mysterious random order. This can be fun on gaming sites, or social networking sites, but in most cases the navigation should be easy to see and easy to use. If you do want to use Mystery Navigation I would recommend keeping the text based navigation at the bottom of the page, just in case.

7. Have a “Complete” web site – And finally, no one wants to go to a web site only to find that the site is “Under Construction” and the content they are looking for is not there. These are words that you should never use. If a section of your web site is not ready for prime time yet, then simply don’t show it yet. It is better to have your site look complete and professional, then to have it look like a work in progress that should not be up on the web yet.

You can easily tell your visitors that you will be having more content in the future without looking like your site is unfinished. Just use phrases like “Content Updated Weekly” or “New Products Added Monthly”. Both of these will tell your visitors that it would be worth their time to come back and visit at later, but neither one will make your site look unfinished. So no matter how small your web site is, give the impression that you have taken the time to complete the site before putting it up on the internet, this makes for a more professional presentation and a better visitor experience.

In Closing – By following these simple 7 Basics of Good Web Design you will be well on your way to having an easy to use and successful web presence. Just keep in mind what you look for when you first land on a web page after doing a web search in Google or Yahoo, or other search engine. If you want fast loading pages, make sure your pages load fast. If you want to be able to find what you are looking for quickly and easily then make sure you have easy navigation. Just keep your first time visitor in mind, put yourself in their web shoes and make your web site an enjoyable place to visit and success should follow.

George Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 40 multimedia based tutorial training titles covering such topics as Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. To see his training sets visit http://www.howtogurus.com

Article copyright 2008 George Peirson


Related Blogs

    July 6, 2010

    Essential Features of a Good Web Design

    Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 12:54 am

    With the invention of computers, these days web designing has become another booming industry. Web designing has gained immense popularity, websites are considered as an important source of providing information. Every business concern these days has a website; websites can also be said as a very good source of advertising about the company their product offerings and other information with concerns to the company. It has become a recent trend in many business houses to do business on online basis. So in order to get good results through the website it is important that web designers make very nice, clean, professional-looking web- pages. This article is going to explain about the essential features of a good web design. It is a very easy to design a nice, professional looking website, even if the companies do not possess much experience in the field of web design. The difference which would exist between the beginner web designers is the elimination of some of the basic features which are of vital importance for a good web page to give a good appearance in all cases irrespective of the different search engines.

    The features of a good web design are as follows:

    The major components which should be kept in mind in the formulation of a good web page are text, navigation tools, links, graphics and General design. These tips would be a handy tool for the beginner web designers.

    Web designing requires creativity along with some handy rules which have to be considered. The text should be aligned in such a way that it is not interrupted by the background. The font size of the text should be big enough so that it does not cause any strain in reading. Be sure that information provided is in proper hierarchal and clarity of the idea behind writing must exist.

    Text and Images must be strategically added on the web pages through effectual website design. Browser compatibility is as well a key need that must be dealt with during web design creation stage. For that reason website development process must make sure that a balance is maintained between the text and the images.

    Navigation is a consistent process through the web site, these bars act as a clue to where the visitor is. So the buttons used for navigation should be clear and easy to understand. In case there is usage of frames then there usage must not be obtrusive. Incase the site you are designing is a very large one then it would be better to have a site map for easy search results.

    As far as the links usage is considered the link colors must be set in such a way that there is proper coordination with the background color. The links are underlined so that they facilitate clarity in understanding. The graphics in the page should be such that the buttons are not too big, it is always better that each graphics possess an alt label facilitating the purpose of easy understandability. Use background safe colors for graphics and background. So while designing a web site keep the following tips and boost yourself to get good web design.

    Alberdecruz is a Copywriter of Web design Houston. He has written various articles like Website marketing Houston , Web page design Houston, Houston web developer and more. For more information visit: Web designers Houston. Contact him at alberdecruzseo@gmail.com

    January 16, 2010

    Good Web Design

    Filed under: Web Design — Tags: , , , , , , — admin @ 3:53 am

    Web design is a process that really demands a lot of energy. It means providing the web design that is informative, pleasant and applicable for the web site costumer. Such web sites have a good design and right below are some advices that can be helpful in web designing.

    Priority

    The main thing that matters web design is the informative side of the web site. That is a good web design. The good web designer should provide to the costumers the best screen leading and it is the priority that shows different weight of all visual parts that web design has.As an example for most important status in many web designs can be the logo you see on the web site. But the priorities can go much further and it is up to you, your web designer to choose from many tools that are in your disposal you wish your costumers look at.

    Spacing

    Starting with web designing some beginners can consider that it is important to use every blank part left in the web site design. It seems them like a pity not to fill every space. But it is opposite. Web design must be clear and pleasant for looking. There are three aspects of spacing that are considered as necessary. Those are line spacing which directly determines the readability of the text, padding that represents the space between text and elements. Generally there shouldn’t be any touch between text and some other elements but some exceptions exist. The third aspect of spacing is white spacing and it considers empty spaces that doesn’t have to be white. This space gives a web design that is clear and elegant with balance, proportion and page contrasts.

    Navigation

    Something worst that may happen to you when navigating the web site is not to know where to go. Web designers must enable you to know where to go and to make it to easy figure out where you are in every moment. There are two important navigation aspects:

    Navigation- to know where next to go.Orientation- to know the right position at the moment.

    Typography

    Text belongs to a web design and there for a lot of attention is turn toward it. The things you must take care about the text appearance are next:

    Font ­­- it is recommended to use the appropriate font and not too different.

    Font sizes – Today texts are written to read and the font size must be consistent and the proportion between headings and sub- headings must exist.

    Line length – It doesn’t need to be too long.

    Colour – It must be a good contrast and not too many colours to use.

    Spacing – We have already discussed it above.

    Usability

    Putting as many information, text and images must be usable for the costumers so web designers must pay attention on it.

    Sharpness

    The sharpness of web design is very important for having design very crystal and sharp. If want a sharp design certain things must be achieved:

    Make shaped edges into pixels.

    Use appropriate anti- aliasing setting for any text.

    Contrast must be high how the borders can be clearly defined.

    Emphasize the borders just a little to increase the contrast.

    Los Angeles Professional Web Design Company and Los Angeles Professional Web Development Company

    September 21, 2009

    How to Create Good Web Design?

    Filed under: Web Design — Tags: , , , , , , , — admin @ 2:13 am

    There are many different types of web design, from those built using website templates and ‘build your own’ site building applications to complex content managed and e-commerce web designs such as those used by big brand names like Amazon, eBay and Tesco.

    Some companies, even some big name companies, have unprofessional looking and badly designed websites. Some have amazing looking websites but because of their high graphical content and minimal text content can take an age to load, are not user friendly and do not provide what the visitor wants.

    Good Website Design

    Though many aspects of website design differ from site to site, many things remain the same throughout the majority of websites on the internet. Most notably is the navigation or menu.

    The way in which a website’s menu works and looks is very important, as ultimately, visitors to a website are looking for certain criteria that will make them either stay and interact or leave. This ability for a website to keep visitors interested is sometimes referred to as stickiness. Visitors want an attractive visually exciting experience, but perhaps more importantly, they want ‘ease of use’.

    Website usability is a key factor for websites that want their visitors to stick around, make an enquiry and ultimately complete a transaction and order a product or service.

    Easy to Use Web Design

    Internet users tend to prefer easy to use websites, because they do not want to have to learn how to use a website every time they find a new one. They should be able to use a website after only a few seconds of looking around a homepage, any more and they will leave and browse elsewhere.

    The need for fast user interaction is vital and therefore having a fast loading website is also important for a website to succeed. Even with faster internet connections such as broadband, internet users don’t want to wait around.

    Just imagine, if you go to a shop on the high street and are totally ignored by shop assistants at the counter for 5 minutes, even after you have made it clear you want help. There is a correlation here to how an internet user may feel, when they arrive at a website that has been poorly designed, is difficult to use, unfriendly and slow to load.

    Making sure that a website has been well thought out and designed with the user in mind, displays a company’s unique selling points within easily recognisable eye catching calls for action and has a clear, easy to use menu is key to its success.

    Flash Web Design

    With recent web design advancements, such as the introduction of Flash animation and high definition video content, impressive websites have been produced to take advantage of much higher levels of visual effects and interaction. However with this ‘high end’ web design, comes a price, more often than not, web designs which rely heavily upon Flash content are often ridiculously slow to load. They often have a progress bar, which slowly goes across the web browser to signify when the website will finish loading.

    This is much like the progress bars that you may be familiar with if you use video editing or 3D rendering software, or if you use games consoles where they are displayed whilst you wait for games to load.

    Internet users on the whole do not want to wait 3 – 5 minutes for a web page to load even if it does feature high resolution images, animation or video. They want fast informative content rich websites. If they wanted to watch an animation or video they would watch TV.

    Good Flash Web Design

    This is not to say that Flash animation is all bad news and shouldn’t be used in web design. If used subtly and in small amounts it can make a website more visually appealing without slowing the load time down too much. Suitable uses for Flash animation in web design are things such as; Flash banner advertisements, Flash video and interactive Flash forms for online questionnaires or business presentations.

    Using Flash for a whole website design however, is not such a good idea. It slows the user’s experience down because they have to wait for elements of it to load. Also, sites totally developed in Flash tend to use unfamiliar menu structures and features. This can confuse visitors who just want to quickly interact with the website and not be amazed by the way the menu animates.

    Just because you can do these things in Flash, it doesn’t mean they have any real working value in the real world. They may look pretty, but if they are not functional and only irritate the visitor then they have no real value.

    Flash Web Design & SEO

    Another argument against using Flash to create a whole website is that it dramatically reduces the effectiveness of your websites’ Search Engine Optimisation. Flash web designs are made up of one main file within a web page which search engines find difficult to index. This is because the text within them is usually graphical text and therefore is not usually accessible by search engines.

    Some recent developments allow some text to be displayed for search engines in Flash websites, but this is nowhere near as effective as text content within traditional HTML based websites.

    Don’t Write Off Flash in Web Design

    Although Flash does have its limitations it also has its good points if used correctly. For instance; Flash animation is usually smaller in file size than traditional gif animation and because of the way it is made the animation flows smoother than gif animation too.

    Having said this, I would recommend only using Flash in small areas within a site to compliment other imagery that makes up the overall design.

    Finding a balance between minimal graphical elements, imagery, Flash and good quality informative text is the key to a successful user friendly website. This isn’t to say that web design needs be boring. By working with quality web design companies there’s no reason why you couldn’t have a visually exciting, well designed, easy to use and successful website.

    Visually Stimulating Web Design

    When visitors first arrive at a website, they want to be impressed and engaged with what the website has to offer. This will be determined by the ways in which the web designer has laid out the website’s content text, images and features.

    Arranging elements such as imagery, text, graphics, flash and video in such a way as to keep the visitor interested in the website is the key to good web design. If a website has poor design and doesn’t grab the attention of the visitor in the first few seconds, then it may well be dismissed as just another average website. This ultimately means the visitor will go elsewhere to spend their time and, more importantly, money.

    Good Web Design Layout

    A lot of time and money is spent making sure that the right elements of websites are positioned in the right places. Companies spend large amounts of money conducting research into how internet users use their websites.

    This type of research shows where their visitors’ eyes concentrate the most, which elements of the website they click on first and generally how they interact and use their websites.

    Most internet users will look primarily from the top left either across the page, or down the left hand side of the web page through an internet browser via a computer, mobile phone or TV set.

    I would hazard a guess, that they are looking for the company’s name or logo, their main selling points or slogans and then what the website has to offer in terms of what is featured in the menu. After which their eyes are probably drawn across the page content and over to the right hand side. Successful web design usually takes this into consideration and will ultimately affect the way a website looks.

    There are of course rather famous exceptions to this rule for instance one rather well known s
    earch engine has a web design which is quite different. The main focus and core functionality in their web design is located right in the centre of the page. This however, isn’t any ordinary website with tens or even hundreds of pages of products and services to display, its main focus is its recognisable logo and of course its search box. It does however feature a small minimal menu across the top of the web design, which flows from left to right. So even they have taken onboard some of the research undertaken into internet users’ habits.

    If you go looking at websites after reading this article, I can guarantee that most of the web designs you’ll see, will have a left hand menu and a defined header bar with a company logo and slogan across it.

    Find high quality professional web design and search engine optimisation services at the EC-Plus website. Established in 1999, EC-Plus has a strong team of web designers & developers who create successful online brochure & e-commerce websites.

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