A couple of important lessons in web design
Published November 10, 2009 | 
- Despite not being exactly relevant to the idea of web design, the first and foremost tip proves to be far more significant than design itself in the long run. While many try to learn the tricks of web design they tend to think that it will help them to convert useless set of pages into pretty entities, since most are misled into thinking that style instead of content forms the core of the business. However, they all must spare a minute to contemplate and realize the fact that basically the existence of a web page is only to provide the users or the visitors with something that is useful or attention grabbing. But then, if a page fails to accomplish this task, then it becomes far more important to get that problem right instead of worrying about the style of presenting it. Hence at the very onset, one must actually try to address questions such as what is being actually offered to a visitor to the site or is it really worth anyone’s time to pay a visit to a particular site. Until and unless they are cleared there is hardly any point in progressing or planning about the look or appearance of the web site.
- Avoiding any kind of sleazy elements has to be the next important lesson in the course of web designing. One has to admit that most of the web users across the globe find features like animation and the so called creative use of sounds to be extremely disturbing. Most tend to complain or grumble about the fact that it is next to impossible to focus on reading the content given on a particular web site when there are numerous other elements moving all around the web page. According to these annoyed users, the whole thing is ridiculously like trying to go through a newspaper peacefully while a menace is continuously poking on the shoulder again and again. Moreover, the visitors who are using slower connections often dislike the idea of simply wasting time by loading animations and sound files which are of absolutely no use. Although one may tend to think that people will get attracted to an animated advertisement, but in fact it is just the reverse. Readers feeling battered by these ads are most likely to go away from the site right away without any clicks or anything, and are even far less expected to do any kind of bookmarking on the site with any intention of returning or even recommending it to others. Thus studies often reveal that an animated banner ad can even be less effective than a stationary ad on a web page.
Ten ways to promote your website
Published October 21, 2009 | Most people mistake website promotion as only the act of registering with a search engine. What most people do is that they go and register their site with engines like yahoo, Google, etc. they think this is sufficient for the website to gain popularity and publicity. However, this is far from being the truth. Websites require as much effort after the launch as it requires during the designing phase. You have to let people know about your website and highlight its unique points. This can be done in a number of ways. We shall tell you a few.
• Register your website with a search engine. This is the first and basic step for any new web design. And this is a must. Your website should feature among the top few searches when people try to look for relevant content on the search engines. This will give your website the required boost. Also make sure your website contains all relevant keywords with which people usually tend to search the required topic. However, this is not the sole step to website building.
• Also register yourself with some web directory like yahoo. These are less popular than search engines but will also help you immensely.
• Get linked to some well established website on the net. This is another way to promote your product. Search engines like Google tend to give extra favors to sites that are linked with some already existing popular site.
• Create a unique email signature for yourself. Mail people to make them know more about your site. But mail only those who have searched for your site and visited it at least once. Do not go on a mailing spree. People will never visit your website if you do that!
• Be a member of newsgroups. Yahoo has many newsgroups. So do many other websites. It is another good way of being in contact with a lot of people. It also makes a lot of people aware about your website and its day to day updates.
• Create offline techniques of promotion as well. Do not confine yourself to online activity. Do promotional campaigns for your creation. Try to advertise in newspapers and magazines.
• You may also consider joining web rings, partnerships or affiliations.
• You may also opt for banner advertising if you feel that web rings are not your cup of tea.
• Your achievements will also count when it comes to the popularity of your website. If your website is genuinely of good quality, it is sure to win some accolade. This will definitely work in your favor. So put in all the effort that you can in making your website a well designed one. It will surely bring you a lot of followers.
• Make your website as easy to navigate as possible. This always works as users long for easy looking websites. Make the information easily accessible.
Fundamentals Of Web Designing
Published September 14, 2009 | Web design is preparation of few basic grounds, and if you recognize those you can make impressive page design which will illuminate your readers.
Web designing Tips
The tips given below will be helpful to you for creating great web designs which will work with your readers.
- Make use of small images such as 10-15 kb/ image, obviously it is dependent of the source, but pages that loads slowly are actually very annoying and large images are a basic cause of slow page load. It is very simple to optimize your image.
- Every time apply graphics which fit the contents. Even though you are having an adorable snap of your dog, do not apply it on your website if it is not related and appropriate for the site theme.
- Follow standard layouts. The layout of 3 columns is very popular on websites and newspapers as it works great. You could feel it is boring, however, you will be keeping more readers when you go with something simple that they could understand.
- white space is a function of your layout. So it should be more than the CSS property.
Fonts To Use –
- Ms Serif for headlines and Ms Sans-serif for text – Serif fonts are the most readable fonts on computer screens as the resolution of screen is not much high like prints. If you type normal text in serif fonts, it blurs together on screen and make it hard for reading.
- Reduce the number of several fonts. There are only 2 to 3 standard font families that are easy to read and looks more professional.
- Choose Standard font families – Take “Rockwood LT” as an example. You can use this font your web page, but possibly one of your readers will be having that font and is much low too. Going with standard fonts such as- Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, Verdana may appear boring, however your web pages will look superior and your designs will look appropriate for several number of browsers.
Consier Your Readers –
- Take a trial of your web pages with different browsers.
- Write the contents according to users requirement. Unless you write the web site only for yourself, ensure that your contents should involve topics which your readers desire to read.