Website Design e-Comerse : Ideas for services website design
5 Important Rules in Website Design
When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid
to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose.
Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website
performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a
website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like
"welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just
that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a
reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your
site up front without the splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to
ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real
estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate
links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy
instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward
navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away
from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your
visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you
will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment.
That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any
section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means
"abandon ship"!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site,
reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some
audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make
sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work
fine.
5 Ways to Keep Visitors
Coming Back
A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to
account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to
convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the
more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away.
Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:
1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox
When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are
providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their
peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a
sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your
site almost religiously every day.
2) Start a web log (blog)
Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on
your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are
curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you
post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are
proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.
3) Carry out polls or surveys
Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you
should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for
visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure
to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of
your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.
4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games
Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work
every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting
your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment.
You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people
trying continuously to earn the prize.
5) Update frequently with fresh content
Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every
time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site.
This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning
visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of
webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten
years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!
Generating Revenue with
Good Planning
For anything to work well, care must be taken to make firm, workable plans to execute it and the same goes for website designs. With a well thought out website design, you will be able to create a site that generates multiple streams of revenue for you. In fact, may websites turn into online wasteland because they are not well planned and do not get a single visitor. Gradually, the webmaster will not be motivated to update it anymore and it turns into wasted cyberspace.
The crucial point of planning your site is optimizing it for
revenue if you want to gain any income from the site. Divide your site into
major blocks, ordered by themes, and start building new pages and subsections
in those blocks. For example, you might have a "food" section, an
"accomodation" section and an "entertainment" section for a
tourism site. You can then write and publish relevant articles in the
respective sections to attract a stream of traffic that comes looking for
further information.
When you have a broader, better-defined scope of themes for
your website, you can sell space on your pages to people interested in
advertising on your page. You can also earn from programs like Google's Adsense
and Yahoo! Search Marketing if people surf to those themed pages and click on
the ads. For this very reason, the advertisement blocks on your pages need to
be relevant to the content, so a themed page fits that criteria perfectly.
As Internet becomes more widespread, advertising on the
Internet will bear more results than on magazines or offline media. Hence,
start tapping in on this lucrative stream of profit right away!
Good Design Practices
Your website is where your business resides -- it's like the
headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good
design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of
visitors and sells to as many people as possible.
Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your
website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors
know how to navigate around your website without confusion.
Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your
site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you
think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using
image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.
Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a
paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the
text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that
is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.
Make sure your website complies to web standards at
www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website
looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you
will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.
Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is
absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not
to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the
loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not
supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important
information because of that.
Use CSS to style your page content because they save a lot of
work by styling all elements on your website in one go.
How To Have Websites Built For You The Cheap Way
Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom
build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few hundred
dollars. All this can change if you know where to find the best deals, the best
designs for the lowest price. Here's a rough guide:
First, you must understand that it is a rip off to get
companies to design websites for you. Have you ever seen those advertisements
in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These
companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they
have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent,
designer's wages, advertising costs and so on.
Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who
work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a
high operation cost like that of a company. On the other hand, they will be
able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies,
so it's a "no-brainer" choice.
However, choose freelancers with care. The best way to do
this would be to go to elance.com. There, you can post the abstract of your
project and get thousands of freelancers to bid on your project, so you will surely
get the best deal. On top of that, you will be able to choose the designers
based on their experience, past transactions and ratings, so your value for
money is secured.
Another route you can take is to design your website
yourself. Think about it, if you only need 5 simple pages to present some
simple information, why waste hundreds of dollars for it? Just spend a little
time to sit down and do it yourself. You'll be able to design your own sites
even if you do not know a single line of HTML code with the help of WYSIWYG
(what you see is what you get) programs such as Microsoft Frontpage, Macromedia
Dreamweaver and so on.
The Importance of a
Sitemap
A sitemap is often considered redundant in the process of
building a website, and that is indeed the fact if you made a sitemap for the
sake of having one. By highlighting the importance of having a well constructed
sitemap, you will be able to tailor your own sitemap to suit your own needs.
1) Navigation purposes
A sitemap literally acts as a map of your site. If your
visitors browses your site and gets lost between the thousands of pages on your
site, they can always refer to your sitemap to see where they are, and navigate
through your pages with the utmost ease.
2) Conveying your site's theme
When your visitors load up your sitemap, they will get the
gist of your site within a very short amount of time. There is no need to get
the "big picture" of your site by reading through each page, and by
doing that you will be saving your visitors' time.
3) Site optimization purposes
When you create a sitemap, you are actually creating a single
page which contains links to every single page on your site. Imagine what
happens when search engine robots hit this page -- they will follow the links
on the sitemap and naturally every single page of your site gets indexed by
search engines! It is also for this purpose that a link to the sitemap has to
be placed prominently on the front page of your website.
4) Organization and relevance
A sitemap enables you to have a complete bird's eye view of
your site structure, and whenever you need to add new content or new sections,
you will be able to take the existing hierarchy into consideration just by
glancing at the sitemap. As a result, you will have a perfectly organized site
with everything sorted according to their relevance.
From the above reasons, it is most important to implement a
sitemap for website projects with a considerable size. Through this way, you
will be able to keep your website easily accessible and neatly organized for
everyone.
Improve Usability of
Your Website
No matter how brilliant your website design is, if it is hard
to reach the content of your site then your site is as useful as an empty
shell. Here are some tips to improve the usability of your website to ensure it
serves its functions optimally.
The first method is to make sure the typography of your
content is suitable. If you have large blocks of text, make sure to use CSS to
space out the lines accordingly. The longer a single line of text is, the
greater the line-height of each line should be. Also, make sure the font size
of your text is big enough to read easily. Some sites have 10-pixel-tall text
in Verdana font; while that may look neat and tidy, you have to really strain
your eyes to read the actual text.
Make it easy for visitors to find content that they want on
your site. If you have thousands of articles on your site and a certain visitor
wants to find one single article from that pile, you have to provide a feasible
means to enable visitors to do that without hassle. Be it an SQL-driven
database search engine or just a glossary or index of articles that you have,
providing such a feature will make sure your visitors can use your site with
ease.
Ensure that your site loads fast if you do not want to lose
visitors. Most internet users will leave a website if it doesn't load
completely within 15 seconds, so make sure the crème de la crème of your
website is delivered to the visitors as soon as possible to retain their
attention.
Last of all, test each and every link on your site before it
goes online. There is nothing more effective in tarnishing your professional
image than broken links, so be very careful about that.
Improve Usability of
Your Website
Building Your Mailing List with Downloads
A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The
old adage "the money is in the list" cannot be true enough -- if you
had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product,
you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list
of targeted prospects.
You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that
are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your
website. For example, let's take a look at a very good example -- apple.com.
When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they
will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send
you offers on songs that you can purchase via -- guess where -- iTunes!
In reality, you do not need to offer such a
"heavyweight" download such as a full-feature software like
iTunes. You can attract prospects
equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free
wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough
value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to
get it.
However, slapping together a simple download and putting a
link on your website won't be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will
have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work
well for you.
First of all, you must place your download form prominently
on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from
every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors
cannot find the download page, and when they do, you'll get some of them
converted into your prospects!
Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your
download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your
visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a
freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download
it because most of their downloads just sit on the hard disk collecting virtual
dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your
freebie.
Make It Easy To Buy
From Your Site
Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job,
but have you ever thought that you're making the process twice as difficult for
both parties if your prospects are convinced but don't know how to buy from you?
No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won't buy if they
find the process cumbersome.
First, you will want to check that people can find your order
form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct
your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them
getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a
prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.
Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may
feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit
card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the
better your chances of covering your prospects' desired payment method. After
all, it wouldn't make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that
they won't be able to pay you when they want to.
On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a
credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You
would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee
so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales
support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?
Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your
contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects' confidence.
Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them
on the other end of the Internet.
As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard
and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to
pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!
Mistakes To Avoid When
Using Web Templates
Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot
of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website.
However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a
web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in
mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.
The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a
template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your
website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid,
different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic
just like your next-door neighbours.
To whole point of using a web template is to save time and
effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you're done. The
biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation.
While that may be good in the sense that you're creating a unique graphic,
you're defying the very purpose of using a web template -- saving time and
effort.
However, on the opposite side, if a template you purchase is
suitable but some changes must be made to suit your site's theme, then you will
have to take some time to make the changes. For example, you can find a very
nice template that suits your hobby site except the original designer has put
an image of stamps in the header. You can find images of garden plants and
spades to replace the stamps for your gardening hobby site. However, do only
make the necessary changes and don't redesign the whole template.
In some circumstances, some people simply make the wrong
choice of templates. This is a very subjective issue but you have to be careful
in selecting templates to suit your audience. Do not choose templates just
because they are pretty, choose them because they serve your purpose.
Pros and Cons of
Flash-based Sites
Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years,
and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only
predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However,
Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where
exactly do we draw the line? Here's a simple breakdown.
The good:
Interactivity
Flash's Action script opens up a vast field of possibilities.
Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactive features
ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This
whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for
more.
A standardized site
With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser
compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in
Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in
Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player
installed.
Better expression through animation
In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to
convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a
lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller
file sizes) as opposed to real "movie files" that are raster based
and hence much larger in size.
The bad and the ugly:
The Flash player
People have to download the Flash player in advance before
they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease
considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player
just to view your site. You'll also have to put in additional work in
redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn't have the player
installed.
Site optimization
If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines
wouldn't be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank
well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.
Loading time
Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content
compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their
patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the
more you risk losing visitors.
The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely
need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture
of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple
textual and graphical information.
Reducing Load Time
Through Image Optimization
Even though more and more Internet users switch to broadband
every year, a large portion of the web's population is still running on good
old dialup connections. It is therefore unwise to count them out of the
equation when you're designing your website, and a very major consideration we
have to make for dialup users is the loading time of your website.
Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a
very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites
is mainly large images on your website, and it is very important to strike a
delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not
to bog down the overall loading time of your site.
You should also go to a greater length and optimize every
image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I
really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information
on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image
without affecting its appearance.
If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you
save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the
"quality" of the JPEG image -- normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good
enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small
file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors
online that you can download and use to reduce your image's file size.
On the other hand, you can opt to save your images in PNG
format to get the best quality at the least file size. You can also save your
images in GIF format -- the image editing software clips away all the color
information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size
possible. However, saving in GIF format will often compromise the appearance of
your image, so make your choice wisely!
Search Engine Friendly
Pages
There is no point in building a website unless there are
visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is
search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by
designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in
search engines and obtain more visitors.
Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots
to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a
page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database,
pulling up the listing as people search for it.
If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should
avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine
robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames
make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without
using long, complicated scripts.
Do not present important information in Flash movies or in
images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you
present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form,
your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.
Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site
so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is
about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the
search engine robot's job easier so they will crawl and index your site more
frequently.
Stop using wrong HTML tags like <font> to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.
The Importance of A
Good Design
Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the
virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically
or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically
like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. Hence, people
do judge you by your covers. This is where a good design comes in.
Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you
allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are
dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are
telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply
because first impressions matter.
Similarly, the same case is with your website. If your
website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute "quick
fix", you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not
professional and you do not care for quality.
On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking
website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given
meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You
are organized, focused and you really mean business.
On the other hand, you should also have anything related to
your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional
brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business,
these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the
"salesperson dressed shabbily" analogy, and you will get my point.
Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website
Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood
of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales.
However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales
without the need to get more visitors.
The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your
sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people
will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your
audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart,
they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual
in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.
The second method is to publish testimonials and comments
from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad
comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials
are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the
confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when
others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and
buy too.
Use visual representations for the problems and solutions
that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head
to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.
Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you
offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a
very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary
value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your
good bargain.
Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects
with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has
solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the
sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the
button to buy now!").
Web Design Elements You
Should Avoid Having on Your Site
As a web designer, you should design your websites to give
your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important
of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest
product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able
to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by
the lousy design.
When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not
only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be
able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good
website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user
experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic
design.
Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web
designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against
your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria,
you should know it's high time to take serious action!
1) Background music
Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or
anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting
looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at
first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a
visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts
playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave
your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your
site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your
site as it is meant to be viewed.
2) Extra large/small text size
As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics
-- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on
your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it
without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or
your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!
3) Popup windows
Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements
that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just
close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup
blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on
my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it
in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's
screen. Your website loses its function immediately!
In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a
webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do
effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning
optimally!
If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it
is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. Here
are some points to consider:
Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If
you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a
redesign. Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure
whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design
might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that
function if you do a redesign.
On the other hand, if your website has had the same website
design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. The last thing you
would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without
taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. If this
is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign.
Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery
on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and
your regular visitors might not recognize your new design at first glance. You
risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page.
Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your
old layout. Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text
style for the title for your site.
To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors
do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh
look, give it to them!
Who Is Your Audience?
Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.
What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your
audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a
professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a
regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well
educated university graduate will find that site interesting.
Take your audience's emotional state into consideration when
building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes
across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up
front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor
will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more
likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.
When you design the layout for your site, you have to take
into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young
people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information
served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting
game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page
will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site's
general theme.
Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.
Why Hire A Designer?
A lot of online business owners start with no money. They
have to do everything themselves -- the preparation of a product, the
development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater
to their product's marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they
will find that their simple "homemade" site might not be enough to
cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply
dedicate that to the website expansion.
Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started
everything with no money too, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to
giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done
yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing
up a job that you don't want to do.
When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are
doing more than just handing over the "dirty job" to someone else. In
fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little
annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when
you're halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have
more time to spend on your actual business strategy.
On the other hand, the designers you hire are professionals
so they are good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them,
you won't have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them
to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it
faster than you probably will be able to.
Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional
than what you can achieve because the designers have been doing it longer than
you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!
So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your
business too!
Why You Should Use Graphic Templates
When it comes to graphics, most Internet marketers shy away
from using graphic templates whether it's eBook covers, website layouts or
promotional banners because they firmly believe that by using graphic
templates, they are tarnishing their own business. They want to own a unique
identity and hence will always find a professional graphic designer to do the
job. Well, you're in for a big surprise!
When you purchase a graphic template, you will be able to
customize it to an extent or even build a totally new design based on it!
What's the point of using the template then, you say? Well, it serves as a
source of inspiration and ideas for a totally new design. You can't derive
anything from a blank canvas, right?
On top of that, you are actually saving a lot of precious
time that you can otherwise spend on more important matters like developing new
products or market your products. When you buy a pre-made template, you only
need to edit a thing or two to give it an identity of your own, and that gives
you more time and flexibility to work on other stuff.
Okay, let's say you argue that hiring a designer to do the
job is equally fast. That may be true but don't forget, hiring a professional
designer to do a custom design for you will cost you a lot of money. Unless you
need a totally unique identity that you are aiming to establish firmly in your
niche market, you don't need to get a designer to design it for you.
Not all graphic templates are suitable, so you have to be careful when choosing one. Consider quality over the price, and you're on your way to creating a positive image for your business while saving more time for more productive chores!
Is It Easy to Create our own Website? What is HTML?
Creating a website is not so much a feat, if we compare it to
the education of other technical skills. Most people tend to give up and pack
their bags as soon as they hear the word “programming” and “technical”. They
think it`s too much of a hassle to actually learn a whole computer “language”.
HTML, the most basic computer language in building websites, is actually pretty
simple to understand, as long as we have the interest in learning new things.
What is HTML?
HTML is the acronym for Hyper Text Markup Language. For learning purposes, just think of it as a language that the computer understands. For example, as humans, we were taught different languages; i.e. HTML as a language, is mostly and specifically used to create a website. The web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, will then decipher and interpret the code or rather, language(HTML), and display it in a way we can understand it, just like in a basic webpage.
Coding
Coding the HTML language might be a bit tough for some
people, so we can actually purchase programmes, such as Macromedia Dreamweaver,
or even Microsoft Frontpage. These programmes are solely created to help
individuals in designing professional webpages/websites.
Furthermore, one could also gain access to online
web-builders, website builders that are inbuilt and can be directly controlled
from the net. There are many different and specific builders online.
Books and magazines contain guides that can help in offering
tutorials and ways to put up our own websites. Even online tutorials are
credible, as in the modern world, information technology is the best and most
cost efficient way in retaining knowledge, especially in this particular field.
So, you could start and build one right away. If you enjoy
coding, it might even become a favourable past-time.
People always want to follow the latest thing, be it in
fashion, sports, that kind of thing. Websites have become a necessity to almost
everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even young adults have created
personal websites with their respective purposes, be it for profit, or for
entertainment.
What one must consider, however, before creating a website,
are the factors in which must be put to thought before doing so, such as the
cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.
Firstly, associating with the cost, we must always try to
find an affordable host, not spending too much, nor too little. A cheap host
does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always
look for value for money deals. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web
host reliability, there are many cases of web hosts not providing the service
they had assured other people, some had even shut down and were nowhere to be
seen. Keep this note in mind, as if you would like a long-lasting website, this
would be the first thing to look for.
Next, would hiring a professional be affordable? Is it the
best option? For simple websites, we could always pick up the coding, or even
use programs, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more
complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing
information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms
of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If
the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be
the issue here.
So, having considered the things to do before building a
website, do we actually NEED one? If creating one would boost sales or promote
positive implications to oneself, then by all means, go ahead and do what’s
best. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.
The Key to Better
Websites
[A] Navigation
Introduction
Importance of the latter :
One of the primary implications of a well-organized / good
website, is to keep your visitors in the website. A website is definitely
created for a purpose, unless intended for personal use, which is the minority.
For example, a portfolio website would want to be visited and it’s content
viewed. For companies and internet businesses, your website certainly aims to
provide product information, to make sales, or somewhat similar. However, most
individuals undoubtly prefer visually captivating designs, so on and so forth.
It is undeniable that this causes no harm, but one must put himself/herself in
other people’s shoes, as to understand how a visitor to the website might think,
do and react.
1 ) Navigation
As I said, a web designer has to learn how to think the way
your visitors think.
Situation
A : Website with good navigation ( 2-3 hyperlinks to target page ), well
planned in terms of placement, and
design.
Situation
B : Website with poor navigation ( takes forever for the visitor to reach
his/her target page ), hard-to-read navigation fonts and poor placement of the
navigation buttons/bar.
In Situation A, a visitor will always
want to be able to access his/her target page. For example, the individual
comes across your website, and is interested in the product sold, but wants to
find more information. He/she finds the navigation with no trouble, and enters
the particular product information page.
As for Situation B, a visitor
stumbles into the website, and would also like to find out more information
about the product. Unfortunately, due to bad placement and fanciful font-types,
the visitor takes forever, or even fails to find the navigation bar. Even when
he/she does so, links to the product information are nowhere to be found,
(example : home > about > products > product image > etc…[a few
more clicks] > product information ).
Analysis : In both situations,
wouldn’t a website with characteristics similar to the Situation A be more
rewarding ergo better?
The Key to Better
Websites
[ Part B ] Design
Introduction
Importance of the latter :
Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design
into perspective, imagine a when we are purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all,
what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well most people do,
other than the material factor. But let’s assume the all other factors are
constant, wouldn’t the design or looks, become the key aspect then?
2 ) Design
Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here
are another two situations.
Situation
A : A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes
with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper
fonts and word sizes.
Situation
B : A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of
resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background)
Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)
Situation A, visitors that enter the
website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures
and designs will somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the
company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression.
As for Situation B, the shabby environment
due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help
in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone
comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly
welcoming, is it?
Analysis: Now, the main idea here is
to always plan your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and
perspectives. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for
improvement. Don’t get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would
generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least
maintain an impressionable website.
Website Customization:
What can we do?
Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when
they do not look entirely presentable. This would also be the case in web
designing.
Every individual would definitely want their website to look
good, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few things we could look out for
when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.
Color Schemes and Themes.
When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of
a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and
designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the
design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as
purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the
website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look
more professional.
Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization
/ etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to
stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme,
such as machinery.
Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the
website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional
cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and
fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.
Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the
way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too
large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s
needs.
So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.
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