Graphics For Web : : : : :

What Are The Basics Of Web Design?

2011-09-12T19:44:00.000-07:00

eb design uses almost all those elements as used in print design. One requires exploring layout and space, manage colours and fonts, and arrange it all together in a format in order to put all the intended messages across. Those resources will enable one know details of web design even if one is a professional web developer or just on one’s beginning stage leading to the web arena. Understanding of Designing Elements: One must know that a good web design is equivalent to the good design. If anyone has the right understanding about the elements that appropriately suits with a good design, then one will undoubtedly have a Web page that works well. One applies those elements of good design if and when one is producing a web page, a business card, or a raiment logo, and once one makes out them and their necessities and differences, one will acquire the skills and expertise that requires for becoming a great web designer. Use of Colours: Colour is present everywhere. With it we make our world up and help ourselves see things from different angles. In short, it is what as we see the things around us and as we dress up our world. The ‘red’ or the ‘black’ is not mere colour; they have meaning beyond their apparent looks. And they have larger important effects on design elements. The pools of colours show influences in their varieties as how they could be used effectively in web designing services. Application of Web design software: "What You See Is What You Get" [WYSIWYG] editor is a popular preference among most of the web designers. It has become popular because this editor provides a visual interface to the design effects. At the same time, it should be remembered there are more opportunities and resources than they meet the eyes. Only web editor could not have brought about such a revolution unless there have been other designing tools. Fundamentals of Web Layouts: Layout comes at the very onset of web designing services. It is the proper arrangement of elements on web pages. It is very necessary to begin with basic design rules. If and when one understands them, one can proceed across how to place elements on one’s web pages. Usefulness of Images & Graphics: If one wants to apply and bring about an environment of fun and frolic, the graphics and their use will be best considered. The effects of graphics are so long extensive that it reminds us of the proverb "a picture is worth one thousand words". This proverb is also applicable to the web designing service and their uses of images and graphics. Usefulness of Navigation Interfaces: When a website is live on the internet, there are all chances that visitors may come to the web pages of the website. On visiting the website, visitors may want to know what the purpose of the website is. And for this reason, they may go to one page to another. This is called navigation. There should be all browser compatible navigation interfaces, where from the visitors can move through one page to another and see the objectives of the website as a whole and at the same time see the image and graphic application. The purpose of a website design is well fulfilled only if the website is professionally designed and in this case professional web designing tops the list of priorities. Only a professionally designed website can bring in desired business and return on investment on a quicker pace.About The AuthorThe author has long been in the field of website designing. His experience and expertise are really worth following.The author invites you to visit:http://www.chromewebsolutions.comhttp://www.articlecity.com

Website Redesign Keeps The Customer Interested

2009-04-09T05:32:00.000-07:00

The reason many businesses are reticent about redesigning their websites is due to a fear of losing their identity, or rather, becoming unrecognisable to their existing customers. The truth is that those who do update their site’s image and functionality to fit with the times enjoy more customers than those that are averse to change. After all, when Madonna changes her hair color we still know it’s her, right? And doing so doesn’t damage or lessen her popularity, it actually boosts it.

It’s the same with a business website. At http://wrwebdesign.com WR Web Design the premise is that a change is much more than a rest. It’s a means to boost business and keep existing customers and new ones interested. If you consider a radical redesign for your business website you can send out pre-change notifications that let the world know you are going to be presenting a new face very soon.

Your business website is one of the most impacting tools you have in your power. And it pays dividends to have it sharpened from time to time. It’s still the same tool, it still works for your business, but after website redesign it does the job far more effectively and looks better too.

The Internet is a fast moving environment, so while you might refurbish a brick and mortar store once every five years or so, you might think about making changes to your business website more frequently. The beauty of having a home on the web for your business is that the whole thing is evolutionary; you make small changes on a regular basis to suit the needs of your customers as you learn about them. More revolutionary adaptations to your site would be wider spaced. Website redesign ensures that your site matches up to the expectations of online users. And they are a discerning lot. They’ll quickly bounce out of your site by hitting the back button if it doesn’t do what they want when they want it to. Speed, functionality and ease of navigation are vital. Alongside cutting edge design and quality content these factors can really influence how successful your business is online.

by: Wr Web Design
About The Author
Will R.
Leader and expert in http://wrwebdesign.com Website Redesign strategies and solutions.

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Web Design Companies What You Should Know About Them

2009-04-01T20:05:00.001-07:00

Also portrayals or flashes or other realistic desktops with acceptable angle should impress the watchers to go through the website. Then only the intention of the website implies. To boost all the essentials in the web we need suitable and master web design companies to make web design. After choosing a company we can place order to design a web with choice.

If we are satisfied with them we can go for having it, another for newer version by imposing all out thoughts in detail. Now many web designing companies are employing web for a limited period with contract. What ever may the web designing company, service with good quality is very essential. We may have web already and find not suitable to the present condition, mandatorily we have to redesign the web. The web designing companions are also offering web redesigning works which matches to the current needs of the company.. Early we cannot change the design of the web and now we can modify web through redesigning with the help of programmers developed in computer world.

Many companies are ordering graphic designs, flashes, and template giving life lively atmosphere on the web. Other objects and detailed histories are decorated in the suffixing pages so that every viewer can browse the required sites easily. Now web designing companies are offering free websites in trial version in the required data so as to retain the same or redesign the web or even to deny the services. In the modern days each and everyone is busy with some business and can spare little time over the visit to a factory or concern to study the merits and demerits of the products or other which they want to analyze and go for purchase.

About The Author
John Davis is a respected design writer that writes for various design websites. He also runs an informational design website that provides millions of design links and articles. To get more information goto NutechDesigns

http://nutechdesigns.com
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Picking Colors For Your Website

2008-12-07T20:38:00.000-08:00

Color is a very important aspect of design and website in general. Picking the wrong colors may repel your costumers in subconscious level and make your website and business look amateurish and unreliable. Many things have been said about colors and what they represent. In this article I will explain some basic rules in choosing website color.

Colors are connected to certain associations, this is something to keep in mind. Red is a color associated with danger and it is very intensive, therefore you shouldn't make it the dominant color if you want to create calm, reliable atmosphere. Pink is a very feminine color so you better use it in websites related to children and women. Blue is the most popular color when it comes to website design because it represents calmness and reliability. White is the most popular color for a background, although many websites use black and dark backgrounds.

The problem with black color is its intensiveness and that it is sometimes represents darkness and evil. Combination of black background with very bright colors may result in very unbalanced ,really bad looking website. Although, there are some cases when designer can create quite a good looking website despite the demand for black background. If you considering making your website black I suggest you take a very good designer because black emphasize all the other objects of the website, specially if they are bright.

Combining colors in your website can be a hard task. There are number of free websites which may help you matching website colors, like http://www.colormatch.dk/ . I suggest you don't use more than three or four colors in your website so it won't look amateurish. If you want to add a picture to the header , select the website colors from the picture

Be reasonable in color choosing. If you own a beauty shop , don't color your website gray or black. If you have a law firm, don't make a pink or orange website.

Be aware that some people are color blind , and some people have vision problems so make sure to have enough contrast between the text and the background so everyone will be able to distinguish between them.

Caution , Copyright! Finding beautiful images is very easy today, all you have to do is enter Google Image or one of the large image banks. Unfortunately for the website owners, most of the pictures are copyright protected, and using them can cause you thousands of dollars. You may think , since your website is small and relatively anonymous no one will find out. You should not count on it , today, technology allows finding content on the net very easily, so I suggest you don't take risks, pay for your pictures or use the pictures from your Website Building Provider.

About The Author
Gally Reznor is a web developer and marketing manager at http://Site123.com. She has a large experience in planning and creating e-commerce and other business websites

by: Gally Reznor
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Build Web Page Which Is Effective

2008-11-26T18:32:00.000-08:00

There are a few critical places in building a web page (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) where you must make the right decision, or you'll have to repeat this task again and again until you get it right. The better you grasp these essential points, the better your web page will work and the happier camper you'll be.

As a website builder, make sure you know what the project can do for you. If you are the owner of a business, you want to maximize your business opportunities. But if you are an employee who just has to get the job done, you may want to stick to something basic that will please the boss and not cause any headaches. And if your a volunteer, you may want to use this as a chance to increase your skills and do a good deed.

Make sure the needs of the business or organization are met when you build web page (http://www.buildyoursite.com/). Develop a brand identity and help potential clients and customers to find out who you are and what you do. An online brochure is a good way to start.

You're trying to enhance your brand or organization image. But this is very legitimate for some kinds of companies, especially local businesses or organizations that aren't trying to conduct national or international commerce. You want people to know who you are, what you do, where to find you, and how to contact you.

A good strategy is to provide product information that will improve local sales of your goods and services. Car sites are a good example. Car companies don't often sell their cars through the internet, but they guide people to local dealers. You can also sell advertising, but right now, there is more space than ads to fill it.

Though the industry is improving, internet advertising is rather under-priced. Sites that are portals for many other sites may be able to sell some advertising space, but this should not be a counted on form of revenue. Instead, view the revenue from advertisement space sales as a bonus.

Construct a web page and become an Internet direct seller of products or services. You want to engage in e-commerce and sell to a domestic or worldwide market. You will have a system for ordering one or more products, or maybe you will feature an in-depth online catalog. Your online service may offer delivery over the Internet, or it may be initiated online.

Build web page (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) and earn affiliate commissions for sales and leads generated through links on your web page. Savvy marketers are building micro sites designed to generate search engine traffic for a particular hot product or service. When a visitor clicks on one of their links, he is referred to an e-commerce site, and, if a sale results, the affiliate gets a commission. Perhaps a form on your site generates leads or subscriptions for another company. .

About The Author
Tem Balanco

Anyone who wants to successfully and fruitfully build web page (http://www.buildyoursite.com/)s must first consider the requirements of the enterprise involved, and focus upon those above all. You need to market your brand name. Develop an online booklet that informs would-be customers and associates about your firm and presents it in the most impressive way possible. There are a few critical times when you are building a web page (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) where you have to make the right decision the first time, or risk performing it over repeatedly. Once you remember these essential points, the better your web page will work and the happier you will be.

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Advantages of a Custom Website versus using a Website Builder Tool

2008-11-26T00:59:00.001-08:00

Advantages of a custom website versus using a Website Builder Tool

The internet has revolutionized business all around the globe. Almost every competent new or existing business wishes to exploit the incredible potential of the internet, and the first step is to have a web site designed done and maintained by a professional web site design service or build and maintain it yourself. One of the first things to consider is your computer ability. If you despise computers and software and find them confusing and frustrating then building your own website can be quite a task. One that you may not want to undertake. However, if you enjoy working with computers and learning new things or if you just have the patience to stick with it, then building a website is within your grasp. You may also decide to do it yourself to save cost. If you still feel that you want to build your own site you should choose software that is easy to use and user friendly.

Your website should be as unique as you and your business. You should select the website that is specialized in what will meet all your needs, both now and in the future. Custom based websites are for those who already have a website but are looking for those special finishing touches that quality custom graphics can provide. Designer graphics can make your website stand out above the rest and a custom website specializes in taking your original graphic or photo and turning it into a unique work of art. Quality graphics make an incredible difference in the visual appeal of your website.

Actual site "content" continues to be essential to the success of a website. More often than not though, visual appeal is the determining factor as to whether or not a client or customer will remain on a website long enough, to actually see the product or service the business is providing. Custom websites are for those who don’t have the time to design or create, but want to get things mush better and fast with a nice graphics.

Web site builders are online tools which anyone can use to build a professional looking Web site without programming and have it hosted instantly. No software to buy, no code to learn, all you need is to be a little Internet savvy and know how to click your mouse.

Most business owners today know that having a web site is an essential component of marketing. In the past, the choices were to hire a professional web designer, hire a local teenager to create a site for mall money, or learn to do it yourself. The last two options, are the least expensive, and were the preferred method for small businesses. The results are often not what businesses need to grow, reach, and impress new potential customers, however. They seem good at the start but quickly become limiting.

If you operate or manage a business, you surely must realize the increase in e-commerce taking place today. Many businesses find themselves searching for the best way to increase their exposure on the internet, and for most a website is the first course of action. As most businesses operate on firm budgets, finding cost effective solutions are usually one of the first thoughts when looking to make new purchases. When it comes to creating a website there are many affordable software programs that can produce professional results. Business software should be capable of handling your needs today and in the future. Business are always changing, adding new products, changing or removing old products, offering specials, having sales, etc. By choosing a business website builder over a professional web designer you will be able to make changes to your website whenever you want to. Another benefit is that you will be avoiding the high costs associated with developing the website and costs for making any necessary changes.

Website Builder tools advantages to you are increased revenue, cost control, caters to the large demand existing for web designing in the SME sector and can increase the client base without adding to your overhead. The advantage that your customers gets is a professional quality website, up and running in minutes and a User friendly and easily customizable interfaces that gives a complete website with all its frills and features and a nice attractive design. The downside is that you are limited to the look and functions of the tool and the templates or designs they provide.

On of the advantage of a custom website design is that the web site will look and function exactly as you want. A custom made web site can promote your brand and increase sales. The functionality and design of your website is important, because the images and text on the screen can make an indifferent visitor turn into a keen client, and the goal is to optimize your site to evolve maximum traffic conversion.

As more and more people are starting their own small home business many are finding that having a website is an important factor to consider. When one starts to consider building a website, especially the novice, many questions arise including…. can I create a website myself or should I hire a professional?

Hiring a professional is a great way to go if you can afford it. Although there are several things to keep in mind: how much will it cost? How much will ongoing maintenance cost? What will changes cost? How long will changes take? etc. As a result, many people opt to build their own website and begin searching for software that can easily help them.

As you start searching for an easy web site builder, there are some factors that you should take into consideration so that your new software will serve you now and the future.

There is quite a variety of easy web site building software and content management(CMS) based websites on the market today. In addition, some of the software available today is very expensive, geared more for the professional web designer, and come with a huge learning curve.

The options for small businesses to get a site developed have changed from the past. There are now sophisticated "site builder" tools available to small business owners, bundled with many web hosting packages. By using templates, and a content management system to manage updates to the site, it became easier to set up and maintain a web site, and many development companies have canned this functionality, for a fee. Hosting providers are increasingly offering tools to automate the web site building process, and with good reason. This new option has many benefits, as long as the business owner recognizes that there are trade offs and limitations to getting a web site this way. Some of the downsides are…the design is limited to their predefined templates. The functionality is limited to the tool. Also, in most website builder tools it is hard to perform search engine optimization, which is essential for a site to be found in the major search engines.

One of the biggest attractions for site building tools is the cost. It won't necessarily cost less to get your site this way, but it does provide a way to spread the cost over time. The cost for a custom website varies as per the feature and function it carries with itself.

Many people are concerned with building their own website, fearing boring designs and complexity. However, it is now becoming apparent that there are many custom web site builder software products on the market that promise dynamic layouts, professional templates, and user friendly web design tools. The professional web designers know there are a few more things to know, but sometimes they find some irony in the fact that web developers, in their quest to improve and better the web, have made themselves "optional". Most site building tools today are very robust, making it simple to add forms, searching, maps, guest books, calendars, and a whole variety of elements to a web site. Even better, the hosting company sometimes offers an entire suite of services - the site builder, email marketing, search engine optimization and statistics, all in one package along with the hosting.

There is also a possibility that the service will require you to keep some branding on the site telling people that you used their website designs and tools. This is more common with the free site builders - which pay for themselves by putting ads on your site. If your goal is to build a business web site, it's really not worth sacrificing your professional image by getting something free, which screams CHEAP.

Low quality websites sometimes attempt to sell expensive products or services. These websites cannot succeed. Studies reveals people spend more time on a well designed web page than on a low quality web page. There is a comparative relationship between the amount of time that an average visitor will spend on a web page and the amount of time that was spent building the web page.

Websites are an important aspect of online businesses. They are the first face of interaction between the user and the business. The website creates the first impression on the user and hence needs to be effective and impressive too. It is the job of web design services to make the website user friendly and search engine friendly too, so that it can serve the purpose of both effectively.

A tool can make things happen - but if you don't know what to make happen, it is either a useless tool or a dangerous one. There is a learning curve in knowing how to present information online (called information architecture in the profession), as well as for using the site builder. In other word, the fuller featured the tool; the more there is to learn. If you aren't familiar with color theory, use of typography, information architecture, navigation and interface design, and page layout and design, you can potentially make something that will hurt your business more than help it. So, unless you are already computer and web savvy, figuring out all the features within your web hosting and site builder package can be time consuming and frustrating.

In the end there are ways that a business can take advantage of these new options and still create a functional and professional web site. One way is simply take your time and research the available website templates, and find the one that has the most features and flexibility, that meet your functional requirements. In other words, spend the time to learn the things a seasoned pro would bring to the table. The internet is a massive library of "how to" information, where you can literally teach yourself anything - and with enough time spent, you could potentially learn how to layout information, what colors and fonts work well together, how to conduct your marketing online and optimize the site for search engines. The second is choosing the best suitable custom website design company and work with them to build a professional website that meets your needs get your imaginations carried and make business a greta success.

About HostChart.com

HostChart, a Web Hosting Company Resource, is a leading web hosting directory website that has been in business for over 5 years. They provide numerous web hosting articles and tutorials as well as news, interviews, and reviews. You can use their extensive set of tools to research and evaluate your current or future web hosts. HostChart is a Property of Advantage1 Web Services, which also operates ResellerConnection.com, a a href="Reseller" class="hft-urls">http://www.resellerconnection.com">Reseller Web Hosting Resource, HostingKnowledge.net, and FoundHost.com, a a href="Budget" class="hft-urls">http://www.foundhost.com">Budget Hosting Resource.

About The Author
Rodney Ringler is President of Advantage1 Web Services, Inc., which owns a network of Web Hosting Informational Websites including HostChart.com, ResellerConnection.com, FoundHost.com, ResellerForums.com, and HostingKnowledge.net. Rodney has over 15 years industry experience from programming to internet marketing.

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Design Your Own Website- It Is Simple

2008-11-20T18:35:00.000-08:00

Before you embark upon the process involved when you design your own website, you must select and register a domain name. That is your site's brand name and contact name. In order to be given a domain name of your very own, you must make a yearly payment to the appropriate registering entity to obtain the exclusive right to it.

Obtaining a domain name doesn't mean you have a web site or anything close. All you have is a name. It is similar to getting yourself set up with a name for your business is the "real" world - just obtaining exclusive rights to a name doesn't mean you are totally in business. You just have a name.

A web host commonly implements numerous computers that are all linked to the Internet to allow a very large number of web pages to be broadcast all over the world. The first step in making your new web page visible is to use a reputable web host that will give your personalized website a virtual home.

Thinking of a domain name is very much like thinking of a name for your company in the physical world. Similarly, a web hosting account is the equivalent of renting an office for your company. After you have come up with a domain name and signed on with a web host, you will then need to design your own website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/) to attract visitors.

As a beginning web designer, you first need to design your own website in a attractive, and appealing manner. After you have got your basic web page posted you will be able to make any adjustments that you feel are needed. There are free web editors and commercial versions that are widely available.

When you choose to use free software, you can also learn more from a complete tutorial on the web. The step-by-step tutorial will guide you in the process of making your own web page, site map, and comment forms. It will also give you tips on the basic aspects of the software so you can continue to update and improve the site in the future.

A crucial aspect of web development is optimizing your site for search engines. This should be undertaken from the very start of the design process. In addition, there are a number of other concerns involved in developing web pages.

About The Author
Tem Balanco

The first thing you need to do to design your own website (http://www.buildyoursite.com/), before anything else is to get yourself a domain name. A domain name is the name you want to give to your website. Companies that provide web hosting are essentially outfits with banks of computers hooked up to the Internet. Once they put your web resources on their systems, the entire world will be able to connect and view your site. The Internet is a valuable resource for obtaining educational tutorials pertaining to the use of free software. There are many considerations that must be taken into account when you are planning and designing web pages.
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Writing Articles With Style - Create Quality Articles With CSS

2008-11-18T02:38:00.000-08:00

Writing your quality articles using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) will insure that your articles will be both easy to read and aesthetically pleasing to the viewer.

A CSS style sheet allows the HTML code for your articles to be cleaner, table-less, easily customizable, and "liquid."

Removing the display attributes of your articles from the HTML code allows you to concentrate on using the HTML for organizing your document's content.

When you use CSS, a new approach is possible to writing your articles for the Web:

* First, you write your article in a very basic HTML document, using simple HTML code. At this stage, use only the most common HTML tags. Focus on organizing your article's content first.

* Next, you identify parts of your document for special display formatting.

* Finally, you define the formatting in the CSS file.

Once you work through this process, you can reuse both the HTML document and the CSS file as templates for your future, quality articles.

This article will provide the tips, tricks, and sample code to give you a head start in creating your own quality articles and templates using CSS. If this all seems complex and intimidating at first, don't despair--read on. I will explain the basic HTML and CSS terminology throughout the article.

THE BASIC HTML DOCUMENT

The basic HTML document is devided into several sections: html, head, and body.

Tags are used to demarcate document sections, or "elements." Content lies between the tags. For example, the article you are now reading lies between the body tags of an html document.

Tags usually exist in pairs, a start tag and and end tag. The start tag is surrounded by less-than and greater-than angle brackets. An end tag is bracketed with the same symbols but the first character of the tag is a forward slash (/). For example, HTML code for a paragraph element would include the start and end "p" tags with the content sandwiched between the two.

The basic tag pairs found in web pages are:

* html -- These tags tell a browser that this is an HTML document and define the start and end of the document.

* head -- The head element can contain information about the document. Although the browser does not present the information to a viewer, the information can be "seen" and used by search engines.

* title -- The title tags define the title element that will be used by a browser for the document's title.

* body -- The document's content is placed between the body tags.

In HTML 4.01, not all tags exist in pairs. The "!DOCTYPE" and "meta" tags do not use an end tag, for instance.

The first line of code in the basic document is the Document Type Definition (DTD). The !DOCTYPE tag tells the browser which HTML or XHTML specification the document uses. HTML 4.01 specifies three document types: Strict, Transitional, and Frameset.

The first meta tag in the basic HTML document provides information about how the page-content characters are encoded so that a browser can interpret them correctly.

If you want your articles to be widely seen on the Internet, you need to be particularly interested in the meta tags for keywords and description. These can be seen and used by search engines.

Use the "keyword name" and its related "content" in a meta tag to list your keywords or keyword phrases.

Keywords ought to be appropriate for the article content. They should also reflect what internet surfers actually type into a search engine's query box when hunting for the information you are offering.

Keyword research is a study in itself. Freeware is available on the Internet that can help you determine the best keywords to use in your article and keyword list. Keywords or keyword phrases within the meta tag need to be separated from each other with a comma.

Although not all search engines will utilize the description meta tag for their search results, you still need to include a good description for those that do.

If you had just a few characters to describe your article, or to entice a surfer to select yours from the results of a search, what would you write? What you would write is what should go into the description.

USING CASCADING STYLE SHEETS (CSS)

I have already suggested several reasons why today's preferred method of creating web pages is to separate a page's content from it's display properties. It's time for a demonstration of how this can be accomplished.

In the past, HTML tags included attributes to define how the content was to be displayed by a browser.

Today, CSS is used to concentrate these attributes in a single, separate file. Simple HTML code specifies "what" content is to be displayed; the CSS code defines "how" the content is to be displayed.

Before CSS can be used to format an HTML document, the name and location of the CSS file must be known to the browser. The browser gets this information through the HTML "link" tag that is coded between the head tags.

Once the CSS file is linked, the browser will check the CSS file for display attributes. For example, if the browser encounters an "h1" tag in the HTML code, it will check the CSS file for "h1" formatting. Here is the "h1" formatting information I included in the article.css file I use for my article titles:

h1

{

color:maroon;

text-align:center

}

When a browser encounters an "h1" tag in the HTML code, it would display the title centered and maroon.

SELECTING CONTENT FOR FORMATTING

Content formatting can be applied to an HTML document only after the content to be formatted has been identified to the browser. An easy way to do this is to place a "class" or "id" attribute within a start tag. The same class name can be used many times on a web page; each id name should be used just once per page.

Once content is identified, the class or id name can be referred to in the CSS file and the browser will apply any formatting attributes found there.

Selections Using Class Names

As an example of using the class name, I used the following CSS for in an article about writing ad headlines. In the HTML code, I used divisions tags with a class name of "headline" to demarcate the headline text. I added the following code to the CSS file:

.headline

{

font-size: 24px;

color: red;

font-weight:bold;

text-align:center

}

In the CSS file, I specified the font-size, color, font-weight, and text-align attributes. The class name was added to the CSS file by preceeding the name with a period. I used a semicolon to separate attributes in the list. The HTML and CSS code combine to produce a bold, 24px, red headline centered in the HTML page.

It should be noted that there are some basic HTML tags that are their own class names and do not require a preceding period in the CSS file. These include p, h, body, li, and others. That being said, these tags can be modified by appending an additional class name to them. For example, if I wanted to make the next paragraph blue, I could add a "blue" class attribute to the opening HTML "p" tag and then add this code to the CSS file:

p.blue

{

color:#0000FF

}

This would be a blue paragraph if this HTML were displayed in color.

Selections Using ID Names

The CSS syntax for an ID is a little different from that used for a class. In the CSS file, ID names are proceeded with a pound sign (#). The example below "floats" my 288px by 59px logo image to the left of the following paragraph: the text flows around the image. I added an ID attribute with a name of "logo" to the HTML "div" start tag I used to demarcate the image information. Here is the CSS code I used:

#logo

{

float:left

}

The HTML and CSS code would combine to produce the following results:

~~~LOGO WOULD FLOAT HERE~~ Text here would flow around the logo.

Selections Using Span Tags

If you want to format just a bit of content, you can use span tags

In the article.css file, I defined a background-color attribute for a "highlight" class that will put a yellow background behind selected text. For the next paragraph, I used span tags to bracket the text, "separate attributes." Here is the CSS code:

.highlight

{

background-color:yellow

}

As a result, and if this were in color, the phrase "separate attributes" would be highlighted with a yellow background.

LOOKS AND LAYOUT

A careful selection of the "global" characteristics used for the body element of your web page will insure that your articles will be both easy to read and aesthetically pleasing to the viewer. These characteristics include font, font color, page background color, and page margins.

I use the "body" code in the CSS file to define the default body display attributes. Here is the CSS body code from the article.css file:

body

{

background: #fffef2;

color: black;

line-height: normal;

margin: 3% 25% 3% 25%;

}

Fonts

In the CSS body code, I specify the font family I want to use. The first font listed, Verdana, will be used by a browser if it exists on a viewer's PC. If Verdana is not available, the other fonts will be checked, in order. If none of the specific fonts are available, the browser will default to any available sans-serif font.

If you use a commonly available font/font-family for your articles, the chances are good that a reader will see the article as expected. Otherwise, your article might not look the way it should.

Verdana was designed for easy readability on computer monitors and, for this reason, is my font of choice. Since Verdana is commonly available on PCs, using this as the default font will also increase the likelihood that my article text will be displayed as I intended.

Page Background

I set the background color to a light color, the font color to black, and the line height, or spacing between lines, to normal. The background color I like to use (#fffef2) shows colored text and graphics to good advantage.

Margins

I like to adjust the article on my page to show content in roughly the middle half of the page. I think it is easier for the eye to process than content that goes edge to edge. I use the CSS margin attribute to adjust this. The margin attribute defines the top, right, bottom, and left margins respectively (margin: top right bottom left).

In the CSS body code above, I set the left and right margins to 25% of the available display width. Using 25% places about 60 characters per line of text on my 1024x768 pixel full-screen display. I also set a small 3% margin above and below the content.

Lists

If you use a list in your article, you can use the CSS file to customize the way your list looks. Two important considerations of list design are the list bullet and the spacing between list elements. The example below shows how to change the bullet graphic and element spacing of an unordered list:

li

{

list-style-position: inside;

list-style-image: url

(http://www.elizabethadamsdirect.com/articles/images/small_blob.gif);

list-style-type: none;

margin-bottom: 1em

}

I added two list attributes to customize the list:

1. list-style-image - used to specify the URL to a bullet image (not shown below), and

2. margin-bottom - used to provide some extra space between list items.

For a complete description of possible list attributes--as well as great tutorials on using HTML and CSS--you can visit http://www.w3schools.com

Entity Names

Some characters have special meaning in HTML documents. When you want to use these characters in your text, you can use their "entity names" to prevent browsers from misinterpreting them for HTML code. I used entity names extensively for my web version of this article to display many symbols, particularly in the code samples.

Most commonly, I use entity names in my HTML code for quote marks. By doing this, I get the look and feel I want in my text when I use quotes. For example, when I want to use distinctly different left and right quote-marks in my web-based titles and headlines, I use specific entity names to do so.

Careful attention to the entity names you use can add "that extra touch of class" to your articles.

For HTML 4.01, there are entity names for both ASCII and extended characters and symbols. I use an entity name to insert a copyright symbol at the bottom of all of my web pages. You can find a complete list of entity names at w3schools.

I use Dreamweaver 8 for my HTML and CSS editing. With Dreamweaver, I can validate my code as I write it. I have optioned the validator to warn me when entity name substitution might be appropriate.

Validating Your HTML and CSS Code

I like to write valid HTML code for the "!DOCTYPE" version I use. If you click on the w3 validation icon at the bottom of my full-color, web-site version of this article, you will see that the HTML code for the article is valid and error free. You can use the validator accessible through w3schools to check your code, too.

CONCLUSIONS

When you separate your article's content from the code browsers use to display your article, you can focus on using simple, basic HTML code to organize your content. A Cascading Style Sheets(CSS) can accomplish the separation.

A CSS style sheet allows the HTML code for your articles to be cleaner, table-less, easily customizable, and "liquid."

You can look at one of my recently published articles to see the results of using the techniques outlined in this article. The article is "Profitable Ads: How to Write Ads that Pull."

Sincerely Yours,

Elizabeth Adams

About The Author
Elizabeth Adams has been writing direct sales copy since the early 1990's, when she employed several people to handle mailings and product fulfillment for her postcard marketing business. Elizabeth learned in direct mail how to tweak her sales copy on the run and improve her sales conversion by as much as 400% in only one mailing. She learned how to write a great headline and effective sales copy. Get "Great Headlines — Instantly" today to learn how to do for yourself what Elizabeth learned in the trenches: http://www.elizabethadamsdirect.com/greatheadlines/

http://www.articlecity.com

What a Website Needs to Succeed!

2008-11-18T02:35:00.000-08:00

A Proven Formula for All Websites

Every business needs a website. It is an absolute MUST! Nowadays, it’s like not being in the phone book. The Internet is a digitally-indexed database that is searchable. Whenever anyone wants to know more about anything, they look it up on the Internet, in their own time, 24/7, without the pressure of a sales person. With search engines, such as Google.com or Yahoo.com, the information they are looking for can be found in seconds.

If you aren’t where people are looking, you CAN’T get the sale.

Even if you aren’t planning on selling anything online, you still need to have an Internet presence, telling your story and being a 24/7 sales person for you. The Internet is information. So, even if you just have an informational website, people can find out more about you, your company, what you have to offer, and why they should choose you over your competition. A website gives you the opportunity to get all of that across to your potential customer.

Following, are proven components of a website and why you will need them in yours.

A Home Page is the window into your website and should be short, sweat, and to the point. Statistically, it has been proven that you get about 3 seconds, once a person arrives at your website, to get them interested enough to click for more information. If you can get them to click, then you have them! If you try to give them all of the information at once, then you will lose them.

Some websites try to give you their inventory on the home page, or write a story that scrolls forever. This is not good. A home page should not scroll. This is a big “No No”. When people get to a home page and see paragraphs, trust me, they go on to the next website. It needs graphics that represent the services, happy pictures, happy customers, and a quick sales pitch. Remember, people are lazy and won’t read large amounts of text, unless they have a need to. And included on the home page, needs to be quickly gotten across, why someone should use you over your competitor.

The About Us page sometimes gets left off, in favor of making the home page the About Us page. You will want to have an About Us page that explains in detail what you have to offer, your history, your mission statement, and a good reason that a potential customer should use buy from you over your competitor. This can be seen as the detailed version of the home page. However, it is a mistake to forgo the About Us page in exchange for a detailed home page. Again, this will just push people away who do not want to read all of the details to find out who you are and what you have to offer. This information should be available for those who wish to see more information after they are intrigued by the home page.

Design rules. For uniformity and good design, websites (any marketing piece) should have rules for graphic elements and text. For example, all headings should be the same size/style/color, etc. All subheads should have their own size/style/color, etc. This helps the eye make sense of what it is looking at. Guide your visitor with well-placed graphics and text.

Make sure that your website has good navigation, with buttons/links for all main sections of your website. And be sure to keep these navigation buttons/links visible on ANY page. There is nothing more frustrating than to not be able to find your way while browsing a website. People will leave before becoming too frustrated. Don’t let this happen on your website!

The constant, flashing email (or other) button/advertisement is a "No No" these days. In the old days, flashing and blinking graphics were used. As websites became more graphically sophisticated, these types of elements were not used any more. It can be annoying to see something flashing just off your vision, when you are trying to read the web page.

Text links at the bottom are rarely used any more. They were implemented back in the day of the text-based websites, when they were just starting out. This was for the dial-up users who had the option to turn off graphics for faster web page loading. When this happened, there were no links for navigation, unless a webmaster placed text links at the bottom. Nowadays, most people have broadband connections, and this just isn't necessary any more.

The biggest problem I see with websites these days is that a person has to read quite a bit to see what, exactly, a website is selling. When people show up at your website, you get about 3 seconds to peak their interest. Get it across very quickly, with icons/graphics/bullet points that are easy to understand. Tell them why they should choose you over your competition. And then tell them where to go to get started.

Another very important element is testimonials. More important than telling them why a potential customer should use your services over your competitions’, is a customer of yours saying the same thing. Not only is a testimonial someone who used your services, but they can say "how" you were able to help them. This gives new potential customers ideas on how your services will help “them”. Testimonials are also sales pitches from your happy customers, people just like them. They are people who were in the same position as they are right now and they got through it, so they can too. They also build credibility. When you are endorsed by other people, you have credibility and that you can do what you say you can do. And even though they may be saying the same thing that you are saying, it is coming from someone just like them, and not someone who is trying to sell them anything. They have nothing to gain by saying this. You do. So they need to hear from them. You absolutely MUST have endorsements for your business; otherwise, you are just blowing your own horn!

The next best thing to a testimonial page is an FAQ page. An FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page answers questions for your company 24/7, when you can't be at the phone to answer, and for people who would rather look over your information than speak to someone who might try to sell them something. FAQs also help to give scenarios of how they can be helped, by answering questions that other potential customers have asked, and they might not have thought of themselves. This gets them thinking and gives them answers in a risk-free environment. It is VERY important to have an FAQ working for you 24/7. It's like having a free sales person working for you around the clock, fielding all questions that might come up! It's a MUST-have for ANY website!

Your website should also have a clear "call to action". A lot of websites say that “we are here and we do this”, but they don't tell them how to get started, or tell them where to go to get started right now... no call to action. Now that they have the information, now what? People are like sheep. They must be led. You must lead them to the next level; otherwise, they probably won't get there. You should have calls to action by all services, and on your home page. You should sprinkle testimonials throughout, as well, leading them back to the full testimonials and then to the call to action, which should be placed on the testimonials page, as well. You could offer a FREE Consultation by calling right now… or click HERE now to email us 24/7 for a FREE Consultation… something that tells them where to go from here and a reason to get started right now and how.

There also needs to be graphics to help tell the story; high-end icons that help draw the eye to the item of interest, to get them to read it. Having a text-only page usually does not get read. People are lazy and will not usually read paragraphs of information in hopes of getting the information they are looking for. They would have to first be extremely interested before reading the “fine print”. And to get them interested, it should be broken up with graphics that represent each section. They will see the related graphic first, and then move to that area if interested. But to give them a page of information usually doesn't work.

You also need meta tags. This is very important to search engines. These are hidden key words and phrases that describe what you offer, but also your location, etc. Search engines rely heavily on key words and phrases in order to give your website as a result in a search done for your type of business. In fact, it is also good to have misspelled keywords that people might type in order to find you. Obviously, you won’t want to have misspelled words or phrases on your page, since this will give the wrong impression of who you are. With meta tags, misspelled words are hidden in the code of the website, but can be used to bring people to your website who may not be able to correctly spell some your services. Even putting your competitions’ names and products in your meta tags can help get traffic to your site, so that they can compare your products and services to your competitors’.

Another item that puts you high on the search engine results listing is having articles about your type of business, both on your website, and other websites that link back to yours for more information on the subject. Offering free information makes you an authority on the subject, not just someone trying to sell their wares. This plays heavily in search results, along with one-way links back to your website. When you get one-way links back to your site for more information, this gives you much credibility and definitely helps to make you an authority that other sites rely on. So when someone looks up your type of product or service for more information, obviously the search engine will give a site that has the most helpful and free information (and one that other sites rely on for more information on this subject) a higher rating and puts them higher on the search results list.

A FREE Tips & Tricks or Hints page is also a good way to get relevant traffic. People are always looking for How-To's and DIY information on all types of subjects. On my site I have FREE Tech Tips that get hits all the time, which pertain to my services. Again, a percentage of these hits click on my services. And the only way I got them there was because of the FREE How-To's that I offer. So, you have to entice people to your site, by offering more than your competitor's website. This is where these types of pages come in handy.

It is also good to have a Privacy Policy page. This shows integrity and also builds credibility and a higher ranking in the search engines. This is one item that search engines look for, in particular. Websites with a page dedicated to a Privacy Policy get a higher ranking and your site will show up higher in the search results.

A Guarantee page is also a good idea. Again, this gives credibility and will give you an edge over your competitor, who may not offer a guarantee. A website that has a guarantee, but is hard to find, makes a potential customer feel like they have something to hide and may not purchase from that website. However, if you have an easy-to-find Guarantee that you put right in their face (whether you dedicate a page to it, or you put it right on the Home page), it eases potential customers into a buying position.

You may want to have a form that allows a customer to request more information about your product or service, and which also lets the customer type in their personal information and what they are looking for. This not only helps you by getting their contact information, it also helps by prompting the potential customer into thinking about other aspects. By doing it this way, you will also get all of the information needed to correctly quote a product or service more effectively, without having to make additional phone calls to the customer. The more common way of requesting information is just by posting an INFO email address and hope that the person requesting the info knows enough about what he is looking for to provide all of the info to get a good quote. This is not usually the case. Most of the time they need a form to fill out. In most cases, there is info that is left out. A form ensures that you get everything needed to quote the product or service accurately. And, also, by offering a form to request more info, leads will be generating 24-7 for you. All you have to do is the quote and give them a call. This reduces the need for cold-calling, and gives you an excuse to call and close the deal.

If you incorporate all of the above pages, along with the “way” these pages should be shown, your website will have a higher ranking in the search engines, which puts your website higher in the search results, thus significantly increasing the traffic to your website!

The above categories aren't the only things you can do to increase traffic to your website. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) should also be done, as well as swapping links with relevant websites, and posting articles and links back to your website from online article and content websites.

To have an award-winning and specially-formulated website designed for your company, contact Michigan Tech Group TODAY at (810) 496-4595 or email us at info@MichiganTechGroup.com Visit us online at http://www.MichiganTechGroup.com

Good luck. I hope this article has helped you. If you live in the Lapeer, Genesee, or Tuscola County, Michigan areas, and would like an IT Professional to do a professional to help you in your home or business,please contact Michigan Tech Group at (810) 496-4595, or visit our website at http://www.MichiganTechGroup.com. You can email us at info@MichiganTechGroup.com.

If you would like to use this article for any publication, you may do so if you do NOT change any of the content, and the tag line remains intact.

About The Author
Jim Shutes

I have worked in the IT field since 1989 and hold several Microsoft certifications. I am a network administrator and co-owner and co-operator of Michigan Tech Group, located in Flint, Michigan. During these years, I have supported both Macs and PCs, am an accomplished graphic and web designer, and have had the opportunity to support 2nd and 3rd level enterprise networks for GM, EDS, Delphi and Delco. If you would like to get in touch with me, you may do so at (810) 496-4595, or by email at jshutes@MichiganTechGroup.com. My website is http://www.MichiganTechGroup.com
http://www.articlecity.com

Top Tips for Web Design

2008-04-28T00:26:00.000-07:00

This article takes a look at the top 10 web design tips for users at any level. It will give you 10 complete different points to contemplate when you next begin a site design or when talking to your web design consultant/employee.

Design is never straight forward and web design has the additional unpredictable complication of technology thrown in. This means that you need to consider the consequences of your design decisions and how it will effect the most important people who see your site, the users themselves. The following tips should help you consider this and have a positive effect on your site and its users.

1. Navigation & Functionality

You should never sacrifice overall functionality for artistic extravagance. It is highly unlikely your site will ever achieve its purpose if the people who visit it cannot clearly and easily navigate around it.

Your site should look good but first and foremost consider how someone who knows nothing about the site would think when they landed there.

Something occurring in website frequently these days is Mystery Meat Navigation. This is a term coined by Vincent Flanders and it is used to describe site where navigation structures are so obscure and difficult to process that users cannot identify them at all and end up running there mouse across whole sections of a screen just to identify hyperlinks.

2. Images

People say images are worth a 1000 words and in web design that’s true in 2 ways. Firstly an image can do a lot more than text in some situation but secondly they are much, much bigger files with a higher download time.

It is widely accepted users will click away from a page that takes longer than 5-10 seconds to load and every time you put an image in a page you are increasing the likelihood of this happening. Additionally each image you imbed into a page design activates an additional HTTP request to your server so dividing an image into smaller ones or using lots of small images across a page does not solve the problem.

ALT tags should also be factored into the code of a website. They are a huge help to people who have either images turned off in a browse, mobile broswers that can’t read the images or a random error preventing the image from showing. They also hold a small SEO benefit.

3. Tables

It is advised that you use CSS and not tables to format a document but in some cases tables can be necessary. Remember one thing however, a table cannot be displayed until it has fully loaded. This can potentially cause a huge problem for users as they wait for the page to load, nothing appears then out of nowhere the whole page is done.

Someone is much more likely to click away when nothing is loading than when they can see progress.

4. Fonts

Don’t design sites to use fonts only you have, chances are they will be converted into some dull font and ruin the effect you were trying to achieve. Save special fonts for specific headers and convert them to images. Make the rest of your site in standard fonts so that as many browsers as possible will see it in the way you meant it to be. Recommended fonts for high scale compatibility are Arial, Verdana, Courier, Tahoma and Helvetica.

5. Plug-Ins

Plug-ins hold a lot of potential for both users and designers but it can easily be misused and misguided.

Plug-ins have a many forms and uses, the most popular being Java and Flash Player. I have heard a lot of people say that these plug-ins are “safe” and that everyone has them but this is simply not true. Every plug-in has a stack of different versions and connects differently depending on the browser the user is surfing with.

Think if your users will really want to browse to other sites to download a plug-in, restart the browser then navigate back. If the answer is no use other tricks at your disposal to make your page unique and save the big guns that are Flash and Java for times where it is essential.

6. Tags

The “tags” I am referring to hear are meta keywords and description, title, alt and h1 tags. Together these tags help manage your sites search engine optimisation (SEO) potential and this is defiantly something not to overlook. Helping people find your site will bring more traffic in and more conversion if you are a retail site.

The higher search engines rank you the more traffic will filter down and the more successful your site will be. Try to keep a constant theme running through all your tags but do so in a subtle way. Splashing the same word 1000 times on your page will only have negative effects so make sure you strike the correct balance between informative and spammy.

7. Browsers

In a perfect world everyone would use the same browser and your website would look the same on everyone’s screen but unfortunately this is not the case. Every browser has its own specific functions and styles and learning to make you code cooperate with both can present some serious problems.

The three you really need to concern yourself with are Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari. These make up a good 95% of the browser market at the very least and while there are some additional popular browser I would not recommend you spend time optimising code for the rest.

The only thing you can do is do your best and stay away from browser specific functions, you’ll never make someone get a new browser.

8. Pop Ups

Something that is very important to remember is that the user should be in control of their browser and desktop. Do not place unnecessary pop ups and window opening links everywhere and the user will feel they have lost control of the site, become annoyed and close the windows.

There are some exceptions to using the (_blank) attribute but I would steer clear whenever possible.

9. Text Layout

Text is part of your design to and positioning it correctly on the page is very important. Try to get all the copy you need as early in the design process as possible. This means you will be able to design around the copy instead of trying to cram it into smaller spaces because someone wrote twice as much copy as they said they were going to.

Use the right alignment for the right situation, remember 99% of people will prefer left align and while justified look aesthetically better it can be very difficult to read in longer bouts.

10. Site Search

In this day and age finding what you want on a website in paramount. After you have followed the first tip on navigation you should also provide a search bar on your site so that a visitor who cannot immediately see what they are looking for can search. Many internet studies have seen the success of these smaller additions to your site and free ones are available from Google and many other SE operators.

Conclusion

Taking these 10 tips into account will help you design a more user-friendly and successful website, sometime it may seem like they are hindering your grand design but failing to take notice may result in your site being a very pretty stop sign for browsers. Just because you can find your way around your Flash menu system that takes 6 minutes to load doesn’t mean Mrs Smith who needs the product can.

by: Frank Woodford
http://www.articlecity.com

About The Author

Frank Woodford is a professional copywriter who has a vast experience at producing design based articles. He has worked closely with many businesses over the years including Soula Web Design Nottingham, who keep a web design blog, you can find these at http://www.soula.com

List Building And The Single Page Website

2008-04-24T18:57:00.000-07:00

Here’s a scenario for an online business that provides information and is in existence to help other succeed in their online ecommerce objectives. You should know up front that the ultimate goal for the business is to get you to purchase their marketing plan.

Do they develop a flashy website with flash and animation? Do they flood the screen with video testimonials or podcasts? Do they pay a celebrity to provide a testimonial?

There is a quiet awakening in a form of marketing that is essentially low key, low budget and is essentially comprised of a single visitable page.

The page provides an audio greeting from the owner telling you briefly about the product and the potential success. You are then invited to read a singular page of information.

Once the visitor does this they have to make a choice. If the information is solid enough they will need to determine if they are interested enough to find out more. If they are then they will need to fill out a form on the single page website. That is the key that unlocks a world of information. This approach is a prime example of powerful list building strategies.

A site like this may be a prime candidate for web builder technology. The site is essentially simplified and does not require significant upkeep so the use of a site builder can be a cost effective and simple way to reach your online objectives.

The remaining functions of the website may be comprehensive or the information the guest needs may be managed through autoresponders. In other words when the door is unlocked you can help guide your visitor in the way that will best help them understand your marketing product the best.

Obviously this is a business-to-business scenario, but the process may have possibilities for business to customer applications as well.

I think one of the reasons this might be a smart approach to marketing is that you are not immersing your guest into a site that has so much information it can be intimidating to actually learn where to start.

This approach may result in fewer signups, but these individuals may be more motivated to learn more and perhaps share your message. You can help them by systematically dismantling your marketing system or product and bringing it to your customers in bite sized nuggets that are attractive and filling.

As a business owner you might look at passing along the information in either a webinar video stream or an ecourse that is sent to customers over a period of time by autoresponders.

Why do you think listening to books has become so popular? People seem to have less and less time to devote to something they feel is overwhelming. If you were to simply send out a manual in the mail with your information it may get lost and unused, but by creating attractive and helpful sections that are dispersed at strategic times you may find those same individuals learning significant amounts about your business and/or product.

There are many ways to develop your site and equally remarkable ways to build traffic. This article presents a case for a technique you may have never thought about before.

by: Scott Lindsay
About The Author
Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. Make your own website in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com or Build A Website at: http://www.buildagreatsite.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com
http://www.articlecity.com

Are you making your mind to design a website, then how you choose a web design company?

2008-04-20T02:27:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that today is the age of internet. Every successful company knows that a web site is an essential marketing tool. Whether you're in the business of selling widgets, soliciting volunteers, or building your brand awareness, a carefully executed internet marketing plan can reap a tremendous return on your time and money.

Depending on your web design budget and you needs. The first thing you need to do is determine your goals and objectives. Specifically:

* Who is your target audience? * How will your target audience find your website? * What do you want them to do once they're there? * How will updates be made to the site? * What is your timeline? * What kind of return on investment do you expect from the site and how will you measure it?

Creating your web site can be a tricky process. Choosing the best Web Design Services for your site is extremely important. Now it's time to find the right web design company for your needs. Go to Google and search for web design firms and you will see how many results show. Start at the first web design result on work your way down. Examine the portfolio to see if there is anything equivalent to the web design layout you are imagining. You will be able to tell immediately if this web design firm is right for your company and its look and feel. Find out if they have the staff available to work on your entire web design needs and that they know the programming necessary to complete the job in a timely manner. Ask for references, a top end web design firm will be glad to offer up references on the web design work performed. Most web design references will be glad to talk to you about the quality job your potential web design company did on their web site.

When searching for a company, here are a few key questions to consider:

* Does the company's portfolio reflect the kind of aesthetic that you are looking for * Does the company work with clients in your industry? Have they previously created a site similar to what you want in scope and function? * Were they responsive to your query, or did it take them four days to return your call? Were they friendly and helpful and take time to find out about your company and your needs? * What kinds of guarantees do they offer for their products? What kind of support is available? Do they have a thorough testing process? What are the terms of the contract and who owns the final design, source code, and intellectual property? Now that you've found a couple of different companies, and have a couple of proposals in hand, you'll want to take some time to compare them carefully and check references. Call several of the company's clients and ask the following questions: * Did the company meet your goals and objectives? * Did they follow up after the launch, or disappear once the check was cashed? * Does the site function properly? * Are you happy with the design? * What does your target audience think of the design and functionality? * Did you get the return on investment that you were expecting?

Professional Web Design Services may cost more in the short term but you must Remember, when it comes to your business and your companies exposure on internet, so take your time to finding a good web design company. Your future may depend on it.

http://www.articleburn.com

To Create Dynamic Pages Choose An Advance Programming Language Like PHP

2008-04-18T04:47:00.000-07:00

PHP is an open sourced server side scripting language and almost used in foremost operating systems like Linux, UNIX and also in Windows. PHP follows object oriented programming (OOPs), practical programming rules and nearly a combination of them. It uses command line interface, desktop applications thus it is know as the best traditional server side scripting language.

PHP programming (http://www.getaprogrammer.com.au/) supports most of the reputed database connections like Oracle, SQL, My SQL, and ODBC thus it is an easy choice for freelance programmers to build their dynamic pages with the help of PHP development. The latest version is also popular because it can be embedded HTML coding directly and can be carried by nearly all of the web servers.

PHP is a popular language because of its numerous features infused specifically to design websites or you can say to develop dynamic pages. PHP engine and the PHP coding can be used in every platform that increases flexibility of PHP language. Basically PHP is profitable for both programmers and designers, programmers who realizing its flexibility and tempo and web designers who worth its handiness and user-friendliness.

PHP language can develop giant business services like CRM solutions, community sites, chatting forums and E-Commerce shopping cart as well. Several pools of qualified web programmers (http://www.webprogrammers.com.au/) are using PHP development for organizing their goal, resource planning and fulfilling their client requirements.

Here are some few things which you can perform with PHP:

• Design HTML web forms.
• Superb Database usability to store records.
• Calculate visitors by sessions and cookies.
• You can use arrays as well.
• Play with files through file management system.
• Creating XML for large number of product list on E-Commerce

Serialization

Serialization is not needed for all kind of databases. In some particular databases like ODBC, MS SQL etc when you wish to pass a value without mentioning its type, it gets dumb. This problem is solved properly in the latest version of PHP. This is also an added advantage of PHP over all king of scripting languages.

Using PHP to Improve Design your website

PHP has many capabilities features designed specifically for use in Web sites, including the following:

1. Securing Your Website: PHP is designed to allow user level access to the file system, it's entirely possible to write a PHP script that will allow you to read system files such as password, modify your Ethernet connections, etc. thus this can provide a customer with an exclusive membership in the business.

2. Working with Web Forms: HTML form can be displayed by PHP and it is the best way to know more about the requirements of your customers and to gather note about their detailed benefits.

3. Communicate with Your Databases: When a persistent connection is requested, PHP checks if there's already an identical persistent connection and if it exists, it uses it. If it does not exist, it creates the link.

4. Customer Loyalty Functions: PHP allows content and applications to be generated and run server-side. This is highly advantageous to web users as they do not have to rely on their own system resources to generate or run content on their own systems. This allows for faster delivery of applications to the user and reduces errors and problems due to browser incompatibilities.

About The Author
Joanna Gadel is a web programmer (http://www.webprogrammers.com.au/) and associated with several programmer jobs (http://www.getaprogrammer.com.au/). Her article on benefits of PHP guides her readers to gather more knowledge about latest PHP development.

by: Joanna Gadel
www.articlecity.com

12 Steps to Creating a Professional Web Design

2008-02-03T17:53:00.000-08:00

Before we share some of the necessary steps used to create a professional web design and website, the following question must be addressed: What constitutes a "professional web design"? More often than not, a web designer or web design company claims to offer professional web design services for their clients. However, should they be promoting "web design services" rather than "professional web design services"? When measuring the professionalism of a web design and website, one must take into consideration a number of factors/steps:

Multi-stage web design process
Project collaboration tools (if project has more than one person involved)
High-quality design
Attention to detail
Current web design technology (CSS)
Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content
Usability
XHTML and CSS validation (clean code)
Standards-compliant
Optimization
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly
Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects

To put it simply, what separates professional web design from web design is whether or not a designer or web design company takes into consideration the above items when designing and building a website. Other than paying for a respected companies name and reputation, the items listed above are why professional web design services tend to cost more than regular web design services - you're getting a lot more than a website - you're getting the total package of web design professionalism that will surely shine through once the website is completed and released to the public.

The good news is, you don't need to hire a professional web design company or professional web designer if you want a professional web design and website. Although there is a great deal of work involved, if you'd like to attempt to do the heavy lifting on your own, then the following professional web design tips will help you create a professional web design and website.

Note: You might be wondering why a professional web design company would give away their process and professional web design "checklist" for free. The answer is quite simple: there is only so much time in the day, and unfortunately we can't professionally design every website in the world. The more high-quality, professional websites there are in cyberspace, the happier we as professional web designers and lovers of websites will be. To be blunt, there is just way too much junk out there. Lets get started.

Step 1: Multi-stage web design process

We've already written an extensive article on the basics of a professional web design process, so we're just going to list some of the article's key points for the sake of avoiding redundancy.

Stage 1: Conceptualization and planning (flowcharts)
When designing a website, one should not begin the process inside of a text editor (BBedit) or website builder application (Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc). Instead, the process should begin on a piece of paper or within flowchart software. According to Wikipedia, a flowchart is:

a schematic representation of an algorithm or a process.

In layman's terms, a flowchart provides a visual chart illustrating the structure of your website. How many main navigational items will your website contain? What will these items be called? Will there be any pages contained within the main pages? What will they be called? By planning out your website using a flowchart, you get a head start on:

Information organization
Usability
Determining the volume of content required

Stage 2: Modeling (wireframes)

In the modeling stage, static "wireframe" mockups are created for each unique web page. To create wireframes, one may use either:

paper and pencil
mockup software such as Adobe Photoshop or our personal choice, OmniGraffle Professional

These wireframes contain a bare-bones skeleton which illustrate the layout of a particular web page. Where will the logo go? Where will the content be located? Will there be breadcrumbs? Will you have a login box? Each of these questions (and many more) are answered in the modeling stage. A few things one should take into consideration when creating wireframes:

be sure to include all important elements that will be used (logo, navigation, content placement, images/video placement, login box, search, breadcrumbs, etc)
reference the flowchart which you created in Stage 1
don't use graphics - wireframes are meant to be bare-bones: boxes/circles/ovals which illustrate the placement of objects
only use text to label the elements, don't use body text (thats for the third stage)
focus on clean, well-organized, user-friendly layout; avoid cluttered layouts

Stage 3: Execution

The third stage in our professional web design process includes:

Creating the graphical user interface (GUI), also known as the design
Creating the content
Converting the web designs from images into code (markup) which web browsers use to present your website on the Internet

In the final stage, reference both the flowcharts created in Stage 1 and the wireframe mockups created in Stage 2 to create the final page layouts and designs. The design should be finalized in Photoshop or whatever image editing software you choose to use because it is a pain to make changes to the design once it has been converted into markup (code).

Trust us, process makes perfect

Following a well-structured web design process is by far one of the most importance steps that many web designers choose to neglect. By following a web design process such as the one we've just described, you increase the likelihood that your website will be well-organized, easily navigable, and user-friendly. If you're going to skip any of the items in our professional web design checklist, make sure that the web design process is not one of them.

Step 2: Project collaboration tools

Note: If you are the only one working on your project, then you can skip this step. Project collaboration tools are only recommended for projects which have two or more people involved.

Communication is one of the most important elements in a project. When multiple people are building a website, there usually are quite a few e-mails sent back and forth between one another. The more e-mails exchanged, the longer it can take to find a certain e-mail and the easier it can be to misplace important bits of information. This was one of the biggest problems that our professional web design company faced when we first began - there wasn't an easy way to organize the e-mails, attachments, milestones, etc.

Thankfully, after a little bit of research, we discovered a project collaboration tool called Basecamp. Taken directly from the Basecamp website:

Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.

Basecamp (and project collaboration tools like it) allows multiple users to access a website which stores all of the messages, milestones, file uploads, to-do lists, time it takes to complete parts of the project, etc. that are associated with a project. No more sending e-mails. Everything is securely stored on the Basecamp servers. The only e-mails you will ever receive are notifications whenever something is contributed or changed within a project.

Basecamp has packages available that can be tailored to suit your needs. If you only need to use Basecamp for one project at a time, then you can signup for free. Unfortunately with the free version, there are no file uploads allowed. However, for a measly $12/month, you can control up to 3 projects at once, have 250 megabytes of file upload space, have unlimited people and clients, have a real-time chat that can easily be integrated into Basecamp, and much more.

When it comes to project collaboration and communication, nothing beats a web application like Basecamp. If you're serious about your project and want to have the best communication possible, then you must try Basecamp. A project collaboration tool such as Basecamp is especially useful for a professional web design company which handles a number of projects and clients at any given time. For project collaboration, there is simply no better way to communicate.

Plug over.

Step 3: High-quality design

Who and what determines a "high-quality design"? There isn't one answer. Often times something that is appealing to one person may be extremely unappealing to another. Despite this fact, there are several things that a high-quality design should have:

Balance. Balance refers to the equal distribution of the heavy and the light elements on a single page.
Unity. Unity keeps all of the similar elements in the website alike and those that are diverse further apart; everything should be pulled into one integrated whole.
Emphasis. Emphasis involves the main points where the eye is drawn into the design; also known as "focal points".
Contrast. Not just color contrast, but also contrasting shapes, sizes, textures, and even typography.
Rhythm. Also known as repetition, rhythm brings internal consistency into your web design.

Since this is a broad topic and cannot be fully covered in this article, you can read more about the five basic elements of web design.

In addition to these five basic elements of web design, information overload is often times one of the biggest killers of a website design. Designers sometimes forget the saying "less is more" and somehow seem to believe that the more information that is stuffed onto one page, the better it will be. Don't become a victim of information overload. Keep your layout as clean as possible. Give different topics their own dedicated web pages. One of the biggest causes for information overload is not successfully planning out your website layout through the use of flowcharts and wireframes, discussed above in Step 1: Multi-stage web design process. Remember: white space is not necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, white space is your friend, especially when creating a professional web design. Successful professional web designers learn how to use white, negative space to their advantage, and make it a key element of the design.

Step 4: Attention to detail

When professionally designing a website, every little detail is thought out and planned. Should there be a line above the headers, and if so, why? If you use rounded corners for your main body, should you be consistent and use rounded corners for everything else? Does your logo look better with a reflection underneath? The only way to answer any of these questions is to experiment. Sometimes the best results come from accidental experimentation. Don't always be happy with the first design. Work to improve upon the design and go through a few revisions, each time asking yourself "What can be done to make the design look better?", be more consistent, and most importantly, give your website a stronger identity and image.

When we say "detail", we're not just talking about graphic design elements. No, graphic design is just the tip of the iceberg. We're also talking about typography (font faces i.e. Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, font sizes i.e 10 pixels, 12 pixels, 18 pixels, font weight/style i.e. bold, italic, font placement), the use of negative space, and other elements of design.

Attention to detail is important because it is oftentimes the details in your design which make your website stand out from the competition (or from other websites in general). People get bored with the same old design - give them something different, unique, and attractive, and they will come back and visit. Heck, they may even become inspired by your design.

Remember: Less is more. Use details, but don't abuse details.

Step 5: Current web design technology (CSS)

CSS - also known as cascading style sheets - replaced table-based website layouts years ago. The problem is, a lot of web designers are still using tables to create their designs. Not only is this unprofessional, but tables just plain suck. Here are a number of reasons why using tables for your web design is a bad idea:

Tables slow down your website. Everything inside of a table's cell is loaded before being shown to the user. This is especially apparent for people using dial up connections.
Tables make messy code and add unnecessary junk markup. File sizes are increased due to the excessive lines of code which means slower load times. Also, having to sift through hundreds (sometimes thousands) of lines of code just to make a change isn't a lot of fun.
Universal layout updates are difficult and time consuming when using tables. Making universal edits with tables involves opening each file, sifting through the code and junk markup, and making a change (again, on each page). Often times with CSS, all one must do is open the stylesheet and change a single value.
Tables should only be used to show data, not be used to design websites.
Tables limit your creativity and design. Table layouts are limited to boring, grid-based layouts. With CSS, you can place anything anywhere. The layout possibilities with CSS are endless.
CSS will save you time and increase your revenue in the long run. Updates and edits are much easier using CSS than tables. Because of faster load times, fewer visitors are likely to become impatient and leave. Longer visits = more browsing, more ad-clicking, lower bounce rates = more money for you.
Display your CSS website on tons of high-quality CSS Showcase websites. Tons of exposure if your website is featured. Table-based layouts are not welcome. Complete list on listible.com.

Some people will argue that table-based layouts are better than layouts which are built using CSS. However, oftentimes the person arguing that tables are better than CSS is the person who spent thousands of dollars on a table-based layout. Despite what anyone tells you, table-based layouts are inferior to CSS and should be avoided at all costs.

To read all about CSS, visit w3schools.com. Again, to be blunt, if your website is created using tables, it is not professional web design quality. Start using CSS stylesheets today and keep the tables in your spreadsheet application.

Step 6: Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content

One thing that greatly compromises the quality and credibility of a website is poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled content. This kind of content is unfortunately present in an extremely high number of websites - especially "professional" company websites.

If you don't know how to write, then hire someone to write the content of your website. You'll thank yourself later. Even if you do know how to write, mistakes are easy to make. Run through your content a few times to confirm that everything makes sense, is interesting, and is spelled correctly. You'll look more professional and people will take what you have to say more seriously.

Step 7: Usability

Website usability is extremely important. According to usability.gov:

In general, usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals and how satisfied they are with that process. Usability, as defined by Joseph Dumas and Janice (Ginny) Redish, means that people who use the product can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their tasks. Usability may also consider such factors as cost-effectiveness and usefulness.

If website usability is poor, then people can easily become frustrated and leave your website. A great deal of importance must be placed on website usability if you want your web design to be of professional quality. It is usually poor usability which separates the regular websites from the professionally designed websites. Usability is the most important element of a professionally designed website.

For a wealth of information regarding website usability, visit usability.gov and also read our Dos and Donts of Website Navigation Usability.

Step 8: XHTML and CSS validation

Some people will argue that validating your website with XHTML and CSS validation from W3.org is a waste of time. To be blunt, they are wrong (for a number of reasons).

Accessibility. Without accessibility, you run the risk of being sued. For example: a disabled person who cannot use a "conventional" browser can sue you if your website is inaccessible to them. Although validation doesn't necessarily guarantee accessibility, it is an important component of exercising ones due diligence and is reason enough that you should validate your website's XHTML and CSS.
Cross browser compatibility. The more validation errors your website has, the higher the chances are that your website will not look the same in all web browsers. We will cover the importance of cross browser compatibility in the next step.
You look more professional with a valid website. Again, like having interesting content free of grammatical errors and misspellings, having a valid website makes you look more professional to your visitors. It tells them "Hey, I care about my website's image, I took the time to validate it".

If you're building a website for the first time, then you may find that your website has a lot of validation errors. Don't worry, this happens to the best of us. The more websites you build and the more time that you take to learn the rules of validation, the fewer errors you will get and the easier it will be to validate your website.

For more information about XHTML and CSS validation visit W3.org.

Step 9: Standards-compliant

Perhaps the most difficult, time-consuming aspect of professional web design is making sure your website is standards-compliant.

Taken directly from Wikipedia:

Standards-compliant is a term often used in describing websites & user agents' (often web browsers) relative compliance with web standards proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

In layman's terms, if you want your website to be considered professional, then it must look and function the same in all major browsers. In addition, achieving interoperability lowers costs to content providers since they must only develop one version of a document.

As mentioned above, creating a standards-compliant website will take a good deal of time and can even involve using basic hacks in order for certain elements to appear the same across all major browsers. Major browsers include: Internet Explorer 6 (IE6 -PC), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 - PC), Firefox (PC and Mac), Safari (PC and Mac), and Opera (PC and Mac). These browsers control the majority of the browser market share and therefore the website which you create should be tested extensively in each of these browsers to ensure standards-compliance. In addition, XHTML and CSS validation (as mentioned in Step 8: XHTML and CSS validation) are extremely important when programming a website to be standards-compliant. Validate your website, validate your CSS stylesheet, validate yourself (okay, you can't validate yourself, but if you could, would you?).

Step 10: Optimization

Website optimization is another crucial factor that must be taken into consideration when professionally designing a website.
Website optimization includes:

Image optimization. Next to audio and video, images can severely compromise the speed in which your website loads. Always compress your images using Photoshop or your favorite image compression utility. By compressing images, you decrease the size of a file which allows a web page to load quicker which ultimately decreases the chance that your visitor will leave your website due to long load times.
Audio/Video optimization. Another major annoyance which screams "unprofessional" is having enormous video and audio files embedded in your web pages. Try to use Flash Video (.flv) compression for your video files and (.mp3) compression for your audio files. Not only are the file sizes smaller than using (.avi) or (.mpg) for video or (.wav) for audio, but the video/audio loads faster which means other elements on your web page will load faster, too.
Clean code (just say no to tables). In case you skipped Step 5, do not use tables when designing your website - use CSS (cascading style sheets). Tables have a ton of junk markup which will slow down your page load time, increase file sizes, and make editing and updating quite difficult.
Validate your XHTML and CSS. Although covered in Step 8, XHTML and CSS validation is an integral part of professional website optimization and therefore should not be skipped. Validate your XHTML and CSS.

Step 11: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly

Professionally designed websites should be designed with a solid SEO friendly foundation. To make your website SEO friendly:

Don't use Flash. If you must use Flash, make sure it is used sparingly. Flash content is not crawlable by search engine spiders and therefore the content located inside of Flash files cannot be indexed in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Ask.
Don't use Frames. Search Engine Spiders have a difficult time crawling through a website that uses frames. Many Search Engine Spiders will receive the following message when visiting a website designed using frames:
â€œSorry! You need a frames-browser to view this site.â€

Keyword Research. Optimize your web pages by including keywords relevant to the content on your website. Use keyword research tools such as Wordtracker or Overture to find the best, most relevant keywords for your content.
Researched Keywords in Title of web pages. Arguably the most important element in SEO, make sure that your title tags include the keywords found in the keyword research stage.
Researched Keywords in URL. Be sure to include the researched keywords in the title of your web pages as well. For example, if a page on your website is about energy drinks, make sure that the file is saved as "energy-drinks.html". Use dashes instead of underscores, if possible.
CSS Navigation/CSS Stylesheets. CSS navigation guarantees that your website navigational text is crawlable by search engine spiders. CSS navigation also loads very quickly and anyone will be able to view the navigation using any browser.
Researched Keywords in Anchor Text. For hyperlinks inside and outside of your website, be sure to include the researched keywords in the anchor text of your hyperlinks. This helps search engines better determine what a particular page is about and will help that page rank higher with the researched keyword(s).
Images: ALT tags, no text in images. Not only are ALT tags required for XHTML validation, but they are necessary components of web accessibility. Try to avoid placing text inside of your images since search engine spiders cannot crawl image text. However, if you must place text inside of an image, use the text inside of the image as that image's ALT tag. Search engine spiders can read ALT tags, just not the text inside of images.

Step 12: Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects

The last step in creating a professional web design and website is to avoid the abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects. Not everyone has Flash or Javascript enabled on their computer, and therefore your website should not be built around them. If you're going to use Flash or Javascript, use it sparingly.

Try not to use Flash Intros on your website. Most people hate waiting for Flash Intros to load, hate being forced to sit through them, and hate being surprised by the sound that many of them have. Do not create your website using only Flash. Again, what about the users who do not have Flash enabled on their computer? That could be a potential client, customer, or reader who you're missing out on because of an unnecessary technological limitation.

If you're going to use sound effects, make sure that they only play if the user enables sound on your website - never force sound effects onto your visitors. Nothing screams "unprofessional" like having a sound effect play each time a navigational item is rolled over or even worse, when the visitor lands on the home page of your website.

As a matter of fact, Flash and sound effects should generally be avoided when creating a professional web design. Javascript is the only exception as long as you program the website to work even if Javascript is disabled. Flash and sound effects are a nuisance to a lot of people, so for that reason alone, try to stay away from them.

The recipe to professional web design

These 12 steps make up the majority of the recipe which many professional web designers live by when designing websites. Of course, knowing the things that you know after reading this article and actually being able to create a professional web design are two very different things. However, as it does with anything, practice makes perfect. Now get out there and start building a professionally designed website! And hey, if you can't do it yourself, go to Google and search "professional web design". Chromatic Sites is in there, along with many other highly-respected professional web design companies.

by: Matthew Jurmann
http://www.articlecity.com

Web Design Tips

2008-01-14T17:44:00.000-08:00

When someone sees a beautiful web design, he or she can’t help but fall in love with it and wonder how it was done. However, designing a web would take more than just your knowledge in color, texts and images. It involves codes. But you can learn those in no time so there’s nothing to worry about. Moreover, there is a science behind web design and the following could help you be more scientific with your designs

Usability Testing

The secret here is to let someone who is not familiar with your site have a look at it. As much as possible, be in the room while they are testing your site. Take note of the things that they click on and the things that they ignore so you will know what to improve.

Browser Testing

Do not make the mistake of thinking that your web page will look good at any other browser because it looks good on your favorite one. Remember that the same browser could be used on another operating system and it may not look the same. What you need to do now is to check your page on every possible combination of OS and browser.

Use Log Files

Including log files can be very tiresome, however, it can also be very useful. It helps you know where viewers go from your homepage, what they mostly click on and what pages are least visited. Using log files can help you gather information that can help you modify your site and eventually lead your viewers to the page where you want them to go.

Don’t be afraid to recreate

One of the biggest advantages in web designing is the freedom to change web pages and layouts. Don’t be afraid to change designs that don’t work. Designing a web can be a lot of fun and involving science and structure into your designs will surely attract your viewers.

Use accurate titles for every section

Web browsers tend to scan pages and sections so make sure that your page or section titles are consistent and accurate. In this way, they can be sure that they are being led to the right section of the site.

Avoid ‘Click Here’

Links are very important in web pages. However, avoid using the text ‘click here’ when leading your viewers to another page. Instead use a descriptive and more appropriate text .

Improve Readability

Now is not the time to show off your collection of fonts. What’s important is for your customers to be able to read what is written on your site. Therefore, use attractive but readable texts to attract readers and customers of your site.

Proofread

Even the most excellent writer makes grammatical and spelling errors. You wouldn’t want your site viewers to think you’re an amateur, would you? What you have to do in order to increase trustworthiness is to proofread everything that is written in your site. Remember, less mistakes or lack of errors can add to your reliability points.

by: Hunter Blyth
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk

Issues On Web Design

2008-01-08T18:02:00.000-08:00

Different issues can’t be avoided even in web designing. Due to conflicts between differing goals and web design methods, conflicts arise. Some of them are listed below.

Liquid vs. Fixed Layouts

Web designers do not have control over everything when designing a web site. Some of the factors that they do not have control over are browser window (the web browser used), used input devices (such as mouse, touch screen, voice command, and text) and the size and characteristics of fonts available.

However, some designers choose to control the element’s appearance on screen with the use of specific width designations. This may be done with the use of HTML table-based design or CSS. Fixed width design happens when images, texts and design layouts do not change as the browser changes. Supporter of this design prefer to control the look and feel of the site as well as the placement of objects on the page. However, other designers use liquid design, as in Wikipedia. In liquid design, the design moves so that the content will flow on the whole screen or a portion of it. The supporters of this design wishes to use all the available spaces on the web.

CSS versus tables

During the days where Netscape Navigator 4 was the most popular browser, Web designers use tables to layout pages on the web. This was considered as the practical solution then. However, popular as it is, it requires dozens of nested tables even for simple designs.

With the emergence of dominant browsers such as Internet Explorer (which became more compliant to W3C), designers started to turn their attention in using CSS. Proponents of CSS say that tables should only be used for tabular data and not for page layout. In CSS, on the other hand, HTML returns to a semantic set-up. With this, search engines are able to understand what is happening in a web page. But one major downfall of CSS is the fact that control is essentially abandoned because each browser has its own trait which leads the page to have a different display.

So to avoid this stand off, you have to decide firsthand on the approach you will take when designing that webpage, here are some of the key elements you have to bear in mind:

Website Planning

It is important to plan on the kind of website that you would be establishing. Keep in mind the audience or your target market, as well as the purpose for creating the site and lastly, its contents.

Audience

The key step to website planning process is defining your target market or audience. Your audience is the group of people you visualize as the ones who would most likely visit your website. These people will be visiting your website for a purpose so it is beneficial to know the things they are looking for. To help you decide on this, you should clearly define the goal of the site and also understand what people want to feel or do when visiting your website.

Looks vs. Function

Some designers pay more attention on how the site looks rather than on how it works. Some even rely on advertisements, so that clients will find their website, instead of search engines. On the other hand, SEO’s or Search Engine Optimization consultants are concerned with how a web site works, textually and technically. As a result, designers and SEO’s end up having fights because of the differences of their concerns.

by: Hunter Blyth
http://www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk
http://www.articlecity.com

Optimizing Keywords for Search Engines

2008-01-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

All SEO experts believe in the importance of optimizing keywords for search engines. Search engines need to know enough about your keywords so that they can help your pages visibility. If you're optimizing keywords for every page of your site, search engines help those pages be found as well.

How's Optimizing Keywords Done?

Before any other things, you need to select your keywords carefully and smartly. Keywords aren't the words or phrases that you invent. You have to discover what searchers are typing to find what they want. Then, you choose the closest to the content you want to write and write with those keywords in your mind.

Use a Variety of them

To distinguish individual pages of your site from each other, optimizing keywords for search engines can help. Every webpage on your website should have its own keywords or key phrases. Search engines, then, realize your pages are different from each other. Also, they see what the difference is.

On the other hand, in optimizing keywords for search engines, it will be very useful if the keywords of various pages on your site are similar and/or relevant. This, of course, will be the best SEO tactic in terms of optimizing keywords and will enhance the content relevancy on your site.

Optimizing Keywords or Key Phrases?

Today only the known brands or very successful websites use keywords successfully. Does it sound disappointing? Don't worry! What I mean is that one single word (common name) can hardly bring you targeted audience unless you're well-known or famous for that single work.

So, what's the solution? You have to get involved in optimizing keywords for search engines in a precise way.

Use a string of words, a key phrase. The longer a key phrase, the more targeted your site visitors. Of course, there's some limit to it! These days, three-word key phrase or even four-word key phrase is the best to have.

For example, "affordable search engine optimization India" brings more targeted customer to your site than "seo India" or "seo packages" if you're an SEO company in India trying to sell lower-priced search engine services in your country.

Where to Use them!

You've carefully been optimizing keywords for search engines by now. The outcome should now be used at your title tags, alt tags, first two headings, beginning and end of pages, middle of pages, menu links, inbound links, etc.

This doesn't mean that you stuff the above positions with your keywords. Of course, the more inbound links with your keywords in them, the more benefit you get, specially from quality web pages outside your website.

How to Use them!

Once you've decide what key phrases to use and where and completed optimizing keywords, stick to them as they are. Never split them up by adding a word in the middle of such strings or words.

Key phrases should have appropriate weight, frequency and density on your web pages, not more not less than necessary. Otherwise, they will be seen as inefficient or spam!

Therefore, you should be extremely careful about how to use keywords or key phrases at your web pages.

How to Use Keywords Appropriately!

After you've completely done optimizing keywords for search engines, you should use them sufficiently and efficiently. This is something that search engines will find out easily. You also need to use good softwares or hire SEO experts to adjust this crucial point at your website.

While you've put all the above tactics into action, in your web pages, you could expect more targeted visitors. Obviously, this ends in having more customers who find you and buy what you've got to offer.

by: Rahman Mehraby
http://www.site-booster.com.
http://www.articlecity.com

Web Design Facts

2007-12-24T18:45:00.000-08:00

Fact 1: We can’t deny the fact that when browsers enter a site, they look for something that is relevant to their needs. If they ended in a particular site through advertisements, then they would expect to see something related to that ad.

Fact 2: On the other hand, when a search engine scans a site’s contents, it looks for contents which are useful enough for other sites to reference. It expects to locate a content that is consistent with the keywords.

Fact 3: Moreover, visitors who go to a shopping cart would expect to find photos with high quality, a variety of applicable views and lastly, a concise and clear description and costs. They also expect that the cart should work in all types of browsers.

But sad to say, some viewers do not find what they need in a website or sometimes they have a hard time going around the site. The following things should make you aware on the things why web sites fail.

One fact that web designers must know is that people wouldn’t enter your site unless they know their way around it.

Due to this concern, web designers must take into consideration that they need to conceptualize user friendly and easy to understand websites. For most customers or viewers, very extravagant design won’t matter as long as they don’t get lost in your site.

Your competitors are just a click away

When designing your web site, think very carefully on things that could give you a plus over your competitors. Think of the things that you can offer your customers in order for them to stay on your site and choose you above all else.

People hate slow websites

Designers must understand that searchers can be very impatient when surfing through sites in the Internet. Therefore, designers must find a way to minimize the slowness of websites and at the same time offer viewers with quality contents.

Searchers look for relevant information

Dr. Jim Jansen of Penn State’s School of Information Sciences and Technology said, “A web site has to be relevant to a searchers needs. Otherwise, by the time three minutes have elapsed, 40 percent of searchers will have moved on. While some may have found what they wanted, others may simply have given up and move to a different site." When designing web pages, designers can’t help but become graphic artists with the aim to make your site look great but sometimes lacking in information. Therefore, remember that while it is important to make your site attractive, it is equally important to place in your site the information that visitors need.

Sites should have clear abstracts

The first thing that appears on the result page as an answer to a search engine query is the site’s abstract. The abstract explains everything about your site. According to a study done by Penn State, more users or searchers can be drawn to a site with the use of an abstract. That is if the abstract is informative enough and gives relevant and enticing information about the site. Dr. Jim Jansen said, "For site developers, if you want to be looked at, it is absolutely critical that the abstract be crystal clear about the purpose of your Web site."

by: Hunter Blyth
http://www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk/
http://www.articlecity.com/

Enhance Web Page Behavior With Color And Graphics

2007-12-19T17:55:00.000-08:00

People frequently ask me about the format and appearance of their web site. Should they include their logo? What about using color? How much? What kinds of graphics should they use? All the research and advice I've seen recommends using quality, understandable color and graphics, except for those rare situations where the visitor explicitly forbids it.

There are several factors that contribute to a good web site page layout, legibility of the font, use of white space. But, two of the more important tools you can use are color and graphics.

Be careful not to offend! Color is important in the success of any web page. However, colors mean different things to different cultures. If your business deals with several different cultures, be sure to research the importance of colors and their meanings. This includes the colors of fonts, graphics and borders.

Research indicates that using color and graphics can increase the reader's motivation up to 80%, increases comprehension up to 73%, and sells products and ideas 55% to 85% more effectively. The reason why this works, is that some people learn more easily through graphics than they do through words. Some people, however, are skimmers, and graphics are more likely to slow down the skimming process so that they absorb the content.

To better understand what color and graphics to use on your web pages, learn the behavior of your audience - the visitor. Human behavior, is always the result of one or more of five basic needs or motivating forces. This theory is that until a lower-ranking need is satisfied there is no desire to pursue a higher ranking need.

Below are the five human motivators, beginning with the basic or lowest ranked need and continuing to the highest.

Physiological needs - Include hunger, thirst, reproduction, shelter, clothing, air and rest.

Safety-security - The need for security, stability, dependence, protection, structure, order, law, tenure, pension and insurance.

Love-belonging - The need for belonging, acceptance, love, affection, family and group acceptance and friendship.

Self-esteem - The need for recognition, respect, achievement, responsibility, prestige, independence, attention, importance and appreciation.

Self-actualization - The need for satisfaction, the desire to achieve fulfillment through reaching self-set individual goals or aspirations.

The web page designer will do well to become familiar with this theory of human motivation because it stresses, once again that motivation is always an individual act. The most your web page message can hope to do is to present an appeal strong enough to stimulate action toward satisfying one of the basic human needs.

If there is one rule that will be most helpful in preparing effective web page design for advertising, it is this The message must put the desire of the potential customer before the advertiser's desire. Please read that one more time! The rule may sound like a simple one to follow, but frequently graphics and messages take the form of a plea for customers to respond and solve the advertiser's problem.

Think about color and graphics while you're outlining or organizing your web pages. Graphics that are thrown in as an afterthought typically look like afterthoughts. By following these tips, your web site will be more colorful, more interesting, and will have more impact.

by: Chris Boaze
http://www.webdevelopmenttechnology.com
http://www.articlecity.com/

Building Dynamic, SEO Optimzed Websites The Easy Way

2007-12-16T21:09:00.000-08:00

Tired of spending, hours, days, weeks or months building a website, only to see a small return for it? Yeah, maybe you do it because you love your subject and want to share it with others. But wouldn't it be nice if you made some money from it, even if only to cover hosting fees?

Building a quality website can take a huge amount of time and many people are frustrated at the low levels of money they earn from Adsense ads placed on their pages. That can be down to something as simple as the placement of those ads on the page.

But there is another approach...

Instead of putting all your time into one website, why not put a small amount of time into many websites and start building a Virtual Real Estate Empire. Now each website might only earn between $0.10 and $0.50 per day, but if you had 10 websites, you'd be getting $1 - $5 per day. With a 100 sites, you'd get $10 - $50 per day.

You see, Adsense is a numbers game...

The more websites you have, the more meney you make. All those little amounts combine into one big monthly check. But how do you go about building multiple sites? Well, one thing you can do is buy those Adsense website templates you see all over the internet. Or you can go one stage further and buy complete website packages in a box, but there are problems with these:

- Most look very cheap

- You have to modify them to suit your content and tailor them to your affiliate promotions

- If any content is provided, it's static, unchanging, and the search engine spiders, along with visitors will get bored looking at it

- And, most importantly, 100s if not 1,000s of others are using exactly the same templates and content

That hardly leads to a dynamic, unique website. Google hates duplicate content and you don't stand a chance of being remotely unique in a sea of sameness unless you start individualising your sites. And, guess what? You're back to square one, putting a lot of time into each site to make it different.

But there is a solution...

What if you knew there was a piece of software that would create dynamic, unique websites, optimized for Adsense, customizable as you need with options for adding other affiliate revenue streams, and you could create such a website with the click of a button?...

by: Gary Nugent
http://www.sitebuilderelite.com
http://www.articlecity.com

How To Build A Website That Makes Money

2007-12-11T04:06:00.000-08:00

As little as one decade ago an ecommerce site was the domain of techno wiz’s and coding geniuses. Today the Internet business world is not limited to the technically gifted and motivated. Anyone can build an ecommerce business due to the advent of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors, web building wizards, open source blog and web site platforms, as well as platform like Ebay, Amazon, etc.

A person can build a viable web business without ever understanding how to configure a Mysql database or coding in HTML or PHP. A strong computer background or time needed to learn, is all the skills needed to get started.

Static Pages & Content Management Systems

Static pages are like digital paper. They do not change. They end in .htm, and remain the same until the owner changes the content on them.

A content management system can be as simple as a www.blogger.com or Wordpress blog. Or, it can be a complex $10 000 platform that is powerful enough to run 100 000 pages of content. The objective is to create something for the search engines to send their robots to for ranking and traffic generating.

The content should be designed to create demand, solve problems, and offer solutions. The secondary purpose is to optimize the website increasing the traffic and profit.

What Are You Selling

The Internet does not require a tangible product for sale. There are dozens of things to sell which are not tangible including downloads, education, affiliate and advertising, pre-selling, or social/ entertainment. Creating a site where people can come and share their love for a hobby, venture, belief, or view, can provide a good opportunity for a savvy business owner.

It is possible to sell entertainment. It is possible to sell ‘meeting people.’ Many Internet businesses have grown to unbelievable levels of success doing just this. Some examples are youtube.com, facebook.com, myspace.com and more.

The first step to building a website is not designing the site. It is deciding what is being sold. Why will people come to the website? What will attract them? What will make visitors stay at the site?

Understanding what is for sale will help the business owner pre-sell the product without continually telling people to buy something. In fact, the most profitable sites are those that do not try to sell anything.

Monetize the Website

The term monetize the website means to create a website that doesn’t sell anything. Its sole purpose is to pre sell a product and make money by driving people to websites that do sell something. This is a popular method of income generation as it lets Internet businesses to create multiple streams of income and diversify without needing to invest money into products, merchant accounts, and warehousing or drop shipping.

Shopping Carts

Once the website owner decides what to sell, they need to determine what type of platform. Many new companies stick with paypal.com an ebay company. Other people do not try to do it their own. Instead they take their time and explore their options.

One way is to use prostores.com, ebay.com, or amazon.com to sell their products.

Stay Up To Date

Being behind the times is a quick way to go out of business. Ecommerce companies need to stay up to day. That e-book should be changed into a home study or an e-course. The download should become a video or audio file. The free blog – a personalized website. The internet world is evolving. As fast as users become familiar with one form of Internet tool or feature, another is quickly increasing to take its place.

The key to success is remaining educated, reading everything you can, and staying up to date with the web and all the tools it has. What makes money? Something new.

by: Patricia Taylor
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.CashFlowInstitute.com

Web Design – How to make it Template based?

2007-12-07T00:52:00.000-08:00

Web Design – How to make it Template based?

What is a web template?

A web template is an element of web designing system that is used to rapidly generate and produce massive web pages through a pre defined schematic layout.

If you are planning to build large amount of web pages site with same navigation link which would be updated on the regularly basis on site’s navigation part then template based web design is the best option for it. During creating a template based website you create a template file where you choose your editable and non-editable region part of your template. You can do changes on only your editable region of your web page.

So you must be careful to choose editable and non-editable part of your website building template for your website. The main advantage of template based web design is their SEO (search engine optimization) advantage.

As it just needed the template to be updated and all the related web pages get updated in one go. This helps in bringing frequent updating on the whole website. Whenever you will do some updating on the template file then it will be applied on all site’s pages

How to build a template based web design?

1) Open the html file in dream weaver software
2) Open “Site” menu bar and click on the “New Site” option.
3) Now add your site folder in your dream weaver for building template file
4) Now Click on “Insert” menu and choose Template Object and then “Make templates”
5) Now select the table of html file which you want to build editable part of site
6) Again click on “Insert” menu and choose “Template Object” and click on “Editable Region” option

Benefits of building template based web design

• Easy to build
• Easy and quick updating
• Updating becomes online updating just template page.
• SEO friendly design

by: Jyoti Mali
http://www.tisindia.com
http://www.india-designers.net
http://www.articlecity.com/

Good Design Practices and Important Rules in Website Design

2007-12-03T20:02:00.000-08:00

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.

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 alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

by: Kanicen Nichathavan
www.articlecity.com
www.shoppersjourney.com

Hosting Plazza

2007-02-15T05:50:00.000-08:00

July 2006 Joomla/Mambo Template
Released from www.templateplazza.com for TemplatePlazza Club Member
Copyright 2006 TemplatePlazza.com All Rights Reserved.
This template tested with Joomla 1.x and Mambo 4.5.x
===================================================================

TemplatePlazza would like to thank you for join with our Template Club Membership
We hope you are as pleased with the service we are to bring it to you.

=====================================
Installation And Setup Instructions :
=====================================
1 Go to Your Joomla/Mambo Backend (eg. http://www.your-mambo-sites.com/administrator)
2 Open the Template installer from drop down menu, Installer --> Template-Site
3 Click the browse button, select the zip file on the setup folder (from you template package) and then press the 'Upload & Install' button
4 Then go to Template Manager Section and check the new template radio button. Press the 'Default' button on the top of Template Manager.
5 Finished! Your Template have installed now.

=====================================
For Mambo 4.5.3 User :
=====================================
This template comes with default Joomla module position.
If you install this template to Mambo machine, you need to re-arrange your module position at mambo module manager as instruction below :
Go to Modules->>Site Modules and then please change the module postion :
- Change the Top Menu Module position to 'user3' (mambo default position is 'top')
- Change the Latest News Module position to 'user1' (mambo default position is 'user2')
- Change the Popular Module position to 'user2' (mambo default position is 'user3')

=====================================
Modification :
=====================================
You can modify header or another element at template from editable source file included in the package.
(eg. PSD or FLA, if there's)

=====================================
Special Modification
=====================================
To change images that will be displayed on flash rotated images please follow 2 easy step below:

1. Simply create /edit a jpg images using your favorite images editor, then save on "slide" folder at your Hosting Plaza images folder.
2. Open images.xml that's located on Hosting Plazza folder, then type your new images path with format like this :

Finished. That's all

For best result please create your image on 462x125 pixel format and save as a jpeg file.
You can add unlimited images for this flash rotated images but please notice more images will caused more loading time for your site

Have a nice day,
Regards,
TemplatePlazza.com

Business Plazza

2007-02-15T05:43:00.000-08:00

June 2006 Joomla/Mambo Template
Released from www.templateplazza.com for TemplatePlazza Club Member
Copyright 2006 TemplatePlazza.com All Rights Reserved.
This template tested with Joomla 1.x and Mambo 4.5.x
===================================================================

TemplatePlazza would like to thank you for join with our Template Club Membership
We hope you are as pleased with the service we are to bring it to you.

=====================================
Installation And Setup Instructions :
=====================================
1 Go to Your Joomla/Mambo Backend (eg. http://www.your-mambo-sites.com/administrator)
2 Open the Template installer from drop down menu, Installer --> Template-Site
3 Click the browse button, select the zip file on the setup folder (from you template package) and then press the 'Upload & Install' button
4 Then go to Template Manager Section and check the new template radio button. Press the 'Default' button on the top of Template Manager.
5 Finished! Your Template have installed now.

=====================================
For Mambo 4.5.3 User :
=====================================
This template comes with default Joomla module position.
If you install this template to Mambo machine, you need to re-arrange your module position at mambo module manager as instruction below :
Go to Modules->>Site Modules and then please change the module postion :
- Change the Top Menu Module position to 'user3' (mambo default position is 'top')
- Change the Latest News Module position to 'user1' (mambo default position is 'user2')
- Change the Popular Module position to 'user2' (mambo default position is 'user3')

=====================================
Modification :
=====================================
You can modify header or another element at template from editable source file included in the package.
(eg. PSD or FLA, if there's)

Have a nice day,
Regards,
TemplatePlazza.com