h.264 dvr
Step 1. Getting the background together.
Let’s start by creating a new Photoshop file. Open Photoshop and create a new file that’s 770pixels wide by 180px high. Make sure the resolution is set to 72 dpi.
For our basic grey background I’ll need two components:
1. A Shape layer with a Gradient Overlay effect applied
2. A layer with a Pattern Overlay applied
Start by selecting the Rectangle tool and dragging out a rectangle to fill our empty document.
Next, go to the Layers palette and click on the “Add a Layer Style” icon at the bottom. Choose “Gradient Overlay” from the popup list. In the Layer Styles window, create a new gradient from black to grey (I used a hex value of 545454). It should look something like this:
Now I’m going to create a diagonal tiling background pattern. Create a new Photoshop document of 4px square. Zoom right in, and using the Line Tool, create a white diagonal line going from the top right corner to the bottom left. Hold down Shift as you draw to constrain it to 45 degrees. Double click on the background layer and hit OK to make the Background layer into a normal bitmap layer. Now turn that layer’s visibility off in the Layers palette. The document should look a little like this:
Choose Select > All from the menu and then go to Edit > Define Pattern. Choose an appropriate name if you like. Now head back to the original header document.
Create a new layer above the rectangle with the gradient and fill it with black. Double-click it to bring up the Layer styles and go to Pattern Overlay. Your new pattern should be in the drop-down list of patterns. Select it and you should see your pattern in place in the document. Click OK, and the adjust the layer’s opacity to around 5%, or whatever you think best. This has the effect of reducing the effect of the pattern to “just about visible” levels.
So now we have a nice basis for our header. The gradient and pattern serve as a backdrop for what comes on top. The pattern especially will really emphasize the effect of reduced opacity of any layer above it, and the gradient is practically essential in current web design thinking!
Step 2. Adding the logo.
I’ll be creating a header for a fictitious gardening social networking site, called “Grass is Greener”, so select the Type tool click on the image and type it out. In our example here I’ve used all lowercase, with no spaces to keep the modern feel. I’ve used Arial Bold at 48pt. I’ve also pulled in the Tracking to -50 to tighten the space between the letterforms a touch. For the colour I’ve chosen a really vivid yellow/green of d0e113.
To differentiate the “is” in the middle of the logo so it’s readable, I’m going to select just those two letters using the Type tool and make them white (choosing the colour either from the Options bar or the Character palette).
I’ll give the logo just a hint of a glow to make it “breathe” a little on the page. Click on the “Add a Layer Style” icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and choose “Outer Glow”. You want a smallish yellow glow with a Size setting of 5, at quite a low opacity, so set that to 25%. You can see the settings and their effect below:
I’ll also add a tagline of “social gardening” to the logo. Again, use Arial Bold (or Helvetica Bold) with the Tracking set to -50. I’ve set the font size to 14pt and aligned it with the right of the logotype above. To add the same glow as we used in the previous step, go to the Layers palette, hold down Alt/Option and drag the layer style from the previous layer to our new tagline, like this:
Lastly, I’ll have a box framing the logo, which I’ll create using a Shape layer. Select theRounded Rectangle Tool and set the corner radius to 5px in the Options bar.
Click and drag to create the shape, until it’s a little wider than the logo, with about 15-20px of clear space in all directions. If it’s sitting on top of the logo, drag it down in the layers palette so that it sits beneath both the logotype and the tagline. I want to position it off the top of the image, so using the Move tool just drag it off the top a little to lose the top rounded corners. You could also use the shape editing tools to re-shape the top of the box, but it’s a waste of time in this instance.
For positioning, I’ll put the edge of the box 20px in from the edge of the image, and set the text 20px down from the top. Really I should align the top of the main text body (the “waistline” in typo-speak) at 20px down, but that feels too high, so in the end I think instead that pushing the top of the dot of the “i” 20px down suffices.
Now, we’ll use our “dragging Layer Styles” trick to drag the Gradient Overlay from the background to the new box. So Alt-drag the Layer Style to that box in the Layers palette, and you’ll see it take on the same gradient as the background. I want to see an illusion of transparency here, so I’ll drop the opacity of the layer to around 36% to allow the lines in the background to be visible.
Finally, double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Styles window, and now we’ll add just a tiny Bevel and Emboss effect to make the box “sit into” the background a touch. The settings for this are in the screenshot below.
Step 3. The Search box.
To preserve continuity, the search area has the same corner radius and Layer Styles as the background for the logo. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool again and make sure your corners are set to 5px. Click and drag out the search box until it’s around 30-35px high and 275px long.
Position the search area 20px in from the right, and align the bottom of the search box with the bottom of the logo background. Again, using the same margins and lining things up keeps everything neat.
Copy the Layer Style settings from the logo background to the search box using the Alt-dragging technique mentioned previously. This looks okay, but doesn’t really feel indented like a text area should. Double-click on the layer to bring up the Layer Style window, and click on“Inner Shadow” in the Styles menu on the left. We’ll use a Distance of 5px and a Size setting of 57px to give a deep shadow (see settings below). Set the Opacity to 100%. Click OK to commit the changes. To complete the search area, set the Opacity of the layer to 36% to allow some background through, and mirror the effect of the logo background.
I’ll add a user prompt to the search area in the shape of the inviting word: “search…”. This is just arial bold at 18pt. It’s worth noting at this stage that to actually implement a search field like this, you’ll have to use a background image in the final CSS.
Our final search area looks like this:
Step 4. The grass.
Now comes the fun bit – drawing the grass. Note that we’re not after photo-realistic grass here; just the suggestion of grass. I want a very stylized version, and I’ll build it up using three of layers of brushes and gradients.
To start, create a new layer in the Layers palette by clicking the “Create a new Layer” icon at the bottom of the palette. This is going to be my “background” grass, which will be quite a dark green. Changing the colours for each layer adds depth to the image. I’m going to choose 667e04.
To create the grass, I’ll use a brush. Click on the Brush tool, and from the Brushes palette, find the Grass preset. It’s a little big as it stands, so drop the size to around 45px. Your Brushes palette should look a little like this (Note I’ve turned off the Color Dynamics since I just want a solid colour at this stage):
Now I’ll “paint” with the brush to create a grassy border around 50px high at the bottom of the image.
I’m going to add another layer of grass above the first, but this time using the light yellow/green colour from the logo (chosen to add consistency). Use the Eyedropper tool to select it by clicking on the green in the logo, and reselect the Brush tool. Just brush it on as before to create a “highlight” layer.
Lastly, I’ll add a bit of a glow to the whole thing which just livens it up a little. Create a new layer above the previous two and select the Gradient tool from the Tools. If you followed the last step, you should have the light green from the logo as your foreground colour, but we want that to fade to transparent rather than another colour. In the Options bar, open the Gradient Picker and choose “Foreground to Transparent”, as below.
I’ll click at the bottom of the image and drag upwards until it’s just past the top of the grass, where I’ll release it. That effect’s too much, but now I’ll drop the Opacity of the layer to around 60% to soften the effect.
Finally, I’ll add a bigger grass stem in the background that will show through the translucency of the search box. This should really emphasize the depth in the image. On a new layer, I’ll use a bigger version of the grass brush we used previously. This time it will be around 230px in size, and use a dark grey colour. I’ll choose #282828 for this; not quite black as we want a slightly softer effect than the black would give us.
Drag the new grass layer in the Layers palette to just above the lines in the background, and add a couple of touches of the bigger grass to the layer so that it sits behind the search box. Try changing the size slightly between each dab of the brush to add more variety.
And that, as they say, is that! The final image should look something like this:
Wrapping up.
The end result of this tutorial should give you some grounding in how to apply abstract concepts like Layer Styles and Shapes to a real-world design example. Get a feel for what it looks like with different alignments, composition and colours to see how the various elements fit together, and play with those Layer Styles to get a feel for how they can affect the perception of depth and tone. Above all, have fun!
There is one tool besides all the mentioned ones here which people may underestimate or ignore. It is your ‘website’. Your website can bring in business and can also establish a report. How? Let’s see how.
If a website is designed the right way, it can do wonders for your business. It is that one thing which can speed the journey of success for you. It can take your business to the global level in a quick and easy way. Website designing is an art about the technicalities of which a layman may not know. There are companies and experts who can help you create website designs which could help you grow on a faster pace in every corner of the world.
To do this, you have to find a company which understands your needs, as well as your customer’s. A website design has to be user friendly. The website must not be cluttered with information as it can be confusing for the user. At the same time it must not have a dearth of information on it as incomplete information again leaves users confused. Not only pictures and pie charts, but the content also has a big role to play in a website. The website has to be interactive and fresh in order to leave a mark on the minds of users. All these things are not merely important for the beauty of a website. In fact they are also helpful in the online promotion of the website. There are many good web design and development companies providing online marketing solutions, web designs, Viral Marketing utilizing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), major social networking platforms, targeted and untargeted Email and SMS mobile marketing and many more such services. The combination of such services from experts and a good website design can take your website to the first page of leading search engines.
An expert can surely help you with all the details about useful techniques and ways to benefit the website and business. Your website is one of the biggest and economical ways to rule the industry.
Typography in Web Design:
A very important but often underplayed element in website design is web typography. Typography itself is as old as the earliest writing systems and has since developed into a very specialised field.
Typography originated after the invention of printing from movable type in the mid 15th century and has come along way since then. Today we find a large number of typefaces on the web.
How you approach typeface in your design, will either enhance or diminish the visual impact of your website. Function and aesthetics are intrinsic in web design and how well your design works is just as important as how it looks.
New liberty in Web Design: sIFR Text
Creative uses for typeface in web design were limited until recently. Today’s new operating systems have made it possible for website designers to move away from the limitations of using standard system fonts.
Scalable Inman Flash Replacement, better known as sIFR text are giving many website designers creative leeway. In simple terms, sIFR text is a flash rendering technique whereby designers can replace on-screen text elements with flash equivalents. In order to display correctly on someone’s web browser, sIFR requires the following: JavaScript and a Flash plug-in.
sIFR allows website headings, pull-quotes and other elements to be styled in whatever font the designer chooses. It is Search engine friendly and will display the website content as text and not an image.
Important Typeface Tips:
The web is saturated with tips on website design and typography. Here are a few tips that can help you with the choice and placement of your typeface in web design.
Space:
Take note of the line spacing/ leading that you give your text. The space between your words will impact the readability of your copy.
Colour
Consider the colour of your design and choose the colour of your text accordingly. The colour of your text should neither overpower your design nor be consumed by it.
Font Size:
Consider the theme and style of your web design and choose the font size accordingly. Certain typefaces have been designed as small fonts and will therefore not have the same effect if it is too big.
Take into account that your text size should be readable to different users who are making using different browsers and technologies. Don’t make your text too small or too large.
Legibility
Take your user into account. The emphasis in web design today is on user-centric design. Remember that your website is there to communicate information. The objective is to encourage people to read the information on your site.
Too many fonts
Don’t use too many fonts throughout your website, rather make small adjustments to the existing font. This will help you to maintain a sense of continuity throughout your design. We suggest you use two types of font at most.
Font-smoothing
Any windows operating system lower than vista, does not apply “font-smoothing” as a default setting. This could radically change how the viewers see your text.
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In Delhi there are lots of website design companies found in google who provide various plans and different types of website template and design services at different price some companies offer cheap web design services one important comes in mind how to get best web design company delhi who provide cost effective solution at much affordable price. Remember your website should be customized according to your requirement and most importantly satisfying all basic requirements for visitor to easily convert them into customers. Web design firm like delhiwebhostingindia works under wire frame management make changes when required test your website in different phases and views so that not a single error there exist they knows what best for their customers is best for their customer clients.
Remember your website should be designed in such a way that it looks search engine friendly and it helps you got a big list building and hence improve customer base firms like delhiwebhostingindia provide online tools customized with your website when user sign up in newsletter they got weekly interactive email about your new product and services with special discounts and coupen codes for special occasion such as company inauguration, holiday festivals etc.
You can sell your products online web design delhi firm provide cost effective solution including shopping cart intergeration with paypal, ebookers etc they use various platform like content management system like Joomla, mambo and shopping site templates developed under php, ruby like magento, ecommerce, ecart etc. these platform have builtin analytics panel in which you can track what your visitors are doing and how many comes from which internet medium like search engines, directories, classified, advertising modes etc.
If your website is not found in Google then you are losing mass volume of potential customers. Your website should be search engine friendly it should have unique content and description in on-page optimization factors like meta tag, meta description, header tag, image alternate text, body text etc. millions of website are being developed each day and in internet there exist very competitive market ranking in google for long period required effective search engine optimization. In order to optimize our website in maximum keywords we should update our website with fresh content in the form of blog, articles, press release page, faq page etc.
You should think about it. When you do a search with Google, do you browse through the different pages of the result or do you reach a decision based on the first page. 9 times out 10 people do the same. If you get web design delhi service for your website with 100 % ethical white hat seo while following Google search engine guidelines definitely you will get good traffic of visitors and your interactive website will convert this visitors into customers.
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You’d think, then, that Google and other search engines such as Bing would spend their time monitoring the top web design pages for link spam and other unethical, black hat search engine marketing tactics. However, it appears that Google’s "web design" results are fairly unfiltered and loosely regulated, as a quick scan of their inbound link profile will show.
Armed with Yahoo Site Explorer and a desire to see what makes the most valuable keywords in the web design industry tick, I checked the first page for any unusual rankings, unethical marketers, and interesting search results.
What I discovered was quite alarming: The same black hat SEO tricks that have been used for years are still helping short-term search engine marketers make their way into the top search engine results page (SERP).
From link spam (also known as spamdexing) to manipulative page widgets, there’s an alarming amount of dark SEO tactics going on in the web design world.
This article discusses SEO techniques that a few disreputable web design companies are using, and what they mean for ethical web designers.
Backlinks from Blog Comments
Almost all of the top-ranked results for the search term "web design" showed some signs of proactive search engine optimization. Many used HTML and content optimized for search results. In other words, most had content that was specifically designed to target terms such as "web design" and "website design", and the majority made use of interlinked pages and cunning anchor text. That’s all well and good — I guess — at least in the eyes of Google’s auto-indexing bots.
What’s a little more surprising is that many of the top-ranked web design sites appear to have built at least some of their inbound link profile by using blog comment sections that allow the commenter to leave a URL, as well as placement of links in blogrolls–a list of other blogs that a blog recommends to readers. This tactic has been around for years and can be used to improve a website’s search engine ranking, but in Google’s terms, isn’t natural link-building.
Blog comments, sometimes automated, are still used by shady sites.Blog comments, sometimes automated, are still used by shady sites.
It’s quite unnerving to see such low-level SEO tactics working for these artificially promoted sites. Does this type of strategy really work for such competitive terms? While it makes up a small percentage of their total link profile, it’s still an interesting thing to see for an authority website.
Manipulation of Anchor Text
Google’s stance on manipulated anchor texts is somewhat murky. The search engine has punished websites in the past for exploiting inbound link texts (e.g. the fake credit card story of a few years back), but generally accepts that site owners will try to influence users into picking a specific link text. Some of the websites ranking for the term "web design", however, appear to be taking things too far; well beyond Google’s motto of "Don’t be evil."
These links were spotted in the footer of a client's website, and use an obvious manipulation of the designer's company name.These links were spotted in the footer of a client’s website, and use an obvious manipulation of the designer’s company name. Notice how the first letter of the company name was left out of the anchor text.
A quick scan of the backlink profiles of many top-ranked web design sites shows that unscrupulous web design firms are using their clients’ websites to build their backlinks.
While third-party websites produce links with normal, generic terms such as "website" or "info" to link out to commercial websites, most of the inbound links to design sites use ultra-specific anchor texts and appear to be self-created.
Social Media is Used to Manipulate Search Engine Results
Back in 2006, the SEO community was obsessed with manipulating PageRank through MySpace by using graphics and widgets. The images, often embedded in a table, would appear on profiles and other high-value pages with an outbound link placed below them. This could, theoretically, give a higher PageRank (PR) value to the linked website and increase its placement in search results.
For the most part, these manipulative tactics aren’t that effective anymore. Google’s algorithm has evolved beyond the days of PageRank manipulation, or at least the unsubtle manipulation seen in the days of MySpace.
While outdated PR-boosting techniques have died out, some shady web design companies have found a new way to gain inbound links and trickle-down PR through site widgets that display Twitter and Facebook updates.
More obvious anchor text manipulation; this time in a Twitter widget that's used on thousands of popular websites.More obvious anchor text manipulation; this time in a Twitter widget that’s used on thousands of popular websites.
Check the screenshot above for an example — the linked page has gained most of its "web design" links by distributing a branded Twitter widget. What’s interesting about this example is how their outbound link is displayed — while it’s technically branded as their business name, the first letters from their name have been excluded to ensure that PageRank is passed with the right anchor text. Shady, right?
This type of manipulative inbound linking has been used on all the major design-related terms, making it difficult for organic search engine results to break through.
While SEO is very much an effort-based marketing field, it’s unlikely that Google and other search engines appreciate this kind of PageRank manipulation. It would be interesting to see how long these types of links will remain valuable, as search engines tend to use disincentives and penalties to push down websites that manipulate their anchor text in this way.
Bad News for the Good Guys: Organic High Rankings Are Unlikely
What does this near-constant search manipulation mean for ethical web designers and web design companies? Unless you plan to target small, niche search terms like affordable web designers that love cats almost exclusively, the likelihood is that your website won’t rank well for volume-based keywords without the same SEO work.
Without an active SEO campaign, it's unlikely you'll rank for anything more than ultra-niche search terms.Without an active SEO campaign, it’s unlikely you’ll rank for anything more than ultra-niche search terms.
Are these disreputable web design companies affecting the relevancy in search results? Possibly. While there are some relevant results in the first page for terms like "web design" and "website design", such as the Wikipedia entry on web design and the About.com pages for web designers, many search results are of commercial websites that have participated in unethical SEO practices. It’s possible, though, that Google actively monitors some of the more popular web design keywords, which could potentially limit the effects of these black hat tactics.
Linkspamming and Other Blackhat SEO Tactics Are Still Effective
Comment backlinks, manipulative links, and self-created links are one thing — and their effectiveness is questionable due to no-follow rel attributes that most blogs implement — but spam, what’s known as link spam or spamdexing in the context of SEO, is another game entirely.
While most web design company sites appear to have gained their backlinks at least somewhat ethically, there are two results found on the first page alone that have gained their positions almost entirely through link spamming.
It's rare to see a service-based business resort to keyword spam, but this Chinese web design firm has succeeded in doing just that.It’s rare to see a service-based business resort to keyword spam, but this Chinese web design firm has succeeded in doing just that.
One is an offshore Chinese design site, which appears to have gained the bulk of its backlinks by publishing automated blog posts. It’s not often you see "web design" listed alongside common spam terms such as "levitra" and "Louis Vuitton Replica" if your backlinks are organic. Check the screenshot above for a quick look into this website’s backlink profile; it’s quite alarming on such a competitive search keyword.
What’s clear is that unethical search strategies — spammed links, PageRank manipulation, and other shady tactics — still work. And, often, very effectively. If it’s possible to gain a front-page SERP listing with little more than automated blog posts and spammy links, it seems unlikely that legitimate and ethical design company websites could ever rank well, let alone for a competitive and valuable search term like "web design".
Organic SEO campaigns Aren’t Likely to Succeed in Web Design
Can a natural link profile compete with the big players? Unlikely. Search appears to be an area that is lucrative for those with questionable ethics, given the amount of websites ranking for high-value terms in the web design industry.
It’s troubling and saddening to say this: It seems very unlikely that a small site, particularly one that hasn’t been aggressively marketed because of budget restrictions or because of ethical beliefs in artificially growing their search engine ranking, could ever rank well for major design keywords.
And that sucks because amazing web designers are out there, but are being outcompeted by those who would rather spend their budget in gaming the system rather than investing in things that improve their products (such as hiring talented designers).
It's difficult for an ethical design firm to compete with opponents that use linkspam, automated blogs, and other nasty tactics.It’s difficult for an ethical design firm to compete with opponents that use link spam, automated blogs, and other nasty tactics.
However, there’s still hope of success on the front page. Advertising is available through Google AdWords, albeit frightfully expensive for those based in large markets like ours.
Similarly, the amount of time and effort required to compete in organic search results just isn’t realistic for many small web design firms. Freelance designers and small boutiques studios, it seems, just can’t compete with big companies and shady spammers.
Is There Hope for Web Designers with a Conscience?
Possibly. At this point, it’s hard to tell how Google will react to the latest wave of link spam, although given their history, it appears that the links in question could be devalued.
A case about search results in the UK last year suggests that Google does take an active approach to monitoring specific keyword phrases, although with the quantity of design-related link spam, it probably won’t happen soon enough.
Google occasionally removes offending pages, although it's rare to see it in service-based industries like web design.Google occasionally removes offending pages, although it’s rare to see it in service-based industries like web design.
The ideal way to get good search results is by focusing on your products and hope that they’re good enough to gain organic links from high-ranking, reputable websites that deal with web design topics; but with the current situation, it seems even that isn’t enough.
I think personally that this budget will be the official end of the Celtic Tiger for those who in the private sector have been lucky enough to keep their jobs and businesses going till now as they face higher taxes and charges for services that escaped in the past.
I am not an economist. I could dust off my MBA notes from the OU and try and fill these paragraphs with some sort of commentary but I wont bore you with this. All I know is that from a web design perspective it will become more and more competitive for me. A website is often seen as a discretionary marketing spend for many companies. I will not go into this argument again (suffice to say I disagree). I know that inquiries will possibly drop and people will want more for less. This is perfectly understandable as I am in that very same boat myself. I find myself looking at prices in the supermarket more closely, shopping around that little bit more and like you sometimes not spending where in the past I might have done so without question.
OK Where is the Sales Pitch?
Now I could slip in a special offer “Website for XX euro” and try and attract you to making a spend. However if you are reading this blog post you probably already have a website or at least the knowledge to do it without my help. As more and more media students are streaming out of colleges the competition is fierce and prices are hitting rock bottom. Surf around and you can get sites from 300-500 euro easily.
I don’t compete with these prices and value stream and as a result I have been thinking long and hard about my plans for the future in this space and have decided that I my strategy for 2010 and beyond is going to change. Of course I will still design websites and those queries are welcome and I will give you a product that you will be happy with. However my competencies lie beyond this. I have worked in IT and the Internet for over 20 years as a technologist, hosting expert and project manager.
I believe that there are customers out there that need people to help them understand what they are looking for in a website.and an on-line business solution. They are experts in their own niche but are unfamiliar with the best way to go with an on-line strategy. If they ring up a website design company no self respecting designer is going to say they cant deliver on their needs (god knows I have done it often enough myself), but for a large scale project they can often be disappointed and run the risk of failure.
Business owners need expertise to help them to make the right decision for their on-line strategy. They may know the answers but not the right questions. I have the questions that will save you picking the wrong people to deploy your solution. For a very modest fee I can show you the best approach, recommend the best website designers in your area (I exempt myself from this process of course), measure success and tell you how it should all work together. There are some fabulous website designers and graphic designers in the Cork area alone and I know most of them.
I can point you in the right direction, document a plan for you – give you the contacts and set you on your way with a high degree of comfort.
Why Should I Bother?
Why bother with this – is this another middle man in the process? You told me up top that I would have less money and now you want me to spend it on you – this sounds like a huge waste of money. ?? No it isn’t and I will explain why with a simple example. I am dealing with a customer at the moment who wants me to update their website as their original designer has moved on. However they do not have any hosting details or ftp information. To get this is going to take some time and add to the duration of the project.
It is also frustrating for the customer as they had not planned for this time to be part of the process. If when they had originally started the website and made certain that this information was documented then this stumbling block would have been removed. This is an example of a question that was not asked when this project was originally started.
If you call me and explain what you are looking for I can develop a website strategy document for you, supply yopu with a set of contacts that will help you succeed all for less than the cost of a small ad in a local newspaper. You will have a document and a plan at your elbow that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your project.
Here are some key aspects that throw light on the criteria for selecting a website design company that can cater to your needs.
Experience: There is no better teacher than experience. Before selecting the company one needs to know whether the company has got any experience of designing a website for that particular industry. Since how many years is that web design company providing this service. The more the experience the more is the technical expertise and knowledge about increasing the utility of the website. This depends on the expertise of the workforce deployed by the web design company.
Testimonials:
The true worth of a website designer is known from the feedback of clients to whom he/she had provided the services. It is not reliable to trust 100% the client testimonials that are embedded on the websites. It is always better to contact the clients directly and ask their opinion about the services offered by the website designer.
Time:
While getting a web design prepared from a website designer developer, time is of prime importance. The more the time it takes to design the website, the more clients the website owner is losing. If the website is prepared in a hurry, just to get the business identity on the internet, it may be loss of time, money and energy. The web designing process should take neither a lot of time nor be done instantaneously. The time that is given for this should be justified.
Pricing:
Before placing the order with any professional web designer the business identity should calculate how much money is worth being spent on the website designing and developing. This directly depends on the projections of the maximum business that the website can bring to the organization. This is the maximum revenue that can be generated from the website after design and development. It is only after this that the quotations should be asked from the web design companies. One should not get carried away by anything offered for free or at cheap rate. The service charges levied by the company should neither be very cheap nor dear, but reasonable and justified. The inclusions of the packages should be made clear in the quotations. It is always better to get this aspect cleared before placing the order.
Comparison:
It is always better to seek quotations from two or three companies that offer web design services. The comparison of these services can throw light on the range of services offered, pricing and at times even on the satisfied clientele of that particular company.
Hope the above mentioned tips help you to select the best professional web design company.
If you are worried about the outdated text or broken links then, design a web and maintenance should be the solution. Planning for website design and maintenance should be ideal for updating the website. One can easily find service provider for website design and maintenance. There are several service providers out there offering with high quality design a web and maintenance and that too at competitive prices.
The websites dealing with ecommerce, information needs to be updated regularly. For instance, the news related to the company, images, information on products, web content, prices and the content needs to be updated.
The sites that abstain from changing content and the overall appearance for a long period hold risk of losing interest of the visitors. For an old site, more changes in website design and maintenance needs to be done. It would also allow the site to maintain its freshness. Taking certain steps should allow you to take right decisions related to design a web and maintenance.
Some web beginners would charge on hourly basis, while the rest would charge on monthly basis. Sometimes, website design and maintenance can be planned in such a way so as to allow you to makes changes on own.
Decision regarding the usage of Macromedia's publishing program is quite important. The program offers with an array of advantages for the users. It would allow you to connect to live sites, yet make draft for the web pages where the changes need to be made, editing it and updating the work. After completing all of these steps, one can make it online to live site. 'Contribute' operates like any daily day-to-day desktop type of program. Using it is quite simple and would allow you to update without having any troubles. If you are looking forward to make changes on your own then, you should probably try out this program.
It is advisable to seek some professional help for website design and maintenance. The experts would help with design a web and maintenance the best way.
Irrespective of the path chosen for website design and maintenance, having a practical approach for keeping the site updated should be fine.
SEO Website Development Company is professional SEO specialist offering an array of excellent services - SEO, ecommerce website development, web designing, web development, web maintenance, web content development and quality assurance.
It’s easy for everyone to get caught up in obsessing about how to optimise your site & build links for Google, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google totally dominates the search market. But, there are still other search engines that some people are using, so it is wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too!
Obviously the other two engines are Yahoo and Bing and whilst Yahoo is seemingly declining fast, Bing is actually gaining a market share. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway. With the muscle of Microsoft behind Bing, you can be sure the search engine won’t be prepared to play second fiddle to Google for long!
However, unlike Google, we don’t hear much about what Bing wants out of a site for decent rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for complying with Bing’s policies, does not differ too much from the advice that Google would give you. It is however, still always nice to hear what they think, just to clear up any possible confusion.
Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. “Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution,” says DeJarnette. “You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time.”
What You Should Do!
DeJarnette shared some tips for getting more quality links. The following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased):
1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently
2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content
3. Publish concise, informative press releases online
4. Publish expert articles to online article directories
5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable
6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)
7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content
8. Launch a blog/forum on your site
9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site
What You Should Not Do!
DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:
1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
3. Using hidden links in your pages
4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
5. Linking out to known web spam sites
“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction,” says DeJarnette. “If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalised with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”
Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any experienced search marketer is not already aware of, but it can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and not to do, to help webmasters get better rankings.
"Link-Building Policy for Bing"
- http://www.freshwebz.co.uk/blog/ (view on Google Sidewiki)
Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor’s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.
Teasing your curiosity
“Do Not Click Here”. How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!
Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor’s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the “Do Not Click Here” slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor’s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.
Simple integrated design
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, “Google”, to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these “boring” ads such a great success?
Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor’s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.
Take part in the action
Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman “eat” few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.
Back to Black and White
Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.
Get Out of the box
Have you heard about the mrfdesign.we.bs If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community’s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.
What about the next trends
What the
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eCommerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead the visitor to one simple task – make an online purchase. A web designer needs to consider a variety of online selling principles while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will try to take a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have in an eCommerce website.
Many of you are probably already asking why eCommerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need to be attractive, well organized and use the right colors that fits the website spirit and so on. Your instincts are good. However a close look at some successful eCommerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are typical in a successful eCommerce website.
An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:
1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
2. Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
3. The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.
Those principles are not new. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.
How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.
As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.
A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.
“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided
Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
I was recently asked by a visitor to thesitewizard.com to take a look at her company's website, designed by a university student. I will not give the URL for that site, partly to protect the innocent, and partly because by the time you read this, it'll probably have been modified.
The site was heavy in its use of graphics with images adorning most parts of the page layout, to provide curved borders (to replace the sharp corners in enclosing boxes), different background images for different parts of the page, etc. It had a top navigation bar, driven entirely using JavaScript. The navigation bar mimicked the sort of menu bar you find in computer programs - there is a horizontal menu bar with different items listed. When you move your mouse over one of those items, the menu will automatically expand vertically. As you move the mouse cursor down the pop-up menu, the item beneath the pointer is highlighted. Click it, and you will be delivered to another page on the site.
In general, that site is typical of the kind of sites produced by newcomers to web design. It scores well in terms of prettiness and gadgetry (although only under one browser, it doesn't work well under other browsers), but fares dismally in terms of usability and search engine readiness. In fact, the reason my visitor wrote to me was because the website suffered a significant drop in the number of visitors after it was redesigned in its current form.
This article uses that site as a starting point for discussing some of the issues that a web designer needs to consider when creating a website that must exist and compete in the real world (as opposed to a site that is created merely to fulfill the course requirements of a school or university).
1. Appearance is Not the Most Important Issue
Over the years that I have dealt with newcomers to web design, it is my observation that they tend to focus excessively (and sometimes almost exclusively) on the appearance of a website. The site I mentioned earlier is a case in point: the designer tried hard to make the site look beautiful (and, if I may add, succeeded too - the site does indeed look pretty). However, as hard as it may be to believe (if you are a newcomer), appearance isn't the most important thing to look at when you are planning and creating your site.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that appearance is of no importance. Far from it. However, in this article, my intention is to address the excessive importance newcomers place on beauty. In fact, if you belong to the other extreme, discounting the value of the appearance of a website altogether, you might want to read my discussion of Two Common Web Design Myths at http://www.thesitewizard.com/
Having said that, your site can still survive (or even thrive) if it is a plain-looking site like Google. This is not necessarily the case if you overlook the other important issues in web design.
2. Usability is Important for You to Achieve Your Purpose
All sites are created for a particular purpose. Some were created so that their owners can sell something. Others are information resources (like thesitewizard.com). Still others are designed to showcase their owner's talents (such as sites displaying the owner's resumes and portfolios).
The usability of your site is important to help you achieve that purpose. The basic question that you need to address when dealing with usability is: can your visitors easily access the information they need so that they can do the stuff that you want them to do? There are quite a number of things involved in this question.
1.
Information Availability
Is the information that your visitors need to make informed decisions available on your site? For example, before they can buy a product, they will want to know more about that product. A brief one-line summary about your product's features may work for your main page, but you will probably find that you get more buyers if you can p
Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Visibility in Web Design
by Christopher Heng, thesitewizard.com
I was recently asked by a visitor to thesitewizard.com to take a look at her company's website, designed by a university student. I will not give the URL for that site, partly to protect the innocent, and partly because by the time you read this, it'll probably have been modified.
The site was heavy in its use of graphics with images adorning most parts of the page layout, to provide curved borders (to replace the sharp corners in enclosing boxes), different background images for different parts of the page, etc. It had a top navigation bar, driven entirely using JavaScript. The navigation bar mimicked the sort of menu bar you find in computer programs - there is a horizontal menu bar with different items listed. When you move your mouse over one of those items, the menu will automatically expand vertically. As you move the mouse cursor down the pop-up menu, the item beneath the pointer is highlighted. Click it, and you will be delivered to another page on the site.
In general, that site is typical of the kind of sites produced by newcomers to web design. It scores well in terms of prettiness and gadgetry (although only under one browser, it doesn't work well under other browsers), but fares dismally in terms of usability and search engine readiness. In fact, the reason my visitor wrote to me was because the website suffered a significant drop in the number of visitors after it was redesigned in its current form.
This article uses that site as a starting point for discussing some of the issues that a web designer needs to consider when creating a website that must exist and compete in the real world (as opposed to a site that is created merely to fulfill the course requirements of a school or university).
1. Appearance is Not the Most Important Issue
Over the years that I have dealt with newcomers to web design, it is my observation that they tend to focus excessively (and sometimes almost exclusively) on the appearance of a website. The site I mentioned earlier is a case in point: the designer tried hard to make the site look beautiful (and, if I may add, succeeded too - the site does indeed look pretty). However, as hard as it may be to believe (if you are a newcomer), appearance isn't the most important thing to look at when you are planning and creating your site.
Don't get me wrong here. I'm not saying that appearance is of no importance. Far from it. However, in this article, my intention is to address the excessive importance newcomers place on beauty. In fact, if you belong to the other extreme, discounting the value of the appearance of a website altogether, you might want to read my discussion of Two Common Web Design Myths at http://www.thesitewizard.com/
Having said that, your site can still survive (or even thrive) if it is a plain-looking site like Google. This is not necessarily the case if you overlook the other important issues in web design.
2. Usability is Important for You to Achieve Your Purpose
All sites are created for a particular purpose. Some were created so that their owners can sell something. Others are information resources (like thesitewizard.com). Still others are designed to showcase their owner's talents (such as sites displaying the owner's resumes and portfolios).
The usability of your site is important to help you achieve that purpose. The basic question that you need to address when dealing with usability is: can your visitors easily access the information they need so that they can do the stuff that you want them to do? There are quite a number of things involved in this question.
1.
Information Availability
Is the information that your visitors need to make informed decisions available on your site? For example, before they can buy a product, they will want to know more about that product. A brief one-line summary about your product's features may work for your main page, but you will probably find that you get more buyers if you can p
Following my article on Appearance, Usability and Search Engine Friendliness in Web Design where I discussed the importance of looking at the usability and search engine visibility of a website, I have received countless messages from visitors to thesitewizard.com asking me to review their website. While I do not have time to answer such requests individually, I decided that an article outlining some glaring usability flaws that I have found in a number of websites in general would be helpful. This article thus deals with the myths and fallacies commonly believed when designing a website to sell a product or a service.
Make It Easy for Visitor to Check Your Price List
Some websites try to hide the price list for their products. Some of these sites only display the price of the item after you hit the "Buy" or "Order" button, or worse, only after you have created an account on their site. Others have a price list, but bury the link to the price list somewhere deep in their site in a place not easily accessible from the main page or the products page.
I'm not exactly sure what the reason behind this is. Possibly, they think that if the customer does not see the price until they click the "Buy" or "Order" button, they will be more likely to buy the item. This reasoning is fallacious.
There are many types of visitors arriving at your site. Let's take the case of the window shopper. If they see something noteworthy on your site, they may make a note of the price so that they can return later if they want the item at some point in the future. If the price of the item cannot be easily found on your site, do you seriously think that they will thoroughly search the site just to find that elusive price tag? Or do you suppose that such a visitor will click the "Buy" button, just so that they can find the price tag at the end of the process somewhere? Or will they go through the bother of creating an account, revealing their personal particulars, just to find the price of an item?
Like the serious shopper, if they cannot find the price, they will simply go to another site. Remember: this is not a brick and mortar store we're talking about, where you need to take time and put in effort to travel to another store. On the Internet, your competitor is only a click away. And the search engines are more than happy to yield thousands of other sites selling the same type of goods or services as you. I realise that there are some brick and mortar stores (usually small concerns) who think that if they don't put a price tag, the customer has to find out the price from a sales person, who will then have the opportunity to persuade him/her to buy that item. Whether or not that is a good idea for a brick and mortar store (and I can think offhand of some types of customers that you will lose even there), it is a bad idea for a web store.
No matter how you look at it, every customer and potential customer will need to know the price of a product. Even the corporate customer buying for his/her company works to a budget. Making it difficult for your visitor to find the price list is a quick way to drive a potential customer away. As has been observed by many usability experts - the average Internet user has the attention span of a flea. If they can't find what they want within the first few seconds of glancing at your page, they will leave. And your competitors will be more than happy to attend to them in your place.
Provide Descriptions and Pictures for Your Products
I realise that the new web designer is beset with contradictory advice about how best to design their site. One set of such conflicting advice is the requirement to be brief and to-the-point so that you can catch that Internet visitor who will only give your web page a few seconds glance before deciding whether to stay or go elsewhere. Contradicting that is the requirement that you describe your products in depth and place pictures of your product, or screenshots if yours is a software product.
The best way to resolve this, I think, is to take a leaf from Amazon.com's book. For ev
1.
Place some (or all of) your content in a small frame and force your visitors to read the content through that window. Don't worry about what constitutes "small" here, since most of the time, even if you create a big frame, it'll be considered too small by most visitors. This trick has a high annoyance value since your visitors have to view the information through that small little box and scroll continuously to see the text while the rest of the browser window is filled with information they don't really want to read at the moment. With this strategy, visitors cannot resize or maximize the window to make their reading more efficient or pleasurable. This method will allow you to frustrate those hapless souls and, as a bonus, make them leave your site.
2.
Disable the right click menu of the browser. Nevermind that people need the right click menu for many purposes, and that they can access the same functions through the main menu bar even after you've disabled it. After all, if your aim is to annoy, you might as well make their visit to your site as unpleasant as possible.
3.
Play background music when they arrive at your page. If that's not enough of an annoyance, make sure you loop the music so that the visitors are plagued by it continuously while they are on your page. If you're feeling particularly sadistic, place automatically-playing music on many (or even all) pages of your site. You don't have to worry about choosing a horrible tune - choose your favourite piece if you like. Since one man's meat is another man's poison, any sort of music tends to annoy most visitors.
4.
Make every link on your site opens in a new window when your visitor clicks on it. That is, put a target="_blank" to every link. This will annoy visitors since every time they click on a link in your site, a new window or tab will open. Another benefit of this technique is that it makes your site look amateurish.
5.
Force your visitors to navigate your website using Flash. That is, place all your content in a Flash file - text, pictures, links, etc - even if Flash is not ideal for such content (a straight HTML page is best for those types of content). Make sure that visitors who don't have the Flash plugin enabled or installed cannot see anything or do much on your website. This effectively drives away all mobile users, a group of users that is growing in size, as well as cripple your visitors who have come to expect certain facilities to always be available in their browsers (such as the BACK key and the ability to bookmark specific pages) when they visit websites. Now they will be forced to work through the more limited Flash plugin of their browser with whatever subset of features you deign to provide. In fact, exclusively using Flash for your site content might even help you to drop to the bottom of search engine listings too, thereby reducing the number of visitors to your site. After all, if you don't have visitors, you don't have to think of new ways to annoy them.
6.
Load your site with pop-up windows that open when your visitor reaches your page as well as when they leave the page. In fact, if you want to annoy them even further, open a pop-up window when they click on links on your site.
7.
Reduce the navigational usability of your website. Don't put site maps or navigation bars with shortcut links to pages that your visitors will usually want to go such as the "Download" page if you're a software author. If you can annoy your visitors by forcing them to read whole pages of your text before they can find a link to move on to do what they really want to do, so much the better.
In an ideal world, you only need one set of CSS style sheets for your website, and those styles will work with every browser currently being used. This, as every webmaster soon finds out when he/she uses CSS, is a pipe dream. The modern browsers all have uneven levels of implementation of the CSS standards. As though this isn't bad enough, their implementations are often buggy - and they don't share the same bugs! And when you have solved that tricky bit, you find that your site has certain visitors (often your best customers) who, for various reasons, are using older browsers that have only rudimentary support for CSS.
What most (if not all) CSS-using webmasters want is a way to specify that a certain style sheet is to be used by such and such a browser and not others, as well as to hide other style sheets from older browsers.
The Good and Bad News
The bad news is that there is no standard documented method to include or exclude style sheets from being used by every browser still being used on the Internet.
All is not lost however. The good news is that there are a number of tricks, workarounds and even non-standard but documented methods available that you can use to have your style sheet included by some browsers and not others. The workarounds often rely on known bugs in certain versions of specific browsers.
On the other hand, even with these workarounds and tricks, you will probably find that there are certain browsers that you want to code for but do not have any reliable means to detect and work around. However, at least with the help of the tips listed here, you should be able to design a CSS-based website that works with the most commonly used browsers
Preliminary Tips for Coding
Before you start coding your site using CSS for specific browsers, here are some tips that hopefully will make your life easier.
Design From Scratch
Most webmasters who have had to convert their existing website to CSS say that they find it easier to design their site from scratch in CSS than to try to find a way to reproduce their old layout in CSS.
Another reason for designing from scratch is that CSS allows you to do many things not possible using the old tables paradigm. Rethinking your entire design allows you to take advantage of the new possibilities.
Code to Follow the CSS Standards First
Many of the web designers hanging out in webmaster forums have found that it is far easier to develop their CSS code for a highly standards-compliant browser like Firefox first, and then only later add the workarounds to make their code work on IE, than to code for IE and then try to make it work for Opera, Konqueror, Safari and Firefox.
It is also logical to write for a more standards-compliant browser first: sooner or later, Microsoft is bound to issue a newer version of IE that will have the existing CSS bugs fixed. When they do so, all you have to do is to remove the workarounds which you created and you're done. If you write your main style sheet with styles that are coded in a non-standard way to deal with IE bugs first, you will wind up having to rewrite everything when Microsoft fixes the bugs.
This is not to say that Firefox does not have its own share of CSS bugs. As such, my personal recommendation is to code with the two (supposedly) most standards-compliant browsers first, ie, Firefox and Opera, while at the same time periodically making sure that your CSS code validates with the W3 Consortium's free style sheet validator. You can add the workarounds for IE later.
(If you are not sure what validation means, or how you can get it done, check out my article on HTML and CSS Validation: Should You Validate Your Web Page? at http://www.thesitewizard.com/
Use External Style Sheets and Take Advantage of the "Cascading" Aspect of Cascading Style Sheets
One way to handle the bugs and omissions existing in different browsers is to put all your standards-compliant CSS code in a separate (external) style sheet file that is loaded by every browser.
Then, when you find th
E commerce websites have come of age. As customers realize the ease and benefits of online shopping, the popularity of e-commerce websites have soared like anything else. However, with the increase in the number of Ecommerce websites vying for attention, it has become important for them to devise strategies to be better than the competition and attract more traffic. Here are some new trends and techniques that can help your Ecommerce processes.
Focus on User Experiences
Often we concentrate so much on improving the usability of the website that we completely forget about the user experience. The way users feel on the website goes a long way in influencing their purchase options as well as their general perception of the website. Therefore, try to connect with the visitors on intimate level and then build up your branding through strategic marketing techniques.
Provide Customized Messages to Specific Audience Segments
The chances of sales increases when the audience is more targeted. When you segment your audiences, you know about their general common preferences and likes. This will also give you an idea about what segments are useful and most profitable. In turn, you can customize your sales message and make sure they receive more relevant and personalized information and offers.
Create Compelling Content
Content is the only source of direct communication with your website audiences. Therefore, make it as compelling as you can . The main objective of your product page should be sales conversions. Include product images and videos along with content that convinces them to hit the 'Buy' button.
Eliminate Unnecessary Page Elements
A majority of Ecommerce websites carry a bulk of undue weight because of unnecessary page elements like blinking banners, rotating graphics and annoying flash-animations. Attention grabbing works best on subtle levels. Also make sure the information you provide on the website is short and crisp.
Include Videos on the Website
Videos are an emerging source of product promotion with more and more website embedding videos on their websites to promote their businesses. You can upload videos that provide demonstrations of your products and show how they work, exhibit their different features and show how users can benefit from their use. Moreover, video inclusion has certain search engine benefits as well.
Involve your Website Audiences
The three main elements of a successful website are - Content, Communication and Commerce. You need to involve your audiences and make them feel that they are a part of the website. Include a form on audience interaction on your website. Provide them with an option to review the products and participate in forum discussions etc.
Provide Free Shipping Options
A little known secret of the e commerce industry is that shoppers often shy away from buying a product because of the additional shipping costs that are involved. Thus if you decide to waive of the shipping costs, you'll have more sales. If its not a profitable option individually, provide free shipping options for bulk orders.
Optimize Products for Local Searches
While it is great to business on a global scale and cater to international customers, you can get huge visitor traffic with localized search engine marketing. Promote the products on your website on domestic search engines. You can also customize your product descriptions, tutorials, public relations and ad campaigns to suit the tastes of the local markets.
The homepage of your website is the face of your online presence. It is what makes the first impression on online audiences about your company and business. When people type in the URL of your website, they reach your homepage. The homepage, should therefore present a brief introduction about the website and lure visitors to browse further within. The homepage is perhaps the most important page of the website and thus you need to take adequate measures to enhance its usability. Here are some tips to ensure the same.
Include a Crisp and Catchy Tagline
Draft a tagline for your website homepage that informs about the company and business in a simple sentence. When visitors enter the homepage, they should know what the website and the company is all about just by reading the tagline. In fact, by drafting a catchy tagline you can catch the attention of your visitors and make sure they don't forget you.
Draft a Meaningful Title Tag
The title tag of your homepage should have your company name followed by a very brief description of the website. Avoid using words like 'Welcome' or 'The' that just populate the space and do no value addition. Instead, try to include your relevant keywords and phrases in the title tags.
Cluster All Corporate Information
Website visitors generally don't bother reading about the company. However, there are times when they decide to do business with you only after they are convinced about the company. In such scenarios it is important to have good corporate information on the website. Create an About Us page on your website that is dedicated towards informing visitors all about your company and business and provide a link to it from the homepage.
Focus on Key Tasks of the Website
The homepage of your website should act as a guide for visitors and help them find a browsing route. It should provide a clear starting point to do what they want to do i.e. there should be clear links to the main areas of the website where visitors might be interested in going.
Include a Search Box
The search box is indispensable for any website. Internet users are an impatient lot and they love anything that cuts short the action steps. Search boxes enable visitors to search for the exact information that they need by just entering a query instead of browsing through categories to fins what they need. Make sure your search box is at least 25 characters wide so that it accommodates multiple queries.
Offer Snapshots of Inlying Content
The homepage of the website is where you can showcase things and lure visitors to further explore the website. A good idea is to place snapshots or post the topics of important content within your website. Whether it is a recent article or a report that you have on a certain web page, offer a preview on the homepage.
Use Meaningful Design Elements
The homepage of a website is important and should welcome visitors. However, that doesn't mean you can load the page with useless design elements and flash animations that offer no value but only increase the file sizes.
Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a reputed offshore web development company that provides an extensive range of web design services and web Development services. He has completed several international web design projects for international clients.
array(
"type"=>"select",
// attributes are an associative array
"attributes"=>array(
"mr"=>"Mr.",
"ms"=>"Ms.",
"miss"=>"Miss.",
"mrs"=>"Mrs.",
),
),
"first_name"=>array(
"type"=>"text",
"size"=>40,
"required"=>true,
"onclick"=>"alert('test');",
"style"=>"border:2px solid #CCCCCC; padding:4px; font-size:15px;",
),
"last_name"=>array(
"type"=>"text",
"size"=>70,
"required"=>true,
),
);
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}
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View codin reference to: required field validator in php - Google Search (view on Google Sidewiki)