The popularity of using Flash components in websites has increased markedly, particularly after Adobe took ownership of Macromedia. Web designers are finding it easier than before to incorporate Flash more creatively and seamlessly into websites, without hampering download speeds.
Flash is a natural fit for Web designers. It enhances the visual appeal of a web page with its ability to deliver the message in a continuous movie format accompanied by audio. Its vector-based graphics are able to increase the interactive functionality of the website, which in turn increases the visitor to customer conversion rate.
With animated graphics and a supportive audio track, Flash is able to attract the attention of the visitor within the first vital seconds, that determine whether a visitor considers it worthwhile to further explore the website. The extensive multimedia capabilities of Flash, allow complex ideas to be presented in a more effective manner. Flash movies also load faster than other scripting such as JavaScript.
However, Flash is also prone to overuse. This causes websites to load slowly or cause the user excessive distraction with unnecessary animation. As text in Flash media cannot be read by search engines, it does compromise SEO (Search Engine Optimization) efforts.
When designing with Flash, the following should serve as a quick checklist:
1. Give the visitor an option to skip
Repeating the presentation of the same Flash movie each time a page is visited should be avoided. Give visitors an option to skip the presentation by offering a skip button.
2. Make the website SEO compatible
Search engines do not crawl content in a Flash presentation, (though lately, there have been some positive developments in this regard). The result would be a non-listing of the website in search engine results. One solution is to create web pages that have both Flash and text elements. You can put the keyword rich text in an HTML text format, leaving images and minimal text for the Flash-enabled banners, thus catering to both SEO and design. You can then selectively submit only those pages to the search engines which are not totally Flash-based.
3. Don’t forget the deadlines
Making complex Flash presentation is a time consuming process. If you are working against short deadlines, develop your HTML site first and add Flash elements after it has been put online.
4. Use Flash judiciously
Using Flash for the sake of it can prove counter-productive as it can come in the way of information gathering, particularly if the site’s purpose is to impart knowledge with a high density of text. Just the minimal use of Flash is often all that is needed, in for example, stock market related sites. In such sites, you can use interactive based graphs created in Flash to provide greater user flexibility and customization.
5. Don’t go over budget
Flash components raise the cost of website development. Therefore the extent of Flash usage in a site should be well planned to keep costs within budget.
Flash presents immense possibilities to enable designers to innovate and make websites interactive and absorbing. But remember, it is just another tool. Use it sparingly for greater impact.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Common Mistakes That New Web Designers Make
I’ve seen it happen time and again, someone is just starting out with their first web design and they get too ambitious, or they simply don’t know that they’ve even made a mistake. But for the experienced Web Designer, things like code validation, optimized images, and uncluttered and easy to use websites seem to come as second nature.
My inspiration for this post comes from a recent post I read on DesignersMind, titled “The 20 Most Common Mistakes in Website Design“. The article focuses on not only on some basic design principles that should hopefully be common sense, but also on other problems a designer might encounter, such as an Untested Web Site, No Contact Information, Old Content, and No Prices.
Many times a new designer will ask for a review of their site and the first thing that I will notice is whether or not their code validates and what the site looks like across multiple browsers. From there I can dig deeper into the site and see just how up to date the content is, how easy the site is to navigate, and how hard it is to contact someone if I have a problem.
One of my biggest pet peeves are designers that build the majority of their site using Flash, or Image Slices, instead of using good ol’ HTML and CSS. It’s great that you can create a beautiful website out of 20 different images or some cool flash interface that I can’t understand (it’s not by the way), but it doesn’t mean a thing if no one can find it (search engines or otherwise). Remember most search engines are looking for text and links, some search engines will even look at images (or at least the alt tags associated to them), but good luck having that search engine actually index the content of that Flash interface, not to mention accessibility usually suffers too.
So as a new web designer what steps should you take to avoid these mistakes?
1. Make sure your code validates W3C Markup Validator and W3C CSS Validator
2. Images are great but if you can do the same thing with a little HTML and CSS, do it! And when you do use images on your site, make sure to optimize them as best you can (gif/png for images with text and logos, jpg for everything else).
3. Flash has its place too. Flash can be used to help make a site more dynamic, and interesting for your viewers but remember to Keep It Simple (a small banner, or section is ok but stay away from an entire site or interface).
4. As if you don’t already have enough to worry about, always TEST TEST TEST your sites in as many browsers as you can. It’s best to test your site design in a standards compliant browser such as Firefox first, but remember that many people still use Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and some of us like to use Safari and/or Opera too.
5. Finally, and probably a much more important piece of advice is to KEEP IT SIMPLE. Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for on your site, and don’t overload your site with links, and columns, and ads, and popups, and all of the content you can possibly squeeze into one page.
My inspiration for this post comes from a recent post I read on DesignersMind, titled “The 20 Most Common Mistakes in Website Design“. The article focuses on not only on some basic design principles that should hopefully be common sense, but also on other problems a designer might encounter, such as an Untested Web Site, No Contact Information, Old Content, and No Prices.
Many times a new designer will ask for a review of their site and the first thing that I will notice is whether or not their code validates and what the site looks like across multiple browsers. From there I can dig deeper into the site and see just how up to date the content is, how easy the site is to navigate, and how hard it is to contact someone if I have a problem.
One of my biggest pet peeves are designers that build the majority of their site using Flash, or Image Slices, instead of using good ol’ HTML and CSS. It’s great that you can create a beautiful website out of 20 different images or some cool flash interface that I can’t understand (it’s not by the way), but it doesn’t mean a thing if no one can find it (search engines or otherwise). Remember most search engines are looking for text and links, some search engines will even look at images (or at least the alt tags associated to them), but good luck having that search engine actually index the content of that Flash interface, not to mention accessibility usually suffers too.
So as a new web designer what steps should you take to avoid these mistakes?
1. Make sure your code validates W3C Markup Validator and W3C CSS Validator
2. Images are great but if you can do the same thing with a little HTML and CSS, do it! And when you do use images on your site, make sure to optimize them as best you can (gif/png for images with text and logos, jpg for everything else).
3. Flash has its place too. Flash can be used to help make a site more dynamic, and interesting for your viewers but remember to Keep It Simple (a small banner, or section is ok but stay away from an entire site or interface).
4. As if you don’t already have enough to worry about, always TEST TEST TEST your sites in as many browsers as you can. It’s best to test your site design in a standards compliant browser such as Firefox first, but remember that many people still use Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and some of us like to use Safari and/or Opera too.
5. Finally, and probably a much more important piece of advice is to KEEP IT SIMPLE. Make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for on your site, and don’t overload your site with links, and columns, and ads, and popups, and all of the content you can possibly squeeze into one page.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Web Design and SEO Tips for the Newcomer
Keywords – the words that people will use to find your website. Choosing the right keyword and being consistent with it is vital to your websites success in the search engines.
There are many tools on the market to help you make the right keyword decision. Tools such as Wordtracker will highlight keyword opportunities. We are looking for popular keywords in terms of expected traffic delivery but have a low competition score from other competing sites. This score can be called KEI.
KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index is a measure of performance. KEI is a ratio of business against competitiveness. The lower the KEI number the harder to get results in the search engine results pages.
As a general rule avoid any keyword with a KEI of under 0.1 as this will be very difficult to target and you could be wasting your efforts.
Go for longer, perhaps 3 word keyword phrases that carry good traffic. The benefits being that they are usually easier to target and provide better, more qualified traffic. Try to avoid broad, non specific terms.
Competitors to that keyword?
Find out how many backlinks your competitor sites have - there are many to choose from, just do a search for backlinks tool. They all give varying results but don't get distracted by that, just find a tool and use that in all cases, this will ensure that the results you get are at least relative.
No1 competitor HTML
Have a good look at the top two or three websites HTML for that keyword. Have they done anything that you can improve upon? usually be looking closely at three different sites you can arrive at a best method to use for your site. Ensure that title, heading and other tags include your keywords - remember to be consistent as mentioned earlier.
Improve your HTML
Aim to write valid HTML code. The search engine robots prefer clean code and a valid site will usually guarantee that all of your site will get crawled. Always take the time to write original content too - avoid the copy / paste syndrome that plagues many sites. The search engines thrive on original content, make sure that they notice yours.
Search engines are always looking out for duplicate content and will choose not to display your pages for a given search if it thinks your site is not the originator.
Some HTML tips with SEO in mind:
Description tag - take the tine to write an appropriate description tag for every page of your site. Google will display this in it's results pages and a well written description here should lead to more searchers actually clicking your link and becoming a visitor.
Title tag - This is probably the most important piece of HTML. Always include your keywords here and write an accurate keyword rich title tag for every page of your site.
Keywords tag – It is good practice to put a list of related keywords into this tag although don't overdo it and do not include any keywords that are not relevant to your web page.
Keep the code clean, use DIVs and not Tables where possible as this has many benefits and it means the ratio of content to code is greater. Try to use your keywords in heading tags throughout the pages.
Take the time to write original copy that uses the chosen keywords throughout. Write the text for a human to read though and not as though you've written it for a search engine. Over use (or spamming) of keywords will work against you always.
Try to get the good text content as near to the top of your code as possible. You could use CSS positioning to help with this.
Navigation – Use keyword rich absolute text links with a title where possible and not relative links.
Link to the domain name itself when linking back to the homepage and not /index.html. The search engines will then find the content in one place and not try to index two URL's - a very common mistake.
To target several keywords, create several pages to do this using the above methods. You cant expect one page to perform for everything.
There are many tools on the market to help you make the right keyword decision. Tools such as Wordtracker will highlight keyword opportunities. We are looking for popular keywords in terms of expected traffic delivery but have a low competition score from other competing sites. This score can be called KEI.
KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index is a measure of performance. KEI is a ratio of business against competitiveness. The lower the KEI number the harder to get results in the search engine results pages.
As a general rule avoid any keyword with a KEI of under 0.1 as this will be very difficult to target and you could be wasting your efforts.
Go for longer, perhaps 3 word keyword phrases that carry good traffic. The benefits being that they are usually easier to target and provide better, more qualified traffic. Try to avoid broad, non specific terms.
Competitors to that keyword?
Find out how many backlinks your competitor sites have - there are many to choose from, just do a search for backlinks tool. They all give varying results but don't get distracted by that, just find a tool and use that in all cases, this will ensure that the results you get are at least relative.
No1 competitor HTML
Have a good look at the top two or three websites HTML for that keyword. Have they done anything that you can improve upon? usually be looking closely at three different sites you can arrive at a best method to use for your site. Ensure that title, heading and other tags include your keywords - remember to be consistent as mentioned earlier.
Improve your HTML
Aim to write valid HTML code. The search engine robots prefer clean code and a valid site will usually guarantee that all of your site will get crawled. Always take the time to write original content too - avoid the copy / paste syndrome that plagues many sites. The search engines thrive on original content, make sure that they notice yours.
Search engines are always looking out for duplicate content and will choose not to display your pages for a given search if it thinks your site is not the originator.
Some HTML tips with SEO in mind:
Description tag - take the tine to write an appropriate description tag for every page of your site. Google will display this in it's results pages and a well written description here should lead to more searchers actually clicking your link and becoming a visitor.
Title tag - This is probably the most important piece of HTML. Always include your keywords here and write an accurate keyword rich title tag for every page of your site.
Keywords tag – It is good practice to put a list of related keywords into this tag although don't overdo it and do not include any keywords that are not relevant to your web page.
Keep the code clean, use DIVs and not Tables where possible as this has many benefits and it means the ratio of content to code is greater. Try to use your keywords in heading tags throughout the pages.
Take the time to write original copy that uses the chosen keywords throughout. Write the text for a human to read though and not as though you've written it for a search engine. Over use (or spamming) of keywords will work against you always.
Try to get the good text content as near to the top of your code as possible. You could use CSS positioning to help with this.
Navigation – Use keyword rich absolute text links with a title where possible and not relative links.
Link to the domain name itself when linking back to the homepage and not /index.html. The search engines will then find the content in one place and not try to index two URL's - a very common mistake.
To target several keywords, create several pages to do this using the above methods. You cant expect one page to perform for everything.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
SEO Services Can Change the Amount of Business Received by You
If you deal with the product that is not just catering need of demographic region but people located globally then marketing on the large scale must have been targeted by you. Online marketing is what can help you reach the potential buyers located in every part of the world and if you already have a website the next step in the row is to get search engine rankings. Search Engine Optimization or SEO can help you enhance your website rankings in search engines, which will surely result in increased revenues through increased sales.
The vital role that SEO is playing cannot be ignored by any organization that aspires to be leader in the industry and wants to reach every nook and corner of the world. In this technical era, when internet is getting popular, the online competition is getting even more cut throat. No matter, you are a manufacturer, trader, contractor, service provider or any other; you can only reach to target audience only when your website ranks among the top ten. As more number of consumers looks for business on the internet, online marketing plays a vital role in generating business for any organization.
Now let’s understand how SEO services can change the business received by you.
A set of methodologies that assist in enhancing the visibility of a website in search engine listings is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The guidelines lay down by the search engines are used to bring the website high in the rankings. However, few SEO services make use of unethical practices to manipulate search engine rankings. Such deceptive practices are also known as spam-indexing. Using the right way may take some amount of time but the end result will definitely be stable and unethical practices may result in immediate results but are barely long-lived, bearing the risk of website being blocked as the spam by the search engine. No organization would want to get the website blocked permanently and thus completely loose on the business. The algorithms of various search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others get changed after some time this is reason SEO process need perseverance, firmness and dynamism to keep pace with this ever changing trends of the internet. This is reason at times it become difficult to understand which method to apply and which not thus you can take help of SEO services.
SEO experts have in-depth knowledge of the various tools and techniques that enable you to reach the desired goal in the most efficient manner. They study the requirement of the website, according to which they develop effective strategies. Once the SEO campaign takes place, it definitely take some amount of time to attain the results but the results will be long lasting and hence more profitable. Such explanation clearly states the importance of SEO in today’s scenario.
The vital role that SEO is playing cannot be ignored by any organization that aspires to be leader in the industry and wants to reach every nook and corner of the world. In this technical era, when internet is getting popular, the online competition is getting even more cut throat. No matter, you are a manufacturer, trader, contractor, service provider or any other; you can only reach to target audience only when your website ranks among the top ten. As more number of consumers looks for business on the internet, online marketing plays a vital role in generating business for any organization.
Now let’s understand how SEO services can change the business received by you.
A set of methodologies that assist in enhancing the visibility of a website in search engine listings is known as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). The guidelines lay down by the search engines are used to bring the website high in the rankings. However, few SEO services make use of unethical practices to manipulate search engine rankings. Such deceptive practices are also known as spam-indexing. Using the right way may take some amount of time but the end result will definitely be stable and unethical practices may result in immediate results but are barely long-lived, bearing the risk of website being blocked as the spam by the search engine. No organization would want to get the website blocked permanently and thus completely loose on the business. The algorithms of various search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN and others get changed after some time this is reason SEO process need perseverance, firmness and dynamism to keep pace with this ever changing trends of the internet. This is reason at times it become difficult to understand which method to apply and which not thus you can take help of SEO services.
SEO experts have in-depth knowledge of the various tools and techniques that enable you to reach the desired goal in the most efficient manner. They study the requirement of the website, according to which they develop effective strategies. Once the SEO campaign takes place, it definitely take some amount of time to attain the results but the results will be long lasting and hence more profitable. Such explanation clearly states the importance of SEO in today’s scenario.
Monday, June 2, 2008
Programming Languages You Could Use in Web Design
These days, most ecommerce websites require at least some form of server side programming to build a proper web design. Even a small business website can have a basic content management system in its web design, which allows the website owner to update the content or even add pages themselves. Such web design solutions are used to make dynamic websites. In other words, owners can interact with their websites.
If you want your website to run any kind of server-side program, you will need your server to be set up with a programming language like PHP and a database like MySQL. The easiest option is to use a program that anyone else has already written. There are a variety of existing server side programs that can be used in web design. These include content management systems, message boards, online shops and blogging tools. Such programs may sometimes be obtained free and can be integrated effectively in the web design. Some common server side languages used in web design are: PHP, ASP, ASP.net, Java, ColdFusion, Perl and Python among others. In web design, such programs usually store information in a database like MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and Access among others.
Moreover, some of the better programs to use for creating the web design cost money but as mentioned above, there are also free and open source alternatives. You normally have to install the program yourself but the process can be a bit tricky. For this reason, web design and hosting companies give you a set of basic programs like blogging tools which you can install on your server through the control panel. On the other hand, you could create a program to ease you with your web design task. Or, you could book the services of a professional web design company to do this for you. This will usually give you more control but will also be more expensive.
Furthermore, if you are going to do the programming yourself, PHP can be a good first language to learn in web design as it is easy to understand. Almost every web design and hosting company provides PHP free these days and most also let you have MySQL free. There are lots of good books and websites to guide you making a good web design through PHP. Scripts are as well available for download and can be easily learnt from. Another language used in web design is ASP. So, if you already know Visual Basic, then ASP can be the best choice for you to create your web design as the code is written in a similar way.
Web design is very complicated than most people can imagine. The ease with which a form is filled, a page is loaded or some colouful graphics appear require extensive web design skills to be achieved. This may heavily depend on how you code your website and how impressive the final web design picture becomes. For better outcome with your web design, you can make some of your potential customers test it before sending it online.
If you want your website to run any kind of server-side program, you will need your server to be set up with a programming language like PHP and a database like MySQL. The easiest option is to use a program that anyone else has already written. There are a variety of existing server side programs that can be used in web design. These include content management systems, message boards, online shops and blogging tools. Such programs may sometimes be obtained free and can be integrated effectively in the web design. Some common server side languages used in web design are: PHP, ASP, ASP.net, Java, ColdFusion, Perl and Python among others. In web design, such programs usually store information in a database like MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle and Access among others.
Moreover, some of the better programs to use for creating the web design cost money but as mentioned above, there are also free and open source alternatives. You normally have to install the program yourself but the process can be a bit tricky. For this reason, web design and hosting companies give you a set of basic programs like blogging tools which you can install on your server through the control panel. On the other hand, you could create a program to ease you with your web design task. Or, you could book the services of a professional web design company to do this for you. This will usually give you more control but will also be more expensive.
Furthermore, if you are going to do the programming yourself, PHP can be a good first language to learn in web design as it is easy to understand. Almost every web design and hosting company provides PHP free these days and most also let you have MySQL free. There are lots of good books and websites to guide you making a good web design through PHP. Scripts are as well available for download and can be easily learnt from. Another language used in web design is ASP. So, if you already know Visual Basic, then ASP can be the best choice for you to create your web design as the code is written in a similar way.
Web design is very complicated than most people can imagine. The ease with which a form is filled, a page is loaded or some colouful graphics appear require extensive web design skills to be achieved. This may heavily depend on how you code your website and how impressive the final web design picture becomes. For better outcome with your web design, you can make some of your potential customers test it before sending it online.
Sunday, June 1, 2008
If You Want Your Website to Make an Impact, You Need to Make it Visually Inviting
Striking visual impact. Instant appeal, instant identity. Compelling navigation system. Everyone loves your web site. The links keep flowing in, and your counter grows and grows. Before a month is out, you have a hot search engine ranking, a write-up in a top directory and a handful of willing contributors. No kidding. Plus, your web site looks damn good. It’s a dream, right?
Music for your Eyes
It could be, for sure. But if you put some passion into your colors (passion being the sum total of time, love, inspiration and obsession), you might just hit the big time. You’d have a pretty good chance, in fact. Run the gauntlet of the search engines, and you’ll find some 50 per cent of web sites steering their colors precariously between the unimaginative and the out-of-control. So there’s plenty of room to make your mark with something one step better. How hard can it be?
When it comes to unimaginative color schemes, look for black text on a white background, with a murky blue or green thrown in for measure, a splash of red for impact and some dodgy GIFs or a badly compressed JPEG.
Out-of-control color combinations might display clashing, marble blue backgrounds with harsh yellow and black text, a badly compressed JPEG and a zillion wriggling GIF animations. Not that any of this is wrong per se. Its just that, thrown together in fear of HTML (everyone’s nervous of code, right?), web site color schemes usually come second in the pecking order to ‘What the hell am I going to write in this?’, ‘What on earth is CSS and do I have to use it?’, and ‘How can I make this look okay when decent graphics take an age to squeeze down the phone line?’
But hold back for a moment, because the Internet is primarily a visual medium. No one likes reading on the web – surfers only read when they already believe it’ll be worth it, and dynamic visuals with snippets of text are the fastest way to convince them of that. Forget compression paranoia, forget HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and forget the web critics. Take time to figure out what your web site’s about, then start thinking in colors and fonts.
Colors and fonts are your opening gambit. They offer immediate visual impact and they amount to the first impression you give. Make a mess of it and you’ve lost your visitor at the starting line. Make it brilliant and they’re already hooked.
So if fonts and colors set the pace for how visitors uncover your site, then let them set the pace for how you design it too. Everything else will follow, from your layout and style to your graphics and even content. Use crisp, clear and minimalist colors and fonts for a serious, informative and business-like identity. But don’t think that has to mean dull.
Use wild fonts and crazy colors for a fun and funky identity, such as Coco-Cola. There’s nothing to stop you going extreme – extreme is positive, even in a serious context. It stands out and makes a memorable impression. You just need to keep it under control, and that’s the skill.
Holding it Together
We could go on and say that pink and green should never be used, and all that, but frankly its tosh. There’s not a rule that can’t be broken, and if a color looks great, use it. The problem is how to build something dramatic without it getting horribly garish and out of control. It’s actually not that hard, and there’s nothing enigmatic and conceptual about building great schemes. You just need to consider the different elements to your pages, what they actually do, and how they need to work together.
Start with your background, since it pretty well governs the rest of your colors. At the same time, you need to be thinking about your main body text, which must be clear and easy to read. And then you need to whip up something special for your navigation element and links – arguably your top concern. They need to be consistent, or they’ll get confusing, and they need to be obvious and appealing so surfers use them rather than hot foot it elsewhere.
Backgrounds basically fall into four categories – the white and light (traditional), the black and dark (dramatic, but the text is harder to read), and intense single color (say red or blue – visually strong but tough to work with) and the rainbow look (forget it).
White is the favorite for functional, high info sites. It’s easy to read text as long as its dark, its easy to choose other colors because nothing clashes and white shows off pictures well. But it’s not especially inspiring, so you’ll have to get your drama in some other way – with superb graphics, striking headlines or fantastic photos.
You could try pale cream, which makes for a warmer, softer background, pale blue which gives a cool, crisp look, or another light color. Text is still easily readable, pictures still look great, and you still have the option to use other colors.
Black, on the other hand – said to be the domain of the free speech contingent – makes for a dramatic background, but you need to be aware that text is harder to read. You’re almost entirely limited to white and pale colors for your body text, and you can’t get away with too much of it at that, but pictures look fantastic and you can cook up some superbly dramatic graphics and navigation widgets.
Bold backgrounds – intense red, blue, green and so on – make for top drama, but you’re instantly limited as to what other colors are going to work. Also text can be a real problem – it’s the difference in brightness more than color that governs how easy text is to read. But figure out something that works and you’ve stolen a lead in the impact stakes.
Go for a rainbow and you’ve shot yourself in the foot, like all those sites with swirly, marbly backgrounds. For sure, tile a background image – choose well and it can be striking – but keep the color range small, so it doesn’t spoil your words and graphics.
Once you have something figured for your background and text, the rest follows easily, as long as you keep it simple. Start with just two colors besides your text and background. If you are working on black, try red and yellow. If you need more colors, don’t go for a blue – you’ll muck everything up. Instead, keep the color scheme tight and use an orange or a paler red. Work with neighboring colors to the ones you already have, and you can’t go wrong.
It really is that simple. If your colors look inspiring, visitors to your site will be inspired, and that’s what makes them want to come back.
Music for your Eyes
It could be, for sure. But if you put some passion into your colors (passion being the sum total of time, love, inspiration and obsession), you might just hit the big time. You’d have a pretty good chance, in fact. Run the gauntlet of the search engines, and you’ll find some 50 per cent of web sites steering their colors precariously between the unimaginative and the out-of-control. So there’s plenty of room to make your mark with something one step better. How hard can it be?
When it comes to unimaginative color schemes, look for black text on a white background, with a murky blue or green thrown in for measure, a splash of red for impact and some dodgy GIFs or a badly compressed JPEG.
Out-of-control color combinations might display clashing, marble blue backgrounds with harsh yellow and black text, a badly compressed JPEG and a zillion wriggling GIF animations. Not that any of this is wrong per se. Its just that, thrown together in fear of HTML (everyone’s nervous of code, right?), web site color schemes usually come second in the pecking order to ‘What the hell am I going to write in this?’, ‘What on earth is CSS and do I have to use it?’, and ‘How can I make this look okay when decent graphics take an age to squeeze down the phone line?’
But hold back for a moment, because the Internet is primarily a visual medium. No one likes reading on the web – surfers only read when they already believe it’ll be worth it, and dynamic visuals with snippets of text are the fastest way to convince them of that. Forget compression paranoia, forget HTML, CSS and JavaScript, and forget the web critics. Take time to figure out what your web site’s about, then start thinking in colors and fonts.
Colors and fonts are your opening gambit. They offer immediate visual impact and they amount to the first impression you give. Make a mess of it and you’ve lost your visitor at the starting line. Make it brilliant and they’re already hooked.
So if fonts and colors set the pace for how visitors uncover your site, then let them set the pace for how you design it too. Everything else will follow, from your layout and style to your graphics and even content. Use crisp, clear and minimalist colors and fonts for a serious, informative and business-like identity. But don’t think that has to mean dull.
Use wild fonts and crazy colors for a fun and funky identity, such as Coco-Cola. There’s nothing to stop you going extreme – extreme is positive, even in a serious context. It stands out and makes a memorable impression. You just need to keep it under control, and that’s the skill.
Holding it Together
We could go on and say that pink and green should never be used, and all that, but frankly its tosh. There’s not a rule that can’t be broken, and if a color looks great, use it. The problem is how to build something dramatic without it getting horribly garish and out of control. It’s actually not that hard, and there’s nothing enigmatic and conceptual about building great schemes. You just need to consider the different elements to your pages, what they actually do, and how they need to work together.
Start with your background, since it pretty well governs the rest of your colors. At the same time, you need to be thinking about your main body text, which must be clear and easy to read. And then you need to whip up something special for your navigation element and links – arguably your top concern. They need to be consistent, or they’ll get confusing, and they need to be obvious and appealing so surfers use them rather than hot foot it elsewhere.
Backgrounds basically fall into four categories – the white and light (traditional), the black and dark (dramatic, but the text is harder to read), and intense single color (say red or blue – visually strong but tough to work with) and the rainbow look (forget it).
White is the favorite for functional, high info sites. It’s easy to read text as long as its dark, its easy to choose other colors because nothing clashes and white shows off pictures well. But it’s not especially inspiring, so you’ll have to get your drama in some other way – with superb graphics, striking headlines or fantastic photos.
You could try pale cream, which makes for a warmer, softer background, pale blue which gives a cool, crisp look, or another light color. Text is still easily readable, pictures still look great, and you still have the option to use other colors.
Black, on the other hand – said to be the domain of the free speech contingent – makes for a dramatic background, but you need to be aware that text is harder to read. You’re almost entirely limited to white and pale colors for your body text, and you can’t get away with too much of it at that, but pictures look fantastic and you can cook up some superbly dramatic graphics and navigation widgets.
Bold backgrounds – intense red, blue, green and so on – make for top drama, but you’re instantly limited as to what other colors are going to work. Also text can be a real problem – it’s the difference in brightness more than color that governs how easy text is to read. But figure out something that works and you’ve stolen a lead in the impact stakes.
Go for a rainbow and you’ve shot yourself in the foot, like all those sites with swirly, marbly backgrounds. For sure, tile a background image – choose well and it can be striking – but keep the color range small, so it doesn’t spoil your words and graphics.
Once you have something figured for your background and text, the rest follows easily, as long as you keep it simple. Start with just two colors besides your text and background. If you are working on black, try red and yellow. If you need more colors, don’t go for a blue – you’ll muck everything up. Instead, keep the color scheme tight and use an orange or a paler red. Work with neighboring colors to the ones you already have, and you can’t go wrong.
It really is that simple. If your colors look inspiring, visitors to your site will be inspired, and that’s what makes them want to come back.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
Worst Mistakes to Avoid in Website Construction
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Website design and construction is one of the core business activities that can make or break your business. A well-designed website will always attract more number of customers to your website by bringing in high quality traffic and volume to your website with greater revenue potential.
On the other hand, poor website construction can ruin all your efforts of promoting your business online. It can put your business reputation at stake and spoil all your future business prospects if you neglect this important aspect.
Top 5 mistakes to avoid in website construction
-Bad colour schemes
One of the most important things to avoid in website construction is to have a bad combination of colour schemes and background which can be simply distracting to the users.
Never use too loud and dark colours that feel like screaming at the visitors and creates confusion in their minds. It is preferable to have dark coloured text with a light background for creating a better visual effect.
-Poor quality content
t is a really a big turn-off to have a content that is so difficult to read and understand with lack of clarity. If the sentences are clubbed together and paragraphs are too long, then it can easily drive away your visitors.
Instead, create a content which carries more useful information for the visitors in an interactive manner. Make it more readable and keep the sentences short so that it is easy for them to read and follow.
-Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
It is necessary to avoid bad spelling mistakes and punctuation errors in your website construction. It leaves a bad impression on the minds of the visitor and reflects carelessness on your part for overlooking such minute details which can make a lot of difference to your business.
Always spell-check the entire content and if you find any grammatical mistakes or punctuation errors, make sure you correct them accordingly during website construction.
-Badly designed layout
It is definitely annoying to find a website that is filled with so much of unnecessary details leaving little space for the user to breathe! In other words, it is sure to cause lot of distraction to the user while trying to digest too much of available information.
Never go overboard with website construction by designing pages that have no spaces left between the text and the graphics.
-Poor navigation facilities
The main aim of website construction is to provide easy search and navigation facilities to the visitor while browning your website. But what is the use if this purpose gets defeated with lot of error pages, too many broken links and ads repeatedly popping up in between?
The visitor is sure to lose his patience and get distracted by these things and go on to some other site. If you do not want this to happen, then you need to pay attention to website construction with good and easy navigation facilities Also, keep a check on the links to see that they work with regular maintenance.
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";}
Website design and construction is one of the core business activities that can make or break your business. A well-designed website will always attract more number of customers to your website by bringing in high quality traffic and volume to your website with greater revenue potential.
On the other hand, poor website construction can ruin all your efforts of promoting your business online. It can put your business reputation at stake and spoil all your future business prospects if you neglect this important aspect.
Top 5 mistakes to avoid in website construction
-Bad colour schemes
One of the most important things to avoid in website construction is to have a bad combination of colour schemes and background which can be simply distracting to the users.
Never use too loud and dark colours that feel like screaming at the visitors and creates confusion in their minds. It is preferable to have dark coloured text with a light background for creating a better visual effect.
-Poor quality content
t is a really a big turn-off to have a content that is so difficult to read and understand with lack of clarity. If the sentences are clubbed together and paragraphs are too long, then it can easily drive away your visitors.
Instead, create a content which carries more useful information for the visitors in an interactive manner. Make it more readable and keep the sentences short so that it is easy for them to read and follow.
-Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors
It is necessary to avoid bad spelling mistakes and punctuation errors in your website construction. It leaves a bad impression on the minds of the visitor and reflects carelessness on your part for overlooking such minute details which can make a lot of difference to your business.
Always spell-check the entire content and if you find any grammatical mistakes or punctuation errors, make sure you correct them accordingly during website construction.
-Badly designed layout
It is definitely annoying to find a website that is filled with so much of unnecessary details leaving little space for the user to breathe! In other words, it is sure to cause lot of distraction to the user while trying to digest too much of available information.
Never go overboard with website construction by designing pages that have no spaces left between the text and the graphics.
-Poor navigation facilities
The main aim of website construction is to provide easy search and navigation facilities to the visitor while browning your website. But what is the use if this purpose gets defeated with lot of error pages, too many broken links and ads repeatedly popping up in between?
The visitor is sure to lose his patience and get distracted by these things and go on to some other site. If you do not want this to happen, then you need to pay attention to website construction with good and easy navigation facilities Also, keep a check on the links to see that they work with regular maintenance.
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