by:
A decent website is a pre-requisite to online business these days. But if you want your website to offer something more, something different then others then it has to be different. Your website should attract the visitor's attention so much so that he stays on to explore your site and returns again and again to get information about your offers. This type of advanced & dynamic website design and web design development requires high level of skill and expertise in this specialized field.
Mosaic's enterprising young team of web developers is a pool of talent; impatient to give you that customized service you were looking for. These skilled professionals well versed with the intricacies of the web development tools like PHP, HTML, DHTML, .NET, ASP and others give the right balance of design and functionality to your website. They design and develop the website considering the basic tenets of web design & webdesign development like readability, easily download, user friendliness and an attractive design. The mosaic team creates attractive & effective webdesign development solutions to cater to your specific needs and special requirements. Your website is created using the latest technologies and uses the latest coding standards for code customization at a later stage. The web development processes are also optimized to give your website greater ROI. A vigorous quality analysis is maintained throughout the web development process to provide the website with exceptional quality.
Mosaic team can add functionality to your site like a shopping cart or can change your static website to dynamic or it can even provide an application with a web interface for you. The various web development services offered are e-commerce, application development, database development and custom programming etc. The company offers webdesign services besides a complete range of LSI based SEO services. You can even get a free website analysis to check what additional functionalities can be incorporated into your website to enhance it. In case you know your requirements, you can request a free quote for a detailed proposal from the renowned web development India company http://www.technology.mosaic-service.com . Mosaic services also offers other advertising, marketing and technical services that cater to your marketing and promotional needs at competitive charges.
Visit the site http://technology.mosaic-service.com to get details about the various other services offered by the company and to solve any web design and development related queries. You will surely get more then your expectation from one of the India's finest web development company.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Web Designing Development
Comprehensive Web Design Checklist
by: Your Web site needs to do more than make your company look good. It has to support your overall business operations - customer service, sales and marketing and collaboration. Whether you're planning an intranet or Internet site, don't start before you check your strategy against this comprehensive checklist.
The following checklist and the associated answers will facilitate the analysis process ofr designing and building the website that allows your company to turn the corner.
GENERAL
1. Where did you hear about us?
2. Do you have a domain name? If not, do you have ideas on one? If so, what is it?
3. What is your company name? Do you want to use the entire name on the site, logo, and graphics?
4. Do you have special features in mind like ECommerce shopping cart, BLOG, RSS, Forms with emails, EZine, Newsletter signup, autoresponders, advertising landing/call-to-action pages, etc.?
MARKETING
5. Who is your intended audience? Are they regional, industry specific, company size specific, etc.?
6. Do you intend to provide a call to action - make a sale, call in to your office, fill out a form, etc?
7. Describe your ideal client and the specific attributes that we'll be targeting in the website.
8. What are your website expectations, main emphasis and primary goals - increased sales, increased leads, etc.? Please prioritize.
9. What separates your company from your competition and what do you expect will draw clients to the website?
10. How do you plan to market the website?
11. What company properties do you want to emphasize on the website? Please prioritize.
IDENTITY
12. Do you already have a logo and other graphics to be used? If not, do you want to have one created?
13. Have you identified a tagline? That would be something like "Just do it", "Reach out and touch someone", etc. Here is some information on the subject http://advertising.about.com/od/copywriting/a/guesttagline.htm.
14. What keywords do you want to be found by in the search engines?
LAYOUT
15. Please provide a list of websites that you like and don't like. Why do you or do you not like these sites?
16. Please provide a list of competitors websites.
17. Do you have ideas of the colors to be used, and colors you don't like? Please provide example sites.
18. Do you have an intended website screen size - 1024x768, 800x600, or stretch to the entire width of the screen?
19. If the site isn't the entire width of the screen do you have a preference for left or center alignment?
20. Do you have a horizontal or left-side vertical preference for the main navigation?
21. Please provide the main pages you need in the website.
22. Have you created the copy text for any of your pages?
23. Do you have existing business cards or other printed material we need to match?
24. Are you leaning towards custom drawn artwork or photographs?
POST-CONTRACT
25. Once we start designing the website we'll need the following (Note that this information will be kept in strict confidence):
a. FTP access information - username and password
b. Hosting company and their tech support phone number
Why Not Have A One Web Page Design Until You Are Ready For A Full Web Site?
by: A number of web design customers coming to us have only recently set up a business. In fact some have not even set up their business and are exploring ideas with regards to a web design. Designing a full fledge web site can be costly, depending on what type of web design you are looking for. If you are not sure about your business, your products and services, let alone your corporate identity, you might not be ready to invest into a web design project. If you have just started your business a one page web site or web page design might be the answer for you. The one web page design has several advantages.
Nowadays, whether you like it or not, every business has its web site. More than likely you need a web page design as well. But you do not require a full several pages web design from the outset. You can still have a web page with your logo, a nice web design, your contact details, some texts about your business, products or services and be part of the online business community.
Indeed, there are a number of web page design companies that are offering affordable web design solutions for small businesses which are not ready to invest in a large web design project. One of the most popular web page design web sites are those that allow you to have your web page design, a domain name, a hosting and your web site online in a few simple steps. How does it work?
Discount Web Design offers such a web page design product which is popular with business starters. Just visit the site, select Business Starter Web Page Design and follow the simple 5 step web page design process. First, check if your domain name is available. Then choose your web design from a number of templates. Just click on the web design that best suits your needs and proceed to step 2. Here you can easily upload your logo if you have one or order a logo online. Step 3, type in your company contact details and some text in the boxes provided. Preview your web page design, if you like what you see, click on the order button to securely pay online. Once your payment is cleared, allow 48 hours for your web page design to be published online on your own domain name.
Once your web page design is published you will also receive five email addresses with your domain name. The web page design will look professional and you can have your own web site, on the internet within 48 hours at a very affordable price. Discount Web Design will also place a link to your web page design from our web site which is already indexed by the major search engines. This means that your web page design will also get picked up by search engines in time. Having a web page design online will help your domain name and web site with Search Engine Optimisation. The longer your domain name is online, the better it is. Obviously, in time you can use the same domain name and hosting account to publish a full web design with several pages. Until then, your web page design will be accumulating Search Engine Optimisation by just being online. Search Engines like established sites, even if it is a one web page design.
There are then some definite advantages to getting your one page web design online as soon as you can. It’s easy and affordable. Your customers can see your web presence through your web page design and it is working in your favour with the search engines.
The Importance Of Good Web Design
by: Have you ever at some point thought about designing your own web site?
If so, what do you think is the most important apsect of this popular task?
Is it the way your pages look? Well to some degree it is, but it's more to do with the navigation of your links and how your website flows and presents itself to your viewers as a whole.
When potential visitors see your site you want them to find the relevant information quicker than they would researching it themselves, so that hopefully they will come back to your site either by bookmarking it or taking note of the URL(web address) for later use, and so that they don't just go elsewhere on the net, because once they are gone you'll more than likely never see them again! (fact!).
So you want to make your site easily accessible and all the information that the visitor wants is clearly marked with links that draw them in.
Of course you are not in full control of peoples minds to make them stay, but remember by making your site interactive and with something for the viewer to do you may gain an advantage over other sites that don't offer this.
Images and banners should be used sparingly and only to compliment your targeted content, 70% writing(content) 30% pictures(Images) is a good rule to follow, ideally either your home page or your index page should have your main content and the point of your website should be realised here, maybe you are promoting a service or product, make it known.
Your site overall, needs to be attractive to the eyes and not that much of a distraction that puts your readers off, clear, readable and easily viewable articles and valued content are what should be presented here, there is no point in mis-matched colour fonts or a mix of small, medium and large sized fonts scattered throughout (this appears quite childish), you need to think beyond the fact that that particular design may look good to you, but may be off putting to others, try to think about your subscribers or future ones as these are the people who will spread your reputation so make a good professional first impression.
It's also a good idea to get a basic understanding of HTML, which is the code that all websites are partly made up of and designed by, all tables and colours are formatted using HTML and then split up by other coding language such as Javascript which creates the interactivity into a web page, you do not have to be a complete know it all in HTML but it is helpful to know the basics such as creating hyperlinks and links to images etc.
Lastly of all remember there is information all over the internet(that is what the web is about!!) when you need it, you just have to do a search to find the info you need, but of course if you cannot be bothered there is always the added bonus of finding a cheap ebook that someone has gone to the trouble of compiling themselves through extensive research that they have done, so you just have to buy it and it is downloaded instantly.
http://easydesignknowhow.com/products/65DesignAnswers/index.html
Ps. If you are considering a good webhost for business on the internet then you should try http://easydesi.thirdsphereplus.com it has all the tools for automating your business and saving you more time to create valuable content for your web pages.
10 Terrific Tips for Web Design Beginners.
by:
When embarking on the daunting journey to web design enlightenment it can be hard to know where to start. This short article is intended as a roadmap, outlining the significant tips all aspiring web designers should be made aware of. If you follow each of the following tips you will be well on your way to web design nirvana. However, you may possibly be an intermediate, or, hold your breath, advanced web designer – well if that is the case, be humble my good friend, peruse the following tips and you may surprise yourself and pick up a thing or two. So saddle up to your computer chair, make yourself a coffee, drink some chai tea if it tickles your fancy (it’ s certainly not my cup of tea), assume the full lotus position and prepare to be digitally enlightened.
-- TECHNICAL TIPS --
1. LEARN XHTML - Extensible HyperText Markup Language.
If you don’t already know, XHTML is the ‘markup language’ that every individual web page is made out of. Right click on your screen, and click on view source. Feel like Neo already? Yes, that’s right folks; every web page you view is simply a plain text file full of code stored on some dudes computer (sometimes otherwise known as a web hosting server).
Don’t be scared, XHTML is quite possibly the easiest programming language you can learn, so easy in fact XHTML isn’t technically classed as a programming language. Don’t take the ‘red pill’ and learn Dreamweaver – it may seem the easier option at first, but being completely honest once you learn XHTML you can create web pages in half the amount of time than it takes to in Dreamweaver, and you have more control over the final layout. Additionally, Dreamweaver adds quite a lot of unnecessary code and as a result increase the file size of the page, slowing down the loading time for all those poor sods still on dial up Internet. You can write XHTML code in a plain text editor, such as notepad, or notepad++ ( my favourite), however word processors such as Microsoft Word are entirely unsuitable.
If you’re rich, unlike me, pick up a cheap ( recent) XHTML book, otherwise browse Google for XHTML tutorials, or head over to http://www.w3. org/MarkUp/Guide/ for a brief introduction to writing XHTML by Dave Raggett.
2. LEARN CSS – Cascading Style Sheets.
Stop torturing you with all these programming languages you say? Don’t fret my friend, CSS is only a little more advanced than XHTML and most books on XHTML also cover CSS. CSS is the language that controls things such as the colour, background images, font attributes, and so on. The beauty of using CSS is you can control the aesthetic features of multiple web pages with a single CSS file.
If you would like another wonderful online tutorial, head over to http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/ Guide/Style for a brief introduction to CSS, by Dave Raggett also.
3. LEARN PHOTOSHOP.
All web designers know how to use Photoshop. I was actually born with a Photoshop watermark on my upper left thigh. If you are aspiring for a web design career you are going to need to learn Photoshop, hell – even my Nan knows how to use Photoshop. So Google away for Photoshop tutorials, or browse your local library to spice up your Photoshop skills.
The best piece of advice I can give you is to make up all of your web page designs in Photoshop first. Once you are entirely happy with the design start slicing and dicing your photoshop file for the images you will need, and coding the web page in XHTML and CSS. This saves stuffing around with markup code unnecessarily; it’s much easier to make changes to layout and colours, etcetera, in Photoshop first.
4. USE CSS INSTEAD OF TABLES FOR YOUR DESIGNS.
If you already know a thing or two about web design you are probably sick to death of hearing about using CSS instead of tables for your layout. Well I’m going to give it a brief mention anyways for all those web design n00bies out there. Use CSS to control your layout, don’t use HTML tables for your design. Tables add tons of unnecessary code, are time consuming and expensive to make changes to once the site is completed, and only affect the layout of the single page you are working on – as opposed to using a single CSS file that affects the layout of any page you want. Don’t bust your knuckles by typing the same code over and over again.
5. USE VALID XHTML AND CSS.
Valid XHTML and valid CSS is code that validates with the World Wide Web Consortiums coding rules. There is plenty of information on how to ensure your code is valid over at http://www.w3.org. It is important to keep this in mind, as most web design employers will not touch web designers with a ten-foot clown pole unless their code adheres with the standards of the W3C.
-- THEORETICAL TIPS --
6. LEARN ABOUT GRID THEORY.
Grid theory is basically the design theory that suggests that works of art are more aesthetically pleasing if they adhere to some sort of grid that controls its layout. Additionally, the rule of thirds, which is a theory that is related to grid theory, (it’s sort of like the relative that no one wants to speak to at family functions because of a foul and unpleasant body odour), suggests that designs are even more aesthetically pleasing if their visual form can be divided into thirds. When designing web pages in photoshop, I always start with a grid first to ensure my layouts align to the grid.
7. LEARN ABOUT TYPOGRAPHY.
Typography can be defined as the study of fonts. Learning about typography will teach you when and where to use fonts. Learning about letter spacing (kerning as they like to call it), line height, the serif and sans serif font categories, and more, you’ll have a truly lethal understanding of fonts in your web design arsenal.
It is important to keep in mind that there is only a small range of fonts that will display in people’s web browsers, so don’t rely on primarily using custom fonts in your designs, unless you plan on saving them all as images which can drastically increase the file size of your web site. Site visitors aren’t going to download custom fonts just to view your website the way you want them to, even if you are super polite. If you stick to using the following fonts for the actual text in your web page, you will be safe: Arial, Arial Black, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Georgia, Impact, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, and Verdana. If you want to be an extra lame nerd like me, you should print out all the variations of these fonts (in bold, italic, different sizes, etc) and stick it on your wall.
8. LEARN ABOUT COLOUR THEORY
Before I continue any further I must offer one small piece of advise. Please please please do not email me and tell me that I have spelled ‘ colour’ wrong. If you do so, I will slap you with a salami. Every time I write one of these articles I seem to get at least one email from a silly sausage that doesn’t realise words such as ‘ color’ and ‘optimize’ are spelled differently in different parts of the world. Well, on with the show.
Colour Theory, is, well, the theory of colours. There are many theories on how to choose a nice colour palette, and these will help ensure your web site won’t have the appearance it was designed by a colour blind… blind-man. Without getting into too much detail, one nice colour scheme to use is a monochromatic colour scheme. A monochromatic colour scheme is a selection of colours that features a colour (lets say cerulean blue), tints of that colour (cerulean blue with more white), shades of that colour (cerulean blue with more black), black and white colours (yes black and white are classified as colours my learn-ed friends).
A nice little tool to help you choose your colour scheme can be located at http://wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-en.html. Mmmm, free tool.
9. GET INSPIRED
Browse the net for good web designers, don’t steal their designs, but analyse their designs and try to figure out what fonts, colour scheme, grids, and photoshop techniques they are using. A simple way to use this is search for web design in Google, and browse the portfolios of the top web design companies that come up in the search results. Digital art and poster websites also serve as good inspiration.
However you don’t need to restrict your sources of inspiration to the Internet. On the rare occasion when I venture out of my web design cave to eat something other than baked beans on toast, I like to analyse what grid, colour scheme, and font types that restaurants like to use in their menus. But hey, put me in a sack and throw me down a river if you think I’m just crazy.
10. PRACTISE PRACTISE PRACTISE
I shouldn’t have to say this but practise whenever you can. The more you practise, the sooner writing XHTML and CSS code will become a second nature to you, and you should also practise utilising the information from the various theories I have just mentioned too.
A good tip would be to make one web page template a week and submit it to http://www.oswd.org and other online free web page template directories. It’s a great way to improve your skills, and develop a nice little portfolio too.
Well that’s just about it for today, my avid readers. I hope the useful tips in this article have helped you well on your way towards web design enlightenment. If you need more information on any of the topics I have mentioned please don’t forget that Google and Wikipedia are your friends. And finally, please, never let yourself forget ‘There is a difference between knowing the path, and walking the path’.
Web Site Design - Five essential tips
by: When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.
1) Do not use splash pages
Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.
2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements
Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.
3) Have a simple and clear navigation
You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.
4) Have a clear indication of where the user is
When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!
5) Avoid using audio on your site
If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.
I hope this has been of value to you. Feel free to contact me with questions.
SEO Web Design For Text
by:
It is well known that the best way to search engine optimize a website in terms of its design is to keep it as free as of many bells and whistles as possible (including images, banners and graphics.) However once you have some excellent copy to put on the front pages of your site your job does not stop there. You should make sure your web design is going to nicely support that text as well.
First of all make sure that there is no Flash, image map bytes, java script or any other kind of multimedia on that page. The search engine spiders will read that as blank space. Second of all make sure that you include text for your image ALT tags as well as for all of your anchor tags.
Thirdly, you need to consider how your HTML code will be prioritized and arranged on the page. It is also absolutely essential that your HTML code is clean as well. It does not matter if the web page looks right. It is what is beneath it that matters most to the search engine spiders (the sloppy HTML scraps and ends of mistakes that you don’t see.) If this is sloppy enough your website could end up being ignored or repressed for a long time before it actually becomes part of any page ranking.
You should also never underestimate the impact of your site’s functionality and architecture on the search engines. An assessment of this is definitely known to be a part of many of the algorithms that govern page rank popularity on the major search engines like Google. If a search engine does not think your site is well put together it can simply ignore it. This means that nobody will ever see the clever search engine copy that you were trying to get the site’s search engine optimized architecture to support in the first place. That, of course, would be a waste of time.
Elements to Avoid in Web Designing
by: As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.
When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.
Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!
1) Background music
Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitor’s burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.
2) Extra large/small text size
As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!
3) Popup windows
Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!
In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!
In Summary:
1) Avoid background music
2) Avoid Extra large/small text size
3) Avoid Popup windows
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Web Design Consultancy Services – Choosing the Right Firm
By: Bruce Abbott
Buying web design consultancy services can be difficult in terms of finding the right company; especially when you lack technical knowledge and are therefore not exactly sure of what is right for you. In this instance, what two companies are offering might be inherently different and it is therefore hard to compare two proposals based solely on price.
Testimonials
You should ask web design companies if you can view testimonials offered by past and present clients. This will allow you to find out what prior clients thought of their service and the results that they have attained from using them. The fact that these companies have been happy to openly offer testimonials is usually a great indication that they were delighted with the services that they attained. If you find a company has worked with reputable businesses and delivered excellent service, this is a good indication that they could be the right consultancy for you.
Skill-Set
When choosing a web design consultancy you should look for a service provider that has a broad skill-set in internet marketing, design and development. This will ensure they can offer a well rounded service, and ensure you achieve online success through being given a service that is more than simply web design. A good consultancy will have experience in a broad spectrum of internet business issues, and will have helped clients overcome problems in the past. Having a broad skill set will allow them to look at problems cohesively, such as considering internet marketing and search engine friendly design at the initial design phase. This will in turn save you money through not having to have problems resolved at a later stage.
Portfolio
When you are looking to buy web design services, a great way to decide if a company is right for you is to look at their portfolio of prior web sites they have designed. If you feel the look, style and functionality of what they have done in the past is good, then there is no reason why they should not be able to offer the same service to you. Despite that, you should keep in mind that the service they delivered would have been heavily influenced by there client in many cases. Therefore if you feel they should have went about certain problems and design issues in certain ways on certain sites, then you should keep in mind that what they delivered might not have been their preference.
Internet Marketing
Internet marketing is a major consideration for any online business. In fact, what good is a website if nobody visits? For that reason alone, it is often best to work with a company that also understands internet marketing. That way you can work with the same company from the design phase all the way through to launching an internet marketing campaign. A good internet marketing company will also be able to help you rank in the search engines for keywords and phrases that relate to the business sector that you are involved in, which can be a vital factor in online success.
Web Design - Custom vs. Templated - What's the Difference?
By: Brad Stone
To discuss the difference between custom websites and template websites, let's first define the two.
Template Website - Is a website that is constructed from pre-designed banners, images and layouts. Limited to available designs.
Custom Website - Is a website that is constructed completely from scratch. Everything on the website is original and unique. Unlimited designs.
Here are some comparisons between the two to help you to make your decision.
Pros and Cons of Custom and Template Websites
Custom Websites
Pros:
* Unique Design for your Business
* Personalized Images
* Unlimited Color Selection
* Unlimited Font Selection
* Unlimited Content (Text)
* Online Lead Generating
* Forms, Flash movement, database storage
* Custom Layout
* Full update support
* Search Engine ranking
* Maintenance of Website
Cons:
* Takes longer to design
* Costs are usually higher
Templated Websites
Pros:
* Quick to have designed
* Usually lower in costs.
Cons:
* Not unique to your business
* Limited on Images, color selection and fonts.
* Limited on how much content (text) can be used.
* Very limited on the use of flash movement and forms.
* Most changes have to be done by yourself.
* Usually no maintenance.
To have a website that will draw customers, produce leads and phone calls, a custom website is the only way to go. Layout of images, your phone number and contact form are extremely important to the success of your site. It plays a key role in whether or not your website visitor will contact you. Research has revealed the importance of placing images next to text you want your readers to see, the strategic placement of your phone number and the ease and simplicity of filling out a form with contact information. A custom website allows the freedom to do this. A template website does not. Your are restricted in where you can place these important marketing items.
The fact that the Internet has made shopping so much easier and faster than jumping in your car and going down to the Mall to shop for a product or service, it becomes even more important that you have a dynamic, professional-looking website, with the right marketing layout, because you'll only have one chance to hook your customer.
Most template websites are boxy-looking and plain, lacking the professional touch that sets your business apart from others, and are usually sold by website companies that are reselling for another company, so they typically do not offer ongoing support if a problem comes up.
A good exercise to help you with your website decision, is to do a Google search on your industry. Review all the website listings on the first page, both the sponsored listings and the natural listings. Look at how they are laid out. Do they make it easy for you to pick up the phone and call or to fill out a form with your contact information. Which websites grab your attention and which ones turn you off. This will give you a pretty good idea of how your customers will view your website. Most websites that are attention-grabbing are Custom-Designed sites that have carefully placed images and text to provide the optimum marketing for the business.
"You should give as much attention to the professional design, layout and dynamics of your website, as you do your business, for without a good website, you have no business!"
Freelance Design - The New Era of Website Design?
By: Liam Hoolahan
Freelance Design - The New Era of Website Design?Years of experience in internet use and website design, has shown me one thing that is certain; there is nothing ever so constant as change.
The internet has come a long way in it's use of websites, particularly, design.
Not long ago, the webmaster was a sought after provider.
Not so today.
With more and more information being released on the internet, with sites that enable users to submit their own html content, it seems more and more users are not only internet savvy, but homemade web page creators.
This puts a damper on the website designer's business.With over 1,114,274,426 internet users worldwide, you can imagine that new websites are launched on a daily basis, by the thousands.
From business owners, to mom's, dad's, kids and students alike, nearly everyone has fiddled with html creation in one way or another.
Many hosting companies offer free web page builder tools and software, giving anyone wanting a site the ability to do so for themselves.
Nearly every internet service provider does the same.
Networking sites, offering personal space for people to use for whatever, have personal sites in the hundreds of thousands.Is the webmaster an endangered species?
Not necessarily.
Advancements in the internet, software and websites, with their ever-changing functions and abilities, still provides a great need for the webmaster.
Especially when it comes to business websites.
True, nearly anyone can produce a website, following basic website structure and design.
But can they perform tedious and difficult tasks in site creation?
Databases, online shopping, form handling, order processing, cross-browser development, etc.
Many of the critical components and functions of websites that still keeps the webmasters alive.Is there a rift in the web design business?
There really seems to be.
With more and more website design firms offering extended features such as SEO (search engine optimization), internet marketing, tools, software and other offers, says something about the design business.
The competition and attracting new clients has become increasingly difficult for the design firms.
Between the home-user, do-it-yourselfer, html software creation advancements and more competition, has seemed to spawn a new breed of website designer; the Freelancer.
The freelancer has been around for some time, but more noticeable now, in greater multitudes.This is not to say that the freelancer has it easy either.
The average freelancer has to be a multifaceted, sharp and quick, web design programming engineer.
Adept at multiple programming languages, programs and skills.
Here in the realm of the freelancer, competition is extremely fierce.
Freelance directories have become commonplace for them, where heavy project bidding wars occur.
Fighting to gain clients or work by piecemeal. The freelancer can be a very valuable asset to the mediocre or even the professional website designer.
However, finding the right one is the difficult task.
In a hurry to secure a bid or client, a freelancer may say they can perform certain tasks for you.
Only to find out that you have paid them and they did not quite finish the project or did not fulfill the bargain, and you are stuck at square one. How to tell the difference?
You need to read between the lines.
Pay particular attention to the way they say things.
Does it seem like a canned response? Then beware.
Does their communication with you read as though they were not listening? Then, they probably were not.
It's your money, save it and move on.
You have to realize, their time is money, more often, time than money.
Trying to secure clients and projects is no easy feat for the freelancer.
So, the freelancer must hurry, applying as many bids as they can, in hopes of landing a few jobs.
Not to say that using a freelancers services is a bad idea.
On the contrary, it can be to your advantage.
Since time is money to the freelancer, they can provide services quickly and inexpensively. Another caution; if it seems too good to be true, the bid or requested price is too low, it probably is.
A good way to tell if a freelancer is reputable; some sites provide their services with a ratings score for the freelancer. Or, you can base your selection on the total number of jobs performed by the freelancer.
Do not overlook the freelancer with 0 jobs performed, they may have just started in that freelance directory and could be every bit as qualified as the leader in jobs and, may come cheaper to you as well. Where are things going to be in the coming months and years?
One guess is; things will become increasingly automated and easier for the average person to communicate on the internet and in business on the interent.
As for the webmaster? I don't feel the webmaster will fade away, but rather change with the changes and become an even more skilled expert and professional in his field.
Freelancing however, may become the next highly marketable profession out there.
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
The Shrek Model of Web Design
by: Here is a web design theory : websites are like onions, you see, since websites have layers. And ogres are like onions, since ogres have layers. Websites are designed by web designers. Ergo - web designers are like ogres.
So, let's explore why web designers are like ogres.
Firstly, let's see why we say that websites are like onions, with layers, in the first place - since this is the whole raison d'etre of my argument.
~Websites have an outer layer~
This is the graphical look and feel of the site. This is normally what most people think of when they refer to 'web design'. In order to create this your common, or garden, web design ogre needs to have an artist's eye and a designer's skill with tools such as Photoshop or Fireworks. The graphical web designer needs to have insight into the latest web design styles, He needs to be able to wield shades and shadows and meld them into Web 2.0 flavored onion soup. Preferably soup not made with eyeballs.
~The second layer of a website is the structure~
The structure could be determined through some method such as functional decomposition, where the web designer might start with the main function (home page) and break the site into manageable sub sections so that he ends up with a clear idea of the scope of the site as well as the internal structure. So here your web designer needs to have some knowledge of basic Software Engineering principles. But even more than that, once the main functions of the site have been designed, the functions need to be married to the graphical design in such a way that the system is usable. A knowledge of the principles of good web design and usability (ala Nielson - http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html), and a familiarity with the site http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/ to learn how to avoid making mistakes such as 'mystery meat navigation', is essential.
~The third layer of a website is the dynamic and interactive elements~
Frontpage and Photoshop can only bring you so far. Your web design ogre might find that he simply has to go and kill a couple of nerdy programmers to steal their reference manuals: PHP and MySQL for Dynamic websites, AJAX and PHP - Building responsive Web Applications. And he'd better know that Ruby on Rails is not a gem on a train track.
~Then we get to the content~
The website needs to be filled with good, quality content. Sometimes you are lucky and your client gives you good content. Other times, you'd better start rewriting the techno-speak and corporate waffle and ask your client gently if he can state five benefits of their services. So, a good knowledge of copywriting and a command over the English language will not come in amiss.
So, we have the layers that make a website. The core, though, is the marketing strategy.
~Marketing Strategy~
We all know that it is NOT just a case of 'build it and they will come'. The website needs to be marketed and it can only be marketed if the underlying SEO principles have been kept in mind right from the start - in other words, links are easily followed by humans as well as search engines, all pages have meaningful titles, keywords are gently worked into the content of the pages. Apart from that, someone needs to take the marketing budget allocated to the website (all websites have a marketing budget, right?) and use that marketing budget to get the best ROI for the site - decide on the best Internet Marketing strategies for building links and traffic and then go forth and execute (the strategy, that is).
Now, my question is: Is it fair to expect one person to have all these skills?
Years ago when I studied 'Computer Science' there was basically one job title to aspire for and that was 'Systems Analyst'. If you worked for a really big corporate they might have distinguished between System Analyst and Programmer. (And there was also a career called 'Punch Operator', which strangely enough, has disappeared since today we all are supposed to do our own punching...) And yes, I suppose the 'System Analyst' of that time was supposed to do everything - analyze, build, test, deliver and support the system.
But... tempers fuggit.... 'That was then, this is now.'
Today, there are myriad career paths available for the aspiring math's whiz-kid who sits down for an aptitude test. Anything from Business Analyst to Test Manager to Network Administrator to IT Technician....
And BTW, if you are a COBOL programmer, you are a COBOL programmer. You know COBOL; that is what you do. Nobody would expect you to sort out the DNS entries for the company intranet server.
But the same specialization doesn't seem to have filtered through to the web design arena. I saw a job description just today for a 'web developer' who is supposed to have the following skills: Photoshop, Fireworks, Flash, Swish, .net, C#, MSAccess, SQL design experience, ASP, VB, .net, HTML, DHTML, ASP, XML, CSS, Java script and VB script. And this poor sod is supposed to also maintain networks and troubleshoot Windows servers. And wait for it - this paragon of a web design ogre will be paid what practically constitutes a minimum wage in the IT world. And this is in the corporate world, where they should really know better and where they can actually afford to appoint specialists.
If you are a web design freelancer working for yourself, you'd better be sure that you are well versed in all the skills that go into building the layers of a website...or you'd better start working on a plan to build strategic partnerships with other specialist freelancers. This will allow yourself some freedom to specialize in whichever aspects of web design that you enjoy the most, as well as offer the opportunity to others to do the same.