5 (professional web design) Basic Rules of Good Web Design
No commentsBy Micrositez
When designing your website, great care should be taken to ensure every last detail of the site performs at an optimum level and actually serves its purpose. Here are five simple rules of good web design that anyone would do well to remember when considering building or designing a new website.
1) Dont use flash intros
Flash intros are still commonly seen as the first pages many web visitors view when they arrive at a website. Flash intros or splash pages as they are also known, are normally short flash based movies with moving images and text; featuring information about the site and many times words like “welcome” or “click to enter website”. In point of fact, they are just a distraction and inconvenience to web visitors that serve no real purpose. Dont force your visitors to have a reason to click on their browsers back button! Give them the valuable content of your actual web site that is what they are looking for after all and get rid of the flash intro / splash page.
2) Dont use too many banner ads
These days even internet novices are astute enough to ignore banner advertisements so dont waste your valuable website real estate on annoying flashing banner ads. Why dont you just provide more valuable content instead? Then mix in some relevant affiliate links within your websites body content this helps your website visitors feel that they want to buy instead of feeling like they are being pushed into buying.
3) Easy to use and intuitive navigation
An absolute essential as far as web design is concerned is the provision of a straightforward and clear navigation menu system. It should be so clear in fact that even an 8 year old could use it. Steer well clear of complicated flash navigation menus or multi-tiered dropdowns. If your visitors find your site hard to navigate they will leave your site and they probably wont come back.
4) Give visitors a clear indication of where they are
When visitors are browsing deep within the inner pages of your site and are enjoying being there you should ensure they know which part of the web site they are actually on at any given moment. By giving visitors a clear indication of where they are they will be able to browse all relevant information on your website or indeed navigate to any other section of your website with ease. Don’t willingly confuse your visitors because confusion can lead to them leaving your website.
5) Avoid using background music on your website
If you really want your visitors to linger long on your web site, reading your content, the very least you should do is ensure that they arent put off by annoying background music looping on your website. If you really feel you must use background music at least make sure visitors have some control over it - give them the option of volume or muting controls at the very least.
Scot Crone is a search engine optimisation consultant who works for Totally Ace Web Design Bath Totally provide professional web design, internet marketing and digital printing in Bath UK.
Squidoo: Build a Free, Multi-Media Website With This Web 2.0 Hosting
By Ron Passfield
A Squidoo lens is designed to be a highly focused window to other directly related resources - blog posts, websites, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, web-based articles or e-books. Hence a lens is not an end in itself but a means to an end - a window on other information about a topic, issue, problem, product or service of interest to the reader. Each Squidoo lens you create has a unique URL.
There is no limit to the number of free Squidoo lenses you can create. At the time of writing this article, I have in excess of 50 Squidoo lenses which are catalogued in my “lensography”.
Each lens has AdSense ads and other ads that generate revenue for Squidoo, charities supported by Squidoo and the lensmaster (lens creator). The lensmaster can choose to give all or some of their share of this direct revenue to charity.
Squidoo lenses can be used for endless applications, for example, to promote a cause, support a charity, educate, showcase an artist or photographer or generate affiliate income.
Each Squidoo lens is made up of modules and widgets (like WordPress blogs) that can be accessed by a unique point-and-click technology. You don’t even have to know HTML to create and market your Squidoo lenses. There are even lenses on basic HTML and advanced HTML if you want to be creative. The design of each lens is limited only by your imagination.
In a very real sense a Squidoo lens can integrate many elements of Web 2.0 technology - blogging, Flickr, FaceBook, YouTube, RSS feeds and Twitter. Fundamental to Squidoo is the connections it creates - between people, between lenses, between resources and between social networks.
Squidoo enables you to contribute to Squidoo charities as a by-product of lens creation. You can also promote a charity of your choice, a location and community, a local artist or a local business.
You can recruit people to your favorite hobby such as scrapbooking, model trains, electronic toys, photography, model planes or stamp collecting.
You can even create a Squidoo Group, or join an existing group, to link to people who share your interests and passions.
What also appeals to me personally is the opportunity to be creative and extend my “learning edge” or “push the envelope”. The numerous Squidoo lens templates, modules and widgets provide endless opportunities to be creative and to develop different lenses for different purposes. For example, I have created a photographic exhibition, a simulated tropical rainforest walk and my e-portfolio.
Squidoo can tap your creativity, build your income, grow your connections and enhance your Internet presence. You learn Squidoo by building lenses - but beware, Squidoo is addictive!
Article Source : Article King Pro - Free Reprints and Distribution
This article is written by Ron Passfield, PhD, Top 100 Squidoo lensmaster and Giant Squid.
Ron’s Squidoo lensography provides many examples of web design for Squidoo lenses (with free website hosting by Squidoo):
Squidoo lensography
Locate A Web Developer For Your Website Needs
Why Do You Need A Web Designer
By Catherine Harvey
When it comes to promoting your company, the best step you can take is to make the most of your web site, if you have one. If you don’t have one, get one. A large proportion of business is now carried out over the internet and this is where you will gain the most of your customers. Advertising your company over the internet is relatively cheap given that it will reach potential customers across the globe.
But it has to be done right. With a website where half the links don’t work or the content is irrelevant or badly written, not only will it not be found through the search engines but people will not hang around on it. You may find yourself getting lots of visitors but not generating any business from it and this just makes it dead money.
To this end, effective web design is essential. In the UK, you will find web design in Essex is a popular business due to its proximity to London. London being the capital of business, web design in Essex is suitably situated to assist these companies with the right sort of marketing strategy that will get them noticed across the planet. This is not the sort of coverage you could get with any other sort of advertising campaign.
So how can companies get the best from web design in Essex?
You need to have a clear, precise idea of what you want and to be able to communicate that effectively to your web design company. The more clarity you can show at this point, the more the web design company have to work with. This is also the ideal time to think about the SEO on your site. Search engine optimisation in conjunction with web design will ensure your website is seen by as many people as possible and that all the people landing on your site will find exactly what they were searching for.
The design itself should reflect in some way your product and be appealing to your target audience. You should have a target audience in mind as this will assist you design company. Something bright, vibrant and jazzy is great for a pop music website but not very appealing if you’re advertising aids for the elderly.
Many people think that the internet is all about visuals, catching people’s attention with pictures and colours and clever trickery with the way internet pages interact. However, if you want your site to appear in a search engine, it is vitally important that you have content on the pages too, particularly the home page.
Information that is unique, fresh, genuine and appropriate with a sprinkling of key words will direct the right people to your site and generate more custom.
Your information needs to be fairly obvious. Internet browsing and shopping is meant to be easy. Search engines provide a list of sites that are relevant to what you are looking for. Once the visitor is on your site they do not want to spend ages searching for appropriate pages or getting stuck on a half finished page where links do not work. They simply won’t bother and immediately return to their search results for a site that’s easier to navigate.
If you are serious about your business, then it is worth spending that little extra to get your website designed properly and ensuring the SEO is as friendly as possible. Your outlay will be returned by the custom generated.
SEO expert Catherine Harvey looks at what makes web design in Essex a well placed business in our technology age.
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
