As marketing continues to move over to the Internet,
graphic designers are moving there too ... and often
with disastrous results. However, if you've been trained as a graphic
designer who specializes in direct-marketing design, you
are already
prepared to do well in Web design.
Most print-focused graphic designers want their products to look elegant,
beautiful, striking, super-modern, and so on ... to show off their design
skills.
Web-focused designers, on the other hand, are concerned
about one thing: making the sale.
Sound familiar? Of course! That's exactly what your
focus is as a direct-marketing graphic designer.
It doesn't matter how fancy your creation is - if your
design doesn't help make the sale, you have failed.
But if your design is plain or even downright ugly and
it sells a million dollars worth of product - you are a
success.
There are a great many similarities between DM-focused
and Web-focused design. But there are some important
differences, too. Here, we'll cover some of the general differences. Later
on, we'll delve into slightly more complex issues like images, designing
for different monitors, and Web-safe colors.
THE FIRST, LAST, AND ONLY RULE OF WEB DESIGN:
YOUR SITE MUST BE EASY TO READ.
"Easy to read" means that your text, background images,
and the text within graphic images should have the
highest contrast possible. And the highest color
contrast comes from using basic black and white.
Another good combination is a light yellow background
with dark blue or black text. Dark blue text on white
makes good subheads.
Color combinations that have less contrast can be used
in headings, mastheads, sidebars, navigation buttons,
and image maps. (But make sure they are still easy to
read.)
Do not use graphic images as backgrounds. While they can make a website
more "artistically" pleasing, they can also make it more difficult to read
... and take longer to load.
The most legible fonts are standard serif fonts (like
Times or Courier) and sans-serif fonts (like Arial or
Helvetica). Decorative or cursive fonts are much more
difficult to read and should rarely be used.
If your client insists on using a decorative font (for
instance, in his logo) bring it into the site as a fast-loading GIF image
made in an image-editing program like Photoshop.
Try to stay away from really small type. To keep the
site readable, use the equivalent of 12-point or
greater. If, for some reason, the client insists on a
small font, make it a sans-serif font - which is easier
to read in small sizes.
Italicized, oblique, or condensed fonts are harder to
read than standard typefaces. Except for very short runs
(such as italicizing quotes), they should be avoided.
THE OTHER FIRST, LAST, AND ONLY RULE OF WEB DESIGN:
YOUR SITE MUST LOAD QUICKLY.
If you use only text on a website - and keep to the
above design guidelines - the site will load super-fast.
But "text only"? That's not likely to happen. So now, I'll tell you what you need to know to make sure
your site loads fast ... is easy to read ... AND makes
the sale!
Make your site quick to load!
The time it takes to load your site
can make or break a visitor’s first impression of your site. If your site
takes too long to load, the visitor will click “Stop” or “Back” and leave
your web site. If you are a business and offering people important
information, it is critical to have a nice design, with a quick load time.
You may want to check out the load time of your page, to indeed see if
your site loads quick enough for the average user. A great site tool can
be found at
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/ where you are
able to enter your site and it displays a report on the time it takes to
load your site on different connections, in addition to tips to decrease
load time.
Upon doing a speed test, if your first page takes a great time to load
in the visitor’s browser, it is in the best interest to do some
redesigning to decrease load time and increase the number of visitors that
will not click back on the browser. We must remember that not everyone is
running on DSL or Cable modem. Many users still dial up using a 56K
connection. As web designers and site maintainers, we want to ensure our
site’s load quickly, as to not lose potential visitors to your site.
Images, Sounds & Animations are the major menaces to download time.
While these add nicely to a site, they may take up a lot of time to load.
If you may avoid large sized files, please do. Many images may be
optimized to look the same, however taking up less space, and download
more quickly. Many image editors such as Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro
can perform these tasks.
Sounds & Videos should be avoided on your main page, as they take up
most time to load. Keep these for inner pages if possible. Videos and
sound files can be from 100 KB to 1 MB in size or larger. If the user
needs to load a 500 KB video file on a 56 K modem, it will take upwards to
89 seconds to complete. This definitely could turn the user away from your
site. So keep these files to a fairly small size, or avoid if possible.
Text can also play a significant role in the load time. If you have a
large amount of HTML code and large amount of content on your main page,
it will also increase the load time. Text however is not as significant,
as the entire text you have on the site may not be even the same size as a
couple of pictures combined.
So limit the large sized graphics on your web sites. Your visitors will
appreciate the fast loading site with the information being presented that
they are looking for!
Ten Tips to a Better Site Design
Introduction to Site Design It has been said for
ages that "first impressions last a lifetime", and as we enter the
information age, this old saying still rings true. In today's dynamic,
competitive Internet world, creating a base of regular visitors is one of
the keys to success, and the design of your site is extremely important
because it is, in a very real sense, the first impression you make on
millions of Internet users worldwide.
An attractive, user-friendly site design can be the difference between
success and failure, and therefore a good amount of time should be devoted
to making your site as good as possible.
Designing a good site, however, is a lot more difficult than merely
dragging and dropping some pictures and text onto a page and arranging it
to look nice. Successful sites must try to come up with the perfect
marriage of form and function, making sure that neither component is
lacking or in excess.
Tip One: What is Your Site About? Perhaps the most important thing to keep
in mind when designing your site is that there is by no means one site
design that is best.
In fact, the nature of your site, its content, and its theme should all be
carefully considered in order to ensure that your site has the look and
feel you desire, without sacrificing the user-friendliness that will keep
the hits streaming in.
So before you open up Dreamweaver and start creating tables, and inserting
text blocks and images, sit back and think about what it is you want your
website to portray, and how you want visitors to feel when they visit your
site. If your site is a personal website, think in terms of how you can
exhibit your personality and style.
If your site is a commercial website, think in terms of how you want your
customers to feel about your products and services. A good deal of
planning beforehand will allow you to choose the correct theme for your
website, saving you the headache of going back and trying to get it right
afterwards.
Tip Two: Research, Research, Research After you have come up with the look
and feel that you feel is most appropriate for your website, the next step
is to research what other websites with similar objectives have done.
Spend some time looking at existing websites, and make notes of their
respective positives and negatives; then think of how your site can
incorporate the positives, while avoiding the negatives.
You can learn a lot about what works and what doesn't by looking at the
layout, color scheme, text, and images of other websites, and then use
that knowledge to get the most out of your site.
Tip Three: Planning Once you have completed your research, and come up
with an idea of what you want your site to look like, the next step is to
plan your site.
The best way to do this is to start by drawing a sitemap, covering all of
the pages you plan to create. By drawing a sitemap, you will be able to
see clearly exactly how your site will work, and which links you will have
to create to make it work the way you planned.
Drawing a site map is easy and will save you a lot of time in the long
run. For an example of a site map, please see below
Tip Four:User Friendliness Regardless of how beautiful your site is, if
users can not navigate it, they will simply find another site. Try to lay
out your site in a clear, logical manner, and avoid using image-based mouseover links.
This will help ensure that your site is easy to navigate, and will still
leave you plenty of room to add your personal design touches
Tip Five: Images/Page size As we all know, images add a lot to a website,
but it is important to understand that they also add a lot of size to web
pages, size which can increase loading time. As a result of this fact, you
should try to use the minimum amount of images on each page.
Try to limit your pages to a total of 30kb, including text, background
images, and images. This will ensure that all pages will be loaded in
about 5 seconds, even if the user happens to be using a dial-up
connection.
Another thing to consider when deciding the amount of images to use on
your web pages is that each file on a web page requires a separate HTTP
request to the server.
What this means is that using a lot of small images, which add up to less
than 30kb is still going to slow down your site considerably.
Tip Six: Tables
When using tables in the creation of your site, it is important to make
sure that you do not use one table for the majority of your site. If you
do use one table, users will not be able to see any of your content until
the entire table has been loaded.
In order to avoid this problem, break your page into at least two tables.
The top table should contain your page header and some links, while the
bottom table should contain the remaining content.
This will allow the user to see part of your page quickly, so that they do
not get discouraged by a long wait.
Tip Seven: Browsers
When you have finished designing your site, be sure to take a look at it
in several different browsers. Sometimes your "perfect" design will look
atrocious when viewed with a different browser, which means you will have
to go back and fix your errors. Still, it is much better to catch your own
errors before your visitors do. Tip Eight:Navigation Bars
One of the most helpful trends in web design that has gained popularity in
the last few years is the in-site navigation bar, which helps users know
exactly where they are in your site.
Typically a navigation bar looks something like this:
You are at: Home>My Hobbies>Sports
This means that you are currently in the Sports page of the My Hobbies
Section of your site. Navigation bars are by no means essential to a good
website, but are a helpful tool to make your site more user-friendly to
users. Tip Nine: Plug-ins Over the past year or so, a number of plug-ins have
been developed allowing you to add advanced graphics and animation on to
your website. Before you load up your site with these animated graphics,
it is important to understand that most users do not have these plugins
installed on their computers, nor do they have the patience to download
them before viewing the site.
The exception to this rule is Macromedia's Shockwave Flash Plug-in, which
is installed on most computers.
Tip Ten: Meta Tags One of the most important things not to forget when
designing your site is the importance of meta tags. Site description and
keyword Meta tags are the most important factors in getting recognized by
search engines, which will bring your site more hits.
When writing your site description remember to keep it clear, concise, and
to the point, and do not load it up with keywords, because it should make
sense when displayed on a search engine results page.
Build A Web Site That Sells
Have you ever set off in the car to your
destination, without a map, naively believing you will find it? Several
frustrating hours later, you are either lost or stressed out. Your wife
says, “I told you so – you should have brought the map!”
This is the same situation when you create a web site without planning.
The end result will be an unclear purpose, target market goals and
structure. Ultimately, you will lose visitors and end up with little or no
sales.
Let’s look at each of these points:
Define Your Purpose Without a clear purpose for your site, you will not
know where you are heading. For example, the purpose of my design site, is
to help small business owners attain a presence on the web to sell their
product or service. Now, write down the statement of purpose for your web
site. Go over it a few times to make sure it is crystal clear, otherwise
your customers will be trying to figure it out for themselves. Research
Your Target Market Research the product or service you wish to sell. Find
out if it has a good niche (e.g. a product or service nobody else has
thought of), or it has a strong demand (many people are searching for it).
Do a search on some of the major search engines (e.g. Yahoo, Overture) for
keywords and phrases that you think people will be using when looking for
your product. Now you can see what kind of demand there is for it.
Realize many others may be competing to sell the same product. Focus on
something unique you may have to offer, that stands out from your
competitors. If you are setting up an affiliate program, make sure it is a
reputable company with a good track record with lots of help available
from others involved. Don’t recklessly jump in – you will waste a lot of
time and money. This is the number one reason, why many entrepreneurs give
up so quickly.
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For a more in-depth look at targeting your market, read my previous
article, “How to Target Your Customers and Put Them in a Buying Mood?”
Set Your Goals
Create a timeline for the planning, building and marketing of your site.
Without doing this, procrastination may take over your goals. Decide how
much money you want to spend to create your site and how much you will
invest for its promotion.
Set a target date for what you want your site to achieve - you can always
adjust it if you need to. Make a goal for how many visitors you will
attract to your site. What percentage of these will be actual sales? When
do you expect to make a profit?
Choose a Domain Name Look up available domain names for your business, by using Nameboy. (www.nameboy.com).
They will provide a large list to choose from. Keep your domain name as
short as possible, so it is easy to remember. Avoid hard to spell words.
Also avoid words with hyphens in them, because people won’t remember to
add the hyphens and may end up at your competitor’s site.
Mindmapping – How to Sketch Out Your Site This is the process that allows
you to structure ideas on paper in the logical order your brain follows,
rather than the linear process normally used when forming ideas.
Take one sheet of paper, draw a circle in the middle – this is the subject
of your homepage. From there, draw branches, which have more ideas about
your topic. If any topics are related in a more definitive way, create
another branch off the current idea branch. Within minutes, you will see
your mindmap develop into a dynamic sketch. You might find that a standard
sheet of paper is not enough to contain all your thoughts. Use more paper,
create more branches, and keep the ideas flowing.
With a clear purpose, definite target market, targeted goals, a domain
name and a clear structure, you are now ready to begin building the pages
for your successful web site.
Avoid Sloppy Web Site Copy
If your web site visitor can’t find the information
on your web site, within 10 seconds or less, you will lose them. Two of
the largest factors that contribute to this, are the lack of clear purpose
and poor layout of your web pages.
Let’s look at how you can resolve each of these issues.
Lack of clear purpose – the first page of your web site must have a clear
title and description, which immediately states what your site is about.
(if you need help to determine the purpose of web site, read: “How To
Build A Web Site That Sells”
You must include a clear benefit of your product or service in your
description. For example if you are a web design company, your title may
be “How to Build a Web Site That Sells”. Your description may be something
like: “Let us save you precious time and hassles, by designing a
professional web site that WILL sell your product or service”. Realize
many others may be competing to sell the same product. Focus on something
unique you may have to offer, that stands out from your competitors. If
you are setting up an affiliate program, make sure it is a reputable
company with a good track record with lots of help available from others
involved. Don’t recklessly jump in – you will waste a lot of time and
money. This is the number one reason, why many entrepreneurs give up so
quickly.
1. Alignment – There are 3 kinds of alignment for your web page – left
side, right side and centered. Choose one, then use it on the entire page
or even throughout your other web pages. Don’t try to mix alignments,
because this will make your web page look unprofessional.
One such example, is to align all the text on your page to the left. This
will create a strong edge and make it easier for your visitors to navigate
and read. Avoid bumping up your text to the navigation bar or graphics.
Create an equal amount of space between all the elements on your page. If
they are bunched up, it will create a cluttered appearance.
2. How To Use White Space
– Visitors do not appreciate useless clutter and
masses of content on Web Pages. Most users prefer a page with well
distributed content resulting in less clutter. Users quickly scan pages
and the more that they must scan through, the more information they will
miss.
This does not mean you should not provide a lot of information. Just do
not provide it all on one page. Each page should contain approximately 50
per cent less text than a printed version of the same information.
If you have a lot of copy on your web site, try to have only 4-6 sentences
per paragraph. Split the page up into different topics, with the subject
title close to the accompanying text.
3. Repetition – each page of your web site should look like it belongs to
the same web site, the same company and same concept. For example,
navigation buttons, colors, style, illustrations, format, layout can all
be part of the repetition that unifies the entire site.
4. Contrast – this is what draws you into the page and pulls you in. Pages
that just have all text and no graphics, or vice versa and have no
contrast can be very boring (unless it is an article or book). If elements
on your page, such as type, rules, graphics, color, texture, are not the
same, make them very different.
Be aware of what you want the visitor to focus on. What will be the first
thing that a person will be attracted to when that person first enters
your site? If your site is not well organized, it will be difficult for
your visitor to find what he is looking for.
5. Graphics – graphics should be used to illustrate the benefit of your
product (this is why there is the popular saying, “a picture is worth a
thousand words”). You should use them to enhance the experience of your
visitor. If it does not have a clear purpose to be there (other than just
to have a pretty picture on your site), don’t use it.
6. Spelling and Grammar – bad spelling and grammar can destroy the
professional effect of your web site. Don’t just use the spell checker for
correcting your copy. Read through it yourself several times or get a
friend who is a proficient proof reader to check your work, before you
launch your site for the world to see.
With a clear purpose and layout to your web pages, your visitors will
easily find the information they are seeking, rather than your
competitors. Doing this, will help to increase sales from your web site.
Building Good
Websites that Stand Out from the Masses
Websites, there’s literally billions of them
out there in cyber-space. How many of them do you go to and just think
this is boring, bland, or hard to use? It seems like too many to mention.
So what makes a good website? I reckon it’s about interaction. You’ve got
to make the visitor interested. You’ve got to grab their attention. Many
sites use plenty of bright and shiny gimmicks to attract you, but once you
make it through to the content of the site it’s just not worthy. A good
site uses easy navigation, relevant content, and interactive media like
comments and message boards. If you’re fortunate, whoever builds your site
may even have a few tricks up their sleeves to make it really fun with
sound, video, and other interactive fun stuff.
Do you want people to come to your site and then tell their friend and
family about it? Do you want to have huge amounts of visitors? Do you want
to succeed in making your dreams come to fruition on the Web? Make your
website exciting! It might be easier said than done, but there are people
around whose job it is to construct and design sites for a living. If you
can afford it, go for the best. How great is it when you come across a
site that has some special feature that you’ve never seen elsewhere? Isn’t
it great when you find a site that relates to one of your interests that
is simple and easy to get to the information you want? If you want to have
people to come back again and again, you’ve got to keep updating the
content to keep it fresh and interesting. Have a way for people to
communicate with yourself and others who are into the same things. E.G.
Forums, message boards and comments. The aim is to catch the ‘viewer’s’
interest.
A lot of sites just look like giant advertisements and you have to search
for the needle in the haystack to find out what the actual site is for. I
know advertising is a way of making money, but if you want your site to
have an authentic, respectable atmosphere that exudes a feeling of
integrity, you better be careful. People are becoming wary of this
consumer driven, mindless attack at the average civilian’s wallet. Some
people will automatically leave a site if a bunch of commercials pop-up on
the screen. Pop-ups, don’t even make me go there…
So, the aim of the game is to make a site that offers the public to be
part of the action as well as being a source of knowledge or information
that is in demand. A simple to navigate, good ‘feel’, and if
possible-innovative site is the means to becoming the popular Internet
magnate you’ve always dreamed of becoming. Another important fact is the
idea of ‘you’. Your website is a chance to put your identity out there in
the world. Be yourself. If you try to appeal to an audience in a way that
doesn’t reflect your true self, you’re destined to fail. Be honest and
speak from your real perspective on life. Give it to us from the heart.
Designing For Content
Views of
Kelly Paal ,Graphic Designer.
We've all been told that a successful website has
great content. The problem that I've discovered is what do you do with and
how to you organize all this great content?
Below are some of the things that I've learned in the time I've had my own
site. Now my particular situation is one where my site is constantly
growing in content. I didn't start my site with all sorts of content at my
finger tips. So the tips below are from that perspective.
1. Keep your content concise and simple. Of course make sure that
there is enough there for your customers but don't write pages and pages
of information. People are not going to sit there for an hour reading off
of a computer screen, no matter how good the information is.
2. Keep your content relevant to your site. Do not start putting
unrelated content on your site. It will be confusing and won't help you
draw customers into your site.
3. Organize, organize, and oh yes organize. Keep everything
organized. I don't know how many photography sites that I've been on have
these huge lists of how to articles, hundreds of them which is great, but
they are completely unorganized and I guess they expect you to scroll down
through all these articles to find what you want. So organize your
content. Make it easy to find things. Whether that's through a search
option or carefully organized subheadings. Make it easy for people to get
what they need quickly.
4. My site has grown steadily but more than I ever expected and
that created a problem that I didn't foresee in the beginning. As you add
content and I assume new pages be aware of where you place these pages in
the grand scheme of your web design. Just don't add new pages to the
bottom of list of links. As the web site grows the list of links to your
other pages could be quite long so keep some sort of pattern of
organization so that as you add pages it will seem to fit in with the
rest.
5. Out of date information. With all this content we're all adding
watch for out of date information. Remove content with information on
technology that is not longer used. And cycle out old information that
just isn't read or was not very popular.
These are just a few things that I've learned in designing for content on
my site.
About the Author:
Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting
nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business
Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com).
She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial
art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her
web design.
The 8 Most Important Website Design Principles
Building an Innovative and Effective Website, by making full use of
available technologies, is crucial for the future success of your current
or future online business. There are literally 1000's of great ideas out
there, but finding the right ones and applying them to your website, is
where the real trick lies.
Applying the best tips, tools and other design principles to your
website, can bring you untold success on the internet. At the same time,
using powerful and innovative ideas in the design and development stages
of your website, will level the playing field for your business, and raise
it's competitive edge on the internet.
We have been doing web development for more than 7 years now, and
during this time, many important design and development principles have
come to light. Don't waste valuable time by making the same mistakes many
other web designers and webmasters do. The following 8 powerful website
design principles will assist in helping you make the right choices for
your online business :
1. Do-it-yourself OR outsourcing ?
Before you start compiling your new website, you have to establish your
skill level to tackle the specific project. If you have sufficient html
understanding, a good idea of graphics and colors, plus fair writing
skills, you mostly can do the website design yourself. If, however, you
don't have a fair understanding of html, it would be advisable to
outsource.
2. Dynamic vs. Static web pages
Do you want your site to be static, i.e.. no input from visitors, or
dynamic, i.e.. fully interactive, with visitors being able to log on, take
part in forums, post information, etc ? Many new and fantastic scripting
languages are available to make your site more dynamic and bring it to
life.
3. Web Site Title vs. Domain
Before registering a domain for your site, take some time to think of
related words or names that best describes your business. Compile a few
possibilities and then check for availability on the internet. The best
ones would normally already be "taken", but innovative thinking can get
you very far !! When compiling you main page, use this domain name and
extend it to your website's main page title tag. This is step 1 in getting
future good search engine rankings.
4. Build your site around important keywords
When building the content part of your site, remember to include a fair
dose of important keywords and phrases that best describe your business.
These keywords, the words and phrases people use when searching for
relevant information on the internet, should also be extended to all the
important tags of every web page of your site. Be careful though not to
overdo it, as search engines penalize "keyword stuffing". Also use full
sentences and make them sound natural. The clever search engine algorithms
have recently just become even more advanced, and can now track
unnaturally sounding sentences !
5. Optimized Title, Description & Keyword Tags
Each page of your website should be individually optimized in terms of
the message you want it carry. Every page is different and there for a
specific reason. If the page info and page tags do not match in terms of
keywords, the page will not show up in search engine results. Search
engines want to give searchers relevant results, and by not applying this
principle, your site will not rank well.
6. A Site Map with links to all pages
Assist the search engines by making it easy for them to index your
site. If all pages can be reached from a central point like a sitemap, you
will firstly make sure that the search engine spider finds all your site
pages, and secondly help visitors to find relevant info and pages quickly.
Sites with good structures and fresh content gets spidered more often.
7. All pages back-linked to the Site Map and Home Page
Visitors to your website will not necessary land the index page or
sitemap. It is therefore imperative to give them a way to get to your
index, site map and other important pages. A well structured informative
website also receives more return visitors.
8. Standard background & fonts on all pages
By keeping pages uniform, you ensure your visitors know they are still
on your site. Having various banners, backgrounds and fonts will only
confuse visitors. Try to stick one font, or two at the most. The human eye
needs to adjust every time it reads text written in a new font. Do not
irritate your visitors by using many different fonts - they will leave in
a flash !
If you have an existing website, but nothing much have been happening
for you, try to apply these 8 principles and see what good transpires...
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Alexa tool ... shall you realize the importance of site build it.
One more important aspect of "Site
Build It" is...
you supply the content and presell the content to the highly targeted
traffic ... this shall not only generate a steady income for you by
promoting related products which go along with your theme but shall also
form a major source of internal satisfaction you shall have when hordes
and hordes of people make a beeline for your website... its prime targeted
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If generating money - income from
your website is the only goal then also "Site
Build It" is
for you... if you desire to serve the community by providing appropriate
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Building a truly professional web
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The owners of "Site Sell Software"
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