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To Hire Or Not To Hire A Website Designer
In the early years of the internet the actual design of a website was either very basic or had to be done using a software package that needed a specialist to use it. Not surprisingly, website designers were in short supply and could command huge fees for their services. All that has changed dramatically and website design is not such a complicated procedure as you might think. The actual look and feel of a website is more down to personal preferences than current design trends. Internet users want websites that are nice to look at, sure, but they are much more concerned with the ease of use of a website. If a visitor to your professionally designed website cannot find the information that they are looking for quickly and easily they will go elsewhere. Website designers are similar to fashion designers. Quite often the designs that they come up with are totally impractical or outrageously expensive. Unless you have absolutely no idea of what theme you want applied to your website such as colours and styles you do not need to hire the services of a website designer but can produce the basic outline yourself. Obviously the technical aspects of your website requires an expert but it is becoming more common for website builders to be concerned more with how the site works rather than the aesthetic side of it. There are a number of free website building sites around these days and these can be a great way for you to play with your design ideas without the expense of hiring a professional. You can also buy relatively cheap software that can produce fairly complex website designs quickly and simply. Drag and drop website design software has become extremely popular. There are also many programs that you can produce your website design with and have it converted to html for uploading to your website. Personally I have had experience of both sides of the coin. The worst experience was when I was working as a website copywriter for a guy, who shall remain nameless! I first became involved in his website project after he had paid a large sum to a website design team. To be honest, I hated the design that they had produced for the website and it seemed to have taken them an extortionate length of time to produce static pages. The design of a website is very much a personal preference but I was not the only one that hated this particular design. So, the guy decided to hire another person, just for the design while the technical side of his website was being sorted out. He thought it would be easy to apply a different style to the website but he was wrong! The second design seemed to cause problems for the tech guy and eventually had to be dropped. Now on his THIRD website design the website owner decided to find a company who could perform both the design and build aspects of his website. Finally he found a website professional who could deal with both. Unfortunately he had invested so much money in the failed designs that he ended up being unable to fund the final website and the whole project was shelved. The best advice I can give is that you should be extremely careful if you are hiring two different companies to produce the design and the technical aspects of your site. The two must be able to interact with each other and use the file formats that each other produce. Don't be deceived into thinking that you have to employ a design professional when you may well be able to do it yourself, cheaper and to your complete satisfaction. My name is Erika Pilkington and I hope you enjoyed this article. I have much more information at my website http://www.saywebsite.com.
Graphic Design Can Make Or Break Your Web Site
We all want high impact graphics for our Web sites - Right.Sometimes it is easy just to pick a template that comes included with a site builder and or hosting package.There are also thousands of Free templates that you can download from the Internet.But for those of us who want full control of our design and graphics, it is first a matter of sitting down and choosing your site design and color scheme.Your site theme...
Sales Versus Customer Oriented Websites
Should Generating Revenue From A Website Be The Prime Motivator? A pure sales site has only one purpose... to generate as much revenue as possible at any cost. In other words, your experience--good or bad--is inconsequential to the ultimate goal of the site and may well sacrifice customer satisfaction to make a sale. How many times have you gone back to buy from a website you've had a lousy experience with? My guess is not very often. I know I don't. How many times have you gone back to buy from a website you've had a great experience...
Hexadecimal Color Notation On The Web
When designing elements for your webpage, you will often be called upon to specify a color. For example, the code for a span shown below specifies that the color of the text within the span will be yellow.TextColors can be specified according to their names, for example "yellow", "green", or "blue". In many cases, these simple color names will work. But what if you want to specify a more sophisticated color like "cornflowerblue"? A particular browser may not recognize a particular color nam...
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Three Things You Must Do When Designing And Building Your Small Business Website
If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function ? and that's to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner.No matter what your web designer tells you, simplicity is best when building your small business website. While having a website with lots of bright colors and flashy interactive graphics might win web design awards, it will probably not help you win customers. In fact, the more complicated your web design, the higher the risk that your sales message will be lost amidst all the fancy bells and whistles... |  |
| How To Start An Internet Business ? Designing For Usefulness
The first step to starting any Internet business is conducting keyword research to determine if there is any interest in your idea. Once you identify a need, it's time to consider what your site should look like.What Is The Goal?In considering the look of your site, you first need to determine what elements are needed to promote your service or product. There are endless books, forums and people with adamant opinions on the subject. Some opine a site should be all about linking, while others opine creating a community through message boards is the key. A third set righteously point out a site should be slick or cool, while a fourth gro... | |
| Basic Web Design Principles
Home PageHome page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link "skip intro" should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.Navigation structure | |
| Maximising Web Site Viewability - Resolution
This is my second article on maximising web site viewability. Analysing screen resolution data.With so many different configurations internet users have their computers set up with, it can be difficult to decide how web sitesshould be configured so that it is viewable in as many configurations as possible.So in the last 6 months i have been logging the statistics from my web design site to achieve as accurate a result as possible to answer this question.The results are interes... | |
| Designing Beautiful Artist Websites ? 12 Tips To Showcase Your Art
1. Who needs an artists website?Not everyone! If you are currently exhibiting in multiple high-end galleries and making a handsome income, a website may not be for you. In fact, it might actually work against you ? some galleries may not like the perceived threat of you showing your work independently on the internet. Bette... | |
| Quality Web Copy Is The Key To Success
Many websites make the mistake of being all flash and no substance. Nothing irritates potential customers more than visiting your website hoping to find information and instead seeing only blinding color and flashing borders. Of course, you want your website to be attractive, even snazzy, but if there is no useful information included in well-written copy, customers are going to go elsewhere.Offering your potential clients and customers informative, well-written copy is one of the most important aspects of maintaining an effective website, one that brings you new customers and keeps the ol... | |
| You Too Can Have An Amazing Website
It is a well-known fact that a successful business depends greatly on how it is marketed. With an ever increasing dependence on the web, the use of a professional website is not only a necessity, but a priority. Although it is a common thought that only large businesses can have top-notch websites, with the tools available today what seemed impractical can now be a reality. Best of all, designing an ex... | |
| Getting Along With Your Web Designer
You're all ready to get started creating your web presence and you've found a skilled web designer to build your website for you. Do you know what he needs from you to do an efficient job? Good web design requires cooperation... | |
| Design With Purpose
If your website is falling through the cracks, the chances are that the site has no message, no central core to build traffic or a core readership. Websites that try to do everything usually fail.We begin every web site evaluation by helping you define your web site goals. You can do this yourself.Knowing what your site is supposed to accomplish should be the first step in your design process. Your website success starts with understanding your ... | |
| Leave Those Links Blue!
Don't mess with those links! When you're designing your site, you should leave your text links in their natural state--blue and underlined. We all want to be creative and not do the bland, expected, normal thing. We want to change our links to red, green, yellow, even black--anything but blue. And we have the urge to take off those underlines.Resist the temptation. It's hard. But there's a good reason to leave them alone.From t... | |
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