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Why You Should Hire A Professional Website Designer
Your web site should always adhere to standards! A professional web site designer will provide you with a standard compliant web site that is cross-browser supported. What does this mean to you? Why should you care? Any site that isn't standard compliant can "break" in older browsers, or simply not display at all in, say, text-based browsers. If you are a small business, this could be the difference between a conversion and a lost sale. That potential customer just went to your competition. Also, a standard compliant web site will have "clean" HTML, XHTML, or XML code. This allows search engines to index your site easily and improves your Search Engine Rank Position (SERP). What good is your web site if no one can find it? Read more about the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Standards and Guidelines. But you aren't a small business? That's ok. Non-profit organizations can lose potential members and/or donations due to a lack of credibility. Individual web sites are no different. If you don't care if people can visit your site, or not, why even bother publishing your web site on the World Wide Web? Think it's too expensive? Not at all. An ethical, professional web site designer should be able to provide simple web sites for as little as $50. A is for... Accessibility! A professional web designer gives you all of this plus they ensure that your site is accessible to people with disabilities. Too often, web sites are not created with people with disabilities in mind. For example: The wrong font colors are used causing people who are color blind to be unable to read the text; and proper code and navigation are not utilized for individuals who are blind or vision impaired. Another benefit with Return on Investment (ROI): better indexing for those Search Engines. Read more about the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). You should make sure that the professional web site designer you hire provides all of the above and should adhere to the most common, professional ideas about web design, like the following: 5 elements of professional web site design: Clean web site design/structure. Good usability.Fast loading, small web pages.Proper use of web technology.Ability to convey information.
1. Clean web site design/structure.
Only a few years ago, the web was a mass of blinking, twirling, animated images and scrolling text. Today, things have changed. Design principles focus more on simplistic, clean development and ease of navigation. How wonderful for all of us wandering around the World Wide Web! The problem now with most sites is the lack of flexibility. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and other design tools make changing and updating a web site's pages with little effort. And that translates into less time the web site designer is spending on maintaining your web site - and that equals less dollars out of your pocket, especially if your designer is getting paid by the hour! 2. Good usability.
Usability goes hand in hand with standards, accessibility, and cross-browser compliance. When you achieve all of this, usability is a natural by-product. Usability can be best defined as: how easy the average person (without disabilities, etc.) can get around your web site, or how "usable" is it. If someone has to hunt for a link back to your home page, or hunt for how to contact you, then you have a usability problem with your web site design. 3. Fast loading, small web page files.
As a rule of thumb, a visitor will wait 8 - 10 seconds on a 56k dial-up connection for your web site to display - then they'll leave. Most web designers agree on a limit of 50 to 60k total for a page. This includes: the html page, the images it will load, the size of the external CSS page(s) and JavaScript pages. Keeping these last two pages (CSS and JavaScript) separate will go a long way to increase the loading speed of each page. However, it must be kept in mind that these external pages DO effect over-all page loading speed. 4. Proper use of technology.
Only one thing needs to be mentioned here - a professional knows the best way to use technology and when to use it. Using a 250k flash intro page - just so your site looks cool - is not making the best use of the technologies available. In short just because you can, doesn't always mean you should. A professional web site designer will advise you of the technologies available and make recommendations based upon your individual needs in how to best include any advanced features into your web site. 5. Ability to convey information.
Clear, concise information (text) on your page should immediately convey to the visitor what you site is about. A professional web site designer will work with you or your copywriter to ensure that you are conveying what is needed and appropriate. In closing, if you want a professional looking site that is available and usable to the widest group of people, you should hire a professional web site designer. Have more questions? Please feel free to contact us. Tami Jones is the owner of Illuminations Web Services: an affordable website design company based in Knoxville Tennessee. Dedication to helping "illuminate" the internet and make it a reality to other small businesses is their #1 goal.
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...
Making Good Websites That Stand Out
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 com...
Web Site Accessibility
Making your site accessible means making it available to be used by all. It's too easy to think that what looks ok to you will do for all. Unfortunately, things aren't that simple.Websites are no longer just looked at by people sitting down in front of a PC. Today, websites are viewed on PCs, laptops, palmtops, all manner of mobile devices, digital TV, they are viewed by non-human automated systems or robots and are read aloud by special software to the visually impaired. If your site cannot be used by all these ...
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Web Design: Use It To Showcase The Message
If you are designing a web site for which the achievement of high conversion rates is a priority, focus your design efforts on showcasing and highlighting the content and copy.For sites where conversion rates are a priority, the primary purpose of design should be to present the message in such a way that it delivers the maximum impact.>> So "good" design doesn't matter?That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that design serves a function. For an entertainment or arts site that primary function may be to present images in an attractive way. That's fine.But for a site that is created to generate sales, the text must come first. Everything...from the architecture of the site to its design must work towards supporting your message and delivering people to the final checkout page.>> Sounds obvious. Why m... |  |
| Website Design Considerations
Q: Should I build and maintain my business Web site myself or pay someone else to do the work for me? -- Wesley L.... | |
| Optimized Web Page Template
I want to give you a free web page template that will besearch engine friendly. Why?Well, I assume you want your web page to come up as high aspossible in search engines because that generates freetraffic.On the other hand, your page has to deliver value to yourvisitors. Most people on the web are not searching to buysomething. They're surfing the web to find information tosolve a problem or fill their needs. If your page deliversthat, they'll be back.Fortunately that is exactly what search engines want you todo.Their job is to ... | |
| 14 Ways To Add Content To Your Web Site - Part 1
When I surf the Net, I often see web sites filled withbeautiful graphics that strive to capture my attention.Well, they do so for an instant, however I click away whenI don't immediately find relevant content. The content youadd to your web site needs to attract both visitors andsearch engines.Here are 14 ways to add content to your web site and attractvisitors:1. Get into the mind of your visitor. Brainstorm all theways your visitor would think of your product. Write yourcontent as if you are sitting next ... | |
| How To Get Your Visitors To Create Content For Your Website
An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh content that gives visitors a reason to return to their site. Unless you have a full-time staff dedicated to creating regular content, the time involved can be crippling.Wouldn't it be great if someone else would write timely, relevant content for you? Sure, but what are the odds of that happening? Well, many webmasters are already enjoying this phenomenon, and I'm happy to count myself among them.Set it up.Whether your site has a catalog of products or a collection of articles, you can design your pages to allow visitors to post reviews of whatever is featured on the page. They can share their experiences with items they've bought or post comments on the information in your site. Don't confuse this powerful ... | |
| Ten Steps To A Winning Home Page
There's no doubt about it - the first page your site visitors see is the most important page of your website. If your home page isn't appealing, chances are the rest of your pages will never even be seen by your visitors. It helps to think of your home page as the "front door" to your online business.... | |
| How To Double Your Online Sales Without Spending Another Dime On Advertising
Learning how to convert visitors to your web site into buyers, is the single most important factor affecting the success of your online business. If you don't have paying customers, your business will fail.FACT: "50% of Visitors are L... | |
| What You Should Ask A Web Designer Before You Hire Him
You've thought about it and you're ready to go. You're ready to give your business an online presence. You want your own website. That's great but unless you are doing it yourself, you would be shopping for a website designer. Some people would design their own websites but most people pre... | |
| Simple Lines And Shapes For Your Logo Design
Geometric designs come in all shapes and sizes? and lines. You can create your logo design or customize your illustration by using simple lines and shapes to create your very own unique image.Integrate the principle of simplicity with lines, circles, squares, triangles and rectangles, and you'll be able to come up with wonderful results that you can use for logos, newsletters, flyers, brochures, and even web pages.I would just like to emphasize that this article is not your typical 'you-do-this-you-do-that'. It doesn't matter how you manipulate your geometric shapes and lines, as long as you produce results that best exemplify your tastes and specifications. I could only provide you with the basics of making your shapes and lines vary in thickness or flow in your media presentation. I wi... | |
| Maximising Web Site Viewability - Browsers
With so many different configurations internet users have their computers set up with, it can be difficult to decide how web sites should 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 interesting reading and in my next few articles i wi... | |
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