Archive for the ‘Website Design’ Category
published by Gary in Website Design
It is hard to believe that the first proper website went online as recently as 1991 and now there are billions of pages fighting for attention. Of course the Home Page is by far the most important as it is your company’s shop window. It is so easy for visitors to hit the back button that a website has to grab hard and hold fast to keep its visitors and, hopefully, convert them into customers.
In a recent interview, the great retailer Sir Philip Green stated that the reason why his shops are a success despite the recession is because the shop windows are regularly refreshed and the goods on offer are regularly revised.
A website has to continually evolve if it is going to continue to attract attention. Most organisations are not simply interested in hits to their sites but in converting those hits into paying customers. Although it is always important to attract new customers it is even more important to retain existing ones, so innovation has to be balanced with the tried and tested.
A few years ago, Coca Cola decided that their cola recipe that has been kept secret for generations could be improved and the costly experiment cost Coca Cola a small fortune. Changing the recipe of the cola drink that has worked for generations was marketing madness.
Successful giants like Sir Philip Green know that there are things that must be changed and things that must stay constant. When Coca Cola changed their own recipe they became like any other cola company and the drink was no longer “the real thing”.
Download speed If a search engine has brought your website to the attention of a potential customer, the first thing that the person will notice is how long the website takes to load. Of course, broadband speeds vary considerably but good website design will enable a website to download in just a few seconds.
First Home Page impressions The first question that any web designer should ask of his client is what they want the visitor to do when they arrive at the Home Page. This is always a tough one for big organisations that have lots of products and services to sell. If there are too many images, too many messages, too many things to do, instead of creating wonder in the viewer, it can cause their computer to slow down because of all the visual processes clogging up the works, resulting in a potential customer beating a hasty retreat with the aid of the back button.
Navigating around and from the Home Page Many websites are designed by people with state of the art monitors and what looks good on a giant screen may not look so good on a laptop or notebook screen.
Creating a clear, easily navigable Home Page that is also interesting and can be easily refreshed is a great design skill. Of course, the Home Page’s content is not just for the human eye as it also has to work well for search engines.
The copy on the Home Page has two principal functions: to inform and to lure. The copy must be short and simple to read but also Search Engine Optimised so that people can find the website easily when Keywords and Key Phrases are typed into search boxes.
The secret of good website design is simplicity. Many designers believe that the more bells and whistles there are to deflect attention the more exciting the website. Simplicity does not mean boring; a web page can still be visually stimulating without making the visitors feel that they are the target on a shooting range and every flashing, twirling, ticker-tape style image is gunning for them.
Website design conventions In the last couple of years, most people who use computers for work or pleasure have visited hundreds of websites and so have an idea of where to look for things. For example, it makes sense for all websites to have navigation links across the top of the page or down the side or both.
It is also still surprising how tough some websites make it for their customers to be able to find contact details or to place an order. Sometimes, protective measures against spam are so onerous that only the most ardent customer would bother to fight through all the security.
SEO - the essential website ingredient Every phrase that is written within a website should be Search Engine Optimised. That does not mean that the copy is going to be rubbish to read, but it does mean that there are always two ways of saying something - any old way and the SEO way.
The size of the copy is also another factor to consider. A website designer may have a massive screen whereas someone looking at a notebook has a screen a third the size. Legible, bite-sized chunks of copy that is well-written and regularly renewed, is the key to retaining visitors.
50 web design tools
published by Dan in Blogging | SEO | Web Development | Website Design
Turning to the different scripting techniques to make your website stand out above the rest of website designs today may be something that will not always be good. For one thing, web site design does play a role in SEO but if your site does not load fast enough, you may eventually lose the potential visitor. It shall always be what is in your site that will matter to them as information is what they are after.
This is not to say that you should not consider extravagant web designs. In fact, readers may even love you for it. But if you don’t use optimized designs that are concerned with making sure that your page loads faster, people will not be patient enough to see what you have to offer them.
Perhaps this is something that says a lot of the character of the web designer. For sure he is amazed at how new scripts and add-ons make a site tempting to check out. But at times, it is the developers of these web designs that is really the one that is being satisfied and not what visitors really want to see. When that happens, website optimization is obviously not met.
There are certain gauges to determine how a site is optimized. Content and keywords used in them is perhaps the best source of them all. For one thing, when you do search queries, you don’t see them looking for design. It’s all about the keywords. Focus on that and then think of an ideal but tempting design that will keep your guest coming back for more.
published by Dan in Blogging | Web Development | Web General | Web Technology | Website Analytics | Website Design
When it comes to putting up sites these days, we can see a fair amount of people left with two choices, blog sites or websites. Some may ask what is the difference between the two since they can both be hosted using any domain and maintained using the standard ways of search engine optimization. Between the two, it seems that blog sites are easier to maintain since with software such as Wordpress or TypePad, you can easily just compose and save your blog entries and even add an image or two and you can start building on rapport on the web.
Websites on the other hand are known for requiring the need of advanced scripting and programming languages such as PHP or CSS. Not all people can easily understand how they can use these software and all they care about is putting up a site, adding some content and then applying certain scripts to get their website up and running. These programming languages are actually being studied by most people since they all know that websites are something that most businesses need right now to establish web presence.
Putting up a blog seems to be simple but it does require some scripting to get traffic. Blogs have so far evolved from the usual online diary belief into something that can be made profitable. Through adsense and some text link ads, blogs can generate good revenue if you really focus on building them. Its all about content generation using main keywords in demand in cyberspace today. That is where the profit lies these days.
published by Dan in SEO | Web Development | Web General | Website Design | Website Standards | Writing for the Web
When it comes to designing a website, people normally point at advanced programming such as PHP or CSS for reference. But there are software today that make it easier. There will still be the usual coding and commands that a site developed will have to get used to but generally, if you know logic, you can handle it yourself.
Normally, hiring a professional website designer would be the immediate solution to the problem for most. But getting the proper one will cost a lot, sometimes even more than the site URL and hosting. For most it would not matter since it is a one time thing. But seriously, if you are inclined to learn, you can use the help option or even get simple tutorials online on basic to advanced programming.
It may all sound simple but most of these seasoned website programmers started out the same way. You will be surprised to find that they have not really garnered any specific dedicated studies towards web programming as most of these software are new to them. In fact, you may be surprised that they would know the latest software when in fact they claim to have learned it long before it was introduced on the web.
This is not to discredit what web programmers do these days. But there are people who do that. The thing is, if they can do it then why can’t you? It is all about taking it one step at a time. There will be basic to advanced modes and once you get the hang of it, the pieces of the puzzle will fall into place and you may even pick up a lesson or two when it comes to building good websites.
published by Dan in Web Development | Web Technology | Website Design
- Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML) - Powerful XML-based markup user interface markup language and application markup language in one. Has the combined functionality of various user interface markup languages such as XUL, SVG, and CSS. Created by Microsoft.
- OpenLaszlo - Supports Flash. Newest versions 4.x and releases also supports Dynamic HTML (DHTML). As you have already probably deduced from the name it is open-source.
- MXML - Markup language for Micromedia’s Flex language. Like OpenLaszlo, MXML-defined user interfaces are rendered by Flash Player.
- GIMP Toolkit/GTK+ - Created primarily for GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) but has evolved in a feature rich toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces that is cross platform compatible. The primary platform that uses GTK+ is still the X Window System but it is also already supported Windows 2000 and upwards, as well as newer versions of Mac OS X.
- Curl - If you have heard of Curl before and thought it was actually a programming language then don’t worry because you are right. Curl IS an object-oriented programming language AND a markup language. Curl was actually developed by MIT’s Laboratory for Computer Science as a research project (Curl Project) but due to it’s success now a corporation (to which site I linked to) fully dedicated to bringing commercial products.
published by Dan in Web 2.0 | Web Development | Website Design | Website Standards
We all know how important the graphical user interface (GUI) is for all websites. Though a website may have excellent content if the user interface is poorly designed users will have an extremely difficult time extracting the information they need or finishing whatever task they were set out to do on that website. The GUI is a factor that largely affects the user satisfaction and as we all know it is the satisfied customer/user that will come back and maybe even spread the news. Because of this GUI is extremely important.
User interface markup languages are of course used to render a site’s GUI. Most user interface markup languages are actually dialects of XML (which I have already briefly touched on in the general purpose languages but will be discussing in greater depth).
to be continued..
published by Dan in Web Development | Web Technology | Website Design | Website Standards
This is a partial list of markup languages. The links pointed to are the most authoritative links I could find on each particular markup language. Note that I chose only the more popular markup languages for each category in order to give you an idea of the scope of use of markup languages.
General purpose markup languages
Lightweight markup language - Uses very simple syntax since they are designed for very simple text editors.
Content syndication markup languages - We are very familiar with the first two since it is what’s mostly used for web feeds.
published by Dan in Web Development | Website Design
I realised that before doing a post on the list of markup languages I should discuss (even if just very briefly) the importance of markup languages.
As mentioned in the previous post “a markup language is an artificial language using a set of annotations to text that describe how text is to be structured, laid out, or formatted.” From the very definition we can already find the importance of markup languages.
Before computers came markup languages were used by editors and publishers. To them a common markup language was very important (and still is) in order to make collaboration possible. Of course collaboration is still possible without a markup language but imagine the hassle of writing very detailed instructions when trying to describe how each and every publication should be layed out, not to mention what to do in case of revisions. Having a markup language where technical terms that can be readily understood by people in the industry made communication more efficient.
Now this is also true for web designers by using a common markup language such as HTML, XML, etc. it makes it possible for us to create web pages that can be understood not only by other web designers but also by most web browsers and whatever other applications that may need to read the contents of the websites we make.
published by Dan in Web Development | Website Design
If you dabble in web design then hearing the term “markup language(s)” shouldn’t be something new to you. However, do you really know what it means? And do you know that markup languages has actually been used long before computers came into existence?
According to Wikipedia, “a markup language is an artificial language using a set of annotations to text that describe how text is to be structured, laid out, or formatted.” As you can see the definition does not say that it describes how text should be formatted in a web page but simply how ANY text can should be formatted. What this means is that more likely than not there are markup languages found in every corner of the world as long as languages are printed or put in written form. Of course, as web designers this is not our concern. What we are interested in are the markup languages that have emerged due to computers including all the markup languages that fall under these categories:
- XML markup languages
- General purpose markup languages
- Document markup languages
- Content syndication markup languages
- Lightweight markup languages
- User interface markup languages
- Vector graphics markup languages
- Web service markup languages
As web designers though it is to be expected that you’ll be most familiar with XML markup languages and user interface markup languages. In my next posts I’ll be giving a short list of markup languages and maybe even discuss with a bit more depth some of the more popular markup languages.
published by Dan in Accessibility | Tools & Resources | Web Technology | Website Design | Website Standards
Benefits of automated authoring tools:
- Programming-free authoring and publishing - Uses easy to learn and use WYSIWYG editing
- Time saver - Automated processes makes content translation faster and everything else faster, which results in saved money and earlier release of product to the market.
- Cost reduction - The in-house production/development of e-learning materials and websites using such tools can be significantly lower than hiring a development team.
- Quality assurance - Automated editing processes ensures that process steps are taken.
- Easier collaboration - Some automated software allows for real-time multi user collaboration.
- Results in documentation consistency - By automating documentation processes you can be sure that you’ll get more consistent and timely results.
Disadvantages of automated authoring tools:
- Small things that count get overlooked - There’s no denying it a professional web designer will find it easier to spot problems or even just potential problems that someone inexperienced that is just dabbling with an automated authoring software.
- Non-compliance to web standards - This wouldn’t be too bad if it didn’t result in something adverse but since it does affect accessibility then it is a problem that shouldn’t be overlooked. Most affected by accessibility issues are the visually-impaired. While this can be corrected by someone knowledgeable in HTML those using WYSYWIG editors do not even know there’s a problem.
- Debugging woes - Whether a big/critical problem or something as minute as incorrect alignment arises a lot of those using automated authoring tools will find themselves unable to solve the problem that easily, if at all, which then prompts them to either hire a professional web developer or to leave the the end product flawed.
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