Tuesday 27 July 2010

The Importance of Proper Web Design For Business Success

In this modern day and age, business web sites work as a direct projection of a company's image to the public. A well-organized interactive site with a user-friendly interface can help to increase the overall sales of specific products and services, so whether you will be creating the design on your own or hiring a professional to do the job for you, it is important to ensure a high standard of quality. Web design services are available from companies and independent designers throughout the world, creating intense competition and massive variation in terms of price per project.

As a general rule of business, wide exposure to a large pool of potential clients is the key to generating large profits and company recognition. For this reason, corporations and small businesses alike have recognized the importance of establishing an easily accessible web presence. Used effectively, the Internet can easily become any company's most valuable and useful advertising asset. This advertising method is receiving wide recognition as being superior to conventional methods, such as TV commercials and poster campaigns. It is also much less expensive and easier to acquire.

With the immense quantity of new web sites springing up across the web on a regular basis, simply having a web site is not necessarily enough to guarantee results. This is where website design plays its part in adding value to an advertising campaign, in cases where the design used is attractive, efficient, and user-friendly. There are a wide range of factors to consider within this realm, including the web site's content, manageability, targeted information, and copywriting. When all of these factors are evaluated and maximized within the overall framework of the web design in question, the potential benefits achievable by a business can be tremendous.

With the influx of new web designers that are skilled in the creation of content relevant sites as well as search engine optimization, the average price for a web site has been drastically reduced over the past decade. Depending on your personal preferences, you may choose to either hire an independent freelance designer or a company consisting of a designer team to accomplish the job for you. Companies will usually offer fixed rates, special discounts, and package bonuses for designing a web site, whereas freelance designers will be likely to thoroughly evaluate the size of the needed work, and establish the total rate that must be paid for the project accordingly.

In conclusion, if you own a business, the importance of building a web presence is simply undeniable. Business owners should research the web design offers available, and choose their providers carefully. The large amount of designers can make it complicated to select an appropriate offer, although this process can be greatly simplified if additional information is sought. It is also important to make sure that the provider creating your web site is capable of optimizing it for better rankings with popular search engines, as this aspect is crucial to the success of your large or homegrown business in the long-term.

Thursday 8 April 2010

Simple Web Design Principles To Avoid

When undertaking web design, it is important to give the visitors to your website the best possible browsing experience. A website must be attractive to the eye, simple to navigate and informative.

In order to offer your users an optimal browsing experience, it is necessary to avoid the use of the following web design elements.

Flash Navigation

Adobe Flash creations are typically very effective both in terms of functionality and looks. This is especially true for buttons and menus. However, Flash is not perfect. In addition, a number of users may not have Flash available to them.

A website that used Flash navigation would prove useless to those visiting on an Apple iDevice (for example, an iPhone, iPod Touch or iPad) as the Flash Player is unavailable for use on such devices. This holds true for any device or Internet browser that fails to support Flash Player.

Furthermore, many browser users ensure that Flash is turned off in order to prevent security problems. It may therefore be wise to make use of image links and text. For animations and interactivity, try a scripting language such as JQuery or JavaScript.

Background Music

Try to avoid the use of background music unless you are designing a site that is related to music in some way. Avoid music that will play automatically when a page has loaded.

Background music may sound awesome to you, but if a visitor does not expect to hear music on your page, they will either go back to the page they were on initially or will make a desperate attempt to mute the music.

In addition, do not forget to consider that users of dial-up Internet will incur a long wait when loading your site.

Do not subject your visitors to this.

Extremely Tiny/Large FontsTo make sure that your site is readable, refrain from using unusually small or large fonts. Significantly small fonts are not easy to read while fonts that are excessively large create a requirement for excessive scrolling. A visitor who requires a different sized font can change it through his or her web browser.

Popups

Popups are typically used to show the visitor adverts or "important" messages. However, to most they are highly irritating. Popups interfere with a user's experience - they get in between the visitor and the website.

Popup windows have gained a bad reputation in the online community. For this reason, many browsers now possess functions to prevent them from being on display. You should not be reliant on popups for site functionality.

In short, the use of popup windows is frustrating and considered to be bad Internet etiquette.

Do not forget, as a web design expert, your job is to ensure that visitors to your site have the most pleasant browsing experience possible. When visitors are granted this, your site will do exactly what you need it to. If your site is not a pleasure to browse, visitors will be few and far between. They will visit once and will rarely return. This is not something that you would wish for.

Tuesday 30 March 2010

Why Would You Use A Web Design Service?

If you are starting up a business one of the most effective ways to market that business is to get a website. With a website up and running you will have the opportunity to bring in a much larger audience than you would otherwise. It allows you to market your business and advertise your products to people halfway around the world, without ever leaving the comfort of your own home.

Ecommerce is booming and besides improving your advertising you will also benefit from reduced information distribution costs by having your own business site. You can send order forms, catalogs and invoices to customers online saving yourself time and money.

These days the only way for any business to maximize their potential for success is to have a website set up. You may choose to make the website yourself or find a professional company to do the work for you. In most cases hiring a web design company will be the best idea. Why choose web design services? There are a few reasons.

Anyone can spend a few hours reading up on web design and learning the basics. There are even some programs that take you through step by step helping you add in color and text to your site before publishing it. However, if you want the most advanced and appealing site it is usually best to leave things up to the pros. The better your site looks the more potential customers you will draw in.

With Flash design, text inputting and all the other key issues that have to be addressed unless you are willing to devote a serious amount of time to your site you are not going to come out with the results you are looking for.

A professional web design company will work with you to address all issues and interests you have. You can dictate to them what sort of ideas you want to bring to life and what theme you want your website to have. You can have as much or as little input as you like.

They will then work with whatever information they were given to create a site from the ground up for you.

There are already enough things for you to worry about to run your business without having the task of creating a business site on your shoulders. When they are finished you can check it out and let them know whether there are any areas you want changed. A good web design company will be more than happy to move things around and set up the website until it is to your liking.

It is easy to see the benefits of hiring a comapny offering web design services rather than taking on the job yourself. It offers more convenience and better results for you, and usually for a very reasonable price.