Saturday, October 17, 2009

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It does not matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I am talking about a "good design" or how to build a website, I am not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional website design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst website designs I have come across. I hope that you will be able to compare that against your own website as a checklist and if anything on your website fits the criteria, you should know it is high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a website, which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your website. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big web site with hundreds of pages and every time a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I would just turn off my speakers or leave your website. Moreover, they just add to the visitor’s burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your website, as how it is meant to be viewed.

2) Extra large/small text size on your website

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it is illegible you will not be selling anything!

3) Popup windows on a web site

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct every time each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it is meant to do effectively. Do not let some minor mistakes stop your website from functioning optimally!

To all newbie’s and expert who are looking for a quick and easy how to build a web site free up your time and give you first website take a look at this site.

How to Build a Website for the First Time.

Should I Create a Website? Do I Need One?

People always want to follow the latest thing, be it in fashion, sports, that kind of thing. Websites have become a necessity to almost everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even young adults have created personal websites with their respective purposes, be it for profit, or for entertainment.

What one must consider, however, before creating a website, are the factors in which must be put to thought before doing so, such as the cost, maintenance, use, web host and so forth.

Firstly, associating with the cost, we must always try to find an affordable host, not spending too much, or too little. A cheap host does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always look for value for money deals. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are many cases of web hosts not providing the service they had assured other people, some had even shut down and were nowhere to be seen. Keep this note in mind; as if you would like a long-lasting website, this would be the first thing to look for.

Next, would hiring a professional be affordable? Is it the best option? For simple websites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use programs, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If the website in addition, acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be the issue here.

So, having considered the things to do before building a website, do we actually NEED one? If creating one would boost sales or promote positive implications to one, then by all means, go ahead and do what is best. Yet again, planning is the key to success, in everything we do.

How to Build a Website for First Time.

Five Important Rules How to Build a Website Design.

When it comes to how to build website, extra attention should paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages on your website

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements when build a website

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more content that is valuable and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors do not know how to navigate, they will leave your website.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is when come to your website

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your web site, you will want to make sure they know which part of your web site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section your web site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your website

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your website, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on at your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.
How to Build a Website for First Time.

The Key to Better Websites

How to Build a Website.

Introduction

Importance of build a website:


Build a website is to put the wonders of a good design into perspective, imagine when we purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well most people do, other than the material factor. But let’s assume the all other factors are constant, wouldn’t the design or looks, become the key aspect then?

2) Design a website:

Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.

Situation A: A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.

Situation B: A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)

Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures and designs will somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression.

As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly welcoming, is it?

Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to plan how to build your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives on how they build their website. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Do not get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to how to build website and at least maintain an impressionable website.

How to Build a Website for the First Time.