Web Design is an area which can be extremely important to the success of a website. It’s fair to say that most people who design their first website don’t do a good job. They may think that there design is good enough to upload to the web but in actual fact the only reason they think that is because they were the ones who designed it. This is a common issue which most amateur designers experience but it’s very important to keep practicing and keep telling yourself I can do better than this. It may sound cliche but practice does make perfect and the more times you redesign your website layouts, the better you will get.

It’s not impossible to design a great website on your first attempt but you shouldn’t expect to. Please read the rest of this article and take note of the tips and advice given and you will be on your way to designing a website that is nice to look at and easy for people to use.

Keep it Simple Most people who start off designing a website think that more is better. That’s completely wrong and will turn your visitors away. Do not have lots of images, background music, flaming text and a hundred different colors fonts. All this stuff will increase the loading time of your website and believe it when I tell you that most people get impatient after waiting more than 10 seconds.

If you don’t believe me look at every popular website, take Google for example! All the site consists of is a plain white background, a nice logo, a few links and the search box. Some may say Google’s design is poor but experienced designers would say to you that it’s a nice design. Google became popular because it provided better content and loaded much faster than competing search engines at the time. Sites such as eBay, hotornot.com and papal all have simple designs but still look professional. That’s exactly what you should be aiming for with your website layouts.

Here is a more exhaustive list of design tips you should follow:

Don’t use frames Don’t have background music Don’t have too many images Stick to one main font for your text Don’t use too many colors for your layout, stick with 2 or 3 main colors If using flash, don’t overuse it. Don’t use things like flaming text, animated gif images they look tacky Don’t use bright text on a bright background and vise versa Don’t make your text size too large or too small Arial and Verdana are the two most popular website fonts Don’t make the width of your website too large test it on multiple sized monitors and on several screen resolutions

The above points are very important. Please remember that having an excellent design is really no better than having a good design. However a good design is much better than having a bad design. The truth is that it’s your content or website concept that will determine the success of your website but having a bad design can affect your chances of success, so take note!

About the Author

Darrell Knox is a writer and entrepreneur with 15 years of home business and marketing experience.Website: http://myacetemplates.net/design.pl/photo-law.html/website.html -

?I?ll do it myself!?, ?Yes, I must update those contact details??, ?What meta tags??. Sound familiar? What about ?I don?t need a website!?? These are things you may say to yourself regarding your existing website or the thought of having a website constructed. Over the coming years electronic communication and commerce will inevitably increase at a faster rate then ever before. The Internet gold rush is over, and now websites must compete for cyberspace, eyeballs and the dollar. It is time for web development to become more focused on quality rather than quantity, effectiveness rather than glamour.

Your website advertises your business. So do it right. If you have a website, ask yourself these questions:

? What are the objectives of my website?
? Can the objectives of my site be met?
? Does everything on my site work the way it should?
? Is all the information on my site up to date?
? Does the look of my site reflect my business and my image?
? What impression does my home page give?
? Can my site be found on the net?

If you are thinking about having a website built, these are questions that will be relevant to you also. You need to have addressed those during the planning phase of your website development. Your website can be a cost-effective and valuable marketing tool which, when used complementarily to your existing marketing plans, can help to grow and expand your business. Your website should work for your businesses effectively, and there are some basic steps you can follow when starting off, that can help make that happen.

Plan it

Think it through, map it out and determine what the objectives of your website are. They may be to advertise or sell your products or services, impart information, gather information or to teach something to the users of your site. Identify the objectives before you start, they are the cornerstone of your web development project (and of your existing website if you already have one). You should have three or four clearly defined objectives for your website, and they should be easily achieved right from the home page. Consider impact! What will be the first impression that users of your website have when they open your homepage for the first time? Apart from the good versus bad impressions, ask yourself this: will the nature, image and focus of my business be able to be determined from this page? How far into the site will someone have to go to find out what your core business is?

What content do you really need? Keep focused on what your objectives are. There is nothing wrong with starting small with a view to expanding later. Remember also site flow, and how users will navigate through the site, moving through the pages, and using the links. Is it sensible and logical? And of course make it easy for people to contact you! That?s what your site is for! So plan the site, get feedback from others, and get it working correctly from the outset.

Build it

There are two options here. Build it yourself, or obtain the services of a web development company. The first option is noble and ambitious (unless you actually are a web developer!) but if you are serious about a website I wouldn?t recommend it. Would you record your own radio ad on a cassette and allow it to be played on air? Only if you were brave. A poorly developed site will probably do your business more harm than good. But it is possible: if you do it yourself, are happy with it and it works for you then great! Apart from that there are web development companies and there are lots of them too, so shop around, get quotes, find a good one (not necessarily the cheapest), and then ask the right questions. ?What sites have you built before?? (these are usually listed on the web developers own website), ?what do you suggest for me??, ?what time frames, testing expectations, hosting options, support and follow-up services do you provide??. Ensure that search engine optimisation of your site is part of the deal and when the site is being built be involved, review progress with your web developer periodically to ensure your and their expectations are being met.

Test it

A brand new website should be tested thoroughly, especially in instances where there is a level of inbuilt functionality in the site, such as database searches, form submissions, shopping facilities and online payment. Make sure everything works as you think it should. A good idea, as in many situations, is to put yourself in your target market?s shoes, and use your own site from their perspective. It?s a great idea to get friends (and anyone at all, in fact) to test your site, and to give you feedback (good and bad). For a really complex site, hire testers if necessary.

Market it

A website that no one visits will not generate a lot of business for you. Market it. Obviously put it on your business cards and other stationery and advertising, but it may also be appropriate for you to market the site in its own right. Where do you market a website? Well it seems sensible that you could always start to market your site where users of your products or services currently look for your products and services. If you are one of the first in your industry to get online then offer them an alternative! Your site should be search engine friendly, and should be listed on relevant search engines and directories. Just make sure your search engine optimisation is correct because it can be difficult to change your listing on many search engines once you have been added, and good rankings on a number of search engines can take months, so be patient.

Measure it

How do you know if your site is working for you? More phone calls generating more business? Contacts made with you from the site contact form? Sure is! The first and most logical thing to do is to research where your leads are coming from. Ask people making enquiries where they heard about you and get feedback from customers and users of the site as to how user-friendly they found it, and what were it?s good points and not so good points. As well as this you must analyse your website statistics. These are usually provided by your webhosting company, and there are also a number of statistics packages available to buy or download from the net (some of them free) which do a reasonable job. Most statistics software include explanations of how the statistics are gathered and what the terminology used in the reporting means. These website stats can really tell you a lot about the patterns of traffic to, from and within your website, as well as how much traffic is visiting your site, from where and what systems the users of your site are using. You should use this data to refine your site and to make decisions about the future development of it.

Manage it

So you have launched a website and can now sit back and wait for the business to roll in? Don?t you believe it. There are very few websites that require no management, maintenance or review on an ongoing, if periodic, basis. If you have good traffic to your site and want to ensure they return then you will need to refresh the content periodically to keep interest. Content Management in the general sense is vital too: keep your contact details up to date, remove old products or services and add new ones so that interest is retained.

So there are some of the fundamentals of website planning and operation. Don?t forget: start small if you are unsure, and plan to expand over time as you review the effectiveness of your website. When your website really starts to work for you, you can expand out into other related areas if appropriate for your business, such as online marketing and email newsletters. These are great ways of spreading the word about your services or products, and of keeping your business top of mind with your existing and potential customers.

Finally remember: plan a site with objectives in mind, build a suitable and appropriate site for your business, get the users in, keep them in, get them returning and manage your site.

Hollander Consultants’ Interactive Site to Help Healthcare Managers

Tualatin, OR: Hollander Consultants revisits its outreach into the information exchange of cyberspace by redesigning www.askhollander.com, a website designed to provide practice management advice for healthcare practices.

The site continues to offer practice owners a forum to ask questions concerning practice management issues and get advice from Hollander Consultants’ over 23 years of experience in providing practice management results.

“With the re-launching of the Ask Hollander site, we are already getting interest in a higher quantity than we previously had gotten from the site,” said Matthew Bratschi, vice president for marketing and public relations for Hollander Consultants, “this signifies a greater interest in our products and services.”

Additional pages to the website include:

 Frequently Asked Questions  Form for more information from Hollander Consultants  Free practice analysis  Link to an introductory video on Hollander Consultants

In addition to its flagship websites, www.hollanderconsultants.com and www.solutionsmags.com, Hollander Consultants has created an extensive presence on the World Wide Web with its other websites, www.hollanderpressroom.com, www.gettingnewpatients.com, www.hollander-consultants-success.comm and www.practicemanagementblog.com.

Hollander Consultants was named in 2005 as one of the top 50 companies to work for in Oregon by Oregon Business magazine, the leading publication for Oregon businesses.

Hollander Consultants is one of the leading national consulting firms in the United States and Canada for the combined dentistry, optometry and veterinary professions. Hollander Consultants uses the administrative systems developed by business management pioneer, L. Ron Hubbard.

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About the Author

vice president for marketing and public relations -

In business world, you need a professional image, a professional sales team. Similarily, as one of your company member, is company website performs in professional fashion? Company website is your online sales team, do you know how professional it is?

#1 You have a beautiful website background?

In personal website, we can always find some beautiful background image or eye-catching background color. In some company websites, they also use some company photo, factory photo or product photo as the website background. Actually, it is not the right way to do. The right way is “Make it simple”.

You will never find a background image in Yahoo, Google. People visit your website is looking for information not the beautiful background. Moreover, the background image have disadvantages: loading time will be longer and distract the visitor attention. Think again what information the background image can bring to your customer? If no, take it off.

#2 Full of image

Dont make your webpage in full of image. Use image only if image can present more clear than text. For example, you can use image to present the order process. Size of those images should be small enough, you can take a look on the article about “Image Optimization”.

Remember, company website is not a comic.

#3 Page Frame

Many websites use frame to make the navigation easier. However, more and more website designers dont use frame in the design. It is because frame will distort the whole design and also make the visitor confused and difficult to find the information. Also, using CSS or Javascript can provides similar effect but can keep the design consistency.

#4 Visitor Counter

Put a visitor counter on the web site. This can let visitor know how many people visit the website before, get their attention and build up their confidence. This look true, but we suggest you to take it off.

Actually, these counters are not accurate and can be trigger manually, no one will believe these counters. Why don’t put a testimonial with a real customer name instead of this counter?

#5 Under construction

Have you see those “Road Construction” image? Or those “Under construction, please come back later”? Dont waste your visitor time. If your webpage has not finish, take it away. I can’t remember have I try “come back later”.

If you really need to put this “Under Construction”, we can give you some suggestion. You can package it to become a re-visit event, for example: - On which day the web page open, the first 100 visitors complete the registration can get a free gift or discount. - Raise the visitor curiosity, tell them what surprise they may get once the webpage open. - Make it like a fiction. Everyday you put some additional information on it, make the visitor re-visit. This can greatly encourage the visitor to visit again.

Remember, no one like those boring “Under Construction”. Turn it into a marketing event.

website design, web design, under construction, professional design, quality web design

About the Author

Isaac Chu is Project Director of Evinco Solutions Limited. Evinco provides innovative business software, include emarketing web solutions, email marketing software, e-catalog publishing software, invoicing software, and electronic cheque writer. Visit: http://www.evinco.com.hk

So you need a business website? - It costs money right? And it’s hard to find a local reliable web designer who can work within your budget? So you gonna do yourself (or get nephew Jimmy to do it for peanuts, afterall he is a computer whizkid at only 13 years old) ? Maybe you’ve seen those cool flash web templates with music for a few dollars - that will do nicely !

But what about registering the right domain name; setting up email accounts for all the staff; getting the right type of web space to host the site; how you gonna add a web form; have you got any decent web design software installed ? - Oops! that willl cost mega bucks! Erm so maybe web templates aint so cheap after all ? And you’ll need to find a few hours/days to do this - maybe you’d be better selling your product/service ?

But Web Templates are so cheap !

Well, a good web designer is undoubtedly worth the money if you have the budget. He/She will build you a customised web site with your business logo, snazzy imagery in your brand colours, nicely laid-out text and menus. They may add a little Flash animation to create impact and a online form that helps your prospective customers contact you from the website. SOUNDS GREAT ! But your website needs to do a lot more that look pretty.

The more professional and experienced web designer will go a few steps further, beyond the bells and whistles. He/She will make sure the code is validated to W3C standards, it is accessible to the disadvantaged, it works in all modern browsers such as Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozilla and Safari. They will ensure the content is optimised with keywords for Google and Yahoo, etc. They test all the links work. They’ll submit the site to the search engines that matter. They will install a ‘hit counter’ so you can check how your site visits are coming on. And best of all they will give you honest and practical advice on all things web, stuff they have learned over the years. Because they’re experts.

DIY web templates are just the begining and if looks got you to the top of Google then I’d say GO FOR A WEB SITE TEMPLATE. But the reality is the web is too big and competitive for you not to get the web designer in.

If you are serious about your website being a major part of your online marketing mix then my (maybe biased) opinion is get a web designer - it’ll pay for itself. Yep, there are thousands of web templates very cheap but the Google and Yahoo top 10 don’t seem to list them - enough said!

Try These, they may help:

• G-Force UK Web Templates example of web tempaltes
• Digital Idiom UK Web Design Customised / Bespokeweb sites
• W3C Web Standards World Wide Web Consortium
• Google Search Tips

So is it web template or web designer?

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Anyone can draw up a design in Photoshop. That doesn’t make them a web designer. I have worked with artists and graphic designers that can create some pretty cool looking “layouts” but the problem is they can’t be converted to a web design. You don’t just paste an image into an HTML page and call it a website… it has to be cut-up and laid out with lots of thought and care. Knowing the rules, limitations, and constraints of web design will dramatically effect what you draw up in an image editor.

Before you draw anything, you will need to figure out some things first:

1) What resolution do you want to develop to?
2) What layout do you want to use?
3) Will your content be static, dynamic, or mixture of both?

The first thing to figure out is what desktop resolution you are going to develop to. Based on information from http://browsersize.com/, all web user desktops worldwide can be broken up into these percentages:

1024 x 768 - 56%
800 x 600 - 22%
1280 x 1024 - 13%
1152 x 864 - 3%
other - 6%

When actually drawing a website design up in an image editor, don’t forget to subtract 30px from the width for your layouts.? This is to accommodate the scrollbar that will appear to the right when content exceeds the screen height.? Example: for a resolution of 800×600, your design should be 770px in width.

The main number you want to look at here is the width (the first number). Scrolling down is fairly well accepted as normal behavior for a website by all users. So the height is not as important as the width. Scrolling across is a different story. You will never want your design to have horizontal scrollbars at the bottom of the page. You will need to pay special attention to the width of your design when developing. If someone’s desktop resolution is smaller than the resolution you designed to, they will have scrollbars at the bottom of their page and this will be deemed to be an unpleasant “viewing experience” for that user. The lower the resolution of your design, the more people that can be included in those that will have a nicer “viewing experience”.

Before you just jump to the highest used resolutions (1024 x 768), consider your market. Who are you developing your website for? If your website is a forum about Java Web Development or CSS Web Design, then it’s probably safe to figure that most of your users will be tech savvy. That means they will probably have nicer/newer computers, which means that you could probably develop to 1024 x 768 without worrying about to many people having a bad “viewing experience”. On the other hand, if you are developing a website for a non-profit organization that provides free food and clothing to families with low incomes, you probably want to stick to 800×600. Your target audience probably can’t afford the latest computers and may more than likely have older computers that were given away to them or purchased at a very cheap price. Another example is older people with bad eyesight - if your website draws in lots of senior citizens, they will probably want to see things at a lower resolution to make text and images larger.

You might also want to consider whether or not you want to ignore a quarter your market’s “viewing experience”. If your website is for a company that markets to the general public, I doubt their marketing department will like this. They will more than likely want something that looks appealing to everyone. This can be done easily by designing to 800×600 desktops. In fact, sometimes it’s nice to have a background for your design. For those people who use higher resolutions, you can create more of an esthetically pleasing look to your design by having a background.

The second thing to figure out is what layout you want to use. A layout is how headers, footers, content, sidebars, etc. are placed on your page. Not every page has to have the same layout. For instance, you may want a unique layout just for your index (entry) page. That’s fine, as long as most of the other pages on your site are consistent in their layout.

There are all sorts of layouts you can go with. There are those with menus on the side, menus on the top, some with sidebars and side boxes, and some without. There are those whose width stretch to fill your screen (liquid) and those whose width is a set size (static). Lots of possibilities here. A good place to look at some example layout can be found at the Layout Gala: http://blog.html.it/layoutgala/. This site provides the code for some of the most popular base layouts used in web design. All these layouts use valid markup and CSS, and have been tested successfully on Internet Explorer/win 5.0, 5.5, 6 and beta 2 preview of version 7; Opera 8.5, Firefox 1.5 and Safari 2. A great starting point for your web design. Again, keep in mind the two types of basic layouts: static and liquid. If you use a liquid layout, you will still need to determine the minimal width. It should be equal to the width of the resolution you have decided to design to. Your content should “float” appropriately as the browser is resized - either to the left, right, or center until they overflow, at which point they should float downward, pushing all your content down. Once you have reached your minimal width you have designed your site for, you are no longer accountable for your users “viewing experience”. The content can overlap and run into each other… this now acceptable. You can try and force it to be static once it has reached its minimal width, at which point it will show horizontal scrollbars. This is sometimes deemed to be more pleasant than letting your content overlap itself. This is up to you.

Finally, you need to consider your content. Is it going to be fairly static? Will the content be updated by users frequently? Is there dynamic data that is used for content that comes from a database? Does the site use a content manager? The important thing here is to design to your content. In general, you should avoid designing static height pages… they should stretch appropriately to accommodate the data that is present on the page. This is one of the mistakes I see a lot of from graphic designers that don’t know anything about the web. They code a watermark background that looks cool for a page of an exact height of, say, 600px because that was how big the page was with its content. But then a month later someone goes in adds some more content -now the website has an 800px height, and there is 200px at the bottom of the page that doesn’t have a watermark and is even a completely different color/look than what was used for the first 600px. As a web designer you have to be aware of when to use “repeatable background images” or colors for backgrounds with dynamic data. Sometimes you can use static images or horizontal repeating images at the top or bottom, as long as they gracefully blend into the main background eventually.

This is also important for menus. Using a static image, like a tab, is fine as long as you are willing to go into an image editor and create a new tab every time you need to. However, you might consider using repeatable images/solid colors with text that automatically stretches when content is added. To do this is more complicated, but will save you time in the future. Plus, if you’re using a content management system, this will be mandatory. You will have no idea how long someone might make their menu link, so you will need to be prepared for links that wrap and/or stretch dynamically. Again, solid colors or repeatable background can be used here. The doodlekit website builder tool is an example of when you would want to consider this.? Advanced web designers that use this tool will need to consider these rules when developing. Some of the more complicated designs used by doodlekit have repeatable images/colors in the middle, and static images at the top and bottom, or on the left and right sides that blend into the middle.

Once you have figured out the resolution you want to design to, picked your layout, and determined how dynamic your content is, you are ready to finally start drawing! Keeping these in mind will determine how and what you design. When it comes time to convert it to an actual website, your web designer/developer will thank you!

About the Author

Heath Huffman is co-owner of doodlebit website designs & website solutions. They created the doodlekit website builder - an online tool that allows you to create and build your own website. doodlekit has the following built into it: page edit/creation, blogs, forums, photo albums, forms, shopping cart, file uploading, & website stat tracking.

Hiring someone to build or promote your website costs considerably more than building it yourself, but it can be a good way to quickly get your site online and start doing business, especially if the site you intend to build is relatively complex or you need to implement an e-commerce solution. Obviously, if you decide to hire a custom website designer, then you will want to make sure the website designer specializes in the skills you require. That means learning to ask the right kinds of questions both of yourself and your candidates.

Hiring someone to build or promote your website costs considerably more than building it yourself, but it can be a good way to quickly get your site online and start doing business, especially if the site you intend to build is relatively complex or you need to implement an e-commerce solution. Obviously, if you decide to hire a custom website designer, then you will want to make sure the website designer specializes in the skills you require. That means learning to ask the right kinds of questions both of yourself and your candidates.

There are three primary types of small business website designers and developers:

• Custom Website Designer These are typically individuals with a great deal of creative talent who specialize in the look and feel of your website. Custom Website Designers will typically focus on user interface issues, but will not venture much past the HTML of the site. Most designers will not do heavy programming or get involved in business processes or e-commerce. You can typically find good website designers for small business in the $25 - $40 per hour range. A typical small business website may cost somewhere between $2500 and $5000 to design, and you will be responsible for writing the sites content.
  
• Web Developer These folks are typically more expensive than website designers and may or may not be able to assist you in the user interface design or look and feel of your website. They focus primarily on the programming and development of more complex websites and web-based applications. You will want to bring in a developer if your site requires building a custom database, you plan to have some sort of specialized functionality that you cant purchase off the shelf from your web hosting company, or you need to implement an e-commerce solution, and you dont feel comfortable with doing it yourself. Custom Web Developers will charge between $35 and $100 per hour depending on the type of service you require and how large the project is. A very basic e-commerce site will cost at least $10,000, with more complex sites running much higher..
  
• Search Engine Optimization Specialist Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing are both hot markets right now with lots of snake oil salesmen who would love to take your money. A good Search Engine Optimization specialist will be able to show you examples of sites that he or she has optimized, and demonstrate how that optimization has led to increased traffic and sales for their clients. You can expect to pay monthly retainers between $500 and $2500 for a competent SEO. Those that charge less are probably not giving your business enough attention. With SEO the true test of ability is results. You should start to see improvements in your sites positioning within 90 days of bringing on a Search Engine Optimization expert. It isnt good enough to be ranked on some particular term, you are hiring these people to bring in qualified traffic.

So, depending on the type of website you are putting together, and what sort of help you think youll need, you may work with several different types of consultants. The most important thing is to try to identify your needs up front and plan the site as thoroughly as possible. Believe me, web developers and designers make a lot of money off of entrepreneurs who do not plan out their sites well enough in advance. The changes and redesigns can quickly add up to quite a bit more than what the sites would have cost if they had been planned out correctly from the beginning.

If you feel that hiring a custom website designer is not your cup of tea, and you want to try to do it yourself for less money, take a look at our section on How To Build A Website. You can do it yourself; you just have to take it one step at a time.

If you dont know any techies to help you build your website, you can find one at www.elanceonline.com. This site allows you to post a job and have qualified professionals bid on it. You can also browse through service providers that have posted portfolios online and select a vendor based on their past work. Either way, this site provides an efficient way to put you in touch with qualified technical resources without undue effort on your part.

In any case, you will want to make sure you have a detailed scope of work agreement and contract in place before you start working with a developer. There is nothing more frustrating for either you or your designer than to have a miscommunication about what exactly you expect to receive and how much your developer expects to get paid. Make sure you get it all in writing!

In conclusion, you should hire a Custom Web Designer or Developer if you feel that you are too busy or not capable of creating a quality site yourself. There are three types of site developers: Custom Website Designers, Web Developers, and Search Engine Optimization/Marketing Experts. If you do not have technical contacts to do the work, you can find qualified professionals here: www.elanceonline.com. You should make sure you have your ideas organized about your website, and you should make sure you get a contract with a detailed scope of work signed by your consultant before work begins on your site.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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How do we know if a web design is affordable? Affordable website design is when there will be an obvious return on investment, over a set term. But the costs do not just stop at the website build itself. One has to look at whole expected life cycle of the website. Here are some ways that you can have a more affordable website design at the initial purchase stage.

The initial meetings usually get drafted into the cost of the website. Traveling to a client takes time and money so preparation is the key here. Find someone local, and get a minimum of three quotes. It may take more than one meeting to decide who to choose so here is where your preparation pays off. Know what you want, know how it should be achieved and reduce the number of meetings needed.

The actual design of a website can be very costly or very affordable, if you know what you want then it is more affordable. There are plenty of templates out there and even more websites, so if you leave it to a designer to build from scratch it will cost. The current trend is for simplistic design and since you have your own logo it should not be too hard to sketch together a style of your liking, simplistic design should not cost a lot of money. The important part for us is the content of the website so make sure that the design does not crowd this content.

The website has to be hosted somewhere and web hosting comes in various forms. Make sure that it suits what you need. If you have a ten page website which you aim to grow to a hundred page website, and one page averages at 110KB, then you should be looking at a web space of around 11MB. Take into account additional or larger images so triple it to be safe to start with at around 35MB. ? Do not pay for a 500MB website hosting when you only need 35MB.

Are they building the site from scratch or are they using open source software. If they build it from scratch, it is highly likely that the costs will be very high due to testing and development. Also, the support costs will be high as it is bespoke. Open source software is developed by the community and supported by the community. More than one web Design Company can take over a website built from open source software and support it without problem. If you use open source then there will probably also be pre built training packages on how to use it. Again reducing the cost and making the website more affordable.

Open source software is free software which web design companies can use and manipulate to suit their needs. The web designers still put in a lot of effort to make it look and behave as you like it but the engine of the website is normally already been and can be adapted to various situations.

So, as a starting point to a more affordable website design, have a good idea of the design you want. Try and opt for open source software. Have a guess at your web hosting needs and question if you think it is too much.

About the Author

Neil MacLeod runs Web-Studio.co.uk, web design milton keynes providing web site and web marketing services in Buckinghamshire. Neil has been building websites since 1999 and is a founding member of http://www.itwebnetwork.co.uk.

Website Success By Design Submitted By: Ron Seawood

You never get a second chance at first impressions. Not only does this truth apply when developing personal relationships it also applies in the world of website design. As I have traversed the World Wide Web I have found sites that have been thoroughly impressive and others not so much. You would be surprised at the lack of understanding of the first impression principle. In the age of information it is important to make your information as accessible as possible. If a customer cannot find what they are looking for on your site they are likely to leave and find it on your competitor’s. People go to the internet for two things: 1. Find information on a product or service they intend to purchase 2. Make a purchase There is no doubt the importance of website design as a tool for marketing goods and services. Upon visiting a website the mind of the customer is made whether they will stay or go as soon as your site downloads. Your ability to keep them perusing your page is in based on a design that creates compelling exchange. Regardless of what anyone says all humans look on the outside rather than the inside. It is our human nature to make judgments based on looks rather than substance on first encounters. If the cover of your book(your website) is not appealing than you will find that you have been judged only by your appearance and not the quality of the character of your site. If the design of your website placed emphasis on deep and rich content yet losses a customer because of first impressions then you have wasted your time. When your website is perceived as confusing and uninteresting then your product or service will be perceived in the same manner. A great example of this comes from Robert Cialdini’s book, Influence - Science and Practice, a woman owned an Indian Jewelry store in Arizona who recently purchased an allotment of turquoise jewelry. The store owner had a hard time selling any pieces of this particular jewelry. She tried many sales tricks such as shifty their location to a central spot in the store, no luck. She had her sales clerks push the jewelry hard upon customers –with no success. One day the owner went on a buying trip but prior to leaving she left a note for her head saleswoman stating, “Everything in this display case, price x 1/2,” in hopes of getting rid of the offensive jewelry, even at a loss. The store owners handwriting must have been horrific because the saleswoman mistook “1/2″ to be “2″, and the entire allotment was sold for twice the original price! The jewelry only sold because a higher price led to a perceived higher value. You see, “Perception is the key to the mind”. If you place your website in a side-by-side comparison to your competitor, both offering the same product, the same price and the same value, the one who wins is the one with the best design hands down. Take time to think of what you are communicating to your customer and how it is best communicated. Through the creation of your compelling exchange your customer will find greater value in your website by “Design”. Copyright ? Ron Seawood - It is at times a common mistake for web designers, especially beginners, to create a website which is not optimised for various screen resolutions. With over 40 different screen resolutions, it is extremely important to optimise your web pages for the most popular screen resolutions so that your web pages can be viewed by a greater number of online visitors. Here are some basic facts to consider when designing for screen resolutions: - 800×600 is the minimum resolution offered on most PCs and notebooks. 800×600 is also the preferred viewing option for 14% of internet users. - The most popular resolutions used by approximately 60% of online users is 1024 x 768, followed by 1280×1024 and other resolutions, with 26% of internet users. Designing for a wide spectrum of resolutions is therefore essential. But how is this achieved? The process of designing for all resolutions is achieved through a “lowest-to-highest” resolution technique. Which ever image editing or web building application you are using, it is important to set your working area or table width to a resolution within 800 x 600. A suitable area of 770 x 560 is recommended for best viewing in a web browser on a 800 x 600 screen resolution. This recommended area will not only alleviate horizontal page scrolling but will keep your pages user friendly and easy to read. Designing web pages for all resolutions is especially useful for attracting and keeping visitors for a longer period of time on your site. Easy to use and read websites are always more likely to attract customers. A poorly designed and structured website with irritable horizontal scrolling will only drive away visitors and potential buyers. About the Author Ilan Touri is a search engine optimisation specialist and website designer working for SEO Sydney. He has worked on many projects and offers website optimisation services and website design to companies in Australia. Comments (0) W3C Web Design - Understanding W3 Compliant Website Design Filed under: Uncategorized — @ 1:00 am The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was established in order to develop a set of pre-defined practice standards for the internet. The W3C acknowledge that, in order for the web to reach its full potential that the fundamental web technologies need to be compatible with each other and with any hardware or software used to access the internet. W3C is comprised of member organizations and companies whose staff is engaged for the purpose of working together to develop standards. The W3C has written more than ninety standards, known as W3C recommendations, which can be viewed as an overall design philosophy as well as a strictly-defined set of practices for building websites. W3C have produced standards which govern all the most fundamental elements of website design including, recommendations for markup languages (HTML, XHTML, SVG and XForms), style sheets (CSS), JavaScript and for the Document Object Model. Conforming to W3C standards confers benefits for you, the developer and also for your end users. Of the benefits, enhanced website accessibility is probably the most important. A compliant website will be more visible to search engines, thereby increasing site traffic. In addition, compliant websites enhance accessibility for the end user. Clients who use non-traditional browsers, including voice browsers and Braille browsers, or hand-held browsers with very little monitor space, are easily catered for when W3C compliant coding is used. Writing web pages in a manner congruent with the W3C standards means that your development time will be reduced. The processes of debugging and trouble-shooting become easier because the code is written in a standard fashion. Further, your W3C compliant documents will be easily convertible to other formats, including databases and word documents. Migration of compliant documents to new systems, such as televisions and PDAs is also much simpler when code is W3C compliant. Stability is also improved when your code is W3C compliant. The W3C standards are written with considerable thought to both forwards and backwards compatibility, to ensure that data written to old standards will continue to work in newer browsers, and that data written to newer versions will produce an acceptable result in older browsers. If your code is compliant, you won?t have to worry about creating many versions of the one code to ensure that everyone can view your developed page. W3C compliant coding ensures universality. The standards offer a set of rules that all developers can learn, follow and utilize. It would be unrealistic to expect that only one designer will be involved in the development and maintenance of a website. If standards-compliant coding is used, each developer will be easily able to understand the coding conventions, and new designers can pick up where their predecessors left off. Adoption of the W3C compliant coding by web developers will ensure the web is a more streamlined, functional place for developers and end users. As the variety of web access methods increases, the need to adjust or duplicate websites to satisfy all needs will also intensify. Following a set of pre-defined standards is a step towards solving this problem. Author: Matt Garrett - ? 2007 http://www.dominoseo.com Get more simple effective Optimization Tips and Advice @ DominoSEO.Com Click Here for Free SEO Tips - Freelance website design is the act of hiring a freelancer to design your website. Many webmasters all over the internet are doing just that. Hiring a freelancer is often cheaper and even sometimes faster and more reliable than hiring an establish design company. A freelancer is in business for himself or herself, they have a whole lot more to lose by losing you as a client, more so than an established company. When you need freelance website design one disadvantage to hiring a freelancer over a company is that you may need to find several different freelancers to finish the website. While a freelance web designer will be able to take care of the design and graphic aspect of your website, they may not have the skills to take care of the technical aspects of a website. Furthermore, you might be able to find a graphic designer to take care of logos, headers, and buttons, but the overall design of the website might not be in their skill set. Both of these situations will require a separate freelancer. Now it is not as bad as it sounds. You might find freelance website design in one very skilled and experience person or you might find a graphic designer who has a deal with another freelancer on the technical side of things. Either way you can get the job done. Freelance website design is probably the most popular choice for business owners all over the world. However, you want to make sure the designer is experienced and has proof of their experience in references and samples. You never want to hire a freelancer that cannot provide you with verifiable samples of their work. Now when it comes to budget, a freelancer will be cheaper, but you should be willing and able to pay for quality. Keep in mind you get what you pay for. If you expect to pay $50 for freelance website design, you should also expect to get your $50 worth and nothing more. This could result in a poor design that you simply are not pleased with. I once read somewhere a freelancer said, ?If a client says they want cheap, fast, and quality, I tell him to choose two. I can provide cheap and fast, but I cannot combine it with quality.? Keep in mind freelance website design takes time and talent, you should be willing to provide a good price for both. To find a freelance website design specialist visit: www.unlimitedfreelancers.com today. Comments (0) May 24, 2008 How to Work with Your Website Designer Filed under: Uncategorized — @ 5:00 pm none CLIENT CALLS TODAY My client, Marg, is upset with her webdesigner. She says, Doesnt he understand its my website? I dont want this to be a constant battle. Nancy designs websites. She tells me, I did a beautiful site for the client and then they c****** it up. I cant even use it for my portfolio. She changed everything and its really hideous. I think shes colorblind. Sandy is working with a webdesigner, too. She tells me, I outlined what I wanted, but I left [the web designer] plenty of leeway. I know theyre creative and want to express themselves. Ill tell her from there, take it. THE BATTLE OF THE EXPERTS Since Im an Internet marketing coach, Im often in a triad the client, the web designer, and me! It becomes a battle-of-the-experts, a nightmare for all concerned. Basically when I accept an Internet marketing client, one of my stipulations is that they listen to what I tell them. Youd think someone paying you would do that, wouldnt you? Instead, they listen to their brother-in-law or the guy at the post office, or they start reading things on the Internet. One client, Julio, even started hiring other people a PR consultant, a logo designer, an advertising agency. It became an impossible situation with input from all directions. Each of us contradicted the other at one point. Julio then made the decisions, trusting no one. Why, then, I asked him, did you hire people? (And then I fired him.) THE IDEAL CLIENT DOESNT CONFUSE HIM/HERSELF Other clients pay me and listen to what I say. Its a novel concept, but it works well. When I started working with Gordon, I said, Yes, I will tell you what computer to buy, but not if you plan to then go ask everyone you know for their advice. That would waste your time and mine. Gordon said, I wouldnt do that. Then Id get confused. Gordon is the ideal client. He paid me for my marketing consulting, listened, took action, and his practice is thriving as a result. He saved us both a lot of time, which, since I bill by the hour, saved him a lot of money. He’s a smart man. So how should you proceed if you are working with a web designer? There are a few musts. Many of them work in a world of T1s, LANS, and DSL. This is a very different world from the rest of us mere mortals. WE live in another world only 7% of us have broadband and this percentage doesnt appear to be growing. What does this mean? Most people visiting your website surf at 56K or slower. 60% still surf at 28.8k. If you want people to visit your website and stay there, make sure the front page loads fast enough — 8-10 seconds at 28.8k. Web designers, like all creative people, get bored. Okay? They like to try all the new bells and whistles. This may or may not work in your situation. Its like the choir director at church. Most of us would like to sing A Mighty Fortress every Sunday, some hymn we know and love. Its been around a long time because we love it! It works. The choir director, on the other hand, wants to be on the leading edge, try the new things. Know what you want and stick to it. Do your homework before you get there. Find 3-5 websites you like. The style, colors, font, layout, navigation. Show these to your web designer rather than trying to describe. Be clear about what you want. Something professional-looking is open to interpretation. A site like this one: www.professional_website.com works a lot better. Trust your intuition. If they show you something you dont like, go with your feelings. Find one with expertise in websites in your field. It will save you having to explain a lot of things. Find someone you trust and let them do their work. HOW DO YOU FIND THIS PERSON? 1. Get a referral from someone whose opinion you trust. 2. Find a site you like and find out who did it. I recommend two web designers to my clients. I know them and I know their work. They are excellent in every aspect: They can get out of their own head and put the client on the webpage. They have the technical skills required. They are professional and responsible. They meet deadlines. They set a price and stick to it. They are courteous to my clients. All those points are important, but Number 1 is MORE important. (In fact you should expect the others.) Its most important they have the knack of translating you onto the Internet. THE RELATIONSHIP Ive been in marketing for many years. It happens to be a field everyone thinks they know something about and indeed we do. Were all consumers, and we have marketing working on us all the time, so we have our opinions. It isnt like going to the dentist, for instance. I really havent much knowledge about root canals, and I pretty much leave it up to the dentist. Its takes maturity and emotional intelligence to make it a successful relationship that produces the kind of product you want. That means you need two mature people with EQ skills. Some web designers are all IQ and tech skills, with little ability to relate. Avoid those. Some web designers are the creative genius type, like Frank Lloyd Wright, who wanted to do what he wanted to do, the hell with the client. Avoid those. Something in between is nice. It doesnt have to be a fight. If its feeling like a fight, you need a new web designer. Start with a web designer who comes well recommended. Then enter a relationship of mutual respect. He or she knows how to design a website. You know you and what you want. Together you can make music! About the Author Susan Dunn, The EQ Coach, GLOBAL EQ. Emotional intelligence coaching to enhance all areas of your life - career, relationships, midlife transition, resilience, self-esteem, parenting. EQ Alive! - excellent, accelerated, affordable EQ coach certification. Susan is the author of numerous ebooks, is widely published on the Internet, and a regular speaker for cruise lines. For marketing services go here. - Effective Website Design For Massive Traffic  by: Brian Daniels STEP 1:Do your homework Plan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. The pages should have “real content”, as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright… etc pages. STEP 2:Buy Domain name: Invest in an easily brandable domain. You may want “google.com” and not “mykeyword.com”. Keyword domains will go no where, whereas branding and name recognition are the in thing. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to Search Engines. Get them STEP 3:Site Design: As a rule of the thumb: develop for MS Internet Explorer. As for text content, it should out weigh the html content. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring. Use less of these heavy stuff: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them - there is little reason to have them that I can see - they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don’t appreciate (search engines distaste for javascripts is just one of them). Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit. Don’t clutter and don’t spam your site with frivolous links like “best viewed” or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability. Visit Google.com and learn from them. Simple is retro cool - simple is what surfers want. Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until “something happens” in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request. If you need help, visit http://www.xcelweb.com for the latest web design packages. STEP 4:Check Page Size: The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can. STEP 5:Build Content: Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren’t sure what you need for content, start with the Overture.coms keyword suggestor and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters. STEP 6:Check Keywords placing Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don’t fret about it). Use good sentences and spell check it. Spell checking is becoming important as search engines are moving to auto correction during searches. STEP 7:Cross links: Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with Google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your Page Rating (PR) value across your site. You do NOT want an “all star” page that out performs the rest of your site. You want 50 pages that produce 1 referral each a day and do NOT want 1 page that produces 50 referrals a day. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with Google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily. STEP 8:Put it Online: Make sure the site is “crawlable” by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main “topic index” pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content). Don’t put it online before you have a quality site to put online. It’s worse to put a “nothing” site online, than no site at all. Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don’t have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo. About The Author Brian Daniels (sales@xcelweb.com) is the founder of www.xcelweb.com, a company dedicated to online Internet Marketing and Web Design. He has just released a new Ebook dedicated to Internet Marketing. Comments (0) Next Page » Pages About Categories: Uncategorized Archives: September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 Meta: Login Comments RSS Valid XHTML RSS Blogroll Ads Cash Business Ads Cash Business ASD Online Business Opportunity ASD Surf Domain Hosting Packages Surf Program Pays Daily Web Hosting Website Development © 2007 Gifting Club - The Most Elite Gifting Program is designed by Business Directory -- Made free by Cheap New York Hotels and Scrabble Words