Good Web Design Practices

September 29, 2009 by · 9 Comments 

Your website is where your business resides, it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. It is therefore important to follow good web design principles to make sure that you attract and retain the maximum number of people to your site.

The navigation menu should be clearly marked so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website or at least optimize the images that you have on your site, so that they do not cause your website to load slowly. Optimizing images mean that you must reduce their size without losing the image quality.

Keep your text paragraphs short and do make use of bullet points to illustrate certain principles. Make sure that you use a bold font for the headings of paragraphs so that these will catch the eye. It has been proven that people tend to scan websites for information rather than read every word, and using headlines in a bold font will catch their attention and draw them into the paragraph.

Make sure that your website complies to web standards and is compatible with all browsers. The most popular browsers are Internet Explorer and Firefox and your website must at least be compatible with these two browsers. A professional web design company spends a lot of their time making sure that the site performs equally well in both of these browsers.

Make sure that your website is hosted by a reputable hosting company, since the last thing that you want is that your site is down when prospective visitors come by. Rather pay the little bit extra each month to make sure that your site is not hosted by a fly-by-night company.

Using CSS Instead of HTML Tables

August 11, 2009 by · 8 Comments 

Times have changed on the internet and back when you thought coding couldn’t be made any easier for you to style your websites you were wrong. CSS has taken the basic HTML coding to the next level and again when you thought your coding couldn’t look any neater, you were wrong. CSS doesn’t need the likes of HTML tables and what a superb advantage CSS is and I’ll explain why.

In the old days of HTML coding, website designers would have to use the HTML tables tags which made the coding looking messy. Not only that, without the use of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) coders would be coding for a lot longer which resulted in a lot of time was wasted. This all changed when CSS was introduced and don’t get me wrong, a lot of cross browser problems still occur but it’s such a good transformation to the web design industry all this is worth it.

Cross browser problems do occur a lot more often with the use of CSS because some browsers render the CSS functions differently and cause the website to be displayed differently between most common browsers such as IE7 and FF. There are many myths and different information on the internet which discusses cross browser compatibility and how coders should only code for the latest browers which are the likes of IE8, FF, Google Chrome, Opera, Safari etc. None of this information is true and if you do only code for the latest browsers, a huge percentage of internet viewers still use Internet Explorer 6 so you’re not catering for a huge amount of internet users who can’t view the sites you code properly.

There are many hacks and different CSS functions you can use to cater for the whole internet browsing industry and all you need to do is learn to code for one browser such as FF (as recommended by professionals, given that IE7 doesn’t compile the codes correctly) then once you’ve mastered to code for one browser you can make the specific changes so your site is viewable in all browsers and on all systems.

 

Tips on how to UseWeb Design

February 26, 2009 by · 7 Comments 

Web design is an great visual aspect of this, but what good is a flashing logo if no one can find the information or product they are looking for? Web design is not book design, it is not poster design, it is not illustration, and the highest achievements of those disciplines are not what web design shoots for. Although websites can be delivery systems for games and videos, and although those delivery systems can be great to look at, such sites are exemplars of game design and video storytelling, not of html web design. Web Design Schools Guide is your home for finding the best web design schools and web design program for your needs. We maintain one of the most extensive sets of reviews of web design degree programs and online web design schools as well as a regularly updated web design school ranking.

Web design is usually the first stage of a project. At this point, the project is not a web site at all, but layers of pixels within a graphics package. Web designers CT for real estate advertising online dental practice sites re-designs. Web design companies will be able to handle images, their size and placement.

Flash should not be used to jazz up a page. If your content is boring, rewrite text to make it more compelling and hire a professional photographer to shoot better pictures. Flash is not a standard produced by a vendor-neutral standards organization like most of the core protocols and formats on the Internet. Flash is much more self-contained than the open HTML format as it does not integrate with web browser UI features.

Search engines cannot read flash. They cannot read javascript, or images. Search Engines use extremely complicated algorithms to calculate their interpretation of the suitability of web pages to display when a search is requested. These algorithms are not known to anyone outside of the Search Engine’s highest echelons and cannot accurately be predicted or foreseen, as they are also regularly changed or adjusted.

HTML web design needs to factor both different resolution sizes and browser types, as different web browsers interpret HTML and CSS differently. For example, Firefox and Internet Explorer do not agree on the size of a pixel. HTML web design templates’ sole drawback is their modification can be rather complicated for normal users. A great site can be accomplished using web templates, and free downloads are available on the web.

 

 

 

How to Actually Rank For Any Keyword With a Legitimate Search Engine

January 4, 2009 by · 12 Comments 

Everyone wants to have their site rank well in Google.

And why not? Not only can Google send you a boatload of free traffic – it’s also highly targeted, and it’s one of the best ways to drive business.

The problem is, that exact same ideal is shared with thousands of your direct competitors. This creates an environment where you’ll always be fighting, kicking and scratching to maintain your traffic – along with the ever present fear that your livelihood is only one “algorithm update” away from vanishing.

And that’s if you can even get ranked for any decent keyword, to begin with…

In fact, only the largest, most-established authority sites can reliably see consistent traffic from Google. And even then, their rankings fluctuate constantly – several times a day, in some cases.

The fact is – it’s getting harder and harder for the “little guy” to get any kind of meaningful web presence on the web these days.

Getting ranked in Google is almost impossible unless you’ve got a major promotional budget and some time on your hands to “wait” for your domain to become trusted (Google favors older domains). And advertising with pay-per-click ads isn’t affordable like it once was.

Search engines marketing has finally become what everyone feared it would – a game reserved for big business.

But what if there was still a way to legtiimately rank for keywords with tons of traffic?

And what if you could do this without having to spend months and even years building up an authority site to do so?

In fact – what if you could systematically create one-page minisites that could rapidly rank in the top 3 spots (consistently) for basically any keyword you target within a matter of a week or so?

Is this for real?

YES.

But not with Google.

It’s happening right now, as we speak, on MSN.com

Now – before you think it – yes, I know, MSN doesn’t have nearly the reach that Google does. But, it still does receive millions and millions of search users daily. After all – MSN is the default home-page for anyone who first uses Internet Explorer.

And, to put it in perspective, which would drive more traffic?

Occupying the #1 ranking for your most desirable keyword target on MSN?

Or occupying the #47 spot on page 5 of Google’s results?

Sadly, it’s actually more effort to make it to the 47th spot in Google than it is to literally dominate in MSN.

How does this work?

Watch this video to find out: Search Engine Loophole

Like I said – forget about Google.

Focus on something that you can actually WIN with, and win big!

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