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On the first page of Google, you will have a choice of around ten or so different business links to click on. If you click through to a web design that looks unprofessional, in an instant you will probably be clicking on the next link. Many small business owners mistakenly believe that simply having a web presence is all that is needed to gain the benefits of online marketing.

First impressions do count

The design of your website represents the first impression your customer has of your business. If the web design of your site is outdated, or the information is poorly organized, or if your home page is so cluttered that it is hard to know what to look at, your website and web design is probably not working for you. Your visitors will not stay on your site, and take one look at your home page web design and move onto another site. Remember, a competitor’s web site is only a click away.

Keeping up with the competition

Do a search on Google for your competitors and go and look at how they are representing themselves online. Can you learn from these sites? Is their web design more contemporary, more professional looking than yours? Your website needs to, at the very least, look as professional as your competitors if you want to be competing with them at the same level.

How often should you update your web site design?

Generally, web designs can start to look dated after two to three years, depending on the style and quality of the design. Like fashion, web designs do go out of style. The simpler and cleaner your web design is, then generally the more timeless the design. The more contemporary and ‘now’ your web design is, the quicker it will date.
Your web design should look contemporary when compared to your competitors.

Measuring the success of your website

This has never been easier. With all the software that is available to provide you with statistics on website visitors, including what pages they looked at, how they got to your site, keyword searches, etc. it is not difficult to see if you are going wrong. If all your visitors come to your home page and then leave the site, your web design probably has some usability issues that you will need to address.

Creating the illusion

Web designs can be deceptive. You can use a web design to create the illusion that your small business is large and thriving with seemingly hundreds of employees, even if it is not. Creating the illusion is the first step to making this a reality.

Who shouldn’t create your web design

Definitely not your brother’s friend who has just finished an HTML course and offers to do your web design and build for free, and definitely not your system administrator who has some spare time on his hands. Leave the web design and development of your website to professionals who have valuable experience in this area.

It is worth paying someone to do a good job, than have a website designed built for free that can possibly damage the professional image of your business and, in fact, turn customers away.

Is it time for a new web design?

Web Genesis specializes in providing small business in Australia with high quality, yet affordable website design and development. For more information on our affordable website design and our other services, please visit our website at http://www.webgenesis.com.au.

Author: Carrie Webster
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Whenever a web designer gets a web design project, he or she will require to take a step back and go through the research process in order to complete the job. The research process is a tedious process, it determines how well, and successful will the result of your web design. Ideas for web design will share with you how to go through that research process smoothly and obtain results.

One fine day, you received a call from some client and he requests you to design a website for his company. Over the phone, he briefly tells you what his company is about and asks about the prices, you then fixed an appointment with him for discussion. You will probably get excited about it and starts to get more details of the company by checking them on Google, and thinks about some prelim ideas for the website. At this stage, your research process has already started.

RETREIVING THE DETAILS:

After meeting up with the client, you get a lot of details that will assist you in your design process.
This details applies even when you are designing a personal website.

1. Nature of the Company

2. Client Preferences (Example websites?)

3. Target Audiences (kids? Young adults? Everyone in the world?)

4. Platform (Flash? Html? Php? Asp? )

By organizing these details, you get a bigger picture of:

1. What are you going to design?

2. What style of design are you approaching?

3. Whom you should design for?

4. How will your design work?

5. How will your design please both the audiences and the client in order to be successful?

DETERMINING THE STYLE:

With the information you have on hand, its time to determine the style. For a start, you should base on the client’s description of his company, his nature of the company to give a rough gauge on the design style. Examples below:

Example 1:

Web Hosting business >> High tech web design, sleek and professional design

Example 2:

Dolls and Toys business >> Kiddy, Girly, Colorful, Fun design

COLOR THEMES:

Having a good and suitable color theme on your web design will give users a pleasing experience while surfing through the web site you designed. One of the important techniques is to get a color chart from your local art store or use some color chooser tools to aid in your color selection. Your color theme will affect the mood and feel you want to create.
Colors also have their own meanings. For example, white is clean, blue is cool and corporate, having a white and blue color theme gives you a clean and corporate web design. Orange and yellow are warm and friendly colors, Grey is cool, combining a Orange-Grey theme will give you a friendly and fun mood. Dark colors are also popular among many, because they easily matched other bright colors. A common match is using a black background and light colored text as a combination.

There are thousands and one meaning to choose your color theme. Whether your color theme turns out successful depends heavily on the first step “Determining the style” of your website.

PHOTOS & GRAPHICS:

After getting the colors done, its time to think about the graphics and images. As a graphic says a thousand words, it is good to think about how you want to approach this portion. Here are some recommendations you can try:

1. Stock photos – Some are free, some requires you to pay a certain amount before providing you with high resolutions image. If your client has the money and there are suitable photos he would like to use, this is the way to go. Searching in Google for “stock photos” will give you plenty of results on this.

2. Take your own photos – When budget is involve, usually the project will require you to take a relevant photos and use them as supporting images on the website. Having a mid-range camera should do the trick as images for website are all on low resolution. Seldom there is a chance for you to use an image more than 640 x 480 pixels.

3. Creating Graphics Images – A web design will always need custom-made graphics images. For example, icons for a Shoe section, button for submitting information. You will need some skills in creating the graphics of your needs, or you will feel stuck while designing. Consider looking for tutorials on creating certain effects, like rounded corners, Mac alike buttons, pattern backgrounds and more. Learn about vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks. They can help you to create graphics, mockups and layout fast and efficiently. This will greatly aid in your next web design project.

INSPIRATION AND REFERENCES:

If you already have some inspiration on how to design the layout, great, but if you do not, consider looking at related websites for some references on how they are being done. A search in Google also reveals some websites of the same genre. You can also check out ready-made templatesas well. I am not teaching you to copy exactly, but as a new learner, you should take reference and see how they are being designed.

Why bother looking at them?

Reference sites will give you ideas on usability, color theme, ideas on relevant images, navigation, features and many more guides to work on your web design project. Always consider them as useful references to help you whenever you need inspiration and ideas for your web design. It is all about looking more, reading more and getting your eyes and brain more exposed to the web design styles. http://www.sitecritic.net has alot of website reviews by different web designers all over the world and is worth taking a look.

Final Say

I hope this article has been helpful to give you some ideas for your next web design project. In this web design industry, it is a never ending journey of learning. By reading more and seeing how others create, you will be more aware the next time you design your client’s or your own web site.

Bernard Peh is a great passioner of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Web Design Ideas. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews, freelance SEO and PHP work.

Author: Bernard Peh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Communicating with a web designer can be the most difficult part of the hiring process because you and the web designer don’t speak the same language when talking about the details of a website. This article explains how to get your ideas across to the web designer you want to hire.

Ok, so you’ve decided to hire a professional web designer to build your website. You spent some time looking for the right person. Eventually you found the right web designer that you believe will design the most “remarkable”, “extraordinary” website the internet community has yet seen.

So now what? Explaining to the web designer the layout design you have in your mind can be a very frustrating process. You will find that putting the “picture” in your mind into words can be a difficult task. Actually in most cases this is the biggest hurdle between you and the final outcome. No matter how talented the web designer is, if you can not communicate with him properly, in his own professional language, he will not be able to use his talent to achieve your design.

There are two possible situations you may face:

1. You know what content you want on the website but have no clue how to present it to the user.
2. You know what content you want on the website, and you have the layout in your mind, but you don’t know how to implement it

In both cases you will need to explain your thoughts to the web designer. Although most people who read those lines are probably thinking that being in the second situation is better then being in the first situation. However, real life experience shows the opposite to be true. Giving a web designer the complete freedom of action regarding the web design based solely on the website content is usually a smart thing to do. You will find that explaining to the web designer what the nature of your website is, whether it’s a product that you want to sell or a hobby item, is much easier then trying to explain to him the temperate of the color schema or an undefined shape that you would like to have in the website header.

Actually for both of the situations, I would suggest you use the same approach, but with a minor modification to each situation. If you know of a website that has all the features you want or need and/or a site that looks the way you want your site to look, be sure to give the site’s url to the web designer. Doing so will give him some idea of want you want. You will both be looking at the same thing but will actually look at it from a different angle. Therefore, it may be better to give him more than one website as an example.

The more websites you find that can express your feelings and/or needs, the easier it will be for web designers to understand your intention without you having to use a single “technical” term. Chances are that you won’t find a single website that has all of the feature you want. After all, if such a website already exists there would be no place for your new web site to be born. Use several websites to express the different features you want. Spend as much time as necessary until you find just the right websites to provide examples of your needs. Doing research at this stage will definitely save you a lot of time later trying to point the web designer in the right direction.

Although you are the one who needs to express your self to the web designer, you must learn to listen to him as well. When he uses technical terms, ask for their meaning. Do not finish any part of the conversation unless you are absolutely sure that both sides are on the same page. Remember that when a web designer speaks about the temperature of a color, he is not talking about the next day’s forecast.

Remember, you hired a professional web designer because you want a professional looking website and you couldn’t do it yourself. So, trust the web designer’s judgment when they tell you something you want won’t work or isn’t the best way to accomplish your goals. After all, you are paying them for their expertise. Don’t try to tell them how to do their job.

It is OK to require that a web designer gets your approval each step of the way so you can tell them if one of your goals isn’t being met. Also, if you really don’t like how something looks and want it changed, tell them immediately. Don’t wait until everything is done and then decide you don’t like it.

A final word about cost

You have agreed on what needs to be done and the web designer has given you a price quote. Simple modifications and bug fixes are usually included in the price. However, other major changes or outright revisions may or may not be included. Make sure the agreement states what is included, what constitutes a revision rather than a fix, and how many changes you can make after delivery without incurring additional costs.

About the Author:
Warren Baker is an Internet business consultant for WebDesigners123.
WebDesigners123 connects the Freelance Web Designer with Webmasters who need their services.
If you would like to read more of Warren Bakers writings, visit our Website Design Articles page.

Author: Warren Baker
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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Presentations delivered through the World Wide Web are usually created through web design. Thus, web design can be defined as the skill used to create these presentations. Designers create such presentations using the web browser or software such as internet television clients, RSS readers as well as microblogging clients. The software used has to be web – enabled. This is normaly carried out in order to generate an anthology of electronic files located on a server. It is also necessary for the presentation of content as well as interactive features or interfaces so that the end user can easily access them in the form of pages. Web design involves the placement of several elements including text and bit-map images such as gifs, JPEGs as well as GIFs on the page. The use of HTML, XML as well as XHTML helps designers to place these web elements.

Web design also involves the placement of other more complex media such as animations, sounds, vector graphics as well as videos. In such a case, design would therefore require the use of plug – ins which can also be fixed to the web page through HTML together with XHTML tags. Examples of plug-ins commonly used include QuickTime, Flash as well as Java run – time environment. Since there have been major developments in web design ever since its advent, most people use XHTML and XML together with Cascading Style Sheets commonly referred to as CSS. These tags are necessary in the positioning and manipulation of objects and elements on the web page. As advancements in web design keep growing, designers are slowly embracing the creation of web pages without plug – ins.

Web designers create pages that could be broadly classified under two groups; static or dynamic. The content and layout of static web pages can only be altered with manual updates created by the programmer. Dynamic pages on the other hand can be altered by an end user’s input. The computing environment can also alter the content of a dynamic web page. It is however necessary to note that web design is especially concerned with the graphic design of a web page rather than the logistics as is the case in web development. Web design involves the use of several disciplines. These include search engine optimization, animation, typography, graphic design, interaction design, communication design, photography, corporate identity, marketing among others. What is more, it uses Multimedia technologies such as Flash and Silverlight together with Database technologies including PHP and ASP. Mark up together with Style sheet languages are also used, not forgetting to mention client – side scripting as well as server – side scripting.

Designers have to conform to certain principles in order to ensure that the web pages are accessible. For instance, it is advisable to use semantic markup so that the web page can have a meaningful structure. What is more, the web page should also be organized semantically so that other web services can easily recognize them on various web pages. Web designers also need to use a valid mark up language that follows the standards of a published DTD or Schema. Non text components should be presented in forms equivalent to text such as images and multimedia. Hyperlinks are also necessary but they should be placed in such a way that when one reads the text, it still makes sense. For layout in Web design apply CSS instead of HTML tables. Frames should also be avoided. It is important for any web design process to consider the intelligibility of the web pages while it should also be easily accessible to the users.

More on Web Design..

Author: David C Mills
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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You have been planning forever to get a website designer to work on your site. Your plans are clear and you have prepared your content. What next? How do you go about choosing the best web designer or web design company?

Step 1. Ask around. Ask friends, or similar companies who have hired a web designer in the past. Besides getting the contact numbers of the web designers, ask how it is to work with that person. Find out what happened during the design process and what they think of the designs submitted.

Step 2. Do your research for contact information. Use the internet or your phonebook to get the names and contact information of web design companies in your area. If you use the internet, have a peek of their past work. Then contact each and ask for a quotation.

Step 3. Look through the portfolio of the web design company you are choosing from. See if the designs are professional-looking, clean and easy to use.

Step 4. Look at the experience of the web designer or Web Design Company. How long has the person or company been in business? How many companies have they designed for?

Step 5. See if the designer or web design company is up to date with the newest trends in web marketing. Useful, profitable websites attract the correct traffic with search engine optimization and usability and by employing web 2.0 strategies such as social media marketing. Effective web sites take SEO and usability into serious consideration. See if your web designer has at least a basic knowledge of both. In order for your website to be successful you need to be able to implement a successful internet marketing campaign.

Step 6. Look at the web designer or web design company proposed turnaround time. Does it match the schedule of your company’s plans?

Step 7. Examine the web designer or web design company terms of service and website files ownership. See if you agree with the conditions set by the designer to work with you. See also the rights as to who owns the final output and what sizes. If this is not clear from the start, you just may be surprised to find that the work you commissioned is not yours and you may have to pay extra to get it.

Step 8. See what the web designer offers for after-design services. Will the designer help maintain your site or is the designer only expected to do the initial design?

Step 9. Talk to the designer. Is s/he easy to communicate with? You should be able to communicate with your web designer easily. You should be comfortable presenting problems that you want solved. Your web designer should be respectful and prompt. You should both be able to compromise on what will work best for the viewers, not necessarily your personal taste.

Step 10. Look for previous, happy clients. You may look through the designer’s website or blog and see if there are client testimonials. Note what they have to say about the designer. You may also try to call them (you may ask the contact number from the web designer) and ask for comments regarding the design process and final output.

Nicole McCullum is the Founder of http://www.CaptivateDesigns.com, a Web Design Company that provides professional and effective website design that’s affordable to businesses throughout the US and Canada. Ms McCullum has been featured on inc.com as a Web Design Expert and her web design tips and articles have been published in NY Enterprise Report and Strategy Magazine. You may reach her by emailing her at info@captivatedesigns.com. For more tips on successful web design strategies and internet marketing you may visit her blog “Turn Your Website Into a Lead Generation Machine” at http://www.captivatedesigns.com/blog.

Author: Nicole McCullum
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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