Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Build a Website From Scratch: The Best Tools and Tutorials for Beginners
When you fist begin to conceptualize what your website might look like you will have many good ideas. What will drive you to build on those ideas is your passion to bring them to reality. An integral and exciting part of this web development process is the research, learning and frustration as you seem to be confronted by difficult obstacles. Having the right tools to perform any task is crucial and this philosophy applies to when you build a website from scratch. There are various web development frameworks available and other tutorials which can provide excellent guidance for the foundation of your website.
If you consider that most new web developers began as you are and have shared their experiences in various forums and online venues, the sheer amount of knowledge and tools available to help you through the process is enormous. Gathering this experience will take some time and dedication, but it is a critical part of the website building process.
Besides the knowledge provided by the various seasoned experts, you can research the work of other fledgling website builders and designers through community directed blogs and tutorials. For difficult and seemingly unsolvable problems, forums may prove a to be an invaluable tool where you can ask specific questions and receive help from those that have gone before you. In order to succeed on the internet you need to have your finger on the pulse of all the new trends including: social media, web site building tools, keyword research tools, traffic building tools and content creation tools.
Eventually, after many hours of planning and research, you will be ready to launch your website. You will feel great excitement and satisfaction launching your own internet business as you have achieved a goal that many others would not contemplate; therefore, be proud of yourself. A universal truth is that once you build one site you will want to build others on varying subjects and it will become easier and easier.
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
How To Choose The Best Source For Affordable Custom Website Design
As a consumer, it's your responsibility to shop around, do your research and choose the best source to design your custom website. This article gives you a few tips on how to choose:
Tip #1 - Who Will Be In Charge Of Your Project? Name And Number!
It's very very important to know who exactly will be in charge of your custom website design project. Is there a huge team managing your project? Will you receive a response from a different person every time you ask to receive a project update? Is the person in charge available via email or via phone? Will they be available on weekends should you need to discuss a quick problem or suggestion? It's very important to know who exactly is in charge of your custom website design project. It's a horrible feeling to NOT know how many people are developing your website, and who's in charge. If you cannot get a name and number of the main individual in charge of your project, this can only mean one thing: NO ONE IS IN CHARGE OF YOUR PROJECT!
Tip #2 - Find Out Exactly How Long Your Custom Website Project Will Take
If the company you're about to choose for a custom website design cannot give you a good and accurate estimate on how long your website project will take, take that as a huge warning sign! When working with an experienced designer or design company, they will surely know just about how long a project will take, and they should be able to provide you with a very accurate estimate. Now, don't expect them to give you a precise day and time - let's not be too anal! But do expect for them to give you a monthly or weekly time frame. And, don't be scared to move on to the next company if they cannot get the job done within an adequate time frame.
Tip #3 - Find Out Costs, And If Payment Plans Are Available
Typically a custom website design company will have contracts and other legal paperwork (whether physical or electronic) for their clients to read over and sign. When coming across companies such as these, it's extremely important to look over these documents to figure out the final price of the custom website design project. Many times, large design firms will hide the final price within the terms and conditions. You thought your custom site was only going to be less than an arm and a leg - turns out they want to charge you 2 arms and 2 legs! Read over all paperwork and be certain about how much you're about to invest for your custom website. And don't be scared to ask if a payment plan is available. And if no payment plan is available, or if they are going to charge you large interest rates, move on! Find a designer or design firm who can work with you and your financial capabilities.
Tip #4 - Is This Company Actively Involved In Creating Custom Websites?
Be sure to ask to see recently completed website designs before working with a custom website design source. If they cannot show at least a few recently completed custom projects, this of course is not good. You want a company that is highly active in the industry and familiar with custom projects. If the company you're considering primarily works with templates, you may want to look at other options. You'll want a designer or company who specializes in "from the ground up" custom work. And yes, there is a huge difference between the two!
Tip #5 - Listen And Observe - If You Get A Good Feeling, Go For It!
It all comes down to how you feel. If the company you're considering hiring doesn't give you a good feeling inside, that isn't good! You definitely don't want to settle for less than the best, or choose a company because they're good at talking over you and using a crafty-worded sales pitch. Never be afraid to say "No thanks", and always go with your gut feeling. It's usually always good to have at least a short "real" and "down to earth" conversation with the company or designer, just to get a better feel for how they really present themselves. If they're easy to communicate with, easy to understand and easy to work with - looks like you have yourself a winner!
Simply put, do your homework when picking and choosing a designer for your custom website project. Yes, they should be affordable, and yes they should be straight forward when it comes to answering difficult questions. Knowing who will be in charge of your project is critical, and their level of activity in creating custom websites is equally important. So, be sure to work out a great deal that's both affordable and acceptable and keep in touch with whoever is in charge of your brand new custom website design from project initiation to project completion!
Tuesday, 18 September 2012
Intuitive Website Design - Usability Tips for Web Designers
Here, we present to you some fundamental factors that have to be taken into account by the web designers when working on an intuitive web design -
Identify the needs of the users
"Your" goal for creating a website is to take the site visitors from point A to B. But what do the visitors actually want so that they can move from the starting point to the main point? Answer to this can be obtained through a comprehensive research. First find out what actions you want the site visitors to take on your site (for eg. - signup for newsletters, register for membership, login, list their businesses, edit their profiles etc.). After that, you have to find out the factors that can compel the site visitors to take the desired action based on their intuition. By understanding this, you can create layouts that are naturally intuitive.
Help users understand what you are saying through the design
Knowledge gaps exist everywhere. While one person finds a website design intuitive, the others may not. This knowledge gap can prevent some users to take the desired action, simply because they don't find the design intuitive. Therefore, a web designer must respect the varying knowledge level of the users, and build a website that is catered to everybody. By adding few statements that explain how to perform the particular task, can greatly help people understand what the design intends to say.
Take small steps
Starting your web design project with a small and basic idea is the most appropriate way to go about it. You can do better with a minimalistic interface than a complex layout. So, when you are working on a web design and you feel like adding everything, start with the element that should be at the core of your design. Begin with that element and eventually expand your design in a more comprehensive manner.
Borrow ideas from other websites and apps
Learning in web design never stops. Designers often learn different tricks and styles from each other and integrate them in their websites. When you are working on an intuitive web design, you can look at different websites and applications to understand the factors that make them usable and intuitive. You can list out the different intuitive factors you found on these websites and apps for future reference.
Testing helps, a lot!
The best technique to assess whether the site is actually usable or not for people from different walks of life, you should gather a group of people with different technical understanding level and demonstrate your website layout. The way they will interact with the site would, to a great extent, give you an idea how the actual users would engage with your site. Such trial runs help you identify mistakes that you missed before.
Building an intuitive web design requires a lot of efforts & time, and the above mentioned points can somewhat minimise the efforts and time consumed by helping you define the right pathway.
Monday, 17 September 2012
Make Your Website Awesome
Relax.
That's easy to say, of course, but not so easy to do. After all, you have "millions of things" to get through; there's no time to relax!
One of the problems of rushing through the information overload is poor decision-making. Another issue is the fact that we so easily misinterpret information because we do not have enough thinking time left any more. And for anyone running a business website there is another problem.
People rush through your website, missing those "buying signals" you have so carefully prepared. No matter how hard you try, unless you are a major brand which can spend millions on promotion, you just can't get enough people interested in what you do. And that's because they are rushing past your content so quickly they cannot really attend to it or make decisions about it. The result is fewer sales than you would like and a general lack of engagement.
There must be something you can do? Luckily, new research on how we perceive time has come to the rescue. Researchers at Stanford University have just conducted three different experiments on the concept of "awe" and how it affects our perception of time. Something that is "awesome" gives a sense of vastness, of wonderment and of being generally amazed by it. In one of the experiments, all that people had to do was read a story about looking over Paris from the top of the Eiffel Tower. Then they had to complete a simple task. Compared with people who read a similar story about going up an unnamed tower and seeing a plain aerial shot, the people with the Eiffel Tower story had an increased sense of "being in the present", of peacefulness and happiness. Similar experiments which provided other ways of a sense of awe found that when people felt wonderment and peacefulness they tended also to feel happier and have a better appreciation of time.
You have surely felt this yourself when you have been on holiday or you have been to an awesome event. Your sense of time changes and you feel more peaceful and generally happier.
So why don't we feel like that online? The problem is far too many websites give you a sense of time rushing past - read this, look at that, here's something else you should read. That just contributes to our need to "get on" and so we miss all those buying signals.
Instead, if websites created a sense of awe, giving us the feeling of wonderment of space and of being somewhat relaxed, then there is a chance we will linger longer. Oh, now remind me, isn't that rather how the Apple website appears?
Wednesday, 12 September 2012
The Must Have Features For Any Mobile Website Design
There are a number of differences between designing a website for a desktop computer and a mobile device - the web access between the two is completely different, the screen sizes are worlds apart, and even the situation of the user is unique (as in, the user of a mobile device is generally on the move and cannot browse at leisure). If you work extensively with mobile website design, there are four features that you should ensure you include in every project you tackle:
Auto redirect
This redirect should take users to your desktop computer website. All mobile websites should have the functionality to detect what sort of device is being used to access it and be able to send the user to the most appropriate site. If they are using a desktop computer, you will be able to provide the user with a very different experience than they would receive with a mobile site.
Call to contact button
This is the name given to a certain type of functionality that allows a user to press a button that automatically dials the number of your business. If a user is on the road, they may not have a pen and paper to jot down your contact information or be able to memorize your phone number, so this makes it easier than ever for users to contact you.
Driving directions
This should be something that is included on all mobile websites, but it is often the feature that most designers leave off. By not including driving directions, you are going to send users away from your website (to other sites like Google Maps and Melways) to find you. By including directions on the website, they can remain on your page for longer.
Location map
Posting a Google Map on your mobile website design can be critical in helping users to find your business. Whilst posting your address can be helpful, being able to actually see where you are located in relation to nearby streets and landmarks can mean that they get to your store or office much faster than if they had to pull over and plug your address into their GPS.
If your business is just branching out into the world of mobile website design, it is important that you ensure the four features outlined above are included in every project that you work on. This will ensure that users are given the most rewarding experience possible, as well as making it easier than ever for them to contact and locate you. And, if you have already created a number of mobile sites, you should go back and make sure that each of these features has been included.
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Tuesday, 11 September 2012
The Future of Website Design - HTML 5 and CSS 3
The internet has really taken the world with a storm since its inception and the early days when it was merely an instrument for academic research and limited military usage. From the humble and relatively anonymous beginnings, the tide has really changed and these days the cyber space invades our lives almost equally as the physical space.
Having a presence on web or cyberspace means that continuous improvements in the design of websites and the tools used for such design. HTML and CSS are undoubtedly one of the most widely used tools, simple yet versatile, capable of handling most situations. There have been continuous improvements and versions of HTML and CSS since their inception and the HTML-5 and CSS-3 are the latest kids on the block.
HTML has been in existence since 1990 and it was long time back in the year 1997 when the version number 4.0 was released. It was only recently about a couple of years ago that the web scientists started to think about the latest version which can take care of the current limitations and flaws of HTML-4 though it also means that the version was so stable that it lasted for over 15 years in a space where technology changes drastically literally every year.
There are lots of features which are there in HTML-5 which are syntactical in nature such as video, audio and canvas elements. Scalable vector graphics are also integrated in this latest version.
Experts are expecting this to be completed somewhere around 2014, so in about a couple of years time.
Similarly CSS or cascading style sheets are used to provide aesthetic appeal to a page and serves to separate the content from the layout and design. The standards of this are being taken care of by the W3C.
The latest version CSS-3 provides a lot of features which help web designers to break the previous boundaries and express their creativity in a much better manner. It won't be possible to elaborate on the features in this elementary article, still to describe in brief these enhanced features include those related to animation, borders, masks, text columns and so forth.
On the whole it can be said that apart from the rise of the internet, the websites which form a part and parcel of that cyberspace are also improving technologically as the tools used for creating those sites keep improvising. Once the HTML-5 and CSS-3 standards are fully functional in the near future, the web designers would certainly have a much better arsenal of tools.
Hence it can be seen that in the future of website design, HTML-5 & CSS-3 will play a very important role by providing a better platform for website development. This will certainly be a boon for the coders who feel themselves limited within the previous versions of HTML and CSS as well as the clients who can now get their dream websites converted into actual portals in a much more efficient manner.
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Tuesday, 28 August 2012
Website Design Errors You Should Avoid
Creating a website for your business is a great way to put your company name out there and display your business model to potential clients almost anywhere in the world. But before spending all that time and money on a website design company, you need to make sure you are getting your money's worth. You want your website to attract customers, increase website traffic, and draw in more business. Here are a few blunders you should avoid when planning out your company's web presence. Keep these in mind when consulting with your website design company.
Give the viewer some room to breathe:
Cool images, videos, and fonts can be good for your company's web presence; however, you need to know when enough is enough. Don't have too many animations or widgets that take a long time to load--people won't want to wait. Too many images and videos can also distract the viewer from the actual content of your website. Remember, the goal of your website is to promote your business model. Some fancy web design features are good, but keep the main focus on the content of your website.
Spelling and Grammar:
Speaking of content, you want to make sure you have good spelling and grammar. This may sound like a no brainer, but you'd be surprised how many errors appear on company websites. Take the time to proofread and edit your content. If you have typos, your readers won't find you credible or trust the quality of your service.
Don't Be Afraid of White Space:
You may have the urge to take up every square inch of white space on your web pages. But stop and think about using the white space to your advantage. White space can make images pop and make your content clearer. Too much color can distract the viewer and be too overwhelming. Contrast between content and design can be a good thing, forcing the reader to appreciate the design and still focus on the content.
Don't Forget About SEO:
You want to make sure you content is search engine friendly. Create an SEO plan and figure out how you want to incorporate your website design and content. High quality content with key words related to your business will help put you higher on the search results page.
Your company's website should do its job of informing people about your business and projecting your company name on a global scale. It's important not to make these blunders so that your website can be effective, alluring, and informative.
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Monday, 27 August 2012
The Must Have Features For Any Mobile Website Design
There are a number of differences between designing a website for a desktop computer and a mobile device - the web access between the two is completely different, the screen sizes are worlds apart, and even the situation of the user is unique (as in, the user of a mobile device is generally on the move and cannot browse at leisure). If you work extensively with mobile website design, there are four features that you should ensure you include in every project you tackle:
Auto redirect
This redirect should take users to your desktop computer website. All mobile websites should have the functionality to detect what sort of device is being used to access it and be able to send the user to the most appropriate site. If they are using a desktop computer, you will be able to provide the user with a very different experience than they would receive with a mobile site.
Call to contact button
This is the name given to a certain type of functionality that allows a user to press a button that automatically dials the number of your business. If a user is on the road, they may not have a pen and paper to jot down your contact information or be able to memorize your phone number, so this makes it easier than ever for users to contact you.
Driving directions
This should be something that is included on all mobile websites, but it is often the feature that most designers leave off. By not including driving directions, you are going to send users away from your website (to other sites like Google Maps and Melways) to find you. By including directions on the website, they can remain on your page for longer.
Location map
Posting a Google Map on your mobile website design can be critical in helping users to find your business. Whilst posting your address can be helpful, being able to actually see where you are located in relation to nearby streets and landmarks can mean that they get to your store or office much faster than if they had to pull over and plug your address into their GPS.
If your business is just branching out into the world of mobile website design, it is important that you ensure the four features outlined above are included in every project that you work on. This will ensure that users are given the most rewarding experience possible, as well as making it easier than ever for them to contact and locate you. And, if you have already created a number of mobile sites, you should go back and make sure that each of these features has been included.
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Friday, 24 August 2012
Website Design Errors You Should Avoid
Creating a website for your business is a great way to put your company name out there and display your business model to potential clients almost anywhere in the world. But before spending all that time and money on a website design company, you need to make sure you are getting your money's worth. You want your website to attract customers, increase website traffic, and draw in more business. Here are a few blunders you should avoid when planning out your company's web presence. Keep these in mind when consulting with your website design company.
Give the viewer some room to breathe:
Cool images, videos, and fonts can be good for your company's web presence; however, you need to know when enough is enough. Don't have too many animations or widgets that take a long time to load--people won't want to wait. Too many images and videos can also distract the viewer from the actual content of your website. Remember, the goal of your website is to promote your business model. Some fancy web design features are good, but keep the main focus on the content of your website.
Spelling and Grammar:
Speaking of content, you want to make sure you have good spelling and grammar. This may sound like a no brainer, but you'd be surprised how many errors appear on company websites. Take the time to proofread and edit your content. If you have typos, your readers won't find you credible or trust the quality of your service.
Don't Be Afraid of White Space:
You may have the urge to take up every square inch of white space on your web pages. But stop and think about using the white space to your advantage. White space can make images pop and make your content clearer. Too much color can distract the viewer and be too overwhelming. Contrast between content and design can be a good thing, forcing the reader to appreciate the design and still focus on the content.
Don't Forget About SEO:
You want to make sure you content is search engine friendly. Create an SEO plan and figure out how you want to incorporate your website design and content. High quality content with key words related to your business will help put you higher on the search results page.
Your company's website should do its job of informing people about your business and projecting your company name on a global scale. It's important not to make these blunders so that your website can be effective, alluring, and informative.
ExperTrans language - multilingual services
ExperTrans voice-overs services
ExperTrans interpreting translation services