If you’re planning to give birth to a new website idea and want the process to go smoothly and turn out effectively you need to take adequate time to plan. My postings for the next several days will all center around planning your new or revamped website for success.
The first step in your planning should be to thoroughly consider your objectives and determining the best platform for your website. What will the site do? Is it an on-line brochure that encourages people to call for your services? Is it an e-commerce website for selling product online? Is it a social networking website, a blog, forum or directory?
Each of these examples would be developed using different software platforms. Many designers and developers only work in one platform. It is important that you think through your ideas and your website objectives and select a company who can meet your needs with the most effective software platform. Keep in mind that there are often several options for building a specific type of website. Lets take e-commerce for example. For on-line transactions you can choose from off-site Yahoo and PayPal options to the more robust on-site Zencart, osCommerce, Ubercart and Magento platforms.
Start with the correct platform and web design and development company experienced with this software. Ask around and do your research before jumping into your project. Remember, the first step to building an effective website and bringing your idea to life is thorough planning.
jweissberg Blog Articles Custom Website Design, e-commerce, Website Design
1. Follow the fundamental rules of design and composition including webpage balance, focal point, ratio of positive to negative space, use of either a complementary or analogous color scheme.
2. Use an industry relevant color palette. Check the sites of competitors and trade organizations. Use a reliable color selection program, such as Color Schemer Studio, to sample and identify colors and to quickly create full color palettes.
3. Follow a simple navigational button layout. Its good advise to keep the button layout simple and predictable. You don’t want people having to struggle to find their way through your website.
4. Include sticky elements to capture viewer’s interest and email addresses. Commonly used sticky website elements include free newsletters or special pricing sign ups, free white papers or e-books and interactive tools relevant for your products / services.
5. Build in the Search Engine Optimization (SEO). On-Site SEO primarily involves editing the site textual content and HTML coding, therefore the easiest time to do this is while developing the website. A great time to write the SEO titles, tags and description is in conjunction with the development of the website page verbiage.
jweissberg Blog Articles Sticky Site Techniques, Website Design
Many people can find that searching for a good web designer can quickly become a daunting tast. With thousands of “web design” websites out there to choose from, which one is the right one for you? We have prepared a list of what you should look for in a good web design company:
- Personalized service.
- Understands all aspects of website design and development – from e-marketing through graphic design to hosting.
- A company that does the work in-house.
- Small enough to consider your project important, but experienced enough to handle all aspects.
- Strong recommendations and testimonials.
- A diversified and extensive gallery of work.
- Strengths in Website Marketing and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Custom Website Design and Website Programming and Development.
- A company that understands and employs W3C standards (such as CSS – Cascading Style Sheets).
jweissberg Blog Articles Custom Website Design, Website Design
Custom Website Design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies (such as markup languages) suitable for interpretation and display by a web browser or other web-based graphical user interfaces.
Custom website design is different from template-based website design in that each site is approached as a unique marketing / sales vehicle for the client. Unlike a template-based site, a custom site is designed to meet your individual business needs and is not easily replicated by competitors.
The intent of custom web design is to create a custom website (a collection of electronic files residing on one or more web servers) that presents content (including interactive features or interfaces) to the end user in the form of web pages. Such elements as text, forms, and bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs) can be placed on the page using HTML, XHTML, or XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) on your custom website usually requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Of course your custom website design should be based on the features and objectives specific to your business goals.
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