Tag Archives: Design

Web Design For Newbies – Common Website Elements

Posted by MGP Website Designs on October 19, 2010 None comments

These days it seems like anybody and everybody has themselves a website of some kind, whether you are interested in doing business online or just making yourself available on the web for any reason, a website is the way to do it. Every where you look today you will see website URLs on billboards, TV screens, book covers, and business cards. No doubt It is true that having your own website is the best way to get a presence on the internet. The problem is for those individuals who don’t have any experience in web design to figure out just where to start and how to design their first website. This article is written especially for those who would like some tips and information on web design for newbies. However for those of you who already do have some web design know-how, you may also be able to pick up a few new things or ideas. So let’s begin.

Because your website is expected to be seen by millions of individuals 24 hours a day 7 days a week, it should be stated now that you will want it to represent you or your business in the best possible light. This is the reason you will definitely want your website to have a professional look and feel through out its’ pages. What do I mean by professional? Well that could be defined by the one observing your site whether or not it looks professional or not, or is there some type of guide line that we can use to help us keep our website design up to a specific level of professionalism? The answer is yes, the standard in today’s internet market for your website design is to “keep It simple”.

Remember this, that the generation of individuals that will be visiting your website not only expect your website to be pleasing and professional looking to the eye, it should be user friendly by being easy to navigate, and easy to read. You should plan on using both creativity, and individuality when designing your new site they are both very important parts of what will not only be interesting to your future visitors, also it will be a part of making your site stand out from the others in your niche while building your very important online presence. By keeping your new website professional looking and simple you will have nothing on your website that will draw or distract the visitor away from the purpose or reason of your website.

Your new website should be designed with certain purposes included:

1. To draw interest to your worldwide niche or market

2. To functional around the clock, “24/7″

3. To immediately provide its merchandise. products or services to its customer.

4. To have an efficient method of customer service and support

5. To Be user friendly and easy to use.

The list above covers a wide range of the technical aspects that your website will need to have designed into it for it to be successful. However a new website design should also include and deliver the wants and need of its target audience. For instance, is the main user of your website in need of assistance using your website because of lack of internet experience? if so, maybe you will need to consider including instructions on how to use your website in certain places on your site easily found by the user. The bottom and very important line is that a website’s market actually demands what must and must not be included as part of your website design if your new site will be successful in reaching your niche market.

If your niche market will be made up of different levels of internet skills sets, in that case it is best to design your website to accommodate the most basic needs of all of your expected users.

Getting Your Website Constructed

There are different methods of getting your website design turned into the actual website. The first is to build it yourself. If you have the time and understand the basics of how to construct a web site already or you are willing to take the time and effort it takes to learn the technicalities of using the different web site building software and tools out there that are available, then this may be the best choice for you. Although this option can be a little tricky as well as time consuming if you have no experience doing it. It can also be very rewarding to do it your self. You will need to learn to use the basic website building software. They can be from simple to complex to use, from free downloads to expensive purchases. If you are new to the subject I would suggest that you just download a free “WYSIWYG” (What you See Is What You Get) webpage design editor from the internet and get familiar with it before deciding if building your website yourself is what you want to do. A good free software to start with is “NVU. com” There are others that you can use if you want, you can find them online by doing a simple “Google Search” for “free website software”. There are also other skills you will need to learn should you choose to “do it yourself” some of them include but are not limited to:

1. Use of Graphics Editors

2. Use of Multimedia Editors

Be sure to use the above editors wisely as not to slow down or distort your website functions.

As you have seen above building your website yourself can involve quite a learning curve, if you find it a little to much for you right now and you would like to get your website up and running a little faster you should consider another choice of getting your new website constructed,

that is to use a pre-designed website template. Using a website template will take a lot of the work out of building a new website, it is the next best thing to giving the task to a professional webpage designer, also a whole lot cheaper. Website templates are complete website designs minus your custom content. Depending on the type of template, website owners can either (1) download, change,and then re-upload the edited templates to your server, or (2) change the template online and save changes to your remote server. Both methods are low-cost ways of producing a website, yet they don’t allow for unlimited customization.

The other method of getting your website created is to give the job to a website builder professional or service. This is the easiest of the ways mentioned here today. This way you will save a lot of time by giving this job to someone who knows what they are doing. If you don’t mind giving up the major control of your website development to a pro then this may be the route that you will want to take. However be very careful, before signing any contracts be sure you know who the copy rights to your website design belongs to, you or the website developer, who will be responsible for future updates or maintenance to your website, also just what performance or obligations the website developer has to you for the amount money that you have decided to pay.

It is very important to consider just how much you plan to invest in the design of your website. The full cost of the whole design operation could cost anywhere from between $50 – $10,000. I am assuming that being a newbie you will of course want to start closer to the $50. end, I know That I did. That being said, it basically boils down to the more you have to construct and design your website the more it will cost. I would suggest just starting out with the basic necessities and keep your website cost to a minimum, don’t get bogged down with buying every expensive website building tool or software available. Remember the best way to go in the beginning is to “keep it simple”.

Your Business Name, E-mail address, Contact info and URL ?This will make it easy for your website visitors to make a copy of any of your web pages and get this vital information for later use and reference.

Your Business Brand Or Logo.? Help your visitors remember your website and create a positive internet presence for your website, products or service.

A Navigation Bar.??A navigation bar or elements should be displayed on each page to assist your visitors in finding what they a re looking for on your website no mater what page they are located.

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Today’s Date. ?By having the date and time display on your website pages the website visitor is of particular convenience to your website visitor as well as helps to identify the potency of any time sensitive content that may be on your site.

Your Website Copyright. This element is displayed not only for legal ownership rights reasons but as a deterrent to those who would try to claim you website information as their own.

There are of course many more elements to be considered when you are designing your website like the types of links, sitemaps, colors, font colors and sizes, the use of headlines and others that will decide the final design of your website.

I hope that this article helped to give you some idea what is involved and maybe even where to begin. With the proper research and development processes I am sure you will be able to arrive at a website design that you will not only be proud of but one that will serve you and your internet business successfully now and for years to come.

About The Author

Tony Sanford has been associated with internet marketing and starting home online businesses for the past 8 years. He is also considered by some to be an expert in this field. Tony is the owner and creator of his own successful internet marketing help sites. He has devoted years of his internet marketing life to offering internet marketing help and advice to all those who are interested in starting or enhancing their own successful home online business through his websites. Tony is one internet marketer who really seems to get the greatest reward and success by helping others reach their home online business goals.

If you would like to find out more about Internet Marketing Incomes or starting a nline business. Please visit his main site at: http://www.sasonlinebusinesssuccess.com

Website Design – Some Basics of a Quality Website Design

Posted by MGP Website Designs on October 18, 2010 None comments

Today I’m going to talk about some Do’s and Don’ts of website design. As a website designer in NH, this is one subject I’m passionate about. So please, bear with me if I start to ramble on a bit. I want to share as much useful website design information as possible (without boring you to death) but when it comes to the topic of designing websites, I could talk for hours.

So let’s begin…

For starters, I believe your website design should represent your personal or business philosophy, your values, and the overall “look and feel” of who you and your company are (or who you want to be)

When people see your website for the first time, they’re going to get an instant impression of you and your business… What do you want them to see?

Take my latest website for example (you can check it out by following the link at the end of this article)… When I designed this website, I wanted it to be simple, crisp, and elegant. The black background represents authority. And it also takes away some of the eye strain you might get, from looking at a bright white monitor, while trying to read what’s in front of you.

What values does it represent..? The values of authority, or someone who knows what they’re doing. It also shows my concern for your comfort (reduced eye strain while you’re reading)

Then, I wanted to give you something a bit more entertaining to look at, so I added a few flash banners to the pages.

What’s the philosophy behind this..? To give you quality information, from the words you’re reading, but not bore you with a static website design that has nothing but words on the page.

Finally, I put all the main navigation links in the same place on every page (Left hand side of page) This is so you’ll know exactly where to find the links, no matter which page you’re on.

I also sprinkled a few links throughout the text, so if you want more information about something, you can click on the link, and move on to whatever you’re interested in.

So, what do you want to impress your website visitors with?

Do you want a corporate presence that’s all business..? Or do you want a website design that shows you’re an honest person, with hometown values (and not just a faceless corporation)..? Or perhaps you want a website design that shows people you’re a fun loving person, with a sense of humor..? Maybe you just want a website to showcase your hobbies, talents, or personal opinions..?

There are nearly as many answers to this question as there are people reading this page right now.

My main philosophy is to keep your website design simple.

There are some large corporate websites on the internet that are very complex (and often very confusing to navigate) and most of the visitors they receive, click away without buying anything.

This is fine, if you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to spend, driving huge amounts of traffic to your website. (If 10,000 people a day are visiting your site, you don’t mind when only 1 out of every 200 actually make a purchase. You’ll still make 50 sales a day)

But for us mere mortals, who only see a few hundred visitors a day, we’d much rather have a higher rate of conversion from our websites.

You also don’t want to make your website design too cluttered or too distracting. Tons of animated pictures or flashing banners may look cool, but your visitors will become distracted, and possibly forget why they came to your site in the first place.

Also, too many moving images makes your website load much slower, so some visitors may click away before they ever see your website pages at all (No one wants to grow old waiting for a website to load)

Pop up windows are another thing… One pop up is O.K. (to present a special offer or an email sign up form). But you don’t want more than one on any page, and make sure your visitors can close it immediately if they want to.

Those pop up windows that block out part of the page, and won’t let you close them for a certain amount of time, only irritate most people. And if you irritate your visitors… they’re going to click away from your website, and never come back.

So when your thinking about what kind of website design you’d like, keep in mind who your building your web presence for… your visitors.

Keeping your website easy to navigate is one of the most important aspects of a good website design. If your visitors get confused looking for something on your website, they’re going to click away from your site and look somewhere else.

We live in an attention deficit society, and most people want instant results from their inquiries. If you don’t give it to them, they’re going to look elsewhere.

You also need a website design that will easily allow the search engines to navigate your website, so they can index it in their search listings. (You do want your website to show up in the search engines, don’t you?)

But what about Flash websites?

It’s true… Flash websites represent some of the latest technology in website design… They move and flow, and they can make your visitors say “WOW, NEAT WEBSITE”.

But full flash websites are difficult for search engines to index, because search engines only read HTML code and page text. If the search engines can’t tell what your website is about, they’ll have a difficult time indexing your website for your particular keywords.

I do like the look of Flash websites, and if you’d like me to build you one, then we also need to talk about off page website promotion. (ways to get actual people to your website, while we’re waiting for the search engines to figure out where to index your website)

Now don’t get me wrong… Big flashy websites are a designers dream. It gives us a chance to really get creative with flash animations, dynamic pop up windows, and auto loading video clips. but they can often be very confusing to navigate, and they can also be very distracting to your visitors.

If your visitors get too distracted by all the flash animations, they will often get confused or frustrated, and possibly even irritated. Remember… irritating your website visitors is one of the quickest ways to get them to leave your website in a hurry.

How about pure CSS websites?

CSS website designs are another up and coming website technology. There are many CSS evangelists who would have you believe it’s the only way to go.

CSS websites use an external file (CSS file), instead of tables, for the look of your website layout. Many people believe they give a more consistent look for a website when viewed through different web browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.) They also tend to load a bit faster due to the reduced code on each individual page.

But CSS websites also have their limitations. In particular, when it comes to centering certain fonts and images on the page.

Besides… table layouts, when done properly, will also give you a consistent look through all major web browsers.

CSS websites also allow you to globally change the look of your website by editing a single file instead of changing each page individually. This is great if you want to continually make changes to your website design, but if you already have a website design you’re happy with, then this point isn’t really necessary. Also, if you want to have different headers, or fonts, or images, on different pages, then you’ll need to access each page of your website one-at-a-time anyway.

What about PHP websites?

PHP websites are the only real way to go if you want a dynamic database driven website, (like a full e-commerce store, or a community website, or a blog. Basically any website where you want to keep your visitors information, so they can log into an area of your site with their name and password. Or if you want to allow your visitors to leave comments on your website).

But PHP websites tend to load slower than standard HTML websites. So if you simply want a fast loading website, to bring your business to the internet, HTML is the way to go. You can still sell products and services from an HTML website, but they don’t have to go through a database to retrieve any information.

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So there you have it… My basics for a quality website design.

I could go on for another hour, but this article is already starting to get a bit long. (in fact… This page used to be nearly twice as long) But then my friends and family told me you might not be as enthusiastic as I am about the topic. So I shortened it up a bit. The hard part was editing the content without leaving out some of the things I wanted to say.

I realize this whole process can be a bit of a challenge, trying to establish a web presence that will be up to date with modern technologies… one that will easily be indexed by the search engines… and a website design that will also be simple enough to allow your visitors to make the decision of doing business with you.

So your best bet is to simply browse the internet and look at some other website designs that are appealing to you. When you see a few that you like the look of, it will give you a starting point for your own website design

In summary…

The design of your website says a lot about you and your company.

A clean efficient website design tells your visitors you run a clean, efficient business. By contrast, a cluttered or confusing website design tells your visitors you’re cluttered and confusing.

If your visitors can’t understand your website, or if they can’t easily navigate your website, then they’ll probably click away as soon as they arrive… never to return again.

When people see your website for the first time, they’re going to get an instant impression of you and your business, and the first impression they’re going to get will be based on your website design… What do you want them to see?

Think about it…

Steven Rubin is a co-founder and the ranking partner of SARubin-websites.com – A website design and website marketing company whos sole purpose is to help you bring your vision to the world.