Got Template For You
Just about featured websites

Not all design can be considered great, or even good for that matter. Great design must convey a message quickly and cleanly, with little guesswork. Your audience should never have to guess what it is you're trying to say. Some of the more popular tools used by graphic artists today are, the Adobe products (Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash, InDesign), along with web applications such as Dreamweaver. Here are some tips you can use if you're just starting out in the graphic design field.

Too Many Fonts

You should strive to keep the number of fonts to no more than two. I typically prefer a serif font, which is a font that has "feet" if you will, such as Times, for body copy. Then I create my headlines with a san serif font such as Helvetica to distinguish paragraphs from one another. Too often, a novice designer will attempt to experiment with too many different fonts in the same piece. Keep it down to two if possible.

Too Many Design Elements

Another issue concerning novice designers is that they tend to cram in as many visuals as they can. All in a bid to display their design skills. It's important to remember that you are trying to convey a message and get the viewer to react to your design. You are not trying to show off your design skills because more often than not, you will create an eyesore and distract the viewer.

Colors

Like all of the other elements in your piece, you should control the amount of colors used. Generally, two complementing colors should be used, with a third color for accent. This is a general rule so you can be flexible. Just remember, keep it simple!

Keep It In The Family

It's important that all of the elements in your piece complement one another. Each image you use should relate to any other image in the piece, thereby creating a consistent theme to your piece.

I hope these guidelines can help you be a better designer. Keep in mind that you want to reel the user in so keep it simple, legible and attractive. If you can master this idea, you're on your way to a great career in graphic design.

About Author:
Steven Pepe has worked in the design field for over 15 years in both employee and freelancer roles. He has worked in many capacities from print to interactive media and is the founder of BuyLance.com. Mr. Pepe can be contacted by email at stevenpepe@buylance.com

Article provided by webmastertips.us

Featured Sites: Review 20

Joshua Stearns
Simple yet sleek, Flash has the ability to make even the most basic designs engaging.



Saso Kos
Very layered black photo site with a super stylish thumbnail layout. (Some NSFWish)



Fabio Lana
Worth a look for the rotating turnstile photo module alone.

Featured Sites: Review 19

Indiana Jones
Official movie site filled with goodies for the new film.




Triangle Mystery
DARE YOU LOOK INTO Triangle Mystery!!!




Dorito's: The Quest
More intriguing puzzles for the Doritos summer contest.

Featured Sites: Review 18

TOM CRUISE!!!!!!
The boy is making a comeback with a very sleek flash site despite 14 trillion pictures of Tom Cruise.




Term'it
One of the richest sites you'll ever see. Just check it out.





Samsung Blackline
Do you like pretty blue swirlies? Me too!

Featured Sites: Review 17

Dvein Studios
Design Studio site with content that out-flashes its flash. One client is notably Spider-Man 3.




The Eye
DARE YOU LOOK INTO THE EYE!!!





Levi's Lady Style
A long loader, but this can't be the be the first time you've waited for a pretty gal to get ready.

A business often has more than one target audience it wants to reach with its website. Different customers mean different sales appeals and a homepage needs to be able to direct visitor traffic to go to the right places to get information or make a sale.

In order for visitors to find the right information, a website's navigation path needs to be clear. Without a clear navigation path, visitors will become confused and leave before they can make a purchase.

Here are some ideas to consider when designing the navigation on a homepage:

Make the Navigation Familiar

Most people expect the navigation buttons to be on the left side of the website or at the top of the website. If the buttons are on the right, it makes the visitors hesitate and think. You don't want them to have to think about the navigation; you want it to be instinctive and easy.

The more familiar the navigation, the less likely they will get lost or confused. They will know how to find the correct path to where they want to go.

Use Text Links to Reinforce the Path

People rely on navigation buttons to find the main paths of the website, but it is also important to reinforce the main paths with text links within the content. Again, this makes it easier for visitors to immediately go to where they can get further information without having to think.

Decide on a Path for Each Buyer

As you put the content together on a homepage, or any other page of a website, you need to think about the complete path that you want to create to take the customer from information to purchase. The path will differ according to the audience appeal, and your purpose.

Sometimes your audience needs to be educated before they can make a purchase. In that case, you need to make sure that visitors receive enough information that they will feel confident in making the decision to buy. This type of audience will need to know the features of your product or service as well as the benefits before they can make a decision. It would also be helpful to have testimonials and examples to reassure them that they are making the right decision.

When you have to take the time to educate your audience, you would probably take them from the homepage to another area of the website where they can get further information about your product or service. However, if they didn't need to be educated, they could simply go from the homepage to the buy page and make their purchase.

So, on the homepage, you need to make sure that you have both types of paths available: one for the buyer who needs to be educated, and one for the buyer wants to immediately make a purchase.

Decide on a Path for Each Audience

When you are trying to appeal to multiple audiences, it is important that your homepage has information to appeal to each audience. When visitors come to your website they are looking for information to solve their specific problem. You need to have information that they can quickly and easily identify as the solution to their problem.

For instance, maybe your company offers a product or service that is useful to Human Resource Directors, managers, and individuals. Each one of these three audiences would have a different benefit appeal that could be used in gaining their attention on the website. An easy way to do this is to set up three bullets that are questions with text links to take each audience to a separate page where you can exclusively cater to this audience:

Are you a Human Resource Director looking for XYZ?
Are you a manager looking for XYZ?
Are you an employee looking for XYZ?
You want each one of these three audience members to land on your site and immediately find the path that will take them to the solution they seek.

Conclusion

Good navigation on a website is one of the secrets to having a successful website. The information or content of the website needs to be laid out in such a way that it is easy to follow and logical. The easier it is for people to find information on a website, the more likely it is they will buy. And, the more difficult it is for them to find information, the more likely they will never visit your website again.

About the Author:

Michelle Howe, MBA, president of Internet Word Magic, specializes in writing irresistible copy for websites. Transform the way you do business. Visit her website at http://www.internetwordmagic.com/ for a FR^EE chapter download of her new book "Turn Browsers into Buyers".

by Debbie Ray

I'm sure you've seen examples of great websites on the internet - and also examples of really "Bad" websites. First impressions are extremely important - you have about 20 seconds to make that first impression a good one. If you want your visitor to come back you've got to do a lot to impress them in an extremely short period of time.

Many individuals or small business owners often opt to design and build their own websites. Without proper experience or website design background many mistakes are made. If you are a beginner then there are several things you should keep in mind to avoid before designing your website.

Here are several common mistakes which should be avoided when designing your new website.

1. Slow Loading Pages

Problem: Have you ever gone to a website and waited and waited for it to load?

Solution: Optimize your images at a lower resolution to achieve faster loading pages. Keep your page sizes well under 60 KB.

2. Page Layout

Problem: Websites that have the navigation in different places throughout the site. It looks cluttered and unprofessional.

Solution: Be consistent and be organized in your websites layout. Make sure all your web pages look the same and the websites navigation is in the same location on each page.

3. Wild and Crazy Color Schemes

Problem: Have you ever visited a website that has a background with a bright, neon color and can't read the content because the colors are so loud? What's the point?

Solution: Think "easy to read." Avoid dark backgrounds with light colored fonts. White background with black text is best for the general public.

4. Spelling and Grammar Errors

Problem: Spelling and grammar errors just jump off the page.

Solution: Always spell check.

5. Text on the Page

Problem: Most internet users don't read web pages - they scan them.

Solution: Make sure your page is easy to read. Break text into manageable pieces, use sub-headings, short paragraphs, highlighted keywords and bullet points.

6. Font Styles and Sizes

Problem: Serif fonts such as Times New Roman are more difficult to read on a computer monitor. Also, text that is too small or way too big are hard to read.

Solution: Use non-serif fonts such as Arial, Verdana or MS Sans Serif for web pages that will be read online. Your page will look much better, more professional, and will be much easier for your visitor to read.

7. Not Enough "White Space"

Problem: Too many words on a web page can be overwhelming.

Solution: Make your page easy to read by breaking the text into smaller, more manageable pieces. Also, use sub-headings and bullet points.

8. Cheesy Music that the User Cannot Control

Problem: Background music on a site that does not fit. Next, not being able to shut it off.

Solution: If you think you need to use music on your website for some reason, then make sure you offer your visitors the option to turn it off, or on, quickly and easily.

9. Poor Layout and Design

Problem: Have you ever been to a website that is simply just "too much"? It's like they are trying to fill every available pixel of space on the entire page.

Solution: Don't overdo it when designing your pages. Just because you can add something doesn't mean you have to. Leave plenty of white space between your text and images.

10. Overly Long Pages

Problem: Ever been to a website with a page that just scrolls down forever?

Solution: Most people will never scan down to the bottom of really long pages. It's better to have several short pages vs. a few really long pages.

11. Non-Standard Links

Problem: You go to a website and aren't sure which words are really links because the link colors have been changed.

Solution: Don't confuse your users. Keep the link colors as they are.

12. Under Construction signs

Problem: Have you ever been to a website and found a page with no content of any type but a big "Under Construction" sign instead?

Solution: Don't use "Under Construction" signs on your website.

13. Didn't Test Your Web Site

Problem: Ever been to a website that just looks like a mess? Maybe you saw text overlapping images, weird alignment, etc.

Solution: Always check to see what your site looks like in multiple browsers and change accordingly before uploading your site to the web.

14. Unclear Navigation

Problem: You don't enjoy broken links, error pages or too many moving objects - neither do your websites visitors. If navigation is too difficult to follow, visitors won't return.

Solution: Make sure that your navigation is easy to read, find and to follow. Also, make sure that it is in the same spot on all of your websites pages.

15. Sloppy Web Site Copy

Problem: Have you ever visited a website with missing words, bad grammar, or it just didn't make sense?

Solution: Always remember, "Content is King" on the internet, so make sure there is plenty of good, focused information for your visitors.

16. Never Updating Your Site

Problem: Ever go to a website that hasn't been changed at all over the last few times that you've visited it?

Solution: You should always update the content on your site frequently.

17. Too Many Clicks

Problem: Have you ever gone to a website, found something you're interested in checking out, and then had to click, click, click before you found the item you were looking for (if you didn't give up first)?

Solution: Don't test the patience of your visitors. Make sure that everything can be found on your site within 3 clicks or less.

18. No Privacy Policy

Problem: No Privacy Policy page is listed on a website.

Solution: Post a Privacy Policy on your website. Make sure that your customers know that you will not share their addresses with anyone.

19. No Company Contact Information

Problem: A company with no address or contact information is not one you necessarily want to give your money to.

Solution: Email addresses or phone numbers are most often seen as contact information on websites, however, having a physical mailing address on your web site adds another key credibility factor.

20. Using Free Web Hosting

Problem: You visit a web page that has a name so long you'll never remember it because it is from one of those free website hosts.

Solution: If you want your internet business to be taken seriously avoid using free web hosting. This all adds to the issue of credibility.

21. Using Free E-mail Addresses

Problem: You visit a website and try to send an email to them, however the email addresses are not associated with the domain name.

Solution: Using a free email address, such as Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail, is never appropriate for your website. On your website, always use an email addresses associated with your own business domain name.

22. Advertisements

Problem: You've come to a website where the pages are cluttered with a lot of different advertisements.

Solution: A lot of people are using advertisements to earn extra money. That's fine, just don't overdo it.

23. Bad Images

Problem: How many times have you seen a web page with missing graphics files or misshaped images?

Solution: Always optimize your images and use the height and width attributes of the image tag. Additionally, save the files in the right image formats: JPG for Photographs and GIF for artwork.

24. This Website Best Viewed on .....

Problem: This is often seen on many beginner websites.

Solution: Simply don't use this on your website.

25. No Prices

Problem: Websites that don't have product prices listed clearly.

Solution: If you're selling a product on your website, ALWAYS include a price with the item description.

And here's a list of things that you should just avoid, or should not forget, simply because it's the right thing to do, website design-wise. And here they are:

Frames, Hit counters, Orphan pages, Anything "Cutesy", Pop ups, Fancy Fonts, Don't overuse Flash, Avoid Javascript links, Blinking text , Animated GIFs, Missing Meta Tags, Horizontal (sideways) Scrolling, Don't underline or color normal text, Don't forget functional links on your footer, Don't forget about your Marketing Strategies, Don't forget to include anchor text on your links, Never subscribe a visitor for anything without his consent, Don't leave the home page title as "Welcome to Mysite.com", Avoid using all the "Bells And Whistles" simply because you can, Not Taking Advantage of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your website

Whether you have created your own website or are working with someone else on creating your website, I hope all these ideas above will help you build a better website that steadily attracts visitors. If you've never built a website on your own, I hope the tips above help you design the best site that you can and help you to avoid all these issues in the future. Knowledge is critical.

About the Author:

Debbie Ray, owner of www.pedigreedpups.com, www.the-website-doctor.com, www.pedigreeddogs.com and www.total-german-shepherd.com is a lifelong dog owner, teacher and internet business owner. Want to learn all the steps in building a website by yourself? Interested in purebred dogs? The German Shepherdin particular? Promote your dog related website? Let me teach you more. Check mysites

by Rio Cordella

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1. Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2. Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3. Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4. Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5. Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

About the Author:

Rio Cordella is an affiliate marketer and "offline" marketer, working as Export Marketing Manager in a Furniture Company. Visit his blog at internetpreneur.blogspot.com.

by: Mathew Browne

One of the most common requests I get from web design clients is "can I have a Flash intro with that?" These are words that good professional web designers dread to hear. Flash intros are an artifact of 90's web design; a fad and a novelty which is still so prevalent that some users still demand it. From the website owner's perspective, I can see how a slickly-made, animated Flash introduction must be good thing - what better way to show off their fantastic website than to decorate it with an expensive (and equally expensive-looking) introduction? The aim of this article is to explain why Flash intros are a very bad thing in terms of design, usability and search engine visibility.

If you are considering adding a Flash intro to your website, ask yourself the following questions:

Would your website users like it?

The vast majority of web users would find it an unnecessary barrier to the rest of your website. Upon encountering a Flash intro, users tend to either skip it or leave the site immediately. Several surveys and reports back up this fact - particularly a report by Marketing Sherpa which suggests that even in 2003, 80% of users "hated" Flash intros. By adding a Flash intro you risk losing users before you have had a chance to make an impact. Couple this with the potentially substantial cost of designing such a feature and you find a compelling reason to avoid it altogether. However, the drawbacks don't end there.

What purpose does it serve?

With very few exceptions, Flash intros don't convey useful information; their sole purpose is to act as eye candy. Even if the Flash intro does convey useful information, this is still ill-advised, which allows me to segue nicely to my next point.

Do you want your website to be visible to the search engines?

It doesn't seem to be common knowledge but is a very pertinent fact - search engine crawlers do not index Flash nearly as effectively or consistently as they do for regular HTML. If your Flash intro includes important text about your website, it is far better to present this as regular web page content which is readily accessible.

Are any other established sites doing it?

I don't recall Amazon, eBay or Yahoo using a Flash intro, so you probably shouldn't either. This is a good rule of thumb for any non-standard feature on your website - if the big sites aren't doing it, take it off your "to do" list.

What effect does it have on your website's image?

The ever-increasing proportion of savvy Internet users perceive the Flash intro as a dated gimmick. On the Internet, where your first impression may be your only impression, don't portray your website in a negative light from the very first page.

Finally, a question you should be asking me:

Are you just biased against Flash?

Not at all, in fact I use some Flash on my own website. I think Flash is a great medium, but only if used correctly (and sparingly). An intro, however, is rarely an example of correct use.

About the Author:

Mathew Browne is a specialist in web design and search engine optimisation (SEO).His business, MB Web Design, provides affordable, bespoke web site design, logo design and search engine optimisation.Visit MB Web Design for more web design and SEO articles.

By: JJN

They say that photos are the equivalent of 1000 words. If you want to spark emotions within your visitors head then you need to use images to get the level of effect you desire. Whether it is to sell more products, gain user loyalty or just to impress the visitor then well placed images can have significant effects.

Find the Image You Need

The first thing you need to do is find the necessary images. With the wide selection of free stock images available you are best to just perform a search in one of the search engines and you will get plenty of results. When you look on all the sites you will actually find that you are spoilt for choice!

Alter the Image

Once you have the image you need to resize it and alter it as necessary so that it will fit nicely into your site and work with the colour scheme. This can be done even with free software like 'Paint' which comes already installed on your computer. Although remember to retain the best possible quality of the image, it is better to have a great looking image that takes 1 second to load then a rubbish image that takes half a second to load.

Is The Image Right For What You Want?

All the time you should be thinking about what effect you want the image to have. If you are selling a product then it obviously needs to show the product off to the max or at least highlight one of the best features. If you own something like a debt related site and you want to make the visitor feel even more miserable so they phone your company up then you will want to put an image of a depressed person with a beer in their hand looking at their finances (immoral I know but business is business!). Make sure the image is relevant and will spark the emotions you require.

Placement of the Picture

Now you need to put the image in a good place. Once again this varies depending on what you are trying to achieve. If you have a large article then I think it is best to put a small image half way down. This way you can increase the emotions they have as they have already read half the content so they are already gripped, its just a case of heightening their emotions.

If you have content which doesn't really get juicy till half way through then you don't want to lose them early on. The best way to avoid this is put an image at the very top, this will give them an idea of what the article is about - especially if it is a chart, flow diagram or something like that.

Alternatively with some content you may want to put it at the bottom. This is best when you want to finish the reader off! For example if you are reading an article written by a charity about a poorly child from Africa and the whole article has made you feel sad about the child's problems with her health and family deaths then a picture of her (crying) at the bottom of the page is probably going to finish you off and make you 100% appreciate what the charity is trying to do!

Conclusion

You may think the references above to people in debt and to a poor African child may be a bit inconsiderate, but I'm just trying to emphasise the power of images. Well written content is good and draws the reader in but a top quality well placed image can close the door on the reader and make them remember the page they are on. After the effect you've just had on them they will use your website and no go off looking for others!

Get Free Images for Your Website

If you are looking for top quality images that you can download for free then you are best to visit Free Stock Images. This lists all the best photo resources and all provides articles about images just like this one so you can learn even more about the power of the picture!

Author's URL: www.goarticles.com

Author: Craig Randall

There are so many websites on the Internet and the number rises every day. The level of professionalism in the websites varies so much between each website but what makes a good website? and what are the common errors people make? Well this article will answer them questions. If you want your business to succeed then try to avoid the following:

Free Web Hosting and Domain Names

Avoid these at all costs. It doesn't cost much to have your own domain name and if you have your own hosting you have more control over your website and it's contents. A lot of free hosts will put advertising on your websites which will make them look tacky. Also you will want to have your own relevant domain name to help your Google ranking.

Dark Backgrounds and Light Text

Personally I would never buy of a website that has a black background. It just looks tacky. Also it is no good for printing out the page. You will notice how many of our websites we make at WebGrafix have a white background with black text. Keeping it simple usually produces the most professional image.

Red and Blue

Red and blue are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Try to avoid using these colours together. Red text on blue or vise versa is not good on the eyes and looks terrible. Also if your logo uses these colours try not to have them too close together or on top of each other.

100% Flash Website

Although flash websites can look great and be fun to use there is no hope of Google ever finding it. You could put millions of keywords in your text on your flash website and have the most fun and professional looking flash website ever but Google will just see it as a flash file and will ignore all your links, text and images. The result will be your website being no where to be seen in the search engine. We never create websites like this at WebGrafix and if we did they would usually take months to complete anyway.

Lack of Heading and Title Tags

The two most important tags you could possibly use on your website. The title tag is usually what Google will pick up on first so try to add some keywords there but don't over do it. The heading tags should also contain keywords as Google will rank these higher than text inside a P tag. Using the correct tags is the first and most simple step in good SEO usage and we offer this as a service for existing websites and also contain this SEO in all the websites we create for no extra charge.

The internet is huge. Google alone list over 3 billion pages, looking at one each second of the day would take you over 99 years to view them all!
Many people can do website design, but how many can actually design a website. The design element is so important and so often overlooked.

If you intend to send out brochures to your customers, or to potential customers, and the brochure was of poor quality what type of image will this reflect on your business? A poor website will do exactly the same.

When designing a website one of the most important task to remember is colour co-ordination. Ideally you should strive for a maximum of three main colours, with variations and tints of these. By using more you run the risk of non-matching colours and ultimately less easy on the eye for visitors.

Next comes navigation. Colour co-ordination and navigation are the top main priorities. If your site isn't easy to navigate, people will not stay around to delve deeper. Once you site is designed ask some friends or family to test it out. The easier your website is to navigate, the longer people will stay.

Accessibility is a key issue that has been highlighted recently with a AUD$20,000 fine imposed on an Australian website for not ensuring people with disabilities and sight impairments could use the website. These rulings are few and far between (for now) but to help always use ALT tags on images (helping to describe your image), plus use text based links where possible. For further information you can check out http://www.w3.org

You have your site ready, it's full of content, great design and ready to hit the super highway - now how will people find you. This is where SEO comes in to play (Search Engine Optimisation). Optimising your site for the main search engines can help bring free targeted traffic to your website. The main and basic rules of SEO are:

1. A good Title tag, e.g for C2 Web Design being a website design company based in Essex, UK and covering Colchester our Title tag is 'Website Design Essex Website Design Colchester'. Using your main keywords for your title tag can instantly bring good results.

2. Make sure your keywords appear within your website. The % of times it appears has started to have less an impact, but the general rule is your keywords should make up around 5% of your copy - or ideally once every one to two paragraphs.

3. Request Linkbacks. Make requests for other sites to link to you from the day you website is activated. Search Engines, particuarly Google, base a large porpotion of their listings based on the number of websites linking to you - plus their popularity and themed relationship to the content of your site.

4. Be patient. It can quiet easily take a year or so to achieve a good placement in Google for a popular phrase - but considerably less time in other search engines e.g. MSN and Ask Jeeves.

By sticking to these basic principles and ensuring your site is pleasent on the eye, easy to navigate, and optimised for search engine visits you should be able to claim your stake in the World Wide Web.

So you've decided you want so have a website designed for your company. You've had a brainstorming meeting with your staff and are starting to think about what you consider to be the important aspects of the site; what colours to use, where you want your pictures to appear and whether or not your web designer should make your logo spin from right to left or from left to right. Stop! There are far more important considerations that need to be made and this article will tell you the main things that cannot be overlooked by a website designer if their intention is to build a successful business website that will deliver a return on your investment.

1. The Goal of the Website

The goal of the website needs to be carved in stone; well I suppose just writing it down would suffice! What do you want to achieve by having the website designed? This could be something as simple as publishing contact details on the internet. It could be something a lot more specific such as:

To have 500 users sign up to your newsletter in the first year. To sell £10000 worth of products over the internet in your first year. To achieve 10 sales enquiries per day through the website.

Whatever the goal of the website is, make sure that you are clear about what it is and that your web designer know exactly what this is and what the website should deliver. Your website will then be designed with this in mind and will have a measurable goal. Imagine building a house, putting the roof on and then telling the builder you wanted a double garage as well - this often happens to website designers!

2. Who Your Target Audience Is

It is very, very important to know who your target audience is. This needs to be very clear right from the very start. This will allow the designer to make the best possible web design decisions to make sure your site is as attractive and accessible as possible to your target audience. Your site after all need to be aimed directly at your target audience in order for them to do whatever it is that you want them to do when they arrive at your site.

3. What Kind Of Content / Keywords Are To Be Used

Your website designer needs to thoroughly understand the nature of your products and services and the things that potential customers will type into search engines to find them. I have had a few clients that have asked me why their products and services aren't listed in Google. One example that stands out in my mind is a lady that asked me why a search for 'coloured concrete' didn't display her site in the results. After I explained that she actually needed to tell search engines on the website that the company sold 'colored concrete' I built a search engine targeted webpage, which was listed in the search results.

Please try and bear in mind that web designers although they are trained to ask intelligent questions, they are not mind readers and know a lot less about your industry and your business than you do. The best thing you can do is to provide as much information and detail up front so that the designer organise your website in the best way possible.

Conclusion:

It's a sad fact that a lot of websites are designed badly and deliver bad results for good customers but by following the advice in this article, you can be sure of 3 things:

Your website project will have a clear, well defined and measurable goal
Your website will be correctly themed and aimed at your target audience
Provision will be made for your content and nothing will be missed out

If you're trying to entice people return to your site from the Explorer's Favorites menu, it helps to prompt them with a special logo of some kind. If you're in Explorer right now and pull down that menu, you'll probably find some of those logos lined up next to the selections in the Channels item. For very little effort, you can have the same thing next to your own site's name.

This little icon is called a "favicon", and it works only in Explorer 5 and above. If your visitors are running Netscape or an older version of Explorer, the browser will just ignore your little icon.

When an Explorer 5 user bookmarks your page, Explorer searches for a special icon with the name "favicon.ico". If it finds one, it replaces the default Microsoft icon with your special little icon next to your name in the favorites menu and in the location bar. The user can also put your icon on the desktop and the taskbar, though few are likely to bother.

The icon you create has to be exactly 16 pixels by 16 pixels. There are some alternative larger sizes, but only use these if you've investigated favicon use very thoroughly. The safest route is definitely 16x16. Try to fool the browser with a larger or smaller size and it will usually ignore you. You should also stick with 16 Windows colors. Again, more colors can be used in sophisticated icons, but 16 is your safest bet.

There are two routes to creating your icon. You can take an existing graphic, maybe a BMP or a GIF, and convert it using graphics software. Unfortunately, some icon converters don't do a good job of transforming bitmaps into .ico files.

The alternative is to use a dedicated icon editor. There's one included in Mocrosoft Visual Studio, and an online Java editor you can try at http://www.favicon.com/. In the long run, you'll probably find it faster to use an icon editor to create your graphic from scratch, rather than converting an existing graphic and ironing out the inevitable bugs.

When you save the .ico, name it "favicon.ico". That's the default icon that Explorer looks for. If you want other pages to have different icons, you can do that too. Name each icon differently, but make sure they all have .ico extensions.

To have Explorer pick up the default favicon.ico, copy it into the root directory - the main directory that holds your HTML pages. If all you want is favicon.ico to be associated with your site, you're done. Every time a visitor bookmark your site with Explorer, favicon.ico is copied to the visitor's cache, where it waits to be displayed. You don't even need to alter your HTML.

However, there are some other tricks you might want to play. If you want a different icon associated with special pages, use the LINK tag on those pages like this:



When visitors bookmark this page, instead of favicon.ico they'll get mypage.ico. You can direct the browser to any absolute location you want using:



Of course, there are weirdnesses to take into account. If you test the favicon on your own site, you may get only one shot at it. Once a site is bookmarked, it's hard to flush out that listing completely. Even if you delete the pages from your cache, delete the listings from the Favorites menu, and reboot, re-bookmarking a previously bookmarked site may not cause the new icon to "take". If this happens, enlist the help of somebody who hasn't previously bookmarked your page.

One other potential snag is that some Web hosts don't support .ico files. If you use one of these, contact the company and politely ask them to start supporting .ico files.

If you follow these guidelines you should find it all relatively straightforward. The only time-consuming parts are getting used to an icon editor and then creating your icon or fixing the problems with your converted graphic. For relatively little effort, you too can give your site that customized cutting-edge look in IE5.

I hope this came in useful!

There are literally millions of websites on the Internet these days. How do you make sure that your website is not lost in virtual obscurity? Well, there are several key elements that every great website has. These elements are described below:

Visible Elements

How eyes see the site
The first item that's seen on the website is the upper-left corner. From there, the eye moves to the upper-right corner, and then it moves in a zigzag fashion from elements that grab its attention. Knowing this fact, you'll notice that most great websites have their company's logo and key messages positioned in these most coveted eye catchers!

Layout
Layout of the site is extremely important. Great websites have a consistent layout and repeat certain elements of it throughout the site.

Alignment
Elements on the website have consistent alignment. Choose either left or right justification and stay away from centered alignment.

Colors
Use 2-3 colors throughout the site, keeping text to the easiest to read combination of white background and black text. Overdoing the color makes eyes wander the page trying to figure out logical connections.

Graphics
Graphics are an important element of any website; however, it is easy to overuse them. Great websites use graphics sparingly and consistently. For example, if site has illustration graphics on its pages, their design and fashion should follow the same style.

Easy Navigation
Great websites have one common feature--easy navigation. Whether it is menu based, link-based or graphic based, navigation should be consistent throughout the website. It is also a good idea to have a "you are here" link on the sub-pages to allow quick jumps between parent-child menu items.

Short and Organized Copy
Websites are designed to grab user's attention. Main page of the site should not overload the user with heavy text. Break up the text in small paragraphs. Clearly label topics in bold or italics. Try to minimize the scrolling on the first page. Create jump links from the main page "read more." Remember that most users stay on the website for less than a minute.

Invisible Elements

Keywords
The key element of the great website is presence of keys in its Meta section. Keys are what search engines see when they crawl the site. It is imperative to have a targeted set of 10-20 keywords that are 2-3 words. Remember that most people online use 2-3 words for their search string.

Title
Every webpage should have a short and descriptive title. Titles should not be a repetition of keywords; however, keywords should be used in the sentence. Titles should be kept to about 36 characters.

Description
Description is displayed when the page is presented in the results of the search query. It is imperative that websites have a detailed description that's short and to the point, without marketing twists. The length of description is generally kept to less than 256 characters; and many search engines display only 128.

Links
In order for a website to score high with the search engines, it should have links pointed to it. Larry Page's (one of the founders of Google) famous PageRank measures a website's popularity by the links that point back to it. Great websites usually exchange links with other sites and affiliates.

Creating a state-of-the-art website takes knowledge and patience. Remember, people often visit the website before the personal meeting to learn about the company. Therefore, take the time to study the website design and make sure to ask yourself the following questions:

Do the prime spots on the page display a strong message?
Does the website look attractive?
Is the copy clean and concise?
Does the website provide easy navigation for visitors?
Have the invisible elements of the website been properly setup?

Remember to keep the points listed above in mind when creating or reviewing the website design. Consider firm's brand and keep elements of the website consistent.

Here are the top 7 things I wish I had known when I started:

1. Reading is incredibly valuable.

Learning from the experience of other people who have already "been there and done that" saves a tremendous amount of time. In my opinion, both books and online newsletters are very valuable. Books are more methodical than newsletters, but newsletters are free and can cover more up-to-date topics. Personally, I try to read on a variety of subjects, including graphic design, web development, search engine optimization, copywriting, marketing, and online business in general.

2. It's imperative to understand the target audience and the primary goal for every client.

In order to design a site that truly meets a client's needs, the designer must understand what the site is supposed to accomplish, and what kind of visitor they will be working with. I'm ashamed to say I truly had no concept of how important this was when I first started designing. I didn't realize that a site's target audience and primary goal should affect every decision-the colors, the size of the type, the style of the graphics, the content of the home page, the personality of the copy, and everything else.

3. A basic understanding of search engine optimization and copywriting is imperative.

Although you can design a website without knowledge in these areas, it's pretty hard to design a GOOD site without knowing at least something about SEO and copywriting. Designers have to realize their craft revolves around their ability to communicate a message-and that is dependent on the site's copy and visibility. Without any content or traffic, a designer's work doesn't do any good.

Additionally, any time you get into more complicated sites, you also need to understand the basics of programming. If you don't, you'll end up designing poor-quality sites, or else spending a lot of time and energy to correct mistakes caused by lack of knowledge.

4. It helps immensely to narrow your own target market as a designer.

It's a simple reality that no one can be good at everything. Even in the specific field of web design, one designer can't be an expert at designing all the various sorts of websites that are needed. It's better to pick a niche-whatever sort of niche you're best at-and hone in on that niche. Whether that means restricting your focus to e-commerce sites, or single pages for sales letters, or B2B sites, or sites in a specific industry, focus is key. It allows you to become specialized in one area and to develop real expertise in that niche.

5. Web designers should be marketers, first and foremost.

After all, that's what websites are all about-marketing products, services, and ideas. If a web designer does not understand the mindset of a marketer or a salesperson, they won't understand the logic of how to create pages that sell.

6. The point of graphic design is to increase functionality, NOT to create something that looks pretty.

The appearance of a website (or a particular aspect of a website) has a tremendous affect on functionality, but design is not for appearance itself. It's a means, not an end. As soon as designers begin treating appearance (and graphic design) as an end in itself, functionality starts to suffer. Instead, graphic designers have to recognize that every line of text, every photo, every button, and every other element on the page should be designed to make the page more functional. If it doesn't increase functionality in some way, it doesn't belong on the page. Period.

7. Knowing the rules is good, and knowing when to break them is better.

If you learn the rules and principles that underlie good design, you're a step ahead of the crowd. But if you have skill in knowing how to apply (and when NOT to apply) those rules and principles, you're leaps and bounds ahead. Knowing (and following) the basic conventions of the web is very important, but it's even more important to be able to think through the logic of a given situation.

Happy web designing!

Website design is becoming an increasingly important topic for all businesses. The online community is growing at a rapid pace each day. As more businesses establish their storefront online, competition is expanding from a local to global market. Now, almost every product is available to research and buy online.

This only heightens the need for every business to have an online presence. While the Internet community is expanding, users are also evolving.

Today, the consumer is savvy and time conscious. While some consumers are looking to research products, many also want the option to buy online. As any business steps into the Internet community they need to ask themselves,

"What can I do to entice consumers to buy from my website?"

It's no secret that building a website is no simple task, but the trick is to set your business apart from the competition. The most important thing to remember is make your site usable and customer friendly.

A time conscious consumer will not expend effort trying to figure out a difficult or complicated website. If you can keep your site usable, customer friendly, and aesthetically pleasing your business will see increased revenue and return on investment.

Listed below are tips to creating an effective, efficient, and profitable website design.

1. Limit graphics: Glitzy graphics are great, but putting too many in a site can slow downloading time for the consumer. While you may have Cable or DSL Internet connections, many customers still use dialup. Also, putting too many graphics in the site can clutter a page and cause confusion.

2. Use casual language: When designing your site, use everyday conversational language. The more relaxed the customer, the greater chance of them buying from you.

3. Make paragraphs short and use bullets: No one likes to read long paragraphs of text. Break up paragraphs and long sentences with lots of bullets. Make the reader's eye flow down the page instead of across. Also use captions to showcase important information. People's eyes are drawn to text that is set apart from the rest.

4. Change the site often: Rotating your content is very important. It not only gives customers a fresh look at your site, but a reason to come back. In addition, rotating content also helps search engine rankings.

5. Place important information at the top of the page: Grab the customer's attention by placing promotions or other key information on the top half of the page. People should never have to scroll to find or read this information.

6. Have contact information visible: It should be easy for customers to contact you with questions or to order products. If they can't find your contact information they will continue shopping but with a competitor. Put your contact information in a visible place such as the navigation bar and header.

7. Don't put too much information on a page: People want to read information about products, but don't provide them with so much they get lost. Give the important facts, features, and benefits in a concise format.

8. Navigation should be visible and simple: Make sure that any customer can easily find what they want to buy. Make section names obvious and descriptive. The more options a customer has to segment products the better. For example, you can allow people to shop by product, brand, price, etc.

9. Online ordering should be simple: Give the customer an easy, fast, and secure way to order products. Make ordering screens simple and only collect necessary information.

By using these guidelines of website design you are sure to have an effective, efficient, and profitable site. It will be effective by giving customers a usable and friendly site to buy from.

The site will be efficient by allowing customers to buy online, freeing you to pursue other opportunities to further your business. Lastly, it will be profitable by providing you not just a local but global customer base.

So you are feeling a bit creative and are ready to sit down and punch out some designs, eh?

What works for me might not work for you, however, this article can hopefully offer you a friendly kick start should you get stuck.

1. Getting started.
So where do you start? If you are like me, work, family, friends, and the daily grind often times takes a hefty toll on your creative side. So how do I get around that? Keep a sketchbook or notepad handy at all times. It is a good idea to sketch our ideas or jot down notes as they come to mind. For example, say you are in a conversation with a friend and an idea comes to mind.

Jot it down on a notepad to develop at a later time. An extreme for some would be to carry your camera with you to various places. Take random shots at work, on your way home, or at the store. You might get some funny looks in the process but the outcome is well worth it.

Use these notes, sketches, and photos to your advantage. Never lose track of a great idea. If you are anything like me, chances are that if you do not make note of that idea, you will not remember when the time comes to create something.

2. Do you have something to say?
One area that I have tried to improve upon is the creation of meaningless graphics. When sitting down to develop a personal image, I first establish a theme or message for that image.

Rather than sit in front of your computer screen being stared down by a blank canvas in Photoshop, it is better to enter the battle armed. Arm yourself with a theme, perhaps something from one of your notes.

When I start off without an idea, searching through stock photos or previous creations, I rarely come up with anything worthwhile. Building on one of your ideas is the better path to take.

3. Power in the music.
I have found music as a great source of inspiration. Not necessarily the lyrics to a song, but more importantly, the mood that the music places me in. Music draws certain embedded emotions out from their comfort zone and places themin the forefront.

Use this to your creative advantage. Try listening to new music, there are more play-lists on the internet than free AOL CD's in the mail right now so finding new music should not be difficult. I have been pleasantly surprised at some of the new music I have listened to that normally I would pass over.

4. Exploration.
Explore what else is "out there" in the design world. By exploring, you will find new sources of creative inspiration. For example, there are numerous bulletin boards available where users post their creations.

Find a couple of people that you admire and keep an eye on them. I have discovered that by examining someone else's work new ideas of my own have come to the surface and I am able to start working. It is important for me to look at all types of art and not to focus on viewing one style. Keep your eyes and your mind open.

5. Environment.
Get a change of pace. Take a walk. Visit a pet store. Change a daily habit. "Look" around you. In my opinion, artists see the world differently than others.

So it is vital that artists see as much as they can, taking in as much as possible. Many times new ideas come to mind just by talking an hour walk later in the evening.

6. Pleasing everyone.
This is impossible. You will never be able to please everyone so do not even attempt it. Who do you design for? That should be your primary goal. If the work is something personal, then what matters most is if you are happy with it.

If the work is for a client, then you must put their wants and needs before your own. Should you worry about what every single person says about your work, it will drive you out of your mind. For example, say you post your work on a bulletin board and someone absolutely rips it apart.

Realize that some people are outright negative and childish in all that they do, so focusing on those morons is not recommended. Pay attention to any and all constructive critique offered and take it into consideration.

Art is subjective so many might not "get" what your goal was. However, consider their suggestion and ask yourself if it really would help your goal.

7. Take a break.
You cannot design 25 hours a day, 8 days a week. Take it from me, you will get burned out faster than you might think. Enjoy your life and do not plan your life around your Photoshop schedule.

Granted, Photoshop is more of a hobby for me, so if your hobby is design, then I expect you to spend more time with it. However, some designers do it for a living and it is important for them, and everyone else, to take their eyes off the screen, at least for a second or two.

Hopefully the above tips can help you along in your creative process. As I said before, what works for me might not work for you, however, you never know what you might be missing by not trying something new.

Designing for any online business is a vital and serious issue as it says a lot about the business, its owners and product or services. It is the thing which keeps a customer on a website and its easiness compels and convinces him to buy a product. So it's important to have a professional look.

No doubt launching a website for small business is a hilly task. To achieve it you better do some research on your needs; the site purpose, the target audience and finally look for skilled website designers, developers and graphic designers or a designing company. There are many different website design companies, offering different facilities. However for gaining an effective internet presence what should be the look of site of small businesses? This article will guide you in understanding the structure for your site specific design. Keep this article as a reference point. When you go through the process of development then check out each part to have an effective web site for your products and services in accordance with your target audience.

Choosing web designer

Don't go by the cheap web design. This will certainly diminish your professional image among potential customers other than financial losses. To have a professional web design, don't compare web designers by their price; always look at your requirements regarding the type of service, internet marketing and updates you needs w.r.t. growth.

Domain Name

Choose simple, short and relevant domain name for your site. Don't get settle down on anything to get your web space as every word on your web site has relevancy in its success. Being a serious online venture you should register it for at least two years. You can get your own domain name by paying as little as $ 17-18 for 2 year registration with ICANN approved sites such as Register . You can find out if the name you want is still available by using the free search tool on the sites.

Web Hosting

Web hosting can be obtained free of cost from content portal sites such as Yahoo! Geocities . Such sites invite users to establish Web sites on their domain in order to create a critical mass of core content on their online property. The user does not have to pay for service because it is subsidized by banner advertising. As they do not charge, they offer limited service depth and relative quality. They do not even provide customized hosting services where domain names are personalized. So, avoid getting lured by the free hosting providers as nothing is really free. It mostly retards the downloading speed of web pages. Even avoid messing around with small time web hosting. Affiliate yourself with a reputable company that provides top-notch service and have the resources to provide fast and reliable servers.

Text Content

Content of the site deserves utmost attention as it's the words that people read, it's the words that call people to action, and it's the words that sell. The rest also helps, but a site with poor content is an as bad as a site without any words.

Keywords

Order to end up high on search engine use the relevant keywords and place them accordingly on a web page. The number of times each word appears on a web page is the factors that determine how high you end up in search results.

Regarding resolution

Sure that your pages should work at any resolution, from 800x600 to 1280x1024 and beyond. Currently the most widely used screen size is 1024 x 768. Of course, the general guideline is to optimize for your target audience's most common resolution, so the size will change in the future. You shall see the statistics for the month of January for the last 2 years provided by w3schools seem to reflect the general trend we are seeing on the Web. Year Higher 1024 x 768 800 x 600 640x 480 Unknown 2007(January) 26% 54% 14% 0% 6% 2006(January) 17% 57% 20% 0% 6%

It's always safer to keep your web site at less than 750 pixels wide as you don't want to alienate your visitors by having them scroll to see the whole page. Make sure that that your web pages show up the same in all web browsers.

HTML Tags

You will have to make sure that your title, description, and keyword meta tags are bang on with the text on each web page you build. The linking structure of your website should have to be good as it's easy for the visitors as well the search robots to understand the details. All of your optimized pages must be linked from the home page itself.

Graphics

It's good to place web graphics in context with the information being presented. If you have product descriptions on your web site, then you should have the related graphic depiction next to them. Avoid using graphic that has no any relation with your text. Overusing graphics will only make the site look amateur. Make sure if you use web graphics as links that they work at all times. There is nothing worse than clicking on a graphic that does not work.

Conclusion

Basic tips for small business website are just the tip of the iceberg. You should also have to provide correct contact information plus regular updating w.r.t. your products; which I already explain in detail in my earlier articles. Web design can make or break your business. So always remember to create a site that is appealing and easy to navigate.

Your website should be like an investment and for that you are certainly going to receive a return.