Posts Tagged ‘Website Design Tips’

Professional Website Design Tips

Thursday, August 19th, 2010

Why do online businesses fail to get traffic to their online storefront? Why do webmasters fail? Is it because of poor web design, getting the cheapest web hosting, or failing to do online marketing? Many websites fail from the very beginning because the webmaster is new to the industry. If you’re new, you will do just fine. I have a lot of tips and tricks that I can tell you to get you started on the right foot. This is an opportunity you should not pass up. Follow my basic tips and use these tips to get the results you need. If you don’t have a web site online, you might want to hire a professional website design company to help you with all the details.

Can streamlining your website help you? Sure it can! When you start an online website your focus should be on the streamlining process of new online products and offering affordable services. However, your key focus should be on developing new content and don’t worry about product and service pages just yet. It will all fall together. Furthermore, when you start creating good content web pages, consider mapping them out on paper for the best results. Structure your web-pages to make sense to visitors and search engines like Google. Start with a sheet of paper and write down broad keywords that would make a good navigation. Next, use specific keywords for your sub-navigation pages.

Why should you design a website around content? Don’t worry, even the professionals can’t get this concept right! When you design a new website your objective is to focus on publishing new content. In my experience, this is by far the best way to design and create a website. Web design is not only about making a website look good but also about creating unique content for visitors. For instance, you should publish between one and five new article each week. Next, you should tell people about your new content using social networks, blogs, or send emails to get the word out. You can also use twitter or article marketing to tell others about your website. Twitter is the best way to keep people up-to-date.

What are the best ways to generate online traffic? I suggest using about 5 to 10 different online marketing sources that will improve your traffic 300% or more! This will also depend on your marketing and offline advertising. For example, not only do I advertise offline, I also join social networks, blogs, and community groups to promote my products and services. You should do the same! Why not? Everyone else is doing it. Google AdWords is another great place to advertise and promote your products and services. Moreover, publishing advertising in a local newspaper is more traditional but it gets the job done!

Are you playing chess, or checkers? If you remember nothing else; remember what I am going to tell you now, web design is not to make your website look amazing. Web design is to be user-friendly and provide a solution to your visitors problems. Stop changing and wasting time on your home page and start creating meaningful content that helps your users. I’m not saying you can’t re-design your home page. However, most of your time should be spent publishing new content. It is far more important to focus on your central message then to try to impress the user with flash and other design stuff. Lastly, it’s a business and not a hobby. If it is a hobby, you should consider making your website a business.

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Designing A New Website From A PSD Image File

Wednesday, March 17th, 2010

For those of you who are new to website design and need to know how to make a functioning website out of a Photoshop designed image file, this is the article for you. This is not a technical explanation which outlines each of the steps involved but instead just a quick & dirty explanation of the task at hand so as to get you pointed in the right direction so you’ll understand what needs to be done with your PSD image file.

In order for you to be able to use this PSD image as one of your website pages it will first need to be converted into a web ready format. There are several different types of web formats that you can convert your PSD file into such as HTML, XHTML, Joomla, and others. The most commonly used web formatting language, however, is HTML and more recently XHTML. Converting your PSD file into a valid HTML or XHTML file (sometimes referred to as a “coded markup”) will allow it to function as an actual web page.

Ok, so how do you convert it? Well, you have 3 options. Convert it by hand coding yourself (this requires “slicing” the image up into sections while inside of Photoshop, then exporting those slices into separate files, and then hand coding an html and css file from scratch that will properly configure your slices and pages so that when finished it all looks exactly like the original image). If your head has just fallen into your hands (and I’m assuming if you’re still reading this it probably has) then this is not likely to be the option of choice for you. Your 2nd option is also not well suited for the faint hearted beginner, although a bit easier than the first, and that is… you can actually purchase software that will help you to convert the image. You’ll still have to do a fair amount of setup and configuring before the software will actually convert it but the steep learning curve can be handled easily enough as long as you have the time available and are already comfortable working with image files, layers and some light html or web page editing programs. While this type of software can be expensive and time consuming you may consider it being cost effective if you plan on having to do this more than once for more than just a single page or website.

Your other option is to just hire a PSD to HTML service to do the conversion for you. There are literally dozens of small companies and individuals you can easily find on the internet today who are well skilled at performing these types of conversions. Prices will be varied and are typically indicative of how technically difficult your particular project is (such as java or flash features being built in, etc.). Some will offer to code it by hand and others will use software, and some will use both depending upon the project. Average costs for taking this route will probably range from about $50 per page to more than $200 per page.

At least now, you have a better understanding of what needs to be done in this situation and where you might need to begin looking to get your project completed. While image based web designs can be a bit of a pain to deal with due to the conversion factor and other maintenance related challenges, they also tend to make some of the most visually attractive presentations and can help to make your site more popular.

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