Website design is what determines the look and feel of your website. It is what forms the first impression of your website for visitors coming to your site. A good website design is one which is easy to use, easy to navigate, easy to understand and read, and also attractive. By attractive we don’t mean you need to put in lots of graphics and animations, even a simple site like Google can be termed as attractive. The important point to remember is that the site should not be cluttered with too many things as it can take the focus away from your content which is what you are trying to convey.

Importance of good website design

The debate between website design and content is a never ending one. While some feel that content is the main part of a website, others are of the opinion that it is the design which holds more importance. The answer is that both are required for a successful website. If the design is not good then your visitors will not even look at your content, and if the content is lacking then the visitors will never come back. A good website design is what compels the visitor to read what you have to say and forms the first impression of your site.

Planning before website designing

It is important that you put in time to plan the website design strategy before starting work on it. The website design should be decided keeping in mind the field the website is related to and the target audience. For instance, a site for business executives needs to portray a professional look with an uncluttered, minimal, and attractive design. On the other hand, a site aimed at kids needs to be full of color, graphics, and maybe even music. Accordingly, you need to give proper importance to the browser and settings you are designing your website for. Any site which incorporates horizontal scrolling is difficult to navigate and not liked by many people, thus you may be alienating a large percent of your traffic. Cross browser compatibility is another issue to be looked into during the planning phase. Also remember to keep the design consistent between the different pages of the site.

Use of color and graphics in Website design

One of the most important though not so obvious aspects of your website design is the background color and the color scheme you use for the site. For instance, a white background conveys a more professional look, lets you experiment with different color schemes, and is best suited for professional sites. However, for an artist wanting to display his or her work the color may be too dull and they should try different colors. Black is often chosen by those daring to be different, and if you have say a rock n roll band then it may be a good option for you. Graphics are a great way to make your site look attractive, but remember too many of them on one page can make the page look cluttered apart from increasing the time the page takes to load. The same rule applies to animations as well.

About the Author

Aidan Doran is a freelance author who writes about various technology realated subjects. For more information about aidan visit his website www.techstore.ie.

Broadly speaking, a webpage consists of two major elements �" copy and design. While the copy has to be accurate and engaging, the design needs to be impressive enough to attract visitors. Even before the design work starts, any web design company would first need to make the decision on the appropriate colour strategy to be used.

Most people who are not directly involved in web design tend to think that designers choose colours as per their whims and fancies. This is not at all true. There are a whole lot of concepts that go into selecting the colour scheme for a website.

To start with, even if the copy is well written, yet the choice of the right font can make a significant difference to the readability. The font colour has to be carefully selected to ensure that the copy is readable as well as visually appealing.

The target audience is another factor that affects the choice of colours. A corporate website, for instance, would contain sober and professional looking colours. While a lifestyle website targeted to youth might include jazzy and bright colours.

The colour scheme is most often decided based upon the brand assets of the company. Most good organisations have specific colour codes that they use upon all their communications including brochures, catalogues as well as websites. In such cases, the designers have little choice in deciding upon colours, except for choosing the right combinations. Here again, what matters is the skill and conceptual knowledge of the designer while selecting the right colour combinations that engage the audience.

One important point that must be remembered is that the colours and designs on a website are not mere eye candy. In fact, the communication is complete when copy and design work in tandem to create the right affect. This is indeed an important concept for any web design company.

About the Author

Jack Albert is a dedicated writer writes for NetProphets Cyberworks, which develops CRM Applications also one of the best Application Development in india.

 

Many a times, website designing is confused with website development. Though both seem to be the same thing, they are quite different in approach, technique and style. Website designing is all about making websites look more attractive, pleasing and approachable. Several website designing firms in UK and also around the world have created a number of stunning website designs. They have made use of the latest technologies and trends in order to make these websites different from the rest.

The field of web site designing in UK has changed leaps and bounds. The web designers these days are more focused and much better trained in the field than before. Technological up-gradation has become a regular affair in the field. As soon as a new technology is introduced, it is learnt and implemented in the designing of these websites.

The advantage that the UK website designing companies have over the rest is that they always focus on experience. The more experienced a designer, the better polished are its skills. An experienced designer is always in a better position to comment on the website designs and his work is also quite professional in nature. Before selecting a web site designing company to design a project it is important to have a look at their previous projects this will give a fair idea of their designing style.

A professional website designing UK based firm, promises to be available to the clients 24X7. Meaning they will either be available through emails, chat or phone anytime and you can get your query resolved in some time only. These website designing companies, are extremely professional in their approach. They not only draft the first layout of your website in some 4-5 days and ask for your consent, rather they also keep coming back to you with the modifications and major changes that keep taking place one after another.

The approach that these website designing companies have towards web site creation is quite different from what we are accustomed with. For them website designing is a professional work and needs to be done professionally too. The creativity and technical part of website designing is finely blend with profession to give an extremely satisfying piece of work.

About the Author

Naman Jain is an Online marketing professional, Presently working with Rupiz Media, one of the leading Internet marketing company, providing Search engine marketing services,ecommerce website design and web development solutions as well.

 

A Cascading Style Sheet is a set of rules that specify how a HTML document should be presented.

Cascading Style Sheets are used to format HTML. You should have at least a basic understanding of HTML before starting to learn CSS.

There are three types of style sheet: external, internal, and inline. Cascading Style Sheets get their name from the hierarchy assigned to them. The inline style sheet has the highest priority when formatting the HTML, followed by the internal style sheet, and finally the external style sheet. This means that if there are conflicting values in an inline style sheet and an external style sheet for example, only the style defined within the inline style sheet will be applied (the rest of the external style sheet will be applied as normal however).

The only major difference between style sheets is their location in relation to the document. Inline style sheets are contained within the specific element's tags, and will be only be applied to that element. Internal style sheets are included between the head tags of the document, and will only be applied to the elements within that specific document. External style sheets are separate .css documents that are applied to elements in pages that they are linked to. This makes them very useful for applying the same style to different documents. The link to the external style sheet is included in the head tags.

The CSS structure is comprised of 3 components: the selector, the property and the value. The selector defines which HTML element is being formatted. The property defines what aspect of the HTML element needs to be changed. The value specifies how the aspect will be changed.

The selector is defined first, followed by the property and the value contained between curly braces and separated by a colon, like so: Selector{property:value}

For example, if we wanted to define a 2 pixel border for all the tables in a document:

Table{border-width:2px}

Note: the word "attribute" is often used instead of "property".

The structure is slightly different for inline style sheets, as they are specific to the element in which they are contained; there is no need for the selector or the curly braces. If we wanted to define a 2 pixel border for one specific table, the tag would look like this

<'table style="border-width:2px">

(An apostrophe has been included after the starting tag to avoid being recognized as HTML).

Once you know the structure of CSS, all you need to know is the different selectors, properties and values. You define your own selectors using classes and IDs. An ID is unique and can only be used once in a document, whereas you can classify any number of elements in a document using classes. Remember not to start the name of your ID or class by a number as this not supported by some browsers. There is also a 'wildcard' selector: the asterisk *.

If you are interested in learning more about CSS, there are many good resources online.

About the Author

Webmaster of Ertharnia.com

 

With millions of websites on the Internet it is easy for a website to be lost in the rubble, irrespective of the size or esthetic design of a website. But if your website really has something to offer, and gives out something of value to people, good traffic is bound to enter and one can get appreciation for our website. What is the use of a website if it doesn't get good and enough visitors? Investments in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques can put any website on an active mode and gradually fulfill business / organizational objectives by getting the right traffic and can even trigger a growth in your business that was unexpected. Link building is one of the major SEO techniques.

Search engines like Google look at the incoming links to your website to evaluate and rank your website. No wonder there was frenzy among the SEO specialists a few years back to buy and exchange links from all types of websites in the name of "link building". I know some sites that spent a lot of money to get thousands of links overnight. It was easy for the search engines to find out all those who used such cheap and black SEO tactics. Today there are many once respectable websites who have had their page ranks sliced down and penalized. Thus it is always better to use safe and a more natural link building tactic. Here is a list of some of link building solutions/tactics for increasing the number of quality links and ensuring a good web presence.

• Submit website to web directories
• Appropriate niche blogging
• Article marketing
• Advertise website online
• Social book marking
• Use feeds
• Forum marketing
• Exchanging links with other websites
• Use yahoo answer site
• Appropriate outbound linking to good authoritative sites
• Buying links for money
• Sponsor some thing for free on website (like graphics / themes etc)
• Request direct link from an authority site
• PPC advertising
• Be an authority on your subject
• Content must be relevant
• Competition website research/ analyze
• Community linking
• Automated link building
• Offline advertisement/backup essential
• Offline public relation/ site promotion
• Get links from trusted websites like government or university sites

About the Author

The author of this article is Ricci Mathew of Outsource Strategies International (OSI), a US based company that offers services in Search Engine Optimization, SEM, PPC advertising for clients across the US.