Web Design Criteria

Web Design Criteria

There are many facets of web design that are important to implement. A website should keep the viewers’ attention. It should not be something that is as simple as copy and pasting elements into the web page. This is why it is important for professionals to do it. They went through numerous classes and certifications to provide clients a website that they can be proud of. Below are some things to think about when building a web page.

Content: Whether it is an e-commerce site or a personal website, the information should be as clear and concise as possible. Portraying information is one of the hardest things to do because you don’t want to sound overly pretentious or overbearing. You also want to be professional.

Appearances: The appearance of the website, or layout, is important because someone can overdo the design aspect of it. Overloading the web page with graphics doesn’t necessarily make a good website.

It only showcases the fact that the person building the website knows how to implement graphics.

Navigation: Regardless of the site, it should be easily navigable. Also, information on the site should be easy to find.

Search Engine: I’m not merely talking about regular SEO; I’m referring to VSEO, which works in exactly the same context as SEO. Your site should be visible on search engines. If it’s not it becomes very difficult for traffic to get to your website. Approximately 80 percent of people find what they’re looking for via search engines.

A Dallas web design company should be familiar with these concepts. Without these techniques, websites would not get the recognition they deserve.

Does Your Web Design Agency Understand Your Business?

Does Your Web Design Agency Understand Your Business?
It’s always difficult combining creativity with business. For creative designers, their primary concern is how something looks. For business people, it’s all about how something performs. So if you’re talking to a web design agency about updating your website, how do you know that your creative team understands your business needs?

Bums on seats, clicks into conversions

The first role of a website is to give your business an online presence that encourages unique and return visitors to visit your virtual ‘store’. Getting them to stay on your site and not bounce to a rival after a few seconds is a tough job – in fact, just getting them through the door in the first place can often seem like an uphill struggle. Your web design agency’s first role is to create a website that not only attracts human visitors, but the search engine ‘bots as well, because without a good Google ranking your website is effectively shunted to a side alley with no passing traffic.

So a web design agency has to have a good understanding not just of design concepts, but how business works too. They have to work on the idea that design facilitates business, acts as a ‘display cabinet’ for a business’s products and services and has to portray those in a way that appeals to both human visitors and the search engines. The two concepts are not, in fact, separate entities but two halves of the same whole.

The role of SEO in design

A web design agency doesn’t just design the layout of your page. They have to integrate SEO or search engine optimisation into the concept, as search these days isn’t just about keywords. Web browsers now allow people to search on images as well as keywords, so the visual content of your website is almost as important as the content copy. Clean pages that are clearly road-mapped for easy navigation, engaging copy and a strong SEO element are all now part of the design process. A web design agency that can demonstrate a good understanding of these concepts is an agency that will produce successful web design and consequently, successful websites for their customers.

What’s your part in this?

Designers need a starting point to bring an idea to life. So one of the first things any good web design agency will do is sit down with you and find out about your business. If they understand your business, they will be able to understand your ultimate goal and the kind of message you want to deliver. Once they have a firm grasp of your business focus, they will then be able to create a website that puts this message across in a way that entices and engages visitors. So you need to be prepared to take part in the creative process, rather than just leaving it to the designers. It’s a two-way partnership that is dependent on an exchange of ideas.

Good website design is a synergy of creativity and business acumen. Your web design agency should be able to bring both to the table, and in turn you have to take the time to understand what the limitations of website design are, what a site can and can’t achieve and how this interaction works between business partners. Choose wisely and you have a business partner that invests time and effort into your concepts, bringing them to life.

Web Development versus Web Design

Web Development versus Web Design

There are many people in the virtual world web development claiming to be the same as the web design. In fact, both terminologies are very different from each other and the following highlights the difference between them.

The difference can be obvious if one focuses on the words “development” and “design.” Web development refers to development of the website to perform best, while web design is only on the design of the website with the help of the best available technology.

Web development involves studying the behavior of potential consumers, the design of the website, using the latest technology, user-friendly design and simple, browser compatibility, the implementation of strategies for search engine optimization, inviting to most traffic, conversion of clicks into customers, money transactions, and ultimately customer satisfaction.

Web design is just about how to make a beautiful design, attractive to the buyer and illustrated with images that have no more effect on discharge rate of the website.

We can say that web design is a vital aspect of web development, plays a crucial role in the effectiveness of the website, but is not synonymous with web development as well as web design, web development, covers other aspects as well.

Technological advances such as content management systems (CMS) and programming languages such as PHP 5. 2 and Action Script 3.0 (AS 3.0) have given new dimension to web development. The CMS provides the web developer to easily manage web page content and data is crucial for both the buyer and seller. web development concerns not only the creation of a customized Web page, but also make the necessary changes to the website to increase your return on investment. Web development is not just about taking into account consumer behavior, but also the behavior of spiders and crawlers of search engines.

Web development is on the overall performance of the website in the virtual world of the Internet in web design, it is just how beautiful it is the web site and its ease of navigation. Factors that influence the development site are much more numerous than those that affect web design. With changing technologies, these factors also increase. This shows that web development requires more effort, plus costs and in-depth knowledge required to design web. Web design stops when the website is hosted on the Internet, but web development, it never ends because the development of technologies affecting web hosting services provider, and the strategies of search engine optimization.

We can say that web design is a part of web development, web development, but is not part of web design.

Professional Web Design, Professional Web Designer

Professional Web Design, Professional Web Designer

There is a lot to consider if you are looking for a Professional Web Design. So let’s get to it. First and for most there are a lot of web design companies out there that promise true results with a Professional Web Design. A lot of it is just plain old Bull! A good Professional Web Designer will come highly recommended and not be afraid to let you see and speak with their clients. If you can’t get a referral then move on to the next professional web designer. Next is how many sites have they actually completed? I they can’t produce a complete site that is easily found on Google, Yahoo, and Bing then once again take a hike buddy! The next big issue to tackle when considering Professional Web Design is how are they at marketing your site? If you purchase a website and then it can’t be found in the search engines than what’s the point, right?

Now that we have the basics out of the way let’s look at some key terms that will help you understand better your site should have.

First is the term SEO(Search Engine Optimization). SEO is defined as the process of improving ranking in search engine results. That means if your web site sells office furniture that if it type in “office furniture” into Google, Yahoo, or Bing that your site comes up on page one and not page 100. The next term is SERP (Search Engine Results Page) this is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. The results normally include a list of web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page. A SERP may refer to a single page of links returned, or to the set of all links returned for a search query.

Ok now that you have a little knowledge let’s talk about what a good professional web design can actually do for your business and what it should cost.

A good web site should be submitted to the top search engines i.e. Google, Yahoo, Bing, Altavista, Ask, AOL and so on. Next your home page should have a proper description in the meta tag inside the HTML code. Not just any old description but a relevant one. Also your keywords should be relevant in the meta tag as well. The cost should be around 1500.00 to 2k for a basic website that is no more than 6 pages and should include a blog if desired as well as be build for SEO. The site -should require a separate marketing package for SEO. This should be around 250.00 per month to 500.00 per month. You should be given your statistics at least twice a month so you can see your sites performance. Call Lighthouse Design Solutions today for a free consultation at 972-955-9236.

Web Design – Principal Elements

Web Design – Principal Elements
The six basic elements of a good web design are: the simplicity, the visual balance, the proportion, the contrast, the fluidity and the harmony.

Let’s start to talk about the simplicity, which is the most important principle when we talk about web design. Visitors should not struggle too hard if you hide the information from menu after menu than Visitors consider here is no more information, you will only frustrate your visitors or you will oblige them to move to something else (click, click, click, click, click, forget it!). If possible try to use “three clicks rule”, which means that no information should be more than three clicks away. But the World Wide Web wants to make things simpler and it also wants more accessible public information. That is important.

The visual balance is the most important principle when we talk about web design. To create a balance from the beginning to the end, it is required that any Web page should have a header and footer section; this creates visual parts of your site and it makes it easier to navigate in. Many inexperienced designers feel the need to fill every pixel of information. In print, this is called ink density. What’s more, the colour shade should be the same. In addition to that, do not underestimate the value of white spaces. Each element of web design (pictures, texts, white spaces) has an optical influence.

Another important principle of web designing is the proportion. It is more pleasing for the eye to view a rectangle in a proportion than a perfect square. For some reason, the human eye tends to favour the different proportions of length and width.

The contrast is very simple to explain the public will come to a close to listen if you shout from the beginning be sure someone will pay attention if you just whisper and suddenly shout really loudly. Other advice would be to avoid using a single type of “treatment” for your text. For example: use either bold or italics but you are advised not to use both of them together. Another mistake is to create very dense text documents ignoring the inclusion of white spaces; it makes the readers see a gray wall.

Be careful also about the fluidity. The visitors tend to scan pages quickly first and then decide to read what interests them. The first looks are fixed on unusual forms and then the visitors begin to analyse the text. A good web page leads the visitor to the desired point.

Last, but not least, your site should be balanced. In other words, your pages need to compliment each other, to show that they belong together. You can do this keeping the same elements and the same structure on each page of the site

The six key elements of web design are equally important and harmonize each other. If you want to create the desired visitor experience that you should keep a balance of all these elements.