Web Design Los Angeles

Archive for November, 2011

Web Design is such a commonly used term these days and is used in several different contexts. It can be defined as the process of designing a web page. Web Design is a multi step process and often requires strong creative and analytical skills to produce good material.

Web Design can be broken into the following concepts, which collectively form the basis of designing a web site:

Usability Analysis Wireframes Visuals Interactive Elements

Usability Analysis

This is the process of analyzing the user experience on a website. To provide a higher quality of user experience, designers with extensive background in creating successful websites on the Internet are must on the project. During this phase the goals and objectives of the website to be designed, are carefully examined and items on the web page are marked with priorities. This helps in creating an effective layout to draw the user to certain parts of the web page with higher emphasis compared to the other areas of lesser importance. Usability analysis lays the foundation for the design and is followed by wireframes described in the following paragraph.

Wireframes

Wireframes can be visualized as laying tiles on a blank sheet. These individual tiles would contain the various static and dynamic elements of the web page. During this step the viewing area of a web page is divided into blocks of different sizes, with each block containing the basic layout scheme for the items enclosed within those blocks. This process is extremely important and follows the outcome of the usability analysis. Various elements of the page are assigned their respective real estate and design plan creating overall layout of the web page.

Visuals

Each block of the wireframe is polished with appealing visuals during this process. Having a well-defined style guide is very useful before creating the visuals. This helps with keeping consistent color schemes and fonts. Creative skills combined with thorough knowledge of using designing software are essential to complete this step of the process. Several color effects, font variations, shapes etc. are creating during this phase and the design goes through several iterations before it is finalized.

Interactive Elements

Creating interactive elements goes side by side with the visuals but it is important to understand the difference between visuals and interactive elements. Interactive elements are the elements of a web page that make it interactive. A few simple examples would be sliders, pop-ups, forms, drop down menus etc. Designing an interactive element requires a solid understanding of the functional aspect of a web page along with powerful creative skills.

This article provides very basic understanding of the web design process and can serve as a good starting point for beginners interested in becoming a web designer.

The most commonly used software for designing web pages is Adobe Photoshop. Dreamweaver is another very useful software that is used to convert the Photoshop designs into the HTML version of the design.

To design a web page you must begin by making sure that you are absolutely clear, in your own mind, what the function of that page is. Is it to sell something, is it get people to sign up to your membership site, newsletter or free report or mini course?

Once the function of the page has been established then please make careful note of the following ‘must do’ web page design basics.

You begin by establishing what keyword phrase is the focus of your page. Let’s assume it’s ‘how to grow roses’ The page name should be http://www.yourwebsitename.com/how-to-grow-roses.html. The title of your page should be, or should at the very least include, ‘how to grow roses’. The phrase ‘how to grow roses’ should appear in the first paragraph and once or twice in every 100 words of your page text. Avoid using lots of different fonts. I use a maximum of two and rarely anything other than Arial, Tahoma and Verdana. Don’t use anything fancy, gimmicky or difficult to read fonts – obvious? – you would be amazed. Keep paragraphs short – no more than two sentences. Remember to solve the readers problem, it’s all about what’s in it for them, what benefit will they gain from using your product or service. They are not particularly interested in you, your company or how wonderful you think your product is. Forget ‘me’ and ‘I’, concentrate on ‘you’ and ‘yours’ Avoid jokes and too much humour. The odd light hearted remark is OK but you do not know the person you are ‘talking’ too therefore you know nothing about their sense of humour or what offends them. Always design a webpage in ‘American’ English. Make sure that your headline is an ‘H1′ tag. This tells the search engines what the page is all about. To design a web page with long copy is fine if you are going for the immediate sale. If you are just after their name and email address keep it fairly short and to the point. Use a numbered list, check marks or bullet points to get across your main points, they are very effective. Good quality graphics and pictures are essential. A good source of good quality, inexpensive pictures is iStockphoto. Use question marks, exclamation marks, highlighting, bolding, italics and underlining but don’t over do it. Search engines can’t ‘read’ graphics or pictures, in other words if your keyword phrase is part of some specially created image it will not register with the search engines. If you have an ‘opt-in’ box on your page try to have it ‘above the fold’ and please don’t have the button marked ‘submit’ – sounds awful – ‘Yes-Sign Me Up’, ‘Send Me My Gift’ or even ‘Click Here’ is better. To design a web page is like any other skill, it can be learned. If you really do want to make money online from home a web page that doesn’t follow the above guide lines will be less effective and therefore less profitable.

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Your web site should reflect the business or services it offers. It should provide easy navigation for the visitor and the message should be clear. The graphics should be small so the page loads quickly (some people still have older browsers) and further more there should be some basic information on you that should be on your site.

Your mission statement, services, and products. Provide enough information to not leave the visitors guessing or questioning you. Have an “About us” section, here provide information on the staff, team, qualifications along with any other information that you feel will better connect you with the visitor. Express why they should choose you.

List what sets you apart from the others and provide testimonies of past customers if possible. This allows the visitor to feel more at ease knowing that “real” people have had both negative and positive results from using you. Provide all the contact to include phone numbers, email address, hours of operations, fax numbers. This provides the customers a way to reach you should they have further questions or concerns. If possible, have a search tool or a site index.

A site index provides a list of what is on the site. A search tool will allow the visitor to search by keywords or sentences for particular information.

All of these combined will increase an easy to view site and that will make visiting a happier experience for those who come and visit. Use these simple suggestions and your site will have satisfied visitors.