Archive for the ‘Online Marketing’ Category

These days, everyone is trying to become a Web designer with a relatively simply web design Singapore packages readily available, but is this wise, or is it giving them a headache? If you have the time, the panache, and the vision for your organization’s website, you will have no doubt in designing yourself. But have you ever thought why the visitors are turning off from your website? Well then there are a number of guaranteed ways to turn-off visitors to your web site. Turn-offs generally can be defined as anything that obstructs the user from quick and easy use of your site and so these factors requires special consideration and attention as you either design a site, or revise a site.

Your website is highly important for your online business and you should observe those rules of thumb and avoid common blunders with an eye toward making them less common if you want it to achieve good results. Some of the common mistakes are:

1. Overly wordy web designs that make your website loaded with problems including perception, a comprehension, and a design. It will be wise to slice it down by being brief to drive the online visitor to take action. 

2. Ugly web designs consists of pixilated graphics that were not sized for the screen, a lack of integrated design, and the use of free clip art instead of artwork designed specifically for your pages. 

3. Useless Website- that is your website does not have a point to make, a mission statement of its very own. Your website does not offers excellent content which can be graphics, text or interactive features. 

4. Lack of traffic flow planning is a common flaw in web design, especially inexpert design. A good website is equipped for its user with easy navigation tools effective enough to persuade the user to whip out their credit card, send an email, or download something fascinating. 

5. Lack of tracking features keeps you aloof of the necessary information of whether or not your website is meeting its mission which is very important for the progress of your website. Therefore the tracking feature is the only way to you will be able to measure the level of progress. 

The criteria for good web design Singapore depends upon the person and the purpose of each site and these common mistakes all point to a lack of forethought on the part of the would-be web designer.

written by: Brad smith

With over 15 billion searches being made each month (comScore research) you already know that your small business should own a piece of virtual real estate so it can take advantage of this enormous market place called the internet. But before you race off and slap up a website design, take a moment and think about just what it is you want to accomplish.

Think about it for a minute. If you want to sell directly to a visitor your site is going to look different and function differently than a small local business website that wants to drive traffic to its brick and mortar shop or office. Your website is an extension of your marketing efforts and you should seriously consider just what you want it to do before you start building it.

Here are a few steps to help you out with your website planning.

Website Purpose

As mentioned above, you have to understand why you’re creating the site. Take the time to reduce what you want from the website to writing. Brainstorm with your partners or friends, or even better, with your customers and find out what they would like to see. If you do a good job with this task you’ll end up with an impossibly long list of objectives ranging from lead generation to providing online customer service.

Take that list and prioritize it by importance. Once you’ve done that, look at the top three or four objectives. These will be your primary goals. You’re new at this; don’t try to create the perfect website on your first time out. As you gain experience the website will evolve and at some point you will have covered every item on your prioritized list. The important thing is to get started and if you wait until you have what you think is the perfect design you will have missed out on significant opportunities.

Website Appearance

There is an incredible number of design options that are limited only by your imagination and budget. One way to make choosing a web design plan a bit easier is by doing a little comparison shopping. Visit your competitors’ sites and write down what you like and what you don’t. Go through the same exercise with sites that come up on the first page of a search engine after you enter a query that’s relevant to your business. Pay particular attention to the ease of navigation, number of panels in the layout, color schemes used and the type and placement of graphics, videos and photographs.

Review your list and then sketch out what you would like your home page to look like. Once you’re satisfied with the rough design it’s time to think about building.

Website Platform

A platform is the software that the website resides on. The free platform WordPress has become extremely popular with small businesses because of its built in features that eliminate much of the technical design and development skills required. Of course there are other options as well, some free and some that cost.

Before you make a decision on which platform you’re going to use, do some research and get a feel what other webmasters think of the product. Remember, your site is not going to be a static sales brochure. You’ll be making updates on a regular basis and you want a platform that is not only easy to use but that doesn’t take all day to modify.

If you follow these three steps you should be in a pretty good position to go forward with an actual website design and launch. Remember, these sites are not carved out of granite. As you get experience with traffic you can modify and optimize your design to better achieve your objectives.

Step 1: Know Your User or Client. To begin, an understanding of the most important system or Web site component, the user or client, must be obtained. Understanding people and what they do is a critical and often difficult and undervalued process. The first step in the design process involves identifying people’s innate and learned characteristics, and understanding how they affect design. 

Step 2: Understand the Business Function. A system or Web site must achieve the business objectives for which it is designed. To do so requires an understanding of the goals of the system and the functions and tasks performed. Determining basic business functions, describing user activities through task analysis, understanding the user’s mental model, and developing a conceptual model of the system accomplish this. The system’s conceptual model must fit the user’s view of the tasks to be performed. 

Step 2 also addresses the establishment of design standards or style guides, and the definition of training and documentation needs. 

Step 3: Understand the Principles of Good Interface and Screen Design. A well designed screen must reflect the needs and capabilities of its users, be developed within the physical constraints imposed by the hardware on which it is displayed, and effectively utilize the capabilities of its controlling software. Step 3involves understanding the capabilities of, and limitations imposed by, people, hardware, and software in designing screens and Web pages. It presents an enormous number of general design guidelines for organizing and presenting information to people. 

Step 4: Develop System Menus and Navigation Schemes. Graphical systems and Websites are heavily menu-oriented. Menus are used to designate commands, properties that apply to an object, documents, and windows. To accomplish thesegoals, a variety of menu styles are available to choose from. Step 4 involves understanding how menus are used, and selecting the proper kinds for specific tasks. The principles of menu design are described, and the purpose and proper usage of various menu types are detailed. In these step guidelines for Web site navigation are also presented. Topics addressed include the elements of Web navigation such as links, navigation aids, and search facilities. 

Step 5: Select the Proper Kinds of Windows. Graphical screen design consists of a series of windows. Step 5 involves understanding how windows are used and selecting the proper kinds for the tasks. The elements of windows are described, and the purpose and proper usage of various types of windows are detailed. The step concludes with a discussion of Web browsers. 

Step 6: Select the Proper Interaction Devices. In addition to the keyboard, a system or Web site might offer the user a mouse, trackball, joystick, graphic tablet, touchscreen, light pen, or some other similar device. Step 6 consists of identifying the characteristics and capabilities of these various control mechanisms and providing the proper ones for users and their tasks. 

Step 7: Choose the Proper Screen-Based Controls. The designer is presented with an array of controls to choose from. Selecting the right one for the user and the task is often difficult. But as with interaction devices, making the right choice is critical to system success. A proper fit between user and control will lead to fast, accurate performance. A poor fit will result in lower productivity, more errors, and often user dissatisfaction. Step 7 consists of identifying the characteristics and capabilities of these various screen-based controls and guidelines for providing the proper ones for users and their tasks. Step 8: Write Clear Text and Messages. Creating text and messages in a form the user wants and understands is absolutely necessary for system acceptance and success. Rules for writing text and messages for systems and Web sites are presented. 

Step 8: Write Clear Text and Messages. Creating text and messages in a form the user wants and understands is absolutely necessary for system acceptance and success. Rules for writing text and messages for systems and Website design are presented. 

Step 9: Provide Effective Feedback and Guidance and Assistance. Effective feedback and guidance and assistance are also necessary elements of good design. This step presents the guidelines for presenting to the user feedback concerning the system and its processing status. It also describes the system response times necessary to meet user needs. Step 9 also describes the kinds of guidance and assistance that should be included in a system, and presents important design guidelines for the various kinds. 

Step 10: Provide Effective Internationalization and Accessibility. People from different cultures, and people who speak different languages may use graphical systems and Websites. Guidelines for accommodating different cultures and languages in a design are presented. People with disabilities may also be users. Design considerations for these kinds of users are also described. 

Step 11: Create Meaningful Graphics, Icons, and Images. Graphics, including icons and images, are an integral part of web design. Design guidelines for various types of graphics are presented. Icons are described, including a discussion of what kinds of icons exist, what influences their usability, and how they should be designed so they are meaningful and recognizable. The elements of multimedia presentation are also reviewed. Guidelines presented include those for images, photographs, videos, drawings, animation, and audition. 

Step 12: Choose the Proper Colors. Color, if used properly, can emphasize the logical organization of a screen, facilitate the discrimination of screen components, accentuate differences, and make displays more interesting. If used improperly, color can be distracting and cause visual fatigue, impairing a system’s usability. Step 12 involves understanding color and how to use it effectively on textual and statistical graphics screens, and in Web sites. 

Step 13: Organize and Layout Windows and Pages. After determining all the components of a screen or page, the screen or page must be organized and its elements presented clearly and meaningfully. Proper presentation and organization will encourage the quick and accurate comprehension of information and the fastest possible execution of user tasks. Step 13 addresses the rules for laying out all screen elements and controls in the most effective manner possible. 

Step 14: Test, Test, and Retest. A host of factors must be considered in design and numerous trade-offs will have been made. Indeed, the design of some parts of the system may be based on skimpy data and simply reflect the most educated guess possible. Also, the implications for some design decisions may not be fully appreciated until the results can be seen. Waiting until after a system has been implemented to uncover any deficiencies and make any web design changes can be aggravating, costly, and time-consuming. To minimize these kinds of problems, interfaces and screens must be continually tested and refined as development proceeds. Step 14 reviews the kinds of tests that can be performed, and discusses creating, evaluating, and modifying prototypes in an iterative manner. It also reviews final system testing and ongoing evaluations of working systems.

http://www.leveljam.com

One area where web design Singapore and search engine optimization (SEO) professionals usually butt heads is over the use of images as text instead of actual plain text, usually done in the navigation or other important elements of a web design Singapore. This can cripple an SEO implementation by limiting the effectiveness of elements that could have been textually based, as text is much more effective for interlinking. This is just one area where image alt text can be very useful. 

Alt text — which are found in the “alt” portion of image tag — allows you to add a short descriptor of the image, whether it’s a photograph, a navigational element or some other useful image or graphic. Alt text allows you to describe to users who hover their mouse over an image what they’re seeing, but for SEO, Services, it also gives the search engine more information than the image’s file name might. Optimizing image alt text is a part of any effective on-site SEO campaign, and in this article, we’ll give you some tips on how to optimize alt texts to make them more useful and effective. 

First, if there is text in your image, make sure your alt text matches it precisely. If it’s a one-word image such as menu item, for example, you would include this word in your alt text, as well as possibly a short description of the menu item. This gives the search engine some idea as to what that element is all about. 

Secondly, for pictures and other descriptive images, you want at most a sentence describing what users can see in that picture, and again, it has to match what the picture actually is. Google’s crawlers can’t see images, but humans can, and if one of Google’s engineers see that you’re filling your image alt tags with irrelevant information, it could raise red flags. 

Finally, not every image has to have an alt text in it. You wouldn’t add alt text to transparent spacer images used to align other elements of a page together, for example, but you would add alt text to all important and relevant images on a page. Alt text doesn’t carry the weight of actual readable text in the eyes of the search engines, but it’s better having it than not.

http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_2740.shtml

If you run a serious online business your website is probably the major contributing factor to your success, especially if it’s well-designed, user-friendly and informative. The company website is the prime connection between you and the all-important customer base, upon which every business relies. So it makes sense that everything a person sees on a website should project an image that is consistent with your corporate identity.

In particular, a logo is a visual design element that works as a symbol of a company’s goals, attitude, and target market. It represents a company and, if chosen well, can work wonders for your business. Over time, a well-chosen logo becomes synonymous with your company and will take you a long way. Think of McDonald’s golden arches, or Coca Cola’s famous red and white swirl design, and you’ll understand the power of a logo.

When designing your website and trying to select a fitting logo, there are many features to consider, so take the time to find just the right one – it’ll be worth it. Remember: a good logo works simultaneously to convey a professional first impression to new customers and strengthen brand loyalty in returning ones.

First, decide what kind of logo suits your business best. Some companies make use of text-based logos, for example. With this type of logo a unique look is achieved by creating a distinctive font and color combination that sets it apart – this is called a type treatment.

Another type of logo illustrates exactly what the company does through graphic representation. For instance, if your business sells ice cream your logo might be the picture of a triple-scoop ice cream cone. This type of logo works well for businesses that can be easily summed up in a specific piece of imagery.

Lastly, a logo can be abstract. It could be a curly line, a shape or something in that vein, which represents the company brand. This type of logo takes time and money to be effective, as it starts off meaning nothing – only when a company grows and becomes more well-known can this type of logo come to symbolize the product you are selling. For the start-up company looking to gain exposure and break into the business world, a logo that clearly sums up your business is probably a better choice.

The process of choosing a logo

Selecting an appropriate logo will take some time and effort, but it is this crucial initial investment that will ensure your company’s logo will do its job over the long term. You might start off by brainstorming about the image your company represents, or the message you want to express to the public. This will help you focus on what’s important about your company’s product and come up with an apt visual representation of all it stands for.

Next, check out the competition to discover what you’re up against. What logos do other businesses in your field use? Are they professional and formal or creative and flashy? Once you determine the image your competitors have established, seek to differentiate your own logo and separate yourself from the crowd. If your logo and corporate identity differ from everything else on the Internet, people will want to see what you’re all about.

Keep it simple. Don’t go overboard when choosing a logo because this is always a big turnoff. Keep your logo crisp, clean, focused and easy-to-understand. It should also be functional and focus on the overall feel of your website and company in general.

Also consider how your business benefits your target market. Why do you provide the best product or service online? If you can convey this message easily and clearly through a graphical logo go ahead and do so. If your customers recognize your logo and associate it with the main crux of your product, they will bring you repeat business time and time again.

Choose a logo that looks good in black and white. Colors are great, but when you need to send faxes or make photocopies the company logo needs to show up strong and clear for everyone to see.

Whatever you do, stay away from clipart. Even if you want to avoid the high costs of hiring a professional designer, there are better ways to create a memorable logo that will last you for years to come. Many design companies, for example, sell logos for discounted prices that you can use as is or manipulate to suit your specific needs.

Finally, don’t choose a logo that follows the latest trends. A logo is something you should expect to last a very long time, as it will come to stand as a symbol for the quality and trustworthiness of your name. You don’t want it to look outdated in a few years and have to change it entirely. Loyal customers look for a familiar logo and don’t take too kindly to logo changes.