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How to tell if what you want is what you need?

Often the use of photography, huge bright images, a lot of decoration or visual effects are taken as a synonym for sale on a website (client’s main purpose). However, if not used with some brake this “plus” can be transformed into a “minus”, a big “minus”.

How to know which is the correct path? A skilled web designer knows that every project is a project but there are also a number of items that make the ideal base for a good creation & development:

I present to u a table with several Do’s & Dont’s in terms of thinking and designing a website. Who knows, maybe it will help you decide what’s best for you, and most importantly…what’s not.

Following the concept of this post:
Do share your thoughts with us, we would appreciate it very much.
Don’t stop visiting us, we promise we will do our best to deliver good and actual information to you.

See you next post with more trends, tips or issues about the world of Web Design.

Source:
webdesignledger.com

Introduction:

“What exactly is the goal of your home page?“

It is the first contact that you have entering a website, and can create a good or bad impression that will affect how people see the company or the major idea behind the purpose of it. If the purpose of the website is to sell something, or render a service, the home page design can cause the success or the failure of your business.

So it’s critical to have a strong and directional home page to accomplish our goals, for that in this post we’ll see some of the web design tips to improve your Homepage effectiveness and success.

1st Giving answers:

You have 4 main questions that need to be answered before you begin the design process:

- What is this site about?

- What it has to offer?

- Were can I go next?

- Why this site is better than another?

And also you can think of 3 different types of people visiting your home page:

- 1st time visitors

- Repeat visitors

- 1st time or repeat visitors reorienting themselves within your site

After responding all the questions above you can now establish the website “personality”, this means by doing so you’ll have a better idea how your website is going to be seen by the normal user.

Resolve the website “Personality”

For that use adjectives, I’m going to describe this website and joint down a list of adjectives to describe it. These adjectives will help me set the personality and drive the look and determinate the feel of the home page.

Example:www.pkarch.com

- Clean

- Professional

- Minimalistic

- Cool

- Refreshing

- Confident

The way you place your contents and the writing style you use reflects the website “personality”.

The tone and your choice of words should reflect the “personality” you want for you website. For example, a website for a Bank is going to much more formal than that for Music Store.

How do users think?

• Users appreciate quality and credibility. If a page provides users with high-quality content, they are willing to compromise the content with advertisements and the design of the site. “Content is more important than the design which supports it.”

• Users don’t read, they scan. Analyzing a web-page, users search for some fixed points or anchors which would guide them through the content of the page.
To learn and see how the user navigates your site you have software’s that can evaluate the website hot spot’s and more.

This video is an example of one of those programs:Eye Tracking Demo

• Web users are impatient and insist on instant gratification. Very simple principle: If a web-site isn’t able to meet users’ expectations, then designer failed to get his job done properly and the company loses money.

• Users don’t make optimal choices. Users don’t search for the quickest way to find the information they’re looking for. Neither do they scan web-page in a linear fashion, going sequentially from one site section to another one. As soon as they find a link that seems like it might lead to the goal, there is a very good chance that it will be immediately clicked.

• Users follow their intuition. In most cases users muddle through instead of reading the information a designer has provided.

• Users want to have control. Users want to be able to control their browser and rely on the consistent data presentation throughout the website.

Manage to focus users’ attention.

As web-sites provide both static and dynamic content, some aspects of the user interface attract attention more than others do. Obviously, images are more eye-catching than the text – just as the sentences marked as bold are more attractive than plain text.

Focusing users’ attention to specific areas of the site with a moderate use of visual elements can help your visitors to get from point A to point B without thinking of how it actually is supposed to be done.

Example:www.sumitpaul.com

The home page should be different from the rest of the site.

By sharing the same layout as the rest of the website you’ll turn your website boring, at the same time if the homepage serves a different purpose, why should it look the same as the others pages, you have to have a importance scale and at the top it should be the homepage, making the first good impression.

Homepage

Example:www.kissmeimpolish.com

Internal page

Example:www.kissmeimpolish.com/our-work

Give users what they’re looking for.

Have shortcuts to useful content. People want to have a quick navigation and you can use links to direct people attention to your most popular content, allowing a great navigation experience for the user. The Mozilla Europe website is a perfect example of that.

Example:www.mozilla-europe.org

Don’t overload your home page.

Your homepage must be appealing, so don’t cram it with tons of information that will make people disperse and they will not focus on the your main issues. Also the homepage must opens quickly our people don’t bother to wait for it to load correctly, the less they have to process the better.

This information was gathered in many blogs, here are some of them and also related articles:

www.sixrevisions.com

www.smashingmagazine.com

www.vanseodesign.com

www.bolducpress.com

www.psd.tutsplus.com

www.siteinspire.net

At Microsoft Live Labs they are all about experiments, and Pivot is one of the most ambitious to date.

“Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web.

Although trends don’t start and stop on January 1st, there is a definite change from what we had seen in the last year (2009) and what we will see this year (2010). Most of the time, this shift is subtle. It’s a perfection or re-interpretation of a currently hot trend, a new esthetic or a way too look at old designs and give them a new twist. As designers master the skills of design aesthetic, web design continues to push forward to what’s next or what needs to be fully discovered and experienced.

“With the new CSS3 and HTML5, designers and developers are trying to utilize the new features to create impressive designs. Sketchy and large background styles are fading out. Serif fonts and texturized background will be popular. Thanks to CSS3, we are going to see a lot of rounded corners, RGBA transparency, and drop shadows. With the rise of smart phones, mobile web design is going to pick up this year.”

@: www.webdesignerwall.com

Let´s know see some of the trends to 2010:

Big Headings

Big headings in header (as part of design interface) will gain more popularity in 2010, giving the top of the web-pages more importance.

Example: www.blackestate.co.nz

Serif Fonts

Most of the web sites that we see today were designed in either “Verdana, Arial or Tahoma” (sans-serif fonts), but that is going to change in this new decade. Serif fonts will get more attention. Not to difficult our reading but to bring new context to word’s and their true meaning, used very often in titles, phrases our citations.

Example: www.legistyles.com

Texturized Background

The big background trend is going to be gradually out-of-date and be replaced with subtle and texturized (particularly the light noise) background, that confers to the web-page elegance and also less visual noise.

Example: www.siblingrivalrywine.ca

Minimalism

This trend comes and goes every once in a while but it seems that during the 2010 minimalism is going to be one of the more prominent trends regarding the web design.

Elegance and simplicity is one of the trends that are more appreciated in web designs.

Example: www.informationarchitects.jp

Text Shadow

Lots of web sites are using text shadow to add more depth to text, and give highlight to certain menus or buttons.

Example: www.adiirockstar.com

Mobile Design

With the release of iPhone in 2007, web designers face a new challenge. With the increase of the users and the numbers of smart phones that support full CSS and Javascript, mobile design is definitely going to be the future of web design.

Lots of companyes are allready offering a mobile version of their web site.

Example: www.nclud.com

This information was gathered in many blogs, here are some of them and also related articles:

www.designtutorials4u.com

www.webdesignledger.com

www.webtoolkit4.me

www.uxpassion.com

www.siteinspire.net

As far as we know, correct constructions always begin with the planning and then start to build up! A “Search Engine Optimization” Strategy must follow the same rule.

SEO Strategy must be planned and implemented before the launch of the website for several reasons: new domains rarely appear in search engines, redesign that takes SEO into account can be time-consuming and costly and sometimes it disrupt URL structure, wasting equity earner before.

And if you try, you will agree: it’s much easier and successful get a solid optimization into your website before launch.

We found an article that identifies three main steps to build an well-organized information architecture that is friendly to users as well as search engines, and, as far as we know, those are three of the best highlights to be concerned:

Take attention and, why not: Give it a try!

“ 3 steps to building an SEO-friendly site structure

By Ian Hughes

(…)

Step 1: Start with keyword research
You can’t do SEO without keyword research. Keywords are your building blocks. So don’t whiff this step by relying on brainstorming, purchased keyword lists, or a limited tool set. Be thorough and aggregate a comprehensive, accurate list of keywords from multiple data sources:

• You can seed your list with free, public keyword tools such as WordStream’s Free Keyword Tool or the Google AdWords Keyword Tool. Try entering both words and phrases related to your business and the URLs of competitive sites. Look at synonyms and related terms. Focus on relevance, not popularity.
• Whenever possible, use private data sources too. If you’ve been operating a related website, mine your log files or web analytics for real keywords that drive traffic and conversions.

Step 2: Group your keywords
This is the single most important step to transform a raw list into something truly useful and actionable. Segmenting your keywords into tightly themed groups will create a map for the layout of your website:

• Broad, high-level groups will correspond to the top-level categories on your website, so potential customers can easily find what they’re looking for. For example, a home goods site would have keyword groups (and site segmentations) devoted to bath products, bedding, kitchenware, and so on.
• Narrower subgroups of keywords will further help site visitors drill down to find their exact needs. Keyword subgroups under the kitchenware parent group might include pots and pans, small appliances, utensils, etc.
• This grouping process will save you lots of time in the end. You can create a series of focused, optimized pages that each target a small group of related terms, rather than needing to craft a unique page for every single keyword.”

“Step 3: Map your keyword groups onto your site
The last step is to map your keyword groups and subgroups onto your information architecture. Start with your homepage and top-level category pages, then build out your website by creating a hierarchy of optimized content filed under the appropriate category.

For a new business, SEO-friendly design is every bit as important as attractive design. With an organized, logical site structure that is easily navigable by humans and spiders alike, your site will be primed to enjoy better rankings for relevant keyword searches. After all, what good is a nice-looking website if your customers can’t find it? “

Source: imediaconnection.com