Nov 7

When designing a website, it’s easy to start loading it up with graphics. While tempting, you have to resist — otherwise, you’ll end up with graphical overload.

Why is that a bad thing? Here’s why.

It Takes Too Long to Download
The first reason to cut down on graphics is that the more there are, and the larger they are, the longer it will take each of your pages to download. People are impatient when waiting for pages to download — you only have around 5 seconds before your visitor hits the Back button.

What can you do about this? Apart from using fewer pictures, you can also make sure that you resize your images in a graphics editor. This actually makes their file sizes smaller. If you just resize images by specifying a width and height in HTML or CSS, they will still be slow to download because the full file size is being used.

You should consider turning on compression in your image editor. JPEG files can often be compressed by up to 25% before there’s a noticeable difference in quality. Try different formats and compression levels to see what works.

It Gets Too Busy
If you use a site with more than 4 images on the page at once, your eyes are being pulled all over the page. They’re not sure where to focus because the page simply has too much going on.

Look at the front pages of newspapers, and notice how they lead on 1 picture. Putting 2 pictures on a front page is considered to be poor: the reader doesn’t know where to look.

That goes double for websites, where the viewable area is much smaller than a newspaper page. Even if you have more than 1 thing to say, it’s better to ‘go large’ with 1 picture and then explain the other things in text, next to or below it.

Read the rest of this entry »

Jun 4

Nowadays, in this trendy world, people get very uptight when they do not look entirely presentable. This would also be the case in web designing.  Every individual would definitely want their website to look good, if not, to the best they can. Here are a few things we could look out for when wanting to create a professional looking webpage.

Color Schemes and Themes.
When designing, always choose matching colors. An example of a matching color would be to have a dark background, with visible words and designs. With the dark theme, try not to mix too many bright colors into the design. What we should NEVER do, is to mix two very different colors, such as purple and yellow. Now, of course, it would depend on the purpose of the website, but those two colors are too striking for one who wants it to look more professional.

Themes must always suit the company or rather, the organization / etc. If the website was made to cater for a food company, it would be wise to stick to that particular category, rather than to revert to a different theme, such as machinery.

Fonts should be used in regard to the formality of the website. A simple sans-serif font would suffice in most cases. Exceptional cases such as design and art groups might want to use fanciful designs and fonts. Of course, that’s only if you know what you’re doing.

Finally, we must always try to think of our visitors, see the way they see. The resolutions and file sizes of the pictures must not be too large in terms of size. This is to allow maximum compatibility and cater our visitor’s needs.

So, planning is something we should always do, before attempting something.

Feb 13

A lot of online business owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves — the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product’s marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they will find that their simple “homemade” site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you’re someone who started everything with no money too, so you’re pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don’t want to do.
Read the rest of this entry »

Feb 9

Website templates are very affordable and they save you a lot of effort and time when you want to create a new layout for your website. However, a lot of people make mistakes in the process of choosing and using a web template and end up with something that was unlike the image they had in mind. Here are some guidelines to help you avoid those mistakes.

The first obvious mistake you should be aware of is using a template that is very popular. If many people use the same template, your website will not appear unique at all and your credibility as a solid, different website will be tarnished. In other words, you will appear generic just like your next-door neighbours.

To whole point of using a web template is to save time and effort. You just change the title and appropriate details and you’re done. The biggest mistake one makes is to customize the template beyond recognisation. While that may be good in the sense that you’re creating a unique graphic, you’re defying the very purpose of using a web template — saving time and effort.
Read the rest of this entry »


 Page 1 of 2  1  2 »