I found this great article about Color theory and how it is used in creating websites. Colors invoke different emotions from people so choosing the best color for your design is important. To read the complete article on color theory click here.

Color theory is the practice of using the meaning behind colors to bring about a sensory experience. This practice can be applied to web design with some knowledge and thought.

People will often disagree about what certain colors mean and what colors designers should use to implore a certain emotion. However, what can’t be argued is that consumers do have emotional responses to colors.

Article Information:

A Look into Color Theory in Web Design
March 8th, 2010 by Shannon Noack

Source: http://www.articlealley.com/article_1428570_4.html
Web usability covers a broad range of areas but generally it focuses on ensuring you keep visitors on your website and help them achieve their goals. In many cases you can make improvements to your site by adding or altering content, and in other cases a web designer may be needed to make technical changes.

Often a small number of seemingly insignificant changes can collectively improve the experience of a user. For instance, by removing any annoying or frustrating feature from the path of a visitor, they are less likely to leave your site and visit your competitors site instead. Do you really want to lose potential sales to your competitors?

It is a good idea to put together a web usability checklist so you can tick off each item before the
website design is finalized and the site goes live.

Items on such a checklist are wide and varied but these are the absolute basics:

Navigation

Each page should have the same navigation (menu) otherwise visitors will get confused and won’t know how to get back to where they came from on your site. Make sure you include a link to your Home page in case visitors entered your site via an internal page.

Content

Clear and simple is best. Small bullet-pointed paragraphs with visible headings make it easier for your visitor to find what they are looking for. Emphasise important text by using, for example, a different font or colour. Whatever you do, don’t be tempted to bold and capitalise sentences as you will give the
impression of SHOUTING. Write for your visitor so try to avoid jargon and marketing text.

Links

Are links in context i.e. do you have some text before the link explaining where it is leading to. All links should be obvious, preferably underlined and changing colour once clicked on. Above all, make sure your links are not broken.

Branding

Ensure your brand is consistent throughout the site. This not only means placing your logo in the same place on every page (usually the top left) but keeping all fonts and colours consistent. Page layout should be consistent as well. Visitors should not be left wondering if they have gone to another site by mistake when they click on another page. This is one of the main elements of the website design.

Contact

It is surprising how many websites do not make the contact information more obvious. Do not make it hard for people to contact you. By all means have a contact enquiry form but also display your telephone number as not everyone will want to fill in a form to get in touch with you.

As mentioned above, these really are the basics of website usability but it is surprising how often these are overlooked during the process of website design.

The benefits and growth of your company will refund all expenses related to creating web site and SEO web design as well. About 60% of small businesses don’t have a web site and you should stand on the side of remaining 60% – with the side of development and prosperity. Get more exposure in your branch and attract new clients – all of that is possible with a professional company website. If you are not a professional in the area of computer science, it’s recommended to find the best web design company that would create you an impressive web site for you.

Nowadays almost every company has a web page. If you still advertise your small business only in the newspapers, you are just out of the game. A professional web presence is just a must for a small business.

Your company’s web page should be clear, professional and useful. Remember about containing all the most important information about company profile and the offers your company grants! With the help of a reliable Web Design Company it would not be hard to accomplish this factor. They would advise you not only on the graphic design and the structure of a web site but also advise which information will add credit to your domain. Another thing that would help your business to prosper is being active on social networking like LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. You can create a positive image of your company without big efforts.

With your company’s web page you would certainly improve your chances to develop, but still it isn’t enough. There is no point of having a web page if no one knows about it. That is why you should consider ordering SEO Web Design. Promoting your website means promoting your business, so it’s worth both effort and money. The highest traffic on your company’s page will result with more clients and more money. That is why SEO Web Design is just a must nowadays. Ask your web design company if they offer such services and do not hesitate. Improve the traffic of your web page and gain incredible popularity in the World Wide Web. If your company web displays top on the list of search engines results, you have better chances of being noticed.

The last but not least advice – always remembers to keep your web page fresh and dynamic with up-to-date information. There is nothing worse than out of date price list or previous address of the company on your web page. That makes you unreliable and unprofessional too. With fresh and full of resourceful up-to-date web page, you have better chances to make impression on potential clients without even talking with them.

Article Source:  Written by Kimberly Ann
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_1928.shtml

Statistics prove that the percentage of getting a click to your website keeps on reducing as the searcher moves down the result pages on a Search Engine.

What does a SEO friendly content have?

• Uniqueness
• Appropriate Language
• Relevancy
• Descriptiveness
• Scanable & Skimmable structure – Lists or Bullet form
• Presented in Q/A format
• Powerful Keywords and their placement
• Structured Flow
• Proofread for any mistakes

SEO friendly content does not mean that you start writing for search engines. Write content that search engines would adore automatically. The first and most important rule of content writing strategy is to write for visitors and not for search engines. Search engines ultimate goal is to provide their users with the unique and most relevant content. They will prefer your content if it is written for users.

It is not a coincidence that writing strategy for good contents makes for SEO as well.

Uniqueness:

Name a subject and you will find it on web, so dig deep and write something that you own. Something that makes you stand out of the regular web shops.

Appropriate Language:

Write in the language of your prospect. The language determines the kind of visitor your site will attract. If you are writing for Business owners who are generally non-technical, write in plain business language. It is always easy to write if you know your readers.

Relevancy:

Write what is relevant to your topic and business. Search engines have their own algorithm to check the relevancy of the content. Please avoid playing around with search engines. Even if you get successful in bringing few visitors to your site and they find the content irrelevant to their search, they will immediately bounce out of the site.

Descriptiveness:

Descriptive here does not mean to start writing stories. Describe your services or products in an informative manner. Try to display important information with a link to the detailed information. This could give you an extra edge over your competitor

Scanable & Skimmable:

Most of the web users do not read they just scan the web. Research shows that visitors read about 20% of content on a webpage. Write content which is easily scanable by readers. Some points to be kept in mind are-
• Use of font color which is easy to the eyes
• Variable Eye catching font sizes
• Use list or bullets instead of paragraphs to improve recall value
• Use of Headers and sub headers – can create interest

Presented in Q/A format:

Present your content in a form of questions and answers. Most of the websites miss this opportunity to answer reader’s question and they land up increasing their bounce rate. This can be best done by addressing the user’s pain with a simple yet effective answer.

Powerful Keywords and their placement:

Keywords play an important role in SEO strategy. Do not just sprinkle your keywords into the content rather build it around the selected keywords and phrases. The denser the keywords towards the top, the better they are. Use of synonyms is good, however, try them a little lower on your web page.

Structured Flow:

It is very important to flow your visitors in a desired manner. Do not leave them to search their way. Guide them with doorways. Do linking within your content that makes the visitor flow with the content. This is called Flow design.

Proofread:

Do proofreading to give an additional support to all your writing and SEO efforts. The spelling and grammar errors make your content look unprofessional.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_1941.shtml
by: Neil Paige

If your answer is “NO” then you have greatly diminished the “Goal Realization Capability” of your website.

Think about an interested visitor to your website and how you have missed a potential conversion opportunity by not presenting him a strong “Call to Action”.

Goals you set for your website may be selling your product or service, white paper downloads, a newsletter sign-up, taking a survey etc. At a stage where the visitor is convinced that you have something valuable for him – you have to nail it with a statement which is hard for the visitor to ignore. This is where the Call to Action steps in – a clear step to tell them what they can expect and what you want them to do.

Every visit to your website is a precious commodity and without CTAs you are simply wasting the time of your interested visitors and ofcourse your efforts on the website. Look for the segment of users coming to your website and accordingly treat them with specific “Call to Actions”.

What you need to keep in mind for CTAs

• Uniqueness: The phrase used relates the PAIN the visitor is experiencing. HIT the PAIN!

• Position: A ‘clear and visible’ call to action has to be placed ‘above the fold’. ‘Above the fold’ is that part of the website which you see without a scroll. Research states that 60% – 80% of visitors will not scroll your website ‘down the fold’, so the best opportunity is lying ‘above the fold’.

• Consistent: Place your call to action on every page that talks with the FLOW of website. If the user is not convinced on the first page and is looking for more educational content, flow them to next page but keep a call to action available on all those pages where you think the user may convert. No looking around for visitor, this has to be available right when it is needed.

• Color: A consistent color on the CTAs so that visitor can distinguish them – works wonders.

• Easy to Understand: The short and precise language can eliminate the guess work and helps user to take action.

• Be Specific: As discussed earlier, “Call to Action” should be tailored to audience interest. Before writing any “Call to Action”, you need to ask yourself few questions:
o What is my user base?
o What are their interests?
o What motivates them?
o How can I help them?

• Size: The size of “Call to Action” does matter. Do make it look bigger than other Action buttons available on the page. Bigger grabs attention.

Article Source:
http://www.articlecity.com/articles/web_design_and_development/article_1942.shtml

As you may or may not know about me….I LOVE Wordpress!

I recommend Wordpress to many people and companies everyday. Over the next few weeks I am going to be writing more about my love of Wordpress, how I use it, tutorials, why you need to use it for your company website, etc.  So, to get us started here is  a link to fortune 500 companies using Wordpress in one way or another. Stay tuned for my Wordpress goodness.

Date Published: 25th January 2010

Author: kabirbedi   – Source (http://www.articlealley.com/article_1361772_4.html)

Creation of a website is not just the duty of the web designer. In fact, website that are only created by a designer seldom taste success on the world wide web. A successful website is one that is a joint-effort of both the client and the service provider i.e. wherein bot the client and the design team, sit together, have a brainstorming session and come to mutual conclusions to decide the course of the website design project. Clients need to educate the design team about their business, its prime goals and objectives whereas designers need to listen closely and formulate web solutions that provide credible results.

Communication is a key ingredient of any web design
project.


Here are some things that as a client, you need to discuss with your design team:

Extensive Company Insight

If you are working with a professional web design team, chances are that they would have already done their home-work and done some quality research about your business, niche industry and key competitors. When you go and meet them for the first time, make sure you take their knowledge about your business to another level. Discuss with them about key functionalities that will work right on the website, what kind of design will reflect work best, what kind of design best reflects your brand image and so on. In addition, also ask the service providers about their core competencies and how exactly are they going to approach your project. Try to
gain a rough idea about the entire process right from the concept to the execution stage.

Agreement Specifications

The agreement marks the foundation of the client-vendor relationship. So make sure you invest quality time and effort on this one. The specifications detailed in the agreement should represent the entire scope of the project. Study the agreement carefully and mark elements that are not included. Don’t just assume things. Instead make sure you ask your design team about any point that you aren’t sure about. On the whole, it is important that you discuss and understand all the points mentioned in the agreement before the development works begins.

Development Phase

The development phase is critically important in the course of the project. Therefore, make sure you follow-up thoroughly in order to keep track of the progress. Avoid haphazard communication lest your design team feels interrupted. Rather mark a fixed time to discuss the project progress. This will not only provide you with a timely update but also your design team will be prepared to answer any concerns and discuss it out with you.

Website Launch

One of the most common mistake businesses make is that they think their job is done once the website is launched formally. However, its nothing close to the truth. Rather, post-launch phase is when you would need to communicate more with your design team. There can be glitches that need to be fixed, updates and so on. However, don’t assume that the design team will help you manage the website indefinitely, unless of course you have signed them for website maintenance as well. Generally web design teams offer you some post-launch development help but don’t mistake it for lifetime web maintenance. Therefore, make sure you discuss these terms with team well during the agreement stage itself.

If you are in interested in web design and internet marketing, then you are probably aware of the importance of content on your website. Internet marketing has changed with time. While link building and other techniques used to be popular, today it is the content on your website that is primarily responsible for its rank on search engines.

The popularity of internet has meant has put significant pressure on the effort required for achieving a top rank on search results. It has become vital to focus on a strategy to publish content frequently on a website or blog.

Although it is difficult to publish quality content every day, it is important if you are serious about making money on the internet. I have been publishing content for websites and blogs for many years now. In this time, my approach to creating new content has changed significantly. While before it took me almost one week to write new articles, today I can publish more than one article a day. With experience of publishing new content frequently, I have formulated a new approach to publish new content. It allows me to publish content frequently with ease. As a result of this I have seen massive rise in website traffic.
Needless to say the earnings on my website and blog have increased manifold.

Tips to publish content frequently:

1. Start by listing down titles for your content

I do this as a standard word or excel document where I basically maintain a simple list of titles on which I would like to publish about. This is a good starting point. Whenever I come across a topic I want to publish content about, I and also allows me to keep track of work at hand. Whenever I come across an interesting topic which I think my readers will find useful, I list them down.

2. Don’t hesitate to refine your list

Based on what you find when researching your topics, you may find that some topics are not very easy to cover. If a topic is difficult to write about, you should not hesitate to replace the topic with something that is easier to research and write about. Sometimes the topic may remain the same however you may wish to cover it from a different angle. In
either case, your list of article topics is not definite and should be changed if ongoing research requires.

3. Expand you content in steps

Whenever you find some spare time, you should visit your list and expand the content. The content I publish is seldom written in a single step. I often expand my list by including notes or bullet points of information first. I can do this for multiple articles simultaneously. This also helps me by allowing me to write content for multiple articles as the same time.

4. Write multiple article simultaneously

As I have mentioned above, I often write multiple articles at the same time. If you maintain an active list of articles to write, then this is easily possible. It is much easier to manage a list if you are expanding content on an ad-hoc basis. It may appear initially that doing this will take longer to publish an article. In practice however I have found this approach to work better that writing one article at a time. I spend a lot of time on the internet and read many blogs and forums every day. Whenever I come across information that is relevant to one of the content topics in my list, I make it a point to note it down. This way content for my articles is able to expand even when I am not explicitly working on my articles.

5. You don’t have to write an article in the same day.

My content publishing strategy involves publishing new content on a daily basis. This however does not imply that an article has to be completed the same day. Actively covering multiple articles at the same time also offers the flexibility to spend more than a day on certain articles without reducing the frequency at which you publish content.

6. Use bullet points

Bullet points are effective while taking notes during research as well as in completed articles. I often start my research by writing short bullet points of viewpoints I intend to cover in an article. This saves me time and allows me complete my research faster. I can do this for multiple articles simultaneously. I then go back to my draft and expand the points as required.

7. Always review your content before you publish

The importance of revising your content may seem obvious but I have listed it down to reinforce its importance. At the end of the day, quality of the content you publish is more important than the quantity. I always revisit all new content I create in order to review and find ways to improve its flow. You don’t have to spend hours on it. A quick glance with a fresh mind is enough to improve its quality.

8. Automate your submission

Last but not the least; you should spend more time to write articles than get caught up in the publishing process. Publishing content on your website or blog is easy. However in order to maximize the benefits, you should also publish your articles on various article directories and content websites. There are many article submission software that can do this for you. Some even do automated submissions. I personally prefer a semi automated approach. I use Article Submitter Platinum which offers manual, semi-automated as well as fully automated submissions. Using this tool allows me to focus entirely on writing new content as opposed to spending time on submissions.

Author: Emma Fovargue

Define your audience and their needs

Defining the purpose and objectives of your website should be your first step. Focus on what you want your website to achieve. Create a profile of your intended audience and try to understand their needs and tastes, and design the site with them at the forefront of your mind at all times.

Take a look at competitor websites to gain an idea of what works and what doesn’t.

Easy navigation

In order to make your content easy for your intended audience to navigate, make sure the links to the main sections of your website are easily visible from each web page. You want to invite people to view as many pages of your site as possible, so make it easy for them to find each page.

A good way to help you visualise the structure of the site is to create a flow chart of the whole website on paper. Think about think about how your users might structure the information within the site to help
them find the information they need easily.
Try to keep the information on your first page a general overview so you don’t bog people down with too much information. They can then click on the (clear and easy to use) links to view more information about the topics that they are interested in.
Layout

Most web pages have a common structure consisting of a header and footer, a horizontal navigation bar along the top and / or a vertical navigation bar down the left of the page and a central section for the main content.

This structure is based on simple, easy-to-understand layout principles.

If there’s a lot of content, split it up into several different pages so your viewer doesn’t have to digest too much information on one page.

Keep text simple and to the point, and make sure grammar is correct – check and check again to avoid looking unprofessional. Text is more difficult to read on screen than in printed media, so it’s crucial get
your message across in a succinct and easy to understand way.
You should always keep your text blocks relatively small. Huge paragraphs are more difficult to read and may make your audience lose interest quickly.

Stick to 2 or 3 different fonts at the most – and make sure they are ones generally found on most computers. San serifs are easier to read on computer monitors so stick to these for the main text, and make sure your text is large enough for everyone to read.
Bullet points, lists and relevant photos can help to break up the text.

Learn the basics of html

Learning the basics of html – even if you are using WYSIWYG software Front Page or Dreamweaver – will help you gain an understanding of how a web page in built, and deal with problems you encounter using the software. A good beginner’s guide to html can be found at: http://htmldog.com/guides/htmlbeginner/

Try and stay away from tables, and create the pages using layers (divs) and cascading style sheets (CSS).
Tables mix ‘presentational’ data in with your content, which makes the file size of your pages unnecessarily large, as users must download this presentational data for each page they visit.

But by using structural markup to create web pages, you can keep the actual content of your page separate from the way it is presented.
Table-based pages are also much less accessible to users with disabilities and viewers using mobiles and PDAs to access the Web.

And to change the layout of the site, all you need to do is change the style sheets; you do not need to edit the pages themselves at all.
For more info about the advantages of using divs and CSS over tables, take a look at http://www.hotdesign.com/seybold/index.html

Using color

Creating a balanced color palette from which to choose your website colour scheme will help you to create a professional looking website. Bright clashing colors scream amateur.

If you are creating a website for a company with a logo, start here. Upload the logo to your host server and go to a colour palette website such as (http://www.colorhunter.com/) to create a palette, from which you can choose colours for the main banner, buttons and text rollovers etc.

And keep things simple and uncluttered – empty space makes colours stand out and text easier to read.

Optimising photos and images

Don’t use a graphic just for the sake of it – make sure there’s a reason for it’s presence, i.e. it improves the user’s understanding and experience. A site full of unnecessary graphics looks amateurish, and it can be an obstacle for accessibility tools such as screen readers.

Make sure the photos and images you do use are clear and well optimised to reduce file size and increase page loading times. One sure sign of an amateurish website is a page with a huge image that takes forever to load. And your viewer will probably click away from the site before they even get a chance to see it.

Creating clear, professional looking graphics
GIFs are really grids made of tiny pixel squares. Data about every pixel is saved (so it’s lossless), and you can save up to 256 colors. Pixels may also be transparent.
A GIF may contain more than one frame, so it can be animated.
It is a good format for saving images with fewer colors, like charts and small graphics, images containing text, and drawings.
JPEGs are a good file format for images with millions of colors, like photographs, drawings with many shades, images containing gradients etc.
For more information on optimising images for the web, have a look at this tutorial: http://inobscuro.com/tutorials/read/35/

Design tips:

a.) Use design to highlight functionality. For example; using gradients on button also helps make them seem more ‘button like’, different coloured mouse over text draws attention to links.

b.) Be wary of animation and sounds unless they serve a specific function. It is difficult to concentrate on reading what’s on your site when there are things flashing on and off and flying around the page. And visitors with slow connections may resent that you wasted their time by forcing them to load animations and sound files against their will.

Some recent research does indicate that visitors assaulted by blinking ads are more likely to leave the site immediately, and are far less likely to bookmark the site, return to it, link to it, and recommend it.

c.) Don’t use images as a web page background. Image backgrounds scream “amateur”, because it’s mostly amateurish sites that use them. They take longer to load and the text over the background image is usually difficult to read.

d.) Design the webpage including all elements within it for your audience. For example, create a chilled out mood for a massage / therapy website using colours like lavender and blue. Use darker, more restrained, stronger colours for a more traditional finance website.

e.) If your business doesn’t already have one, make a logo for your site, display it at the top of every page, and add a link from it back to your homepage. It will make your site look more professional and create a sense of branding to help people remember your site and recognise it as yours.

Going ‘live’ – Hosting

When it comes to hosting, cheapest is not always best. For a small-ish ‘beginner’ website you shouldn’t need much bandwidth (unless you’ve not been following the ‘image optimization guidelines!) But I wouldn’t recommend hosting your website with the cheapest offer available until you have checked that they can give all the support you may need as a newbie.

I would always recommend looking for a local contact telephone number on the website of the hosting company you are considering using, and ringing it to make sure there is an actual person at the end of it.

Ask if you can get technical help from this number – they may only communicate via email for technical support. If they give you another number, ask how much it costs per minute, and ring it to make sure there is someone at the end willing to help you as a beginner should you have any problems connecting to their server, uploading your files, or sorting out your email accounts.

You should also make sure email accounts are included in the cost, and, if you have any dynamic elements such as a search facility or enquiry form on the website, check that the server will support the PHP or ASP etc needed to allow this facility to work, and if that is included in the hosting price quoted.

If you want people to buy, you have to ask for the sale. Really, it is that simple. Yet it is impossible to tell you how many ads, web sites, brochures, sales letters, etc, are floating around out there that is not asking.

So, what is a call to action? It is telling people what action you wish them to take. Typical calls to action include:

Hurry in today.

Click here now.

Nothing terribly sexy, However, if you are looking to see an expansion in your buyers, leads, revenue, etc, this is an important component. However, you may be thinking, is it obvious? Why else would you be running advertisements if you did not want people to pay for what you are selling? It is true, people do
know, if they stop to think about it, that you would possibly like them to buy from you.

However, the misfortunate fact is your potential customers are not going to spend that time thinking about it. People have too many things happening in their lives that to spend that time and energy on your business.

If they do read your ad or promotional material and it does not contain a call to action, they will likely mention, “Oh, that’s nice” and go on to the next thing.

In addition, even though they were interested in buying your offerings, they may not know what their next step should be. Do they choose the phone? In fact, if they do not know what they should be doing, chances are they will not do anything at all. Therefore, you require saying your potential customers what you deserve them to do. Remember, people are full of activity, and if you do not provide a serious
business, they possibly will not do business with you at all.

So, back to the above call to actions. Did you notice they all had something in common? The word “now” or, in the case of the first one, “today”. If people think they can purchase from you anytime, they will mention, “oh, I can do this later.” In fact, later rarely comes. You require giving them a circumstance to purchase from you right now, while they are interested. Adding the “now” or some other urgency or scarcity method, maybe a limited time offer or few copies left statement is a great alternative to push people into doing what you deserve them to do right now and not later.

While we are on the topic of calls to action, think about one other kind of advertising campaign where you rarely see calls to action. These are called branding campaigns. Normally, huge corporations like MacDonald’s, Nike, Starbucks, and Target show them on national television. In those instances, the businesses are building a brand that will cause you to think of their business first when you are interested in buying their products. For example, when you are hungry, you think of MacDonald. If you require new athletic shoes, you think of Nike, and if you are dying for that cup of Joe, you will think of Starbucks, etc.

While there is nothing wrong with branding campaigns, they are tougher to track than campaigns with a special call to action, Sale ends Saturday, call before Friday to receive your free gift, etc. Those campaigns are also call direct response because you are asking the purchaser to respond literally. Direct response campaigns could be test, so you have a good idea what is employ and what is not, and can tweak the campaign accordingly. In addition, if the campaign does not require getting a salesperson involved, i.e. if the call to action is for the purchaser to whip out his wallet right there, the campaign will just run itself, and make cash all by itself.

You are require to do more than add a call to action to have a potent direct response campaign, but that does not negate the power a call to action can bring to your campaigns. Branding campaigns are closely impossible to test, track and tweak. They either appear to work or do not appear to work. In addition, if they do not appear to work, it is very complicated to start tweaking to improve the response rate.

However, branding is yet very, very important. As a business proprietary, you require a good brand and you require communicating that brand successfully. In fact, occasionally it produces sense to run a branding campaign. However for most cases is to mix branding and direct response. Your brand is communicating clearly in your ads and promotional materials, but you also exploit some direct response formulas at the same time. If nothing else, make sure you do not forget the call to action.

Want to include a call to action in your promotional materials but do not know where to start? Here is an easy systematic formula:

1. Understand your aspiration for the ad or promotional material. Why are you running this ad, establishing this web site, printing this brochure? Is it to produce leads?

3. That is it, that is your call to action. Whatever the result you wish for the campaign is what you have to be asking people to do.