Posts In Web Design & Development

5 Dreaded Questions Clients Can Ask You!

Hi,

We have all, at some or the other time, had clients who managed to ask all the scary questions at all the scary times. And then it would be the ever sufficing effort to trying to convince a point and addressing counter questions.

Here are 5 of the most difficult questions clients can ask you and ways to tackle the blow:

Question 1: Can that be put in a different section?

Clients sometimes have the urge to ‘re-classify’ information on the website to match with their organizational structure. But then it involves pulling out parts of well laid information and shifting them someplace else.

Answer

The best bet is to show them a well laid out sitemap before embarking on the website development process. Trust me… This will save lots of irrational requests later! Anyways, if something like this does come up, try explaining the importance of grouping similar information together rather than as per company structure.

Question 2: Can we have the logo bigger?

In a bid to maximize brand exposure, clients often want to increase the logo size on the website. But it threatens to ruin the design altogether.

Answer

Communication is the only key. And compromise is the solution if all else fails. Try explaining the importance of design elements apart from the logo and tell them good information works better than logo recognition. And if nothing works, then you can just try n bloat it a tad bit.

Question 3: Can we copy information from the Internet?

The internet is a free platform but that does not mean that everything available there is free for commercial use. Picking up information from wikipedia or anywhere else and loading it onto your own website is just not right.

Answer

Educate your clients about search engines that reward harsh penalties for duplicate content and can further hamper the reputation and performance of the website on the World Wide Web.

Question 4: Can you make the logo blink?

Some clients continue to live in the ‘90s where blinking spinning logos talked about design skills. The problem is that now it amounts to sheer amateurishness.

Answer

Explain the facts to your clients and show them illustrated examples of what constitutes a professional website design and what makes up for college experiments. Minimum movement on the screen means maximum concentration for the website visitor.

Question 5: Can we use our corporate font?

Marketing departments of companies are notorious for demanding the use of their corporate fonts for the website text. But the fact is printed text and online text are worlds apart.

Answer:

This can only need a simple explanation of the facts. Again, illustrative examples come to your rescue. Generally, the pioneers are themselves discouraged to see their corporate fonts’ online face.

Good luck with your clients! Till next time… Byeee…

Padding Or Margins – Which Way To Go?

Hi,

Website design is a holistic term for the website layout itself. How the layout of the web page is structured impacts web design a great deal.

Website layout determines the organization of various elements on the web page. And the layout involves a number of design principles and techniques. Often, it becomes confusing for the web designer to decide which design practices to employ.

One of the most common dilemmas is whether to use margins or padding?

Both Margins and Padding are two of the most popular properties used for spacing-out elements. While Margin is the space outside the elements, Padding is the space inside the element. It can often get confusing for the website designer to know which one to use. After all basically it’s all about the whitespace around an image or an object.

Margins
Margins are the spaces outside the border of a particular element on the web page. It is basically the space between the border and the other page elements surrounding the image or object. The whitespace surrounds the whole space image or object and prevents it from touching the borders of anything else next to it, except if desired otherwise. Margins are placed on all the sides of the image, on the top bottom, right and left.

Padding
Padding is the space that lies inside the borders of the image or object i.e. the whitespace between the border and the actual image or object. The padding area is always restricted to the insides of the image or object. It goes around the contents and surrounds the element totally.

It depends upon the design and the placement of images that best decides whether to use margins or padding. And that is where the expertise of a professional web designer comes into play.

Browser Window Or Monitor Resolution – What Matters More?

Hi,

As a web designer, you design websites with our audiences in mind. While they are your prime concern… what resolution do you design with?

Do you arrange your pixels to fit the web browser window or is it to match the monitor resolution?

As varied is your audience, so different may be their monitor resolutions! The most popular monitor resolution is perhaps that of 1024 x 768. However, designers usually have larger monitors… generally higher than 1280 x 1024 ranges. So when you design websites on your computer, you are actually building them for yourself… not your audiences!

Users with 1024 x 768 monitor resolutions generally maximize their browser windows. Others with higher resolutions don’t bother doing that.

Now let’s talk about browser chrome. It is all that is not included in the web page in the browser like scroll bars, title bars, toolbars and so on. When visitors view your website on maximized browser windows, the screen space is more than the resolution.

So what do you do in such a scenario?

As I said before, always make sure that your primary motive is to design for your audience. If their monitors have low resolutions, they would obviously be maximizing their browser windows. That means you should design with an appropriate pixel count.

However, people generally use 1024 x 768 resolutions. So it is always better to create larger pages so that it becomes easier for your audiences when they maximize their browser windows.

Try using a browser widths background image. It has different widths marked on it that lets you keep track of things. Or else you can get your web page design dynamically and then use a script to determine the page width.

Hope these tips are of good help to you…

Bye for now...

Microsoft Morro – Is It Bad News For Antivirus Firms?

Hi,

The latest buzz… Microsoft has announced its plan to discontinue its subscription based consumer security suite and launch a brand new free antivirus software in place. This revamp strategy looks for consumers but hasn’t gone well with antivirus firms who view it are as potential competition.

The new anti-malware product called Morro that plans to make an entry in the market in the later part of 2009 promises to have all the regular features of any basic (paid) antivirus software. According to Microsoft, it would protect against viruses, spyware, rootkits, and Trojans just the same way.

The advent of Morro will see the demise of Microsoft’s present antivirus suite, Live OneCare service even though they are not replicable. While Morro has all the basic antivirus features, it lacks the non-security features of the other like printer sharing and automated PC tune-up. In fact, it uses lesser number of resources thus making it well suited for low-bandwidth systems. For consumers who need additional features, Morro would offer add-ons from third party service providers.

Even in the advanced internet age, there are still many computers that go without antivirus software. While some users are not concerned about malware at all, others just fail to update it regularly. But the seriousness of the issue only shows face when there is some or the other virus infection. As per industry estimates more than 50% of systems in developed markets are bereft of antivirus softwares. In such a scenario, Morro will sure have good amount of subscribers.

However, if Microsoft aims to target the population that doesn’t have antivirus suites installed on their PCs, they will have do much more than making available the freeware. They would need to educate the market about the requirement and importance of antivirus softwares. Moreover, their product would need to stand true to its claims and be efficient.

All seems for consumers but antivirus firms may have a cause to worry. Considering the tough financial times and economic situation, such competition can obviously pose as a serious threat to businesses that sell antivirus softwares like McAfee, Symantec etc. though they may retain customers who required specialized features, they do stand to lose a chunk of paying customers who prefer the free version for their regular needs.

However, tracing the track record of Live OneCare and considering the fact that Morro is a product of the same stable, there is good enough reason to hope that the potential threat is not very serious.

In the past, even though OneCare entered the antivirus market at a lower price, it failed to draw in customers, courtesy poorer performance and substandard protection. This is chiefly because when it comes to PC protection customers prefer quality and secured protection over reduced costs.

All the aspects boil down to one fact, any antivirus product only works if it is robust, identifies potential web threats and protects the system against infection. In addition, it should be easy to use, fast and should not hinder other functions of the systems.

Let’s see how it fares… Meanwhile its all good for the website development services industry. Free or not-free, safe websites need to be rendered safe!

Bye for now!