Posts In Web Design & Development

Web-Browser Wars – Which One Are You Using?

Hi,

If the count of websites populating the internet is innumerable, popular browsers to view them with are not few in numbers. With different browsers vying for attention, which one is your favorite?

Let’s weigh ‘em down here…

CHROME
Google’s latest bet in the online market! It comes as a final blow to literally conquer the Internet and establish Google control over cyberspace.

Plus Points
The star feature is of course the ‘incognito’ mode that lets user browse freely without having the browser record their searches and history. But don’t think you can fool your administration with it! Whenever you open your tab, thumbnail images of your nine most visited sites get displayed. And then again you can program out a wish list web pages to launch when the browser opens.

Minus Misses
Its still in beta testing stage! So, expect its share of fallacies. There is also a rumor that Google might be spying the browsing record of Chrome users. And that arouses my skepticism.

FIREFOX
The first ever competitor to Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox is characterized by it innovative and path breaking browsing experience.

Plus Points
Firefox offers its users a variety of add-ons (small softwares to expand functionality). There is one for every need. Want to add a speed dial feature? Want to retain the web page combination the next time you open the browser? It can all be taken care of.

Minus Misses
My only problem with Firefox is that I hate working myself to alter it. I would rather go for something that comes with pre-loaded features.

INTERNET EXPLORER
The ruler of the internet fraternity, Microsoft Internet Explorer has 8 versions up till date.

Plus Points
The latest version of IE is all that I could ask for. With the concept of tabbed browsing made so easy, it has revolutionized the browsing experience completely. You can also add tools like Accelerators that enables you to perform multifarious functions with a single click.

Minus Misses
On the flipside, IE 8 makes me realize that it’s still in the beta testing mode. The Web Slices feature are difficult to configure and there are many features that it prods you to enable that it itself has disabled.

SAFARI
Apple’s Safari, simple and works.

Plus Points
If simplicity is anything to go by, then Safari has stake to claim to efficiency. Fast loading web pages, no crash experiences, functional design, has a private browsing feature…it has just everything that counts for an ideal browsing experience.

Minus Misses
Just what it sells for makes where it loses it! It’s NOT for those who fancy bells and whistles.

OPERA
Relatively unknown, this browser is perhaps as efficient in performance.

Plus Points
Its catalogues of thumbnail images of your favorite websites can get you addicted. And loyalists swear by the built-in Bit Torrent downloader. Moreover, if you use Opera on multiple media, it synchronizes all your data.

Minus Misses
Its complexity often hinders the working of some websites and that makes it an unreliable choice. Yeah… Inspite of great media download abilities.

So, those were the popular buzzwords of Web Browsers. If you like some feature that I have not glorified above, feel free to inform me about it. We can have a good fat gossip session!

Always make a point to hire professional web developers who create websites that work well on all major browsers!

Bye

5 Things Your Web Designer Can Forget – Make Sure You Remember Them

Hi,

I am not talking about the newbies here but a handy bunch of professional (and experienced) custom web designers commit some of the cheesiest mistakes! I don’t mean to demean anyone but read on and if you secretly know you are one of the lot… make haste and fix it before someone else points it out.

Web Page Background
While it’s real easy to assume that background color of a website to be white, what is it is not? You will be in a black spot then. It’s just easier to assign #FFFFFF to the background body element color.

Still using Tables?
Creating websites with Table layouts may be a smooth ride. I know it’s easy, fast and yeah… profitable. But would you have done it if you were at the client’s end? Tables are for data. Let’s just keep it for that!

Style of Print
When people print a page from your website, they don’t need the menus or the advertisements or the links. They just need on paper what they want. Make the task easier for them and get working with your CSS to set up a print style sheet. Trust me… your visitors will thank you for this.

JavaScript
I know you love JavaScript but until you have that fact pasted on your website, your website visitors wouldn’t. And they won’t turn on theirs to view your site till then. Why do you want to test their patience? All you need is a bit of progressive enhancement! Need I say more?

Default Browsers
Just as the color of your cell phone doesn’t match that of the man next-door, he might as well not be using the same browser as you! Be aware of all the major defaults and reset the various key default styles.

Just a bit of caution and you can move over these silly mistakes!

Keep visiting! Bye for now…

What Type Is Your Website Designer?

Hi,

Great websites are a creation of talented website designers! They are the end product of their imaginative power and ability to construct what they conceive in their minds.

Now designers are living people and not mere software programs that are programmed to churn out a particular type of product. And so, as different they are, so different will be their services.

Geeky Guys
They are the ones with sound technical competence. Focused primarily on the industry jargon and web standards, they are generally adept at a range of programming languages. Latest technologies and software programs seldom escape their scrutiny or review. On the whole, you can be guaranteed of a well functional product.

However, they often uninspiring and lack that imaginative edge!

Creative Artists
They are the ones that create visually appealing websites that are a treat for the eyes to watch. No doubt you can claim ownership for a great looking website that stands apart from the other run-of-the-mill ones but often it happens that certain functionalities are compromised on. Like there will be sheer ignorance of web standards or there will be some visual element that hampers the overall user experience and so on…

Cross Hybrid Designers
In both the above scenarios, it becomes absolutely useless for you to have a website designed by them. Therefore, it is best to choose a web designer who balances both aspects of the profession in a good manner. Hire a professional web development company that has a team of web designers who are adept at the technical front as well as talented in a creative manner. Only then can you get a website that is not only good to look at but also good to stay!

Your website designer should understand your business and the products and services that you offer. Once there is a keen understanding of the brand name, a website can be created to reflect the same. The website should add value to your business and seek to achieve the prime goals and objectives.

Before starting the design and development phase of your website, make sure you have a steady interaction with your website designer so that project can be steered ahead in a common direction.

So, go ahead! Make a wise choice. You know what it takes now!

Website Improvement – Off Site Techniques

Hi,

So we have been following a steady ritual of website improvement course. Well… let me just close the circle with a couple of handy off site techniques that you can do for yourself.

Spread yourself!
Yeah… Just browse through cyberspace and spread your presence. Go to popular forums, portals and blogs that belong to your industry and comment. You can give advices, link up with others and just generally show people what you know. All you need is a little time each day and you are on it. Just take care not to spam!

Gather Information
Apart from showing how smart you are on forums, also take that as an opportunity to learn. Those are places where you have direct interaction with people. You can gather valuable customer feedback and know what popular sentiment is regarding your industry.

Viral Marketing
Apart from your email and newsletter campaigns, forums can be a platform for viral marketing. Use them to share unique information about yourself and your company. Nothing spreads faster than community talk!

Avoid Spam
Do anything but spam. Trust me there is no better way to create a wrong impression than by ranting out useless bits. And once you find place in the trash folder of your potential customers, there is no easy way back to their inbox.

That’s about it. I hope we are a great deal wiser after this Website Improvement Crash Course! Have it all at once by hiring professional web design services!!

Till next time… Byeee!

Website Improvement – Content

Hi,

We have discussed about Accessibility & Usability, website Design & Development and SEO in previous posts. Today let’s talk about the King of them all. Yeah… Content!

With bigger issues like the former lot, content seems to be shadowed down. But that is perhaps the biggest mistake website owners tend to make. No matter what and what not you do to attract visitors to your website, it’s the content eventually that makes them stay!

That does it. Content is the King!

Let’s take a look at some things you need to look at:

Text vs. Whitespace
There is a perpetual tug of war between the two. While there is no precise ratio that needs to be maintained, there needs to be a certain balance of course! Clients may often push towards ‘judiciously’ using that extra space to put some text and sometimes designers may even fall give in to that whim. However, the end result is often a suffocated mass of text that gets very uncomfortable to read.

Your content needs enough space to get noticed and read easily. And unless you have poor content that you really wish to hide, there is no reason not to give that space.

Who Are You Writing For?
You might be a whiz at your work. But that doesn’t mean you litter your website content with industry jargon that a layperson cannot even understand. You are writing for your audience and not for yourself. Keep the language simple and chuck the slangs!

Help Rather Than Hoard
Tell not what you do for yourself but tell what you can do for them! This is the commandment for website content. Rather than boasting about your skills and expertise, inform your website visitors how they can be of use to their business. Trust me… A slight difference in tone can do tons for your business.

Do Follow
Not the links! All possible query points should be followed by leads. If someone visits your website, offer them a newsletter subscription offer. If someone reads your article, lead them to concerned product and so on.

All these bits will go a long way in overall website design process!

SEO Vs. Web Design – Clash Of The Titans

Hi,

Can’t do with it… Can’t do without!

SEO and Web Design, the two indispensable parts of a website share such a relationship. And this becomes the cause of conflict during the web development process.

What may please the aesthetic senses of a designer would not go well with the SEO logics and techniques suggested by the SEO person might wouldn’t appease the designer. However, for a website that performs well, both these aspects need to be fulfilled well enough.

Let’s see how you can do it

Purpose to the Website
Even before you start off with the development process, think about why you want the website and what do you want the website to do.

This will lead you to other logical questions…

Who is your target audience?

What will they do with the website?

How will they find your website?

While the first two questions will help you design your website in accordance to the taste and preferences of your audience, the last one will help you assess the SEO considerations.

* If your audience identifies your website by your brand name, then SEO considerations don’t weigh that heavy!

Visual Galore
Web design is about visual pleasure. But it is also about good functionality and great usability. All the page elements, be it the textual content or images or graphics need to appease the website visitor.

All the images that you decide to paste across your web pages should be related to the content matter there and NOT vice versa.

Even the content on the website should be broken up into easy understandable chunks of nicely formatted text. That’s to say use headings, subheadings, bullet points, tables as and when appropriate.

Crawlability Quotient
A website that cannot be crawled doesn’t exist at all. So do all that you can to get it crawled.
• Include a site map
• Use text based navigation

* Don’t try to experiment with your navigation. The reason it is kept simple is because it is just perfect the way it is.

Brand Package
Don’t count on your business logo alone to flag your brand name. Rather, your brand should be exhibited by all the features of your site. Be it speedy smooth navigation, high quality content, enhanced performance and so on…

And the design and SEO activities should boot together to achieve this!

So, the next time you have a Design-SEO conflict, you now how to find a middle ground.

Web 3.0 – Wayward Ho!

Hi,

You are in a mood to catch a funny movie tonight. And then may be feast on some ethnic Italian cuisine while guzzling down good wine.

What do you do? Go search out your options on the internet. First you go by what movies are showing where and then based on it try to figure out a good Italian restaurant someplace nearby. Takes time… does it?

Well… What do you know? With Web 3.0, this can be a second’s fling. All you need to do is type out a single strand sentence about your query… just like you ask a pal and voila… the net will give you a chunk of options! If industry buzz is to be believed, this will soon be a reality!

After the Web 2.0 whirlwind, the internet is ready to take a step ahead and be a tad more interactive with its 3.0 version.

Gestures and Body Language
Web 3.0 is slated to be much more personal and intimate than its predecessor. It has already started showing face in social networking websites with features like ‘poke’ or ‘slap.’ Basically communicating with a human touch!

Gone are the days when communication used to be ‘exchange of information’ via emails and scraps. Now it’s more of a non verbal and non textual expressions though emotions! Gestures and body language have just about replaced casual mails.

Interactive Business Communication
Web 3.0 is steadily closing the gap between businesses and their audiences. How? Well… with free and public exchange of dialog, one does not need to try much to gather what’s the public opinion like. Business owners are making good use of the phenomena to identify negative reactions and working to rectify the cause.

This kind of feedback is so much more accurate and reliable than the traditional surveys and polls. It builds a direct relationship between the consumer and the company.

Web 3.0 is huge and though it’s in the nascent stages right now, it will come up really big in recent future. Be ready for it!

Web Development companies... be prepared!

Website Improvement – Search Engine Optimization

Hi,

Last week I talked about certain design and development considerations in website design and ways to make them work for you.

Now, let me tell you something about Search Engine Optimization! I have already discussed at length about this topic here. Here I am just going to remind you some very basic but extremely important pointers.

Here goes…

Title Tags
• All the pages of your website should carry relevant titles on them
• Keep them short and crisp describing the crux of the contents of the page
• Make sure you include your prime keywords in the title tags

Title tags not only help users decipher the topic of the web page but also attract search engine crawlers. And nothing works better than having your keywords do the job!

Inbound & Outbound Links
• Link deeper pages of your website to your homepage or landing page
• Link outside to other website of the sane fray

Links, be they inbound or outbound help strengthen the foothold of the website in the World Wide Web. You will not only increase the usability quotient of the website but can also specify link titles throughout.

Strong Keywords
• Highlight your keywords in the content spread
• Specify strong & bold tags for them and make them stand out

Use this technique sparingly and appropriately. By making your keywords stand apart from the rest of the text, you place increased importance upon them and this makes search engine crawlers take good note of them.

Headers
• Use header tags in the correct and appropriate order
• Try including keywords in the H1 tag as it is the most important

These SEO techniques do not demand anything much from your side apart from a little time and effort. If you have them already… great! But if you haven’t, make haste!

Will get you more next week.

Byeee

Web Designers To Good Web Designers

Hi,

The other day I had met some friends for lunch. And we had a heated discussion about the prospect of web designing as a career and skills that are required to survive in the field.

The prime concern seemed to be the overlap of web designing and web development work profiles. But then I guess to survive in this increasingly competitive industry, designers need to know and do a lot more than just designing.

It comes easier when you work for big organization where you just need to take care of the design aspects and coordinate with the development guys. But when it comes to smaller companies, designers are made responsible for a lot more.

The Web industry needs people with specialized skills thus making it inevitable for designers to gain knowledge about technical bits as well like HTML, CSS, JavaScript and so on. And then again, it’s always good to have a couple of handy skills at hand. Here are some things you need to know:

Information Architecture
Simple websites can give this a pass. But websites that are high on content and have a good number of web pages to claim cannot risk the find ability factor. Information architecture lets designers sort this out.

User Experience
Just by making the web design a little user focused takes care of the user experience needs of a website.

User Testing
There is no professional course that can help with this. Testing a website from a layperson perspective comes with experience. And experience comes from practice!

JavaScript
It is what comes handy when clients want a few ‘tricks’ on their website. It will do good to learn this language and right way to use it.

Interactive Interface Design
Now you can claim to be a boss here. But think about it! Do you know all the best interface design methods and techniques in Ajaxian, RIA environment?

Accessibility
Is your web design really accessible? Make sure you are ready for WCAG2 or ARIA then!

Usability
The real test of usability comes from how easily a layperson can use it rather than how well you can. Don’t push off usability for the end. Take it along in the designing process.

Backend Coding
Now this is pure development terrain. But then being a web designer for the same website, just a little understanding about code blocks wouldn’t do any harm. At the least, you should be able to read and understand it!

It’s a fair argument to be a web designer and be just that. But trust me… If you need to be a tad ahead of competition, you need to make an effort!