Choosing A Web Designer

Mistakes To Avoid When Choosing A Web Designer

As you begin to narrow down the shortlist of web designers and the time comes for your web design to become a reality, there are several mistakes that many business owners make as the process begins. If you don’t want to make the same errors and end up with a poorly designed website, or worse no website at all, then read on to discover three crucial mistakes you want to avoid.

#1 No Clear Idea Of Your Needs

Before choosing a web designer you must establish what function the website has and what part it is going to play in the success of your business. Websites can vary tremendously in both their size and complexity so it is vital you know which sort of website you need. Is it a fully functional e-commerce site, a small single page email capture site, a corporate portal or a blog?

Of course, there are other types of website so whichever it is, ensure that you choose a web design company that has a track record of creating the sort of site you want and make it clear exactly what it is you require them to create.

#2 Making Your Decision Based On Price Alone

Every business has budget restraints, especially new businesses, so it is likely that you will need to have an eye on the cost of your web design. However, this does not mean that you merely choose the cheapest quote. Remember that your site may be the first contact any of your potential customers have with your business, so the last thing you want is for that impression to be of a cheap company with no pride in how it appears to the online world.

If your budget won’t stretch to all the advanced functions and eye-catching graphics you’d like, at least go for a designer who can build you a great looking site at a cost which is value for money. Ensure that what they design can be upgraded as your business revenue increases and a budget you can allocate to improving your website further, becomes available

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Web Design Career

Web Design As A Career?

As the internet continues to evolve, web design as a career will remain in demand. Currently, web design is a hot career choice, for many creative high school and college graduate types. Although a degree is not necessary, it is not useless to have one, especially while being interviewed. The important thing is to do the necessary research during the planning stage, so that you can determine if web design is the right career for you. Typically, web designers have an artistic background, or experience in art of some kind. Before we get into the specifics of web design as a career, let’s first take a look at what web design entails.

Designers Make Web Pages Aesthetically Pleasing

Web designers are responsible for developing the general design details that make up a website. This includes, but is not limited to, the color schemes as well as the layouts of web pages. What is often misunderstood, is that web designers are not there only to make web pages aesthetically sound. Web designers are also responsible for, ensuring that the navigational aspects of a website are smooth. There is no use in having a gorgeous website, if your visitors are unable to navigate it. Web designers also need to have a basic understanding of SEO. Doing so, allows for their client’s websites to rank higher in the search engines. If this is done properly, websites can place ads that incur revenue and monetize content.

All web designers usually come from creative backgrounds, and many of them know a bit about coding as well. This is especially handy, when it is required of them to program in HTML and CSS.

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Early Stages Web Design

The Early Stages Of Web Design

The internet today is vastly different from what it once was. For many of us, we remember an internet landscape where watching movies, managing our finances, and buying and selling products, was simply beyond the grasp of comprehension. Those of us who were alive to remember using the internet during its early days, are comforted by how far it has come along, and the current level of convenience. It is true, that we rely on the comprehensive scope of capabilities that the internet provides today, much more than we ever have. Every day, it feels as though the internet becomes steadily more efficient. Taking the occasional glance back at the early, simplistic days of the internet before the advent of digital agencies like allows you to appreciate what we have today all the more. As technology has evolved, so has the Web Designer’s trade.

Early Uses For Webpages

While the internet was developing in the 1950s, it was also being used as something of an early academic social network. When the 60’s came around, researchers at Santa Barbara and the Stanford Research Institute, founded ARPANet. This is turn facilitated the transmission of messages, sent between researchers who were members of the network. This was an amazing feat! A new mode of communication had been discovered! A new and alternative form of communication was needed, in the event that phone systems could potentially be eradicated during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Early Web Design

Shortly after this advancement, the internet arrived. When the IPS (Internet Protocol Suite) was established, a guideline on data transmission that previously did not exist was now set in place. Essentially, this acted as an early manual of how the internet should be used. It was not until halfway through the 90’s, that WWW (The first Web Browser) was established by Tim Berners-Lee. From that point onward, we have witnessed the continual evolution of the internet.

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6 Things to Think About When Preparing a New Website

Remember the late 1990s when blinking images were thought to be the best thing for any website? Well fast forward to today and that shouldn’t even be on your want list. You and your web designer need to sit down and hash out what your website is going to look like before they start building your site. If you are wondering what you need to do to prepare to get your website off the ground, you’re at the right place. Let’s look at 6 tips & strategies you need to think about.

  • Who will be in charge? Who is going to make the development and design decisions? This can be a group of people or it can be just one person. If it’s a team one person, still needs to be handle the final approval. Otherwise, it can become quite chaotic as reworks are ordered by individuals in the group.
  • What’s your niche? What do you sell? What’s your product or service? You need to be very specific. If you sell air conditioners to residential customers, then your need to focus on that market with what you say in your content and the images you show. Don’t show a beach when you sell air conditioners – it sends a confusing message to your visitors.
  • Who is your target market? It is important that you stay on target. You need to be specific. Back to our example. If you sell air conditioners then your target market will be homeowners and let’s say they have homes that are 25 years or newer and the age of the homeowner is between 30 and 50. So when you write about your services make sure this is the market you are talking to.

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Web Design With Website Templates

Web design has become very popular as a ‘do it yourself’ kind of undertaking. Website templates are a way of creating your own web design without the need to engage a professional digital marketing agency. You will be able to create a professional looking website quickly.

Website templates usually come with some ‘dummy’ content inserted to mark placeholders so you can just replace with your own text. Templates can be found in many different themes and tons of colour schemes, so that you can find the template that’s right for you. Many times these templates come with related graphics and these can be customized with your own graphics. Remember you do not have the copyright to the template, so make sure you are aware of what you are allowed to do with the template.

There are a number of benefits to using a template. Templates:

  • Provide a basic web page layout
  • Provide a consistent look and feel throughout your site
  • Come with quality graphics
  • Let you customize your graphics
  • Allow you to easily add content

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Checklist: 10 Must-Haves For Websites

We love bucket lists for budding online entrepreneurs, so we’ll give Certified Social Media Specialist (drum roll) Joanne Burgess have a turn this time at telling you Top-10 things your website should have.

Why do we do these every now and then? Because there’s always first-time web design customers coming along, and it’s too easy to forget that our advanced chatter sounds like a babbling brook of techno-jargon to the first-timers. It’s necessary to include the new users, too.

Web Design – Hire a Pro or Do it Yourself

When it comes to web design a great debate still rages about whether you should hire a pro or do it yourself. There are a number of important factors that can help you make your decision about which is right, because both have their pros and cons.

The days of a simple HTML website being sufficient are pretty much gone. Working in checkouts and taking payments can be complex, sights that look professional and compete against other sites is necessary, and understanding the technology that is involved in web hosting security, creating a quality site and a mobile load are essential. Some of you may have the necessary skills, others may not. This should help. Below are a few of the skills which Internet business consultants agree are necessary for modern web design and to build a site that works.

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Handy Tool Of The Day: CSS3 Generator

OK, you web design people all probably mumble hexadecimal color codes and CSS div tags in your sleep, but there’s a tool to generate CSS3 code on the fly anyway. Similar to the W3 School’s “try-it” editor, this is a visual tool to try out a trick and tweak it on the fly, then just copy ‘n’ paste the code.

Only downside is that you need a bleeding-edge browser to see it. But we’re all used to that; it’s been a fact of life since, what, 1992?

Open Source Gurus: Why Are They Such Curmudgeons?

WordPress users are ruminating over the founder’s latest opinionated decision, and this author does us all the favor of explaining just why the guru prima-donna mindset tends to be the norm in open source development.

We see it all the time with open source project founders. The fact is, it simply takes somebody with a stubborn streak to launch a successful open source project.

Neither democracy nor oligarchy will do; you need the fabled “benevolent dictator for life”. The recipe for an open source founder is a self-starter, visionary, and rebel, with a touch of stubbornness and an unswerving aim for the Right Thing… which isn’t always the popular thing.

Web Design Changes to Expect in 2013

You could say web design has its own ‘fashion statement,’ because each year things come and go. Let’s look at web design changes you can expect to see in 2013.

  • Large Visual Impact Created with Large Images
    While there is a focus on typography over images throughout the website, on the home page it seems big just might be better, as many websites are placing large images on the home page for a visual impact. Web designers are being conscious of data usage and bandwidth by providing these large images only to those with large screens.
  • More White Space Please!
    Over the past year or so, we have been seeing a move towards more white space, and this trend is going to continue in 2013. Finally, web designers are recognizing that white space creates a clean design aesthetic and a much easier read for the surfer.
  • It’s All About Social Network Sharing
    There will be more integration with social media on websites. We’re not talking about ‘sharing buttons,’ as that’s old news already. This is going to be much more in-depth and include things like ‘pay by status,’ ‘single sign on,’ ‘Instagram,’ and other new types of social media content.

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