Ideas for Web Design

Whenever a web designer gets a web design project, he or she will require to take a step back and go through the research process in order to complete the job. The research process is a tedious process, it determines how well, and successful will the result of your web design. Ideas for web design will share with you how to go through that research process smoothly and obtain results.

One fine day, you received a call from some client and he requests you to design a website for his company. Over the phone, he briefly tells you what his company is about and asks about the prices, you then fixed an appointment with him for discussion. You will probably get excited about it and starts to get more details of the company by checking them on Google, and thinks about some prelim ideas for the website. At this stage, your research process has already started.

RETRIEVING THE DETAILS:

After meeting up with the client, you get a lot of details that will assist you in your design process.
This details applies even when you are designing a personal website.

1. Nature of the Company

2. Client Preferences (Example websites?)

3. Target Audiences (kids? Young adults? Everyone in the world?)

4. Platform (Flash? Html? PHP? Asp? )

By organizing these details, you get a bigger picture of:

1. What are you going to design?

2. What style of design are you approaching?

3. Whom you should design for?

4. How will your design work?

5. How will your design please both the audiences and the client in order to be successful?

DETERMINING THE STYLE:

With the information you have on hand, its time to determine the style. For a start, you should base on the client's description of his company, his nature of the company to give a rough gauger on the design style. Examples below:

Example 1:

Web Hosting business >> High tech web design, sleek and professional design

Example 2:

Dolls and Toys business >> Kiddy, Girly, Colorful, Fun design

COLOR THEMES:

Having a good and suitable color theme on your web design will give users a pleasing experience while surfing through the web site you designed. One of the important techniques is to get a color chart from your local art store or use some color chooser tools to aid in your color selection. Your color theme will affect the mood and feel you want to create.
Colors also have their own meanings. For example, white is clean, blue is cool and corporate, having a white and blue color theme gives you a clean and corporate web design. Orange and yellow are warm and friendly colors, Grey is cool, combining a Orange-Grey theme will give you a friendly and fun mood. Dark colors are also popular among many, because they easily matched other bright colors. A common match is using a black background and light colored text as a combination.

There are thousands and one meaning to choose your color theme. Whether your color theme turns out successful depends heavily on the first step "Determining the style" of your website.

PHOTOS & GRAPHICS:

After getting the colors done, its time to think about the graphics and images. As a graphic says a thousand words, it is good to think about how you want to approach this portion. Here are some recommendations you can try:

1. Stock photos - Some are free, some requires you to pay a certain amount before providing you with high resolutions image. If your client has the money and there are suitable photos he would like to use, this is the way to go. Searching in Google for "stock photos" will give you plenty of results on this.

2. Take your own photos - When budget is involve, usually the project will require you to take a relevant photos and use them as supporting images on the website. Having a mid-range camera should do the trick as images for website are all on low resolution. Seldom there is a chance for you to use an image more than 640 x 480 pixels.

3. Creating Graphics Images - A web design will always need custom-made graphics images. For example, icons for a Shoe section, button for submitting information. You will need some skills in creating the graphics of your needs, or you will feel stuck while designing. Consider looking for tutorials on creating certain effects, like rounded corners, Mac alike buttons, pattern backgrounds and more. Learn about vector graphics tool like Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks. They can help you to create graphics, mockups and layout fast and efficiently. This will greatly aid in your next web design project.

INSPIRATION AND REFERENCES:

If you already have some inspiration on how to design the layout, great, but if you do not, consider looking at related websites for some references on how they are being done. A search in Google also reveals some websites of the same genre. You can also check out ready-made templates well. I am not teaching you to copy exactly, but as a new learner, you should take reference and see how they are being designed.

Why bother looking at them?

Reference sites will give you ideas on usability, color theme, ideas on relevant images, navigation, features and many more guides to work on your web design project. Always consider them as useful references to help you whenever you need inspiration and ideas for your web design. It is all about looking more, reading more and getting your eyes and brain more exposed to the web design styles. http://www.sitecritic.net has a lot of website reviews by different web designers all over the world and is worth taking a look.

Final Say

I hope this article has been helpful to give you some ideas for your next web design project. In this web design industry, it is a never ending journey of learning. By reading more and seeing how others create, you will be more aware the next time you design your client's or your own web site.

Bernard Penh is a great passion of web technologies and one of the co-founders of Sitecritic.net Web Design Ideas. He works with experienced web designers and developers for more than 5 years, developing and designing commercial and non-commercial websites. During his free time, he does website reviews, freelance SEO and PHP work.

E-Commerce Web Designing - A Complete Introduction

Owners of online stores have a mindset that display products and brand is expensive enough to persuade people to buy them but when it comes to shopping online, your ecommerce business should be attractive and should have some features essential for people to buy the products. Online shopping portals are always at a disadvantage compared to physical shopping stores because buyers do not have the opportunity to feel the product in their hands because many of them back.

Also, in this post, let's take a look at some of the important elements that should be incorporated into a ecommerce website in order to provide a comfortable online shopping experience for shoppers.

A Dedicated Search Bar

Fans of online shopping do not scroll through the items they do not want. That is definitely because they are looking for a specific product. A search bar is considered as the most prominent on the web and in the world of electronic commerce, as it gives users the opportunity to manually type the name of the product you are looking for so they can get directed to it at any time.

Therefore, web developers keep this in mind and use all the HTML and XML codes for all products can be immediately linked the search bar for manual searching.

A prominent ' Buy this product ' Button

Buyers are always impressed by the design and color graphics. In order to ensure that they receive full satisfaction of your purchase, e-commerce websites provide an outstanding ' buy this product ' button every high resolution image of the product displayed next. For this, various shopping portals are today using techniques of high quality web design and methods, along with a content management system first class so they can get better control of management on the website along with maintaining a record of all sales per day.

Special Effects, Flash content and presentation function

Ecommerce websites today rely heavily on their window. The better show its website more people will buy from them. The persuasion process is not complete without the use of Flash content on a shopping website. Hands on advertising or videos if they join each site attract a lot of traffic to the site. Therefore, good web developers ensure that e-commerce site is under construction gives the front end manager total control over the graphics board using good CMS solutions for the purpose.

Simple payment page and time saving

People usually buy your desired products online because they have the opportunity to do everything the right way their homes without having to go places. Therefore, the e-commerce websites provide the payment page as simple as possible for their transactions, giving payment options like cash on delivery, PayPal and credit / debit card so they can choose the payment option of your choice by filling all relevant data in the form of payment.

In order to reduce maintenance time drastically, you need to design your ecommerce site done by an expert. This website is full of a lot of images of your products and services. There are lots of animations to attract customers. You can add or delete multiple images according to their needs. Ecommerce website design is perfect for people who want to give your website a great makeover. These are some of the best things you need to know about web design. For more information on this topic, consider seeking professional guidance. With a little help and guidance, you can create a bespoke website.

Ecommerce web sites, especially in India have been growing at a rapid rate and therefore the demand for Web Design India. User Experience web part should be implemented in the best way possible, because in order to move up in the retail business online, you have to make the site navigation as simple as possible for end customers. If you are looking for a best web design company for your next e-commerce portal, please contact Digital favor.

Web Designers Devon: Web Easy Professional 8 Software Report

When you're considering establishing a presence for your business or enterprise on the Internet, there are a myriad number of details to sort out. Among the most crucial decisions you will have is opting for the most effective software to add some liveliness to your design notions. Developing and arranging web sites is an intricate activity in which all-inclusive software applications are needed for support. In advance of selecting your software for your unique application, it is prudent to use a little time for scrutinizing your requirements and studying reviews of web design software packages. In that spirit, we'd like to offer a brief review of what we think is a highly functional piece of software for web designers.Devon agency owners need to read further to see if Web Easy Professional is the best application for them. This is a concise evaluation from the specialists at Oxygen Creative Services.

Web Designers Devon: In Reference to Web Easy Professional 8

This is a piece of software developed to generate superior online applications with not much effort. WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) user interfaces that are like the interface in Web Easy Professional are highly sought-after as they provide very convenient as well as nice-looking web pages with practically no acquaintance with HTML. Web Easy Pro 8 is equipped with an intuitive, simple drag-and-drop interface which speeds up site production by agencies such as Oxygen Creative Services, permitting designing to happen in just hours and not days or even weeks. Web Easy Pro carries out all the heavy lifting. Both iPhone and Smartphone templates can be utilized for designing websites for these widely-accepted devices. Providentially, our locale has got several expert web designers.Devon is set up with plenty of competent companies.

Web Designers Devon: The Formulating and Production Process

Employing Web Easy Pro 8 makes it remarkably effortless to generate expert-looking sites. The developer simply chooses a design, and then adds pictures, text, graphics and animation to create a customized look. Even the most complex design ideas are easy to understand through Easy Pro 8's high-end features, because they make it easy to develop cultured expert websites. Case in point, it features a step-by-step template wizard. Because there are in excess of 500 templates, it is not very difficult to develop the most ideal look. Even if a template isn't exactly right, it's simple to edit. There are over 30 effects and options available to add customized touches.

Web Designers Devon: Additional Tools and Aspects

We are partial to the Web Easy Pro 8's e-commerce abilities. You can easily develop a feature-filled online store, and connect it with PayPal to take in payments. You will even find it simpler to create shopping carts, and also to get a presence on eBay. This application supports any main video formats, like QuickTime and also Windows Media Player. Also, the addition of YouTube videos is rather easy. The editing tools are very perceptive; furthermore they integrate a well-known interface for generating shapes, adding text, plus many different actions.

Web Easy Professional 8 is the form of comprehensive developing software that is incorporated by front running web designers.Devon offers many very skilled agencies.

Offshore Web Design and Development - Use Great Opportunities

Sooner or later every small or medium business owner realizes that he needs a web site for his business. And almost everybody wants to have great web site for affordable price because usually web site design budget is quite limited.

There are few ways to find the best solution.

    Somebody prefers to design the site by himself - but it takes much time and labor, distracts from the general business, and let be frank - you have seen many of such "DIY" - web sites -they lack professional touch and look unfinished or overworked.
    Somebody decides to hire a professional web design company but in case of limited budget he has to say "good-buy" to many features he wants to see on the web site, because web design companies are also businesses and they can't work for "thank you very much" only.

So what to do when you want to have great web site but your web design budget is limited?

Think about IT-outsourcing and offshore web design and development!

There are many web design companies in other countries, mostly of Eastern Europe and East-Southern Asia that operate with small budgets and offer great web design works

How it is possible? There are different economical factors which condition on low internal expenses of the companies in these countries so they can do the same volume of work but for lower price than it costs in USA, Canada, UK, Western Europe or Australia. So offshore web site design and development helps to keep prices at least 3-5 times less.

You can say "Yes, this is cool that I can save my money but how they will do the work if I am here in USA but they are in Ukraine, for example?" Easily! In our age of Internet this is not a problem at all! Practice proves that for web site design project it's enough to have communication through email, instant messenger (ICQ, AOL, MSN) or IP-phone.

You can say "How can I trust somebody whom I have never seen before and most likely will not ever see?" Actually this question must the web design companies ask, not you, because there are many of IT-outsourcing companies and competition is quite strong in this area, so to get a customer many companies allow the first payment after 30-50% of the project completion, i.e. you pay after you have seen good results and satisfied with the work.

And as in onshore web design you need to pay much attention while choosing web design company: look at their previous works in portfolio, and ask about previous customers' references. Ideally all this information must be accessible on the company's web site.

As for the rest there is not much difference between offshore and onshore web site design process. You see the results of work in the progress, make your comments, see changes, agree them. When the project is complete and the site is ready to be uploaded to your server, you make final payment. It's also not a problem - you can make payment by credit card, PayPal, wire transfer, Western Union, etc.

So let's resume what you must know when dealing with offshore web site design:

    If you are on "tight budget" and can't afford spending thousands of $$$ for your web site design you should think about trying offshore web site design opportunities.
    There are many countries, which take part in offshore web site design; the most well known are India, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, Philippines.
    To make right choice of offshore web design company for your web site design take into consideration the company reputation, portfolio of previous works, previous customers' references, quick and competent feedback to your initial request.
    To avoid problems you must be attentive and ask exact questions about payment policy and method, timescale and milestones of the project, conditions of the ready site delivery, warranties, post-development support and maintenance.

At your first experience with offshore web design you can see it to be too risky and complicated, but this feeling will be replaced with real satisfaction when you will see your new great web site live in the Internet and you realize how much you have saved on its design.

Julia Rama
Marketing Director of IT-Inventors
http://www.it-inventors.com/

IT-Inventors - professional offshore web design company from Ukraine offers affordable custom web site design at rate $10/hr. Services we offer:
Corporate web site design, E-commerce web site design, Content Management Software integration into existing web sites, Real estate web site design.

More than 130 projects made, dozens of satisfied customers. We are always ready to help you become an owner of a great web site for affordable price.

Web Design Tips That Can Improve Your Web Site

Although certain subjects, including web design, might seem exciting for many people, once they put a lot of thought into doing this, they're intimidated by trying. If you're interested in web design but suffering from a bit of information overload, this article can help. Read on for some basic, easily-digestible tips on how to employ outstanding web design techniques.

Learning new website design strategies is something that becomes simpler the more you practice doing it. So, go ahead and start up some simple pages with HTML and C+ to see if you have some of the fundamentals down. Practice, as they say, makes perfect!

Don't assume that you have to make use of every last inch in your website layout. Using plenty of blank or "white" space is a common design strategy, and a very effective one. White space helps people to clearly see your site, which in turn allows them to read and absorb the information much better than a site that is packed with too much stuff.

Do not put pop-up windows on your site. While these might seem valuable in some instances, most people think they are rather annoying. As a result, your users may just go away from your site, too angry to come back.

Make use of free software in your site setup. While it is widely thought that pricey software and tools are the only solutions to building a quality website, there are actually vast amounts of free software and tools available on the Internet. Both of which can help you as you start the design process and to keep your site up and running. You just need to do a little Internet searching in order to find some free tools that will work best for you.

Designing your website and running it, requires your personal office space. Eliminate distractions, and be certain that your space is efficient and suitable for your work. Set up your office so that your tools and other items you need to successfully design sites are easily accessible. Use your space to help make it easier to do your job.

If you are looking for a good domain name, but find that most are already in use, visit an auction website and shop for old domain names. You will be able to buy abandoned or never used domain names that would not be for sale anywhere else.

Keep all of the site files you use as small as possible, regardless of design. The smaller the size of each of your files, the quicker your pages will load. It is always better to have your website load as fast as possible. You should also keep in mind that not every visitor will be using a high speed Internet connection. Continue to test your site to make sure it will load quickly, even with a dial-up connection.

Hopefully this article has provided you with some good pointers about web design, and you are more confident than ever about diving into it. Keep this information in mind for web design, and be sure to never stop learning about it. If you do this and apply all that you learn then you should have no problem succeeding in your web design efforts.

Ideas To Figure Out How To Be A Good Web Designer

No matter what level of experience you may or may not have with producing web sites, you probably realize the significance of good design. If you want visitors to enjoy your site and revisit it over and over, you need to build a site that is attractive, easy to use, and stuffed full with useful information. The tips below serve as a good starting point for making a great web site.

Make sure that all of your colors match one another. Make sure that text can be easily read against background colors. It is generally agreed upon that dark text on a light background is the easiest to read. If you aren't sure if your color scheme works well, show it off to a friend for some feedback.

Regular newsletters attract repeat website visitors. Giving your customers the opportunity to receive promotions, updates, or other news in their Inbox can encourage them to return. Put your sign up form on your site's sidebar to keep track of how many people sign up. Do not distribute the newsletter to people who have not specifically requested it; otherwise, recipients might become irritated.

Do not utilize pop-ups. This is one of those most hated marketing tactics on the web! Many people will close a website that brings pop-ups as soon as they can, no matter what size the site is. Make sure your customers are happy by eliminating these pesky ads from your site. If your host forces pop-ups on you, it may be time to find a new one.

Your website needs to function properly for visitors who use any kind of browser, so be sure to test out your site for browser compatibility. A page that works well in Firefox may display improperly in Safari, Internet Explorer or Chrome. Check how each page displays in the major browsers before your site goes live.

Do not overuse JavaScript. While Java opens many doors towards an interactive website experience, a lot of Internet surfers are going to have difficulty with it. Although JavaScript has some benefits, you need to be aware of the different types of browsers being used. Not all visitors have the most current version of their browser. Also, everyone doesn't enable JavaScript on their browsers. This means they'll have difficulty viewing your site because of this.

Don't underestimate the importance of your "About Us" page. Too many websites use boring, generic biographies. Make it a little more exciting! Provide some insight about your own story. How did you get inspiration? What are your goals? What led you to website creation?

Hosting your own website might not be a good choice. Do as much of the design that you are comfortable with, but allow a professional to host your website, so your time is freed up; this allows you to dedicate your time for things other than the site's security and safety.

You can use a What You See Is What You Get code editor (WYSIWYG), but using a text editor such as Notepad, gives you full flexibility when editing your code. The idea behind platform is that you are responsible for designing site features, then just paste in the generated code. It makes things simple, but it can create some bulky, messy code. To make things more error-free, working the old fashioned way, via a text editor, is the smarter approach.

Hosting your site yourself is not really a great idea, no matter what amount of money you've decided to invest in it. Design your website as much as you can by yourself, but have someone else host it, so that you do not have to worry about its security and safety.

Find a good CSS Love newsletter to subscribe to. This will give you something to fall back on for inspiration when you need it. Newsletters are available to offer advices for site designers of all skill levels.

Catches are only useful when people are registering for your website, otherwise skip them. Encountering a catch pulls a website visitor out of passive viewing, and forces them to solve a relatively complicated problem to continue. Only the most devoted members will stay on a page with catches, while others will leave to go to other sites.

Get someone to run a test of your site to see if it functions as you progress. Whenever you add a brand-new feature, have someone test and judge it while being impartial. For instance, you might not be bothered by a video that loads slowly, but someone else may have a different opinion. It is important to always get the advice of others.

When adding videos to your website, you should take into account that some people's Internet bandwidth isn't very high at all. You might want to convert your videos at 5,000 kb/s, but that may be a lot faster than someone's connection. Which translates into a slow video, buffering every few seconds.

Remember, designing a website does not need to be expensive. For all the tools you have, there are usually less expensive ones that will benefit you. For example, you can use free software to help you create websites and add design elements to all your pages. Open source software usually does the same things as paid software. Utilizing open source software can help you save a significant amount of money.

You don't have to design your site alone. Web page design incorporates many areas like user interface design, SEO, content creation, graphic design, and web programming. So, don't be ashamed to ask for help if you need some. When you are not sure how to design something, keep in mind that there are professional web designers out there who can help you get it done.

Open space on a website is restful and allows the visitor to focus. It is a mistake to pack as many bells and whistles as possible into your website. Blank space makes your site easier to read and navigate: your visitors will enjoy viewing your site if they do not feel overwhelmed by the quantity of information on each page.

Much sure you allocate a little time each day for your website development. Your design project will come together quicker and more coherently if you avoid working on it in small bits and pieces. When you put the effort into doing this, your hard work will pay off as your site is built. In addition, working for longer periods of time makes the retention of what you are learning and doing much easier.

Link your logo to your home web page. Most websites with a logo have that logo linked to the home page, and your visitors will expect this. Static logos frustrate users because it forces them to search for the link to the homepage. If your logo is clickable, people will find your site more navigable.

It is unlikely that you will be the next creator of a craze like Facebook or Google. The odds are stacked against you. But, the good news is that the right CSS Love skills can help you create sites that are much more attractive and that function just as easily and seamlessly as the big boys do. Use what you learned from this article to become a great web designer.

Why to Choose Responsive Website Design for Your School Website?

School websites are becoming increasingly vital and common for use within schools particularly the use of the intranet. School websites are heavily dependent on interactivity both for staff and students. It is therefore important that school sites are designed with responsiveness as a priority. With a responsive design, the school website could benefit staff, students and website guests.

Responsive website design is important not just for school sites but for all websites. The speed and interactivity of a website is important as it heightens as well as enhances engagement for website readers. Interactive parts of the site can be engaging if they are responsive enough for example, if your website had an interactive educational games section that is instantly accessible as well as responsive, it could appeal to the younger website users whom are using the website.

For more mature uses, the response of a website can also be important. School websites are regularly including the use of the intranet-a closed network if you will. This closed network can be accessed as well as used by both staff and students. This part of a website should be designed with responsiveness in mind. You would not want a quality website but then a poorer intranet crippled by speed.

The intranet could well be a key component of your school website design as it may be where you get the most use from your website-especially if your school is a high school. Having slow, unresponsive load times would harm both staff and students alike. It is important to have quality response through design as well as perhaps capable servers to withstand the usage of this network capability.

Overall, the responsiveness of a website can certainly be enhanced through website design. Certainly including components such as a closed network/intranet will do much to harm how well a website can function as well as respond to requests. Nonetheless, an interactive and responsive design will do much to enhance the engagement as well as interactivity of the website for guests using the website.

Including interactive segments on the website is a viable option particularly for websites aimed at Primary School level. Using educational games in a dedicated child friendly section can do much to engage the website user also. For higher educational levels, the use of an intranet system is almost guaranteed as it is becoming a point of accessibility for both staff and students alike. Ensuring the design of this is responsive will do much to help the component deal with the high usage levels.