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6 Web Design Tips from Leonardo da Vinci
2008-04-07 12:53:00
Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inspire artists, scientists and others. Here are six things we can learn from him about web design.One of the most remarkable things about Leonardo is his insatiable curiosity. Besides being a master painter, here are some of his other interests… * Botany * Music * Human and animal anatomy * Fluid dynamics (before there was a name for this branch of science) * Writing great poetry * Platonic philosophy * Design ing remarkable inventions, including flying machines and a sort of pre-industrial tankMany of these interests show themselves in his artistic work. Anatomy is obvious, but have you ever compared the ringlets of hair in his paintings to his drawings of water flow? Or thought of how rhythm, which is so essential to music and poetry, also shows up in painting and drawing?The point is that being curious and learning about many things that are apparently unrelate...
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Every Website Must need .......
2008-02-28 07:43:00
by Mike Cherim There are a plethora of Website s out there, each one unique in its design, its content, markup, features, functionality, and in myriad other ways. Yet, despite these differences, there are specific needs that should be met with near consistency, Internet-wide, regardless of the site. Let’s take a look at twelve of these common denominators. Below are the first six.1. A Proper Navigation Menu"An easy to use and accessible navigation menu must be available. There are other concerns as it pertains to building a proper navigation menu, as well, such as… * Its link styling the :hover, :focus, and :active pseudo elements. * The semantic use of lists to properly organize your links into a proper menu. * And even going so far as marking the current page."2. A Meaningful, Well-Formed Title"Ideally the content title should come before the site (this helps search users find stuff like your main content heading, instead of seeing your site name over and over again) a...

BMW’s mid December website Redesign
2008-02-08 12:17:00
A monthly study that analyzes what percent of OEM website visitors use shopping tools, the team assessed the change in visitor use of three shopping tools following BMW’s mid December website redesign.Want to Better understand How Consumers Interact with Website s then Read Initial Impacts of BMW Website Redesign

Design tips to reduce bouncing rate
2008-01-09 08:35:00
Everyone need to start measure his/her website Bounce rates. If your website have 80,000 Unique visitor/Month and more then 70% of visitor leave without clicking on any single link within your site.Sometimes, jumping to deep pages can lead to higher bounce rate because visitors realize that new web page isn't exactly what they are looking for and they leave the website.Being designer, you need to develop Bounce rate reduction strategies.slingshotseo give some way to reduce Bounce rate of website1. Make almost everything on the homepage click-able. That includes flash and images. Make sure that the image maps lead to relevant content, not just some random page.2. Make sure that your contact information is on every single page of your website except for the homepage. This forces those would be callers to dig at least one page.3. Come up with catchy tag lines or call to actions. This can be a ribbon, tag, or flash advertisement. Examples would be Free Catalog Download, Competitive Pr...
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Inferior Web design conventions - Killing Some Bad Layout Conventions
2007-12-14 09:18:00
3 Columns Done WrongThis layout consists of a main content area bordered on either side by narrow sidebar columns. Despite the inherent problems with this sort of layout, it caught on fast and remains a popular choice for blogs and online retail. It also became and remains quite popular as a default layout for many content management systems.Design fundamentals reveal this layout to be deficient in several ways. Due either to a lack of designer or owner discrimination or understanding, or perhaps simply due to laziness, this layout remains common even today.Sites Using Centered 3-Column Layout * Apple Store* Amazon.com* Many content management systems’ default themesSo what are the flaws ? In order to better understand them, it is helpful to first examine some of the supposed benefits to the centered 3-column layout.Supposed Pros* Centers the content, “making it the focus”* Results in a “pleasing” symmetrical design* Allows for twice as much ancillary content and cross-prom...
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Milestone’s Top 10 Website Programming Guidelines
2007-11-30 12:29:00
1. Use clean CSS (cascading style sheets) codes2. If websites are built on a dynamic platform, make sure that your Content Management System is search engine friendly3. Keep your codes clean by calling all java scripts and CSS using an include file4.Use keyword rich H1 TAGS5.Use ALT Tags for images to enable your site to be read by visitors with visual/hearing impairments and name all your images keyword rich6. Keep the download time low by reducing images on the site7. Float the content right at the top and make it easy for the crawler to index your page8. Make sure phone numbers and address are on every page as text9. Use Absolute Links, no relative links10. Check for browser compatibility so the site appears the same across all platformsSource :Website Programming Guidelines

How to design and create your own custom logo for free
2007-11-07 10:14:00
There are many free logo designs available on the Internet for your web site or company, but most of the time creating and designing your own logo makes the most sense and gives it a truly unique touch. However, designing a logo yourself can be a laborious task and too technical if you don’t have the right tools and skills. However, one site that I just ran across called Logo Maker, allows you to create your own personalized custom logo for a website or business and use it online for free! The cool thing about this web site is that you can design a logo and use it on a personal web site or blog without paying anything. Of course, there’s a catch!Once designed, you will be able to copy and paste a line of HTML code onto your site that will display your logo from their web site. If you want to download the logo in JPG, PNG, or any other image format and use it on business cards, letters or for any other business purpose, you have to pay $49. However, if you have a really small site...
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Important Web Design Tips: SEO Friendly Website
2007-10-24 14:10:00
A website should firstly be searched out by visitors before talking about attracting or retaining those visitors.Nowadays, a “well designed website” does not only relate to a web site’s visual attractiveness but more importantly, how friendly it is with search engines.Below are 10 SEO friendly website designing tips where web designers should pay attention to during the early stage of their web designing process.1. Avoid creating menu on the left-hand side of a website. If unavoidable, an alternative way is to put some text with rich keywords at the top or above the left-hand menu so that this text will be the first thing to be read by search engines.2. Headlines are rated more important than the rest of the web page by search engines. To take advantage of this, you should have your keywords in the page headline. Since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it to make it smaller.3. Every page should contain the “title” and “description” tags with good ke...
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Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid
2007-10-08 14:10:00
1. The user must know what the site is about in seconds: attention is one the most valuable currencies on the Internet. If a visitor can not figure what your site is about in a couple of seconds, he will probably just go somewhere else. Your site must communicate why I should spend my time there, and FAST!2. Make the content scannable: this is the Internet, not a book, so forget large blocks of text. Probably I will be visiting your site while I work on other stuff so make sure that I can scan through the entire content. Bullet points, headers, subheaders, lists. Anything that will help the reader filter what he is looking for.3. Do not use fancy fonts that are unreadable: sure there are some fonts that will give a sophisticated look to your website. But are they readable? If your main objective is to deliver a message and get the visitors reading your stuff, then you should make the process comfortable for them. 4. Do not use tiny fonts: the previous point applies here, you want to...
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Search Engine Friendly Web Design - 3 Ways to Use CSS
2007-09-26 14:35:00
CSS stands for cascading style sheets and CSS is a way of separating presentation code from your actual content in web design. Usually you build up a set of CSS style rules that are stored in a separate file that has a .css file extension. You then link to the CSS file from your web pages using an HTML link tag. There are many, many web design advantages to separating your presentation code off into separate CSS files and this article will tell you 3 excellent ways that you can use CSS to make your web design more search engine friendly. Web Design Technique 1 - Us CSS to Structure Your Document Let's consider the facts that we know about search engines. They send their search engine robots to your site to read the content that you have there and the easier it is to find for them the better because they don't waste much time looking. So having said this, what is the point of bogging down your pages with lots of un-necessary presentation markup that could quite easily be stored off...
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Web Designs for Corporate Organizations
2007-09-21 09:46:00
Both large and small corporate organizations have become conscious of the fact that the World Wide Web gives them instant availability to their corporate clients. You can operate your business with total flexibility and efficiency, all with the single click of a mouse. One of the best reasons for going online is to provide your clientele with customized web page information to meet all their needs at the same time.With fifty-one percent of corporate businesses indicating that the internet has improved their profitability and helped their business expand; going online is a great way to not only improve your business, but make it more versatile and adaptable in today's fast paced world as well.Common web design features of Corporate Organ izations Some common and poplar web design features of corporate organizations include:Photo AlbumsOn Photo Albums page corporate organizations put the images of their company and employeesGuest BooksSite visitors post entries in an online guest book ...
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Web Design & Usability Guidelines
2007-09-14 10:44:00
Unlike web accessibility which impacts directly upon disabled users, web usability affects all users, and can be defined as a measure of how easy it is for a generic site visitor to carry out a task such as finding a given piece of information or buying a certain product.• Consistent placement of navigation and page structure• People read left to right, top to bottom • People scan copy looking for relevant links [headings and bulletpoints are good devices . . .] • Therefore: most important screen area = top left • Create a logical screen hierarchy [following the above points] • Clearly title all your content, and pages • Keep your content concise • Features supported by images can be very eye catching • Use general language [avoid technical jargon where possible] • Consider what your audience are likely to be looking for • Users are impatient. Design for a 2-10 second maximum download. Reuse header graphics so they can load from cache. Avoid excessiv...
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Web Site Development Process Tips to turn the tide in your favor
2007-09-03 11:20:00
The development of your website involves an important decision-making process. A key factor in the process is the consideration of how potential clients or customers will interact with your site. The success of your website, and possibly your entire business rests on how you address that issueWhen you begin the process of setting up a website, here are some questions that you should consider: 1.What is the one overall message that a customer should take away with them when they leave your website? 2.How does your website make your customers feel? 3.How can your product or service best be explained to the customer in a simple and concise manner? 4.How can the customer be guided to buy/buy now? 5.How can you encourage the customer to come back? 6.How can you get your customer to bring you additional customers? Planning a Website is a two-part processFirst Part -- You gather your development partners, analyze your needs and goals, and work through the development process outlined here ...
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The 5 hats of graphic designers
2007-08-27 08:15:00
If novice can work their way around a photo manipulation or page layout program, why do designers still charge large figures for their services ?Today’s designer must wear many hats, and I’ll talk about some of them here.The problem solving hatDesigners are presented with a problem, and it’s their task to find a solution. The problem could be to set a business apart from its competition by using an effective logo design, or to increase product sales with a cleverly designed advertising campaign. Whatever the initial brief, there’s a clearly defined problem and the designer puts on their thinking hat.The teaching hatBy educating clients, customer-satisfaction is improved and the designer is more likely to be called upon in the future. What might a designer teach? File preparation is an important part of the print production process, and a lot of my time is spent educating clients about file types. You’d be surprised just how many of my clients don’t understand that a thum...
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Tips and tricks for designing logos
2007-08-14 08:04:00
Creating a logo design is a pretty exhausting task what with having to think of all those ideas and going back and forward with the client. But after reading this article I hope that it will become a little easier for you to knock out some pretty sweet designs.Its also good when showing the client to present at least 5-10 different versions, even if it's something simple like a change of colour or some font styling. Ive had many clients often ask to see a design with a slight change just becuase it was hard for them to visualise it in thier heads, I guess its the same for all clients and in the most part why they are hiring you.So check out some of the examples below and hopefully you'll feel better next time you have to come up with a few good logos :)Try flash drawing toolsIf the thought of learning to use the drawing tools in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator makes you sigh, try Flash, no really iam serious, Flash is also vector based the same as Illustrator but it offers a very d...
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Pocket PC Web site development tips
2007-08-10 11:44:00
More and more users are accessing the Web via Pocket PC handhelds, so Web developers need to be proficient in Pocket Internet Explorer (pIE) specifications. This article examines the basic pIE specs and shows you how to tune your Web site appropriately.When you're developing Pocket PC Web sites, you need to consider three elements: presentation, browser features, and bandwidth. You can create mobile code by hand or with specialized tools. The Visual Studio .NET 2003 mobile controls easily self-render ASP.NET pages for the Pocket PC platform.This article will offer a brief overview of the Pocket PC Web site specification. I'll examine details native to the Microsoft Pocket Internet Explorer (known as pIE), but much of the information will be applicable to other Pocket PC-enabled Web browsers, such as Access NetFront, ThunderHawk, and MultiIERead more at Pocket PC Web site development tips
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20 practical tips for web designer
2007-08-01 08:12:00
The Difference between a good web designer and a great one is the ability to know how to take short cuts and save time without compromising the quality of work. Pixelsurgeon’s Jason Arber has put together 20 top tips and tricks you should be using to give your work that all-important professional edge1. PlanningWhen you’re itching to get started, it’s easy to overlook the most obvious step: planning. Whether it’s drawing wireframes and site diagrams in OmniGraffle or Visio, or even on a scrap of paper, you’ll save time by having an overview of your design at the site and page level before you start building. Obvious errors can be detected and solved before it’s too late to go back and it makes explaining your ideas to clients and colleagues a lot simpler than waving your hands in the air.2. Do it by handAlthough there are some excellent tools around for building web sites, such as Adobe GoLive and Adobe (formerly Macromedia) Dreamweaver, professional code monkeys prefer ...
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10 Quickfire Practical CSS Web Design Tips and Tricks
2007-07-19 09:44:00
1 Universal Selector - This sets ALL html tags to have zero border and padding. You then build your css up from there:*{padding:0; margin:0; }2 Image Replacement is the process of using images instead of text yet still using semantic html code. Whilst image replacement is great for static sites, the SiFR method is better for dynamic sites. Sifr uses a mix of Javascript and Flash to produce the text in any font. Both are great methods of making your site and typography more attractive and “designed”.3 Comment tags are a great way of organising your CSS. Comments are inserted like /* Details about the Css are help within is very useful tag */They are very useful for breaking up sections of your CSS code. For instance you could have/* ...All link styles ...*/a:link, a:hover{ color:#f00; }a:visited{ color#000; }/*...Below is the left nav system section ...*/#nav{ clear:both: float:left; }Im sure you get the idea4 Structure of the file ( the order in which selectors come etc ). Ther...
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How Does A Non Techie Build Websites ?
2007-07-09 12:53:00
It’s very easy simple fun and quick. A point and a click of the mouse with web browser interface and 1,000 template designs anyone can and a wide variety to choose from. Customize with your favorite theme – layout and color. With graphics and CSS – Cascading styling that makes positioning them or stacking very easy Z drag and drop into place. Such as your own logo or branding with photos and with own fav album personal family or business slides. Type your own text and fonts size with selection of style. Flash intro really does catch some attention with a little music. Mobile phones also have internet capabilities for browsing sites and text messaging graphics online games and downloading. With some of the latest technology a person is able to build a .mobi site with a mobile domain with this. And to keep it up to date with RSS feeds and add a journal dairy or web blog. The website is dynamic and updated in real time with fresh up to the minute hourly daily weekly or monthly co...
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Logo Design, Web Banner Design & Graphic Design Considerations
2007-06-29 13:11:00
Your corporate logo, banner ads, and other graphic design aspects are key parts to a marketing campaign. It is important for your corporate logo to be unique, recognizable, and to reflect your type of business. Your corporate logo will be representative of everything your company is, and will indicate your company by its presence on buildings, letterheads, advertisements, promotional items, as well as company vehicles or uniforms, if applicable to your company.Corporate logos are separated into three groups - descriptive logos- abstract logos- typographical logos. Descriptive logos are an image, web banner design or logo design that suggests the company name or line of work. Abstract logos have no clear association to the company and rely on uniqueness and exposure to link the company to the logo. Typographical logos are logos based specifically on the name of the company, and attempt to take a well-known name and add a graphical appeal.When it’s time for a logo design, you may ...
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Make Your Website Design Efficient By Avoiding These Costly Mistakes
2007-06-26 10:10:00
Some of the most effective way’s to create an efficient website is to make sure that you offer your visitors simplicity. Identify at the beginning that the focus of your website design is to accommodate your users. Being able to quickly and efficiently retrieve the information that the visitor is looking for should be your number one priority. Don’t get caught up offering them a substantial amount of insignificant information. Also remember to create your design from the user’s point of view.Here are a few factors that can greatly affect the efficiency of your website:Poorly Written ContentIt has been said that users tend to scan website content while thoroughly reading print content. This means that you are to avoid large blocks of text and break up your content and make it more visually comprehensive. Have you ever noticed while reading a magazine article or newspaper ad that they will take a short blurb of some key content and then reprint that in a bigger font within a box...
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Common Web Site Mistakes: Ten Things You Should Always Leave Out
2007-06-16 09:36:00
Designing a slick, attractive Web site takes practice and persistence. With time and feedback from visitors, you'll learn what makes them come back for more and what causes them to abandon your site after one quick stop. Few site owners do the job perfectly the first time: thankfully, you can always upload updated pages as you make improvements. Experience is the best teacher, but here's something to start you on the road to a solid, professional Web site: things that you should always leave out. No matter what type of site you design – personal, business or somewhere in between – these things should never find their way onto your pages. . Flashing graphics. If the neon-green-and-white image gives you an instant migraine, odds are your visitors will have the same problem. Keep the headache-inducing elements as far away from your site as possible. . Sound files that automatically load. The auto-loading option only wastes valuable time that can be better spent loading your real ...
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Selecting the Best Web Design Language for Your Project
2007-06-06 11:53:00
If you'd like to create and publish your own web site on the Internet, your first step should be to decide what type of web site you would like to create and what web design language you would like to use.Although there are several web design languages to choose from, make sure you take some time to research your options to ensure you're making the best choice for your project. Hypertext Markup Language (HTML)The easiest and most popular web design language is Hypertext Markup Language, better known as HTML. This language is so simple you can type the syntax into a text editor, such as Notepad, save it with an .html extension and instantly have a web page.You can learn more about HTML here:http://www.w3schools.com/html/Althou gh HTML will enable you to create simple web sites, if you want something more dynamic, you'll need to look into using other languages:PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor (PHP)PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor, better known as PHP, is a highly popular, server-side scriptin...
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The Birth of a Professional Web Site
2007-05-26 07:36:00
The Internet has opened a whole New World of opportunity for all of us. With the vast amount of information available at your fingertips, it has never been easier to communicate your message to the world. A web site will enable you to create your own home on the World Wide Web. Your home may be as simple or dynamic as you'd like and is only limited by your imagination.Although designing a great web site is an important part of developing a successful online business, it is only one small part of an overall plan.Although many new Internet entrepreneurs believe that all they need to do to make money online is to put up a web site, that couldn't be further from the truth.The truth is developing a successful Internet business takes a great deal of time, thought and effort. It takes a sincere commitment, a lot of patience, and a lot of personal drive. There are a lot of lessons that must be learned, and a lot of failures that must be endured. However, if you're truly passionate about ...
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Web Development & Design Techniques
2007-05-09 12:34:00
Today, internet has become a very important media in business world. According to a statistics, almost 70% of the the total business in the world is running over internet. A natural question arises that how does people running their millionaire business over internet? The answer lies with web site design and web site development, designing and search engine optimization. I'll discuss Search engine Optimization in my next article. Lets discuss about Website Design and Development .Web Site DevelopmentMost of you must be familiar with web site design and web site development and must be thinking that is their any issue discussing about it. Yes. All of us who works on internet has now or later must have developed one site or at least seen one. There are many website development company who develops site for others. What do you notice when you look at a website. Its beauty, images, flashes etc. Most of us go well impressed by such sites when we look at it. But that is not enough for a s...
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