Website designing & development both are co related words. Both have great impact on each other. If you have website with great functionality, it’s really good but it’s not the guarantee of success without a beautiful design or template. Same words are for the website with good design but have no functionality and usability.

Website designing becomes easy by the availability of many new tools. Now the Webmaster has wider option now, many frameworks are available to help you in website designing. Webmasters really enjoy the new technology & methodologies that are very helpful in website designing. Website designing cost goes down, so this is the best time to get your website. In starting days HTML tag are used generally and website are made using frames. But now website designing comes in a new age, now the website created using the web 2.0 technologies – Ajax and has all the enhanced features that you would never imagine in the starting days of Internet.

Some basic tools are very popular in a website designer like dream weaver, Photoshop, edit plus are very helpful in making great website. Some basic problem faced by the website designer like high load time that really annoyed the visitors or user so if you are planning for a good website and have a great ROI reduce the load time of your website.

Many website have no clear message, that’s why they loose customer. Write clear content that will represent your company and product. A visitor comes and if they like the information they return back again & again. Include important keywords in your content. It will be helpful in getting better ranking in the search engine. Some times they choose the wrong template that has no clear connection with their product or feature. They loose customer because not a professional look.

Some common mistake are done by many website owner that really annoying the visitors. A visitor comes but they never return back due to bad user experience. Making website heavy with lots of pages is a common website designing mistake. Rather, discard unwanted pages from your site to make it compact, easy to get loaded, precise and professional looking. Existence of unnecessary hinders beauty of design and functioning of sites. A visitor leaves early if they are not finding relevant information, so delete unwanted pages that have no use.

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1. Inappropriate domain name: Pick a domain name that is memorable and relates to your business. Since people are likely to forget very long names, shorter domain names are typically better, but not always. For example, a name like Peter.com can be too vague and says nothing about the content of the Web site.
2. Poor design and functionality: Why have a Web site with content if no one can access it? Good design is largely based on consistency. Menus should appear in the same place on every page, links should all be the same color/typeface, and a logo of some sort should be clearly visible at all times.
3. Too complicated or too slow: Although flash animation may look amazing, it may be too complex for casual Internet users. Though aesthetics certainly matter, it must be in balance with functionality and ease of use for the typical user. Also, a more complex design takes longer to load on many computers.
4. Stagnant site: Not only is content time-sensitive, so is format and design. There will always be new tools available to make Web sites better looking and better performing. It is not cost-effective to create a Web site and let it sit. Update content regularly and take advantage of (appropriate) new technologies to make the site look better.
5. Broken links and 404 error messages: Make sure every link on your site works. You’ll lose users quickly if they see a “404 file not found” error message or find broken or incorrectly labeled links. If you have a large site, consider adding a form so users can submit a broken link, which lets users know you are on top of any problems they discover.
6. No contact info: Users need to be able to contact you with questions, complaints, and suggestions. A Contact Us page, like an Internet business card, should be available from any part of your site. Also, be sure to actually answer these messages either personally or through an auto-reply.
7. Ignoring statistics: Detailed reports of visitor traffic are available for your Web site. This service may be offered by your hosting provider or obtained through a third party. By monitoring your statistics (such as visitors-turned-customers, users on broadband, etc.) you can tailor your marketing and design toward those who visit most or find weak spots based on who you are not attracting.
8. Free or cheap hosting: As attractive as some of these services are, realize that the reliability of your business depends on the reliability of your hosting. A good host service should have minimal downtime, offer services such as shopping cart systems, and have good customer support. Be sure to read reviews and apply for free trials (if possible) before you commit to anything.
9. Avoiding spiders: Spiders are what search engines use to find your page. You want to make sure your pages are designed so that you show up high on search engine rankings. This process is called search engine optimization. There are, however, ethics and strategies to SEO. Some practices (such as hidden text, redirects, etc.) will result in you being banned from search engines.
10. Not hiring a professional: Search engine optimization is complex. To move up in the listings on Google and other search engines, you may want to hire a professional, especially if your business relies heavily on generating business from the Web.

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Clarity: Top Web Design firms critically emphasize the importance of clarity to make websites user-friendly. Websites should make things understandable and easy to the users with an easy to use navigation. Use clear layouts and organized structures with apparent and familiar looking links. Visitors will find it pretty annoying if they can not find what they want and it is less likely that they would return to your site again.

Brevity: Websites, especially e-commerce sites, or sites that offer a tool or service typically require visitors to fill out a form. Web design experts recommend that you keep these forms short and to the point; having to fill out information that is excessive in length will cause visitors to leave your site and not follow through with the order process. What consumers look for these days is their comfort and processes in speed of light, so processes that require time is a thing of the past.

Privacy: It is suggested by designing companies that not asking for personal details from visitors for trying out certain services can maximize better business hand. Having to do so deter users from trying introductory software downloads that they might later be willing to pay for. Let users explore and discover what your services have to offer before you ask for personal information. Once these users decide that they like the service you are offering, they are much more willing to provide personal data such as an email address in return.

Readability: While high quality, useful content is an extremely important element of website usability, do not make the mistake of using too much text in your web design page lay out. Web design firms use italics and bold words in contents so that users can spot easily what they are looking for. Break content up and help explain it with images and captions, bullet points, and headings. Content is a must, but make sure you do not feed any useless or good for nothing contents to agitate a user.

Simplicity: Always remember the “keep it simple” mantra for an amazing website. Use a neat an simple structure for the web design. Make sure there is a limit to the amount of pop ups, audios and videos featured in a site. These can overwhelm users, and without adequate technology, overload their computer and deter them from using your site. Use hierarchical structures to give a sense of visual hierarchy to delineate the content type and importance. Maintaining a proper structure, colors and fonts all throughout your site will ad credibility into your sire.

1)      Optimize images to increase loading speed.( Less image more content)

2)      Design a content based layout.( More content more search engine ranking and traffic)

3)      Create static navigation links both header and footer.( Top menu and footer menu)

4)      Add content to web pages inside p tag avoid br tag.(The tag is an empty tag )

5)      Minimize table especially nested tables.( Try to use div )

6)      Add div avoid using old tables.

7)      Avoid Java script.( Less java the page will load faster)

8)      Use H Tags like h1…h6 for placing Keywords example like service name and products.(For Important Words)

9)      Create file name related to web page example web-design-India.htm or html or php and try to avoid keeping page name as Page name1.html, page name2.php, http://www.yoursitename.com/templates.Php? etc.

10)  Add alt tags related to images and your keywords.

11)  Avoid using frames.( Most of the search engines don’t like frames and it wont crawl your site)

12)  Validate web page for W3c to avoid html code error.

13)  Add a good site map structure for your website.

14)  Make a blog associated with your main website.

The first  rule is  that every web designer should follow is to create a fast loading web site. You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While designing a web site always think about how long it will take to load. Try out our tips to build a great looking web site that also loads fast.

• Minimize the use of images – The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don’t make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. Notice the popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon etc., they have very few images because the load time is more important. Very often simple designs are the best.

• Optimize images for the web – Once you have decided on the images that you need on your site, make sure that it is optimized for the web. They should be in the gif or jpeg format. You can also minimize the size of the image by choosing the number of colors you need, from the color palette. The less the colors you choose, the less the size of the image. You can also use online tools like Gif Wizard to optimize your images or to get a recommendation on how to cut down the size of an image.

• Use Tables creatively – You can get some great looking designs by using tables creatively. Tables load very fast because it is just HTML code. Tables can be used in the homepage, menus or anywhere you like. Check out our homepage and our menus to see how we have used tables in our site.

• Design simple icons – Instead of using big, bulky images use simple and small icons that add a little color and draw the attention of a visitor. We have used small icons in our homepage to highlight the main sections of our site.

• Try out CSS Styles – Have fun with CSS styles to get some cool text effects. Again, a CSS Style is simple HTML code so it loads very fast. You can create cool rollovers using CSS Styles.

• Use Flash sparingly – There seems to be a lot of hype about Flash but I recommend that you minimize the use of Flash on a site. Don’t make entire sites using Flash. It may look great but it takes hours to load and can really put off visitors. If you do want to use Flash use it within an HTML site and make sure it loads fast.

• Keep checking your load time – Last but not least, before you decide on the final design of your web site; check its load time on NetMechanic. This site gives you a free analysis of your web site which is extremely useful. We kept using it to improve our site till we got a report that said good loading time!

In addition, cost of Web site development and hosting has dropped dramatically during this time. Instead of costing tens of thousands of dollars, as was the case for early websites, one can now develop a simple web site for less than a thousand dollars, depending on the complexity and amount of content. Smaller Web site development companies are now able to make web design accessible to both smaller companies and individuals further fueling the growth of the web development industry. As far as web development tools and platforms are concerned, there are many systems available to the public free of charge to aid in development. A popular example is the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP), which is usually distributed free of charge. This fact alone has manifested into many people around the globe setting up new Web sites daily and thus contributing to increase in web development popularity. Another contributing factor has been the rise of easy to use WYSIWYG web development software, most prominently Adobe Dreamweaver, Netbeans, WebDev, or Microsoft Expression Studio, Adobe Flex. Using such software, virtually anyone can develop a Web page in a matter of minutes. Knowledge of HyperText Markup Language (HTML), or other programming languages is not required, but recommended for professional results.

The next generation of web development tools uses the strong growth in LAMP, Java Platform, Enterprise Edition technologies and Microsoft .NET technologies to provide the Web as a way to run applications online. Web developers now help to deliver applications as Web services which were traditionally only available as applications on a desk based computer.

Instead of running executable code on a local computer, users are interacting with online applications to create new content. This has created new methods in communication and allowed for many opportunities to decentralize information and media distribution. Users are now able to interact with applications from many locations, instead of being tied to a specific workstation for their application environment.

Examples of dramatic transformation in communication and commerce led by web development include e-commerce. Online auction sites such as eBay have changed the way consumers consume and purchase goods and services. Online resellers such as Amazon.com and (among many, many others) have transformed the shopping and bargain hunting experience for many consumers. Another good example of transformative communication led by web development is the blog. Web applications such as WordPress and Movable Type have created easily implemented blog environments for individual Web sites. Open source content management systems such as Joomla!, Drupal, XOOPS, and TYPO3 and enterprise content management systems such as Alfresco have extended web development into new modes of interaction and communication.

In addition, web development has moved to a new phase of Internet communication. Computer web sites are no longer simply tools for work or commerce but used most for communication. Websites such as Facebook and Twitter provide users a platform to freely communicate. This new form of web communication is also changing e-commerce through the number of hits and online advertisement.

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STOP!!!!

Take a deep breath and read some practical tips for professional looking websites.

1. Select a colour scheme and stick to it.

If your company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that’s a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them – don’t change colours on every page.

The most common colour schemes include:

- Red, yellow and white
- Blue and white
- Red, grey and white
- Blue, orange and white
- Yellow, grey and white.

If you’re not sure what colour scheme to choose, surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can then model your colour scheme on what already exists.

2. Use templates.

Can’t find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set designs. These come as part of your web design software (such as FrontPage) or you can check out some websites that specialise in designing templates.

Visit:

www.web4business.com.au emplates1.htm
www.newtemps.com
www.website-templates-resale-rights.com
www.123webtemplatesandmore.com

3. Provide an easy to use navigation system.

This is one of the most important issues to consider when designing a website. You need to ensure your visitors can find what they are looking for easily. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it’s best to stick with it.

It also helps to include your navigation bar at the bottom of each page to save your visitors from having to scroll back to the top.

4. Don’t go overboard on special effects

Whilst it is ok to have one or two special effects to jazz up your website, spinning graphics and logos often distract your visitor from the content, not to mention they can take too long to download. Your visitors may click away even before your spinning logo finishes loading.
5. Backgrounds

Ensure your visitors can read the text on the background, ie. no black writing on dark blue background or yellow on white. Also be careful that your links are visible before and after being visited. The default for links in most programs is blue (before being visited) and burgundy (after being visited), so if you have a dark background, ensure your links are light.

6. External Links

It is a good idea to open links to other websites in a new window. That way your visitors can easily return to your site when they are finished browsing the external link

7. Site Map & Search Feature

If you website is more than 15 pages, it is useful to have a site map or a “Search” feature to ensure your visitors can easily find what they’re looking for.

8. Content is King

While it is important that your website looks clean and professional, it is far more important that you concentrate your efforts on the content and promotion.

If you want a professional website, things to stay away from include:

1. Flash intros, revolving globes, bevelled line separators, animated mail boxes
2. Loads of pop up or pop under boxes
3. Autoplay music. Allow your customer to play music only if they choose.
4. Hit counters of the free variety, which say “you are 27th visitor”
5. Date and time stamps, unless your website is updated daily or weekly
6. Busy backgrounds.

Don’t sweat the small stuff and get yourself focussed on what to include on the website and the best way to promote it. We will cover these topics in future articles.

This article is written by Ivana Katz whi is the owner of Websites 4 Small Business – www.web4business.com.au, a company specialising in the design and promotion of small and home-based business websites.