Tips on how to build a better web experience

The wonderful world of the Web has driven a lot of business to printing outfit My1Stop LLC, from Fort Scott, Kansas. Approximately 50% of the company's US $20 million in annual revenue is derived from Web traffic, according to Michael Joseph, their vice president of e- commerce.

Given those numbers, My1Stop's web site must be top-notch - period. And although it won a 2006 Web Marketing Association award for outstanding achievement in Web site development, the company and its workers know that's not what drives business.

"The company that takes the best care of the customer is going to win, and e-commerce is not an exception to this rule," says senior programmer Mike Wulz.

Read More article...

Two Common Web Design Myths

If your site has been around for a while, you'd probably have been visited by the "Web Design Police" (people who have a lot of time on their hands). In fact, depending on your site, you might have been visited by different branches of these people, both advocating opposite policies. I recently received an email from one of my visitors who had apparently been "helped" by some of these people, and thought that an article on two of the myths of web design was appropriate.

Read More Article...

Keeping Your Website Simple is Most Effective

What do the Internet’s most profitable websites such as Dell, Amazon and Yahoo all have in common? They are plain, simple, and easy to use. The most effective web sites do not employ fancy graphics or animations to sell their products and services because these distractions take away from the goal of a website – selling! Your goal is to sell your products, services, and yourself – not impress people with your technical prowess. It just does not make sense to pay a website development company thousands of dollars to design a fancy website that will not be as effective as its cheaper, simpler counter-part.

Read More Article...

Web 2.0 'neglecting good design'

Hype about Web 2.0 is making web firms neglect the basics of good design, web usability guru Jakob Nielsen has said.

He warned that the rush to make webpages more dynamic often meant users were badly served.

He said sites peppered with personalisation tools were in danger of resembling the "glossy but useless" sites at the height of the dotcom boom.

Research into website use shows that sites were better off getting the basics right, said Mr Nielsen.

Read More Article...

Adobe Extends Web Video Leadership with H.264 Support

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the latest update for Adobe® Flash® Player 9 software, code-named Moviestar, which includes H.264 standard video support - the same standard deployed in Blu-Ray® and HD-DVD® high definition video players - and High Efficiency AAC (HE-AAC) audio support, as well as hardware accelerated, multi-core enhanced full screen video playback. These advancements will extend Adobe's leadership position in Web video by enabling the delivery of HD television quality and premium audio content through the ubiquitous Adobe Flash Player and pave the way to expand rich media Flash experiences on the desktop and H.264 ready consumer devices. The latest update for Adobe Flash Player 9 will be available in beta for immediate download later today on Adobe Labs at http://labs.adobe.com.

Read More Article

Reality Check for Web Design

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect."

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, recognized that universal access is a critical element of good design.

The Web's landscape has altered dramatically since its inception, when many websites completely ignored users with disabilities.

"Most project managers assumed that blind people could not use the Web anyway, so therefore they also could not use the specific website that was being developed," said Web usability guru Jakob Nielsen.

Read More Article...

How To Start Your Own Web Design & Development Company?

Internet marketing is comprises of a large number of options for people who want to make money online. There are many openings for those who are willing to work and are dedicated. The web designing is one of the Internet marketing options, which have a great scope. Although the work is not very simple but learning a couple of development tools can really provide help.

There is a number of software available in the market that allows the user design the web pages with ease. The tolls such as dream weaver and other are more of graphic user interface software that can be learnt quickly.

To start any business one need to have a good amount of knowledge on the related subject. Same is the case with web design and web development industry. The website designers are available in a large number and hence to select a few web site designers for your company from the large pool of designers you need to have a good grasp of the subject.

Read More Article...

The Design of Sites: An outstanding guide to Web Design.

“The ‘pattern’ book has become a familiar genre for frequent readers of technical manuals. The idea is to sift through mountains of architectural or design schemes and then to categorize and catalogue the most frequent ideas and present their strengths and weaknesses. This type of book has been a success in software engineering, but can it translate to website design, where designers have everyday and frequent access to other designs? At worst, these books provide a common industry vocabulary (assuming it was read by everyone in the industry). How many people knew what a factory method referred to before Erich Gamma’s Design Patterns was released? At best, as in the case of that ‘original’ software design patterns book, mountains of complex ideas are archived into a single reference and will sit within arm’s reach for the rest of your life. So, is the web design discipline full of patterns that evade common sense?”

Read More Article...

Harnessing web 2.0 development

World has come closer and communication has become faster with the harnessing web 2.0, I won’t be wrong if I say ‘Network made easy with web 2.0’.

O'Reilly Media in 2003 coined the term Web 2.0 to emphasis a post-dot-com generation of sites and service that use web as platform. Web 2.0 is the new generation of web with new set of principles of web-based communities and hosted services for all its users. Web 2.0 is vanquishing the internet world because of its flexibility, usability and impetus that is driving various social communities.

Web 2.0 is quintessential internet online solution that has given web 1.0 a shove on one side and has foster mashups, banner Ads, wikis, file sharing, photo sharing, podcasts and technologies like weblogs, social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds on other side; these technologies have gained more visibility, ultimately improving interactivity of web. We are observing major shift in web usage, new development paradigm has refined the overall process letting users to benefit from software continuously being refined without waiting for upgraded version or SDLC. Different applications that operate well off online (del.icio.us, Skype, dodgeball) and offline (Flickr, Google Maps) have also helped to improve effectiveness of web.
Transition of Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 has consolidated different segments of web and now a website is not mere a website promoting its product and services but a good source of information exchange where visitors can maintain their own blogs and communities and share more information.

This new generation technology is synonymous for public communities, cloverleaf exchange of information, open communication; all these speak of its cosmopolitan nature in the market place and are serving web application to end users.

Broaden your web horizon harnessing web 2.0, for your help web is available as an open source where you can use and reuse the market and resources and have individual control, openly conversing and communicating, sharing your resources and views, and easily creating new corporate paradigm using readily available spontaneous modular elements. We also find remarkable growth in web economy as a result of web 2.0. Web 2.0 is data driven platform developed by independent developers and their participation, it creates network effects and very simple business paradigms driven by content and service unification.

The technical demography of traffic statistics shows increased figures from social media sites and rising trends in deployment of web 2.0 technologies. Recent statistics shows that social networking as the most popular tool, with 19% of companies having invested in it, followed by podcasts (17%), blogs (16%), RSS (14%), wikis (13%), and mashups (4%). When we sum up companies planning to invest in the tools, the percentages says: social networking (37%), RSS (35%), podcasts (35%), wikis (33%), blogs (32%), and mashups (21%).

In a nutshell I would say, Web 2.0 is a holistic approach that includes software for servers, content assimilation, standard based browser, rules for messaging, rich-interactive applications, and extensive use of folksonomies, all start with information inculcation, its management, storage and dissemination.

Article Source: http://www.1articleworld.com

Development India is an outsourcing website design and development company in India.

Rakhi, is a SEO copywriter at development India.

Demand is growing for multimedia production and Web site development

Ben Harrison could have taken an Old World route after high school and joined his friends trapping lobster off the coast of Maine.

He, instead, took a different path into an emerging industry using a skill set he had acquired as a youth.

"I was breaking into video games, modifying them and learning to make my own," he said. "But that was a really long time ago. I was a kid. I had to be about 10."

Embracing his knack for computer hacking, Harrison today creates Web pages, digital 3-D floating objects, video animations, and informational kiosks in museums in his role as creative director for Kamazar Multimedia Production in Albuquerque.

Read more Article...

Website Design: Keep it Simple

Keep it Simple One of the keys to a quality web site is simplicity. You've heard of the KISS principle? Keep It Simple Silly. This applies doubly for websites. Design Web Friendly It is inexperience than can make you want to use every bell and whistle, every feature and every new trick. It is nice to be able to create complex frames and tables, use large busy fonts, use flash and animated GIFs, but will end up with too many features competing against your message.

It's more than likely your audience is quickly going to be overwhelmed, rather than impressed. Just because you can create a flashy effect, doesn't mean you should. Ask yourself if the flashy addition is improving my page, my design. Decide if there is actual value in the addition and does it add with this technique? Is this the best way to communicate my message? A simple design doesn't necessarily mean uninteresting and dull. Lots of people confound fancy effects with effective communication. Keeping it simple means you should think about how people will be using your pages. Then present your information to them so it matches their requirements and expectations. Earn their attention Use technology and effects where appropriate and where they make for more effective communication. You're not designing web sites for yourself to look at. You're publishing a web page because you expect someone to stop by and visit it - your audience. The more you know about and understand your audience, the more effective you can gear your communication and marketing appropriately on your site.

Does your audience still use dial-up service that still relies on slow modems? Then be aware of file sizes and download times. Are they expecting to hear your band's music clips? Then you'd better think about an audio format. Ease of use is critical in web design, so above all else your site easy to navigate. Many small factors can quickly add up to create easy paths through your site. For example, one thing you can do is keep the number of choices small, that way people are less likely to become lost in a long list of options. Simple in design is simple design. Did you know that the average human mind sees five or fewer items as one group, but when it encounters more than five items it has to divide them into smaller sub-groups to process them? It makes sense, then, to try to keep your selections arranged in groups of five or less. That makes it easier for your readers to quickly see the options and select one.

Article written by Jason A. Neal.
graphic design seattle
seattle graphic design

Source : http://www.article99.com/

Building an Effective Website

There is no question that these days you cannot successfully run an Internet business, or in most cases any type of business, without an effective website. Most people, unless they are very knowledgeable about the intricacies of building websites, employ the services of professional website builder software, such as the highly rated XSitePro. The cost is definitely worth it when you are looking to have a website that portrays your business in the most effective way, and want it to be eye-catching and customer-friendly. The business owner needs the type of software that can help him or her build a website that will reflect exactly what he or she wants to portray, and what his or her customer need. There are basic steps involved in building an effective website, and good quality website builder software will help the business owner through each step so that the process can go smoothly.

1. General concept.
   At the very beginning of the website building process, the business owner should map out a plan, making an outline of what the general concept of the website should be. Before ever starting on the website, business owner should make specific notes about the website concept. Business owners should realize that the professional site builder software contains templates and ideas for building an effective website, and the software itself can probably contribute ideas that will enhance the website experience for everyone. However, the business owner is the one who knows what he or she wants to portray with the website, and how the website should work to enhance the business as a whole. Within this framework, the concept of the website will be determined, and the business owner, using the website builder software, can start the actual work.
2. Design.
   Things can get trickier when deciding on the actual website design. An effective website needs to reflect the business in its design, sometimes in a subtle way, and sometimes in a much more flashy way. A lot of this will depend on the type of business. If the business is selling children toys, the design of the website should probably be light and fun, with bright colors, whimsical graphics, and a fun text font, such as Comic Sans. A bookkeeping business website, on the other hand, should be portrayed in a more mature manner, with colors such as hunter green, gold, black and burnt orange, and a more serious font, such as Times New Roman or Arial. Though animation would work well on the children toy site, the bookkeeping business website would be better to have more serious graphics, such as office photographs or clip art that depicts a serious working environment. Everything from the title to the contact information must be considered in designing an effective website. The business owner can work with different possible design ideas, and then build a prototype before the website is published. This way, the business owner can decide on every aspect of the website design, and make necessary changes before actually launching the site.
3. Type of media used.
   Websites these days do not have to be just pictures and graphics. Different types of media can be used to make it a more effective site, such as video and sound. The business owner may wish to have an introduction on the first page of the business website; one that includes a video presentation. This can be very effective when trying to portray what a business does, and how it works with customers.
4. Search engine optimization.
   Good website builder software will help with search engine optimization, so that the business website can and will be seen by the right demographic. The best and most elaborate business website cannot be effective if it is never seen, and this makes search engine optimization one of the most important aspects of the website building process. Though the words that are contained within the website are up to the business owner, the website builder software can help by automatically examining the text content of the website to determine if specific optimization keywords are placed correctly, and in a number that will help give the website a good rating in the search engines.
5. Important details.
   An effective website has to include certain details in addition to design, graphics, and text. These details can often be overlooked when building a website without any help. These include such things as pop-ups, effectively linking, mail server details, contact information, and business marketing add-ons such as merchant accounts for accepting credit card payments on a website. Good website builder software includes these things so that no detail will be forgotten. XSitePro takes the business owner through every possible website detail, so that certain website details can be chosen and others rejected. The key is knowing what the choices are so that the website will be as effective as possible.
6. Changeability.
   Most business owners know that they cannot build a website and then never have to change it. The very nature of business means that a business website will need to be changed on a regular basis. With good site builder software, changing the website to meet the changing needs of a business can be done smoothly, without having to start from scratch. Customer bases change, new products are added and old products become obsolete, new announcements need to be featured on a regular basis. Building a website is never a one-time deal, it is an ongoing process, and effective site building software will be conducive to this.

Mike Lane is involved in several online ventures and is the author of Website Builder.

Source : http://www.articleblotter.com/

What users hate most about web sites

Too many organizations have web sites that are low on usability and high on annoyance.

Users have a short fuse when they are browsing the Web, according to Theresa Cunnington, senior usability consultant with services firm iFocus.

"It doesn't matter how cool a web site looks, if users find it impractical they will head to your competitor's site, which is only a click away," Cunnington said.

"Flash animations are an obvious, yet stellar, example of what users hate in a web site; the skip intro button is the most used button on the Internet.

Read more Article...