Saturday, September 24, 2011

Web Design is Not Just Designing

The great Shakespeare once said ‘What’s in the name?’ that holds perfectly true when it comes to website designing. The name will make tempt anybody to believe that it’s all the game of designing. But designing is only a part of the website designing work. There is so much more that a web ‘designer’ has to do.

Any website design work includes site structure, usability, functionality, and much more. Web Design Delhi Let us take a closer look that some of these extra elements that take website designing beyond the colors and fonts.

A very critical part of the website designing process is the structure of the site.This has to do with the platform used to present content on your website. You can use straight HTML or PHP or other coding options. You may also use may content management systems like Wordpress, Droopal, Joomla etc. Each of these options presents its own pros and cons, and they can all affect search engine rankings.

Usability or the user friendliness of a website is also crucial to the success of the website designer. It is also termed as UI or user interface refers to how easy or difficult it is for new visitors to navigate the site, find what they are looking for, and interact as necessary. When visitors come to your website it should as easy as possible for them to find whatever they want. They should be able to go from one page to another, and then back to the home page. A good web design company will be able to create sitemaps and a site structure that will make your site easy to navigate for search engine spiders as well as human visitors.

Website Functionality is another key to effective website designing. Functionally not only means what all sections you have on the website, it also means that they should be easy to interact with. This isn't generally an issue for content only websites, but it is an issue for websites that offer any interaction methods. For instance if you have a blog where visitors can comment on your posts, it needs to work properly.

Then comes the element of readability of a website.Web Design India The tricks like putting black text on white background to make it easiest text to read have to be implemented No point making things look fun and modern, but it gets uncomfortable for the average reader. Choice of colors is also important.

To sum up, website designing is not merely about making it a pretty thing to look at,it's about how well it functions, how easy it is to use & read, and coding standards of the site too.

Understanding Google Panda Update

There was a Kung fu Panda that took the kung fu world by surprise and then was our Google Panda. Very different to the animation world Google Panda was named after one of Google’s top engineers, Navneet Panda. When the update went live in February 2011 no one was clear what was coming.

The update is also known as Content Farmer update. It was introduced to target the low quality websites and web pages. Web Design Delhi Low quality websites were termed as the ones who had no internal or external links, not enough text on the page, poor navigation structure, low quality backlinks or irrelevant or poorly written content. It seemed fair that Google punished these sites. Only it didn’t happen as planned.

Content farms that Google initially planned to crack down surprisingly got increased amount of traffic to their websites after the Google Panda Update. Popular websites like eHow.com were a few of the sites the update was targeting. This left a lot of website owners confused and disappointed.

What was worse that many quality websites suddenly lost their search engine rankings. Those who had honestly worked hard to get top rankings saw all their efforts were gone in the blink of an eye.

If you are already starting to wonder how to protect your website from this online panda that doesn’t seem to distinguish between good and bad guys then relax, we got tips that help you safeguard your beloved website.What you should keep in mind that SEO it itself is so unpredictable; the algorithm changes on a constant basis. What Google deems important for ranking today, may not hold any weight tomorrow. So we can only do our bit and hope for the best, here’s what all we can do:

Stick to the basics of SEO game like title tags, H1 tags, and Meta tags and of course,backlinks. It’s an open secret that backlinks are one of the most important elements of this game. It’s crucial for you to obtain backlinks from high quality sites.

You must also pay attention to have an extensive and well defined navigation on your website. User experience is one of the most important elements of SEO. You must ensure that visitors can navigate your site with ease.

Content has always been and will be the pulse of any SEO campaign. After all, if you don’t have content to link to, there’s no point of SEO. Web Design India When it comes to creating quality content for SEO, you have to make sure it’s unique, informative, entertaining,and grammatically correct. If you have trouble expressing your ideas, there are many content writers that you avail depend on.

These are all the steps you can take and stay abreast with the constant changes in SEO alogrithms. That’s the best you and me can do, rest all is the hands of Mr. Google.

Right way to Use Pictures On Websites

In an ideal world, a web designer could use the highest quality photos and have the webpage download lightening fast. Unfortunately, as we all know, the reality is always far from the desired. The quality of image used on a website are inversely proportionate to the loading speeds. In other words, the better the quality of image you have on the website the slower it will load. Does that mean that you have to compromise on either these two important fronts? Not quite! Using the right balance and putting to use some simple & effective tricks will help you get the best of both worlds.

A computer screen is designed to display images at maximum 72dpi (dots per inch). Web Design Delhi So there is absolutely no point having high DPI images like 300 DPIs (which are meant for print usage). If you have a larger DPI image its logical to reduce the resolution to 72 dpi. Each piece will be a very small file and together will load in a fraction of the time.

What you must also know is that an image comes with many attached graphic files that contain information about the color palette of the image. This information is useless for online application so it’s better to get rid of it. The way to do it is simple,almost all imaging programs include the option of Save for the web. This option discards all of the unnecessary information in the file without any loss of picture quality and reduces the size and loading time of the image.

Another very effective method is to use the images in right format. Instead of simple JPEGs use either the GIF or PNG interlaced or the JPEG progressive property. These properties allow the picture to load gradually. Its kind of a gimmick because this way the picture actually loads a fraction of a second slower than the regular formats do but it appears to load faster to the site visitor as he can see the picture coming from blur to complete. It’s a very effective thing to do.

Lastly, you must pay attention on the Width and Height IMG Attributes. Web Design India The HTML tag tells the web browser to create a specific sized box to hold the graphic.That way the browser can continue loading the rest of the web page while the graphic file is downloading. If you don’t put the width and height attributes, the web browser must pause until the images is downloaded before it can load the rest of the page. So always pay attention to these attributes to speed us the loading process.

Effectively using these techniques will allow you to use more and better pictures on the website along with keeping a check on the loading times. Of course, it goes without saying that you should always use only the needed number of pictures on a website. If you stuff too many pictures none of the above will help.

How to Get Exactly The Website You Need

When you are planning you get yourself a new website you feel that choosing a website designer is the biggest challenge. Well, not quite! The real challenge begins after you finalize the website designer. It is because communicating with a web designer can be the most difficult part as you and the web designer don’t speak the same language in terms of industry or required details of the website.

It can be the most frustrating part at most times to explain to the web designer the layout design you have in your mind. Web Design Delhi You will find that putting the picture in your mind into words can be much more difficult than you imagined. No matter how talented the web designer is, the success of your project depends on your communication skills with him.

You simply have to explain your thoughts to the web designer. Giving a web designer the complete freedom of action regarding the web design based solely on the website content is usually a smart thing to do. They are the experts in their field and its best not trying to explain to them the use of the color schema or an undefined shape that you would like to have in the website header.

If you come across a website that has the features and looks the way you want your site to be then there is no harm in sharing it with the web designer. Doing so will give him some idea of want you want. You will both be looking at the same thing but will actually look at it from a different angle. You must spend some time to find just the right websites to provide examples of your needs. Doing research at this stage will definitely save you a lot of time later trying to point the web designer in the right direction.

Another important part of the process is to learn to listen to the website designer.IF you only go by your judgments and preferences the chances are you will mess up things for yourself. Give him the credit for being the expert and you will always be benefitted in return. It’s never a good idea to try to tell them how to do their job.

However, it doesn’t mean that you sit by and watch things done the opposite way to the desired. Web Design India You can always tell them if your goals are not being met. Also, if you really don’t like how something looks and want it changed, tell it immediately. Don’t wait until everything is done and then decide you don’t like it.

Keep in mind the above points, use your judgments and trust the website designers and you will end up with a website that is equally pleasing for you and the designer.

Website Trends

Internet is more than a decade old and over the years it has evolved many folds. It has grown from an experimental channel to the most prominent communication channel. Along with the Internet everything related to it has also changed. The most important partner in the growth is the core of Internet i.e. websites.

Websites started of as mere information mediums. There was no other use of these virtual catalogues. Web Design Delhi Things today have changed and how. Websites are used to sell & buy products, for social interaction and even to find life partners!

With the role redefined, the trends in website development have also seen see change. The most obvious change is the upgrade in screen resolutions.The supported screen sizes have gone bigger year by year. It has given the developers a larger playing field and the results are tremendous.

Of course, the technology has evolved beyond expectation. The richness of colors and text is something that was unimaginable when it all started. From the coding perspective also the functionalities now possible on a web portal are mind-boggling.

Another important factor is the speed that today’s systems are capable of handling. With the transfer speed in mega bytes there is no hitch for website designers to load their websites with heavy images and videos. Again this has increased the possibilities many folds. The speed of Internet complimented by the speed of systems is the perfect mix for website designers.

Mobile websites have slowly but surely stamped their presence as a redefining factor for the websites. Web Design India Earlier there was a tendency to replicate the system website for mobile versions but now the developers are realizing the potential of portable websites and the restructuring of information it requires. Ironically,this advent has also increased the design trends in system websites as people are learning from mobile versions.

Now the latest buzzword is tablets and soon the websites will shift focus to them.As the technology evolves and the minds sharpen, the websites world is bound to get better and better.

Website Content Writing

Many people live by the theory of once a writer, always a writer. Its true to some extent but has a lots of riders attached. A person with the basic skill and talent to write is potentially capable of writing any form of the craft but he needs to mold himself to suite the demands of different writing styles. One such style is content writing for websites.

Writing for websites might look like one of the simplest challenge for a writer as he is given the brief on what to write Web Design Delhi and he just needs to put it in fancy words.However, the reality is quite the reverse. Ask any writer and he will tell you that its much easier to write by himself deciding what should be written and what not rather than being told so. It’s like binding the creative freedom.

Then the biggest challenge is that when you write for a website you are writing on behalf of a company or an individual so you talk to website visitors in the many that the represented company or individual would. The tone has to be their while the word are your. This transition is a tough one to say the least.

Many times the content for websites are technical and product information sharing. The company that hands over the responsibility to you of writing their website’s content wants everything in the way it is but at the same time feel you are obliged to add your creative spark to justify the cost they are paying. It’s a double-edged sword but you got no option but to work around it. There has to just the right sprinkle to creative burst in words to highlight your work and enough of the needed information sharing.

Another tough nut to crack is the heavy industrialized language that you are given to understand and explain the business in question. Web Design India This is a problem specially with industrial or IT companies, they talk to you in their own lingos and you need to grasp just the right message but then when to get down to putting the message on the website it has to be worded in an easier way to understand so that a general website visitor who is not knowledgeable on the subject is also able to understand the concept equally well. You have to extremely careful of the use of industry jargons as a wrong usage might change the whole meaning.

There are many other challenges that a website content writer faces everyday but the irony is content is perceived as the least important element of the website by most people. Nonetheless, a writer knows the contribution he is making and also knows the responsibility on him to write something that comes with a lot of effort but looks so obvious that it misses the attention it deserves.