Basics of Web Design

Presentations delivered through the World Wide Web are usually created through web design. Thus, web design can be defined as the skill used to create these presentations. Designers create such presentations using the web browser or software such as internet television clients, RSS readers as well as microblogging clients. The software used has to be web - enabled. This is normaly carried out in order to generate an anthology of electronic files located on a server. It is also necessary for the presentation of content as well as interactive features or interfaces so that the end user can easily access them in the form of pages. Web design involves the placement of several elements including text and bit-map images such as gifs, JPEGs as well as GIFs on the page. The use of HTML, XML as well as XHTML helps designers to place these web elements.

Web design also involves the placement of other more complex media such as animations, sounds, vector graphics as well as videos. In such a case, design would therefore require the use of plug - ins which can also be fixed to the web page through HTML together with XHTML tags. Examples of plug-ins commonly used include QuickTime, Flash as well as Java run - time environment. Since there have been major developments in web design ever since its advent, most people use XHTML and XML together with Cascading Style Sheets commonly referred to as CSS. These tags are necessary in the positioning and manipulation of objects and elements on the web page. As advancements in web design keep growing, designers are slowly embracing the creation of web pages without plug - ins.

Web designers create pages that could be broadly classified under two groups; static or dynamic. The content and layout of static web pages can only be altered with manual updates created by the programmer. Dynamic pages on the other hand can be altered by an end user's input. The computing environment can also alter the content of a dynamic web page. It is however necessary to note that web design is especially concerned with the graphic design of a web page rather than the logistics as is the case in web development. Web design involves the use of several disciplines. These include search engine optimization, animation, typography, graphic design, interaction design, communication design, photography, corporate identity, marketing among others. What is more, it uses Multimedia technologies such as Flash and Silverlight together with Database technologies including PHP and ASP. Mark up together with Style sheet languages are also used, not forgetting to mention client - side scripting as well as server - side scripting.

Designers have to conform to certain principles in order to ensure that the web pages are accessible. For instance, it is advisable to use semantic markup so that the web page can have a meaningful structure. What is more, the web page should also be organized semantically so that other web services can easily recognize them on various web pages. Web designers also need to use a valid mark up language that follows the standards of a published DTD or Schema. Non text components should be presented in forms equivalent to text such as images and multimedia. Hyperlinks are also necessary but they should be placed in such a way that when one reads the text, it still makes sense. For layout in Web design apply CSS instead of HTML tables. Frames should also be avoided. It is important for any web design process to consider the intelligibility of the web pages while it should also be easily accessible to the users.

More on Web Design..

Business Relationship Basics for Freelance Designers

Freelance designers and other freelancers often miss the boat when it comes to finding new customers and building their freelancing business.

That’s because they don’t understand how building healthy long-term business relationships fits into their marketing plan. In the eyes of some freelance designers, a contact is either an immediate prospect or they are not worth pursuing. Often, this means they miss a lot of business opportunities.

In this post, I’ll discuss the importance of building relationships and what it can mean for a freelance designer. I’ll explain why long-term relationships are important and also provide you with five tips for meeting and building business relationships. If you like this post, you may also enjoy reading Why Online Friends are Important to Freelancers.

I totally get it. You’re afraid of the feast or famine cycle. That’s why your focus is on finding short-term freelance design work.

You’re right. You probably do need short-term work right now. You need to keep that cash coming in.

But, you also need long-term business relationships. Trust me, one day those long-term relationships are going to become the source of some of your best projects.

Why are relationships so important? It’s simple, relationships with business colleagues and contacts grow trust. People prefer to do business with those people they know and trust.

Plus, you are more likely to get repeat business and referrals if you have a strong business relationship with the client.

So, if you want more design work, develop more relationships based on trust. How can you do that? Try building long-term relationships.

Most freelance designers severely underestimate the value of long-term business relationships. The prevailing attitude is: if you don’t hire me today I have no time for you.

Some freelancers are even downright rude to contacts who don’t hire them–talk about burning your bridges!!

The thing is, people move around. They change jobs. Some people move back and forth between freelancing and the corporate world.

That business contact you mouthed off to today may one day work for your ideal client. If you’ve already burned your bridges, what do you think the odds will be that he or she will hire you in their next job?

You need to shift to long-term thinking. Try to remember that the business friend you make today may have work for you in a few months or even a few years.

At the very least, try to be polite to almost everyone.

You may not be sure how to go about establishing the long-term business relationships you need. So, let’s move on to some tips that will help.

Here are five tips to help you find and develop long-term business relationships:

Participate. Before you can develop long-term business relationships, you need to meet people. The way to meet people is to participate. Leave meaningful comments on blogs. Connect through social media. Go to meetups and conferences.

Remember it’s not about you. Too many freelancers think that asking for something is connecting. It’s not. Contacting a stranger on Twitter or Google+ who has never heard of you to ask them out of the blue whether they’ll hire you isn’t building a relationship.

Add value to the relationship. You need to give people a reason to want to connect with you. Perhaps you are able to answer a question that they have posted. Maybe you can point them in the direction of a resource that they need. Look for ways to add value.

Stay in touch. It goes without saying, you can’t build a strong relationship if you don’t check in regularly. Of course, you also need to respect your contact’s time. Customer relationship management (CRM) tools may help you to insure that nobody falls through the cracks.

This is for business. The contacts you make may or may not be the same folks you’d invite to your pool party. That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter as long as there’s trust and respect because you are not looking for new BFFs (best friends forever). These are business relationships you are nurturing.

How do you nurture long-term business relationships? Every freelancer handles this differently. We’d love to hear your tips.

Image by Trekking Rinjani

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Web Design Basics

Professional web design has become vital during recent years. A few years ago, it was estimated that a visitor to a web site took about 8 seconds to decide to stay on that web site or click the "Back" button. That was then, this is now: Your web site has only about 4 seconds to make an impression on the visitor. That is not much time at all! Today, people want instant results. Few people even wait to see the entire web design before making their decision. If your web design does not grab their attention immediately, they won't stick around. And if your web site does not offer something of benefit, they won't bookmark it and they won't come back (more on that later).

So, with that in mind, let's discuss some practical ways to grab the attention of web site visitors. Then, in a future article, we will talk a little about keeping their attention with good web site content. Remember, people spend most of their time on the Internet reading. They read search results, news items, how-to articles and forums. A professional web design company will take this into account. But that is for later. First, we have to keep visitors attention (remember the 4 second rule).

Get to the Point.

We live in a fast-paced society and we are used to instant results: Microwave meals in 5 minutes, lose 5 pounds in 5 days, 30 minute oil changes, see results from fitness equipment in 20 minutes a day, and on and on.

The Internet is no different and it actually may be less forgiving of web sites that don't deliver results quickly.

The 4 second rule that we spoke of earlier does not mean that your entire web page must load in 4 seconds. Rather, it means that a visitor to your web site has to at least see something interesting within that 4 second window. So, to test your site, while it is loading, ask yourself:


How much time passes before I see anything?
What is the first thing I see on the web page?
How much time passes before I can read some text?
How long would it take a visitor to determine what the web site is about?

Try this suggestion yourself and then try to enlist the help of some of your friends. The more people you have to test your web site, the more thorough your results will be.

Ideally, the site should load top to bottom and left to right. However, your design should adhere to the reading habits of your target audience. Some countries read from right to left so, make sure you know your audience. Also, the most eye-catching elements should load first. Once these load, they will grab the visitor's attention. Then, the rest of the page can finish loading.

What Graphics Format Should I Use?

This is probably one of the most overlooked aspects of web design. How many times have you visited a web site and cringed at the slow loading pictures. I'll bet you did not stick around to see everything load.

In most cases, web sites that have this problem were created by someone who bought a Web Design How-To book, created a web page that says "Hello World" and now think they are an expert. Or, possibly they are learning web design and created this slow loading site as a favor for a friend or family member. At any rate, hiring a professional web design company will prevent bad design from happening to you. In the meantime, here are some very basic guidelines regarding those very important web site graphics:

More about the .JPG file format:

.JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format allows images to contain up to 16 million colors. It also supports Variable Compression, which allows you to reduce the size of the image at the cost of some of the detail. In order to take full advantage of this feature, you will need a graphics program which will allow you to preview the image after you have compressed it. Some of the more popular graphics programs are Photoshop, Fireworks and Corel Draw.

JPG is not a good format for images with only a few colors or for text created as an image. The finished image will be of poor quality.

More about the .GIF file format:

.GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) support up to 256 colors. It also supports "transparency" which allows you to specify the background of the image to be invisible, thereby letting the web page colors show through.

Graphics in this format are also "looseless", meaning the final quality is not adversly affected by compressing.

Boiling it Down.

For the most part, here is a good way to determine what format you should use for the graphics on your web site:


If your graphic has many colors (such as a photo) use .JPG as the format, However, make sure that the file size is not so large that it prevents the web page from loading quickly. Find a good balance between image quality and file size.
If your graphic has only a few colors (such as a chart) use .GIF as the format.

Of course, this is somewhat oversimplifying the very important role of graphics in your web site design. If you hire a professional web design company to create your web presence, he or she should follow these guidelines during the design process. You should make sure that the rough drafts you receive from the designer adhere to good design standards.

Make Them Want More.

Of course, no matter how well organized your web site is and how effective it is at grabbing the visitor's attention, they have to view your web site as important. You have to give them reasons to stay and browse your site, to bookmark your site so they can refer to it again and to tell others about your site so you can build new visitors.

We will consider how to tackle this aspect of quality web site design in an upcoming article. That article will focus on three main ways to keep visitors coming back:


Offer something of value

Newsletter
Free tips
Monthly coupons

Good, quality marketing copy
Put effort into the words of your web site.
Remember, the Internet is made up of web pages and for the most part, pages are meant to be read.

Easy to use web site navigation.

If visitors can't get around easily on your web site, they won't stay very long.

Crystal Coast Technologies is a web design team headquartered in Swansboro North Carolina. We specialize in Flash web design and database driven e-commerce. Our blog contains more tips and the latest tech news, including security alerts.