When Web Design Gets Annoying!

The Internet is home to various artists, web artists, and designers both professional and amateur. It can afford to provide individuals with opportunities to freely explore their artistic capabilities and publish content to a borderless audience.

However, unluckily, alongside this freedom of expression afforded to everyone is the capacity to offend sensibilities. Some website provide great utility and aesthetic pleasureothers are bound to get annoying.

There are ways and means in order to avoid getting annoying, and its best to start by knowing when web design of a website does get annoying.

Using colors that just do not work

Colors in good and sensible does are a good means in order to attract attention and communicate ideas and emotions to an audience. They can help add interest to a dull site full of text, and even introduce and maintain a certain mood (as in scary websites using black as a background).

However, there is a fine line between too much and just about right. What gets annoying when it comes to colors is when readability is compromised, and combinations are too loud for comfort. When readability is compromised, it can pose great discomfort to the sites visitors when they try to decipher the text that they want to have access to. Using too many colors and colors that do not complement each other tend to make the website look goofy and awkward, and can make the website lose whatever credibility it can possibly gain.

Too many clicks to get to the end of the road

At the end of the day, people who visit websites do so in order to access information and content in a website. Some websites tend to re-route visitors through too many clicks before they get to the content they want to get to assuming that the content is indeed somewhere in the multiple pages they are made to access. Obviously, that gets annoying. Rule of thumb says that a maximum of three clicks (but preferably less) should be enough in order for someone surfing a site to get to the information they want to get to.

Excessive graphics that take too long to load

Graphics and pictures, when relevant and are the primary content meant for the website, are a welcome part of a website. However, when they just serve the purpose of aesthetic enhancement, graphics and pictures that take too long to loadand inevitably, slow the process of accessing primary contentbecome a major reason for discontent and displeasure among visitors.

It is also helpful to note that not all visitors of the website are equipped with optimal download or Internet surfing speeds; excessive graphics that are too large and thus, take too long to load are not only unwelcome but also a great inconvenience to a great number of people.
Navigation thats over-the-top and difficult to follow

Overcomplicating the navigation of the website can greatly hamper the efficacy of the website to communicate its content, and can hurt the accessibility of many pages to its visitors. At any point during their visit to a site, it is important to assure that the visitors have some way in order to trace back their steps and return to content they previously accessed, as well as carry on with accessing other content.

For simplicitys sake, many websites solve this problem by having a constant button present on all pages for visitors to return to their main menu page, or their cover page.

Fonts that simply do not work

Depending on the browser and fonts installed by the users on their computers, extremely decorative and highly uncommon fonts may not be displayed the way the web designer intended them to appearand may oftentimes even compromise the readability of the text per se.

In order to avoid this from happening, many web designers opt to stay within the bounds of major font families (Helvetica, verdana, and the like). That way, they are assured that most (if not all) of their visitors will be viewing the site as designed, and thus have greater control of the way the page will be displayed in the end.

There is never a perfect template for design as it is open to the subjectivity and artistic limitations of designers. However, understanding the behavior of site visitors can only help make shape design innovation and utility move towards greater heights.

Web Site Design Focus, Focus, Focus

When creating a web site design, it is easy to fall into the trap of trying to be all things to all people. In reality, the key to a good web site design is focus, focus, focus.

We Dont Need No Stinkn Distractions

It happens ever few weeks or so. I am sitting in front of the computer contemplating the meaning of life, i.e., why my numbers arent being picked in the California lottery. A frustrated person calls and wants to know why their site isnt converting. Shaking myself from my revelry, I valiantly pull up their site and here is what I find.

A mess.

The front page is a mass of blinking this and floating that. In really nasty situations, there will be something like a banner telling me the weather conditions in some city.

As if I cared.

I dont even look at the weather in San Diego. Okay, we dont really have any, but that isnt the point.

The point is a site must have focus to covert traffic into revenue. This is known as the rule of one. Every page of a site should focus on one subject, product, thing, picture or whatever is relevant to your site.

If you have a page devoted to disco shirts with huge lapels, then everything on the page should focus on disco shirts with huge lapels. Typically, such a page would consists of brief text describing the disco shirts, thumbnails of the shirts and prices. The page should not include disco cds for sale. The cds should get their own page.

Dont believe me? Then let us kneel at the alter of Google. The Google Adsense program is designed to let you put Google advertisements on your site. To put the ads up, you simply copy and paste a script provided by Google. Once the site is republished, each page with script will show Google ads. If you look at each page, you will note the script produces different ads for different pages. Further, the ads on each page correspond to the subject matter on the page.

Why does Google do this? Because ads that are relevant to the focus of the page will be clicked more than ads that are not. Put another way, the Adsense program is designed to focus on a single subject matter. The rule of one rears its head again.

Are you seeing a trend here?

If your site isnt converting well, analyze the pages to see if you are focusing on one topic. If you have a weather banner on your site, there better be a very, very good reason.

Web Site Design Color For You

Colors can influence our behavior, feelings and psyche. In fact, colors are oftentimes used as treatment to psychotics and other mentally incapacitated persons.

However, when it comes to web designing, many designers overlook the enigmatic power of colors. It can bring life to any image, text or graphics. It can create the atmosphere needed in order to capture the viewer's decision and loyalty. These are the reasons why colors should be on our topmost list of things that need to be considered in mounting a web site. You don't want a drab looking site, do you? It will appear, melancholic, chaotic, plain and boring. Thus, colors must be chosen in order to complement the site's ambiance, feelings and purpose.

Web browsers only see 256 colors. However, there are times when the number may not appear as such because no browser shares the same 256-color pallet. Nowadays, web browsers are sharing 216 common colors. Thus, in order to complement to other web browsers, web designers must stick to the 216-color pallet. If they go beyond this color pallet, chances are the colors may not exist on other browser. In order for the browser to display that particular color, it will need tiny dots from the colors native to the browser. The process is called dithering. Unfortunately, this will result to the distortion of some tiny dots. Further, this will make the image appear speckled and without a solid color. In connection to texts, dithering will make them blurry and hard to read.

Verdict: Web designers must use browser safe color when using solid color as a design element. However, caution must be exercised.

There are times when we feel we are tricked by our eyes. In fact there is what we call mirage? An optical illusion and there is a long list of optical illusions that can otherwise trick us. But there are times when we are neither tricked or deceived in fact it is an act of science. How do this happen?

At the back of our eyes, there is a thin layer of tissue. This layer of tissue contains millions of tiny light-sensing nerve cells which are called rods and cones. Our eyes have ample decoding cones. These cones are the ones responsible for responding to specific wavelengths of light. Say, when you look at a red box, the cones that have detected the red wavelength become exhausted and fatigued. As a result, opposite cones in the eyes start to enter and different colors are made apparent.

Eye fatigue is one of the important considerations in designing a web site. Thus, avoid colors that are tiring to the eyes. It can result to disaster and can further result to giving of wrong notion or idea to the viewers. Colors like red and yellow, strains the eye faster than any other colors. Thus, limit the use of these colors. Use them on areas that need emphasis and focus. This will surely pull viewers attention. Other that those areas - a big no-no!

Web Promotion And Web Design Tips For Free

I hope you find this article beneficial and interesting. I am going to explain and give free web design and web promotion tips.

Cheap web design services.

You may think you need to spend hundreds or even thousands of pounds to have an internet prescence. Due to the amount of people offering the service of web design, this certianly does not have to be the case. In my opinion you should only have to pay between 50 and 100 to have a website built.

You can find these cheap web design companies by looking on internet auction websites, internet search engines or in the Yellow Pages.

Website promotion free tips.

It is important to most businesses to get as many visitors to their website as possible. You are able to achieve this by trying to obtain a high page rank or PR rating as some call it. In general the higher the page rank you have the more visitors you are likely to get.

To increase this page rank it is important to build up the number of backward links your website has. You can do this by e-mailing other websites preferably in the same business sector as your own and asking if they would be willing to swap links with your site.

Writing articles like the one you are reading here is another way of obtaining backward links. By submitting these articles to article websites, other webmasters are then able to use your article on their website, thus giving you an extra link. This is because you are able to add your information and web address in the author bio at the bottom of the page.

You may also want to consider google adwords. This is a form of pay per click where you pay to appear on the right side of the search results in the paid advertising section of the google search engine for a specific key phrase. Always remember not to spend more on the advertising than you are likely to earn from the website.

If you would like to earn extra money from your website you may want to consider google adsense. This is where google put ads onto your website. When your visitors click on the ads you get paid.

Web Design: Give Me Bullets

Did you know there is an essential difference between the way web designers look at the way they design a web page and the way the consumer evaluates the effectiveness of a web design.

Comparisons

* Web Designer: Interested in every subtle nuance of color, graphic and texture.
* Consumer: Interested in how fast the page loads.

* Web Designer: Includes links throughout the design for a variety of locations within the web design.
* Consumer: Clicks on the first promising link and hopes its something interesting.

* Web Designer: Interested in the color coordination and presentation of design.
* Consumer: Searches for bullet points to help gauge whether the site will be useful.

Content over Creativity

In many web designs the site is built on the premise that the beauty of the site is what will win customers. The consumer, on the other hand, has seen hundreds of sites and is often only curious to know if your site is going to help them or not.

The average consumer will only read knowledge-based articles that catch their attention. Consumers often determine an articles usefulness by scanning. If they lock in on material that connects they will stick around, if not they go back to clicking for gold.

Get to the Point

Unlike a television commercial, the consumer doesnt have to wait to find out what they most want to know about your company. They can skip to the best parts, the end parts or they leave-whenever-they-want parts.

It may work to your advantage to use multiple bullet points as well as multiple sub headings in an effort to help the consumer gain a quick understanding of what is in the article or page content and to find out quickly what they want to know.

For many consumers if you cant provide these bits of detail they will keep searching until they find it.

Hurry, Were Losing Them

Obviously not all consumers are like this, but many have grown up in an MTV society where the attention span is used to quick bits of information. So, the reality of web design is you may need to work to provide quick, segmented bits of information that work as a quick index of page information that can help consumers connect with your website.

Solutions

You may find you can actually reach consumers through a template rich web design/hosting option that allows you to develop content that is geared more toward the consumer and less to the sensibilities of a web designer.

Whatever method you chose for web design make sure you attempt to gain an understanding of how consumers actually view your site. This understanding may help you discover the best ways to really connect with those who want a reason to stick around.

Web Design: Be An Architect

Architecture is a word often used to describe the execution of knowledge-based content in web design. Architecture is actually a very good term to use because when you work at developing content for your ecommerce site you can either throw it together in a haphazard way or you be very deliberate about how you construct your knowledge-based web pages.

A Common Mistake

One of the mistakes that seems to be repeated most often is thinking your web pages need to function in much the same way as an ebook. In this scenario the web pages are difficult for casual viewers to use because there is so much information. Instead of a few hundred words, these pages include content that well exceeds 2,000 words. The reason this is a mistake is that the casual reader is looking for quick bites of information they can scan to determine its usefulness.

The eyes of your site visitors act as a racecar driver looking for signs that lead them to the racetrack. If your visitor doesnt find what they are looking for they will take the exit ramp.

How to manage significant content

The management of site content should be thought of as a block of cheese for a party. No one is very interested in the cheese block by itself, but when it is cut up into bit-sized nuggets the cheese begins to disappear.

This is the best picture of the knowledge content of your website. The content as a whole presents a strong case for your online company, but it is less likely that site visitors will do much content consuming. When you can break your content into smaller identifiable chunks that can be consumed in the order of interest and over multiple sittings if needed the more likely the consumer is to consume.

You can provide architecture for web design that allows your content to flow from one subject to a complimentary subject with easy navigational links. This systematic approach to passing along information to sample and explore is a very positive way to move your site from little used to highly valued.

Conclusion

Knowledge-based content has become a key component to both web design as well as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A comprehensive, yet segmented, knowledge-based article warehouse can be a strong support for your website. If you are selling a product that is defined in the article you can, and should, provide internal links to allow the consumer to go directly to your ecommerce store for purchase if they so chose. Make it easy for your customers to take information and use it to facilitate a purchase.

Web design with a Catch

Web design is an artsy interface. It is all about blending, harmony, unity and functionality. Its beauty and usability combined. Given is the fact that each web designer has his own style of making his design communicate. It varies according to the art influences that they have, their preferences and the stuffs that they want to incorporate in a certain design.

Time is one great influence. As we move forward, we are discovering lots of things to make our design better and more effective. Two of the new designs invading the internet nowadays are the design with the use of 3D objects and robots. This design is made possible by the use of 3D software, production technologies and other sophisticated materials.

When it comes to 3D objects, a simple spreadsheet can edit the same. Anyone skilled in the matter can control the objects chamfers, fillets, dimensions, shell thickness and more. After that is to go into details. Even the minutest style element detail must be given a leeway and must be considered so as to yield a productive output.

3D software allows the designer to edit the image continuously. The style tools are just around the interface for easy access. This access can speed up the design process of the object. It can be edited and refined in an easy manner.

The evolution of these 3D tools will give a wider leeway to all the designers. As a result, design will be enhanced so as to make it catchier.

Another worthy discovery is the use of robots on the website. Robots can be easily downloaded. There are numbers of sites that are offering them. Through robots, you can give ample information. They are recorded so that the moment the viewers set their eyes on your site, they immediately hear the information. No need to scroll, no need to type. The information is readily made available to them.

These additions will surely uplift the web designs aesthetic and functionalism aspects. More discoveries are yet to come.