Four Milestones for Website Design and Development

When you fix on that it is essential and in the best interest of your business to have a website, there a certain things you should think for your web design and development.

Just jumping in and building your website isn't as easy and inexpensive as some think it is.

These steps are simple but very important to success -

First, you require thinking the cost it will take to have your web design and development. The cost can be expensive or cheap, this is up to you. If you employ a web designer naturally it will be costly, or if you try to do it yourself it can be time consuming.

Secondly, it is imperative that you take your time to learn about web design and development. There are lots of free and low cost places to help you know web design and development.

Thirdly, you are going to need tools to build a website. With the good tools and know how, it shouldn't be too hard for you to build a good website.

Fourth, acquaintance is power when it comes to web design and development. Take the required time to do some study and find out what is best for you. Keep in mind, you can always outsource this project to web designers, but it will be costly!

Some things you will absolutely require to think in your web design and development are below -

A domain name
A hosting provider
An HTML Editor program
An FTP program
A way to design graphics or outsource to have graphics done

Take your time to analysis about your company, requirements and some basic idea that how your website will look, it will save you not only time and frustration but money!

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Your Choice of Web Site Color

Many web designers overlook the importance of color when designing a web site. Color should be one of your first concerns when it comes time to start your web site design. If you don't pay close attention to the colors you chose, your site you will end up either plain and boring or so chaotic it's hard to look at. The color you use should only be chosen after careful consideration.

Unfortunately web browsers can only see 256 colors. Even that number is hindered because all browsers don't share the same 256-color pallet. Currently web browsers only share 216 common colors. When designing key elements in your web site you should stay within the 216-color pallet.

If you go outside the 216 color pallet you start to use colors that do not exist within that browser. The browser has to mix the colors that do not exist. In order for the browser to display the color, it needs to take tiny dots from the colors native to that browser to come up with an approximate color. This is known as dithering. Some displays will distort the tiny dots to the point where the image is so speckled that it does not appear to be a solid color. This makes text very hard to read if it is placed over the dithered color. You should always use a browser safe color when using solid color as a design element. Some of the browser safe colors should be used with caution though.

Most of the eye operations are muscular and just like all other muscles it tires out. I will illustrate with an example. (This is a test I learned about 7 years ago and is very effective to get the point across). This is a simple test that should take only 45 seconds. If you do this short test, you will be better able to understand what I'm about to say

What did you see when you looked at the white box? Did you see a bluish green color? (If not go back and do the test over). No this is not a trick or hallucination. There is a simple explanation. Without getting too technical, I'll tell you what just happened.

In the back of your eye there is a thin layer of tissue that contains millions of tiny light-sensing nerve cells called rods and cones. Cones respond to specific wavelengths of light. Your eye is filled with color decoding cones. When you looked at the red box the cones that detect the red wavelength become tired and fatigued. When this happens the opposite cones in your eye start to kick in. Hence the bluish green color you saw. Now that you know there is a scientific reason behind eye fatigue you should apply it to your web site.

I'm sure you have you noticed that caution signs are usually yellow. Pure yellow strains your eye more than any other color because of that, it is the first color your eye will fix on. Using these colors (I still advise you to use it sparingly) for banners and advertisements will receive more attention from the viewer's eye. Once the visitor comes to your site there is really no reason you should irritate the visitor with bright colors. You have done a good job if they are viewing your site.

You should use yellow and red colors sparingly in your web site itself. Only use them in areas where you want the visitor to focus on. Do not make large parts of your web site with bright color. It might get your visitors attention but they will either consciously or subconsciously notice their eyes getting fatigued. This will make them not want to look at your web site for long periods of time. There are enough reasons why a visitor would leave your web site. You don't need to add to that list by using irritating color.

Handy Hints for Web Designers

Web Designing is as easy as 1-2-3, claim some of the software tools on the market that "generate" your pages for you. Unfortunately, many web designers today have fallen prey to this marketing gimmick - and the results are obvious. Every now and then, one comes across a website that looks good with a particular browser and a particular screen-resolution; but view it with a different browser, and you can't even read the plain text on the page. Worse still, given the number of operating systems that are used by netizens worldwide, these pages will never be seen properly by more than a half of the intended surfers.

Now let's assume that this web page belongs to a site that sells stuff online. The very fact that half the users cannot even see the page, translates into losses worth half the amount straightaway (perhaps, even more!) I guess that makes a good case for the raison d'être of this article! Web Designing is, in my opinion, a cocktail of creative skills & technical prowess – and one is no less important than the other.

In the following lines, I have jotted down a few points that I noticed during my online journeys, important from the point of view of web designers. Some of them may be taken with a pinch of salt; for it is not possible to please everyone every time. But most of them are simple enough to be used as a rule of thumb.

1. A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. A picture file, alas, is also almost as big. Images, no doubt, enhance the look of a page, but it is not advisable to go overboard in stuffing your page with a truckload of images. Most net-surfers use a dial-up connection and the average time to load a page should be no longer than 5 seconds. If it's longer, the surfer will most probably click away elsewhere. So, within this time, all the images on a page must be loaded as well. So, as a rough yardstick, keep the aggregate page size less than 30k.

Another important point to note is that each file on the page requires a separate HTTP request to the server. So a lot of small images - even if they do not add up to a lot in terms of bytes - will slow down the loading a lot.

Even when you must use images for navigation, please give a second thought to the users who will not be seeing those jazzy, fantastic & truly amazing buttons that you spent hours to design. Yes, I'm talking of the ALT text attribute of the IMG tag. Do not forget to provide an Alternate Text for each image that you use for navigation. (It may be left blank for certain images that are purely for aesthetic reasons, but let that be an exception, rather than the rule.) Though not obviously apparent, ALT text can help such users immensely.

Modern browsers offer users a choice to turn off images. This gives an idea of how troublesome the unwanted images could be.

A couple of more attributes that make your pages load faster are the HEIGHT and WIDTH attributes. Without these, the browser must wait for the image to download since it cannot know how much space to leave for them!

2. Navigability & functionality come before artistic excellence. It is no use making your site a masterpiece of art if users cannot navigate around it - even after they reach the main page; they have no clue as to how to go where they want to go.

3. Especially common, is a kind of navigation that some people call Mystery Meat Navigation. That means that unless your mouse moves over an image, you have no idea where that link might take you. Only when the mouse hovers do you see the actual link. This is cumbersome because users need to move their mouse all over the place to find out which part is a link and which is not.

4. Follow the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep it simple, stupid!

5. Next is a very important practical suggestion: whenever your whole page is within a TABLE, the page cannot render (i.e., the page does not show on the screen) unless the entire table is downloaded. You might have noticed this on several websites, when there is no activity for a long time, and suddenly the entire page is visible. Hence, to avoid such a situation, what you should do is this: Split the table up into two tables one below the other, and let the top one be a short table that displays just the page header and a few navigation links. So now, immediately upon downloading this part of the page, users can see the page header – and this prepares them for the long wait ahead, as well as keeps them from leaving your site to go to other sites, in case of a slow connection.

6. The ongoing browser wars have left only one casualty – the user. As a word of caution, stay away from all browser-specific functions. Because if a certain feature is supported by one browser, it will most definitely not be supported by another. Where you must use such features, it should not hamper the display of the page in the other browser which does not support such functionality. In other words, your page should degrade gracefully.

7. Creating a new browser window should be the authority of the user only. Do not try to popup new windows to clutter the user's screen. All links must open in the same window by default. An exception, however, may be made for pages containing a links list. It is convenient in such cases to open links in another window, so that the user can come back to the links page easily. Even in such cases, it is advisable to give the user a prior note that links would open in a new window.

8. Keep in mind the fonts-challenged users too. The ultra-jazzy "Cloister Black MT Light" font that looks so amazing on your machine may well be degraded into plain old Times New Roman on your user's machine. The reason? He/she does not have the font installed on his/her machine - and one thing's obvious - there's nothing you can do about the situation, sitting halfway across the globe from them.

9. Stay clear of out-of-the-way hard-to-find fonts. Use plain vanilla fonts like Arial, Verdana, Tahoma, and Courier. If need be, make your jazzy fonts into an image and put that on the page. (and while you're there, do not forget Tip #1.)

10. A new design trick that is increasingly being used on the web has caught my fancy: It is a very functional navigation bar that guides you across all possible paths within the site. It looks something like this:

Home > Section > Subsection > Page

What better than to give your users a handy way of visiting just about any other page on your own site, and informing them where they are!

11. Another new trend on the web is not all that inviting - various vendors come up with "revolutionary plug-ins" and undoubtedly, most amateur web designers jump up to spruce up their pages using them. The reality is that most people won't have them installed, and wouldn't care about it anyway. Come to think of it, have you seen plug-ins on any of the most popular sites, including Yahoo.com, Amazon.com or Google.com? It's simply not the best thing to do. Mention must be made here of Macromedia's Shockwave Flash plug-in, which has now made its way onto most computers today, and thus presents no harm in using vector animation on your site.

12. Java is yet another often-misused technology on webpages. Use Java as a utilitarian programming language, not as a graphics front-end for your photos/images. There are various things you can do with Java; that does not mean you should do all of them. Java applets are known to run slower, so users experience a certain sluggishness in performance. And worse still, Java has been known to crash certain browsers. This is not something everyone likes, especially if it is done for the sole purpose of showing a set of images in a slideshow!

The moral: Use it, but with discretion.

13. Never underestimate the importance of those META tags. They can make all the difference between your users coming to your site and going to your competitor's – just because they couldn't find yours. Search Engines heavily rely upon the Keywords & Description Meta tags to populate their search database. And once again, use discretion in writing these. Including a huge number of keywords for the same page can spell trouble. The description should be a small, meaningful summary of the whole page that makes sense even when seen out-of-context of the webpage itself, say, in a listing of search engine results.

14. And the final point that summarizes all the points so forth: Write for all browsers, all resolutions, and all color-depths. If you show people pages that look best with their own browser and their own resolution, that makes them feel "at home", and you get a better response. Compare this with a website that proclaims "Viewed best with Browser X at a resolution of 1024x768." I'll give you a choice between two options when you see such a page: download the suggested browser (which might well be over 50 Megs), then go get a new monitor that supports the high-resolution, and then adjust your screen setting so you get the perfect picture. Or simply click away to another site. Which do you prefer?

The web waits for no one. And furthermore, the user is king. Try your best to keep the user happy. And to keep all users happy. For, a good website is like a good storefront - it can mean all the difference between a casual surfer and a serious customer.

5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website's Legibility

Websites that make their customers work to read them are not the best way to get business. Miniscule fonts, text in colors that make it hard to see against the background color, and lines that are piled on top of each other are problems, but they're easy to correct. Let's jump right in and look at five easy fixes:

1. Format your text using CSS.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the way to go - use one style sheet and control how text looks on your entire site. Make a change to the style sheet and your whole site is updated. It makes life a lot simpler.

2. Make the font size big enough to read.

Consider your target audience. Even if they are a group of teenage girls looking for new shoes, it's never a good idea to use tiny type. It doesn't have to be enormous, but up to a point, larger type is better. 12-pt Verdana is better than 8-pt Verdana.

3. Make the text contrast with its background.

The more contrast, the better. Black-on-white or white-on-black are examples of the highest contrast you can get. Use colors if you like, but if you squint at the page and your text basically vanishes, there's not enough contrast.

4. Give the lines room to breathe.

Don't stack lines on top of each other. Use the line-spacing directive in CSS and give it some space; I'll often set line-spacing to 140% of the height of a typical line.

5. Break text up into chunks.

No matter how good a writer you are, people don't want to read endless pages of text. Break it up by using headlines that reflect the subject of the paragraph(s) to follow so people can scan down to the parts that really interest them, or use bulleted lists to change the pace of the writing and slow down the scanning.

And finally (not one of the 5 Easy Ways to Improve Legibility but still quite important) check your spelling. Nothing irritates me more on a web page than spelling errors - it simply makes you look like you don't care enough to get it right. Use that ubiquitous spell-check tool.

Making your website's content more legible is easy. It doesn't take a lot of time, mainly common sense. The payoff will be text that's more readable, customers that stick around long enough to get your message, and improved credibility with your visitors.

Make Your HTML Email Marketing Effective

In the world internet business people have to pay close attention towards the means they use to promote their web sites and web based businesses. Today HTML email marketing is considered to be one of the finest ways to market your products and services. Email marketing is good in the sense it costs you less. You can reach a bulk of people through one email. This method of marketing is very effective if you take care of certain small steps.

If you want to advance in html email marketing, you need to understand few basic things. These steps will help you in understanding the ways by using which you can make your html email marketing campaigns really effective.

First of all, you need to have an effective list of email addresses. If the list of email addresses that you have is a good one, your chances of getting good response are improved. If this is not the case it will not be possible for you to get maximum benefit out of your email marketing efforts.

Once you have a good email addresses list, you can prepare your email. Your email needs to be concise and impressive. The subject needs to be attractive. The body of the email needs to be informative. Also, you can improve the performance of your html email marketing campaign by having an auto responder in place. Taking care of these five steps will lead you to a successful email marketing campaign. You can get maximum benefit from your email campaign now.

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Best Fonts for Website Design

A font is a comprehensive set of characters of particular size, style and type. Popularity and acceptability of font is depend upon style are readability of that font. Most popular fonts are Frutiger, Futura, Helvetica, Optima, Agfa Rotis, Arial, Lucida, Gills Sans, Univers and Palatino. These fonts are popular because of their readability at low screen resolution. Since the rich content websites use content to get the point across, it is careful to use fonts that are easy to read. If fonts used by you make the content’s readability poor then visitors will more likely leave than put forth the effort. Keep following points in mind while developing your fonts for your website.

Big Fonts

Use Big Fonts for the heading of the web page, paragraphs or for points. Bold them, make them stick out and attract the reader. Many of your visitors will appreciate this step because they will not have to put stress to read the text. Sometimes bigger is better.

Sans Serif

If you don’t have knowledge about the magic of the professional fonts, or how they will affect your visitors, sales, then you should go for san serif font. The reason to choose these fonts is that these fonts provide the awesome readability for visitors in a low resolution atmosphere.

Simple is Safe

Don’t forget that simplicity is always appreciated. Don’t confuse your self in complex fonts. Keep one thing mind that simple is safe. Keep the things simple and easy to read and you will definitely get benefit of this.

What is the need of logo for small business?

When you think about any company what is the thing that first flash in your mind? Is it the products or the location of company or their logo? I think that is logo. Consider any company whether it is car company, shoe company or retailer all have logo so why your business not have?

Need?
A logo represents the company like its values and image to the audience. Logo creates the unforgettable image of the company in the viewer’s mind. It helps you to stand out from the crowd.

How to get?
At this moment I am sure you have understand the importance of logo in your business. Now the question in your mind is “how to get eye catching logo”. Good logo design need lots of research work and creativity. There is myth that complicated logo attract more customers. This is completely wrong. See the logo of “Nike” and “IBM” these are very simple and easy to remember and have well established brand image in the market. For logo design you should go to some professional logo design company. Because it is not just a sign/symbol but a representative of your company in world market.

Website Design For Small Business

Today in the era of Information Technology every business whether it is small or large needs web a presence. Website for small business it play very important role as advertiser in its local market. Good website design always attracts customers again and again.

If you are owner of small business and want to design website then do some research work before beginning the design work. This home work surely helps you to make batter design decision. You should have complete knowledge of the market and targeted your audience.

The most difficult decision is to select the web designer. Don’t go to the @@@ company because it is offering you chap web design. Website is your web presence and you should take care of it seriously. Remember first impression is last impression. If you loose costumers one you will not get beck them again.

Next big thigh that requires proper attention is “domain”. Choose your domain name carefully. It should short and match with your business name so that visitor can get a clue about your website.

Choose your web hosting company carefully. I advice to choose your local web hosting company. Because if you found any problem in future you can contact them easily and your problem will sort in short time. If you’re looking for free hosting then you can use WordPress, Yahoo! Geocities and Blogger (as I am using).

The content your website is the king. It tells customers, what the website is about. Write your content carefully. It should be unique and in proper flow. Use your business keywords. To search the keyword you can use Google keyword suggestion tool.

Last but not least use proper amount of graphics. Excess use of graphics can make the website slow.

So use these things in proper way and definitely you will get a eye catching website.

Web Banner Advertising

Analyze Your Business: first answer these questions:

1. Why your business need web banner?

2. Is it just because your competitor promoting online?

3. Does it effective medium of advertisement for your business?

To answer these questions find what type of products people buy online. If these products are similar to your product or services then online advertisement is beneficial for your business.

Purpose: First determine the exact reason of your web banner camping. What will your web banner promote? Pigeonhole your web banner design according to your purpose. Most common reasons to have web banner ads are:

· To sell products or services.

· To promote a brand.

· To increase no of hits on website.

Target Audience: Identify your target audience. The audience can be from same industry or from different industry. It is important to create rewarding banner design. To increase more audience contact the big sites. Placing web banner ads on big sites like Yahoo and MSN will increase number (number of clicks) of visitor on your site.

Include URL: Don’t forget to include your website address in your banner. If the intention of your ad camping is just to promote your brand name, then include logo of your company/brand in the web banner and also include your website address. Thing that you should keep in mind is the logo should be small in size otherwise it will disturb the look of entire web banner.

Identify your competitor: see your competitor web banner design, their websites and web sites on which they promote their banner. This will helpful to create banner design which stands out from the crowed.

Several banners: Every visitor has different taste and choice. It’s not feasible which banner design will attract more viewers. So the better option to use several banners for single ad camping. By this you can recognize which web banner design attracts most visitors.

Style Guide: if you are using services of banner design companies for your banner deign, they will provide you banner style guide. This guide covers the all phases of banner design like banner size, number of loops, colors etc. Your job is just to send your requirement to designer.

Type: banners can be categorized into three categories:

· Flash banner.

· Gif banner

· Static banner

Selection is totally depend upon target audience, place, purpose of your ad camping etc. But according to some study flash banner get more click through ratio than static banner.

Banner File Size: File size of banner is depend upon multiple factors like colors used, no. of frames, type of images(jpeg or gif) and kind of animation used for banner design. Unnecessary use of these rudiments may affect the loading speed of banner. It is worthwhile to reduce the file size of banner to decrease the load time.

Colors: Color selection is depends upon following factors:

1. Your website colors

2. Colors of website on which you’re going to advertise your banner.

Use some color of your website/business/corporate color in your banner design and also keep this thing in mind that these colors should make good combination on advertised website.

Animation time: Animation time of banner is depends upon looping. Looping is number of time animation repeat itself. Animations with infinite loop distract viewer attention. Use loop 3-4 time and each loop should end within 10 second, leaving the message on last frame.

Images: Use images that express your products and services. Like of your website is all about cell phones use the images of cell phones instead of girl in bikini.

How to be a good logo designer?

What Client Want: It is important to understand the requirements of clients. Don’t feel shy to ask questions. It is good if client also take part in designing process. Try to know that the client belongs to which type of industry and design logo to that industry specific.Example: if client belongs to Sports industry then his preference will be Sports Logo Design.

Do some Research: Before making any decision do deep analyses about of the company or product for which you are going to design logo. You can refer other logos designs of similar industry. This search will surely helpful in next steps and tell you about current trend of that industry

Look at competitor: See your competitor logo this will tell you about current trend and give you an idea to make different logo form competitor one, so that viewer can easily differentiate between you’re and competitor logo.

Look for expert help: Attractive logo designing required great designing skills and good business knowledge. It is advisable to look for expert help form logo design companies. A good designed logo created by professional will surely grab the attention of viewer and boost its brand image.

Simple Design: Always go for simple logo design. Simple logo design is easy to remember and convey the message of advertiser/company/organization in short possible time. Where complex designs are time consuming and divert viewer attention.

Fonts and colors: Most of the logo uses single or two colors. Colors reflect attitude and perception. Use good combination of colors which represent your company. Use simple fonts which are easy to read. If you select complex fonts be sure that it is easy to read.

Future Oriented: Consumer demand change everyday. They always demand for best which result continues up gradation of product. So it is beneficial to keep these things mind while designing your logo so that you can prevent it from being out of dated.

Keys to effective Logo Design

Most of the small companies not pay much attention to logo design. But Logo with right characteristics will boost your visibility and integrity which means more sales for you. To design effective logo first you need to understand the types of logo. These are some most commonly used logo types:

Text Logo Design: The text design focus on text and style. Text Logo is best choice for corporations whose name describes what they do like TCS (Tata Consultancy Services). To make text logo more effective you can use different fonts and colors. Use text based design when you have insufficient funds and your name is logically distinguishing but not a household word.

Symbol Design: This type of logo design includes only symbols, images and shapes but not letters or words.. These images convey complete or conceptual image of business or company. If you have high level of brand identification or unique symbol in your industry then symbol logo is best option for you. Symbol logo design in not recommended when your have started new company.

Text and Symbol logo design: This type of logo design contain both business name and symbol. Different types of approaches are used to integrate text and symbol. It may be side by side or one located above the other. Text and Symbol logo is best choice for medium size, small size company or new establish company. Text and Symbol logo is easy to copyright compare to symbol logo design because logo is used with business name.

HTML Email Marketing Tips

Use receptor name to address: If you got an email which is not addresses to you what will you do? Well if you will ask this question to me I will simply delete that email and this is what most the people do with the emails that are not addressed to them. To avoid this type of misunderstanding for your HTML Email marketing, address individual receptor with their name.

Use your name in from field and Brand name is subject: People ignore the email which is sanded by stringers (mail@mail.ffff.com) and robots. Use your name in from field and brand name in subject field in all the email you send. This will increase the trust factor for you in viewer mind.

Avoid $$$ in your HTML Email: Most of the spam contains “$$$” symbol in the subject or in body part of email. So this crates a mental block in viewer mind that every email that contain “#$#$$$^T” symbols are spam and its better to delete them. This is the reason why you should not include “$$$” symbol in your HTML Email Marketing.

Send Your HTML Email Newsletter on Business days: During the holidays people like to watch T.V or move to another city. They not check their email. And when they came back from holiday they have lots of email to check. So they pay not much attention to each message and some time important email gets deleted. So its better to not send your HTML Email Newsletter on holidays or month which contains mostly holidays (December, January, July and August).

Incorrect Email Address: Most of the user who want to get your HTML Email Newsletter may not get it. Because during filling signup for HTML Email on your site they mistype their email address. Correcting these errors on your side is temporary solution. For permanent solution use two text box for email verification just like you use for password verification. This will reduce the number of errors in email address.

Clear Prospective: Some HTML Email Newsletters are eye catching they include everything that can grab viewer attention except on most important thigh that is “clear call to action”. Viewer doesn’t understand where to click and where to go. So design the message in such a way that makes the path clear for the recipient. Do not include too many links and offer in your HTML Email that distracts the viewer attention.

Emphasize on Content: Most of the people think that if you want to emphasize on particular line or wording just add exclamation mark with it. But actually they not put any importance in the word. Good idea is not to use exclamation marks. Use content in your HTML email in proper flow and rhythm.

Reply to Email: Last but not least reply to all your emails within 24 hours. It is important because if somebody sends you email that mean he is interested in your product or services and if not reply to his email you will loss the customer for life or even more worse.

How to promote your logo design?

Most of the people don’t know how to promote their company using logo. Even they have no awareness how to promote their logo design. These are some promotional technique that helps you to promote your logo:

Good Logo Design: First step is you should have good logo design. Good logo design mean it should simple and eye catching. For this you can take part in designing process. Avoid logo design software and cheap logo design methods because you get as much you pay.
However you can go for logo Design Company. Once you have find right logo designer take part in each designing steps and discuss all issues with your designer. While designing your logo don’t forget about your company values and targeted audience. It should able to create positive image of your company in costumer Mind.

Stationary: After Creating a good logo design next step is to select similar business stationary design. Business stationary includes business cards, letterheads and envelops. Your logo design should adaptable to this stationary. Some factors that effect business stationary design are targeted audience, company values and type of industry. First impression is last impression so take care about printing of these stationary and use good quality printer instead of using cheap and bad quality printer.

Logo printed t-shirts: In this promotion technique all you need to do is print your logo design on t-shirts. Wear these t-shirts and distribute to your friends, relatives and collogues. It is little-bit costly but effective way of promotion. Once they walk around wearing these t-shirts you will get noticed. But this promotional technique is limited to particular area.

Sponsor Local Functions: Another technique is sponsor local school, college or youth functions. In these functions uses banners on which your logo design is printed and hang up it on wall. Take some pictures of these banners. In these functions you can give logo printed t-shirts to the people and take picture of people wearing these t-shirts. Use these pictures on your website, magazines and information brochure of your company.

Identify your customer: Last but not least identify your target audience. Your logo should designed according o your target market like if you are from corporate sector you should use Corporate Logo design. Spend some time to search about your target market and plan your advertising budget for this area of market. This is effective and you will get more return on your investment.

Best Practices – HTML Email

Provide administration center in your email: Admin center in your HTML Email connect your potential clients to you and helps to distinguish you from other mails. A unsubscribe link and link to your privacy policy should also include in HTML email HTML Email Template.

Provide search Function: Don’t forget to include search functionality in your HTML email. This allow subscriber to search for product, services, company information etc. directly from HTML Email instead of first move to your web site.

Forward to Friend link: Including forward to friend” link in your HTML email design is more practical then including message asking them to forward your message to others friend. This link send request through your server and helps you to track the person who forwarding your message.

Link to Web Version: Some client’s email environment blocks images or don’t read Html Email properly. It becomes difficult to client to read the HTML email. To solve this problem always create a web version of your HTML email Newsletter and provide link in your message.

Provide Email Address: Sometimes subscribers may have some query about your product or services in their mind. It’s important to clear their doubt else it will create bad impression about your company in their mind. To overcome these type of problems always include your email Id in your HTML email so that they can contact to you regarding their queries.

Add to sender recipient list: Today most of the internet users use spam filters to block the unwanted emails. These filters delete the emails that are not present in the receiver’s address book. This could also happen to your HTML email also. To avoid this add some line like” To ensure this email is delivered to your inbox, please add the email address” at the top of your HTML Email. It is important step in getting your emails into the inbox.

Logo Design Myths

Time: There is myth that logo can be designed in a few hours or even within an hour. Log is name, symbol or trademark of company. It crates a memorable image of company in viewer mind. Before designing of any logo research is required. This Research is about company, its value, its market image and target market. So how can a designer say that he can create good logo design in a few hours?

It’s all about great graphics: Most of the people believe that logo design is about great looking graphics. This is totally wrong. What about customer priorities and target audience. If designer fail to understand target market and what kind of message company wants to convey to its customer, logo design is worthless. On other hand most of the multinational corporations use simple logo design. They have money and resources to come up with complicated graphics design but they prefer simple Logo design because simple designs are easy to memorize.

Illustrative logo is better choice: There is myth that the more illustrative logo design is better. This is right for some type of markets. But if we see broadly this decision should based on market research and not on client and designer assumptions.

Colors: Designer and customer think that excessive use of colors in logo design garb visitor attention. But if it doesn’t look good in black and white it would not look good in any other colors. Instead of using too may colors use single or combination of colors that represent your company well.

Web Banner Advertising Standards

Banner Size: 468X60 pixels banner size is very popular banner size. It is also included in the recent version of Photoshop. Before finalizing the size of your web banner , make sure that the website where you want to display it will accept a banner of that size. Following is the list of standard banner sizes:

Banners and Buttons:

234 x 60 pixels (Half Banner)
392 x 72 pixels (Full banner with vertical navigation bar)
120 x 240 pixels (Vertical Banner)
125 x 125 pixels (Square Button)
120 x 90 pixels (Button 1)
120 x 60 pixels (Button 2)
88 x 31 pixels (Micro Button)
728X90 pixels (Leader Board)

Rectangle and Pop-Ups:

300X250 pixels (Medium Rectangle)
205X250 pixels (Square Pop Up)
336X280 pixels (Large Rectangle)
180X150 pixels (Rectangle)

Skyscrapers:

160X600 pixels (Wide Skyscraper)
120X600 pixels (Skyscraper)
300X600 pixel (Half Page Ad)

Logo Design Guidelines

Logo creates an unforgettable image of product/company in viewer mind. It also helps to distinguish similar products and services of different companies. Good logo design clutch the attention of visitors. Logo is one of the most important marketing tool.

Keep these points in mind while designing your own logo:

1. Do some Analysis: before designing a logo do some analysis about the company/client for whom you are designing like their style and taste. Logo should be designed in such a way that it convey message about the company.

2. Eye Catching design: Eye catching logo design quickly grabs visitor attention. It makes visitor curious and engaged for a short moment. For this it should be easy to read and easy to identify to avoid misunderstanding with other logo.

3. Memorable: your logo design should make a memorable image in viewer’s mind. It should simple enough to convey clear message and should able to create positive image of your company in costumer mind.

4. Flexibility in Design: Make your logo design flexible so that it can work in any situation. For this you should take care of two factors. First is color that is used for logo designing should be simple. Second one is logo should be perfect in size.

5. Fonts Type: Some Fonts types look classy but difficult to read. So this is useless. Pick Fonts like Arial and Veranda that are easy to read and understand.

6. Colors: Good logo design should look glowing in black and white. If your logo design not looks well in black and white definitely it would not look well in any other colors. You can choose your company colors for your logo design.

7. Be Unique: Your logo design must have ability to stand out from crowd. Impressionist logo design creates confusion in viewer’s mind because they are difficult to distinguish between them. Result is loss in sales. Don’t stick to ordinary design. Your company is unique means it has different environment and market presence. Keep all theses things in mind and go for unique logo design.

8. Long life: While designing your logo keeps one thing mind that your logo designs should be future oriented so that it can convey its message over stable period of time. It must be able to adapt to culture changes.

How to make your website load fast? (Part-2)

1. Increase Content Section: Content provides information about your company, services and your products to visitors. Unique and quality content can make your website popular over a night. This also allows your website to perform better in search engine result.

2. Text Link: Some time when you are visiting some web site you will find that buttons don’t fit properly or look bad on webpage. This may be because of shape, size or color of buttons. Always use text links in place of graphics buttons. Additional benefit of using text links is that you can incorporate text link in your content.

3. Java Script: JavaScript is not compatible with some old browsers. Use of Java Script in your website may decrease the visibility of your website on search engine result. So try to minimize the use of java script as possible.

4. Check Load time: you should periodically check the load time of your web site. There are countless free web sites available on internet where you can check the loading time for your website. This will help you to understand the changes required in your website to decrease the loading time for your website.

Web Banner Design Tips

Advertisement is a massive source of income for any businesses. In the era of information technology on of the most popular way of advertising is online advertisement. If we talk about online advertisement then most popular and successful method of online advertisement is web banner ads. Web Banners are maid of images (gif or Jpeg), Text, JavaScript and multimedia objects (flash, shockwave etc). A web banner is become visible when web page that contains the banner is loaded in visitor’s browser. When visitor click the banner he is diverted to the website which place this banner on this website.

Web banner design requires lots of research work and striking content to get the visitor to act on seeing it. These are some tips to make attractive web banner design:

Attractive punch line: If you want to create the best looking banner advertisement in the world then your punch line must be equally effective. Use something to get the user clicking on your banner and visiting your Web site. Also make sure that you are using a proper combination of colors and fonts.

Relevant content: Always make sure that the content of your banner is relevant to the services/products that you are offering on your site. You will get a lot of clicks and attention of a male internet user by showing a woman in a tiny bikini on your banner but when the user finds out that you are selling something else totally unrelated to a woman in a bikini, e.g. DVDs, he will leave your site without any further ado. Therefore, you will end up getting high clicks but no sales.

Include your logo and website address: If the objective of your web banner ad is to promote your brand image then it is advisable to include both your company logo and website URL in your banner. However, be sure that they don’t dilute the punch line.

Trite phrase: Study shows that trite phrase (“Click here” or “Free”) in your web banner can increase the click thru rate. The phrase should be displayed for 2-3 seconds and in the last frame of the animated banner. To make things even better, you can animate the phrase as well.

File size of web banner: While creating web banner ads, remember that the file size of a web banner should be as small as possible, for the simple reason that it will load faster and the visitor will get to it fully before he or she moves on to the next page. The ideal file size of a web banner is 10kb or less. Try minimizing the use of animations and heavy pictures in your banner to reduce the file size.

Animation: Animated banners have click thru rates greater than those of static banners by 30-40%. The main drawback of an animated banner is its large file size. However, you can optimize the design by reducing the colors or animation.

Blue underline text: Internet users understand blue underlined text as a link. If you are going to advertise your banner on a webpage which has white background then you should create a banner with blue underlined text, written in common fonts such as Arial or Verdana. This banner will give the impression of being a part of the content.

Multiple banners for single ad campaign: Always keep rotating the banners because by this you will come to know which banners are generating higher click-thru rates. You can start with 6-10 banners..

Design it professionally: To give a professional look to your banner, you can hire a professional web banner designer to deliver a quality web banner in case you don’t feel capable of doing it yourself. Web banners create a long lasting impact about your company image on the visitors. Therefore choose it very carefully. Search on the internet and you will come up with lots of free web banner design advertisements or free banner design software.

How to make your website load fast ?(Part One)

1. Prefer Simple Design: Always go for a simple website design. Websites simple in design take very less time to load and are easy to maintain. Convoluted design will increase loading time. Use minimum graphics and lines of code to develop a webpage.

2. Maximize the use of HTML and CSS: HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is a language used in website design. Try to use HTML wherever possible. Websites with good use of HTML win a good position in search engine. HTML coupled with Cascading Style Sheet make the navigation control of your website fast, moreover you can modify the website at any stage if need be.

3. Use Light Images: A light webpage will load faster. Minimize the use of images, be it for text or for picture. This allows quicker loading of the webpage and even helps in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of the website. It is easy for search engines to comprehend text on a webpage than an image. Use various image compression tools available online to reduce the image size into kilobytes. Generally a GIF image will be lighter than a JPEG one, but there is a bargain in terms of image quality in such a case.

4. Flash: Use of Flash in web pages may not be a very good idea. Flash, though increase the appeal to a site but do not perform very well on search engines like Yahoo, Google, MSN, etc. In addition it increases the loading time of a webpage. So better option is to try and avoid a Flash website design and use HTML in place of that.

5. Use Tables: Loading time of tables is less because it is just HTML. You can use tables intrepidly on your home page, menu or anywhere else. Tables definitely scores over frames. Try to avoid all type of frames on a website.

Web Design Myths

Content is king, No need of Sound/Java/etc: You have seen in many articles that say "Content is King and avoid the use of java/sound/flash etc.” Content is indeed the king but applications like flash, of java/etc. should be used to some extent. On the web, you have 5-10 seconds to grab the viewer's attention. Content-centric web pages are not able to capture the viewer's attention in such short span. Using Flash and sound effects definitely rev up the look and feel of the website by catching the viewer's attention and keeping it.

Good Web Design is all about Graphics: Some people believe that a good website design is all about colors and animations. This may be true in some cases but generally it does not provide any informative value. These graphics may create interest of the visitors in your website but if these graphics do not convey your message to the visitors then the purpose of using these graphics is defeated. In addition to this, graphics also increase the loading time of page.

Hence, the website design tip of the day is don't say no to graphics. Use small-size graphics that make the page look more pleasant and reduce the loading time of the page.

How To Design a Web Site

Select Color Scheme:Use colors that best suit your business and can express your business better. If you already have corporate colors like color of your logo, use these colors for your website design as well since your consumers are already aware of these colors. In case your company is a start-up, use a good color combination. The most common and popular color combinations are:

• Blue and White.
• Red, Grey and White.
• Red, Yellow and White.
• Blue, Orange and White.

Easy to Use Navigation: User friendly navigation controll is a basic web design tip that you should keep in mind while thinking of your website design. An easy navigation system is one of the most important factors in effective website design. Display your navigation bar where it can easily be found. In most of the web sites, the navigation bar is displayed on the left or top side of the webpage.

Special Effects: Using Special effects is a good web design idea to keep the viewer’s attention stuck on the web page. On the other hand however, it might also distract the viewer’s attention from the content. They also increase the downloading time of webpage. Hence, you need to optimize on the kind of special effects you want to use and the loading time when using any kind of animation on your page

External Link: Open links to external web sites in new windows to enable the visitor to return to your site after completing the work on the external site. Never include a link to your competitor’s site on your link page since this may divert traffic from your site to your competitors’ site.

Layout: The design and layout of your website are integral parts of website development. Bad web site design and layout could entirely spoil the show irrespective of how good your content might be and how much advertisement you do.

Place Your Business Name: Place the name of your business or website name at or near the top of page. If you have your company logo put that also on the home page of your site. It should not be too big or too small and should be able to fit into a particular area.

Avoid Excessive Scrolling: Different users use different screen-size monitors. Although Vertical scrolling on your web site is entirely acceptable, horizontal scrolling is undesirable to most users; it also makes the page look like a patch-up job. Keep the images small and divide the content into multiple pages, if need be.

Site Map and Search Feature: If your site contains more then 10 pages, it is advisable to include a “site map” or “search feature” in your site. This will reduce the searching time and visitors can easily find what they are looking for.

Last but not least take the help of free web design tutorials to make your website more appealing and eye catching .

Avoidable Mistakes in Website Designing

Visited Link: Navigation links on your website helps the visitor in understanding their current location. Knowing their already visited links and current location, they can easily make a decision as to where to go next. In some web sites, it's difficult for the user to differentiate between the visited links and unvisited links since no colors are used to differentiate between these links. When visited and unvisited links are of the same color, the user gets confused and ends up revisiting the page already visited.

Text Format: A webpage with a single text format looks monotonous and difficult to read. To draw the user's attention to the text, use the following formatting tricks in your website design:

1. Use Proper headings for your paragraphs or points.

2. Use bullets to indicate the points.

3. Highlight the keyword (example: Website Development)

4. Short paragraphs

5. Include some examples to make things more understandable.

6. Use simple language and avoid grammatical mistakes.

Page Title: Users use search engines for digging up different sites on different topics. The page title is the major tool that attracts more visitors to your site. The text written in the title tag is the title of that webpage and is displayed on the search engine's result. Search engines show the first 66 characters of the title. So create your title according to your webpage. Include information that specifies what the user will find on that page. For home page, begin the title with your company name followed by a brief description of the site.

Advertisement: Most of the web users do not pay attention to the advertisements in the form of banner ads and pop ups which rather get in the way of their specific objective. Users also ignore webpage that include lots of advertisements (banners ads and pop up) or give the feel of advertisements themselves. Hence, it is better to avoid website design that run like advertisements.

Not Answering the User's Email: Sometimes interested users send emails to the concerned company in order to know more about the product or services offered by it. It may happen that the user didn't get any reply to his or her email from the concerned company side. Although, this might happen for many reasons, it will leave the user with a bad taste and will create a negative impression on the user's mind, thereby making him or her drop the idea of buying the product.

Browser Incompatibility: A few years back, Microsoft internet explorer was the first choice of every internet user and all the web sites were designed to be compatible with the internet explorer only. Nowadays, however, lots of other web browsers are also available in the market (Mozilla Firefox , Netscape, etc. ) which do not support all the features that are supported by the internet explorer. So before putting up your website, check whether your web site design will be compatible with all the available browsers.

Web Design Basics

Marketing and advertisement are the important factors in the success of any business. Marketing involves speaking about your product, company or services to consumers. In the era of information technology, the best method of marketing and advertisement is Internet marketing. The most popular medium of internet marketing is a website. A website is a global medium of advertisement since it's capable of reaching every little corner of the world that has an internet connection. In addition to this, you can carry out online trading on your website.

As your web site represents your business, you need to pay proper attention to those factors that influence your website design. Some web design tips that would help you in making a better web site design are summed up below:

1. Analysis: This is the very first phase of website design. In this phase, you need to answer these questions: Why do you need a Website? Who are your competitors? Who is your target audience? It is of paramount importance that you answer these questions carefully since this phase is the foundation stone of your website.

2. Uniqueness: If your company is unique, then it requires a unique website as well. A website designed on the lines of plagiarism will only lead to an image that is a duplicate of the website where you had copied your design from. Your Company has a unique environment and a unique market image; hence keep it up by providing it a unique website as well. Duplicate designs only succeed in creating confusion in the viewer's mind resulting in a decline in your sales. Hence, before finalizing any design for your website, checkout some related (competitor's) site so that get an idea of how NOT to build your website.

3. Compatibility: HTML is a language which is used for website designing and a web browser is where it gets compiled. A study shows that 70-80% internet users around the world use Microsoft internet explorer for internet browsing. The rest use some other browsers such as Netscape, Mozilla Firefox etc. These browsers do not support some HTML tags which are supported by Microsoft internet explorer. It is, hence, important that your website should look good in all these browsers. In other words, your website should be compatible with all browsers. Check your website design in all the available browsers and make changes as per requirement.

4. Content: Make sure that the content displayed on your web site is related to the products and services that you are offering on your website. Don't use difficult words or long winded phrases and sentences in your content. The content should be kept as simple and understandable as possible. You can use links or examples to make it easy for the viewer.

5. File Size: Always go for a simple web design since a simple design not only looks good, but also helps in reducing the file size. A small file size reduces the loading time of your website.

6. Home Page: The Home page of a website is the first page visible to the viewer who visits the site. Hence, it should be designed in such a way that it grabs the viewer's attention. For this use font type that improves the readability of the content. Use colors which match with your business. Avoid writing all your content on the home page itself. Divide the pages according to different topics, e.g., products, services, etc; provide links to these pages on your home page.