Posts Tagged ‘web design’
What Makes a Web Site Stand Out
Does your website stand out from the others in your market?
There was time when fancy animation and flash were real big and everyone went out and put that on their websites, hoping to stand out from the crowd.
Things have definitely changed since then. Even the color of your text and your background make a big impact on how people see your website.
It’s important to understand these concepts Before you set out to build your website. Plan it carefully.
Here are some basic things you should keep in mind:
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Do Not put flash and animation on your website! This has become to annoy visitors! Most nowadays won’t even stay at a website that has flash on it. And unless you know how to do it properly flash and animation take a very long time load. People today are in a hurry and won’t wait around for it to load
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I’ve seen websites with all kinds of backgrounds and some are nice and fit the market the owner is with. But there have been some that are just plain ugly and make me leave. Be sure to keep your background image or color to what your market will appreciate.
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The text area is another big issue with some websites. You do no want to have a black background and then red or yellow text colors. This makes it very hard on the eyes and you need to consider who is visiting your site, do they have difficulties reading, are they older? The best combination so far is to keep your text area white with black text, this is the easiest to read through for most people. For important information you want to make sure some sees, make that text a bit bigger than the rest. Also, you should always have the size of your text set to 12 this will also make things easier to read.
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Images, I have seen some pretty badly placed images, and some images that just don’t have anything at all to do with the market. Make sure you are using images properly. Do not make them very big, remember the size of most computer screens is 1024 with 32 bit settings. So keep you images within size, like around 800pixels this makes things easier for your visitor. Be sure that your visitors don’t have to move left to right to see your pages.
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With videos there is a right and wrong way to go about putting videos on your website. Most do not want to go to a website and get blared out by the audio or video immediately. If you must have your video or audio start as soon as someone lands on your website, make sure that you have a pause or stop button in plain site and easy to find so they can turn it off if they choose. Keep your audio and videos down to about 2 minutes, so they can also read your website without spending a lot of time there.
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If you are planning on selling products on your website, make sure that you place the buy buttons in easy to find plain site so there is no mistake as to what you want them to do and why. Also tell them exactly what to expect and when, so there is no confusion on what will happen once they purchase something from you. Place a call to action link in several places on your website also, this will entice them to purchase.
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If you are website is just for list building, make sure that is all that is on your website. Do not put anything else on there but an opt in form. If there is more than one action, your visitor might get confused and just leave even though they might of wanted your report or ebook or whatever you were offering.
These are just a few of the things you need to keep in mind when planning your website. If you do then your visitors will have a pleasant time visiting and will remember you and possibly tell their friends about your website and come back again.
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Tags: building a website, web design, website, website designRelated posts
How to get your website online
So many people seem to have problems understanding just how they can get their website online. The terms that are used can be confusing and misunderstood.
If you think about how things work logically, then it really isn’t that difficult to understand.
The term FTP simply means File Transfer Protocal. And it does just what it says. It transfers files from your hard drive, desktop whatever, somewhere else you tell it to put them.
So say if you were on your desktop, and you wanted to move your folders/files from your desktop to a specific place, say your documents folder, then all you would do is highlight that folder or file and right click and tell it to copy and then go to where you want it to go and then paste it there. Tada! It’s moved!
Well the same thing happens when you want to move your website files/folders onto a server so your website becomes live on the Internet. With a special piece of software that is usually free to get and download and very user friendly, you simple highlight your folders/files and then tell the software to move them from your desktop to your server. That’s all there is to it.
Now your website will be live, instantly. No waiting around, once you have moved your files to your server your website is online!!!
So when you hear these terms such as FTP, HTML editors, and so forth, try to think of what these letters represent, not so much the technical side of it, but the logical side of it. FTP – File Transfer Protocal and HTML – HyperText Markup Language, not hard once you understand the letters and what they mean, the rest is easy to figure out if you think in simple terms.
So the next time you hear someone mention FTP don’t go running the other way, realize that they are just letters and they have a specially meaning.
I hope this has helped some of you understand some of the basics of getting your website online.
Remember to leave a comment of question below so I can help you better.
Laura Miller
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Tags: gettingawebsiteonline, making websites live, web design, websitelive