Posts Tagged ‘web site design’
Social networks and community web sites have made it possible for people to have their own personal space on the Internet. These are great for your own amusement, but if you want to have something a bit more sophisticated and something for commercial purposes, you have to worry about good web site design. You can do this on your own or have someone do it for you, but there are things to look for when you decide if your site is good or if it is going to be confusing and hard to navigate for your visitors. Nothing will sink a web site faster than problems.
Good web site design starts with a site that looks good. It is not that hard to come up with something as long as you think about centering, focus, and keeping things even. Even a very simple design can look great as long as it has been thought out before being implemented. Choose colors that work well together, and do not go for something that is too bright or too busy. If the colors and design hurt the eyes, no one is going to stay for more than a few seconds. Look at other successful sites to see how they did it if you need guidance.
You also have to think about ease of use when it comes to good web site design. If someone can not seem to find what they want, or can not figure out how to order, you are not going to have any success. If they do manage to get where they are going, but things are difficult and annoying, they are not going to come back again, even if they are happy with what you have to offer. They will find it somewhere else. Do many trial runs to make sure that everything goes smoothly with no glitches or confusion before you put your site live for customers.
Your web site is going to be the face of your business. Once it is finished and you have decided that it looks good and is easy to use, think about your goals and see if your site not only reflects who you are as a business, but also, where you hope to go in the future. Good web site design is not just about how well the site works, but also, about what it says about you. The bare essentials must work well, but it must also be a site worth visiting. Don’t go overboard, but add some extras that may interest your customers. Product related informational articles are great, as they help the customer and also make it appear as if you know what you are doing and are a great source for what they need.
Customer service is at the heart of any good business whether online or off. Your good web site design is not going to mean much if your customers can not reach anyone if they have a question, problem, or even just a compliment to share. Make sure emails are answered immediately, that any numbers you provide for customer service are answered all the time, and that these things are easy to find on your web site. If they feel a real person is always working behind the scenes, they are going to be more comfortable ordering from you time and time again.
You know that someday you will need a web site and you have probably wondered how much it will cost you to set one up. You may also probably have heard people who built their own web sites and others who spent thousands of dollars to have one set up for them. It is also true that some web sites are pleasing while others are not exactly worth a second look. In any case, it costs money to set up a site. So what are the facts about web design prices? How much should you pay to have a sight set up and have it up and running?
Of course not all web sites cost the same. In order to determine the cost of a web site, let us consider some parameters that have a direct bearing on the price tag. One of these is the domain name. The domain name is the name that people will use to locate your web site. Some common domain names are Amazon.com, Yahoo.com among others. Sometimes, you may need more than one domain name if you have a lot of content. The more the domain names you want, the higher the cost. Consider also the server space that you will be offered. A commercial hosting company will offer a price tag based on how much space you require for your web site. Generally though, 50 MB or less of storage space is considered the standard and will cost you anywhere between $20-$50 if you will be using e-commerce services such as credit cards and other e-commerce services. The above two elements sometimes come bundled as the part of the web design prices that you will be expected to pay your developer.
Another element that determines the web design prices is the design itself. A professional web site designer can produce original designs and save you valuable time, at a fee. In order to capture your vision, he will need to work with you and transfer your feel and look to the site. Depending on the kind of web site you want, web design prices will range from $250 per page to $500 for a basic page. If you want an E-commerce page, it will cost you more. Top designers will usually start at no less than $1000. As your business changes, updating your web site will be necessary to reflect the latest changes. This will also cost you, say $100-$200 a month. For an aggressively marketed and maintained site, web design prices for this can go up to $1,000. The costs of content maintenance depend on the number and difficulty of the required or requested changes. From the above, you now have a rough estimate of the web design prices you should expect in order to have an attractive, fully functional web site.
When designing a web site using the average Dreamweaver design tool, it is usually easy to do a layout of the design, add the necessary elements provided on the tools palette and import the necessary pictures and graphics to complete a web page. In fact, if you know your way around the Dreamweaver design tool, you can have a complete web page up and running in a few hours. Flash web site design is however a little different. In order to have a fully-functional web site that has the same capabilities as Dreamweaver, more than the basic design skills are needed. This is because flash has another platform which can be used to design highly interactive websites. This is the scripting language ActionScript.
It has to be remembered however that flash web site design should not take the same approach as design in, say Dreamweaver. This is because flash applications can quickly get large when using elements like pictures and audio features. On top of that, such things as a preloader can take up a lot of bandwidth which can significantly reduce the loading speed on a flash web site. In order to reduce the size of flash websites, a developer may decide to manage elements by having them load up dynamically from a server. In order to do this, a good knowledge of Actionscript will therefore be necessary. If a flash web site design will involve some movie streaming, then it may be necessary to monitor the loading of the flash movies. There are several ways to do this. One is to have a loader frame and determine what to do next when a user, say clicks a button. ActionScript allows a developer to set the frames to determine when a user can continue to use the site while certain elements are loading.
A flash web site design can also incorporate some interactivity by allowing users to type in input text fields. This information can then be manipulated using ActionScript. In fact, Flash is considered a good alternative to plain text forms since it is smooth and scalable allowing a developer to use any font by embedding it in the flash movie. Data in flash movies can also be easily manipulated. From the above, it is clear that in the right hands, flash can be used to not only come up with an amazing flash web site design, but also one that offers a lot of interactivity.













