10 Valuable Web Design Tips and Tricks

Whether you are designing your own web pages for the first time or whether you utilizing the services of a  web design company, it's always useful to learn a few effective web design tips. So, read on:
1. Keep it simple and clutter-free
You may know all those cool effects on Photoshop and Fireworks, but that doesn't mean that you have to use them all on your web page. Users are put-off by designs that seem totally cluttered. Design a simple and appealing web page by:

• Creating visual focal points where vital information is provided to the user
• Organize information in the page so the user can easily find what he is looking for
• Text and visual must complement each other and one must never overpower the other
• Make sure the images are optimized for faster downloads

2. Communicate visuallyDon't just use visuals to grab eyeballs. Use them to effectively communicate to the user.
Use colors to project your website's image. For example: You can use green if you promoting bio-degradeable products; pink if you're selling little girls' shoes; or restrict to using your regular corporate colors if you are an established company trying to take your business online

• Use visuals for highlighting. Use buttons to highlight links, so navigation is much easier. You can also use thumbnails in place of a text link to a graphic image.
• Direct the user to updated content or important links using visual cues like arrows or bold text or scrolls

3. Keep it content-rich Focus on providing interesting content if you want users to come back to you, time and again. Visuals may get the user to say 'wow' the first time, but it's the content that keeps them coming back.

• Keep updating as users are always looking for fresh content
• Provide informative content in an interesting fashion
• You may keep the tone conversational and lively
• Keep it short. Users don't have time or patience to read reams of content
• Ask users for feedback and comments. Interact with users and they will come back to you

4. Keep text narrowKeep the text layout narrow. You don't want your readers to scroll sideways to read every line. They may eventually get bored and stop reading after all. This is the same reason that newspapers also have short columns. Narrow text columns are easy-to-read and visually more appealing.
5. Be consistent
Be consistent in design across all pages of your website. Users may feel overwhelmed and may face difficulty finding vital information in your website.

• Try to use the same color schemes across web pages
• Maintain consistency in the location of key links
• Avoid using a wide variety of fonts across pages
• Consistently use easily readable fonts

6. Gratify user needs instantlyThere are several million websites on the internet today. Users are overloaded with information and chances of them coming back to your website time and again are, realistically speaking, minimal. BUT, you can get them to become regular visitor, IF, you gratify their needs - and gratify them instantly, every time. You can do this by:

• Providing immediate access to information. Don't test user patience by making them search for what they need. Provide it instantly
• Updating and providing fresh content on topics that interests them
• Consistently delivering valuable information
• Interacting with users and making them feel valued

7. Adhere to conventionConvention is not really a bad thing when it comes to certain aspects of a web page design. For example, users are used to finding the twitter link, the RSS Feed link etc., in a certain way across most web pages. If you try to do it differently, chances of them missing your link are very high. After all, would you be comfortable if somebody placed your coffee mug in a different place each morning?
8. Make navigation easy
Make navigation crystal-clear if you want users to stay longer in your website. Make it easy for them to find important links. Check and re-check to see if all links are working just fine. There is nothing worse than a frustrated user who decides to go to your competition simply because he was unable to find the appropriate link.
9. Check for browser compatibility
Check to see if your web page is opening up right across all browsers and not just IE. Clear up all resolution issues. Work out technical issues pertaining to the use of several design software. Ensure that your website is up and running in peak form without any technical glitches.
10. Test and re-test for usability
You may think that you're website looks fantastic; it's really easy-to-use and so on. But does the user feel this way. Test your website for usability. See what's working and find out what's not working. Make appropriate changes. Re-test your web design from time-to-time. Most successful web design company portfolio is built on testing and refining to enhance usability. That's because people's needs and expectations change. Make sure your web design keeps up with changing demands.

Redefining Web Design - SEO Web Design, The Only Effective Way to Leverage Your Online Presence

There are a lot of web designers out there, and a lot of firms advertising the "best web design" available. We are of the school of thought that an effective web design is one that brings traffic to your website and revenue to your business. For that reason, you won't see us recommending Flash, you won't see us recommending HTML templates, and you won't see us recommending a design without SEO.
For a web design to be effective, you must have SEO. A thumbnail explanation of SEO is that the site speaks to the search engines in their language. It is optimized for the search engines. Why is that so crucial? Because the number of pages on the Internet is increasing at an exponential rate, and the competition for page 1 in Google, Yahoo or Bing will grow in intensity. It will be more & more difficult to rank on page one. In the more competitive niches, it is already impossible to rank on page one without good SEO; that will become the case for every niche in the very near future.
Good SEO can mean many different things; in terms of SEO web design, "good SEO" means on-page factors. Yes, you will also need to market your site to insure top placement in the search engines; on-age SEO factors are not enough in most cases (unless you are in an extremely tiny, non-competitive niche or hyper-niche) to insure top placement in Google, Yahoo and Bing.
The two go hand in hand. We are redefining good web design to be SEO Web Design.
The old school way of doing things was to create a website and then go hire a separate SEO expert to optimize it, oftentimes completely changing what the designer did because it was actually harmful for your search engine rankings. We value your money more than that; it makes more business sense to get it right from the start and create a website that has good SEO built into it.
SEO used to be a very expensive proposition, and it still is. Many firms will charge thousands of dollars for an SEO website. For a very limited time, one web firm is offering completely optimized, professionally designed websites with SEO and webhosting for a fraction of that. With most business websites costing thousands of dollars, without even approaching good SEO, it's something worth checking out.
Regardless of who builds and maintains your site, insist on an optimized website that is search engine friendly. It does your business no good at all to create a web presence that is going to appear on page 600 of Google. Ninety-eight percent of web search ends on page one, so your intended destination should be clear -- if you hope to reach your intended customers and clients.

John Flynn is an online marketing consultant for real business, specializing in creating profitable websites for brick & mortar businesses and finding hidden revenue streams for his clients. Successful online since 1999 in over 300 niche websites, Mr. Flynn combines his years of online expertise with over 12 years operating a chain of specialty retail stores and over 9 years in a successful boutique service business. He is the author of "750 Traffic Streams for Your Business" and creator of several DIY products and Do-It-For-You services designed to help Small Business dominate the search engines and make more money.

Web Design Tips For SEO

 Posted by Web Design Doncaster
It really wasn't all that long ago that SEO or search engine optimization was one big giant mystery. Back then it was a rare person who even understood its basic principles let alone effective techniques.
Now how times have changed and it seems that today almost everyone with a website is aware of its basic functions. However; what still remains pretty much exclusive knowledge is the finite workings of SEO.
So just what can you do to better familiarize yourself with SEO and its inner workings, prior to having your website designed. Understand them in such a way that you won't be stuck like you were the last time you had to talk to a mechanic about your car when it comes time to communicate with your Web Designer.
You can start by typing in what ever you're selling or providing into your computers search engine. Check out the sites on the first page brought up by the most popular keyword entries. The ones at the top are doing something right, so study their sites carefully.
One thing you're going to notice is that at least one of them and probably more will have the keyword in their name. For instance if your business in wedding cakes and the most popular keyword is of course wedding cakes, you're going to see sites with names like weddingcakes-4U etc.
Now check out all the pages of their site and you'll see that they have their name, which includes this keyword plastered all over each page. They won't be penalized for "keyword abuse" either because it's in their name and it's only normal that a company would put their name at the top of each page and in their text.
So the gist of all of this is to consider including a popular keyword in your domain name, so it can be used liberally in your site. It's really not worth changing or adapting your name for less popular keywords though but its really all up to you.
OK so whats next? How about a selection of topic related keyword articles in your site. Perhaps a box on the right or left of your opening page with around 15 well written articles that contain 15 good keywords. Now bear in mind that the top keywords can be very competitive, so you may want to consider passing some up.
Consider wedding cakes as an example again. Type in (wedding cakes) and you may find that 2,000,000 entities are competing under that keyword. However; if you live in, say Kalamazoo Michigan, you may be better served by focusing on less popular and far less competitive "regional oriented" keywords in your articles like (Kalamazoo Wedding Cakes) or (Michigan Wedding Planners), etc.
Do yourself a big favor by taking some time to study up on article writing and keywords before you put your pen to paper, so to speak. Once again, another great idea is to check out what some of the better article directories have to offer under your selected keywords.
Do the same thing there. That is, check out the top articles on page one and consider duplicating or even copying what they're doing. Of course direct copies will never pass copyscape, so you'll have to rewrite them in your own words but there is nothing wrong with writing "similar adaptations".

SEO Web Design

Website Design that does the business

The best investment a business can make is a website. We design sites that are sales and marketing dream machines. With our knowledge of SEO and Web Design Doncaster we can put together a package that will bring customers to you.

Ramping Up Your Website

Posted by Web design south Yorkshire

Ok, so here's the situation. You have a well designed site and you just realized the importance of online marketing. But you just realized you have nowhere to put new content, and worst your site hasn't been indexed. What's the solution? Convert your site to WordPress. This CMS platform has been around for some time now and recently webmasters are beginning to use it for search engine optimization purposes. I'm going to show you the benefit of having a Content Management System (CMS) platform for your site, why WordPress would be the best immediate solution and what you have to consider when working with the WordPress platform.

You may be thinking: "Hey, how does a CMS even matter for search engine optimization?" Well a CMS doesn't automatically mean you'll rank better. What it really means is that you'll have more tools to help you rank better. The real benefit of a CMS is that it allows you to add content to your site really quickly, and the most basic search engine optimization principal is the more content you have, the more authority you have in your topic. A CMS will help you insert and organize content into your site so you wouldn't need to keep a web developer on standby when you're updating your site. There are many CMS platforms available such as Joomla, Blogger and Drupal. In my history of web development, I believe the fastest way to ramp up a site is to use a WordPress platform.

WordPress is an open source blogging platform that users either can take the code and install it onto their site or they can create a WordPress account at WordPress.com and set up their site there. This platform is the best CMS structure I've used for three reasons: ease to install, gives great search engine optimization rankings and has the ability to add in plug-ins that everyone can use. The installation process for WordPress last no longer than 2 minutes. All you have to do is upload the files they give you and then run the installation files through your browser. Search engines seem to give the WordPress platform more authority than standard coded sites because I guess they believe it will be content heavy on its topic. Plug-ins is probably the greatest thing about this platform because it allows you to attach code to your CMS easily. Great code attachments include search engine plug-ins and functionality plug-ins.

Finally you may be wondering: "Hey, if this is so great why isn't everyone doing it?" Well there are two unfortunate limitations to WordPress that doesn't make it easy for everyone to do it. The first limitation is working with the theme of WordPress. Unfortunately you can't just design up something in Photoshop and assume it'll work easily with WordPress. You have to consider the area the navigation is going to be and the area the footer is going to be. These things must be created properly in order for it to function properly in WordPress. The other reason WordPress is hard to work with is because it focuses more on blog updates as opposed to page creation. If you don't plan to update your site frequently, it may be inconvenient to work with.

Overall, WordPress is a great platform to use to ramp up your site. There are some benefits and advantages but if you have the right developer, you can do anything with your site.

SEO and Link Building

Search engine optimisation is a process of optimizing your website to attain better positions in search engines and to acquire high volume of monthly traffic. SEO is the only and last choice that will send insane traffic to your website if you are optimized properly. One of the most known search engine is known as Google, boosting every ones business now a days.

Some of the most crucial steps that are to be implemented to gain high positions in search engines for better traffic volumes are many but here we will be discussing the most effective step for SEO namely link building. Link building is like a vote for your website in view of search engines and a vote means better rankings and repute. So how can you build back links? Some of the following ways are widely proved to gain quality back links.

Article marketing:

Article marketing is very important for link building and requires a very little effort to gain links back to your site. Just write quality articles and submit them to high ranked article directories like EzineArticles.com and goarticles. Before submitting them,in the resource box give URL of your site to gain a link. If article marketing is implemented correctly, it will provide you with results which you can't even consider.

Forum posting:

Forum posting is another way to gain one way back links. Just visit high PR forums and post replies in threads related to your niche with a back link to your site. This way to gain back links is very easy and will provide you awesome results.

Video marketing:

Video marketing is considered as the most modern way to gain back links and is getting proved very effective. Just make a short minute video on a topic relevant to your niche and upload it to maker video hosting sites like Youtube.com. It will provide you with the most effective results you are willing to see.

Choose the Right SEO Consultant to Improve Trade

Marketing through Internet has become the order of the day. Almost all types of products and traders, however small or big the volume of his trade is, look to Internet as a means to advertise and trade. But, trading or advertising on the Internet involves creating a website, a blog and this work is totally different from advertising through print or any other media. Creating a web requires the help of a web designer, who is technically qualified in the field. After creating the web and before it is loaded, it should be scrutinized by a professional SEO consultant.

What is the job of an SEO consultant?

Considering the number of websites now on the Internet, however much attractive the web is, it is not certain that it will be visited by any surfer. In this situation, it is possible that the surfer may not even be aware of the existence of the particular web or blog. Now, the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) consultant comes into picture and he builds the links so that the website gets the due identification. Apart from choosing the right keywords, he also builds a perfect and strong link so that the website comes to the forefront.

How to choose the SEO Consultant?

Experience: Before choosing an SEO, assess his portfolio. It will be much better if he is experienced in SEO of similar products. By this, he will understand the market much more easily.

The SEO consultant must be confident: Some of the SEO consultants assure quick improvement in the rate of clicking. This can be misleading because no website however much artistically crafted, can become popular in a very short period of time. In other words, such assurances on the part of the SEO consultant cannot be relied upon and will not be the right selection.

Type of support: Some SEOs offer support till such time that the web is loaded. There are instances that after it is loaded some errors may appear. Some links may get disconnected. In such a situation, the web will not serve any purpose. Therefore, even though some SEOs assure that the web will be self-operational, they must be ready and willing to be on the job even after it is loaded.

Improvements: Here also the involvement of SEO will be necessary even after the web is loaded. Many times, the website may need changes. It could be a change of keywords or description, introduction of new video, graphs, design etc. A new product may be introduced or design of the existing product may change. In all these circumstances, the web content will undergo changes. Here again the SEO consultant comes into the picture. He has to ensure that in such a situation he would take to re-optimize the web after effecting necessary changes.

Effective PPC: The purpose of web is achieved with the best PPC. Many SEO companies also provide enough support to regulate the PPC and advise the trader in this regard. The consultants also advise the trader on copyright. He monitors the positive clicks and advises the trader on ways to improve his business.