by: Fort Myers Web Design

In the early years of the World Wide Web, most of its users belonged to the geek crowd: technology savvy, computer obsessed, relatively young people. Then it spread to the general populations of university campuses and business offices. Today, with the far-reaching influence of the Internet phenomenon, anyone from six-year-old children playing games on the Disney website to 76-year-old grandparents using Facebook to stay in touch with distant loved ones can be found online. As website designers, we must constantly evaluate our work to make sure that it remains user-friendly and accessible to the wide range of modern consumers.

Remember: No matter how pleased you are with the aesthetics of your design, it won’t help the average user unless he can also find his way around your site. Use this article as a guide to keeping your website accessible to your target demographic.

Keep in mind that the majority of consumers will not have the same expertise and technological sophistication that you have as a designer. Make sure that you design the website from their perspective, not yours.

When conceptualizing a website, focus on the purpose that it serves for the average user. Why is he there? What does he need from the site? How long, on average, is he going to stay? Whether for information, entertainment, or socializing, the needs of your target market should be one of your foremost considerations. If he enjoys his experience and feels at home with the website, chances are high that he’ll stay longer, and even return.

I’m sure you worked very hard on the text you put on your front page, choosing each word carefully. But most consumers with hundreds of options at their fingertips will not spend time reading everything they see; they’ll just scan. If they don’t find what they need immediately, it’s on to the next website on the search results page.

With these in mind, ask yourself: How can I give the viewer what he needs at just a glance? A clean, organized layout, bold headings, and readable fonts will help in achieving this. Several well-chosen, attention-grabbing titles placed strategically will catch your reader’s attention and hold it long enough to encourage him to read the rest.

Occam’s Razor, or the law of economy, states that “entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity”. In design, this means not using two or more elements when just one would serve the purpose adequately.

Simplicity is one of the characteristics of a user-friendly, navigable interface. Too much clutter, and your viewer will have to struggle to find what he needs from all the buttons, widgets, and links on the site. This can get annoying, and will turn the user off to find a more neatly organized resource.

I’m not saying the website should be completely bare and unadorned. The important thing is to keep it uncomplicated enough for your demographic to use. To apply Occam’s Razor, evaluate every element on the site: Is it absolutely necessary? Can its purpose be served by something else that’s already there? By keeping the interface uncluttered, you’re making sure that your viewer can focus on the content and leave satisfied.

User interactivity on your website is mostly accomplished through hyperlinks. The rest of the content is usually static, but the presence of hyperlinks invite the user to take action: to click or not to click?

As a designer, you must alert the consumer to these options. Hyperlinks are portals to other pages on the site or to external websites, so they must look significantly different from ordinary text. Hover effects, such as color or font changes, can accomplish this. Don’t get so funky with your effects that it’s no longer recognizable for what it is. This might seem obvious to a designer, but it never hurts to reinforce the basics.

As a website designer, your job is to structure the site into a format that has a natural, organized flow that will make visitors feel relaxed and at home. Keep honing your skills and seeking feedback, and remember that no one can make the “perfect” web page, but it doesn’t mean you can’t try.

The Definitive Guide to Principles of Web Design Accessibility by Naples Web Design is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

My friend is a web designer. He tells me that he gets a different kind of rush when he see a blank white box on his computer screen. “I keep on imagining what this white box could turn into. I can see people visiting my site and getting the information they need while being awed by the sophistication and easy navigation of my design. This vision is my driving force.” Creativity, the mouse, and the keyboard are the tools of his trade.

Web design is also a form of artistry. It brings the same kind of joy as any beautiful piece of artwork, because that is what a website is a web designers art. If you are like my friend who has so much passion for web design ( He would even design a website for free!), then surely it must be a joy to make a living out of it.

There is however, one thing you should know when you get into any kind of business. It’s different when your doing something as a hobby and it’s different when you are working for somebody else. Before getting into the web business you have to be sure that you are in the right mindset and you bring a process into your work. You have to keep in mind that you are not only creating for yourself, now you have somebody else to please.

The Pitfalls of Getting into Business

Just like any business, the web design business also has a set of pitfalls that at one time or another, a web designer will inevitably meet. Let’s take a closer look at each one.

Pitfall #1 “Failing Website” or the case of the website that fails to function properly

This is a web designers’ worst fear. You were able to come up with a winning design, unfortunately your client hates it. This happens when you create a design that is aesthetically pleasing but is a failure when it comes to function, meaning it doesn’t provide support for the client’s goal or the message he wants to send. Failing design lies in lack of communication or lack of understanding. Fortunately, it is something you can avoid (although not completely) by paying attention to the client’s needs.

Pitfall #2 “Designing without a Process” or the case of the jumbled process of web design

This supports the stereotype of the undisciplined artist. If you’re still new to the business, you may not have had the chance to develop an efficient working process. Read my lips: working with a process is a direct path to failure. The process of design is supposed to be like this:

Step 1: Planning

You need to plan. The Bible has a scripture to support this process. Luke 14:28 reads “For example, who of you that wants to build a tower does not first sit down and calculate the expense, to see if he has enough to complete it?” If the greatest Creator has a planning process, then so should you. Know about your client’s concerns. Find the answers to the important concerns.

You need to know the answers to these:

• What is your goal with this site?
• Who are your site’s visitors?
• What do you want your visitors to do?
• Why should they do it

Step 2: Content Building

After forming a plan, you can start building the content of your site. This means you should know what the content is and where to put it.

Step 3: Designing

Now you can start designing the website. This is where you can let your creativity flow but you still have to leave Photoshop alone for a bit. Build multiple layout so you can have an idea of what the finished product would look like.

Have you heard about the 10-3-1 rule? It works like this: First, you have to come up with 10 good designs for either a product or a site. Second, eliminate 7 of these designs until you come up with the best 3. Finally, eliminate 2 of these designs until you are left with just 1 powerful design.

Step 4: Development

This is the final step. When you have come up with a design, you will have to start coding and doing the backend stuff. You will have to turn it into XHTML/CSS/PHP/MySOL or into whatever it is you need for the site. Some designers choose to work with a partner or hire someone to do the coding of a site.

What have you noticed in the process of web design? Yes, designing comes in the latter part. By following this simple and easy process, you can avoid failing designs. This is why it is important to know and have a process in web design. Now that you know all about it, you can start marketing yourself as the efficient professional web designer that you are.

Article written by Naples Website Design Company

Naples Website Design Company is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

By: Atlanta Web Design

The profession and job of web designing is extremely interesting. Every day, is a new day for a web designer. Because, while all others do the same old job, the job of a web designer is creative and he or she learns something new every day. For instance, if you have designed a coffee mug today the next day you may have to design a jewelry box or a flower vase or an animated cartoon. Therefore, the elasticity and strength of web designing profession is too prospective and too good for the young aspirants.

For those who are already settled in web designing can have great fun by recruiting young web designing assistants who would be working enthusiastically with their boss. Therefore, web designing is a creative work and the level of stress and anxiety is very less and there is more joy and fun all the time, as you work smartly and dynamically.

It is true that web designing requires  lot of time to do the designs but this does not mean that quality words cannot be produced in a short time. But this again depends on what kind of web design software you are using to design your works.

It is important for you to have latest web design software to catch up with the interests of the clients and to get updated with the current trends of the market in web design.  Basically you need to have passion about web designing. If you are doing the client’s work with dedication and interest, your web designs will get marketed very quickly and you will have good earnings.

Whether you are beginner or a professional web designer, you must keep an update from the market about web design and most importantly take time to visit web sites which did lot of good work in designing their web sites. This will also help you to develop such web sites and will also guide you to produce outstanding works in web designing.

Therefore web design products, free web design downloads, market news, skills required and management of clients are very important at all levels to prosper in web design business. It does not matter whether you are starting in a small way or big way. It all matters how you take care of your clients and what kind of quality work your are delivering to them.

Good endeavor towards quality work is very important and for this, you must understand the requirements of your customer. Because if a customer wants a bird holding paper in its beak as web design you cannot design just a bird holding pen. It is very important to understand the needs of client and ask once or twice and confirm about web design.

The profession of web designing is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

Good web design is all about putting yourself in the eye of your audience. Seeing things from their perspective ensuring the site appeals, is readable and easy navigate and use. This is why we ask so many questions about the intended or target market of the site, so we can design with that in mind.

One of the main things you learn when surfing as a user is to put as few clicks as possible between the user and the information or product as possible. This is the single most important element of website design. Studies have shown that you have anything from 1 to 3 seconds to interest a visitor to your site in order to keep them there for any length of time. Every second counts! Splash pages, slow loading pages, music, flashing banners and all the other questionable devices take away valuable seconds while the visitor attempts to get what they need from the site.

Ensure when they use a link or the URL of the site that they arrive on a home page with meaningful information right there for them. Also make sure there is a usable menu system in order for them to navigate around the site. Use those seconds to get the visitor straight to the heart of the site. The home page text must be tight and engaging, enough to keep them there looking for more.

Keep pages succinct is another “rule” for a successful website. While sometimes unavoidable, and forgivable in some circumstance reduce scrolling as much as possible and don’t overload pages. Too much information can be as much of a turn-off as too little. If you have a lot of information to impart or a story to tell, keep each section no longer than two pages long. Any longer and you should be dividing it up into separate pages.

Ensure there is always a link to your home page of every single pages of the site. Visitors needs to be able to navigate the site effectively if they are to hang around. In fact, make sure you include a menu on every page. Make it as easy as possible for people to find things, and pages while they are on the site.

Lastly, don’t use frames. As tempting as it may be, frames have downsides that impact a website too much to consider using. It may be easier to have the same header or menu system throughout the site but there are the downsides. Firstly the address bar doesn’t change when navigating. This makes bookmarking difficult, especially if a user wants to bookmark something specific. There are so many ways to share bookmarks or links nowadays that any site owner needs to be able to capitalize on them to get ahead. The other main downside to using frames is when the site comes up in a search engine result. If the search engine has indexed something other than your main page, the frameset won’t appear when they link to your site. This means the subpage will appear on the screen without the frame around it. While this isn’t earth shattering, it is a consideration to be borne in mind when designing a page for usability, after all, you want search engines to find out and return everything they can about the site.

Make Web Design Straightforward and Stuff Easy to Find. is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

The internet is an amazing and fascinating place of infinite scale. One of the few remaining examples of global co-operation and communication. Somewhere where we can express ourselves, meet, comment, sell, buy, or generally just hang out. We all have our favourite sites and places to visit, and they work for us because they are appealing. Sites you like or dislike are extremely subjective. Like anything, taste is down to the individual, but there are a few underlying principles in making a web design appealing to the masses, or to just a few. We will cover a couple of them here.

Don’t blind your visitors with flashing or blinking images or text, scrolling titles, animated gifs or sound. Unless done very, very well these should be avoided at all costs. All of these elements distract your audience from the sites message. At worst they annoy them enough that they leave altogether.

Web audiences scan pages, they don’t read them. So when a flashing banner ad or scrolling text keeps drawing their attention away from what you’re trying to say, the website fails. It’s like trying to read a newspaper while a small child is poking you. Not a good position to put your audience in.

Biologically speaking, the human eye is drawn to movement. So theoretically, a moving or flashing banner should attract the eye. While this is true, the reason for grabbing that attention is what annoys the visitor. On any web page, the text should be your advert. It should engage, interest and sell to an audience. Banner ads, and the scrolling text or other annoyances will always be that, annoyances.

In a similar vein, avoid using popups at all costs. Nothing annoys web users more than unsolicited popups. As a website owner, you may be more interested in making money than engaging an audience, but the kind of ads are going to quickly drive traffic away from your site. You aren’t going to make money with no visitors. As a web designer/owner you have to put yourself in the shoes of the audience. See things as they would see them. Try this on a site with popups and you will quickly see why they are a bad idea.

The last piece of advice I’m going to share today is to not use images as backgrounds. It doesn’t matter what quality picture you use, it looks cheap. If you are considering using one in a design, firstly, don’t, but surf a few of the most popular sites you know and see what they are doing. They don’t use them do they?

Design is all about doing things differently and making something stand out, but that has to be achieved the right way. Using images as a background isn’t one of those ways. It looks amateurish and practically screams “home-made site” or “low rent”. Not only does it destroy the appearance of a site, it also slows it down. Even with broadband, loading up a background image can take a while and certainly isn’t worth the wait once it’s loaded. MySpace may be able to get away with it, but as useful at the place is, an example of good design and usability it isn’t.

Keeping it Clean. How not to Turn Off Your Visitors. is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

There are some rules about website design that should be adhered to in order to make your website as navigable and readable as possible. The scope of the internet is so vast, the attention span of the average visitor is tiny that you need to make sure it is as quick and easy as possible for your visitor to get the information they need.

This article concerns itself with website text. The words that make meaning from those pretty pictures and menus on the page.

The first rule is; No text line should be wider than 600 pixels.

Magazines and newspapers use column layouts because it makes lines short so you can easily read the text from one sentence to the next. A well designed site will have the text in a similar layout so it is easy to read and navigate. Good publishing rules when using text, whatever the medium, is plenty of white space, short paragraphs and snappy sentences. The website has limited space and limited time to get its message across to its audience. Short, engaging text will help you achieve that.

The second rule is; Make the text easy to read.

Use colors wisely. If you website has a colored background, dark or light, choose a text color that is easily read even at 16 color screen resolution. It is easy to forget that not everyone has the latest computers with LCD widescreens. When designing a site, it has to look good at different resolutions in order to work effectively. It’s hard to read light text on a light background or dark text on a dark one. Choose colors carefully and make sure the contrast between them is enough to make it readable. Never put text over an image or a textured background, it will be really difficult to read.

The third rule is; Ensure the text layout works.

Similar to rule number one, but different. The text on a web page needs to be large enough to read. It is an obvious point to make, but it is important enough that it needs making. Nobody wants to squint at their screen in order to read a page. The absolute minimum text size for any site should be 12pt for paragraph text. Use line spacing to your advantage too. Don’t necessarily plump for single line spacing, play with it a bit until it the text looks right on the page. White spaces makes the text more readable and the page more pleasurable to read.

The last rule is; Grammar and spelling.

Use a spell checker, always. Even if you have a degree in English Literature, use a spell checker. There is nothing that says “amateur” more than a site with spelling mistakes. I write for a living but still use it. Most web designers I know use it. To take this a step further, ensure you use correct grammar. Don’t use all caps, or more than one “!” in a sentence. Make sure you end a sentence with a period and use commas appropriately.

Making a Readable Website is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

Anybody can make a sales page to sell a product or service. Not everyone can make a good sales page to sell a product or service. To sell effectively you have to create a need and then offer to satisfy it with your product. Just planting the info and order details on a page isn’t going to get many conversions. Clever use of language and structure will help your visitors become customers.

Use your title tag. Any SEO savvy people out there will already have the title tag covered. For those of you that don’t, use it to describe you, your company and service or product. This is what will be displayed in the first part of the search results. Give potential visitors enough information to make the site worthy of a visit.

Use good descriptions. The description tag will be what makes up the rest of the search result. It is here that you have to hook your potential customer. You need to sell them on the idea of visiting your site. Save the product sales pitch proper for the site. Hook the visitor into getting there first.

Once on the site your title should be interesting and compelling. You have about 5 seconds to capture your visitor before they leave, so you need to do it quickly. For example; ‘A description of identity fraud protections’ is nowhere near as interesting as ‘Stop criminals spending your money while you sleep!’ is.

Include an image or images of your product or service. Depending on your business this may be harder than it sounds. If the service you offer isn’t really depictable in an image, find some that are relevant. Images make a page, they break up the text and form associations in the mind of the reader so are invaluable as a marketing tool.

Offer something for free, preferably a sample or trial of your product. To make your visitors believe in your product you have to convince them you believe in it too. A site that tries to sell me something but won’t let me take a look at it first isn’t going to get my money. You wouldn’t buy a car without trying it first, or even a book without have a quick look at it first would you?

Add some kind of customer service. Be this via a forum or contact page. Reassure your customers that you aren’t just going to take their money and run. It doesn’t matter if you intend doing that or not, as long as you convince your buyers otherwise.

Finally if you product is important enough to you, have some kind of after sales follow up. A friendly contact to the customer will demonstrate that you care, and is also a good way of getting testimonials. Testimonials are by far the best kind of sales tool you can get. Just don’t forget to ask permission before using customer feedback in this way.

If you can follow these guidelines you will have increased your sales potential immeasurably. The rest is up to you and your product!

How to make a good sales page is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

Most experienced web designers already know the rules for making a website user friendly but those newer to the scene need to take note of these rules and why they are important.

A study by IBM in 2003 found that for every $1 you invested in making a site easy to use translated into $10 return if the site was a commercial one. A useable site also converts 100% more than an awkward one. For these reasons alone a site has to be created to be useable as well as beautiful.

The site has to be easy to navigate and use one of the traditional navigation schemas. Things such as the term ‘About me/us’ linking to a bio page on the person or company who owns the site. The logo at the top of the page linking back to the home page and a shopping cart being exactly that. These are things taken for granted by many visitors and if you plan on varying them, do it clearly.

Web pages have grown in size since broadband became mainstream. Once pages had to be as light as humanly possible to squeeze down a 56k line as quickly as possible. Now with broadband and ADSL the standard we can get away with a little more than that now. That isn’t to say someone with a T1 into their house is going to sit there and wait even 5 seconds for your pages to load. As a nation we are becoming increasingly impatient. If you can’t grab someone’s attention within the first 3 seconds you have lost them. Using CSS instead of tables and navigation items and optimizing any media or images will speed up your page load immensely.

You must not restrict users in any way. The biggest mistake here is having your pages open up new tabs or windows. Although this may seem a convenience from an experienced users point of view it muddles the navigation options for the average user. For instance, a page that opens in a new tab has no back button. Although a small thing, it can confuse, and worse, annoy visitors to your site. If you are linking externally then it is logical to have that open in a new tab or page, so the navigation options on your site remain intact.

Avoid using frames if you can as it makes the whole web process a little more difficult. It makes the site harder to bookmark or interact with, you can’t email links, or print properly and the main issue is search engines still don’t seem to like it. If you want a good page rank then this is certainly a no-go.

Your page layout should reflect the readers habits. They don’t read a web page like they do a book. They scan in an F shape across the page from top left down to the bottom. You have to sculpt your page and content to take advantage of this. Have your important text in line with one of the lines of the ‘F’ and your readers will take note of it.

Following these rules will make your website work for your most important critics. Not your client, but their audience.

Website Usability is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

You may have all the visitors in the world coming through your site, but if they don’t stay and buy anything then they are worse than useless. This happens to more sites than you would believe but there are some simple tips to help keep the visitors from just bouncing out.

Teach them something. You may be trying to sell to visitors but dress it up as education and you will keep your customers interested enough to stick around. We have all seen the one pages websites selling ebooks on diet pills or whatever. Mostly we click right through them because they are a blatant sales page and we don’t want to buy. Dress the sale up in some articles on weight loss, or nestle your product within healthy eating recipes or something and you will start doing business.

Keep your site navigation simple. Don’t make the site too deep or complicated. Keeping it as simple and consistent as possible will take away many of the barriers to visitors. There is nothing more frustrating than not being able to find the page you’re looking for. More often than not a visitor will just give up and move on. Don’t assume a visitor will always arrive at you home page either. Recommendations or search results of specific terms will result in visitors arriving from all over the place. Bear this in mind with your site design and ensure navigation is easy from whatever page you happen to be on.

Provide full product descriptions and good images. This may seem like a no brainer but it is essential to give your buyers the fullest possible picture about what they are getting for their money. Describe the product here, don’t sell it. List the benefits by all means, but keep on topic.

Give the customer choice about how to order. Offer online purchasing, phone or mail. Many people are still very sceptical about buying online because of all the stories they hear in the media. Cover that one off by offering telephone sales or ordering by mail. In a similar vein, use every security precaution you can think of and advertise the fact on your site. Use SSL, Thawte or whatever to give your buyers confidence in your operation.

Encourage interaction with your visitors. Employ a blog or forum and encourage user feedback of your product. Sites like Amazon saw a big jump in conversions why they added the customer feedback piece to their pages. This is as good as a testimonial. An example of a real life person telling the world that your product does what you say it can do.

Keep the tone light. When you write your pages, keep it conversational, and if replying to forum posts or blogs keep it the same. Talk to and engage your audience. Avoid geek speak at all costs. Jargon just turns people off, keep the language positive and accessible to all. You don’t want to limit your potential market.

How to Keep Visitors on Your Site is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design

Our main site is here: RT Design

This site is really just to catch traffic form people searching for “collier web design” which there probably isn’t many, but just in case there is, I put this site up. Even if it only drives one person a month to the main site, who cares? One is better than nothing. So anyway, that’s the story. I’ll get some more posts up here soon.

Collier County Web Design is a post from: Fort Myers Web Design