Web Design nbd Blog

Archive for the ‘Web Design’ Category

Forums offer a great platform for webmasters to exchange ideas on a given topic. This is obviously a great way to learn and find solutions to those niggling problems that you might be facing, but also a chance to raise your own profile by offering advice to other webmasters according to your area of expertise.

Raising your profile by posting questions and answers on well organized forums also creates the potential for more inquiries about your products and services which is a nice bonus. Read the rest of this entry »

During a recent visit to one of my favourite forums I came across a very creative designer who for the purpose of this post and reasons best known to her I’ll call Daisy. Surprisingly she was producing images of websites without the help of any screen capture software other than that built into her computer.

This was surprising because her work included updating review sites that regularly needed screen captures of new websites. I might have got a little lost during the explanation but the method Daisy was using for grabbing screen shots of long scrolling pages went something like this:

• Find the relevant website and open it in a browser
• Hit the print screen tab and then paste it into Adobe photoshop
• Back to the browser and scroll down to capture the next part of the page
• Paste this screen grab into a new file
• Rinse and repeat according to the length of the page

Read the rest of this entry »

Striking a Balance

It is important when considering your web design to strike a good balance between how your site looks to visitors, what may be called the “human view”, and how it appears to the automated “spider” software sent out by Google, Yahoo and others search engines to “crawl” links between web pages and index them, we’ll call this the “robot view”.

This is a strange sounding cocktail of creatures I know but let’s look at some of the important questions to ask yourself if you want your web design to be effective in attracting visitors. Read the rest of this entry »

Conflicting Views About Web Visitors

Whether you are just starting out on the journey to establish a successful website or you are disillusioned with your results so far, you will more than likely be aware of the need to attract a healthy flow of Website visitors.

The conflicting views about the best way to do this can often be confusing. Should you focus on the design of your website, search engine optimisation, or should you work hard to develop an effective marketing strategy? My advice is to develop a broad approach that includes all three.

Heated debate about the true benefits of SEO and professional website design have been around on the web for a long time, but more and more people are becoming aware of their effectiveness in helping to generate a high volume of targeted website traffic (website visitors).

Instead of getting too caught up in the tangle of conflicting SEO and web design advice available, concentrate on providing a website that people will enjoy visiting and that is deserving of high rankings in the search engines because of the quality of content it offers. Read the rest of this entry »

What Does The Term Web Design Mean To You?

It is likely that most people’s answer will be unique, in fact most web designers would give slightly different answers.

As part of a team that designs and promotes websites it often tickles me to see the preconceived ideas that some business owners have about exactly what goes into designing a good website.

Clients often approach us with strange expectations of what can be achieved and misconceptions of what needs to be included on their site. There is often a big emphasis on the appearance and the need to include specific gadgets, with little mention of things like optimisation and usability.

The most entertaining example I’ve come across was a cat rescue sanctuary owner who wanted us to develop a website for her business. Her concept was imaginative but had more resemblance to a social networking site for cats than a website offering cat rescue services. Read the rest of this entry »

Website visitors are crucial to the success of any website and usually the result of hard work trying to attract them to it in the first place. Here are 8 top tips on how to quickly lose your site visitors and ensure that they never want to return:

1,On your home page have little or no information. Instead have a pretty picture and the word Welcome written in a stylish font. This tells your visitor nothing and leaves them unsure about what they should do next. If they click on anything it will more than likely be the back button.

2.As your page loads introduce a loud noise. The louder the better as this will take them by surprise and cause them to frantically search for the volume control , or something else to make it stop before it wakes the kids or worst catches the boss’s attention when they should otherwise be working.

3.Fill your page with banner ads, affiliate links and other distractions. If you can get flashy moving ones these are the best. This helps to convince your visitors that you have nothing really to say and just want them to buy something or click through to buy something from someone else so that you earn commission. Read the rest of this entry »