Important Design Considerations for Your Business Site

When thinking about your business website design, careful attention should be paid to every minute detail to assure that it performs well to serve its goals. Here are five vitally important rules of thumb to observe to make sure that your website performs up to that standard.

1) Don’t even think about using splash pages

Always remember that we attract our site’s visitors for a specific purpose (or set of clear purposes), and we want nothing to stand in the way of achieving that goal as efficiently as possible. A splash page, which you probably have come across at some time, is a landing page that is no more than decoration. Usually, splash pages are meant to be visually attractive. The only meaningful content they have is a phrase such as “click here to enter this site.” Why add the frustration of one additional click between your landing page and the desired outcome on the part of the site visitor? Get those visitors through that virtual door immediately.

2) Avoid excessive banners

Eye tracking studies indicate that, while such banners might distract visitors to a website, modern visitors are accomplished at not noticing the content that the banners contain. Unless your business plan is advertising, the last thing you want to do with your visitors’ time on your site is to direct their attention away from your content (and the action that the content is designed to achieve).

3) Make sure your site navigation is intuitive

Your navigation menu should mimic what your site visitors have used many times before. Make it evident that your links to other pages are just that; they should be like directional sign posts on a highway. If you insist upon an animated, dynamic menu or a multi-level dropdown, also provide a tradition, text-based static menu in one of the traditional menu locations, such as along the left panel of the site. Besides, the static menu will contribute toward your search engine optimization efforts.

4) Provide a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some sound looping on and on at your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Your http://www.99sites.us/>online business will benefit from attention to details such as these.

Guidelines to Guide You Through the Web Development Process

There are a ton of website owners out there that are new to the web design process that often find the task quite overwhelming. The truth of the situation is, no matter what type of site you are developing, there will always be a lot of work involved and a huge learning curve for newbies. The tips that we have compiled below will be able to guide you through your entire project’s development process.

Many people that have limited resources often do not prepare enough for their project. Problems and issues during the process typically arise when individuals are not geared up for the time it will take and resources required. Newbies to the web development procedures fail to plan accordingly because they often fail to account for many of the inflexible costs that they will inevitably have to incur. There are specific costs such as reoccurring costs and other necessary services that you should consider before hand.

In addition to these fixed costs that you can almost certainly count on running into there might also be other costs related to your specific needs. For instance, most site owners will ultimately run into normal costs for the majority of third party services such as newsletters, mailing lists, security auditing, video encoding, or ecommerce solutions. These things are going to be costs other than the the costs of your sites construction and some of them might be monthly, weekly, or yearly costs.

You should also consider the amount of time you will have to contribute collaborating with others. You will want to be extremely involved during the whole process. To make important choices for your website you will have to communicate with your development company constantly. One of the biggest things that usually slows down the process and holds the team involved up is lack of communication between the the team developing the site.

Before getting started, all of these things will have to be kept in mind in order to function like a flourishing web development company.

Get Fancy with Various Applications Of Flash Web Development

If you have ever been on a website where you could listen to some form of music or watch a video then you have undoubtedly visited a site that utilizes a popular form of multimedia interaction known as flash. These types of sites are becoming more and more popular. Website designers and creators are starting to recognize that a more interactive undertone must be used in order to keep website traffic up. However, interactive sites are not the sole ones benefiting from this type of design.

While it was somewhat problematic in the beginning because of broadcast regulations, radio stations have now begun to break free of the legal red tape and are now allowed to stream their broadcast over the Internet at their station’s website. For almost all of these applications a flash plug in is necessary to hear the streaming audio.

Flash website usage has made its way onto television websites as well. These have been a real boom for the networks. Not only can they make many of their television shows available for viewing online, but they also add what is referred to as a bumper commercial to the show. This bumper commercial is separate from the television broadcast and is used to not only cover the expense of posting shows for viewing online but it also helps the network to earn a profit as well.

Online movie rental companies have also benefited from the attractions of web design using flash. One particular company’s website allows members to watch a selected group of movies free of charge. This feature has been the determining factor in many people selecting this online movie rental company instead of the others.

In retrospect, it is very difficult to think of a website that could not benefit from a flash design. No longer is interactive audio and video solely for the MySpace and YouTube’s in this world. The simple truth is that it really does not mater what kind of website it is, the benefits of flash can make any site more interesting and capable of generating increased traffic. As long as traffic remains the driving force of any website, then it is a beneficial thing indeed. If your business relies on the internet, you may want to think about contracting a website design company and get onboard with flash applications.

 

One might be able to find additional resources by using The Wall Street Journal and/or by searching on AOL.