Davill Design

A couple of years back Bill Gates introduce the idea of Convergence to the public. It was a fresh idea that later became a catchphrase for the Internet Industry. However, that promised marriage between the TV and the PC/Internet did not fully come into being.

As a result Microsoft lost millions in their MSN TV initiative. But that is all in the past. Today, the tide had finally turned. Although most people are still not quite use to the idea of surfing the Internet on their TV screens, they seem to be ready for their PC screens to be turned into televisions.

Sure, technically you could watch TV shows on any computer with a built in TV/Tuner card. But what is now driving the rapid acceptance of the TV and computer coming together is what they call Web 2.0 or the second version of the World Wide Web.

The term Web 2.0 is somewhat of a misnomer. Since The web and the Internet as a whole, is not released in such stages like in softwares. Rather, it evolves erratically as time pass on. The Internet is full of trends in technology. What is popular today may die out the next day. Or in some cases, it might evolve into something better.

So in reality Web 2.0 is not really an upgrade. Instead it refers to the current state of trends in the web. So if someone wants a Web 2.0 website, they may be referring to a website that has a popular style of design, a social component, or uses a specific technology or some combination of those three.

Take a look at how to design a site that uses Web 2.0 design conventions. First stop the page background. The background of a page is generally either very light (more common) or very dark (less common). This simply follows a good trend of making text on a page contrast highly with the background for easier reading.

A background may have stripes or something similar, but the most common aspect is a slope at the top, fading down to some other color that continues throughout the background of the rest of the page.

When it comes to logos, they tend to be very simple. Usually they contain nothing more than the name of the site. Words may be spaced closely together, along with alternating colors different words. There are only two or maybe three bright colors in the logo. The most commonly used combination is orange and blue, although green and red are not too far behind. There’s usually a small reflection of the logo right below it.

Next stop is the page elements. Web 2.0 design normally displays rounded corners. If the background does not have a gradient at the top, some round-cornered area of the site will. This are set in bright colors. If there are only two or three colors in the logo, those colors are all that is used in the other elements of the page. Simple and clean, that Web 2.0’s trademark!

As for the social aspect of the websites, this might come as a surprise but there’s nothing has truly changed here. Once again its guest books, discussion forums and so on. The only difference is that instead of giving general feedback on the site as a whole, your site visitors can now comment on specific articles and updates. Another cool change is that your visitors can now rank individual pictures instead of just telling how much they like them.

The advances in technology make it possible for such feedback to often result in instant changes in the site. But that does not mean this was not possible before. It only meant that the current technology makes it easier to isolate and extract those people who are spamming with comments or artificially trying to raise the rank of some item. Simply put, Web 2.0 provides option for social interaction and that can go a long way towards giving visitors a sense of involvement in the site.

As for the technology associated with Web 2.0 sites it is Ajax, which stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Here is another way to look at it. Before, you would load a web page up in your browser, possibly even fill out a form, then click on a submit button. At that point, that page would disappear, and a new page would load with information based on what you had filled out and/or clicked on the previous page.

With Ajax, Javascript is used to update the page you are on without the need to load up a new page. Let’s say you are on a forum board and found at the bottom of a series of messages is the reply field. You put in your reply and hit the submit button. Instead of loading up a new page with your reply on it, your reply is immediately added to the bottom of the list.

Ajax can make a website run much more spontaneously, if used properly that is. However, like everything else on the web it can be abused. So think twice before doing anything else. Also, make sure that everyone can access your website equally. You will need to include non-Ajax options for using your site as well; otherwise the traditional pages will reload.

Although most web-surfers will have no problem using Ajax, still consider that your target audience may not be a typical cross-section of web surfers. Your audience may be primarily older people that don’t update their computers as often. Or maybe your audience is full of people that are likely to turn Javascript off. Just make sure you carefully evaluate whether using Ajax is worth it for your site.

So what else could we expect for the web in the distant future? A possible Web 3.0? Well, only time can tell. What’s important is that you keep a close eye on the current online trends, remember these changes daily. Since a lot of users will judge your business based at least partially on how current your website appears. So give it some thought…

Danny Wirken
http://www.articlesbase.com/communication-articles/web-20-a-guide-for-newbies-69887.html

Do you have to sacrifice all of the creative and artistic elements of your web site to rank in the search engines? Later in this article I’ll show you a real case scenario and the design and SEO approach used.

Thanks to the birth of professional search engine marketers the top ranks are saturated with the pages of companies that can pay for such insight. That said, it’s certainly possible to employ high ranking tactics in your own website. Actually, the most basic tactics can move you up from an 800 position to a 300. However, it’s the top of the scale where efforts seem almost inversely exponential or logarithmic, you put a ton in to see a tiny change in rank.

How do you meld the ambitious overhauls required to attain significant ranking and NOT compromise the design of your site?

DESIGN CAN’T BE IGNORED

if you have an existing site, you’ve probably tied it into your existing promotional content. Even if you’ve allowed your website to cater to the more free form of the net, it should still be designed as a recognizable extension of your business.

The reasons for doing so are valid, and can’t simply be ignored for the sake of achieving a first age position, can they? If your research into search optimization leaves you shuffling around thoughts of content, keyword saturated copy and varying link text, you correctly understand some of the basic pillars of search engine optimization.

And, you aren’t alone if you have this disheartening thought-If I do all this SEO stuff and reach number one across the board, who would stay at my site because it’s so stale and boring I’m even embarrassed to send people there!

There are two ways to successfully combine design and SEO. The first is to be a blue chip and/or Fortune 500 company with multi million dollar advertising and branding budgets to deliver your website address via television, radio, billboards, PR parties and giveaways with your logo.

Since chances are that’s not you, and certainly not me, lets look at the second option. It begins with some research into your market, some thoughtful and creative planning, and a designer who is a search engine optimizer, and understands at least basic CSS and HTML programming techniques. Or a combination of people with these skills that can work very well together.

DESIGN IS FOR BROCHURES, INSTANT RESULTS ARE FOR THE WEB

That’s not the whole truth, but it will help compare and contrast design and SEO. In reality, SEO needs the quantity and detail of supporting text that a brochure has, but good web design has to catch a viewer’s attention in 5 seconds. It’s pretty difficult to read and absorb the content of an entire brochure in less than 5 seconds.

Search engines need rich, related, appropriate, changing and poignant content. And for them to rank you, all of that must be on your pages. But if it’s not well organized and broken down into bite size chunks, no one is going to bother learning about what you’re offering.

CONSTRUCTION 101- ATTRACTIVE DESIGN AND SEO

Sadly, it’s very difficult to optimize a site without completely overhauling it. You’ll soon understand why. Design and SEO must be strongly rooted into every aspect of each other, possessing a true, symbiotic relationship. Lets look at a simplified example of this. Lets say you are optimizing a page for the keyword phrase, “pumpkin bread recipe.”

From a design standpoint “Building a Chicken Ark” would be the heading for the page, in a nice, readable font with the words perhaps an orange-brown color. And lets add a fine, green rule around it.

There are many ways to create that simple, colored heading. However, there is only one way that is best for both design and SEO. That is to use Cascading Style Sheets, or CSS. In addition, that line of code containing “Building a Chicken Ark” needs to be as close to the top of the page as possible (which CSS also allows).

To a viewer, the information might be read more if it were located next to a picture of the chicken ark  that clearly shows the finished coop.

SEO needs to read the related text. Search engines now understand on a rudimentary level that the iinstructions are indeed related to the optimized words- Building a Chicken Ark.

Additionally, it would take many extra lines of code to make a table in this example if you didn’t use CSS. Search engines don’t like extra code. In fact, given enough times, that “extra” code will make the keyword phrases seem less important and hurt rank.

Note: In the page code, a few thousand characters more than you need to get all of that content organized would normally just add to your page load time, and might be acceptable. But to a search engine, that time can really add up. It wont read through page after page, site after site, billionth after billionth character of unimportant code to find the relevant text. Therefore, the less code, the better your chances. Moral- Less code, more content.

SEO USUALLY MEANS REDO

In the previous chicken example, CSS will eliminate the need for almost any extra code at all, and provide the means to place the text to the right of the photo.

Now, imagine that someone had already created this page, but done so using other programming methods. The page could very well be W3C compliant, well programmed and got the job done. However, without designing and programming for optimization as in the above illustration, the end result would have no significant rank compared to others that do.

You can be sure that there exist at least 30 web sites built to rank for the keywords “building a chicken ark”. Note- why did I use the number 30? It’s safe to assume if you’re not on the first three results pages of a search, you’re not being seen.

While this is a simple example, hopefully you understand that it would be impossible to optimize this simple page without redoing it. This isn’t always the case, but extrapolate this into detailed, multiple pages in an entire website and the issue is greatly magnified.

AESTHETIC IMPORTANCE VS. TRAFFIC

everyone has an idea of what they want their site to look like. The pretty factor- splash pages, cool flash and graphics must now be justified as to their importance to the bottom line. If you want/need to establish an online presence, you will have to make some compromises in these areas.

Understand exactly the role your site should play in your company marketing.

Ask- What is the goal of your website and who is its audience? Is it for existing clients to see? Is it to reach new clients? To venture into yet untapped market segments?

Ask- How strongly do your other marketing efforts promote your site?

Ask- Is your website an extension of your existing collateral that must reflect the same graphical look?

Ask- Is your website meant to assist to your sales force or is it your sales force?

Chances are you wont have any single answers. That’s ok. It will give you some meat for your designer/SEO to digest and develop a solution for you.

REAL CASE OF DESIGN BALANCED WITH SEO AND SALABILITY

if you sell jewelry solely online, you must have a catalog of exceptional photography and detailed, high-resolution close up images. But, you must be optimized and rank well if you want to sell any of that jewelry.

If such a company approached me with this project, my recommendation would be this: If you sell a product, people have to see that product. Lots of good images. The site should be slick and sheik and easy to navigate. The home page has to capture the buyer’s attention. If it’s very expensive jewelry, the site should have a lot of class and elegance. If it’s home made jewelry, the site shouldn’t look home made.

However, as you have no store front, if the online community can’t find you, you’re business will fail. So I’d have a very optimized home page with some discussion of the quality of your product, the history of your company, etc. This is also great sales copy. Ad a few special catalog pieces with descriptions below some smartly placed gifs, jpegs and readable type graphics built out of CSS and you’ve got a cool to look at, content rich, and well optimized layout.

I’d make the link to your catalog very obvious and prominent. Note the catalog is not the homepage. I’d also include subsequent well written, in depth pages about the history of some specific pieces. Load them with targeted keywords and a few images. Again, make your catalog link very prominent. In doing so you’re creating relevant content for search engines AND providing additional pages that can rank.

The catalog can be database driven, simple and changeable, and you have the foundation to build your search rank.

PLANNING YOUR SITE

if your designer is not a search engine optimizer, hire one to work with your designer from the initial development stage of your site. If you would like a visible presence that is not dependant on traditional marketing efforts to get your name around, then you will have to optimize.

However, with advances in html and css, text itself can be a very flexible and attractive design element with endless possibilities. Site optimization consists of some rigid, unbendable rules. It can be intertwined successfully with very creative and attractive design. If your Designer and SEO aren’t the same person or company, make sure they have the same, close working relationship.
If you want/need to establish an online presence you will have to make some compromises. But how many? How much do you have to sacrifice in the aesthetics of your site to be seen? Examine the problem and read a real world case solution.

Babita Kumari
http://www.articlesbase.com/business-ideas-articles/design-and-seo-make-site-look-good-and-rank-well-503713.html

There is more to an effective website than great looking graphics. In fact there are seven crucial elements every site needs to maximize profits.

1. Balanced Visual Appeal Of course your site needs to have a clean, attractive design. The Web is a visual medium and an ugly website is often the kiss of death.

But your graphics should not distract attention from your marketing message. If your site is an online video game or movie promotion of course it’s ok to have a full-blown flash intro and loads of cutting-edge animations, but if you are marketing a more traditional product or service you should avoid going overboard on the visual presentation. A simple blog design such as The Chicken Ark can work well, particularly when you’re just getting started online

Also a visitor should not have side scroll to view your entire page. This adds a sluggish feel to the browsing experience and should be avoided if at all possible.

2. Awareness of the 60 Second Rule It’s safe to assume the average Web surfer will give your site a maximum of 60 seconds of their time unless you actively compel them to stay longer.

For this reason, the area above the fold is the most important part of any page your visitor might land on. When I say ‘above the fold’ I am referring to anything that is visible before your prospect has to scroll down the page.

You should use this area to relay your most important message. You might leverage a well-crafted header graphic, a clear and inforamtive headline (such as Choosing a Chicken Ark), or you can use an audio greeting that plays as soon as the page is loaded, to pull your visitor into your marketing message.

3. Easy Navigation. Give you visitor clear navigational options so they don’t get lost. Nobody likes being on a Web page with no idea of how to get back to the page they just came from or where to find the main menu.

You can take this a step further by actually directing prospects where you want them to go. You might have a flashing Click Here button above the fold on your main page that takes a visitor to your portfolio or service display page, for instance. Or in the case of a direct response site you can leave your visitor only two options: order your product/opt-in to your newsletter or leave your site.

4. Quality Content! - A strong and informative message is not only what your target market is looking for as they scour the Web in search of your product or service, it’s what the major search engines will use when ranking your site in the search results.

It’s a great idea to present yourself or your company in a personal and inviting manner. Most people want to do business with other people, and not some nameless entity.

5. Pre-Qualification. Your website should answer many of the common questions and overcome the most typical objections posed by your target market. When this is handled correctly you are able to weed out potentially problematic customers and pull only the best fit clients into your profit funnel. This is obvious enough in the case of a direct response sales letter site.

But even if your business is in the service arena (landscaping, home inspection, wedding planning, etc.) pre-qualification is a must. By providing detailed information on your scope of service, and even including a FAQ page on your site, you can begin the pre-sell product and “warm up” your prospects before a personal meeting or phone conversation ever takes place.

6. A Lead Capture Device To Set The Stage For Follow-Up Marketing. Research shows the average Web prospect needs to see an offer up to seven times before deciding to take action. If you let a visitor leave your site without collecting their contact information for a follow-up campaign, it might be your competition that finally ends up closing the sale.

You might offer a monthly newsletter, an discount club subscription, a sample product, or a free course as the incentive for your prospects to opt-in to your mailing list. These are just a few examples.

In fact there are a slew of different ways to collect your visitors contact info in an ethical, mutually beneficial way. The key is to offer some real value in exchange for the subscription.

7. Findability It’s pretty hard to profit from a website that your target market can’t find. It takes a lot of active promotion to drive traffic to your site, and this should be viewed as an ongoing process.

While the above statement is abundantly obvious to website owners in the business opportunity niche, a lot of traditional business owners fall into the trap of thinking an active site will automatically be available to the citizens of cyberspace.

Article marketing, link building, blogging, e-zine ads, viral marketing strategies, displaying your domain in all of your offline advertising, and joint venture promotions are all examples of effective promotion strategies. Of course a sound tutorial on this aspect of Web marketing could fill an entire manual, but no discussion of website design is fully complete without at least a mention of the need for constant promotion.

Make sure your site meets the entire above curriculum, and you will have yourself a great foundation for profitable web marketing.

Timothy Aaron Whiston
http://www.articlesbase.com/marketing-articles/seven-crucial-elements-of-a-successful-web-presence-92271.html

Do you want to be FLASH?

Having a whole site developed using flash by a specialist design consultancy can result in an exciting and even exhilarating media experience for your customers, the main points to keep in mind as to whether to go for Flash are:

Is your customer base likely to view your website via a high-speed connection? Who is your main target audience?

If you are an established business who has already built a strong and loyal client base and do not need to worry about search engines to achieve your expected or projected revenue, then using Flash for your entire website can be an exciting choice, especially if the design consultancy are excellent at what they do.

A Flash website can be a captivating online experience, one which can both engage your target audience and project interesting dimensions into yOur clients interaction with your business, something which cannot be achieved to quite the same degree on the usually more flat and less engaging standard non interactive websites.

You need to be mindful of the technology utilised by search engines to find your all important content, as the web is based upon different technology to Flash and as such, at this current moment in time for the majority of website designs it is worth restricting the usage of flash. Utilising Flash to provide your target audience with a more engaging user experience can be a fantastic choice as long as it is built around a solid html based architecture; this will ensure that using this great media tool does not spell disaster for your online organic marketing.

If you are looking to run a campaign or advertisement on your website or are looking to incorporate a few elements of flash it can be a powerful tool to engage your prospective target audience. It will not be long when the use of streaming media and flash media becomes an everyday part of the web, as Telco companies entice more and more people away from the chains of dial up Internet unleashing the true power of the web.

Do not do a DIY website design

Generating the correct image for your organisation, whether small, medium or large is imperative in today’s business world, like no other time in history has it been more important for you to create the right image with your target audience, one that resonates with them, one that allows them to identify with you and conversely you with them.

People are now targeted every day with so much information and with so many choices it makes it imperative for you to communicate with your target audience so that they can recognise and differentiate you from the thronging masses, if you do not then how can you expect to gain their attention and ultimately their business? DIY web site creation at the outset may appear to be a cost effective strategy, and if you have the time and expertise to become an expert, (or at least produce expert quality work) whereby you utilise design tools to re-create the template into a unique custom looking design, then it may be a viable possibility. Though, for the majority who do not have the time, creative flare or technical skills to produce expert quality work you are more likely to produce low quality design that will be perceived as sloppy, unprofessional and third rate. For those who opt for a template design it will be a false economy as at first glance your business website may appear professional, though as with all template designs your business will have the look and feel of hundreds if not thousands and thousands of other business websites. Why create a whole business around the design, look and feel of a thousand of other websites when you can utilise the services of an affordable web design company who can create a unique masterpiece for you that will propel your business into a league of its own. In the crowded streets of this superhighway you want to make sure that you have another gear to be able to drop down into so that you can leverage full steam ahead leaving the opposition whirling around in confusion.

Navigational Design and Structural Architecture

Using a Design house that can look at these elements of your website and build them into the design as they map out and structure your site is a key component of successful website design. The vast majority of web designers miss the point completely in this area, either the design is weak or the navigational design and structural architecture is all wrong. If you utilise a professional company who use skilled expert designers that work along side other professionals with diverse backgrounds in areas such as corporate learning and development and/or marketing then you are sure to achieve a resounding and satisfactory result for your business. These companies are rare, though there are a few who do exist, unfortunately they tend to charge a small fortune for their services, however if you look in the right places there are still companies out there who offer this quality of work for an affordable and fair price. You need to partner with a graphic design agency that have a diverse and multi-skilled background, a team that understands and achieves great design whilst always adhering to core principles of navigational design and structural architecture. Your business deserves a team whose sole aim is your immediate and continued future satisfaction. When these core principles are adhered to then during the SEO phase of your website promotions the need to spend unnecessary time and money on the navigational redesign & architectural modifications to your website will be minimised, if not completely eradicated.

However if you are in the unfortunate position of owning or being responsible for one of the many websites that suffer from this very real and prevalent problem, then there are a few Expert SEO (SEM) companies out there, whose extensive skill set and expertise can provide you with SEO solutions to rectify and undo all the damage inflicted by a previous novice provider.

Even with a great looking design, poor navigation will ultimately lead to fewer returning visitors to your website, and consequently less sales for your business. One analogy that springs to mind, is the business that has a prime position, fantastic street frontage and a great fit out, though with absolutely no parking in the immediate vicinity of the business, undoubtedly creating another unwanted road block between the customer & the business. Roadblocks push your potential customers to another business that is easier to deal with, otherwise known as your competitor. If visitors cannot easily find the information they are looking for within your site, or they experience error pages, broken links, or pages with too many moving objects (animations, scrolling menus and text, motion driven flash, marquees) then they are likely to either completely leave your website, never to return, or will miss important information that you wanted them to see. Create an environment where the customer wants to stay, a place where they can find what they are looking for, and a place where buying from you is made hassle free and easy, after all that is the reason they are looking at your website in the first place.

Keep your navigation simple by creating clear links on all web pages, do not provide the visitor the reason to click elsewhere, or even leave your site altogether.

Ensure that you do not fall into the trap of having endless web pages that scroll down forever. Websites who utilise this adaptation of one endless page of information are thankfully set to become a thing of the past, a little piece of unimportant Internet history.

Another terrible and deadly design sin is the use of the horizontal Scroll bar; it is a little like the sales man who has a weak and feeble handshake and cannot even comfortably look you in the eye. It is the ultimate design sin and one you cannot allow under any circumstances. There will never be a justifiable requirement to employ such a terrible piece of navigational design within your website.

Another important and usually overlooked usability guideline for navigational design is the need to help users understand where they’ve been on your website, where they currently are, and also where they can go to. Try to think about it as Past, Present, and Future.

Take the necessary time out to ensure that your website includes a sitemap, this will ensure that advanced users have the ability to navigate your web pages easily, some more advanced users will often navigate a website this way, at the same time as creating a page that is easy for human users of your website to understand you will also ensure that your pages are presented in a format that is preferred by some of the main search engines, this will allow them to index your pages and follow the deep linking within your site so as to discover more of your websites all important content. There are other methods which can be utilised to govern the way search engines view your site, one of which is through your robots.txt file, again something else that is better placed in the hands of a expert SEO company

Look out for the next part of this information packed series (Three part series, submitted over 3 weeks)

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