Web Designing , Site Development & E-Commerce

Whether you are starting a brand new website or just remodeling an old one, some key pointers must be kept in mind. The following checklist would prompt you to examine the purpose of the website and make sure that it is an ideal one.

Aim of the Site
Assign the purpose of the web site. It can be a brochure site that offers a short introduction about a company or a firm or an informational site giving information about any topic or the company. It could be an entertaining site that attracts visitors through entertainment topics and indirectly informs about the company or a community site that builds a community and links people with similar interests. It could also be an E-commerce site that sells items directly or through affiliate links.

Mission Of the Site
It is necessary to identify the reasons of making the website. It caters to a multi-dimensional market. It gives information about specific goods and impresses target audiences and prompts them to buy it. It also strengthens customer loyalty and builds up brand name of the company in the market. Both the short term and long term goals of the website must be determined at the starting.

Content
The website must present a description of the business that gives information about the services offered by the company, the customers that it caters to and features that make it a distinct player in the market. It must also inform about the goods on offer and the areas that particularly appeal to it.

Marketing Strategy
The target market and the marketing strategy must be pre-determined. All the visions for the website over a period of time must be outlined and worked upon.

E-Commerce
There are many kinds of e-commerce solutions on offer. A non-interactive flat file page needs visitors to print and fax in or phone in orders. The single page secure order form sends out each order as a separate e-mail. The multi page secure order form with shopping carts enables visitors to pick goods while continuing to browse through the site. They can even change their orders, preview it and submit it online. The order is sent as e-mail or downloaded via FTP from the server.

Contact Address
The website must carry a valid postal address or contact point like a mail order catalog. This is necessary in case of offline business workings.

Competitors
The competitors must be well identified previously and their websites must be scrutinized for any feature that is lacking at your end. A constant surveillance must be maintained over those sites to look out for any possible insights.

Domain Names
The domain name must consist of the most important keyword in the URL. It must be identified easily and must be easy to explain over the phone and to print on a business card.

Logo
A logo is important for branding purposes. It should speak volumes about the company and go well with the company’s motive. It must ideally have the company colors and must be in sync with the website and the brand.

Links
The website must have about 6 to 8 topic links that direct visitors to interior pages from the homepage and vice versa.

Feedback
There must be a feedback centre where visitors can submit in their comments and suggestions. Also a questionnaire can be drafted to carry out a survey that would decide consumer behavior and demands.

Domain Registration
The domain registration and an ISP to host the site must be determined along with the level of hosting needed. The budget for the completion of the web site and yearly maintenance needs to be established as well.

Security Status
Also assign the security level needed by the website. Whether it will have sensitive files that demands protection or if there would be a password protected area for dealers and members. The digital delivery system must also be assessed to password protect each consumers download individually.

After all these steps to assign and assess the website and target consumers, draft out a list of top 10 keywords and your top 10 keyword phrases that could be use by the search engines to locate the site in response to an inquiry. To rank well with search engines, the site must have quality matter that contains the actual words and phrases the consumers are searching with. These keywords will need to be inculcated within the text of the website pages.

Website Colors

‘First impressions,’ if hold true then website colors are the defining element in a web site. The colors of the website must be the prime concern of web designers while designing a website. This is because it is what either attracts or distracts the viewers at the first glance. The colors used in a website can create it look either monotonously plain that bores the visitors or so contrastingly chaotic that scares them away altogether.

The web browsers can only see 256 colors, out of which only 216 colors are shared commonly by all the browsers. Thus, while designing the key elements of a website, the designers must strictly restrict themselves within the 216-color pallet.

If one ventures outside this said limit, then the colors that are used would not even exist within that browser. The browser has to mix the non-existing colors. For the colors to get displayed, the browser will require to borrow tiny dots from the colors native to form the exact color. This is known as ‘dithering.’ Some displays distort the tiny dots to the point where the image is becomes so speckled that it fails to appear as a solid color. And if the text is placed over the dithered color, it becomes extremely hard to read. This is why only browser safe colors must be used when using solid color as a design element. But even some of the browser safe colors need caution.

The eye muscles tire out after prolonged exposure to bright colors. The back of the eye contains a thin layer of tissue, on which are placed millions of tiny light sensing nerve cells called rods and cones. The cone triggers off response mechanisms to different light wavelengths. When the eye is made to concentrate on bright colors continuously, the cones become tired and fatigued. Then the opposite cones start to function and cause illusionary visibility of coloration. And prolonged concentration causes the eye muscles to strain and tire out.


Even caution signs are generally painted in yellow. It is because pure yellow strains human eyes the most in comparison to any other color. And thus, it is the first color that catches the eye even in a chaotic set up.
Thus, bright colors like yellow and red must be used very sparingly and judiciously on the websites. An overdose of these colors would just irritate visitors and makes them leave. They must only be induced in areas that need special attention! If there is a specific area which needs more aim than the rest of the page, then that are could be highlighted using these bright colors.

The use of colors can make or break the consumer traffic towards the website. It’s best to make a wise choice!

Website Design and Usability

How did it feel when you first discovered Text Art in Word? Or when you clicked upon the clipart tab? Wasn’t there an arrival of all these colored components into your documents?

People generally get into website designing and development in a bid to satisfy their creative spirit and end up becoming fulltime website designers. Programmers get a chance to work their creative sides through HTML and Web Development.

But there is more to website designing than just creative fulfillment. The kind of fonts used and the page width on display must be a little more than a reflection of personal taste. The scientific aspect of website designing dictates some basic terms to be taken care of so as to make sure a successful and useful website:

Usability Testing
A usable website is one which encourages repeated visits and gives consumers with useful and credible information. Usability tests are done to decide and optimize user traffic towards the same. You can keep your usability test as simple or as elaborate as you want. Anyone can be asked to use and check the website, be it someone from the family or any other unfamiliar user. But you must try and be with them while they test the site to keep a note of all their moves and maintain a track record of what attracts them and what they completely ignore. This would help you identify the weak areas of the web page and work towards strengthening them.

Browser Testing
Testing the website on your favorite browser may not be reason enough for it to be compatible all the other browsers. And don’t forget to check it on the same browser on some other operating system. You must actually check the web page on all the available combination of browser and OS to optimize their smooth functioning.

Desktop Publishing And Established Design Principles
Amateur website designers do not generally have any formal training in graphics and design and thus end up improvising on the same styles and layouts. The basic principles of desktop publishing includes line lengths for readability, colors for emphasis and margins for look that can be translated to the web.

Log files can establish to be an asset to the designer in spite of their dullness. A log examine tool can be used to track consumer movements like where they go from the front page, the most clicked element on the web page and web pages that are least famous. You can keep this information handy in reinventing and modifying the website to direct consumer traffic towards the desired place.

The web permits flexibility in terms of changing the layout and design of the web pages. If in case the specific design doesn’t work out or demands some improvising, then changes can be easily induced.

Website design involves a lot of fun and an outlet of creative capabilities but the technical know-how of the scientific aspect makes sure it generates enough consumer traffic to the site.

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