Friday 18 November 2011

Web Design - The Principle of Contrast

In a web designing process, many things are given a higher value than others. To differentiate them visually they are provided different styles and colors. This difference is referred to as the contrast between them.

Contrast does not always mean simply using different polarity colors like black and white. It is having a visual difference between objects. Contrast can be of different types. There can be contrast between colors, text and graphic sizes, backgrounds, text alignment and placement.

Color contrast

There has to be a contrast between the text and the background colors.Website Design Company India Using contrasting colors skillfully makes the web page look beautiful. The most commonly used contrasts are black and white, red and white or black, yellow and black, blue and white, etc. These are just a few examples of the hundreds of color contrasts that are being used in web design all over.

There can be high contrasts or lower ones. Highly contrasting objects have two opposite colors placed near each other, while objects with smaller contrasts have similar shades in their proximity.

The backgrounds used can be of different contrasting colors. The header and the footer can be of darker colors, while the content part is lighter, easier to read and follow. Or, it may be just the opposite, depending on the overall design of the page.

Size matters!

As said earlier, contrast does not always mean that it has to be between colors. Font sizes also have contrast among them. The text that is to be highlighted can be given a high font size value, keeping the readable articles of smaller size. This is the perfect way to make the title of the document or the headings of the articles stand out.

There can also be contrast between fonts in the content of the web page. Different types of fonts can be used to differentiate content sections and articles.

Left, right or center

The placement and the alignment also matters. Some text is aligned to the left, while some is kept in the centered.Website Design Company Delhi Not to be much used, text alignment contrast has to be managed well otherwise creates a mix up of the content, confusing the reader. It should be noted that large paragraphs should not be in the center of the pages as they are difficult to read.

Contrasting is unlimited; use your imagination and creativity to create new and beautiful contrasts. The contrast has to be blended cleverly and creatively otherwise it may reverse the effect. Typographic contrasts too have to be well planned and managed. Alignment contrasts should not be used frequently. With time and practice one can be able to create beautiful contrasts between objects.

Labels: , , , ,

SEO – Significance of the H1 Tag

Headings in a web page are usually defined inside the header tags from H1 to H6. H1 is the most important whereas H6 is considered to be the least important one. H1 tag is used to give heading to the website document. Placed in the body of the document, H1 tags are one of the most important factors that affect the ranking of the website in search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. Higher the rank of the website on these engines, the more popular it shall be among users.

Search engines look out for web documents having correct information for the user.Website Design Company India To attain a higher ranking, proper management of the header tags, meta tags, articles and other content like multimedia is necessary. Search engines work on algorithms that find out the authenticity of the website according to the content and provide them rankings.

H1 tag is used to give heading to the web page on the top of the real content. They inform the user what the upcoming content and the web page is going to contain. The reason why H1 tag is to be placed on the top of the webpage, either at the left or in the middle, is that search engines look out for these tags inside the document. The keywords and the description meta tags are given lower priority than H1 tags. Other content is also given lower priority than this header tag. Therefore they are to be given valuable text, so that the search engines rank the web page high.

H1 tag is being used since a long time ago and web document writers who have used them wisely have always profited. There has to contain a proper blend of the title tag, the header tags and the links in the webpage to make it really profitable. Links are not to be embedded within the H1 tags as it affects the credibility of the website. Search Engines may consider the linked website of higher importance than the actual website, which shall surely decrease the ranking of the website. Anchors to the same page, if used, should be properly placed in the H1 tags. H1 tags are to be used in proper co-ordination with the content of the page.

H1 tags produce the text effects of the largest font size until external styling is used.SEO Service Delhi Styling can surely be used on H1 tags to make them look a part of your document as it supports the important and common attributes Class and ID. Other attributes like Style, Align, etc can also be used. They can be bold, italics, underlined or any other style suiting the mood of the content. H1 tags are never to be used just for font effects as they are of large font size, but to identify your web document.

Header tags make the web document structured making it suitable to the needs of the information hungry search engines. So their importance must never be under-estimated.

Labels: , , , ,

SEO – Membership Site Optimization Tips

Your membership site has to be optimized to be popular among users. The title, keywords, description and other meta tags have to be optimized. Unique and updated content with proper keywords shall increase your search engine ranking. Here are some important optimization tips for your website.

1. Title optimization

Give a suitable title to each of your documents in the title tags. Use keywords that are contained within your document making it highly descriptive.Website Design Company India A maximum of 59 characters can be used to give a proper title to identify your document. The content of the title tags are shown as the heading of the search engine results.

2. Keywords and description

The Keywords and description meta tags inside the head of the document are also of much importance, so the keywords used in these tags shall be similar to the words in your content. Choosing the correct keywords for your website shall make it rank higher than competitors.

3. Phrasing

Using descriptive phrases for your document is very important. These phrases shall properly describe your website and its content. Using phrases that have been popular searches shall make your website optimized for search engines.

4. Content

Unique content is quite necessary for your website. Never use copied content in your document as you may be violating cyber and copyright laws while increasing your credibility and customers.

5. Updating your content

Always use fresh content and keep it updated regularly. Updated content shall make users return to your page after some time, increasing your number of page hits.

6. Keywords in your content

Use optimized keywords and phrases in the content of your web page. Use the same keywords in your articles which were used in the title and keywords and description meta tags and the H1 header tags.

7. Headlines in a webpage

Heading grab attention of users as well as search engines. Make sure to use appealing headlines containing optimized keywords in your webpage.SEO Company Delhi

8. Keyword proximity and prominence

Keyword Prominence is the placement of the defining keywords and phrases in the document. Placing them on the top of the document in the upper paragraphs of your content shall increase the prominence of your keywords.

Keyword Proximity refers t o the nearness of the optimized keywords placed in the document. The closely these keywords are related to each other and the nearer they are placed, the higher the attention Google and other search engines pay on your page.

9. LSI – Latent Semantic Indexing

Use varying keywords that relate to your document. Make sure that your website shows up even if users give in a broad search term to the search engines. For example, if your website deals with reselling cars, keywords like ‘car repair’, ‘modify cars’, etc can be placed in your content to make it available in broad searches.

10. Dynamic linking

The web business is an exchange market, you give links to other websites and they’ll provide your links to add on the pages. Backlinks, links pointing to your website, are of much importance and never goes ignored by Google and others. Make sure the websites you are going to relate your website with are of good values and morals, otherwise reverse credibility happens and to your dismay, your page ranking may come down.

11. Accessibility, navigation and site map

Designing a website with higher accessibility value and better navigation is important.Web Design India Ease of access always counts and users will always return to your website if it is easily navigable. Always provide a site map for users to trace where they are. Search engines always look out for easily navigable websites as they can easily penetrate through your pages to find information.

12. Labeling your content

Graphics and images with an ALT attribute are of higher value. ALT attribute provides a label to your graphics and shows out if the image itself could not load for whatever reason.

Labels: , , , ,

Metrics of Social Media – Measuring the Investment and the Returns

Social media campaigning has proved to be a profitable business to lots of investors. There is also a fact that thousands of pages and websites find loss in this business. People are addictively logged on to social sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, etc. Other means are blogs, communities, podcasts, videos, etc. But is social media really worth investing? Let us have a look on some of the important aspects of this new craze.

Analyze your goal

Setting the target of your social media investment is very important.Website Design Company India You must plan how much you are going to spend, on what terms and for how long. All this should be clearly confirmed with the management and the staff.

Analyzing your goals is very important to handle the unexpected results of social media. Clearly defining your target makes your investment much focused, clear and identifiable to you, your company and the clients.

Plan the quantitative and the qualitative factors affecting your business. Quantitative factors are the materialistic profits gained while quantitative factors are relations with the customers and the total quality of your business.

Monitoring your success and failures

Monitoring and reporting are the important tools of any business management. They let you know your status in the market in relation to your competitors. Having a feedback system allows outsiders to connect to the business making them feel homely. This surely pays off and gets you stable customers.

A feedback system is never to be considered as an extra mailbox just to make relations. They help a business find its weak points and strengths. Proper consideration is to be given over such a system.

Keeping your business intentions transparent to customers shall make them believe in your business, increasing the returns. Measure the traffic directing towards your business and your web pages, blogs and other social means. Having proper communication with customers will surely find returns.

Return of Investment

Social media is fast but may prove slow to you. Have patience, it will bring you profit if you have employed it wisely in your campaigning.Web Design India Keep your methods simple and hopes high. It may have proven as fast returning business to others but the same might not happen to you. It is a broad way of investing and returns may be slow and late. Consider it as a long term investment. Even if it seems a loss, it might be increasing your customer relations. Do not always count on money; sometimes having better relations is more important.

Social media presence has become a necessity for today’s business with the increasing number of internet users. Proper planning and management of your social media campaign can surely increase your business assets.

Labels: , , , ,

Guide to Your Simple HTML Website

For basic Web Design, it really doesn’t matter what platform you use, what Operating System you have and what software you rely upon. It depends upon the skills and creativity that must be in the Web Designer. Skills are learned but creativity comes naturally. It should come from within. This shows why some kids are good at art at school while some are not. But regular practice can make oneself the master of the skills of Web Design.

Start with your favorite text editor or IDE (Integrated Development Environment) or Web Design Software.Website Design Company India Now, outlining your project, first make a folder where you’ll keep the content of your website, i.e. the whole website. Whether, it is a folder on a local disk or an online directory or sub-directory. Make a new folder in your Website folder to keep the images, script and style-sheet files. Name that folder Resources or Style or just any handy relative name so that can be called to and located easily.Make your first HTML page, the way you wish to do with your IDE and save it with .htm or .html extension.

Now, the page design guidelines. Do up the Prologues and the basic structures, i.e.HTML, HEAD, TITLE, and BODY. In the head tag, give in the most appropriate title to your Website that relates to the subject of your Website. Write in the basic Meta description related to the character set. Link your style-sheets and script files. Do not forget to link a tiny shortcut icon to the head, so that Web browsers display your icon or logo beside the title of your Website.

In the body, start with making out the basic parts, the header, the main part and the footer. Try being semantic rather than being structure oriented. Design out the page navigation list in the header. If it is not in the header, it doesn’t matter at all it totally depends on you. Use unordered lists to list out the navigation links rather than placing simple hyperlinks side-by-side. Use clean coding with proper comments. Comments help you to edit and manage your code, so never try to ignore the importance of code comments.

Place in, your content into your web page, the images, icons, the text in a simple and an attractive way. Use proper colors that match to the mood, context and the theme of the Website. Make the headings and the titles distinctive by using HTML Headings (H1 to H6) and darker colors.

Make the hyperlinks and buttons stand out by using slightly contrasting colors that grab attention. Use small fonts for the text to identify the reading part but do not make the fonts too small so that you’ll end up with a difficult to read text. Divide your text into small paragraphs.

Similarly, complete the webpage, full with content, ready to be published. Now, try to remove the unnecessary white spaces in your webpage and from the related files.Website Design Company Delhi This might make your files even smaller than what they used to be. Locally, use your web browser to view your webpage to find out what your page actually looks like.

Obviously, you would have been testing it every now and then, after every significant change made in your webpage. View your webpage, again locally, on some other browsers if you can, you might find an error. Rectify all such browser error and then your website can be published on the Internet.

Labels: , , , ,

Flash is Outdated

When the Web was a bore, Flash came up as a revolutionary change. The too limited simple HTML and blinking GIFs were not enough to satisfy the coming floods of Internet users all over the world. Easy to install and easier to update and maintain,Flash came up to the top as a hero.

With Action script as its backbone, Flash could be programmed and re-programmed according to the need.Website Design Company India Flash was heavy, slow browsers cried havoc when it came to loading Flash based Websites. This story dates back to when Laptops, Mobile Phones, Tablets and other handheld devices were just about to emerge. So, the fact of worry was to how to load heavy flash based websites on low powered computers.What did we want was, Websites with cool new features and cooler interfaces.Handheld devices needed lightweight applications and thus the Bigger players started early in the game.

Numerous ideas and applications popped up and began a new era Web 2.0.ASP.NET, JavaScript, jQuery, Prototype JS, MooTools, Dojo and several others are the new players in the Web Development team. These are applications and or JavaScript based library tools to help in the rapid development of a Web Application. These applications prove useful in designing the Websites too. HTML, with new variations like XHTML up to level was being used, but someone still liked the classic HTML and wanted it to be in use.

HTML, which had been left out at level 4.01 has been redesigned to a better level of accuracy and consistency and named HTML5. Website Design India CSS, the key player in the world of Web Designing has also been re-specified to level 3. So CSS 2 has moved to CSS 3. With such revolutionary changes in the Web Design world of lightweight applications, Flash finds itself too fat to be employed in real Web 2.0 Websites.

Some websites still rely on Flash, but that doesn’t make them ‘Old School’ or something like that. As it is said, everything has pros and cons. Being heavy, flash is scriptable and controllable. Altogether, it can be said that although Flash is outdated it is being used. But, we have better and cheaper and lighter technologies in the market, to build better Web Applications and in lesser time than the Flash technology.

Labels: , , , ,

Colors In The Web

What could life have been like if there wouldn’t have been any colors in it!Remember the Black and White TV? Whites, Greys and Blacks! It made man realize the importance of colors and that probably made him to work harder to introduce color screens.

The Web is full of colors and shades of Grays, Reds, Greens, Blacks, Blues and hundred others.Website Design Company India Using different colors make a Website look beautiful and attractive. No wonder a beautifully colored website may attract more customers or visitors.People all over the world have been appreciating beautiful objects, since ages, and they have been paying for it too. So if your Web artwork is beautiful enough to catch an eye, you got be earning some profit of it.

A beautiful website or may be any artwork must have a theme that relates to the mood, context and the content of the Website. The background can be separated from the main content by applying a totally contrasting color or can be subtly merged with the content giving same looks as the main content. Web parts, basically the content parts should be given similar looks to provide consistency among them,closely following the theme. That needs the theme to be properly planned before getting it on to the floor.

Web Design has also taken a turn to Feng-Shui and the Vastu Shastra. Web sites are being designed according to these principles for attracting wealth and prosperity to one’s business. Bright and holy colors like Reds, Oranges and Yellows are given a preference. Gold and Blues are also used in the Oriental methods of Web Design.

The hex values of colors range from red to black, i.e. Pure Black to Brightest White. All other colors lie between these ranges of values. There are hundreds of shades of each common color. So if you like your Website to be Blue, it could be in six to seven or even more shades of blue. Add a blue logo or icon or image and a dark blue background to your page, your blue theme website is complete. And not to worry, all modern and updated browsers support all the colors. So you are not going to miss out any such color if you have a good browser. New Web Designs use the RGBA values to provide even better color detail in Web sites. Now, adding just any color or all the colors will not make a site beautiful.

Coloring of a Website is to be pre-planned too. As said earlier, a theme has to be properly planned.Web Design India Adding too many contrasting colors will make the viewer difficult to view or read your article in your Website. The heading colors should match the text color and the text background should be contrasting to the text color to make easy reading possible.

Ignoring the importance of Grays can be punishing. Best for backgrounds, text-headings, buttons, links and to fill extra white-spaces, Gray works like concrete, fill into everything empty to make it solid. Colors indeed are life, and when used at their best can make our lives even more beautiful. And, Web Design is an art, and which art does not employ the use of colors?

Labels: , , , ,

Saturday 5 November 2011

Should You Have a Flash-Based Website?

It's always a good feeling to have an animated flash website with lot of interactivity But as they say ‘all that glitters is not gold’. There is no doubt that a flash website i much more pleasing on the eyes and has many advantages over the conventiona HTML based websites, but there are some drawbacks also which can make the site experience a nightmare instead of a dream. The idea is to understand if a flash website is the right solution for you. Let us understand the pros and cons in depth.

The biggest advantage of a flash website is its smooth flowing graphics the instantly catch the attention of the visitor. Website Design Company India Flash action-script opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used flash to create interactive features ranging from very lively feedback forms to full fledged flash-based games This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

Another plus point of a flash website over the HTML based website is that we don’t need to check for cross browser compatibility in flash websites. They are standard sites suited for all the browsers. It might sound like a small advantage but any website designer will tell you how difficult it can be to attain cross browse compatibility with HTML websites.

The single most problematic area of flash websites is that the content in these websites is image based and not text based like HTML website. It means that search engines are not able to read this content; hence, we are not able to get good rankings in search engines. This is a major drawback for websites whose busines is search engine driven as they can’t afford to have a flash website. At best, the can have some flash animations on the website but the entire site in flash will spe troubles.

Flash websites are always slow loading in comparison and if they are loaded with heavy pictures (which most flash websites are) then the loading can be very long Again, some people are ok with slow loading but for many it’s a big turn off. It’always a risk you are taking.

A recent problem is that some tablets and mobile phones don’t support flash Although, it’s a brand specific and most likely a temporary problem but the mas popularity of these products has made companies shy away from flash websites. Web Design India

To sum it up, flash websites are a beautiful gift that you can give to your online presence but the question is whether the gift is worth it or not. The answer i different for different people and so is the suitability of flash websites.

Labels: , , , ,