Archive for the ‘design’ Category

Refer to these brainstorming tips and advice when you have a task at hand that requires problem solving techniques. When doing web design projects, I find myself using these techniques whether coming up with website page ideas or blog posts.

No matter what project you’re working on, whether for business or scholastic purposes, brainstorming can be an effective strategy. When you have to come up with something from nothing, it’s helpful to have some resources to refer to. Brainstorming is one way to create your own resources with your own imagination.

Make a file on notepad and title it “thinktank” where you can save your concepts. Begin to brainstorm and jot down any ideas you may come up with, no matter how trivial they may seem. Even the most insignificant thoughts could be the inspiration for the creative process. Visit your thinktank regularly to add or expand on your thoughts and ideas.

The more concepts you come up with and write down, the better chances one of them could turn into a great idea. The effort is about quantity, not quality when brainstorming, so write or type as much as possible during your session. Do this for at least 20 minutes or until you just can’t come up with anything else. Think of it like popping popcorn in a microwave. Once the “pops” occur only every 4 seconds, it’s time to take the bag out of the oven.

Bookmark my blog for tips and advice on topics that could be helpful for you whether you’re in web design or not. Questions? Contact us by phone and ask for Roger or email us with any questions about custom small business web graphic design.

You can make your own GIF files for blog posts and even in web design projects. This is a widely used graphics format for the Internet that allows transparency and animation. By simply adding animation to a blog post or website, you might just spice it up enough to entice your visitors into staying longer.

GIF files, also known as Graphics Interchange Format is a widely used graphics format that allows animation and transparency. GIFs can be created either using software or a website. The limitation of this format is that it the maximum number of colors is 256, but can often give the illusion of more colors. Some GIF creation websites include gickr.com, picasion.com, makeagif.com and loogix.com.

You can usually upload about a dozen pics to use in your GIF animation and have a variety of options to choose from such as speed, size, looping and the number of pics allowed. The size generally spans from 100 to 400 pix and the speed generally goes from slow to fast, with some other customization available. Once you finished creating your GIF, if it’s under 150 kb, you could even use it as an emoticon on your instant messenger.

GIFs are ideal to spice up a blog post or integrate into your web design. You can upload GIFs to enhance your webpage visitor’s experience instead of photos. Use these tips to dazzle your website design or blog with an animated GIF today.

There’s No Place Like www.home.com, your business website’s home page. With this familiarity, the website should encompass a professional theme. The home page should make visitors feel just as comfortable, but sometimes it’s hard to have an objective opinion of your own site.

The journey of a thousands sites begins with a single click, so maintain a positive first impression. With a positive home page reaction, your website visitors soon become interested in products or services offered. Sharp graphics and layout should use appropriate colors and fonts to match your business cards and printed material. The website visitors should be able to recognize your market branding on a website that is easy to navigate. Give your potential customers the ability to gather information quickly and easily.

The home page is the first thing your website visitors see and should attract website traffic. Bringing repeat customers is the advantage of a small business website, and with enough visual appeal, visitors will be encouraged to bookmark the website and tell a friend as well.

Consider these computer management shortcut tips when working with documents, photos or videos. Using shortcuts is very helpful and saves time when working on anything. With quick ways of accomplishing complicated tasks, your projects will tend to run smoothly.

Some useful tips include the use of shortcut keys such as with the shift or control button. Copying text or a section of a photo can be easily done with ‘control + x’ to cut, ‘control + c’ to copy, ‘control + v’ to paste and ‘control + a’ to select all. To undo anything on a text document or a graphic, just click ‘ctrl + z’.

Here’s a great tip for moving or uploading multiple files at once, and an alternative to selecting them all by dragging the mouse and boxing them in. Highlight the first file in a group to begin. Then go to the last file you want to highlight in the group and while holding the shift key, double click on it. This should highlight the entire group in between and allow you to move, copy or upload that entire group quickly and easily. If you want to copy a file instead of moving it to another folder, drag it with the right click of your mouse.

F5 is used to refresh a website page if you want to reload it, whether for seeing new changes made or to just refresh a stale webpage. In the same way, to do a “hard refresh” simply hold control while clicking F5. ‘Alt + F4′ closes the current window you are on.

Changing photos from one format to another is simple. If you want to change a file from gif or bmp to jpeg, or vice versa, an easy way is to right click on it, choose ‘open with’, choose paint, then on the top right of paint, under ‘file’ choose ‘save as’, and choose the format you’d like to save it as. Paint is kept in your accessories folder and can be useful to resize and edit photos as well, using the options across the top.

When changing video files from wmv to mp4 or between any other formats, DVD Videosoft could be a useful option. Adding graphics to photos can be easily done with Befunky.com. Add special photo effects such as starbursts, ink, text, shapes and speech bubbles.

Keep checking my blog and website for tips, tools and advice for making your online experience more productive. I offer custom CMS website design and SEO services for small businesses worldwide.

To the left are the before and after photos of a cabinet I considered using for display on a website design. The top photo had flaws I wouldn’t even attempt to display for a blog post. With some quick touch ups, the photo became good enough to post on a cabinet website page.

You’ll notice the “new handle” on the bottom (as well as the reflection) was a simple copy and paste of the drawer below. The lock and hole at the bottom was covered up with a simple copy and paste as well, from a blank portion of the cabinet. Finally the flaws such as the scratch and number “90″ at the top were removed with the same copy and paste method.

When you have photos that aren’t quite the quality that you would want to display online, from a website designer’s point of view, there are many methods to edit the photo. Therefore, you can use photos with imperfections and convert them into a quality image.

(click on the photo to enlarge)

Some sidebar ideas for a main website or blog is one of the first hurdles to get over when deciding on the creation of a new web design. Keep in mind that different sidebars could be applied for each section, tab, or page of your website. Review these ideas that could inspire you to plan out your website design a little easier.

Sidebar Ideas for the Main Website:

• A social networking feed such as Twitter or Facebook
• Provide a search box for easy navigation for your visitors
• Contact information to make it easy for visitors to contact you
• Add your picture to help create a relationship with your readers
• Subscription buttons to provide methods to subscribe to your blog

Sidebar Ideas for Your Blog:

• Provide a search box for easy blog navigation for your visitors
• Links to archives by date to make it easy for readers to locate old content
• Add a popular posts link to redirect your visitors to your readers’ favorites
• Add a list of recent posts on your blog’s sidebar to encourage additional page views
• A categories list should be added to help your blog readers find posts on a particular topic

If you are running your blog on WordPress, there are a variety of add-ons that can make it easy to customize your sidebar any way you choose, and change it as often as you like. A well designed website is about easy navigation by your visitors, so consider these web design sidebar ideas to use in your small business website.

When you stand out over your competition, getting customers can be easier than if you remain just one in a crowd. Forming a business niche helps separate you from others in your industry, so provide examples of what separates you from others in your same business.

When advertising your company, whether in print ads or in a website design, mention how your business will help the customer like none other. Talk about why someone should come to you rather than the competition, what goods or services you offer, who your target audience is, and what your unique position is in your market. By showing potential customers the advantages to utilize your company over others, a “a call to action” is conceived for those who encounter your advertising.

Form your business niche by giving your customer reasons to choose your company, pointing out what you do that others do not. By projecting a positive business image, knowing the importance of market branding and using advertising to attract customers, you may find that your business stands out over your competition.

I can show you how to obtain a winning website and use website advertising to attract customers for your business. Contact me by phone or email today for details.

There was a need for a new custom CMS website design template for my site and a cleaner layout for easier navigation.  I decided to do an entirely new design and change a few things around for the desired look.  Compare the old home page at the left of this blog post and the new one to the right.  By moving the sidebar from the left to the right, using a lighter scheme of colors and changing the fonts, button styles and background, this is a look that I can be proud of to represent my business.

In order to solve the situation with having a clean, easy to navigate website, moving the Custom Google Search Box to the top of the sidebar seemed like a good idea.  Also now it’s easy to add different items into the sidebar exclusive to certain sections of my website.  This clean layout with lighter colors gives my website visitors a more pleasant browsing experience.

As a result, by using a new custom CMS design template for my website, navigation is easier and an improved browsing experience is attained.  Customizing the sidebar for each section is the next step, but for now, enjoy exploring my site for more tips and advice on small business website design.

This post is dedicated to some common mistakes that may make your website hard to read. A hard to read website can send your website visitors away to other pages listed in their index of search results. The idea of having a website is keeping your visitors on your page and getting them interested enough in your products or services to contact you. Avoiding these common mistakes that make your website hard to read may help.

Appropriate contrast between text and background is important so your content can be read easily. You don’t want your website visitors squinting to see what you write, so make text as readable as possible with high contrast against the background.

Don’t tire out your reader by writing long paragraphs. By breaking up the text into shorter paragraphs and using headings to break up the page, you give your reader the ability to scan your website page much easier.

Avoid using wide columns so your reader’s eye doesn’t get lost following a long line of text. Divide your text into multiple columns or use right and left margins to fit everything on the screen.

Highlighting with bold, italics, bullet points and hyperlinks can break up your paragraphs as well. Draw your readers into your website by linking to other pages that have a common theme with what you are writing about.

Avoid long website pages and using too many navigation links because this is just too much for the reader to take in. Keeping a minimum of links could keep your readers from being overwhelmed by so much to choose from.

Avoid these mistakes that make your website hard to read and you may find that your visitors will stay on your website longer when you track your stats. Visitors that stay on your website longer are more likely to use your products and services because they are impressed with how comfortable your website makes them feel.

Read more on related subjects on my blog:

Small Business Website Navigation
Small Business Website Home Page Advice
The 7 Best Website Optimization Techniques
10 Ways to Come Up With Blog Post Ideas

I’ve recently added a site index for the resources section of my website, seeing as it has grown to over 150 pages. A site index, much like a table of contents, has made navigation much easier because now you can see an entire section of my website at a glance.

The difference between a site index and a sitemap is that a sitemap is usually organized by importance or navigation, where a site index is an alphabetical order list index. This site index provides content overview at a glance to help my visitors navigate around my website. This way I could help engage my website visitors and interest them to navigate through other pages of my website.

By adding a site index to your website you offer easier navigation, more stickiness, increased SEO, and a clear layout of what your website contains. In turn, this could lead to greater traffic and more customers to your business. Have a look at my My Webdesign Resources Site Index.

Read my blog posts on:

Add a Google Searchbox to Your Website
Sitemaps For Your Website