.: When to let go of your website designing ideas
Category:Home / Internet / Web Design
As hard as it may be, but letting go of your website designing ideas and listening to the customer may actually be of benefit in the long run.
I know what you are saying, you’ve been in the web designing business long enough to know what works and wont doesn’t, what would my customer know? Well after approaching web design in the same manner, I’ve unfortunately had no other choice but to give in to my best laid plans and comply with the wishes of my customers.
Construction of good websites usually means that it has to be appealing to the eye, as well as being fully functioning for Search Engine benefits, but ultimately it must display professionalism for the business represented.
Complying with W3C Standards (W3C Markup Validation Service) for both HTML and CSS validation is paramount to good design and programming (but not necessary for good Google PR, I will discuss in later posts), so when designing we like to use base HTML formatting and CSS text font like Tahoma 11pt, to make neat easy to read text and nice page image layouts.
I will list some cases of where letting go has benefits for both parties involved and how in some circumstances actually resulted in little or no web traffic for the website.
Case Study 1. Architectural Firm flash and font matters
Our customer wanted the use of Flash elements to display several architecture images with a nice fade between images and changes to original CSS Font used Tahoma 11pt font and replaced with Century Gothic 11pt, which is used in all their logos and architecture design work.
As most would know embedding Flash files into your website results in W3C Validation undefined source failure, thus rendering the site Invalid Markup. After explaining this, the customer felt the need to have a nice graphical flash style image far outweighed the importance of quality valid HTML Transitional Markup. To them the appearance and perception of their website to their customers was far more advantageous than complying with the W3C.
In addition they wanted the use of the Century Gothic font rather than Tahoma. By design Century Gothic has a much larger font height than Tahoma and when used increased the page height larger than when using Tahoma thus resulting in the site displaying with scroll bars when view under 1024 x 768 resolution, where previously it fitted in the whole page perfectly.
In the end the customer achieved the desired affects they wanted and ultimately it is the customer who ‘always’ knows best.
Case Study 2. Box supplier becomes boxed in
Our customer had started a new business supplying cardboard boxes for moving and packing. They wanted a simple site with heavy graphical image elements and little or no text on the home page.
Explaining to the customer the role of text based search engines results and that having no ‘readable text’ on the home page would limit their visibility, they choose design over results.
Why you may ask would a company limit their possibilities of being found on search engines? Well the question still burns with us too, but as mentioned earlier the ‘customer always knows best’ and the decision was solely theirs to make.
Their philosophy was simple, their website was purely to be used as a reference guide and not the source of extra business, as their marketing strategies would be enough to garner constant business.
To this day I still wonder why they limited their marketability and in particular their website which is always online and can be searched at all times of the day.
So in summary the best laid plans of mice and men (well in this case web designers) can be a utter waste of good management as what I have stated all along that the ‘customer always knows best’ and ultimately they are the ones paying for your service so sometimes its best to lay down your guns and concede defeat.
Article keywords: good website design, w3c validation, client wishes, customer website requirements, website design principles
Article Source: http://www.articles32.com
Craig Bucknall is the owner and Managing Director of the Sydney based Website Design studio Bullie Graphics. You can view his website at www.bulliegraphics.com.au
.: New Web Design Articles
1). HTML Might Become Obsolete
Web designers are beginning to dump HTML in favor of more versatile web programming languages
2). Macromedia Dreamweaver: An Introduction
Getting started with your first web page can seem very daunting indeed. Macromedia Dreamweaver is the industry leader in web editors, but knowing where to start and what you need to know can be a little confusing at first.
3). Finding A Good Web Designer
Avoid the mistakes I made when I hired someone over the internet to design my web site
4). Top Tips for Getting Free Websites
There are millions of opportunities of earning money online, but for that you frequently need to have a web site and there are many people interested in how to build a web site online for free. So whether you want to build a free business web site or to build a Yahoo-like web site, you can be sure there are plenty of online guides, such as this, to take you step by step through the process.
5). Is Your Web Site Driving Away Visitors?
Much has been written about optimizing your web site for search engines, but less emphasis is placed on usability. Optimizing for usability and for search engines is not a contradiction.
6). Choosing a Web Designer
freelance web designers are rip-off artists
7). HTML Sitemaps Are Still Important
An html sitemap is one that humans and search engines both can read. Google sitemaps are important too, but they are specific to google and are read only by a search engine.
.: Top Web Design Articles
1). Advanced Joomla Templating (pt1) Using Module Class Suffix
an article from User Written Resources
1. duplicate the styles already used for the particular module, adding a suffix to each style name. this will definitely include some of the following;
1. .module {} 2. div.moduletable {} 3. div.moduletable h3 {} 4. table.moduletable {}/li> 5. table.moduletable th 6. table.moduletable td
and can include other styles used on the content in that section, such as;
1.
2). How To Make a MySpace Layout That Stand Out
If you are a MySpace user, you have learned what an easy to read and fun profile looks like. The only problem is, you may not know how to create or find out. Most of the time when you see an awful MySpace layout, it's because its sloppy, hard to read, or has annoying links you didn’t even see. That is because since MySpace has been growing so much, so have the layout sites.
3). Professional XOOPS theme design - What to look for
In general, prices for theme design work will range depending on a number of factors. If you don't mind the designer releasing the theme on their site for others to purchase, then you can expect anywhere from $20US to $50US for your theme. If the theme must be a one of a kind theme that only you use, you could expect to multipy the fee by at least 10x.
4). Adsense: The Smart Investment
Over the last 2 years, We have been building a Virtual Adsense Empire of over 500 websites and making some good money. We've also been building content sites for clients using the same system. The system we use is not something that produces 1000's of sites with a click of a button, our system does not build spam websites, nor does it produce the same sites you see over and over and over again.
5). Irish Graphic Design Industry
Graphic design is the use of color, light, balance, contrast, emphasis, proportion, proximity, repetition, texture and a plethora of other elements to create a work of digital art that is pleasing to the eye. Graphic design is about seamlessly molding image and text to convey a theme, message, or often advertise a product or service. Graphic design dates back to prehistoric times.
6). How to Create a Splash Page for Your Website?
These splash designs prove to be quite popular, especially among the designers as they allow the designer to show their skills in flash and any other technology on a single page. The splash page design involved in the splash page will be one that is very attractive to the eye of the viewer. Its main intention lies in captivating the viewer the moment he looks at it.
7). Does Your Web Design Include Background Music?
When you design your website, you may wonder whether or not you should include background music in your web design. The answer to this requires you to ask two additional questions: