e-commerce websites have their own unique character that is designed to lead visitors to a simple task – an online purchase. A web designer needed for a variety of online selling principles while designing its e-commerce website. In this article we will try to get a look at some of the major design aspects that you must have an eCommerce website to take.

Many of you are probably wondering why e-commerce website design is different from any other website design. They all need an attractive, well organized and use the right colors so that the website in mind and fit. Your instincts are good. But a brief look at some successful e-commerce websites will reveal the conceptual differences that are characteristic of a successful e-commerce website.

An e-commerce site, according to certain principles to sell:

1. Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
2. Make sure you have enough information about who owns the site and why they should be trusted with.
3. The website should be easy to use. If not, the visitor to your competitor.

These principles are not new. We all know the basics of our daily experiences at the mall, shopping center and any other market that is waiting for us to open up our wallets. The big challenge for a web designer is that conventional marketing techniques, how to translate the virtual world of the Internet. I’m sure you all noticed that in most supermarkets, the bread is placed at the end of the building, but you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes even use a special air duct to the scents to wear). This is done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to our questions via the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies are we going to get our bread.

How to set an imaginary path in a web page? A path designed for the visitor to do what you want him to do … an online purchase to lead. Unlike the supermarket our website has no odor. In a website of the distance from one point to another is pretty much the same, so the output is always right. In a website you can try the “plank” in the way of you think the visitor will most exposed to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he is a shortcut to another page that can also way to find out your site.

As shown, although putting your products on the web is much easier than renting space and the opening of a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead visitors to the appropriate page in a click or two at most. Somewhere web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-ecommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these pages are the only link to the order. Sales letters are not the most typical e-commerce site, because they usually only sell a product. That the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product are presented to the user is a smart way every few lines as he has the opportunity to click on the order form. If he is not convinced that he will have the option to go to more facts and testimonials about the products to have read. Believe it or not, this sales letter websites actually sell.

“What about online stores?” Online stores are dealing with more than one product. Of course, the largest number of products increases the complexity of the website. Advanced e-commerce sites use a variety of personalization technologies in an attempt to find the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are an important part of advanced e-commerce websites. However, this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce Web site personalization of technology has a major influence on the design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to make their client’s books to push for a visitor based on that visitor previous orders with the statistics they had gathered for all visitors used to predict what someone looking for a specific book may also be interested in reading. Today, the aim is to try to predict what the user on his first visit to offer.

An e-commerce web design is also on the layout. An important aspect is the user’s eyes first look at accessing a Web page. Much research has been done on this subject. Most research has shown that the left middle area, the most attention, followed by the middle of the page. By using these techniques, web designers try to “trail” the eyes of the visitor, just like what was done in supermarkets to withdraw. An experienced e-commerce web designer will know how to design to these requirements.

If you have an e-commerce site, or if you already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online sales. Consider consultation with an experienced web designer, preferably someone with experience in e-commerce websites.

Good luck with your sale.

Web surfers are basically an impatient bunch and if a site is difficult to ascertain because the tires are not obvious, they will click away never to return. Website navigation is one of the most crucial elements in determining the effectiveness of a website. This article discuses the basic principle of designing website navigation.

To be effective website navigation should not only useful for the average person. Although there is always room for creativity, well designed websites tend to have similar navigation layouts.

As a web designer you should always consider the main purpose of the website and the target in the design of navigation elements. Most websites exist for visitors to inform either a product or service is actually selling or the product or service. Therefore there are some basic rules to follow:

Make sure all navigation elements are clear links with standard conventions for the bands, such as buttons, menus, underlined text or change color on the mouse. Resist the temptation to clever or ambiguous names for links.

If non-conventional tires, explicitly indicate that this is a link the visitor. For example, suppose you design a Web page where you want a map showing the various cities to use and you want the user to click on the name of the city late pulling up information about that city. Make sure you tell the user to click on the name of the city to learn more about the city each day.

Remember the “Three Rule” that most professional web designers use. Studies have shown that most users no more than three left click to get to the information they want. So every page on your site should be reachable within three clicks.

I do not recommend using a Flash movie or a different type of splash page on your website. Keep the design simple yet attractive web pages. But if you decide to use to activate using the META REFRESH tag to the visitor to be automatically assigned to your home after a few seconds and a clickable, clearly marked button or so providence link the visitor’s entry page and skip straight to your home otherwise a large percentage of the visitors just click away never to return. Remember, most visitors are looking for information not entertainment.

Locations navigation element

Top Menus – a top of the page menu bar is typically located directly under the header of the page containing the image that site logo. These menu items are some links, drop down menus, menu or extend. Each menu item can be represented by a graphic or text only. In the case of an ether link is associated with each item that the visitor can click to go to the information described.

Left Navigation Pane – left side navigation is typically implemented as either a column or text on the left upper portion of the web. Like the top menu, each item has a link or an expansion of the menu.

Right Side Navigation – Navigation is not right so often, but when used, is designed as a column or text on the top right of the webpage. Most designers use this area for the ads instead of site navigation.

Bottom Menus – down menus can be either a menu bar or footer. Menu bars use images or text links, and footers almost exclusively use text links.

Important navigation elements

Internal Page Links – Each page on this site within two or three clicks from the homepage. Important pages should be a click away. The type of site will determine which links are more visible.

Login Boxes – login boxes should be clearly displayed. Common locations are left, right or in the header of the page.

Shopping carts – if you have a shopping cart to sell your products, you must clearly view cart button on each page. The most common location is just below the top right or as part of the header.

Buy Now buttons – if you use the individual buttons, they are big and visible. The fewer clicks it takes for your order page, the more orders you get.

Breadcrumbs – breadcrumbs are both left and a graphical representation of where you are in the site. Breadcrumbs are usually located in the upper left of the page just below the header. Each word is a link back to the previous page. They are in the form

Home-> Products-> Marketing

External Links – external links can be used anywhere, but often are the most common areas of the text on a website. They can be references for more information on another site, the recommended products, or almost anything else.

Ads – ads are usually either an image or text with a hyperlink attached. Ads can be placed anywhere on a webpage, but are mostly used just under the header banner, down the right side of the page under the navigation elements on the left margin on the bottom of the page or even rotated within the pilot areas of the page. Studies show that ads “above the fold” more effective.
(“Above the fold” refers to the surface of a web page that is visible without scrolling.)

Downloadable items – if you offer downloadable items, such as audio, video or PDF files, make sure you tell the user haw big the file is and whether they need to file an application to use. If they request, a link to the application. For example, a link to the free Acrobat Reader and PDF files to offer.

Site Map – A sitemap is a good way to layout your entire site for your visitor. (Search Engine Spyder, just as they are.) It is simply a hierarchical list of every page on your site with a clickable hyperlink to that page.

Final Words

A good navigation system can increase the number of pages viewed by each visitor. This may increase notifications, customers, sales, members or whatever it is your site is designed to do and your website more successful.

The goal of most web designers is an attractive and easily accessible and functional website to convince the visitor to do something. Creating such a website requires good graphics, easy and intuitive site navigation, logical site layout and good web copy. The following suggestions are general web design guidelines.

Website Content

You want the visitor to see you as a knowledgeable source of information and / or a reputable company. Poor grammar and spelling will instantly reduce your credibility. Remember, people use the Internet to find information. Whether you are selling your own product or recommend someone else’s products, you must Provide valuable information to the visitors will love ze or click and find that a website geeft themself what they what they want.

Cross browser compatibility

There are at least a hundred different browsers in use. You should design your website to work properly in most browsers. To do this you may not be able to address all of the really great special effects available to use because they may not be supported in most browsers.

Although most Web browsers are free, people need not bother to upgrade to the latest versions. The average surfer may not know how to upgrade their browser or the attitude: “If it works, do not fix it.” Think of your visitor a PC, a Mac, a Linux box, a PDA or a mobile phone and they use different browsers.

Good web design requires your web pages in Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Opera and Safari works at a minimum. Validating your HTML will help, but the final test is to see your website in different browsers on different platforms.

Images and Photos

Web surfers are impatient and studies show that most people will click away if a web page takes longer than 10 seconds to load. Always optimize your photos and other graphics files to a size as small as possible without sacrificing image quality.

Always use the width and height attributes on the picture so that the rest of the page to load graphics files while downloading. Use the ALT tag in HTML, so people with images turned off and using portable devices to know what the picture should be.

Background Colors

If you have something other than white behind text, you indicate otherwise link the user’s browser default colors will determine what color the links, which may obscure them.

Multimedia

Multimedia is compiled Flash movies, video clips, audio clips and background music. Always use streaming media because it reduces the download time. Make sure that the visitor can stop and start multimedia files or in case of flash introductions, store them if they want. That way people with slow connections or devices that do not support multimedia can ignore.

Also puts all the important information in multimedia in the text as well so that the visitor has access to that information without the use of multimedia. If a plug-in for multimedia, always use a link to it so the user can install. Finally, always remember the 10-second rule for loading site to the decision to use multimedia.

Site Navigation

Site navigation must be simple and intuitive. Studies have shown when a visitor can not access information they want to within three clicks, they will abandon the site. This is called the 3-click rule. Every area of your website should be reachable within three clicks from anywhere else on the site. If you have something other than a simple text links, make sure you have the trial in all major browsers.

Left

A periodic inspection of all site links to make sure that they are valid. Nothing drives a visitor off faster than broken links. There are several free online services that periodically checks your tires.

Frames

Avoid using frames because they make it difficult for the individual pages on your web site to bookmark and you want people to bookmark pages so they can come back.

Final Summary

Good Web design is a combination of common sense and good planning. Your site must be attractive and easy to use and above all give the user the information or services they want.

The terms web designer and web developer are used interchangeably in the media and advertising. But it is not the same. Design involves what the visitor sees on your website, development involves the site’s functionality. This article explores the difference between these two disciplines.

A website containing several different aspects:

* Look and feel – mostly graphics, color scheme, navigation elements, etc.
* Content – information, products, etc. on the website.
* Functionality – functionality includes interactive features that the website provides to visitors and the necessary infrastructure needed to provide them.
* Usability – the site from a visitor perspective and include things like program interactions, navigation and usability.

Look and Feel

Appearance and includes general appearance of the website. A graphic designer decides what colors and fonts to use and how to layout each of the sites pages.

The graphic designer must have a good understanding of aesthetics and sense of which combination of colors and images will project the image that the website owner wants visitors to have on site.

Contents

Content is the entire text, available on a website and include everything from politics to protect a very persuasive sales letter extolling the benefits of a product and ask the visitor to part with their hard earned money and everything in between. If it is written text, then it is a part of the contents. You need a copywriter and editor for creating good content.

Functionality

Functionality includes all the interactive aspects of a web site, and includes animation. The common denominator is that programmers are using different web programming languages that work either on a Web server or in a web browser to create all these functions.

Flash can be used to animate graphics. Perl, PHP and Java programming language is used on the Web server for creating sophisticated dynamic web pages. These pages can work independently, but often with a database to create all the features we have come to expect from a website.

JavaScript is used in the browser to create a lot of cool effects such as swapping images when a mouse moves over an image, “ticker tapes” links changing colors, etc. JavaScript working in the user’s Web browser rather than on the Web server.

There are also other “backend” applications that are transparent to the visitor, such as form processing, content management and other management applications that enables non-programmers to maintain certain aspects of the website data.

All these programs have to be integrated into the HTML code to be used on the website.

Usability

Usability is the website from the user perspective and includes mostly testing things like:

* Is appearance and is actually portray the correct image?
* Is the navigation is user friendly?
* Does navigation lead the visitor to where the owner wants them to go?
* Does the site load quickly?
* Do the applications work properly?

Design Versus Development

Unfortunately, there are a lot of overlap and integration needed between web design and web development. When you throw in content creation and usability testing, it becomes a real mess.

Can a single person to do all these things? There are some people who can do all these things, but most people only do one or two of the tasks.

Web design usually involves creation of content and appearance, while web development involves creating the functionality and testing its usability.

Web designers should be skilled with graphic design tools like Photoshop. Most also know HTML, so they can implement their designs. But using the animation on the site and layout for the site content is also part of the web designer responsibility.

Many site owners to deliver content to the website, but a web designer must be able to edit and even write the content if necessary. Web designers usually do the usability testing of navigation and homepage loading speed.

Web development programmers create functionality to the website, but all this functionality must be integrated into HTML pages on the site. Alternatively, the HTML content will also be integrated into the program. Web developers also do usability testing on site, at least for the functionality they provide. So programmer should also have some HTML knowledge so well.

In both cases, web designer and web development programmer must work together to ensure that the website does all that the owner of the site requested.

Bottom Line – Only big companies can afford to hire separate experts in graphic design, content production, programming and usability testing of building a new website. In most other cases the web designer and web development programmer two different people who must work together to create a successful website.

Whether you’re designing the website yourself or hire a professional web designer depends on several very important factors. One of the most important thing to consider is the level of expertise that you or your employees have the necessary web technology to create an attractive, professional looking site that functions as you wish. The decision not to make it even comes down to your skill level, the features you want or need, the image you want to project for your site and the time you need to build the website.

Some of the skills necessary to design and build a website are:

* HTML knowledge – some basic knowledge is necessary, but good web design software can help.
* Artistic ability – a good eye for color and overall good taste is needed for a web designer to create an attractive website.
* Graphical software expertise – some knowledge is necessary to produce attractive clean images and website graphics. It is also necessary to optimize images for the smallest possible file size for quick loading.
* Navigation Expertise – Understanding functionality of site navigation design and implementation is a critical skill.
* Programming – you can use CGI, JavaScript or a database programming to add interactive web pages or integrate it with an online database.
* Marketing and business experience – whether you are building a personal website or a company website, there are some large commercial and marketing aspects to be taken into consideration right from the start deisgn phase of the website.

What if I can not do all that?

If you do not have neither the time nor the skills necessary to build your own website, you can hire a professional to do all or part of it for you. A good place to find a professional web designer is one of the many freelance work sites available. These freelance job boards allows you to recruit people with expertise you need: web designers, programmers, SEO specialists, writers and more. It may be a person or an entire team of individuals. Alternatively you can hire a local web design firm. Freelancers are usually cheaper, because many of them live in countries where there is a 5:1 ration in wages. That means $ 1 in the USA is equivalent to $ 5 in their country. So pay them $ 5 an hour is like paying someone U.S. $ 25 per hour, which is the minimum price you can recruit people with the necessary knowledge.

Content writers who are native English speakers charge from $ 0.05 per word and up. Non-English speakers can be rented for about $ 0.02 per word. But if your site is in English, you probably want to hire a native English speakers to write your content.

Make sure you notify the web designer, web developer or copywriter you hire exactly what you need to achieve. A good website designer understands how to build internet marketing instead designed to make it search engine friendly.

What does outsourcing cost?

For a mere five or six page website, expect to pay somewhere between $ 100 for just web design and $ 1,500 for the entire site with graphics and content. For a more complex interactive website you can pay from $ 500 for just the programming of $ 10,000 and up to the entire website.

It is all a cost in your time as well. You will manage the project: to write project specifications, spend time writing emails to a freelancer, doing some quality assurance testing, etc. In some cases, you’ll discover, develop a website in-house can be cheaper than outsourcing it.

Remember, it’s not always about money. If you already have an established corporate brand, you probably want to seriously consider hiring a professional web designer to make sure that you can maintain your brand and present it professionally to your website.

In Conclusion

The decision to hire a professional web designer or building site itself depends on what skills you have, how much time you can spare and really, whether you want to do the work themselves.

Hey Web Designer!

Communicating with a Web designer can be the hardest part of hiring process because you and web designer do not speak the same language when we talk about the details of a website. This article explains how to get your ideas across the web designer, you want to rent.

Ok, so you’ve decided to hire a professional web designer to build your website. You spent some time looking for the right person. Finally you have found the right web designer who you think will design the most “remarkable”, “extraordinary” website the internet community has yet seen.

So what now? Explain web designer layout design you have in your mind can be a very frustrating process. You will find to be the “image” in your mind in words can be a difficult task. In fact, in most cases is the biggest hurdle between you and the final result. No matter how talented the web designer is if you can not communicate with him properly in his own professional language, he could not use his talent to achieve your design.

There are two possible situations you may face:

1st You know what content you want on the site, but have no idea how to present it to the user.
2nd You know what content you want on the site, and you have the layout in your mind, but you do not know how to implement it.

In either case, you must explain your thoughts to the web designer. Although most people who read these lines are enough to believe that in the second situation is better than being in the first situation. But real life experience shows the opposite to be true. Does a web designer complete freedom in terms of web design based solely on website content is usually a smart thing to do. You will find that the web designer to explain what the nature of your site is whether it is a product that you want to sell or a hobby item, is much easier then trying to explain to him the temperate of the color scheme or an undefined figure that you want on the homepage header.

Indeed, for both situations, I suggest you use the same approach but with a slight modification to each situation. If you know of a site that has all the features you want or need and / or a site that looks the way you want your site to see, be sure to give your site url to the web designer. This will give him an idea of want you want. You will both see the same thing, but would actually look at it from another angle. Therefore, it may be better to give him more than a website as an example. The more websites you find that can express your feelings and / or needs, the easier it will be for designers to understand your intention, without having to use a single “technical” terms. Chances are that you will not find a single site that has all the function you want. After all, if such a website already exists would be room for your new site to be born. Use multiple websites to express the various functions you want. Spend as much time as necessary until you find the right sites to provide examples of your needs. Performs research at this time will definitely save you a lot of time later to try to identify web designer in the right direction.

Even if you are the one who needs to express yourself to web designer, you must learn to listen to him as well. When he uses technical terms, ask for their views. Do not finish any part of the conversation unless you are absolutely sure that both sides are on the same page. Remember that once a Web designer talking about the temperature of a color, he is not talking about the next day’s forecast.

Remember that you hired a professional web designer, because you want a professional looking website, and you could not do it yourself. So trusted web designer judgments when they tell you something you will not work or is not the best way to achieve your goals. After all, you pay them for their expertise. Do not try to tell them how to do their jobs.

It is OK to require a web designer to get your approval each step of the way so you can tell them if one of your goals not achieved. Also, if you really do not like how something looks and want it changed, tell them immediately. Do not wait until everything is done and then decide you do not like it.

One final word about price

You have agreed on what should be done, and web designer has given you a price quote. Simple changes and bug fixes are usually included in the price. However, other major changes or revisions directly or can not be included. Make sure your contract states what is included, what constitutes a revision rather than a fix, and how many changes you can make after birth without incurring additional costs.

It wasn’t until my cousin told me he wanted to get into the website design game, and seeing his progress, that i finally saw how far i’ve come as a website designer. Not just a website designer, but a freelance website designer.

The stuff we go through and accomplish on a daily basis is unbelievable to most. It’s not easy. 9-5 is easy.. not knowing when your next invoice will be paid so you can pay your bills is hard. It can be financially rewarding, but we don’t get enough credit. People thing we sit back and collect, but we’re doing the jobs of what should be a full staff!

So to those freelance website designers out there; Right on!