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A Guide to Stinking Website Design

What makes you scream when you stumble upon a website? For me, it is cheesy music with no “off” button.

Signs of Webmaster Newbies

All of us have been “newbies” at one point in our webmastering lives.We spent hours at dhtml, javscript and graphics sites looking for copy-and-paste stuff that we thought would make our sites look impressive.

First timer’s websites are easily spotted with their smorgasboard of javascripts, animated gifs, sounds and other components. Unfortunately, this only makes a site look amateur.

Creating an Amateur Image

You might have a brick and mortar business that’s been around for the last decade, with tons of satisfied customers.On the net, however, your visitors do not know who you are.A professional online image will inspire trust.  When designing your website, here are some things to avoid so that your business does not look amateur or like a fly-by-night operation:

• Dark, heavy backgrounds with hard-to-read fonts – For a business website, it’s best to use a plain white background and black text so that your visitors can read it easily. Some first timers are tempted to have “fancy” backgrounds with different colored text. Not only is this hard to read, but if you have a product line, it is difficult to make pictures of your product line blend in with the background.
• Pages that are larger than the browser screen – There’s nothing more irritating that trying to read a web page that scrolls across the screen. Most web usters have their desktop resolutions set at 1024 x 768. Try to stay within those confines.
• Sound effects – Everyone has different tastes when it comes to music, but even if you discovered music that appeals to every single person alive, don’t make it automatically load on your site. With a music site, there are scripts that allow the user to click play and listen at his or her free will. This goes with audio advertisements or other background sound effects — provide a way to pause the sound or shut it off.
• “Cool” effects – About 8 or 9 years ago, it was real “cool” to have a flash presentation on the index page. Everyone was doing this. This does not establish your online reputation. Flash introductions involve a lot of effort to create and when it is all said and done, many look silly. These introductions can take a long time to load and generally, people will not view them. Another thing that beginners think is “cool” are page fading effects, animated images and scrolling text. When I first started designing pages, I added these things, thinking it made me look like I was adept with web design. However, the cold reality is that these effects are a waste of time and a turnoff. I’ve seen some sites, designed by supposed design specialists, where the links scroll by really fast and you have to “aim and shoot” just to be able to click a link. Do not bother with these effects. People visiting your site are looking for products or information, and are not there to look at animations that will give them a headache.
• No clear navigation scheme – Many people enter a website by the interior pages, not at the home page. You should give your visitors a way to easily click through your site. Menus that are on the left side of the page or on the top of the page are the most popular. Regardless of where you decide to place your menu, make sure that it is in the same place throughout your site. A missing or confusing navigation menu is a sign of amateur web design.
• No search feature – Particularly if you have a large product line that you are selling or if you have a content rich site, always include a search box to help your visitors. If you don’t know how to do this, try free services like FreeFind or Google search.  This makes your site “user friendly” and shows that you care about your visitor’s experience on your site.
• “Secret” prices - If you’re selling products, include the price. Don’t force your visitor to click through the shopping cart just to find out what the cost will be — many of them will not do it, anyway.
• Policies – An amateur site will not include privacy policies, terms of use and, when selling products or services, returns and shipping policies. It’s a good idea to provide contact information, particularly if you are selling products or services.
• Under construction pages – “Under construction” or “coming soon” pages are a surefire way to announce that you’re an amateur. If you are not done with a page yet, do not link to it. Add a link to your menu or sitemap at such time as the page is completed.
• No online shopping cart – If you are selling a product, provide a way for people to purchase your product online. If a web surfer is beyond the ‘research mode’ and ready to buy something online, he or she wants to be able to buy it immediately. Chances are, they do not want to send you a fax with their credit card information or mail in a check or money order. If you don’t have a merchant account, consider Paypal or, in the case of digital products, consider using a service such as Clickbank.  There are other quality shopping carts available for people who already have a merchant account, such as Mals-e.com, which also givesyou the ability to offer an affiliate program.

What’s Your Top Gripe?

Newbie or pro, you can voice your opinion about what makes a stinking website at the NotGuru’s survey about poor website design.  If you’re looking for software, giveaways and other things to help your fledgling online business, the NotGuru blog provides plenty of resources.If you have a couple of seconds to spare, take the site design survey and feel free to comment – the results are interesting.

Tags: JavaScript, newbies, sound, survey, web design, website design

Adobe Dreamweaver Training for Independent Consultants

If you are someone who offers web design and programming services to different people and companies, it’s important for you to know how to use the whole arsenal of tools that exist for you to make the most of your career. That includes understanding and using Adobe’s excellent Dreamweaver program, which is a great tool that allows you to edit and create webpage and also allows you to edit HTML and CSS, the two cornerstones of internet code. Knowing how to use tools like these will be essential to your success. Learning from textbooks won’t be very productive to your needs. You’ll often find yourself relying on the book to make decisions, and to understand how and why you do certain things.

The use of Adobe Dreamweaver training software can be a much better option when you need to learn to use the program. Interactive software will allow you to get a hands-on feel for the product, and also see what it has to offer, so that you can make the most of your experience. By seeing what you’re supposed to do rather than reading about it, your brain will make the connection much more quickly. People have always learned better by seeing something first hand. This is why we teach children the way that we do, with examples and experiences, rather than with textbooks and no proof. Learning by example is part of human nature. If your brain can connect what it needs to do with images of how it was taught, it will work much better than trying to memorize instructions and textbook information.

Adobe Dreamweaver training doesn’t have to take very long and having it as a skill in your resume can give you a better opportunity for jobs and clients. Many people feel safer designing webpages in a program like Dreamweaver because it’s a popular program, and one that they can relate to. If you plan to become an independent contractor in the web design and programming industry, you owe it to yourself to know how to use this program. Your odds of learning effectively will be much better with interactive training tutorials, though, so keep that in mind. Even though a book might be cheaper or seem to be less time consuming, you’ll actually spend a lot more time learning because you have to memorize information without seeing it first hand.

If you’re an independent contractor and in need of Adobe Dreamweaver training, you should check out training software that is available before you make any decisions. Even if you think learning from a book will be okay, once you see the hands-on interface of the training software, you might change your mind.

Tags: cascading style sheets, computer software, computers and the internet, css, dreamweaver training, html, JavaScript, Software, web design, web development

Adobe Dreamweaver Training for Independent Contractors

If you are someone who offers web design and programming services to different people and companies, it’s important for you to know how to use the whole arsenal of tools that exist for you to make the most of your career. That includes understanding and using Adobe’s excellent Dreamweaver program, which is a great tool that allows you to edit and create webpage and also allows you to edit HTML and CSS, the two cornerstones of internet code. Knowing how to use tools like these will be essential to your success. Learning from textbooks won’t be very productive to your needs. You’ll often find yourself relying on the book to make decisions, and to understand how and why you do certain things.

Using some Adobe Dreamweaver training software can be a much better option when you need to learn to use the program. Interactive training software will allow you to get a hands-on feel for the product, and also see what it has to offer, so that you can make the most of the learning experience. By seeing what you’re supposed to do rather than simply reading about it, your brain will make the connection much more quickly. People have always learned better by seeing something demonstrated first hand. This is why children are taught in the way that they are, with examples and experiences, rather than with textbooks and no proof. Learning by example comes naturally to most human beings. If your brain can make a connection between what it needs to do with images of how it was taught, it will work much better than trying to memorize instructions and textbook information.

Adobe Dreamweaver training doesn’t have to take very long and having it as a skill in your resume can give you a better opportunity for jobs and clients. Many people feel safer designing webpages in a program like Dreamweaver because it’s a popular program, and one that they can relate to. If you plan to become an independent contractor in the web design and programming industry, you owe it to yourself to know how to use this program. Your odds of learning effectively will be much better with interactive training tutorials, though, so keep that in mind. Even though a book might be cheaper or seem to be less time consuming, you’ll actually spend a lot more time learning because you have to memorize information without seeing it first hand.

If you’re an independent contractor and in need of Adobe Dreamweaver training, you should check out training software that is available before you make any decisions. Even if you think learning from a book will be okay, once you see the hands-on interface of the training software, you might change your mind.

Tags: cascading style sheets, computer software, computers and the internet, css, dreamweaver training, html, JavaScript, Software, web design, web development

Adobe Dreamweaver Training Can Teach You Things That a Book Can’t

A textbook can supply you with all of the HTML codes that you might need for web design. It can list every possible command that you could execute in a program like Adobe Dreamweaver. It can even help you to get an understanding of the different parts of the program by definition. However, it will never teach you to use the program properly. What you need is a training program that offers a hands-on solution, allowing you to learn by example and through experience, rather than by merely reading and memorizing information, commands, and codes. Books are only useful if they are combined with adequate training and actual hands-on experience. In and of themselves, they are practically useless for learning how to use computer programs.

Adobe Dreamweaver training offers you the chance to see things firsthand. This will allow your brain make a much better connection between commands and what they do than a list of definitions ever will. Interactive training adds the aspect of seeing and doing at the same time, which can help to make you a better web designer. Dreamweaver training videos, for example, will show you a real person using the actual program you’re trying to learn, allowing the association between knowing and doing to become much easier than a textbook ever could. You can also find courses that offer tutorials and one-on-one interaction, which can give you another level of understanding and assistance in learning the software.

Whether you’re a professional or just learning for fun, the training software for Adobe Dreamweaver will prove to teach you much, much more than a book ever could. Even if you just want to know the basics, you can learn them quickly, and get on to designing your webpages, and spend less time memorizing facts and lists of commands that might not be very useful to you until you make the connection. Your brain tends to like pictures and examples better than useless, memorized information, so give it what it wants, and you’ll learn that much faster.

Computers now offer us a whole new world to work with. Using training software to learn the proper operation of programs is not a new concept. People have experienced hands-on learning with computer software for many years, and it makes the process much easier for everyone involved. If you want the best, fastest chance of learning and enjoying the web design process, you need to try the training software approach and forget about the books.

Tags: cascading style sheets, computer software, computers and the internet, css, dreamweaver training, html, JavaScript, Software, web design, web development