|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Before you start planning your new web you need to ask yourself if you really need a web site or do you just want one because you have been told that you have to have web site these days.
Or have you been told you need to get a web site quick before your competition does. This is probably the biggest misconception when it comes to the Internet.
If you own a Pizza shop chances are you won't ever need a web site. How many people do you know look up a Pizza shop on the Internet. You wouldn't, you would just walk to the local shops and find one.
Below are 8 reasons why you may need a web site: -
- Promote your ideas, hobbies, or beliefs
- To Advertise your company or product
- Make loads of money really fast
- Provide customer services and support
- To keep your customer base informed
- Give or Sell Information
- Create an 'Extended Business Card' for your company
- Provide internal information and services for your company
Research:
- Look partially at your competitors web sites or web sites on the same thing as yours is going to be. See if you can get any ideas you can use and improve on.
- See if there are things about other sites that you don't like or find hard to use.
Don't be mistaken that the flashest coolest looking web site is the best. Quite often these sorts of sites will only work in the latest browsers or are difficult to navigate, or take along time to download.
Sites with lots of animation are not always the best. They may take some time to download. Remember the average attention span of most Internet users is 8-10 seconds. I for one find that as soon as I see a loading sign for a web site, 98% of the time I will immediately go to the next site.
You must also keep in mind that not everyone has a fast Internet connection
Content:
Before you can start deciding what content the site is going to contain you need to determine who your target audience is. What age group are your users? What is there skill level with the Internet?
An important question to ask yourself when deciding on content is: -
- Why would anybody want to visit my site?
- Why would anyone re-visit my site?
Keeping the content on your site updated frequently is equally important, as no one wants to keep reading the same stuff over and over again.
Design:
- At this stage you need to decide on the design of your web site. This will create the look and feel of your site.
- Consistency is especially important with web sites so that the person knows that they are still in the same site.
- Draw some sketches of your page design.
Next you need to try your design on a computer screen, to do this open up your favourite graphics program with a blank canvas of 783 x 398 pixels (this is the minimum live space of a web browser on a 800 x 600 resolution screen). Now you can start laying out your screen design.
By using a graphics program you can see how your web page design will look on a computer screen and if the colors don't look good, or the layout is wrong you can easily change colors or move the layout around the screen till the page design looks good.
It is much easier trying out your page designs in a graphics program as it takes seconds to move things around the screen, as opposed to an HTML page where it can take hours rearranging the layout of a page.
Navagation:
- How the user navigates around your web site can make or break your site.
- make your navigation controls as obvious and simple as possible.
- Keep the navigation controls consecutive. Using frames for your site may help with this.
There are different ways you can create navigational controls for your web site and they are: -
Text:
This is the simplest way to link pages on your site. Although not as attractive as graphical navigational controls you are at least guaranteed fast downloading times and can be viewed in all web browsers.
Images:
Using images to make navigation buttons to link the various pages on your site together can really make a site, but not everyone, such as the visually impaired and browsers that don't display images, will be able to view the buttons. To overcome this problem you can use the HTML ALT tag, which will display a text alternative to your button images.
With images you can use icons or symbols to represent where the link will lead. Again here you must be careful, as what means a mailbox in your country may have no meaning to people from other countries.
It maybe good to use text links with your icons or symbols, that way you get the best of both worlds.
Using Images:
One of the biggest complaints with the Internet is that web pages load too slowly. People don't want to wait while graphics with large file sizes load. To overcome this problem graphics need to be compressed.
Graphics for the web are usually in 72dpi resolution this is a much lower resolution than used in the print industry.
The most common graphic formats supported by web browsers for compressing graphics are JPEG and GIF.
JPEG - This format is usually used for photos where there are lots of subtle color changes and detail. The JPEG format is a lossy, 24-bit color, compression format that generally gives a smaller file size and better quality for photos.
GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) - This compression format is usually best suited for graphic's that have mainly flat colors. The GIF file format is a loss-less compression format that allows you to select a palate of up to 256 colors.
When choosing colors for your graphics it is best to use 'Web Safe Colors' of which there are 216. These are colors that have been specially selected, as they will look the same on different systems.
Larger graphics take longer to download, so try to make your graphics as small as possible. If necessary use thumbnails, these are smaller images that link to larger versions of themselves. This way if the user has the choice of waiting the extra time if they want to see the image in more detail.
Use the 'ALT' tag when you use graphics on your web site. The 'ALT' tag will display a text alternative for the visually impaired or users that have a text only web browser.
|
|
|
|
|
|
