Web Design Blog

It is much harder to say what good things to do since I have never seen a website that was truly stellar with respect to usability. The best major site was probably amazon.com as of late 1998, but during 1999 Amazon declined in usability due to the strategy of blurring the site's focus. Of course, articles that list 30 mistakes can be seen as constructive criticism and a prescription for 30 things to do in a Web project: design to avoid each of the mistakes!

Most web designers face the challenge of designing cool websites with only a couple of choices for fonts; Arial, Courier New, Times New Roman, and Verdana. Now thanks to Google our font library has expanded and this is just the beginning: http://code.google.com/webfonts.

Creating a "buzz" around products, services, businesses or an event is a requirement from all clients. There is no social media marketing wand that someone will wave and a target audience will automatically start coming to your site. And what works for one brand may not work for another.

80% of the end-user response time is spent on the front-end. Most of this time is tied up in downloading all the components in the page: images, stylesheets, scripts, Flash, etc. Reducing the number of components in turn reduces the number of HTTP requests required to render the page. This is the key to faster pages.

Twitter, the net's networking success story, is intriguing and intimidating because of its message limitations: they can be 140 characters, and no more.

Proper Search Engine Optimization, otherwise known as SEO, has quickly become a popular topic of conversation among website owners and entrepreneurs. The difference between having a successful website, and hosting a flop, is often the difference between whether or not you've incorporated proper keywords and phrases into your webpages.

1. Visual design is eye candy and evokes several emotions and feelings. Your website should be engaging and draw in the user. Never under estimate the power of design. If you are not a designer, leave it to the professionals =)

Every web designer understands the importance of cross browser web design. Basically, this is the act of making a web site look the same on each browser. If this sounds new to you then you are probably unaware that each web browser processes web sites in different manners. Only really affecting the visual elements of the site (the css sheet/styles).

I love PHP and I love CSS, but until recently I was never easily able to mix the two. Let's say on the home I want a different background than on the other pages. My usual answer was to make two css files and use php if/else statements to call in the specific css file depending on the page. But recently I stumbled on to an interested feature that allows me to use php INSIDE the css file!

These are the basic six steps involved in developing a website and help new web users understand the process involved in developing a website.