Load time is a huge issue for web designers, clients and users alike. Those who are searching online for information are notoriously impatient and the demand for fast browsing is growing as better technology is being introduced by internet providers. This doesn’t mean, however, that you should jump ship and revert back to text-only designs – by following these simple tips you’ll keep hold of your beautiful site and improve its usability dramatically.
Obviously, the actual coding of your site can make a huge difference to its load time. There are a couple of things you can do to smooth out your coding issues:
- Use CSS as often as possible as a replacement for images. HTML images aren’t actually inserted into a web page – they are linked to the web page and allocated a space with the use of HTML. Using CSS can speed up your load time by eliminating the need for the browser to re-find the links. The CSS file will simply be downloaded the one time and be re-used for different pages on a site.
- Get rid of any redundant white space in your HTML. You may be surprised to learn that white space actually takes up a huge amount of your disk space, even though it’s used to de-clutter and stylise many sites.
When it comes to your actual server and database setup, take these points into consideration:
- Connecting to secure http pages takes a lot longer. Avoid using secure pages (https) unless you absolutely have to.
- Upgrade your web server, server memory and database server hard drive as often as possible to ensure that your site’s running at maximum performance. This is a factor that is often overlooked.
It’s a well-known fact that images slow down the load time of a web page considerably. Thankfully, images can be optimised quite easily by trying out the following tips:
- There is much debate surrounding which image formats produce the best results with regards to your load time. If your image is a highly detailed photo, you’re likely to want to use jpegs, but it’s well known that png images tend to load a lot faster. Whatever your preferred format, there are plenty of compression tools on the web that will improve your load speed too.
- ‘Slice’ your images. A common technique used by designers to cut a large image into bitesize pieces, slicing your pictures has been proven to speed up load times (although this point of view is often contended by experts).
- Make sure that the browser knows exactly where to place your images. Make use of the HTML height and width attributions and never leave them blank. After all, it’s important to eliminate confusion to make the load process as simple as possible for the browser.
Of course, there are several more generalised changes you can make to aid the improvement of your load time. You may find that splitting up long pages into several different pages will develop both your load time and the usability of your site, as users will be directed towards information-specific pages. By implementing a loading progress indicator, you can let the user know that their request is processing and reassure them that the load time is due to the size of the site’s resources, not their browser. Progress indicators can be customized as needs be and developed easily. Cookies also play a major part in your site’s load time, so you should keep the size of your cookies to an absolute minimum and get rid of any that are completely unnecessary.
Get in touch with your web design company if you believe that your load time is seriously affecting your site’s performance.
Moving into the final quarter of 2011, SEO Positive is as strong as ever.
We’ve had an incredibly successful year so far, most notably with the expansion of our Chelmsford-based team. Identifying the need to branch out and provide an even greater level of care and commitment to our clients, we have recently expanded our accounts department and taken on a dedicated social media manager, who has been effectively managing both our social marketing campaigns and those of our clients. We have made effectual changes to our customer support system which means that client account managers are able to provide clients with more information, more efficiently. Overall, we have continued to acquire new business whilst retaining our impressive 97% client retention rate – no mean feat for any company and a skill that we’re immensely proud of!
The past few months have required SEO companies such as ourselves to pay particular attention to the new needs of businesses. Many predicted that the struggling economy would begin to pick up by the end of 2010, but as this was not the case, companies are increasingly looking for effective yet competitively priced SEO, PPC and web design services that will dramatically improve their online presence and generate those much-needed sales and enquiries. SEO Positive is proud to still offer some of the most affordable online promotions services in the entire industry, helping businesses of all sizes up and down the country to realise their ambitions and achieve unprecedented success within the major search engines.
Our website design division has indeed reached new heights, especially with the launch of webdesignpositive.co.uk, a site dedicated to explaining our design packages and providing individuals with more information about the web design industry as a whole. We’ve also recently lowered our web design prices in order to remain competitive and consistently aim to provide the best value for money services in the UK.
With the battle between the smartphone giants Apple and Android (amongst other market leaders) raging on fiercely this year, the number of web users taking advantage of the mobile browsers has risen dramatically. Contemporary web designers should surely be taking mobile users’ needs into consideration now that over 15% of the UK’s internet traffic relies on mobile phone access? According to a recent study conducted by Heart Internet, one of the leading hosting companies in the country, only 50% of 500 web designers surveyed take mobile users into consideration when building a new site.
There’s no denying that the majority of designers and developers are still creating sites for the desktop platform above all other browser options, which is considered by many to be a backwards approach. Now that the mobile web market has risen to such prominence within the industry (according to recent statistics, more smartphones are being shipped into retail outlets than desktop PCs), there are a number of free webmaster tools that are available for professional web designers to utilise if they currently have limited experience when it comes to web design with WAP compliancy in mind. In particular, goMobi offers fast and easy ways for business owners to convert their existing site to comply with the requirements of all mobile phones, while there are a number of free sites that offer the same service such as Google Mobilizer (also known as the Google Conversion Utility) and mobisiteGalore.
With recent trends in mind, designers should take into consideration that their client is likely to be missing out on huge volumes of traffic if their site lacks functionality when it’s viewed with mobile devices. Similarly, search engines such as Google index mobile listings differently to traditional web listings, so from the point of view of an SEO company it would be important to explore the impact that mobile search has on their clients’ SERPs and code sites accordingly.
The concept of web design is to make your web pages look aesthetically pleasing to the eyes. This is because of the fact that most internet users, whether we like it or not, focuses on the visual beauty of the web pages. That is why several web design techniques should be employed in order to make your web pages to be visually pleasing to the users’ eyes. One such technique is the application of balance in your web pages, balance in web design would mean how images, texts, contents or any other web page elements are placed on the web page. Is there symmetry? Or is it asymmetrical? The two types of balance are Symmetrical Balance and Asymmetrical Balance. Let us learn these specific types of balances in perspective.
Symmetrical balance is achieved if there are equal elements on both sides of the axis line; this can be either on the left and right or the top and bottom area. In web page design, the symmetrical balance would give an “organized” look to your web pages. Some web pages have two equal columns as incorporated in their web design this is called a horizontal symmetry, such type of symmetrical balance is seldomly used but there are other types of symmetrical balance that are commonly applied. One of such is the bilateral symmetry this type of balance in web design is seen on web pages where symmetry is seen on one or more than one axis. This is mostly applied when using the one-third rule which divides the web page into three rows and columns thus producing several axes. Another type of symmetrical balance that is used in web design is the radial symmetry, this is applied when elements of your web design is equally spaced around a central point forming a circular type of balance.
Asymmetrical Balance on the other hand is considered to be an abstract arrangement or that which do not follow a specific arrangement in terms of the line axis. This type of balance will bring out a web designers’ creativity due to the fact that it will be dealing with a myriad of sizes, colors, tone or type of orientation. This type of balance although having some drawbacks are however considered as versatile and flexible, manipulation of the different elements are not locked within a certain position rather, the web designer is free to move and customize the elements of the web page around until a desired web design is met.
Visual balance in web design is very important to achieve the desired aesthetics; this would help the users or visitors of your website to appreciate the work that you have done in your website. Varying the approach on balancing your web design elements gives your web pages a non-monotonous look and thus making it more dynamic and pleasing to the eyes of the users or web site visitors.
For more information related to Website Design UK and Search Engine Optimisation UK visit our other SEO Blog pages.
The internet is a vast track land of information and throughout the years this information had evolved from simple text to as complex as codes and images. Unfortunately, if text information is abundant plagiarism is lurking around too, that goes the same way for images. In web design, to build good aesthetics for the website or web pages the use of images is crucial to the over all design. Such design will in turn contribute although indirectly to your SEO campaign by making users browse your site a bit longer and try out the different features of the site.
Basic internet ethics would suggest that we as responsible web page designers should never resort to tactics that will go against laws or norms of good conduct that is why we have to be careful in using the different images uploaded onto the internet in order to avoid violation of laws or to avoid taking credit for another persons’ hardwork. Unfortunately for some designers, due to the availability of the picture, would think that the images being downloaded are free and sometime they unknowingly use the images for their overall design. The following will inform us on the different techniques employed by web designer which at first glance might look legal but in actuality it counters the ethical point of view.
1. Improper use of image results – people who requires images will initially turn to search engines to give them the images that they need. Examples of these are Google, Yahoo! and Flickr among others. Once the desired image is found the user will download it and may even use it for the web design. I seems a normal walk in the park type of image research to be incorporated in a design right? Well that is where you are wrong, because the basic rule should always be put into the mix, that is; any image or images posted in the internet without the express information that such is free must always be tagged as copyrighted by the owner of the photo. That is why in downloading photos which is not labeled free, the user must ask the permission of the photo owner.
2. Using the link which server the image is found – images are posted on to the internet and are stored in the server. Some designers have the tendency of not downloading the photo used for the design but instead just places the image URL which when subjected to a web browser will still display the correct image. Using such technique should not be allowed because it would affect the traffic of the website where the image came from and it might be detrimental to your SEO efforts.
These are only two of the prohibited types of using images in your web design, use this a your guide to build not only a good website but also to your fellow internet user or company.
Web design is very common nowadays, we see it every time we access the internet. Today website presence is as common as having a telephone. Sadly, with the wide presence of websites in the society today is, there are only a few web designers and developers who take into consideration the basic must-haves or must-present parts of a website. Common misconception is that the website is considered good only if it contains a web design that is dynamic which makes its users go wow!, but of course we should know better that animated websites are not necessarily the best websites.
In order for us to create our own website criteria on judging whether or not a website is truly professionally done or not, we take into consideration the following rules in making the web design or website. The following are the expected content or at least the minimum content of the website.
- Use appropriate design elements. This would include the color combination and color scheme that is going to be utilised in your web design. The design elements that you will be incorporating must be able to outright convey to the audience the websites’ general look and feel. In addition, choosing the right font type, font color and font size is likewise critical to the success of your web design.
- Convey the logical flow and interconnection of your websites’ web pages through site navigation. Site navigation links one part of your website to another, web page to web page within the website. In order not to allow our site visitors or users get lost in our web site or entirely brought to a dead end the site navigation must always be present in the web pages within the website. In addition, so as not to mislead the users the navigations’ design must always be in congruence with the over-all web design.
- Identify your websites’ purposes and goals by writing or incorporating concise and clear web content. The web content may anything be from the company vision-mission, goals, aims up to the products and services being offered. Make sure that when you write these contents that keywords and key phrases will also be incorporated to help you also in your SEO campaign. The contents’ design such as fonts and colors must be inline with the general web design.
- To enhance your web design, identify the additional website content formats that may be incorporated in your website, such as audio, video and pdf files. In that way the content will be dynamic and has an additional web design enhancements present to keep users longer within our website.
Web design will not be complete without the incorporation of images to make your design a little bit more presentable and down right exciting. Remember keeping clients surfing our site will be a good thing for our SEO campaign. A web page that contains purely text could prove to be boring and repulsive. As web designers and owners of web sites we do not want that unless you would like to create a web page that would make your visitors fall asleep. So in order for us to make our visitors to keep coming back we need to place several presentation design features such as adding of graphics or images. The question is can we just place any pictures we have lying around our hard disk or any storage media? Well I hear a resounding no to those questions, so here are some guidelines for us if we plan to incorporate images in our web design.
Utilise graphic file formats that are supported – although there are several graphic file formats that exists not all of them are used in web design. The three commonly used file format for web design are .GIF or the Graphics Interchange Format, .PNG or the Portable Network Graphics and .JPEG or the Joint Photographic Experts Group. Should you require images for your web pages make sure to provide the images in any of these formats.
Always see to it that file size is at minimum – we know that any image or documents that are to be viewed through the internet are suppose to be downloaded by the client computer first. It is for this reason that images must always be at a minimum file size in order to facilitate the displaying of such images that were incorporated in your web design.
Always keep back-up identification – have you ever experienced images that were not displayed due to slow connection or any other reasons? This occurrence is not rare, so to help your clients understand your web page much better even if images were not loaded an alternate text that would describe the image should always be included. This method is also very useful for your SEO campaign as the texts may be the keywords for the spiders to gather.
Choose the graphics to be included prudently – the common misconception of more graphics the better should not be practiced. When communication with your web design company about image incorporation in your web design always bear in mind that the use of images should not be overdone because it may result to so much clutter in your web design. Limit your use of graphics to those that are important in conveying message to your clients.
These are just some thoughts for you to keep in mind should you decide to make your web page more exciting using graphics or images. Now that you know, its time for you to locate those images in the deep abyss called your hard disk.
It simply shows that you should hire the services of reliable website designer and SEO Companyto work out things in a best way. It is not like that every internet user knows your web address as they have to look for their needs on different search engines. Thus, you should make sure that your web page is well designed and also search engine optimised. Sometimes masterly create web pages result into flop because of insufficient search engine optimisation services. You need to get in touch to the professional SEO Company that designs your site search engine friendly to grape attention of target visitors. Positioning and quality of the graphics on your website is essential to look both professional and attractive.
In the process of launching a website, you sometimes need to deliver a message to public related to sale or site information. In such scenario, the contents of a page must be well defined and organised. This can be achieved by breaking up text with relevant and well positioned graphics ensuring to get viewers attention.
There are some common mistakes that you need to avoid when you are designing your website. It is better to optimise your web image at lower resolution to get faster page loading. Recommended size of standard web page is under 60kb. Be organised and consistent in the layout of your webpage. Make sure all pages look consistence, and navigation of website is the same for each page.
Make your web text easy to read, avoid dark colour background with light colour font. Black text with white background is considered best for common viewers. You should hire the services of professional web design and SEO Company as professional display of graphics on your site acts like grabbers and makes your web page stand out in the web crowd. Working with graphics is an art and time consuming task that can be achieved successfully under the supervision of professional website design firm.
