Web Design

We've all visited sites that are completely cluttered and offer more distractions than assistance to the end-user. Designing a better user experience increases conversion, retention, and can significantly impact your brand. Finding equilibrium between design and usability can be tricky - sit in the middle of a web design meeting between designers and user experience managers and you will certainly here compelling cases for strong design vs. strong usability.

Here a few simple tips to help you de-clutter a website and build a more positive user experience:

As a Web designer, I like to approach the design of any site as efficiently as possible. Long before I even became interested in Web design, I stumbled upon the art of information architecture, which is basically a complex map of information. As a primarily visual learner, I took information architecture to the next level by expressing information visually as opposed to textually. My fascination with mapping led me to what I consider my primary source of inspiration: maps!

A Web Application Engine is an extension to web servers that process/interpret web application code. Some app engines are built into various web servers others must be installed.

App Engine Tip

• Carefully select your application platform. While all engines can accomplish nearly identical functionality some will be a better fit for where you are and where your web future will be.

Popular Web App Engines

• CGI Scripts (Perl,C/C++,PHP)

An Internal Search Engine allows searching within a site for pages containing certain keywords. Internal SEs are particularly useful on large sites as an alternative to hierarchical menus for site navigation. Many scripts/programs are available to add searching capability to your site.

Internal Search Engine Tips

• It has been estimated that over half of web users are search dominated versus hierarchy links dominate. As your site becomes larger it is important to offer both options.

Quality describes the overall value (both perceived and real) of your web site from your audience's perspective. Quality drives the value of your site. While many people focus on aesthetics in judging quality, total quality relates to all aspects of your site.

Web Site Quality Gauge

• Basic:
  Packaged template design, light promotion
• Competitive:
  Custom theme design, strategic planning, functional features, moderate promotion
• World-Class
  

As web developers we do a lot of browser testing. It would be nice if everyone used the same browser (Firefox 3, for example) but they don’t. Believe it or not, there are still people out there who are using Firefox 2, which is why we need a way to install and run this now outdated web browser. Unfortunately, Firefox does not make this easy.

Web Design is the process of creating the overall look and feel of a website. While functionality of the site must be considered during the web design process, generally this portion pertains only to how the site will be rendered on the screen using colors, fonts, images, and graphics.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is the styling language developed by the W3C for use in conjunction with a markup language such as HTML or XHTML. Its power is in the fact that the information can be stored in various scopes, and the cumulative effect of all styling rules is computed before rendering the final design in the browser. When used with sufficiently semantic markup, it is a very flexible way to completely style a website, separating the presentational details from the content itself.

TOP 5 CLIENT REQUESTS

1. My Unqualified Friends have different Ideas...
   - Judge the idea on its merits, reasonably explain why it may not work, due to your research, experience, etc.
2. Purple is my favorite color, Why don't we use that?
   - Backup with documentation, color board, creative specs, etc
3. We need more stuff about the FOLD!!
   - A significant amount of research is available to show that users understand they can scroll for more content
4. There's so much EMPTY SPACE, can't you fill it?
   

So there I was, sitting in room 18ABCD at SXSW 2008 watching a presentation designed more for the Food and Hospitality industry than for an Interactive Conference, thinking, "why the hell did I spend good money to listen to this shit?"when I realized God IS in the details. While the presentation started at a painstakingly slow pace, the speaker began making his points and his objectives where uncovered.

God is in the details. Good design begins with inspiration. Less is more.