What is Good and Bad in Web Design
The success or failure of a site is primarily determined by its usability and utility as opposed to its visual web design. The website should be user-centric since the visitor is the main consumer. When built with the right principles and approaches, websites can be sophisticated in design yet simple for the visitor to perceive and process the presented information. The first point of focus in designing a website is to understand how the users will interact with the website. This will enable you to tailor the theme and the features of the site to meet the identified needs.
How Users Interact with Websites
The behavior of site visitors is not any different from that of customers in a store. They glance at every new page they come across, click on links that attract their attention, and scheme through the text on the webpage. As a matter of fact, there are certain parts of the page that they may not even look at. Many users look for something that is both interesting and clickable. Whenever a webpage does not meet their expectations, they immediately click on the back button and continue with their search process elsewhere.
Tailoring Web Design to Meet Users Expectations
There are several web design principles you need to bear in mind if you want the site you are designing to capture the attention of the user and enhance their experience. Below will will give you these principles:
Webpage Usability
When creating a website, the main task is to ensure the site structure and navigation is intuitive. This will reduce the number
of question and make it much easier for users to understand how to get from one point to another. There should be a clear structure with moderate visual clues that are easy to recognize. Links well spread out in the webpage are effective in helping site visitors find their path to their goal. A well structured webpage reduces the cognitive load making it simple for visitors to grasp the flow and idea behind the system.
In order to achieve usability, you must adhere to the standards. There are certain things that people expect to see on a site and the moment they do not see them, a state of confusion sets in. You should also think about the tasks the user is likely to carry out when they are on your site. List them down and brainstorm on how best you can avail them.
Spacing
Web designing is not all about filling every available space. As a matter of fact, spacing is very important in web design because it makes things much clearer. There are three main aspects of space that should be considered in web designing.
Line spacing – When laying out text, the space allowed between the lines affect the readability of the text. Allocating too little space makes your eye to spill over from one line of text to the next while too much space makes the eye to get distracted when you finish one line and want to go to the next. Therefore, you should find a middle ground that makes the eye comfortable.
Padding – Padding refers to the space between texts and elements. It is good web design practice to have space between text and other elements such as images.
White space – Also called negative space, white space is essential in giving proportion, balance and contrast to a page. It makes things more elegant and up market.
Typography and Website Design
Text is arguably the most common element in web designing. This is why a lot of thought is dedicated into discussing text. Among the text attributes that you need to factor in as you look at site topography include:
Font choices – The choice of font you make will give the site a particular look that can either be modern or retro. You need to think ahead on what the website is built for while making a decision on the type of font to use.
Font size – This element of topography is important in web design because text is meant to be read rather than just looked at. The font size has to be large enough to be legible, consistent, and proportioned so the headings and subheadings can stand out.
Line Length – The length of the lines is not guided by any rule but as a rule of thumb, lines of text should not be too long. This is because longer lines as opposed to smaller columns of text are harder to read.
Alignment, Clarity and Sharpness
Just as it is in print design, lining up your web elements is very important. Within a page, the elements need to be consistent and well aligned so as to create order. Try to base your web design on a particular grid.
In web designing, it is very important to keep your web design sharp and crisp. The clarity of the web design is determined largely by the pixels. In order to achieve a sharp design, you should:
Snap the shape edges to pixels – This may involve cleaning up lines, shapes and boxes in case you are creating them in Photoshop.When it comes to contrast, ensure it is high so that the borders are defined clearly. You can overemphasize the borders slightly in order to exaggerate the contrast.
Consistency in Website Design
Without consistency, web designing gives rise to a mixed up website where font choices, heading sizes, button styles, coloring, photo choices and illustration styles do not match. This will definitely affect the visual appeal of the site but more to that it will affect its usability. In order to score big in consistency, you need to theme everything. This will bring coherence between different pages and elements on the same page.
Inconsistencies lower the perception of quality and make the website unprofessional. The simplest way to achieve consistency is to have an elaborate web design plan from the beginning and stick to it to the very end. If you are designing a large site which may change in the process, you have to keep on going back so as to readjust the earlier design to match the revised one. You should invest in a good set of CSS style sheets as this will make it easy for you to achieve a consistent web design.
Vogue Web Services is a professional web design company with expertise and time tested experience in building highly customized and responsive web design.
What Can we do For You?
Welcome to Vogue Web Services. We are a full service web design company that can help you create an attractive, functional website that will not only bring more customers to your front door, but actually increase your sales by encouraging a higher conversion rate. In today’s economy, every dollar counts and many businesses have forgone the expense of having a professional website designed in favor of a more economical solution thinking “I cannot afford to have a professional website built.”
Vogue Web Services is a, full service website design company. That means that we have the in-house talent you need to create a great looking, dynamic website, responsive web design, logo design or other intellectual property regardless of what you need. We are in the business of custom designing a myriad of website designs from business websites, ecommerce websites, blogs and much more. Because we have web developers that are disciplined in several coding languages, you can rest assured that your website will not only look great, but will always perform at a level that your customers expect.
We will work with you to ensure that your website meets your expectations while fulfilling your needs. We do this by working with you step by step as your website is being designed in order to ensure that the website communicates your brand appropriately. Our web designers have a large amount of experience, having custom created hundreds of websites that have helped businesses enhance their brand and expand their businesses through a cooperative effort with our clients.
Vogue Web Services can help you whether you need a completely new website or to simply spruce up an old website or logo, give us a call today. We can accommodate any request. Our services are affordable and the results are outstanding. So, ask yourself, “can you afford NOT to have a professionally designed website?”
OUR WEBSITE DESIGN / REDESIGN GOALS
At Vogue Web Services, we are committed to providing successful online business solutions. We believe a great custom web design should:
- Increase quality traffic to your business
- Allow clients to easily access your product information
- Enhance your business brand
- Be easy to use
- Keep your audience informed
Vogue Web Services is different because each member of our team is different. Each web designer brings valuable experience to the table, representing many different backgrounds. Because of our diversity, we feel as though our clients get the very best service possible. We continually strive to provide exceptional web development services and to exceed our customers’ expectations each and every time.
So, please feel free to take a look around at our portfolio and review the services we offer. If you don’t see what you are looking for, please give us a call and let one of our friendly, knowledgeable web designers custom design a solution that will meet your needs.
Whatever your needs may be, our goal is to provide you with exceptional website design and great customer service!
10 Design Tips for Creating a Timeless Logo
Timeless Logo
Contrary to what most people believe, a logo is not an abstract piece of art or a combination of colors and fancy lines that can be created by just anyone but rather a purpose driven process that requires creative thinking. A logo is a brand identity symbol which at times is more identifiable than the brand name. This is precisely why you need to put your all in the logo design process including your artistic imaginations, creative thinking and systematic planning. This article discusses ten tips to help you in accomplishing the creation of a timeless logo. Read more
6 Key Ingredients of a Good Website Design
Whenever people talk of beautifully website design, in most cases they only refer to looks. But the truth is–a good website design has nothing to do with beauty, but everything to do with purpose. Meaning, if viewers of your website have a hard time using the site, then regardless of how beautiful the site looks, it’s definitely not a good website. Having said that, what exactly makes a website great? And what golden rules do great web designers apply to come up with excellent web designs? Read more
A responsive design
A responsive website design is simply a website whose content, structure and images appear the same way in all devices. For instance, if a user is accessing your website using a desktop, and thus getting the full view, the site should be able to retract and fit on a smaller screen in case he decides to switch to a tablet or smartphone. Read More
10 Key Features for a Great Website
Great Website
It is not that difficult to get a website up and running these days. However, there are a number of tiny details that you should pay attention to in order to achieve a great website for yourself, your business or your organization. There are a lot of factors that influence the success of a website so keeping them all in mind may be a tough option. With the ten tips provided in this post, you will be able to know the features that make great websites stand out from the rest of the competition and how you too can begin to take advantage of these features for your own website.
1. An Engaging Website Design
The very first thing that will get visitors attracted to your site is the design. It should neither be too dull nor too flashy. A good website design should be engaging and keep the visitor online for further actions. Even the color palette that you choose for your site can influence the mood of the visitor and can win their favour or lose it very quickly. Read More
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Web Hosting Features
- The more disk space you have the more files, pages, emails, and more everything your account will be able to store on our server.Amount of space
- Bandwidth can be best described as gas for a car. If your website runs out of bandwidth nobody will be able to visit it. 1GB of bandwidth is equal to over 100,000 hits. The average account with us uses less than 2 GB of bandwidth a month. Your bandwidth number used will reset back to zero on the first of every month.Bandwidth per month
- No. of e-mail accounts
- MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database. Many forums and other database driven programs require MySQL to run. We use version 5+ at this time.No. of MySql databases
- Our control panel gives you the option to make an ‘instant’ backup of your entire cPanel account. It will archive your account and provide you with a link to download the backup. You can then use this backup file to restore your account on our servers if need be. This backup gets everything associated with your account: e-mail accounts (including the passwords and messages still on the system), FTP accounts, add-on/sub/parked domains, databases, mailing lists, EVERYTHING that is setup with the account.Instant Backups
- Support tickets per mo.
- Domains Allowed
- A private SSL will act as a secure layer between your visitors and your web site. It will encrypt information such as Credit Cards which will give your visitors the confidence to make purchases on your website. Web sites that are e-commerce based are generally r equired to have an SSL to accept credit cards.Free Private SSL
- There are no contracts and you are free to cancel at any time. .No Contract!
- We guarantee that your site will be up 99.9% of the time we host it. This guarantee includes both network and server failures. If your site isn’t up 99.9% in any one month we will issue a service credit to your account for the month.99.9% Uptime Guarantee
- We guarantee that if for any reason during your 30 days with us should you decide to cancel, we will issue a full refund.30 Day Money Back Guarantee
Domain / FTP Features
- The medium and large hosting plans allow for unlimited domains to be hosted on just one single account.Addon / Parked Domains
- Anonymous ftp allows the public to download or view files in a specified directory. (no login required)Anonymous FTP
- A normal domain name looks like www.domain.com a sub domain looks like sub.domain.com For example forums.voguewebservices.com is a sub domain name of our site www.voguewebservices.comSub Domains
- FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Having multiple FTP accounts will allow you to give friends and employees their own FTP account. This will allow you to give them as little or as much access to your website as you choose.FTP Accounts
Supported Web Hosting Features
- WordPress is one of the largest CMS and blogging platforms in existence. Don’t be limited to just one blog. With Vogue Web Services you can host unlimited WordPress blogs on just one plan! WordPress Hosting
- CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. CGI is one method by which a web server can obtain data from (or send data to) databases, documents, and other programs, and present that data to viewers via the web. More simply, a CGI script is a program intended to be run on the web. A CGI program can be written in any programming language, but Perl is one of the most popular. On our servers you will get a cgi-bin directory that your scripts should normally be uploaded to, however your CGI scripts will work both inside and outside of this directory.CGI
- FastCGI is a method to improve the speed of almost any scripting language we support, including Ruby, Python, Perl, and PHP.Fast CGI
- PHP is a server side HTML embedded scripting language. All accounts come with support for 5.2.0PHP 5
- Ruby On Rails is an open-source web framework that’s built for productivity.Ruby On Rails
- We allow you to use the OpenSSH Protocol (using Jailed Shell) on all of our Shared servers to make it easier to develop and debug your files with such text editors as vim and nano.SSH
- Perl is one of the most common CGI scripting languages used today. We have version 5.8.7 currently installed on our servers.Perl
- Python is a programming/scripting language that can be used on many different computers and operating systems.Python
- Server Side includes, refers to Perl based HTML commands that direct a server to generate on-the-fly contact for web pages.SSI
- Crontab is a process in Unix systems that uses a Daemon called cron to execute commands for the user at a certain time.Cron
- We support all version of Microsoft FrontPage. Frontpage is a website creation tool that can be used to both create and upload your site when FP extensions are installed.FrontPage
- Curl is a command line tool for transferring files with url syntax.Curl
- GD 2 is an ANSI library dynamic creation of images. GD 2 creates PNG and JPEG images, among other formats. We stay up to date with the latest GD version.GD 2
- ImageMagick is a robust collection of tools and libraries to read, write, and manipulate an image in many formats. We stay up to date on the latest version.Image Magick
- We support Windows Media, Quicktime, and Real Media player allowing you to run streaming audio and video.Streaming Audio/Video
- Need a special module for your program to work? We will review requests for custom modules within 24 hours.Free Module Installation
E-mail Hosting
- This is the number of POP accounts you get. POP accounts are used to send and receive emails through programs such as Outlook Express or Eudora.POP3 Accounts
- We include squirrel, horde, and round cube with all our hosting packages . Web mail allows you to send and receive emails online by going to yoursite.com/webmailWeb Mail
- Mail box aliases will allow you to setup multiple email addresses to go to a single mail box.E-mail Alias
- You can setup your email addresses so when they receive mail they will automatically reply back with your message.Auto Responders
- Have a group of people you regularly mail? Add them to a mailing list so you can email them faster and easier.Mailing Lists
- A catch all email address will receive all emails delivered to non existent email addresses. If you would like this feature enabled, please e-mail support.Catch Alls
- If you enable Spam Assasin it will block most spam from reaching your e-mail.Spam Assassin
- You can setup a mail forwarder. Doing this will forward all your mail to any email address you wish.Mail Forwarding
- We support Internet Message Access Protocol. “IMAP permits a “client” email program to access remote message stores as if they were local.”IMAP Support
- We allow you to use our servers to send outgoing mail.SMTP
Control Panel Features
- cPanel will be your hosting control panel. cPanel allows you to monitor the amount of bandwidth used, space used, create e-mail addresses, sub domains, MySql databases, and much more instantly!Latest cPanel
- Soholaunch Pro Edition is website creation software made for people of all experience levels.Soholaunch
- Hotlinking is when another site is linking to your images or files. Hotlink protection will stop them from stealing your bandwidth.Hotlink Protection
- IP deny manager allows you to block whoever you want from being able to visit your site.IP Deny Manager
- Allows you to make a custom error page for anyone who visits a not existant page of your site.Custom Error Pages
- The below blogs (journals) can be installed with a click of the mouse.. b2, b2evolution, Nucleus, pMachine Free, WordPress Instant Blogs
- Instant Portals
- Instant PHPnuke
- Instant Forums
- Instant Guestbook
- Instant Counter
- Instant FormMail
- Lets you redirect pages of your site to any url you want.Redirect URL
- You can upload your files directly from our control panel via the File Manager.Web Based File Manager
- Password protect a directory and nobody can view its contents without a password.PW Protected Directories
- All accounts come with phpMyAdmin preinstalled. PhpMyAdmin allows for easy management of your databases.phpMyAdmin
Website / Ftp Statistics
- 1) No more waiting 24 hours for your stats to update. You can update them real time at the click of a button! 2) Get the most accurate Unique Visitors and Click Paths information in the industry. 3) See where your traffic is coming from – search engines, banner ads, referrals, email campaigns and more 4) Analyze downloads, bandwidth usage, errors, and much more that is only possible with software-based web analytics.AWStats (Real Time Updates)
- Webalizer displays in depth traffic statistics for your site. Webalizer
- You will have access to download your sites raw logs.Raw Log Manager
- The referrer log will tell you what sites your traffic is coming from.Referrer Logs
- The error log will tell you if anyone is getting errors and where.Error Logs
E-Commerce Features
- SSL encrypts confidential data such as credit card numbers and passwords. Either a shared SSL or a private SSL is required when taking credit cards off your site. Private SSL certificates require a dedicated IP address at $2/month. We can install a private SSL certificate you may already have for a $10 install fee. You can purchase a private SSL CRT from us for $150 per year including installation.Private SSL Allowed
- Dedicated IP
- Shared SSL
- osCommerce is yet another of the shopping carts we provide that can be installed with a click of the mouse. “osCommerce allows store owners to setup, run, and maintain their online store fronts with minimum effort and with absolutely no costs or license fees involved” You can read more at their homepage located at www.oscommerce.com.osCommerce
- Zen Cart is another of the shopping carts we provide that can be installed with a click of the mouse. “Zen Cart will deliver the ultimate online shopping experience to your customers. Navigating through your merchandise offerings is a breeze with Zen Cart, the program provides several “Spotlight” lists in addition to the traditional category to product links.ZenCart
- Cube cart is another shopping cart that is free to use and can be installed instantly using our control panel.Cube Cart
Petite
Free
per month
- 1 GB
- 1 GB
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- 1
- 1
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- 2
Small
$5
per month
- 2 GB
- 20 GB
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- 3
- 2
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
Medium
$7
per month
- 10 GB
- 200 GB
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- 5
- 10
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- $2.00/Monthly
Large
$9.99
per month
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- Unlimited
- $2.00/Monthly
Why You Should Use Our Web Hosting
So why should you choose our hosting over other companies? To be honest, there are a number of reasons as to why we are the best at what we do. First, there is the price because we offer quality hosting at rock bottom prices. With us, you get so much with each package that we cannot be beaten when it comes to value for money.
Next, our web hosting is ultra-reliable making sure that your website is up and running as we provide you with 99.9% uptime, so you can rest assured that your site is not only there to be seen, but working perfectly every minute of the day. However, should you encounter any issues, then support is available 24/7 and 365 days a year with your query being handled by trained technicians that can deal with any issue no matter how complex you may believe it to be.
Finally, if you are not happy, then we do also provide a special 30 day money back guarantee although we are confident that you will love having your website hosted with us that you will not need to use this particular offer.