Nowadays, almost every company has an online presence. This means that these companies are investing money for them to have their very own website. Due to this fact, starting a website design service would be a great idea, especially if you have a background HTML and graphic design. This could even turn out to be a very profitable business for you. But how exactly can you start a website design service? Here are a few tips that can you get started.
Rather than looking for your first client, the first thing that you have to do is to create your website – a portfolio website. The design must be great so that the visitors will be impressed. The website must be flawless too. With this website, show your potential clients what you are capable of. Continue reading »
How good is the design of your website? Is it worth a patent? Google thinks so, and the U.S. just gave them one. Check out this post I just read on RWW.
Looking for some freelance work as a web designer? Xemion has a site just for you filled with web design jobs.
Xemion has been around for about five years, so you can expect a ton of new listings. It could also be especially busy right now because employers are able to submit ads right now for the big ZERO. That would be a $75 fee at Craigslist. There is a big difference between Craigslist and Xemion though. Xemion also filters out the type of job by industry type, and not just location. Continue reading »
In a hurry, and looking to crank out a site in a flash. Elegant Templates might be good source for you. They offer logo templates, web design templates, flash templates, and even some free templates.
Templates can be great, especially in the testing process. It’s a nice way to see your site idea in different formats. Elegant Templates offers templates for a variety of web related items like logos, and flash intros. They have a huge listings of categories for each type of template you need so you should be able to find something that fits your theme.
Using a template, especially a free template, can have a downside though. You will find other sites using the design. I’m not a big fan of that, and if you are like me, don’t worry. Elegant Templates offers templates in exclusive format, meaning you can buy the template, and they have to stop selling it. The price will jump dramatically for this service, but it’s a fair price considering the work involved. Prices for shared web design templates averaged around $60. Comparing to other template sites, a pretty standard to low price.
Anybody using an Elegant Template? Let us know how it went.
I was asked to do my Basic Usability and Design Analysis on Velnet Web Design yesterday before their site is totally completed, and they said that it would be OK if I shared a few of my findings.
Right off the bat, I saw something that needed fixing. There is way too much text. What about my site, that’s all it is you say? Well mine is a blog, and you are here to read. Velnet Designs is there to sell, and those looking to buy want quick facts, and an easy method to do so. Here is a possible wake up call to some of you reading this. I am writing a post about their site, did an usability analsyis of their site, and STILL did not read all of the content on the home page. It’s just too much.
So as a visitor how do you navigate all that text. There is bound to be lots of links within it. Usually, when visiting a website, we are used to a link changing color in some way after visiting it. Well in this case clicking the links doesn’t help the visitor.It stays the same color, and when returning to my starting point their are no visual clues of where I have been. In my book this should be the first thing to fix on the site. Make it so the visitor can navigate that text.
If you look at their free ecommerce web design quote form you will see an easy enough form to fill out. What’s slowing down visitors from filling it out though? Dumb stuff. Getting some basic info is important, but knowing the visitors title, or what color scheme they want is really unnecessary. When building a form, get the minimum first. You can fill in the blanks as the relationship continues.
There was also one form missing. The search form! It’s always a good idea to have a search form on your site to help visitors out when your sites navigation fails them.
Looking at the UK Web Design page, the reigns need to be yanked on the use of bold or strong. Their lists have the same emphasis as the titles of the lists. Where’s the emphasis there?
The beauty is the owner has taken the time to get an analysis before they completed their re-design. They can review all my comments, pick and choose what they want to improve on, and finalize with a clean site. Having an extra set of eyes always helps, and too often webmasters are doing it solo.
Did you know that the internet is now the largest marketing platform in the world? Who would have guessed that ten years ago? Ten years ago, I had whopping one or two sites in my portfolio, and most people had not even heard of DSL. Upon the many requests I get for site reviews now, the reality of global internet really kicks in. I must unfortunately turn down doing usability tests, or site review simply because I can not read their site. Just in the past week, I have written three reviews on UK sites, and this post is about a company that does web design in Staffordshire.
Rapid Web is a web design company located in Stafford England. Their services include: web design, SEO, ecommerce, email marketing, presentations, branding, and IT work. They have an extensive portfolio, matching their extensive team of designers and developers. There specialty appears to be in ecommerce, and have recently done a case study on the t-shirt site, 8 Ball. The t-shirt site, yet another UK site offers more proof that the internet is overwhelmingly global. Most of their inventory caters to a U.S. audience, and I even found a t-shirt with an old favorite of mine, the A-Team, classic!
One great advantage of hiring a web design company that has a team, instead of just one guy like me, is that they can bring many levels of expertise. Mine is site usability, so my site designs tend to reflect that. The only disadvantage, is cost. It really depends on what your site is for. I believe the 8Ball t-shirt site is exact match for Rapid Web. Here is a site that needs highly effect SEO, ecommerce, and branding. All of these services are offered by Rapid Web.
Now I just have to get on these guys, and let them know their text font is kind of small for my old eyes. Maybe they need a usability expert!
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