ribbon Enter Now

Want a brand new website for your charity worth over £5,000?

Positive Web Design is offering one lucky charity the incredible opportunity to win just that!

Call Free for an instant quote
  • /wp-content/themes/default/images/headings/bespoke-sites.png
  • /wp-content/themes/default/images/headings/brochure-sites.png
  • /wp-content/themes/default/images/headings/ecommerce-sites.png
  • /wp-content/themes/default/images/headings/template-sites.png
GET A FREE QUOTE

    • Archive for March, 2012

    « Older Entries

    Balancing Your Web Design Images

    Friday, March 30th, 2012

    Incorporating images in your website is one of the essential part of web design. Images are important because of the fact that it allows you to create a better content for your user.

    What is Better Content?

    As they say “a picture paints a thousand words”, with images you can better explain what you want to convey to your readers or website visitors. Images would augment the text in your content and further give the site visitor an avenue to understand what you are trying to impart through your text content.

    What is Image Balance in Web Design

    One thing that you have to understand in developing a website using images is the fact that images should be used properly in your web design. The use of images whether generously or sparingly would depend on what you want to achieve in your overall website design. Sometimes, there are cases when the web designer would be creating a web design that is not in conformance with the overall goal of the website. For instance, images may have been used generously in a niche whose target audience would favor speed over design. Or there might be some instances when the web developer might not balance the presence of images in the website. Image balance is achieved when the images are placed in either a symmetrical or asymmetrical arrangement.

    What is Symmetrical Image Balance?

    Symmetrical image balance pertains to the incorporation of images that are the same in size and structure and are placed on either side of the web page screen. The sides of the web page screen are determined by dividing the web page screen at the middle with an imaginary demarcation line. The images that placed on top and bottom of the demarcation line at the center of the web page screen is called a vertical symmetry. While images placed side by side, one at the left and another to the right is called a horizontal symmetry.

    What is Asymmetrical Image Balance?

    Asymmetrical image balance on the other hand pertains to the abstract incorporation of the images, this means that there is an informal arrangement with the images, it does not follow sets of lines where images should be placed, here creativity is in play , however getting too creative might be detrimental to your website rather that beneficial.

    Conclusion

    Achieving image balance is one of the most essential requirement of website design, whatever type of balance you have chosen for your web design it is imperative to take such symmetrical and asymmetrical balance into consideration, anything less than that may end up to be truly creative or truly disastrous.

     

    Tags:, ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    What is a Bad Web Design?

    Thursday, March 29th, 2012

    Web Designers may unknowingly design a website that is not according to standards or which may not be presentable in the eyes of its target audience. Sometimes web designers are taken over by their desire to be overly creative that they tend to forget that there are certain, obvious, unwritten standards that should be incorporated in the design. This does not belie the fact that creativity should also be considered when designing a website.

    What is a Bad Web Design?

    Before we talk about what a bad web design is or the different features of a bad web design it is important that we would first know the reason why it is important to know what bad web design is. To simply put it, no web designer will ever understand the concept of what a good web design is if he or she does not understand what makes a web design bad. There are a lot of factors that should be considered when in order to determine a bad web design and the following are the most important ones:

    1. Dull or Boring Background – a web design is said to be bad when the background is dull, untexturised and distracting to the overall content of the website. The latter characteristic pertains to incorporating images that are tiled and goes in the way of determining whether such image is a content or a background.

    2. Unreadable Text – a website’s purpose is to convey or impart information to its users or visitors, if the text are too small to read or are causing strains in the eyes of the reader then it is said to be a bad web design.

    3. Little blue links – the default link structure for websites are in blue and are underlined. This tends to destroy the overall design especially if you customise such designs. Using the default links would not matter if it compliment the design however if it does not then it could be a sign of bad website design feature.

    4. Unnecessary Graphics – not all images should be incorporated in the website, it would be a bad website design if you would incorporate too many meaningless images, not to mention the fact that graphics, especially those that have large file sizes, would slow down the loading time of your website. Thus, when incorporating graphics you should choose those that convey meaning as well as those that would not interfere to your websites’ loading time.

    Conclusion

    In order to know what is Good we have to acknowledge the presence of the characteristics of a bad website design, therefore knowing the features of a bad web design is not a futile exercise as this would open up a desire to balance between creativity and good website design.

     

    Tags:, , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Commonly Missed Web Design Tips

    Wednesday, March 28th, 2012

    The process of web design entails a lot of different strategies that sometimes web designers tend to overuse or misuse. To make the previous statements clear, there are time when we think that inclusion of different “features” in our web design would add to the aesthetic of the entire website, however what we think as an upside to the aesthetic of the website may become the downside in the website in terms of its functionality.

    What Should Be Done?

    In order to avoid having too much of aesthetics or functionality features it  is a must that balance between the two must be achieved. In order to accomplish this the following should be taken in to consideration:

    In terms of aesthetics:

    1. Avoid Using Too Much Animation – flash animation indeed adds to your websites aesthetic value, it delivers that surprising factor that will captivate your site visitors, however, if this is used excessively on a website however, loading time will be sacrificed and that surprising factor may turn into a click away from your website.

    2. Design should be easy to read – many websites are developed focusing on the design of the site but not on making the website easily readable for visitors, when designing the website it would also be best if the structure would allow visitors to easily read through your site content.

    3. Minimise use of Graphics – incorporating images or graphics in your site is not prohibited however, inclusion of too many images in your website may slow down you site page loading so it is advisable that you provide graphics that are necessary to your design.

    In Terms of Functionality:

    1. Not Too much on the JavaScript – Javascript helps web designers to incorporate functionality features in their website however too much JavaScript sacrifices loading times and it also increases the loading time of a website since the necessary scripts and functionalities must be downloaded before it could function in the website.

    2. Avoid placing CAPTCHA’s When Possible – CAPTCHA’s are used to tell whether a human or a computer is accessing your website, if there is no need for CAPTCHA’s then it would be better to avoid installing them since it makes it difficult for your visitors to access your website. However, if you wish or intend to place the CAPTCHA for security reasons or statistical reasons then using it is the most appropriate way to go.

    3. Provide a Sitemap – if your site is growing and pages are constantly added to your site, it would help your visitors to easily navigate your website, providing a sitemap would accomplish this goal thus it is imperative for your site to have one.

    Conclusion

    Achieving balance between aesthetics and functionality in website design should be the quest of every website designer, and the best foot forward is to have a mindset that the website is being developed for the user and not for the website designer.

     

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Basic Photoshop Skills For Web Design

    Tuesday, March 27th, 2012

    Apart from coding the web design, web designers may also, most of the time, design the template or blueprint of the website using an image editing software. For this purpose, Photoshop is the most popular choice, but because of the fact that web designers must memorise or know the different scripting language for web design there may be instances where a web designer may forget the basic Photoshop skills needed for the web design process. This is why it is important for a web designer to at least know the basics of Photoshop.

    Why Photoshop?

    Adobe Photoshop is a popular choice among web designers because of the fact that it provides a diverse and wide array of tools that will allow website designers to recreate every image depending on their requirement for the design of the website.

    What are the Basic Photoshop Skills?

    The different Photoshop skills that every web designer must know are the following:

    1. How to Resize an Image or a Layer –there are a lot of instances where the image used may not have the right size that would conform to your website design. This is the reason why it is very important that an image editing application should provide the avenue that will allow users to resize images. In Photoshop this could be done by transforming the image, in order to do this the user should highlight the layer to be resized and press Ctrl+T or Command+T in order to activate the resizing box which the user can use to increase or decrease the size of the image.

    2. Rotating the Image – there will be some instances where you will need to rotate the image in order to fit the design, this can be done by using the transform tool which was also used in resizing the layer or image. Activate the transformation box by highlighting the image or layer and pressing CTRL+T or Command+T for Mac. After which user must place the cursor just above the edge of the transform box until the curser change into a curved arrow which now allows you to rotate or reposition the image.

    3. Proper Storage of Files – there are some instances where web designers tend to forget to save their file in Photoshop file format (psd) instead they save the image in JPEG or PNG, thus the user loses the capability to conduct further editing in the image if it is save in a file format other than the Photoshop file format (psd).

    Conclusion:

    The above mentioned Photoshop tips are easy to execute and is a common knowledge in the field of graphic design, but for website design these should be refreshed in the memory of the web designer in order to efficiently create a website that will conform both to graphic design and web design standards.

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Audio for Your Website

    Monday, March 26th, 2012

    Adding audio to your website may increase your website’s aesthetic value and even its functionality value. For website designers incorporating audio in your website starts out as a challenging endeavour because of the fact that the Hypertext Markup Language do not provide an element for adding an audio file into the website. Instead you will have to require the installation of third party applications like Microsoft’s Silverlight, Flash or Quicktime among other audio players. In terms of the criteria on usability, installing any of these third party applications in order to run or play the audio in your website might already be too tedious for your site visitor thus ending up with the site visitor not installing the plugins or application and would leave your website entirely.

    The HTML 5 Solution

    It is because of the fact that third party applications must be installed in order to play the audio and the incompatibility on the file types that specific applications are recognising, there is a need for HTML to create a new element that will accommodate a native audio file for every website, this is why HTML 5 introduces the <audio> element. The <audio> element allows web designers to incorporate audio in their website design without the requirement of installing any third party application audio player. On top of having to independently incorporate audio in the website, the audio element could also be manipulated and redesigned using Javascript and Cascading Style Sheets respectively.

    What Can <audio> Do?

    The <audio> element in HTML 5 is not just a simple element that can incorporate audio into the website, it comes with several attributes which allows the website designers to incorporate additional functionalities in the audio player, among these attributes and elements are:

    1. <source> – this element when incorporated with the <audio> element will allow the web designer to specify several audio file types that the website will be able to recognise. It is to be understood that HTML 5 can recognise several audio file types only if the <audio> element would specify such audio file types.

    2. Loop – this attribute will specify that the audio file will play continuously within a loop once the website is loaded. Caution in using this attribute is required as it prevents user control on the execution of the audio remember some might like the audio some may not.

    3. Autoplay – this attribute allows the audio file to be played when the website is already loaded. Again caution is required in using this because of the fact that user control may be prevented.

    Conclusion

    The introduction of the new elements in HTML 5 indeed would solve age old problem in web design, it is thus imperative to know everything about the elements in HTML 5 in order to efficiently use such elements.

    Tags:, , , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    What is New With HTML 5?

    Sunday, March 25th, 2012

    In the world of web design a lot of web designers out there are have been wondering on what features can the new HTML version offer that which was not already incorporated in the previous version? It is known that HTML have been adding or removing elements to their elements list and call it a new version, but nothing has been done to drastically change the structure of the Hypertext Markup Language in general, until HTML 5 was conceptualised. HTML version 5 promises a lot of changes with regards to how a website is designed and how it is structured.

    So What’s New For Web Design?

    For web designers out there one thing that would really be of help are the new structural elements which functions to create the website structure, previously, HTML only provide elements that may or may not be used for structuring the website however with HTML 5 there are specific structural elements with specific functions. The Following are the different structure elements introduced by HTML 5:

    1. <article> – this element denotes that the area is reserved and a stand alone area for texts such as comments, forum texts and or blog posts.

    2. <nav> – in previous HTML elements the navigation area was not highlighted, with HTML 5 however the navigation are is indicated by the <nav> element, this area will include or contains links within or going out of the website.

    3. <footer> – again, in previous HTML versions the footer area or section of the web page does not have an explicit element associated with it, with HTML 5 however, the case is different since HTML 5 have provided an element specifically indicating the area as the footer section.

    4. <section> – to indicate a general content for the website the <section> element was provided in HTML 5, such content could either be an application, image, animation, text among others.

    5. <header> – this element indicates that the content are for branding information or the main information about the website, it could be in the form of a text or an image.

    Conclusion

    With HTML 5, website design was given an avenue to indicate specifically the different areas within the website which makes it easier for website designers to discern the areas to be edited whenever there are some updates or any debugging works that should be done within the scope of the website.

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    How to Increase Loading Time for A WordPress Website

    Saturday, March 24th, 2012

    WordPress has become the content management system of choice by many SEO companies, website designers and online entrepreneurs. This may be attributed to the following facts:

    1. WordPress is free – some content management system charge users certain amounts in order for the user to utilise the application or the CMS. However, for WordPress I has been given to the public for free.

    2. WordPress is User Friendly – with the blogging community in mind where not all are well versed with WordPress but are tech-savvy WordPress has made their application, easy to navigate, navigation here would refer to the interface of WordPress on the side or point of view of the person managing the Content Management System. WordPress is user-friendly because it has several tutorial via the internet and the interface is made convenient to navigate.

    These two reasons are enough to say that WordPress is also the recommended content management system, this is why it is also imperative to know that since the content management system is actively working on your server your website might cause the slowing down of your websites’ loading time, especially if your content is focused more on videos, audio and animation. There are however several strategies that will help increase your WordPress based website and these are:

    a. Making your Plugins and Themes Updated – time and time again, WordPress would release updates for the system where these updates are focused on the security and efficiency of the Content management system platform, should an update be available it is imperative that you as the website designer must update your website’s wordpress version, plugin or theme to the current version.

    b. Unused plugins should be deactivated or removed – there might be some instances where you have installed a plugin and you find no use for it however you fail to remove such plugins in the repository of WordPress, this will cause the slowing down of the system, this is why it is important to remove or delete plugins or wordpress themes in order to free up the space giving room to a faster loading time for your website.

    c. Use Plugins to speed up WordPress – there as several WordPress plugins whose sole purpose is to deliver the website functionality of every plugin or templates, in order to get rid of the slow loading time there are some plugins which may help speed up the wordpress website, one of the best example is the WP Super Cache plugin.

    Conclusion

    Loading time for a website has become a ranking factor worldwide thus if you decide to create a web design using WordPress you have to take into consideration the different ways for you to speed up the loading time of the websites.

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work, Wordpress |

    Steps to Take When Designing your Site Navigation

    Friday, March 23rd, 2012

    Time and time again we always reiterate the fact that web design is not only the development of the aesthetics of a website but also its functionality. To gauge whether or not your website’s functionality is at its optimum you have to test it and determine if you have a good user experience. A good user experience is assured if your website is user friendly, that is, you do not have to provide a manual in order for your website to be navigated by your website visitor.

    One of the biggest challenges in website design is to assure that your website navigation would be user friendly and that it would help your users to actually navigate through your websites’ web pages.

    Steps in Designing Site Navigation

    1. Create a Blueprint – planning your web design and your site navigation is very important because it will allow you to create a draft which you can revise prior to actual design implementation. This will prevent any lost links or any missed links that might have been forgotten to be incorporated in your website navigation.

    2. Plan out a logical navigation menu – when designing your website navigation make sure that the navigation is going to be logically arranged allowing your users to find the data or information that your visitors are looking for.

    3. Main Links Should be Visible – your main links are your links to your main pages, make sure that when you are designing your navigation you have to prioritise the main links as they should be prominent in order for your website visitors to easily locate such web pages.

    4. Create a site map – site maps are not only for search engine optimisation purposes it is also for helping your site visitors in order to locate deeply structured or deeply located web pages. This way users will have an avenue or alternative in navigating through your website.

    5. Design your links – your links should not only be a simple text link but it should also be designed in such a manner that your links when hovered upon by the mouse cursor will be highlighted. Highlighting the links will help your visitors in knowing that they are activating or clicking the right link.

    Conclusion

    User friendliness should be the web designers’ paramount concern in web design because of the fact that websites are created for information dissemination and not for showing off one’s website design capabilities. Making you website to have a clean and clear navigation will assure the user friendliness of your website.

     

    Tags:, , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Speeding Up Your Website Loading Time

    Thursday, March 22nd, 2012

    If you are thinking that web design only deals on how the website is presented to the online public, then you are mistaken. Web design mostly deals with both the aesthetic as well as the functionality feature of a website. Sometimes, website design will also be dwelling on the realm of search engine optimisation, this is why the job of a web designer is so diverse that he or she must be able to know bits and pieces of areas related to design, image editing and even SEO.

    One of the most important additional feature in every website is the improvement of user experience and a great way to start giving a good user experience is by speeding up the loading time of your website.

    Why Do I Need to Increase the Speed of Loading Time?

    Increasing the speed for a websites’ loading time is important because of the fact that it allows the users to view the information quickly and will be able to navigate the site as quick as possible. Nobody would like to wait a minute or more for a website to load, since it is very easy for a user to click out of your website then chances are they would do so if your site does not load immediately. Thus, as a consequence your website will lose valuable traffic and revenue.

    How Do I Speed Up Website Loading Time?

    There are several ways on how you can cut down your websites’ loading time, the following are the most common and the easiest website design processes that will help reduce loading time for your web page:

    1. Create Minimalist Design – as the adage says “less is more” this means that you have to conduct a minimalist design for your website. This means that you do not need to incorporate too many fancy design concepts, just keep it simple and your website will load faster than those sites laden with heavy designs like animations among others.

    2. Use compressed images – if you require to include images in your website design then use image file compressions rather than images that are not compressed. The different file compressions that would work best in helping your site to load faster are JPEG and PNG.

    3. Minimize the Use of Animations – although animations can make your site “cool” it will also slow down your site’s loading time. So, if you want speed over design then do not include too many animations in your website one or two animations will do.

    4. Do not Use Table Tags – table elements when loaded via web browsers will slow down the loading time instead utilise the <div> element as replacement for the table element.

    Conclusion

    There are more website design concepts that may help increase the websites’ loading time, using the four tips in order to reduce the loading time for a website is a great start. Just remember that more than the designs, animations and audios, users would tend to focus more on your sites’ content and what your website has to offer in terms of information.

     

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work |

    Getting to Know Content Management Systems

    Wednesday, March 21st, 2012

    Web design does not only cater to the overall aesthetics of a website, it does not only dwell in the realm of photography, image editing and colour combination. The other side of web design focuses on the functionality of the website among the different functionalities would be the management of the site’s content. Site content management is important because of the fact that content of websites are supposed to be dynamic, gone are the days when a website is only viewed as an only brochure. Today the value of a website could be determined by the content that it has.

    What is A Content Management System?

    With the importance of Content Management Systems properly explained, the question that you might be asking would be what is a content management system? There are several meanings of a content management system depending on its purpose, however the general definition of a CMS is that it is an application that enables the web designer to organise the different publications that will be incorporated in the website. CMS is composed of three different parts, the Collection System, Administration System and the Management System.

    Collection, Administration, Management Systems in Perspective.

    To understand what the general components of a Content management system are it is important to put each component in perspective.

    1. Collection – the part of a content management system where all the pre-publication processes happens. Pre-publication processes mean those that happen before the content is actually published. It is in this phase where the contents are written, formatted and designed.

    2. Administration – as the name would imply it sole function is to implement administrative function in the entire Content management system. It is responsible for the implementation of different web design structures and parameters.

    3. Management – management on the other hand is responsible in organising the content for long term storage. It is also is responsible of maintaining the different collection of publications or content as well as its corresponding details, the author, time and date of publication among others.

    Examples of Content Management Systems

    There are a lot of content management system applications made available for the public to use the most popular of these CMS’ are:

    a. WordPress – a blog platform which is considered to be a popular choice among all web designers and SEO companies alike because of the fact that it has the ability to utilise plugins and templates which are free in general and it is the most SEO friendly CMS available.

    b. Joomla – for enterprise class e-commerce websites Joomla is the most popular choice because it offers powerful content management systems add-ons allowing your site to handle a large repository of content information such as products, its prices and descriptions.

    Conclusion

    With the fact that websites are now supposed to be dynamic, web designers have turned to using Joomla, WordPress or any other content management system. Attaining the goal of turning the website into something dynamic where content abounds is an important factor if you would like to turn your target website into something which the users as well as the webmasters can utilise with ease.

     

    Tags:, , , ,
    Posted in Web Design Work, Wordpress |

    « Older Entries