Janvier Design Services

I, like many other web designers out there, have been caught up in “killer design” techniques. Things like CSS tabbed navigation that saves page space and give the “wow effect” to the site.  While this is a good idea, there’s more to designing a webpage than just how it looks. The truth is, most visitors don’t care that you make your site look like a mideaval piece of art  as long as you provide them with the information they are looking for.In other words, when you design pages, keep in mind they areto be read  by human beings, so avoid anything that makes the visitor  fetch for the information they are looking for. We are becoming more and more geared at accessing information really fast. Try to follow  some of the tips below.

1. Keep it simple.
   Ever wondered why Google doesn’t make their site so complicated and yet stays as the top online portal for the past few years? Because they keep it simple. Visitors are not looking for “CSS wizards”. As a matter of fact, just a small portion of them actually know what  CSS is, let alone knowing what it does. Visitors want information really easily. So, the easier to navigate the site you design, the better the user experience will be.
2. Graphics moderation is key.
   Clogging your pages with so many graphics means one thing: search engines won’t like you. Why?
   • First, because Search engines don’t understand the data contained in the graphics than the graphic’s title and hopefully its URL.
   • Graphics don’t make your site any faster. Actually, they slow it down and this can meaning nothing but bad news, because your site load time is one the key parameters search engines consider while indexing pages  from your site.
   • Graphics are relatively larger files than average text or html files. So, for an account with limited  bandwidth thi can be a source of trouble.
3. Be at their place. Will you?
   When you design a page or a bunch of them, very likely it’s for someone else. Some audience out there. If you were part of that audience, how would you like them? Ask yourself that question, to avoid being part of the 85%  webmasters who will see their websites go down in less than a year because they failed  to consider this trivial but rather  crucial info.  I see web designers who spend so much time on “flashy” techniques and forget what really matters;  User Experience!!
4. Color combination.
   It may not be your choice, but from different surveys and polls data, most web surfers preffer clear backgrounds to dark ones. In other words, a white background and a black font is better than a black baground with a yellow font. Google chooses that combination. So does  Yahoo! and many others including wikipedia, facebook,… Do you think it’s a coincidence? Think again.
5. Be unique
   Yes…Uniqueness is quality. Even if you use a highly popular theme or template like the wordpress omni theme, make sure you can get a professional designer to customize it for you to give it a unique look. This is because you simply don’t want to have a site looking like your competitor’s  who might buy the same template!

With these few  design tips, I hope you can a new insight in making your pages more appealing and more attractive. The main point to focus on is the visitor, because in the end their behaviour  will read the final verdict for the content and organization for your site.

Popularity: 40% [?]

Many times I get surprised when someone asks me a question about owning a website, creating one or both. To most it seems like a complicated task or a chalenging investment. It probably was ten years ago when skilled web designers weren’t as numerous. Today it can take just a few minutes to set a professional website or blog up. Literally!

Take the example of janvierdesigns.com … I registered this domain with bluehost.com within a minute or two for $10/year. Using easyscripts in cpanel I set up a wordpress blog in the root directory of janvierdesigns.com  within less than five minutes. In total, it took me close to 6 minutes to set up janvierdesigns.com .  When I share this story, some people find it hard to take, and that is why I am sharing in this post how to do that and why it is the best way to approach website design.

1. You will start with a domain name. That is the somethingyouwant.com  part of the site. It adentifies your website among the billions of others on the Internet. Usually a domain name is under $10 a year. It can be registered with a different registrant than your hosting company. In my case I do both through  bluehost.
2. Once you have your domain registered, simply assign it to some hosting package. In most cases hosting packages come with “addon domains” option. This allows you to add extra domains to your main hosting account at no extra cost. For example, with bluehost you sign up for the main domain, let’s say mysiteof choice.com This costs  $6.95/month. Now, you would need to register another domain name and add it as an addon domain on the main account (mysiteofchoice.com) via the control panel.
3. In the addon directory, install wordpress. The easiest way to do this (which is what I use) is to use easyscripts. It takes a few seconds when you use a package installation software such as easyscripts or fantastico. These package installation softwares, with a simple click you create the necessary database, database username and assign necessary privileges as well as copying all basic files to show your website. At least in the default format. At this stage the website is already set up.
4. Customize your site/blog.
   This is the stage where you can install other templates/themes add plugins and many more cool features that don’t come with “traditional page after page” website creation.

There you have it. Once your site is up and running you can create pages and posts at simple clicks. There are many advantages that come with way of website design I discuss in “web design that rocks”. Get there and learn more. If you don’t understand the whole “addon domain” thing, please feel free to visit my post on that  topic here.

Popularity: 14% [?]