Dealing with clients, designing prototypes, coding, programming, and testing — there’s a lot to keep track of and a lot to make sure gets done.
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In a day in age where there are just as many freelancers as there are university educated designers, developers, and all around web gurus, it is amazing to me how much many of us don’t know or have forgot about our trade. As a self-taught designer, I will admit to you upfront that there is a lot I don’t know when it comes to official jargon or certain aspects of things like typography and graphic design. It is these reasons that I call upon glossaries from time to time.
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There are specialized terms referring to all sorts of aspects of web design. For someone just getting started in web design, or someone looking to have a site designed, all the technical jargon can be overwhelming. Especially the acronyms. Below is a guide to industry terms that should get you well on your way to understanding what web designers are talking about. In addition, we’ve provided some resources for each term to give you more in-depth information.
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Branding experts hit the nail on the head when they say that a winning brand conveys why you are your prospects’ only solution. If you can’t achieve that, you should at least convey why you are your prospects’ best solution. Of course, the same logic applies to your clients. So make a compelling claim about your business, product or service, and back it up.
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Non profit websites share many of the same best practices as any website. They need to be user friendly, easily navigable, and use appropriate fonts, colors, and other design elements. But often a non profit website needs to offer more than your typical corporate site.
A non profit’s website needs to make it easy to find out more about their cause, to donate money, and to become more involved. It needs to make it easy for media contacts to find the information they need and the contact information of key personnel. And it needs to do all this in a way that’s inviting to the organization’s targeted donors and/or volunteers.
Below are a list of best practices for designing non profit websites followed by some examples of non profit websites that are getting things right.
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From the Napa Wineries in California to the vineyards of Australia and France, the beautiful designs of these wine maker’s websites embody the spirit of the vine. Trends for winery websites have been leaning towards a dynamic Flash introduction, animation and beautiful graphics, which would give the best representation of the products for the target market.
Unfortunately, winery sites strongly focus on the visual design, while best usability practices are often ignored. For instance, some web-sites do not offer a search functionality and use hardly readable content (and the size of the text can not be increased, because the text is embedded into a Flash-animation). Besides, since many sites are Flash-based, it’s also impossible to bookmark a specific page, although (in general) it can be achieved in Flash).
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Naming is linguistic design, and a good domain name is an important part of the overall design of a website. A name plays a prominent role when people discover, remember, think about, talk about, search for, or navigate to a website. It establishes a theme for the branding of a website before people even visit it for the first time. Coming up with a good domain name requires a combination of strategy, imagination and good linguistic design practice.
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Real estate is a valuable and often expensive purchase. Copious research is done by home buyers before venturing out to acquire real estate. In this day and age, gathering information about a property is typically done online, and an effective and captivating website design can make or break a home sale.
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When designing a website, the most important thing is to make it as usable and convenient as possible. On a website on which users could possibly get confused, it is best to include help elements. Help elements come in all different shapes and sizes: an entire page, a suggestion box or a quick tip. But they all have one thing in common: besides doing the obvious (i.e. helping the user), help elements provide an extra convenience that brings the website closer to that sought-after usability.
With the number of forms, search functions and other navigational elements on websites these days, using them can occasionally become confusing for some users. Providing help elements in as many places as possible can be a great way to make the user’s experience more pleasurable. The better the experience of the user, the more likely the user will buy your product, come back to the website and fulfill the goal that the website was built to achieve.
Below is a compilation of best practices for help elements, an explanation of when to use them and a showcase of excellent help elements.
You may also be interested in the following related posts:
* 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design
* 10 Principles Of Effective Web Design
* 12 Useful Techniques For Good Interface Design
* 10 Useful Web Application Interface TechniquesRead more…
Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.
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