Remember Me
forgot your password?

Web Design Basics for Entrepreneurs

When is it appropriate to hire a graphic designer? When should you use Flash animation or HTML? We are joined by Sparxoo’s Senior Designer, Deirdre Zahl, to discuss the basics of web design and how entrepreneurs can utilize design for their brand.

Deirdre is a graphic designer with seven years of industry experience who specializes in web design. She has worked with clients ranging from top-tier luxury brands in the fashion industry such as CHANEL and MAC Cosmetics, commercial and residential real estate clients, Ann Taylor LOFT.com and other small e-commerce sites. She is also experienced in logo, brand and web development, as well as print and web design. She holds a BA in Communication Design from Skidmore College.

What is the purpose of web design?

Web design is not just how a web page looks, it’s how users interact and have a relationship with it. It’s about designing an experience on a visual and functional level.

It’s incredible how subtle, functional changes can make tremendous impact. Consider the donate button for non-profits. If the button is not prominently displayed, it could greatly reduce the amount of donations. A solution could be as simple as changing the button to a bold color, like orange or red, or increasing its size.

Functionality also extends to search. The basic HTML on a website enables it to be indexed by search engine crawlers.
The website has to have enough live content, tags and links that it can be picked up by Google in order to be found. While graphic treatments can enhance a site visually, they also limit its visibility to search engines. It is important to have a balance of both, proportionate to the goal of your business. E-commerce sites, for instance, or real estate listing services, would want to have a very high percentage of searchable content.

There are SEO specialists who can help with the technical side–implementing it from the back end. Designers have to consider this in crafting a site, adding visually friendly places for links, not overusing graphic or Flash elements and thinking about natural ways to interlink pages and sections of the website.

When would an entrepreneur want to consider hiring a web designer?

Web design and layouts used to be the domain of tech-savvy professionals (think coding languages: HTML, Java, C++, etc.). In today’s digital world, there are incredible tools for non-professionals to create professional-looking websites. WordPress and SquareSpace enables anyone to design and manage a website. Thousands of web designers & developers have created...

To read more about web design basics, go to Sparxoo, a digital marketing, branding and business development blog.

Sparxoo

Sparxoo is a business blog that inspires breakthrough by tomorrow’s leaders. We are a strategy consulting firm with a pulse on marketing, branding, and development.

Rate this Article: 0 / 5 stars - 0 vote(s)
Print Email Re-Publish

Add new Comment



Captcha

  • Latest Internet Articles
  • More from Sparxoo

Proper Internet Web Site Promotion Principles

By: Alex Baldeo | 08/12/2009
Internet web site promotion has seen a growing popularity during the recent years. Today, there are already different web promotion techniques used by different online businessmen to bring in more traffic to their page.

The 12 Days of December for Smart Small Business Owners

By: Susan L Reid | 08/12/2009
The countdown to Christmas is underway, and many people are shopping online this holiday season. As a smart small business owner, you need to offer special buying opportunities all month long. The list of "12 Things You Can Do to Make Your Business Merry" will help you do just that. Implement one idea each day. You'll not only be promoting your business during this holiday season, you'll also be making certain it will be a success in 2010.

How To Change Your Attitude Towards Angry Customers

By: Jason W Tarasi | 07/12/2009
Learn the secrets of how to keep angry customers from ruining your online business.

Articles Ideas

By: Brad | 07/12/2009
Coming up with Articles Ideas can often leave your head with a feeling of hopelessness and numbness, while you attempt to come up with new and interesting content to write about, but it really doesn't have to be that way.

Finding That Unique Piece - Why You Should Look Online First

By: Jesse Akre | 07/12/2009
When searching for that special piece that you would like to add to your home, the first and best place to look may be online for a number of different reasons. Not only does the internet offer a wide range of stores and shopping websites, it makes for easy price...

How to Shop For Electronics Products Online?

By: Russ Elderman | 07/12/2009
If you are shopping for electronics online, savertech is a fantastic site to visit. It focuses on consumer electronics and video games, and, the site is very neat and lacks clutter. It's a breeze to find items you want, and the shopping cart is very easy to use. From Memory...

Web Designing – Simplicity Design

By: Margaret Atwood | 07/12/2009
Web design area in support of selected count straight away and single can argue his way through either sense. However, I'm in support of the regular design since I simply believe with the intention of simplicity is essential, more so whilst it comes to a tangled web design. Lets die through the essentials or instead the persistence of a website. A website exists to grant to users of the internet, germane content or products with the intention of they can require. For instance such, nothing more

Internet Marketing Strategies - Internet Marketing Tips to live By

By: Tom Preston | 07/12/2009
Tips and information on successful internet marketing strategies.

Boxee Gathers iTunes, Hulu, Last.fm and More in New Set-Top

By: Sparxoo | 04/12/2009 | Entrepreneurship
With the availability of devices like Tivo, DVR, and online video streaming platforms, we have access to nearly every show on television, whenever we want it. Our growing media consumption – whether it’s through TV, YouTube, iTunes, or streaming video – is no doubt growing each year, and expanding beyond the television set itself to ever more popular on-demand streaming platforms. Online video streaming will get even…

Is Banner Advertising Still Relevant?

By: Sparxoo | 03/12/2009 | PPC Advertising
All of the clicks for online ads are derived from a mere 16% of internet users, according to a recent study by comScore. That means, you’re optimizing your ad for that 16% of users — a very small audience to capture. As consumers become more digitally savvy, they are less inclined to click on advertisements. What happens for those business owners that do not have audiences in that...

“First Click Free” Will Give Allow Publishers to Re-Enforce Pay Walls

By: Sparxoo | 03/12/2009 | Online Promotion
After Rupert Murdoch proposed blocking his paid sites from Google (saying, search engines are “feeding off the hard-earned efforts and investments of others”), the search engine giant has made a surprising move to reach across the table and help publishers like Murdoch. In the past, Google has been criticized for thinking like engineers (for instance, the copyright infringements that made Google Books possible), not business people. They might be…

Digital Influencers Usher in a New Era in Branding

By: Sparxoo | 02/12/2009 | Entrepreneurship
Brands are taking two tough punches right now: 1) the economic downturn has continued to spur consumers to buy private label and 2) digital social influencers are taking control from brand managers. The question is not just how brands can survive, but more importantly, how can brands thrive?

Using Google to Optimize Blog Post Headlines

By: Sparxoo | 02/12/2009 | Blogging
Optimizing your blog post headlines often seems like a mysterious, esoteric, black art. With data-rich online resources, optimizing blog post headlines can be simple, straightforward and actionable. Such resources, like Google, eliminate much of this mystery surrounding the issue. We will walk you through the simple steps of optimizing your blog post headlines — from how to identify your keywords and…

Optimizing Blog Post Headlines in WordPress

By: Sparxoo | 01/12/2009 | Blogging
If you were to develop a site seven or eight years ago, you would likely need at least a basic understanding of programming codes like HTML or Javascript. Such coding was a significant barrier to entry for many non-digitally savvy users. The game changed when WordPress was developed in 2003. Since its release, Wordpress has grown to an incredible...

Creating a Valuable Network of Business Relationships

By: Sparxoo | 01/12/2009 | Entrepreneurship
“We all exist within this complex network of human development. Today, the human network’s reach and complexity have nearly exceeded our ability to understand what we are creating and how it affects us.” We have emerged from a period of excess and frivolity, where objects and things...

Are Connections or Followers more Important: LinkedIn or Twitter?

By: Sparxoo | 30/11/2009 | Internet Marketing
In early April 2009, we witnessed a social media milestone: Ashton Kutcher collected 1,000,000 followers on Twitter. Since then, Oprah has begun tweeting and the microblogging site has been the social network darling of the mainstream media. What does it mean to have a network on Twitter? Could Ashton Kutcher ever collect 1,000,000 connections on LinkedIn? Probably not. But why?

Submit Your Articles Free: Signup
Article Categories




Use of this web site constitutes acceptance of the Terms Of Use and Privacy Policy | User published content is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Copyright © 2005-2008 Free Articles by ArticlesBase.com, All rights reserved. (0.05, 1, w2)