When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

6) The most important – Host only with a Reliable Hosting Provider.

Before Chosing a Web Hosting provider, read its reviews and always check the top 10 hosting providers. A good resource to research hosting providers is at Top10DedicatedHosting.com

HTML5 is the newest extension of the current HTML markup. It provides more interactive elements for web designers to play around with, has taken away some tags and attributes and introduced new ones to suit the recent design and development needs of clients.

It has new features based on HTML, CSS, DOM, and JavaScript, has reduced the need for external plugins (like Flash), has better error handling, and has more markup to replace scripting. Moreover, HTML5 is device independent and its development process is visible to the public.

As a new language used to code websites, it allows for consistency making it simpler for developers and designers to get a clear view of a page’s structure.

It also allows for web application integration. This means that drag and drop tools, discussion boards, wikis and other useful elements can be incorporated seamlessly into websites written using this code.

Additionally, it can be used with CSS (cascading style sheets) to describe the way a document is supposed to look as well as with JavaScript for a more interactive website.

Finally, it lets web designers to have more fun with media elements since it is easier to embed these on websites thanks to JavaScript.

You can get more information from your San Diego web development company about the advantages of this new addition to the web design family.

Websites are typically classified into static and dynamic sites. Each type has its own advantages and disadvantages.  They also serve different purposes depending on the client’s needs.

Static websites, also called flat pages or stationary pages, are written using HTML with each page saved as a separate document. Design-wise, these are basic and lack bells and whistles. It provides the same information for all users and they work much like flyers or brochures. These are cheap to develop and host. It also takes less time to create these kinds of websites. A disadvantage of this is that it requires web development expertise to update the site. Also, the content can get stagnant and the site may not be as useful for the user as it was initially.

Dynamic websites on the other hand are written in PHP or ASP where each page is stored in a database or external file. They give the owner the ability to update and add new content to the site through a simple browser interface. These also feature more functional websites that can handle content management system, e-commerce system, bulletin/discussion boards, intranet or extranet facilities, and the ability for clients or users to upload documents. The down side to these kinds of websites is that it can be slower and more expensive to develop. Moreover, hosting dynamic websites costs a little more than their static counterparts.

Consult with a trusted web designer San Diego based preferably for more information on this matter.

Having a website is extremely useful for small businesses who want to establish online presence. However, before hiring a San Diego web design firm, business owners must first consider some things. Below are some tips to think about before hiring a web design company.

The easiest way to gain knowledge about a web design company and how it operates is to inquire to their former clients. They can provide information on how easy or difficult it is working with certain companies. They are also a great resource for finding more about a service provider’s reputation.

There are other qualifications to consider as well including a company’s experience in the industry. Those who have spent quite a while in the business are most likely to deliver quality work.

Previous client lists can also help business owners to pick the right firm for their needs. Those with high profile clients are often credible and reliable. Additionally, look for client testimonials since other people’s experiences with a company can make the decision process easier.

Finally, seek out companies that know the value of time. Punctuality and timeliness is an important aspect of web design especially for small businesses who intend to utilize their websites as early as possible.

These days, more people opt to use their mobile devices such as smart phones to access the internet. With that, the emergence of websites intended for mobile is surfacing. Much like creating sites for desktops, San Diego web design experts believe that excellent web experience should be the focal point and goal of designers. Below are three tips when building mobile websites:

First, be mindful of screen resolution. Common screen sizes are 128 x 160 pixels, 176 x 220 pixels, 240 x 320 pixels, 320 x 480 pixels. It is important to know these dimensions to be able to optimize web content and the actual layout of the website.

Second, focus on important content. Mobile phones have limited screen space so it is vital to only include the most important content or features contained in the site. Focused websites makes it easier for users to navigate through it. Moreover, it takes less time to load pages with less content which is helpful for devices with slow internet connection.

And lastly, opt for single column layout. Again, taking the screen size into consideration, creating single column pages that fit the device screens is helpful for users. Scrolling down rather than across is more preferred by visitors.

San Diego website design firms will find that Google highly recommends the use of responsive web design since these websites are flexible enough to display well on a wide variety of devices. These websites adjusts its dimensions to the screen size, resolution, and type of browser that a device has, in order to provide an excellent viewing experience to the end user.

In a statement on their blog, Google cites the following reasons why they love responsive web design:

• Using a single URL for a piece of content makes it easier for your users to interact with, share, and link to your content, and a single URL for the content helps Google’s algorithms assign the indexing properties for the content.
• No redirection is needed for users to get to the device-optimized view, which reduces loading time. Also, user-agent-based redirection is error-prone and can degrade your site’s user experience.
• Responsive web design saves resources for both your site and Google’s crawlers. For responsive web design pages, any Googlebot user-agent needs to crawl your pages once, as opposed to crawling multiple times with different user-agents, to retrieve your content. This improvement in crawling efficiency can indirectly help Google index more of the site’s contents and keep it appropriately fresh.

At the end of the day, Google only wants what would make their end users happy when browsing the internet and responsive web design gives users exactly that.

Some business owners are having second thoughts on hiring a San Diego web design company for their needs. However, a completely optimized website needs to be of high quality content-wise and design-wise. This is where reputable web design firms come into the picture.

Primarily, professional web design companies will help small businesses to get real results for the business. Professionals can create effective websites for small businesses without the need for experimentation and with little need for testing. They know how to develop a website that can deliver the best return on investment (ROI) as long as it is continuously marketed.

Getting a web design company to do the work also means that business owners can focus on developing their core company instead of fiddling with codes and such. Moreover, doing so can save business owners a lot of time. Professional web designers can quickly create and launch new websites which means brands can immediately benefit from this.

Most importantly, professional web designers know the ins and outs of creating websites. They know the importance of a top quality, aesthetically pleasing, and fully functional website. They know which elements to place on various pages to guarantee more sales and lead conversions. Finally, professional web designers will know how to optimize websites to be able to get sustainable rankings in search engines.

When hiring San Diego web designers, technical skill and eye for design aren’t the only things to consider. Work ethics play a crucial role in determining whether or not hiring a designer will be worth one’s money or not. At the end of the day, a good pairing of design dexterity and moral values will make for a great web designer.

Ethics vary from person to person but in general, here are a few things to look for in a web designer:

• He or she must treat clients and website visitors with honesty and respect at all times.
• He or she must be upfront with rates and fees right from the beginning of the project.
• He or she must make it clear for the client what his or her role and expectations on the project are.
• He or she must have a high level of competence when it comes to work.
• He or she must be updated with trends in the web design industry as well as in web development.
• He or she must be able to beat deadlines that ensure the success of every project.
• He or she must protect information given by clients and shall treat them as private and confidential. He or she must perform transactions concerning credit cards, social security, and personal information on secured servers.

If you are eyeing a San Diego web designer for your new site or business, you may have quite a lot of questions as to how to pick one that delivers great results. Listed below are some things you might want to consider when searching for a web designer:

1. Skills in HTML and CSS

These are two of the most important languages web designers must be familiar with. These allow web designers to understand how the Web works thus resulting in more effective designs that have applications that meld with the earlier perfectly.

2. Skills in Flash

Animations and vector images can be critical components of a web design depending on your needs. A web designer that is proficient in using Flash can help you greatly not only in making your web page more aesthetically pleasing but also making it more functional.

3. SEO Knowledge

At least some knowledge in search engine optimization (SEO) can help web designers make more effective websites. Proper placement of keywords, landing pages, and what-not is critical to make sure that a website turns up well in SERPS.

4. Design Sense

Web designers are primarily digital visual artists. They must have an eye for design to be able to identify what works well and what looks tacky and cheap. You can choose a designer who keeps everything minimalist and mod or a designer that plays with various elements effectively to create eye catching outputs.

5. Skills in Project Management

This is an important skill that you have to look for in a web designer. This guarantees that the person you are going to hire can effectively carry out the tasks you will give him or her. This shows that your chosen web designer is committed to his or her work.