Take the modular approach

When planning your website layout, use boxes (or modules) to house each page element. For example, you may have a search box in the top right. Illustrate this as a box and write inside it “search function”. Do this with all your page elements and it will help you separate out each part accordingly. You may decide at a later date to shift things around, so planning it so freely will aid you in this.

If you really want to get creative, you can colour-code your modules. For example, if you have a button below a block of text that says “sign up”, you can name this a call to action and colour it red. Colour-code other elements like links, menus and images also, and you start to build up a map of your site than can be referenced when it comes to actually building it.

Building your site

Now you have a modular site plan in place, you can start to build your pages. If you’re doing things properly and using CSS/XHTML, you will probably be building in a modular fashion anyway. Correctly building your pages with CSS will separate out sections into containing DIV’s and, before you style them, it might be worth putting a background colour that corresponds to your plan. This isn’t necessary but if you’re showing it to somebody else, it might be worth doing to give them a feel of your design.

Finally, we add styling

Styling these elements will then be a piece of cake, because you’ve got your plan, you’ve built it accordingly and now you just need to sprinkle on the creativity. For me, this is absolutely the single best way of executing a successful website design; by planning it on a modular level and then referencing these plans when building. If plans change along the way, don’t be afraid to shift your design to meet them, it’s all about achieving a dynamic work flow that gives the best end result.

With the creation of CSS3 comes an extraordinary amount of cool features. Some of these features will substitute Photoshop for graphics and jQuery for animation.

Here is a rundown of my favourite CSS3 features:

• Rounded corners – creating a containing element with rounded corners in CSS2 was an absolute pain. You would have to create all the images and painfully align them using nested divs. Now with CSS3’s “border-radius” property you simply assign a value to get rounded corners! Easy! Unfortunately this is still unsupported by the Internet Explorer family so be sure to use this feature only on sites with a dominating Safari/Firefox browser usage.
• Drop shadow – This is create for creating text with drop shadows. Used effectively this can really add another dimension to your design. You can even add multiple drop shadows, change the colour and alignment to create glowing text and stroke effects. This is one to be used sparingly as too much will be overkill.
• Animation – That’s right; you can actually apply animation to elements to make them spin, zoom and pan. I’ve only seen one example of this and I’m unsure of its support but this could revolutionise web animation if done correctly. Hopefully this will see off Flash – which has been a pain in my backside for years!
• Multiple backgrounds – thanks to CSS3 it’s now also possible to add multiple backgrounds to a single div element. This is great and disposes of the need for nested divs which we once struggled with.

The future is bright for the web and with more browsers supporting these standards, a lot more is becoming possible. Personally I’m looking forward to being able to experiment with some of these new features, in particular the animation property as I think this could pave the way for some really unique and interesting results.

Keeping abreast of CSS3 is easy with plenty of support and informational sites out there so if you’re still a table-based web designer, there has never been a better time to jump into CSS.

It’s the design of  letterhead, business card or the logo that is essential to convey the definition of the brand in a concise way to the targeted customer. These tools are the connections between the customer and the company.

Several softwares are available in the market nowadays that aid in the design of these business tools. These softwares aid in the creation of these tools effectively but it is one’s ideas that really drive the design process and not the software as such.

A letterhead is a sheet meant to convey something to the customer in the form of a professional letter. Designing this tool for business is essential to convey the brand of the company or the commitment of the company towards its services.

A letter head should normally contain specific items that really make it professional in appearance at the same time not compromising on the aesthetic portion.

It should primarily contain the logo of the company and its description tagline. Usually the logo and the tagline serve as components that convey the brand definition of the company as well as give a concise description about the company’s objectives. Care should be taken that not much space is used for conveying information pertaining to the company, but the necessary message needs to be conveyed in the available space on the letterhead. As such, one needs to choose what content needs to be added in the printed space of the letterhead.

A letterhead needs to have the logo, the tagline of the company in the most readable format. This would first drive the attention of the customer towards the logo and tagline. This would give a general idea about the company to the customer in case when does not know anything about the company.

Information pertaining to the relevant products and services should be printed on the letterhead in the corner portions or on marginal portion of the letterhead.

It is highly important that the information that is being conveyed pertaining to the brand on the letterhead is free from grammatical errors and is conveyed in the most concise form. Its highly recommended to have the contact information of the local offices printed upon the letterhead in the marginal portions along with the necessary contact numbers in the professional international format and email address of the contact person. It is recommended to have the website address also printed below the email id of the contact in the printed area of the letterhead. As far as possible control should be exercised in the usage of font choices and space allocated for the printable information.

Design of logo becomes important in the business decisions to show that the service or product offered is unique from others. This drives to the point of how to proceed to design an effective logo that becomes a reflection of the business objective. One should note that the logo design should not be based on personal interests. It is the brand’s definition that is the base for the design of the logo. A logo demarcates one from the other by basing on few parameters which can be listed as follows.

A logo design needs to be inspired by the following parameters:

1. The objective of the business being driven. The basic question of who you are?
2. The products or services being marketed through the business
3. How can one reap advantage out of the business outcome or who would be the targeted audience to the website.

Logos are basically very small and communicate the essentials in one’s business. Hence it is highly essential to include the most important business brand definitions during the logo design process. This drives one to arrive at certain characteristics of logo during the design phase.

It’s essential to cross check if the characteristics really go with the definition of the brand. The weightage needs to be given to the font, its size, colors and other formatting options meant for the design. A logo is something that connects the marketer with the targeted audience.

Personal interests may help one to develop the logo of one’s choice in those situations when the targeted visitor is similar to the marketer. In such cases driving the ideas through logo designed as per one’s choice can help drive the business effectively. But in several cases wherein the target customer does not have similar interest as the marketer, it’s important that the logo design should not be based on interests or one’s like but be a reflection of the brand being marketed.

A logo should be simple and should not be cluttered with too much of text or other formatting. During the design process one should take care of the basic fact that the logo design is meant for the promotion of the business and the design is not meant to drive personal interests but the business objective. Moreover it is meant to convey as to who is the targeted for whom it could be of help.

Its always suggested to follow the simple rule of KISS. KISS is the short form of “Keep it Simple Stupid” so as to avoid unnecessary complexity in the design process.

Logo tells the story of business’s brand, its personality, its uniqueness and the targeted customer in short, simple and compacted form.

Designing an aesthetic website may require usage of tools that may not be directly linked to web designing technologies or may not be possible with those tools for website design. PSD or Photoshop document is a tool that helps in creation of aesthetic websites by converting the code to CSS and HTML to be embedded at the required areas on the website.

WordPress is a free and open source blog publishing application using which one can create or publish blogs powered by PHP and MySQL. One can use the conversion of PSD 2 WordPress to arrive at aesthetic sites combining the advantages of photoshop and wordpress. Joomla is also an open source system meant for content management of the published content. One can utilize this open source platform to publish and manage content over the World Wide Web and intranets as well. It’s a portal engine that can be downloaded through web free of cost and websites can be published using it. Photoshop documents can be converted to Joomla. One can easily find converters for PSD 2 Joomla. Once the PSD document is converted, it can be used to create aesthetic sites.

Some webdevelopers also slice up PSD files to convert it to CSS layouts to have customized web pages with aesthetic appearance. CSS can aid in generation of aesthetic sites with colors, layout and font aesthetically presented. It can be used with any XML based language like XHTML. XML makes it possible to link with other tools of web creation. PSD can be converted as PSD 2 CSS and PSD 2 XHTML as well. CSS code and XHTML code can be separated and CSS and HTML code can be shared as a separate entity by placing the codes in separate paragraphs within the code of the website.

XHTML is based on the XML language. XHTML has a format very similar to the HTML format but the difference lies in its association with an XML language. XML simplifies the way the storage of data is done. XML is most common platform for documentation purposes and is most widely used; as such XHTML becomes a preferred choice for web developers. Its ease of understanding to humans and its usability to publish any type of documentation makes it is a preferred choice.

Several softwares are available that can help in conversion of PSD 2 XHTML or PSD 2 CSS or PSD 2 wordpress and PSD 2 Joomla. The conversion is for convenience in web development that aids in deriving advantages of PSD and at the same time uses the output for website creation aesthetically.

However, for a freelance web designer, sometimes it’s time to raise some money, and design one of this completly useless sites. So let’s have a look at the whole brochure concept, and apply the same technique to a web site creating the same sections.

A business is usually driven to fulfill certain objectives pertaining to marketing of products or services that a business organization specializes upon. Marketing is core to driving the business and several tools related to marketing are in vogue. One such tool is the brochure of a company.

A brochure is generally an advertisement material of any company. It’s a material that includes relevant information pertaining to a company, its products or services and the locations of these business organizations. A brochure can be thought about as a tool that delivers the required information to the prospective customers in a concise format. As such the design of company brochure is key to the success of its marketing objectives.

A brochure is meant to promote the brand definition of a company through pamphlet formats. A brochure is meant to persuade a customer to meet his requirements in certain aspects which are the specialties of the business being marketed through the brochure. It is another form of promoting the business idea altogether. Though brochure design and development requires some of capital investment, the advantages that can be reaped out of it are enormous.

Since it is a key component to fulfill certain marketing objectives, one should take special care during its design process. It should be noted that a company brochure should not only be informative but appealing too.

A brochure should include the key business objectives embedded into it. It should normally contain the brand definition of the company in the most readable and viewable form. The content pertaining to the information related to the products and services needs to be printed in the most appropriate and concise format. It should include a short and concise description of the products or services being marketed by the company.

The logo of the company and its tagline should be the most prominently visible so as to first draw the attention of the target customer. A brochure should be thoroughly checked for any grammatical errors in the language used it.

Normally, no customer would spend much time on reading the entire brochure. It’s the psychological aspect of the customer that needs to be taken care when designing the brochure. The brochure should content the relevant product or service named and printed in the most readable format so that the customer can directly jump to the section of his choice in which he/she wishes to seek information.

A brochure should not be printed on cheap quality paper. Good quality paper should be used as far as possible. This would also have a psychological impact on the readers mind on the brand image of the company whose products are being marketed.

A reader can be encouraged to look out for more information by including real testimonials and press cuts at the appropriate locations on the brochure.

Finally, the brochure should not be cluttered with unnecessary graphics but with the relevant one only. It should have the necessary contact information imprinted on it in case one is interested in knowing more about the product.

Whatever is the purpose or website, the design of website is a vital component that plays an important role in promoting a product or service or delivering hits to the site. There are several ways in which a website design can be done. Most website creators in spite of creating a great website fail to attract visitors only due to its fall back in terms of landing page design.

A landing page is a vital component for a website as it is the first page that is open to the visitor on accessing a site. As such, this page plays a vital role in defining what the visitor’s attitude towards the site would be. Landing pages convey the very basic information pertaining to a site and give an idea to the visitor on the information that could be posted on the other links of the site.

As the success of website is determined by the visitor’s mindset, the landing page needs to include a substantial amount of the content relevant to the target visitor.

Let’s look at some vital points that are needed for a successful landing page design.

As far as possible the content should be brief and to the point. More importantly, the content in the landing page should be relevant to the targeted visitor. Visitors normally search for information using keywords and it’s a good idea to highlight the keywords that can be normally thought of being used as search words. This would enhance the design with respect to the relevance of search for the visitor. Not only will this increase the number of hits, but also the visitor would be willing to visit the site several times for updated information and delve more into the links provided within the site.

As far as possible it is important to post the 1^st hand information pertaining to the product or service or the subject of interest in the site. This would increase the good will and trust among the visitors about the site.

For those into marketing, it’s good to have the visitor persuaded to a point that he may be interested in going for the product or service offered by the marketer. The landing page should have content in such a fashion that the visitor keeps on browsing the site and not drop out of it. It’s important to have the content free from grammatical errors.

The content needs to be validated and it’s good to have testimonials or other supporting statements posted on the site. Finally, the quality of text, usage of fonts and images should be controlled.

Website design is a term used for creation of web pages that deliver information over internet. Several tools go into this design process. Usage of tools like HTML, CSS and Java Script and other programs related to web design is sought after for the design of websites. The basic aim of website design is to convey the information and its development is meant to present it in an aesthetical format.

To those delving into this field of website design and development, I recommend some tips here that can help one in coming out with a successful website.

First of all, the creator of website needs to understand what he is really going to do and at the same time, understand the type of visitors that are targeted for. Designing for optimized speed is best recommended due to variance in the modem speeds of different visitors.

Never forget the basic quote, Keep it simple. A website design should include a development pertaining to the way information is provided. As far as possible, try to convey the information in the possible viewable screen.

Organization is the third most vital point. Having a organized site with TOC or table of contents increases the number of hits that the site receives.

Never clutter the site with bunches of images or with large sized images. This only distracts the viewers. At the same time try to have a site developed in a way that it is properly readable by using proper set of fonts, colors and other formatting options.try to avoid grammatical errors through thorough scan before hosting the site.

It’s better to convey information in a short witty way rather than lots of text. Moreover, link to any other website or within the site needs to be thoroughly updated from time to time. Several viewers tend to miss out the vital information that may be shown within a link. Its good to highlight links using several format options like change in color on hovering the cursor over the link or annotating the link or having different color to the text in the link.

More importantly, it’s always recommended to have a page dedicated to the contact information or the contact information can be built into an existing page innovatively. Welcoming comments and suggestions from viewers through options

In simple terms, a CMS aids people across the domain to contribute or share data. Using the system one can control the way the access to data is done in the system by defining roles for various users. The system basically tries to maintain single copies of the data and prevents repetitive work involved in the duplication of the data. Inbuilt routines in CMS help one to report the data in an efficient way and thus aid the communication between users of the data across the domain.

CMS is a neutral system which can support almost any format of data. Basically, data can be in the form of documents, video formats, text formats, and scientific data and so on. The importance of CMS lies in the fact that it can support any of the formats and helps in the management of these data sources, controlling the data sharing and storing processes and help in publishing documentation. There are several types of CMS systems in the present day scenario.

E Commerce sites are those that highlight the company’s product and aid in the selling process by providing access to shoppers to purchase the product. As such these pages are any company’s lifeline as they sustain the company’s online sales. Design of such pages plays a vital role and promoting a company’s product and converting it to sales.

One can achieve an nice looking site through use of several methods involving PSD conversions to CSS, HTML etc. Ecommerce sites are vital pages for sales and as far as possible need to be simple in all ways to avoid ambiguity in visitor’s mind which in turn may result in a failed transaction.

Ecommerce sites should contain information pertaining to the product meant for sale on a particular page in clear and concise manner. So the concept of clarity is essential in such cases. The page should clearly describe the product meant for sale, its specifications, price and so on. It’s essential to demarcate all the sub divisions appropriately in the code pertaining to a product using XHTML code procedures.

In the ecommerce site design and development code, it’s essential to add a section pertaining to opinions on the product by the expert or testimonials as this would enhance the chances or the visit turning to a sale. An ecommerce page needs to have a title that describes the product along with a photo of the product if possible and detail out its attributes.

Successful ecommerce pages also list out the delivery options as well as the time meant for delivery of the product by the company marketing the product. Credibility of the site can be enhanced by linking it up with guarantee policy of the company or the manufacturer’s warranty.

Any ecommerce site design and development or site design code needs to gradually drag a visitor towards the buy button using various attributes and techniques of marketing.

Nearly everybody uses Facebook, and those who don’t at least have an account. Webmasters are harnessing bookmarking technologies such as Digg.com which allow people to post links to their favourite pages.

Tools such as Squidoo and HubPages allow for the creation of micro sites that can be tied into larger sites or used as standalone portals. These have the added benefit of improving off-site SEO for their owners.

But where are social platforms going? There is only so much that can be done, surely? I think the future holds some very interesting developments for social tools.

We’ve already seen the publics’ obsession with Twitter – a tool that requires minimal effort, can be used for both good and evil and also goes a long way to polish the ego of whoever uses it. With developing technologies such as jQuery and to a lesser extent, AJAX, web applications are becoming super fluid and easy to use.

After taking a look at the demo of Google Wave I think the browser will become the new desktop. We will interact with everything from fewer places in the future.

For example, taking a look at Google Wave reveals a shocking number of collaborative tools including a revolution in email and some insanely good blogging features. You can physically edit your Blogspot blog from Wave, which may make redundant the admin panel within Blogspot. As Wave is open source, similar tools may be developed for WordPress also.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Looking into this decade and mobile phones are going to become central to everything we do – that is if they aren’t already. The main stopping point at the moment is the lack of support for web technologies that most phones have, but the next generation of phones will support all the bells and whistles of the modern web application -like the iPhone.

Now, as of this writing if you try to login to Google Wave it warns you that iPhone’s Safari is not supported, so I proceeded at my own risk as they say. But it is only a matter of time, months probably, before we’ll have an entire office in a pocket. If only there was a foldable bluetooth keyboard to be used with the iPhone…

This is an exciting time for the development of the social web; a pioneering time.

Things are becoming unified which is late coming but ultimately beneficial to all web users from businesses to teenagers on their social networking sites.

Content will be shared, served and generated in a fast and intelligent way, which is a far cry from the bulletin boards of the late 90’s.