Web Design – Basic Tips



Web design deals with the question of how to present your content in a manner that would attract and provide ease to your targeted visitors. There are a number of rules and tenets that a web designer should observe, but this article offers basic tips that are practical and straight to the point.

Make a relevant offer. What use do people have for your website? Why should they visit your site and go through its pages? It is imperative for a webpage to have useful and interesting content. This is what web design can improve and work on because no form of graphics can possibly make a page relevant when it’s useless to begin with.

Keep file sizes small. Images that take up a huge space can cause slow loading responses in your page. This can bore and even cause nuisance to your visitors. Optimize your images so that your pages will load fast in any browser.

Keep it simple. In designing a web page, people are likely to use different kinds of graphics. Make sure that the graphic images that you use are related to the content of your page. Do not use blinking, glittering, or flashing banners because studies have shown that these merely repel visitors instead of capture their attention. Scrolling text makes reading inconvenient and image backgrounds are amateur and slow to load, so avoid these as well.

Reduce scrolling. There are prescribed and standardized layouts or templates for specific sites – three columns for pages that are heavy on content, for instance. Make use of these templates to make navigation through your site easier for visitors. You may think sideway scrolling makes you unique and interesting, but this is not what users want. Make information and options easily available to users.

Use standard fonts. Stick to standard fonts like Verdana, Arial, and Times New Roman. Do not change fonts too often and limit your page to two kinds of fonts. Avoid using italics because it makes text difficult to read. Consistency in font style will make your page appear more pleasing to the eye and professional.

Advertising. Websites generate a great deal of revenue through advertisements. However, ratio should be kept at ¾ content and ¼ advertising. People do not go to websites to view ads; they search for content. Do not overwhelm your visitors with pop-ups and a lot of sponsored text.

Basically, you should keep the users’ interest in mind. You do not create a website for your own self-satisfaction but you build web pages for your potential visitors. It will be helpful to imagine yourself as a visitor, avoid things that would likely annoy you and prioritize what users would look for.

Web design involves different kinds of tasks, and if you lack experience in the field, web design outsourcing is an option that can provide flexibility as well as ensure that your website is optimized and professionally designed. For those who have working knowledge in web design, you can also outsource web design projects that are small yet time-consuming, like creating Flash elements and maintenance. Numerous companies choose to outsource web design to the Philippines because of the availability of highly skilled workforce, low labour costs, and the people’s good English communication skills that improve the quality and efficiency of the outsourcing process.


SEO Important for Alcohol Treatment Websites



If a treatment centre for people with substance misuse issues has a website presence, it is important to ensure that this website can be found easily in the search engines. Those suffering from alcohol addiction and their families need to quickly and easily find help and the internet should be a simple way of doing this.

For a website to gain a high position in web page rankings it needs to be search engine optimised. Quality SEO ensures that a website appears high up in the listings when relevant key words are typed into a search engine.The higher on the list that the alcohol clinic appears, when relevant search criteria are typed in, the more likely the visitor is to see the particular website in the listing and click on the link to open it.

This is particularly important when a clinic offers specialist treatment for addictions such as alcohol and the website visitor is looking for expert targeted advice on this sensitive subject. The SEO on the site needs to ensure that the alcohol treatment centre is promoted as a specialist in this field and can be found through a variety of related keywords.

Written website content is the most important consideration when ensuring that a website is SEO optimised. The copy needs to be keyword rich whilst still being clear and informative. If the relevant keywords are included a number of times then the website will appear higher on the search engine listings when these keywords are searched.

Once the visitor has found a treatment centre website, it is then important to consider how they will navigate it and then take the steps to becoming a client. With this in mind, interactive and clear website content is an important consideration for treatment centre websites.

Phone numbers and email addresses must be clearly visible and the visitor should be able to click on buttons to go through to contact forms. Such interactive features provide obvious points of contact for people who need immediate help. Contact details should be repeated frequently and clearly throughout the website.

There should also be interactive features like downloadable brochures to further inform the person who is enquiring. It is often a family member who inquires on behalf of a relation so it is important to give them as much information as possible, in order to ensure that they feel they are making an informed choice about the care of their relative.

Treatment websites can be further optimised to be visible on the search engines by using content management systems with SEO built-in. The written content of the website can be contained within the CMS and managed either by the website designers or by the treatment centres themselves.

A CMS can be very simple to use and ensures that an organisation is able to manage their own website content, for example adding recent news and testimonials or changing essential information like prices and contact details if the need occurs. Access to a CMS often involves paying a monthly usage fee, which can be very economical considering it provides control over website content.

So there are several ways to ensure that an alcohol treatment centre websites are visible on the search engines and that they offer key information to the visitor once they have found the site. Good SEO and website content means that those in need of alcohol treatment find the assistance they need and that the clinic themselves can reach and help the right people.


Web Hosting



Most people would’ve never heard the word ‘web hosting’. Website is a collection of files that exist on a computer server that connects to the internet. So, when we enter a website, we actually just connected to a server that displays the file we want to see. There are a variety of packages offered by hosting service providers are. You should be wise to choose which package suits you. Identify the characteristics that you want to use on your website. Avoid buying packages that are too large which you may not use. You can start with the smallest package and then clicking “upgrade” from time to time according to your needs.

There are web hosting features provided by web hosting provider that we all need to be aware. Among them are:

• Web space – the size in MB. We must know the size of the space needed for your blog or website. Depending on what is in your blog or website.

• The Bandwidth per month – the bandwidth is the measure of data from your web host’s server to the visitor computer. The greater the bandwidth, will allow the growth visitors to your blog or website. 1Gb is enough for the visitors at the 3 thousands peoples a month.

• PSP, ASP, CGI – a programming language. If built to PHP website hosting that it is necessary to find the programming language support.

• Access Databases – A database. If we need a blog or website database, it is necessary to search for hosting that provides the database.

• FrontPage Extensions – If your website is created using the software “Microsoft FrontPage”, you may need this feature available in your hosting package.

• Control Panel – This is an important feature to enable you to control and organize (setting) your hosting account. With the control panel, you can manage your account using only an internet browser. Usually,
you will be given a “username” and “password” for you to enter your control panel. Among the functions of the control panel is like creating or deleting email accounts.

• Support – is an important feature to help you face any problem you encounter in using the web hosting services.

Actually, there are many features in the hosting. But the features above are the basic features needed in a potential web hosting. Many hosting providers provide attractive packages, and you just need to find the best. Hopefully this info can help you who do not know what it is web hosting.