Tryangled Solutions web designing tips tricks

* Test your site’s usability with your users.
If you do nothing else to improve your site, this would be the best thing.

* Focus on your content.
Content will get people to your site and give them the information so they keep coming back.

* Put lots of links on your site so that your readers can navigate as easily as possible.
What is intuitive to you might be unclear to me, so give your readers a lot of different ways to get to the information on your site.

* Don’t believe everything you read or hear.
Just because I’ve written this article and UIE did their study, doesn’t mean that the results will apply to your readers. Find out, from them, what works for your site.

Websites are intended to be seen and used by Internet surfers. Not many people realize the wideness of the range of the users of the Internet.

A website’s usability is one of the key determinants of its success in fulfilling its main goal, whether it is made for information dissemination, business or communication. Usability is all about the relationship between a website and its users. Websites should be seen as tools which will allow its users to do their tasks and help them achieve results.

The issue of usability is very pertinent and is treated with much attention today. There have been moves (including legal ones) that aim to push web development towards usability. There are many people who are affected with some kind of disability or impairment which hinders them from fully enjoying the different aspects of life including the use of the Internet. The Internet, with it’s continuous development towards the better, has been a great instrument in providing people, especially those with impairments to be able to have avenues for accessing information, communicating and transacting. This is why the issue of website usability is a much talked about issue.

Usability is important because it can be the difference between accurately performing a task or not, between enjoying the whole process or being very frustrated. Usability is also important for the developers since it can be one of the key factors in determining the success of a system. It is also important for businesses which thrive in the Internet because a low level of usability will definitely drive the customers away. Most importantly, it is important for people who have impairments because they are the most vulnerable group in terms of accessing the different avenues that the Internet provide.
Components of Usability

A website’s usability is one of the key determinants of a website’s popularity. A recent survey revealed that the “ease of use” with regards to websites makes 74% of website visitors want to come back.

There are different components of usability. These are:

- Efficiency

This refers to how easily the users can perform their tasks after they have had a general feeling for the website.

- Learning curve

Can the structure of the website easily be learned by the users?

- Over-all perception

Is the website pleasant to the eyes and can easily be accessed by people viewing it?

A website that is usable will be able to deliver a lot of benefits not only to the viewers but also to the developers. Here are some of the most important benefits that can be achieved by improving the usability of a website.

-user satisfaction
-productivity and success
-avoidance of long-term costs of development
-improved competitiveness of the website

Now, we go to the ways on how to the basic concepts that should be kept in mind in developing websites to achieve usability.

1. Give information about the website

Many website developers forget the importance of putting some information about the website because they assume that people will be able to figure that themselves. Many people will be giving negative feedback if they don’t get what they want (or what they think they want) from the website. A portion of the homepage can be used to relay this information or a separate section “about the site” can be added.

2. Provision of a Sitemap

Many people are not very familiar on navigating through the different layers of a website and therefore they result to the sitemap to be able to find what they are looking for. Sitemaps provide a skeleton image of the whole site and cramp the pertinent sections into one single page.

3. Loading time

If people are to be asked to choose between a good-looking site which takes too much time to load and a basic site which loads quickly, most of the time, the second one will win. The use of large flash programs, graphics and the inappropriate placing of too much information should be avoided to improve the usability of a website.

4. Quality content and readability

People visit website to be able to gather information and they will leave immediately if the content are either: of poor quality or has poor readability. Make sure that the contents are written well and are structured to be easily read.

These are just some of the ways on how a developer can improve the usability of his website. The development of websites is pushing forward to usability and every single website should take this in mind.

If you are looking to hire an SEO firm, here is some of what you want to look for in that firm.

Keyword Research and Copywriting Skills

Both SEO and search engine advertising require keyword research and copywriting skills.

With ad copy, writers deal with only a limited set of words, including:

1) Query Words

2) Unique Selling Propositions

3) Calls to Action

In Web Site pages (including landing pages), writers have much more to deal with like page titles, meta tags, headings, a higher word count, site navigation schemes, calls to action (above and below the fold), and cross-linking. Though some of these features should be available on ad landing pages, many of these landing pages aren’t an integral part of a site’s information architecture.

Many copywriters come from the print world or, advertising, or journalism background. These copywriters might not specialize in the Web and search engine copywriting. Search engine copywriters know how to write with keyword phrases and incorporate these phrases into sales copy without diluting either their brand or copy. Search engine friendly copy has a certain level of redundancy that most likely will not be acceptable in a print medium or for that English paper you wrote in college. So it is important to find search engine copywriters for web site work, otherwise inevidibly you will most likely have problems if you try to hire a print copywriter.

Web Site Design, and Interface Usability

Placing keyword-rich text on Web pages won’t increase search engine visibility unless crawler-based search engines can easily access that text. A site’s design, page layout, navigation scheme, and information architecture are just as important as search engine friendly copy. That’s why you will notice a site that is primarily designed in graphics will not rank well in the search engines.

Finding an SEO firm that specializes in search engine friendly design is difficult. Not only must this firm’s staff have design skills, their staff should have programming, marketing, Web analytics, and interface usability skills. Very few SEO firms have staff with technical and marketing skills.

Even if an SEO firm doesn’t have individual staffers with multiple talents, make sure it has staffers with these five skill sets: web design, programming, search, Web analytics, and interface usability.

Inbound and Outbound Link Development

Link development is often an ongoing process that goes far beyond site development completion. For a new site, link development often begins with directory paid inclusion. Since it’s very difficult to modify a directory listing, a search engine friendly copywriter should know how to research categories and write appropriate descriptions that will enhance a site’s overall search engine visibility and be an accurate directory description. Many Web content writers don’t understand directory submission. It’s a special skill.

Unfortunately, link development isn’t a skill PR firms currently provide. Link development requires search, publicity, and e-mail skills. For example, an article opportunity might arise in an online publication. A qualified link developer knows how to:

1.) E-mail a publication to pitch the article
2.)Write the article so keywords naturally appear in the copy
3.)Ensure the article links back to the Web site in a search-friendly way.

In Closing

Sometimes, SEO can be a simple process. Maybe the title tags need a little tweaking. Adding text links and a site map might solve the problem, or creating a URL structure the crawler-based search engines can follow. However, if you need to outsource or hire an SEO firm, make sure the firm has staff that specialize in search, copywriting, design, programming, marketing, and inbound link development.

The best archives are carefully organized into subjects and date ranges. For search traffic (particularly long tail terms), it can be best to offer the full content of every post in a category on the archive pages, but from a usability standpoint, just linking to each post is far better (possibly with a very short snippet). Balance these two issues and make the decision based on your goals. A last note on archiving - pagination in blogging can be harmful to search traffic, rather than beneficial (as you provide constantly changing, duplicate content pages). Pagination is great for users who scroll to the bottom and want to see more, though, so consider putting a “noindex” in the meta tag or in the robots.txt file to keep spiders where they belong - in the well-organized archive system.
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To make sure your website works for you, follow these six key points to an effective website:

1. Make Sure It’s Consistent

Your site should reflect key elements of your brand identity, it should reflect the corporate look and feel of your business and be consistent across all your marketing communications. Keeping your brand consistent across all forms of media is vitally important and reaffirms what you’re about.

2. Usability

It is important that users find your site easy to use to get the most out of their visit. Things to consider here include ensuring the navigation is simple, logical and consistent and that all links are working properly, that there is the right information on each page and that if you have any forms on your site, they are working correctly. These factors amongst others will ensure visitors stay longer and are more likely to return.

3. Text Legibility

It is important that fonts used on your site are sized correctly so that the text can be read easily on different browsers and different platforms (and you should also consider making sure that text can be resized by visitors). It is also worth noting that the text on your site should be significantly darker than the background colour, so that it can easily be read, bearing in mind that some visitors could be colour blind or visually impaired in another way. You should therefore ensure that text is easy to read, logically laid out and that text doesn’t interfere with any images on your site.

4. Style with Substance

Make sure that your site is well designed, it looks good and gets your message across. By keeping it simple and stylish with lots of high quality, relevant content you are well on the way to creating a website that will bring you the results you need. Do not be underestimated the skills of a professional website design team who can provide you with a range of options and will ensure that your site meets both your brand requirements and your online objectives.

5. Website Speed

It is crucial that your site is quick to load and quick to navigate as visitors always want access to the information you provide quickly. By ensuring graphics on your site are optimised and the site written with clean code, it ensures that wait time

is kept to a minimum. The longer visitors have to wait for your site to load or to get around, the more likely they are to leave – and they are far less likely to return in the future.

6. Make Friends with Search Engines

It’s no good having a great looking website, packed with lots of relevant well laid out information if nobody can find it. And if people can’t find your site, then the chances of receiving enquiries about the products / services you offer are slim. So what can you do to make the leading search engines like your site? Here are a few quick tips amongst the many things we can recommend:

Firstly it is important to have the text within your site coded in HTML rather than embedded with the graphics or images. Search engines cannot read text within images so keep them separate. Instead, use ALT tags on images as search engines do consider these and they do have an impact on your search engine ranking. Also, include meta tags and descriptions within your code ahead of submitting your site to the leading search engines – many of which will list your site for free. Consider submitting your site to online directories and work hard a developing the number of inbound links your site has too.

By ensuring that your website is well-designed, logically laid out, quick to load and looks good, you are well on your way to ensuring that visitors to your site will enjoy their visit whilst getting their hands on the information you provide. Your website is a crucial business and marketing tool – make sure your site is working as hard as you are.