Website design

Posted on March 9, 2012 by A1dezine Limited

With the ever changing global market of IT, Web is the major IT-solution providing brand that is keeping its constant position to continue as the best web design company in New Zealand and in front of global clientele.

General Website design company stick their graphics and web design and development business for years and hence target a small segment of web consumers. With the time, Web has integrated newer services and changed its basic role of a New Zealand web designer. From building twenty pages Web site to developing a full functioning e commerce site, Web does it all. Today, Web builds Android and iPhone based apps thinking about the business opportunity of mobile application development. Plenty of newer services are coming up in the evolving services of Website Design Company.

Web Design: Of coursework a large part of website design is… design. In the event you require your Web site to look nice then you need to be definite that it is created by somebody who has a flare for layout, color, graphics & mise en scene. When you speak about your custom web design with a website design company, they will speak about the look of your site with you & what you require it to communicate, but then they will use their specialist design specialists in order to generate your vision in a manner that looks as professional as it can & is as eye grabbing & simple to navigate as feasible.

There’s plenty of aspects to designing the look & layout of an online site a ensuring it is eye catching & pretty for example, but simultaneously also ensuring that it can be basically navigated & is intuitive to understand. If your Website design is done well, visitors will come to your home page & basically be able to finding everything else they need.

There are also plenty of other art skills that are incorporated under this design heading. For example it will help plenty of if your web design is handled by somebody who can use Paint Shop or Photograph Shop in order to enhance your images & be definite that they are crisp & nice looking a than showing the noise that you get on some JPEGs or the rough edges of something that has been badly drawn. On a related note you ought to also look for a website design service that has photography skills & equipment & that possibly even makes use of models. Again this will make your site look more professional & will mean that it’s photographs of satisfied looking professionals who look attractively airbrushed & high definition to persuade viewers to make use of your service whatever it may be.

There will be to find out what you require to do for your business to be thought about legitimate. Now this might include getting a business license, tax identification number, or something else that is necessary by your local governing body. Nothing is worse than having a business that is prospering only to have it shutdown because you did not do the proper steps before you opened up.

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Website design company

Posted on February 24, 2012 by A1dezine Limited

In the period of web 2.0 and web three.0, natives need increasingly facilities from sites and Web is being used to promote businesses of every kind. Corporate are well concerned about launching and promoting their offers on Web and they need their website design company to be competitive and way ahead of time. Only few web design and development companies stand tall with the detailed and varied web development company range that caters to the requirement of IT and e commerce clients. There is the New Zealand website design company that is serving IT clients with the largest innovation on the web feasible and continuously upgrading its know-how to serve clients better, faster and with advanced know-how.

Website Design Company is in continuously transitioning through the technological evolution of web and Web has slowly gained its position as the best web design company in New Zealand out of the lot. There’s some factors on which Web has seldom compromised. With the time this professional web design company has given these services to its clients:

Also, support team of Web does continuous communication with clients to understand their requirement in web design and provide the exact web design services to the clients. Web also gives the facility for custom design services which helps clients get custom-made Web site design services at maximum cost. No matter whether the job is for global Website design or a graphic design in New Zealand, Web is the best place to go for. No matter what the client’s budget is, if the client for, Web is the right place to go for. Despite being a giant company, Web acts like friendly New Zealand web designer to catch the Web trends for local clients and Startup businesses.

The developers and coders of Web provide the solution to the clients in a platform which are simple to upgrade and alter with the expertise development of the future. The coders of Web com are professional to experiment with different expertise and nicely applying these in to the future projects.

The rich portfolio of Web also helps it to bag new projects. Due to company experience in serving clients from different industries, Web can always show a relevant expertise work to the client while other web development company can’t show such works for most of the cases. As a result, new clients get instantly impressed by Webs professional Website design and as a result Web is continuously awarded with new projects.

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Simple CSS: Creating More Readable Text

Posted on October 17, 2011 by A1dezine Limited

Typography is an important part of Web design. Just like in the print world, your content needs to be readable to your viewers for it to be of any use. As a general rule, you want to make sure your Web site provides as little resistance as possible to the user, and the easier your site is to read, the better. CSS provides three very useful properties to enhance the readability of your site: font, line-height, and letter-spacing.

A sample page

Let’s begin with a small sample Webpage. This page uses a small, pretty standard design with some low-key colors to help emphasize the content. This is a good use of design and color if your site fits in the “content is king” category (and most sites do), especially if your content consists of articles or other long blocks of text, like a blog.

The thing to notice here is that the text does its job: it communicates a message and the user can walk away having consumed your content. But the text is the same across the whole page, with the exception of a color change in the small subheading below the header text and the positioning of it. Here’s the CSS that’s being used in the sample page.

body {
	text-align: center;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	background-color: #363942;
	color: #382513;
}

#container {
	margin: 15px auto;
	text-align: left;
	background-color: #D8CAA8;
	border: 1px solid #4B1E18;
	padding: 0px;
	width: 850px;
}

#header {
	height: 80px;
	border-bottom: 1px solid #284907;
	margin-bottom: 15px;
	padding: 15px;
}

#header h1 {
	position: relative;
	vertical-align: center;
	color: #382513;
	margin-bottom: -10px;
}

.subheading {
	color: #284907;
}

#sidebar {
	border-left: 1px solid #8FB65F;
	margin: 0 0 15px 15px;
	padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;
	float: right;
	width: 175px;
}

#content {
	padding: 0 15px;
}

#footer {
	clear: both;
	border-top: 1px solid #284907;
	padding: 15px;
	margin-top: 15px;
}

Choosing your fonts

To improve readability, we’ll want to choose a font that looks good with the colors you’ve chosen and at the size you plan on making your text. Typically, a non-serif font is advisable for the main content, while headers benefit from the added noticeability of serif fonts. If you come from a print background, this may sound backward. Usually, in the print world, serifs are preferred for blocks of text because the serifs help the eye distinguish each line. However, modern operating systems have options to smooth the edges of screen fonts automatically, so non-serif fonts come out looking better as main content and serif fonts look good in small doses.

With this in mind, I’m going to use one of my favorite lines when it comes to CSS and fonts:

font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;

These fonts are some of the safest you can use in your design, and if cross-browser compatibility is a concern, memorize them. They’re good to use on their own, or you can use them as a starting point for your non-serif text. In this case, for simplicity’s sake, I’m going to stick with just these three for the content. The body section of the CSS now looks like this:

body {
	font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
	text-align: center;
	margin: 0;
	padding: 0;
	background-color: #363942;
	color: #382513;
}

And with that small change, the overall readability of the page has changed slightly for the better:

The slight change is good, but all of the font is still the same family and this creates a bad sort of uniformity. We want some distinction going on here, so let’s set our headings and subheading apart from the rest of the content. We’ll ignore the h1 at the very top for a bit, since we’ll want to do something a little different with that in a second.

For the subheading and the heading in the content, I’ll be using a serif font. Just like above, this next line is probably one of my favorites:

font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;

Again, these are some of the safest fonts you can use in Web Design, even if it’s just for a starting point and you plan to expand your typography a bit later. Reserve this line for headers and other places where it would look good in small doses; the eye has a tougher time reading serif fonts on a screen than non-serif fonts so whole blocks of serif text can be jarring.

So now, our subheading class looks like this:

.subheading {
	color: #284907;
	font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}

And we need to create a new rule for h2 tags in the content section. We do so like this:

#content h2 {
	font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}

Alright, now the header information is more separated from the content, which is good.

Now, what about that h1 header we have at the top of the page? We’re going to make it larger and give it less contrast to its background. This is so that users will know what site they’re on, but won’t be distracted by the header.

We’ll do this with this code:

color: #6B5846;
font-size: 48px;

And the full header h1 rule now reads:

#header h1 {
	position: relative;
	vertical-align: center;
	color: #6B5846;
	margin-bottom: -10px;
	font-size: 48px;
}

Now we turn our attention toward the sidebar and footer. The text in the these places is the same as the body text in main content area. The sidebar and footer typically play secondary roles, so we’ll give them smaller text and a different font family with a single font rule:

font: 12px Verdana;

Now, our sidebar and footer divs have the following CSS:

#footer {
	clear: both;
	border-top: 1px solid #284907;
	padding: 15px;
	font: 12px Verdana;
	margin-top: 15px;
}

#sidebar {
	border-left: 1px solid #8FB65F;
	margin: 0 0 15px 15px;
	padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;
	float: right;
	width: 175px;
	font: 12px Verdana;
	color: #5A4735;
}

Right now, the content text feels a bit overwhelming. We’ll reduce its size with this:

font-size: 15px;

And we’ll put it in the content rule, so now it reads:

#content {
	padding: 0 15px;
	font-size: 15px;
}

We’ve taken some good steps in making sure the different sections of our site each have their own look and feel while still feeling unified. Now, we can take it a step further with the line-height property.

line-height — Be good to your visitors!

Your visitors are there to see whatever content you have up on your site. They’ve come to see you and they’re your guests! Treat them well. You don’t want to strain their eyes when they view your page. Use line-height to make your text more readable. Adding more line height to your text increases the amount of space between each line, and it helps the eye make that jump as it moves down your content.

We’ll give the content div a line height of 160%, which basically gives it 60% more line height than it normally has, based on font size. This is a decent amount of line height and gives the text some room to breathe. For the sidebar, since the text is smaller, we’ll only give it a line height of 140%. So, now our content and sidebar CSS are as follows:

#content {
	padding: 0 15px;
	font-size: 15px;
	line-height: 160%;
}

#sidebar {
	border-left: 1px solid #8FB65F;
	margin: 0 0 15px 15px;
	padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;
	float: right;
	width: 175px;
	font: 12px Verdana;
	line-height: 140%;
	color: #5A4735;
}

And with this, the text takes on a much more pleasant look. The eyes don’t have to work as hard to read the text now, so it’s easier for your visitors to consume your content.

Adjusting letter spacing

There are only a couple of places where letter spacing comes into play with this page, but it too can play a part in increasing your site’s readability and help make each element on the page more distinct. Headers and headings are usually good candidates for letter spacing. From a design point of view, you can use letter spacing on your header text to add some improved visuals to your page, like we’re going to do in the header div with this:

letter-spacing: 20px;

This increases the space between the letters of your text by 20px. 20px is a big number for ordinary text, but for the header at the top of the page, which is just 4 letters, it helps it stretch to be just about as wide as the subheading beneath it, giving it more of a header feel.

For the headings (the h2 tags) in the content of the page, we’re going to increase the letter spacing by just 2px. This will lend the headings a more prominent feel and separate them further from the text, and the adjustment is minor enough that it will not distract from reading:

letter-spacing: 2px;

So our header’s h1 CSS and our content’s h2 CSS now look like this:

#header h1 {
	position: relative;
	vertical-align: center;
	color: #6B5846;
	margin-bottom: -10px;
	font-size: 48px;
	letter-spacing: 20px;
}

#content h2 {
	font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
	letter-spacing: 2px;
}

Expanding on this CSS

There are a lot of different ways you can apply these properties, too. For the design of the page I purposely used a simple, rather unintuitive design so I could focus on the text as it changed during the above steps, but applying this kind of CSS to a much more vibrant and elegant design can drastically improve its effect on your visitors. I don’t intend to “pretty up” , and if I do, it will be for a totally separate article, but if you’d like to take a crack at making it look prettier while preserving the font and text adjustments.

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Eight Rules for Effective Web Forms

Posted on October 17, 2011 by A1dezine Limited

If you’re looking to collect information from your users, there isn’t a much easier or more straightforward method than a Web form. If designed well, Web forms provide valuable information; if not, they may scare users away. With this in mind, here are a few key tenets of Web form design that every designer should know.

All the examples in this article were created with CoffeeCup Web Form Builder.

1. Build Conservatively and Design With a Purpose

Let’s face it: No one likes spending a long time filling out a form. Keep it short and simple and eliminate elements that aren’t absolutely necessary or that don’t offer a tangible benefit. Make sure every part of your form is pulling its weight, and your users will thank you.

The structure of your form should serve just as much of a functional purpose as its elements. When laying out your form, keep in mind that, at least in the Western world, people read from top to bottom and left to right. They also often use the Tab key to move around the form. Your design should reflect this through intuitive labeling and natural placement of elements. And, of course, your form should never look scattered or haphazard — make sure everything is evenly spaced and neatly arranged.

Here are a few standard form layouts that you should use as a starting point for more creative designs:

Left-Aligned Labels With Vertically Stacked Fields
Form with left-aligned labels and vertically stacked input fields

This form features left-aligned labels with neatly ordered fields stacked on top of one another. This gives the eye an easy-to-follow path down the form, which is especially helpful if you’re asking questions users may not be familiar with. Because they’re able to read down the list of questions without the visual interruption of an input field, they’ll be able to concentrate more on what you’re asking. This layout does tend to make for longer form completion times because of the amount of time it takes for the eye to move from the label to the input field.

Right-Aligned Labels With Vertically Stacked Fields
Form with right-aligned labels and vertically stacked input fields

Right-aligning your labels can help make them easier to distinguish and quicker to read, and also eliminates awkward spaces between labels and input fields. However, this can be harder to read. It also looks jagged, which can be a bit unattractive.

Top-Aligned Labels
Form with top-aligned labels and input fields with variable stacking

Top-aligned labels like these make for a form that’s quicker and easier to fill out because the eye doesn’t have to move as far between the label and the input field. This type of layout also gives you the freedom to place related fields next to each other, which can save space.

2. Tailor Your Form to the Situation

Every form you make should be tailored to the specific situation it addresses. When you’re planning the design of your form, ask yourself the following questions: What are you asking? Why? What does your Web design look like with and without the form? Is the form something users want to fill out, or is it something they’re required to fill out? Your answers to these questions should help dictate the layout and content of your form.

3. Use What You Need

When deciding whether to add an element to your form, ask yourself if you could do without it. If the answer is “yes,” don’t use it.

One element that’s almost always unnecessary is the Reset button. These relics still make an appearance now and then, but they should be avoided. Think about it: When you want to change information on a form, it doesn’t matter if the field is already filled out or not, so why would you even need to erase all the information? The only thing the Reset button is good for is accidentally clearing all the information your user just entered and aggravating them enough that they’ll go somewhere else instead of taking the effort to fill out the form again.

4. Use Short, Clean Descriptions When Necessary

You may need to explain why you are collecting certain information on your form, especially when users are loathe to share it, like with phone numbers or e-mail addresses. This not only helps reduce user confusion, but also ensures that the data is accurate and correctly formatted.

Any descriptions and comments should be clean and concise. You may also want to format them with different colors, sizes, or styles to help set them apart. Just be sure not to overdo it — after all, you don’t want your descriptions to look tacky or drown out the rest of your form. This form, which asks for information in order to provide a quote for printing services, is a good example of a form that effectively uses descriptions:

A form requesting containing short but informative descriptions

5. Be the First to Communicate

Make sure the wording in your form is friendly and user oriented. Here’s a simple trick for writing conversational copy: Pretend you’re actually talking with your user.

If you want to know someone’s name, you aren’t going to stare them in the eyes with a rigid expression and demand, “Full name.” That would just be creepy. If you were looking to garner a positive response from this person, you would instead open with a smile and say, “Hi, what’s your name?”

Keeping this in mind, instead of prompting your user with the label “Full Name,” try something a little more personable, like, “What’s your name?”

6. Divide the Form Into Bite-Sized Sections

Communication involves the exchange of ideas in small, manageable sections. You introduce yourself, and the other person does the same. You mention what you do for a living, and the other person has a comment or question. You remark back, or answer, and this prompts another response. In a good conversation, the information is a steady, back-and-forth flow.

A form, being another method of communication, should be the same way. You may be asking for quite a bit of information, but that doesn’t mean you have to throw it all at the user in a huge block. Try using horizontal rules, colored bars, meaningful images, or headings that match the design of your site to separate the information into small, easily understood chunks. If all else fails, spread your form out across multiple pages and add a progress bar across the top so users know about how much they have left.

7. Include Meaningful Contextual Error Messages

Your error messages should be helpful and clear. Specify in the message which field caused the error, and highlight the label and/or the field itself. After all, no one likes hunting through a form for an elusive field they overlooked the first time around.

8. Release the User

When the user clicks the Submit button, they think they’re done, and they’re ready to move on. They’re basically saying, “Here’s the info you wanted. Talk to you later!”

In a real conversation, you’d give them a wave, say, “Bye,” and walk off, or give them some other way of acknowledging that the communication is done. Your form should be no different. Have your form programmed so it sends the user to a custom page that tells them something like, “Thank you for your submission! You’ll be hearing from us shortly.” There should also be a link back to the main page of your Website.

And that’s it! Keep these rules in mind when designing your next Web form, and you may be surprised at the quantity and quality of feedback you receive as a result.

For more information about Web Form Builder or to download the free trial, click here.

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HTML, the Foundation of the Web

Posted on October 17, 2011 by A1dezine Limited

HTML is hot again. Some time ago the HTML5 promo machine got up to speed, causing a little mini-fuss. In a parallel universe, others are still putting a lot of time and effort into the development of xHTML2. This (public) renewal of interest in HTML caused plenty of discussion, revealing several blank spots in the general knowledge of HTML. This article will hopefully plug one of the most notorious holes shut.

For many front-end developers, HTML remains mostly an excuse. It is viewed as a language of hooks, constructed for adding javascript, css and other enhancements to web documents. In recent events, this kick-started a small semantics debate again, where people were reminded about the semantic value of HTML. A reminder voiced by raging standardista, still fired up from previously fought debates and awareness battles.

HTML != Semantics

Everyone with a passion for front-end development will recognize the importance of the standardista when it comes to HTML awareness. Yet this doesn’t mean that their methods should go totally uncriticized. With all the attention they raised for the semantic function of HTML, some people have started to see HTML as a purely semantic language. Which it is not.

Evidence of this can be seen in the “divitis” issue that followed the early rise of web standards. When front-end developers were urged to switch from table-based layouts to div-based layouts, some took the advice a bit too literally. They turned everything into divs, ignoring the semantic purpose of the elements at hand. This triggered an ever bigger reaction of the standardistas and led to demonization of the div element. Divitis was considered the AIDS of front-end development and using divs became almost taboo. Only when absolutely necessary were they allowed.

Enter Minimal HTML

The fear of purely structural elements (divs and spans) branched off a new movement. A group of people that didn’t believe in the absolute need for structural elements and tried to build pages with purely semantic elements as much as possible. They banished extra divs when used for styling but forgot about the original function of the div and span along the way. In the end, they made HTML a poorer language than it was supposed to be.

two layouts, different by structureConsider the following two basic page layouts. A simple layout consisting of four main areas. The context area gives contextual information on the main content area. A layout like this (not considering any graphical design enhancements) could easily be made with four divs. This is setup A, preferred by minimalists. Setup B shows a situation where the layout is build using five divs. Take a moment to think which setup you prefer, purely on a structural basis.

HTML = Semantics + Structure

HTML is more than just semantics, it’s also about structuring your document. The main difference between both type of elements is that semantic elements explain the purpose of an element, while structural elements explain the relation of its content to the content of other elements within a document.

In setup A we have four separate divs, structurally all on the same level. This tells us all divs are related in the same way, only the order of appearance will indicate some sort of relationship. In setup B the main content and context area are grouped in a content div. This is an indication that the relation between context and main content is a lot stronger or at least different than the relation to the other element. And on the other hand, the content area shares a similar relation with header and footer.

Structurally, setup B not only holds more information about the relationship between the separate areas, it’s also more correct. This makes it the better implementation of the two. The extra div used to group main content and context is not useless, but adds useful meaning to the document.

Enter Minimalitis

Minimalitis is the disease formed by the aversion of divitis, and is equally dangerous as divitis. People who suffer from minimalitis will write badly structured documents and will often incorrectly use (or simply abuse) elements to avoid the use of divs (often they use a p tag) and spans (em, strong and even the b tag are popular). Another sign is the merge of block and inline elements on the same level. While this is not exactly illegal, it’s a serious warning of possible minimalitis and bad structuring.

And yet, the cure for this disease is simple. Reinstate the power of the div and span, but use it for its intended purpose. Use divs and spans to bring structure to your document. Contain elements that share a similar relationship within the same level. Use it to separate elements from others that share a different relationship. And use them together with a meaningful class or id whenever you don’t have a valid semantic element to describe your content.

The Future of Structuring

Luckily, the people working on HTML5 have understood this and added a couple of extra structural elements to the language. Instead of leaving us with a simple div and span, two elements with a simple structural meaning, they added elements like footer, header, article, section and aside to help us better define structures in HTML documents.

The fun thing about these elements is that they not only hold structural meaning but also semantic meaning. Instead of simply structuring a document they hint at the relationship elements bear to other elements or the page in general. Tags like footer and header not only contain a section of a document, they also hint at the function of the contained elements and the relation to the other elements on the page.

Hopefully this will give the opportunity to those suffering from divitis or minimalitis to write better structured code while keeping the document as semantic as possible. Until then, just know that a div has more power than simply adding a rounded corner or border to the graphical design. Structural elements are there to reveal relations between elements, a sometimes forgotten power of HTML.

Personal Promo

Niels Matthijs spends his spare time combining the luxury life of having no kids and a wonderful girlfriend with the agonizing pressure of blogging under his Onderhond monicker. As a front-end developer he is raised and nurtured at Internet Architects, a Belgian company investing a lot of time in making the web a more accessible and more pleasant place.

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Top Five Ways to Make Your Site More Popular

Posted on October 17, 2011 by A1dezine Limited

The Web has grown into a real jungle, and finding cool new sites nowadays isn’t always the easiest thing in the world. If you have a Website yourself, you’re dealing with the other end of this issue. How do you get noticed online, and is there anything you can do to increase your popularity?

There certainly is! Here are the top five ways you can strengthen your site and increase your online visibility.

1. Strong Hosting

This first point is mostly important for those who don’t have their own Website yet but eagerly want to create one. After you have selected your domain name, the next step is to choose a hosting plan. There are many good, affordable alternatives, but what professionals usually recommend is specialized blog hosting. This form of Web hosting allows you to set up a professional-looking Website in no time at all. Why is this important to mention when it comes to making your site more popular? Well, without strong hosting, you won’t be able to handle a traffic to your new Website, which means you’ll have no chance at all of becoming well liked.

Of course, finding strong hosting is often easier said than done. The hosting industry has grown very popular in recent years, and this has lead to large numbers of companies offering various hosting services. But don’t be fooled by their tricky ways of making it sound as if they are the best in the industry. We would recommend you partner up with a company that has a strong reputation and experience in the business. You might start at Web Hosting Search for reviews and other information to help you find the right fit.

When it comes to hosting, you should compare the different features included with the plan. Make sure you are guaranteed at least 99.9% uptime and that customer support is easy to get hold of. You never know when you could need them. Likewise, it is also good to know exactly what kind of numbers in terms of disc space and bandwidth will you be allowed to use and manage. Some providers also forbid their clients to upload music or video files to their servers even if it is for personal use. It’s important to ask customer support to resolve such issues before purchasing a plan. Some other things you might consider asking are whether your domain name registry information will be protected and how many different e-mail accounts will you be allowed to use as part of the hosting agreement.

2. Optimize Your Website

A cute robot searches some binary codeIn order to be truly successful online, you will have to get a high ranking in search engines. To succeed in this, you should learn as much as you possibly can about search engine optimization (SEO). The subject of SEO is vast and can be quite daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you’ll be able to see the benefits immediately and will probably wonder why you didn’t get started with it earlier. A few things you can do to get started are to make sure you’re using the proper keywords and to write for your visitors as well as for search engines. Writing for search engines is important, since you want to get high rankings, and writing for visitors is of the essence because you want them to stick around and return to your Website.

When you are satisfied with the keywords and content on your site, it is time to start working with link building. Search engines determine much of the value of a certain page/site by looking at the number of inbound links. Link exchange is one of the most popular and successful ways to get a good rank on search engines, and it’s really easy to do. Simply visit a Website that you like and ask the Webmaster if they are interested in a link exchange — it doesn’t have to be any more complicated than that.

Having something interesting and distinctive on your page is a great way to attract potential link partners. For example, if you are running a Website about domain names, why not add a domain name availability checker to your homepage? It will most likely attract links from other sites related to the niche, and people will tend to come back again if they want to know whether a domain is available or not. Try to be extra creative to set yourself apart from competitors.

3. Take Advantage of Social Media Optimization

Even though SEO should be a big part of your site optimization, it shouldn’t end there. Social Media Optimization is probably just as important, since it’s one of the strongest marketing tools available today. A social media optimization campaign should include a few different things. First, make sure the content on your site or blog is relevant to your topic and not out of date. Visit similar sites and join the discussion in leaving comments on posts/articles — don’t be afraid to say what’s on your mind. Make yourself visible on Facebook and MySpace. Three other sites that can be useful for social media optimization are Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube. The two latter ones are not always applicable. Make sure you only take advantage of them when the time is right — you might do more harm than good if you don’t.

Obviously, don’t forget to include outbound links to your Website on any social media site you utilize. Even if your link has a “nofollow” attribute attached to it (e.g. like in Facebook), you will still attract new visitors and potential customers to the site. Lastly, your campaign should be built on friendly platforms, such as CoffeeCup Flash™ Blogger, which make it easy to create and edit content.

4. Get Your Visitors Involved

A crucial point to make your site grow in the number of visitors is by getting them involved. Try to write in a personal style, and don’t be afraid to leave an open question. If this shouldn’t do it, why not hold a contest? This will most likely get people talking about your site. The prize doesn’t have to cost a fortune, since people like to compete regardless of what the award is — it’s human nature.

Other easy ways of getting your visitors involved is by including a forum on your site or the possibility to comment on your posts/articles. Everyone wants to express their own personal ideas and thoughts on topics, and by allowing them doing so, you also increase the chance of visitors returning to see how was their feedback appreciated. As an added bonus, if the topic is extra popular, the discussion could attract interest from other Websites as well!

5. Emphasize Usability in Your Design

Fingers on a keyboardInvesting in a good design is more important than some people seem to think. With a beautiful design, you will grow in trust among your readers/visitors. An important fact to remember is not over-designing the Website. It doesn’t matter how many hours you’ve put into designing the site if no one understands how to use it. Let some non-Internet-savvy friends navigate through your Website before launching it at a full scale. If they find it easy, so will the rest of your visitors.

It is difficult to say exactly what makes a beautiful and functional design. What looks good to one person might seem terrible for another. However, there are basic trends in Web design, and if you follow these, you can be sure to please most of your visitors. A few popular Web design trends for 2009 are multi-column layouts, large illustrations, and lots of white space.

If you wish to stay on the safe side, then it is a good call to make the layout and design features on the page easily accessible and simple to understand. Try to use standard coding and avoid over-the-top Flash animations. Some people may have browser settings that prevent them from viewing Flash, which means you might lose valuable visitors. Try to think how the visitor thinks, and your Website will grow more popular and respected day after day.

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