Friday, July 18, 2008

Web Design- the invisible hand to the success of your business

Business and website go hand in hand. Website is the focal point of your business, interacting with your customers and clients round the clock. People judge you by your covers and this is where a good looking website design steps in. A professional website layout puts your business where it matters the most- in front of your customers and set you apart from the noise and clatter of your competition. How many times have you walked in a store which appears shabby? I bet you avoid stepping in, leave alone doing business with them. The same rule applies to your website- it is your virtual storefront and by designing an eye catching website, you are bound to turn a few heads and keep visitors coming back.

Picture this- your website acts as your storefront, your web layout and design the first impression your customers get, your content acts as brochure and catalogs for your customers to browse through, would you be willing to take a chance with any of the pointers that directly affect your business? A professional looking website layout portrays that your website means business. A website should be designed like a car with the purpose it needs to serve in mind. What´s the use of creating a vehicle without passengers? Getting a good looking website does not necessarily cost you a fortune. A well thought out website design would not only add value to your website but open up host of revenue avenues for your website besides creating value to your business. Making your website easily accessible and providing relevant content with your business niche creates a winning combination.

Before you start creating a website, there is an important factor to be borne in mind- your target audience. Your target audience should dictate your website theme and design. For instance if your business niche is real estate, your target audience is in the age group of 25-55 years and your website theme, layout and concept should be governed by your target audience and by over looking this key component you would end up turning your website-"internet real estate" into an "internet wasteland" . Your website should speak the language of your customers. Hiring a professional web designer to turn your vision into reality might come in handy but remember no one knows your business better than you, so your involvement would always create a personalized professional website leaving your footprint on the website, helping you to communicate efficiently with your customers. Make sure the website serves the purpose for which it has been created.

Business is what Business does- making contacts with the right people at the right time at the right place. But how can we do it all the time? This is where a website steps in. In simple terms it puts your business on auto pilot. Every Business needs a website-PERIOD.

source:- americanchronicle.com/

Use PNG Images Format in Your Web Designing

The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use. The PNG image file format is not new to the web. It originally developed in the mid-90s as a solution to the shortcomings of the traditional GIF image file format. However, because early browser applications offered only spotty support for the PNG's advanced features, web designers, developers were limited in its use.

One large hurdle in particular faced by PNG's was Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). Far and away the most popular browser, IE offered particularly poor support for the file format. However, with the release of IE 7 as well as several JavaScript hacks, this has all changed, and PNGs are more popular than ever.

But who cares!? And besides being one letter short of my favorite 1972 video game, what makes a PNG so great? Below, are three reasons why PNGs are the best image format since the Polaroid.

They’re See-Through! (Alpha Transparency):
As compared to the GIF, PNG offers a far less basic form of transparency. With GIFs, a particular color (or colors) is able to be saved as transparent, leaving colors either entirely opaque or transparent. There is no in-between.

PNGs have a distinct advantage in this area. The PNG file format supports "semi-transparent pixels," meaning a PNG can be saved with a soft drop shadow and floated over any background. It can be used as a watermark on a textured or gradiented background. It can even be smoothly faded from fully opaque to transparent, revealing the web page contents beneath.

Summerour.net features a logo which demonstrates this function. The homepage layout called for a logo with a soft drop shadow over a textured background of architectural sketches that regularly change. Using a GIF or JPG would be highly impractical, because every time the image changed, the logo is background would need to be edited. A PNG, however, is floated over the image with a faded drop shadow, making the task quick, simple and dynamic. PNGs make the look and feel of your page flexible.

They Look Great! (Lossless Compression ):
Every time a JPEG is saved and compressed, it loses some of the original file's information and the image quality degrades. The GIF file format offers lossless compression (so the file can be saved and resaved without losing image quality), but it only supports a limited 256 color palette, making it useless for full-color photography and other such complex images.

PNG offers the best of both worlds. It displays full color photographic images, like the JPEG, but it also supports a managed color palette, like the GIF format. While the PNG will typically have a larger file size than the JPEG for photographic images, it does have a distinct advantage: its compression is lossless, meaning images never degrade in quality or suffer from "compression artifacting" which affects many JPEG images.

The results are crisper, brighter images that will on your pages unlike ever before.

They âre Self Optimizing! (Gamma Correction ):
Adjusting the brightness and contrast of images to look correct on a wide variety of monitors and operating systems is a common problem facing web designers. This problem is primarily related to different monitor Gamma settings.

Gamma is a method monitors use to distribute their luminance evenly across the display. Unfortunately, different operating systems (in particular the Mac and Windows) use different Gamma settings. So an image that is color-corrected for the Macintosh operating system may look too dark on the Windows operating system and vice-versa.

source:- www.pr-usa.net/