Your Website Hurts My Eyes: 7 Reasons to Tone Down Your Advertising

So you're on the computer, as usual. Your eyes are smarting. Your back hurts. You want to jump in the car and sail down the highway with all the windows down and your hair flapping in the wind. But before you call it quits for the day, you have to look up just one more thing. Maybe it's web marketing, maybe you want to buy some artwork to hang in your office. Off to Google you go.

You type in the magic words, whatever they are, and watch as a list of websites flows down the page. You click on the first one, and it's an instant assault on your eyeballs. Ten glaring banners, flashing like Vegas at midnight. One of those annoying hover ads that follows you as you scroll and won't let you read anything until you click the corner. Some sparkly things "snowing" down the page. Frantic messages screaming things like BUY NOW! LAST CHANCE! INSTANT SUCCESS CAN BE YOURS. A picture of a grinning guy who reminds you of your creepy Uncle Lester.

You click away. Not today, not any day. You don't care what that guy is selling or even if he's giving something away, because his presentation is god-awful. Just when you thought you'd escaped the mayhem, a sneaky little window pops up: "WHY DID YOU LEAVE THIS SITE? Please fill out this quick survey!" Are they kidding? You consider typing something offensive in the "Leave Your Comment" box, but figure it will only encourage someone to spam you with unwanted offers.

We're all familiar with this web-surfing experience. It's downright unpleasant. What's your opinion of someone who pitches their company in such a loud and desperate manner? Do you believe all of their pie-in-the-sky promises? Do they strike you as company run by people who are intelligent, honest and reliable? Are you going to whip out your credit card because they tell you to?

Of course you're not. Being the loudest, the brightest, the busiest and the boldest may attract attention, but it does not bring sales. That's something to remember when you're creating your own company website. What DOES attract and keep new customers coming back? A simple, tasteful web design. An easily navigable site. Copy that's crisp, clean, and interesting.

Here are 7 reasons to tone down your advertising:

1. Flash is just too flashy. A flash presentation can be creative and unique, but is it really needed for what you offer? Will that kooky winking clown-head in the corner really make the sale for you? Even if you find a really excellent designer who can put together an incredible high-tech Flash feature, consider the harried web surfer. She's been clicking all day; do you really think she has the patience to stand for one more mini-movie?

2. Too many messages cancel each other out. Ever try to read one of those pharmacy circulars when you're tired? All of those big red words emblazoned across the page. Headlines crammed in beside blown-out price points and cheap photography. It isn't easy! If you try to cram a whole bunch of words on your website, guess what? Not one of those messages is going to be read, let alone remembered. The eye doesn't know where to look! Try a visual whisper instead of a scream. Make your point as best you can, but take care to leave whitespace so the eyes have a resting place where they can digest what you've said.

3. Movement is distracting. Think about the last time you visited a website with "magical stars" sprinkling down over the words. Were you able to read and understand it? Mind the weary web surfer; be kind to his eyes! You stand a much better chance of holding a customer's interest with words that aren't flying off the page, but rather standing still in one spot, waiting quietly for someone to read them!

4. The mighty click is all-powerful. You know what it is to be that web hunter. The mouse is in your hand; you're in total control! Now think of that other person palming the mouse, surfing YOUR site. If your website is a frenzy of color and confusion, all it takes is one CLICK and you're forgotten! Don't want them to click away? Here's how to make them stay. Keep it clean and simple!

5. Your empty promises are lost on the skeptical consumer. Think about your own web-surfing experiences. Did you believe that guy who told you he'd make you a millionaire if you just SIGN UP TODAY? You're better off being honest and optimistic, than crazed and fanatical about what you can offer your customer.

6. Pop-ups are really annoying. Have you ever been so intrigued by a pop-up ad that you bought whatever they were raving about? My guess is no. Do you appreciate it when you're trying to get some work done on the computer and fifteen pop-up ads crowd your screen and overload your hard drive? I certainly don't! If you don't like such rude interruptions, then don't impose them on somebody else. I don't care how many times that marketing guru tells you it will improve your search engine ranking. Search engine stats might give you exposure, but click rates mean nothing if the customer's not buying.

7. No one reads really long sales letters. Ah, how brilliant of those copywriting experts to convince you that a six-page letter is going to bring in big bucks for your company. Especially if you're paying them by the hour or word! A two-page letter will do the same thing as a six-pager, and more. The 'more' being that it will hold your reader's interest the whole way through. Brevity is the key to great writing. If you can make a great argument in five words or less, you've got it all over the next guy. Keep that in mind before you put the Magna Carta on your web portal.

Want to design and write website content that attracts and captivates? Want to bring your visitors back for seconds, thirds, fourths, and the ultimate purchase? Then keep the above "distractors" to a minimum. Really try to put yourself in the other person's shoes... the one who is searching the internet for what you have. Think about all of those things that prevent you from enjoying your web surfing experience, and then take care to remove them from your own company website! Offer tasteful, subtle design, eloquent headlines, and clear, informative copy. Be honest about what you sell and how it can make a difference for your potential customer. Speak softly, and watch the sales roll in.

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Web Designing Tips

Easy That??s how you??d like life to be, right? Especially when you??re creating a website on your own. But that doesn??t mean you want the site to look severe and just functional. you want it to be pretty , smart and also respond and move when you interact with it, while saying all that you want to say to its visitors . There are little tips and Features incorporated into software just for people like you.

Love what Flash can do but don??t know how to use it ? Macromedia thought of you and built a feature into Dream weaver that lets you create cool animated Flash buttons just by entering parameters. Want to have button respond to a mouse-over but have no idea or patience to create one with graphics software? You can make a quick and easy mouse-over button right from within FrontPage. What do you do if you need to optimize 150 images within an hour? No need to panic, image ready can help you out with a little droplet. Check out the different tips that make life easier or better for you as a Web designer.

?? Animated Flash Button & Macromedia Dream weaver:

Dream weaver lets you create some custom vector graphics from within the software. You can make Flash and embed them into your Web pages. There are different kinds of style that you can choose for these from the available set-play back type of buttons .Arrow shaped button, shopping cart button And so on, or make some of your own.

Making a smart interactive button is simple in Dream weaver, select insert-interactive Image-Flash Button. Form the window that opens select different button style by looking at the preview image below. Customize the button the way you want it by adding the name of the button, the Font color and font size , then specify the URL that the button has to link to . The button is saved with SWF extension you can preview the button in your browser to see if it looks the way you want.

?? Easy Mouse-Over Buttons :

Mouse-over and Front Page? Oh Yes. The software has quit a few convenient features up its sleeve, one of which is ??Hover buttons.?? Granted, these buttons don??t have snazzy graphics they look like typical button blocks, but they react to mouse-over and you can archive it very simply. Here??s how.

Select Insert ??Web component. in the window that opens , select Dynamic Effect in the component type and select the Hover Button effect on the right . Type in the text that should appear on the button, choose a font for the text, specify the URL to link to on clicking, and select the size and color of the button. In the drop-down menu for Effect, Glow is the default selection. Try it ?? you can select the color of the glow-check the button in preview mode-the button light up when you move your mouse over it. There are several other effects available that are worth checking out, especially the bevels quite neat!

?? Cool Effects With DHTML :

DHTML or Dynamic HTML offers some cool effects that could make your Web pages stand out click? Or your page to load with a transition Effect? DHTML will do this for you along with other little tricks. After you??ve built your Web page, from the menu bar, select Format-Dynamic HTML Effect. A tool bar appears in the work area. Choose an event from the first drop down list. This could be on ??click?? double-click.?? Mouse over or page load. Depending on the event selected here, the next Drop-Down list offers the possible effect that can be achieved , This could be a change in the color and style of the font if it is text, a border added around it , or in case of an image , you can replace the image with another one by a swap .

Most of the effect toggle Meaning if there was a font change on click, another click will change the font back to what it was before. However, some effects are one-time like the disappearing act of an image or button .you select ??fly out?? from the effects list for this . On ??page load?? you could have the selected text drop in word by word, or hop in, spiral in, zoom out, and so on. This is especially useful for advertisements or parts of the page that you want to draw the user??s attention to.

?? Animation In Reverse :

You??ve made an animation using image Ready-may be a tween of position, opacity or effects or a manually placed and manipulated animation backwards? No need to re-tween or manually place the frames backwards; simply click on the little arrow in the animated palette and select Reverse Frames. You can also create a rubber band effect by copying the forward sequence (small arrow > copy Frames), pasting it at the end of sequence (small arrow > Paste Frames > ??Paste after selection ??) and then, by selecting the newly pasted sequence and applying Reverse Frames on this.

?? All It Takes Is A Droplet :

Want to optimize several images with the same settings? Create a ??droplet ??and save time.

Open the optimize palette in Image Ready with your image open. Set the optimization to what you want-file type (JPG, GIF or PNG), quality (low, medium, high), lousiness, dither and so on while previewing the result in the ??optimized?? tab of the main in the Optimize palette. This creates what is called a ??droplet?? that contains your optimization settings. Save this droplet anywhere you want, say on your desktop.

Now drag the folder containing the images to be optimized onto this droplet. All the images in the folder will get optimized the way you specified. This may take a while depending on the number and size of the images in the folder. You can also drop images one at a time onto the droplet.

?? Precise Hot Spots :

Want to link different parts of an image to various URLs? You can do this by slicing the image and assigning links to the relevant slices, but the disadvantage of this is the lack of precision: slice is necessarily rectangular. Also, slices are pieces of the image.

Say you??re working on a Web page for children about the different parts of ancient castles. You would like the parts-dungeons; moat, guard towers, and so on-to have precise rollovers and links so that the information is conveyed correctly. Rather than slices such an images and allot links, use image maps, select the polygon Image Map tool in Image Ready and outline the part you want to talk about precisely . Even circular image maps work fairly well in some areas. You can adjust points of the map edge after finishing the shape, too .in the image map palette, you can specify the URL to link to along with ALT text. To preview your work, save Optimized as a HTML file and check it in a browser.

?? Optimize Your Web Graphics Easily :

Despite the cable Internet connections and high-speed modems, Web graphics are still limited speed-wise. The sites that load fastest and work most efficient have well-optimized graphics .GIF images are generally good for line drawings and illustrations while JPG ones are best suited for photographs. Besides file format, there are various factor that affect the optimized image like the ??lousiness??-the amount of data in the image that you??re willing to sacrifice for smaller file size-the number of colors you need minimum, whether you can have dithering or not, so on .

In Photoshop, to try out different optimization settings, click Save for Web . A window opens up showing the current image along with various options and menus on the right . in the image window itself, you can see two tabs: 2-up tab to see two versions-the original and the optimized-for comparison along with time needed to load the image according to various modem speeds . The 4-upshows you 3 versions against the original. These previews are useful and convenient, rather than having to manually save the image repeatedly in different ways and comparing each of them.

?? Making A Banner Ad:

We??re all familiar with banner ads that we see all over the Web: a strip with an image and text that changes into another and another conveying some information. Clicking on this ad takes you to the site that the company is advertising for. You don??t have to use GIF Builder or any other graphics software to animate such an ad. You can make it easily using Front Page. Select Insert-Web component-banner ad manger. In the window that opens, specify the size of the ad, the transition effect, the number of seconds to display each image, the URL to link the ad to and add the images you??ve prepared. That??s it.

This feature could also be used you want to share a few photographs coiled also be used when you want to share a few photographs or images but don??t want the images to be save-able on the cline??s side; right-click will not work on these images. Although the images may be found in the cache, at least they won??t be able to be copied directly.

About The Author

Pawan Bangar,
Technical Director,
Birbals, (Hbirbals,Seobirbals,Ebirbals,Ibirbals)
#1047,Sector 42-b,
Chandigarh.
Cell:+91-98153-52253

email:

www.ebirbals.com

www.birbals.com

Web Designing Tips For New Web Designers

Websites are such useful tools. They are great for sharing information, selling products, and staying in touch and up to date with family and friends. As a web designer with some ??hard knocks?? experience under my belt I would like to share some tips for getting started that should make the process a little easier and a little less confusing. The basics that you need to know about putting together a website are keep it simple, keep it relevant, and keep it accessible.

Keep It Simple

Keep it simple is one of the most overused clich???s in the business world but, in this case, it is an absolutely necessary clich???. By telling you to keep your website simple I am in no way advocating that you make it dull, uninteresting, and boring. Not at all, in fact, I am saying quite the opposite. If a website is too cluttered with visuals it will not be easy to navigate. If a person cannot find what it is they are looking for than they will not come back to your site, even if what they need is on your site. Make sure that your design has a specific focus. There should be a homepage that easily directs people to the specific section of your site that they need to get to. The last time I was exposed to the information I read that the average attention span of Americans is slightly less than two minutes. It becomes even shorter when they are browsing the Internet because there is so much to look at. If they cannot find what they want on your site immediately, there are hundreds of other places they can look. Also, don??t put a lot of Flash stuff on your site; the extra time it takes up will make viewers impatient.

Keep It Relevant

It is amazing the number of websites that are dedicated to one subject but then just throw all kinds of other stuff in there. If someone is looking to buy quilts they don??t really want to have to wade through vacation pictures to get to the quilt page. Also, if someone is looking for a specific topic, subject, or item and they see something else when they get to your homepage, they won??t stick around long enough to realize that they are at the right spot. They will leave and find another site to browse. That ties in with the simplicity of your site as well. Irrelevant material makes a website complicated. Even things like random ??jokes of the day?? or comic strips, while funny I??m sure, will drive more people away than bring them in.

Keep It Accessible

There are two things to consider when dealing with accessibility issues, outside accessibility and inside accessibility. These two, if mastered, will drive people to your site and keep them coming back over and over. These two, if disregarded, will leave you with a nice, clean, unused site that does nothing more than take up cyberspace.

Outside Accessibility

In order for people to get to your site they have to be able to find it. Sure, you can hand out business cards and email the URL to all your friends, but that is not where the majority of your traffic comes from. You have to make sure that your site can be found by searching the major search engines. In order to do this, you have to have content that will register hits when web browsers perform a search. For instance, if you are selling woven baskets you, obviously, want to make sure that your site mentions, in a readable way, that you are selling woven baskets. You would also want to make sure that your site mentions that you are selling crafts as there are people who would be interested in buying your baskets but would search for ??crafts for sale??. These are called keywords and you want to make sure that you have enough of them to register when a search is performed.

Inside Accessibility

This merely ties back in with keeping it simple. If someone goes to your site where you sell all different kinds of arts and crafts, but they are only interested in buying Popsicle stick bird feeders, you need to have an easy way for them to find what they are looking for. Otherwise, they will just go somewhere else. It is always a good idea to have a search option for within your site to accommodate easy browsing.