Fortunately for you, the aspiring web developer, the internet and culture surrounded development is becoming more and more highly open source and friendly to beginners.

1. Develop your skills, learning online, from books and by being practical

As is the nature of the internet, learning a skill such as web development is becoming easier as easier as more things go open source and forum based. There is a plethora of resources out there for the beginner developer such as Khan Academy, Code School, and GitHub.

All of these sites aim to teach and show what and how to do things in the development world. There are hundreds upon thousands of similar resources as well out there on the web for free just a Google search away.

2. Interact on social media, blogs, forums etc

The web has been made to be open sourced and helpful (if you are going to the right places, that is.) By keeping up on the many resources out there in a social manner, such as keeping up with development and programming blogs, reading forums and viewing other people’s similar problems in coding, and befriending other developers on social media who are glad to help, one is certain to go from slow to pro in barely any time.

3. Ask questions and for help to learn

These previously mentioned forums are not just for reading, but also for asking questions of your own. Developers want more of themselves out there so that the web and code libraries can grow and provide more tools and research for every party involved. Developers are not a stingy group when it comes to helping out.

See, for instance, when learning the Processing language, they have a massive set of forums where your coding qualms will be settled in often mere minutes when you are having any issues — ranging from the tiniest missing semi colon to some mis matched variables.

4. Try to gain experience, even working for free with design agency etc

Internships have always been a staple of learning with any career path. These are a great way to pick up experience – some times even with a small pay. The more work you do, the easier it slowly becomes, thus get as much work as you can in order to becomes the best developer that you can be.

Try to make friends with a seasoned developer who can take you into a project with him or her, allowing you to be able to see and work first hand at a real development project, thus gaining insight into the business and brushing up on those coding skills.

5. Build a portfolio of any produced work, own site, social networks, dribble etc

Developers and designers are fields where people love to show off what it is they do. Since these fields are very closely related, the designers are often building repositories that looks beautiful and functional for you to use. Consider going on a site like Dribble.com where you can post small screenshots of works in progress. This is great for getting your name out there, because people love to share the things that they find online that they enjoy and would like others to see.

Build a portfolio on a website such as Zerply, LinkedIn, Cargo Collective, Virb, or Squarespace to show off your new abilities and get your work out there in the world; it’s hard to get hired if no body knows who you are or the quality of work you can put out.

Summary

Marketing is not just for selling products but services as well. As a web developer, you have to get your name out there and known. Try using sites such as Facebook or Twitter to show your work off to your friends and acquaintance, a good deal of work, especially when freelancing, is gotten off of word of mouth or referrals.

Once you are past the learning curve, be sure to continue on in your web development training. The internet is changing and improving constantly with the additions of responsive design, mobile development, and other such technological improvements. Stay up to date!

In this article, I’ll offer some tips on how to optimise your web pages for better conversions using marketing design principles and a few tricks I’ve picked up along the way.

All Hail the Magic ‘F’

One of the difficulties marketers can have when working with designers is influencing the creative so that it works on a psychological level and encourages the audience to act. Whenever I work with designers on the layout of a landing page for, say, an email marketing campaign, there’s one thing that I always stress: “Make it look like an F!” Despite what might seem an absurd demand, there’s reason in the madness.

As visitors enter a website, numerous researchers have suggested that they tend to scan the page in a way that outlines the letter F, with the short horizontal stem being the focus of the visitor’s attention. Marketers have also revealed that placing key sales messages in this area significantly improves click-through, and ultimately leads to better conversions.

It’s also important that this area is displayed above the fold of the page; that is, the area which appears before the user has to scroll down. The further a visitor has to scroll, the fewer there are who actually reach the bottom of the page.

The Internet is no Place for Novels

On average, an adult can read about 200-250 words per minute, and with 1 in 6 people in the UK with a literacy level below the expected age of 11, overly cramming your web pages with content can be a real turn off. Although times will vary widely according to the type of site and industry, an average eCommerce visitor will only spend between 30-60 seconds on a web page, which means your pages should be no longer than about 250 words. (At least, before you provide a creative diversion to break up pages that require more text.) And what’s more, you should ensure that your key message appears within at least the first paragraph before the call-to-action so that the entire sales proposition is quickly and easily understood.

Test and Measure

There are no hard and fast rules to optimising your web pages, but the tips I’ve outlined above should go some way to helping you set up your pages initially, whilst also complementing any search engine optimisation efforts you may be undertaking. Because audiences will differ across demographic profile, industry, location etc., it’s always wise to try out different versions of your page to see which works best and gives you the optimum conversion rate. Tools such as Google’s Website Optimiser can help you to run such tests and is a great way to gain further insight into your visitors’ behaviour.

FDC provide web design Leicester can be proud of and work across the travel and tourism, healthcare, agriculture, and events and exhibitions sectors.

Why bother using Joomla?

You might be asking yourself why you should bother using Joomla at all. You might even considering using some other commercial content management system. But as mentioned, Joomla is an open-source content management system which means that there are no fees to be paid. Additionally, there is a large amount of people who support this management system. In fact, the forum alone has well over 200,000 members who come together in an effort to make this CMS a better system.

With it being so easy to extend the functionality of Joomla, it is possible to create virtually any type of website. Joomla CMS engine is ideal for websites whether they are large or small. You can build anything from a full-featured membership site to a simple portfolio website. With thousands of addons and plug-ins there are any number of image galleries, forums, blogs, project management systems, as well as shopping carts available.

Easy Content Management System

Aside from all of that, one of the biggest benefits of this content management system is the fact that the look and feel of your website is so easy to change. Moreover, your website style remains consistent throughout and you are able to make updates without having to make changes to every page within the site. That is not possible with a simple HTML website. Plus, there are thousands of free Joomla.

Since Joomla is so ideal for so many different types of websites, even smaller businesses and personal websites have plenty of room for expansion as their websites begin to grow. All of this takes place without the need to upgrade or switch to a different content management system. Furthermore, these expansions are quite simple to add. This is one of the things that make this content management system so popular among webmasters today.

Finally, changes have been made through the updates of Joomla that have begun to make this content management system a choice that is search engine friendly. Despite the choice of plug-ins that you may be using, Joomla responds very well to search engines. Overall, this content management system is an excellent choice for all webmasters beginning or advanced.

It is one of the most cost efficient solution

Most of the companies go for outsourcing of various tasks because it saves a lot of money involved in various things. Of course, a lot of hassle is also saved, but what really lures most of the business owners is that the money can be saved.

The professional web design companies have employees with diversified experiences

The professional web design companies have a pool of diversified professionals. Often every web designer has a specialty that he or she can bring to any project. For the website redesign projects, this can help a lot. The personnel of the web design company know everything that works and everything that does not work for the masses.

The web design company will have great infrastructure

It is impossible for an in-house web design department to beat the infrastructure of a specialized web design and development companies. The infrastructure includes the specialized custom-made hardware and the software too.

Lower risks of web design reject

If different parts of the website redesign are outsourced to various companies, the risks for the rejection of the designs become much lower. This is because different web designers will work on different ideas. Therefore, there is a lower chance that all of the money that a company pays for its website redesign and or development is lost.

Professional maintenance

The customer service for the website and its scalability are extremely important. They can only be achieved with the help of a professional web design company. Therefore, whether you have to get a new website or a website redesign for your business, make sure that you hire the professionals.

Photo Credit

Information a web designer must know

A business should have pro active approach in its processes so that they go smooth. A real thought process should be given before designing the website. The web designer must know:

1. The target market
2. The target audience
3. Business theme

Above mentioned points always help a designer to plan how he is going to design the site. There are so many factors a designer needs to take care off but here in focus is flash and HTML. It’s really important that a designer must know what are the exact requirements of business are, only then he can come up with the desired work.

When is flash website required?

Sometimes designers try to become over smart and they overdo with the flash. It turns out to be the reason of increased load time which is very bad from SEO point of view. It is important to determine first that what kind of websites require flash. Flash is required when a business focuses on youth and wants to add some flashy animations in its website. It can also be used to provide an eye pleasing effect.

When is HTML website required?

On the other hand HTML website is required for simple and user friendly interfaces. It depends a lot on the target audience as well. Browsers understand HTML very much that’s why it’s always a good idea to have HTML website for users who are not technology oriented.

Wisely use flash

The website’s success is very much depended on the usage of flash. Excessive use of flash can increase the page load time. It might be disturbing sometimes for users. Flash websites have a level of interactivity which HTML websites lack.

In brief all the key persons have to deliver to make a website successful whether web developer or web designer. They have to play their role o make the website attractive and SEO oriented.

Here are some design issues that are mostly ignored by a website designer but need to be given due consideration.

Image by Kyle Hixson

Mystery meat navigation – icons or pictorial buttons for navigational links

There is no text in place of navigational link and users have to find the location on their own and this effort often proves fruitless. This kind of navigation requires JavaScript and images. It is also a fact that using JavaScript and images enhance the time taken by a web page to appear at the screens of users. Images if necessary to use should get a supplementation of text links. It will provide a pleasant users’ experience.

Page title should represent the page content

This is a serious blunder that is often committed by designers. They make the title first and then write the content. In that way the chances of irrelevancy increase. Title of the content should come first and then the name of the website. It will make your website easy to locate as a results of relevant search made.

Contact information – the most significant feature of any website

Where to contact the concerned person? Site visitors often look for this section and if don’t succeed; decide to shift to some other website. Try to equip your site visitors with detailed contact information so that they consider your business as real and legal. There should be business address, email address and contact phone numbers for the convenience of site visitors.

Site map helps visitors to get clear idea about different pages

Most of the designers forget the importance of site map. This site map helps site visitors to locate the pages of their interest in an easy manner and also tell them where they are at present. A site map arranges all web pages and links in right hierarchy. Site maps also give a neat and organized look of a website.

Markup for enhanced accessibility of a website

Whether it is in the through the use of tables, layouts or line breaks, standardized markup increase the usability of a website. Using semantic markup is a good option.

The above mentioned aspects are often neglected by a web developer. If you are at start of your website design or just have hired the services for this purpose, communicate with the experts about your concerns.

Web designs can be made effective if you hire the services of an expert web design company. There are two options whether you can go for the design company or you can seek the services of a professional free lancer who can make your website as per your expectations.

Thinking about web designing

Prior to entering into the web designing venture you need to know what kind of website do you want for your client? A thorough analysis of the business, of the market, of competitors is essential to be made. This is the responsibility of the web designer to make all these analysis and also know the objectives that the client wants to gain from his website. All these factors need to contribute toward effective web design. Another thing that matters in web designing is the interest and expertise of the designer in making a certain kind of websites. What kind of websites appeal designer to work over. Before hiring a web designer also focus this aspect as well and have a look at the portfolio of the company. This glimpse will help you in understanding whether the designer or the design company possess the capability to make the websites those are relevant or similar to your business.

Add more things to your portfolio other than web designs

Being a professional designer you need to market yourself. For effective marketing you need to have expertise and experience of making logos as well. Using several tools to give a new and fresh look to the websites is another feature that adds a positive impression at the designers’ profile.

Hands on using different software

A perfect designer knows when and where to use a certain software. Following are the software that needs a professional hand of a web designer.

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe illustrator
• Adobe Flash
• Adobe Fireworks

Though there are many other software available in the market but Adobe is more innovative as compared to others.

Developing expertise

While making custom website design, the company should have professional developers who possess expertise in developing different software applications. Various programming languages are used for developing purpose like PHP, Python, Ruby, C++, .NET etc. Understanding of these languages by the developers is very fruitful in giving high profit to the design company.

Career in web designing is bright if you know how to understand the expectations of the client and how to incorporate your creativity and use of latest tools to come up with perfect web design. Once you get good responses from your clients, rest it will become easy for you to attract more online businesses toward your services.

Have a successful web design career!