Webtwist Design blog » Web Development

How to Reduce Costs and Improve Efficiency While Web Designing for a Client

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 10:49:15 +0000

Even when the economic situation is shiny, cost reduction and efficiency improvement are important when designing web sites for a client. While it is not recommendable to make cost savings at the expense of quality, there are many ways in which you can achieve cost reduction and efficiency improvements and still design a top-notch site.

Get Shared Hosting for Your Client

One of the obvious ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency when web designing for a client is to get shared hosting for them. Web hosting costs are recurring costs and as a result they are one of the best candidates for optimization. Dedicated web hosting is great but only for enormous sites with a lot of traffic.

Since a new site will hardly have millions of visitors a month, the best you can do is get cheap website hosting. Later, if the site becomes a high traffic one, you can easily move to more expensive website hosting packages.

Pick a Reliable but Cheap Website Hosting

When we recommend to pick cheap website hosting, this doesn’t mean that you should pick the cheapest offer without paying attention to the quality of service this website hosting provider offers. Today there are many great cheap website hosting offers and if you don’t know how to pick one there are plenty of articles on that will help you. On the other hand, extremely cheap webhosting also comes at a price, so you need to find the balance between quality and cost.

Use Ready Templates

Many website hosting providers offer free web site builders or ready templates you can use in your designs. If you don’t see such goodies listed in the features list of your webhosting package, ask your webhosting provider if they offer them. If your webhosting provider doesn’t offer them, most likely you will be allowed to use third-party website builders or website templates. Search the web and see what you can find.

Use Open Source Software

Similarly to free web site builders and free templates, many web hosting companies run on open source software. Open source software is great not only because as a rule it is free (though you can make a donation to the development team, if you like) but because it is also very reliable.

Similarly to webhosting costs, software licensing costs tend to be recurring costs. This is why it is best if you select open source software – you will not pay initial fees and you will not pay subscription fees later. Anyway, Linux, PHP, MYSQL, Apache and the other similar open source technologies are what powers the Net, so if you have worries that these products are not of high quality because they are free, your worries are in vain.

As you see, there are ways in which you can design a high quality site and keep the costs under control. The most important steps in that direction are to get shared webhosting, to pick reliable but cheap webhosting, and to use ready templates/open source software your webhosting provider most likely offers. If you follow these steps, your clients will be happy.

The Scope on Flash Design

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:56:56 +0000

FLASH DESIGN

Flash design is a niche in internet design that has exploded over the last few years. Connections have speeded up to tens of hundreds of times what they were five years ago, hence use of Flash has grown exponentially. Animations which would earlier take minutes to open, open almost simultaneously along with the site.

Flash is a relatively simple to use program that allows you to make simple as well as complex animations for use on the web. But before you start integrating these animations on your website, you need to actually learn how to make one. I can’t really teach you exactly how to create flash animations, right down to the technicalities of it, so I am assuming you have a decent knowledge of Flash and just need a few pushes and prods on your way to a better Flash design.

Watch Flash videos by the best in the business and see how they do it. There are thousands of free videos out there that teach you specific techniques in Flash which will really jazz up your application. Such videos can be found on sites like youtube literally by the tens of thousands and you’ll never run out of new stuff to learn.

You should also ensure that the flash content you make must run on all kinds of platforms. This means your flash content should not require a high end PC to be displayed properly. It should run on old, low memory PC’s without any hiccups. The basic reasoning behind this is that a lot of traffic these days is from third world countries like India and China where the hardware may not be the best. You should have a sufficiently high frame rate, but nothing so fast so as to increase the file size dramatically an/or take a lot of processing power. Nobody likes to wait for 5 minutes for the site to load completely.

Lastly, make sure what you create is pleasing to look at. Avoid excessive use of graphics and use graphics to supplement your content, don’t make it the main focus. Be original in your layout and use of colour schemes. People should remember your site even after they leave it, your design shouldn’t be a carbon copy of another good looking site you found on the net. Use subtle colours that don’t hurt the eye and keep it simple. Most importantly, put yourself in the visitors shoes, would you like to see what is on the site? If the answer is yes, you’re well on your way!

Take a moment to see our flash design portfolio

Flash Web Design

admin — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:45:05 +0000

Flash Web Design

Flash has become an integral part of web design these days. Flash can be found on most good sites, though it might not be very obvious. Interactive images, cool looking menus, and a beautiful logo – they are almost always made with Flash. Not only is Flash usable on almost all platforms, it is very versatile and can be modified exactly as per the persons
requirements. There are a few precautions you need to take while using Flash. You must keep file sizes small, and ensure your flash animations will play across all platforms and screen resolutions. Enough about the precautions, let me explain on some techniques you can use for a good flash web design.

1. Rollover effects

These are some very cool effects which will surely impress a visitor no end. It basically means that the content on the page will change when a person brings his mouse pointer over a particular picture. So you can have a picture saying “Home”, another saying “Contact us” and yet another saying “Games” and whenever the user moves his/her pointer over any of the images, the link would simultaneously change to that page. It’s a very cool effect which will make the browsing experience much easier for the visitor, as well as leave an imprint on his mind.

2. Use unique and stand out fonts

Sometimes, you don’t even need to do hocus pocus with images to make your site look cool. There are hundreds of free fonts available on the internet which are professionally made and are usable by the general public. These fonts will help you achieve the effect you see in the banners of big companies….totally free of cost! A good font logo negates the need to have a flash logo made, which might cost a lot of time, effort and money.

3. Use plenty of white spaces

This might not seem terribly important to you, but white spaces play a major role in moulding user perceptions about your site. Simply said, white spaces are empty spaces on your site. They help create a feeling of space on your site. You can create more white spaces by reducing images/flash animations on your site and increasing the space between various objects. This of course, should not be at the cost of maintaining a comfortable page length.

4. Put image effects to good use

Use effects like fading and transparency to make good flash designs on your site. Techniques like sepia, watermark and grayscale help images on your site stand out to the eye. Fading and transparency can be used to good effect in making collages of various pictures, which when done correctly give a fabulous effect.

Apart from this, you can follow the standard guidelines like making a sitemap, ensuring there are no broken links on the site to ensure you have a good design. Remember, one can have a good flash web design only when you get the basics right. You start thinking of the finer aspects after that only.

See our flash web design portfolio

Storyboards for Adobe flash

admin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 15:59:18 +0000

Why would a task manager or business analyst need to know how to make a storyboard for a Flash animation? You could debate that this is the territory of a graphic designer or animator, and you would be correct. But applying storyboards is an efficient method for finding out the price of an animation, and surely budgeting considerations are a duty of a task manager.
In the first place, we should have some sort of definition of what a storyboard is. At the most basic stage, a storyboard is a series of images which map out the chronological sequence of an movie or animation. It’s wide accepted that a working specification should be developed before any coding takes place, so why wouldn’t you use some kind of designing process prior to creating a Flash animation?
Before you say “but I can’t draw. Last time I drew a stick man, people guessed it was a spud”, you need not concern. Artistic skill isn’t as vital as you may think, sequence is of greater implication (e.g. first, many camera photoflashes goes off and then the limousine approaches, etc).
The formatting I use for a storyboard is really basic. This is intentional because it needs to be realized by both graphic designers and customers.
The construction is as follows:
Document Purpose – this is for the gain of anybody seeing the document for the first time. It’s a short instruction of what the document is about. For example; this document demonstrates a storyboard for the animation appearing on the Blue Widgets website. The thought is to show a series of illustrations in order to help see the sequence of the interactive animation.
The Animation – this is where you say well occur in the animation, and in what order. It’s also where the ‘illustration panels’ appear, nothing fancy is needed, its adequate to put in named squares or circles (e.g. a circle with ‘client logo’ in it, the text ‘tag-line’, a box with ‘button 1′ in it, etc).
Beneath the illustration panel will be a series of bullet points. These explains what is going on in this specific part of the animation. This is why you label the figures in the panel, so you have something to relate back to, for example; ‘the client logo will fade-in step by step’, or ‘the bouncy ball will go across the screen from left to right’.
The bullet points are where the factual detail goes, thus why artistic skills aren’t such a big requirement for this style of storyboard (leave the artistic stuff to the experts). The more detail that goes into here the better. You wish to make instructions about what goes on when the user acts with special elements of the animation (e.g. if the user directs their mouse above the client logo, a yellow glowing comes out around it and a nice bell audio plays one time). Timing, or stating how long things will go for is crucial here (e.g. the motto text will fade-in over a time period of 1.5 secs). This is as well a good place to determine what pictures, URLs or text will be utilized on the panel (e.g. if the user clicks the customer logo, they will be taken to index.html).
Bullet points are handy, they assist as an crucial instrument for clearing up what the animation is actually intended to be. The bullet points are planned to give discussion (e.g. client: “we don’t need a male poser in our banner, our target area is female, they’re the ones that lean to purchase our lip rouge”).
Don’t forget to say what the state of the animation will be when it for the first time loads up, will there be a progress meter as the animation is anticipated to be big? What will the initial banner picture be? Will any buttons be spotlit by default?
Appendix – this is the final part of the storyboard document. It can hold anything else which you believe wants to be documented (e.g. screenshots, mockups, JPEGs to be applied for reference purposes, etc). The 2 standard parts I put in the Appendix are: Support Files, and Technical Remarks / Non-essentials. The Support Files part is really a ZIP archive embedded inside the MS Word document. The ZIP file holds any applicable artwork files meant to be utilized with the animation. The benefit of packaging these files together is that the most up-to-date artwork move with the storyboard document itself. This is particularly useful as the document requires to be emailed to off-site contractors. Naturally, this just works if the ZIP archive is under 2-3 MB in size.
The Technical Notes / Non-essentials part is where you state what you’re not going to do. For example; there will be no sound-effects or music utilized with the animation, no effects will be applied inside the animation other then fade-in/fade-out, the animation will run no more then thirty seconds. In addition, you might wish to give particular directions which are applicable only to the Flash programmer, such as: the finished animation should be no more then 1 MB in size, all text appearing in the animation ought to be retrieved from a XML file, etc.
A large portion of producing a storyboard is assisting a client understand what’s in their head into something more touchable. Failing to do so could lead in an iterative cycle which is not simply costly, but unnecessary time consuming.

Computer Animation – To Increase Interest In Your Website

admin — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 08:24:17 +0000

Look at some of the websites that are on the internet today. There are so many that have amazing layout designs with tasteful animation. With competition high to get and keep customers on their website, companies will no doubt continue to demand user friendly websites with a bit of “eye candy.”

Some of this is evident in the way designers create animation and animations flash, etc. They want their sites to stand out and mesmerize the “online” crowd.

computer animation
Early animations started appearing around 1910 and were normally drawings that were photographed one at a time. It was a very intensive and long process, as there were literally hundreds of drawings for each minute of film. Of course, improvements were constantly being made with Walt Disney leading the pack.

He was the first to add sound to his cartoon animations and produced the first, full-length movie animations film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Then, with the introduction of computers, animation began to take on a whole new meaning.

For any type of graphic work, the quicker your computer processor is, the better. Extra memory is also a huge help with computer animations and graphics. You may also want to consider a larger hard drive.

flash animations
These types of files will build up quickly and the file size for a graphic or animated movie is much greater than that of a simple text file, for example. A computer generated vector image used to create animation can be 2D or 3D animations.

Of course, if you plan to work on a computer it is also advantageous to learn about photography, lighting and movement. You will need to visualize how the pictures animations, 2D animations or 3D animations will look and then have the know-how to make that inanimate object move.

There are many different computer animation software programs that offer both tutorials and downloadable programs. The tutorials are very important, yet each software program will likely have a different interface, different menus, palettes and toolbars etc.

cartoon animations
Depending on the type of images animations desired, some can be wholly computer generated, while others, such as many of the 2D animations cartoons, still need to be penciled by hand before scanning to a computer to generate graphics animations.

Using a computer to create animation often eliminates the need for many of the extra tools that are normally needed for the more traditional animation process. The basic tools needed to create animation by computer are a system that will be able to run the software programs you will need, and of course the ability to use the programs.

flash design

Remember Webtwist Design for all your design needs

admin — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 19:38:58 +0000

If you come by our blog, then don’t forget to have a look at our flash design portfolio. We have a very dedicated team that not only specializes in flash design but also web design, SEO, brochure, flyers, ecommerce, and cms driven sites. Please have a look and we promise you that you won’t be disappointed.

Building Your Website

admin — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 07:43:02 +0000

When building your own website there are a few things to consider. If you know nothing about web design, you will need to pay someone to design it exactly the way you want. Make sure you use a reputable source so you are not wasting your money. Be very picky about choosing your domain name. Make sure it is short, sweet and memorable. One popular site you can visit to check what domains are available is www.whois.sc This is also a good site to see who owns a particular domain you are interested. If the owner is not using the domain, you can offer to purchase it from them. Probably one of the most important factors in an internet company is choosing a very good web host. If your web site goes down, you are completely out of business. When searching for a web host company make sure they have secure server capabilities, fast servers, lots of space, unrestricted CGI access, SSH and FTP access, web-based administration, access to raw server logs, full email services, power and daily server backups, and no minimum contracts. You may want to test their technical support and see if they offer services, scripts, and software. Inquire about their downtime and how long they have been in business. Make sure you are not being charged for the extra services. When a customer visits your website, you want them to see professionalism, knowledge and fast connections. If your visitors notice advertisements from your free or low cost web host server they will perceive your site to be unprofessional and very small time. Slow connection speeds will definitely lose customers and cost you much money. So, choose your web host server carefully and you will be well on your way to creating a website that will attract all types of visitors.

Dont forgot our free seo tools

admin — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:50:41 +0000

free for all, no hidden cost. But please do me a favor and press on the some of the google ads once in awhile…..THX and even better link to the page

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How Online Mentoring Helps Make More Money

admin — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:28:55 +0000

How Internet Business Mentoring, Helps You Earn Money

Online businesses are the up and coming way of working from home. Moms love the idea of being able to stay at home with their children. Dad’s like the freedom it brings to their lives not having to go to work everyday for a meager income that barely pays the bills. The internet business was created for those who are ready for a change and for those who want to be in control of their future.
One problem with all of that. If you research the satistics, over 90% of people fail with thier first online venture. Some will try again, hoping this is the one, and some will just go back to their humdrum life and their nine to five job.

There is a better way to work from home and make huge profits. We have a team of Top Mentors to help even the newest beginner, or those who think they are absolute dummies when it comes to internet. We are experts in this field, and we are there for you each step of the way.
Online mentoring is the best way to make your business succesful the first time around. The training they offer is extremely valueble, and is offered for free in our exclusive group.
If you are interested in gaining that freedom from your job and your finances, this is the right place and the right time.
Begin your journey to success.

Network Marketing Business – Key To Successful Follow Ups With Your Prospects

admin — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:04:41 +0000

One of the bad mistakes network marketers make in their work at home business is not following up on a consistent basis with their prospects. The truth is, most of the time, their upline is to blame simply because they are taught that if they are not interested just move on.

Well, this is okay in theory but we are dealing with a sales-based industry and while relationship marketing is the core base, it’s still about sales and it’s a proven fact the majority of people never buy on the first look.

Simply dismissing a prospect because they don’t join your work at home business the first time round doesn’t mean they are not interested. If they let you know that no, I am not interested and please don’t contact me again then yes, let them go but the majority of people will simply put it on the backburner initially.

That’s why the presell approach you use is vital and why you need to begin the education of your prospect from the time they come into your sales funnel.

Warm Up Your Prospect

In a work at home business such as network marketing, you’re selling the opportunity. Many take this literally and bombard their prospects with sales pitch after sales pitch.

Eventually, they’ll hit the unsubscribe button and put you down as a bad experience. Why is this? Becase at no stage have they been given any information so they can assess you as someone they truly believe can move them forward in reaching their goals.

Hitting prospects with a barrage of sales pitches doesn’t convince them that you are the genuine article and someone they can place their trust in. In other words, you don’t convince them that you would be able to deliver what you’re saying in the sales messages.

Following Up With Prospects The Right Way

So how do you earn a prospect’s trust? You educate them in your follow up messages instead of trying to sell them. It’s that simple.

By educating a prospect you’re showing them you’re someone who knows what they’re talking about and they gradually start to believe that it’s you who can help them achieve success in a work at home business.

You build trust and credibility with a prospect with every educational message you send them. It shows them you are genuinely interested in their wants and needs and not just trying to make a sale. Every message should clearly show them that their time and money will be well invested with you. More importantly, the information you provide needs to be useful enough that they can take it away and use it.

By constantly bombarding prospects with sales pitches you raise their defenses. It’s natural and confrontational to them. They will naturally resist you but by providing messages that are educational, then this resistance is negated and non existent and your will be better for it.