Do you want to share your music, or perhaps create a professional art gallery. Maybe you want a personal photo gallery, or a website for your business. Maybe you already have a website that needs some updating or maintenance. What about getting some search engine optimization, so you can get to number 1 on google and get more traffic to your website. I also do graphic design, video editing, and music production. If you need a logo, youtube video, license musical instrumentals, or any other multimedia production work then check out my Asheville Web Design portfolio.

I would love to offer a more holistic approach to web design.  I have been building websites for years now, and find that people are naturally more attracted to creative designs than “professional” websites.  Just take a look through my Web Design portfolio, and you will see that most of the sites I’ve designed are for more holistic practices like yoga, art, raw food, and health.  I find that web design is such a powerful tool that I like to be careful what I promote with my skills.  I like to healing arts and conscious expansion at the core of my web design ideals, although I have done some flash design work for HP, and other big name companies.  I was subcontracted, and wasn’t being paid fairly for my services.  It didn’t take to long to lose my passion for that particular job.  If you want me to feel free to go on a creative rampage, and really go all out with your website then I encourage you to make that possible by offering adequate funding for my service.  I really have everyone’s success as my top priority.  Let me help you, and you will be happy with the results.

If you’re doing business online, your website is your store front, your virtual business location. As such, it’s critical that you use good website design principles to ensure your site reaches the maximum number of customers and prospects. Believe it or not, there are design strategies that are virtually guaranteed to improve your site’s results.

First, be sure you use clean and understandable navigation on your site. Your navigation menu should contain only what’s needed to direct your visitors around the site without confusion.

Next, you’ll want to consider the load speed of your site. Too many graphics and photos make your site load extremely slow. Use only graphics that are truly an essential part of the design. And optimize the ones you do use with an image editing program such as PhotoShop, or even an online optimizer like the one at DynamicDrive.com. The smaller your image files, the better.

Write short paragraphs and include lots of white space to make reading online easier. If paragraph are too long, break them into shorter ones so text blocks don’t look overwhelming. Large blocks of text deter people from reading the content and the content is what sells your products and services. Do all you can to get visitors to read it.

Follow compliance standards of W3.org to ensure your site is cross-browser compatible. While your site may look great in Internet Explorer, if it’s unreadable in Firefox, Chrome or Opera, you can lose a lot of visitors. Keep in mind version differences as well. Many Internet users are still surfing with older versions of IE, so be sure you consider what your site looks like to them as well.

Don’t get carried away with the number of scripts on your site, either. Too many scripts slow down the load time just like too many images. And some can even crash some browsers! Many scripts aren’t supported on all browsers, so if you rely on a script to provide important data, some of your site visitors could miss important information if the script doesn’t work properly.

Make use of tools such as stylesheets (CSS) and server side includes (SSI) to manage your content. It may not seem important when you first begin because you only have a few pages. But as your site grows CSS and SSI can save you hours of work. If you don’t know how to use them, learn. Or hire a designer who does.

Unless the purpose of your website is purely personal, you need to present a clean, professional image to the virtual world. That’s done with a clean, professional website. It requires some work, but it’s definitely achievable. And well the effort in bringing in added traffic and sales to your business site.

———-

Article © Darlene “Dee” Bishop and Business Support Group. All rights reserved worldwide.

Darlene ‘Dee’ Bishop is the owner of Business Support Group where she and her team of professionals provide writing and editorial services, website design and hosting, and virtual assistance to small and home-based business owners, churches and non-profit organizations.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Darlene_Bishop

Side note: Jacob Louis is the publisher of this blog, and also an excellent web developer. If you need a clean and professional look, CONTACT HIM to get an estimate.