Mozak Design Blog

Robust CSS Website Design

I have seen numerous post by designers struggling to transition into the world of CSS from table based design. One book I have found extremely useful is “Bulletproof Web Design” by Dan Cederholm.

This is one of the first books I picked up when I was learning and one I still grab every now and then. It is readable, clear, and thorough.

Topics covered by this book include: Flexible Text, Scalable Navigation, Elastic & Fluid Layouts, and Creating Floats.

While each of these topics warrants it’s own blog (and hence its own chapter in the book) I want to highlight how each topic makes for a high quality final web design.

Flexible Text:

• This is the concept of using relative font sizing instead of hard coding in a font size. The author gives a great example of a website for eyeglasses where the font was hard coded at 11px. While this might work for someone with healthy eyes, someone searching for eyeglasses might prefer to have control of setting the default size to something larger. By coding text size in relatives, this allows users the ability to control the overall font size of the site. The design controls the relative font sizing of headers and content.

Scalable Navigation

• This next topic goes hand in hand with flexiable text. Now that the font size can change, the website needs to behave well with these shrinking and growing letters. Scalable navigation allows for this. Instead of having fixed size images for your navigation. Buttons can be created using thin images slices that can be arrayed. Link button names can then be written as text with the graphic slices arrayed as needed behind them. This not only saves design time & graphic maintenance it make the website faster and more accessible to search engines.

Elastic & Fluid Layouts

• This chapter provides a great discussion on the benefit of layouts without tables. Furthermore, it explains how to utilize your viewer screen size by defined sections as percentages of the entire space. This enables websites to present well on both a wide and narrow screen. It also enable the ability to have the html content order different from the website presentation order. In other words you can place higher quality content at the beginning of your html even if it is not the first item displayed on the website.

Creating Floats

• Floats is a powerful part of table free web design. However, with all the wonderful browsers out there that each seem to interpret directions differently getting things to work as desired can be tricky. This chapter does a great job explaining how to achieve cross browser compatibility.

These are just some of the topic covered in this book.

I highly recommend this book to anyone looking to refine their web design skills. It will take you from creating an okay site to building a high quality site you will be proud of.

Craigslist – Advertising for Free!

Craigslist is one of the most popular websites on the Internet and presents you with a great marketing opportunity for your small business. The Internet has provided the world with a huge marketplace where people can advertise and market their goods or services.  Craigslist is a website that allows users to sell anything from furniture to real estate. It is a listing of classified ads that include job placements, personal ads, ads for home supplies, ads for pet food, ads for website designs for small business, etc. Craigslist is a flea market that is online and used by millions all over the world. 

People who visit Craigslist are looking for something that they want to purchase. If you advertise some product or service that suits their interest, you are bound to have an increased traffic to your website that converts to sales. For instance, a web design company based in Portland may advertise their services in Craigslist to expand their business worldwide.

Since the Craigslist site is conveniently divided into regions, it is very easy to place your ads in the city or country of your choice. Your ads will be displayed on the site for 45 days, but after that you can re-list them if you so desire.

Craigslist ads are given top rankings by search engines, especially Google. So, expect an increased flow of traffic to your site within a week of posting your ad at Craigslist. SEO web design for your web page ensures a good ranking at search engine listings. Make use of the same SEO techniques to design your ad by using the relevant keywords to ensure top-ranked listings.

There are a number of websites that allow you to post free ads. Posting ads at sites like Yahoo Classifieds, Backpage, Highland Classifieds or USFreeads will also help to increase traffic to your site. However, the volume of traffic generated through Craigslist posting is much higher than any of the other free classifieds sites available. This is the reason that Craigslist is so popular among net surfers.

SEO Techniques to Improve Website Traffic

In order to earn sales leads through internet marketing, it is crucial for a website to be highly ranked on the search engine results. Search Engine Optimization or SEO ensures high ranking results for a website. Most site owners are aware of this and therefore adopt SEO techniques to achieve the rankings they desire. Some of the most useful SEO techniques and some do’s and don’ts are discussed here.

• Web Page Title
  

When a search engine reports a result, the first line of each result is the title of the website page. When the user reads the title, he/she knows the relevance of the website vis-à-vis the search criteria. For example, if you are searching for a web design firm in Portland and one of the results is “Portland based ABC Web Design Company”, then you know that the page or website is what you want. Needless to say, the title tags should contain the strongest keyword relevant to the particular website that is understood by both, the user and the search engine.

• “Alt tags”

Alt tags refer to alternate tags which are assigned to images. It helps explain the image as well as notify the user as to which image is missing if it (the image) fails to download. Additionally, it is a location to tastefully integrate keywords. Good SEO web design practice to makes abundant use of them.

• Keyword Density

Keyword density is the percentage of the total word count occupied by the keyword/phrase on the web page. Strategic placing of keywords in the title and the body of the text will help to manage keyword density which is one of the essential SEO techniques.

• Content Quality

A site with rich and unique content usually ranks amongst the top in search engine results. Constantly updating the content on your site makes the site dynamic, therefore, search engines are more likely to rank your site among the top in the listings.

• Well Designed Websites

Creating an attractive website design is one way to keep up the flow of visitors. Many a times the users are put off due to a poorly designed site that is difficult to navigate or its contents are difficult to read. Website design for the site should be such that it can be viewed easily in all major browsers.

• Pratices to Avoid

Avoid bad SEO techniques like spamming which may cause your site to be banned. Your website should contain pages that are rich in content while using the targeted keywords. However, be careful not to overwhelm the reader with a very high keyword density.

The best SEO web design practice would be to keep things simple on your website. See that your site loads easily, is simple to navigate and above all provides useful information to the user. Following good SEO techniques will certainly help you achieve your desired ranking; leading to increased traffic to your site and an increase in business.