How can somebody do this? Stealing a whole website design! It’s not only about stealing a web site but a lot more than that. It is offending somebody’s idea, killing his creative instinct and invading into his imaginary world.

And this offensive act has been done again with XHTML.PixelCrayons.com website design. When we found that the web design of XHTML.PixelCrayons.com was completely stolen by tidycars.net. We were upset but not tensed (as it is not our first time to deal with these kind of crooks) because of the whole process of mailing and wasting our resources on it.

On probing into the matter a little, every one started giggling and laughing, instead of showing anger, even the designers who had put their labor behind the design. The reason was unbelievably moronic. The dolt hasn’t even changed the page descriptions and used it as it is. The whole structure was copied and pasted - a shameless and unethical act. This is the least I can say and sorry for ranting.

An open violation of copyright infringement laws calls for the strict action against the guilty. This may force a ban on tidycars.net or a tight compensatory slap in their treasury.

There are many other ways of complimenting somebody’s creativity. But stealing it and posing it own your own is surely immoral. As someone has very correctly said, “Only great work deserves imitation”.

Is it a Child’s play or Prodigy? Or something else…

A mere look is not sufficient to make someone fall for you, and make them do exactly what you want them to. Can’t be a child’s play, so what it is then? A Prodigy! No.
In Designing Banners for advertisements there is nothing like child’s play or prodigy. Everything which is done is done after a well processed research. Designing banner for advertisement is a big challenge in itself because unlike website designing, it has limited space. Within this space and limited text one has to communicate to its audience and convince them to click the banner, at least, if not buy the product.

Advertisements are the quick and most successful way to promote, spread and make company’s brand name and ultimately earn ROI though it is not as simple as it sound. A company wants to be known by their name and it is a must too.

Few tips which should be taken care of while designing an advertisement and also placing it.

1. Branding: - It would be very nice if you keep some logo or text which represent your company in front of your target audience. The benefit of picking a logo, term or a design is that it distinguishes you from other players in the industry and helps you in creating your own market. The very first thing which must be kept in mind while designing a banner for advertisement is mentioning and highlighting the brand name or symbol. It will be of no use and indeed very stupid if you decorate the whole banner with all glittering colors, but forget to mention the name of the company.
2. Hook: - A banner placed anywhere always has an objective of incurring sales. So never forget to keep a hook in your banner. But be careful, it shouldn’t create a dubious picture of your brand. Make it subtle like 50% discount, Christmas Offer, Free Sign-Up etc.
3. Logical Reading Order: - Design your banner systematically. Don’t create a scene of hotchpotch in your banner. The most advisable and logical order to fill in formation is:-
   • Name of the brand, followed by logo.
   • Place a hook (any discount, scheme or any other thing which can attract the target audience).
   • Place your call to action.
4. Call to Action: - After you have followed 1st and 2nd step in designing your ad banner, now it’s time to tell your user ‘what to do now’. There must be some call of action which you want your target customer to do. You can place a button with certain short but explanatory text. For ex: ‘Click Now’, ‘Free Sign-Up’, ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Download’, so that your sole objective behind advertisement can be achieved.
5. Color Combination: - This is something which only a web designer can do and must do. This needs proactive ness and creativity. Designers can make an ad banner eye catching and attractive by their skills and depth of creativity. Good designs for sure attract people, irrespective of their interest in product or service offered in the banner.
6. Design to Stand Out: - It is obvious that your ad banner will be accompanied by many others and most of them will be your competitors (competitors’) only. The grid where all the banners would be placed will offer same size to all for placing their ads, so how are you going to make a difference? Along with using some bright eye catching colors and designs, you can also try some irregular but interesting shapes within the proposed space. This may attract the attention of the visitors, but beware before doing this. If it is not done properly then it could subject to mockery of the brand.
7. Strategically Placed Ad Banners: Strategically Placed ad banners got the large probability of diverting large traffic volume to your site than randomly placed ads. The site or the space where you are placing your ad must be researched very carefully. To make out the maximum benefit of the limited space in the banners, companies use jargons, abbreviation or short forms to communicate to their audience. These jargons or lingoes do fine if they are used in thematic sites but what about new avenues where people are totally unaware? For ex: - A company who does PSD to XHTML put ‘slicer’ word in their ad which is very much common in web designing industry. If they put their ad with this jargon in some place other than web designing, then it is likely to convey some other meaning. Possibly people will think that the site related to food or kitchen.

Designing has become more of a research work along with being creative. So next time whenever you go for any designing project (may it be designing web site, banner, logo etc.) if it is a company then probe for its Design Research Team or if you are approaching to a freelancer then you better do all the required research and provide him all the needed ingredients.

Who doesn’t want to keep his hands full of projects and few more projects on hold? Emails coming in, people calling continuously, asking you for website design.

With more and more revenue sliding in from your Paypal (generally) account into your respective integrated bank account making you happy. And you suddenly start believing in the proverb “Wealth Is health”, oops! I meant, “Health is wealth”. 

Ah, such a nice dream to see! Though it would increase the work load, but who cares when one sees dollars blinging around! If you are on your own, then am sure ‘outsourcing’ would definitely pass through your grey matter. Of course, after all- projects must be delivered on time.

Generally, web designers come across this kind of situation very often. The reasons could be many, like, some designers do not know how to convert their PSD to XHTML/HTML/CSS, or they might be out of resources, or anything!

Now while looking for some PSD to XHTML service providers or slicers, whom you do not know, how you will decide on them?  

There are some parameters which must be strictly followed while looking out for PSD slicing services.

• Quality
• Responsiveness or Customer support
• Pricing 

Quality:- 
The best you can do is ‘look’ and ‘judge’ the quality of the website design of your service provider. And more importantly, see if it is coded well. You can get the idea about the work service provider does. Analyze under the hood of their site and portfolios. Do the codes stand up to the claims made by them. Also see what their clients speak about their service, if there is any testimonial from clients. See for their presence and resources working for them, as it would add a layer on their credibility. 

Responsiveness or Customer support:-
Look for their customer response time. Ask some queries, clear your doubts via mails or other mediums. See how quick and vigilant they are in replying back to their customer query. If the response takes more than an hour, you better start searching for a new service provider, because if they don’t worth your dime they can’t be your best deal.

You not only need quality but also reliability. If they are promising 8-12 hrs of delivery time but can not answer your query within few hours, you can imagine their credibility. To increase the responsive time, many PSD slicers have integrated their web site with Yahoo!, MSN, and other instant messengers.

Pricing:-
It is the most important factor in deciding, who to hire? One must see that “How much it will cost”. Do a little research:-

• Compare the prices with other slicers in the market.
• See the difference in packages and turn around time.
• The features available in the package. Examples:- Basic Package /Professional Package.
• Do they offer discounts? If yes, then “How much?”

These are not the only parameters but few important ones. Hope this will help you. 

Take care till we meet next.

Who design the customer care along with it. Don’t you think they all look same, no matter how different the web design of one’s home page is. If you look at the services and the promises made by the vendors, you may observe the orthodox similarity and say that they all have got the same vocal chord, as they all sound same. The reason for this could possibly be the same resources and same art of doing it. Now the question is how to mark a difference from others?

Before sitting against your laptop and google for your answer, just think about the pleasure of being chosen by customer itself, but how? Well, I will discuss this later. The answer for the question in first paragraph comes very easily and I found it from my daily experience. Just think, when you go out in the market and all hawkers surrounds you with the same product, to whom you walk up-to and from whom you repel. A normal social human being likes to get close to the happiness, care, smile, respect and the place where he can get the answers to his queries. Yes you are right, even I think that the one will go to the place where he is likely to get all the listed things and may be more. And depending upon the experience, how fruitful it had been earlier, you will definitely visit the same vendor again without getting disturbed by others and turning down their approaching shouts. But these days everyone is busy in increasing the noise in the market, shout at the fullest of their capability and offering smart discounts in order to intimate the customer before any one else does.

Now some clues for the question in second paragraph is in the terminology “customer support”. If you think that the initial stage of customer service starts after the visitor has agreed to make the deal then, I am afraid it is not so. The moment when customer lands on your landing page through any referral or directly (if you are so popular), the process starts right from there. The friendliness of the web site, the self explanatory content and structure of the site, the designs, images, colors, fonts used, the model of the “order now” or “contact us” form, everything which can help to make the experience of the visitor memorable. All these things constitute some part of initial stage customer service. The list doesn’t ends here but it all depends on the service provider, how long and sweet relationship he wants to build?

Companies are now understanding the gravity of the visitors and now enabling themselves with every possible resource. You might have seen sites with Yahoo!, AOL, Skype, MSN etc icons on contact us page, toll free numbers for the customers to clear their queries. These are the practices followed by the companies to become the customer’s choice and to be chosen by the customer again and again.

As companies are becoming customers centric, many businesses, let them be of any industry are accepting new business models which are customer driven, because it has been experienced that the loss of loosing an old client is bigger then the gain of adding a new one. So, a wise man idea should be to get his web presence established by some professionals rather then from any corner shop to get the cheap deal.

Online to please your visitors and convert them into customers, you can neither possibly overlook the phenomenal significance of search engines (like Google, Yahoo, MSN), nor forget the natural emphasis of your end users for good looks and informative feel! You target optimum conversion rate for maximum web traffic, translating into two imperatives as regards your website design - it must be user-friendly and search engine friendly! Your window to sure success, the tips to a search engine friendly are quite logical and easy to grasp. To begin with, let us explore vital areas of mutual significance for search engines and users, and build our strategies upon them.
Keywords Next! Before you design your website, research some 100 highly targeted keywords relevant to your website business and zero down to keywords that are often-used but produce lesser number of competing websites. While too many keywords may squeeze away the meaningfulness and finesse of the information from a user’s point of view, it may well declare the web page(s) as ‘doorway pages’ to the search engines due to excessive optimization for higher ranking.

Design Third! Look and organization of your website invariably influence the interest and impression of your end users, as well as, help search engine spiders rank your website. While images enhance user experience, they may also slow website’s download time. You must make sure that images are used only when meaningful. Keeping the graphics/images less and light, with due use of alt tag including short descriptions, is advisable. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) aid consistent layout, as well as, overall updating later. Keyword optimized meta and heading tags, with crisp titles and descriptions, also help attract consequential search-engine attention.

Navigation Fluent and intuitive navigation is vital to satisfactory user browsing experience and fruitful search engine optimization for obvious reasons. It is indispensable to ensure that the organization of your site is hierarchically logical and consistent. It is advisable to include a site map if your site has more than 10 pages. It is also wise to stick to obvious descriptions/titles for navigation buttons/tools. It is an absolute must that all internal web pages sport a link to the homepage. This also increases the number of links pointing to your home page.

Besides, it is a good idea to write concise HTML code and keep the lengthy javascript codes in external files, to enable search engine spiders scan content rather than code. It is also advisable to insert the DOC TYPE tag at the top of each web page to keep them compliant with browsers like Mozilla, IE5/Mac and IE6/Win. Healthy user experience and higher ranking among SERPs are highly interrelated. Search engine algorithms place natural importance to popularity for ranking. In short, easy to navigate and easy to use web design is a search-engine friendly web design!