Anchorage Alaska Web Design

Good Website Designers Effectively Use Meta Tags

1:12 PM

Effectively Use meta tags

SEO ordinarily refers to making imperceptible adjustments to parts of your web site either by your web designers or by the person responsible for content management. If inspected by themselves, these adjustments probably appear like incremental adjustments. In any case, if merged with other website modifications or "optimizations", they could generate a noticeable influence on your visitors' experience and also the evaluation in organic search results.

Possibly the topics outlined here are already familiar to your company's web designers and developers. Because they consist of essential factors for any business web page, but in any case, your developers may not be taking full advantage of their potential. Beyond a doubt, every Anchorage, Alaska website design company is aware of these basic elements, but they don't always practice them. Make sure your web designers are doing their job properly with this little bit of knowledge.

Create Unique, Depictive Web Page Titles

Title tags notify both your company web sites' potential customers and search engines what is the subject matter of a particular page. "Title" tags are in most cases to be placed inside of the "head" tag of HTML documents. Your organization's software engineers should write a unique title for each web page.

Best Practices for Web Page Title Tags

Specifically specify the content by grabbing a title that properly communicates the topic of the web page's subject matter.

Avoid:

Selecting titles with no relation to web page's textual content
Adopting default titles like "Untitled" or "New Page"

Do:

Generate individual title tags for every page by supplying each of your business's pages a unique title tag, which helps search engines know how the page is distinct from other web pages on your site, such as Alaska Web page design

Do not:

Using a single title tag across all of your web pages
Write short but descriptive titles by ensuring your website's titles are both concise and illuminating. If titles are too wordy, major search engines merely place a small part in the search engine results
Leaving exceptionally lengthy titles that are of no use to your company's visiting clients
Stuffing worthless valuable keywords into your web pages' title tags

Taking Advantage of the "description" Meta Tag

Web pages' description meta tag provides major search engines a summary of what the web page is about. In as much as web pages' title may be merely a few words or a short phrase. Web pages' description meta tag may be a sentence or two or a short paragraph. Similar to "title" tags, description meta tags are set within the "head" tag of HTML documents.

Description meta tag is essential because Google, Yahoo and Bing might place them as snippets for your business's web pages. Snippets materialize under pages' title and above pages' URL in major search engine results.

Words and phrases within snippets are bolded whenever they show up in users' queries. This offers your website' potential customers clues whether the web page's copy is relevant to what he is hunting.

Best Practices for Description Meta Tags

Meticulously summarize web pages' textual content by choosing descriptions that both brief and interest users. If they glimpse your organization's description meta tag as a snippet in major search engines results.

Do:

Write unique depictions for every web page by creating different description meta tags for each web page. This helps major search engines and your web sites' visitors, particularly in queries where users retrieve many pages on your domain. If your enterprise's web site has 800 or 5000 pages, hand-crafting description meta tags isn't a logical choice. In this case, your company could automatically write description meta tags based on each page's web content.

Do not:

Writing description meta tags that don't relate to web page
Using generic explanations like "This is a webpage" or "Page about aviation risk management system"
Filling descriptions with only keywords
Copy/pasting entire contents of documents into description meta tags
Using single description meta tags across all your web pages or a large set of pages.

In conclusion, these meta tags are understood by many people, but yet most fail to use them correctly.

Original article

NWDS Alaska Web Design

About NWDS - founded in 2003 by six software engineers, NorthWest Data Solutions (NWDS) provides custom computer programming and systems design services. NWDS creates many types of software, including e-commerce, financial, defense, engineering, logistics, aviation and more. www.nwds-ak.com

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alaska web design

Web Design Tips for Login page

11:51 AM

One of our products, SMS Pro™, is web-based aviation safety software. SMS Pro has a configurable login form that allows users to securely access the system. We recognize the importance of functionality, usability as well as aesthetic desirability. As a website designer, I have to balance all of them together in order to meet a great user’s experience.

Images are helpful during the design process, but they need to used properly. What does that mean? It means that when we have an image, such as from your camera, we can’t haphazardly upload it next to text on our login form. We have to think and choose wisely.

The following are steps a professional Web designer takes to modify an existing SMS Pro site.

Existing Web Site Design

What would I like to change?

1. The image looks nice but it needs some work before using it. I’d like to remove the person who stands right in front of the plane. This task would take about 20-30 minutes with Photoshop so why not? The image without the person there makes it less distracted. Next, I would not use a border surrounding the image because if it doesn’t help to make it looks better I’d rather just leave it alone. One of my principles of design – less is more.

2. A couple more things I would like to do are adjusting the color tone and crop the image. So this way I have the plane in focus more than clouds. Then put the image on top of the page.

3. The logo and login form do not stand out and they don't seem connected. I’d like to group them together to make them stand out more. I'd put them on the grey background (same tone with the sky.) Also change character of word “username” and “password” with uppercase and increase the size. Change text color to be dark grey since it match with the login background color.

4. Increase the size of text box including the login button.

5. Change the word “Retrieve password” to be “Forgot your password?” and move it next to login button.

6. Move the Facebook button away from the middle of the screen.

7. Add welcome text under the logo to inform users this is their safety system, and it helps to direct users’ eyes to the login form.

How about a second Web design idea for the Login page?

I like the first design better than the existing login form but I like this one even more.

1. I change image since the previous plane faces outward so it leads users’ eyes out from the page. With this image, it helps keep users engaged within the page.

2. The background color changed to be the same tone with plane background (faded more.)

3. The logo looks bigger since it has more white space.

4. The welcome text has more room for larger size and becomes the title of the page.

One of our cultures is excellent customer support. I’m happy that I can help improve SMS Pro™ to serve our clients better. In conclusion, exceptional Web design is about whether the client likes the concept. So, which one do you like better?

NWDS Alaska Web Design

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alaska website design

You Know You Need a Web Designer When…

7:08 AM

Your online representative

Would you fix your car by yourself? Most of us would say no. We would hire a professional to insure that we get the best results possible. A professional designer knows how to create appealing website to attract your target audience. First impressions are very important, and if your website represents your company in a professional manner you will gain customers that would otherwise be lost.

Uniqueness

There are millions of websites on the Internet. (Source: How Many Websites Are There In The World?) How are you going to make your website stand out? Purchasing a template may seem like a good idea for creating your own website, but you risk having your website look like others. Also you may need specific features that a template cannot provide you such as a photo gallery or forums.

Design sense

A skilled designer knows how to create quality graphic elements like image resolutions, correct image file type, and other graphic design technique. Designer responsibilities also include the use of right fonts to fit your brand, how to use white space, what colors are most effectively combined, and how to arrange all elements in aesthetical way.

Time

Hiring a professional web designer instead of building a website yourself will save you a lot of valuable time. There is a wide range of skills that are necessary to make effective websites not just learning the basics HTML. Important languages to help creating websites cover CSS, JavaScript, and others.

Search Engine Optimization

It is useless to have a great website if it does not show up on search engine results. A high search engine ranking is important because potential customers will find you on the Internet. A professional web designer knows how to optimize your content, all tags and using effective keywords on your pages.

Browser Compatibility

Different browsers (Internet Explorer, Google Chrome, Mozilla, Safari, etc.) have different standards for displaying web pages. What looks perfectly fine in Google Chrome may show up as a mess in Internet Explorer. Professional web designers are skilled at knowing how to make websites display properly on multiple browsers. An efficient web designer will test your website across browsers, insuring that the majority of people on different browsers can view your website the way it should be displayed.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

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alaska web design

What Is the Difference Between Web Design and Web Development

9:34 AM

Differences Between Web Designers & Developers

Sometimes people use the terms “web designer” and “web developer” interchangeably, but they actually have two different meanings. Web designers usually involve with the design and front-end of a website, while web developers work with back-end of a website.

Web Design Processes

The front-end of the web covers two processes: the designing of a website and front-end development. The design can be developed by graphics program such as Photoshop, Illustrator, or Fireworks to reflect the look and feel. Also concerning about usability of a website to help users easily to navigate and want to return back. The front-end development using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript combination to code all elements needed. These include things like images, font, color, buttons etc.

The back-end of a website covers two parts: a database and a server. Let’s say, if you use online banking, you usually interact with the front-end. Once you’ve entered your information, the website or web application stores it in a database which was created on a server. All information stays on the server so when you log back into the website your account information still there. A web developer uses server-side scripting languages such as ASP.NET, C or PHP to make this work.

A web designer is a graphic artist who styles elements on the web. He or she typically has a creative mind set, while a web developer usually thinks logically. Because of the difference mind sets, it’s hard to find a good web designer who is also good at back-end development. On the other hand, web developers probably find it hard time to create an appealing website.

When you’re looking for someone to develop your website or web application. The best way is hiring a web design company since you can get both on the designing and programming. We, Alaska Web Design, have web designers and developers to help you meet your goal on the next project.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

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How to Create a Facebook Cover Photo

4:17 PM

Facebook cover photo is like our account representative. We would like to have nice and aesthetic in order to draw attention from audiences. These are some processes to help you to create the nice one.

1. Select image

Your photograph needs to have high resolution so you can work on it with Photoshop or your favorite software photo editor. I usually use Photoshop to adjust brightness and contrast before uploading, also when I play around with saturation can get more interesting look.

2. Dimensions

Cover photos are 851 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. If you upload a smaller size image it will be stretch to fit these sizes. For the best result is having your image with the exact same size of Facebook’s dimensions.

It’s a little bit tricky sometimes when the image sizes don’t fit. I always resize the width first to be the exact number I need. Then I crop the image by using the width number I already got and the height I need. So I’ll get the width and height with those numbers.

For the profile picture sizes are 180x180 pixels. If you want to have a white space around the image, you can design it to be smaller but sit on white background that have the profile size need.

NWDS logo

3. The design

Please keep in mind when you design the cover photo. On the bottom left corner will be hidden by profile image. So it’s better to avoid to put something important or text on that area.

To add or change your cover photo:

Log in to your Facebook page
Go to your timeline
Click Add a Cover if you haven't have a cover photo yet, or hover over your current cover photo and click Change Cover
Choose a new photo from your computer
Click Save