Once you’ve created your website, you are highly likely to see a massive increase in the amount of spam you receive. This normally occurs for two reasons; the first is that your e-mail address is published on the internet, probably on several of your pages and is therefore an easier target for spam crawlers. Secondly, any ‘contact us’ form provided, can potentially be hacked to send spam messages. Luckily there are ways to mitigate both circumstances in your web design.

The way most spammers work is via a piece of software which trawls the web, extracting e-mail addresses from sites and adding them to a spam mailing list. These crawlers are only programmed to look for a certain type of text, so one way to stop them picking up your e-mail address is to disguise it wherever it appears.

As a webmaster, the easiest way to do this is to type the whole thing out in words; contact (at) emailaddress (dot) com. However, this can look slightly unprofessional and is not as easy for your visitor to use. It takes more work up front but  it can be worth spending the time to replace a text ‘@’ sign with a graphic one. As spam crawlers can’t read images, creating a graphic email address will stop them picking yours up.

To protect your contact page, you need a ‘humanity check’. This means showing a piece of information and getting your visitor to repeat it back to you, as machines can’t do this. The most famous piece of software is Captcha, but it is possible to write your own version in using HTML.
Applying simple steps such as these should greatly reduce the amount of spam your site receives.

Colour psychology is now an established area of study, focusing on the effect colour can have on a human’s emotions and brain function. Brighter colours, such as red and orange, tend to act as stimulants and are often used in sales to encourage buying decisions. Contrastingly, cooler colours such as blue and grey are taken as indicators of reliability and intelligence. The ideal choice of colours in your website design will not only complement each other visually, but utilise this psychological language to hook customers.

When choosing your colours, the first key question is ‘What is my demographic?’ This will automatically help you narrow down your potential colours. For example, a product aimed at the over 60s market is unlikely to sell if marketed with a strongly contrasting colour scheme.

Following on from this, decide what is it you want your website to project. Should your company be interpreted as dynamic or traditional? Do you want to push sales or build relationships? All these types of questions will help you narrow down the best colours for your website. Many sites now use two or three colours to create interest, so keep in mind that your choices need to work visually as well.

Colour dictionaries, providing in-depth explanations of each colour’s psychological impact can be found across the web and are excellent resources at this stage of web design. Don’t become too bogged down in the science though; although using colour psychology can help increase sales, it shouldn’t be at the expense of an attractively designed website!

We were lucky enough to have an exchange colleague in the office today.   Riu Yokota is a Japanese PhD graphic/web designer – and the team enjoyed him showing us examples of Western-influenced Japanese designs. 

Riu was also kind enough to write a little summary of his day which he has given me permission to post here:

I’m Riu and from Japan.

I come here Scotland by the vocational exchange program of Rotary International.

NSDesign kindly accepted me and gave me an opportunity to experience the web design in Scotland. So, today I got involved in NSDesign and spent a day here.

As a part of today’s program, I looked for the difference of web design between Japan and Western countries. I feel the framework of website layout in Japan is almost the same to western companies’. The logos would be placed at top-left corner. There may be horizontal navigation bar below the logos. In-site search box will be top right corner of the website, and etc… However, the difference of language, that is, difference of characters or letters, makes the look of the websites different.

Another difference would be the atmosphere of the workplace. I think it is more friendly and enjoyable here. Of course I didn’t mean my workplace is uncomfortable. It may be the NSDesign will be the nicer place to work comparing to others. Anyway, I appreciate for Gary, Paul, Kenny, and Thea for taking care of me.

 Thank you very much, NSDesign.

Really hope to see you again!

On behalf of the team – my thanks to Riu for his short (but influential) time with us, and I hope this is the beginning of strong Scottish/Japanese relations!   – Sayonara

View the Photos here!

Once you’ve created your website, you want to make sure as many people as possible can see it. There are several technical steps you can take to ensure your website is attracting the attention it deserves.

Make sure it’s browser compatible: Check your website in as many browsers as possible. Every browser has different ways of reading things which means that something which shows perfectly in Internet Explorer may not display properly in Firefox. Making sure your website design can be seen across the widest variety of browsers will ultimately gain you more visitors.

Set up a test server: You should never edit a website live, or throw something up online which hasn’t been tested. Once your website goes live, everything can be seen online, including any mistakes in the draft. A mistake-free site is one of the easiest ways to impress customers, attract search engine attention and gain rankings.

Back up your site: You never know when your site will be the victim of a server outage, or a hacker. Both occasions can, in their most extreme circumstances, result in the need to re-establish the site. It’s rare that this happens, but if it does, back-up is essential to get the site online again quickly, to minimise disruption and avoid missing out on lost business.

Be wary of Flash: Although Flash is popular now, it’s never a good idea to base your entire site design on its usage as it does cut out a proportion of visitors. A substantial number of people don’t have Flash – and they won’t download it just to access your site!

If you’re looking for help with accessible website design, contact NS Design for a free no-obligation consultation.

With time being one of the business world’s most precious commodities, it is important that websites load quickly and completely – or you risk losing the prospective customer. As search engines like Google continue to develop their ranking algorithms, evidence is emerging that loading time is now included in their scoring systems. Consequently, how fast your site loads will have an impact on your site’s position in the search results.

The easiest and quickest way to reduce your loading time is to limit the number of web elements on each page. Elements include items such as scripts, images and any Flash components. Each element requires an http marker within the page’s code, creating http requests to the server for each component. The more elements you have, the more requests and the slower the page will load.

Ask yourself – for every piece of your webpage – what value does it add to my site, to my SEO and to my customers? If the answer is low or none, then cut it.

This doesn’t mean images should be avoided completely, but if they are essential, make sure they are optimised. Images should not be written into your code as they stand, but should be saved as suitable for web, with a screen-only resolution of 72 dpi and in GIF or PNG format. It also makes sense to resize the images so they reflect the size on screen.

For more information and advice on how to optimise your website design for the search engines, and ensure it loads in the shortest possible time, contact NSDesign for a free no-obligation consultation.

Websites are a competitive industry and the temptation to throw as many bells and whistles into your design as possible can be high. When well placed and used in moderation, flashy graphics and video insets can add both colour and interest to your site; however, over-using them can distract users from the key messages of your site and create a slower-loading, less accessible page.

The same mantra applies across all aspects of your design, from colour schemes to text. Content is the absolute king of your webpage and needs to be kept as simple as possible, remaining jargon-free and concise to ensure your visitors read what you want them to.

With colours, pick a two or three colour scheme and stick to it. Over-egging the palette of your website can result in a messy and unreadable design which makes visitors want to click off quickly. Excessive colour schemes can confuse and disorientate viewers, making navigation of the site harder and ultimately costing you sales.

Navigation is one of the most vital areas in which to stay simple. The norm for navigation bars is either at the top or the left of the site, with pages easily identified through their home titles. Don’t be afraid to use ‘standard text’ for these links. People searching websites are used to looking for FAQs, so you’re more likely to get a hit than if you headed it ‘Things people often ask us’ or even ‘Popular Questions’. It can also help to repeat your navigation bar at the bottom to save people scrolling up and down.

Even though technology is improving all the time, simplicity is still the number one aim for all websites. So don’t be afraid to rein in your design a little.

In a previous blog, we wrote about the most common web design mistakes.  Here, we’re going to talk you through building and designing your own website. Even if you are a complete novice, once you have read both blogs you should have a clear idea on the do’s and don’ts of web design.

If you are designing your own website using a programme such as Dreamweaver or our own NS Builder you there will be many points that you have to take into consideration. You want the design to stand out, but at the same time clear, concise and easy to manage. The most important fact to remember is what you are trying to achieve. If you are selling products, make sure the shop and pay facilities are straightforward while if you are an information portal, make sure your site is easy to navigate.

If you are new to web design but are looking to create your own site, your web design programme should be very simple to use. You need to be able to update your website regularly, efficiently and trouble-free. Having a helpdesk available to you should you need it will be very important; especially in the early stages.

One of the most important points to remember is that your website needs to be accessible to everyone. Again, this is something we can help you with should you need it.

Finally, it’s important to remember that you don’t need to be an expert designer to create a good, basic website. Look at it constructively, get friends and family to test it with feedback and don’t be afraid to change things if they’re not working. If you are having problems reading a certain font, then it is not right. If your friends/family can’t find the links or pages they’re looking for then it is too difficult to navigate. Once you are happy with the overall look, content and navigation you will be ready to go live.  However, this will not be the end, you will have to closely monitor it and update it when necessary.

Creating a successful website is not as easy as you may think. However by avoiding these common web design mistakes, you will have a much better chance of producing a lucrative site that works for you.

1.    Hard to navigate
Remember that visitors could land on any page of your site. Make sure you have a clear navigation menu to enable people to locate the information they’re looking for.

2.    Generic title tags
If you look to the blue bar at the very top of your browser when viewing a website, what do you see there? A keyword-rich summary of what the page is about or ‘Company X – Home’? No prizes for guessing that it’s the first one you should be aiming for.

3.    Illogical use of links
Links within a webpage take the visitor to another page within your site or to another site altogether. They should be easy to understand and navigate. If you are designing your own website, you will be aware of the importance and simplicity of hyperlinks. If however you want to get your website built and maintained for you, we can help you. (Note: A prime example of a simple hyperlink).

4.    Unreadable font
This may seem very obvious to you, but a very common mistake is to use font which is hard to read – usually because it’s too small. You need to make sure that you use a colour which is not lost within your website and a font which is clear and large enough for people of all ages to read.

5.    Adding too much to your site
While it’s tempting to add as much information as possible, avoid it!  Too much information will make your site look cluttered and confusing and lose people’s interest immediately.

Looks pretty: check.

Easy to navigate: check.

Displays full contact details: check.

There’s one point that’s often missing from many business’s web design checklists, and that’s accessibility. By law, all publicly accessed websites must comply with Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) guidelines, specifically Section 19 which makes it unlawful for a provider of services to discriminate against a disabled person. Websites fall under this law, as they constitute a service, and they must be accessible to visually impaired people who use software to view websites.

Not only is accessibility a legal requirement – and the right thing to do morally – it’s also an important part of SEO. Search engine robots operate in the same way as the software that a visually impaired person would use.

Many websites overlook the WAI guidelines and do not prioritise accessibility, but there are actually a lot of benefits to designing a website to meet accessibility standards. Search engines will look more favourably on your site, as mentioned, and you will probably find it loads more quickly too. By making sure your website is designed in such a way that disabled people can use it, you will be expanding your audience reach and this is likely to result in increased sales.

Accessible: check.

Every web design agency in the country, including ours, has at some point received a response to a proposal along the lines of: “Thanks, but my cousin’s got a mate who can do it for £50”.

It would be easy to rail against clients who can’t tell the difference between a professional design agency and the mate of the client’s cousin who’s offered to design a website for £50 – but easy is overrated! I think that ultimately it’s up to us as web designers to accept that if we want to win the business, we have to take responsibility for educating the client.

First of all, web designers have got to speak the language of business: terms like ‘ROI’, ‘brand awareness’, and ‘higher productivity’ need to appear in design proposals, because business decision makers tend to use the language of objectives. By contrast, many web designers use the language of attributes, such as ‘user friendly’, ‘clean design’, and ‘engaging’. If clients are to recognise the true value of professional web design, then the designer needs to translate attributes into objectives and demonstrate how they will deliver a return on the client’s investment.

The second key component of a winning design proposal is to spell out the process step-by-step (like on our 50 point checklist…). Web design can seem like a mysterious art to many people – in fact, to most people besides other web designers! – so it can really help to show the client where their money is being spent. Most business decision makers who want a professional result will easily understand that £50 won’t buy them a thought-out design process that covers: concept, consultation, research, wireframes, design, build, testing and launch.