Web Designing Sri Lanka

Top Web Designing Trends of Year 2011

2012-01-12T06:22:00.000-08:00

There is a thin line between design and development, and as we move into a new decade, this line is becoming extremely blurry. Is it enough to draw beautiful mock ups in Photoshop? Maybe 5 years ago. These days, the average internet user requires more. All beauty, with no substance, gets boring after a while. If your only goal is to impress a community of fellow designers with your flashy designs, you’ll find yourself quickly beneath the tide. 2011 is not about beauty, it’s about function. The trends for this new year and emerging decade are responsive design, constant connection and virtual reality.

How will you stay relevant as a designer in 2011? The ultimate goal of a designer is not to dazzle but to entangle. Any designer can get ‘oohs’ and ‘ahhs’ that are easily forgotten. The supreme designer is able to create an environment which charms and captivates the user to the point where he does not want to find the ‘Back’ button. Several elements come together to forge such a wonderland: harmonious color scheme, intuitive design, easily accessible information and fast response. Additionally, one can never under-estimate the power of simplicity. Of course, this has always been the case, but in 2011, you are no longer at the forgiving discretion of the desktop, or even laptop, computer. Now, your design must contend with smart phones, netbooks, tablets and the like. Are you ready?

Top 11 trends for 2011.

1. More CSS3 + HTML5
2. Simple Color Schemes
3. Mobile Ready
4. Parallax Scrolling
5. Designing for Touch Screens, Not Mice
6. Depth Perception in Web Design

7. Large Photographic Backgrounds
8. Adventurous Domain Names & Integration
9. QR: Quick Response
10. Thumbnail Design
11. Constant Connection/ Life Stream

Author: Jacqueline.
More about the Author: Jacqueline is an artist and a writer who spends an inordinate amount of time playing Super Nintendo and watching Star Trek.

Five emerging trends around convergence in online travel

2011-07-15T23:08:00.000-07:00

1. The convergence of pre-shopping and shopping
2. Convergence of Online and Offline throughout the entire travel process
3. The convergence of mobile and desktop
4. The convergence of commercial and redemption booking flows
5. The convergence of personalization and content management

Which of these five trends will come together first is hard to say, but as technology never stands still, it is unlikely their relationship to each other will remain unchanged. At a minimum, every online travel supplier and retailer should decide where they stand on this these key trends. Then it is just a matter of which ones to embrace and how.

In 3 years mobile “should” take over desktop internet usage

2011-06-29T12:43:00.000-07:00

In 3 years mobile “should” take over desktop internet usage

What do you think? Either way – this info-graphic from Microsoft Tag provides some serious food for thought and it’s great to see this data together to help with future marketing planning.

8 ways to Test Your Website

2011-03-10T08:43:00.000-08:00

Your website is the "storefront" of your business (even if you have a literal storefront, too). Your website needs to attract customers and keep them coming back for more.

So pull up your website and ask yourself a few questions:

Where do your eyes go first?
You only have a few seconds to capture the attention of your audience...make sure they're seeing something important.

Can you tell what the website is about?
Again, you only have a few seconds to communicate your unique value, so be clear and compelling.

Is important information above the fold?
Make sure your opt-in forms and Unique Selling Proposition are available without scrolling down.

Are the benefits highlighted?
Your visitors want to quickly learn "what's in it for them." Spell out the benefits clearly on the homepage.

Is there a clear call to action?
If they like what they see, prospects need to know what to do next. It can be to buy now, start a free trial, or simply download a free report.

Are the colors and font distracting?
Jarring colors, quick animation, and gaudy fonts can really be distracting. And if your visitors are distracted, they'll click away.

Do you feel personally connected?
Consumers want to buy from people, not machines. Connect with your prospects by being honest, straightforward, and using a conversational style.

Are there links to social media?
Many people want to do a little more research before buying. Linking to social media sites gives your potential customers another glimpse into your company (and perhaps a few testimonials from other customers).

Once you determine a few areas where you can improve, develop a plan to start implementing changes. You don't have to do them all at once - just do a few at a time until you have a website that really converts.

To your success! - Via a Small Business Growth Expert !

Even though Google and other popular search engines do not use the keywords meta tag, many other local and global search engines, still do.

2011-03-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

Even though Google and other search engines do not use the keywords meta tag, many other local and global search engines, still do. Those search engines believes that the keywords meta tag is a good location to include words that you want indexed where those same words are not included with your content.

Three examples for using the keywords meta tag are:

1. To include synonyms of words that are not included in the content of your page. People search on many variations of words and phrases. Sometimes it is hard to include all of the different variations of those words in the content of your page without making your page sound like a keywords page.

2. To place emphasis on certain words. It is not always easy to place your major keywords at the top of your page or in a tag. Your major keywords might not be introduced until the middle of your page. Using the keywords meta tag, you can add these keywords to inform the search engines that these words are important. Remember two important rules when using this tag: When emphasizing keywords, do not place the same keyword more than two times in the keywords meta tag. This could be considered keyword spamming and can reduce your ranking value. Also, do not place irrelevant keywords in your meta tag. Using irrelevant keywords could get your site band from many search engines.

3. Another use for the keywords meta tag is to add words from different languages. A multi-language site with one language as its default page might want to add words from other languages to attract people speaking languages that are different than the language of the default page.

To see your keywords that Search Results has indexed for your page, you can use google webmaster program, or other site popularity and keyword monitoring tools which are freely available on the net. If you are not in position to analyze and identify the patterns of the usage, and the popularity of your keywords in the Word Wide Web's day to day searches, we eDesigners as a SEO specialist can help you to identify these valuable information on behalf of you.

If you are looking to optimize your website using the White Hat mechanisms which help you to position your self in the Search engines including Google for longer years, eDesigners is here to help you with our 11 years experience in the respective subject domain. For more information you can call us on +94 11 2618575 or +94 773 610620 or email us at info@edesignerslanka.com

Building a SEO Friendly Website !

2011-01-11T19:17:00.000-08:00

Has a web design company pitched you on selling you a search engine friendly website that will melt your servers with copious amounts of search engine traffic? It might sound great in theory and leave you imagining a website that will go live and be a set it and forget it proposition. The set it and forget it website is a myth. Or…more accurately: a scam.

Don’t Fall for Turnkey SEO and Website Design Scams, SEO cannot be done in 24 hours or 48 Hours !

You can’t succeed online in one day. It’s more of a marathon than a sprint. And you can’t set up a site and just leave it. Anyone who tells you different is looking to make a fast dollar and won’t likely be around to answer to their failures. In order to succeed online, your SEO friendly website needs to be regularly analyzed and measured for success. SEO changes on an ongoing basis so you’ll need to evolve with it. Tweaks and continuous adjustments are going to be necessary so that you can get successful, fix problem areas, capitalize on success, and leave your competition in the dust.

At eDesigners we believe in following theory. It’s not just because it comes to a formula in a eye catchy way, but because of the proven track record over the past 8-10 years.

Ongoing Research + Analysis + Action = Ongoing Success

Research for keywords, page rank, and other factors need to happen on a consistent basis so that your website will be a credit to your business and increase your success. Don’t have time for keyword research, analytics reporting, and ongoing optimization for every page of your website? Don’t have time to continually create new content and work at lowering your bounce rate and increasing your conversion rate? You need to deal with a company that does SEO and web design.

A complete web design and SEO strategy is essential for success in the 21st century.
You can work closely with a web design and SEO specialist who can help you create a website that works for you. That company can also continually manage the maintenance and optimization of your site so that it succeeds as a marketing and customer relationship management tool.

Want to talk? Contact eDesigners. We can help you with SEO, web design and complete E-Business strategies to take you up on the ladder of Success.

For more information visit: www.edesignerslanka.com

Common issues with the Websites, that you should overcome !

2010-12-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

1. Lack of focus on the user's perspective The website is designed based on what the company wants, rather than what the user actually wants to see when visiting the site. These pages simply do not get their message across quickly enough, most people come to a site and if they can't see the expected content or the supporting graphics. They will go back and go for the next link. This will affect the website in very bad way.

This will leads to increase the bounce rate of the site
Incrementing bounce rate could leads to degrade you in the search engines since the search engine algorithms are defined in a way to track the bounce rate, and if it goes up the algorithm decides that the site do not have the proper content which attracts the user so it will record this in the system as a negative for the site.
In the long run too many negatives could leads to lower rankings on the search
That leads to less traffic
Ultimately your business is not going to get the expected outcome through your website due to lesser sales generated through the site
And finally the site will become a burden for the company

2. Flash only websites Overkill on flashy introduction pages that can't be skipped and take an age to download, and no alternative html only version of the site. This is not only a turnoff for the user, but also a turnoff for search engines as they cannot index the "flash" part of the site.

3. Generally long loading times This can be due to a poor hosting company (slow data transfer speeds), but is often due to poorly optimised Web Pages containing far more images than is necessary to get the message across to the customer. Although broadband is becoming more commonplace nowadays, you still need to consider that a large percentage of surfers are still using modems and can only download about 5KB a second. If a web page takes more than 30 seconds to download, most people won't bother waiting and will look elsewhere.

4. Non standard layouts and bad linking system Too few links to deeper pages in the website can lead to a user having to go through 4 to 5 pages before they find what they want, so more links are needed in appropriate places. However, too many links to other pages in the site from the front / navigation pages can lead to the user having difficulty locating what they are seeking. The positioning of these links is also important as most people expect a standard menu layout, with menus clearly separated from the text of the page and laid out such that they can clearly be seen to be a menu. Conventional menu systems i.e on top menu, menus on Left or right side are the standard way of using, and nothing could go wrong with that kind of usage. So why do you need to risk it.

5. Poor use of colors Although you may like having lilac text displayed on an aqua background with cherry coloured links, this may not suit everybody's taste and can generally make the page hard to read. Also, having images as backgrounds can often be a mistake as they also make text difficult to read unless you brighten them and fade them out in a good paint package.... doing this often makes the image hard to make out and defeats the point of putting it there in the first place. Generally, human beings are used to reading black writing on white sheets of paper, so making websites that follow this convention often leads to an easy to read website.

6. Out of Date Web pages Most websites have web pages which are not updated for ages, but still these pages are appearing on the web and create indirect impression on the customers mind. For example, you may be having a product you used to sell in 2002, which is outdated by now..in the same database which comes as a result for product page, or you may be maintaining out dated technical articles or spec sheets in your site. All these materials create the wrong impression in the customers mind. And sometimes you may have to face legal issues due to misleading your customers with outdated date. You never know, the consumer laws in the countries are very strong these days and you have to be extra careful in this kind of publications.

7. Lack of traffic An awful lot of people assume that once you have a website, you put in on the web and traffic will just start to flow in, this is not true. To get initial traffic to your site, you need to inform the search engines of its presence (http://www.google.com/addurl will do for starters). Without doing this, you won't even be able to search for your own site by putting the address in the search engine.

Then, you need to find ways of getting other relevant sites to link to your site - this often involves setting up a "link exchange" whereby they link to you and you link to them. You also need to consider adding your web address to all of your letterheads, advertising material, and anything printed that you'd normally produce with your telephone numbers/contact details on. You can use Social medias to promote your site among friends and friends of friends like wise your site will reach to many number of users.

8. Compatibility Lets assume you have Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP with a nice big 19 inch monitor (1280x1024 pixels), what happens if someone with a Windows 98 computer running Internet explorer 5.5 with an 15 inch screen (800x600 pixels) tries to look at your website, does it look the same?

Your aim is to make your website viewable by as many computers as possible, often this means checking the site at a number of different screen resolutions (800x600, 1024x768, 1280x1024) and with a number of different web browsers (Internet Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, Netscape). You will always find differences between browsers and often it's a case of finding the best possible layout that suits all browsers and resolutions rather than the exact layout you want. You can check the compatibility of your site via www.browsershots.org .

9. Accessibility

In some cases, people cannot display graphics at all and use text only web browsers or screen reading software (for the blind). Can your site be seen by people fitting into this category? Even if the answer is yes, its often the case that there is an awful lot of extra information that's unnecessary and it would be far better to provide an alternative page for them to view without the side menus, tables, javascript effects etc.

10. Who's been looking at your site?

This is not a problem with the site itself, but it is an important question you should know the answer to. If you can get a copy of the log file your web hosting company produces for your website, it is possible to tell exactly how many visitors your site receives per day, which pages they looked at, what pages they were looking at previously, what operating system they are running, how many colours their computer is capable of displaying etc. It is even possible to see what search terms they typed into a search engine to find your site and often which country they are surfing from. You can easily ask your web designing company to provide you the analytics of the website. With the Google analytics you can get more marketing oriented reports too, which could help your marketing team to position your products in different geo locations based on the customer needs and demands by going through the reports carefully.

From getting attention to giving attention" Web 2.0 to Marketing 2.0

2010-12-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

Online customers are not emotional – the web is a very rational, literate place where words really matter in marketing.

You’re walking down the street and you notice a friend on the other side. You wave and shout at them. They see you, cross the street and are now in front of you. What should you stop doing? That’s right; waving and shouting. Because otherwise they won’t be your friend for much longer.

When someone arrives at your website you have already got their attention. Now you need to pay attention to their needs and give them what they came for. That’s why Google and Amazon and most great web brands are successful. They focus on helping customers to complete tasks. This is really important for you to grow as an E-Business. i.e. converting the web traffic in to sales with the use of simple, but effective methodologies. Otherwise your Websites' bounce rate will go up and ultimately you'll be losing a potential client and the conversion rates could go down drastically.

That is one of the reasons why the Flash intro has almost totally disappeared. Waving and shouting was always a fifth-rate attempt at creating a TV ad, and we know what most people think of ads, don’t we. Except for ads on Google – people don’t really see them as ads because they’re actually useful. If you search for “villa rentals”, the ads are about special offers related to Villas. They are related to the task you want to complete. They’re not trying to sell you something totally different. This is what we learnt in consumer behavior in Marketing. We can use the same theories and apply that in strategic manner using the technology. That's what Google has done through Adwords.

Isn’t it interesting that Google has become one of the most powerful organisations in the world by selling 17-word blocks of text? Google has never sold a single graphical ad on Google.com. What does that tell you? That the web is a very rational, literate place. Words really matter.

Forget traditional marketing words that talk about “solving tomorrow’s problems today”. This sort of waffle drives customers mad. When most customers see this sort of phoney “creative” language, they generally respond, “That’s marketing” – and they don’t mean it as a compliment.

Have you ever bought a product based on an ad you saw on the Amazon homepage? I’ve asked this from many international clients and I’ve yet to find someone who has. Have you ever bought something based on “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”? That’s Marketing 2.0: don’t try to change the customer’s journey, rather try to expand and deepen it.

How many hero shots of smiling faces can customers be exposed to until they become immune to them? We already have banner ad blindness on the web. I also see the emergence of hero shot blindness.

For too long, most marketing has treated customers as emotional and irrational. The web is a different, rational space. It’s where we go to search, compare and find out more. On the web, treat your customers as intelligent strangers.

Web management is a process of continuous improvement based on the actual behaviour of customers. That's why we are always trying to convince the customers to go with a web maintenance plan with eDesigners, since we can improve the website from time to time by looking at the customer behavior and by analyzing the statistics reports we can tell our clients about the geographical locations where many hits have came in, so they can target that audience in a different manner rather than using the conventional approaches. There are many other things that we can do through these analytics. But I feel that the companies are not willing to get the maximum out of web, may be because they just have sales persons, but not strategic marketers who can think and strategies their business processes to bring the highest return to the company using this explicit knowledge( consumer behavior patterns and trends).

BTW the worst possible way to design a website is to have five marketers in a room drinking coffee. Marketers should embrace this new evidence based approach and stop whinging about the loss of creativity. On the web, old‑school marketing is increasingly sounding like a needy child. Marketing 2.0 is about being the helpful attendant.

Web Designing - Forecast 2010/2011 / Optimal Solutions

2010-12-22T18:52:00.000-08:00

Web Designing - Forecast 2010/2011 - As we are stepping in a new decade, we can foresee that web design in 2010/2011 is going to be fun and filled with experimental works. With the new CSS3 and HTML5, designers and developers are trying to utilize the new features to create impressive designs. Sketchy and large background styles are fading out. Serif fonts and texturized background will be popular. Thanks to CSS3, we are going to see a lot of rounded corners, RGBA transparency, and drop shadows. With the rise of smart phones, mobile web design is going to pick up this year....with the rescission and all economic downfalls, We are seeing a boom in the micro site developments in the UK market and people are moving more towards the SEO and Social Marketing Activities due to the low cost factors compared to the standard offsite marketing approaches.

eDesigners is geared up to cater to fulfill the all new technological demands and also as usual, we provide the optimal solution to our customers. When I say optimal...it covers 4 main areas...

1. Afford-ability

2. Technological (State of the Art Technology)

3. SEO Freidnly ( To reach your target Audience)

4. Customer Driven (Fulfilling all your requirements)

All these aspects are linked together but in many situations the Point 1, talks more than the other 3 but a better balance is what we try to achieve through out the whole process in order to give an optimal solution. When all of the above factors are in a balance state, we usually achieves the high customer satisfaction levels...

But we have to keep in mind that the high customer satisfaction will not always leads to the optimal solution. But unfortunately in many cases customers do not realize that during the software life cycle process. By the time they realize it, it's way too late for them. As a web solution company, we always try to convince the customers about the optimal solution and what benefits they could achieve by transforming in to the optimal state.

Why you need a Web Presence?

2009-12-04T06:12:00.000-08:00

Nowadays website becomes an essential part of every profession. Website makes strong impact on the image of your company. It is very important when you are more concern about exploring your business worldwide.

If you are into the E-Business, website is the most essential and much needed material for you to reach to your target market. Because, there are approximately1,733,993,741(1.7 Billion) Internet users, 25.6 % of the world's population. Thus it is a most efficient way to get potential customers from all over the world through internet marketing and a proper web presence. I want to emphasize on the proper web presence little bit more, i.e. because even though you do all sort of marketing campaigns and spending money to market your website, the return will not be as expected unless you have a proper website.

Websites have no boundaries as far as place or region or country is concern. It is international. If you have a website, then you have something international that overcomes the limits between countries and continents. Can you reach the world with your brands or services that easily with any other media other than the internet? The Obvious answer to that is; NO ! Through website designing you will get identity, global presence and good business channel once you make entry in the www (World Wide Web) and promote the website through web marketing.

There are competitions in every business. This is like going for a business exhibition on internet. You cannot stop competition in any business but at least make your identity so that your potential customers are given a chance of comparing and subsequently buying your products or engaging your services with the help of professional business website.

If you own small company and you want to explore globally then website is the only effective media to connect people by creative web designing and with an effective web promotion.

Today, Business without website means you are running business without having your visiting card. By effective profile of your company, products/services you can build corporate image of the company in your business website.

If you have a SEO friendly website, potential customers are inclined to know more about you. Then you can explain to them why your products are great or how excellent and reliable your services are and, also satisfying them by showing your work profiles.

Not only that, with the latest technologies you can run a virtual shopping mall through the site. You do not need to have a physical showroom to market your products to the client. By enabling a shopping cart feature, and a payment option you can simply setup your web store in the WWW and start doing business.

Having a website means your business is open and reachable round the clock and throughout the year. Your web site is your online shop and it is open for 24/7. Website transmits your message in a few seconds.

In website, content can be changed very easily. You can get good ranking in search pages by writing SEO friendly copy writing in your website.The work involved in projecting your website can also be used for presentation purposes, without the presence of the internet.

Professionally design Websites can easily fit on CDs and their content can be presented as the company’s virtual business card or as the company’s portfolio.

There are various types of website designing such as Static Web site Design, Flash Web Site Design, Dynamic Website Design, Hybrid Websites Design, SEO Website. The type of website depends on the type of your business. We at eDesigners can help you out on developing the site according to your desires with the state of the art technologies.

Static websites are generally text base. Static websites are more search engine friendly websites. Even though you have a dynamic site, it’s always recommended to have a static micro site with links to your dynamic portal. That will help you to rank high up on the search engines without too many hassles and without spending too much for Search Engine Optimization.

Flash web sites are for entertainment, game, animation or visual effects. Flash sites are very useful to represent your product or service in innovative way. Flash site gives unique and novel look to your web site, with flashy animated effects. But having a 100% flash sites on the WWW are not recommended because, search engines will not be able to pick up any of body content unless you design the flash site with using a extended markup language.

Dynamic websites can be used for various applications, whereby from login pages, company employees can login to update and report data directly in and from the project’s database. You can opt to go for a dynamic website which will automatically change your content based on changes to your business, like stock items, stock status, prices, important messages, news, articles, services and more.

Hybrid website is mixer of static and flash sites. Hybrid site is useful when you wish to make search engine friendly website with text, visual and flash animation.

Today, many businesses depend on their website. They gained vast exposure and have increased their sales revenue by developingprofessional website design and search engine friendly website.

Search engine optimization is the next step after having web designing and web development. This is normally done through a search engine optimization process directly in your web site. With the latest technological improvements and innovations, SEO is not only going to help you in the world wide web. There are other promotional methodologies like social media optimization, e-mail marketing, pay per click programmes, blogging and pod casting. Etc.

To get maximum benefit of website you need to design web site by professional Web Design Company and have web optimization by professional SEO Company.

We, eDesigners as a Web Designing and Development Company operating in UK, USA and Sri Lanka have the vast experience that you are looking at, when selecting a web company. Also the portfolio of eDesigners gives you the evidence of what we are capable of.

Doesn’t delay the web designing process…act today... Contact eDesigners for preparing web page design, business websites, static web design, flash web design, hybrid web design, dynamic web design, SEO friendly web design. We are a full service web designing companythat can guarantee the professional service that you are looking at.

Web Designing Company Sri Lanka, eDesigners

2009-12-04T04:26:00.000-08:00

eDesigners is a professional web design company in Sri Lanka, with a marketing offices in UK and USA. We specialize in web design and development, and e-marketing. Today, having a great web site isn't enough to fulfill the business objectives of you or your organization. Website is about more than fancy gimmicks. At eDesigners we focus on turning your on-line presence (Website) into a business and marketing tool. We take a look at the bigger picture and first and foremost establish why you are creating a website. Then with your target audience and your goals in mind we design a unique, tailor made website (with all the snazzy graphics!) that focuses on achieving those goals.

As a web designing company in Sri Lanka, eDesigners are in the business Since 2000. Today, we are a full service web design company providing web development solutions for companies / individuals interested in outsourcing their web design and website development needs as well.

The eDesigners team is made up of highly talented individuals. We are a truly an international team, with a diverse range of backgrounds and skill-sets, and what unites us is our passion for providing world class customer service.

Our team comprises of enthusiastic individuals from different technical backgrounds, different countries and cultures with a common customer service ethos. Every individual is encouraged to express themselves, contribute and make their mark in the industry. This makes for a stimulating environment full of ambitious and enthusiastic people and a real sense of achievement at the end of a good day's work.

If you wish to get your website done, through true professionals who have the passion and desire to deliver top quality products according your budget, you can contact us today to find out what we can do for your business to lead you on the path to success.

Website: www.edesignerslanka.com Contact : +94 773610620 or +94 11 2618575 e-mail :info@edesignerslanka.com