This article reveals several important web design elements you must consider during website optimization process.

1. CSS Stylesheet

It is good to use CSS stylesheet to format your web design because it can standardize the appearance of your website. For the sake of convenience, some web designers use internal CSS.

It is no good! You should use external CSS stylesheet so that
your HTML coding becomes consise, and mainly compose of your website content. It is an essential SEO practice.

2. Content Management Software (CMS)

If you use CMS to manage your website, make sure your CMS provides these features:

a. Allows you to define different templates for different sections/pages. It gives you flexibility in optimizing website content.

b. Allows you to define Title and Meta tags for different web pages. Again, it gives you flexibility in optimizing every web page.

c. Allows you to generate static HTML pages instead of dynamic pages. Search engines are not good at reading dynamic web page. Accoding to Google webmaster guideline, Google may not index dynamic URL with more than 2 parameters within the URL.

If your web pages cannot get indexed, you definitely get no rankings no matter how many SEO effort you make.

3. HTML Code Compliance

As a good web design practice, make sure your HTML coding is compliant to some well recognized HTML standards such as W3C standard. Some search engine optimizers reported that non-compliant web design could cause difficulties for search engines
to index and analyze your website. It hinders your website to get top search engine ranking.

4. Use of Graphics

You must optimize the file size of your images. As search engines like to read text, you should consider avoiding the use of graphics near top of your website, whenever it is possible.

5. Multiple-level Navigation Menu

Many websites use multiple-level navigation menu in Javascript. However, the coding usually leaves in the HTML body. This is no good in terms of SEO. I recommend seperate Javascrpt from HTML coding by using external Javascript file. For example, Marketshare - an Asia consumer market research firm, found that their website cannot get indexed properly by several search engines. This situation has been changed only after adopting external Javascript.

6. Bad Web Design

To make your web design search engine friendly, you must consider avoiding:

a. Use of frame. Search engines have difficulties to index all your frameset. Even though they can index some frame pages, users would only access to part of your webpages only in case they can find your website from search engines, e.g., only see a left-hand side navigation menu with a blank page on the right-hand side.

b. Re-direct techniques. For some reasons, web designers may make some re-direct pages or adopt Javascript re-direct techniques and re-direct visitors from one page to another content pages. Since search engine spammers usually use this technique, search engines could penalize your website.

7. Flash

Web designers may sell you to build a flash website or make a flash intro page as your home page. Their point is that flash makes your website more appealing and it would improve effectiveness of your website. However, it is not always the case.

Visitors want to find information fast. Flash sometimes could make your website slow and require visitors to install plugins before they can see your website. In terms of SEO, simply speaking, search engines treat flash as a graphic and cannot analyze content inside a flash file. The implication means a flash website is hard to get top search engine ranking.

Conclusion:

For small business to succeed online, you must strike a balance between SEO and fancy web design. A too fancy web design, in many cases, cannot give you any business as no one can find your website from search engines and if it annoys your visitors.

Jimsun Lui, is working in Agog Digital Marketing Strategy Limited, a company offers SEO Services for both English and Chinese search engines. Click here to learn more about how to optimize website. The company also offers Ecommerce Web Design Service with an emphasis of search engine friendliness.

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Technology, at its best, is transparent - it’s the invisible lubricant between what I want to do, and having done it. A ball-point pen, for example, is successful because it requires very little from me to make it work. I can put ink to paper without needing to think about all the messy and mechanical things a writer had to deal with in the past.

The same idea holds true for Web 2.0 technologies. We’re seeing a decentralization of media creation and distribution as blogs grow to challenge traditional publications. Wikis and open source are driving the co-operative creation of everything from content to code. This in turn is leading to an environment in which applications are becoming as rich on the Web as on the PC, with the advantage of being faster to market, adaptive and componentized, so they can be snapped together to create any number of new user experiences. Why not pair a satellite mapping service with an ad-supported local business directory? What about being able to update your code base in a matter of minutes, rather than hours? In a way, the original promise of the Web - what you want, how you want it, easily - is coming true.

Unfortunately these great strides aren’t always being matched by great design. The leveling aspect of free Web applications is also creating a lowest common denominator in terms of user interface. If 2.0 marks the Web’s adolescence (with emphasis on personal independence, what friends think, and defiance to the establishment), then Web design could be in for a rough ride. And it’s the responsibility of the design community to provide some proper adult supervision through this phase.

So what does that mean, practically? It means embracing new technologies like AJAX for a dynamic page; tagging searches with multi-directional ‘folksonomies’ rather than ranked taxonomies, for more flexible, intuitive results; and providing multiple points of entry versus hierarchical navigation schemes for friction-free flow. How this translates into design on the pixel level will vary, but as professionals, I think we have a mandate and a responsibility to our clients to be best-in-class in any design arena, and it’s incumbent on us to be fluent in all aspects of the web as it continues to evolve.

I don’t presume to tell you how to design sites here, but I do want to suggest this guiding principle: understand how these new technologies are shifting the way people use the Web, and shift your approach to interface design accordingly. Provide the appropriate technology in the most user-directed, functional way, and get out of the way. Because at the end of the day, the utility of a design isn’t measured in how many technology stripes you can point to on your sleeve. It’s measured by how often people use your site, and how good the experience is. The goal, for any of us, should be to provide an experience that asks as little as possible from an end-user. It must be seamless, much as the smooth motion of that ball-point pen.

Jamie Monberg is the new director of interactive for Hornall Anderson Design Works, a brand-focused, graphic and interactive design firm in Seattle. Get in touch at j_monberg@hadw.com or by visiting http://www.hadw.com.

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This is not written by a professional lawyer or anyone close to one. It is written by a typical business owner of a successful web development company who has no law degree or the budget to hire a lawyer to write a web development contract. However, they are in need of a contract agreement that will assure a project will be well outlined for both the client and the developer as to what the expectations are of the entire project.

I must write a disclaimer that this proven web development agreement is purely based on experience and knowledge of the web design and development industry. Others may write these contracts and agreements differently. This article is written to help others who wish to know how to begin to write a 10 step web design and development agreement. So enough said, let’s get down to the 10 steps:

1. Scope of Services:
Start off with the most important aspect of the entire project. What exactly are you as the developer going to do for the client? Present a general 3-5 sentence summary of the scope of service. Will you be responsible for the design and programming? How will the website be updated? Who will be responsible for the marketing at the end of the project? Who will host the website when the project is done?

2. Price and Payments
This is the area where you are upfront and state the exact price payment and terms of the payment is split up into installments. Is the project quoted at a fixed rate? Is it an hourly rate and how is this documented and tracked? Will the payments be made with a certain percentage up front as a down payment and then a monthly billing cycle, or is it a milestone related payment system?

3. Term and Termination
How long will this agreement contract be enforceable? If the client does not want to peruse the project

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