AWR Web Design Blog

Site speed is one of the most important things about creating web content, and web applications. In fact, it has been noted by various analysts at Google that people don’t often sit through the first 30 seconds of a video, much less the first 15, so it would be wise of you to get the content of your site loaded as fast as you can so that people can make a judgement and agree to either use it or not. It may be a bit superficial that people judge sites that fast, but it is often the case, and we shouldn’t take it for granted. Optimizing your site should be a top priority, and often times when using WordPress and other engines they have nice plugins that help. I will assume though, that you may not be using WordPress, because there are a lot that don’t, and I will give you...

Written May 1, 2012 by Kimberly Myers Being a web designer is hard work. Sometimes, being the customer is even harder. Here are the top 10 things you should look for in your web designer: He Should Be Customer-Oriented Sometimes, IT professionals and web designers aren’t known for their friendliness. They may be short-and to to-the-point, lacking any inkling of what constitutes “customer satisfaction.” Make sure your web designer understands your needs and designs his service to meet those needs. Read Full Article...

By Eric Siu | April 24, 2012 | Sitepoint.com With over 93% of people using search engines as their first point of research, it goes without saying that search engine optimization is important for any web property. Here are some other interesting SEO-related statistics: Over 70% of clicks go to organic results. 75% of people don’t click past the first page. The top 3 results get up to 60% of organic clicks. But for a lot of people, there just isn’t enough time to go out and learn the ins and outs of SEO. Or there might not be available budget for a SEO consultant either. But that doesn’t mean you can’t do anything about SEO. This post will walk you through 6 must have SEO changes you need to make to your site. They aren’t too difficult to implement and will help increase your website’s search visibility. Read Full Article  ...

Written by Divya Rawat, April 11, 2012 A little R&R can go a long way to refresh the body and fill your mind with all the great ideas you need for creative success. In this article, Divya Rawat shares a series of things you can do during your off time to keep yourself productive, energized, and up to date! A designer friend with a creative block was amazed at how just a little time-out helped her rejuvenate and get her creative juices flowing. She’s one of those few lucky designers whose designs have found acclaim among the industry stalwarts, and so she can can afford to go on a well deserved vacation. Not everyone is that lucky though. Whether you work on your own time as a freelance designer or juggling a 9 to 5 design job (sticking to a time frame is rare in this field), it’s hard to combine both relaxing...

By Sabina Idler Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency. We were so busy trying to adapt to the World Wide Web as a new medium that we lost sight of its full potential. Instead of using the Internet on our terms, we adapted to its technical and, at first, impersonal nature. If it wasn’t for visionary contemporaries such as Don Norman or Aarron Walter, we might still be focusing on improving processes, neglecting the potential of emotional design. In his book Emotional Design, Norman describes why “attractive things work better.” He explains how attractive products trigger our creativity and ultimately expand our mental processes, making us more tolerant...

By Daniel Foster | April 12, 2012  Call it what you want, but there isn’t a webmaster out there who hasn’t “borrowed” an image at least once. Maybe you just didn’t have the time to scour through Flickr for a free-use photo, or perhaps there was one particular image you just had to have. Given the virtually infinite number of photos on the web and small presence of most sites, who would ever expect to get caught? Last June, Google quietly introduced a new feature called Search by Image. This search tool provides a powerful reverse image search service similar to TinEye, but with more robust results. Search by Image finds copies of images at the usual Google speed. Simply upload a photo or paste a URL and Search by Image will pull up all the sites using the photo, including modified and resized versions. Google touts its new search feature...

By Ann Davlin.www.hongkiat.com Shopping, it’s a woman’s thing right? Well, not anymore. There are many online stores with a wide range of tech gadgets which can make any man glued to the screen for hours. Also, there are numerous web stores that cater for kids, parents and teenagers as well. In general, eCommerce websites engage web customers and they are ready to struggle for each and every one of them. These days, you can’t really say that online shopping is a niche market, aimed at a small audience anymore. Read Full Article...

The web is full of discussion about which CMS platform is the best for creating web sites.  A great deal of opinion is generated from people who are comfortable using a specific platform for building web pages.  Some prefer a CMS such as Joomla!, Wordpress or Drupal, while some purists are hand-coding HTML, CSS and Javascript.  I have tried various options for building sites and I have found that Joomla! is simply the best.  Here are my top 5 reasons why. 1. Easy to Deploy  The core Joomla! system is very easy to deploy on a web server.  Within a few minutes, you can have a basic site up and running, ready to be customized and content added.  If you ever tried to hand program a CMS style site using PHP, HTML and CSS, then you can truly appreciate this. 2. Open-Source  Joomla! is open-source and is covered by a General...

There has been great discussion across the web about whether to keep your Joomla! 1.5 site or migrate to the newer versions of Joomla!, such as 1.6 or 1.7.  After a failed experiment of my own, I was even on the side of sticking with Joomla! 1.5 for now.  But that was until the Joomla! team released the new Joomla! 2.5 in January 2012.  1.6 and 1.7 were just the lead up to 2.5, which is here to stay, for a while anyway.   The Joomla! team reports that support of 2.5 is scheduled until August 2013 and that support of 1.5 is ending in April 2012.  This is an indication that it is time to begin using Joomla! 2.5.  There are many people who post negative comments about the newer versions of Joomla! because they are not working for them for various reasons. But remember this, all new versions of...

Here is a great article posted by Mandy Barrington on Sitepoint.com on February 13, 2012 If you want traffic from search engines, you know that you need to optimize your page for your target keywords. But where on the page should you place your keywords? Imagine your target keywords are seeds: will you throw them in the air and hope they grow wherever they fall, or will you place them precisely where they’ll get the most sunlight (and capture the most attention)? When you look at the big picture, popular search engines like Google have been so successful because they are able to determine the most relevant websites for the keywords queried, while penalizing sites using spammy tactics. This has led to a more satisfactory search experience for users, and a more challenging experience for web marketers and developers. Read full article...