Using an HTML Editor

Designing Your Webpage for Success

It is a hot opinion that "it's the words that sell, not a design" and that you should invest all your money into writing a good sales copy and what is left (if anything) into web-site. I can give you 99 out of 100 that authors of these claims are copywriters, web-designers usually don't write articles. It is like asking football player what game he enjoys more: football or hockey?

I don't want to argue that statement about the importance of copywriting, on the contrary, I think that it is totally true, but under one condition - your Web-Site is already implied to make your visitors feel, at least, comfortable.

It could never be counted, how many times I closed down the browser without reading a single word, just because of the amateurish and clumsy look those Web-Sites had.

No need to emphasize on importance of the professional Web-Site. It is obvious, at the same time you won't read there, that web-design is everything and that professional sales letter or text message is nothing, because it is like answering the question - what is better to have skin or heart cancer? To my mind, it is better to be totally healthy.

A business Web-Site usually plays the role of the virtual office, shop, informational dept., marketing dept., and service dept. It is a main representative and the core of your business. The final proof, the image of your company is based on.

What it is all about?

The target is set - to make your Web-Site as good as it can possibly be. Here I pointed the crucial pillars of designing a professional looking Web-Site. You will not find here, the basic HTML teaching or how to use particular web-editor. The knowledge of HTML will help, but is not compulsory, as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editors will make all HTML coding work "behind the scene" for you.

It does require general understanding of what HTML is and the ability to use one or several WYSIWYG web-editors. That is about a three hour learning process. The feeling of style and taste is also advisable; otherwise you will have to consult a designer.

The problem with designing the "How to...” sites are that Web-Site design is 90% creative work, where are no two identical Web-Sites, unless copied. That is why there cannot be any step-by-step study, the same way there is no step-by-step study on how to paint a masterpiece painting.

What we can teach is how to "hold a brush", but it is you, who
should paint "Mona Lisa" and become "Leonardo da Vinci".

What your Web-Site should look like?

1. Stylish. Consider it as an exterior and interior of your whole off-line business premises, starting from hall (main-index web-page) and ending with your personal office ("about me" web-page). It has to have its unique "feel" and style. Also, don't forget about branding features your Web-Site represents.

2. Clear structure. Imagine a shopper who wants to make a purchase at your offline store, but in order to enter it, he has to go through warehouse, service department and all kinds of office premises. Don't allow your web visitor feel like that shopper.

3. Harmonically allocated design elements. The Web-Site is a united entity including, your graphics and text should become your brand. Every element on the Web-Site is to blend with the “exterior". No separated elements or graphics like a number of flashy banners.

4. High usability standards. With complete Web-Site optimization including a clear HTML code and optimized web graphics that is similar to a clean shop. The more "dirt" your web-pages contain, the more time it will take to load them, thus the more potential errors it may show in different browsers. And the harder it is for Search Engine spiders to index your Web-Site. We will discuss these issues later on. Also, pay close attention to broken links; it is similar to a wall behind the door of your off-line shop. Let your visitors find all the good resources with your help, rather than an "Error 404 Page not found".

5. Absence of grammatical errors. It is important to have grammatical correctness of the textual information. The correct grammar should be clear and understandable. No one wants to deal with uneducated people, especially if they represent a business.

What programs you will need?

First of all you will need to equip yourself with the right "armament", that are mostly WYSISWG (What You See Is What You Get) web-editors. The download links and short description you can find below:

Macromedia Dream weaver -

http://www.macromedia.com/software/dreamweaver/ - considered to be the best WYSIWYG HTML editor. It is ideal for beginners as well as professional users. Everything you can imagine has been included within the program. You can download the 30 day trial version.

EzyPage -

http://www.ezyware.com/ - very simple drag & drop web-page creator for beginners. Although it has several very interesting features build in like dropdown menu or scrolling table. It is a free distribution.

Stepzilla -

http://www.stepzilla.com/ - the software's motto - step by step to the web - tells everything for itself.

1st page 2000 v.2 final -

http://www.evrsoft.com/products/ - It is a very pleasant HTML editor for the beginner. As well as it is for the advanced webmaster. It allows you the ability to choose the interface that will be more suitable. Available features include HTML cleaning option, XML converter, build in FTP-client and preview function. There is a list of ready to use JavaScript, VBScript, DHTML, and Perl applications. The software is being distributed for free.

Hot Dog Professional -

http://sausage.com/products/index.html - They have three HTML editors. HotDog Junior for kids, PageWiz for beginners and Professional ver.6 for advanced users. It has a convenient interface with easy to access HTML functions. It includes a CSS editor, checker for tag errors, and many others. All three editors allow you to download 30-day trial version.

CoffeeCup HTML editors -

http://www.coffeecup.com/software/ - This is another package with several versions of software for beginners as well as advanced users. It features pre-made JavaScript application libraries, Flash effects, a font creator, HTML code cleaner, FTP-client, and many more. It has a collection of web-pictures, backgrounds, and icons. Also, is available in 30-day trial, PRO or free version.

AceHTML 5.0 Pro -

http://www.visicommedia.com/ - A professional HTML editor. It features DHTML, JavaScript libraries. Has a built in CSS editor, HTML, JavaScript, CSS checker, supports XHTML, XML, Perl and WML documents. Also, has an HTML code optimizer, link checker. It is available in a 30-day trial version.

PILLARS OF PROPER DESIGNING

TASK DEFINING.

The next step after setting up the appropriate web-design program is to create your list of tasks that your site should solve. You should ask yourself the following questions before you start the actual development of your web-site.

1. Is your Web-Site a sales letter or a content rich project?
Depending on your answer you have or don't have to pay attention to the structure and flexibility of navigational menu, as it may bring new challenges, as your content-rich Web-Site will grow. Consider reserving Web-Site space for future informational blocks like announcements, exclusive offers, visitors voting, polls, that you may like to include sometime in future. Don't make the page
layout look too tight, as you will require redesigning the whole page just to insert a small table for visitors' voting.

2. What kind of integrated services you are planning to use?
Whether it is going to be shopping cart, discussion board, chat or separate section totally devoted to the Web-Site newsletter, it should fit an overall web-site layout and design. Think in the terms of prospective, as it will take several hours now, but it will avoid several weeks of headache in the future. Make sure that the foundation of your online empire will bear all possible additional growth, without the need of demolishing the whole "building" and strengthening the foundation.

3. What market sectors your Web-Site belongs to in general and what product/service you are going to offer in particular? If your Web-Site is an entertainment portal, full of flash games, casino offers and reviews of upcoming PC games, it is obvious that design and layout plays extremely important role. The “feel” of your web-site is a representative of more than 50% of all information. You can be sure that boring graphics in that case, it would cut the roots of your Web-Site growth. If, on the other hand, you are working at corporate business-to-business online sector (B2B), there is absolutely no need in complex graphics elements or flashy stars in the top-left corner. Online businesses always experience lack of time, therefore, they need quick answers of who you are what you are and why are you, rather than waiting till your welcome 300Kb flash clip will load. The answer to efficiently finding, link partners among businesses, is textual and to the point information that is easy to access and that is, usually, represented in business white-gray-black color scheme.

VISUALLY FINISHED

Anybody can do that. Although the broader imagination you have, the simpler it will be. What you need is comfortable seat, paper and a pen. Put your feet on the table, close your eyes and imagine your Web-Site.

Let me only tell you one of my favorite jokes concerning the technique mentioned above.

There was a group of foreign visitors coming to see a very prosperous and profitable company.

At the end of their excursion one of the visitors asked their guide, “You know, your company is really perfect, with the best technology I've ever seen. Everybody is working very hard but, tell me, who is that man in the biggest room on the top floor doing nothing but relaxing on the soft armchair with his feet crossed on the table, sipping Cola and listening to music?”

The guide replied, “Oh, that man came up with the idea last year, that earned us $1.000.000 and, as far as I remember, during that time he was also sipping Cola with his feet on the table."

So follow this man and don't allow anybody to disturb you during this work!

Don't make any mistakes about it. You may be surprised but, it is the most challenging and crucial part of your Web-Site creation. The brighter efforts you put into your paper, the more beneficial result you will get. There is no need for a degree in painting. Just the basic elements on paper as the background of your future Web-Site building are resting in your mind.

Don't be afraid to experiment! It's a pleasant time spending anyway. Remember - all great works of all times are considered to be masterpieces, only because they, firstly, perfectly reflect the depth of their creators' souls and, secondly, they
are unique in their nature. There is no masterpiece based on well-known standards. They are good in, let's say, decreasing production costs, but they are not welcomed in the art creation process, which the design surely is.

On the other hand, you should always keep in mind that the experiment ends exactly when the web-surfer disappointment starts.

ELEMENTS

The key point, while visualizing your full color Web-Site, is to decide what and where will you place 3 basic elements:

1. The Header.

2. Navigational menu.

3. Space for main text.

The following list represents possible Web-Site elements that you consider to have as a result of previously conducted "Task Defining". The design should also reserve a proper place and harmonically blend them with the rest of Web-Site elements:

1. Banner ads.

2. Menu mirror at the bottom.

3. Additional text for news column, announcements, and testimonials.

4. Email forms, visitor polls, questionnaire etc.

5. Any other items you would consider to include.

It must be stressed that all the main elements of the Web-Site as well as any other Web-Site items, which should be added at your sole discretion ought to be put in mind while visualizing. Then written down on paper to be sure there is no forgotten element left behind. If it occurs at the next stage you will have to start from the very beginning as there is no way to move further. So don't quadruple your work with your own hands. Make sure you have put every "present" into the box you want to receive on Christmas.

WEB-SITE STRUCTURE AND LAYOUT

Draw the scheme of your Web-Site structure. How you are planning to arrange, link and create logically relations between sections or stand alone web-pages? It is easy to navigate a four page sales letter Web-Site, but everything changes when we are exploring 100 spontaneously linked Web-Site. It is easier to get out of Sahara Desert rather than to find what you need.

Your navigational structure could be linear or functional. There are an unlimited number of variations, just pay close attention and follow one simple rule: "The more difficult for you to write a Web-Site structure, the more difficult it will be for potential user to navigate it!"

It doesn't depend on number of web pages rather then logical sequence and connection of different parts or sections of your site.

COLORS

I've also read numerous times, that Headlines is what the visitor sees first, when comes to your site. Wrong! The first thing a surfer sees on the Web-Site, while it loads, is the color and, sometimes, designs appearance. Don't underestimate the importance of color influence. With the help of color play you can easily
create a feeling of excitement or grief even before she/he will see the first letter of your Headline.

One note should be also mentioned, try if possible, to avoid main colors - green, red, yellow, blue. They are very Day-Glo and very annoying while using them in the company Logo sometimes, even considered to be enticing.

Don't use "aggressive" color scheme, make it "polite" to your customer's perception. By doing so you, don't at least, make your visitor irritated. Just experiment with hues and brightness and you will get the color you need. Follow this rule if you are not intending to sell clown noses in the circus tent.

Text color also ought to match the background color. Please, avoid red text on green color, dark blue on black etc.

USABILITY

Usability is what makes your Web-Site pleasant to deal with. While everyone defines personally for her/himself how to make a design nice to look at, memorable (in respect to branding) and serve customer/business needs in the best way possible. The technical side of usability can and should be corrected using the standard requirements.

SOURCE CODE OPTIMIZATION

First about the four problems that come to my mind with" dirty" HTML source code.

1. Potential cross-browser conflicts as some particular useless Tags (a piece of HTML source code) may be neglected by one browser but create some visual errors, when viewed in other browser.

2. The more useless HTML Tags the web-page has, the more drive space it occupies.

3. As the derivative of the previous problem, the larger the size of the web-page, the longer it takes the visitor to load and view it.

4. Search engines like plain and clear textual information for easy search and scan. By having a lot of useless pieces of HTML code, you prevent SE spiders from properly indexing your web-pages. The result is the obvious decreasing of your Search Engine rankings. That is why Meta Tag correcting is not the only thing you should pay attention to.

Statistic shows that more then 85% of all Web-Sites online demand graphic or HTML code optimization. That is actually a common problem, the core of which lies in the use of highly popular" home" web editors like FrontPage or the other.

The "winner" among the worst is well-known Netscape Composer, due to the extremely "dirty" HTML code it generates while editing old or creating new web-pages. If you have ever used Composer and no one has "cleaned" the web-pages afterward, they definitely contain a lot of HTML "garbage".

Based on my own experience every 50Kb Netscape Composer's web-page can be easily optimized to the 40Kb file size or less, as a simple result of the deleting junk HTML tags. If you implement Cascade Style Sheet and HTML compressor you will get the same, but "clean & shiny" web-page totaling 25-30Kb (40-50% space savings) with the enhanced visual effects.

The example above shows saving on a single web-page, but if we
speak in terms of 50-60 page Web-Site, that occupies (without graphics) 3-5Mb of hard drive space, the potential savings as a result of HTML optimization may reach 1-3Mb. So if you are experiencing the lack of hard drive space with your hosting provider, the solution to that problem lies in simple Web-Site optimization. It doesn't only save a lot of space but, as we know, eliminates potential cross-browser mistakes, helps SE spiders to properly index your web-pages and make your visitors' surfing quick and smooth and therefore pleasant.

GRAPHICS OPTIMIZATION

When ever we speak about poorly optimized graphics we get two problems: more occupied space and worse load time. Given that the first obstacle may be overcome by acquiring personal server with several Gigabytes of hard drive space, the latter problem will continue to exist as the majority of web visitors have low speed dial-up connection.

To make your graphics optimized on the basic level, you should save it in the proper graphic format. Many popular pictures of ebook covers can be easily optimized simply by re-saving .JPG format into .GIF or vice versa depending on particular file. That tactic alone can bring 15Kb file to occupy 7-10Kb in the
matter of 2 min.

The basic math shows that 10 optimized pictures (without HTML optimization) on a web-page are capable of decreasing the overall size from 120Kb to 70Kb without visual loss in the quality of the picture. Are you aware that statistics show that many visitors leave your site just because they are tired of waiting until the entire pictures load? That doesn't mean that you have to delete these pictures completely as some people suggest. What it does mean is that they should be optimized. In case of ebook covers, it was proven to triple the selling potential and the absence of the optimization would hardly be compensated by new visitors.

To choose the right format, follow one simple rule: "If the target picture is more likely to be a photo with many colors, unshaped objects and different lights, it should be saved in .JPG format. If on the contrary, a picture is more likely to
consist of a number of vector objects like circles, triangles, squares, doesn't have too many colors or similar to some drown comics, then .GIF format is the best to use."

If it is hard to determine, always save it in both formats and compare quality/size ratio. Not much work, big effect.

Having semi- or fully professional graphic editors will allow you to get even better results by selecting compression rate, smoothness, sharpness of edges - then we speak about .JPG format; or palette, colors, rate of transparency, animation features etc. - if we deal with .GIF format.

Today's technological opportunities are vast, so it is up to you to decide how deeply you want to "dive in".

CROSS-BROWSER & SCREEN RESOLUTION OPTIMIZATION

The numbers are the following: - 2% have outdated 14'' with 640*480 pixels in width and height respectively. - 49% of web-surfers use 15" monitors with preferable "standard" screen resolution of 800*600 pixels; - 45% surf the web with 17" monitors with reasonable 1024*768 resolution; - 4% of users
enjoy 18-19" monitors with 1152*864-1280*1024 screen settings.

What should these numbers tell you? The very simple thing - if you created the Web-Site on your 15" monitor, don't assume that it will look as good on other monitors as on yours.

Let me draw several notes here about the tendency that monitor market will follow in the nearest future. First is that all 14" monitors are gradually going to their deserved eternal rest. Even the share of notebooks with 15" TFT screens growing exponentially. There are even several new versions with 16" active matrixes. Don't also forget that notebooks' 14" TFT screen have almost the same diagonal inches as usual 15" CRT (Cathode-ray tube) monitors. Secondly, the number of 15" monitors is also decreasing, due to growing number of 17" monitor owners that is the third point.

One sentence conclusion of the above statistics is that your Web-Site should look fine, at least, under 800*600 and 1024*768 resolutions. This is a market demand to your Web-Site and, as we know, you better not joke with The Market.

Without going deep into theory, there are two ways: - more simple; - more complex.

Both correct, both satisfy the demand above but the letter way, given it is more complex, usually perfectly fits any screen resolution, whether it is 14" or 21" and more favorable to WS space usage.

The easier way would be to make the borders of your web-page (tables of your web-page) to be fixed with certain number of pixels. The most popular settings are something between 650 to 750 pixels just to fit that 800 pixels width screen under the most popular 15" monitor 800*600 resolution. If you go that way
your web-page will have the same look under different sets of resolutions. If we try to see it at 14" monitor with 640 pixels in width, the unpleasant horizontal scroller would appear because our fixed setting in 700 pixels is wider then 640 and it just won't fit in it. If, on the other hand, we look at our imaginable site under 1152*864 or 1280*1024, it will look too narrow, as it will occupy only 60% of the screen width (our 700 in comparison to 1200 screen pixels width). Why does this designing way simpler? You just won't have any problems building it. There’s not a need for resolution or cross-browser optimization, as the fixed pixels are read correctly under almost every browser.

The more complex way is to have the width of one or several HTML tables’ columns on your site to be set in percents like 75% or 100% and, therefore, poses the ability to automatically broaden or narrow according to the specified percents, depending on what screen resolution the site is being viewed under. If you have 600*800 screen settings (the screen width is 600 pixels) and one
of the table width of your site is set to 100%, then this particular table along with all included text and graphic will narrow to 600 pixels, if we set the monitor to 1200*1024 resolution, i.e. having 1200 pixels wide, our site's table will
stretch to the specified 100%, in that case, 1200 pixels. That's why it looks more attractive under different resolutions but demands additional optimization, including cross-browser optimization, as Netscape Navigator browser has some problems with proper interpreting of percent settings in multi column
tables. Which way you choose depends on the tasks and your preference.

I wish you endless creativity and no more then 70Kb per page.

About the author:
Pavel Lenshin is a publisher of "NET Business Magazine", author
of a free "Info Business Online: the easy way" ebook,
web-developer and founder of the http://ASBONE.com/ -
informational portal and provider of discounted Internet
services for small business.