Truth is… web design comes second (and third, fourth and fifth)

Now, if you’re a web designer you might not appreciate the bluntness of this truth:

Web design is subservient to content

But, understanding what web design is, you’re not offended because you know any kind of design (architecture, graphic design, fashion etc.) is about communication and function. Design that fails to communicate or fulfil its functional requirements is decoration and will not be successful.

You know the 5 critical aspects of a website, in order of importance, are:

1. Content — the substance of the website. The largest and most important aspect. It’s why the website exists and what visitors come to see.
2. Functionality — dictated by the content, the purpose of the website and the audience… what interactivity is required/ desired to fulfil the website’s aim.
3. Usability — user-friendly with a simple and reliable interface. The design must make the content easily accessible no matter the technology its viewed on.
4. Visibility — a website must reach its audience. The site must provide quality content optimised for search engines and to attract visitors/ backlinks.
5. Appearance — graphic design creating the optimal layout and visual style to reinforce the message being communicated.

Starting with quality content, the site must then meet functional requirements, ensure usability and visibility. Only once this is achieved can or should the appearance be decided.

A successful website is one that communicates effectively with its target audience. And what’s our primary means of communicating? Words. Copywriting is essential in effective communication and it’s no accident that the vast majority of online content is the written word.

Attention-grabbing headlines and ad copy, creative and memorable marketing messages, NLP and engaging web content, killer sales copy and strong calls-to-action… these all place different demands on the design.

In other words, web design is dictated by content and therefore by copy. Everything from the number of pages, structure, semantic XHMTL and onsite SEO to the layout… Copy should also have a huge influence on the appearance as both must work in harmony.

Photoshop is the final stage in a long design process — before you reach for it ensure you’re designing to maximise the value of the content, not producing pretty but ineffective decoration.

John Broughton is an SEO copywriter at Vivid Copy and you can find more of his copywriting articles on Escaping the Word Cage.

Top Tips for New Twitter Users

Twitter is expanding rapidly and if you aren’t already tweeting, then I suggest you do and we have put together a list of tips to help you get a good start on twitter.

Setting up your profile.
There is more to setting up than just signing up. What you should do is upload an avatar which will represent you, upload a avatar, add your location, add a link to your website (if you have one) and add a 140 character bio. Doing these simple tasks will make your profile a look a lot better than someone who has just signed up and hasn’t bothered adding their details. Look at the images below and you will see that adding your info makes you look a lot more respectable.

Good Profile

Bad Profile

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Converting a PSD to XHTML/CSS

In this tutorial we are going to create a XHTML/CSS webiste by slicing a PSD, the PSD we will be using is the one from a previous tutorial we did on here called Creating A Nighttime Layout. I would suggest you get yourself a cup of tea as this tutorial can take over an hour to get through.

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Creating a Nighttime Layout in PhotoShop

In this tutorial we are going to be using PhotoShop to create a simple nighttime layout for a webpage. The tutorial should take around 15-20 minutes to complete and when finished will look like the image below.

So lets get started…

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Creating a custom 404 Page

In this tutorial we are going to show you how to create a custom 404 page for your website. A 404 page is the error page which comes up when a user tries to go to a page which doesn’t exist on the server, this can happen when someone a link to your site is outdated i.e. you have removed that page.
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