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Branding your website


When it comes to your website you cannot rely on your webmaster or programmers to brand your website. It is vital that your website is created by a branding firm like Glazer and Kalayjian, Inc. and its subsidiary GK namebase who not only are experts at branding, strategy, communications and design, but also have a team of expert programmers to do the back end. You have probably noticed how so many websites look the same or are very confusing, busy and junky. that is because they are done by "web designers", programmers who also try to be designers, or some kid who is really good on the computer and html becomes a web desinger. This is not the way to do a website, at least a serious one that you to represent your brand and you want positive results.
Would you consider designing a house or a building by a builder alone? How about building a bridge without an engineer? Why, the house or building without an architect will end up looking like any other house on the block like a development, and when you walk in the space, you experience its poorly designed space, and it looks and feels really borring and confusing to be in it. You have to have a good architect who designs the building first, than you give the plans to a builder and have the architect oversee it. Imagine what the bridge would look like that the contractor built without the engineer! Well you have to look at your website pretty much the same. GK namebase the best global branders also provide a team of specialists who work together to make your website branded and designed outstanding front end and back end.
At GK namebase, we support all major programming languages including PHP, MySQL, CSS, HTML, Flash, etc. and use them appropriately as needed.
Another thing, those flashy "Flash" sights, with tons of pictures and animations. most people are tired of them unless you are The Discovery Channel, selling safari trips to Africa or Gucci and you are selling an image. We wouldn't recommend it to most companies. Sure, sometime we may inbed a piece of it in a website if the brand calls for it.
Your website is like your business card. It has to have your image written all over it, it needs to be clear, well designed, well organized, well written, well executed and well managed, fresh and always updated. You cannot create it and forget about it.
Your web site should have the following:
1. Well branded design that has clear hierarchy and your message is communicated clearly
2. Well thought out architecture and navigation system
3. The proper choice of programming for back end, for example data base for future growth and updating of the site
4. If it is an Ecomerce site, shopping cart system that is easy to use and securre
5. The proper use of markup (HTML): only structural tags in the HTML, use of CSS, proper use of structural tags in the layout ( tag order in a document for example).
6. User friendly site that is proven and tested to work with your audience
7. Search engine opotimized site
8. Well structured and easy to updat
9. Clear documentation how the site was constructed for future staff member to follow the logic beyond it
10. Autmoatically printable with CSS media type linked files
11. Web standard compliant site
HTML pages are just simple text documents
Web design is more or less about creating HTML pages. Html pages are just simple text documents that use special 'key-words' called tags. To make a long story short, simple text documents are so easy to create and manipulate that hand-held devices can easily view them! Oh, and just in case it's not clear, even the most powerful handheld PDA's (personal digital assistant) only have a small fraction of the power/speed of the slowest of desktop computers or laptops.
Yes, there are images that have to be created and inserted into your pages, and we all know that image manipulation can really take a lot of computer power. This is true in print work (where images have to be much heavier) but it doesn't apply to web design because images used in web pages (Gif's, Jpeg's and PNG's) have to be made really light so that they don't take forever to download. In a nutshell, what this all means is that images only need a lot of juice if they are heavy images. Recommended PPI (DPI) of 72 to 76, a big contrast to the usual 300 DPI when working in the print world.
Call us, we'll help you. www,gkdesign.com

About The Author

Vsken Kalayjian is the president of Glazer and Kalayjian, Inc.
GK namebase is its naming and branding division
© 2005 Glazer and Kalayjian, Inc.
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