Writing for Your Website




Creating your own website involves a few tasks that are not part of the average daily life, and writing online content is one of them. Here few simple guidelines could come in handy:


Menus and Buttons

Avoid using too many puns or abstract phrasing. Buttons’ sole role is to allow easy and smooth navigation for your site visitors. Don't confuse them by using terms they may not understand. For instance, “Get in Touch” could be a good alternative for the “Contact” button, but “Carrier Pigeon” might be a bit too much.


Describing Yourself/ Your Business

This part should vary according to the service or product you’re offering. Artists, for one, should personalize their bio and not restrict it to a customary education and awards section. There should also be some kind of life story or short manifesto included. This can also apply to a company, only without the personal tone. It is important to describe the product, the quality of service and the advantages compared with competitors (but don't get too nasty!). Some businesses, like medical services or wedding photography, involve a great amount of trust, where a personal statement from the leading professional of the company is a real plus.


Text Length and Structure

In our WWW era, people don't bother to read long texts, so unless your site is actually an online magazine, a blog or a newsletter of some sort, try to keep your content short. For the same reason, we advise you to avoid long paragraphs and sentences. The important thing is to make sure your key ideas and messages are clearly phrased and easy to understand. If you add scrollable text boxes, make sure the most important points appear at the very beginning. And use a READABLE font size.


Writing Style

We can't, of course, recommend the same style of writing for all websites. A website for a human rights organization should not adopt the same tone a basketball summer camp does. We can, however, advise you to stay away from extremes within your own style. If you want to write cheekily, dropping a joke every two sentences will only create the opposite effect. If you want to write professionally, you still need to use adjectives here and there and avoid a strict technical phrasing. Online content contributors usually live in extremes, but write carefully.


Flexibility

One of the biggest revolutions of online text is that it's easy to edit, so make good use of that. Go over your texts every once in a while and make changes if you see fit. A good website reacts to changes in the outside world. You can do this by referring to special sales that you have at the moment, to national or international events, to big news that relate to your business and so forth. It also adds to the credibility of your website, since the visitors see it is often updated and active.

How to Prepare a Style Guide for your Website


The Necessity of a Style Guide

A style guide is a document that prescribes the 'style' or standard format for your website. It lays down common guidelines for formatting texts and images, use of color and fonts, logo variations that can be used, etc. The general idea here is to:
1. Create consistency across your website
2. Creating guidelines that can serve future partners taking over from you
In big (and some small) design companies, a website cannot be created without a style guide to back it up. It’s a communication document that levels out the expectations of all those involved in the project. It’s also a way of making sure there are no surprises in the end. Even if you're not working in a team, a style guide can make your life easier. It is a crucial step towards creating a successful professional website. It’s the touchstone in the process that will keep you focused and help you achieve a more cohesive design.

The Wix editor offers endless possibilities, making for an
exciting and refreshing design process. But watch out! This wealth of design possibilities can just as well throw you off track. A style guide will always help you steer back into the right direction thus saving you a lot of time. By creating a style guide you are effectively establishing rules that will make the design process more efficient and help the final website achieve its purpose.

How to Prepare a Style Guide


Before approaching the editor grab a pencil and paper and construct your guidelines. Web guidelines keep everything consistent, from button styles to navigation structure.

Points to Consider When Preparing a Style Guide


1.
Prepare a color sheet- what are the tones you would like to use in your design, and what is the color scheme of your website? A black and white concept with brightly colored text? Solid black background with neon colored elements? Lay out the colors together, when stuck or lost. It can be very handy to refer to your pre-planned guide.


2. What fonts will you be using? Usually no more then three are needed. Find combinations of fonts that work for you. Decide what font you'll be using for titles, sub-titles, headings and main text. Will you be using Bold or Italics for titles?


3. Think about the grid and layout of the website. This determines where elements will be placed. Prepare some generic templates that you can use when designing. A good grid is the key to a good website and will ensure consistency.


4. Have a look at your navigation structure and organization of relevant materials. Map out the information you want to display on your website - this is where you name the menu options. Menu options may include headings such as home, about, contact, gallery, portfolio (perhaps with sub categories), links, comments. Will you be using an intro page? Or use more then one language? This is the map of your website, it will ensure that your web site has an appropriate structure and will help you lay out all the materials you need to prepare.


5. Prepare the text you'll be using. Think of key words you need to highlight. Gathering all the text at this stage including contact info and picture captions will be a huge time saver when you get to building your website.


6. What images will be displayed? Are they ready to upload or are compression and editing needed? Decide which image goes under what tab and if captions are needed. How are the images going to be displayed? Perhaps with a consistent frame around them? If you have a gallery of some sort, plan out the image categories.7. Consider your use of graphic elements. This is where you decide whether and where to incorporate them, and how and where your logo will be integrated.



You may find it helpful to have the editor open and play around with different options. Make sure to transfer your decisions to the style guide, so you will always be able to refer to it once you start building your website.

The best thing about a style guide is that it's transferable- it can be applied to all your publications. The effort you put into the style guide will definitely pay off when you'll see you can apply it to any other form of communication you use: email marketing, blogs, business cards - your company now has a strong unified style.


Remember the document you produce is not set in stone, you can always make changes and update it!

10 Web Usability Tips



1. Every page should feature a "back" or "home" button. The navigation bar's location should be consistent on every page.



2. If you have a photo gallery, make sure your visitors can enlarge photos and scroll between them while enlarged. This way your visitors won't be forced to close one enlarged photo and open the next. Usability's first rule of thumb is the less “clicks”, the happier the visitor.

3. If you have music on your site make sure the visitor can easily identify the player and switch it off if they so choose.



4. Don’t overload- rich media websites are slower to load, testing the users patience.



5. Be consistent with the design pattern and alignment, don't change your grid on every page.

6. If your website has more than the customary 4-5 tabs, and has more than one menu, make sure there's an easy flow from one page to another and that users can easily spot the sub-menus.

7. Place all contact info under one section - don’t scatter it around your website.



8. Users are usually intimidated by long texts. Be specific, highlight (Bold or with color) relevant texts so they pop out to the visitor. Fact is, most users will probably only read the highlighted text.

9. Integrate Symbols and Icons into your design. Symbols are Icons are usually international, easy to understand and add a great look and feel to your site.



10. Before publishing your site, conduct a usability test, showing your website to as many people as possible. Be present with them while they enter your website, monitor their reactions and where they get stuck.

This post is from wix blog.

This blog is about Biddding Site.

This is a blog for our website " ApniMarzee".
Our web will be an online bidding site like eBay. A user(seller) will put something which he wants to sale online. User(buyer) will come to bid and the user(buyer) with max bid will win.
Moreover , instead of using "sign/register" for bidding site we will use Facebook Login (using facebook API for single sign on).
Further more, we will let this site post to user facebook wall. Lets say, you put a cell phone for sale for 10000Rs. So sooner do you put this on your bidding site, our bidding site (since you will be logged into that bidding site through faceook API , hence it will have access to your wall) will post something like "Ali wants to sale a Cell phone for this amount., If you are interested come and bid here".
This will be different from traditonal bidding sites. It will have a Desi touch as shown by its name.