Web designers use Flash to develop a wide array of presentations, tutorials, and websites. They can create entire websites or simply add interactive elements to standard HTML websites.

Should you consider Flash for your company’s website? Perhaps. Like everything, Flash has both pros and cons.

The benefits of Flash:

* Flash can enhance the experience of your target audience. It grabs attention and can make a stunning and rich presentation to effectively drive home a marketing message.

* Flash provides almost limitless design options.

* With Flash you can explain a wide variety of concepts with graphics and sound via dynamic, engaging tutorials, training courses, introductions, and film clips.

* Flash can give your site a look that emphasizes state-of-the-art technology and expertise.

* If you have a portfolio component to your website, Flash can present samples of your work in an interactive environment that resizes windows to fit the graphics. Examples of companies that may benefit from Flash portfolios include architects, interior designers, and photographers.

Things to consider when developing a Flash-based site:

* Estimates state approximately 95% of Internet users have the Flash plug-in. This leaves only a small group of people who must still download the free plug-in.

* Flash is a complex and time-intensive program. Sites built in Flash take more planning and programming time than “standard” HTML sites.

Copyright © 2004, Wendy Gray Maynard, Kinesis, www.kinesisinc.com

Wendy Maynard, your friendly Marketing Maven, publishes REMARKABLE MARKETING, a free weekly ezine for entrepreneurs, business owners, and freelancers. If you’re ready to skyrocket your sales, easily attract customers, and make more money, get your FREE REPORT at: http://www.gomarketingmaven.com

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Both Shockwave and Flash are Macromedia technologies that let web designers add multimedia elements to web pages. Shockwave movies are the resulting files exported from Macromedia Director that display animation, special effects, and other types of a

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If you design websites for PC viewing the you need to consider how your sites will look and work on mobiles. The bar for mobile specific sites has been raised by some good sites and others need to close their gap. As the mobile Internet has developed savvy users have come to expect higher standards when browsing on their handsets.

These 7 guidelines are based on actual user research conducted with mobile phone users. Users were asked to carry out typical tasks on popular websites using a mobile phone browser. The issues they encountered were used to produce these guidelines.

1. Meet users’ needs quickly

Mobile and PC users can have different reasons for visiting the same site. Mobile users are more likely to want information to help them at that location or time, such as finding directions or finding out what’s going on nearby. Also, they might want quick entertainment to pass away a short period of time, like something to read on the bus or while waiting to meet a friend. For your site, predicts users’ needs and fulfil these as quickly as possible. Exceptions to this are items people download to keep on their phones (e.g. buying ringtones).

Yahoo! does this effectively with its new mobile oneSearchTM service. Searching for ‘Cinema’ produces a list of cinemas near users’ location showing their address and phone numbers. Clicking the ‘Call’ link next to a number opens a call dialogue box on the phone. A further enhancement would to be enable users to click through to a map of a venue.

2. Don’t repeat the navigation on every page

Usable websites designed for PC’s usually repeat the navigation on every page. However, screen real estate is precious on a mobile screen and navigation can push content off screen. BAA’s navigation, for example, takes up the whole screen so users have to scroll down far on every page to get to the main content.

For your website on a mobile, only display the navigation on the homepage. On other pages only include links back to the homepage and back to the last important point along the path users have taken. Show these links at the top and bottom of the page so they’re never too far away. BBC Mobile does this effectively with a clickable breadcrumb trail at the top and a list of links at the bottom.

3. Clearly distinguish selected items

Mobile phone users tend to have poor cursor control. This is because moving the pointing device down (with the joystick or direction buttons) simultaneously scrolls the page and highlights links, buttons and form fields. Due to this lack of control it’s important to clearly feedback to users what item is in focus. This can be done by changing the appearance of an item to make it stand out from everything else. For example, you can change the font and background colour of links and buttons.

For example, O2’s mobile portal doesn’t highlight buttons well. It adds a blue border on a lighter blue background that isn’t noticeable. Users have to move the joystick around to find the cursor. Worse still, Thomson Local only distinguishes form fields by making their border slighter thicker. In contrast, their highlighted links stood out because the font and background colour was changed and contrasted strongly against the page’s overall white background.

4. Make user input as simple as possible

Allow users to input information by making selections instead entering free text (or at least provide this as an alternative method). Entering text on a mobile phone can be painfully slow and error-prone on the typical 12 button mobile keypad. Mobile users are more likely to make mistakes (due to misspelling or mistyping) or take shortcuts. Sets of well thought out links on quick loading pages can be very usable.

On Thomson Local, for example, it isn’t possible to browse businesses or locations. Users tend to abbreviate search terms (i.e. business type) which leads to inappropriate search results. The Odeon’s mobile site allows users to find a cinema by searching or browsing. Users that search often make more mistakes than those that browse, the latter usually finding what they’re after by only selecting 2 links.

5. Only show essential information

Mobile phone screens are of course tiny and have only a fraction of the area or pixels on most PC monitors. Be sure to identify page requests coming from mobiles and only send down the most essential of information. Otherwise, important content might be pushed down or difficult to find amongst everything else on the page.

Also, most mobile phone users aren’t on flat rate data packages so the larger the page the more users have to pay. Users become frustrated if they have to pay to download page content they don’t want.

Header links on the BAA and Thomson Local websites take up lots of screen space and make important information hard to find. ‘About BAA’, ‘Help’ and ‘Advertise with us’ aren’t priorities for mobile users.

6. Place basic browsing controls on the page

To save screen space, mobile browsers often don’t display basic controls such as ‘Back’ or they display the web page in full screen mode. As such, always include a ‘Back’ button on every page other than the homepage.

Transport for London’s mobile journey planner places basic controls, such as ‘Next page’, ‘Back to results’ and ‘New journey’, at the bottom of each page.

7. Design mobile-friendly page layouts

On your website, make sure you design the page to present content in the right order and render well on mobile screens. Website layouts for large landscape PC screens usually don’t work well on small portrait mobile phone screens. Furthermore, mobile browsers and page transcoders usually vertically stack pages suitable for portrait display.

It’s often best to have completely different page designs to meet mobile users’ needs. If mobile phone users are a big part of your business then you should consider creating a site just for mobiles. Sites that are designed for mobiles perform significantly better with users than those that aren’t.

For example, BAA’s website renders very poorly on a mobile screen. Page sections don’t appear where intended relative to each other and pages look poorly designed. Single word link text can be wrapped over 4 lines making it difficult to read. Conversely, Transport for London’s mobile homepage contains simple categorised lists of links. Users find this easy and quick to use.

In a nutshell

Don’t neglect your current and/or potential users by not designing for mobile phones. Follow these guidelines but don’t forget to usability test your website on mobile phones. Real usability testing will always capture things that can’t be covered by general guidelines.

This article was written by Abid Warsi. He’s crazy about web usability and accessibility - so crazy that he spends his days working for usability and accessibility consultancy ( Webcredible - http://www.webcredible.co.uk ) helping to make the Internet a better place for everyone.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Abid_Warsi

]]> http://flashforweb.com/7-usability-guidelines-for-websites-on-mobile-devices/feed/ http://flashforweb.com/website-planning-guide-5-steps-to-make-a-website/ http://flashforweb.com/website-planning-guide-5-steps-to-make-a-website/#comments Sat, 01 Dec 2007 22:36:34 +0000 JHodgson http://flashforweb.com/?p=7 Do you want to learn how to make your own website to make money online? Not sure where to start?

This website planning guide will help you outline the high level strategy for creating your website from scratch. You will learn how to make your own effective business website, and you don’t need to have advanced technical skills to pull if off. Here are the five main steps to make a website:

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1. Plan

Consider your website objectives — the most important part of your website planning guide is the planning…what are your reasons for a website? How can you best reach these goals through your site? What will be your content focus and offerings?

2. Pick a domain name and hosting service

Brainstorm and choose a website domain name. Check for availability and buy it (annual renewal fees will apply). Sign up with a web hosting company to host your website and domain name. To make it easier, use the same company to buy and host your domain.

3. Build

Browse free website templates and pick a suitable layout and look and feel for your site based on your site’s theme. Write original, useful content for your site. Publish your content online as website pages.

4. Promote

Consider various marketing strategies to reach your site objectives. Test and track your promotion efforts, then adjust your website planning guide to optimize your results.

5. Maintain

Continue to update your site with more original content to increase your value to visitors AND for more opportunities for each page to rank with the search engines. Track and adjust your efforts to optimize your business.

Need more help? Get the ultimate, proven website planning guide

If you’re not a technical pro, all is not lost…there is an excellent resource that will help even the most technically-clueless. After all, it’s about building your business (and not fiddling with the technical details).

I’ve personally used this all-in-one hosting solution with impressive results in just the first month. Site Build It! helps small business owners throughout the five-step process above. In fact, SBI simplifies it by making all of the technical, complicated issues disappear. You’ll need a web host to get started - so why not use a web host that guarantees your business success?

Web hosting companies spend so much of their time bragging about what they can offer from a feature point of view, but they don’t provide any support or guidance when it comes to coaching and helping their customers succeed.

But who cares about 10,000 gigabytes of bandwidth if the site doesn’t receive any traffic? Any host can provide the space and the tools, but not many follow through with the necessary coaching their customers need.

Site Build It! not only offers all the features you need to succeed (and then some), but it also teaches you how to use these tools so you build a successful, thriving business that will reward you for life. SBI guides you along each step with its proven, website planning guide.

Read my SBI case study and find out why Site Build It! sites are the top 1% of websites. Ivy Liu is the creator of http://www.MakeYourOwnBusinessWebsite.com, a free, step-by-step beginner’s tutorial where you can learn how to plan, promote, and make your own website.