Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Are you a professional Web designer? If so, we have a few business tips for you today. And do you know what? They’re things you could’ve already learned from your ex! (I bet you never thought your ex-girlfriend — or boyfriend — knew a bit more about business than you.)

Sure, some designers already have a handle on these freelance design issues. But many don’t. So let’s explore some things you might have heard during a break-up that apply equally to your Web design work.

1. It’s not always about you.

If there’s one thing I commonly hear from other women regarding why they chose to break up with a guy, it’s because he didn’t pay enough attention to her. Maybe he was too caught up in being with his buddies 24//7 or playing his video games. Why doesn’t matter. Whether or not he felt he was showing her enough attention doesn’t matter either. What matters is that she disagreed.

You might not care on the relationship front. But when it comes to business, you’d better! Freelancing means working with clients. Yes, you’re a business owner and you set your own schedule and rules. But not everything is about you all of the time. You need to turn your attention to someone else — the client — and what they want and need out of that working relationship. If you don’t bother asking what they want and making a sincere effort to deliver, you won’t be in business for yourself for very long.

2. You’re probably not as good as you think you are.

Okay. Exes sometimes throw lines like this around out of spite more than anything else. But there can be more than a little truth to it when it comes to freelance Web design and working with clients. Confidence is a great thing. Cockiness? Not so much.

Don’t go into a new project or a new client relationship assuming you know everything there is to know. I know designers who do this. They never ask the client what the site’s goals are or who the target market is. They get an idea in their head of what they think a perfect design is. They assume they know best. And they often ultimately lose the work (or at least the client doesn’t come back).

That’s not to say you shouldn’t speak authoritatively about design issues. That’s your specialty area after all. But don’t go into absolute “rights and wrongs” unless the client asked you for your opinion or doing something would seriously tarnish your own professional image. Remember, it’s first and foremost about pleasing the client, not creating a glowing portfolio piece.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

3. Lose the wandering eye.

Exes of both sexes have had a thing or two to say about their partners’ wandering eyes and unfaithful behavior. And there’s another lesson in there that you can take back to your Web design work. It’s about keeping your focus and your attention where it belongs.

If you commit to a Web design project, then stay committed to it! Don’t keep brushing it off because suddenly something else seems like a more attractive use of your time. Don’t ignore your client because a supposedly “better” client comes along. Finish your current working relationship with a bit of respect and dignity, even if you don’t plan on continuing to work with someone in the future.

4. Stop trying to change your partner (or client).

Perhaps this is something the ladies are more used to hearing. We’re often accused of trying to change our partners. And while encouraging someone to be better — to be what they really want to become — is a good thing, trying to change them to fit your ideals really isn’t. Again, it applies to your Web design work.

If a client isn’t into pushy direct sales letters and they make that clear, don’t try to push them on that typical kind of sales letter design. They don’t want to be associated with the kind of image it portrays. The same can be said of any stereotypical design concepts. If the client says it doesn’t work for them, you’re unlikely to change their mind. Even if you do, they might resent you for it later.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

5. Being hot only gets you so far.

If you’ve ever dated someone who was all looks and no brains, you might have gotten to the point where things got boring. Being hot will probably land you as many flings as you want. But on its own it isn’t going to bring in something more substantial. The same is true in freelance design work. Looks are great. But you still need something “more.”

You might have what you consider the hottest design out there. But if you aren’t accounting for the real substance of a site (the words that sell, the product photos, etc.), your design isn’t going to work as a long-term successful solution for the client. Don’t become preoccupied with tossing in so much flair that you forget about function.

What other types of things have your exes said to you when breaking things off? Could any of it apply to your career? Maybe you haven’t thought about it that way before. But really, where inspiration comes from doesn’t matter that much as long as it strikes.

What I Mean by “Stock Photos”

I want to be clear. When I’m talking about stock photos in Web templates causing a problem for the webmasters using them, I’m not talking about images that make up the basic site structure (like buttons or navigation link backgrounds). I’m talking about those creepy corporate smiling faces and very niche-specific photos so many designers love to use.

Most often I see these types of photos used in headers of Web templates. However, I’ve seen a few with stock images peppered throughout. Let’s look at why adding them might not be the best idea.

Why Stock Photos are a Problem

There are a few reasons stock photos can be a problem for people using a Web template. But first, let’s look at a common target market for these templates. Yes, some more experienced site owners still like to use templates and just customize them for their own use. But many Web template users (whether buyers or users of free templates) are new to managing their own websites.

This latter group is important. They can represent a big potential buyer base for template designers. But they don’t necessarily know how to customize designs easily. They might not even have access to software enabling them to do so. For this particular group, stock photos can cause a variety of problems. For example:

• Stock images might be directly integrated with other images in the Web template. Many Web templates don’t even provide the .psd for users to edit layers (not that new webmasters would necessarily know how yet anyway). Sometimes these images are layered over things like textured backgrounds though, and that can make it nearly impossible for the potential buyer to edit the image to something more appropriate for their company’s site.
• Even if you do include the .psd file, it’s likely they don’t know how to edit the images. If that’s the case, they’ll probably buy from someone else. After all, they’re going with Web templates because it’s supposed to be an easy option.
• Potential buyers might love a general design, but stock images represent an entirely different industry. This goes back to them not knowing how to edit the images. They might think it’s an otherwise perfect fit for their site, but if they can’t easily swap things out, they’ll look elsewhere.

Let’s look at a few examples. But let me be clear: I’m not saying any of these templates is “better” than another — just showing examples of potential problems and easier designs to work with from the perspective of a first-time site owner.

This first Web template has a very busy design. It’s visually interesting of course, and that might suck in buyers. But then when they start trying to use it in developing their own site, they might find that it’s not very adaptable to their needs.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

This next Web template might look much cleaner, but it still poses image editing problems to a newer user who might either not have the .psd (or other layered file) to work with or the expertise of knowing how to make the changes. The problem in this case is actually the icons and the fact that they overlap other edging in the design. If someone’s given the coded template instead of the editable image for a design similar to this, they might have a hard time using it if they need different icons to be able to use those areas for different types of content.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

The next Web template example might look a bit busy like the first one — a heavy emphasis on the visuals. However, because the images used are generic and easily adaptable to any number of uses, this one isn’t too bad for a new user. A sticky note is a sticky note. It’s not like having an icon that represents something specific when you want to put different content in a section. This overall should be an easier template to work with (at least when it comes to images).

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Let’s progress a little further to an even easier to use template for new site owners who aren’t terribly familiar with Web design. This Web template is relatively clean. There is only one image to deal with other than the logo in this case. It’s enough to give the template some visual interest, but at the same time it could actually be treated like a block image and be easily replaced with just about anything else relevant to the user’s own site or company.

Credit: BigStockPhoto.com

Remember that appealing to a significant customer base with your templates means that you have to not only focus on keeping the design interesting visually, but you also have to keep usability in mind.

Tips for Designers Who Want to Use Stock Images

If you’re worried about these stock photos turning off potential Web template customers, here are a few things you can do to minimize that problem:

• Use few (or no) stock photos. Instead make the Web template design visually interesting with a great color scheme, generic images (like buttons and icons), and attractive typography choices.
• Try not to use industry-specific images if possible. If a Web template could otherwise be used for any industry or niche, don’t ruin its potential mass appeal with overly targeted stock photos.
• Don’t lay stock photos that people might want to remove over other images or backgrounds. You might make it too difficult for a newbie to change that image.
• Try to avoid stock images with odd shapes. A basic block-style image can be much easier for the user or customer to replace than a complicated image shape.
• Include the .psd. Make the template as easy to edit as possible. Better yet, include instructions on how the user can edit that .psd to change the main stock images in the Web template.

Stock images can make a template visually appealing at first glance, but for customers still new to Web development (those who are also likely to consider templates for their supposed ease of use and affordability) they can also cause problems. You can make it easier on customers, and possibly attract more of them, by keeping those concerns in mind. There’s nothing wrong with using stock images in Web templates. Just keep your target customers’ goals and limitations in mind when designing them.

Let’s assume that we’re not talking about newbies, but truly competent and experienced designers here. They can get the job done. So why does your designer not give you exactly what you want? Simple. Designers aren’t mind readers. Problems with design projects can easily stem from a lack of communication (from both parties), but especially in cases where the buyer takes a “I’ll know what I want when I see it” approach.

As a writer I deal with the same thing on the service provider side. As a client of designers I know I’ve caused my fair share of problems too — it’s why I do much of my design work myself and simply outsource the coding these days. It’s not that I don’t trust the designers I know. It’s that I know myself — I can’t always visualize exactly what I want from a design and sometimes I can’t express what I want well enough to help a designer visualize it either.

Many buyers don’t come to this realization though. They expect a design professional to magically be able to figure out what they want and give it to them. Now don’t get me wrong. Not all buyers are like that. My point is just that even if you are fussy about designs like I am, there’s still hope. You can not only find the right designer for your project, but you can help any competent designer be that “right” designer. It starts with you!

A Tale of Two Logos

Logos are one of the toughest things for me to have designed. I come from a marketing and PR background, so branding is very important to me. While I know what the logo has to portray to site visitors, I don’t always know how to explain that well to a designer who is unfamiliar with my work.

I’ve hired several logo designers, and I was never happy with their work until last year. I found a designer to put something together for a project called Freelance Theater. My partner and I are known for having a tough-as-nails approach to covering freelance issues, but we also go far out of our way to really help freelancers succeed. This project was going to be lighter in nature than our blogs, but still on the snarky side intentionally. We needed a logo to convey that. All we knew was that we wanted to have angel and devil symbols incorporated to touch on the “helpful but hard-assed” nature of the shows. I gave the designer a specific color scheme, the site name, and told him to incorporate a pitchfork and halo somehow. He understood what we were going for in a general sense. I was in shock when I saw his design — I absolutely loved it (still do). He didn’t use a pitchfork alone, but rather worked it into a devil tail which worked much better. That’s what a designer should do — take a concept and use their eye to find ways to make it work. I couldn’t have been happier. Here’s the logo I’m talking about:

Logo for FreelanceTheater.com (owned by Jennifer Mattern; designed by Studio320)

I hired the same designer to do a logo for my main freelance writing blog. While his logo was fine and it did cover what I asked for, I’ve never been thrilled with it and will soon be redesigning it again. It wasn’t the designer’s fault. I know he knows what he’s doing. The problem was that the mission was less clear for the branding of this site (I hadn’t even settled on our new slogan at the time). I couldn’t clearly explain what I needed people to feel when they saw it — what it was supposed to evoke in the visitor. All I knew was a general color scheme, that I didn’t want images incorporated, and that it should be based on a Web 2.0-ish sans serif font, and a thin font at that (very different than the new magazine titling font style used in the updated logo). I didn’t give him much to work with, and as a result it was my own fault that I basically put that designer’s talent to waste (of course he was paid for the logo regardless, so the “waste” was on my end).

The point? If you aren’t 100% clear on what you want and what kind of reaction your design needs to bring about in your audience, you aren’t ready to hire a designer yet.

How to Make Your Designer Your Perfect Design Partner

If you want to pull the best work possible out of a designer (either in-staff or freelance), there are several things you can do. For example:

1. Know what you want before you ask for it.
2. Be as specific as possible, but within reason.
3. Show the designer examples of other work you like (preferably in a similar vein).
4. Fill out a project brief to make sure the designer has all of the information laid out in a clear manner (most professional designers should be able to offer you one to fill out or put one together at your request).
5. Don’t expect perfection the first time around. Remember that design is subjective and what you communicate is open to interpretation. It might take a few rounds of edits until you’re completely satisfied, and there is nothing wrong with that.
6. Don’t rush your designer. If you waited until the last minute, that’s your problem — not theirs. While they might try to accommodate you, the quality of the work can suffer when they don’t have as much time to play with concepts.

Another important step is to get to know a designer’s style before hiring them. For example, I’ve purchased several exclusive WordPress themes from a designer named Christopher Hennis. The themes are pre-made, so I know what I’m getting up front — no custom work involved. As you can see in the theme examples below that I purchased from him, his themes tend to use muted or de-saturated color schemes. That can work very well for some types of projects, and if I needed something along those lines custom-made, I would go to Chris no questions asked. If I, on the other hand, were looking for a very bold, bright design for a custom project, I would look for a designer who specializes in that style, showing that they have a good eye for the specific kind of style I want for the project. Making sure I choose the right one is completely up to me.

Depeche WordPress Theme (owned by Jennifer Mattern; designed by Christopher Hennis)

Soho Press WordPress Theme (owned by Jennifer Mattern; designed by Christopher Hennis)

Calcium WordPress Theme (owned by Jennifer Mattern; designed by Christopher Hennis)

None of this is to say that it’s always the buyer’s fault when a design doesn’t work out as planned. There will be problems on both sides. But both sides need to take responsibility for their own hand in any resulting issues.

I’m sure there are plenty of bloggers outside of the writing community with the same problem. They use themes out-of-the-box not necessarily because they want to but because they don’t know how to change things. With those WordPress or CSS newbies in mind, let’s take a non-technical look at some quick HTML and CSS tips and tricks a new WordPress user can use to improve their blog design. Note: I’m not a designer — these are meant to be practical tips to help non-coders work around common WordPress design issues on their own. I do not claim that they’re necessarily the best solutions in all cases. If you’d like to share other methods, please do so in the comments.

1. Replace your blog title with a logo

By default, your WordPress theme might include a blog title link in the header, but to customize and brand your site you want to replace it with a logo. Here’s how to do that. First upload your logo image and have the URL / address for the file on-hand. Then go to the WordPress templates editor in your admin panel and find header.php. You might see something like this:

<h1><a href=”<?php echo get_option(‘home’); ?>/”><?php bloginfo(‘name’); ?></a></h1>

That code adds a link to your home page (with the text of your blog title). On my business site, this is what the site name looks like without a logo:

If you want to use a logo image instead, you would remove everything between the <h1> tags and replace it with something like this:

<a href=”YourBlogURL.com”><img src=”WebAddressOfYourLogoGoesHere” alt=”YourBlogTitleGoesHere”/>

That code will add your logo in place of the linked blog title. Here is what my site’s name looks like when making the change:

2. Add margins around images or theme areas.

Is your new logo image all the way at the top of the screen or too far to the left? You can fix that by adding margins around the image. Here’s what your logo might look like without margins or padding:

Let’s look at some inline CSS you can use to adjust the margins / positioning of a specific image. Go back into your header.php file and find the logo code you just added. We’re going to wrap that code in div tags (the new code is bolded below). Here’s what you would get (and yes, I know that purists would prefer to do this in the stylesheet, but I’m sticking to inline here to give non-CSS folks easier control over individual images):

<div style=”margin: 9px 6px 9px 12px”><a href=”YourBlogURL.com”><img src=”WebAddressOfYourLogoGoesHere” alt=”YourBlogTitleGoesHere”/></div>

This adds a 9 pixel margin above the image, 6 pixels to the right, 9 pixels at the bottom, and 12 pixels on the left. You can use any margins that you want to — whatever works for your site’s design. Here’s what mine looks like when adjusted:

Note: If your theme’s stylesheet already moves your logo section away from the template edges, you might not need to do this, but you can still try it to see how it makes the logo move and apply the styling to other images as needed.

3. Change colors.

Sometimes you’ll find WordPress themes you love, but you aren’t quite crazy about the color scheme. Fortunately that’s a very easy fix. Colors are represented by six-digit hex color codes. To change a color, you find the existing code in your stylesheet (style.css for most themes) and you swap it out with the hex code for the color you really want.

Take a look at my business writing blog as an example. I designed this site to be minimalist. As you can see on the live version the background is white. What if I wanted to give the body (the area surrounding the main theme / content area) a dark gray background for some contrast?

First, I would find the body style block in the stylesheet. It looks like this:

body {
background:#ffffff;
font-family: arial;
font-size: 14px;
padding:6px;
}

The #ffffff hex code represents the white background. Next I have to choose my desired shade of gray and find its hex code. I can do that using image editing software or by referring to a hex color chart. I’m going to choose the dark gray with the hex code of #333333. To make my body background gray, I just edit my style.css file and replace #ffffff with #333333. Here is the result:

Pro Business Writing Blog with a Gray Background

4. Change default font sizes.

Some themes have unusually small font sizes by default (I’m always baffled by how many designers think it’s a good idea). It can negatively impact readability. Again, it’s an easy fix. Just find the font size in your stylesheet and increase it. For example, the font size for the main blog content on the blog mentioned earlier is 14 px (you can see that in the body style code above).

I wanted my blog post headlines to be bigger though — 18px. So in my stylesheet I simply went to the area dictating h1 tag font style (h1 tags are your primary headings, like your blog title perhaps). Here is what it shows now:

.post h1 {
font-size: 18px;
color: #ff0033;
padding-bottom: 12px;
padding-top: 12px;
}

Note: The proper section of your stylesheet might be titled differently. For example, it might be called content instead of post, or you might not have post H1 tags — just default H1 tag styles that apply everywhere  on the site.

This is how the blog looks now, with post headings a larger font size than the post body text:

5. Add bullet images.

We all know that it’s important to use lists and bold headings when writing for the Web — it makes the content easier for a reader to visually scan through. But plain old bullet points are boring, and they make your website or blog look incredibly plain. Why not replace them with your own bullet images to either use pictures, shapes, or colors to help draw the readers’ eyes down your page? Here’s an example of the bullet images I use on my business writing blog:

I bring the pink from other areas of my site into my bullet points. You can do that by finding the unordered list (ul) styling in your style.css file and the list item styles for them (li). You would create and upload your image, and then just point your stylesheet to that bullet point file on your server. For example, here’s what mine looks like:

.post ul li {
background: url(images/bullet.gif) no-repeat 0 5px;
padding-left: 15px;
padding-bottom: 12px;
}

That code formats the bullet points for unordered lists (not numbered lists which are “ol” for ordered lists) in my blog posts. However, your stylesheet might format bullets in different areas of your site in different ways, such as your sidebar. If you want to use the same bullet point image for all, you’ll need to edit the list style for each section. I choose to use similar arrows, but gray ones, for my sidebar.

These might seem like very small changes on the surface, but those small design edits add up. You can take any existing theme and truly make it your own (figuratively speaking of course). In about a year I went from knowing nothing about coding to being able to code full css sites from scratch. Now I occasionally design and code my own simple WordPress themes too. Even if this feels foreign to you now, stick with it. We aren’t all cut out to be designers (I’m certainly not!), but we can all learn enough to help us get what we want out of existing designs.

After the web 2.0 stream and during the last year some of developers started rethinking the usual approach to design of the hosting website. The clean CSS style with the 2.0 accent was obviously their aim. Nowadays CSS and web 2.0 approach to hosting website design is the new tendency that is getting stronger and stronger. Just think about it, if we find the website with the large fonts, lots of white space, clear icons and big buttons convenient, pleasant to the eye and easy to understand, why don’t we apply same concept to hosting website design.

I’ve prepared some CSS hosting designs that I personally like. Each one has it’s own unique style and stands out from the crowd. Follow the stream and be one of the first to join, as this is the key for success.

Littleoak Hosting

Website: www.littleoak.net

Hostnexus Hosting

Website: www.hostnexus.com

Virtualspirits Hosting

Website: www.virtualsplits.com

Manshosting Hosting

Website: www.manshostings.lv

Onlineeglo Hosting

Website: www.onlineglo.com.au

Churchmediahosting Hosting

Website: www.churchmediahosting.com

Bullethost Hosting

Website: www.bullethost.com

Crucialwebhost Hosting

Website: www.crucialwebhost.com

Eleven2 Hosting

Website: www.eleven2.com

Vps Hosting

Website: www.vps.net

Micromediahosting Hosting

Website: www.micromediahosting.com

Suprasshosting Hosting

Website: www.surpasshosting.com

Motion-hosting Hosting

Website: www.motion-hosting.com

Webfusion Hosting

Website: www.webfusion.com

They have winners in several categories: best for ambiance/design, best for facilities, best for food, best for location, best for rooms, and best for service.

Since we’re mostly interested in the design aspect of the hotel rankings, we decided to turn our attention to the hotels chosen for the best designs — not the hotel interior/exterior, but the website design. Having reviewed several websites, we thought it would be nice to make some kind of a contest not just for design and look, but for the website usability as well. IMHO, the most luxurious hotels should pay more attention to their online presence.

Thinking about the perfect hotel website (in my understanding) I’ve made a list of several features the judging is based on. I’ll list them below.

• Professional photos of the hotel and surrounding area, preferably changing in flash with a version of the website with bigger fonts for aged people or just fonts big enough in general;
• Icons to change the language of the website (except for US and UK since English is an international language;
• An area to make a reservation on the home page (I don’t want to dig inside the website looking for the appropriate page if I already know I want to stay there);
• A search area for quick access to the info needed;
• Testimonials from some rich people, celebrities, or other notable customers;
• Some kind of promotion to attract potential clients, or at least a section with some interesting news

Here are the screen shots for the websites we evaluated, followed by a table showing how each website ranked

EVASON ANA MANDARA & SIX SENSES SPA, NHA TRANG, VIETNAM

Website: http://www.sixsenses.com/evason/index.php

MANDARIN ORIENTAL DHARA DHEVI, CHIANG MAI, THAILAND

Website: http://www.mandarinoriental.com/

RAMBAGH PALACE, JAIPUR, INDIA

I couldn’t find their website, so they are out of the list.

HAYMARKET HOTEL, LONDON, ENGLAND

Website: http://www.firmdale.com/index.php?page_id=8

FASANO SAO PAULO, BRAZIL

Website: http://www.fasano.com.br/site_hoteis_en.php

HUKA LODGE, NEW ZEALAND

Website: http://www.hukalodge.co.nz/

SAINT-BARTH ISLE DE FRANCE, ST BARTS

Website: http://www.isle-de-france.com/

THE SETAI, MIAMI, USA

Website: http://www.setai.com/

BABINGTON HOUSE, SOMERSET, ENGLAND

Website: http://www.babingtonhouse.co.uk/
This one never opened for me so it’s out of the list (a perfect example of poor usability).

ONE ALDWYCH, LONDON, ENGLAND

Website: http://www.onealdwych.com/

THE BULGARI, MILAN, ITALY

Website: http://bulgarihotels.com

HOTEL ASTORIA, ST PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

Website: http://www.thehotelastoria.com/

YASAWA ISLAND RESORT & SPA, FIJI

Website: http://www.yasawa.com/

BAY OF FIRES, TASMANIA , AUSTRALIA

Website: http://www.bayoffires.com.au/

COCOA ISLAND, MALDIVES

Website: http://www.cocoaisland.como.bz/default.asp

G HOTEL, GALWAY, IRELAND

Website: http://www.theghotel.ie/

SABI SABI EARTH LODGE, SOUTH AFRICA

Website: http://www.sabisabi.com/

SINGITA SABI SAND, SOUTH AFRICA

Website: http://www.singita.com/

These are the design parameters that we’ll be using for our contest:
- Up-to date design

- Luxury look

- Unique design approach

- Full screen or narrow

- Quality of the photos

- Colors pleasant to the eye

- The quality of photos

And the measurements are: “0″- not matching, “1″- so-so, “2″- not bad, “3″-good. There’s no “great” here — just my own opinion.

Design Elements

Usability Elements

As we can see the absolute winner when we total the points is the SABI SABI EARTH LODGE reserve. What do you think guys?

Enjoy! And let the spring spirit fill our soles!

www.cindyli.com

www.eco-card.co.uk

www.albertlo.com

www.mint.com

www.sprintbio.com

www.balticproducers.com

www.resolutionim.com

www.freshairhomecleaning.com

www.strawberrysoup.co.uk

www.shopmoss.com

www.project15.nl

www.systima-technology.co.uk

www.stylizedweb.com

www.greenstreetdev.com

www.kit10designs.com

www.psd2html.com

www.laessigdesign.de

www.xhtml4u.com

ww.viviti.com

www.emmasbridaljewelry.com

www.advice-landforsale.co.uk

www.matthew-design.com

www.thesouthernhighlands.com.au

www.kogakure.de

www.gettingcrazy.info

www.greenglobeideas.com

www.crislabno.com

www.refreshokc.org

www.istokpavlovic.com

www.eleganceindesign.com

www.design2slice.co.uk

www.footsteps.nl

www.simplycreative.com

www.treswhitesupreme.ro

www.ebugogo.tv

www.strawpollnow.com

www.slimkiwi.com

www.exiledesigns.com

www.gomontessori.com

www.o2sources.com

www.qualityxhtml.com

www.harpak.net

______

Let’s start with the best 10 luxurious jewelry brands. The research was conducted by the Luxury Institute, and we’ll study the websites of just a few brands.

Number 1

Harry Wilson Jewelry – Website: www.harrywinston.com

This site features simple, strict and minimalist black, white, and gray design elements with a “rich” beautiful font. Light flash effects enhance the beauty of the showcased jewelry and you can almost smell the luxury. Even if you replace the jewelry photos with something else, the luxurious feeling will stay with you.

Number 2

Buccellati Jewelry — Website: www.buccellati.com

This site features the same simple color scheme and same minimalist approach. The expensive book with a golden binding that you adore, high quality jewelry photos, and beautiful women enhance the minimalist design. One can be happy just having this marvelous book of exclusiveness, even without the jewelry itself.

______

Number 3

Van Cleef & Arpels – Website: www.vancleef-arpels.com

This website resembles a fairy tale. It’s so unreal and magical, but with a light touch. Accents on every detail make it so charming and so simple at the same time.

______

Number 5

Tiffany Jewelry – Website: www.tiffany.com

Oh Tiffany — so tender, so gentle and so self asssured. But still, this website could be anything just by replacing the images (I can easily imagine nice kettles instead of bracelets).

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Number 7

Cartier — Website: www.cartier.com

So impressive, so deep, so mature, so passionate — Cartier’s special style features a red, white, and black color scheme as well as professional video presentations. Some of the website parts, like the product description, could have been less “techy” but I think this is just a necessity to give people what they’re used to.

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Number 9

Bulgari — Website: www.bulgari.com

Again what we see is black, white and gray for the color scheme. I love this sophistication, as it looks so balanced and so right.

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Below you will find the websites of some of the brands that were chosen the best jewelry brands in Las Vegas.

Montblanc.  Website: www.montblanc.com

This is an amazing website with amazing videos, fashion, style, and feelings. This is not just the website of a well-known brand, but a way of life and you can feel in online.

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David Yurman — Website: www.davidyurman.com

The popular luxury color scheme is back: black, white and gray. This website serves as a presentation of lifestyle; a website for men.

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Morgan Taylor Jewelers –  Website: www.morgantaylorjewelers.com

I wouldn’t call the design here a successful one. I’m not sure what it is that doesn’t appeal to me — the logo, the font, or the images. Still the website follows the exact same style in layout as other luxury websites do.

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Now we’ll take a look at some brands from the World top brands 2008 list.

Gucci — Website: www.gucci.com

Not much to say here — high fashion in real life and high fashion online.

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Chanel – Website: www.chanel.com

This one is straightforward, black and white. The website reflects the Chanel style in it’s every detail.

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Giorgio Armani — Website: www.giorgioarmani.com

I love this website, but would you know this is Armani if not the logo? I mean it looks so cool that it could be used for almost anything.

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Let’s also take a look at some of the world’s most desired luxury brands according to Forbes.

Calvin Klein — Website: www.calvinklein.com

Here’s what you’ll find at the Calvin Klein site — clean sharp style, lots of white, and an accent on photos. This looks luxurious and follows typical luxury website design style elements as you can see from the other screen shots from above.

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Versace — Website: www.versace.com

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Ralph Lauren — Website: www.ralphlauren.com

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Yves Saint Laurent — Website: www.ysl.com

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As you can see, our small collection here helped us to determine the similar distinguishing features of luxury design on the Web.

1. Colors: black, white and gray;
2. Main website area on some solid background;
3. Website working area in the middle of the page in a rectangle;
4. Menu above and below the main content, usually in small font

So if you need a luxury design just follow these basic luxury design style guidelines and you’ll be off to a good start providing something recognizable to people all over the world.

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When preparing the screen shots for today’s article we also found some luxury websites that are built in a different style. What’s really interesting though is that they also have lots of similar features.

Rolex — Website:www.rolex.com

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Hermes — Website: www.hermes.com

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Prada — Website: www.prada.com

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Louis Vuitton — Website: www.louisvuitton.com

Custom Web Design
A quality web designer is highly skilled and knows that his services are worth a great deal. His rate can be very high for custom work, which is a deterrent for many starting new websites. He might also be unreliable. Many designers are pulled in many directions; they have their own websites to build as well as client work.

You pay a high price for a designer that may be hard to speak to when you are ready for a status check or have questions. In addition, the final product does not always meet your expectations. It can be extremely difficult to explain to another person your vision of colors, fonts and layouts. In today’s global marketplace, the difficulty of explaining your ideal design is complicated further by language barriers. The finished product, once it meets your expectations, will cost plenty of time, frustration and dollars.

Web Templates
Web templates are designed by the same individuals who create custom site designs. A web template, however is pre-designed and can be sold to more than one individual. Some are sold to a single buyer, but most are sold or made available for free to an open-ended number of users.

This means that you can obtain a professionally designed website for a fraction of the cost of custom web design. The only catch is that it is likely modifications must be made to the template to suit your specific purposes.

Modifying Web Templates
Modifying a web template is far simpler than it seems. With only a basic knowledge of programs such as FrontPage or Dreamweaver, you can open the template files on your own computer and customize the design.

Adding you own text, banners and content is simple. Insert your own images and logos. If you are uncertain of how to go about making these changes, you can brush up on your knowledge by researching web tutorials on basic formatting changes or hire someone with experience to modify the template for you.

Price Comparison
Custom web design is offered on a project or hourly rate. The project rate is based on the number of anticipated hours a website will take to create. These figures can be staggering. Even a seemingly basic website can cost thousands.

Purchasing a web template will generally cost less than two hundred dollars, and some are offered free, but usually come with conditions. One you have a template, you have eliminated the hours spent on creating the fundamentals of a custom website. Now paying a designer an hourly rate for basic design changes will be a tremendous savings. If you make the changes yourself, you won’t have any additional costs. Web templates are an obvious solution to low cost customized websites.

As many know, tables were originally included in HTML so that academics would have a means of organizing a web page. CSS came along to handle all of the formatting issues associated with HTML, so that HTML could remain focused on conveying information, not stylistic interests. Unfortunately, by the time CSS had gained enough ground to be viable in code, tables were being used to handle the majority of layouts in common pages. Reluctant developers took time to convert, and even today many programmers still only use table design. This may be due the CSS learning curve.

Tables are easy enough to manage – they work just like a table in a spreadsheet, employing rows and columns to organize data. CSS, on the other hand, is based on more conceptual coding, such as floats, collapses, margins, and positioning. Shifting from one to the other not only requires modifying code, but modifying the way a developer thinks. As mentioned previously, CSS formatting allows a developer to do some very creative things when necessary. When it is not necessary, though, a table could accomplish the job in a way any developer would recognize.

Developers must be sure to consider their customer when selecting a format style. If the client is concerned with standards, and wants to be sure not to use any deprecated strings in their web page, CSS is surely the best option. If your client is more concerned with reaching the widest possible audience, tables may be the best option. There are plenty of users still running old browsers, some as old as Netscape 4, or similar versions of Internet Explorer. With a few tweaks, a table is sure to display properly on these machines, while CSS would require multiple “hacks” to produce the desired outcome. Technology continues to bound forward, but we must always consider the large number of users not on the bleeding edge. Knowledge and practice with both tables and CSS will provide the versatility to handle any situation.