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Converting Print Advertising For Use On The Web - A How-To
By: J Hancock, Sat May 20th, 2006
Contrary to the beliefs of some, advertising for web and print
are very different. Converting print ads for use on the web is
very tricky. What has been very successful on paper may have no
impact at all on the screen. When I am asked “How do I convert
my print ads to web?” my answer is simple: don’t! Web and print
are so vastly different that I believe you should never build
your web pages based on a print ad.
There are certain rules that web design must follow that simply
don’t apply to print. One of my colleagues, Tim Pattison, broke
these rules down very concisely recently:
- Usability
- Browser compatibility
- Designing
within the constraints of (X)HTML
- Accessibility
These are the four rules that web design must follow. I
will explain these rules in detail later. For now though we need
to talk about copywriting. As I said in my last newsletter
Web Site Templates and Their Benefits, the most important
part of your website is content. Search engines and disabled
users don’t care how your site looks. They only care about the
information your site presents. The reason I’m coming back to
this is to explain that writing web copy is an entirely
different ball game from writing print copy. Quite possibly the
best resource for writing web copy is the book “Web Copy That
Sells” by Maria Veloso. It outlines the differences between the
two and gives great techniques to writing for the web. I will be
revisiting this topic in my newsletters to come, so make sure
you visit often.
The four rules exclusive to web design: usability, browser
compatibility, design within the constraints of (x)html, and
accessibility, are the four horsemen of doom for the uneducated,
inexperienced designer. They are some of the most overlooked
aspects of web design, and yet some of the most important.
- Usability: Unlike print ads, web sites are
interactive. Users must be able to easily find their way around,
and they need a clear path to the information they are trying to
find. If you are selling a product, there needs to be a clear,
concise, distraction free path from the home page all the way to
the check out page.
- Browser compatibility: In a perfect world you could
design your web site once and it would look perfect and stay
perfect in all browsers. Unfortunately, we live in the real
world where some browsers support a set of standards and others
simply don’t. Actually, the most popular browser in the world
has for years lived by their own rules. While MS Internet
Explorer still holds the majority of the market share, Mozzilla,
Netscape, and Opera have acquired a considerable percentage of
the browser market. In fact, it’s high enough of a percentage to
make Microsoft revise their plans to release IE 7.0. While
competition is healthy, it makes for headaches for web
designers. It is not uncommon to have your site looking perfect
in one browser only to find that your entire design explodes
when viewed with another.
- Designing within the constraints of (x)html: When you
lay out a print ad, you place the images where they belong on
the page, draw out any shapes, lay out the colors, and place the
text. Then you print it out and make copies. Every copy you hand
out looks exactly the same, and there’s nothing magic about the
way things stay on the page. In web design, everything is held
in place by code. You could easily have a four to one ratio of
code to content. If you are not familiar with the coding
involved in keeping your site looking like it’s supposed to, it
can be very frustrating laying out your design.
- Accessibility: Back to our perfect world – not only
would browsers be perfect, but all our viewers would look
through the same eyes. Unfortunately, some people aren’t blessed
with good eyesight or motor skills like you and I. We need to
consider that for those who have disabilities, a poorly laid out
website can be completely useless. You could ignore that
audience, but you would be doing yourself a disservice. And
let’s not forget, our biggest and most important group of users
is completely blind: search engine spiders. They read your
website the same way a blind person does. If the layout of your
site isn’t logical, a spider may leave and not bother coming
back for a long time.
Considering these things, I
think it is always best to design your web site separate from
your print advertising. Always write fresh copy for the web, and
remember that it’s not enough to write great copy once. You need
to update your site regularly to keep the search engines
interested.
About the author:
J Hancock is the president and founder of HighTide Web
Services. We are proud to be a fast growing, California based
web services firm, offering high quality web site templates from
some of the best designers out there, as well as excellent and
affordable web hösting
HighTideTemplate
s.com HighTideHosting.com