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Diving Into Web Design

Anything considered a "hustle" and not necessarily a CENTS-based Fastlane

William

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My name is Will. I'm diving into web design. Fox's threads and info on web design have been eye opening. To see that he did it without prior experience is impressive. It leads me to believe that I can do it as well - with consistent effort.

I have a solid foundation in sales, writing, and have learned enough with web design to get started.

My good friend's dad has a Project / Program manage company. The website needs work for sure. He's a very creative person - he's an artist, a therapist, and works in architecture. However, he is pretty old school and his website seems to reflect that.

My goal: To get more people contacting him for consultation.

I set up a call with him today. I bought a theme to work on and have been adjusting some things. This project will be free. My friend's dad has a large network and I'm looking forward to doing an awesome job to leverage it into other opportunities.

Website: AVH ONE
 
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Danczyk

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Can you tell what makes you different from the rest? How do you plan to attract more clients for him? SEO or maybe some FB ads?

This squarespace site is one of the worst sites I have seen in a long while. From header to footer everything is wrong. The hero image on the carousel is 236x157px. You will easily make a site which is 100 times better.

I am also on the same boat. Although I must say I am more seasoned than many of the guys here my struggle is finding a client from western world while staying in good ol' Eastern Europe.

Good luck Will and update us.
 

William

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@Fox

or anyone with solid experience building websites

When first getting involved in editing an HTML theme for one of your first clients:

Is it something you learn through trial and error? (messing around with the code)

Or, do you have a particular strategy or science behind it? (ex. edit content first, edit styling second, adding features last, etc.)

Is it simply deleting what you don’t want and adding what you want and just getting used to that?

Looking for the right approach here. Any feedback would help.
 

rblitz

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Quick thoughts after I've looked at the "home" site:

- The height of the header section is way too big. There's too much "whitespace".
- The menu items in the header are too small. Increase the font size.
- The resolution of the 2 images (people and building) is way too small thus everything is blurred on. Get other images (take a look at unsplash.com)
- Thinking about the images... they serve no purpose and are wasting space. I would remove them altogether.
 
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rblitz

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I was bored and quickly edited the site on the fly.
Just a quick glimpse on what I meant in my last post.

Obviously, this is just a quick example.

You are using way to many fonts on the site (at least 3 or 4 from what I've seen). Pick just one for the beginning and play with the font-weight and various sizes for different headlines.
I've chosen Roboto in my example.

FireShot Capture 002 - AVH ONE - www.avh-one.com.jpg
 

MB Burnette

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(Question) Is it something you learn through trial and error? (messing around with the code)

(Answer) In fact, you will only learn through trial and error. Of course, you want to find good resources to learn from. Remember, HTML and CSS is behind everything you see (browser rendered) on the internet. Just right-click any website to Inspect Element or View Page Source.

When I was first learning I used W3Schools Online Web Tutorials a lot. Although it's important to understand HTML(5), these days you can drag and drop entire websites. For example, with the Divi theme builder you could build an infinite variety of professional sites for most clients.

In my experience it is absolutely necessary to understand CSS because it's responsible for 90% of your design elements. Whereas HTML is primarily the outline of a website, CSS ultimately positions and layouts your design.

Most web designers are using Wordpress (33% of all websites on internet). I would recommend you become familiar with it. Set it up on a server and experiment with it. Wordpress sites can be built to do most anything (i.e. CMS, LMS, Ecommerce)

(Question) Or, do you have a particular strategy or science behind it? (ex. edit content first, edit styling second, adding features last, etc.)

Is it simply deleting what you don’t want and adding what you want and just getting used to that?

(Answer) It's a combination of everything you just said. It depends on your client. What do they want to achieve? What websites would they like to emulate? What features do they want? Graphic design, copy and content creation are different skill-sets than those of knowing markup languages (HTML and CSS). Also, it helps to know both web design and web developer aspects.

You can copy any design element of any website. The beauty of learning HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript is it allows you to see behind the surface. Of course PHP and other programming languages are deeper in the backend (server side).

Just get in there and experiment. It's like learning a foreign language. Eventually you will be able to read the code and then you can manipulate the code.
 

Danczyk

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@Fox

or anyone with solid experience building websites

When first getting involved in editing an HTML theme for one of your first clients:

Is it something you learn through trial and error? (messing around with the code)

Or, do you have a particular strategy or science behind it? (ex. edit content first, edit styling second, adding features last, etc.)

Is it simply deleting what you don’t want and adding what you want and just getting used to that?

Looking for the right approach here. Any feedback would help.

I have only a few years of experience so take it with a grain of salt.

Before you start you should know the purpose of the site you are doing. Without a purpose it's just a brochure which appears to be online. You should know what pictures what content you put on the site. At this point I generally draw something with pen and paper really and decide how it will look like. Desktop AND mobile versions both. Colors fonts animations all come later.

Are you comfortable with editing the theme you bought?

I was bored and quickly edited the site on the fly.
Just a quick glimpse on what I meant in my last post.

I guess he will make the site from the beginning.
 
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William

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Looking to re-design the whole thing from the beginning.

Have the base format: picked a theme, deleted some sections, and added sections from other themes that made sense.

Created a doc for the layout and purpose of the website.

Next step: fill in the content, edit the styling (delete margin, edit fonts, size, colors, etc.)

My friend's dad has been a bit unresponsive - but I'll continue to chip away.
 

Danczyk

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They are always late to respond if they ever do.
You should share the result with us for a feedback when you finish the project.
 
D

Deleted50669

Guest
@Fox

or anyone with solid experience building websites

When first getting involved in editing an HTML theme for one of your first clients:

Is it something you learn through trial and error? (messing around with the code)

Or, do you have a particular strategy or science behind it? (ex. edit content first, edit styling second, adding features last, etc.)

Is it simply deleting what you don’t want and adding what you want and just getting used to that?

Looking for the right approach here. Any feedback would help.
Best approach is to first decide what design you want with a wireframe. From there, the mix of CSS and HTML will dictate your structure and design.
 
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William

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Feb 15, 2012
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Spent some time finding, editing, and inputting images to replace template photos. Filled in some content. Also, working with brackets and getting the hang of basic things - like how to navigate the files and code.

Little taxed mentally after some hours but it feels good figuring out small things bit by bit.

Trying to stay close to Fox’s method and keep things simple at first - simple edits - good clean site with purpose - few pages max.

There are some things I still need from my friend’s dad:

-Picture of him and staff
-Reviews from past clients
-Pictures and info about any standout jobs
-USP
-Brief story about the journey of his company

Will continue to work with what I have.
 

MB Burnette

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My goal: To get more people contacting him for consultation.

You're good with the above general purpose. But eventually, it's important to refine down to specific call to actions (CTAs).

It is possible to have just a one page site with multiple sections. Where each section has its own 'purpose', which replaces individual pages. Of course, you still link out to other internal pages.

Clearly, the most important factor is to define your purposes and then add CTAs to accomplish those purposes. Each page should only have 1 or 2 call to actions.

If wanting leads to call, then place telephone number on all pages (upper right top of page). Or left side...:) I just looked at the website!

Little taxed mentally after some hours but it feels good figuring out small things bit by bit.

It is mentally taxing, especially when you're learning and trying to do it all yourself. Because it's not just designing aesthetically attractive site, it's also most importantly designing a site that drives specific action.

I recommend you keep it simple. Look at all Google's pages and sites as excellent examples of simplicity with purpose.

Also, add a contact form in multiple locations. Can place form at bottom of page and jump from link at top.
 

GurpreetSingh

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Apr 15, 2019
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My name is Will. I'm diving into web design. Fox's threads and info on web design have been eye opening. To see that he did it without prior experience is impressive. It leads me to believe that I can do it as well - with consistent effort.

I have a solid foundation in sales, writing, and have learned enough with web design to get started.

My good friend's dad has a Project / Program manage company. The website needs work for sure. He's a very creative person - he's an artist, a therapist, and works in architecture. However, he is pretty old school and his website seems to reflect that.

My goal: To get more people contacting him for consultation.

I set up a call with him today. I bought a theme to work on and have been adjusting some things. This project will be free. My friend's dad has a large network and I'm looking forward to doing an awesome job to leverage it into other opportunities.

Website: AVH ONE
Great!!!!
 
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