Converting Print Advertising For Use On The Web - A How-To

Contrary to beliefs of some, advertising for web and print are very different. Converting print ads for use on web is very tricky. What has been very successful on paper may have no impact at all on 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 constraints of (X)HTML
• Accessibility

These are 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, most important part of your website is content. Search engines and disabled users don’t care how your site looks. They only care about 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 best resource for writing web copy is book “Web Copy That Sells” by Maria Veloso. It outlines differences between two and gives great techniques to writing for 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 constraints of (x)html, and accessibility, are four horsemen of doom for uneducated, inexperienced designer. They are some of most overlooked aspects of web design, and yet some of 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 information they are trying to find. If you are selling a product, there needs to be a clear, concise, distraction free path from home page all way to 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 real world where some browsers support a set of standards and others simply don’t. Actually, most popular browser in world has for years lived by their own rules. While MS Internet Explorer still holds majority of market share, Mozzilla, Netscape, and Opera have acquired a considerable percentage of 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.

How to use stylesheets

Web sites can contain hundreds of pages, even thousands. You have spent your time making a look and brand for your web site, using different font sizes, colours, margins etc all within each web page.

Later on you decide that you want to change background colour of website, and then realise that you will have to edit every single web page and change background color in body tag.......

This is where stylesheets come into play, by simply putting all web page formatting into a single file and then called upon by each web page, you are able to make changes to your web sites layout in just a few seconds!