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09 Jul 11 What Makes a Website Get Thumbs Down?

Everyone has a website these days, but every website is not attractive? Why is it so? All websites have typical website structure, yet fail miserably in terms of appeal and level of interest grabbing. Have you ever thought why some websites simply put you off and you never want to get back to it? Here are some reasons what makes a website draw thumbs down.

Poor Layout

Foremost reason for a website to fall flat on its face is its poorly designed layout. A poorly designed layout may not only appear bad, but also lack proper user friendly structure, legibility. Many people try to save little amount of money by putting all information in a page and cluttering the webpage to the maximum level. Such layouts ask reader to scroll down and find entire information; which is highly annoying for the reader. It looks like a novel, especially when the content is long.

Poor color combination

It’s often seen that few websites consist of bright and warm colors just for the sake of drawing attention. Such color schemes like warm red with bright yellow may surely draw initial attention, but will immediately put off a reader. He may get a headache too if exposed to such colors for long and soon leave the website. Play safe with colors, know which colors are complimentary and most importantly do justice to the website or brand. Suppose it’s a pharmaceutical company’s website, you can’t afford to keep it flashy red. If you have a corporate color you may use the same, to build your brand identity on web.

Poor content

Often people think writing is a job that anyone can do and they themselves try writing, while abandoning the entire purpose of the website. Even if it costs to you, make sure you get the web content written by some expert. Make several tabs for content under different headers and make sure it’s not too lengthy. Crisp, simple yet interesting text always works. Make sure you don’t go abstract in your communication and people can easily locate your purpose behind the communication.

Complex URL

Several times people think of a complex name for their website or end up choosing a rare URL for unavailability of the simple ones. Instead of going for a real rare and complex name choose a simple and easy to remember name with .ORG or .NET or .UK and the like for availability sake. An easy URL is not only remembered but also talked about and passed on from one person to another.

Keep these faults in mind, and you will never end up making the same mistake like those not so good websites.

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13 Sep 09 5 Ways to Improve Your Writing

Writing is an art, and like every other art you need to practice hard to improve it. What would you do if you want to be a piano player? You will take piano lessons and then will practice as much as you can until you perfect the art. The same holds true for writing, but writing has an upside. Unlike piano, we do not need to take special classes for writing – unless you are a non-native who never got taught English in your school and college – all we need to do is practice this art as much as you can. I am sharing here 5 valuable tips that will help you become a better writer.

Become a Blogger

Blogging is to writing novel what net practice is for a FIFA World Cup. In both the cases, you practice, practice and practice to fine tune your skills, and you do it daily.

Use self-imposed word limit

Do not become verbose. Gone are the days when people had ample time to spend idly, and hence they loved long, very long fictions. Now the time has changed, and even if it had not, a well-written work is never verbose. Put a strict word limit and follow it.

Let the criticism help you grow

Critics are your worst enemy, and like any enemy a critic will find the weakest spot in your defense, in this case writing, and will attack you there. What to do to stop them from attacking you? Remove the weakest spot, and for that you have to listen to critics to know your weaknesses.

Read, re-read, and re-read your works and fix the problems that you find.

You are not required to read all your works, if you write profusely. Just pick a piece or two every week and do as instructed.

Your friend and relative is your best reader

No one outside your close circle will like to read your work until you are Sir Salman Rushdie- I suspect, no one even in your close circle will like to read until they are forced to- hence they will need a little pushing before they agree to read what you write. Ask for their honest feedback as it will make you a better writer.

In the next blog post, I will show you 5 more ways to improve your writing.

Tags: Ample Time, , Fifa World Cup, , Honest Feedback, , , Piano Player, Salman Rushdie, ,

21 May 09 Elements of a Movie Review

Movie, novel, essay, poem, and drama are the pillars of literature. Hence, like any other art form, the more you know about the craft of movie making, the better your experience will be watching it. Hence, we write movie reviews. Writing a movie review can be challenging for even established writers because a movie review is not just about writing eloquently or critically about plots and sub-plots of a movie, or its characters. A movie review is much more than that. The purpose of a movie review is to inform readers about what a movie is about, how it is made and who all worked to make it. The goal of a movie reviewer should be to teach the audience as much about the movie, and the different techniques used in the movie as he could without letting out critical details of the movie.

If you are just starting out your journey of writing movie reviews then having an organized list of elements to look for while writing a movie review will be very much helpful. In this post, I am going to provide a list of elements that you should look for while writing review for a movie, but before everything else, watch the movie of which you are planning to write the review. Once, you are though with the movie and the popcorn, it is time to see which all elements you need to analyze the movie against. The elements of the movie review can be classified into three broad categories. One is plain informative like who is the director, when it was made, who are the actors etc., another is qualitative or descriptive, and the third one is technical aspects. Below is a complete list of elements, you need to keep handy while writing a review.

Informative

1.       Name of the movie

2.       Year of release

3.       Actors

4.       Director

5.       Certification

6.       Running time

7.       Genre

8.       Awards

Qualitative or descriptive

1.       Intended Target Audience

2.       Story line

3.       Sub- plots

4.       Treatment of the story

5.       Major characters

6.       Minor characters

7.       Structure of the movie

8.       Narrative technique used

9.       Sue of turns and twists

Technical aspect

1.       Lighting

2.       Music

3.       Cinematography

4.       Camera use

5.       Transitions and editing

6.       Mood

7.       speed

Warning: In essence, the movie review you have written is your opinion of the movie. Keep this in mind, and while writing a review, do not get tempted to reveal the complete story line. Your purpose is to give only the details that can help the readers of your review to form an opinion about the movie, not to retell the story of a movie.

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