When people first hit your site, the first thing they see is your header. As this is your only chance to make a good first impression, it is important that your header look as good as it can be. Because of this, it is imperative that you understand the different ways to create headers.

First and foremost, do not use text as your header. There is no way to come off as anything besides cheap, and that is not a good thing. By using text, you also lose control of how your name is displayed, and that may cause some interesting display issues. If you are even debating that, then track down some the various scripts that use tiles for your letters; some of them do look very nice. At the very least, they aren’t straight text, which always looks bad.

The basic header is an image file that displays the site title and company logo. Done well, they can work for your site. After all, they get the point across clearly and succinctly, and are great for potential customers that are using dial-up. But keep in mind that you can make some interesting mistakes. Keep in mind that you want to have some fun with the header, even if it’s a slight image. Try to keep any contact information in a separate section.

Also, keep in mind that you can have some fun with the header graphic; this is best exemplified by the animated header. They aren’t that hard to create, and can supply some much-needed action to an otherwise staid design. Just don’t make them too complex, and remember to have some fun with them. An ideal animated header not only looks good, but also has a clean loop (you shouldn’t see when it starts over). A bad one is choppy, loops messily, and just looks horrible.

The most complicated header is the Flash header. By incorporating Flash into your header, you can use it as a nice way to identify your site, as well as add some navigation to your header. You need to be really careful with these; some programmers get so into the header that they make it bloated, and so anyone using dialup connections can’t even get into your site because the header is taking so long to load, and all of your navigation is in the Flash header. Just remember that any limitations that apply to your other images apply to your header as well (like keeping it under 100K in size). Also, remember to have another way to navigate around your site; some people do surf with images turned off (usually a dialup connection, but others like the enhanced speed), so that if you limit navigation to just your header then those people won’t be able to use your site, and you lose those customers.

When you design your headers, have fun but remember those on dialup or using text-only browsers. Do this and you will be surprised how it helps your numbers.

Andy Eaton is by far the best graphic designer I have ever come across! Not only does he create quality graphics, which actually do increase your website sales he actually goes one step further and teaches you his exact methods to crank out profit pulling graphics. Check out his work at http://quickpaypro.com/x.php?5086_u20

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• Preparing Web Images with Photoshop