Site Designing For Your Niche

A common mistake that many web site owners make is "over designing" their sites. Let's use a fictitious example of a classic car replacement parts website as a case in point. This company has been in business for 10 years and they enjoy a strong catalog following. They want to increase their sales and expand their business by utilizing the Internet as an additional sales platform. Although not necessarily a home business per se, but a small family owned business that has been highly successful in offering post-war classic car replacement parts. The time has come to expand or stagnate.

The company begins to research web site designers and settles on one that has an impressive portfolio. Lots of flash animation and state-of-the-art design technique. After many weeks of information gathering of product photos and data, design meetings and cost discussions a site is born. It's even been optimized to rank well with the search engines.

The site has been indexed by the major search engines and receives a modest amount of traffic. The site designer assures them that it takes time to get correctly listed and rank well in the search results pages for their top keywords. Almost a year has passed and there is no appreciable increase in sales. The cost to build and maintain the site has not paid for itself.

Should they abandon the site and revert back to a catalog only business? The answer is no, no and no!

What they need to do is understand their internet customer base better. Here's what I would suggest as a consultant.

1. Immediately install site tracking software. This can be accomplished for free by using Google^© Analytics which is part of creating an AdWords^© account. This is pretty simple stuff. You get coding from Google and place it on every page of your site.

2. Create a keyword Advertising program through Google or Yahoo Marketing. This will help to drive traffic to the site and at the same time should help to defray some of the site costs.

3. Allow enough time to analyze site visitors. Another words, wait.

Let's say that by doing the above there is a large enough of a sample to analyze. What did we find?

A. There were hundreds of clicks that landed on the home page or the specific landing page but were abandoned right there. They never bought.

B. The sample showed that many viewers had lower resolution screens, older browser and older flash versions. This is important because of the flash animation on your site. Also the new versions of Internet Explorer, Firefox and Google Chrome have many of these supporting features built in.

C. Viewer loyalty was low (They didn't come back) and average site time was very low as well as page depth (the total number of pages viewed.)

D. There was a high level of abandonment for those that did want to buy, but got to the shopping cart and then aborted before finalizing the sale. ( a form of buyers remorse)

This not what you want to see on a site that sells products that people need and want to buy, why else would they come to the site?

Why did so many viewers drop out after viewing the home page? Let' see if we can make some sense of it all. You know that buyers want your products because they have bought from your catalog very successfully. Then why didn't they buy from your site?

A possible and likely reason for some of the short stay issue could be in the site design. Sometimes simple is better. The reason is not everyone's computer has the latest operating, Internet and Flash software. Your site might not show well in older browser versions and consequently any scripting may cause additional problems. This is not to say that your potential customer is backward it may just mean that they have older computers and operating systems that won't display well. Many viewers get spooked right away if there are any oddities on a site.

Also consider that some one running and older Pentium PC or an older version of a Mac your site with all of its Flash and graphics may take a long time to load. This discourages customers as well and is a deterrent to viewing your site. It's important to understand your customer base first and then add some bells and whistles later. So what is the answer?

Begin by creating a simpler site that is easy for anyone to get around. After all your primary purpose is to open up your market and sell more products to a larger audience.

Make sure you are set up with some analytical software to evaluate your site. Google Analytics is a great choice because it can tell you so much about your viewers and buyers. It even has a function to understand all of the steps someone took before they bought one of your products. This is done through a function called goals and it is a powerful feature to this free service.

In closing, the smart choice is to start out slow and simple and be in the position to analyze everything that goes on in your site.

Rick Carbone is the Director/Publisher of http://www.HomeBusinessResearch.com one of the top home business sites on the Internet. HBR has been helping entrepreneurs start up and successfully manage online home based businesses since 1998.

Three Profitable Benefits of Bilingual Websites Online

Do you have any idea of how profitable a bilingual website can be online? The web is packed with millions of online buyers who want your service. Some speak different languages, some can not understand your language, and you can break that barrier by using a bilingual website to sell your products. Three profitable benefits of bilingual websites are attracting more prospects on one site, easily sell to various markets, and enhance your professionalism by offering a language option to prospects.

Attract More Prospects on One Site

The internet's market is considerably unlimited with prospects from different companies in need of language translations. With the growth of the World Wide Web, developers took in the consideration of offering these features for online business owners to get to these prospects without hesitation. If a prospect understands your pitch, you can have a potential sell. You will no longer target just one market of your native tongue, you can get in touch with millions more with a click of a button. Bilingual websites introduce prospects to new services they could not understand at first. With this in mind, it is important to learn the basics of selling to different markets due to culture differences.

Sell to Diverse Markets

Different audiences need different segmentation and planning to convert prospects into buyers. Although you may have a bilingual website, you must do your homework. Your new prospects may not enjoy dry humor; it may offend a prospect from a different culture. Diverse markets invite lucrative clients who may value your services or products more than your traditional customer. Some of the best bilingual websites are targeted to growing populations in certain countries. By transforming your website into an inviting source for these growing markets, you place you place your business on the forefront for an additional market waiting to learn how you can help them accomplish their goals.

Enhance Your Professionalism

Today's customers demand more for their money. If they feel you were inconsiderate to provide a bilingual option, they assume you do not want their business. Can you imagine how many prospects you can gain by diversifying your language options? Some customers look for the option when they browse interesting sites - but, there is one problem: the language barrier. Enhance your professionalism by giving prospects an option to learn about your business. Once you choose to transform your site, you are in for a treat - more profits for your business.

As mentioned before, the unique and thorough understanding of your diverse markets improves your edge against the competition. New online buyers with language barriers will notice you because they can understand your offers. Your competition will be left in the dirt because they can not speak directly to the audiences like your website. If you think this is not important in online business, imagine how certain professionals feel when they can not make a sell in international markets. Be smart, invest in a bilingual website to launch in a new market of wealth.

For further information, please visit Build Bilingual Websites

Use Safe Identifiers Like Class Names Or Variable Names in Your Web Templates

Stop guessing about what is a valid name for a new CSS class, a JavaScript variable, a PERL function or any other identifier!

Use the common, shared set of rules for those languages. It could not be any easier. Print out that article and keep this valid reference handy for the most important languages on the Web.

Web masters, Web designers, and programmers do not have an easy job, when it comes to update templates, files, and programs for a Web site. In most cases they will have to build on "code" that has been written by somebody else. Furthermore there are many different languages that have rules of their own.

* HTML, XHTML, XML
* CSS
* JavaScript, DOM
* PHP, PERL

Sometimes the differences are minor, but the interpreter, browser, the code validation tool will complain, if the syntax of a particular language is violated. We humans tend to overlook the subtle differences between languages. A computer does not.

1. Characters you can use safely

Use only the following ASCII characters for your identifiers, variables, and functions names.

[ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ] -> [A-Z]

[abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz] -> [a-z]

[0123456789] -> [0-9]

The beauty about the old-fashioned ASCII character set is:

All ASCII characters are available on any computer platform in any country in any language setup.

Even though current standards allow the use of a wider set of characters in most cases, restricting it to the ASCII subset avoids problems with older or badly configured operating systems, servers and browser and different regional/language setups.

2. Case-Sensitivity

Most identifiers are case-sensitive according to the language specification, that means "Web-site" is different from "web-site". Some are not. For example, note in particular that element names are case-insensitive in HTML, but case-sensitive in XML.

To avoid potential problems and ambiguity type the identifiers always in exact case, but treat them as they were case-insensitive. Here is an example, do not use "Manual" and "manual" as two different identifiers. You could mix them up too easily, and "buggy" software could mix them up, too.

3. HTML, XHTML ID and NAME Tokens

For Example:

<div id="Main_Content-1">

* No spaces
* Must begin with a letter [A-Za-z]
* And may be followed by any number of letters [A-Za-z] , digits [0-9], hyphens "-", underscores "_", colons ":", and periods ".".

4. CSS Class Names

HTML:

<div class ="MainContentFooter">

CSS:
.MainContentFooter {
background-color: white; ...
}

* No spaces
* First Character must be a letter [A-Za-z]
* Allowed are Letters, Numbers, Underscores, and hyphen [A-Za-Z0-9] + [_] + [-]
* Case-sensitive in XML, "WebSite" is not "website"
* Case-insensitive in HTML, however type exact case, but treat it as it were case-insensitive
* Multiple class names are delimited by a whitespace [ ] character.
* Descriptive, but keep it short (even though there is no upper limit for length defined)

5. Variable and Function Names

in PERL, PHP, JavaScript

* no spaces
* [A-Za-z0-9] + [_], no "-", ".", ":"
* Case-sensitive
* Must begin with [A-Za-z] or [_], no digits up-front
* Must not be a reserved word of the language
* Descriptive, but short
* You must not use any reserved word

Reserved words for JavaScript:

abstract, boolean, break, byte, case, catch,

char, class, const, continue, default,

delete, do, double, else, export, extends,

false, final, finally, float, for, function,

goto, if, implements, in, instanceof, int,

long, native, new, null, package, private,

protected, public, return, short, static,

super, switch, synchronized, this, throw,

throws, transient, true, try, typeof,

undefined, var, void, while, with

Print this article and refer to it whenever you are working on Web sites or Web site templates.

The author John W. Furst provides first class articles and information about every aspect of Internet business and personal development on his Blog. His writings are the essence of 15+ years of experience with business in general and Internet in particular. Recently Mr. Furst shifted his focus towards Email Marketing. Read more at his E-Biz Booster Blog at http://blog.fcon21.biz and check out the Email Marketing Tips Blog Carnival.

Business Website Design - Why Build a Custom Business Website?

So you just started a new business. Now you need a great website to help market your goods or services online. Well, you are now faced with a choice. Should you design and build a website yourself or pay to have a website built for you?

Building the website your self would certainly save some money, which is important when launching a new business venture. Wait a minute, you need to ask yourself if saving some money trumps all the benefits of getting a custom designed and professionally optimized site. The short answer is a resounding no!

Most business owners realize that a visually appealing and functional website is an essential marketing tool. If your site isn't built properly the first time (especially the back-end) you are likely to end up having to get it built again once your business grows.

Now, in order to save money you could use a sophisticated 'website-builder' tool. There are many available. However, you are then limited to predefined templates, limited functionality and it is often difficult to perform search engine optimization, which we know is of course essential.

The code that you don't see is as important as the graphics and front-end design work. If your site features a customer support ticketing system, multimedia, ecommerce or other interactive features you need to know these have been well-programmed and will enhance a visitor's website experience.

Furthermore, you want your new business website to be unique. Definitely, not a template or 'cookie-cutter' site. You want your business website to stand out from the crowd. It needs to reflect the professional business image you are working to create both on and offline.

Studies show that people will spend more time and make more purchases on a website that appears professional and visually appealing.

Your new business website is often the first interaction between a potential customer and your business. Lets face it - if your site isn't professional, creative and fully operational........your competitor's probably is!

Inksoft Media is a complete web solutions company with over 10 years of experience. We help get your businesses noticed.

Mike is a consultant for Inksoft Media Inc. web solutions.

Visit Our Site at http://www.inksoftmedia.com

7 Elements of a Profitable Dental Web Page Design

Websites, for dentists and other oral care professionals, have become an important part of any dental business and a necessary tool on the road to success. The difficult part is deciding on a dental web page design that will be profitable. After all, dental professionals specialize in a patient's health rather than in online marketing and the intricacies of online practices. However, they still need some kind of an idea of what they would like to include in their website. If you are a dentist or oral care professional, here are seven elements you may want to consider in your website design.

Online Patient Communication

One of the most important elements of dental web page design is a way for visitors to contact the dentist's office. Because of the large number of people that can be contacting the practice at any one time, this system needs to be as efficient as possible. One of the best ways to do this is with a special contact form that prompts the customer to provide you with all of the information needed to give them the best service possible.

Online Appointment Booking

In today's market, customers want to get results instantly or they will simply move on to the competition. Giving online visitors the option of booking online is an excellent way to combat this problem. These systems can even be designed to notify you instantly while being accessible anywhere in the world to give you security and convenience.

Sharing Good News

Once customers begin to access your services, it is a good idea to maintain that contact with your clients to keep them coming back. Why not incorporate this idea directly into your dental web page design? Offer customers the chance to sign up for newsletters that include advertising, the announcement of new services, discounts, and other promotions.

Be A Show Off

One of the best ways websites for dentists attract new clients is to show pictures of some of the work the professional has done previously. Showing the results of implants, veneers, teeth whitening and other services shows the client your level of expertise. As an added benefit, those in dire need of oral care will not be as embarrassed or reserved about coming in to see you if they know you have seen worse.

Easy To Use Personal Content Management

Websites for dentists can be created specifically with the professional in mind. This allows the staff at the practice to update and change information when they want to rather than having to pay their marketing company to do it. This keeps customers checking in on a regular basis to see what's new and lets the oral care expert tailor the page to his or her specific needs.

Suitable Dental Web Page Design

The graphics and text should reflect your practice adequately while still standing out from the rest. Websites for dentists need to promote a call to action from new clients without appearing pushy. While an expert designer best handles this, you should have an idea of what you would like it to say about your practice.

Give A Tour

Websites for dentists are a great way to give clients an idea of what to expect and what your practice is all about. Use a slide show or small video to show them around. Some things you may want to point out in particular include the level of customer service and the innovative technology your practice uses to provide the best treatments possible.

Dental web page design gives oral care professionals an unlimited number of possibilities to attract and maintain their clientele. Websites for dentists should stand out and entice clients by demonstrating why their practice is superior to any other.

About the Author: Christine O'Kelly writes for the innovative creator of websites for dentists, Officite. They have more than 3,100 oral care professionals enjoying the benefits of their cutting edge dental web page design.

Making a Website That Converts - 5 Must Have Items

So you now have a website and you are driving traffic to it, but the sales just aren't coming in. I know it's frustrating, first thing you should do is stop all advertising, stop spending money. I know people that think "well they will come back and make a purchase" 85% of the people you are sending will never even click on the vendor's pages, let alone go back and buy the product. So Stop all advertising. Now the 5 "Must have items".

1.) Catchy Headline - Make sure that your headline grabs the attention of the visitor, on average you have less then 5 seconds to get the attention of a visitor, after that consider then lost.

2.) Professional graphics - Now I don't mean go spend 1000's having your site redesigned, or all flashy graphics. What I mean is that you must have a good looking webpage so the visitor feels like they can trust you. Gone are the days where you can throw up a headline, some ad copy, and makes sale. Make a good looking website.

3.) Site Layout - This is often forgotten, but if you have a opt-in box, the best place is for it to be in the middle right, or upper right hand part of the screen above the fold. Having your opt in box at the bottom of the screen, or a horrible looking pop hover, or whatever they call it are bad choices.

4.) Testimonials with pictures - everyone needs reassurances when they are buying online, and having testimonials with "real" pictures goes along ways, and to go a step further if you can get a video testimonial that can do wonders for your conversion rates. Here's a tip - don't be fake, it must be sincere and honesty, people will see through fake testimonials.

5.) Clear calls to action - People have to know what to do once they are at your website. If they are unsure, they will just leave, think of it as leading a man to water. He needs to know where to go, and how to get there and it expecting you to help. So make sure your visitor knows what to do when they are at your page.

Those are 5 things you can change today to help your website. And hopefully increase your sales.

Make sure to check out my site at http://www.cash4noobs.com - find out why your not making the kind of money you should be online!

MAC Site Builder - Creating an Attractive and Useful Website

With mac site builder, you can construct an aesthetically appealing web site with numerous functional features without the hassle of learning any programming languages. All the necessary design elements are included with the software, which requires no complicated downloads, and the web sites you build can look great and operate properly on any platform and with any popular browser.

In order to add or modify any design element, all you need to do is to click a single button on the toolbar. Similarly, technical assistance or other help is just a click away. This mac site builder is so very intuitive to use, that even those who are uncomfortable with computers, and have no computer skills or knowledge, with help can develop and deploy their own web site in five minutes or less.

Getting started with this product is a sensible, step-wise process. First, you choose a design for your web site from the template library containing over one thousand templates. Then, name your web site and subscribe to a hosting service. Next, pages are added with the functionality desired, from message boards to photo albums. You can tailor each page to your liking and customize the content via the editor. Finally, view your work, make any final changes, and then publish!

Everything you need to get started with the mac site builder is included in the package. There is an editor with a graphical user interface, a manager for page layout, a shopping cart for e-commerce, a wealth of professionally design templates and much more.

Online support with no set use limit is available for answering your questions and providing technical support. Prompt responses are guaranteed. Also, mac site builder comes with full online documentation, FAQ pages, a fast start manual, and a technical library. Contextually sensitive help and support is available through a button attached to each feature.

Either one of the major operating systems is compatible with Mac Site Builder, and websites that are developed with the help of Mac Site Builder will function smoothly and appear flawless on a majority of the popular browsers in use on PCs everywhere. Modern browsers with integrated JavaScript functionality will also have no trouble reading these pages.

Using mac site builder, you can create a website with an attractive appearance and a great many useful functions without having to learn how to program code. Everything you need to get started with the product is included in the package. There is an editor with a graphical user interface, a manager for page layout, a shopping cart for e-commerce, a wealth of professionally design templates and much more. Starting out with this product is an easy step by step process. To answer your questions and provide technical support, unlimited online support is available with prompt responses guaranteed.

Make it Easy to Purchase From Your Website

This is in large part due to the streamlining the buying process. A decade ago, commercial websites were not interactive and consisted of little more than an electronic version of a magazine ad. Such mail order purchasing is a cumbersome process and that is why internet commerce was minimal in the early days. Today, the way in which people can buy online is much easier. That is why they buy in such volumes. Yet, there are still those who employ a website design module that is ten years out of date. So, let's take a look at the website design methods that are much easier for people to make purchases.

First and foremost, the website designers must make it apparent that the website is a commercial venture. Poor web development, for example, may be loaded with lots of cool graphics and interesting text but the actual items that are for sale are presented in a peripheral manner as opposed to the focus of the site. Needless to say, such website development is very weak and will not facilitate any profits.

Solid website design, however, will clearly identity the products or services that are offered. The description will be clear and properly illustrated. If you are selling boxing gloves, for example, you would need to provide a photo of the gloves; the manufacturer should be identified; the different weights of the various gloves; the different colors the gloves come available in; and, of course, the price of the gloves. In short, the potential customer knows EXACTLY what he is buying. If a person is provided with proper information then the person will be less likely to dismiss the purchase.

Now, here is the absolutely MOST CRITICAL aspect of commercial website design. The website positively must have reliable shopping cart software installed. Without such software the ability to make a purchase is made much more difficult. The first time a customer buys from your site all they will need to do is plug in vital purchasing information such as credit card info, mailing address, etc. This info can then be saved on the cart's memory so the next time a visitor wants to make a purchase they can do so with one click. Such ease of use makes customers much more likely to buy.

Ultimately, that is the goal of streamlining website design for commercial sites. You want to make it as easy as possible for customers to purchase. When the process is easy then the ability to sell more items becomes much easier.

As an affordable designer of award winning Canada Website Design, we offer front page search engine listings and global marketing with every website we create. Based out of Alberta, Canada we are a very reputed, global webmaster and web development company specializing in branding and consumer interaction.

We start your web development with a detailed fact finding discovery session, were we identify your companies online objective, target audiences and your specific branding message. Creating a successful design is about understanding the companies our service represents on a personal level to truly appreciate your business objectives and challenges.

We are more than an website design studio, web developments shop, or programming house, we are GlobalWebsiteCreations.com, dedicated to businesses and consumer interaction.

Creatively yours, Todd Herman
President
Senior Vice President
GlobalWebsiteCreations.com
President
GlobalWebsiteCreating.com

Great Plains Dynamics GP Reseller News: custom eCommerce Integration

Microsoft Dynamics GP or former name Great Plains Dynamics ERP has large number of installations in USA, Canada, Mexico, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Asia. Modern market forces companies to go online and expose their stock through B2B or B2C e-commerce stores. If you are starting from scratch, then you should pick existing e-commerce add-on for GP, however if you ecommerce web store has long history and works as you need, then you should map custom integration to and from Great Plains. Obviously each case is unique and each company has different criteria and business procedures, in this small publication we will try to give you just general highlights in custom eCommerce programming

1. GP modules, exposed to integration. Likely these are Sales Order Processing module, receiving either customer orders or directly invoices. Also, Inventory Control module, which exposes inventory items, as well as pricelists and pricing schemas. Often you need to expose custom catalogues, depending on the customer class or individual customer. In this case, you need to build this catalog on the fly, based on customer login credentials.

2. Integrating Phases. Assuming that you already have ecommerce up and running, probably without or with minimal integration to Great Plains, the first phase should just send sales documents as they were generated autonomously in ecommerce to Great Plains SOP module. When this first phase is implemented and proved to be stable, then you could try to move the source of your items and pricing to Great Plains Inventory Control module

3. Integration tools. To try the simplest approach, which is not real time integration â€" try to either export your ecommerce orders to text file, or create advanced ODBC integration for GP Integration Manager. In the case of advanced ODBC source, your integration could look back to your ecommerce database and in After Document Commit script you can program ADO connection to your ecommerce database or GP orders integration status tracking table and mark order or invoice as integrated. If you need real time integration, then consider programming integration in eConnect, especially if you have good C# or VB .Net programmer with strong SQL architecture understanding. In certain cases you can create and deploy SQL custom stored procedures, however in this scenario you will be exposed to higher possibility of business logic violating bugs and their fixing

4. GP automatic batch posting. If you need your ecommerce application to post Sales Order Processing invoices all the way through GL directly from ecommerce and without GP operator approval and even involvement, then you will need Alba Spectrum Posting Server

Web Development Versus Web Design - Is There Really a Difference?

Technology pundits have constantly argued that the terms web development and web design are interchangeable with one another. I respectfully disagree and argue that though the terms may have been interchangeable in the past; they have long since become two terms completely separate from one another with different goals, standards, and philosophies behind them. Web development can be quickly defined as "a broad term for any activity related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. This can include e-commerce business development, web design, web content development, client-side/server-side scripting, and web server configuration"; whereas a definition of web design can be summed up as "a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of technologies" (definitions courtesy of Wikipedia). We can take note of a couple of things simply from these simplified definitions. The first is that web design falls under the wing of web development and it is easy to see why many think the two are intertwined much like the concept that a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square. Web design is a part of web development, but not actually an essential part of developing the web.

Web design, more specifically website design, is a process of creatively visualizing and utilizing the tools and applications created by the web development process. Web design takes the development process one step further and often finds itself using these tools for ideas and applications vastly different than what they were intended for. A quick analogy would be that of how the plane engine made for war combat was used as the basis for the car engine we use in our every day lives. Web design has brought us things like the web 2.0 concept of user generated content; some thing that web development tools are capable of, though not intended for it specifically. Content management systems such as the ones talked about earlier provide the framework for social networking websites and blogs. Dynamic web pages which appeal to our aesthetic eye use frameworks set forth by web development tools yet take it one step further by using the tool to create a masterpiece of web design.

With all of America's advances in web development it became easy to separate the two terms from their synonymous relationship; it has become a process of developing technologies and applications for the advancement of the World Wide Web. These technologies of course, can be adapted and used by anything related to the internet (such as websites) but is not merely limited to it. Content management systems (CMS) are one of the many examples of positive strides made in web development. CMS systems allow for easy management of content and data while online and can be used for simple server networking within an office, or as the backbone of an ecommerce website (voting systems in various states use CMS systems to tally and record votes via software). Web development also houses things such as the creation, modification, and innovation of scripting and coding languages. The advent of Actionscript 3.0 and PHP 5.2 can be marked as some of the great achievements of the web; Actionscript 3.0 is part of Adobe Flash CS3; however Adobe created AS 3.0 to make it much more logical for creative web applications. More specifically, web development in NY has been known to constantly utilize the most up to date tools and research to create some of the most innovative web applications.

If web development is the paintbrush, web design is the Mona Lisa.

Fred McCoy is a NY Web Development critic who works for Blue Fountain Media; his articles are on point, descriptive, and insightful.

Content Management System - Open Source Or Hosted?

While the traditional approach to a content management implementation when it comes to small and medium businesses has been around customizing an open-source CMS, the concept of a hosted CMS (or CMS On-Demand) is gaining popularity among companies with limited IT resources.

There are several hosted CMS solutions for small to medium size companies, such as Clickability, Hot Banana SaaS, Crown Peak and elKontent. These hosted CMS solutions are targeted towards organizations who cannot or do not want to deal with the techie stuff when it comes to setting up, customizing and maintaining their CMS.

How do you determine which solution is right for you: open source or hosted?

As long as the company has available IT resources to set up and maintain their CMS, an open-source solution would be the most cost-effective way to go. Companies that lack such resources should keep it in mind that while an open source content management system can be packed with features, there is often a long way home from the day an off-the-shelf CMS is downloaded and the day it actually meets the needs of your business, from the branding, usability and functional stand points.

Installation:

Installing an open source CMS is not like installing ICQ on your computer, where you are guided through a set of steps and you are done in a few minutes. In fact, I have yet to see a CMS that could be installed without any technical expertise. In most cases, permissions need to be set, configurations files adjusted, commands typed into a command line, and a whole bunch of other stuff that a non-technical user would be scared to mess with.

Look and feel customization

Once a CMS is installed, its presentation layer needs to be customized to reflect your web design and your brand. While many open source CMS claim that their system is template-based and that logic is separated from the look and feel, in reality this is simply not true, not necessarily because of the bad internal design of the system, but simply because when it comes to a dynamic web application, the logic and presentation are not always possible to completely separate.

Severe featuritis

In order to acquire more customers, most off-the-shelf CMS vendors tend to pack their products with as many features as possible to satisfy just about any need out there. The goal is to be everything for everyone. While a feature-rich system may sound appealing to many organizations at first, that appeal quickly evaporates when it turns out that Bob in marketing quietly avoids updating news on the home page because figuring out how to get to that particular "snippet" or "xzamboltet" causes a huge migraine.

There is no doubt that complex and feature-rich systems are necessary in certain situations, most of us would rather see simplicity. The less time it takes to learn something (a web application or a gadget) the higher are the odds that we'll actually use it.

Content management needs of most small and medium businesses are very straightforward: update the content of the site. 90% of the time a typical CMS content writer (i.e. Bob from marketing) needs to update the text on an existing page. If archival, version control, approval, work flows, template updates, e-commerce, trackbacks, wikis, subscriptions and member communication are not a part of content management requirements for your business, they simply should not be a part of your CMS. Not only will your typical user mess them up, but also when faced with a bunch of buttons to useless features that cover up the path to accomplish one simple task, your typical user will not use the system (or won't use it productively enough to justify installing a CMS in the first place).

The cure to featuritis is to either start with a very simple CMS and add the features you need. Or customize the back-end interface of a feature-rich CMS to only include the needed items.

From developers to developers

Open source software in general is written by developers for developers. While open source software can produce great frameworks, applications and toys for other geeks to play with, the user aspect of the open source software in general still leaves much to be desired. Open source is based on grassroots and enthusiasm of programmers to make software better - in whatever way a geek thinks "better" is. As a result, by nature open source software is seldom polished from a usability standpoint (there are exceptions to the rule, of course).

Same goes with commitment. Even with a large open source CMS development team, the commitment is there as long as the interest is there. This is just the nature of open source development.

The point is - you just can't launch an open-source CMS with a click of a button. The to-do list that needs to be completed after the button has been clicked depends on the solution and the needs of your organization. But this to-do list is often severely underestimated or completely ignored, resulting in not-so-usable CMS implementations, higher implementation costs and lesser overall value.

Hence, many SMBs with limited technical staff are opting to outsource the hassle to a hosted CMS vendor, and gain a few extra points by doing so:

Save on upfront costs - since many on-demand CMS solutions charge a monthly fee, the costs of setup and customization are spread over a longer period of time

One stop vendor - with a hosted CMS you have one vendor who is hosting and maintaining the site, so there is one number to call in case of any issue, and one company to blame. (While with a traditional open source CMS installation the hosting company may blame the IT consulting company who installed the CMS, and the IT consulting company in turn could blame the open source vendor or the hosting company).

There are exceptions to every rule of course. And just like with any product or solution, what really matters is who is behind it.

Use Your A-B-C's to Make Your Website Dazzle!

"I built my son a tree house. He built me a website."

The other day I was enjoying dinner out with friends and family and happened to flip over a drink coaster with the saying above. If you've eaten at Outback Steakhouse lately, perhaps you have seen this little wondrous item? When I first read it, I chuckled and showed it to my husband. He laughed too. Then I realized that as funny as it was, it held an inherent TRUTH. Today, many kids will grow up comfortable with and using technologies that simply didn't exist when I was old enough for a tree house of my own. No, I'm not telling my age!

Words like RSS, HTML, Podcasting, Ezines and others will be part of their daily vocabulary. They'll never know a world without a computer as part of their daily existence. They'll also probably never know the fear of learning this technology at a point in life when learning new tricks isn't as easy as it once was. Doing business on the Internet for them, will be just like doing business in a brick and mortar building is for most of us.

There are things in life that aren't inherent to us and take some effort to learn and understand. I LOVE watching our basketball team, the Phoenix Suns, play. But when my husband starts talking about the ins and outs of their "system" I feel my eyes begin to cross and I lose focus on the conversation. It all becomes a blur and although I appear to be listening patiently and interested, I've actually checked out!

Does this feeling sound familiar? Have your eyes crossed and you appear to be functioning but aren't? Are you simply guessing at what you can do with your website or do you have a game plan in place?

If you've ever felt that you're not sure what you should be doing with your website, you start simple and grow bigger. Use the ABC building blocks below to make sure your site is primed and ready for business!

First Building Block

Attractive Layout

This is a biggie so I wanted to tackle it first. Before I ever write a single line of code, I always tackle the hardest issue of all with my clients....what will the site look like? This is important because the site needs to attract the right clientele or it won't make money, it won't build the "know, like and trust" factor and it won't catapult the owner to success. These days it's not enough to simply build and publish a website, you've got to convert traffic with it; you must convince the viewer that you are trustworthy and worth their time not to mention their money!

Three *Visual Keys* to Customer Connection Are:

1. Graphics - help to express what your website is all about. I worked on a website redesign project where my client's existing graphics were of products they didn't even sell! After switching out those graphics with actual product photos the sales rates began to climb. Why? Because the look and feel of the original website wasn't reaching out to the intended target audience; with the new graphics visitors knew immediately whether they were in the right place and the site offered something they needed or wanted.
   
2. Colors - can bring someone into or repel them away from your website faster than you can say "abracadabra!" Colors set the mood and convey emotions. Emotions can heavily influence your viewer's decision making process; specifically to stay on your website or to immediately leave. Your website's colors should mirror the message and/or emotion that you hope to convey to your viewer. For example, if you are selling tranquil CD's to meditate to, you don't want to be using race car red for your main color.
   
3. Layout - of your website is crucial to customers finding what they need and to your ability to sell your products or services. After all, that is why you have a website. Organize your website so that navigation link titles make sense (i.e. Products instead of "Stuff") and they are visible. Most importantly, make it easy to find a Help, Contact Us or Customer Service page with your contact information or answers to their questions.

Second Building Block

Broken Links

The other day I received an invitation to attend a special out of town event with someone I really admire. I signed up and paid to reserve my seat. During the seminar checkout process, I was told that (after I paid) I would receive email confirmation of the events location, times, directions etc. Trusting that I would (after all, these people do this all the time right?) I paid my money and took my chances.

Here's where it all started to break down. Rather than sending me a confirmation of the event I had paid to attend, I received an opt-in notice from the shopping cart with a link to confirm my desire to receive email from them. I clicked the link and whamo!! I had hit a dead page with a malfunctioning link. Broken links can cause real issues for your customers. They might not be able to complete a sale from your website, sign up for your ezine or reach you and you may not even know.

How Can You Avoid This?

Set aside some time in your schedule to work on your business website. The first thing you can do is carefully check that all links on your site are functioning properly. Some reasons links might not be functioning are:

• The page you are linking to may have been removed
• The page or site you are linking to is unavailable (server issues)

If you have removed a page from your website, the search engines might not know yet and still attempt to send traffic there. This can be frustrating to your customers if they click that link and do not land where they expect to. You can avoid this traffic breakdown using a traffic "forwarding" command. From your website's hosting control panel you should be able to setup a forward to easily and painlessly reroute customers to new or renamed pages.

Use a Forwarding Command for:

1. Removed Pages - when viewers attempt to reach a removed page, the forward command will automatically redirect traffic to your new page.
2. Oops Pages - you can send viewers to an "Oops!" page letting them know the page they wish to view is not available.

If you are unsure how to do this, I would be happy to assist you. If you have a webmaster, ask them to verify that all of your links are functioning and to use a forwarding command if necessary when pages are renamed or removed.

Third Building Block

Customer Follow Up

When we last left my story above...

I had clicked a broken hyperlink and found myself staring at an error message. The shopping cart had a link to a support email address on the page however and I composed an email informing them of my difficulties and requesting assistance. Cue the crickets...

After three days I had not received a single reply from support to even address my issue. So I've paid to reserve a seat at a seminar that I have no details for and there is no telephone number I can call to contact a live person about the event (which is now just 4 days away). To make it worse, it's an out of town event and I can't even make plans to travel.

Remember, customer follow up doesn't end when you make the sale! If you have a support email address setup for your website, please remember to check it frequently and follow up with your customers within 24 hours. The goal is that your customers should not feel alone, they should feel attended to at all times when on your website or doing business with you. Technology can assist with this!

Help Your Client Feel Attended to by Using:

1. Phone Numbers - not all customers will opt to call you, but some will. If you can't answer a live phone, provide a method for them to leave a message you can return as soon as possible.
2. Auto-responders - setup an auto-responder for your support email address. Let customers know you have received their email and inform them of your response timeframe. This is also useful for vacation and out of the office messages.

If you receive customer voice mails and emails, it MUST be a priority to connect personally with them within 24 hours. It's important for existing and potential customers to feel that you care about their issues and concerns and that they can call on you. Obvious exceptions are when you are on vacation, however I know you'll have an alternate plan for your business communications!

Website designer Krista Garren publishes the "Design Like an Expert" monthly ezine where you can learn EASY, fun and money saving website design strategies to build a BUSINESS BOOSTING website. To learn more, check out her ezine and sign up for her FREE how-to report at http://www.designlikeanexpert.com

How to Build a Website Without Any Experience? - Find Out Now! - Part 5

This is a part 5 in the article series of getting your website on the First page of Google. It use to be that you had to learn a lot of HTML codes in order to build a website without any experience. That is not the case any more. Now days you need to just know how to follow some simple instructions and build your website and load it with content real fast.

For example, I know you have heard of blogging? Right? Well if you did not know, blogs are also free to put up. Most of these companies are going to even host it for free as well. The only thing is that if you are using it for commercial purposes, you should make sure you have a self hosted blog. It does not require a lot of your time to put up, and you also have a pre made templates to use as well.

Blogs are more search engine friendly and they rank higher in the Google a lot faster. So again, if you are using it for commercial purposes, you will need a hosting account and your own domain name. This should not cost you a lot. Around $10 for domain for a whole year and about 10 per domain per month!

But that is of course if you are not a very computer savvy person, and want to make it as easy as possible on yourself. I found that wordpress.org blogs are great if you want to create a self hosted blogs (self-hosted is a preference). Wordpress is very easy to use and you can get your blog up and running in few hours. Now if you wonder why blogs are so popular. This is because they are user friendly and are up in the Google's first page in very little time. So for anyone to build a website without any experience this should be an easy thing to do! Even though you are not going to need any real experience to build a website, keep in mind that you do need a niche site as it was explained in part 1 of these series of articles.

One more thing to mention with a blog type site instead of the regular type html site besides a more user Google user friendly site, is that it is interactive settings so the visitors to your site can ask you questions, and you can respond to it. This also helps your ranking in Google. So that is how you build a website without any experience. It does not cost you anything, but fast you can build it up.

Blogs are a great way to build a website. But you Need to Get that Site on the First Page of Google? How do you do that with getting quality backlinks, the right keyword research and the SEO. If you don't know how to do that, http://freebacklinks.inexpensiveonlinebusiness.com can show you how!

5 Vital Facts About Website Content Services

Five important aspects of buying great website copy are: deadlines, human readability, search engine friendliness, pricing and communication. Let's look at these areas more closely.

Deadlines

You need to know when you place an order with a professional copywriting company that they will deliver when they promise. This is vital and can impact your business. A professional writer will only agree to a deadline they can meet.

Human Readability

Your content needs to have a good flow, a strong voice and be enjoyable to read. You're probably using that content for a combination of purposes and readability is essential.

Professional copywriters can write persuasive copy without it seeming too sales pitchy. They can entice the reader and guide them through the sales process without pressure.

Search Engine Friendliness

There was a time when people thought they had to stuff articles with keyword to the point they looked like alphabet soup. There were gray hat and black hat SEO methods used and many websites were banned.

Some website owners pay absolutely no attention whatsoever to search engines and as a result don't get much traffic to their websites. If you're going to have great content on your site you want people to find it.

A pro will be able to weave the right keywords naturally into the pages so that the search engines will find you and your readers won't be turned off by poorly written website content.

Pricing

You don't want to have to pay a fortune for website content but you don't expect to get good quality when you pay $1 or £1 an article. You want to find a professional writer with fair pricing and most importantly, good value for that pricing. When the quality and results are both good you should be willing to pay a fair price for someone's time and expertise.

Communication

When you decide to place an order with your professional writing company you want timely communication that orders were received and if there are questions or unforeseen delays. You also want to know if aspects of your directions are not understood. A good writing company can do more than just write. They can also communicate effectively as competent business people who service your needs and treat you like a valued customer.

The above combination in a website content company makes for effective web copy and can help your business be a profitable success.

Julie-Ann Amos is a UK ghostwriter and the owner of Exquisite Writing. Exquisite Writing is a full service international professional writing company that provides a wealth of online writing and website content services on a global basis.

5 Killer Tips For Creating Your Online Personal Training Website

In the past, I've personally done full graphic design and coding for twelve of my own websites. I've also had local community graphic web designers create two additional websites. But now, I outsource all this time-consuming work to Pakistan, India, or some other very inexpensive technology sector based geographical area. I talk comprehensively about this type of outsourcing in Chapter 5 of Train For Top Dollar.

So what methods have I used to create my websites?

Whoever you use to host your website will typically come include free web templates. What this means is that you can download the template to your computer, or you can use an online editing program that is usually available on your web host, and most of the work is done for you. For multiple reasons included in my book, especially for utilizing one-click, simple blog creation, my favorite host is Bluehost.

The colors, backgrounds, and organization in these templates are already present, and you just drag and drop your desired pictures and text. This can be a very effective and quick way to design your website.

On the flipside, a template will have a very generic feel, and you have extremely limited control over the basic website design and organization. These type of sites have no wow factor, but if you're on a time crunch, have a limited budget, or just want to get started, this may be the way to go.

If you use an online website design tool, typically also available from your hosting service (like Bluehost), you'll finish a web page on your web site, then just press "publish" or "save", and it now appears when people type your domain name (aka URL) into their computer's web browser.

If you use your own website design software, based from your computer, you typically have to create the website on your computer, then send it electronically (called FTP) to your hosting service, which typically provides pretty good instructions in the help section on how to use various web design software to create and upload your site.

My favorite computer based software is Adobe GoLive, but if you go to a freeware or shareware download website like Tucows, you can trial or use any number of free website design software packages.

Here are my five killer tips for your website design:

• Keep it simple and clean. Include lots of "white space" so your readers don't become confused with 18 different training advertisements, fitness pop-ups, and sounds or music when they first visit your page.

• Use photos effectively. Try to include your face or body if possible, to build a trust relationship with your potential online clients and show that you are indeed fit.

• Use a simple navigation menu without too many buttons. A simple "Home", "Services", "About Us", and "Contact Us" will suffice for a basic online personal training page.

• Include space for publishing your latest breaking articles on your home page. This is very important for search engine optimization, which I present later in this chapter.

• Include a space for client testimonials. Here's an e-mail that I send out to each successful client after they've reached a milestone goal and have enough dopamine and endorphins rumbling through their system to give me a fantastic testimonial:

"Dear _________,

The people I coach and train are my main focus in life. When you reach your goals, I feel I've contributed to your life in a unique way, and somehow contributed my knowledge to help you achieve something special and meaningful.

I'm in the process of updating my website - specifically the online fitness and nutritional training services. I really want people to know how I can help them achieve their desires.

Here's where you come in. If you're interested, I'm looking for testimonials. Just a brief sentence or paragraph about how I've helped you identify objectives, reach your goals or simply supplied you with a nudge in the right direction.

If I use your testimonial on my website or in a brochure, I would just write your first name, or simply your initials if you'd prefer. All you really have to do is shoot your testimonial to me via e-mail.

Thanks for considering, and remember to train and eat smart!"

These 5 tips will get you started. I also offer business and website consulting services to personal trainers, and give a vast amount of information in my book Train For Top Dollar, which teaches how to maximize your income as a fitness professional.

Ben Greenfield offers business consulting services to fitness professionals, gym owners, nutritional consultants, and personal trainers. In his book Train For Top Dollar, and at his website http://www.trainfortopdollar.com, Ben teaches tips and tricks on effective high-income producing strategies. To learn more, you can e-mail Ben at ben@trainfortopdollar.com

Using Web Analytics to Improve Your Site

How often do you check your web traffic status? If your answer is never, then it is time you start doing so. Measuring and analyzing your website's success is an important step which is often ignored by many website owners. Your sales might be pretty good for your website but without the knowledge of your visitors like who they are, where they go, what they are looking for, where they leave and what turns them off, you might be losing many potential customers. By analyzing your website along with your marketing efforts you can improve the overall performance. Web analytics is measuring the results against your goals and check how much success your website has been able to achieve.

Goals - Current Results = Website Success rate.

To improve your results you need to measure, understand and adjust the events that lead to the result. You need to drive targeted traffic to your site and use web analytics to analyze and measure user behavior.

There are mainly three steps you need to follow in order to improve your website traffic. The first step is to drive targeted traffic onto your site by various marketing strategies like SEO and PPC. The next step is to persuade the visitors to take desired action on your site. You can have an appealing website with newsletter subscription or software demos to download. The third step is to use web analytics to analyze customer behavior. Using web analytics to analyze your site is a new method. This helps you keep track of the end results produced by the former two steps. With the help of this you can monitor and make improvements of the previous steps. You can keep track of the website traffic by knowing where the visitors are coming from, the area where they leave the site, the keywords that were used to find your website, where they navigated your site from and keep track of the actions taken by them on your site. This information can help a great deal to improve your business.

There are two types of web analytics: on-site and offsite web analytics.

On-site web analytics: This type of web analytics measures visitor's session on your website. It means it checks the pages that encourage people to buy your product, the pages that drive them away and the ones attracting more visitors. It measures the website performance in a commercial context. The data collected from here is used to compare against the key performance and used to improve the webpage of the marketing campaign.

Off-site web analytics: You can make use of this even if u do or do not own/ maintain a website. It measures the various opportunities in the market like potential customers, the visibility of a website and other factors that affect a website promotion.

Setting Up Web Traffic Monitoring Devices:

You need to track your site users using more discrete methods. Here are some methods you can adopt to check your website visitors' status:

1. Install hit counters on your site: You can install hit counters on your site or blog to check the amount of visitors. With the help of this you can keep track of the increase of decrease in the amount of users on your site. There are number of counter providers that'll let you run their script on your website. You can paste their code on your website and keep track of the daily visitors. Few of the counter providers are Counter.com, eXTReMe Tracking, Promotion Stat.
2. Use your web host statistical package: The good thing about using a reliable hosting service is that every time someone visits your site, you web host server records the user's activities in a log file. The data in this log is usually abbreviated and cryptic making it difficult and time consuming to use. Your Web host uses a software tool to import the log-file data into a built in database which in turn transforms the data into readable and easy to understand statistical reports. Analog (analog.cx) is of the popular software tools used by Web hosts. You can visit their websites to learn more about it. Web host statistical package includes daily transmission statistics, total transfers by client domain, transfers by reversed subdomain and total transfers from each archive section.
3. Purchase a web traffic analysis software: The log file provided by your Web host is not in a user-friendly readable form. There are many web traffic analysis software applications available to collect the required data. These software applications summarize the results in an easy graphical and readable reports based on the information provided by the web host. Some of these applications work with your web ISP's web server and hence saves you time and freedom to manage the entire process. Being flexible, these applications help you control what you want to include or exclude.

In the past, web analytics used measure things like server hits, entry pages, exit pages, unique visitors, repeat visitors, first page visited and the time spent on the site. The advanced web analytics are more business specific and can show us conversion ratios, browse to buy rates and customer acquisition costs. As the technology improves web analytics are able to help us find other aspects of web as well. At present web analytics help us analyze visitor's behavior. This information could be used to improve your SEM strategies, keyword selection, site architecture and design. You can also improve the marketing methods and follow the appropriate steps to bring relevant traffic on to your site. Web analytics is the best way of improving your return on investment (ROI).

http://weblog.avenuesnepal.com/

Cost to Build a Website - Are You Paying Too Much?

It is easier than you thin to create a website. So why are you paying to have your own website designed?

Many of you want to create a website online, but their is so much information being thrown your way that it's confusing you. But, it's not that difficult to get your own website designed and created online. You have to understand what the masses are using, and follow those that are successful. Don't go with or take advice from anyone who isn't building websites and making money online.

You cost to build a website can be overwhelming, once you get any of those professional web design services to build your website. It doesn't have to cost that much. You can learn how to build a web site online, and the best part is, design it yourself with your own website building tools. It is easier than you think, but everyone is misleading you. they are only trying to take money out of your pockets.

My frustration online comes from seeing people struggle, while the so called guru, just keeps on misleading them. Promoting high priced products that leaves you even more blinded. Stop, following the guru's, they have never designed anything in their live. they pay to have their website designed. They don't know what it feels like to be struggling, they have forgotten, they are filled with greed.

It doesn't have to be that way, all you need is to understand what it takes to build and design your own website, and you can be making money in just a couple weeks online. Who are you going to trust, a guru or someone who is actually making money online with simple website?

If you truly want to make money, you will have to learn how to design your own website, simple little HTML tricks, and how to monetize your websites. most important, you have to learn how to drive traffic to your sites.

Alexander Marlin, builds simple websites online. He can teach you exactly how to use Keyword Elite to target better keywords. He recommends using Cpanel Web Hosting to host your websites.

Three Stages of Website Management

Managing an internet business website basically consist of three main function. These are content research, development and maintenance of this content. The extent of work in any of these functions depends on the kind of website. It also depends on the amount of content your website needs to be competitive in its market. The more content your website has, the more work you will have. Equally the more unique your content, the more work you have, particularly in researching and developing.

Researching content entails determine what content to put on your site. For example a curios website may choose to inform on the culture behind particular pieces. They could detail the culture behind beaded Massai necklaces. On the other hand a book-store website could entail reviews of the books they offer for sale. All of this content has to be researched.

Developing content entails constructing the researched information into valuable information to your users. This stage include site structure design, page structure design, content format eg text, audio, video etc. It is important to note that this stage has implication on both user experience and Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Managing content basically involves keeping your content fresh and up to date. If for example an event has been passed by time or facts have changed, you need to reflect this in the website.

If you have ever tried to manage a 50 page website, you know how easily an internet business becomes a full time job; especially for small internet businesses, that outsource minimally. The process of getting content from research to website can easily take days and this does not include maintenance.

As in any business, you need to focus on growth and increasing value and revenue. This in internet business translate to mean that researching content and to some small extent developing content should be your primary work. Most of content development and nearly all maintenance should take the least of your time. Unfortunately by the time your site is hitting 100 pages, you are tied down more in maintenance, using most of your time in the least productive function. There is a primary tool that can successfully help you focus in production function, namely Content Management System (CMS). Next week we look of what CMS is and how it has become a necessity in website management.

Learn about Site Build It Software the leading All-in-One Small Online Business solution. Find out more sitebuildit reviews here.

Build a Website Fast - 90 Second Website Builder Review

Building websites can be a whole lot of fun if you know what you are doing. Personally, I take much pride in the work that I produce for each and every site that I own. However, site building can take a big chunk of your time...especially if you are an internet marketer. The internet marketing arena is brutal. If you are not on top of things from the get go, you can lose out on good money. As the saying goes - "You snooze, you lose."

As an internet marketer, it is extremely important to be able to build a website fast. Over the years, we have seen many site building programs that use 'WYSIWYG,' or 'What You See is What You Get.' This feature allows it's users to drag and drop items, add text, links, etc. in plain view, if you will, while creating a web page. You can actually see your actions before your eyes instead of viewing codes. Unfortunately, the 'WYSIWYG' feature is somewhat limited in it's use. Typically, the drag and drop areas are confined to the pre-configured layout of the page (side menus, content, footer, etc.)

What is the best web builder on the market today? Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I like a program that is an absolute "What You See is What You Get." In other words, I need the ability to place images, text, and tables anywhere I want them with the simple 'drag and drop' action, with no limitations. Furthermore, the ideal website builder should be able to create menus and buttons, again, with the drag and drop utility.

The 90 Second Website Builder can handle the aforementioned tasks with ease. This program also allows you to overlap images and create Paypal icons. Learn more about 90 Second Site Builder at Michael's marketing blog.

What a Good Website Designer and a Web Developer Should Know About Web Design

So, what it is really that distinguishes a good website from a poorly designed web site? The topic is as broadly debatable as Windows over Linux is but it all boils down to the two important keywords: development and design! A good web designer offering web site design services must know the difference between the two words.

Web development in itself is a broad term for any activities related to website, web application, web solution, e-commerce development, web content development, client-side / server-side coding, web solutions and web database system. Web development usually refers only to the technical aspects of building a website.

Web design on the other hand is perceived as the artistic side of creating a website that involves the visual styles, layout coherence, color theme considerations and all other factors that has something to do with the general appearance of the site, vis-à-vis its functions.

Therefore, we may conclude that web development equates to a programmer's logic craftsmanship while website design is a product of an artist's imaginative and creative ideas. If this is true which I'm sure most website design firms and individual web designers in the Philippines would agree that a good website must be a combination of digital landscape and well planned programming logic. The dilemma however is that majority of web designers falls short of these two important aspects. Worst, most website developers do not realized these qualifications. I don't have anything against talented and enterprising individual with knowledge on web design and development but there is more than simply knowing the basic of html and image editing to come up with a commercial grade website. We must put in mind that a website is our business or personal identity online. It is the sum total of our being and our business that is accessible to clients and prospective clients. It means therefore that a website is our front line to the information age and that should be well planned and designed in order for it to serve its purpose.

There are however rampant offering on "create your own website in minutes" application and other template-based website. I'm baffled by these ideas simply because it directly contradicts to what I have just discussed above. Choosing to publish a website from a template equates to buying a white cardboard box in the department store and stamping it with your product's name, no branding, no image building, no identity! It's like the usual "Special Patis (Fish Sauce) label you see all over the wet market. All of them claim to be special but the sad truth is that non of them are.

As I have mentioned already, there are two important keywords in the subject, they are Website development and Web site design. Development is of course straight forward and can be learned in school. However, design is a rather different zone in the battlefield of web design. As the word design implies, it has something to do with creative ideas carefully woven by an artist - a full fledge designer who is there to collate the meaning of symbols, colors, sizes and positioning of every element in a website. It is ironic though that most web design firms out there offers template based website that are available in many template stores, worst many of them are available for free. So to say, if you have your prestigious business website made from templates, chances are that you have a twin website somewhere in the internet with only its mole and hair different from yours - the logo and text content, but they are visual replica of each other.

So if you happened to be reading this in search of a good website design firm, check out if the firm has a certified graphic artist and not just a programmer who read a crash course in image editing offering templates and who promised to create your website in minutes. Web site design and development involves careful planning, collaborating of design ideas, and putting together appropriate contents to capture the visitor's attention and to properly reflect your business' image or professional reputation..

for more visit: iConcept

Earn More Profits With Effective Website Design

The main purpose of website design is to give a unique identity to your company's business. Thus, it becomes very important to attract more number of customers by designing user friendly and interactive websites so that it increases the demand for your products.

Good content management, designing skills, easy navigation, excellent layout and storyboarding are some of the pre-requisites required for a successful website design.

Understanding the customer psychology

It is vital for website design to create a lasting impression on the customers to improve your website traffic and visibility on the internet. A good website design draws the attention of your customer and induces him to take a certain action. Hence, it becomes necessary to design the website from the customer's point of view.

If you have been to shopping in the supermarket, you might have observed, how each product is displayed there to attract the customers and entice them to buy the product.

Similarly, you should be able to apply the same principles to your website design by understanding what features of your website is most likely to draw maximum attention of the customers.

5 Powerful website design principles

-Content is the King

It is more desirable to have websites with rich content than which are simply attractive to look. Visitors measure the quality and effectiveness of your website based on the content that you provide on your website. Therefore, it is important to give them interesting and informative information that can prove useful to them.

-Eye catching visual images

Images have a high possibility of creating greater impact on the minds of the visitor. Always try to use more visual images that look more appealing and have the ability to capture the attention of your audience with your message using your website. Thus, it makes good sense to incorporate a fine balance of text and graphics in your website design.

-Self-explanatory web pages

Many a times, websites are not be able to provide an effective solution to the problems faced by the customers and leave them in a state of dilemma. One of the main principles of good website design is to give a clear picture of your website so that they do not have to delve into details. In short, your website should be self-explanatory and guide them easily by providing quick solutions to all their queries.

-Keep it as simple as possible

You main aim must to give all the required information to the visitors through your website which provides easy and simple navigation. Keep the layout of the website as simple as possible without creating undue distractions in the form of ads that pop up every time the user is browsing on your website. Try to give them a more customer friendly experience by designing a simple user interface.

-Good communication medium

It is vital to communicate effectively with your customer; this can be made possible only with a good website design. Always try to use language that is more customer-friendly and avoid using technical terms as far as possible. Make sure that you are able to put across your ideas and suggestions along with the message in such a manner that it gets across to the customer. Thus, your website design must be able to create more familiarity about your company and its products.

John Mahoney is a freelance author who writes about various technology related subjects including business card printing. For more information about John visit his website: http://www.techstore.ie

Tips For Proper Web Design

Welcome to the web site design tutorial section. These tutorials are easy to follow and fun to do! From website design tips and ideas to CSS Styles, Dreamweaver, Flash and Fireworks and you'll find all you need to know about web design right here!

This is the number 1 tip that every web designer should follow. You might design a web site that looks fantastic but few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. Your designs should be optimized for the web and should not take more than 15 seconds to load. Remember, you might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. Click here to for 10 tips to fast-loading web pages.

There's only one way to learn HTML, and that?s to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with some actual code. But fear not: HTML has one of the easiest learning curves you?ll ever come across and you can create a basic web page with only a couple of lines. Writing code by hand also ensures that you write the leanest code possible, which is the ultimate aim of all HTML geeks.

The placement of the navigation buttons or links of a website are usually placed in one of 3 different areas of the page. Across the top of each page or down the left or right side. Regardless of where you choose to put them try to keep the text on the buttons or in the links as short as possible. Anything longer than one or two words will cause that part of your layout to be too wide and crowd your content area.

Topics in this huge subject cover tutorials on online marketing, Internet marketing in general, Internet PPC (pay-per-click) advertising campaigns, marketing plans and strategies, and much more. You'll also find a section on top-notch Internet marketing resources, such as online marketing newsletters, Web sites, and marketing blogs. Visit Google AdWords Resources for insightful AdWords tutorials, tools, newsletters, Web sites & blogs, and much more. Visit Google AdSense Resources for helpful AdSense tutorials, tips, blogs, and more.

Can't find a website you really like? Another option is to choose a template. There are many templates or pre-set designs. These come as part of your web design software (such as FrontPage) or you can check out some websites that specialise in designing templates.

The time for a page to load. It is most critical for the most eye-catching elements of the website design to load first and near the top of a page. Website designs therefore need to first-of-all have loading principles in mind.

Make sure your site is browser compatible. Your web site should look good in Netscape as well as in Internet Explorer. Don't stop designing your site as soon as you find that it looks great on IE. Usually Netscape gives some problems, especially when you try doing complicated HTML designs. But don't give up too soon, usually with patience these problems can be easily fixed.

Website designs evolve over time. A website needs to be thought of as a living entity as it is never in a state of stagnation but rather in continuous growth. There are four stages which need to be considered in the process of website design. These can be used as website design tips to ultimately improve a website with increased sales and traffic resulting.

A site that is easy-to-use always encourages visitors to stay and read your content. For site with long pages of content this is very crucial as the amount of scrolling required is reduced. Suppose your site doesn't look good for a particular resolution it is very probable that the visitor will close the browser window feeling that the web page is not for their viewing. Designing stretch layouts that fit any screen resolution ensures that you know all your visitors see a visually appealing and professional site.

Finding a particular Web site is like finding someone's telephone number. Every Web server in the Universe has a unique number that identifies it, called an IP address. For obvious reasons, nobody wants to have to remember numbers like this, so early in the development of the Web, the system of domain names was devised.

Keep your site simple but neat. Don't clutter your page with big, bulky images that take ages to load. Instead use tables creatively and design eye - catching icons that will draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site. Tip - Visitors are usually more interested in content than in design.

Ensure Web site scalability: Make sure your code and design is scalable. As technology advances and configuration of computers & their monitors keep increasing and varying it is impossible to test your site in all screen sizes and platforms.

Have you ever tried to put up a web page with photos or images using Nvu or KompoZer, only to find that when you publish the page, the pictures don't show? This guide tells you why it happens and shows you how you can fix the problem.

Benjamin K is a search engine optimization specialist in Milwaukee Wisconsin. You can visit his site at http://www.everykeyword.com

Website Design - What To Look At Before Choosing Your Website Based On Cost

I was online today and saw a person advertising that he would create a website for 200 Euros.

This is a reasonable price, but not a reasonable offer.

It is not possible for a doctor to tell you what medicine to take unless you tell him what ails you.

In the same sense, a website designer can not honestly offer a service without knowing your business, your existing client base, your prospective clients and your overall objective.

A one page website designed to give out one bit of information and gather contact data or make that one sale is much different than a website created to advertise a restaurant or an online mall.

These are only 3 example of the multitude of different types of websites. Each of these different websites has its own form.

Buying a generic off the shelf solution will probably not meet your needs.

Generic websites do not take into consideration niche markets. It does not take into consideration any specific marketing needs you may have.

Here are a few other questions you need to consider:

• Does your market require the heavy use of video or animation?
• Does your market only sell to government organizations?
• Does your market have a high penetration in the international markets?
• Does your site... ?

Every objective is different, so every site should be different as well.

Would you consider having only one flash animation for your entire site?

A one page website is not that uncommon and in certain areas this can be appropriate.

Do you need one single sales page?

For many products and services sold online this is the best solution. Your business model will determine whether this is the right choice for you.

Is having a blog as your main website the right choice for you?

Many businesses look down on the idea of using a blog platform as their main website. But if you have a constant flow of information, a blog is probably a very good solution.

It is so easy to maintain you will not need to outsource much technical work to optimize your website.

Blogs get higher rankings online than other website formats. This is one of the decision factors for businesses to use blogs. And blog platforms can easily be made to look like traditional business websites.

Will you be using social media?

There is an addition reason for businesses to use a blog platform. It is easier to leverage the power of social media in your business using a blog platform.

The social media scene is developing rapidly, almost on a weekly basis.

Many different types of businesses of all sizes and from all industries are finding ways to benefit through social media.

The Choice Is Yours

The choice of the format of your website, the platform you use and the language used to create it are much more important than the price tag.

What seems like as easy solution today at a reasonable cost may cost you much time and money in the long run.

Get a free special report that gives you the 8 Steps To Develop Your International Business easily from where your business is now. This valuable report is yours when you sign up for the Get International Clients free weekly newsletter, with easy to implement tips and case studies to help you develop your international mindset and get you more international clients today. Get yours now at http://cindyking.biz/get-international-clients

The Benefits Of Buying And Selling Online

No matter where you live, one of the best ways to get rid of unwanted possessions is to sell them online. Similarly if you are looking for a good deal on something new, the internet is ideal for that too.

More and more people are trying the experience of buying and selling various items online nowadays, instead of looking in their local papers and newsagents' windows.

It's not hard to see why. Most people have an internet connection either at home or at work, and it's far easier to hop online for a few moments to search for what you need, or place an ad for something you no longer want than it is to use any other method.

You can also reach a much wider audience online than you can via any other means. People from outside your area can see your advert so you have an even better chance of finding a buyer. Here's a good tip to remember though - always make sure you put the words 'buyer collects' or a similar phrase in your ad if the item you are selling is a big one, so you don't end up misleading the buyer. Double check your wording before your ad goes live to make sure you don't get caught out like this.

Of course you'll reach a larger potential audience if you live in a big city than you would in a more rural area. Classifieds in Manchester, for example, will have a huge number of people looking at them from all over the city. The great thing about this is that if you are looking for something to buy, you have a good chance of finding it, since lots of people in Manchester will be selling off their unwanted goods as well.

Manchester is a good example of a location where there will be a very wide range of goods for sale, which is ideal for the bargain hunter who doesn't want to pay full price for anything. This gives you a good opportunity to check out what other people in the area are selling things for as well, since you wouldn't want to overprice anything you're likely to want to sell yourself.

Another benefit of these sites is that searching for what you want is made particularly easy. You can start by looking in the general category that you are interested in; beyond that if you want to narrow it down to a particular postcode, you can do. For example you might want to buy something that is within close range of where you live or work, for convenience.

In short, whether you live in Manchester or anywhere else in the country, you will find that the internet really is your fastest route to buying and selling; so long as you take the time to browse round the websites you want to use, so you fully understand how they work, you will be online and well away in no time.

Isla Campbell is an online, freelance journalist and avid traveler and pilates devotee. When not on the road she lives on the outskirts of Oban.