This is the second of eight articles about website design. Our discussion will deal with some of the issues which need to be considered when developing a new online presence. You may have already thought of some of these, but perhaps there are probably things which you haven’t even considered.
In the last article, we gave some thought as to what the company wants to do with its online presence. This article discusses what kind of name the online business will have, or “What kind of ‘dot’ do I need.”
The Company
The Great American Widget Company is a manufacturer of widgets, that common household item that many find indespensible. Until now, however, Great American has been a ‘brick and mortar’ business. With the founder’s son just out of college, he is looking forward to expanding the company’s business on the Internet.
.com
.net
.org
.biz
.us
.tv
What’s with all the dots! What kind of a ‘dot’ do I need?
Good question! First, let me say that if you’re in business and wish to advertise your products or services on the Net, you must have your own domain name and a good hosting provider. Keep your domain name as simple and focused as possible.
A marketing maxim that if you’re advertising to the general public, is that it is vitally important to present a simple, memorable message. Web addresses are no exception to this. A well-chosen domain name can be absolutely essential to your enterprise on the Internet. Some of the words used here may be new to you and sound “technical”, but don’t worry about it - just think of it as background material. And, as you get more familiar with the web, it all comes together.
Okay, that said, let’s talk about the different types of domain names, and “Just what is a domain name?”
In simple terms, a domain name is a human-language equivalent of an address on the Internet. The text for the name is called the URL, or Uniform Resource Locator. The URL for the ABC news organization is abc.com.
The name actually represents a number, or more correctly a series of numbers, roughly comparable to a telephone number. Like a telephone number, an Internet address is unique and no two are the same. And, like a telephone number, it serves to connect “callers” to one specific place on the Net.
There are advantages to using names instead of just the numbers alone. The most obvious is that people can more easily recognize and remember a meaningful word than a long string of numerals. The website abc.com is located at 199.181.132.250, which is the IP address for the site. That number is called an IP Address, meaning Internet Protocol address. Internet Protocol is a standard for network communications, which is used throughout Net.
Another, major advantage is that a domain can be moved to a new machine, where it will have a new number, but the name will remain the same. The DNS (Domain Name System) records are simply altered to reflect the change, and access to the domain continues unchanged.
An Internet domain may be the “home” for any number of things: web sites, mailboxes, files for downloading, even entire computer networks. You see domain names as part of practically every Internet address. In the e-mail address info @ US-Email-Service.com (a mailbox), the domain name is US-Email-Service.com. In the Web address http://www.yahoo.com (a web page), the domain name is Yahoo.com.
Occasionally, you will see the numeric address instead of the domain name. http://209.59.173.179/ is a perfectly serviceable address and it has the same function as http://US-Email-Service.com.
It is sometimes useful to match up a domain name with its IP Address, or vice-versa. This is commonly done with a utility called “dnslookup”. There are many dnslookup “gateways” scattered around the Web.
Now we’ll examine the name itself. Domain names have at least two parts, separated by a dot or period.
The part after the dot is called the Top Level Domain (TLD). The Top Level Domain serves to broadly categorize the name as to its type or purpose. Common TLDs include .com (commercial), .org (organization), .edu (educational institutions), .net (networks), .gov (U.S. government) and .mil (U.S. military).
Today, however, you can be a .net even if you are not a network. (MyCompany.net Sounds big and important, doesn’t it?)
There are also hundreds of country TLDs, such as .us (USA), .fr (France), .de (Germany), etc. These are in more general use outside the US.
Additional “generic” TLDs (gTLDs) have been proposed and will probably come into general use by sometime in 1988. Domain names ending in .firm, .store, .web, .arts, .rec, .info, .nom and possibly many others will become widespread on the Net. All this is due to the exponential growth of the Internet and the continued quest for meaningful names.
Addresses ending in .com are by far the most common at present; they’re generally intended to be commercial in nature, although at present the .com TLD actually serves as a catch-all for virtually all domain names that don’t fit the other, more specific TLDs.
The part of the domain name before the dot is the Second Level Domain (SLD). If you’re registering a name, you have considerable freedom of choice in what this will be. So long as the name you choose does not already exist under the same TLD, and is not obviously a famous trademark owned by someone else, its registration is generally allowed. An SLD can contain up to 24 characters: letters, numbers and dashes are allowed.
Databases of domain records are maintained by InterNIC, the primary name registry on the Internet in the US, and by a variety of similar agencies throughout the world. Accessed through a utility program called WHOIS, these databases are easily accessed from throughout the Net. There are a number of sites that permit you to look up DNS information, the most common of which is www.whois.net.
Incidentally, you may do well to remember that your own domain registration will become a publicly-available WHOIS record. For instance, perhaps you have a phone number or e-mail address you’d rather not share with literally the entire world… The company that registers your domain name will usually offer a means to keep your information private.
If you are thinking about getting a domain name of your own, use the link below and see if it is available for you. Or you can try different combinations. And when you find the right one, you can register it right away so your neighbor doesn’t get “your” name! You can check out names you like here.
Richard Hill makes it easy to learn how to use an autoresponder, showing what they are and how to get the most out of them. Click Here to get your copy of the Free eBook “Autoresponder Cash Flow NOW!”.
bio = Richard Hill makes it easy to learn how to use an autoresponder, showing what they are and how to get the most out of them. Click Here to get your copy of the Free eBook “Autoresponder Cash Flow NOW!”.
eCleave offers integration services and solutions by employing a number of technologies. We have formed strategic partnerships with industry leading vendors, as well as the project experience and precise knowledge necessary to effectively integrate platforms in today’s heterogeneous environments.
Our application development services include requirements gathering/analysis, project planning, execution, and management, as well as independent testing, deployment, and maintenance
eCleave offers a full range of re-engineering services for legacy systems including platforms porting, language migration, and end-to-end system redevelopment. Our re-engineering methods can provide migration from one environment to another, reverse engineering, or application re-hosting.
bio = Our application development services include requirements gathering/analysis, project planning, execution, and management, as well as independent testing, deployment, and maintenance
by Richard F. Hill
Copyright 2005 - Richard F. Hill - All Rights reserved
This is the first of eight articles about website design. Our discussion will deal with some of the issues which need to be considered when developing a new online presence. You may have already thought of some of these, but perhaps there are may be things which you haven’t yet considered.
The Company
The Great American Widget Company is a manufacturer of widgets, that common household item that many find indispensable. Until now, however, Great American has been a ‘brick and mortar’ business. With the founder’s son just out of college, he is looking forward to expanding the company’s business on the Internet.
What is the new website expected to do?
Before doing anything else, before you even consider finding a hosting company, or a designer, or even before you register a domain name, or before putting pen to paper to begin writing content, take time to consider what the site will be about. Is your new site to be an eCommerce site, or will it be an online ‘image’ site that displays the image of your business?
Will you want to show an online catalog and take orders over the Internet, or just have prospective customers call you for more information? Will your customers be able to contact you only by email? (Not a good idea!) Will you accept credit cards online?
will you have an online search for products or services? What keywords apply to your business and the way you wish to present it? Why are you better than the competition. What are your strongest virtues in your existing brick and mortar business?
How much money are you willing to spend on your Internet presence? Most assuredly, it will be more than you initially estimate.
Also, now is a good time to consider a budget - even a ballpark figure which you think you can afford on registering a domain, design and hosting. This budget can greatly affect what your site will be. For example, if you want an e-commerce enabled website, the costs will be much greater to develop and maintain than a straight HTML site.
Next week we look at how important a domain name can be. And in future articles we will discuss some of the hosting considerations, how to research the competition and some tips for writing for search engines.
bio = ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Richard Hill is the author of the popular, and free, eBook
“Autoresponder Cash Flow NOW!” which is available at
http://www.us-email-service.com/arcfn.htm
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In working with more than 1000 clients, we’ve seen some really great ways to enhance event registration. And the best thing is that with the advent of online registration systems, much of these techniques can be automated and streamlined.
The result: a better experience for your registrants. In addition, these online registration systems eliminate many of the headaches you and your team face on a day-to-day basis.
These 10 little success secrets will:
ú Attract more registrants
ú Make events more valuable
ú Result in more satisfied attendees
ú Make your life as a meeting planner easier
ú Let’s dive in and have fun exploring our
1. Take the time up-front
You might be surprised how simple changes in your registration design can make everything much easier and more efficient for you and for your attendees - which makes everybody happy! Plus, preparation up-front will save you a lot of time and hassle in the end. Online registration systems are event registration tools to help you build your event quickly. But, all too often, building the event takes longer than anticipated because not enough time was spent designing the registration process.
Give yourself a week or more to create a great design for your online registration. That way you can percolate some really good ideas, bounce them off of others, and even get some assistance from your online registration system’s support team. Some support teams will help you scope
everything out, brainstorm on ideas, and even help you build your registration pages.
2. Maximize registration time
Give yourself plenty of time to register and round up registrants. The more time you have to register people before an event, the more registrants you’ll have. We see so many events where registration starts a couple weeks before the event. By increasing the registration period, people
perceive the event as being bigger, more important, and have a sense that it’s even more worthwhile for them.
This also enables you to have tiered pricing, such as early bird specials that motivate people to sign up even earlier. Some online registration systems will automatically turn different pricing tiers on and off based on dates that you set.
3. Make Signing Up Easy
Give your prospective attendees as many opportunities as possible to say “yes” to your event. How many times have you come across an event you’ve wanted to attend. only to have to sort through web pages to try to find the small “register here” text link hidden at the bottom of a page. This means lost registrants and revenue. It also means more staff time in directing people to where to go. Display the link prominently on your home page, in the navigation bar, certainly on every page that discusses the event, at the bottom of emails (in the signature), and include the URL on your printed materials.
4. Help them feel at home
With most online registration systems, your attendees click from your site to your registration provider’s site. This has the potential to be confusing to your attendees and may make them uncomfortable sharing their contact and credit card information. You can avoid this by changing the border, headings, and font colors on the registration pages to match your site. Also, upload your logo into the custom header and/or footer pages. Now when people click to register, they feel all warm and fuzzy about your brand and colors being right there with them.
5. Welcome them in
A “welcome” message is such a nice touch that tells people exactly what event they are registering for and make them feel good. It’s a wonderful opportunity to remind your prospects of the value they’ll get out of attending your event. Be specific. Whether it’s a conference, incentive trip, training, or golf tournament, we all need reassurance on why we are investing our time and money. It is also a good place to explain a little bit about the online registration process (especially if there’s a lot to decide on or fill out)
For example:
” Welcome to the Conference on Happy Golden Retrievers. We are so excited that you will be joining us in Lake Tahoe this August
20th-23rd.
Among the 300 happy goldens, all the cool dog tricks they’ll do, and all the fun we’ll have hanging out with each other, it ought to be dog-gone-fun! In the next four registration pages we will ask you some questions about you and your dog, your preferences for meals, your hotel preferences, and your preferred method of payment.
Please feel free to call or email if you have any questions or
problems along the way. We want to make sure you are as happy as your golden.”
6. Give access to detail
One reason people abandon their registration is because they want to learn more before buying. Having links from the registration pages to more detailed pages (either on the registration form or to your website) is very important. It enables the registrant to open secondary windows, get more information, and then come back to finish their registration. You may want to encourage people to call you while they are registering, so they can get answers right away and finish their registration right then and there.
7. Ask Deeper Questions
Ask your registrants more questions than their contact information, meal preferences, and credit card numbers. Learn more about them; their expectations for the event, their views and experience on topics related to the event, and their demographic data. Your registrants will feel the event will be more tailored to meet their needs. You can actually use the information to make the event more relevant.
Some example questions are:
What would you like to get out of this event?
How did you learn about the event?
Why did you decide to attend?
How many times have you been to this event?
Have you recommended it to others? Why?
What would you do to improve the event?
Which part(s) of the event are you most looking forward to?
You could use this information to improve the event, promote it, track marketing efforts, gather aggregate data to share with all attendees, and pump up aspects that people are really looking forward to. Some online registration systems will enable you to add custom questions like these to your registration pages. They may also output the responses into a nice, neat format for you as well.
8. Fulfill their desire to buy
Give your registrants the opportunity to buy more than just an event registration. Your registrants are already in the buying mood. They may be itching to get something to help them before, during, or after your event. Do you have books, t-shirts, tapes, white papers, or autographed copies of books from the speakers at your event? Or if you are a charity, this might be a great opportunity to ask for a donation. With an online registration system, you can offer your registrants additional value (with very little additional effort) as they are going through the registration process.
9. Thank your registrants
With online registration, the system automatically sends out confirmation emails to the registrant. Use this opportunity to help your registrant feel really good about their decision to attend. Write a confirmation email that sincerely thanks them, gets them even more excited about their decision to attend, and gives them a subtle reminder to tell their friends and colleagues. You may even want to put a special offer in the confirmation that would help their friends get a deal on your event.
10. Add value before the event
Most online registration systems have options for automated reminder emails at time frames that you determine. Use this capability to increase your attendance, develop more rapport, and increase referrals.
The super charging trick is to give additional value in these emails. a tasting of a topic that will be covered at the event, an article from one of the speakers, an industry whitepaper, or hard-hitting controversial questions facing the industry.
Maybe just before the golf tournament, it’s a blurb from Tiger Woods on how to putt. Give something that would add value and color to your registrants’ lives. anything that would cause them to feel like the event organizers have obviously done their homework and, therefore, the event is going to be super valuable, too.
Bonus Tips:
After reading these 10 tips, you may be asking, “Is there anything else I should know?” We decided to throw in a few bonus tips to help further enhance the event and registration experience.
1. Recruit testers to break your registration
Fully test your registration pages before going live with them. It is much easier to spend the time up front than to have the hassles and embarrassment of a misaligned registration form.
Sometime you can just be too close to it and need another set of eyes to do an adequate job of testing. The more testing you do, the smoother everything will go. Rehearse the registration while it is still in testing mode with several people in your organization. Ask the tech support advisors of your online registration provider to test it for you. Their expertise in event setup will ensure you’re getting the most out of the application.
2. Bring back the people who abandon
Some systems are able to automatically email people who came to register and never finished. The email would ask if they had any questions or problems. This gives you an opportunity to be proactive in helping people complete their registrations, thereby increasing your registration numbers. On some systems, this may be a report that you can run yourself and then email to manually.
3. Talk to attendees after the event
Post-event follow up is so often overlooked. You can stand above the crowd by doing a post-event follow-up email and/or survey. Thank your attendees, ask them what they liked about the event, and what they thought could be done better. Some online registration systems can automate that process too. For example, set the system to automatically send out personalized emails with a survey link one week after the event is over.
bio = About RegOnline:
RegOnline provides meeting planners and event organizers with a flexible, affordable online registration solution that allows them to process registrations and accept payments via the Internet. RegOnline is a web-based service, meaning there is no software to purchase or install. RegOnline’s customers include companies and organizations such as Arthur Andersen, Tech Data, and the California Library Association.
For more information, visit RegOnline http://www.regonline.com/Marketing/,
email us at advisor@regonline.com , or call us Toll-free at 888-351-9948 or 720-564-0350
This Article is Copyright protected, and is property of www.regonline.com. If you have comments; or would like to have this article republished free on your site, please contact the author here: mailto:articles@regonline.com. We just require all due credits carried; and text, hyperlinks and headers unaltered. This article must not be used in unsolicited mail.
Why Should You Create a website?
——————————–
A. What do you want when you create a website?
B. What to do to get what you want.
——————–
A. What do you want?
——————–
1. You may be in a non-profit organisation and want to post forthcoming events on the web. You don’t want to have thousands of visitors to the site. But wait - do you want to create a website for new members from the web? I found a new barbershop singer through my website.
2. You may have a small business selling locally. You’re happy with yellow pages. But wait - how many thousand words can you put in your yellow page advert?
There is no limit if you create a website.
Have you ever had someone keep you on the phone for half an hour of your valuable time with their questions? Wouldn’t it be nice to direct them to your website for answers and sales messages? Create a website!
Once you’ve written all those answers, wouldn’t it be profitable to have potential customers reading your answers? Create a website. A dentist has clients from a hundred miles away, from his website.
3. Perhaps you sell items weighing a hundred tons costing a million dollars. When you create a website you can still write as much information about your product as you like - not like the yellow pages. Then you can direct prospects to phone to make an appointment with your best sales staff.
4. You want to sell a product on the web. First create a website then get lots of traffic.
5. You want to make money on the web?!! without a product?!! No…I’m not laughing. Create a website. If you have lots of traffic you don’t even have to be good at selling to make some money with Google Adsense.
If you’re good at pre-selling then you can try affiliate marketing, or selling advertising on your site, or several other channels of income. Just create a website and get the traffic first.
B. What to do about it
To get high traffic you must give visitors what they want. Tricking Google will only get your domain banned from their listing.
Here are some things not to do when you create a website. If your visitors hit the back button their numbers don’t count.
a) Don’t use frames when you create a website - the search engines can’t find you, and the inventors of frames don’t use them on their own website.
b) It may be artistic to disguise your links, but you will lose customers. I visited a site that displayed just one big picture. I happened to pass my mouse over the picture on the way to the back button, and discovered links flashing on the screen. Apparently I had to click on bits of the picture to see any more!
c) Don’t use Flash when you create a website. If people are using ADSL they are unlikely to wait longer than three seconds before hitting the back button. If they’re on a 56K modem they might be prepared to wait ten seconds. You’ve just lost another client.
d) Don’t use big pictures when you create a website. If you have a photography site, use postage stamp sized pictures with the size stated in your coding, and ask the visitor to click for a larger picture. Telling the browser how high and wide your picture is will allow it to load after the text, so your visitor has something to look at meantime.
e) Don’t use irrelevant pictures when you create a website. One picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture is saying what you want it to say.
Why do people visit websites? It is NOT for entertainment. Their TV gives them all the moving pictures that they need. Even if it is an adult site, the visitor is really wanting to download digital information for later entertainment.
Information is what your visitor wants - When you create a website don’t waste your time and money on anything else.
A paid designer will use all sorts of clever artistic tricks - you now know that you will lose clients that way. More than 99% of new websites soon have to close because they have no traffic, which means no profit.
That is your biggest mistake. Instead, find what people want to know first, then give it to them.
So why create a website? Simple, you know more about your own subject than any show-off website designer. You don’t even need to understand HTML coding if you use SBI. You still should learn a little about HTML coding, but there are free lessons on my website.
bio = Ian McAllister learned fancy web design techniques from the local university, but you shouldn’t use them! Get a free step by step report on the profitable way to create
a website
http://smarthomebiz.com/create-a-website
Websites come and websites go; it’s a fact. It’s also a fact that websites which have exceptional website content don’t go very often. In order to win and retain business you need to be able to attract, keep and excite people’s attention but for many that isn’t always an achievable target. However without website content that can do this and do it quickly you are losing visitors and potential customers to your competition so if you can’t create the website content that will achieve this and more you should consider getting someone who can.
Website content for visitors.
In bygone times keyword cramming your website content was the order of the day; it got you ranked high on search engines affording you plenty of hits to your website but in due course people realised that the visitors they were winning weren’t actually taking advantage of the offers on site or clicking the affiliate links. Search engines also cottoned on pretty quickly to the art of keyword cramming and eventually devised a cunning plot that penalises you for the excessive use of keywords within your website content. This article uses a keyword density of just over 6% for the keywords `website content’ and that is just about right. You need to get the balance just right; not making readers obviously aware of the over existence of the term website content but including it often enough that it will get you brownie points with search engines.
Website content for search engines.
Search engines don’t employ millions of people to trawl through the millions of websites and then judge how good the content is, instead they use robots or spiders that will crawl your website and measure the use of your keywords in order to ascertain the relevancy and usefulness of your website content. If they find it has too high a percentage they judge you to be a keyword crammer and you will be penalised. If it’s too low they determine (rightly or wrongly) that your website content isn’t relevant to potential visitors. Again you get penalised. You have to get the balance just right.
Website content that sells your product.
Your website visitors are your potential customers and they should be treated as such, but the average online shopper is very different in temperament to the high street shopper. They want to see useful content surrounding your products and they want to see it on a relevant topic. The latest and most common way to do this is through the use of a number of articles; these articles serve a couple of very useful purposes that we will discuss in a minute.
You should use website content that informs, excites and compels people to purchase your product and it should do so quickly. The average website visitor will give you 3 or 4 seconds before they decide whether to read on. If you can hook them within those few seconds then they become very strong leads; you know they are interested in what you have to say. That gives you the first sentence, possibly two to get your message across.
Don’t forget that it can take up to four times as long to read off a computer screen as it can on paper so your website content should be restricted to a minimum of 300 words on a informative page to 1000 words on a page. Any less and you may struggle giving them anything useful but more than this and they’ll stop reading. The optimum word count is between 500 and 700 words.
Articles that give value to your website content.
Used well a number of article pages on your site will serve as keyword specific website content pages and also to give your visitors even more information. If you have 50 keywords you want to use you could use 1 article for each keyword. This article would then act as a separate page of website content that will rank on the search engines for that one keyword. Each well written article that your visitors read will move them one step closer to purchasing your product so use them well.
A final word on website content.
The final thing to remember about website content is that it HAS to be unique. Copied or plagiarised website content will see you heavily penalised by the search engines and where a few dollars may have got you high up in the rankings with very well written website content, using stale copied website content will see you plummet to the bottom end of the search results.
www.webwisewords.com is the website of a professional freelance writer who specialises in writing exceptional quality, 100% original website content at more than reasonable rates. Having already written website content and online articles for thousands of sites www.webwisewords.com will give you a free quote and even throw a keyword density analysis and proofread of your existing website content into the bargain (just for requesting a quote!).
bio = www.webwisewords.com is the website of a professional freelance writer who specialises in writing exceptional quality, 100% original website content at more than reasonable rates. Having already written website content and online articles for thousands of sites www.webwisewords.com will give you a free quote and even throw a keyword density analysis and proofread of your existing website content into the bargain (just for requesting a quote!).
One thing that I have learned in over a decade developing web sites is that the Net is continually changing, and to keep up you need to change with it. One of the more recent developments in web design is the use of CSS and semantic markup. CSS and semantic web design has several benefits: clarity in code, browser and other web-enabled devices compatibility, seperation of content and
presentation, smaller burden on bandwith, and better visibility to search engines.
Back in the day, we designed sites with tables and hacked those tables into doing things that they were never meant to do. The table tag was designed to display tabular data, not as a way to render the layout of a website. Unfortunately, a better alternative did not exist, so we used tables. This made for inefficient, slow loading sites with code that was very hardt o read and maintain. Wikipedia defines sematic markup like this:
Sematic pages: supply information for Web search engines using web crawlers. This could be machine-readable information about the human-readable content of the document (such as the creator, title, description, etc., of the document) or it could be purely metadata representing a set of facts (such as resources and services elsewhere in the site). (Note that anything that can be identified with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) can be described, so the semantic web can reason about people, places, ideas, cats etc.)
These days, hip designers and developers use CSS extensively to create beautiful, fully standards compliant sites. CSS-based layout allows us to develop sites that will degrade effectively–that is that they will be viewable on all types of devices such as PDAs, cell phones, T.V.s–and will work correctly on devices that dont even exist yet as long as they are standards compliant.
Most importantly, developing sites with CSS allows us to effectively separate content and presentation. Have you ever looked at the source code of HTML pages that were created with a table-based layout and wondered what the heck is going on here? You see lots of opening and closing of tables and table rows all mixed together with textual content and graphics. With a clean, CSS-based layout you can create pages that are easily understood by looking at the source, making them easier to understand, maintain, and update. Look at the source of my company site http://www.vp3media.com and then look at the source code of this site that uses a tables based layout: http://webservices.org/. Big difference, huh?
If you have a site with high traffic, you can significantly reduce the amount of bandwdth used by transitioning from a table-based site to a CSS-based layout. If a visitor to your site doesnt have to load all of the code needed to render those tables and spacer gifs, you are transmiting less data.
CSS also offers search engine optimization benefits over tables. If you have a tables based business site that relys on Internet traffic to turn a profit or aquire new clients you will see real advantages by switching to CSS. When a search engine spiders your tables-based site, they retrieve a large amount of content that has nothing to do with you business. When search engines spiders a clean CSS-based site, the majority of content retrieved will be textual content that describes your business. The ratio of content-to-code is higher with CSS-based layouts.
Weve all seen search engine descriptions that dont make any sense; thats because search engine spiders use a top down method for retrieving information. Whatever is topmost in your document, the search engines are going to think is the most important part of the document, and therefore should be used as the description. Since we seperate content and presentation with CSS, we can put the most important information at the top of a document no matter where it is actually displayed on the page. Try that with tables!
I hope this article gives you an overview of why it is important to transition from your current tables-based layout to a fully valid CSS implementation. If you dont have a web site, but are planning on launching one in the near future, make sure you tell your developers you want a CSS-based implementation.
bio = James Kendall has been developing websites for over a decade and has founded and co-founded several companies concerned with web development since 1994. Currently he runs VP3Media and focuses on one on one interaction with select clients.
When you start your own hosting business, there are many things you will want to take into consideration. One of the most important things you will need to figure out is how you will attract customers. There are four important factors you will need to know in order to build a solid customer base with your business. If you are a reseller, you will want to know which company to buy your package from.
You will also need to have the skills necessary to run a hosting business. The very first issue you will want to pay close attention to is the design of your website. This is the first thing a visitor will seen when loading your site, and you will want to leave a good impression. If they aren’t impressed with the design of your site, they are unlikely to become a customer. Your website should have an easy navigation menu, because few people will take the time to figure out how to move around your site. You should also try to use a custom design rather than a template.
Thousands of websites use generic templates, and they all have the same look and feel. You will not be successful online if you try to blend in with everyone else. You have to find a way to stand out, and using a custom design for your site is the first step. You want to have a professional look. It is also important to provide a variety of different hosting packages which can accomodate clients on a budget. Whether you decide to offer customer service via phone, IM, or email, make sure you respond to questions quickly. If you take longer than a day, your service will appear to be poor.
If you have some money, don’t be afraid to invest in a tech support department. It is well worth it, and will separate your company from the thousands of other hosting services available. You should also provide tutorials on your website which will help your clients learn more how to optimize or market their sites. If your target is clients with e-commerce sites, write articles about how they can build their business.
It may be helpful to start a forum where your clients can exchange ideas or information. This could function as a kind of tech support where clients answer each others questions and problems. At the same time, if you start a forum it is critical that you provide excellent service. If you make an error with a client, it won’t be long before many of your other customers learn about it.
bio = Michael Colucci is a technical writer for http://www.299host.net - A site that offers different web hosting packages starting at $2.99 per month.
Get a website and boom your sales!
If you just decided to build a home based business then you must get a website. Good, so that seems obvious… but some things are not so obvious. Or at least not at first. If you are planning to get in direct sales or network marketing, you may have a company provided website, meaning that your website is just like everyone else’s and this is not good! If you ask yourself how came then keep reading this. There are several reasons why you need to get a website of your own.
Get a website today so that you can get visitors tomorrow.
When you get a website of your own, you can optimize it for search engines and get totally free traffic. Having a “Company customized website” (the one provided by the company you just decided to work with), you typically cannot change their website, and if you can, the changes you can make are extremely limited. If you are very serious about taking your home business online, this is a bad thing, because you will need to be able to make changes to your site in order to optimize it for search engines. Have you ever thought of what good is having a website if no one can find you?
Get a website and be sure that the world is your market!
Don’t limit yourself to just one geographical area when you can get a website and market to the world? If you have young children, you can do more business from home instead of spending so much time doing the “grip and grin” around town. Of course, there is no replacement for the old fashioned, high touch feel of home parties and the like, but more and more people are searching online for the products and services they need. Why not market to those people too?
Get a website so that you can earn money while you sleep
That may sound farfetched, but your website can “sell” for you, educate your customers and train your distributors, while you play with the kids, nap or clean the house. Isn’t that what we’re trying to accomplish with our home based business? More life and less work!
Get a website so that you can be unique.
Honestly, no matter how impressive the company website is, most people’s eyes just glaze over when they get there. There is usually too much information, the product and opportunities are all running together, and it’s difficult to contact anyone real if you have questions. It’s intimidating. If you are sending traffic to a company replicated website with classified ads and business cards, you are losing money.
You want your customers going to your site so that they can get a feel for who you are, and why they should be doing business with you. You can let your personality shine through! If you get a website of your own, you can have a newsletter to keep in touch with your website visitors, run specials of your own, have contests, etc. You can get creative with your marketing.
Get a website and get publicity for your home business.
When you have a website you can create a powerful free publicity campaign with press releases. You will have a place to publish your press releases, wow your site visitors with your media attention, and also give the media a place to easily get information about your business.
Get a website so that you can be unique.
Honestly, no matter how impressive the company website is, most people’s eyes just glaze over when they get there. There is usually too much information, the product and opportunities are all running together, and it’s difficult to contact anyone real if you have questions. It’s intimidating. If you are sending traffic to a company replicated website with classified ads and business cards, you are losing money.
You want your customers going to your site so that they can get a feel for who you are, and why they should be doing business with you. You can let your personality shine through! If you get a website of your own, you can have a newsletter to keep in touch with your website visitors, run specials of your own, have contests, etc. You can get creative with your marketing.
Get a website and maximize your income
When you have a website of your own you can promote affiliate products that are related to your main product and increase your income without any extra work.
Get a website, a real one! One mistake: a lot of work at home entrepreneurs make is that of using the free web space that they can get from their Internet Service Provider. Big mistake! Why? .because if a entrepreneur in business is unwilling to spend a few dollars a month on paid hosting, it screams “not a real business” to the customer. You want the world to take you and your business seriously, so act like a business person and shell out for decent web hosting. Free hosting usually puts ads on your website that you cannot control, or annoying pop ups. At the very least, they limit what you’re able to accomplish by offering cheap looking templates and cheesy stock photos.
So, what are you waiting for? Get a website today!
bio = Matt Bacak became “#1 Best Selling Author” in just a few short hours.
Recent Entrepreneur Magazine’s e-Biz radio show host is
turning Authors, Speakers, and Experts into Overnight Success Stories.
Discover The Secrets http://promotingtips.com
Web development has greatly increased in popularity over the last 5 years. Many new design concepts, code standards, and technology advances have happened in a short amount of time. With that, so has the knowledge and demand for better, more independent and functional web design packages.
More and more we are starting to see a shift in consumer demand for the increasingly popular website content management system.
Most website owner’s are typical business entrepreneurs who don’t have the time to chase down their web design company for some minor updates that usually cost an arm and a leg. Updates for websites are becoming more and more necessary. It’s now a reality and a trend that in order to make something happen with your website online, you need to stay on top of things and create new content to keep visitors coming back.
As entrepreneurs, we all get new creative ideas almost every day on how to improve our products or services. Without the ability to update our own website’s, those fresh, new ideas may not become a reality for a long time.
Website Content Management Systems Are The Future:
This is somewhat of a call out to all web design companies. If you cannot offer content management to your clients, you may be left in the dust within a few years. The more affordable content management becomes, the more in demand it will be. Without giving your prospects this crucial option, you may lose a great chunk of your potential clients to the next web design company that has a fully automated system that states: “all the consumer has to do is login and get started.”
Granted, there will always be a need for web designers. That is an understatement but with the option of content management, you can also decrease the amount of work needed to put into each project and concentrate more on marketing your business and it’s services.
Content Management Gives The Consumer The Freedom They Need!
Without giving too much freedom that may make the website look bad, there is a high demand for the ability to update a website when needed, not when convenient. People like to have power over managing their own company, content management gives them the freedom they need to expand on their own terms, without extra costs.
Here Are Typical Features Of A “CMS”:
- Add/remove/edit pages.
- Update content within each page.
- Add images where needed.
- Update contact information.
- Show updated listings (i.e. Real estate listings, Mortgage rates).
- Add new tips on their industry everyday (The spawn of blogging).
+ Many extra features not listed here.
Take The Real Estate Industry For Example:
In the last 2 years, “Real Estate Content Management Systems” are popping up everywhere we look. I can recall reviewing over 50 websites that offer this style of service. And why not! Real estate agents as a whole spend a great deal of money marketing themselves. Just in the last couple of years, real estate agents have seen more value in marketing online than they have through regular print media. Many real estate agents I know would rather spend $4,000 for a website rather than spend $4,000 getting listed in the local telephone book.
In Conclusion:
If you offer web design services and have (CMS) Content Management Systems available to your visitors, this might be the time to consider this ever growing popular service for your company. You won’t regret putting in the effort of developing your own system and marketing it, there is a shifting demand for this ever-popular freedom online.
bio = About The Author:
Martin Lemieux is the owner of the Smartads Advertising Network helping companies like yours to increase your business further!
For those of you with Web sites, you credibly love what a “host” is. It’s a company that provides a location, or address, along the Internet where your Web site resides.
In other words, virtuous wish a physical business needs an savoir-faire, so does a Web locate. It can’t have a Web land site and just “mystify it up” on the Web. Unless you want to set up your own host, you have to give out through a hosting company who gives you that address, including server space and bandwidth, that enables the hunt Databases and visitors to incur your situation.
Let’s look at some common problems we often have nicely hosting companies:
You can ne’er find an actual person to speak to! We may have a twenty-four-hour customer service line open, but you can never get through to a real person.
Hosting companies often think that the “lowest Leontyne Price” will always get the sale, but they break down to realize that what people truly want is first-class customer’s serving, servers that are up almost C% of the time, and a variety of services that derive nicely the hosting packet.
Many hosting companies wear’liothyronine provide any other functionality other than WWW site hosting. She father’t provide a “control panel” wide-cut of goodies such as PGP secure e-mail, shopping carts, log analysis, database institution, etc.
Surmisal what? Technical underpin people often Don’t make the best “customer support” people. Him may be technical gurus, but their centered interest lies in their high technical school servers and other functionality, rather than solving the simple problems of their consumers.
In distinguishable words, sapless client service is a major problem nicely the majority of hosting companies these days. Root:
Unity recently was the pleasure of being unveiled to Burning Hosting Society, and to say Him was impressed is a vast understatement.
Hera are some things that struck me as unbelievable. When the phone rings, whoever answers the telephone is required to pedestal up to answer it and talk. After all, the swerve act of standing up requires that He’ray alert and are listening to your problems and concerns. And, you truly speak to a “very” person!
Nicely Combustion, if It have a problem, they Don’t just “tell” you how to solve it, they figure out it for you! Also, their services certainly aren’t limited to “hosting.” We stern set you up with an write up to where you can access the Internet through and through topical anesthetic get at numbers no matter where you trip.
Their prices are extremely reasonable — practically better than I had been paid previously. Plus, the “extras” I’ve received by going with Combustion are awe-inspiring.
Simply the one thing that makes Combustion shine over just about Web hosting companies is their devotion to providing fine customer service, and this is an area in which they truly excel.
Technique you want further validation as to the benefits of victimization Combustion, read: this article.
More or less The Generator
bio = M.Demir is the Cobalt-Director of Training of Webhostseeking.com
You can see to a greater extent articles at http://www.webhostseeking.com/
Home page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.
If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link “skip intro” should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.
Navigation structure
Place the navigation on the place where the people are used too look for it. Don’t experiment with the navigation! I can’t stress enough this. Keep the navigation system same on ALL pages. Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your site.
Font size
Your font size should be enough big so your text can be read without effort. There are many people who will not bother to read very small letters. Don’t loose your visitors because of font size. Optimal size seems to be 12-13 points. Visitors should be able to read your text easy, without any effort. Broke big chunks of texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.
Line Length
The length of a line of type should be comfortable to read. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be about 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Somewhat shorter lines of about 40 to 50 characters may be more appropriate for larger displays. If the line is too long the reader must search for the beginning of it; if it is too short it will break up words or phrases awkwardly.
Creating emphasis
Creating emphasis is an important and integral part of designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and good judgment it can help direct and inform the reader. When these qualities are lacking, or someone feels that every word is important and must be emphasized in some way then your web page starts to look like a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!
Graphics
It’s well known that one picture worth more than million words. This rule applies on Internet too. Do your best to show clear, attractive photo of your product. If you offer a service, find a photo which will best describe him. However, be careful about file size. Don’t compress your photo to that level to not be clear, but also don’t leave the photo on full quality. That will make file size too big, and will increase download time.
Gif vs. JPEG
Less experienced web designers many times use wrong format to store their picture. Here are few guidelines which will help mistakes to be avoided. If your photo has small number of colors (less then 64) GIF will be better choice. Make sure however to reduce the palette size too. That is, if your image have10-15 colors only, reduce your palette on 16 or 32 colors.
Also, if your image contains text, GIF format should be your choice. JPEG use loosy compression method and will cause text and edges to become blurry.
If you are saving a photograph - save it as JPEG
JPEG images can contain over 32 million different colours. That is much more than the human eye can see.
If you want to incorporate large text into a photographic image, JPEG may be a good format to use. While the edges may still get blurred, danger of it becoming unreadable is slim. If you think your image is more important than the text, go ahead and use the JPEG format.
Speed
Do your best to reduce the download time. We live in a busy world and people are not will to wait long time. Try to reduce size of your graphics as much as possible without to destroy the image. Image must look good, but size (in KB) should be as small as possible.
Test before publishing
Do your homework, and do it well. Your visitors will not bother to send you an E-Mail that some of your links does not work or that some of your images does not appear. Even if someone do so, it is quite embarrassing. Perform spell and grammar checking. Remember that in many cases visitor will build his opinion about you or your company on base on your web site. When published, site should not contain any “under construction” or “coming soon” messages.
bio = Zoran Makrevski is President and CEO of SEO.Goto.gr, one of the first SEO companies in Greece.
Mr.Makrevski has over 10 years of experience in Web Design & Development and programming. Since 1998 has focused on E-Commerce and attempts to bring more traffic to the customer sites bring him in the SEO industry, and he is running his own company today.
Hi did you no that internet web pages have come full cercal, well do you remember the old days when a website was designed by code?
You no by actually typing HTML, the web pages looked simple and the only ones that had lots of images was the big firms that had the money to pay for them.
Then came the programs FrontPage Dream weaver and so on, WebPages started to get more and more in complexity, we had to keep image sizes small so the page would load faster and some websites turned the images into background images as these would load faster.
Then come the full page images the whole page seemed to be made up of images, this was ok by now as most users have high speed internet access, forms and PHP websites images and even Flash websites are born.
Now things are changing again, thanks to search engines and the customers the way we look at a website has changed, websites need to be fast loading still and we now see a lot less full page images, graphic design is becoming a thing of the past, WebPages don’t need flashy designs any more.
Here’s my tips for a website design and on you can use over and over.
What do we want a webpage to be?
1. Fast loading else the surfer will jump to another site.
2. A professional looking website, else the surfer will think its a back bedroom business.
3. clean looking graphics and business image.
4. A website that will sale sale sale.
1. Ok a lot of websites have cut down on images these do have there place but don’t use them to make frames and boxes, use them as a whole image and don’t do image cutting, these take time to load and are no longer good.
2. If your sealing something conceder designing a sales page I like sales pages but I do find them to be long pages and a lot of reading, the sales page has a big text header to get the buyer interested then some notes and then a sub header, then the sales page, you need to add some good feed back notes in a sales page.
If you don’t like sales pages design a website to look like a mini sales page using the same idea but not so long add links to other parts of the site, keep the whole site clean looking add images where you think it needs it but don’t go mad.
3. If you are not good at designing images go buy some this is very important if you add an image it must look professional, also consider a photo of you or you and your family, this adds a personal touch though dress well!.
4. If the page loads fast and you have that killer header then BAM, the page is there in there face, Wow look at this? they will read the header, this is your chance to grab them, they may browse down the page so that’s when the sub headers kick in.
This Article is designed to get you thinking about the way you design, I hope you will look at the design of a site when you visit one next and start to see a trend, this will point you the right way.
All the best.
