Web Development, Web Design, Web Hosting & SEO

10 Important Web Design Tips- SEO Friendly Website

2008-07-07T03:58:00.000-07:00

A website should firstly be searched out by visitors before talking about attracting or retaining those visitors. Nowadays, a “well designed website” does not only relate to a web site’s visual attractiveness but more importantly, how friendly it is with search engines.

Below are 10 SEO friendly website designing tips where web designers should pay attention to during the early stage of their web designing process.

1. Avoid creating menu on the left-hand side of a website. If unavoidable, an alternative way is to put some text with rich keywords at the top or above the left-hand menu so that this text will be the first thing to be read by search engines.

2. Headlines are rated more important than the rest of the web page by search engines. To take advantage of this, you should have your keywords in the page headline. Since the header tag (h1) is quite large, you should format it to make it smaller.

3. Every page should contain the “title” and “description” tags with good keywords to describe the page content.The number of words for the title should not exceed 9 and that for the description should not be more than 20 words in order to keep within the limits of most search engines.

4. Try not to use Flash when possible. Flash cannot be read by the search engines to date and will cause slow page loading time and make people run away. If you really have a reason to use flash, try to make it smaller (e.g. as a flash header) and leave other area of your website for keyword-rich content.

5. Think twice on how to use graphics. Make them relevant to your content and use an alt tag with relevant keywords for search engines to read as they cannot read graphics and also for your visitors so that they can have something to read when waiting for the graphics to load.

6. Do not only use images to link out. You should always use text links to link out to important content on your web site. Spiders can follow image links, but like text links more though.

7. Avoid using frames. Some search engines cannot spider web pages with frames at all. For the other search engines that can, they can have problems spidering it and sometimes they too cannot index the web page.

8. Avoid using too complex tables when laying out your page but to keep them simple for the spiders. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the navigation bar is too complicated.

9. Use external Cascading Style Sheets and Java Script files to reduce page size and make the download time much faster. It will allow the spider to index your web page faster and can help your ranking.

10. Use standard HTML. Software such as FrontPage, Dreamweaver or a WYSIWYG editor will often add unnecessary scripting codes that will make the page larger than is needed and make it harder to crawl. It will sometimes add codes that cannot be read by search engines, causing the spider not to index the page or even the whole website. If to use, you should use those web page creator software wisely with a good understanding of html so that you may manually avoid or even delete those unnecessary scripting codes.

Source: http://www.websition.com/

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

Double Your Sales by Improving Your Existing Website

2008-07-07T03:54:00.000-07:00

If your website has been online for a while and you have been marketing it either through ads or pay-per-click search engines, it is very likely that you already have some traffic coming to your website on a regular basis. I will tell you how to make more sales by simply improving your existing website. If done correctly you will see increase in sales within days. Please note that this article will not provide you with a "Get rich overnight" scheme, so if you are looking for something like that this article is not for you.

I like to tell my clients to think of their website as brick-and-mortar business. Imagine that you are owner of a store. Customer comes in looking for something that you have to offer. I bet you would know exactly what to do to make a sale. So why not apply the same tactics to your online store. What would bring a visitor to your store and persuade him/her to buy from you? Let's make a list.

Availability of the product
Price
Location of the product in the store
Customer support

Peace of mind that he/she is buying from a real company that will deliver the quality and support your visitor is looking for

Let's now transfer that onto a website. Let's assume that you have the best priced product/service in your industry. What's next?

Location of the product in the store
Just like a real store, you online store has to be easy to navigate and all your products should be easy to find. Make sure to have clear links to all your categories. It is also a good idea to place "what's in my cart" type of box on all pages so that your customer will know what he/she already added there at all times.

Customer Support
Customer support is extremely important for any online business. Because there are no sales people to help your customer, he/she should have access to as many ways of communicating to your company representative as possible. Place your company's phone number, live support button and any other contact information on the prominent spot on every page of your website or at least put a link to contact page.

Making sure customer feels safe buying from you
This aspect is also very important. Because your customer will be buying from a virtual store, he/she have no way of knowing if there is a real company behind the website or is this just a fraudulent store. Place links to about us, terms of service and privacy policy pages on all of your pages. Make sure to put company's mailing address on the contact page.

Sometimes it is a good idea to put pictures of your staff with couple of sentences about them. That way customer feels a personal touch and knows there are real people behind your website.

Notify your customers that your website is 100% secure and they don't have to worry when providing their credit card information during the checkout process. You might also consider to get verified by services like Better Business Bureau or VeriSign. Having their seals of approval on your website will provide confidence to your visitors.

Improving your website's design
Website's design plays a crucial role in deciding whether to buy from a website or not. Besides making sure your website looks professional and every product is easily accessible you should also consider the following aspects:

Browser compatibility
Make sure your website works with all popular browsers including Mozilla, Netscape and Firefox. Now more and more people are switching to alternative browsers and it would be a shame to loose potential customer simply because he/she can't open your website.

Resolution compatibility
Also make sure that your website can be viewed in all resolutions. Under low resolutions parts of your website might not be accessible without scrolling to the side, make sure your navigation does not disappear like that.

Loading Time
Lately it has become less of an issue because most users are using high-speed internet access to access the web. That does not mean however that you should disregard visitors who have slower internet connections. Make sure your website loads as quickly as possible.

Right about now you might say "I knew all of this!" and you might be right. The question is, did you implement it? For some unknown reason most people don't bother to implement these simple things into their websites and are loosing money every day.

Source: http://www.websition.com/

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

Good Web Design Could Still Be Available to Beginners like You

2008-07-05T04:12:00.000-07:00

Web sites have been in existence for more than a decade and the idea of web design has changed considerably during the years. In the nineties, you could find web pages with web design as simple as text for its entire body with a graphic or two strewn here and there. Such web design was perfectly acceptable then and frequently relied only on tools as simple as notepad to create. Nowadays, most web sites require considerably more advanced web design, often calling for entire teams of web content creators to make them. If you're new to the field of creating web sites, how do you learn to make web sites that you would truly like to visit?

First of all, you need to visit many web sites and be critical of them. Ask yourself what elements of their web design impressed you? What elements of their web design did not seem too functional or were just plain ugly? By knowing what it is that you want, you could be taking the first steps to becoming a really good web master.

Next, you just need to learn the basics. Much of web design coding during the nineties for these web sites still function as the basics for these new more colorful web sites. Yes, web design still relies on good old HTML. Visit any tutorial online and after an afternoon, you're sure to be acquainted enough with HTML to make your own site, albeit a very simple one.

Now, with this knowledge of the basics of HTML, you can revisit your favorite web sites and see how it is that they were created. Use the browser's ability to see the coding for these sites and you'll find out what web design tricks they employed. Did the site use fancy moving graphics that responded to your mouse's clicks? Then it might just have used flash in its web design. Did it have music embedded into it as mp3? Then find out just how the web master did this using your browser's view layout feature. Any of the best web sites' web design tools are always just there, ready for you to see how they were put to use.

After this, the next step would be to emulate the sites' features. It's not too difficult as you can just copy anything using copy and paste. Place these codes into the site you're trying to create. Don't be greedy and copy every feature from every site all at once. You need to start small with one feature at a time. That way, if a feature does not work, you'll know just where the problem is.

It's not all about using the web design features, though. You should only use web features that are useful for your sites' purposes. Are you building a site only for yourself? Then try to have web design that expresses your self. Are you building a site for your families' company? Then maybe you could keep it simple and straight to the point, just giving the company's details. After uploading your web site, give yourself a couple of days rest and look back at it. That way, you'll have a fresh take on your own web design; good luck.

Republished By: http://www.mach9.com/

7 Steps to Good Quality Website Design

2008-07-05T04:08:00.000-07:00

What is quality website design? Before visual aesthetics, studies have shown that usability and utility are the most important aspects of website design that will determine a site’s longevity and popularity. After all, if a user can’t figure out how to get around your site or what it’s about, what’s the use? The following are some tips on how to construct effective, user-friendly web pages.

Step #1: Simplicity Comes First

It is of utmost importance that the navigation of your website is completely self-explanatory. In website design, your job is to reduce the amount of ambiguity in your web pages. Remove any misleading links, and keep all texts clear and succinct. A user should not have to spend time figuring out what a web page is about, or have to guess how to get from point A to B.

Step #2: Don’t Make Life Difficult

There’s nothing people hate more than filling out forms. The less the requirements for the user, the more likely he or she will take a minute to try out what you have to offer. Another useful technique in website design is to ask for personal information after the user has been given a chance to sample a particular product or service.

Step #3: Focus the User’s Attention

Focus attention to certain parts of your web page with the use of visual elements. Try to focus on the bigger picture first, such as what the web page is about, and focus on smaller details less. If you are using images, try to use images that are related or relevant to the theme of the web page. Users should understand immediately what you are trying to communicate with your images.

Step #4: Guide New Users Step by Step

Many web designers have experienced success with step-by-step type setups. These usually include large buttons that guide the user through the website without having to think. Utilizing this type of website design allows the user to comfortably navigate your site and sample all the major features and functions.

Step #5: Keep your Writing Simple

Studies have shown that a user’s attention span when browsing the net is very short. Usually, promotional writing is ignored, and long text blocks with no pictures or bold or italicized words are skipped. Good website design dictates that sentences should be short and concise, organized or bulleted, and written in conversational and objective language.

Step #6: Stick to Conventional Website Design

In the case of website, doing what everyone else does is not boring and uncreative, but efficient. Using conventional formats and naming links with conventional words or phrases greatly reduces the user’s learning curve.

Step #7: Test Early and Often

Statistics show that most mistakes in website design are not done in the implementation phase of a project, but in the design and planning phase. Typically, errors in the fundamental design of a website snowballs into bigger problems later. Therefore, it is crucial that you work all the major kinks in your design early in the game, and do it at regular intervals.

Effective website design will make browsing your web pages much more comfortable and enjoyable for users. Always remember to keep things simple and to the point. Following these 7 simple steps for effective website design will help you to create a clearer, easier to understand, and easier to navigate website.

Republished By: http://www.mach9.com/

Website: Designing Your Perfect Website?

2008-07-04T03:48:00.000-07:00

With the launch of the site, you can now design a Personal site with a few pages or a corporate website bursting with content. And you won't need any special skills, not even a working knowledge of a coding language like HTML.

A good design is pivotal to your success. When the visitor lands on your website, arriving via a link on either a search engine or from mention of your website from another source, you have about 3 seconds to catch their attention. Remember, they're only one click away from the browser button. With a quick mouse reflex, they can disappear in a nanosecond. Once they hit the back button, they'll never be seen again. On the other hand, it is just as easy for them to bookmark your website, return to it again, and even recommend it.

What is the difference between losing a visitor and winning one over? Content, obviously. Content that holds their interest and that answers some core need. But content, no matter how brilliant, how articulate, how relevant, and how well-formatted is not enough. The frame that holds the content in place -- the design -- can be just as important in securing visitor loyalty.

Design does not have to be brilliant to win respect. It has to be highly functional.

Here's an analogy:
Grocery stores are never works of architectural magnificence, but they are popular. They offer people something they need in a way they can easily find. There is an efficient system of shopping carts, marked aisles, and check out counters. The minute the door swings open, people know how to shop. Rarely are these places ugly, dirty, or disorganized. Those that exhibit chaos soon go out of business. The better stores have an austere, utilitarian beauty.

Similarly, a user-friendly website is considered to have a good design.
Mind-boggling graphics seldom impress. Like any high quality store, your virtual establishment should be attractive in a utilitarian way, with form built around function.

Here are 7 ways to create a winning design.

1. Your pages should load fast. Statistics reveal that most people have slow internet connections and that their average patience level ranges from 10 to 15 seconds.

2. Your text should be easy to read. When it is too small, it makes the reader squint and start Searching for their eyeglasses. When it is too large, they wonder if the website was designed for children learning how to read. Usually, a black text against a White background is best. If you lust for a colored background, it should be a pale shade so that the letters still stand out.

3. Your website should be easy to navigate, with each link clearly identified as one because it's blue and underlined. Similarly, graphic navigation elements like buttons and tabs should be easy to recognize and use. While you may personally delight in high-tech special effects, like a mouse movement that leaves a trail of stars, these should be avoided. Keep navigation plain, simple, and easy-to-understand. If navigation is not intuitive, a visitor will simply navigate away from your website.

4. Your layout from one page to another should have a consistent theme. If the headers and navigational clues shift dramatically from one page to another, people may very well believe that they've drifted to another website. Use a stylistic theme to weave a sense of continuity from one page to another.

5. Avoid music! Frankly, most websites that greet the visitor with a loud burst of music instantly frighten them away. It does not matter how beautiful the music. You could be playing something as soothing as Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik Allegro and still offend the visitor.
The reason people use music is because it does work offline.
When you push open the door of a physical store and are greeted with pleasant music, it uplifts you, the customer, puts you in a better mood, and encourages you to linger and shop more.
But on a website, the visitors only response is to escape as fast as is technologically possible.

6. Make your design compatible with the most popular browsers. What may look great on Mozilla Firefox may look strange on Internet Explorer. If possible, view your website from Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari.

7. Design your Web site for all screen resolutions. While most people use 1240 x 1080, some still use 800 x 600, even 640 x 768! What looks perfect with high resolution may be unrecognizable when viewing in 800 x 600.

Good design, then, is subtle. It should be quietly running in the background allowing your visitor to focus on your content. Your purpose is to entice visitors with your products and services. In other words, content becomes foreground only when design elements become background. Since it is content that sells, a "loud" design will not improve your business. Flashy presentations may attract attention offline, but online subtle effects sell.

Article Source: http://neoarticle.com

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

Start Up Website Design

2008-07-04T03:42:00.000-07:00

Setting up a website for the first time is an extremely thrilling step to take. It is a signal that you are serious about your business. After all, the Internet is a very global community, not so, and YOUR website will be exposed to this community from the day that it goes live.

But we need to make it very clear here that acquiring your website is only the first step in a long journey. There are other costs involved in setting up a website apart from the design costs.

The following aspects are all costs that go into setting up and running of a business website:

1. Direct cost of creating the website. Whether you do it yourself, or whether you pay for it, you have to remember that your time is also worth money.

2. Direct cost of marketing your website. Your website will NOT just start generating traffic all on its own. You are going to have to first spend money on marketing your website before you are going to see any return on investment. Setting up a New Website with no promotion behind it is like setting up a shop in a dark alley with no advertising. There will be no feet visiting that shop! You need to get your website out of its dark alley and into the light and that will cost money!
Even if you do the majority of this work yourself, you once again have to consider the fact that your time is worth money, and you should think carefully whether you want to invest your time in this activity, or rather spend it on other aspects of your business.

3. Indirect or direct costs of updating your website with fresh content. It is absolutely essential to update your website with new and regular content. At the minimum you will have to update new contact information, prices and special offers. But it is far better to update your site with additional information about your company and industry to capture more visitors who might be looking for the very information that you are providing. A site filled with lots of information about your industry also establishes you as the expert in the field and builds trust in your visitors and potential customers.

So how much SHOULD you spend on your website? If you are a start-up business, it is very tempting to spend as little as possible on your site, since you probably do not have lots of cash to throw around.

That is understandable, but be careful of being penny-wise and pound-foolish. A badly designed website can be extremely harmful to the image of your company, and if the technology choices that you might inadvertently tie yourself into due to opting for a low cost, or cheap option, are the wrong choices, you will probably find it quite expensive to extricate yourself from these design decisions.

What do we mean by this?
I have often seen websites that have obviously been done ‘on the cheap’.

The detrimental effects of this are often that:

1. The website quality overall is low, with badly designed graphics, layout and functionality. This gives a bad impression of your company.

2. Often, inexperienced Web Designers design the site using frames or use javascript for navigation. This makes the site inaccessible for Search engines, thereby rendering the site completely useless from a search engine traffic perspective.

Websites can be very costly (quality takes time, and time equals money, it is as simple as that), so if you are just starting out with your first website and your company is cash strapped, by all means try and go for a lower cost option, but educate yourself first of all the options, and if you can, go for the best quality website that your money can buy – it will save you in the long term.

Article Source: http://neoarticle.com

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

Create Your Own Family Tree (Genealogy) Website

2008-07-02T04:21:00.000-07:00

Are you researching your family history? A great way of generating interest that may lead to further information is to create a web site of your family tree and family history information.
Many of the better Genealogy Software programs provide the opportunity to do this. Alternatively, submitting your GEDCOM file to the numerous (and free) genealogy sites gives your name and history a presence on the World Wide Web. Another alternative is to use a free hosting service, eg Yahoo GeoCities where you can create your own web site. However these free hosting sites often have restrictions on how much you can display and are often difficult for the first time user.

The best way to design, develop and publish your own personalized family tree website is to use a HTML Editor like FrontPage or one of the many (sometimes free) HTML editors available on the internet. You will need to purchase a domain name and web hosting.

The following tips will help you create a family tree web site:

Title. The correct title to your web page is critical. It helps search engines identify your page, and searchers to find your page. Something like “The History of the Jones Family in Alabama” or “The Ancestors and Family History of Robert Jones in Alabama” is far better than “My Family Tree”!.

Header. The first paragraph, or header, should contain the surnames of the principal families researched and displayed in your family tree. Again, not just a list of names, but proper sentences which include key words such as family, family tree, ancestors, genealogy and family history.

Content. Visitors and search engines are looking for quality content, particularly on the home page of your web site. Just a list of names being researched is not enough. Compose a few paragraphs briefly describing your family history, with links to your other pages for more detailed family information. Limit your images on the home page to perhaps to one family photograph, again with links to your other photographs.

Navigation. Good websites have good navigation which allows visitors and search engines to find theirway around the web site. Navigation buttons or text links must be on all pages. Particularly important is a Home link on each page.

Meta Tags. Meta Tags are essential on all web sites. Without Meta Tags web sites will be hard for searchers to find and will rank very lowly in many search engine listings. There is no point in having a web site that cannot be found. Do it soon to improve your ‘findability’ and search engine ranking. A later article on Meta tags will help further.

The Importance of Links. If you have a family tree web site, having other genealogy web sites linking to you is a proven way of generating traffic and improving your page rank in search engines. ‘Link Popularity’ is measured by the number if inward links you have to your sites. Inward links should be
from quality genealogy sites. A links page on your web site is essential. Links can be obtained by inviting webmasters from similar sites to exchange links with you, or by joining a link exchange site. Do not exchange links with inappropriate sites eg gaming and porn! On your links page invite other web
masters to contact you for an exchange. So that the search engines and visitors can find your links page, ensure that there is a link on your home page to the links page.

Contact Details. So that visitors can contact you it is important that you display your email address prominently. To avoid email harvesters and spammers show your email address as an image or use a free email
account, eg hotmail.

Observing the above tips will help you build a web site that proudly represents your family tree. Later articles will cover other issues relating to family tree web site design.

Article Source: http://www.familyhistoryarticles.com

Published By:http://www.mach9.com/

Build websites easier with remade templates

2008-07-02T04:14:00.000-07:00

To most people the process of building a web site remains somewhat of a mystery. This confusion probably stems from the fact that there is a cornucopia of web sites on the Internet. Even with wide variety of sites, every single one can be divided into two sections: front-end and back-end.

The front-end is the first thing that it is designed. It encompasses the look and feel of a web site. This is probably the most established part of the web site production process. Design has been around since Guttenberg printed his first bible. Much of what has been used in print media (especially art magazines) has transferred to the web.

Most well thought out web sites start off with sketches on paper. We like using the big huge box of crayons, the one with the crayon sharpener built in. Most of the colors in the "big box" are pleasing to the eye and are web friendly. If you use begin paying attention to sites you'll notice that only a few colors are actually used, 256 to be exact. Only about 100 of those won't give you a headache when you look at them. On request we will give these early designs to a client that wants to control the look and feel of their site. The site, of course, never ends up looking like the early designs. The same idea and concept is there but because of restrictions colors and whole images are lost.

This brings us to the next part of the front-end, the actual site creation. This is what many people view as the most important, which is what separates a professional looking site from an amateur one.

The images are created using products from across the board. Mainly, designers stick to industry standards like Photoshop and Illustrator. After getting the basic image in terms of proportions and size the designer should create the static HTML page.

. This is the basic page you would see if you viewed the page source. This is one of the most rewarding, most hated and most tedious parts of the web design process. Each browser displays a page differently. Since most users either use Internet Explorer 4+ or Netscape 4.5 we cater to those two. Sometimes we build a different site for each, trying to maintain the same layout

That concludes the front-end section. Personal sites and some small business sites stop here. While this maybe acceptable today, tomorrow any web site hoping to attract and keep visitors is going to have a strong back-end.

There are many sites and website designers that offer premade templates, these have the entire graphical layout that a page needs.

For those with little or no experience with website design software, templates have quickly become a practical solution to professional website design. Most of the top end sites offer a huge selection of very impressive, easy-to-edit website templates. All you have to do is check your email containing the link to download the .zip file. The html in these templates is compatible with Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage. The major advantage is the price, they run anywhere from $20 to $70. Another great advantage is you don't have to hire a web designer, who usually takes 1 to 2 weeks to produce a page of such high quality. Webmasters, either novice or expert, can easily save thousands of dollars on design fees by using website templates.

Article Source: http://www.familyhistoryarticles.com

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

Small Business Web Design – making the most of it!

2008-07-01T04:00:00.000-07:00

All that the participants(websites) in this online world get is – a space of the size of the monitor. So nothing is too big or too small for the Internet. But however, what really matters is – the design and the contents of your website. How effectively you make use of the same is crucial in carving a niche for yourself in this highly competitive online business.

If you are a small business house and you don't have a website, then you are probably losing more customers than you realize. Your website is what can make your presence felt in the online world – provided you do the right thing and in the right way for your website.

A small business website doesn't need to have too many features like the other websites does. It just needs to be effective. It needs to connect to your customers and let them know - why they should choose you over thousands other he/she can make a list of.

'Budgets' – can be the constraints for small businesses, unlike the giant corporates for whom finances are not an issue. Hence keeping a proper balance between the investments and ROI, small businesses can make the most of what an effective website can provide.

Below are some of the things that you might want to consider for small business web design:

Kind of website: Identify the purpose of your website and what kind of customers that you want to communicate with. Unless you get everything clear for yourself - there is the least probability your customers would do.

Good Design: First thing that catch holds of any visitors to a website is the design. If your small business web design is highly eye catchy – then your visitors certainly might extend their stay at your website.

Effective web page layout: Layouts has to be simple and consistent. You can't take the risk of confusing your visitors. So keep your layout strictly organized and effective. This will help the visitors to search for what they are looking for.

Giving proper feedback:
The web designer that you might have chosen for your small business web designing might have very less idea about the kind of business you are into. So give them the required constructive feedback, which they (designers) can use them effectively to develop your website.

Domain name and hosting:
Getting a good domain name for your website is very essential. It can immensely help you get proper ranking in the search engine pages. Your domain name should make sense of the business you are into. You can easily avail a good hosting and domain name from many reliable hosting providers.

Optimization of your website:
This is one of the most important aspect that you need to take care of once your website goes live. Search engine optimization can boost your search engine page rankings in the long run and drive more traffic towards your site. There are numerous SEO providers today. Go for the one that has had reliable experience. A highly optimized website can give you the ranks and the traffic. Which finally can give you your potential customers.

Keeping your priorities straight and the goals that you want to achieve through your website is essential. Make the best use of the tools and techniques available today in the Internet. And then you can finally make big out of your small business.

Article Source: http://www.contentfueled.com

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

A Truly Custom Unique Website

2008-07-01T03:56:00.000-07:00

A custom-designed, truly unique website allows the Web surfer that initial positive response, which is required within the first few seconds of viewing a site, in order to keep the viewer interested and then move him into the site to actually view and possibly buy your product. Anything short of unique, interest grabbing, visually stimulating content upon first look at a website, usually does not elicit a second look. I have said it many times in these pages, and admittedly, this has been a theme that I have continued to echo now over a significant amount of time. However, it only ever takes me a few moments of surfing the Internet to revisit this theme in my mind and to motivate me to continue the pilgrimage holding out the holy Grail of the truly custom unique website.

They say the nice thing about advice is that you don't have to take it. Having preached the message for quite some time that a truly unique website is not just helpful on the Internet but is practically the only way to garner enough initial attention from a Web surfer to send them inside your site to view the information you really want them to see, I feel that all I can do is continue to try to get the information out there and hope that some people find it to be good advice. Customizing your website is instrumental in setting your business apart from the competition. It conveys the idea to your customers that you are different and unique. It literally sets you apart in a way that is positive to your viewer and will attract rather than lose the viewers attention. By continually customizing you will even be able to create a certain theme for your business. Over time concentrating on this theme will brand your business. So it is very important in order to separate your business from your competition that you create a truly custom unique website.

You continually hear the phrase dress to impress, when you're going to meet new people you put on your best outfit, so that the initial impression you make will be a good one. This is a procedure that works very well in creating a website, you dress it up in a unique and creative way, in effect you give it its best outfit, and you get that initial impression from people that you are looking for, and that you need. It creates a specific identity to your product line or service. To get people to notice your business as being different and exceptional is a big plus, especially for an online business because the Internet is saturated with new businesses everyday and the competition is fierce. A customer appreciates the kind of appeal branding creates and will linger on a website that offers that rare commodity of creativity and uniqueness in web design.

It is so much more advantageous to use a well-orchestrated custom web design for your online business that it really cannot be overstated. First impression is the best salesperson for any online business and an original, well designed, well-dressed, as it were, website offers that irreplaceable commodity that every business owner strives to achieve for his customers, the feeling of being truly welcome. Your truly unique website will stand out and put you on the "world wide map" for your product or service.

Article Source: http://www.contentfueled.com

Published By: http://www.mach9.com/

Website Design - Attract your Traffic with professionalism

2008-06-30T04:17:00.000-07:00

A web site is a very commanding and an inexpensive marketing and advertising gizmo and a great way to develop your business into the online market world. Web Designing is an innovative work. For the millions and millions of web surfers, your web site is only the first impression of your business and your trustworthiness. The key concern in web design is how to add value to the user's experience and how to make them feel that they are truly got something by visiting your web site.

Now-a-days in this www world, all industries are in a need of good looking and attractive website, but few are eager to pay for an expertly designed site. Business owners on the other hand want their site that attracts visitors and wants to bring them back again and again, and hopefully buying their services or products. But, it can be rather baffling to choose the right web site designer/ website designing company. Only a specialized well designed website will bring the visitors in, and even then it may not due to the amount of competition on the web.

Web design industry is one of the most hastily developing areas in the world of commerce. The sizzling growth of WWW has created a demand for web sites. As this is the known fact that Web Design is the never-ending topic but, most of the companies are in very good position to deliver wow-inducing services apart from the other competitors in the given market.

Web design is a composite discipline that rivets an extensive range of skills. In fact, I would go as far as to say that, web design is “information design”. So, before you really go for the website designing, make it sure that it answers the following queries:

- Is the site intelligent and organized?
- Does it load quickly?
- Is it user-friendly?
- Are the designs exclusive, unique and creative?
- Whether they have used latest technology while designing the site?

Designing web site which loads quickly doesn’t signify that you have to compromise on the design. A diminutive effort on CSS and paying little bit more attention to the file sizes means that your site looks professional and loads quickly at the same time.

Only professional and extraordinary Web Design Company has positive answers to above questions and this result to a Successful Business.

There are many companies in India offering professional web design services and graphic design services with affordable rates. And also feel free to circulate and share out this as you wish - if you can post it on your own site or email it to your friends, then please do. It’s real time to reproduce the word far and wide amongst the all community across the world.

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Published By http://www.mach9.com/

Getting Motivated When Designing a Website

2008-06-30T04:09:00.000-07:00

Whatever your skills, whatever your interests, everyone has the ability to be creative in their work. However, we can often lose our motivation and drive to create, making it difficult to stay focused on a particular work plan or project, especially in web design. So what is the best method for staying motivated?

The key to maintaining your own motivation to be creative is actually a long term effort. Starting out can be tough, and in most cases the most difficult part. But with the right methods and consistency you will be able to reach a point where staying motivated is easy. It is a simple case of knowing when to make the right choices at the right times.

Obviously everyone is unique and each of you will have your own methods and actions into being creative. But here is the chance to read something that offers some possible methods and solutions when getting motivated and staying motivated.

The main things to take into consideration are:

Set goals
You will find it is a lot easier to stay motivated when you feel like you’ve reached a target. Give yourself something to achieve and break the work load down. If it is a large website project you are working on, set yourself mini goals so you are reaching targets every few hours or days rather than spending weeks trying to get the lot done.

Small bite-sized objectives
As mentioned briefly above, set yourself up for more success than failure by being realistic in goal setting and come up with small, bite-sized tasks to start with. As you complete more tasks, start making your goals more ambitious.

Build a creative workstation
Whether you design websites at your desk, in a dark room or a home office, you need to assign a place to yourself where you can be creative. Once you’ve decided on that place, use it! Each creative task and success you achieve in your ‘creative workstation’, will slowly train your mind to be creative within it. When I first set up my creative workstation it took me about 3 months for it to click in my mind that it was actually my workstation but as soon as I enter now, I can focus my mind that I’m ready to work.

Walk away, but don’t quit!
Whatever you do, you must always remember to never give up on a website or problem. Put them to one side for a while but always come back it later on, even if it means coming up with a theory for solving the problem. These problems build confidence and develop a nice portfolio.

Find your creative time zone
Just like your body’s sleeping and eating times, there is also a best time when your body can be most creative. For me, the best time to be creative used to be late at night, now-a-days it’s usually between midday and late evening. Although I do have a creative burst where I get most work done after 9pm. Your main objective is find out when you are at your most creative side and start using that time to your advantage.

Using the right tools
When being creative designing websites you need to ensure that you are using the right tools for the job. The ‘right tools’ doesn’t necessarily mean the best tools but being creative can be difficult enough, therefore, the idea is to make the job / project as easy as possible. For example, my best choice design software has got to be ‘Photoshop’, you may make this more difficult by trying to use ‘mspaint’ to come up with some amazing graphics. It’s something you just don’t do!

Following progress
One of the key points in being creative is to follow your own progress. As mentioned in step 1; the main objective is to break the task down into smaller parts. Therefore, after a few weeks working on a project look back and see how far you’ve come. If you don’t stop every so often to see where you were a couple of months ago, and where you are now – do it! You might just surprise yourself on how much progress you’ve made and how your creativity has grown.

Get out of the house
This may seem a bit like the step where you walk away from your work and come back to it later, but there is a fine line between setting aside some work and actually taking a break from your workstation. Whilst a creative workstation can often be the best practice, it sometimes helps to go somewhere different to work. It can provide a different level of ideas and influence your creativity and work.

Work through it
You may think that it’s pointless trying to force yourself to be creative when you’re ‘not in the mood’ but often it can work in your favour. It may feel difficult to start with but as you gain momentum you’ll find your motivation returns almost every time! After all, you have nothing to lose; you get the job done and you’re still producing quality work / websites. It may not seem like they are of good quality but you may still be working the same as you usually do, you’re just in the wrong state of mind to realise.

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Published By http://www.mach9.com/

Give Extra Fuel To Your Website

2008-06-28T03:10:00.000-07:00

Website Designers are well versed with every facet of website designing techniques. They are developers having vast information on developing various kinds of websites. Website development can be of any type depending on the criteria of the client requirement. Understanding the requirement of client, a website is developed by Web Design. In Web Design you find the process of planning, modeling and implementation of electronic media content via Internet in the form of markup language and displayed as graphical user interface. We all know that website is a collection of electronic files which is available on remote server and presents interfaces or contents or pages in the form of web pages on user’s request. The web pages created by web a designer that consists of forms, text, bitmap images and various other things. Multiple web pages having contents and images total constitute to form a website. Plug-ins like flash, complex animations, video and digital sounds are also used during a website designing. Where as plugs in plug-ins takes more time to open a web page compared to a normal displaying image and content page. Web Design create website with the intent to cater to the needs of millions of people whoever want to access services of that particular website. There are various motives behind formation of a website, it may be a professional site or for a personal use. The intention of Web Design is to create a perfect a website with whatever purpose the site is to be developed which can help users in every possible ways. Website contains millions of information, which a user can access to gain knowledge. There are various kinds of website developed by designers for various purposes. Some of them are like community sites, search engines, services offering sites and thousands others. On community sites you will be able to communicate with people around the world, search engine sites will help to find out various kinds of information desired by users. And if you are using a services site, it will obviously help you to use the services provided on that website. On a website you will find bundle of information on a particular topic or a subject. In simple terms it is just like a book, which contains number of pages where you will get total information on your preferred topic. Web designers are responsible for arranging web pages accordingly to create a proper website. If the website is correctly developed by designers, then the site gets enormous response from the users and hence popularity of the site is clear.

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Get Something More with Website Design

2008-06-28T03:04:00.000-07:00

The web pages created by web designers that consist of forms, text, bitmap images and various other things. Multiple web pages having contents and images total constitute to form a website. e-fuzion’s Web Design organization create web sites with the intent to cater needs of millions of people whoever want to access services of different websites. There are various motives behind creation of a web site, first a designer develops some idea, and set-up it in proper way, give lively influence in it. After that a design is prepared. We mainly know that a website is a collection of electronic files which is available on remote server and presents interfaces or contents or pages in the form of web pages on user’s request. The Web Design Company mach9usa creates a great reputation in all over the world due to its quick innovative ideas. Web Design Company mach9usa reliable intension is to create a perfect website with what ever purpose the site is to be developed which can help users in every possible ways. Web site contains millions of information, which a user can access to gain knowledge. There are various kinds of website designing organizations id Delhi for various purposes. In web designing you basically found dissimilar types of articles, it may be about travel, real estate, education or many more. With Web designing you get major knowledge’s about website designing. And these developments can do on various sites; some of them are like community sites, search engines, services offering sites and thousand others. Through this correspond site you can create a link with different people. mach9usa designs the web with different originality, creativity and by various innovative ideas. Understanding the requirements of clients, a website is developed by Web Design usa Company mach9usa. In Web Design Company mach9usa you find large number of information particularly on the basic of its reality.

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The Secrets of Corporate Web Page Design

2008-06-27T04:09:00.000-07:00

Web page design is a simple way that anyone can have a great looking website. But how do the corporate companies get websites that are out of this world? They follow the same basic rules that anyone with a web page should follow in order to bring in more views and give customers an easy way of navigating a website.

The first element that any website should have is consistency. You will see this in all corporate websites. All the pages should have the same layout and color scheme in order to make the information flow better. You can tell a beginner site from ones that have benefited from the utilization of web design. A beginner's website will have a different font and background color for every single page. This throws off the viewer and can make for difficulty in seeing why any of these pages are even linked together. If you want to sell your business, you must be consistent.

Another way to make your website look just the corporate sites is to have plain and simple graphics. You can have pictures and other multimedia, but don't put it in the first page. This could possibly turn off your customers from coming back to your site. Do not make anyone sit through a mini presentation before they are able to access your site. If you want to have graphics, make sure that they are clean and work well with your websites color scheme. For multimedia, you will want to have this in an area of your site that you can navigate your customers to. And when you use multimedia, use a format that is compatible for most internet browsers. There's nothing more frustrating than having a website tell you that you have to download a new plug in or type of program just in order to play a video or listen to a message. This will only make you lose business. Corporate websites, unless they know their target base wants these things, tends to avoid them on their website.

There's another thing that corporate websites probably spend a lot of money on: checking their website personality. They sometimes conduct polls and focus groups in order to see what the results are, but you can do this with your own site for cheaper. Ask friends and colleagues to view your site and ask them how it made them feel. Is your website friendly? Does it stand out from the crowd? There are a lot of different questions you can ask them in order to see what type of website you are presenting to the public, and you certainly don't have to spend as much money on this area like the corporate businesses do.

Making a website that will look just a good as a corporate website is not a hard task if you make sure to use the basic of web design in order to create a site that is approachable and pleasing to your potential customers.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Improve the Usability of Your Website

2008-06-27T04:02:00.000-07:00

If you are running a commercial website marketing plan, it is of absolute paramount importance that the website be properly designed. This is something most people understand clearly. A confusing or poorly designed website will not do wonders for making sales. Again, this is something most people understand. However, there is a single mindedness people have towards web design and it ties into web development marketing. That is, they assume that web design refers exclusively to the text and graphics of the site. This, however, is really only a partial analysis. In reality, the usability of the website is also critical for website marketing. Without a "usable" website the ability to convert visitors to paying customers may be impossible.

On a baseline level, the usability of a website refers to how easy it is for a visitor to navigate a site. Surely, a commercial website will have a number of different "areas" to it. These include contact sections, about us sections, product or service descriptions, etc. In order to arrive at these different sections, people need to click on the links that will lead them there. Of course, if they are unable to find those links then all your website development marketing will be for naught.

Why would people not be able to locate these links? There could be a number of reasons. The font for the links could be far to small to see; the color of the font is too similar to the background colors which makes them blend together; the links could be placed on a very inappropriate section of the website; and pretty much anything else that would be an aesthetically bad idea.

In reality, there are a number of ways one can sink the usability of a website. However, follow a little bit of simple website marketing and design common sense would circumvent these problems. A site should always be clear, concise and properly illustrated. The various links and sections to the inner pages of the site need to be properly marked. Text descriptions should be comprehensive but neither brief nor verbose. In short, proper composition and design skills should be employed. Improving the usability of a website does not require any special magic or plans. It really is a matter of crafting a coherent website. This is critical because poor usability of a site will undermine any web development marketing plans you may have.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Web Design And Web Development Article.

2008-06-25T04:21:00.000-07:00

Web designing is a process of designing the electronic files through planning, concepts, ideas, creativity, thinking, language etc, which is delivered via internet in the form of web site. The main purpose of the web designing is to create a web site. Web site interprets the information about particular topic and website design is creation and arrangement of web pages that can be done by web development that includes but not limited to; Web Development, eCommerce, CMS, Content Management System, shopping Cart, Business Website Design, Flash Website design, business development.

Main intent of designing/developing a website is to promote the business, advertising, access of online products, publishing news, giving information, education, money matters, etc….

It is important that the website must be well developed and designed, not under construction, and content must be specific and neat about the particular topic, otherwise, it will not attract any visitor.

So to design and develop a website, several companies of website designing can be found on the internet, but the trick here is to choose appropriate company. One of which on the internet for web designing and web development named http://www.mach9.com, is a well-established, well-experienced company, which also provides the best, qualitative, affordable services of web designing, web development, eCommerce, web, shopping cart, logo design, etc.

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Web Designing Is A Critical Decision

2008-06-25T04:18:00.000-07:00

Today, the best way to reach to the every corner of this world is by developing a website. It will just be a matter of few clicks and you will be in front of anyone who may be sitting anywhere in this world. That is the charisma of internet and websites. However, when you talk about websites, it doesn’t mean that all you need is a web space with a particular domain name; in fact, there are a lot of other things that have to be kept in mind.

Visual appeal of your website will be the first thing that will earn you a lot of visitors. Secondly, it will be the systematic approach that you must use in presenting the web contents and information about your products as that will make you to convert those visitors in regular buyers. So, it is all about web designing in the most effective way.

If you are looking to design a website, then the first option that you can always choose is to hire a professional who may let you bring your dream into reality. However, you can also do that on your own if you are having some previous knowledge about web designing. Apparently, it’s all about creativity, but, in reality, it’s much more than creativity as it requires a certain level of proficiency in dealing with specific designing tools.

Nevertheless, you can find these tools online and can proceed with your web designing. Also, spending some time on reading the tutorials on using some specific tools will always help. Also, there are so many languages and scripts that have to be understood in order to create a nice and unbeatable web design. You can also choose as if you require static web pages or dynamic web pages.

However, it will be relatively difficult and will involve greater awareness about technologies to create dynamic web pages as you may have to use JavaScript, Actionscript and other such scripting to make your web site lively.

To create dynamic contents, flash is another thing that can be used and in most situations, it will be the better idea to do that as there are some softwares that help you to produce graphics according to your liking. Although, it takes some time and efforts to produce a dynamic page with flash animations, but, it can really uplift the visual appeal of your website which is absolutely important.

However, when you will be designing your website, you must understand that it should not include so many heavy graphics including pictures and other electronic contents as they can hinder the speed of your web site. It is the basic thing of designing a web page as if your site will take time to get loaded, you will end up losing customers as no one have the time to wait for your site to load, especially, when they have other options to explore.

So, keep it simple, yet powerful along with a simple and comprehensible navigational structure which is momentous as well. Also, pay a sufficient attention to scaling and color scheme of your website to exude that professionalism that can grip the imagination of a casual visitor.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Few Tips for Website Redesign

2008-06-24T04:10:00.000-07:00

Website redesigning has become a regular phenomenon nowadays. This is due to various reasons. The most important factor for website redesign is to prevent the site from looking old and out of date. Websites need continuous improvement to keep it at par with other websites. However, this should not be the only motivation behind website redesign: it should have much deeper objectives.

Websites should be redesigned in a manner, keeping in mind the needs and perceptions of the visitors. It must be more and more informative and visually attractive so as to hold the attention of the visitors. To redesign your website successfully, some important points should be followed.

For any website to remain purposeful, it is of utmost significance that is updated or redesigned at regular intervals. Before starting website redesign, it is important that you decide the aim of your redesigning.

Evaluation: To achieve best results, it is necessary that you evaluate the existing website and note its success and failures. While redesigning, try to overcome your failures you have earlier faced.

Creativity: For any website redesign to be successful, it must be original and creative. There must be something different and something special to make your website stand out among the others.

Aims: First, set the goals for website redesign and then start working keeping in mind those goals. This will help you achieve them more perfectly.

Knowledge: Just as you will not start on any other work before acquiring some knowledge about it, your approach should also be similar before you start you website redesign. Website traffic data as well as feedback from the users should be properly analyzed so as to understand the needs and expectations of the visitors. These can be known with the help of online surveys, focus groups, interviews, and usability tests.

Knowing the Competitors: In order to improve your own website, it is vital that you conduct a research about your competitor websites. This can be easily achieved if you study the competitors’ websites carefully. Pay special attention to such details on how they have designed their website. You should try to understand their communication and technological concepts.

Maintaining the Web Standards: While doing website redesign, it is of utmost importance that you maintain the necessary standard of your website and that your website must be able to meet up the expectations of the visitors.

It Is a Project: To achieve success, it essential that you treat website redesign as a project. So every aspect should be well planned. The scope should be well defined, the budget should be fixed, and resources should be set beforehand. Themes should be decided beforehand to avoid confusion in the future.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Web Site Design to Attract More Visitors

2008-06-24T04:06:00.000-07:00

Web site design is actually the designing of a page for introducing a collection of information about certain topics or subjects. Web site design is the creation and proper arrangement of the web pages that are there in a particular website. Each of the websites deals with a specific topic or subject. The professionals make the web site design so that the information inside the web pages is easily accessible to the website visitors.

Various aspects of web site design are there today in internet world. However, the aspects are changing day by day and are changing for the better.

There are mainly two types of websites – the commercial and the non-commercial websites. The basic aspects of the non-commercial websites are almost the same and the aspects emerge because of the variation in objectives. The goals vary according to the response and the desired exposures. Whereas, in the case of a commercial website, there are certain aspects that may be counted as following:

• The content: Content is the mot essential aspect of the web site design. Every site has a characteristic of its own and the content of the web pages vary according to the basic character of the website. The websites through their contents try to attract its target audience.
• The usability: If a site consists of user-friendly interface and navigations, then it is capable of attracting more number of audiences towards it and that makes it more popular.
• The appearance: The overall look of the website should be such that it is easy on the eyes of the users and are attractive to the readers. The text and the graphics of a certain websites are similar and the type of the characters is uniform throughout the web pages. At the time of web site design, the designer must keep in mind that the style of the whole website is similar and has a professionally appealing and relevant layout.
• The visibility: There are certain patterns of viewing that the readers are used to. Therefore, before designing a website, the designer must keep in mind that the web pages have an easy readability statistics and are easy to the eye for a comfortable viewing.

There are also certain strategies for organizing a website for non-tangible products. It is the job of the website designer to organize informational services and websites while creating a new web site design. He should be also aware about the division of the content when the website is not selling tangible products.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Important steps to consider before designing website for your business

2008-06-23T04:14:00.000-07:00

1. THE FOCUS OF THE WEBSITE
This is the first thing you want to define clearly before any other step is taken. You need to decide what the main purpose of the website is - what you want to focus on in terms of a subject.
It is important that you define this step as clearly as possible because a website’s focus has a major impact on the whole project; this is the ‘foundation’ of the site.
For example:
A web store.
Information hub for established clients.
Branding website.

2. SPECIFIC WEBSITE FEATURES
This builds off of the first step, where now you look at actual features that you need to implement. For example:
A shopping cart for an online store
A password protected section of the website
Again, the more detail the better.

3. MAP OUT THE MAJOR SECTIONS OF THE WEBSITE
With the first two steps completed, you’re ready to actually start mapping out the major sections of the website; drawing out quick diagrams of the website is a useful way of doing this.
A diagram can easily show the hierarchy of a website and how the various sections are related to each other.

4. WRITE OUT YOUR FINAL CONTENT
This part is usually left to the end … then people wonder why they have to go back and rethink the structure of the site.
All websites are driven by content; it’s the content that makes a site effective and successful. As such, this part of the process is arguably the most important, so you need to pay attention to it.

5. FIND A STYLE / LOOK FOR THE WEBSITE
At this stage of the process, you are ready to start looking at the visual aspect of the site – the design. You have a few options:
Hire a graphic designer / web designer
Come up with your own design – I’m assuming you have some artistic and design experience.
Buy yourself a website template and save time and money.

6. BUILD THE WEBSITE
Yes, I know it seems impossible but you can finally start building the actual site at this point!
With the above questions answered and steps completed, you’ll find the process of building the website (actually writing out the code,) is much easier and you will have reduced the chance of having to go back and redo things.

7. EVALUATE THE WEBSITE, MAKE THE REQUIRED CHANGES / UPDATES
Once you've built the website, you should walk away from it for a day or two. This will allow you to come back and evaluate it with fresh eyes. It might also be a good idea to get someone who has not worked on the site, to take a look as well.
Here are some of the things you should be looking for:
Clean easy to update design/structure.
Good usability in the design - and all that implies.
Fast loading 'light' pages.
Intelligent use of technology - using Flash when it makes sense not because you want a 'cool' intro!
The website’s ability to convey the meaning/message of the website quickly if not instantly.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

The Dos and Don’ts of Website Design

2008-06-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

Website design has become one of the mot important aspects of advertising these days, the reason behind this being the gaining significance of the virtual marketplace. According to the latest statistics, almost 12.5% people in the entire world use the Internet to find what they are looking for, and this is a pretty respectable figure. However, with the rising competition online, effective website design can be challenging to the designers and webmasters engaging in the activity.

There are a few criteria for being successful in website design – they are, namely, content, search engine optimization, designing, ease of navigation, marketing, layout, etc. However, there are a few other things that the designers and webmasters should consciously avoid overindulging in. In fact, doing more of these than what is needed can be source of negative returns, thereby causing commercial loss.

Empathizing with what the stakeholders and the patrons need is extremely important for a website design to be effective. It is expected of a website designer to be well informed, having researched and read professionally inclined books, and applying the understanding acquired thereby. Obviously, the website design expert should be entirely conversant about the traits of a disappointing website, so that he/she knows what to avoid.

So, here are a few things that miserable websites do, which you should avoid while designing your website.

1. The miserably designed websites do not inform the users about the business they offer and their operations.
2. Their website design does not include email addresses or the relevant contact information to facilitate correspondence.
3. These websites use horrific colors for their pages – colors that do not go with each other or with the content.
4. The website design use backgrounds that are ugly.
5. These websites use preposterous texts that hardly coincide with the webpage background making it virtually unreadable.
6. These websites contain unpardonable spelling and grammatical errors.

Bearing these salient points in mind from the very beginning is the foremost duty of any website design expert. Done these, the following are some other points you should keep in mind.

Avoid Plug-Ins and Multimedia

A website design can never be effective in driving in traffic if it uses too many useless plug-ins and multimedia applications. These, in fact, are real nuisance and can deter a visitor from those elaborate download procedures. This is a definite handicap in finding what they are looking for and this may very well prompt them to look elsewhere. However, these things are a necessity for music and entertainment websites, and they can use these according to their business demands. Also, be picky about the various formats that the viewers can use. Website design image formats such as .JPEG, .GIF, and .HTML and audio formats such as .Au, .WAV, and .AIF are handy. PostScript formats are better if not used.

Use HTML old version

It is better to use the old version HTML because some universal browsers do not support the most specific features. Although the latest version HTML are far more user friendly and useful, the website design expert have to remember that most of the users do not yet use the latest versions. Therefore, in order to see more traffic, the previous version remains a better choice.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

While designing Website

2008-06-21T04:33:00.000-07:00

Web site design is based on your business needs and branding directions. Decide which type of website you are going to design. While designing the web site you have to keep some things in mind. Very first thing is that the Background and Text applied on the webpage should be arranged in proper way. Use colors carefully. Bad color combination, small & stylish font may cause hard reading as well as bad impressions of web browsers' experience.

The second most important point of web design is Content. Content is the stuff (text and graphics) of Web pages. It is not just arrangement or design of web page. To write Better Web Content is very important, while writing use short sentences, terms & paragraphs. Paragraph should contain only one or two ideas. Most important thing while writing does not copy content from other websites to avoid facing duplicate content penalty.

The pages of the website should appear professional. Website should be easy to navigate, means it should be user friendly. Make sure that all links are clickable, as most of the users are in favor of the easy navigation on any site. Site maps and proper headline tags do count.

Use high-resolution graphics which are light in weight for faster downloading, as it takes minimum time. The images should add to the content and help in describing the sites resources and services. Always use descriptive title and meat tags on page. If you are not taking care of your headline tags, not adding Meta tags in each of your web pages, or if you have been stuffing a lot of keywords in your websites, then you will surely not gain the favor of search engines.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Main Arenas for Starting Up a New Website

2008-06-21T04:27:00.000-07:00

Are you planning to start up your own website? There are certain essential parts of any website that has to be worked to start it. The main features of a website are as follows…

Selecting a domain name – Domain name provides an identity to a website. It confirms your space on the internet as it denotes the name of your website that is entered by a user in search box to land on your site. For instance- yahoo.com, sujivan.org, usa.net and so on. Usually the user should opt for a domain name that ends with .com, .net or, org. These are the most common extensions used by the surfers. Many companies offer domain names at discounted rate, so keep an eye on online discounts if you want to purchase domain name at discounted price.

Web Hosting – Every website that is being launched requires a web hosting for database support and web application. Many service providers offer free web hosting service, this should be avoided and instead go for companies providing this service by taking some nominal monthly fees. Otherwise chances of the host offering free web hosting to put up their banner on your site is there which may prove harmful for your business. If the user does not have much traffic they can go for shared hosting and when increases switch on to solo web hosting traffic.

Website design and development– Next step is to hire a professional web designer to design your site. Take a note that the designer should have knowledge of HTML which is basic requirement for web designing. If you desire increased traffic to your site make sure that it is pleasant looking, fast downloadable and dynamic. Once web design part is complete then move for website development. Hire a professional web developer to develop advance functionality of your website.

Content creation – Content management and creation is one of the most important aspects of any website. It can be considered as heart of any site, as relevant information, goals, objectives, discussions, etc fall under the content category. Can you imagine any website without content? Not possible, it’s the backbone of every site whether personal or commercial. The content should be to the point and relevant, devoid of any grammatical errors.

Search engine optimization – To get increased traffic to your website, it is essential that it is visible in first or second page of major search engines like Google, msn and yahoo. This can be done by search engine optimization of certain keywords that the user is likely to enter in the search box. Higher rank in the search engine lands more visitors at your website. You can hire an SEO expert or give this work to your web development company who has this facility.

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Important Rules in Website Design

2008-06-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minimum detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose for you. Here are five important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well. If you follow these you will have a website perform the way you want and need.

1) You should avoid the use of splash pages

A splash page is the first pages your visitor will see when they arrive at your website. Splash pages normally have a nice image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". Some are flash images. The visitor to your site must then click this image to enter your site. In fact, they are just nice images on your page. They in fact have no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) You should avoid using excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements. So you will in turn just be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content to your visitors and weave your relevant affiliate links into your website content. Doing this will let your visitors feel that they are not being pushed to buy from you and instead want to buy from you. It will also make your site more eye friendly to the visitor.

3) Make sure you have a simple and clear navigation menu

You have to provide your visitors with a simple and very straightforward navigation menu on your website. This way even a young child will know how to use the navigation menu. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site. Also make the navigation menu stand out to your visitors. Having a navigation menu that your visitor can’t find or see will also make them leave your site. Remember the importance of colors.

4) Make sure you have a clear indication of where the user is

When your visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information on your site or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because a confused visitor will leave your site very quickly.

5) Try to avoid using audio or video on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio or video looping on your website. If you insist on adding audio or videos, make sure your visitor have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine. Also you can let your user control whether or not to play the audio or video.

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How to Improve Web Templates

2008-06-20T04:12:00.000-07:00

The web is a complete group on interconnected computers discussion to one another. The computers are usually connected by land lines, modulator satellite signals, cables, and other types of data-transfer mechanisms. A 'data-transfer mechanism' is a way to move data from point A to point B to point C and so on. The computers that compose up the web can be connected all the time or they can be connected only occasionally. The computers that are connected all the time are characteristically called a server. Server software is formed to 'serve' web pages and web sites. Basically, the server computer has a group of web sites loaded on it and it just waits for people to request a particular page. When the browser requests a page the server sends it out. There are other ways to find web like search engine but behind the scene web sites are all being establish by going to the web site's certified address. Like your domain address is unique in the real world there also can't be any duplicate addresses on the Internet otherwise no one would know where to go! I have discussion few web design related tips

1: Website templates can be an admirable tool when building a new web site; a tool that can speed up the creation schedule, improve the feature of the final web site and just make the whole process of building a web site much easier. Out of this experience come web templates; web site designs that have been tried and tested. As a software designer and programmer, I can tell you that a hub rule in that field is to not reinvent the controls. This fundamentally means that if someone else has built it already, you should use it! You are wasting your time and money trying to recreate things from scrape. You can now select from a enormous collection of confirmed web site styles that you can use the web site template as the foundation to your own creation.

Web design ers over the years have figured out the best technique to arrangement and design a web page. As such you're going to see mainly web sites work with the same handful of established designs and styles ... given a project's needs. The problem is that every person expects to see a web page layout go behind convinced basic rules; navigation sections have to be arranged in a confident way, links have to look a certain way. being dependable makes the web site easier for the visitor to use. The web site template serves as the structure for designers, where it eliminates the exhausting structural work and frees you to develop the refinement of the web site's style. With so several web site templates to prefer from these days, you are almost definite to find the essential style and layout you are looking for. You can then construct off of that, speeding up the process - makes good sense for you and your clients! Web site templates save you money and large time, the creation cycle of a web site project is at slightest cut in half when you utilize a web site template. An additional advantage of using templates is that you can show the web site designers what you want slightly than trying to describe it to them. The turn around is also true where the designer can show the client several templates that he/she can choose

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Design Conventions: A Good Idea?

2008-06-16T20:38:00.000-07:00

Even while searching for innovative ways to make their websites work, new designers should follow the established design conventions. These conventions have evolved along with the Internet, and users expect web pages to function in a certain way.

If there were only a few websites, designers could expect visitors to spend time learning how to navigate their sites. There are millions of pages on the web, however, and if visitors do not see what they have come to expect, they will find the site difficult to use and simply go somewhere else. Designers could lose significant amounts of traffic if they do not adhere to the design conventions that have already been imposed on websites. And no designer really wants to spend time on writing large help files or FAQs just to explain how to use a site. The web is a competitive place, and most of the time, visitors will simply leave a site rather than try to work through a bad design.

The design conventions for websites are simple, but they are effective. To follow these conventions, designers should ensure that their logos function as links to the home page; that clicking on a small image will display a larger version of that image; that all links lead to HTML documents unless they are clearly labeled as some other format (PDS, movie, etc.); that items are purchased by adding them to a virtual shopping cart and then taking them through a virtual checkout process. Website identity checks should always be accomplished through a system that relies on user names and passwords. These are just a few of the conventions. There are many others.

If a website does not follow these rules and conventions, visitors become annoyed, frustrated, and confused. People will leave a website in a heartbeat if it makes them work too hard to navigate it.

There are situations in which the common website design conventions may be ignored. One such situation is if a site is so unique that what it offers is worth the time to learn how to use it. When Google introduced its Gmail product, the first webmail service in the world that provided a gigabyte of storage space, an interface that utilizes Javascript to change whole pages without reloading them was included. This was a diversion from web conventions, but the site worked so well that it became popular in spite of its departure from conventional design. The site is now beginning to create new conventions of its own.

Designers should not start believing that they are more important than they actually are. The introduction of a new product or service does not mean designers can get away with adding streaming video to a page without annoying people, for example. Designers are advised to recognize the limits of their websites and work to make them as much like other websites as possible in terms of design and navigation.

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Low Cost Custom Web Site Design Helps to Reduce Your Expenses

2008-06-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

In this day and age there is not a lot about the internet and making money through that costs a lot of money. In the early days of the web designers were making thousands of dollars designing even the most basic of all web sites. This was due in part to the issue that there were a select few people that knew how to create web pages, most of whom had been studying this subject in secondary educational locations. Today the outlook is much different and people all over the world are finding that low cost custom web site design is very possible and more then likely the norm.

This is not to say that you cannot find a very high priced web design service, there are still companies holding out hope that they will once again be called upon to design the higher dollar sites. Most often you will find that people are turning to the low cost alternatives in web design because there is not a guarantee on money making these days. As you probably recall there was nothing short of a huge boom when it came to the so called dot com era. Anyone with some internet knowledge and a bit of business savvy was making a fortune through the internet until the bubble burst leaving thousands of people bankrupt and even more in dire need of a job.

Low cost custom web site design is more than a possibility today. The main issue is finding the right service that meets your needs. There are several things that one must consider. First and foremost you need to make the decision about how functional the site will need to be. If the site will require many parts that are interactive with the visitors, along with several databases and so on then the price of building the site will be a bit higher. There is also the matter of the size of the site. Remember the more time that needs to be spent on the site the higher the price. More often then not you will find that most of the web designers of today are more then capable of building a fair sized site in less then two weeks barring any bugs that need to be worked out.

Low cost custom web site design can be a fairly simple thing to find should you look in the right places. There is nothing saying that you could not get out of the entire thing for less then one thousand dollars if you know where and when to look. Check into any special discounts and offers that the companies are making and you will most likely come out ahead.

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Promotion tips of new Website

2008-06-10T09:05:00.000-07:00

Website designing play major role in the success of website. It will help in a great way in making any website popular. Website content and information reliability also play major role in the website success. These are one of the two area where you score more than the your contemporary site.

If you have newly designed website and you are looking to promote it. You have lot of option to do marketing of the website or your company. Web marketing on major search engine like Google, Yahoo & MSN, banner advertisement on some of the major site. You can also advertise on TV and Radio. TV is popular as other days; it has major impact on the people than other advertisement media. It is fast but costly way of marketing.

Today each and every day thousand’s of website are launched. To promote new website is not an easy task. The way of marketing is also changed from last 10 years but one thing that really comes in a nice way is online marketing or web marketing. It is cheapest way to promote your company or brand. It has a global reach and a great impact on people and society. It is a quick as other media like TV and Radio.

Nowadays People have also changed their mind perception about all the things because they are online most of the time. They are taking their decision on the basis of online survey and News. Now you have more option and you can easily compare the prices of product online.

In current scenario 30-40% people are doing their purchase by website. So online marketing have great impact on business and company. It will generate good revenue.
Today online portal of travel and tourism website generate more revenue than offline travel companies. Internet has changed the way of purchasing. Now People have become smarter by using the Internet.
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Web Design and SEO Tips for the Newcomer

2008-06-10T09:03:00.000-07:00

Find your Keywords!

Keywords – the words that people will use to find your website. Choosing the right keyword and being consistent with it is vital to your websites success in the search engines.

There are many tools on the market to help you make the right keyword decision. Tools such as Wordtracker will highlight keyword opportunities. We are looking for popular keywords in terms of expected traffic delivery but have a low competition score from other competing sites. This score can be called KEI.

KEI or Keyword Effectiveness Index is a measure of performance. KEI is a ratio of business against competitiveness. The lower the KEI number the harder to get results in the search engine results pages.

As a general rule avoid any keyword with a KEI of under 0.1 as this will be very difficult to target and you could be wasting your efforts.

Go for longer, perhaps 3 word keyword phrases that carry good traffic. The benefits being that they are usually easier to target and provide better, more qualified traffic. Try to avoid broad, non specific terms.

Competitors to that keyword?

Find out how many backlinks your competitor sites have - there are many to choose from, just do a search for backlinks tool. They all give varying results but don't get distracted by that, just find a tool and use that in all cases, this will ensure that the results you get are at least relative.

No1 competitor HTML

Have a good look at the top two or three websites HTML for that keyword. Have they done anything that you can improve upon? usually be looking closely at three different sites you can arrive at a best method to use for your site. Ensure that title, heading and other tags include your keywords - remember to be consistent as mentioned earlier.

Improve your HTML

Aim to write valid HTML code. The search engine robots prefer clean code and a valid site will usually guarantee that all of your site will get crawled. Always take the time to write original content too - avoid the copy / paste syndrome that plagues many sites. The search engines thrive on original content, make sure that they notice yours.

Search engines are always looking out for duplicate content and will choose not to display your pages for a given search if it thinks your site is not the originator.

Some HTML tips with SEO in mind:

Description tag - take the tine to write an appropriate description tag for every page of your site. Google will display this in it's results pages and a well written description here should lead to more searchers actually clicking your link and becoming a visitor.

Title tag - This is probably the most important piece of HTML. Always include your keywords here and write an accurate keyword rich title tag for every page of your site.

Keywords tag – It is good practice to put a list of related keywords into this tag although don't overdo it and do not include any keywords that are not relevant to your web page.

Keep the code clean, use DIVs and not Tables where possible as this has many benefits and it means the ratio of content to code is greater. Try to use your keywords in heading tags throughout the pages.

Take the time to write original copy that uses the chosen keywords throughout. Write the text for a human to read though and not as though you've written it for a search engine. Over use (or spamming) of keywords will work against you always.

Try to get the good text content as near to the top of your code as possible. You could use CSS positioning to help with this.

Navigation – Use keyword rich absolute text links with a title where possible and not relative links.

Link to the domain name itself when linking back to the homepage and not /index.html. The search engines will then find the content in one place and not try to index two URL's - a very common mistake.

To target several keywords, create several pages to do this using the above methods. You cant expect one page to perform for everything.

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5 Important Rules in Website Design

2008-06-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "abandon ship"!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Republished by http://www.mach9.com/

Learning Drawing for your Graphic Design

2008-06-09T12:57:00.000-07:00

The application of graphic design has been highly in demand in the community. It is widely used in the Internet and in schools. It has been extensively applied to almost everything with regards to practical design and drawings. In almost all the search engines, graphic design is stipulated to promote the popularity of the sites.
Designs come along with the learning and knowledge of simple and skillful drawing. In early levels of schooling, drawing has been a requirement even if students don’t intend to pursue or master a fine arts degree. But in the latter part, knowing that it is useful in some situations and careers, they somehow realize its worth. For some graphic designers who never had any experience in drawing but tend to involve in the field of arts, they are most required.
Drawing has been a basic of graphic Design so in order to be an excellent Graphic Design artist, you have o observe proper basics. Developing your drawing skills does not necessarily mean keeping up the Da Vinci figure but at least have for yourself a sense of style in a manner which is appreciated by the public.
Drawing is about making you feel and see what really is in your mind and imagination. It lets you catch every instilled image and representations unseen by the eye in nature. It’s about speaking for yourself, your thoughts, imagination and how you see the world in your own perspective. A child can merely express her innocence in simple drawings which mirrors her surroundings and capabilities. It is where their curiosity in the real life is boosted and drawn out of creativity. Involving in artwork doesn’t necessarily mean having that artful high-quality touches and pieces. It is a simple means of freely communicating and conveying messages that captures the eye of the people.
Drawing lets you see objects in another perspective and point of view. It sometimes gives you more ideas and comments about a certain graphic design, text design and color. With that prospect, you will be able to bring out your specific talent and originality to fit your needs.
With drawing, it lets you feel the sense of colors and be able to apply them accurately and match exactly. The application of colors isn’t just about picking your favorite color and applies it on to everything. It’s about relevance and knowing the theme. For text graphics, you should choose the right colors to make it appear visible and catchy to the readers so messages and information can be brought out clearly.
For comments and inquiries about the article visit http://www.mach9.com/
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Developing Your Website: 10 Tips for Getting Started

2008-06-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

1. Be clear on your purpose.

Building a website can be a long and arduous procedure if you are not sure what you are doing. However, if you have a clear focus as to what you expect your website to do for your business/organization, things will flow much more smoothly. The purpose can be anything from selling widgets online to keeping members of your soccer team updated. Regardless, figure that out before setting sail on your journey.

2. Establish your target audience.

Your target audience will affect what sort of content your site includes as well as how it will look and function. Obviously, writing for kids will be much different than writing for adults. For business websites, a narrow and specific target market, will not only make it easier for you to market your product or service, it will also make it easier for customers and clients to find you.

Also, consider how many graphics and "bells and whistles" you'll want. If your audience is not very computer literate and generally includes people with slow Internet connections, it doesn't make sense to include large, slow-loading graphics, animations, and video clips. You want your site to be user friendly and don't want your visitors to leave because they've become frustrated with the navigation or because your website loads too slowly. Conversely, if your audience is the younger generation, including flashy graphics and other "fun" elements might be more appropriate and even necessary to grab their attention.

3. Determine your budget.

One can spend anywhere from $99 to $10,000+ dollars on having a website developed. Your purpose should help you decide on your budget. Remember, a website should ideally be a work in progress. Don't worry if you can't do everything you want with it initially — you can always add to it later, and it will work better for you and your customers if you keep it up-to-date and fresh.

4. Assess the value of your time.

Many people have undertaken to create their own websites, especially with the advent of desktop publishing programs. Still, they expend a huge amount of time and energy and end up unsatisfied with the results. While it may be true that "anyone" can design a website, the same could be said about any type of work. If it takes you hours and plenty of frustration to cut your own hair, wouldn't you be better off going to a barber or hairdresser?

If you have a flair for design, feel confident in your writing and marketing skills, and have the time, knowledge, and passion to build your own website, go for it! If your time would be more productive doing your own work and contracting out the web creation, that might be worth considering.

5. If hiring a professional website designer, make sure you are comfortable working with him/her.

Do you feel he or she understands your vision? Does he or she provide useful ideas and solutions you hadn't thought about? Have you looked through his or her past work? Do you feel like you're getting professional service? Is the price right for your budget? What is included in the fee you will be paying?

6. Think about how you'd like the website to look and function.

Often you will have a logo and/or other graphics you'd like to build a design around. You probably have some colour and style preferences. Perhaps a certain font has caught your eye. If you're stumped and lacking ideas, go surfing! Look through a wide variety of websites — both your competitors' and other successful businesses/ organizations. Write down (or bookmark) the sites you like and what appealed (or didn't appeal) to you. Do the same with magazine ads. You'll get a lot of inspiration.

7. Organize and formulate a layout for the information you'd like to include.

Assign page names to each distinct "chunk" of information and, if the total number of pages is sufficiently high (over 12, as a rule of thumb), group them into sections. This will make navigating through your site that much easier. Your designer should be able to make some recommendations in this area.

8. Make sure you understand the importance of effective website copy (text).

Your website copy will be determined by your purpose and your audience. On the Internet, people have very short attention spans. If they don't get the information within a few seconds they'll usually move on to the next website — possibly your competition's. Furthermore, the more you know about writing web copy, the more customers you will draw in. You can learn some basic copywriting skills yourself, or you can hire a professional copywriter to write it for you. Always make sure you know what you want to say and say it concisely. If you have the need for a lot of text that can always follow further down the page or on another page.

9. Choose a domain name and find a hosting company.

Your website will need to reside somewhere so that others will be able to access it. And, you'll probably want to register a domain name, such as www.mach9.com Doing so rather than using the long, awkward name (and free web space) provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), sounds much more professional and is much easier for customers to remember. Choosing a good domain name can also help you get found in search engines, such as Google. which, again, sound professional and reinforce your domain name. There are plenty of hosting companies out there at a variety of prices. Find one that suits your needs. Your web designer or marketing consultant should be able to help you with all of the above.

10. If you have a business website, develop a strategy on how you will market it.

Having a website without visitors will get you nowhere. An analogy is writing a fantastic book, hiding it in the library, and not telling anyone about it. You will need to drive traffic to your site. There are numerous ways to do this. You can either learn to do this yourself, or hire a marketing professional to help you. Although hiring someone will increase your initial costs, it can pay off in the long run when you have more potential customers visiting your site, and ultimately increasing your sales.
Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

The Need to Have Website Design Services

2008-06-09T12:46:00.000-07:00

In the growing internet-driven economy, your business is considered only as good quality as the website design services that you choose. Even if you are able to undercut your business competitor for half percent, it still means nothing or it is useless unless you effectively get the word out there.

It is just the same for it holds true groundbreaking new products without a strong marketing medium; your victories are destined to remain private and confidential.
A good quality website design services company can do a lot more than just set up your site. Take note that a full-service business will aid you develop your idea into a practical and feasible site so that you can begin acquiring clients right away. As a fully incorporated shop, your website design services company can handle everything from your domain name registration and hosting to your e-commerce activity.
However, one of the best things that website design services have to offer is their one-stop shopping. You can imagine for a moment the headaches involved in outsourcing every one of your company's requirements to a detach contractor. Do not forget you'd have to hire a registrar to manage your name, a hosting company to provide you your bandwidth, a design firm to lay out your navigation, and an IT guru to see to your tech needs, not to mention a full suite of marketing, advertising, and optimizing firms. Whew!
There can be an alternative as well. It is by bringing on a vertically incorporated website design services specialist to oversee your mushrooming business from set up to finish. Take note that a company like this can help you troubleshoot glitches, thereby keeping your clients contented even through unstable moments. Whether you like it or not, site hacks, server crashes, and disappearing domains are realities of the new economy.
It is important to note that the company you choose should be able to lift that visibility in any number of ways. This may require an online marketing campaign, a customer referral or affiliate business, or search engine maximization--or maybe all three. With this, it is wise to spend sufficient time browsing the market to see what various website design services are willing to offer in terms of products and features as well as price.
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Web Hosting – What You Need to Know

2008-06-04T04:34:00.000-07:00

Web hosting is a service that lets an individual or organization makes their website accessible in the World Wide Web. This service is made available by companies called web hosting providers. The web host has a server—where your website is run, which is connected to the internet, this way; anyone who has internet access can be connected to your website.

There are mainly two types of web hosting, free and paid hosting service. Under paid hosting service, there are several types, which will be discussed later on in the article.

Free web hosting enables the user to modify the content of his website by uploading the simplest kind of features in which capabilities are only limited to a certain degree. The web hosting provider makes money by advertisements displayed on the website. This type of web hosting doesn’t appear too professional since the site is under a sub domain or a directory, meaning, the website name is followed or preceded by the web hosting provider. This type of web hosting is advantageous for people who are newbie’s in the Internet and needing just a small site to get started especially with the upload tools that are very easy to use.

Paid web hosting, on the other hand, provides more space and more features but you will be required to pay the web hosting provider fees to maintain your website. An advantage for this type is that the ads that appear on your website are those that you prefer and the revenue from it goes to you. You also get to have your own domain name.

The different types of paid web hosting are the following:

• Shared web hosting – wherein you share the same server and all other resources like software with other people. You only manage the design and content of your site.

• Virtual Private Servers – here the idea is that a server is divided into small servers to enable the user to have their own. This is a cheaper alternative to dedicated servers and more expensive than shared web hosting.

• Dedicated Server – this is not too popular for the common companies as it entails a lot of money. The owner gets full control over it. This is ideal for high-traffic websites.

• Colocation web hosting – the individual purchases a server and passes it to the web hosting company for them to provide space, connection, and power. You must have your own administrator to check on your server.

Other web hosting companies provide specific hosting and these would include blog hosting, video hosting, image hosting, and file hosting among others.

When choosing a web hosting provider, consider the following:

• Your needs – what type of hosting do you need, how much memory, bandwidth, etc.

• How reliable is the web hosting company? Can they guarantee that your website is always up and running?

• Development – in the future, can this company still provide for what you need? Do they have the latest technology?

• Dependability – should there be any problems with your website and/or server.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

The Do-it-Yourself Website Promotion Tricks

2008-06-04T04:24:00.000-07:00

You have your own website, now what? In order to succeed online, you will need website promotion so your site would be visible to everyone connected to the Internet. It is a common belief that all websites are searchable by search engines. It’s not as simple as it seems. Website promotion entails a lot of work.

Website promotion suggests that submitting your site to directories first is more important than submitting to search engines. These two are different in such a way that sites submitted to directories are only approved if it has high quality and useful content, whereas search engines just simply accept submissions of sites or pages. In submitting a website to the directory, make sure that you read and follow the directory’s rules and instructions. Keep in mind that the editors will be very discerning of your web content.

Submitting to search engines definitely helps in website promotion but this takes quite a while, usually around 3-6 months. There are things to consider when submitting to search engines, you must prepare your website. Also, you will need to learn SEO or search engine optimization. You may do this by optimizing your website by improving the elements of web design like loading time, browser compatibility, etc. Another is keyword optimization wherein you make use of appropriate keywords; these would greatly help in your website.

Other website promotion techniques are:

• Link popularity - wherein you let people link your site to theirs. In this way, you can generate more new visitors and at the same time improve your ranking in search engines.

• Write articles – that are useful to your website and let other people publish these like in article directories. You may also opt for email newsletters that include a link to your website. In this way, your subscribers are informed and updated on what’s going on in your website promotion.

• Post to a forum or discussion boards. Forums are greatly increasing their popularity and this is a good way to spread the word about your website promotion.

• In line with posting a forum, you may also want to use a signature file, a text that is appended at the end of your every post.

• Improve website promotion through banner ads displayed in other websites related to your content. But be sure that your ad is well-designed.

• Write a press release – this can definitely help in website promotion. You have to write an article about your website and submit it to different publications and you’ll get new visitors in no time at all!

Now you know what to do, know what you have to avoid as well. One of the common mistakes made is relying on free web hosting service. It’s harder for search engines to detect your website if it is hosted on a free host. If you mean serious business and eyeing it as long-term, then paid web hosting is the way to go. There are some companies that promise to submit your website to thousands of search engines at a very low price, do not be fooled. Majority of these directories and engines have very minimal traffic. Website promotion can be tricky but with good research, you and your business will succeed before you know it.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

A Custom Logo Design That Leaves an Impression

2008-06-03T04:22:00.000-07:00

Nowadays nearly all the businesses realize that a logo design is the first step towards brand establishment. Your custom logo design is used in various mediums and at several other places. So a custom logo should be designed keeping in mind that it will be used on your corporate website, banners, business cards, brochures, in the press, and on other marketing material.

Outsourcing of Custom Logo Design Services

Outsourcing of the custom logo design services of design houses has become increasingly common these days. Many design houses now choose to outsource their logo design services for more than one reason. Firstly, the outsourcing rids them of the day-to-day hassles of the whole design process. Secondly, they save on human resources as they outsource the design work. Thirdly, by outsourcing their custom logo design services to a professional design service, they can guarantee 100% customer satisfaction, as the work gets into professional hands. And finally, the customer satisfaction leads to a sharp and continuous increase in the number of customers – hence increased revenues.

Logo Design as a Powerfool Brand Establishment Tool

A logo design is the primary step towards the brand establishment of your business. It is your corporate identity and shows how focused your business is. So due efforts should be put into getting your corporate custom logo designed. Some important factors that will help you get the right logo for having a positive impact on your business are as follows:

• Simplicity:
The custom logo design doesn’t necessarily have to be artistic. Instead, it has to be as simple as possible with no intricate details. Your custom logo design is used in several mediums, and if its design is complicated, the details will be lost in smaller uses of it, such as on business cards.

• Uniqueness:
The custom logo design for your business should be unique in order to be distinguishable from other logo designs of similar businesses. It has to leave a lasting impact on people’s minds. So avoid stereotypes! Never select the overused designs and symbols and try new, yet relevant ideas.

• Professionalism:
Your logo design has to exude the nature of your business and the attitude of your company. Only an expert custom logo designer can create a logo that reflects the professionalism, focus, and the approach of your business. So never choose to go for an unprofessional designer just to save a few bucks!

Republished By : http://www.mach9.com/

10 Ways Your Web Site Text Can Impact On Your Web Site Visitors

2008-06-03T04:10:00.000-07:00

The appearance of your web site text can increase or decrease the level of response of your web site visitors. The size, font, style and color of your text can easily affect your visitor's decision making process. Remember the times you have visited a new site and clicked away very quickly because the look and feel of the site was not what you liked.

Below are ten points to consider when typing text on your web site.

1. Easy To Read- You want to make it easy for your visitors to read your text. Do not use a light
colored text like yellow on a white background and you don't want to use dark blue text on a black back-ground. These options are just too hard to read.

2. Create A Mood- You want to use the color of your text to create a mood for the reader. If you want to create excitement, use some red text. If you want to create greed, use a some green text. Use colors that would put you in a mood to buy your product.

3. Grab Their Attention- You can grab your readers attention by using headlines. Make the headline more noticeable by using a different colored headline than your ad copy. This offsets the headline and pulls the reader into the rest of your ad copy.

4. Highlight Keywords- You can emphasize phrases and keywords that are important to your readers. For instance use expressions like: super, deluxe, fast, low price. You could also use bolding, underlining, italics, or color changes.

5. Sizing It Up- You don't want to use text that is too small or to large. You want to use larger text for your headlines and subheadings. Use H1 and H2 tags for headlines and subheadings. You want to use smaller text for your ad copy, usually 12 font.

6. Don't Use All CAPS!- You don't want to use all capital letters in your ad copy. It looks unprofessional and is hard to read. You may want to use all CAPS in your headlines to offset it.

7. Font Properly- You want to use a text font that relates to the product or services your selling. You don't want to use a comic type font when your selling business books. Also, not all computers have all the font types so your webpage will look really strange on those computers. Stay with the generally accepted font types.

8. Spacing Out- It's important to use spaces properly when typing your text. You should indent and bullet key benefits your product or service will give the reader. Your headlines, subheadings, sentences and paragraphs should be consistently spaced throughout your web site.

9. I Need Sunglasses- Don't use all bright text colors and backgrounds on your web site. It will make your text hard to read and actually bother your visitor's eyes to the point they just decide to leave your site.

10. Check The Readability- It's important to check your spelling and grammar before you upload your web page. When writing an ad copy you're allowed to break some of those grammar rules to get your point across. Remember also that different countries have different understandings of some terms. So be mindful of what and how you write your copy.

Republished By http://www.mach9.com/

Unique Website Design - A Theory

2008-05-31T06:54:00.000-07:00

Very few professional sites these days can claim to be unique. This isn't to say that they don't look good. The clean look that many favor is not due to laziness or ineptitude; it is intentional. Most business web pages these days are graphic-light, often having little more than a logo and perhaps an image or two off to the side. Above and beyond that, they may have some button links which are only graphics in the sense that they were created by a graphics program.

These sites are clean, presentable, and best of all they are what people expect. They are the respectable web standard, the baseline for web design.

But they are not unique. Changes in colors and varying graphics do not make a site unique; they make it a separate site. Something worthy of the term has to do more than make the changes allowed by the forms it works within; it has to use different forms entirely.

This isn't a matter of an interesting graphic, cool bit of code, or elaborate flash intro page. It's a matter of designing your site with the intent to stand out. It's about going beyond the safe, well-traveled path of white backgrounds and file tab links and setting up your site to catch the eye. You don't want a visitor to come away with different information than every other site in your field; you want the visitor to come away with an entirely different experience.

But it's not all about ingenuity. Creativity is key, but that creativity has to be tempered with the user's experience in mind. A site where the links are made to resemble airplanes trailing banners and fly around the site randomly is certainly unique, but it's also a lot harder for the visitor to travel about your site. This is the precarious balance of unique website design; making your pages both look and function in original ways, but still be just as easy to use as a run-of-the-mill, black-text-on-white-background website.

With risks come rewards, and leaving the safe, easy path is always risky. It is the norm because it has been proven to work, and if you design such a site you know that your site layout will never be a hindrance to the user's experience. But the question becomes, will it be a benefit? Often not. Generic site design won't improve the user's experience because it is exactly what the user is used to, exactly what the user expects to experience. The bland and basic layout fades into the background where it's supposed to be, and the user goes about exploring the site with no starting impression.

Unique website design offers you the chance to create a starting impression that your competitors are avoiding. It gives you a chance to make the user come to a conclusion about your website before reading the first line of text, due simply to the layout and the graphics. All you have to worry about is making that impression a good one.

Published By http://www.mach9.com/

Tips to ensure you get a great web design

2008-05-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

It is with a great web design that you will be able to create a good impression on your site’s visitors. In fact, the success of your website is greatly dependent on how it attracts visitors and how much user friendly it is. It is not enough to just drop and drag pictures for an effective web design, lots of thought and forethought is required to get the perfect design for your website.

The most important point to consider when creating your web desig n is the concept of your site and what you intend to propagate through the website. All this has to be done before you actually start working on your web design. If your website is to be a personal website, consider how you intend to show your personality and style; and if it is a commercial website, choose the design depending on how you intend to broadcast your products and services. With a lot of forethought, you will be able to choose the right theme for the websit e, and save lots of headaches.

Use positive points of other websites in your web design

Research to find out what other websites with similar objectives look like and you will get ideas for your web design. Look at websites and keep its positive and negative points in mind so that you can eliminate the negative but use the positive points in your web design.

Once you get an idea of what your web design is to look like, you will have to plan your site. Do this by drawing a sitemap to see how you want your site to work, and which links you intend to use so that the site works as you wish it to work. You save lots of time this way, and give you an idea of your future website.

When creating your web design, remember that it has to be user friendly to be successful on the internet. Lay the site in as clear and a logical manner as possible to ensure that your site is easy to navigate.

Minimum images in the web design facilitate faster downloading of web pages.

If you use tables in your web design, it is better to break your page into a minimum of two tables instead of using a single table. This is because a single table takes longer to download; moreover with two tables, you can have an introduction to your web page in the first table so that visitors don’t get impatient with a long wait.

Use minimum images on your web page where each page should be limited to 30kb including text, images and background images but devoid of plug-ins. This ensures that visitors need not wait more than 5 seconds for the page to load. Use navigation bars in your web design to help visitors know where they are in your website.

Last, but not least, don’t forget to use Meta tags in your web design as they are recognized by search engines and help in bringing more hits to your website. However, your description should be short and concise and not loaded with keywords to ensure that you have a successful web design.

Published By http://www.mach9.com/

Don't you know, what you need for Web design

2008-05-31T06:45:00.000-07:00

The technology nowadays has advanced to great heights. With the advent of internet everything in this world changed. Internet actually revolutionized this world with various changes and it helped the human race in many respects. It has made the life of human race simpler in many respects and people are finding internet as the source for almost anything on this earth. Internet has even become the bread and butter of many people. Many people have earned a lot of money from internet. Also many have made fortunes in this field. Such is the power of internet. Internet has opened many avenues with which it has become almost everything possible for the mankind. However the main factor which has made everything possible is the website. Website is the main constituent of internet. Without websites internet is nothing.

Now one might wonder that what are this websites and can every person ha ve a website of his own. Yes it is true that every person on this earth can have a website of his own. The only thing is that it is a very technical thing and thus requires the help of professional people in website development. Otherwise the content of website can be made by any person. Websites are actually information sources of any particular thing present on the World Wide Web. When we click on a link then it takes us to a website where we get the requisite information. Further there are many people who earn from their own websites. This system is called the PPC system where you get paid for each click which is made to your website. For this purpose you need to make your website attractive through web development techniques and also there are certain technical things which you need to take care of such as web designing.

First of all you need to ensure that the content inside the website is useful and is complete. Then you should care about the decoration part of your website. Further there are technical things like keyword density etc. which determine the page rank of your website in the search Engine results. You need to have the necessary keywords so that your website is flashed on the top results when any person makes a search of that keyword. After that you need to make your website decorative with colors and animations so that your website doesn't only look a simple page with something written on it. This can be done through proper Web design techniques. All these things have to be kept in mind once you have decided to make your own web page.

Published By http://www.mach9.com/

Importance of Good Web Design

2008-05-30T05:22:00.000-07:00

The passion of World Wide Web keep growing and growing these days. Business realizes the benefits of being on the web in the present time. If we want to build and expand our business in world wide then its essential for us to make a good web site, so that people can easily visits our website and came to know about our business and our product and our services. It is said that first impression is the last impression and your website is the first impression to your target potential customers. The impression created by your website in visitor mind so its important to make a good website for first impression on our visitor’s mind so that they revisit our site in the future.

The following rules summarize the work of web design experts who are completely familiar with all the aspects of web design. In designing the web pages for a website you should adhere to following rules:

1. About Pages: Your website must contain following pages: Feedback is necessary to obtain the suggestions of your visitors.

• Contact us is necessary to establish a relation between you and your visitors. You should provide your E-MAIL so as visitors should feel that will be given full support.
• About us page should be included in order to publish the information about your organization. This information could be year of setup, country from which you operate etc.
• Home page should be included where links to all the other pages should be provided and the link to Home page should also be given from all the other pages.

2. Neat which means that site should not be overcrowded with too many links.

3. Attractive means that the color selection for WebPages should be as such that it should look nice. The background color should be light and the design should be able to catch visitor attention at first look.

4. Professional means that unwanted contents should be avoided and all like contents should be placed in proper headings in pages. At first site it should be able to show the visitor their interests for joining your website.

5. Small size of WebPages means that too much flashy content in desire to make webpage look attractive would increase the size which will cause delay in opening at client site. And the visitors will simply avoid surfing these types of websites. So too much unnecessary flashy content should be avoided.

6. Text: Choice of words does not matter what matters is appearance of words in WebPages. Dark texts in light background will be an impressive scheme while dark background unable the visitor to read the text. Those fonts should be chosen which are easily available on every computer. Some of fonts are: Times New Roman, Arial, Courier and Garamond. In the case visitor do not have required font installed on their computer your message will not visible n their computer and which will lose their interest in surfing your website.

7. Grammar: You should be careful in text you write that you should not commit any spelling mistakes that will show your inefficiency. You should check it twice before finalizing the content for your website. You should not make grammatical mistakes as well.

A professional web design company has the design skills and online marketing experience and know-how to create a website that will be an optimum selling tool in the world’s biggest sales market.
Published by http://www.mach9.com/

Web Design is The Essence of Your Business

2008-05-30T05:13:00.000-07:00

Web Design is Fun. It is undeniably a practice of design, a process by which problems are solved. For the millions of web surfers out there, your web design is their first impression of your business and your credibility. The key issue in web design is how to add value to the user's experience, how to make them feel that they truly got something out of visiting your web site. User-centered web design is all about giving the control back to the user, which brings us to the term Accessible Web Design - the art of creating webpages that are accessible to everyone regardless of any device in use. No doubt web design is important, but usability in the other hand, is king. This importance will lead you to find a professional to design your web site right. The complexity of the resulting web design is somehow determined by the goals and budget and affordability in this aspect, is in fact a reality.

Design ideas don't have to be hard to find. For you out there that have specific ideas which are ready to be implemented, you just need someone with the technical know-how to turn them into web reality. Get ideas about the latest web design trends and communications concepts by looking analytically at your competitors sites. Evaluating example products is one way to get ideas for detailed design. From these set of ideas, you can then conclude on your final approach on how you want your assigned designer to get the whole thing done.

Flash is already the Web's standard for dynamic web animation. In creating original cutting-edge design there's nothing better than using Flash Web Design. It is by far, a very versatile and popular method to add eye-catching action to your web site. Flash is also probably the trendiest technology currently used in web design. However a slow-loading web page or flash movie makes seconds seem much longer, if you happen to "overdo" it. Flash does not only associate itself with animations but also as great complimentary values to other media such as presentations, videos and audios.

When you create your own web page keep the importance of shape in mind. You don't want certain things to be in the extra large department when other items such as your text is relatively small to keep up with the overall ratio size of the presentation. Another important item to consider in your websites is the level of seduction. Yes, you read that right. If you've ever got lost in the maze of some websites, you'll know the importance of intuitive web design. Seductive websites provide users the reason to stay longer by providing good typography and by not underestimating the importance of navigation. Knowing the importance of this, you cannot afford to take a chance on any trial-and-error method. The importance of writing quality web content is also equally important. Nevertheless, until recently, though, a greater emphasis has been placed on the importance and overall influence of color in the field of web design.

Web design is a complex discipline that involves a wide range of skills. In fact, I'd go as far as to say, web design is information design. In my experience, web design is primarily about the business. Every new web design is the solution to a design problem that can be summed up in a series of constraint questions - Who is my audience? An extraordinary web design is mandatory to a successful business, hence the goal of web design is simply not merely to dazzle, but to deliver information to the widest audience possible. Web design is exciting, it changes day by day. These changes will reflect your company's complete product and service presentation. Web design has always been made up of some basic premises, and if you understand them you can help deliver pages that will impress and illuminate your readers. A successful Web design is paramount to a successful business.

Published By http://www.mach9.com/

Web Development Teams essential task

2008-05-30T05:04:00.000-07:00

Web development entails complicated and complex details, and before you could create a website; concepts, contents, maintenance, design should be well-thought of and well-planned. You have to have a proactive relationship and collaborate with your web developers, so that there would be no miscommunications and the concepts and designs will be as you specified. However what involves web development? Before anything else, web development is essential for those who want to be seen and heard all over the world particularly for businesses, because having a website would enable you to reach those customers without delays, and be available for 24 hours, seven days a week. The possibilities of the profits that you could gain just by having a web site are limitless. However, creating, updating and maintaining a website is not a walk in the park. For a simple web site it could be developed and maintained by a single individual, most businesses especially a large scale corporations however would prefer a reliable and credible web development team. Creating and maintaining a website needs a group of people that are reliable, knowledgeable and proactive as well, and the advantage of a web development team over a single developer is that there would be no hassles and worries on your end if one of the team member is absent because it will be their responsibility and should be remedied as soon as they could.
The number of members of a development team would depend on the extent and scope of the project. A small scale web development team should have a web developer who is also known as the webmaster, he or she should have an above average skill with HTML and other necessary tools. The web developer could also be the web designer but if there is a resident web designer then much better. There should also be a web analyst; he or she would serve as the project manager only if the project is not that big. However, if the project has a large scope and is extensive then there should be a project manager, Web Developer, Web Designer two or more web analyst, application developer, and a system administrator. The project manager is the overseer of the project and team members. He or she is the representative of the team and is responsible not only for the project but also for the well being of his or her team. The Project manager also serves as the link between the web development team and the client. The project manager should have excellent intrapersonal and interpersonal skills, an above average verbal and written communication skills, have a technical knowledge regarding web development. Meanwhile, the web developer is the bridge between the project and the project manager. He or she should have an excellent knowledge of HTML and other related tools. Then the web designerâ€™s task would be for the graphic designs, the presentation of images, color schemes (if it was not specified by the client) for the website. Creativity and an extensive knowledge of multimedia tools like adobe photoshop is a must. For the quality analysis of the web site, web analysts are the people for that. They will be the one to check if the clientâ€™s specifications have been met. Another important member is the web application developer. This web development member must be skilled in Javascript, AJAX, CSS, ColdFusion, for he or she is responsible for the functionality of the server side. The system administratorâ€™s assignation then is for the maintenance and security of the web, servers for application and database.

Published by http://www.mach9.com/

The Basics of Web Design and Development

2008-05-28T21:53:00.000-07:00

Building a website is not as easy as 1-2-3. First thing you have to consider is your web design, next comes the more technical stuff that you would have to learn. Web design is the arrangement of web pages that make up a website. Starting a web design is a process that involves conceptualization, modeling, and execution. It is through this process that you can easily create a web design. To conceptualize means creating a flowchart-- a flowchart shows how you would like your website to flow. It shows primary headings and subsections of each heading. This will aid you in steps 2 and 3. The modeling stage lets you create a layout for the website. It will show a skeleton view of each of the web pages. It will help you plan where your elements will be placed; elements being audio, video, graphics, sounds, etc. Last step is execution, wherein you will implement your planned web design. All throughout the process, you should keep in mind that the web design must be well organized and user-friendly.

The four basic things to consider in designing a website are:

• Content – it must be relevant and should be in line with its main purpose. Add to this, it must also be able to convey the right message to the target audience.

• Usability – it has been mentioned that a website must be user-friendly so visitors won’t find it hard to navigate through the website.

• Appearance – the website must have the right amount of elements. Do not exaggerate it. Make sure that design looks professional and appealing at the same time. Also, too much video, audio, and images in a website takes longer to load than usual and this can definitely annoy visitors.

• Visibility – it is crucial that the website is easily tracked by search engines to increase traffic and some advertisements.

Common errors done in web design would include:

• Failure to have a target audience and purpose. This happens when there is too much content in the website that the purpose gets lost in all the non-important elements.

• Navigation errors. This would include broken links that easily annoy visitors when they are directed to an error page. Another would be having too many hyperlinks to get to the target page. It is a poor web design when the user has to click on a lot of links.

• Appearance.

o A web design is poor when color schemes are not friendly to the eyes; like neon-colored combinations.

o Fonts. Make use of fonts that are commonly installed in other people’s browsers. Also, choose fonts that are easy to read.

o Theme. Be consistent with the theme used all throughout the webpage.

o Too many advertisements. They tend to mess up the web page and appear disorderly. It takes the user’s attention from the main website.

o Spelling errors make the website appear unprofessional

• Because of too much elements in the web design, the website takes forever too load.

• Browser Incompatibility. It is not the user’s fault if he is not using Internet Explorer or Firefox. So make sure the web design can be viewed by any web browser.

The key idea in web design is to create it suited to the target audience with the ability to convey the purpose clearly. If this is fulfilled then you have created an effective website that can attract traffic.
Republished by http://www.mach9.com/

Web design- Dos and Don’ts

2008-05-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

Web design is an important part in advertising a business. Being important, the process of web designing can be really challenging to the webmaster or designer engaging in it. Apart from the content, keywords,SEO, design, navigability and search engine marketing there are certain things that many things that a webmaster must not overindulge. Doing more than what is needed can yield negative returns and create a business loss.

Empathizing with the needs of the patrons and stakeholders before designing a website is highly important for a best web designer. He must research up on website information and read books written by experts and finally apply the knowledge gained therein. He must remember the features and characteristics of a miserable website before starting up the new website.

1. These websites do not tell the users about their operations and business.
2. They do not provide any email address and contact information to correspond.
3. They use horrible, unmatching colors for their web pages.
4. They use ugly and unpresentable backgrounds.
5. They use ludicrous text that does not coincide with their background making the text unreadable.
6. They contain spelling and grammar errors.

Keeping these thumbnails in mind at the first instance is the key duty of any web designer. He must ensure that he does not indulge in any of the above faults.

Other Keep-In-Mind Points

1. Avoid Multimedia And Plug-Ins
A website is bound to loose customers if it uses pointless pug-ins and multimedia. These things can be a real nuisance.
A visitor will have to download the stuff put up by you and it will be a time consuming process. He may not get the information outright and this can tempt him to move on to other websites for more relevant content and information. You must hence, introspect if the website really needs these plug-ins. A music and entertainment website can use these things as it suits their business needs. However, in most cases plug-ins and viewers are not recommended. Also, be particular about the formats the viewers can use.
.HTML, .GIF, and .JPEG images can be fine. Sound formats like .WAV, .Au, .AIF can be handy. Do not provide PostScript document files unless you are sure that the user has a PostScript viewer.

2. Use Old Version HTML
A designer does not need to be too clever and use the latest version of HTML. Remember that most specific features do not go well with certain universal browsers. The latest versions and features can be highly attractive and useful. The may have several user-friendly interface technologies and may be far more sophisticated than the older versions. However, a webmaster needs to remember that most of the visitors do not use latest versions immediately. Therefore, he may need to use the previous version to see traffic and referrals remain good.

Two Versions Of A Website
However if a webmaster is confused about the technology to use, he may create two versions of a website: one for the new version and another for the old version browsers. This may however require a large amount of time. A webmaster must go ahead only if he has done enough research and is sure that this will be of use to the business.
Republished by http://www.mach9.com/

10 Essential Tips For A Web Designer

2008-05-28T21:46:00.001-07:00

One of the toughest challenges facing any designer is the web page. There are perhaps millions of pages in the World Wide Web all jostling for attention. The question that is foremost is how you as a designer can make a difference.

One of the toughest challenges facing any designer is the web page. There are perhaps millions of pages in the World Wide Web all jostling for attention. The question that is foremost is how you as a designer can make a difference.

Study the subject being featured. Visit as many sites as possible that cover the same as well as related topics. Make a list of what works and what doesn’t. Avoid using a design that is going to be uniform with others. Unless your pages are distinctive they are not going to work.

1. Try and avoid run of the mill things like page counters, java text scrolling, flashing images, GIF images, signs which say “we are not ready.” Or, too many illustrations or animations, black grounds or fade ins.

2. Create a design which coveys in a stylish way what it has to. Instead of using downloaded illustrations use original ones.

3. Avoid things like heavy files or graphics. These will slow down your pages. GIF is better than JPEG files.

4. Think of the target audience and subject being addressed when designing. The overall effect should be that of exclusivity.

5. Avoid incorporating download plugins. While Flash is innovative and fun you will loose viewers if you don’t provide an HTML alternative.

6. Design the pages so that they are not more than 50K.

7. Remember the rule of thumb; a web page should not have more than three screens. And, ensure that the viewer does not have to scroll horizontally.

8. Test your website pages with several browsers. Make sure they open quickly and completely. Do a reality check by asking a cross section of users to check the site. Usability checking will bring to the fore any mistakes made.

9. Don’t usebackgrounds tiles or patterns it makes the design fussy and decreases readability. Avoid frames they make the pages difficult to book mark.

10. Determine accurately the rules of creative design and ensure that you apply them. If you have links make sure they work. Limit page content. Pay attention to search engine optimization. Ensure that the design follows the content and is not a separate element. Maintain archives. Use innovative fonts and titles. The content should follow basic elements of style or a style sheet.

When designing the web page think about the site as a whole not each page separately. There should continuity in design. Include a site map for easy navigation. Pay attention to imparting knowledge, include information on the subject of the site, give tips, make available how to articles as well as publications on the topic. The site and pages should be interactive without being a nuisance, so links must be well thought of and of practical use.

Republication by http://www.mach9.com/

Features You Should Avoid when Designing a Website

2008-05-28T06:42:00.000-07:00

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I am talking about a good design I am not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1. Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

2. Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

3. Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct everytime each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!
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Beautiful Website Design 1 - What You Need

2008-05-28T06:38:00.000-07:00

You want your website to be functional, of course. Informative is important too. Above all, though, you want your website to be beautiful. Your goal isn't simply to provide another bland piece of text that tries desperately to cloak an advertisement in the veneer of useful information. A basic shopping cart with all the items arrayed in orderly rows and columns like a tiny digital army of black text on white screen is not appealing to you and won't be to your visitors. When someone visits your home page, you want to immediately grab their attention, draw them into your message with a dazzling array of impressively designed graphics.

So what do you need to have ready to construct your beautiful website design? What do you have to provide your designer so that he, she, or they can create the most visually appealing layout possible? Well, as the old adage (or has it become a clich? by this point?) goes, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." Ignoring for the moment my inherent predisposition to launch into a semi-comedic rant about the various virtues of D&D monsters and disintegration beams, the beholder in question is the person viewing your website. Or, in the words of advertisement, your target market.

Your graphic designer has all the skills required to construct elaborate and attractive graphics, colors and shapes placed in perfect balance to not only appeal to the eye but also draw its focus to the most important parts of your site. Your web designer knows the technical code that transforms a senseless array of ones and zeros into a fully functional, dynamic site, with all the graphics precisely positioned (despite, it would seem, the best efforts of competing browser developers). However, neither has any idea whatsoever about what your audience finds engaging, interesting, or beautiful.

What you need to have ready for your designers is a basic style for the site. What kind of images do you want? What colors will they be? What should the font style look like? Will there be any animation? I know what you're thinking: "I don't know anything about making a website look good. Isn't that what I'm paying these guys for?"

And the answer, of course, is yes. You are paying your graphic designer to take your colors, imagery, maybe even a few sketches, and turn it into an appealing layout, logo, banner, and button system. You are paying your web designer to make that layout center on the screen, that button system light up when the mouse moves over it and press in when the user clicks. And you are paying them to tell you when your ideas are going to slow the site down, or hamper your SEO, or cost you more than the money you have budgeted.

And while you might ask their opinions, always remember that they can only offer their own, not those of your visitors. It is the classic case of website design; the designers are the experts in their fields, but you are the expert in yours. A site that the designers create based on their own preferences is only a step or two up from a template, and only attractive to those who share the tastes of its creators. Think of who will be visiting, and provide the designers the foundation to allow them to create your pages to your audience's taste. That is what you need to create a beautiful website design.

How to develop a proper web site by means of web design

2008-05-28T06:33:00.000-07:00

Selecting the proper web design firm is not a simple job. If you are a new person in business of web developing you can notice that it is really complex and foggy, but it is simply the first opinion. In case you desire to know more about this newest kind of business read this.

To develop an appropriate internet site, even in case you utilize web design service, you ought to define your demands. It would be unwise to create web site for the purpose of owing a website. The main purpose of every commercial website is to give some incomings to its possessor. Having searched the internet you can find a great deal of various services that can be proposed by website.

Internet site design services come in all forms and at different costs. But you have to be quite attentive not to deal with organization that offers big costs for less amount of performed work.

In case you think that dissimilarity is usually evident, you are false. There is a great deal of different developers who are comprised into professional web development. They are commonly quite laborious so the developer may ask some higher cost. Such kinds of design as graphic require considerably more exertions.

In case you spend at least hour you will manage to search out the organization which will offer some cheaper services. Nevertheless, saving on custom web design services can be dangerous. Pleasant appearance of you site will involve lots of clients and more clients would consider your site as a believed resource.

The majority of experienced companies that provide web design services have many websites as a demonstration of their experience, so you ought to take a look on them. It is better to use the services of the companies that create sites of the same subject matter as your produces are.

Keep in mind that any business operations ought to be performed just after you have obtained a commercial proposition. You should let the company know some details about your project: purposes, terms, and development demands. It is best to list characteristics which need developed.

As you review the commercial offers, do not pay too much attention to the cost as it is not the only criterion that determines the real cost you would need to incur. Most projects need appropriate quality assurance and stabilization. Be ready that the process of creation can be longer than expected due to compulsory iterations. After each iteration all development and usability bugs would have to be fixed. Most of companies guarantee the quality of proposed services, so in case some bugs are found during the action of exploitation, they would eliminate them instantly.

You also need to know that the price that is mentioned in commercial proposition may be reduced by producer in case you carry out negotiations properly.

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Web Application Development

2008-05-27T05:51:00.000-07:00

Websites are not just pretty works of art that act like a brochure these days. Websites have developed into behemoths of information and data retrieval and more. All of these functions are performed by online programs which all falls under the category of web application development.

We have extensive experience with building online applications. Building these applications are not easy. A common analogy that we use when talking about web application development is that we are building a house. First you need the project plan, then the architect and then a construction team that is overseen by a project manager.

Whether its JSP, PHP or Ajax, Comet is digging in and making it happen on a project-by-project basis. Very soon, Comet may make a dedicated department to begin to develop universal apps that can be shrink-wrapped and sold.

You see Comet is not slinking by in this land of online programming. Instead, we are launching our efforts right into the heart of the matter and sector and herding all of our experience into finely tuned and efficient solutions that give us heights to reach for. Our valued customers will reap the benefits from our eagerness to dominate the market. Now that’s a win-win scenario!

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Website Design & Development

2008-05-27T05:45:00.000-07:00

the advent of high-end technological programs, internet has become one of the most sought after medium for business promotions. This further leads to the origination of website design and development and here in this competitive field we are a website design and development firm that specializes not only in designing sites, but also in making websites that help your business to grow. Internet being a major medium of communication has helped to make the world a much condensed place, wherein people can come across anything at any point of time.

Our website design and development team makes use of the latest software and coding language that helps them to incorporate the ideas about your business into reality. We specialize in making incredible sites at affordable rates. Therefore, no matter what your budget is, you can come to us and our professionals will do exactly what you want to see on your website.

A website becomes the only online identity of a business and in such a case; one would surely want to make the design of their site very attractive. You can have a look at our portfolio and see for yourself what we are capable of doing. Whatever idea you may have for your website, you can approach us and we will make it possible for you. Website design and development is not entirely about showing just a beautiful face to clients, there is much more to this and we excel in doing this.

Professionals at Comet who are a part of the website design and development team have a thorough knowledge about the latest coding language like CSS2. We constantly look out for any new innovations in the field of website design and development, and implement those for designing your site. We are entirely different from the average web design and development firm as we make sites that deliver the goods to your business.

At Comet, we firmly believe that your business is our business and make all our efforts to provide you with the best website design and development solutions that we can muster up for you. You can choose your own graphics, designs, pictures and color combinations. Come to us with all the idea that you have in mind to make your business a success and see the wonders that we work for you.

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Website Redesign, Old is Gold but New is Lucrative

2008-05-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

In every form of business, websites have become the norm and why shouldn’t they be as they are the best way to connect with people without much ado. Design and layout of the website do matters a lot. However, most people think that they will have to live with what they have in terms of design, but in reality, they don’t have to, especially, when there is the matter of a website design or should we say, website redesign.

Going for a website redesign is the way to keep your website furnished with the current requirements of the online world, which of course, are and will keep on changing. Now, it actually depends on you on how you would be able to handle the changes and maintain your website in such a way that it conveys the best of the information and enhance the experience of the people visiting your website. However for a novice, it is actually difficult to understand how he should go about his website redesign.

Well, worry no more as you can get a dedicated help from us. We are endeavoring to provide the best support and assistance to our clients, so they may be able to stand a step ahead from the ever changing facets of internet businesses.

There was certainly a time when the websites were used primarily just to deliver some information, but now, websites are doing much more than that as they are serving more of an online catalogue. In this scenario, you will always have to update your products and would want to present them in a fascinating way to lure more customers. If you think that’s what you want, bank on us and we will deliver the goods as we are quite proficient when you want a website redesign. The first thing we will do to your existing website is to give that an exhilarating new look that will keep your visitors interested, as the look and style is the first thing, secondly, you would want to simplify the way of accessing a specific product that can be done by using an extensive search option. We can also let you use some of those options that would be best for your targeted audience which ultimately will contribute in extending your business. That is why; we take every website redesign project on an individual basis as we understand that no two websites would require same revamping.

Our devoted staff really comprehends the antiquated stuff or the quirks that need to be wiped out from your website and also the best innovative replacements. Along with these, they will embed all the graphics without harming the speed of your site. Doing a website redesign is our job and we know it well.

Some time, people feel that they are not getting enough customers but they don’t understand that their website is not conforming to the requirements. Hence before doing anything else, check with us as you never know how problematic and hindering your old website might be and what difference our website redesign would make to your business!

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Well-Designed Small Business Web site

2008-05-27T05:14:00.000-07:00

Most businesses now recognize the need to have an online presence. This means that you as a small business owner need to understand how small business website design works. Large corporate organizations either have their own team of website designers, or outsource the task to a web design company. For your small business however, the choice is usually between learning how to create your own business website, paying someone to do it for you, or listing your company on local commerce portals.

Why your small business needs a website

The problem faced by most small business owners is that they are not usually internet marketing specialists, and have no desire to learn html code, or the intricacies of web site design and construction. What they care about is getting more leads, more orders, and more business. This means advertising your business, and these days, that means having a business website. There are many advantages to be gained by advertising your business on the web, the primary one being that you can have unlimited content. Compare that to the amount of advertising space that you get for your money offline, and the benefits are clear. Offline, you may have only a few sentences to capture a readers interest. Online, you could easily build a 10 page website that describes your company and products or service fully, offered a means to take orders or enquiries, and had an integrated marketing tool that constantly reminded your prospects of your company. What’s more, you can change your business website content, or add to it, any time you want to.

Beware the small business website scamsters

Some web design companies target the small business market exclusively. Their pitch revolves around telling you that the service or product that you offer, has many thousands of searches a month on Google, and showing you examples of other small business websites that they’ve designed that are on the first page of Google. Usually the number of searches that they quote is exaggerated, or taken from unreliable data, and the top rankings are for terms that no-one searches for. heir proposition looks great, for only $497 and a $27 a month hosting fee, but in reality, it will be of little benefit to your business, if any.

How you can create your own business website

I’d urge all small business owners to discover how to utilize the power of the internet in their business. I know that your time is limited, and you would rather not think about it, but face it, you know that you need at least a homepage online. I truly recommend that you take a little time, to design and create your own business website. It doesn’t have to be complicated, you will not have to learn html, and the payoff will benefit your business in many ways. even if ultimately you decide to pay to have your website designed, you’ll be armed with knowledge that will mean you get a better website built by your designers. You’ll find plenty of options online for website building software, that are practically cut and paste - all you have to do is supply the content and any images and you’re good to go. You can start small, upgrade and update it when you feel like it, and test how things work out, all for a few dollars and a little time.

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How to maintain, creating & Updating your website?

2008-05-26T07:51:00.001-07:00

To developed a website is a nice for our business task. You are with out any difficulty sing up to some body to make for you, you have to try and learn how to developed a nice website. How to make a design and how to manage it all? You have to try physically. So lets us study about the tips which are given below:

rearrangement your sequence: you had exhausted so much instance about your website to developed a nice web site, about imprinter, stuff, press releases, case studies and newsletters. The moment you can keep it with the help of PDF’s and has to placement them to your site. You have to cover your all mileage which you had lost unnecessary about this. It is nice to developed a categorize records for newsletter there is a business writing, and also a press releases, business measures, etc, if you add amazing significance to your documents, and was sending out an email observe to your email list.

At present there is a site which allow you to position your newsletter and you can avoid from the disturbed and all through the net. Then you have to link the site to your sequence.

inform your possess site: you may spent a lot of money about the website to update. But when you have a website confidence. You have to take a small carry out if you know how to make a change on your website then you should yourself only start to update a website. Then its well again to yourself.

Lacking to other it is nice to developed by yourself you will straight away response to your advertising condition – attach graphic, new relations, new pages, coupon, no matter what you want to craft you have to improve your website. receive complete benefit of this occasion and organize its physically.

create your imagery competent: at any time when you are try to adding a image there you can see a slow process going on and there is some white space surrounding the creative images the image which you are seen is also a element of that images which can make slow process. You have to remove as much of white space or have a nice designing which the image are use only gif archive to placement to your site.

Help out community to find you… And stay hidden: conditional in your links there is a images and there is not a html and there is extremely words in html which is present on the page this is look for the engines. Then also some are shouting on the website for not looks the email address and to insert their database to send you spam. You have to secure your website and also maintain.
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The Basics of Good Web Site Design and Promotion

2008-05-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

Aesthetically designed pages, uniformity across the site, site that is built upon a great theme and associated keywords and key-phrases, excellent navigation between pages, good graphics, SEO techniques, and a great content are the primary requisites of a great Web site that will attract many visitors.

To design and develop such a site requires mastery over the different related tools and topics. An experienced web site design and development firm can create the best web site, addressing every concerned issues professionally, but even a novice will be able to create a basic web site from the concepts mentioned in this article.
A well-planned and developed business web site absolutely requires professional help in constructing it. Serach engine optimization will help it to rank higher in the search engines bringing in targeted traffic. This traffic is essential for the business, as more traffic means more potential customers, and would mean increased revenues.

The HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and web page editors will help the developer to construct the web site. Every help is available for the novice on the internet with free online tutorials and articles providing invaluable help in the construction of the web pages and the site.

It is imperative to have the concepts ready and use good fonts, graphics, audios, videos, and colors that are suitable. A good page layout can easily be planned using the free and paid online tutorials. Avoid using frames, too many graphics, animations, videos on the site as it slows down the process of loading the web page. Use graphics only to enhance the page and help the relevancy factor.

The most important part of any web page is its content. The content should be of excellent quality and be relevant to the theme of the site. Professional writers can help produce high quality content at nominal price. Hyperlinks to other pages on the site is a much overlooked issue, so plan the flow of the site well, and check that the links are not broken.

The content has its own subdivisions, like the title, the different headings, the meta tags and keywords, the placement of the keywords and key phrases, and the overall beautification using appropriate fonts, colors, length of the paragraphs, and associated graphics. Usage of correct grammar and the flow of the story are of paramount importance. Try and keep the content to an ideal length to maintain readers interest and readability.

Advertisement are a source of additional income the advertisement programs like Google Adsense come equipped with relative ads in text and graphics format. Contextual advertisement is the hallmark of Google Adsense. It is, therefore, recommended to use these advertisements on your web site. A word of caution here, Google Adsense follows a strict code of conduct and requires its users to follow its program polices. There are many other such programs that can be used for web site revenue through contextual ads.

Search engine optimization helps the site to rank well in the various search engines, especially Google and Yahoo! SEO and the resulting traffic will make the site popular. A good web site having a good traffic, especially a targeted traffic, is a winning combination. So, hiring a professional firm experienced in the SEO techniques can work wonders to the web sites popularity. Updating the site regularly is another important factor not to be overlooked.

There are various other issues related to the web design concepts, some more advanced than the others, but the basics of web design are the same as stated, and they can help any type of web site. A professional firm should be consulted and hired if a commercial site or even a better personal site is required, because the visitors will always love a well planned professional-looking web site fulfilling their needs.
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Design & Development Tips

2008-05-26T07:36:00.000-07:00

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Six Reasons to Redesign a web site

2008-05-24T06:02:00.000-07:00

Website redesigning is a specialized task. Though there are scores of web design agencies in the US or Europe and Asia, one needs to pick and choose a web design company carefully to ensure that the company has the required expertise. Following is a discussion of what needs to be kept in mind while redesigning a website.

Step 1: Understand the reason behind redesigning the website

Why must you redesign an exisiting and perhaps even established website? A website design would require overhauling if it fails to reflect the changes in the vision and strategies of the company, when it does not enable the company to showcase its new products or services properly. A change in the business direction and needs of the company also requires the website to be made capable of handling the new demands. Whatever the case maybe, one needs to chalk out the reasons which have necessitated the redesign.

Step 2: Test the website’s current usability

Do your homework before jumping into a web redesign project. Analyze web traffic data and feedback from users to get a fair idea of website’s problems from the user’s point of view. Online surveys, face-to-face interviews, or usability tests can also be used to understand the needs and expectations of the target audience.

Step 3: Treat the redesign as a project

A website redesign is quite a major undertaking requiring proper budget, time, and resource management. Therefore it’s better to treat each redesigning assignment as a project by clearly defining schedules, budget, and resources. It is also important to set up realistic schedules to avoid aggressive timelines as at times it can compel designers to take short cuts or bypass necessary consultation.

Step 4: Refurbish the content

While redesigning, don’t forget to review your website’s content. Based on users' expectations and needs, review and reorganize your website content. Make it SEO friendly conforming to Web 2.0 practices. This way you will be able to give your site better information architecture.

Step 5: Take one step at a time

Don’t go the whole hog at one go i.e. don’t introduce radical changes all of a sudden. Rather, adopt an incremental approach. This approach would involve changing one thing at a time and gauging user’s reaction to that change. With this incremental approach, not only would the changes be less dramatic, the budgetary concern can also be addressed better.

Step 6: Implement a Content Management System

Since the needs and the aspirations of the target audience will always change, along with the progress in technology, there will always be a constant need to update the website’s content. Hence, it is better to equip the website with a proper maintenance tool, namely Content Management System (CMS). This will make the next redesign much easier task because you will be able to focus on the core design elements as the content will already be in an updated state.

There will be certain sections in the site which would require constant updating such as blogs, company news, updated service offerings, career opportunities section etc. Therefore it’s prudent to plan out ongoing maintenance with your web designing company.

These are things which any reputed US web design company would take care of while redesigning a website. It pays to follow them to avoid heartburn later on.

Ethics of Beautiful Web Design

2008-05-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

Deciding on the kind of layout for a web site design, is one of the foremost dilemma faced by any web designer. He finds it difficult whether to design a website according to a competitor’s website or if he should come up with a unique one. Imagine, having a business card of your potential client who wants to design a corporate website through you. You know, a business card can speak volume about the company identity. Maybe you can draw your first hint for the design inspiration through the same.Unfortunately, that’s something that doesn’t happen every time. All you get, instead of the business card is the text. Simply no character or other thing to draw idea about the company you would be designing a website for! Where do you go now ?

To solve this dilemma, make a plan, and contact the person you would be designing for. Try to get some critical inputs from him, such as, the kind of work his company does, the content of the site on which you have to work and many more if possible. With all these information, you certainly will be able to come up with a successful layout and design.

Anyone who has a little experience and a working knowledge of some basic layout principles, no matter what level of creative talent he or she has, can come up with a design that works well and looks good. So now we can start with the basics and before long you’ll have the groundwork needed to design a quality web site.

The Design Process So how do you start ? There are lots of steps which are required for creating a design but real process of developing an entire site or web application includes two major tasks: discovery and implementation.

Discovery In this, you discover as many information about your client as you can. For this you meet the client and try to gather information and your queries could be any of these:

how they run their business,

who are the targeted audience,

do they have any logo,

which competitors’ site they like the most, why do you want to develop a web site, what kind of information you want to provide in your site and many more. Once you have all these information then only you’ll be able to come up with an appropriate and effective design.

Implementation In this part you just implement those information which you have gathered from the client to create a design.

If you will work along these ethics with some conventions that are related with design, it can prove of immense help to further strengthen your design process. Then you would start understanding the nuances of why an ugly design is never beautiful! No doubt some people have a bit of capability for it, but anyone can learn.

Re published by http://www.mach9.com/

Event-Driven Web Application Design

2008-05-24T05:32:00.000-07:00

Frontend engineering rocks right now. The era of boring web sites is over and we’re all into pushing the envelope, erasing boundaries and getting beyond whatever prevents us from building the next killer web application. New companies building quick-turnaround web products spring up like mushrooms and many an old convention of web design is cast aside to make way for quick prototyping and agile development.

The real confusing part of it — at least to me — is that we don’t try out new ways to approach web application development. Instead, there seem to be two separate schools of development approach:

You either use a framework (like Ruby on Rails, Spring or Microsoft .NET) to build your web-app or
You build your web app with best-practices ideas coming from more traditional web design and/or application design.

The framework approach relies heavily on the quality of the generated code and the accessibility and usability of the out-of-the-box page widgets and components. The pure web design approach relies on what HTML allows you to do and most of the time doesn’t take scripting-enhanced widgets into consideration.

As there are not many developers that follow both approaches there is a big divide in skill sets. People tend to become experts in one or another and stay within this comfort zone when talking to other developers. This is a real big waste as both factions could learn a lot from each other. All we need to overcome are the competing notions that (a) web standards and accessibility are show-stoppers for rapid framework-driven development and that (b) frameworks are a source of bad and invalid code. Both approaches are flexible: Frameworks can be extended to produce cleaner web standards can be seen as an agreed way of working with one another rather than as immutable laws that are never to be broken.

Re published by http://www.mach9.com/

43 Web Design Mistakes You Should Avoid

2008-05-24T02:10:00.000-07:00

There are several lists of web design mistakes around the Internet. Most of them, however, are the “Most common” or “Top 10” mistakes. Every time I crossed one of those lists I would think to myself: “Come on, there must be more than 10 mistakes…”. Then I decided to write down all the web design mistakes that would come into my head; within half an hour I had over thirty of them listed. Afterwards I did some research around the web and the list grew to 43 points.

The next step was to write a short description for each one, and the result is the collection of mistakes that you will find below. Some of the points are common sense, others are quite polemic. Most of them apply to any website though, whether we talk about a business entity or a blog. Enjoy!

1. The user must know what the site is about in seconds: attention is one the most valuable currencies on the Internet. If a visitor can not figure what your site is about in a couple of seconds, he will probably just go somewhere else. Your site must communicate why I should spend my time there, and FAST!

2. Make the content scannable: this is the Internet, not a book, so forget large blocks of text. Probably I will be visiting your site while I work on other stuff so make sure that I can scan through the entire content. Bullet points, headers, subheaders, lists. Anything that will help the reader filter what he is looking for.

3. Do not use fancy fonts that are unreadable: sure there are some fonts that will give a sophisticated look to your website. But are they readable? If your main objective is to deliver a message and get the visitors reading your stuff, then you should make the process comfortable for them.

4. Do not use tiny fonts: the previous point applies here, you want to make sure that readers are comfortable reading your content. My Firefox does have a zooming feature, but if I need to use on your website it will probably be the last time I visit it.

5. Do not open new browser windows: I used to do that on my first websites. The logic was simple, if I open new browser windows for external links the user will never leave my site. WRONG! Let the user control where he wants the links to open. There is a reason why browsers have a huge “Back” button. Do not worry about sending the visitor to another website, he will get back if he wants to (even porn sites are starting to get conscious regarding this point lately…).

6. Do not resize the user’s browser windows: the user should be in control of his browser. If you resize it you will risk to mess things up on his side, and what is worse you might lose your credibility in front of him.

7. Do not require a registration unless it is necessary: lets put this straight, when I browse around the Internet I want to get information, not the other way around. Do not force me to register up and leave my email address and other details unless it is absolutely necessary (i.e. unless what you offer is so good that I will bear with the registration).

8. Never subscribe the visitor for something without his consent: do not automatically subscribe a visitor to newsletters when he registers up on your site. Sending unsolicited emails around is not the best way to make friends.

9. Do not overuse Flash: apart from increasing the load time of your website, excessive usage of Flash might also annoy the visitors. Use it only if you must offer features that are not supported by static pages.

10. Do not play music: on the early years of the Internet web developers always tried to successfully integrate music into websites. Guess what, they failed miserably. Do not use music, period.

11. If you MUST play an audio file let the user start it: some situations might require an audio file. You might need to deliver a speech to the user or your guided tour might have an audio component. That is fine. Just make sure that the user is in control, let him push the “Play” button as opposed to jamming the music on his face right after he enters the website.

12. Do not clutter your website with badges: first of all, badges of networks and communities make a site look very unprofessional. Even if we are talking about awards and recognition badges you should place them on the “About Us” page.

13. Do not use a homepage that just launches the “real” website: the smaller the number of steps required for the user to access your content, the better.

14. Make sure to include contact details: there is nothing worse than a website that has no contact details. This is not bad only for the visitors, but also for yourself. You might lose important feedback along the way.

15. Do not break the “Back” button: this is a very basic principle of usability. Do not break the “Back” button under any circumstance. Opening new browser windows will break it, for instance, and some Javascript links might also break them.

16. Do not use blinking text: unless your visitors are coming straight from 1996, that is.

17. Avoid complex URL structures: a simple, keyword-based URL structure will not only improve your search engine rankings, but it will also make it easier for the reader to identify the content of your pages before visiting them.

18. Use CSS over HTML tables: HTML tables were used to create page layouts. With the advent of CSS, however, there is no reason to stick to them. CSS is faster, more reliable and it offers many more features.

19. Make sure users can search the whole website: there is a reason why search engines revolutionized the Internet. You probably guessed it, because they make it very easy to find the information we are looking for. Do not neglect this on your site.

20. Avoid “drop down” menus: the user should be able to see all the navigation options straight way. Using “drop down” menus might confuse things and hide the information the reader was actually looking for.

21. Use text navigation: text navigation is not only faster but it is also more reliable. Some users, for instance, browse the Internet with images turned off.

22. If you are linking to PDF files disclose it: ever clicked on a link only to see your browser freezing while Acrobat Reader launches to open that (unrequested) PDF file? That is pretty annoying so make sure to explicit links pointing to PDF files so that users can handle them properly.

23. Do not confuse the visitor with many versions: avoid confusing the visitor with too many versions of your website. What bandwidth do I prefer? 56Kbps? 128Kbps? Flash or HTML? Man, just give me the content!

24. Do not blend advertising inside the content: blending advertising like Adsense units inside your content might increase your click-through rate on the short term. Over the long run, however, this will reduce your readership base. An annoyed visitor is a lost visitor.

25. Use a simple navigation structure: sometimes less is more. This rule usually applies to people and choices. Make sure that your website has a single, clear navigation structure. The last thing you want is to confuse the reader regarding where he should go to find the information he is looking for.

26. Avoid “intros”: do not force the user to watch or read something before he can access to the real content. This is plain annoying, and he will stay only if what you have to offer is really unique.

27. Do not use FrontPage: this point extends to other cheap HTML editors. While they appear to make web design easier, the output will be a poorly crafted code, incompatible with different browsers and with several bugs.

28. Make sure your website is cross-browser compatible: not all browsers are created equal, and not all of them interpret CSS and other languages on the same way. Like it or not, you will need to make your website compatible with the most used browsers on the market, else you will lose readers over the long term.

29. Make sure to include anchor text on links: I confess I used to do that mistake until some time ago. It is easier to tell people to “click here”. But this is not efficient. Make sure to include a relevant anchor text on your links. It will ensure that the reader knows where he is going to if he clicks the link, and it will also create SEO benefits for the external site where the link is pointing.

30. Do not cloak links: apart from having a clear anchor text, the user must also be able to see where the link is pointing on the status bar of his browser. If you cloak your links (either because they are affiliate ones or due to other reasons) your site will lose credibility.

31. Make links visible: the visitor should be able to recognize what is clickable and what is not, easily. Make sure that your links have a contrasting color (the standard blue color is the optimal most of the times). Possibly also make them underlined.

32. Do not underline or color normal text: do not underline normal text unless absolutely necessary. Just as users need to recognize links easily, they should not get the idea that something is clickable when in reality it is not.

33. Make clicked links change color: this point is very important for the usability of your website. Clicked links that change color help the user to locate himself more easily around your site, making sure that he will not end up visiting the same pages unintentionally.

34. Do not use animated GIFs: unless you have advertising banners that require animation, avoid animated GIFs. They make a site look unprofessional and detract the attention from the content.

35. Make sure to use the ALT and TITLE attributes for images: apart from having SEO benefits the ALT and TITLE attributes for images will play an important role for blind users.

36. Do not use harsh colors: if the user is getting a headache after visiting your site for 10 consecutive minutes, you probably should pick a better color scheme. Design the color palette around your objectives (i.e. deliver a mood, let the user focus on the content, etc.).

37. Do not use pop ups: this point refers to pop ups of any kind. Even user requested pop ups are a bad idea given the increasing amount of pop blockers out there.

38. Avoid Javascript links: those links execute a small Javascript when the user clicks on them. Stay away from them since they often create problems for the user.

39. Include functional links on your footer: people are used to scrolling down to the footer of a website if they are not finding a specific information. At the very least you want to include a link to the Homepage and possibly a link to the “Contact Us” page.

40. Avoid long pages: guess what, if the user needs to scroll down forever in order to read your content he will probably just skip it altogether. If that is the case with your website make it shorter and improve the navigation structure.

41. No horizontal scrolling: while some vertical scrolling is tolerable, the same can not be said about horizontal scrolling. The most used screen resolution nowadays is 1024 x 768 pixels, so make sure that your website fits inside it.

42. No spelling or grammatical mistakes: this is not a web design mistake, but it is one of the most important factors affecting the overall quality of a website. Make sure that your links and texts do not contain spelling or grammatical mistakes.

43. If you use CAPTCHA make sure the letters are readable: several sites use CAPTCHA filters as a method of reducing spam on comments or on registration forms. There is just one problem with it, most of the times the user needs to call his whole family to decipher the letters.

Top 10 tips to rank well on Google

2008-05-19T09:02:00.000-07:00

1. Look before you leap

It is important to understand how Google works - and the size of the task - before you begin. Google itself began life as “Backrub”, a PhD project of two Stanford University graduates. The thesis was that you could ‘rank’ sites on the web in the same way you can judge the authority of a particular academic. In theory, the more times a particular academic is cited by others (for example in a paper) on a topic, and the longer they have been established in their field, the more relevant that academic (and their own work) might be to a researcher of that topic.

Despite its many algorithmic changes, Google retains that essential assumption; Your site will rank well (for a given topic) if it (a) contains good content on that topic which is (b) frequently and naturally linked to by others, for (c) a sustained period of time.

2. Court the Crawl

Search Engines find pages by sending “spiders” (or robots) to “crawl” the web. These are programs which follow a link from one page to another, read the text they find, then follow another link to move on. The spiders bring back the pages they have read and add them to the search engine’s vast index.

Whilst some companies still offer paid submission services, these are essentially obsolete; the big four (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask) and their partners control over 90% of the search market and all decent search engines will find and crawl your site successfully if you (a) have at least one link from another site to yours, and (b) have submitted a list of all your pages (a so-called Site Map file) to them. Find out more at sitemaps.org.

Having all your pages indexed is just the start, however. The most important trick is to ensure the search engine ascribes more weight to your more important pages (normally your home page and product or service category pages).

Google’s weighting system is called “PageRank” and you can find out what your pages score by downloading the Google Toolbar. Think of your site as like a tree, where the homepage is the trunk, your categories the branches and the pages the leaves. To properly court the crawl, your tree should (a) be symmetrical rather than lopsided, and (b) not have too many levels of branches before you get to the leaves. Less is more!

3. Find Phrases that Pay

What do you want to be top on Google for? Many people have ambitions that are too limited. For example, they only want to be top for the name of their business (which is pretty easy for most). The real prize is to attract searchers looking more generally for services that your business offers (i.e. leads rather than prospects).

The key is to thoroughly research (a) the key phrases that people most often use to find what you offer (keyword popularity), and (b) the number of competing pages on Google which also rank for that phrase (keyword competition). By merging these two data sets, you can identify “phrases that pay”, where the demand is relatively high but the supply of competing choices relatively low; “holes in the market”.

Did you know that whilst “rug” (10,400 daily searches) is more than four times as popular as “carpet” (2,300), it is present in less than half the number of pages? As such, it is far easier to perform well (as a carpet company) for searches on rugs!

You can find the number of competing sites by look at the top right corner of the Google results page. To find which phrases are more popular requires the use of online tools or specialist software and there is more info on my site.

4. Target the Long Tail

It will perhaps not surprise you that half of all searches on Google are for phrases containing three or more words. After all, “ladies hairdresser Twickenham” is a more useful search than simply “barber”. As the number of words increases, so the frequency of searches falls; something we call “the long tail” in search engine optimisation (SEO) circles. However, the likelihood of conversion (of a click-though to a sale) rises.

For example, if someone tries a very specific “ski chalet Chamonix child care”, they are more likely to book one of the chalets in that set of results than for the results from “ski accommodation france”.

Target this long tail. Ask yourself what the particular strengths of your product or service are and how people might search for this on Google. It is much easier to rank well on a longer phrase (or series of phrases) than a short one - and it will deliver improved conversions.

5. Prime Your Pages

Most people know about SEO copywriting, the art of writing web pages that read well for the human but are also full of lots of juicy search terms for the search engine spider. What people often do not know is that every part of the web page is consumed by the spider, including the full address of the page (or “URL”). So there is really no excuse to have an http://www.bizname.com/page1.html when you could have both a keyword-rich domain name and a keyword rich set of sub-directories and file names.

The most important blocks of text on your page from an SEO point of view are the page title (contained in the tag), the full URL (as we saw above) and the page headings (contained in the <h1>, <h2>, etc. tags). It never ceases to amaze me, therefore, how many web pages fail to use these elements well.</p><p>The full body text of the page (except for very, very long pages) is also crawled, as are the other meta-tags, including the meta-description and meta-keyword tags. However, these later two text blocks carry limited value these days for SEO.</p><p>There are three key SEO principles for writing good copy; prominence, proximity and density. Prominence means that text nearer the front of a text block carries more weight. For example, a title of “business printing from Chambers” will rank better for a search on “business printing” than the tile “Chambers: We offer Business Printing”.</p><p>Keyword proximity refers to how close the keywords (that make up your key phrase) are to each other. As an example, a page title of “printing business cards & leaflets” will not perform as well as “business card printing & leaflet printing” for a search on either “business card printing” or “leaflet printing”.</p><p>Finally, keyword density is the principle most familiar to people. Clearly, “business printing” has a higher density of keywords than “business printing and more”. Remove redundant words!</p><h2>6. Land the Links</h2><p>No matter how well copy-written your site is, you will still rank nowhere on Google without inbound links! Remember the principle of “citation” behind the Google algorithm? The most successful academics are not just good in their field! They are also good at promoting their skills with their colleagues, so that them and their research are cited often by their peers.</p><p>Ideally, you need links from other sites in (a) quantity, (b) quality and (c) containing the keywords or phrases that you want to be top for. Link quality requires a little explanation; Google judge links that come from long-established and popular sites to carry more weight. There is also some evidence that links from sites with similar content to yours are worth more.</p><p>The importance of links (in ranking well) has lead some webmasters to unethical practices, such as paying for keyword-rich links (often on unrelated sites). In many ways, Google is a “digital democracy”, where the sites with the most (quality) votes win the election. Buying votes is, of course, unacceptable (if such a system is to retain validity) so Google have been finding ways to tackle this (including inviting people to “snitch” on their competitors).</p><p>More valid ways to build links include directory submissions, forum participation, article submission, online press release publication, and cross-promoting sites with other webmasters (so called “link building”).</p><h2>7. Pay only for Campaigns</h2><p>Many businesses use the Google Adwords Programme to pay for positions. This has turned Google into one of the worlds biggest advertising companies! However, a paid advertisement is very much like renting a car. Once you stop the payments, the ads disappear. By contrast, a well-run organic campaign is like buying a car; the investment may be large (particularly in time) but the benefits continue long into the future.</p><p>Paid ads work best for the short term campaign; bidding for “Panasonic TV sale”, with an ad saying “20% off Panasonic TVs”, linked to a campaign landing page about the offer is likely to (a) cost less and (b) convert better than trying to out-bid everyone for “Panasonic TVs” from now to the end of eternity!</p><h2>8. Get your Business on the Map</h2><p>In 1992, almost all the most important sites on the web could be captured in one paper directory. In 2008, there are millions of sites on the internet and the web is getting ever more local.</p><p>Make sure you have submitted your site to Google Maps and other local search engines. Over the next five years, more and more people will use search engines on their mobile phone to find local services. Be one of them!</p><h2>9. Continually Tune & Tweak</h2><p>No webmaster serious about their search ranking should be without two key tools; Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools. Armed with these tools, you can analyse how people are finding your site, how Google is crawling your pages and how many inbound links you have. A search engine campaign is less a battle are more a war, to be pursued iteratively over a long period of time.</p><p>More advanced features help you track the return on investment from paid advertisements and a whole lot more. Do more of what is working well and address poor performance in other areas. Tweak and tune until you get the results you want! </p><h2>10. Play the Long Game</h2><p>Many people are not aware that Google deliberately deflates the value of all links and the value of pages themselves, based on how long they have been in place. This is to prevent unscrupulous webmasters from setting up huge “link farms” of interconnected sites and shooting straight to the top of the rankings overnight.</p><p>As such, it will take at least 6 months (and more normally a year) for any new site to rank well or any SEO campaign to fully impact. This simulates the real world, where no academic (or business) that is too new to their topic will be taken seriously by their peers. To rank well requires patience and sustained effort and there is no “quick fix”. Play the long game to achieve lasting success! </p><h2>Final Thoughts</h2><p>Above all, remember that online sales are just a percentage of your total sales and that search engine marketing is just one part of a comprehensive marketing plan. Too many internet entrepreneurs get obsessed about SEO and spend all their waking hours working at it. Get a life and remember you still have a business to run! After all, this is what consultants like me are for!</p> <br /><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Ethics of Beautiful Web Design</h1> <p>2008-05-19T08:02:00.000-07:00</p> Deciding on the kind of layout for a <a title="ethics of web design, web design ethics, web design, beautiful web design" href="http://www.mach9.com/design.html"><strong>web site design</strong></a>, is one of the foremost dilemma faced by any web designer. He finds it difficult whether to design a website according to a competitor’s website or if he should come up with a unique one. Imagine, having a business card of your potential client who wants to design a corporate website through you. You know, a business card can speak volume about the company identity. Maybe you can draw your first hint for the design inspiration through the same.Unfortunately, that’s something that doesn’t happen every time. All you get, instead of the business card is the text. Simply no character or other thing to draw idea about the company you would be designing a website for! Where do you go now ? <p>To solve this dilemma, make a plan, and contact the person you would be designing for. Try to get some critical inputs from him, such as, the kind of work his company does, the content of the site on which you have to work and many more if possible. With all these information, you certainly will be able to come up with a successful layout and design.</p> <p>Anyone who has a little experience and a working knowledge of some basic layout principles, no matter what level of creative talent he or she has, can come up with a design that works well and looks good. So now we can start with the basics and before long you’ll have the groundwork needed to design a quality web site.</p> <p><strong>The Design Process</strong> So how do you start ? There are lots of steps which are required for creating a design but real process of developing an entire site or web application includes two major tasks: discovery and implementation.</p> <p><strong>Discovery</strong> In this, you discover as many information about your client as you can. For this you meet the client and try to gather information and your queries could be any of these:</p> <p>how they run their business,</p> <p>who are the targeted audience,</p> <p>do they have any logo,</p> <p>which competitors’ site they like the most, why do you want to develop a web site, what kind of information you want to provide in your site and many more. Once you have all these information then only you’ll be able to come up with an appropriate and effective design.</p> <p><strong>Implementation</strong> In this part you just implement those information which you have gathered from the client to create a design.</p> <p>If you will work along these ethics with some conventions that are related with design, it can prove of immense help to further strengthen your design process. Then you would start understanding the nuances of why an ugly design is never beautiful! No doubt some people have a bit of capability for it, but anyone can learn.</p> <h6><em><strong>Source: http://www.goarticles.com</strong></em></h6><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Characteristics of a Properly Designed Website</h1> <p>2008-05-19T08:00:00.000-07:00</p> <div class="entry"> <div class="snap_preview"><p align="justify">If your website is properly designed, it will automatically be optimized for search engines. While your website is still in the concept stage, take care to separate textual elements from design elements. Although the information that is on your website will bring the visitor, it is the actual design that makes an impression. A website that is poorly laid out and hard to use will not attract and keep visitors no matter how wonderful the information is.</p> <p align="justify">Choose your layout, colors, style and information based on the characteristics of your target customer base. If your customer base is state-of the art engineers, you can utilize the latest bells and whistles to give your customers an eye-popping experience. If your customer base is a little more average, or if you aren’t sure, design for the most common browser and resolution. Then check your page in the site viewer at Anybrowser.com and make any changes necessary. Don’t neglect your customers with special needs. Designing for people with disabilities makes the user experience easier for everyone. See Designing sites for universal access for tips.</p> <p align="justify">Your home page should have at least 275 words of text that describes your product and entices your customer to look through your site. Your first paragraphs (80 lines or so) are the most important and should include your primary keywords and your tagline with a call to action. Your primary and secondary keywords should be about 5% of the text on your home page, used in complete and logical sentences. Please note: It does not appear that search engines are reading or following the information contained in iframes.</p> <h6><em>Source: http://www.phoebemoon.com</em></h6> </div> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Starting out in Web Design</h1> <p>2008-05-19T07:56:00.000-07:00</p> <div class="entry"> <div class="snap_preview"><p style="text-align: justify;">If you are new to <a title="web design start out" href="http://www.mach9.com/design.html" target="_blank">web design</a> your head is probably spinning with questions as well as excitement to get started. Many people find that hiring a web designer is a good way to go because they simply do not have the know how to get the job done. If you don’t need your website to be up and running in the next couple weeks you can take a crash course in web design and attempt to do it on your own. Not only can you realize your creative vision, you can also save a lot of money if you do it on your own, and you just might find your new hobby. Web design can be a lot of fun!</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">The first thing you should have if you are undertaking a web design project for the first time is a web editing software program such as FrontPage. Many of the software programs such as this are really easy to use, and offer guidance through the web development phases. There are more complicated web design software programs out there, but you should stick with something along the lines of FrontPage because it is very easy to use, even for a beginner.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Even with an easy to use program such as FrontPage you may want to study up on the benefits of html formatting, Meta tags, and search engine optimization. All of these elements of web design work together to get visitors to your web page. No one designs a web page to sit on the Internet without being seen. Combining the use of html, Meta tags, and search engine optimization you will be working with the search engines to get listed in the results pages of search engine results. This is the first step of creating a user base, no matter what your web page is selling or what type of content you provide.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Next, it is important that you incorporate quality content in your web design. It can be a lot of fun to incorporate graphics, gimmicks, and fun elements that are associated with today’s web pages but quality content is much more important than all of these things. This is not to say that you can’t add color, style, and personality to your web design but that should not be the basis. The content of your web design should be the priority and any graphics and gimmicks should be very secondary. Search engine bots and crawlers do not recognize graphics, so if you want to be seen in the search engine results you need to have content that speaks to the bots and crawlers. Quality content is the key to your web design bringing in the traffic.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Website optimization is a big deal right now and it is difficult to get into web design without delving into this area of the business somewhat. Remember that optimization standards are changing all of the time, so don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Your first priority should be to provide quality information, content, or services to your current and potential customers. When you feel as though you can do this you can then worry about whether or not your website meets all or some of the optimization standards that are out there. If you have a lot of content on your site you should try to hone in on popular keywords and use them throughout your articles and text. Web site design should also include links within and outside of the website. Links are basically a roadway for the search engines to follow as they browse the Internet. If you have links to your pages you will be sure that all of your pages get crawled and you have a better chance of being seen on search engine result pages.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Perhaps you don’t care all that much about search engine optimization because you are designing a family website or something to that effect. If that is the case you can use all of the graphics that you want and really not worry too much about links or html. If you don’t necessarily need a lot of traffic to your website to be happy, then you can really get creative and do some fun things. Your intentions for your web design will really influence how you should do things to be successful. Of course, one of the best things you can do in web design is to have fun because it’ll shine through in the end result!</p> </div> </div><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Ten Commandments of SEO</h1> <p>2008-05-14T02:08:00.000-07:00</p> <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Most of the time when we pitch to a new client we are asked for SEO guarantees. "Your competition has guaranteed top results and submission to 100,000 Search Engines and Directories". We go all out educating clients that Search Engine Optimization is all about smart work and not just adding random keywords and submitting to every directory possible. I'm writing this article to reach out to the SEO buyers and help them distinguish the crooks from the genuine SEO cos. I've compiled my Search marketing experience over the years in this article. I hope this helps you in selecting your Search Marketing initiative.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 1: There are No Rank Guarantees. (Period)</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Search Engines alone control their indexing and ranking algorithm. Do not try to trick Search Engines. The only way to improve your search engine rank is by playing by the rules. And the rule is very simple: make it logical. Web content is primarily for the site visitor and not crawlers.If your Search Engine Optimizer sold you magic "Top rank on Google in 10 days flat". Forget it. There are no short cuts. Top ranking in Search Engine Natural Results will take time. Hard work is imperative especially in developing the content on your website and the links to your site.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 2: Ranking is Not the End, It's the Means.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Ask yourself what will a top search engine rank get you? Most businesses are interested in increasing sales on a website or at the least driving qualified traffic. Ranking for the right keywords (keywords used by your target audience) is important. There are SEOs who will try to show case results for keywords that occur only on your website. Beware such gimmicks.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 3: Know Your Competition.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">"Rank" is relative position and more so in the Search Engines' natural results. How well you do in the search engine results is a function of how much hard work you have done in relation to your competition. Analyze your competition's keywords, links, keyword density and spread, but be sure to never copy your competition.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 4: Use Search Engine Friendly Design.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">A search and visitor friendly design is a must for any successful website. Your website should be compelling enough for repeat visits by search engines and potential customers. Make sure you have search engine friendly URLs and avoid those long URLs with query strings.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 5: Select Keywords that are Worthy.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">You must research your keywords before targeting. There are tools that give you a good idea of a keyword's search potential for example. It is important to know the number of searches for a keyword in the last month, last 6 months and last year. You should also find out the number of web pages that are targeting the keyword. It is advisable to start a campaign with keywords with moderate competition and a high number of searches.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 6: Write Great Content.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Even if your website site is technically perfect for search engine robots, it won't do you any good unless you also fill it with great content. Great means it has contextual and editorial value. Great content brings repeat visits and increases the chance of conversion. Great content is factual and appeals to your target audience. Your web page should have your desired action embedded in the content and you must ensure that the content is fresh. Keep adding and editing content regularly.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 7: Use Good Hyper Linking Strategy.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Hyperlinks make your content accessible and contextual. You must hyperlink in the right context within the website and to other websites. Good links are appreciated by the Search Engines and by visitors. No one likes to be taken to a mall selling "Macintosh" when shopping for "apples".</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 8: Write Relevant and Original Meta Content.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Meta content is like a business card. Just as your business card tells who you are and what you do, Meta content tells the search engines the relevance and context of a web page. Resist the temptation to include everything in the Meta content, but make it detailed. Confused? The idea is to include only what is relevant to the page in the Meta Content but to include everything that is relevant.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 9: Acquire Relevant Links.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The links you acquire are the roads to your web page for search engine bots and visitors. Good links increase your webpage's equity on the World Wide Web and bad links make a dent in your equity and credibility. Be selective in reciprocal linking. Both reciprocal and one way links work, if you are prudent in selecting the links. Submit your website to the relevant sections in relevant directories.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Commandment 10: Consult Experts, If You Need To.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">If you have the competence, there are two ways to learn - learning from your own mistakes and learning from others' experience. You can choose either. If you have the time and can wait for the online dollars, do it yourself. If you want to get started now, it may be useful to consult the experts.</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>How to make the shift from one host to another</h1> <p>2008-05-12T02:23:00.000-07:00</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Most webmasters have had some sort of bad experience with their hosts. Very often you find that a host doesn’t fulfill your needs anymore or they have over priced you. So when you finally find one that suits your needs, you have to make the big move from your old host to your new one. This is how you can make sure your move to the new server is a smooth one:</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">When you set up an account with the new hosting company tell them that you don’t want the domain name transferred until you tell them so. Replicate your current directory on your new server after you have logged into it and upload everything there but your CGI/PERL scripts. If the PERL is different on the new server you’ll have to edit the scripts manually so that they change before uploading them.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">Now it is time to do some testing. To make sure that the upload went well and that everything is working after the domain name transfer takes place test a few key pages. You will have to enter the URLs of the pages yourself. This you can do by replacing the IP address with what your hosting company assigned you and the HTML file names with the actual names of the files on your server.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">Once you’re sure that everything is working properly, tell your hosting company to transfer the domain name. Once the transfer is done you may have to wait up to 2 weeks for the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_system">DNS servers</a> all over the world to be updated.</p> <p style="text-align: justify;">While you’re waiting you’ll have to check both your e-mail accounts. After around two weeks, cancel your account with the previous hosting company.</p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;">If you’ve followed all the steps correctly you shouldn’t have had too much problem making the shift. Have fun.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Types of Web Hosting</h1> <p>2008-05-12T02:13:00.000-07:00</p> There are various types of web hosting solutions. Depending on your needs, you could choose from one of several web hosting solutions and therefore it is important to research and evaluate the services to pick the correct one. Here are some of the most common type of web hosting services available, click on the links for detailed information.<br /><br /><h2>Shared Web Hosting</h2> Shared or virtual hosting by far the most common form of webhosting.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/shared.html" title="Shared Web Hosting">More on shared web hosting</a> ].<br /><br /><h2>Virtual Private Server (VPS) Hosting</h2> Want control over your hosting environment but don't need the resources of a dedicated server? VPS hosting might be right for you.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/vps.html" title="Virtual Private Servers">More on Virtual Private Server (VPS) hosting</a> ].<br /><br /><h2>Dedicated Web Hosting</h2> Web sites that require all the server resources are best served by seeking a dedicated web hosting solution.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/dedicated.html" title="Dedicated Web Hosting">More on dedicated web hosting</a> ].<br /><br /><h2>Managed Web Hosting</h2> Managed web hosting takes the dedicated model of service to higher level by provding support services for the web servers.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/managed.html" title="Managed Web Hosting">More on managed web hosting</a> ].<br /><br /><h2>Server Co-Location</h2> When nothing but your own hardware located will do, you can find hosting companies that will host your server at their data center.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/colocation.html" title="Server Co-location">More on server co-location</a> ].<br /><br /><h2>Reseller Web Hosting</h2> If you have a network of websites or want to resell web hosting services to other, a reseller account can be a good start.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/reseller.html" title="Reseller Web Hosting">More on reseller web hosting</a> ].<br /><br /><h2>Free Web Hosting</h2> As the old saying goes, "<em>There is no free lunch</em>". The same goes for web hosting but if you can live with with limited web space, banners, popups, and other restrictions you can get certainly find "free" hosting.<br />[ <a href="http://www.webhost2go.com/web-hosting/free.html" title="Free web hosting">More on free web hosting</a> ].<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >Source:http://www.webhost2go.com</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Web Hosting Basics</h1> <p>2008-05-12T01:48:00.001-07:00</p> What is a Web Host?<br /><br />A <a href="http://www.mach9.com/hosting.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">web host</span></a> stores your web site and transmits it to the internet for you. To put a web site on the internet you need three things: a domain name, a web site and a web host account.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">How it works is that your domain name points to your web host's server which is where your site is physically housed. When someone types in your domain name, the computer looks to the domain record to see where it should go to find your site. It then goes there and gets it. Here is what you should know<br /></div><br /> * Domain Names - Do's and Don'ts<br /> * Building a Web Site - The Choices You Have<br /> * How to Choose a Good Host<br /><br />Domain Names<br /><br />A domain name is your address on the web. It's the information that customers type in to find your website. It's what comes after the www. in www.domain.com<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Don't buy your domain name from your web host. A lot of web hosts will offer to sell you a domain name with your web host account or will suggest you transfer your domain to them. Although it seems easier to keep them together, don't do it. You should always keep your domain names with a domain name registrar.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Why? Because this way you will always control your domain name. If you let your web host register your name for you, they control it. If the host turns out to be lousy, you won't be able to go to another web host until your current web host releases your domain. If you're leaving they have no incentive to release your domain name and some hosts drag their feet and keep it hostage. I've heard some real horror stories of bad hosts taking weeks or months to release a domain name.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you have access to your domain account it will take you less than 5 minutes to change your domain name to a new host. Basically, it's just a lot safer and less hassle to keep them separate. Plus, you won't pay as much. Web hosts mark up their domain prices.<br /><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The domain registrar I use is Act Now Domains. I think they are super. They only charge $12.75 for 1 year domain registrations which is cheap, they have great customer service and they are really easy to use. I have over 45 domain names and all of them are there.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Please note: it IS okay to keep your web hosting account with your domain registrar because you control your domain account. Act Now Domains has really reliable web hosting and they are cheap so if you want to keep your hosting and domain together use them.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Some web hosts give free domain names with their accounts - I strongly suggest that you do NOT get one this way. I love free stuff, but a "free" domain can end up being bad news for you. Some web hosts that give free domains retain ownership of the domain. This means that if you don't like their service and want to go elsewhere you can't because you would be leaving your domain behind. In other words, you're stuck.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Other hosts that provide "free" domains will let you take the domain with you when you leave but you have to pay them for it. The fees I've seen for this run anywhere from $35-$100. In my opinion, it's just safer to buy the domain yourself from a registrar like Act Now Domains so that way no one can hold "your" domain hostage.<br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Building your Web Site</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">To build your web site you are going to need web site building software. You will need to decide whether you want to use a web host's site builder or use your own. Your choice will affect the web host you choose since some web hosts provide a web site builder and others don't.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I usually recommend that if you are new to web hosting or fairly new that you select a web host that has a site builder and use it. The reason is that a software program like Front Page (the most popular site building program) is expensive and complicated to learn. You can always move up to it later but it's hard to start out with it.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">One thing to be aware of though - if you use the web host's site builder it's even more important than it normally is to make sure you go with a good host. Since your site is built with your web host's software you won't be able to take it with you and make changes if your host turns out to be bad.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Website Design Principles for Internet Marketing</h1> <p>2008-05-12T01:17:00.000-07:00</p> <div style="text-align: justify;">An essential element of the success of any <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mach9.com/design/marketing"><span>Internet Marketing</span></a><a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mach9.com/design/marketing"> </a>campaign is the ability to not only generate traffic to your Website, but capturing the interest of the visitor once he's on your site.<a href="http://www.mach9.com/design.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Website design</span></a> to close the sale.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">There are a number of techniques that the best <a href="http://www.mach9.com/design/marketing"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Internet Marketing</span></a> Strategies employ to ensure that their Website Design encourages a user to linger.To a great degree all Internet marketing strategies - article marketing, blogging, search engine optimization and email marketing, depend on the quality of your Website design to close the sale.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">As you design and continually refine your Website, maintain constant focus on what you are trying to accomplish, what message you are trying to communicate. All the principles in the world are worthless without vigilance to your ultimate objective.<br /></div><br />Here are five fundamental rules of thumb to observe to make sure your Website performs well.<br /><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255); font-weight: bold;">1) Do not use splash pages</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the "back" button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.<br /></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255); font-weight: bold;">2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable Website real estate. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.<br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 102, 255);">3) Have a simple and clear navigation</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus. If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.<br /></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255); font-weight: bold;">4) Have a clear indication of where the user is</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don't confuse your visitors because confusion means "I'm outta here"!<br /></div><br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 102, 255); font-weight: bold;">5) Avoid using audio on your site</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they're not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">If you analyze every aspect of your Website Design and ask the question - 'does this contribute to my ultimate objective?' - you're Website should evolve into a significant contributor for your Internet Marketing efforts.<br /></div><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> <article> <h1>Web Development Basics</h1> <p>2008-05-12T00:43:00.000-07:00</p> <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mach9.com/develop.html">Web development</a> is a broad term for any activities related to developing a web site for the World Wide Web or an intranet. This can include e-commerce business development, <a href="http://www.mach9.com/design.html"><span style="font-weight: bold;">web design</span></a>, web content development, client-side/server-side coding, and web server configuration. However, among web professionals, "<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mach9.com/develop.html">Web development</a>" usually refers only to the non-design aspects of building web sites, e.g. writing markup and coding. Web development can range from developing the simplest static single page of plain text to the most complex web-based internet applications, electronic businesses, or social network services.<br /><br />For larger businesses and organizations, web development teams can consist of hundreds of people (<a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mach9.com/about/staff">web developers</a>). Smaller organizations may only require a single permanent or contracting webmaster, or secondary assignment to related job positions such as a graphic designer and/or Information systems technician. <a style="font-weight: bold;" href="http://www.mach9.com/develop.html">Web development</a> may be a collaborative effort between departments rather than the domain of a designated department.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:78%;" >source:www.wikipedia.org</span><div class="blogger-post-footer"></div> </article> </main></body></html>