Design Website

Many times I''ve seen a web site undergo a revision and everything is brand new, even brand new links!

You''ve worked so hard to get those great page ranks for all your pages and then you get rid of them? NO NO NO.

It''s the same reason why people buy "expired domains". Simply because before search engines, directories & web sites have a chance to notice there is no web site anymore, someone simply changes the site to fit their needs and utlizes the traffic coming in!

Let''s say that you''ve made up your mind and you want to change the entire layout of your site. Before you do so, go through all your links and record the page rank that your pages have right now.

Ex.

Page 1 (PR 3/10)

Link: www.yoursite.com/page1

Page 2 (4/10)

www.yoursite.com/page2

Page 3 (2/10)

www.yoursite.com/directory/page3

Now I would look at those pages and utilize the pages that have a rank of (4/10) for my most important information when I consider the new layout. Doing so will automatically get my page listed under the new information within Google.

Typically, I don''t usually re-use pages that have a rank of 2/10, 1/10, 0/10. Anything higher will be strongly considered.

This will help search engines to recognize, a) Yes the site has changed, b) we are familiar with the pages they are re-using.

People BOOKMARK pages all the time!

What if you deleted all your old pages and created some new ones what will happen to your visitors that have a bookmark for those old pages??? They are now left feeling like your site is down, deleted or doesn''t exist anymore.

If you''re going to discard some old links, try adding a "Page no longer exist" message to let your users know that you know about the problem and you are sorry for the inconvenience.

An ongoing challenge for webmasters today is to provide fresh content that gives visitors a reason to return to their site. Unless you have a full-time staff dedicated to creating regular content, the time involved can be crippling.

Wouldn''t it be great if someone else would write timely, relevant content for you? Sure, but what are the odds of that happening? Well, many webmasters are already enjoying this phenomenon, and I''m happy to count myself among them.

Set it up.

Whether your site has a catalog of products or a collection of articles, you can design your pages to allow visitors to post reviews of whatever is featured on the page. They can share their experiences with items they''ve bought or post comments on the information in your site. Don''t confuse this powerful tool with a discussion forum. You create the topic of each page, and encourage visitors to post updates with the latest information in this area.

The more information you provide on your site, the better service you are providing to your visitors; but they aren''t the only ones who benefit from including reviews. It''s also a boon to you as a webmaster. Even if you never wrote another line of new copy, your pages will continue to grow with relevant content. Granted you still have to spend a little time reading the reviews and moderating what appears on your site, but the time required is much less than you would spend writing original content.

Why someone else will create content for you.

While the advantages to the webmaster and reader may be obvious, you are probably wondering what incentives exist for the reviewer. A few lucky souls have enough free time to share their opinions online for the mere satisfaction of seeing their own words, but most will need something more tangible before they invest the time to write a useful review. The onus is on you, the webmaster, to create an appropriate incentive. The importance of link popularity in search engine rankings provides a powerful clue. At AffiliateScreen.com, I allow my visitors to post reviews of their experiences with online affiliate programs. At the bottom of their review, they have the option of including a link to another page that supports what they''ve written (or they can simply include their affiliate link for the program). AffiliateScreen.com gives them the additional credibility of their expertise appearing on a third-party site.

With an increasing number of employment portals emerging, it is apparent that internet tools do help bring the job-seeker and the potential employer together. A sophisticated job search engine enables the job-seeker to have a smaller sample of relevant job openings instead of going through countless newspaper advertisements.

However, for most job-seekers, their resumes are not attractive enough. They can utilise their personal homepage to boost their chances of grabbing that all-important interview.

Here are some tips:

Allow potential employers to email your referees:

It is important to invite potential employers to email to your referees. Alternatively, you can be systematic and create a simple online feedback form to enable employers to select the information needed and send this request to your referee. Remember to create a brief online profile of your referees to create more credibility.

Your Articles:

It is important to write about 5 articles that demonstrate your interests and allow them to download these articles as pdf files. Your employers maybe impressed with your maturity and willingness to share knowledge to the visitors of your website. For example, if you are seeking employment for a marketing position, you should include an original article about the advantages of internet marketing.

Your Electronic Newsletter:

A natural progression from providing free articles is to invite visitors to be part of your ezine. It will also be advisable to inform subscribers about the contents of your free ezine and to invite article contributions. A certain measure of success is if your ezine membership can swell to about 500 people.

Using the marketing post as an illustration again, if a forward-looking organisation hires you, they may request that you include their corporate profile and website as a link from your ezine. In the same way, your ezine can also be featured in their corporate website. If you have not embarked on creating an ezine, great places to start are at I Make News.com and Constant Contact.com.

Unless you are an inventor, most likely you are selling a product or service that is being offered by someone else, somewhere, at some time. The first person to start your type of business would have gone through a lot of trial and error. Thank that person, as now you can not only profit by not repeating the same mistakes, but by learning what they do to get business.

The best way to do this is to practice what any businessperson knows: know your competition. The most beneficial thing you can do is to study what they are doing to attract customers.

Go online, do a search, pull up the web sites of your competition, and start taking notes. Here are some things to look for.

• What do you like about their web site?

• How can they improve upon it?

• Is it user-friendly and easy to understand?

• Is it too wordy or complicated?

• Could someone browsing this web site learn quickly what this business actually does?

• Does their web site move too slowly, due to an over-emphasis on graphics that sacrifices the actual message?

With your notes, you can begin to set up the key points that you feel your target audience needs to know about your product or service, and why it will benefit them to do business with you.

Look at these different web sites and read the headline.

• Does it draw you in?

• Do you care to read more?

• Do you feel intrigued, or more than a little confused?

If you find one you like, there is nothing wrong with re-wording it to fit your business. Remember that we are talking about imitation, not plagiarism.

It has been said that there is nothing new under the sun. While this may be the case, at least give what your company is offering a unique slant, and make an effort to provide it in a more informative and interesting format than what your competition is doing.

Geometric designs come in all shapes and sizes? and lines. You can create your logo design or customize your illustration by using simple lines and shapes to create your very own unique image.

Integrate the principle of simplicity with lines, circles, squares, triangles and rectangles, and you''ll be able to come up with wonderful results that you can use for logos, newsletters, flyers, brochures, and even web pages.

I would just like to emphasize that this article is not your typical ''you-do-this-you-do-that''. It doesn''t matter how you manipulate your geometric shapes and lines, as long as you produce results that best exemplify your tastes and specifications. I could only provide you with the basics of making your shapes and lines vary in thickness or flow in your media presentation. I will also provide you with ways to use simple shapes in logo design and create other custom graphics using the same circle, triangle or square. The final output would definitely be under your creative hands. It''s all up to you how you want your logo design to come out.

Using linea

Lines can vary in every logo design you create or illustrations you come up with. Innovate and be upbeat when it comes to creating your lines. Lines in general are boring, but with a little adjustment here and there, and a few tuck, lines in your logo design can provide you with the means to attract your target audience. Here are some variations you can do to make your lines more interesting and exciting:

- vary the thickness of your lines;

- try to look for patterns that a series of lines make; make use of those patterns;

- use dots and dashes, or a combination of both to create your lines;

- form barriers with your lines;

- direct eyeflow with a series of lines;

- indicate connections using variations of lines;

- show movement by using lines.

Novice and professional designers alike ? you may probably be skilled enough of any one or all of the techniques in creating a Web page and designing them. However, not all designs, even those made by authorities in the field, prove to be enjoyable and entertaining enough for the users. This is a fact that we hope does not irk some of our design enthusiasts and discourage them from honing their skills.

In terms of honing your skills in Web design, here are several pointers that will give you a chance to make enjoyable designs on a web site. These elements should be kept in mind to make it easier for your customers to interact with your web page, get satisfied with what they''re looking for and thoroughly have an enjoyable experience. A logo is required ? it''s high time for your business to acquire a logo. The logo is a means to define the look, feel and direction of your business. The concept of your logo will eventually transfer over to your web page design.

The purpose is required and you must understand it ? you must identify the objective of creating a Web page. Various companies have various reasons for putting up a Web site, you should have a major purpose, too. And you must be consistent with it in your Web pages.

The goal should be identified ? evaluate each page and align it with the goal you have for it. You might have an ultimate goal of having clients contact you and inquire about your services. If that is so, then you must create your Web page in a logical sequence wherein you will provide for instruction for your clients to contact you.

A navigation system that''s not confusing ? your navigation system must be consistent throughout your site. It would not help you gain more visitors if your recent visitors get helplessly confused in the middle of your site and decide to close the window. The information may be good, but visitors don''t want to waste time thinking where to click next and how to make certain pop up windows appear.

Fast loading of your pages is a needed as much as possible - your corporate identity is reflected in the graphics and navigation inside your Web page. But they must be optimized for fast loading. Loading a page in 20 seconds or more is too long already for Web surfers.

Persons engaged in website design, here''s a scoop for you! Would you just like to know that by understanding the basics of cognitive psychology around color and patterns, we could further improve our Web design!

Designing a Web site does not only concentrate on making web pages of a certain site interesting and impressive. This skill and talent must also be used to ensure the user-friendliness of a certain site and must strive to reach the widest range of users possible.

So what''s this about psychology? It simply implies that by understanding the capabilities of the human eye, we can produce Website designs that are more user-friendly. Being user-friendly means that our website design will not only cater for normal sighted Internet users but also to those partially sighted, blind or estimated 8-10% of men with red-green colour blindness.

If you don''t know anything about vision and colorblindness and their reaction to various designs, then you must start learning now! ''Normal'' vision is subject to huge variances. Even the size of elements will affect an individual user''s perception of colour. The colours and the intensity of shades you choose to use in your Website design will be discerned differently by every individual who visits your Website.

Inconsistencies in color patterns are affected by changes in the ambient lighting levels. It''s like changes in your hair color depending on the amount of lighting it was exposed. Some people even see blue colors in some objects like clothing wherein others do not perceive. These persons just happen to have more blue sensitive cones (photosensitive cells which convert light energy into nerve impulses) in their retina. They seem to view the world with ''blue-tinted spectacles''. As a web desinger, you have to be aware that these conditions are the reasons why your perception of your Web design may be different to other people and certainly are not the same with everyone else''s.

Any design on a web application involves the effective input of color scheme in order to impress web surfers, instill a certain image or identity associated with the kind of web site it represents, and add impact to the web pages. However, very few possess the talent and skill of developing a harmonious color scheme. There are even very talented Web programmers who can develop just about any kind of application, but, for the life of them could not understand anything about color schemes.

If you ever wondered where designers get the almost-mystical ability to declare if a color is or is not "working" or effective, then this article is for you. It may also help other web surfers, web design enthusiasts, novice and even professional web designers who are interested in elevating their understanding of color schemes and color selection for Website design.

Actually, not all people, especially painters who work with colors have the uncanny knack or natural ability with understanding color harmony. You can also acquire this skill from a basic understanding of color theory.

We challenge you to think like a painter that use a subtractive color method. This method is in stark contrast with the light additive method in your beloved computer. This means that, as more of each color is added, you get closer to white light. By telling you to think like a painter, think about colors as combinations of red, yellow, and blue, and realize that, as you add colors, you get closer to black.

A simple color wheel is the most critical tool you can use in order to mix colors and eventually gain a painter''s way of thinking regarding to color and color combinations. You also have to know the principles in understanding the three main sets of color schemes from the color wheel. These three main sets are analogous, complimentary, and monochromatic.

Analogous - adjacent to each other on the color wheel. If you pick any range of colors between two points of either triangle on our color wheel (ie yellow to red, orange to violet, red to blue, etc), you will have an analogous color scheme.

The Internet is a relatively new medium. What works for you in your printed offline brochures and advertising materials may or may not work on your web page. If you have already invested either time or money or both in your website you should carefully scrutinize the written words on your pages to see if they can really deliver a return on your investment. Here are five important questions to ask to when making a review of your website''s copy.

1. Can a web visitor quickly grasp what your page is all about?

You only have a short time to let your web visitors know the purpose of your website. If it is not crystal clear, they will have already surfed on to another website. Headlines and sub headings that convey your most important pieces of information are a must, especially for the main page of your site.

Writing good headlines is a science in itself. Look at a newspaper, almost every headline has a verb. Headlines must be active, and they must be convincing. Marketeers and linguists alike have identified what they call "power words", words that are emotive and draw attention like "breakthrough", "new" , "discover." Use these words to grip the attention of your web visitor.(An excellent introduction to the science of headline writing is Shelley Lowery''s article located at http://www.web-source.net/secret_formulas.htm)

2. Is your "Unique Selling Proposition" highlighted?

There may be hundreds of websites offering the same thing that you are offering. What sets you apart? What is the distinguishing feature or benefit of your product that makes your product or service different and, most importantly, desireable? It may be one particular item, a combination of items or it may be the sum total of all that you have to offer. If you were a web hosting firm it might be "Worry Free Service at a Price You Can Afford." This particular particular item is known as your Unique Selling Proposition (USP). It is your biggest "cannon", and you have to "shoot it" right at the top of your home page.

There are six important characteristics that can play a major role on the impact your website has on prospects. Outlined below is the importance of each characteristic and tips on how to maximize your potential. It is always important to tailor everything you do to what your customer is expecting, doing so will help keep you one step ahead of the competition.

Convenience ? Allowing your customers to make decisions at their convenience is a very powerful element. Nobody wants to feel pressured or hurried into making a buying decision. When a customer can go to your website, browse your products and services, and make a purchase at their convenience, you are satisfying a crucial consumer obstacle -- time. They don''t have to keep returning to your storefront every time they wish to evaluate your value. In fact, most customers do not buy something the first time they see it. Instead, they must see and consider it several times before they finally talk themselves into purchasing. A website allows customers to quickly review their reasons to purchase something, leading to a greater number of impulse buys.

Information ? A website can allow you to communicate much more information about a product or service than an in-store display or advertisement. You can also control the way the information is presented. Supplying information in an orderly step-by-step process can greatly improve the chance of a purchase.

Evaluation ? Many customers will not purchase something without searching for the best value. The internet allows your customers to obtain the information they need to feel like they are making an educated buying decision. Make sure you are using your website to take advantage of this opportunity. Inform your customer why your product or service is of the best value compared to their other options. Always acknowledge the competition instead of acting like your product or service is the only one out there.

Your web site should be-

• visitor friendly to navigate

• search engine friendly for the crawlers

• Automated with ecommerce and subscription forms...

Your visitor should get the feeling that you know your ''stuff''.

Here are few tips to show your web site professionalism:

1. Uniform Layout and colors:

When you see Arial font on one page, Verdana on another or some other on different page and top menu navigation on one page and sidebar navigation on another... How do you feel about the site? Immediately what strikes your mind is ''Newbie webmaster''. Keep a consistent lay out through out the web site. You can use SSI(server side inclusion) to update the whole site with in seconds. http://www.webmasters-central.com/wd/ssi-content.shtml

2. Links:

Check links for 404 page not found errors. When your visitor clicks on order link and found ''page not found error'' and come again after two days to see the same error... Means you noway care about your web site.

3. Start Your own opt-in list:

Ezine or a free course opt-in lists gives you good credibility. You can also have mailing lists for updates of your products.

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/arpproadv/index.shtml

http://www.autoresponseplus.com/

4. Customer support:

Offer good customer support. No matter what type it will be... Live support or email support or phone etc. State clearly the options that your visitor can contact you.

5. Write articles and publish on your web site:

If you have or are about to purchase a domain name, YOU could be in trouble and you don''t even know it yet...

See, what the domain sellers won''t tell you is that the domain name you are purchasing or have purchased can possibly infringe on trademark rights and you can lose that domain name or even worse.

Trademark and servicemark laws apply not only off-line but on-line as well and they even apply to domain names.

Now, a trademark generally applies to goods where as a servicemark applies to services. For the purpose of this article I will refer to trademarks as the same rules apply.

A trademark can be a word, name, symbol, or device and it is used to distinguish and indentify the goods and services from one person or company from that of another.

The purpose of a trademark is to prevent confusion in the eyes of the consumer relating to particular goods and services. Basically, they are in place to prevent unfair competition.

So with that said, just because you purchased a particular domain name it does not necessarily mean you have exclusive rights to it.

If there is a trademark in your domain name, the mark owner has a legal right to send you a "cease and desist" letter and possibly take that domain name away from you.

If you don''t believe a word I''ve said so far then I offer myself as proof because it happened to me. I recently lost one of my domain names under this exact same circumstance.

For legal reasons I can''t tell you the domain name as I agreed to make no further references to it, but there were two words in my domain name that were associated with a trademark.

Now, I wasn''t aware of this when I purchased the domain name. And I definitely wasn''t aware of trademark laws.

Don''t be ignorant on the subject like I was. You can avoid any potential problems by educating yourself and thereby preventing the samething from happening to you.

Don''t make the same mistake that I did!

Have you heard about domain names that sold for over a million dollars? Inspired by this, you imagine registering a great domain name, hanging onto it for a while, and then selling it off to become the next multi-millionaire. It could happen, but don`t count on it!

First of all, many of the truly great domain names are already taken. Second, the dot com bust took some of the wind out of inflated domain name prices. (If you sell your domain name for millions of dollars worth of stock in a publicly traded dot com flop, what is the name really worth?)

The cybersquatter buys domain names totally on speculation. Sometimes he will register names of famous brands, companies, or individuals. Time and again, these domain name speculators learn the hard way that they must respect intellectual property rights. They hope that some large corporation will pay big bucks to them for the use of the company`s own (already trademarked) name. Instead, they end up with threatening letters from a law firm for their attempts at extortion.

However, you can still make money from domain names if you are sensible in your approach. Here are some suggestions on ways to profit.

1. Affiliate Programs: Use your domain name to promote an appropriate affiliate program. Either redirect to the affiliate site or write a review that links to them.

2. Informational Sites: Create content and then profit from it by earning advertising revenue through Google AdSense or a similar program.

3. Redirect to Your Own Site: Some reasons you might want to do this include preventing competitors from using a particular domain name and benefiting from searches some users perform by domain name. (For example, if they wanted to order flowers, they might just type "flowers.com" in their web browser. You could get some traffic and sales this way.)

4. Product Sites: Create your own or sell someone else`s product appropriate to your domain name.

Domain names to the internet are the as necessary as wheels on a car. All websites need a domain name; it is how your website is found on the internet by your potential customers. It is your unique identifier and two organizations can not have the same domain name. Your domain name is not really purchased or bought; it is actually leased for a year to 10 years.

Choosing a good domain name requires some thought, because picking a good name may be an important factor in getting return visitors to your site. You will want to keep it short and to the point, no more than 14 letters. This can help reduce the chance of a visitor mistyping your site and ending up on another site.

It is a good idea to choose a domain name that reflects the type of business you plan to do. You will use the name often in your website and if done right it can help you with promote your site with the search engines. What are some tips for choosing a domain name?

Tip 1 - Buy it early. Take a day or two to decide on your name. Think it through, but, don''t procrastinate. Over 30,000 domain names are sold a day. Don''t let someone else beat you to a good domain name.

Tip 2 - Buy your name in .com and .net. Let''s say you buy domain name KCBBQ.com. Your competitor, who also sells Kansas City BBQ sauce, knowingly buys KCBBQ.net and maybe even KCBBQ.biz. Why would he do that? Isn''t he limiting his own business by getting a name similar to yours and won''t he confuse his customers? Don''t think your competitor is innocent. He has just engaged in a domain name trick! He is not planning on conducting his primary business under these names. He bought those names to TAP into your business! Avoid this common newbie mistake and buy all the necessary domain names to protect your interests.

Tip 3 - Buy alternate domain names. Domain names are so cheap that it is affordable to practice this tip. Let''s say you decide that you want to also buy KCBBQ.com and .net why not purchase KC-BBQ.com and .net. These other sites won''t go to waste. You can point these sites to your main domain name KCBBQ.com and increase the traffic to your site.

"What was the name of that website? It was good. It has something to do with..."

Is your web site like many others?

Domain names always on the tip of a visitor''s tongue, but not quite memorable enough?

Your choice of domain name needs to be easy to remember, as well as focused enough that your visitor will know right away what your site is about.

A Few Rules

Some rules do apply when deciding on a domain name:

Choosing A Domain Name

Choosing good domain names is almost as important as choosing your actual business (see our Startup Ideas page).

There are many different schools of thought when it comes to picking good domain names.

Some say to choose a short, concise name.

Some like numbers in the name, some don''t.

Hyphens and underscores -- as opposed to words all running together -- are another debated topic. It''s mostly a matter of easier reading for your human visitors. Which do you find easier to read?

myhomebasedbusinessadvisor

my_home_based_business_advisor

my-home-based-business-advisor

Generally, the hyphens between words make domain names easier to read for most people.

While search engines don''t rank domain names, a keyword-rich name will let your visitors know what your web site is about before they get there. This makes them more comfortable because they know what they''re getting in advance.

--About Domain Names--

Choosing a domain name for your web site is a major step for any individual or organization. You need domain names that are sticky, short, meaningful, easy to remember and at the roll of your tongue!

It is very easy to choose a domain name but difficult to find a good name, simply because of the fact that most of the good domain names are taken up by organisations. These domain name organisations take up hundreds of thousands of domain names and treat them as investments. It is not as easy to choose a good domain name. Sometimes, even web professionals spend hours at their computers to find good domain names!

Domain name registrations are cheap to maintain and subscriptions typically last a year. The subscriptions are renewable and paid to registrars by the design companies.

The most common domain names end with .com, .net, etc. Country specific domain names will end with com.au, co.uk, .co.jp, etc. For organisations, domain names will end with .org or be country specific- .org.au, .org.uk, etc.

You visited a great website some time ago that had some fantastic information on it. It is not easily found in search engines results so you decide to type the domain name into your favorite browser. The problem is that the url spells out something like keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword-keyword.com.

Does that sound ethical to you? It maybe helpful with those search engine rankings but for many visitors that can be a pain in you know what to type out.

For years I worked in an internet café and was surprised to know that many persons can''t type in a hyphen. Instead of finding out how to do it, they just move on to an alternate site hence a loss of traffic.

The average computer user can be a lazy fellow indeed. That''s why there are so many keyboard shortcuts. He needs to complete his task as soon as possible.

Ever wonder why the Googles, Yahoos, Amazons and Ebays of the online world are so successful? It''s because there domain name play a significant role in there branding.

There are countless persons logging on for the first time each day in search of information that can assist them in the iniation process. It is imperative that your domain name play a major part in creating a bond with your viewers.

For almost four years I marketed a free website that was hosted on Geocities. My "domain" spelt out Geocities.com/Myname which made marketing feel like running with an anchor tied to my legs. I can''t even imagine the amount of traffic and credibility that I lost due to that single factor.

Does it work? It can and sometimes it won''t. I believe that having a domain with too many words in it can be a turnoff just like having a Geocities site. It seems unprofessional for a company to have a name that contrasts the credibility that they are trying to create.

The toll free number 1-800-Get-Rich belongs to the Resorts Casino Hotel in Atlantic City. Perfect vanity number for a casino, right? Well apparently not. Their website shows the actual numbers, 1-800-438-7424 for the marketing department of Resorts Atlantic City. Those NUMBERS are nowhere near as memorable as is the mnemonic device of letters representing those numbers on the telephone keypad. It makes you wonder, did the casino have bad luck (no pun intended) or receive bad publicity for their 800-Get-Rich phone number?

Doing a Google search for 1-800-GET-RICH returns several spoof articles using the toll free number to make light of get rich quick schemes. Seems as well suited to a casino as to satire, since gambling represents the ultimate get rich quick scheme.

But on the web there''s a another element to toll free numbers you must consider. 800 numbers are used as domain names which seem to stick in our memory as a web address just as well as a phone number. Resorts Atlantic City Hotel Casino should buy the domain name www.1800getrich.com from the current owner and assign their marketing department toll free 800 vanity number to the Casino instead.

The domain name www.1800GetRich.com is for sale as of this writing if you visit that web address. You can be certain that the current domain owner knows that the toll free vanity telephone number is owned by Resorts International Hotels www.resortsac.com which matches the domain www.1800getrich.com. It has to be enticing to think a large international hotel corporation may want his domain.

The casino owns the toll free number but isn''t using the mnemonic for the numbers (GET-RICH for 438-7424). Makes you wonder about the history of the domain name, since WHOIS records show it was reserved only this past May of 2004, AND the history of the vanity number since it is going unused, at least on the web site. Hmmmm...

There are vanity phone number resellers online that actually specialize in providing 800 numbers with matching domain name for those seeking the consistent branding for their business. Clearly this is simply a marketing ploy by savvy 800 number vendors, as those domains may be full of hyphens and may cost more than they should due to the perception of value-added.

An interesting aspect to toll free numbers as domain names is that of 1-800 copyright and trademarks. Take for example, the well known flower retailer 1-800-FLOWERS.com where they use both the domain name and the toll free number. Both are copy- righted and trademarked names and essential to the business.

Well it is not Elvis, that''s for sure.

I am a firm advocate of good design but most of the time people tend to interpret design as amazing graphics and astounding visuals they tend to forget that design is the culmination of every aspect of good and effective presentation into one.

We all know that design and content have equal importance in regards to websites but if you must choose which one is immediately important, which will you choose, design or content? If you?re going to prepare an entire web marketing strategy on which of these two shall you focus on more? Why? Please defend your answer?

During my early days (around 1997), when I was still studying/learning to develop webpages, websites with astonishing visuals never fails to impress me and I?d always ask myself this, ?Man, how did they do that great graphic?? I will spend countless hours surfing the net collecting every graphically and visually orgasmic websites I could fine and I?ll try to imitate and recreate them with photoshop (Photoshop 4) and if I can?t recreate them I?ll scour the web for tutorials on how to make those visuals. Man, if I were paying for my internet connection I would be dead broke by now. It was a good thing that my internet access was free. Anyway, back to the discussion. Then it hit me, after saving a screenshot of those awesome website, saving all those wonderful wallpapers and all those banners and images, in my mind a very simple question was formed, ?When was the last time I visited these websites again?? the answer was simple, once or never. After, analyzing my thoughts I finally noticed that most of these sites offers nothing but visuals. I had spent countless hours browsing these websites and I was only looking at their visuals, why, because that was all they have. That was the only thing they can offer, visuals. I finally realized that the websites I regularly visit like Yahoo, Web Monkey, Web Developer Virtual Library, and now google doesn?t have all these WOW factor thing, they don?t have the bells and whistles of those extraordinary websites. All they have and all they offer was information, tons and tons of information. They never bothered to develop their look and their feel, what they developed was their content, their information database. Millions of people or millions of potential clients, buyers and opportunities go to these websites not to look at their remarkable visuals or presentations but to acquire what everybody need information and people pay a lot of money for information. A father will pay millions of dollars just to get some information about his long lost child but this same father would not pay anything more than 10,000 or even 50,000 USD just to look at a design, he won?t even pay at all.

As a webmaster, you want to keep your visitors content so they''ll come back again. Below you will find ten common mistakes made by webmasters that may deter people from returning.

1) Poor Color Choice

There''s one important thing to keep in mind when designing your web site, and that is always keep it simple. More is not necessarily better. Your web site should contain no more than three colors. Also remember that your body text should be a contrasting color from your background. There''s nothing worse than trying to read yellow text on a pink background. It may look cool to you, but cause your visitors to go cross-eyed.

2) Confusing Navigation

If your visitors cannot find their way around your web site, they''ll leave...plain and simple. Your navigation should be logical and consistent on every page. Studies have also shown that web surfers prefer the standard left or right side navigation over other layouts.

3) Inconsistent Font Face and Size

Just like your navigation, you''ll want your font style and size to be consistent. If your home page text is in Arial font, size 10, make sure the rest of your pages adhere to the same font style and size. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule, and you may need to use a smaller font for disclaimers, terms and conditions, etc. However, in most cases, you should use the same style on every page.

4) Long Paragraphs

This is a common mistake made by many webmasters.

To make your web pages easy to read, remember to break up your paragraphs often and use subtitles. Most people will skim when trying to find what they''re looking for so when your paragraphs are small and separated by logical headings, it will make it much easier on your visitor''s eyes.

5) Misplaced or Lack of Contact Info

Don''t make people search for contact information...especially if you''re selling goods and services. Always have your contact information visible on every page of your web site. Hidden contact information looks fishy and makes people leery of doing business with you.

The effective design is this one, which is maximum simplified, conformable to your users because they are your main purpose. This one, simply and clearly announcing what is your website about. This one, quickly offering the users exactly what they are expecting to see on your pages without being troubled with insignificant information. The big mistake made by lots of web designers is to project their activities from their own point of view, without thinking about user.

Factors, damaging the website design effectiveness

? Additional time needed for website downloading

? Badly written content

? Complex design, abundant in elements

? Difficult navigation, incomprehensible for user

? No validated program language

Additional time needed for website downloading

Your pages downloading time is extremely important. Your users will shut your website down very quickly if you make them wait more because of your slowly downloading pages. The other sites are on a mouse click away from them.

? Not important if you are talking about graphics, multimedia, scripts, applets - be cautious about their location on your site. Don''t put them without judging their position, just because you or your designer had an idea about it. Design them small-sized, too.

Badly written content

The text that is ready for print has nothing to do with the text for the Web. According to Jacob Nielsen, Web usability guru, users have more difficulties in reading the information on computers rather than on printed editions. They rather scan it than read it profoundly. Huge text blocks are unreadable and couldn''t allow them to do it. Means to make text more readable and effective could be effectuated by using:

? separate paragraphs

? titles

? subtitles

? indentations

? bullets

? bolds

? hyperlinks

? different fonts and sizes

Complex design, abundant in elements

? Don''t complicate users work by complex and abundant design making the website not to be clear in terms of its downloading and its appearance on their screens.

? Avoid frames. They could seriously damage your website usability.

Geared Up with a website and lots of energy to make a mark online? Spare some time and go through this. You''ll be glad you did. If you don''t already, this is something you MUST know!

1. Maintain an easy to follow Navigational system throughout your website.

2. Do not use frames unless it''s really important. Visitors detest getting stuck up in frames and Search Engines find it difficult to index websites with frames.

3. Avoid using scrollbars horizontally. There is nothing more annoying than having to scroll both vertically and horizontally at all screen lengths.

4. A full Flash Website may look very appealing, but that''s the last thing your visitors are going to wait for to load. Instead try embedding Flash on your pages to get the same look.

5. To minimize download time, use tables with different background colors to add life to your pages, instead of using too many graphics.

6. Do not cluster too many animated buttons and banners throughout your site. Your visitors will not be able to browse comfortably with all that blinking going on and will surf elsewhere.

7. Keep updating your website. People will not return if they find the same old stuff lying there.

8. Put up a message board, feedback form, guestbook etc. to add a touch of interactivity to your website.

**How Colors are Used in web design:**

Demarcates screen elements into groups- You can pu a blue background for your navagational bar and white for rest of your page. This tells the visitor that the blue area has different elements and grabs his attention.

You can relate different groups of element on your screen- If you want to keep a navigational menu also at the bottom of page, you can use the same blue background. This tells the visitor that both blue areas on the screen has the same information.

Highlights information- If you want to make a line of text prominent, you can use different colored text instead of regular text or use a background for that line of text.

Looks nicer- Always colors associate with our mood and perceptions. We always feel the colors. Colored objects draws peoples attention.

**One should always use web safe colors?**

Nah... Unless your audience purely rely on 256 colored monitors. Mostly a remote possibility. You can experiment and enjoy in applying colors in your web design. The worst thing that will happen is the colors are shown to it''s nearest color on 256 monitors. They won''t look like exactly as they look on your monitor.

**What colors are best?**

One cannot say this exactly. Because the blue which means professionalism to some is death to some.

Here are some colors:

To indicate necessary action, use warm colors

Red, orange, yellow.

To provide calm and content feelings use cool colors

Green, blue, violet, purple.

Green means growth and vitality.

Red means energy and passion.

Blue means intuitive, cool and trustworthy.

Yellow means enthusiastic and optimistic.

Orange means courage and success.

Purple means passionate and spiritual.

Grays and browns seem dull. But they can take on a more cheerful attitude with compliments of red and orange. Emotions like this will help your visitors to associate your site with stableness and confidence.

One of the most frequent questions I get asked about my ebook, Don''t Get Banned BY The Search Engines, is whether I amended it to include post-Florida Google. "Florida" is the code name that search engine optimizer wizards gave to a November, 2003, shakeup at Google that left many webmasters covering themselves up with makeshift fig leaves while dangling upside down above the proverbial crocodile moat.

I am tempted to explain that, "No, I did not amend it, because nothing has really changed." But just try telling the world that Bill Clinton did not have "sex" with Monica Lewinski. Yeah, right.

So I take the lazy way out and I just say, "Yes."

But the guilt has been creeping up on me, grasping at my skin, gnawing away at my bones, chewing on my heart, mauling my conscience, and spitting out my toenails one by one. So this is confession time. Don''t Get Banned By The Search Engine has not been amended to include post-Florida Google.

Is this because I am peddling stale goods? Am I leading people astray? Do I have a clue what''s going on? "No", "I hope so", and "Maybe".

In fact, nothing really has changed at Google, and webmasters who have been following Google''s guidelines can just keep doing what they have always been doing, just as Presidents who follow public decency guidelines can keep doing what they are doing (until we vote them out of office for other reasons, of course).

"But I followed the guidelines, and I still took bullets in several vital organs," I hear many webmasters say. In fact, very few webmasters have been following Google''s guidelines. Most have been following the Clinton what-can-I-get-away-with fig leaf guidelines.

Remember that Bill Clinton never had "sex" with Monica Lewinski. Technically. Honest, he did nothing wrong. He followed the rules by not having "sex" with Monica Lewinski. In fact, he was seen in public not having sex with Monica Lewinski on several occasions.

And webmasters follow the rules by not linking to "link farms" or "overoptimizing". Sure, they will link to sites that have nothing to do with their site''s topic, but not to a "link farm". And they will "exchange links", but surely that does not violate Google''s" uniquely democratic nature of the web" principle. As long as you are not actually caught publicly stuffing the ballot box, how could Google possibly suggest that you are doing so?

There are plenty of web sites out there in which basic elements of design are ignored. The viewer may experience overkill and frustration, instead of gently receiving the message or information. Here are some simple ways to help clarify your web site''s message for your company or organization. Use the web as a tool for sales, community contact, and to improve, rather than detract from a business entity''s image.

Choosing Your Images

Choose site images carefully. Collect simple illustrations or photographs that are in sync with company mission or philosophy. A few select images will have more impact than many images competing for the eye''s attention. Avoid images that are distracting or trendy. Don''t simply use graphics to be cool.

How many photos or images are appropriate? A good rule of thumb is one to two images per web page. Select photos and images as carefully as you select the text, and you''ll be on your way to a better site. The exception to the rule is for sites that market a large amount of products or contain many points of interest, where small thumbnail images may be more appropriate.

Placement of Images on the Page

Do you want the photo or graphic to be the centerpiece? The first thing the eye sees? If so, place it in the central position. If not, maybe the photo or graphic is related to some of the text, and it can be placed nearby this text to accentuate it. Remember, we read from left to right. Some say the left represents the past, the center the present, and the right the future. Content may be organized this way on the page intentionally, to heighten this resonance with the viewer.

Don''t let site images be a distraction or hindrance to understanding. Instead, they should blend well into site content and not be a contrast to the message on the page. Images should not compete with content, they should enhance it.

Image Quality

You know that I''m always extolling the virtues of an all-round website marketing approach that doesn''t just focus on search engines? Well, you''ll be suprised to hear there''s a big problem with this.

The big problem with this is that it assumes your website is ready to start receiving lots of visitors in the first place! Before you start marketing your site you need to know..

How To Destroy Your Homepage And Turn It Into Dynamite

The sad fact of the matter is that most homepages on the web suck. They''re not just "below par" - they are downright embarrassing. Now I''m not saying yours is one of them but I''ll stick my neck on the line and say that yours is not 100% perfect.

So what can you do? Well - it''s time to get a sledgehammer and destroy your homepage. Don''t pussyfoot around - just take a big run up, a huge swing and smash the thing to smithereens. Level it to the floor. It''s the only way to get it right.

Why Destroying Your Homepage Is The Right Thing To Do

By destroying your homepage you will then start with a blank page - the only way to truly get inspired and come up with something completely different.

You see the problem here is that your homepage is probably the result of months of tweaking, tidying, cluttering, cleaning, dusting, re-tweaking and re-cluttering. Your homepage usually ends up as a combination of all the things you think are important but as a result can often end up looking more like a messy attic than a welcoming reception into your business.

3 Ingredients You Need To Turn Your Homepage Into Dynamite

Ingredient No. 1 - Headlines

You''ve read a newspaper right? (Here''s hoping..). Imagine trying to digest all that information without headlines to draw your attention, differentiate all the separate paragraphs and give you a clue as to what the detailed descriptions beneath are all about? It would be impossible to read.

If you don''t have attention-grabbing headlines on your homepage that''s what you''re doing - making your page impossible to read. And remember - "Welcome to Widgets Inc." or "Welcome to my homepage" are not headlines! Write something that makes me ask "How do you do that?!"

Ingredient No. 2 - Proof Is In The Pudding

Are you building your website? If so, STOP! Take a look at what you have done so far. How many images do you have? How much text do you have?

If your website has more images than text then you could be in trouble. Ask yourself these two questions

What are my visitors at my website for?

Chances are, your visitors cam to your website to find information on a topic or to answer a question. They probably didn''t come to look at pictures (unless you run a photo gallery). Give your visitors what they want and they will keep on coming back.

Why did I put all these images on my website.

Now, this is not always true, but what I have found is that people put a lot of images on their website to make up for poor quality content. They think if they have a pretty looking website, people won''t pay that much attention to the text. That is another wrong assumption that should never be made.

REMEMBER: People come to get quality content, and will leave if you don''t provide any

"Oh, my eyes, my eyes! What an eye sore. Quick, click away! Click away!"

Suddenly I wake up in a cold sweat. What happened. Oh, then I realize: it was just a nightmare.

O.k., I''m not crazy, and no I haven''t had this dream before. But think about this: what would you do if you came to a site littered with either tons of different colors, loud pinks, purples, greens and reds mixed incoherently, or more animations and graphics than the rods and cones of your inner eye can possibly absorb? If your like me I simply go "click, bye-bye".

Our visual stimulus is ever more so important on the web than almost anywhere else. Most definitely the internet is about information. But, that information is shown graphically. So, if you want to keep people at your site, first appeal to their visual stimulus.

There are a few guidelines that you should adhere to when designing your site, following known research results on colors that elicit certain psychological responses people. The bottom line is that it is hard enough to market on the internet today, why make it harder by bugging your visitors.

(1) Colors and Their Effect: I prefer blue and white. In general blue seems to elicit a sense of trust and white a sense of purity. Gold, on the other hand is the color of wealth and prosperity, something we are all working towards. So, with respect to general internet marketing, these colors tend to work the best. They are easy on the eyes and don''t strike up a sense of danger, such as with the color red. Of course, the colors also depend on purpose of your site. If selling baby items, pink, which represents femininity, and baby blue, representing weakness may work quite well. It depends in part on site content. A high tech site selling electronic components may do better with greys, silvers, and black.

(2) Animations and Banners: Animations are nice, but can take time to load and be distracting. Use them to focus the attention of a visitor. Place them at a single page location, at the center or all at the left side for instance. If you use more than one and they are scattered all over the page, where can you expect your eyes to focus. Yep, you heard right - click, bye, bye.

1. Loading time:

• try to be below 20kb

• less number of images

• specify height and width of images

• Html with out erros

• WYSIWYG editors load up your html code. so try using text editor part of your html editors instead of visual editor

2. Images Only home page:

Say goodbye to images only home pages. Home pages with flash only introductions or only graphics don''t attain good ranking in search engines.

3. Content:

Put content that related to your products or a list of your products with some text under them. Don''t forget to sprinkle some keywords in that text.

4. Links to your Products:

Make it Easy for your visitor to reach your product pages. Afterall your purpose of setting up a web site is to do few sales. Right? On each page you can use same navigational menu. So your visitor can reach any page on your web site with two clicks.

5. Headings and subheadings:

Highlight your product benefits or services. Put your content as short paragraphs. Beleive it or not, if the matter is like short paragraphs anybody can read whole page instead of a half page singe paragraph.

6. Promotions and sales:

If you are offering any promotional methods on your products like free upgrades for limited time or reduction of price to half for limited time etc, state them bold on your home page. This may make your visitor click on your link and check out your product.

7. Links to Outside domain:

As a rule of thumb, don''t put links to other domains from your homepage, unless those are also yours. If you are participating in link exchanges then create seperate folder for link exchanges like yourdomain.com/linkpartners/index.html

8. Pop-ups on Your home page:

Personally I never liked them before and even I don''t advice to put pop ups on your web sites. If you do a search on Overture, there are more searches for the term pop-up blockers. So you decide yourself.

These are first 4 terms- (148790 - pop up blocker,65195 - blocker free pop up,53141 - pop up stopper, 47157 - pop up blockers)

1. Use .gifs rather than .jpgs. GIFs are smaller in size when compared to JPGs.

2. Use ''Height'' and ''Width'' tags for your images. So while page loading certain place is left for the images and visitor can go through the content while images are loading.

3. If you are using large images, slice them up and make them load as part after part. For this you can use img tags like HSPACE=0 and VSPACE=0.

4. Use image compression software that reduce image size. Remember, the more you reduce your image size more will be the loss of quality.

http://www.spinwave.com/index.html

http://www.macromedia.com/software/fireworks/

5. If you have lot of images to display, then put them on different pages by linking the pages like ''Next Image >'' or something like that instead of a long page with 10 images.

6. Use same image over and over again if you need a similar image. Like if you are keeping a big header graphic on every page of your web site. Then use same graphic to link to all pages on your web site.

7. Flash presentations, mouse overs, animations etc increase page download time. So if you can use html instead of these, go with it.

Out there in the WWW there are thousands sites using flash for their needs. But the majority sites are not in this list. Let''s summaries some facts about flash using on YOUR web site and after that it''s you who will have to decide: to use or not to use. There are some facts about Macromedia Flash Technology:

The First Fact:

Sites are look much prettier and professional with the flash animation on their pages. Users sometimes visit sites only to see flash intros if it''s done in some original manner.

The Second Fact:

Flash Source Scripts cannot be stolen unlike Java Scripts or HTML code. Flash files come in "two" pieces: files with .fla extension are the actual source and .swf files are compiled version of these files. In browsers you can see only .swf files.

The Third Fact:

Flash animation files are slow to download and require flash player plug-in . Regular static graphic requires less time to download. In a couple of years when the problem of dial-up connection may be solved and fast DSL lines will be cheap and available for anyone this problem may seem not so serious, but so far we must consider this aspect, as not all users are eager to wait for a minute or two to see your flash intro. That''s one of the main reason flash is not popular on the big corporate sites (but Yahoo for example displays flash advertisements on their pages)

The Fourth Fact:

Not all browser compatible with flash players. The old versions of MS Explorer and Netscape Navigator cannot display flash movies. There is a solution however: to use Java Script to check the compatibility of browser and display the static image if the player is not available for that browser. Well there is some issuer still left with browsers who cannot understand Java Scripts but there are few people who use those browsers today?but there are some?and you must keep that in mind.

Argh, where''s the contact button?! Believe it or not, some websites just DON''T WANT any visitors (even customers) to CONTACT them. There''s no email address, no contact form, no NOTHING!

What if a potential customer wants to BUY something from your website but have a few questions or doubts that he/she needs to ask you first? If you have a FAQ page, that''s the first place he/she will definitely seek answers...but what if your FAQ page still can''t provide the answers he/she seeks?

Don''t care?! Not your problem?! Would rather prevent spam than going through all the trouble?!

If your website can''t even provide even HANDLE the SIMPLEST form of communication, you will definitely lose lots of potential customers (even loyal customers) because simply can''t contact you!

That''s why the Contact Us button or link should be placed in a highly visible or accessible position. This is common sense. Who would feel SAFE to buy from a someone let alone a website that don''t even provide the most BASIC form of customer support. What if the product they bought is defective or they''re having some trouble accessing it?

If you''re HIDING your website''s email address purely because of spammers, especially from those email harvester software, you do NOT really need to REMOVE your email address from your web site. You can create and place a simple GIF image with your email address on it using the same background color as your web page.

Example 1:

To contact us, send us an email to:

If you don''t want to use an image, you can separate your email address so that it doesn''t look like an email address to email harvester softwares...

Example 2:

To contact us, send us an email to: sales at ebookok dot com

This approach is NOT recommended, because some visitors will actually send an email to sales at ebookok dot com without first changing it to sales@ebookok.com. Of course you can tell them to remove the at and replace it with @ and dot with "." before sending it.

Are you serious about get this website done fast and clear and want to make money with your website? Then you will absolutely need some good web design agency to build the website of your dream and that it the aim, right?

Web design studios may be local and virtual. Local studio may be your choice if you live in a big city and you know at least couple of web designers across the road. It is much easier for you to use their services then to chat on ICQ with sales managers or try to explain them your project by phone. But wait! Virtual Design Studios give you ultimate choice between quality and price. You may search the Internet to get the best quote. There are thousands good companies from all over the world waiting for your order and the more choices you have the better for your business.

Let''s face it: people who come to web design agencies fall into two categories in most cases: the first one is people who have little or no knowledge about Internet development and came because they want professionals to help them.

The second one is users who could make some money online, they usually good informed and know a lot of things about web design, promotion, link building, search engine optimization etc, but they also know that professionals can and will do design better. That''s the point of web design agencies: we make tools for online business: clean and quality, original and unique.

If you belong to second category so you probably had some experience in site building and know what you can expect form web design companies but I believe following text may be useful even for you as my advices will help to reduce production time and design efforts and finally total project cost.

If you never had a chance to build your website I strongly recommend to read this article. It may be your guide in the world of professional web design.

Now let''s see how you can make life easier to your web design company. You can think: if I pay the money it is not my problem how to get the best website but that will be wrong attitude: the better YOU understand what you need the easier and faster it can be achieved by designers.

We''ve all seen them. Poorly designed web sites that make you cringe as soon as they load. But how do you keep your website from becoming, well, ugh. You could hire a professional web designer, and that''s expensive, or maybe you already hired a professional, or someone who claims to be professional, and you don''t like what they''re doing with your site. It all comes down to the K.I.S.S. principle; keep it simple stupid. And you''re probably asking well what does this really mean for web design.

Here are some basic graphic design/web design principles that you can use on your site:

1. Background, be careful what color you use for the background of your site. Yes I know that you''re trying to get noticed, but really they''ve already decided to look at your page so why does it have to be orange? Seriously though, consider how long you want people to be on your site, half an hour, one hour, more? Whatever the time chose your background color and then sit in front of your computer and stare at it, for awhile. Is the color easy to look at? Difficult? Does it make your eyes water? Does it make you calm? If you can look at the color for about fifteen minutes without a problem you''re okay.

2. Text, related to the above be careful what text color you use. Follow the rules above for determining a text color. It should be easy to read, and look at.

3. Font, no more that three fonts on the entire website. I mean that! A big mistake that I see a lot of times is the use of more than three different fonts, it get''s hard to read no matter how neat you think it looks.

4. Font size, no more that three font sizes either. Now I don''t mean three font sizes for each of the three fonts you''ve chosen. I mean no more than three fonts with a total of three sizes throughout the entire site, and if you can get by with less even better. It will simplify your site.

There are often many mistakes encountered when creating a webpage or website. Learn about the top five website mistakes, and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1

Web page size. If your website takes longer than 10-15 seconds to load you should consider optimizing it for the web. This is one of the biggest mistakes a web designer can make. You may have cable and love to fill your website with graphics, but if your visitors don''t have cable or a fast connection at all your chances of getting them to wait that 10 to 15 seconds for your page to load is very slim.

Mistake #2

Flashy ads. Ok, so you have to bring in some cash some how right? So you sign up to a bunch of banner ad affiliate programs. Only problem with this is their banners are animated and constantly flashing while your visitors view your website. This can be good in some cases for getting some extra cash. But visitors can be easily annoyed by these banners.

If your trying to get customers, having these flashy banners increases your chances of your visitors leaving. Lots of people may be drawn into these ads (probably your best customers) and if they click that ad, they are now a customer to someone else thanks to your affiliate program.

Mistake #3

Confusing Navigation. Before you build a website you should make a sitemap for how everything is going to be setup. Come up with a plan to have some form of contact information on each page. If your visitor comes to a page and wants to purchase something and they cant find a contact link they will most likely change their mind while searching for it. Keep your navigation consistent on each page. If your visitor has to learn to use a different type of navigation system on every page they will become easily annoyed.

Mistake #4

Confusing Content. You want to make everything easy to read and navigate. If you know someone thats in their teen years you should come up with some questions to ask them about your website. Like: What do you think my site is about? Would you buy this product on my website? Can you understand the information on this(blank.html)page?

"It''s good."

"You''ve done a nice job."

"I don''t like it."

At some point, you have probably received comments like this when asking for constructive criticism of your website efforts. Unfortunately, the generic nature of these comments does not give specific information on elements that you need to improve your site.

So how do you elicit specific, constructive, targeted feedback from the public in order to improve your website? The seven techniques below, when implemented properly, will give you the constructive feedback you need to make your website the best it can be.

1. Ask both closed-ended and open-ended questions. Closed-ended questions, such as "how would you rate the site on a scale of 1 to 10?" will provide quantitative measures which, in aggregate quantities, can be very useful. Open-ended questions provide your users the opportunity to provide specific and detailed answers in their own words, thus providing a more qualitative measure of your website''s appeal.

I generally find that a 60% closed-ended/40% open-ended mix of questions provides sufficient data from both a qualitative and quantitative standpoint.

2. Give your existing website customers surveys. Your website customers are the people for whom your site is ultimately constructed, and showing that you are interested in their feedback to make your site more useful to them serves as an excellent way to ensure repeat business.

3. Develop a "focus group" whom you can approach for advice on a regular basis. One of the positive aspects of soliciting opinions is that there are many people who are more than happy to provide it on a regular basis. Your group can be comprised of customers, suppliers, friends, neighbours, relatives, or just about anyone you like!

4. Critique another''s website when asked to do so. By providing a thorough and constructive evaluation of another person''s website, you will establish a relationship with that other person. When asked, said person will usually be quite happy to return the favour.

If you''re writer, I am sure sometimes you may have run out of topics to write about.

Here are a few tips on how to generate article ideas:

1. Participate in chat rooms related to your targeted audience. Watch what questions people are asking and ask others what information they''re interested in.

2. Examine what information in being broadcast on tv, news and talk shows. That information is usually hot topics.

3. Hang out in similar message boards. People leave questions for information they''re seeking. That is a strong indicator of subjects to write about.

4. Survey your web site visitors or current customers. Ask them what type of articles they would like to see published on your web site or in your e-zine.

5. Regularly check your site''s guest books. People sometimes leave questions or comments that would help you generate high readership articles.

6. Check online bookstore''s best sellers list. They''re very good resources for finding winning topics and ideas to write about.

7. Use the time of year to come up with good topics. You could relate your content to the holiday, season, things that happen years ago during that time, etc.

8. Join some related e-mail discussion lists. Explore the question being asked and the subjects people are discussing.

9. Relate your article to a current fad that''s going on in your specific industry. The topic is usually interesting to your target audience.

10. Make a file of visitor or customer questions you receive via e-mail or phone. Usually, others have the same questions, but never ask.

When you design a website how do you start ?

Do you start with the banner graphics at the top, or the order page or maybe the sales letter ?

All of those are areas that have to be created but they''re really not the place to start.

The place to start is by answering one simple question about your site.

>> What do I want my visitor to do before she leaves? > If she doesn''t do that, what else would I like her to do?', 242, 'The Most Important Question To Ask About Your Web Site!, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'The Most Important Question To Ask About Your Web Site! plus articles and information on Web-Design'); INSERT INTO pqdb_articles (article_id, article_title, article_text, article_cat, article_meta_key, article_meta_desc) VALUES (46895, 'Hexadecimal Color Notation on the Web', 'When designing elements for your webpage, you will often be called upon to specify a color. For example, the code for a span shown below specifies that the color of the text within the span will be yellow.

Text

Colors can be specified according to their names, for example "yellow", "green", or "blue". In many cases, these simple color names will work. But what if you want to specify a more sophisticated color like "cornflowerblue"? A particular browser may not recognize a particular color name. It''s more reliable to specify colors with an "RGB triplet".

An RGB triplet specifies a color based upon the amounts of red, green, and blue, on a scale from 0 to 255, required to create the color. For example, to create the color cornflowerblue you need red=100, green=149, and blue=237. We could then specify the color of the text within a span using the rgb function as shown below.

Text

This will work fine with style notation, but what if you want to use straight html. Html doesn''t recognize the rgb function. In that case, you can specify color using "hexadecimal" notation. Whereas the decimal numbering system uses the characters 0 through 9 to get 10 values, the hexadecimal numbering system uses the characters 0 through f to get 16 values. (After 9 the characters a, b, c, d, e and f are used, as shown below.)

Does your website make a good first impression? Is the navigation intuitive? Is the content appropriate for your audience? You''ve had your website up and running for a while now but you''ve always had a nagging suspicion that your website is lacking effectiveness and you just can''t put your finger on it. You''ve dabbled with colors, added/removed images re-written the text but it still feels as if everything just isn''t working together. Wouldn''t it be nice if you had a way to sort things out? Well now you do!

Find out if your website has power, energy and the right stuff to help your business succeed. You''ll be able to find out if the navigation; advertising, optimization, imagery and look are combining to make your home page an effective tool. Each section has a number of questions that help define, in detail, all the important areas of a well designed website. Just run through the list starting at the top. When you''re finished just click the "Total Score" button at the bottom.

Just use the simple Q and A form here: http://www.learn2design.net/login/secure/interface/eval.php to see if your website meets established design standards. Using this checklist form you can rate your website (or anyone''s) to make sure you''ve got all the essentials covered effectively.

Now the hard part; you have to answer the questions honestly and objectively! I know, it''s your baby; you''ve spent countless hours nursing it to stardom. But now is the time to make an honest assessment. (Pretend its someone else''s website if that helps.)

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you''ll want to put some thought into how you''ll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can''t point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

Ads as a service

Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case, the ads become content. Here''s an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product "reviews". For example, computer magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.

2. Repetition of ads and ad management

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn''t respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will repond to it on the second, third ... hundredth page?

Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your website''s visitors, and a money losing propostion for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management system is a banner rotator.

Home Page

Home page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.

If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link "skip intro" should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.

Navigation structure

Place the navigation on the place where the people are used too look for it. Don''t experiment with the navigation! I can''t stress enough this. Keep the navigation system same on ALL pages. Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your site.

Font size

Your font size should be enough big so your text can be read without effort. There are many people who will not bother to read very small letters. Don''t loose your visitors because of font size. Optimal size seems to be 12-13 points. Visitors should be able to read your text easy, without any effort. Broke big chunks of texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.

Line Length

The length of a line of type should be comfortable to read. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be about 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Somewhat shorter lines of about 40 to 50 characters may be more appropriate for larger displays. If the line is too long the reader must search for the beginning of it; if it is too short it will break up words or phrases awkwardly.

Creating emphasis

Creating emphasis is an important and integral part of designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and good judgment it can help direct and inform the reader. When these qualities are lacking, or someone feels that every word is important and must be emphasized in some way then your web page starts to look like a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!

Graphics

So you''ve decided to take the plunge. You know that stock photography is an effective tool for your web business, but where do you start and how do you choose the stock photo that''s right for you. Here are some tips to get you started so that you are happy with your choice.

1. Decide where you want to purchase your stock photography. There are large agencies and small independent photographers. While the agencies will have more to chose from and sometimes lower prices an independent photographer will offer more personalized service and opportunities for you to have custom work done, if that is what you need.

2. Don''t go in expecting to find an exact image that is in your head, a large agency or an independent photographer will not have the man in a blue suit, holding a cell phone, next to the white blinds nor will they have the beach landscape with the green and white striped chair. You need to have a clear idea in your head of the message that you want to convey and search for an image that creates the message that you want. (If you want something specific you''ll have to pay for a photographer to shoot to your specifications.)

3. Make use of a free comp image to try out the image and make sure that it fits with your project or web design. Most stock agencies offer some sort of free comp image for position only so that you can make sure that you like what you''re going to buy. Please use this option, if available, and make sure that the image is going to convey the message that you want it to.

4. Pay for what you need. Don''t pay for a 300 dpi image for a web design, and don''t buy a 72 dpi image for something you intend to print. Make sure that the agency or independent photographer offers at least a printable and a web version of every photo. Buy only the size image that you need for your job.

10 Basic Things Your Website Should Have ...

__ all short sentences and paragraphs (more reader friendly)

__ lots of "white" space (more appealing)

__ graphics (makes site more interesting and entertaining)

__ links (widens reader interest)(boosts search engine ranking)

An attractive and user-friendly Web site is crucial to attracting prospects and holding their interest. Seems obvious, yet poor design and even more poorly written content clutter the Web.

The basics of a good web site are simple. Generally, if the purpose of your web site is to convey information, the emphasis should be on clear navigation and engaging text. If however, your purpose is to showcase a portfolio or develop a brand identity, then it will be more appropriate to limit the amount of text, and concentrate on the graphics.

However you define the purpose of your web site, following a few basic guidelines will keep your web site user-friendly.

Keep It Simple.

This is the most important rule of Web site design. Keeping things straightforward from a user''s perspective requires some thought and planning.

If people find it difficult to get into or move around your site, they may not stay for the show. Ditto if you make it difficult for them to contact you or place an order. A little research into what your visitors will be looking for when they click on your Web site will help keep them happy.

Make Your Links Clear.

An important part of keeping it simple is making your links clear. If you use icons or pictures for your links, be sure to give them text titles. It may sound boring, but your site visitors don''t want to waste their time trying to guess where to go next.

Also, make sure that your links are easily visible. Don''t make your visitors have to scroll across to find them. Typically, links are found across the top of the page, or vertically arranged on the left.

Use Straightforward Navigation.

Make sure your visitors always know where they are by providing a navigation bar or map on every page. Also, try to arrange your information so that it is never more three clicks away. Make it easy for your visitors to find what they''re looking for, and to get around your site.

Tell Them What to Do.

Web users like to know what''s expected of them. If you want them to order your product, sign up for a newsletter, or contact you - tell them. And then give them an easy way to do it.

Did you know that many folks make "buying decisions" when they are moved emotionally? Other traditional medias have made the most of these principles and taken advantage of them for many years, whether it be a TV commercial or an ad in a magazine. People are emotional beings and people make decisions (either good or bad) when they are emotional. If something causes a customer to become upset, they become angry and try and solve it. If they become upset enough...they''ll make a decision to perhaps discontinue your service and hire another service. On a positive side, the TV media bombards us with commercials that try to make an advertisers product seem fun or cute. The "emotional content" tactic is in nearly every advertising and communication media from print to radio to TV and yes, even the web. Emotional content is used to sell everything from fast food to children''s toys.

What every Toy Marketer knows:

Toy marketers have known for years that the focus in a toy commercial is not so much on their new product, as much as it is on the facial expressions of the child. They''re showing the absolute joy and delight of playing with that toy. Often images in the mind of the child who is viewing the commercial might evoke a sense wonder, adventure and excitement. Sometimes, a toy marketer may aim much deeper psychologically by showing the child in their commercial, enjoying their toy with either Mom or Dad sitting on the floor playing with him or her. The child viewing the program may even desire that toy more simply because they think that "if they only they had this toy", their Mom or Dad might take more time to sit down and play with them too!

Emotional Content in Traditional Marketing:

In the example above, a TV commercial does not focus on the parent...they are selling to the child. However, selling a toy on the web, in an online toy store, is different in the aspect that you are actually selling to the parent (a child does not have a visa card to place an order). The benefits of a toy that appeal to the parent will be things like, it''s safety features, the fact that it "educational". However, focus on appealing to the child might zoom to the top again in a children''s entertainment site. If you want to sell a toy, you must make it desirable to have on the child''s level. Most of us who have kids, know the impact and the drive that a child can have towards getting something from a parent. When a child "wants" something, that child will persistently find a way to go after that item until usually, the parent often gives in and buys it.

Most of us know that we need to advertise our products and our services, some of us still believe we are too small to invest in a advertising campaign. Now while a full-fledged marketing effort may be too much for your operation, it is however crucial to your success that you are involved in some kind of marketing activities. While putting a few strategies into action will make a big difference to your business and will certainly help in reaching your intended audience. However, if you do not spread the word about your business, no one will know you are there.

If you don''t create a successful strategy for marketing your business, you can''t build a profitable online business. It''s therefore imperative to drive thousands of visitors to your web site, then convert them to paying customers.

How do you accomplish this?

Market With Consistency

Set up a clear marketing plan for your web site and stick to it. It is the foundation of your business.

Use Several Marketing Strategies

Do not put all your eggs into one basket by only depending on one marketing strategy. Just look at the latest Google update in which many commercial web sites which once had top rankings, dropped out of existence, instantly losing valuable sales.

By creating more than one strategy to market your web site, you can see which one works the best by attracting the most visitors.

Test Marketing

Continually test all your web site marketing strategies to see which one works the best. Eliminate those that are not profitable.

In addition to optimizing your web site and making sure the content you have included is interesting and valuable, your goal is to make sure that others can benefit from your services and products. But since your services or products are not necessarily for everyone, it doesn''t make sense to promote a business to those who will probably never use it.

1. Email Course or Tutorial

Set up an autoresponder that will deliver quality information over a period of seven days. This means you have multiple chances of contacting your visitor and to promote your product or service at the same time.

Square buttons, round buttons, flashy buttons ? will they match my shoes, my handbag or my tie? Are you stuck in a maze of buttons, headings, bullets, sub-headings and colour schemes?

STOP!!!!

Take a deep breath and read some practical tips for professional looking websites.

1. Select a colour scheme and stick to it.

If your company has a logo or preferred colours on its stationery that''s a good start. For those of you starting from scratch, choose two or three complementary colours and stick with them ? don''t change colours on every page.

The most common colour schemes include:

• Red, yellow and white

• Blue and white

• Red, grey and white

• Blue, orange and white

• Yellow, grey and white.

If you''re not sure what colour scheme to choose, surf the internet and find a website that you like. You can then model your colour scheme on what already exists.

2. Use templates.

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

Visit:

• www.web4business.com.au/templates1.htm

• www.newtemps.com

• www.website-templates-resale-rights.com

• www.123webtemplatesandmore.com

3. Provide an easy to use navigation system.

This is one of the most important issues to consider when designing a website. You need to ensure your visitors can find what they are looking for easily. Most websites either display their navigation bar on the left or at the top. And since most people are used to this type of navigation, it''s best to stick with it.

Want to know what the worst thing to say on a homepage is?

"Welcome to our homepage."

And yet, time after time, we all come across such homepages on the Internet. The reason that this is such a poor opening gambit is the fact that the visitor already knows he / she is looking at your homepage, what''s the point in teaching them to suck eggs?

Your website''s homepage needs to contain much more important messages than a simple welcome statement or brief history to your company. Why has someone landed on your website in the first place? What problem are they looking to solve?

What type of information do they seek? If your homepage doesn''t convey that your website has the answers to these questions in the visitors'' minds then it''s game over - they will leave, never to return.

3 Seconds To Make The Right Impression

So how you can retain visitors and grab them as soon as they view the homepage of your website? Well, try condensing the key selling points of your business. Why are you different? Why should they do business with you as opposed to anyone else?

A lot of businesses also lose sight of the fact that their homepage should not only convey what the business is about but also what the website is about. What can visitors do on the website? What types of information can they find here?

What are the best things about the website? If you don''t convey all these vital messages quickly via the homepage people will not stick around trying to find the answers themselves deeper within the site.

Put Yourself In The Shoes Of Your Customer

So your web site''s online and you''ve got high rankings in the search engines attracting lots of visitors. But the statistics tell you most of them are leaving after viewing just one page, what''s gone wrong?

One possible cause could be a slow download speed of your web site''s homepage or the web site as a whole. There is nothing worse than having to wait for a web site to load up. Studies indicate that the majority of visitors will only wait 3 - 5 seconds for a homepage to load up before clicking elsewhere.

If your homepage doesn''t load up in this time (from a standard internet connection) you are running the risk of losing lots of visitors before they''ve even read the content of the homepage.

They Won''t Hang Around!

You should always assume that most visitors will be connecting to the Internet using standard equipment - not super-charged fast connections. The main culprits of slow download times for a homepage are images. Just remember - every part of every web page you view has to travel down the phone line and onto your screen - the larger the item the longer this will take to happen.

It is for this reason that you will sometimes notice the text on a web page loads up on your screen before the images. This is because of the simple reason that images are larger in file size than text and therefore take longer to come down the phone line.

The more large images you have your homepage the slower it will be to download. Nobody is saying get rid of all images from a homepage - as with many things in life - they key to success is balance.

Try not to sacrifice your web site''s aesthetic for quicker download times but, at the same time, don''t have large images or animations on the homepage, as these will take longer to download.

Does Your Homepage Need To Go On A Diet?

Even if you''re not an accomplished webmaster you can still have a professional looking website. You may be like I was five years ago-you''re teaching yourself web design and you''re starting to catch on to that HTML stuff. You''re so excited about your new bag of tricks-but slow down partner, sometimes less is more. In fact the only time more is more is when it concerns chocolate cheesecake or something like that. (I can never get enough chocolate!)

You''ve worked hard to get the traffic-now don''t drive them away.

1. Fatal Flaw One-Bouncing, Wiggling Animated Clip Art

This one is really annoying to website visitors, and a sure sign you don''t know what you''re doing, especially if you have them all over the place. Just because they''re free, doesn''t mean you should use them.

SOLUTION-You''re probably not a graphics designer if you resort to using clip art, so don''t worry about your weakness, just choose a nice color scheme instead in your tables. (More on that later.) Colors don''t take extra time to download either.

2. Fatal Flaw Two-Embedded Music Clips

Good grief. Don''t do this. I don''t care how catchy your elevator tune is. No one wants to hear it. Sometimes speakers are turned up and a sudden blare of music will scare the heck out of your visitors. They''ll probably leave!

SOLUTION-If you have a site that sells music, then people will expect to hear it sometime somewhere at your site. Make your music links clickable-a choice that visitors can make to listen!

3. Fatal Flaw Three-Unstructured Text

I can''t stand it when I land on a site that I have to read from each side of my screen to the other left and right as well as up and down. Even if you want to write one long sales letter-which obviously works fine for hundreds of rich webmasters, you still need to format it into a legible width.

SOLUTION-Put your text in one single data cell of a simple table. Center your table. Voila.

4. Fatal Flaw Four-Out of Control Scroll

Do you want to use unsafe web colors without offending anyone? You can and you can do it by using JavaScript. It will determine which style tag the user uses by looking at whether it can use unsafe colors. This can get quite complicated for a large web site. You can save these as external Javscript files and use them in a common template. You can even use them in combination with cookies to determine whether they can have unsafe web banner advertising.

I have heard about this problem for years but there seems to be no easy solution. Then I started experimenting with JavaScript and found that not only does it work, but it can be easily accomodated in yesterday''s browsers with a minimum of fuss.

The Javascript code starts like this. You define the colordepth and then determine if it is limited to 256 (2 to the eight power) colors.

var color=screen.colorDepth;
if (color', 242, 'How To Use Unsafe Web Colors With Minimum And Safety And Maximum And Profit, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'How To Use Unsafe Web Colors With Minimum And Safety And Maximum And Profit plus articles and information on Web-Design

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Every action has a beginning phase where you launch your activity, a middle period in which you must sustain and develop it and a conclusion. Many people set up a website enthusiastically but then they find that they don''t have the skills or knowledge to maintain and develop it. So, what are the challenges in this middle phase of a website''s life and how can you meet them?

Updating the site: The beauty of a website is that it is not static like a brochure or printed document. You can change it to reflect new products or new developments in your enterprise. You can launch new campaigns, and at any time you can add more content.

The problem for some companies and individuals is that after they have paid a good amount of money to have their site built, they do not have any personnel who can make changes to the website, such as adding new text or photos etc. One solution to this is to make sure you have a good maintenance plan included in the contract or agreement you make your with your web designer, so that minor changes can be made by your original designer

Another solution, and one that gives you more flexibility, is to train someone in your organization to be able to work with an html editor (like Frontpage, Dreamweaver, or other similar programs). While not everyone has the skills to design a site from scratch, someone who is able to use the normal word processing programs can learn how to modify text and upload files to the server.

Promoting the site: If you just sit on your hands you cannot expect your website to live up to its promise. Many web designers do not have a clue about things like search engine optimization or submission, and the new website owner is left with a nice looking site, but no traffic. Furthermore there are other website related promotional tasks such as reciprocal linking, newsletter editing and mailing list maintenance which do not fall into the duties normally performed by the site''s original designer.

Websites that have multiple pages usually have a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page. There are several good reasons why you should have one.

A successful website is something that everyone venturing into the new arena of Internet marketing and communications wants to have. Your website will often be a potential client''s first impression of you and your business. That being said, it is vitally important that your website represent you in a favorable manner. Your website is a component of your overall marketing strategy and should be reflective of your business and current marketing presentation. Just as your brochures and other print materials represent a level of quality and professionalism, your website should also represent that same level of quality and professionalism. As a point of comparison, you most likely wouldn''t have just anyone design your company''s marketing materials or for that matter, prepare your tax statements. Similarly, it is important that the person creating your website know how to effectively communicate both your message and style, and be able to create an effective experience for those visiting your site.

What does it really take to have your website be successful, and what are some of the most important steps you can take to make that happen?

1. If you intend to have a unique domain name for your website, you must first check to see if it is available. You can check to see if a domain name is currently registered at http://www.internic.net.

2. Set a budget for your website. It is important to know how much you can spend on your project. In considering costs, remember that a website is a complex matrix of text and images and a professional execution is very important. As a generalization, the larger your investment, the greater your return. In order to spread your investment over time, you can also grow and expand your website gradually. Don''t forget to include costs for promotion and advertising.

3. Determine the purpose for your website and the intended results. Does this purpose support the mission and vision for your company? The number of options and variables that are possible in the design of a website are virtually endless. Without a clear idea of the purpose for your website, you may end up putting time, energy, and money into a project which doesn''t meet your needs. If you know in advance the results you intend to achieve, you will be better equipped to create a website which will achieve those results.

Now that you have decided that it is time to create a website for your business there are many questions you must answer. One of the most important questions is "Who should create my website?"

I like to use the analogy of playing music; in as little as a few hours, some people can strum a few chords on the guitar and play a song. But to really play the instrument and make your instrument sing requires experience and understanding. Likewise, although there are tools which are readily available to assist in the process, effective website design requires experience and understanding of many diverse areas including: marketing, Internet graphics options and limitations, effectively creating a site from the perspective of search engines, the differences and limitations of different browsers and computer platforms as well as knowledge of the software and coding required to move beyond simple static html pages.

It is also vitally important that your designer understand you and your business and know how to most effectively communicate you and your uniqueness to your Internet audience. To answer our question, we''ll look at some important pieces of information that you''ll need to find out before you choose your website designer.

What do you want in a website? What are your needs and intentions for having a website? Does the prospective designer listen to and understand your needs and intentions? Have you checked other similar businesses to see what they are doing on the Internet? Can a prospective designer offer any suggestions for improving upon what others have already accomplished? The more clarity you have about your intended results for having a website, the more accurately you can communicate your needs to your designer and the more likely it is that you will achieve these results.

Is the designer experienced in website design? How long has the designer been creating websites? What is their background? How long have they been using the Internet? Three years is a long time in Internet terms. More than four or five years is a seasoned veteran. Ideally, your site designer has a variety of experience.

In this article, I will attempt to cover the basics of creating a great quality web design template for your site. Now it''s a known fact that the layout or "eye candy" as I put it will determine whether your visitors will stay more than 15 seconds or they will just become another statistic.

That''s right, if you don''t catch your visitors attention right away, statistics shows us that your visitors will come and go within 15 seconds or less.

That doesn''t leave you with a lot of time to grab someone''s attention!

Some of you may be asking yourself:

Well why does this happen????

See when you think about it, 15 seconds to the "browsing eye" is like an eternity. In other words, it takes about 15 seconds for the average person to browse your main page and determine whether they will explore your site further!

So with that being said;

How do we grab your visitors attention????

Every new client of mine is asked to perform the same tasks. I ask them to explore their competitor''s web sites and look for specific triggers that would make them want to click on or buy right away. More times than none, my clients will notice specific "Headlines" or "Graphics" that really peek their interest. In doing this, you''ll have 1st hand knowledge on what you expect your visitors will see and possibly expect themselves.

Step 2, I''ll ask my clients to do one more process just like the previous one. I''ll ask them to make a list of all the "eye candy" that really caught their attention and write me a little note as to why it caught their attention. In doing this, it will give your web designer a 1st hand knowledge on what to implement within your site!!!

With these great tasks, you''ve made your job and the job of your web designer a lot easier to target your audience.

Sites that sell "Web Site Templates" :

You may have seen some sites that sell your the right for a specific "Template Style". There are 100''s of resources out there. I need to clarify something for you, these templates are targeted at web designers only!!! Reason being, the files that you receive will no doubt require some expensive and time consuming software just to open them.

The concept of web designing based on the nature and rapid growth of the Internet is nothing to boast of any more. This is because of the large number of web sites published to the Internet everyday, so as to showcase one''s presence and dominance on the World Wide Web. You may ask why this is so, well, the so simple answer is the rate at which technology is evolving.

An example is illustrated with the popular Microsoft FrontPage and Macromedia''s Flash. They are two different web designing software which have the same basic function (to create an interactive website). However, a person who has used both programs would observe that Microsoft FrontPage, which has been existing over quite a long period of time, deals basically with HTML codes. No programming language or knowledge is involved; that is why I choose to term its use in the category of web designing. Almost everybody, who owns a computer with the Windows Operating System along side MS FrontPage installed in it, knows how to design a simple website. This is because of it''s format which does not require programming skills, but only requires the user to type the text, copy and paste even drag and drop a picture to the potential website. However, Macromedia''s Flash, which was released years after Microsoft''s first release of it''s FrontPage, shows it''s advancement in effects, animations and even graphics. This powerful also shows an advancement in web designing technology. You''re probably thinking, "how incorrect". Well, I like you to know the programming and designing are entirely two different things. While designing as been discussed about using Microsoft FrontPage as an example let us look into programming on the web.

Now, unlike Microsoft FrontPage, Macromedia''s Flash creates a more animated and effects-filled website that Microsoft FrontPage. However it require programming skills to maximize its use and put it to work. So as a person with ground knowledge of Microsoft FrontPage would call himself a web designer, the other with Macromedia''s Flash would call himself a web programmer so as to differentiate himself to a so called ''novice'', who may have learnt web designing through the widely believed ''easy-to-use'' Microsoft FrontPage. But whichever way a website is created, it is important to note that its primary function is to supply information about services, products and other functionaries. So, whether a web programmer or a web designer; if the same work given to them is to create a website, they symbolize oneness, in the sense that however way the site may be created, or how more interactive one''s work may be, compared to the other, they still pass the same information to the website visitors, thus making them both creative in the aspect of ''web designing'', which almost every high school kid can do.

You have probably viewed many Flash-based components while surfing the Internet. Most smooth animations on websites and in banner ads, short films, and presentations are built in Flash. Macromedia Flash is a powerful and adaptable software program. It enables Flash web designers to incorporate sound, movement, and interactivity that cannot be achieved with standard HTML websites.

Web designers use Flash to develop a wide array of presentations, tutorials, and websites. They can create entire websites or simply add interactive elements to standard HTML websites.

Should you consider Flash for your company''s website? Perhaps. Like everything, Flash has both pros and cons.

The benefits of Flash:

* Flash can enhance the experience of your target audience. It grabs attention and can make a stunning and rich presentation to effectively drive home a marketing message.

* Flash provides almost limitless design options.

* With Flash you can explain a wide variety of concepts with graphics and sound via dynamic, engaging tutorials, training courses, introductions, and film clips.

* Flash can give your site a look that emphasizes state-of-the-art technology and expertise.

* If you have a portfolio component to your website, Flash can present samples of your work in an interactive environment that resizes windows to fit the graphics. Examples of companies that may benefit from Flash portfolios include architects, interior designers, and photographers.

Things to consider when developing a Flash-based site:

Tips to brand your website

• Include your logo in all pages. Position it at the top left or each page.

• Complement your logo with a tagline or catchy sentence that summarizes your business purpose. For example "Always low prices" is the tagline for Wal-Mart.

• Create a favicon. A favicon is that small graphic that appears next to the URL in the address bar.

• Have a consistent look and feel in all your pages. Use a color scheme and layout that are clearly recognized across your site.

• Have an About Us section, that includes all relevant information about you and your business.

• Include a copyright statement at the bottom of each page.

Tips on website navigation

• Design your pages to load in less than 10 seconds (50Kb maximum size, including pictures).

• Group your navigational options in relevant categories.

• Use common names for your menu options: Home, About Us, Contact Us, Help, Products. Avoid "clever" or "trendy" alternatives.

• If your site uses Flash, provide also an HTML version for users who prefer a less fancy, faster site.

• Provide simple text navigation links at the bottom of long pages, so users don''t need to scroll back up.

• Link your logo to your homepage, except in the homepage itself. Put a link to your homepage on all your internal pages.

• Display a "breadcrumb trail"; it is basically the path from the homepage to the page where you are. A breadcrumb trail looks like this: Home > Section > Sub-Section > Page, and it greatly facilitates navigation.

• If your site is too big, provide Search capabilities. Include a search box in the upper right corner of your homepage, and a link to a Search page from your interior pages. Freefind ( ) offers you a free and powerful search engine for your site.

• Set your search box to search your site, not to search the web.

• Create a custom error page that displays a simple site map with links to the main sections of your site. That way, you will not lose visitors that have followed a bad link to your site or who have misspelled your URL.

Tips on Layout and Content Presentation

• Save the top of your page for your most important content. Remember: good content must flow to the top.

• Lay out your page with tables, and set the width in percentage terms instead of a fixed number of pixels. That way, your page will always fit the screen, without the need to scroll horizontally.

• Optimize your page to be viewed best at 800x600 (the most popular resolution at the time of this writing).

• Use high contrast for the body of your page: black text on white background, or white text on black background work best.

• Don''t use too many different fonts in one page. Also, avoid using small serif fonts (like Times Roman): they are difficult to read from a computer screen. Verdana is the most web-friendly font, since it is wide, clean and easy to read.

• Avoid long blocks of text. Use tools that facilitate scanability, like bullets, subtitles, highlighted keywords, hyperlinks, etc.

• Avoid amateurish features like: numeric page counters, wholesale use of exclamation points, all caps, center justified blocks of text, excessive animated gifs, busy backgrounds, etc.

• Don''t use pop-up windows. They distract your visitors and are immediately dismissed as ads.

• Test your site so that it looks good in different browsers and resolutions.

Tips on Writing for the Web

• Write in layman''s terms so that everybody can understand your content, unless you''re running a technical site for technical people.

• Reading from a screen is painful: use 50% less words than you would use on print.

• If a page is too long, break it into several pages and link to them.

• Don''t use font sizes smaller than 10pt. for the body of your page. Specify your fonts in percentage terms instead of pixels, to let users set their own size preferences using their browser''s text view options.

• Use a spell checker. Spelling mistakes are embarrassing and hurt credibility.

Tips to Know Your Customers

• Ask for feedback: include a feedback form in your Contact Us page.

• Publish an ezine and include a subscription form in your homepage. Give your customers valuable information and encourage them to contact you.

• Include polls and other tools to gather market intelligence.

Tips on Linking

• Make your links descriptive. They should indicate what the user will be linking to, as opposed to just saying "click here".

• Don''t underline anything that is not a link.

• Underline your links and use a consistent color for them across your site (preferably blue).

• Use a different color for visited links, so that your visitors know where they''ve been (preferably purple or a more subdued tone of the unvisited links color).

• When linking to a non-HTML file, such as Excel, Word or Acrobat, make it evident, by including a small icon next to the link.

• Don''t link to "under construction" pages.

• Make sure that your links work and that you don''t have broken links. There are free online tools that can help you with this.

• If you use graphic links, don''t forget to use the ALT attribute. The ALT attribute should describe what are you linking to.

Tips on how to use graphics

• Optimize your graphics. Use only .gif and .jpg formats. Make your image files as small as possible while maintaining acceptable quality. Use a free online graphics optimization tool.

• Use thumbnails (miniature versions of a picture) and make them clickable to the actual size picture.

• Avoid graphics that look like ads. People ignore them.

• Use the ALT attribute on pictures, even the image is not a link. It helps users with disabilities and people who have turned off graphics.

Tips to optimize your site for the search engines:

• Create short, descriptive page titles, to entice search engine users to click on your links.

• Create a site map containing all your pages, and link to it directly from your homepage. Search engine robots will follow the link to your site map and will most likely add all your pages to the index.

• Decide what the two or three main keywords are for each page (the words you believe search engine users will type to find your page) and repeat them often in your page title, description meta tag and page body.

• Create a Links page and call it Resources. In it, place links to those sites that have agreed to place a reciprocal link to your page. The more inbound links you have from quality sites with a topic related to your site, the better your site will rank with the search engines.

• Use more text than graphics, and minimize the use of Flash and JavaScript. Search engines heavily favor text and will crawl and index your site faster.

For more details on these tips, or for more tips, visit http://www.theinternetdigest.net .

About The Author

Mario Sanchez publishes The Internet Digest ( http://www.theinternetdigest.net ), a collection of web design and Internet marketing tips and resources to help you design a better website and market it more effectively.', 242, '50 Surefire Web Design Tips, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', '50 Surefire Web Design Tips plus articles and information on Web-Design

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This may comes as a surprise to you but, if you''re using popups on your website (which you should), then chances are you''re using them all wrong. Almost everybody is.

Did you know, for example, that top marketers are using HIDDEN techniques that make any given popup VASTLY more effective on their sites than the VERY SAME popup would be on yours!

In fact, Stephen Pierce has actually admitted that one of these hidden popup techniques increased his profits by a whopping 50%!

Here''s how that technique works...

Let''s say Joe Bloggs has visited your site but has decided (for whatever reason) not to order just yet. He closes his browser (or clicks to another site) and then BAM!

Up jumps a window that makes Joe a special offer he just CAN''T refuse. On top of that, Joe has only got x number of minutes to make up his mind. There''s a countdown happening right before his eyes. If he doesn''t react before the time expires,he loses out on the special deal -- forever.

Suddenly Joe is back on your site and placing his order.

I call these ''Pressure Popups'' because they really put your visitors'' backs to the wall and practically force them to take you up on your offer.

For pressure popups to be completely effective they have to be ''conditional''. In other words, they should only pop up when certain conditions are met.

You don''t, for example, want the pressure popup to show if your visitor is about to order your product. After all, the idea behind pressure popups is to pull back those visitors that were leaving your site WITHOUT ordering.

In short, if your visitor is ordering, leave him/her alone. However, if your visitor is clicking away, hit him/her with an offer that''s too good to resist (like a special discount, an extra bonus, etc.)

Make sure there''s a live countdown on your popup. Remind your visitor that, once the countdown has ended, the popup will disappear and will never be displayed again.

What are websites? Are they sales tools for vendors and service providers, or are they electronic guidance for potential customers? Put simply, are you selling or are you helping?

Your answer to this question may determine the success of your website. So think carefully?

How we define what a website is all depends on which side of the fence we''re on. I suspect that most ? if not all ? vendors and service providers would say their website is a sales tool. But this is a fundamentally flawed perspective. Adopt this position, and sooner or later you''ll pay for it.

To really understand what a website is for, we need to think about who the Internet serves. It''s tempting to think cynically and argue that it serves commercial interests, but that''s getting the cart before the horse. The Internet serves buyers and information seekers. That''s what most people use it for.

What your visitors are really looking for is a website that helps them. A website that helps them buy when they want to buy. Helps them understand when they want to understand. And ? most importantly - a website that helps them decide when they want to decide.

So if you really want to build trust, credibility, authority, and site loyalty, helping visitors is the way to go. Of course, that''s not to say you have to do it for free. We''re all in business to make money after all. In fact, the main aim of many of your visitors will be to buy something. But it''s important that you focus on them, not on you. For example, your visitors don''t want to know what you have to sell. They want to know what they can choose to buy. If your primary focus is sales, your visitors will pick up on it.

To generate revenue from our websites ? either directly or indirectly ? we need to build them to help our readers. Don''t start by asking "How can I sell?" Instead, start by asking "How can I help?" (Even "How can I help them buy?" is a step in the right direction.)

We need to build our websites from the ground up to be a form of online help. Think of your website as a cousin of the online help provided with Microsoft Office. (If you think of Microsoft''s help as the slow-witted cousin, you''re on the right track?)

You have probably viewed many Flash-based components while surfing the Internet. Most smooth animations on websites and in banner ads, short films, and presentations are built in Flash. Macromedia Flash is a powerful and adaptable software program. It enables Flash web designers to incorporate sound, movement, and interactivity that cannot be achieved with standard HTML websites.

Web designers use Flash to develop a wide array of presentations, tutorials, and websites. They can create entire websites or simply add interactive elements to standard HTML websites.

Should you consider Flash for your company''s website? Perhaps. Like everything, Flash has both pros and cons.

The benefits of Flash:

* Flash can enhance the experience of your target audience. It grabs attention and can make a stunning and rich presentation to effectively drive home a marketing message.

* Flash provides almost limitless design options.

* With Flash you can explain a wide variety of concepts with graphics and sound via dynamic, engaging tutorials, training courses, introductions, and film clips.

* Flash can give your site a look that emphasizes state-of-the-art technology and expertise.

* If you have a portfolio component to your website, Flash can present samples of your work in an interactive environment that resizes windows to fit the graphics. Examples of companies that may benefit from Flash portfolios include architects, interior designers, and photographers.

Things to consider when developing a Flash-based site:

CSS or Cascading Style Sheets has opened up tremendous possibilities for improving web site designs, web page layouts and adding new features. The HTML code can be made shorter, cleaner and simpler by CSS resulting in faster loading of web pages, and making them more accessible to search engines. Here I am narrating my experience with only one part of CSS - using it to eliminate tables.

If you look at a traditionally designed web page, you are likely to find number of tables in the layout. Tables were earlier used only for displaying information in a tabular form. But web site designers soon started using tables for other applications such as showing images, graphics and other decorations.

My own web pages were earlier checkerboards of tables. Each web page was almost fully covered with tables and many tables were nested inside other tables. As I tried to add more features the design became more and more complicated resulting in longer loading times. It also took lot of time to "adjust" the tables on the page to make it acceptable.

It was not an easy task to redesign all the pages using CSS. But once I started, the improvements were more than I had bargained for. The design became simpler, the appearance improved and loading time came down considerably. The code looked real clean. Most of ''td'' and ''tr'' tags were gone.

My purpose of this exercise was not really to change the appearance but to make the design simpler. Now the tables which were earlier used only for design purpose have been eliminated. For eliminating tables first step is to decide which tables or more specifically which cells have to be removed. For applying CSS each cell of a table can be considered as a "box". These boxes are given separate identities and description of each "box" goes into CSS code. The "boxes" can be given names such as box1, box2 etc. The description of the "box" can include size, its location on web page, background color and image if any, font details, padding, border details etc. The location of the "box" can be made "fixed" on the web page, or it can be floating in which case location can be defined with respect to another "box".

Ever wonder why DNS systems came into existence? Efficiency. Every computer has a distinct IP address, and the Internet needed an elite method for obtaining these addresses and for managing the system as a whole. Enter ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Number manages the DNS root of the Internet domain namespace. ICANN''s role is to manage the assignment of identifiers, ensuring that all users have unique names.

The DNS system is run by a series of servers called DNS servers. ICANN manages the root DNS domains, under which are the top-level domains.
It also manages:

Organizational domains
Geographical domains
Reverse domains

Beneath the top-level domains are other naming authorities such as Nominet, the UK''s naming authority.

How does a DNS Query work?

The process occurs in two parts. Firstly, a name query begins at a client computer and is passed to DNS client service for resolution. When the query cannot be resolved locally, DNS servers are queried.

For example, when a web browser calls the fully qualified domain name www.discountdomainsuk.com, the request is passed on to the DNS client service to resolve the name by using locally cached information. If the query is held in the cache, then the process is complete.

If, however, the query cannot be answered locally, the DNS client service uses a server list (ordered in sequence) to query external DNS servers. When a DNS server receives a query, it first checks to see if it is authoritive for that domain name. If it is authoritive, it resolves the name, and the process is complete.

If the DNS server is unable to resolve the query, it in turns queries other DNS servers, using a process known as recursion. DNS servers make use of root hints to assist in locating DNS servers, which are able to provide the required result. In this way, DNS queries are minimised and the Internet is able to operate quickly and effectively.

A typical query may run as follows:

Client contacts Nameserver A looking for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A checks its cache, but can''t answer, so it queries a server authoritive for the Internet root.

The root server responds with a referral to a server authoritive for the .com domains. NameserverA queries the the .com server and gets referred to the server authoritive for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A queries this server and gets the IP address for www.discountdomainsuk.com.

Nameserver A replies to the client with the IP address.

Queries can return answers that are authoritive, positive, negative or referral in nature. In the event of a negative answer, another DNS server is queried.

---------------------------------------------
Clare Lawrence is CEO of Discount Domains Ltd ? A leading UK provider of Domain name registration and Web Hosting services. Please feel free to re-publish this article provided this reference box remains together with a hyperlink to http://www.discountdomainsuk.com Clare can also be contacted on clare@discountdomainsuk.com.
---------------------------------------------', 138, 'Understand the Domain Name System, Domain-Names, Domain-Names articles, Domain-Names information, about Domain-Names, what is Domain-Names, Domain Name Information', 'Understand the Domain Name System plus articles and information on Domain-Names

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Aside from the nuts and bolts of where to register your domain name and purchasing a good economical hosting service, there are a few things to know about buying a good domain name, that only experience can teach. Here are a few tips to get you started on the right foot:

1. Buy only ".com" and don''t trouble yourself with the others. Although the domain name players have gone to some trouble to publicize and market to us about the availability of other extensions such as .org, .net, .us and others...there is still no real reason to buy anything but ".com."

If you currently have a domain name that is not a ".com," I strongly suggest you obtain it. Or, if that''s not possible, consider finding a new domain name.

The rationale is simple: if the point of having a website is to get people to visit it, the best rule of thumb is to make it easy to remember. If your customers have to think in order to get to your website, and maybe even have to type in a wrong domain first before they finally reach you...you want to change that so they don''t.

2. Buy your own personal name. What better way to make it easy for your customers to find you? As you become better known online, and as you build your customer database, it will become increasingly important for your customers to be able to find you based on your personal name.

Buying your personal name allows you to build credibility for your brand identity and makes it easy to "Google" you. Ever tried typing in just your first and last names at Google? Try it and see what happens. If you aren''t showing up in the results, you will want to work on this. And buying your own personal name as a domain name is a simple and very effective way to get going.

3. Buy the most common spelling mistakes for your domain. Even if you follow the advice in (2) above, it may be inevitable that some of your visitors will misspell your domain. It''s human error.

So although these may not be obvious to you at first, it''s worthwhile putting your antennae up in order to figure it out. The first hint? If you misspell your own domain name, chances are others will. Be sure to grab the most common ones.

Example: www.Google.com, www.Gogle.com and www.Gooogle.com all go to the same page. Why? Google "gets" that lots of people type in too few or too many "Os" and has set it up so everyone gets to the right place.

"What''s in a name? That which we call a rose,
By any other name would smell as sweet"
-Shakespeare (Romeo and Juliet)

A rose perhaps but not your domain name!

Welcome to the dotcom bubble! Here, any successful e-tailer should tell you that there''s more to a name than just the name itself. This article serves precisely that purpose ?against the backdrop of quality domain naming strategies and styles, auctions, speculators and court conflicts, to convince you why your online endeavor needs that perfect domain name.

There''s no point in coming up with that absolutely fabulous idea for online selling plus a perfect site to launch from, as long as you don''t have ''the'' name you need. Choosing a name that will eventually contribute to your brand equity, profits, internet marketing and above all -your online credibility, shouldn''t be done haphazardly. Especially, since it''s so easily purchased (for a low startup capital), easily maintained and one that, if you choose, may be disposed off at a substantial amount. Intentionally or otherwise, your domain name becomes your de facto brand name, a location or an experience your visitors relate to in the long run. Even if you plan to sell it later on to prospective buyers, it is only an asset! Your challenge is to come up with that one name to funnel visitors through.

Brandmeisters today seem to understand the significance of site names, especially since the emergence of a number of me-too sites. Like a Washington Post reporter put it ? "feature for feature, service for service, discount for discount, even annoyance for annoyance", a number of sites may turn out to be a close match to yours. Quoting Rebecca Saunders, author of the Big Shot series, "Names have to sound fresh and new even if the site duplicates one already on the net. Names should stir the imagination or otherwise gain the surfer''s attention. Further site name should be as simple as possible, they should be believable, and they should be easy to pronounce, pleasing to the ear, easy to spell and therefore easy to look up on a search engine." Here''s more on building your handle.

The ''aha'' name

Domain name consultants will serve you innumerable dos and don''ts on internet domain naming ? a feat that could leave you grumbling with limited choices. Personally, your domain naming methodology need not be absolutely conventional, as long as your imagination is not slave to impractical logic and common sense.

Dear web site visitor.

I can''t tell you how glad I am that you found my website. You have no idea the great lengths we''ve gone to get you here, let alone what we''re about to do to keep you on this web site.

First, let me say, I have no idea who you are, or why you came, but believe me when I say, I built my site just for you. My company and products are the best there is to offer. You can find everything you need to know about me in my About Us page (it says "us", but there is only me, really. It''s all about impressions you know?). I removed my address because Google Autolink will give you a map to my place and, like I said earlier, I have no idea who you are.

Contacting me is easy. Just fill out the form when you find it. When you find the privacy policy, please take an hour to read that. Basically it says I don''t have time to record your data and don''t care who you are. I''m only interested in selling you something that has my company name on it.

Speaking of which, did you find my site in search engines by using my company name? Being new to the web, I figured I had to do some things to grab your attention. I''m so sorry the "blinds" you searched for led you to my sunglasses page. While you''re here, can I interest you in my e-book about ostrich feather arrangements?

The product catalog is to the left of that big fat image on the right of the homepage that''s distracting you. Above the two global navigation schemes in the top header is your login area. To register, you need to first give me your phone number so I can call you at 3am and tell you about my specials. I put the search box at the bottom of the page, so you can find things quickly. The sitemap needs to be updated, sorry. We put it there for search engines to crawl and then forgot we had it. Since we''re not sure how you like to find our products, we figured we''d put a link to what we think are the most popular items in the left navigation. Unfortunately there''s an endless need to scroll. We couldn''t decide what you''re favorites are, so we put everything there, just to be safe.

Are you looking to create the perfect website? A complete novice when it comes to HTML, CGI, FTP and all the other associated pieces that make up the website puzzle, then this article is definitely for you.

By following the 5 guidelines listed below you are guaranteed to create the perfect website.

1. Plan your website

Creating a plan of your website will help you identify the purpose of your website and will also help you to see how many pages you will require. You should then research similar sites to see how they appeal to their target audience. You should also make a list of the tools that you will require, for example do you intend to have a guestbook, a message board, a chat room, a web journal or blog. How often do you intend to update your site? Are you going to sell products from your site?

By answering all of the above questions you will have a very clear perception of what your website will be about and what you will need to get it up and running. You can then move on to step 2.

2. Finding the right hosting service

Choosing the right hosting service will depend on your individual needs and having created your website plan this will make choosing the right host a lot easier. Before paying for hosting I recommend that you check out some of the free hosting companies. Here you can host your website for free and learn about web-building in the process.

Here are a few of the sites that I trialled:-

www.bravenet.com ? This site allows you to have your own free website yourname.bravenet.com. The tools on this site are excellent and include a guestbook, message board, web journal and site counters to name but a few. They also have a website builder which is very important for the novice user. Great templates and also easy to use.

www.frandt.com ? Offers free web hosting yourname.frandt.com. Another great site with many tools.

Customers will form an opinion of your business as soon as they look at your website. Therefore the same basic rules apply that you use in the production of your brochure and your business card - It needs to grab attention, be easy to read, have a benefit statement, be friendly and make a statement about your business.

More and more potential customers will look at your website to find out more about your product or service or even to place an order. Here are some further points:

#1 Keep it updated - all information, prices and technical details needs to be kept right up to date

#2 Easy to understand - just like your brochure, your customers need to find what they''re looking for quickly and easily

#3 Not cluttered - some websites try to convey too much information and people just "click off" Remember the KISS principle - Keep It Simple Stupid.

#4 Don''t get too clever - no fancy fonts and flashing lights. People are fed up with sites that try to be too clever. They''re designed by people who want to show how clever they are and who aren''t really thinking about the customer

#5 Fast loading - photographs and graphics can slow down loading, so be aware. If customers can''t get to what they''re looking for quickly enough, then they''ll "click off"

#6 Friendly - your website just like all your other marketing materials need to suggest to the customer that you are a warm and friendly organisation to deal with

STEP 1:Do your homework

Plan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. The pages should have "real content", as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright... etc pages.

STEP 2:Buy Domain name:

Invest in an easily brandable domain. You may want "google.com" and not "mykeyword.com". Keyword domains will go no where, whereas branding and name recognition are the in thing. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to Search Engines. Get them

STEP 3:Site Design:

As a rule of the thumb: develop for MS Internet Explorer. As for text content, it should out weigh the html content. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring.

Use less of these heavy stuff: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them - there is little reason to have them that I can see - they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don''t appreciate (search engines distaste for javascripts is just one of them).

Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit.

Don''t clutter and don''t spam your site with frivolous links like "best viewed" or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability.

Visit Google.com and learn from them. Simple is retro cool - simple is what surfers want.

Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until "something happens" in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request.

If you need help, visit http://www.xcelweb.com for the latest web design packages.

STEP 4:Check Page Size:

The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can.

STEP 5:Build Content:

Your web site has been up for a few months and you are making money hand over foot. While surfing sites one evening, you are shocked to find a competitor using your design. You find out your designer sold them the same design. They must be breaking the law, right? It all depends on whether you own the copyright to your web site design. Many site owners are shocked to find out they do not.

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a method of protection for authors of original works such as literature, computer programs, music, artistic pieces and photographic images. The protection provided by copyright arises under Title 17 of the United States Code. A copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to do or authorize others to: reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, publicly display and generally use the material that carries the copyright in exchange for something, typically a royalty or fee. The copyright owner often grants this use through a license agreement, but can sell it outright.

Who Can Claim Copyright?

Copyright protection is created IMMEDIATELY upon the creation of a fixed form of the material in question and granted to the person that created the material. For instance, I automatically own the copyright to this article upon completing it. I am not required to file for an official copyright with the US Copyright Office to prove that I am the owner of the content. However, if I want to sue a person for using my article without permission, I must first register it.

What If I Hire Someone To Create A Web Site For Me?

If you hire a person or company to handle the design of your site, the complexities of copyright become a major issue for you. Specifically, the issue of "work for hire" is critical in determining whether you own the design.

"Work for hire" refers to the relationship between your business and the person creating your web site. If this person is an employee of your business and creates the material within their scope of employment, then your business owns the copyright. However, what happens when the designer is not an employee? In such a situation, the following must occur for the copyright to automatically transfer to you. The work must be specially ordered or commissioned for use as:

Ecommerce is just exploding right now on the Net. More and more people are doing their shopping online. Some Internet retailers are even beating out their offline counterparts. So what does this mean to you? It''s important that you are taking full advantage of your web site to get your share of the billions of dollars spent online every year. In this article we are going to cover 7 tips that you can put into practice immediately to increase your sales and revenue with your ecommerce web site.

1: Introduction

Make sure to have a brief introduction on the homepage of your web site. Your introduction should be concise and clearly identify the benefits of your visitors shopping at your site.

2: Navigation

Make sure that your site has clear and easy navigation, such as a visible search box on the top part of your web site, clear categories to browse through, a FAQ page that clearly explains your shipping and return policy, and etc.

3: Gift Certificates

People love getting gifts at certain times of the year, so make sure that you have gift certificates that your visitors can purchase right on your web site.

4: Customer Loyalty

Instead of just focusing on getting new customers why not take advantage of repeat business? Why not give your customers an incentive to come back and do business with you again? You can easily do this by offering coupons and special discounts to ones who have already purchased something from you. This is a lot easier than acquiring new customers since they already know you and feel comfortable shopping at your site. You can also add more value to your customers by adding live customer support to your site.

5: Special Offers

Make sure to have a section on the top part of your home page devoted to featuring your current special offers and sales items. In fact if you happen to have a lot of special offers you can just feature the most popular ones and then make a separate web page that shows all of your sales items.

6: Shopping Carts

Ever wonder how HTML color codes are put together? For the beginner, it can look like lots of numbers and letters that make no sense. In reality, HTML color codes are written that way for a specific reason that we''ll look at in this article.

Introduction to the Hexadecimal System

In mathematics, the hexadecimal or simply hex is a numeral system with a base of 16 usually written using the symbols 0-9 and A-F. The numbers 0-9 have the same value as in the decimal system but starting with the letter A, the value keeps going up one up to the value of 16. A is worth 10, B is worth 11 and so forth until you get to F which is worth 16.

How the HTML Color Codes are put together

HTML Color codes are composed of six hex numbers that represent a possible 16.7 million color combinations. The hex color codes are built on the RGB color model. R stands for red, G for green, and B for blue. With your typical html code that looks like this: #FFFFFF it breaks down as follows. The first two hex digits #FFFFFF represent ''red''. The second set of two hex digits #FFFFFF represent the color green. The third and final set of two hex digits #FFFFFF represent the color blue.

A brief overview of the RGB model

The RGB color model, like the HTML color model can represent a total of 16.7 million colors. By varying the amoung of red, green, and blue, one can come up with any of 16.7 million colors. Each RGB value is represented by a number from 0 to 255. So a set of RGB values for the color white for instance, would look like this: 255, 255, 255.

Putting HTML and RGB Together

We''ve already established the hex numeral system with it''s number range between 0 to 16. Now, when you combine two hex numbers, you can represent any number between 0 and 255. As you can see, RGB and HTML color codes represent the same color model.

Well, you''ve got your product, started your home business, and even have your website up on the internet. Only one problem, where is that money you were supposed to be making? Nothing! No one is knocking down your door to buy your product! Well, here is the real world answer. Just because you have a website up doesn''t mean much if people can''t find you among the masses of sites out there. And you thought you were done:) Now, the real work starts..... Need marketing strategies......

Some easy and free online marketing marketing tips:

1. Look for relevant sites, and ask for reciprocal links. Most will be happy to link with you if your site is not an affiliate, mlm, and has some quality their customers would like.

2. Do a search for free areas to post classified advertising. Again, look for some that are relevant to your site. You don''t get customers by advertising to people who are not interested in what you have to offer.

3. Join newsgroups, hotmail groups, yahoo groups that are relevant to your business. You mostly can''t do blatant advertising, but put something in your signature file, so people will know about what you have to offer, and contribute to your group. Since you should contribute, choose topics that interest you, so you can be a productive member of your group. Also, there is something to be said about participation, and it helps to keep up with trends in your business this way. There is always something to learn, and someone else''s point of view can help a lot:)

We all want high impact graphics for our Web sites - Right.

Sometimes it is easy just to pick a template that comes included with a site builder and or hosting package.

There are also thousands of Free templates that you can download from the Internet.

But for those of us who want full control of our design and graphics, it is first a matter of sitting down and choosing your site design and color scheme.

Your site theme, design or layout will play a major part in the size and number of graphics you will use on your site. Somewhere along the process you will have to decide on how many and the quality of your graphic images.

Images used on websites are usually Gif and jpg or sometimes png and the odd bitmap image. Gif and Jpg images can be adjusted in quality and size to be a smaller file size to strike a balance between quick loading and image quality.

You may have an awesome graphic but if it takes 2 minutes to load on your page, you will notice by checking your Web site stats you will notice a difference between the number of page requests and pages viewed.

As the purpose of your Web site is to attract visitors and for them to make a positive decision either to request more info, join your Newsletter or to make a purchase, every lost visitor is a lost potential customer.

The header at the top image on a page often includes a logo or the name of the company or website. This is usually the largest image on a page. So if it is the full width of the page of 760 pixels wide, and depending on the height it may be worth considering cutting it into two pieces.

There are two reasons for dividing an image into smaller pieces, firstly having your image load faster as two separate pieces and secondly as many browsers load 5 images at one time, your header should load faster.

There are also webmasters who prefer all images to preload before displaying the complete page and some sites have two images for the one button, the image you see on first viewing the page and the image you see when you hover the mouse, cursor over or click on the button. Often with buttons that use two images these will be set to preload with the page so that they are loaded or stored ready for when you click the button.

Content is king. Without content your website is an empty shell, a skeleton with no flesh, an empty vessel. Content can redeem the worst designed website. The right content can make your phone ring off the hook and flood your inbox with people wanting your product or service. Content is the most important ingredient in the recipe for your website''s success. If you have engrossing, valuable and relevant content you are onto a winner..

Tip 1 - Keep It Customer-Focused - What You Like Is Irrelevant

I land on the homepage. I want to buy a bathroom from this company. I want to know what bathrooms they have available. I want to know how much it will cost, when they can deliver, if they have any special offers and what their previous customers have said about them. Instead, upon landing on the homepage I get the following all-time classic;

"Welcome to ABC Bathrooms. Our company was formed in 1985. Our Managing Director John set up the company at the age of 25 after spending thirty years in the position of.."

Who cares?! I want to know exactly what you sell and how much it will cost me. I have 10 spare minutes today to find this information out and if I don''t see it on your site in a few seconds I will click off to your competitors so don''t bore me with the life story of your managing director. I do not care. Give me content that I like - not what you THINK I would like. Key difference.

Tip 2 - Sell Benefits, Not Features

Potential customers do not want to know how your product was built, how old the production manager is or what colour the wallpaper is in the production plant - they want to know how buying it will enrich their lives. They want to see evidence for the benefits of owning your product or using your service. People don''t buy things - they buy benefits and they buy feelings. People buying a Ferrari are not buying a mode of transport they are buying prestige, luxury, envy, success - they are buying a symbol, a way of life.

If you''ve a website but not making a lot of profit from it, cheer up because I have 10 website sales secrets that can help you maximize your sales and profits, starting now:

1. Tell people the point or focus of your web site. Explain to them what things they can do or which goals they can accomplish while visiting your site.

2. Make your visitors feel comfortable at your web site. Give them your main business address, your visitors may not trust you if you''re using a P.O. box.

3. Include a FAQ on your web site or via e-mail on an autoresponder. This will give your customers an extra convenience without having to contact you.

4. Buy advertising space on discussion board web sites. They are usually arranged by subject; that makes them highly targeted.

5. Start a free e-mail newsletter to create your own opt in list. Create a title that grabs readers attention. Submit it to free e-zine directories on the internet.

6. Record all your new promotion ideas into an idea journal, good or bad. Sometimes you can combine ideas to create new ones to increase your sales.

7. Convert your web site and free e-mail newsletter into different languages. This will increase your over- all target market.

8. Make your classified ads stand out in a crowd. Use all capitol letters in the headline, divide letters with extra spaces, add in text symbols, etc.

9. Remember your customer is always right, even if they are not. Resolve all conflicts quickly and painlessly. They are the lifeblood of your business.

10. Create a bond with your visitors by bringing up likes or dislikes you have in common with them in your ad copy. Just make sure you do your research.

Your website design may be affecting your sales in ways that you may not believe.

Here are a few website design tips to help you improve your website and ad copy for greater profitability:

1. You could decrease or increase the length of your ad copy. There is no rule on how long your ad copy should be unless space is a consideration. The ad should be long enough to sell your product.

2. You could add some sub headlines on your ad copy. Sub headlines act just like headlines; they grab the readers attention. They''ll keep the readers interested as they continue to read your ad.

3. You could ask your reader questions through out the ad copy. They will answer the questions in their own head as they read your ad copy. The questions you ask should persuade the reader into buying.

4. You could highlight keywords through out your ad copy. The keywords should be attractive to your target audience. You could highlight them with color, underlines, italics, etc.

5. You could bullet or indent your benefits on your ad copy. Must people won''t read a whole ad copy, so make your products benefits standout and you won''t lose the sales from all the skimmers.

6. You could change the size of your text on your ad copy. You want to make your text large enough so it''s not hard to read. You also want your headline and major points to be larger so they will standout.

7. You could raise or lower the price on your ad copy. A higher price could increase the perceived value of your product and a lower price could lesson your product''s value.

8. You could add proof of results on your ad copy. You should include testimonials, endorsements, and factual statistics to prove your product''s claims.

9. You could add special offers on your ad copy. It''s usually easier to sell the offer than the product. You could use discounts, free bonuses, volume sales, etc.

10. You could eliminate the hard-to-understand jargon on your ad copy. Unless your product calls for technical words, you want your ad to be read without people pulling out a dictionary.