Design Website: November 2008

Your Website Visitors - Will They Stay?

I''m sure you''ve all heard the saying ''Build it and they will come''. Although that may have been true a few years ago, now we must work, and work hard, to get visitors to our websites.

You can''t always control who visits, however, you can have some control over who stays.

Here are a few website no-no''s that I have come accross that made me leave without even clicking past the first page.

1. Slow loading pages - For those of us still on dial-up internet access this is one of the primary reasons for not hanging around.

If you think you are going to load your page up with lots of images and javascripts to make it look nice and do great things, think again. They slow down the loading of the page. Save that stuff for later pages when you have your visitors'' attention. If you offer them something they came to find they will have a little more patience as the remaining pages load.

2. Curser followers - We''ve all seen them, those little dots or letters that follow the curser around the page. They are so annoying that I don''t even bother to read the first paragraph.

OK, so maybe there is a place for them. If you have a site based on entertaining children then perhaps you can use them effectively. However, if your site is focused on getting signups for your affiliate programs try to keep it professional looking.

3. Flash Intro - These are not as bad as they used to be due to the fact that most search engines can spider and index them now.

What is annoying though is when a site has a flash intro and does not give the visitor a way to skip it and go directly into the site. Again this is particularly bad for those with dial-up connections. If I have to sit and watch a little colored bar that says ''loading'', guess what, I''m gone. Always give your visitor a means to skip the intro if they want to.

4. Colored backgrounds and printing - Have you ever had to get up close to your monitor to read the words on a website? I have and I can tell you that I didn''t read too many lines before I was gone.

There are definitely some color schemes you should stay away from. For example, red letters on a black background are extremely hard to read. I''m sure you have come accross some yourself that were sure-fire triggers for the ''back'' button.

Simple black letters on a white background is your best bet for easy reading. Also be sure to keep your paragraphs short and have lots of ''white space'' on your page.

I''m not saying not to use colors in your site, there have been many studies that indicate certain colors trigger certain responses, however, you really need to experiment to get the right combination.

5. Animated Banners - DO NOT put animated banners on your home page.

Banners, animated or not, are images and can slow down the loading of your page. Also, animated banners are distracting and if you distract your visitor from the main purpose of your site......there goes a possible sale.

I know that many people just starting out are using Banner Exchanges as a means of getting visitors to their site. That''s OK just don''t put them on your home page. Put them at the bottom of all the rest of the pages if you want, just not on your index page. Remember, if your home page is strong enough to capture your visitors'' interest, they will click on more pages and you will get your banner impressions.

6. Too much on one page - I''ve seen some sites where the owner has just about every affiliate program he belongs to on his home page.

If I type a keyword into a search engine and click on the first site that comes up, I want to be able to find what I''m looking for without having to sift through paragraph upon paragraph of other advertisements and affiliate links. If your visitors don''t think they will find what they came to find, you''ll lose them.

You should use your home page to welcome your visitors and tell them exactly what they want to know. If your site is about pet grooming, tell them that right from the start. Let them know the kind of information they can expect to find on each of your pages. Make sure your navigation is easy to follow by having the main navigation bar at the top left of your page and putting links throughout the text.

Your home page should lead your visitors to the rest of your site, that''s where you do your selling.

Those are a few of the deterants that I have found while searching for information on the internet. I hope you will be able to use this information to make your own sites more user friendly and keep your visitors from clicking away.

Randy Justason is the Owner/Webmaster of MLM Wonders - http://www.mlmwonders.com - A website dedicated to opportunities, ideas and resources for starting a home based business on the internet. You can subscribe to the MLM Wonders free monthly Newsletter at: subscribe@mlmwonders.com', 242, 'Your Website Visitors - Will They Stay?, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Your Website Visitors - Will They Stay? plus articles and information on Web-Design

Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website

If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function ? and that''s to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner.

No matter what your web designer tells you, simplicity is best when building your small business website. While having a website with lots of bright colors and flashy interactive graphics might win web design awards, it will probably not help you win customers. In fact, the more complicated your web design, the higher the risk that your sales message will be lost amidst all the fancy bells and whistles on your site.

For most small businesses, a simple and elegant four or five page website is all they need to get the job done. As an added bonus, such sites are inexpensive when compared to flashier multimedia sites. If you want your small business website to increase your profits instead of emptying your pocketbook, pay close attention to the following design guidelines when you build your site.

Make Your Website Easy to Read

In order for your website to get sales and/or leads, your small business website design needs to be user and consumer-friendly - that means it needs to be easy to read. So, short sentences and paragraphs, dark text on white (or very, very light) backgrounds and lots of white space should be the norm.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I''ll say it again - the purpose of having a website for your small business isn''t to win design awards. It''s to convey information about your product or service that guides the consumer toward making a buying decision in your favor.

If you think that dark websites and colored text on colored backgrounds looks better, you may be right. However, as I mentioned earlier loud colors and excessive graphics only serve to distract attention from the sales message contained in your site content and makes your site harder to read. Remember: keep it simple and you''ll keep the sale.

Also, remember that web users tend to scan text instead of reading it start to finish like printed text. Since the majority of your visitors will not read all your content, use headlines, subheadings, and bolded text that quickly convey your overall message. Done correctly, a visitor should be able to scan all your headlines, subheads, and bold text in just a few seconds and understand the central message of your site or page.

Make Your Website Easy to Navigate

Since the chief purpose of your site is to convey information, you should design your website so the information it contains is easy to find. If you make it easy for your visitors to navigate your site, they''ll thank you with their dollars. Make it difficult, and they''ll leave your website before you can say "Google."

At the bare minimum, you should have a navigation bar on every webpage that includes a link back to your home page and to every top-tier page in your website. In addition, you should consider placing links back to the previous page visited at the top and bottom of the current page. Some websites use "bread crumbs" for this purpose ? a "trail" of links that show each page visited since landing at the site.

Lastly, make sure that there are no broken links on your website. Broken links may not seem like a big deal to you, but to a site visitor who was clicking on a link for more information they are a major frustration. Fix your broken links!

Oh, and incidentally, making your site easy to navigate will also help the search engines to find and index all your pages, which might help you get more traffic over the long haul.

Make Sure Your Website Loads Quickly

Despite the fact that high-speed internet access has become very affordable and accessible in recent years, many web users are still using dial-up connections to access the internet. Note that these people get very frustrated when they have to wait five minutes for your webpage to load. You will lose these visitors if your web page files are too large and take too long to load.

Keep photos, graphics, and animations to a tasteful minimum on your websites, and keep your total page size under 50K to ensure maximum usability for your visitors. In addition, avoid using background music on your pages unless it is absolutely necessary ? music files take time to load, and can annoy your visitors enough to make them leave your site.

By the way, smaller and faster loading pages make it easier for the search engines to spider and rank your site ? an added bonus for keeping your page files small and your load times fast.

-----

Hopefully, these guidelines will help you build a website that gets you more sales and leads for your small business. Remember, building a website that your visitors enjoy browsing will boost customer loyalty and encourage repeat sales. Create a fast-loading site that''s easy to read and navigate, and your visitors will thank you with their checkbooks!

Mike Massie is a web marketing consultant and copywriter. He specializes in showing small business owners how inexpensive website marketing can boost their profits. Michael can be reached by visiting his website at http://www.Modern-Digital-Marketing.com', 242, 'Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Three Things You Must Do When Designing and Building Your Small Business Website plus articles and information on Web-Design

Congratulations! You?ve Gotten Visitors To Your Site! Now, Can They Find What Theyre Looking For?

As search engine marketers, we spend an enormous amount of time trying to get targeted traffic to our site. But, once those visitors get to our site, can they find what they''re looking for? If not, guess what? We''ve lost a customer.

Think about it this way. How many times have you found a site through a major search engine or directory, only to visit the site and not be able to find what you''re looking for anywhere on the site? What do you do next? You go back to the search engine and click on the next site. That site has lost a customer: you.

Helping your visitors find what they''re looking for on your site can cover a great many areas, such as navigation, user interface issues, and the lack of a clear "call to action."

But one way around many of those issues is to offer an onsite search engine, so that once visitors hit your site, they can easily find exactly what they''re looking for.

The really neat thing about onsite search engines is that many of them are FREE. Yes, you read right: free. Of course, that also means that you may have ads in your search results, which may or may not present problems for you. However, even if you choose to purchase an onsite engine, the cost is generally not expensive.

What should you look for in an onsite search engine?

Good customer support. If you begin to have problems with the engine, you want to be able to get help in fixing it.
Reports that let you know what people are searching for once they reach your site. Just think of the GOLD this will tell you! If you don''t have a page that covers a particular topic, make one!
Ease in setting up the engine. This may or may not be an issue to you, but if you''re like me, you want something that is simple to set up and maintain.
An extensive "help" section at the site that will walk you through setting up the engine and answer any questions you might have.
The ability to keep the engine out of certain areas of your site that you don''t want spidered and available through the search, such as employee areas, password-protected member areas, etc.
The ability to spider password-protected areas so that your member areas can have their own onsite search.
The ability to customize search results pages.
The capability to request re-indexing whenever you update the site, or even to schedule re-indexing on a regular basis.

In my training material and resource library at the Academy, I had an onsite search engine for a long time. Then, the company folded. Until recently, I hadn''t set up another onsite engine, because the one onsite engine that I really wanted to use didn''t index password-protected areas. So, I "patiently" waited for the onsite engine, FreeFind, to add this to their list of features. When they recently did, I jumped on it, and now both of my online training programs have excellent onsite search engines through FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com).

But why did FreeFind stand out among the others, and why was it so important to me to wait until they could index password- protected areas? FreeFind offers some features that I couldn''t find on other onsite search engines, features that would help me tremendously with my work.

For example:

FreeFind will automatically create a What''s New page, after you''ve any changes to the site. Just think of how much help that will be for me with my training material? Between my two programs (beginning and advanced), I have over 1000 resource pages to update every single month, and I''ve been creating the "What''s New" page by hand. Now, it''s automatically created for me.
FreeFind is the only onsite search engine that enables your visitors to find the page they''re looking for, then keeps an eye on it for any changes. Their ChangeDetection (tm) monitoring system lets your users monitor a page for content changes, then notifies them when the page is changed. If you set up this engine on your own site, it will build traffic by turning casual, one- time visitors into repeat and loyal visitors who return again and again to look at changes made to the page that are of particular interest to them.
FreeFind will automatically create a Site Map of your site. This Site Map is an alphabetical listing of the pages on your site. The Site Map will be even more valuable to you if you have a regular, non-password protected site, because it will give the Web search engines a page of links to spider.
FreeFind will search across several domains. So, if your company has numerous domains, your onsite search engine will cover each of those domains, without having to set up separate engines.

In Conclusion

Look closely at your site. Is it time to add an onsite search engine? Is it time to make sure visitors can find exactly what they''re looking for when they land on your site? Are you losing customers who get lost and can''t find what they want?

FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com) is an excellent onsite search engine that met my exact needs. However, to be fair, and because this article isn''t meant to be an advertisement for FreeFind, here are some other onsite engines that you may want to consider. Look closely at their features, and find the one that works best for you.

Other Onsite Search Engines

Atomz: http://www.atomz.com

PicoSearch: http://www.picosearch.com

SiteLevel.com: http://www.sitelevel.com/

FusionBot.com: http://www.fusionbot.com

A listing of numerous onsite search tools: http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools.html

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy''s training site to learn more about their online search engine marketing training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and search engine optimization (http://www.se-optimizer.com) software. She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Email: RobinN@acws.com', 242, 'Congratulations! You?ve Gotten Visitors To Your Site! Now, Can They Find What Theyre Looking For?, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Congratulations! You?ve Gotten Visitors To Your Site! Now, Can They Find What Theyre Looking For? plus articles and information on Web-Design

Recipe For A Good Looking Web Site

We''ve all surfed the web and seen some awful web sites. Sites that never completely loaded. Sites with too many photos. Sites with no easy way to find what you wanted. Another way a site looks bad is when each page looks different. You''re not even sure you''re at the same site. It doesn''t have to be that way. Templates are the solution.

A template is a web page showing the basic elements of how you want the site to look. The navigation bar, title, banner, and copyright information are all there on each page. All that''s missing is the content. You can pay someone to do your site, but this costs more money. If you have a template to start with, all you need to do is add your content.

You can buy a template already created. Find a company with templates for sale, choose the look you want, and change it a little to make the look your own. Here are two template companies; (www.lcpeterson.com/s/websiterecipe.htm & www.lcpeterson.com/s/templatestore.htm). Choose a template and simply change the content and pictures to suit your needs. You can also pay companies to create an original template for you. Don''t want to create your own art work? There are numerous clipart and photo sites available. Remember, a web site look can be created from scratch; or, use a template made by someone else and change it to suit yourself.

If you want to do it yourself you will need a HTML editor. What HTML editor to use? I suggest DreamWeaver. It is expensive but if you want to create web sites for yourself and others this HTML editor is the best one. Remember, teachers and students can get educational discounts when buying. If you have never worked with HTML expect to spend some time learning and experimenting. Many free editors exist but I haven''t found them useful. If you aren''t sure, try a simple program such as Serif makes then move up to a more professional package. Web Monkey is great site for more web site creation information.

The main advantage of using a template is to maintain the same look and feel throughout the site so your visitors always know where they are. A new page can quickly be added without having to start from scratch. Professional web site developers use templates. Tip: always keep an original copy of the template.

Your web site''s look is one of your most important decisions. Don''t reinvent the wheel. Every time you need a new web page use your original template, make the necessary changes. This is the easiest way to a great looking web site your customers will love.

Author info: L. C. Peterson is a freelance writer and web site consultant. More web site articles and tutorials can be found at http://www.readysetgosites.com and http://www.lcpeterson.com', 242, 'Recipe For A Good Looking Web Site, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Recipe For A Good Looking Web Site plus articles and information on Web-Design

Keep Them Coming Back - Update Your Site

If you are anything like me, your website is a reflection of yourself. It contains your thoughts and communications, exposed to the entire world at all times. Look at virtually any non-commercial web site and you will get a glimpse at the person behind the monitor.

I look at web sites all day long, and I am constantly amazed by the things that people reveal about themselves without saying anything. Is the website well organized or just a jumble of images and text thrown up at a moments notice? Is the site alive with color or just dull and lifeless black and white? Is the site exploding at the seams with content or is it just a collection of ads, banners or links?

All of these and many other clues tell me more about the webmaster than any of those 50 question psychological quizzes.

One clue that tells me more than anything else is whether or not the site is kept up-to-date. Sometimes I will see a beautiful web page - a work of art that comes from the heart and soul of a human being. I fall in love with the page and want to learn more, then click on a link and bam, page not found. I shrug, as every webmaster has a bad link now and then. Click on another, and another, and more than half of the links are dead. I sigh, then move on.

Or I''m reading wonderful stories about a person''s life experiences and find, well, these are all years out of date. A little looking around the site and I find that nothing has been updated since 1997. I always feel a little sad when I see this - it''s as if something inside the webmaster died. I wonder, did she grow tired of it all? Get married and lose interest? Perhaps even died? Who knows, there is no clue on the site at all. It''s just ... abandoned.

Another clue to a neglected site - the person created a webring and got several hundred people to join. The ring is obviously a creation of love as it''s not easy to get so many sites to join up. The ring graphics are wonderful, the join page is beautifully written, and I am actually very impressed. I start to surf the ring and quickly find that over half the sites no longer exist. Another dozen have removed the ring code. How sad. It''s one thing to lose interest in a webring ... but to just abandon it? I wonder what changed in a person''s life caused this work of love and community to just be discarded so easily.

Or it could be that a person and simply doesn''t update their site very often. There is a wonderful comic book site which is simply beautiful, yet sometimes months go by without a single update! It''s so frustrating as I really am intrigued and want to come back to visit this guy''s private world. I haven''t checked in a long time - why bother, since the site is updated so infrequently?

My feeling is simple. Create the best website that you can with the knowledge that you have. You will never be finished, as there will always be more to say and show. You are a living, breathing human and you are learning more every day. Thus, there should always be something of value that you can add to your web site.Presumably, you''ve created your web site to communicate something to the rest of the world. It could be that you want to write up your life story, explain about the mythology of the Greeks and Romans, or simply compile a list of the best blonde jokes. It''s possible that you even want to make a few dollars now and then by selling a nice product. Why settle for just getting someone to read what you''ve got to say and move on? Why not continually update your message so that your readers come back time after time to find out what new and wonderful things you''ve posted this week.

Think you''ve said everything that can be said about your subject? There are many options to this method of continual updates. You could add a message board to start virtual conversations with your visitors. Or perhaps you could add a weekly column (and associated ezine) to get people to come back. Even if you''ve said everything there is to say, perhaps you can add pictures, sound and videos or change the layout or presentation.

Be sure and let people know what''s new by including a "What''s New" section right on your front page. This serves to your visitors right to the new content immediately. It also lets them know that you are updating the site all of the time, which means they will want to come back again and again just to see what you have written or changed.

A periodic ezine is another way to stay in contact with your readers, letting them know what''s going on at your special website. Another great way to get people to come back is to become active in newsgroups or email discussion lists (such as egroups and topica). By posting useful information at these places you will get people wanting to come to your site to find out what else you''ve got to say.

Which, of course, leads back to the original premise of this article. If you want people to come back to your site, you had better be keeping it up-to-date, accurate and adding new content all of the time. Otherwise, your readers will grow tired and move on to greener pastures.

And that''s the saddest thing of all ... an abandoned creation of love and passion.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

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Transforming A Site From Good To Excellent

One of the challenges of moving a web site up from good to excellent is transforming it from just a bunch of web pages and graphics to an interactive experience. Another term for this is community - a place where people can come to communicate with others. The very best web sites have mastered this transformation, thus attracting return visitors again and again.

The whole point of a web site is to communicate ideas and concepts to other people. If you are just putting up pages and graphics, then you are performing half of a communication. You are telling people what you think, want, desire or need.

The other half of communication is listening. That''s why merely adding an email form (or link) and a guestbook go a long way to improve your visitor''s experience with your web site. You are giving them the opportunity to tell you what''s on their mind. If you also take the time to answer their messages and perhaps even get involved in an online communication - then you may very well have a friend for life.

You can add even more value (and get a few more visitors as well) by adding a "tell-a-friend" capability to your site. This adds a third and very interesting (although seemingly trivial) element to your site: the ability to add others to the communication.

Look at it this way. Someone surfed to your site and actually found something that was interesting. That''s actually not an incredibly common occurrence on the internet (consider how many stupid, boring or just plain silly sites you''ve visited). Okay, they''ve found something interesting, perhaps very interesting, and they want to tell someone. You would be very wise to give them this capability. This is not just because it gains you another visitor, but it makes people feel better. Why? Because people like to share good experiences with each other.

You want to increase the ante? Include a message board! Now you''ve added another form of conversation to your website. People can jump on your board and leave messages for each other, answer questions and generally have discussions about whatever subject appeals to you. Some advice about message boards: be sure and actively moderate the board. Why? Some unscrupulous people have a tendency to leave advertisements, pornography, curses and flames on message boards. Unless that''s what your board is about, none of this serves your purpose: to get people to talk about your subject and come back to your website.

Another good reason to moderate the board is it puts you in control, which is where you should be. It''s your board and naturally conversations should be about subjects in which you are interested. The purpose of the board is to improve your site and your visitor experience - not ruin their good time.

Another great interactive feature which is not so obvious is running an awards program. What this accomplishes is simple: you are inviting people to submit their sites to you for review. By giving them the opportunity to apply for the award you are increasing the value of your site to them, and improving your chances of getting them back for more.

Perhaps one of the very best interactive features is hosting your own custom made e-cards. These are extremely popular and greatly improve your visitors experience on your site. Better yet, they give your visitors an opportunity to communicate (by sending cards) with their friends - and their friends may visit your site also.

Other features which increase your site''s desirability even more is polls and surveys, interactive stories (to see our own interactive story, visit http://www.internet-tips.net/cgi-bin/story/story.pl - and add your own chapter), ezines and even chat rooms.

By adding these and other features, you are increasing your value to people who visit your site. If there is one thing that people like to do (and must do to survive well) it''s communicate. By giving people many different ways to communicate, you are making it more likely that they will visit your site, stick around, and recommend it to their friends.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

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A Writers Glossary (Part One)

Find definitions from A to G!

~~~~~~~~~~~ A ~~~~~~~~~~~

About the Author -
usually a few paragraphs to one page that describes the author. Written in 3rd person. Used for books, book proposals and sometimes articles.

Advance -
The amount of money paid to a writer by a publisher before a book is published. The amount varies depending upon a variety of factors like: the publisher; the writer''s background; and the type of book. Advances are sometimes paid in installments as the writer works toward publication. The payments come from the projected royalties of the book.

Advertorial -
An article or copy created by a writer that is being paid for by an advertiser (or "advertiser driven"). This definition can be complicated because while they may pay well, a writer must protect herself ethically by making sure her work is marked as advertising in some way or making sure her name does not appear on it. It is also to your benefit to specify from the beginning how many rewrites you''re willing to do.

Agent -
a liason between a writer and their publisher or editor. They try to sell the manuscript to a publisher or editor and they usually take a 10-15% fee from the royalties and the advance.

All Rights or Work-for-Hire -
This means that the publication you''re writing a piece for owns your work once it is submitted to them. Unlike "First Rights" - this type of deal prevents you from ever reselling your work and/or making money on it other than the one time payment you receive from them.

Anthology -
a collection of short stories written by various authors, compiled in a journal or a book, or a gathering of works by one author.

Assignment -
an article the publisher or editor has assigned to a writer for an agreed upon fee.

Attachments -
clips attached to an e-mail query. -(2) -research, photos, or charts, usually attached to a nonfiction book.

~~~~~~~~~~ B ~~~~~~~~~~

Backlist -
Books that are still in print, but are not being published during the current season.

Bio -
A short paragraph, usually less than 100 words, that tells about the writer.

Biography -
A life story of someone other than the writer.

Blank Verse -
Nonrhyming poetry, usually written in iambic pentameter.

Boilerplate -
A standard contract. Most agents and/or authors make many changes on the boilerplate.

Business size envelope -
A #10 envelope which is the standard size for sending business correspondence.

Byline -
The line (usually printed below the title of a published article) that states the name of the writer and to credit her with writing the piece.

~~~~~~~~~~~ C ~~~~~~~~~~~

C.V. or curriculum vitae -
Simply put - your resume.

CC or Contributor''s copy -
This usually means a copy or copies of a book or magazine sent to a writer whose work appears in that publication. Sometimes publishers offer this as a form of compensation instead of monetary payment to a writer whose work they choose to publish.

Category Fiction -
Includes all types of fiction. See also genre.

Chapbook -
A small booklet of poetry, ballads, or tales.

Clean copy -
a manuscript free of wrinkles, smudges, cross-outs, and errors.

Clips -
Copies of a writer''s published work, usually taken from newspapers or magazines, which serve as samples for prospective editors.

Column Inch -
The amount of space in one column inch of typeset for newspapers.

Commercial novels -
A general term referring to novels designed to appeal to a large audience. Often broken into categories such as romance, mystery, western, etc. See genre.

Copyediting -
Editing a manuscript for printing style, punctuation, and grammar, but not for the subject matter.

Copyright -
A means to designate ownership, and protect an author''s work. Most publishers will copyright the text in the name of the author so that when the work goes out of print, all rights return to the author and the book can be sold to another publisher.

Cover Letter -
A short (usually one page) introduction letter usually sent with a manuscript to remind the editor that the manuscript was requested. A cover letter may also be sent with a book proposal. It is not the same as a query letter.

Creative Nonfiction -
Nonfiction in the 1st person, that uses creative language and an innovative approach to the subject.

~~~~~~~~~~ D ~~~~~~~~~~

DF -
An abbreviation for dark fiction usually meaning the genre of dark fantasy.

Derivative Work -
An alteration of a previous work by annotating, condensing, adapted, translated, abridged, etc... This must have the written permission of the copyright owner of the original work.

Desktop Publishing -
A publishing method for a personal computer that can illustrate, layout, print, design, and typeset for distribution.

Distributor -
A company that provides services to publishers like - warehousing, fullfillment and marketing to bookstores.

Dummy -
Mock-up of a book with that includes: page breaks; illustrations; and text.

~~~~~~~~~~~ E ~~~~~~~~~~~

Eclectic -
A variety of different genres or writing styles.

Editor -
Chooses articles or novels and edits writing.

Editing Service -
A company that offers to copyedit, rewrite or provide similar assistance (for a fee) to writers. Many organizations for writers supply information on the quality and legitimacy of such companies.

Electronic Rights -
The definition of electronic rights or Web rights is not clear-cut at this point. Many publishers feel they have electronic rights when they buy "First Rights." Most freelance writers disagree. The courts are going back and forth on the definition of this term. If a publisher''s contract includes "electronic rights" - you may want to specify how long you give them permission to keep your work published on the Web and/or try to negotiate additional payment for giving them "electronic rights."

Electronic Submission -
A submission of an article or book proposal, manuscript or similar work sent to the editor electronically (usually by e-mail or on computer disk).

Experimental Fiction -
A term that usually applies to fiction that can be defined as innovative in content or style.

E-zine -
A magazine published online.

~~~~~~~~~~ F ~~~~~~~~~~

Fair Use -
A portion of the copyright law stating small passages from copyrighted material may be used without the owner''s permission.

First Rights or First American Serial Rights -
This usually means the rights that you sell, even if you do a story on assignment. It means you give the publication the right to run your piece one time and then the rights come back to you. It is to your benefit to specify "First Rights" on your work as this allows you to resell your work after the initial publication.

Fanzine -
Usually refers to a publication produced by speculative fiction fans, which features fan-written stories about characters from popular published stories.

Feature -
An article about human interests instead of news. Used in magazines to describe a distinctive department or a lead article.

Filler -
A short item used to complete a magazine or newspaper page such as: short humor, an anecdote, a timeless news item or light verse.

First person point of view -
The author reports or narrates the story from his or her point of view.

Flash Fiction -
Very short fiction pieces that vary in length from 100 words to 1,000 words depending upon the genre.

Flat Fee -
Same as "work-for-hire." The illustrator or author is paid a lump sum for their work, and gets no royalties.

Formulaic Fiction -
Fiction that tells a story following a pre-formatted formula.

Frontlist -
Books published in the current season and shown in the publisher''s current catalogue.

~~~~~~~~~~ G ~~~~~~~~~~~

Galleys -
The first typeset of a manuscript before it''s been divided.

Genre/Category -
A term used to classify a writer''s work according to its content. Some examples of different types of genres include - erotica, gothic, mystery, poetry, romance, science fiction, and western.

Ghost Writer-
A book, story, article, or speech that is based on another person''s experience or ideas. No byline given for the writer.

GL or Guidelines -
The publisher''s instructions for writers to follow in order to submit their work to that publication.

Gothic Novel -
A genre or category of fiction that usually has a pretty young woman, a castle or mansion, a menace, and a hero.

© Danielle Hollister (2004) is the Publisher of the Free Ezine for Writers featuring news, reviews, and continuously updated links to the best resources for writers online like - freelancing & jobs, markets & publishers, literary agents, classes & contests, and more... Read it online at - http://www.bellaonline.com/articles/art157.asp', 248, 'A Writers Glossary (Part One), Writing-Articles, Writing-Articles articles, Writing-Articles information, about Writing-Articles, what is Writing-Articles, Article Writing Information', 'A Writers Glossary (Part One) plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

How To Edit Your Articles As You Write

Increase your ezine subscribers by submitting articles once or twice a week to the opt-in ezines. Read by thousands, even hundreds of thousands, you get 10-25 new subscribers for each submission. Your articles also bring people to your Web site to buy your products. Use this checklist to edit your own work.

Knowing these benefits, you want to create and submit as many excellent articles as you can. At times, you have the articles complete, but don''t have anyone handy to edit them. While it''s best to get at least two other edits from business associates, you can edit your articles yourself with a little help.

Use this checklist to edit your own work:

1. Start your introduction with a question or startling fact. You must hook your readers with something that reaches their emotions.

2. Make your introduction only a few sentences. Your readers want to get to the heart of your article fast. They want easy-to- read quick tips. Long stories can bring a yawn to your reader.

3. At the end of your introduction, include your article''s thesis to stay on track and make your article clear and compelling. For instance, "use this checklist to edit your own work."

4. Make all of your sentences short. Since standard sentence length is 15-17 words, make most of your sentences under that number. Complex sentences and multiple phrases make the reading tougher. Make it easy for your readers to find the subject and verb of each sentence, so they get the point fast.

5. Avoid dull, slow sentences. To avoid passive construction, start them with a subject, and then follow with a verb. For instance, "The coach marketed her business and books through submitting articles online" is an active sentence. "The coach''s books were marketed online through submitting articles." is passive. Drop linking verbs such as "is," "was," "seemed," or "had." Replace them with power, active verbs. Instead of "She is beautiful," you could say, "Her beauty compels you to stare at her."

6. Aim for compelling, clear copy. Write for the 8-10th grade reader. Don''t try to impress with pompous words such as "utilize." Always think "What''s in it for them?"

7. Use specific nouns and names. General references don''t engage your readers'' emotions. Let them see the size, color, and shape. Rather than say, "Write your book fast to make lifelong income," say "Write and finish your book fast so you can take that long vacation to a Caribbean island." Money alone doesn''t motivate, but what we can do with it does.

8. Let go of certain adverbs. Words like very, suddenly, and sparingly, tell instead of show. Use adverbs as often as you celebrate your birthday. Did I show, rather than tell? Your readers are hungry to experience feelings as well as picture themselves in your examples.

9. Let go of adjectives. Instead of saying, She is a super-intelligent person," you could say, "She''s a genius."

10. Appeal to the senses of sight, sound, and emotions. Telling is not effective. Instead of "Buy this book today because it is so useful," say, "Would you like to double, even quadruple your Online income in three months?"

11. Cut redundancies. Too much repetition in your articles speaks boring or "talking down" to your readers. Be willing to part with some of your "precious" words. Your first edit should reduce your words at least by one-fourth.

12. Don''t use pompous words to try to impress your reader.
Use the shortest, simplest, most well-know word. Check your word''s number of syllables. The more syllables, the more difficult.

13. Keep the subject and verb as close together as possible. Don''t make your reader work to get the meaning.

14. Use the present or past tense of the verb rather than the "-ing" form of the verb. Instead of "she is singing," say, "she sings or she sang.

15. Put your point at the end of a sentence, a paragraph, or chapter for emphasis. This position hooks the reader to pause and notice or hooks him to keep reading.

16. Cut clichés. Once, original metaphors, clichés age and become trite. Instead of "Birds of a Feather Flock Together," you could say, "Birds of a Feather Need to Fly Away."

Make your articles sculptured and painted like a fine work of art. Your word choices do make a difference--both in commercial acceptance as well as audience understanding.

Self-editing will help.

Judy Cullins, 20-year book and Internet Marketing Coach, Author of 10 eBooks including "Write your eBook Fast," and "How to Market your Business on the Internet," she offers free help through her 2 monthly ezines, The Book Coach Says...and Business Tip of the Month at http://www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml and over 140 free articles. Email her at mailto:Judy@bookcoaching.com', 248, 'How To Edit Your Articles As You Write, Writing-Articles, Writing-Articles articles, Writing-Articles information, about Writing-Articles, what is Writing-Articles, Article Writing Information', 'How To Edit Your Articles As You Write plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

Top Ten Ways to Format and Leverage your Articles Success - Part 2

You want your business to be noticed by thousands daily. Online ezine publishers and webmasters are constantly looking for new, original content. They want and need your articles. This is a promotion marriage made in heaven. But you will have a much better chance of being chosen if you write an article that solves a problem for your audience. Give each article an angle.

Let''s assume they are business people like yourself who need a problem solved--to stop procrastinating, write a book, promote their business, develop a loving relationship. Part one of this article is available at www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles/article-61.shtml.

What Format Suits You?

6. Write an article about mistakes business people make and their solutions.

A favorite of Online readers because they want to avoid costly mistakes. Here''s a few samples: "Five Book Back Cover Mistakes," The Two Biggest Web Site Mistakes," and "The Seven Mistakes Writers Make and What to do About Them."

Always give solutions for the mistakes.

7. Take an excerpt from your fiction, poetry, or other book.

Not all people want to write articles. Set up a dramatic incident from your story, then put "Excerpted from "Title of your Book." Or, take a page or two that shows your hero in action or in conflict. Conflicts include with others, with self, with nature, with technology or with fate. People love conflict, which leads to action.

Remember the who, what, where, when, why and how of your story. Create any one of these into a short piece.

One client wrote a memoir on growing up during the Great Depression. She wrote a short article on the New Deal by Roosevelt to attract people to her book, because history lovers would read it.

8. Write a list to help your audience succeed in meeting a challenge.

Think titles such as, "The Five Must Packs for the Tropics." "Seven Kinds of Massage--Which is Best For You?" Try odd numbers up to nine. Online readers will enjoy a list of the top ten...."

9. Rewrite your article to a different audience.

The best way to tweak your article this way is to copy and paste it into a new file. Now you have writing already up and it''s easier to add to some words than start from scratch. Your Online audience of small business people can be narrowed to service businesses, product businesses, professional coaches, consultants, health professionals, then different ages. Think outside the box and win new fans from new audiences.

10. Write a mini sales letter article.

Choose a topic, title, and thesis. For instance, "Conquer Procrastination Through Prioritizing." You know have identified a problem. Aim your article at one audience, such as business people.

Start your article with a hook. Ask a question that reflects your audience''s challenge that they need help on. Follow with more on the background of their need or situation. Then deliver several solutions. You now have an article that your audience will pay attention to and click to your free offers in your signature file.

You have ideas for your article format. Now choose an outstanding title and include the largest benefit to solving a challenge in the title. No matter who your article is aimed at, it is well on its way to being a top Online and offline promotion method for your business.

Judy Cullins, 20-year book and Internet Marketing Coach, Author of 10 eBooks including "Write your eBook Fast," and "How to Market your Business on the Internet," she offers free help through her 2 monthly ezines, The Book Coach Says...and Business Tip of the Month at http://www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml and over 140 free articles. Email her at mailto:Judy@bookcoaching.com', 248, 'Top Ten Ways to Format and Leverage your Articles Success - Part 2, Writing-Articles, Writing-Articles articles, Writing-Articles information, about Writing-Articles, what is Writing-Articles, Article Writing Information', 'Top Ten Ways to Format and Leverage your Articles Success - Part 2 plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

Bad Web Design: ActiveX

ActiveX uses an interesting method for enforcing security ... it doesn''t. Well, that''s not exactly true. What happens is when a web page requests an ActiveX control the browser determines if that control is already loaded onto your system. If it is the ActiveX control is executed. If not, the user is asked if it is okay to install the control. Additional information about where the control came from and it''s security implications is also included.

The theory behind this security model is the user knows what''s best for his system. In my humble opinion, this is pure hogwash (a stronger expletive came to mind but this is a family site). Is your average web surfer really knowledgeable enough to make a decision like this? Look at it this way, by installing an ActiveX control you are assuming it is secure, won''t damage your system and is bug-free. You are basically trusting completely the company which created the control, the developers and the people distributing the image.

Yes there are security certificates involved, but those are relatively easy to get. Also remember how many security problems have been reported involving ActiveX controls.

I don''t know about you, but when I get that little box stating a site wants to install an ActiveX control, my first impulse is to hit the NO box, quickly followed by the BACK key. This may seem a bit paranoid, but I use my computer all day long and I depend upon it for business and pleasure. Why would I want to put it at any risk for some silly little ActiveX control? The web is a huge place and there are plenty of other sites to look at.

My advice to anyone is generally don''t allow ActiveX controls to be installed from anywhere except for really big sites like Microsoft. It''s just too difficult to judge how safe or unsafe the control happens to be.

How is this different from Java? Well, Java has an entirely different security model which does not make the assumption that the user has been educated about the specific Java applet. Java sets specific rules to what an applet can and cannot do, and generally these rules do an excellent job of preventing damage to a system (there have been bugs but no where near as many as with ActiveX).

On top of the security concerns, ActiveX only works in Internet Explorer. Yes, I know there is a plug in for Netscape but it''s slow and not very usable. Besides, most Netscape users don''t have it installed. If you are designing a web site, please consider this very carefully. If you include ActiveX controls you are losing as many as 50 percent of your visitors. Perhaps more, depending upon your market. Is any functionality that you might gain worth that cost?

Of course, if you are creating an Intranet (a web local to a company) then by all means use all of the ActiveX controls that you want. In this case, you have far more control over the user environment that you have on the web.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

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Designing Professional Web Pages

If your Web site doesn''t project a professional and polished image to your visitors, your credibility and that of your products and services will suffer. Image is everything -- especially online where your competitor is only one mouse click away!

Before your first HTML code is written, you will need to consider your Web site''s navigational structure, color scheme and page layout. Is your content developed? If not, who is going to write it?

Once you have done the necessary pre-planning, then the fun part begins -- coding your HTML pages.

Following are some steps to consider when laying out your Web pages:

I highly recommend that you try to get your home page to fit on one screen. Ideally, people shouldn''t have to scroll down to see what your site has to offer. You may need to make your graphics smaller, but that''s okay. Smaller graphics mean a quicker download time.

Be sure to check your pages at all the various screen resolutions. Although only a small percentage of users have their monitors set at 640x480, you will want to make sure your site looks good at that resolution. I design my Web pagesat 800x600, which is the average resolution. However, more and more users have their computer monitors set at higher resolutions, such as 1024x728. You will see that your pages will look radically different depending on the resolution. I personally have been horrified at how ugly my "beautiful" pages look on different computer screens.

Browsers are another very important consideration. Netscape and Internet Explorer both perform the same function -- display Web pages -- but the way they do so is strikingly different.

Your code needs to be very clean and pretty much flawlessto display correctly on Netscape. If you miss even one table tag (e.g., you forget to close a tag), you will be mighty surprised when you get nothing but a blank page on Netscape.

Internet Explorer is much more forgiving. It "assumes" what you meant to do. Netscape, on the other hand, is unassuming. If it doesn''t understand your code, it simply will not display it.

NOTE: An excellent site to check your HTML code for browser compatibility, as well as screen size, is Anybrowser.com at http://www.anybrowser.com/

You will no doubt want to employ JavaScript and DHTML on your site because it''s both functional and cool. However, those technologies work better on Internet Explorer than they do on Netscape. Many of the scripts that you can grab for free at sites like Dynamic Drive DHTML (http://www.dynamicdrive.com/) and Website Abstraction (http://www.wsabstract.com/) are written exclusively for Internet Explorer, so you will need to be very careful when deciding what to use on your Web site.

For example, on one of my sites I use a JavaScript to display the date and time. This script is supposed to work on both Internet Explorer and Netscape; however, a couple of days ago I noticed that the year on Netscape was 100 versus 2000. A 1,900 year variance is a pretty significant difference!

The titles on all of your Web pages need to be consistent -- not only in font style, size and color but also alignment. Make sure the spacing between the title and the first paragraph is consistent throughout your site. Make sure your spacing is uniform on all pages.

If your navigation is dependent on graphics (e.g., image maps, icons, buttons, Java, JavaScript), some of your visitors will have a problem getting around your site if their browser doesn''t display graphics, or if they''ve chosen to turn graphics off on their browser settings for faster surfing. It is extremely important to provide text links in addition to graphic links. All of your users will see your text links, plus text loads faster than graphics.

It is an excellent idea to make your logo a clickable link back to your home page from all of the pages of your Web site. Many visitors expect to be able to use the logo to go back home. Don''t forget to also include a text link to your home page.

These are only a few considerations in designing your Web pages, but they are very important. Don''t let your beautiful pages look ugly on your visitor''s computer screen.

If you are like me, you will find these issues among the most challenging aspects of designing professional Web sites.

About The Author

Joanne Glasspoole is a Webmaster and freelance Web designer. Visit her Web site for Internet and technology news, insightful articles, and links to excellent Webmaster resources to help you grow your online business. http://www.glasspoole.com', 242, 'Designing Professional Web Pages, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Designing Professional Web Pages plus articles and information on Web-Design

Free Online Tools to Design (and Maintain) Your Website

These days, it seems that everyone has a website. Unfortunately, many of these websites are either bland, or sloppily designed by people who don''t understand how to use HTML effectively or are intimidated by it. And, they don''t have the money to spend on a good page editor, so they limp along using the page templates that their website might provide, or they attempt to use programs like MS Word, which offers conversion to HTML. Yet, there are many free tools available that people can use to give their sites some extra polish that will put them a cut above most sites on the WWW. Here is a listing of three of my favorite online tools that will help you create and manage your site:

ColorMaker http://www.bagism.com/colormaker/

This is an essential site to use when designing web pages. It allows you to select the text, link, and background colors from a table. Then, you can preview your choices, and make changes to them to compare different color schemes and change them instantly. It even allows you to upload multiple backgrounds and combine them with your color choices. Once you have found the combination you''re going to use, click the link that says, "copy the Body Tag," then copy the text that is shown, and paste it into your document.

Media Builder http://www.mediabuilder.com

If you don''t have a graphics program, you can still have pictures on your site, and not be limited to their original size or color. GifWorks, part of the MediaBuilder Networks, is a free, online GIF editing program that will transform these files with a number of effects, and even make buttons for your site from any GIF that you upload.

QuickCheck http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/quickcheck.html

Nothing is more annoying on a website than dead links. But, checking links manually is quite time consuming, especially if you have many links on your pages. However, there is a free service that checks the links on your webpages, and even validates the HTML. Your pages can have up to 200 links each, and you can check 10 pages per hour and 50 per day.

I hope these tools help you to make your website even better than it is currently. Please let me know what you think of them.

About The Author

Susan Gross

How-to articles on computer topics updated often.

http://avalon-technical-services.com/', 242, 'Free Online Tools to Design (and Maintain) Your Website, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Free Online Tools to Design (and Maintain) Your Website plus articles and information on Web-Design

Ten Basic Steps For Building A Web Site That Works

1. Assemble a web site development plan that is integrated with your overall marketing processes; the content should be consistent with offline materials, the graphics/images don''t have to be identical with traditional media, but should be consistent with your overall branding, style guide, usage of colors etc.

2. Hire a web site design firm that understands your market position and one that won''t get "geek crazy" - meaning they are so in love with their own design capabilities, your site gets bogged down with graphics, plug ins, GIF garbage, etc. But, conversely, check your ego at the door when you work with your design firm - I''ve see so many good web site designs get ruined by clients who can''t or won''t listen to what we tell them!

3. Pay attention to "load times," how long it takes a web site to load on a 56 KBPS modem (this is an industry average), if its more than 12-18 seconds you may experience the "click of death" - the site doesn''t load quickly and the surfer is gone. Of course, if your targeting broadband customers who are reaching your site via ISDN or DSL then you can build a site that incorporates multimedia-ready content that may include streaming audio or video, or Shockwave or Flash capabilities - go ahead and let those digital geeks get carried away with cutting edge content!

4. Dare I say it, "keep it simple" - make your site easy to move around in, build a menu structure that is consistent with industry standards, local menus (for a page or section) on the left and global menus (overall site navigation) at the top and/or bottom of each page, keep as much information "above the fold" (above the cutoff point at the bottom of a monitor), don''t make people use horizontal scroll bars unless absolutely necessary.

5. Inculcate "digital speed" into your overall site design, your client/customers should be able to get to their desired area of your site within one or two mouse clicks; they will quickly get frustrated if they have to click-through multiple menus to find information they are seeking.

6. Develop content that is web-enabled, people don''t read web site content like they do offline media, keep your paragraphs short no more than two to three sentences, build in white space with your content, include links in your pages - don''t try to tell your whole marketing story on your site - get people to call you (hello the telephone still works!), e-mail or fill out a profile form (see below).

7. Make your site permission-based marketing ready - I love Seth Godin''s "Permission Marketing" book, http://www.permission.com, and we recommend it to all of our clients - he champions building a long term relationship with a customer by asking their permission to continue to market to them and incorporating value/information in all marcom processes.

8. Ensure your site is optimized for Search Engines by identifying 8-12 keywords that people will use to find your site, then incorporate these keywords in your site content (to drive relevancy with s/engine spiders/bots) and then manually submit your site to the top ten search engines. We don''t'' recommend most of the free or $19.99 specials available; yes, all will get your registered with the s/engines, but getting listed on page 75 of 350 pages (for example) won''t really drive qualified traffic to your site, you need page 1-3 listings on the top ten engines to really drive qualified traffic.

9. Delve into your log server files to uncover "digital tracks" made through your web site - your log files are raw files that show how and from where (in most cases) people accessed your web site, where they went on your web site, how long they stayed, etc. Web Trends is the defacto industry standard, http://www.webtrends.com/default.htm, but we use and recommend a market-experienced firm in Europe, Fantomaster, Ltd. to our clients http://www.fantomaster.com - they have a suite of Search Engine products that can be downloaded for free or purchased.

10. Think global in your overall site design - the greatest Internet growth is occurring outside North America, so it is essential to build a site that can be accessed easily by people around the world. What issues do you need to look at? Load times are very important (again), develop content that avoids colloquialisms that may not be understood by others who may not speak the same language, you may want to make your site content available in diverse languages, there are a number of emerging applications that will facilitate this process, ensure your e-commerce capabilities can be utilized by all.

About The Author

Lee Traupel has 20 plus years of business development and marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc., http://www.intelective.com, a results-driven marketing services company providing proprietary services to clients encompassing startups to public companies. Lee@intelective.com

Lee@intelective.com', 242, 'Ten Basic Steps For Building A Web Site That Works, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Ten Basic Steps For Building A Web Site That Works plus articles and information on Web-Design

Some Useful Common Site Ideas

In my web surfing adventures, I''ve found a few site elements which make surfing easier and more enjoyable. There are no concrete, hard- and-fast rules to follow - these are just observations of some things which I virtually always look for in a site.

So without further ado, here is my list.

I often look for a way to contact the webmaster. I may want to tell him something about his site (privately), propose a link exchange or just drop him a line. I feel an email link or a link to a form is something to expect to find on every single page. If you are running a commercial site this is essential - your customers want to be able to tell or ask you things and if you want their business you had better make it easy for them.
I like guestbooks. When I run into a site that I find enjoyable, I want to tell the webmaster. Give him or her a compliment - I think it''s a good exchange. The webmaster worked hard and provided something that was entertaining, informative or useful. It''s nice to let him know in return. So please put a link to the guestbook on every page.
A good navigational system is very important. A menu of some kind, with a link back to the home page, needs to be on every page of the site. Sometimes this may consist of a simple "previous" and "next", but please always add a "home" link in this case. If I''ve surfed a ways on your site, I want to be able to get back to the index quickly without using the "back" button.
Nothing makes me leave a site faster than finding one of those silly little "right click" scripts which attempts to disable the right-click functions. Not only do these not work, but they are rude and violate some of the primary tenets of the internet - free, sharing, and community. Also, you are modifying my browser controls - which is not a nice thing to do. If you display something on your page I guarantee you that it can be taken, no matter how many scripts or functions you install.
Speaking of browser control - don''t modify my screen size, buttons, menus, cursors or anything else that my browser does. You want me to leave fast - resize my browser to fit the whole screen and remove the menu. I will be out of your site in a second!
Whether your site is personal or professional, tell me a little about yourself, your wife, your kids, and your pets. I find it much easier to like someone and be receptive to their message if I know something about them. Just a quick page with a few paragraphs is fine. If you are going to ask me to fill out a form, please let me know how you are going to use the information. You want my address? Why? Phone number? What do you need that for? More importantly, how safe is this information?
I know many people like to put banner exchanges on their sites, but please keep it to a minimum. First, banner exchanges don''t work very well. Second, they make the pages load slowly. And third, if there is more than one or two banners on a page it''s pretty tacky. If you are going to insist on putting background music on your site, please give me an obvious way to turn it off.
Please don''t expect me to go searching through your whole page for a little dot hyperlink. I''ve found sites which bury the link to the next page in the strangest places - in someone''s eye, for example. Normally, I am just going to leave instead of trying to find out how to navigate.

Well, that''s a start. I hope these ideas are of some value and help you make a better, more friendly site.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

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Website Polls For You And Your Visitors

Setting up a survey on your site is extremely simple and many times just as beneficial, for two main reasons. One, they let you create a more interactive website for your visitor. Choose interesting topics, poll opinions on recent events related to your site, and people will participate to find out what other people on your site think. Second, if you write your surveys in a way that keeps them interesting and useful to yourself you can gather important information about your visitors in order to build a site better tailored to their interests.

STEP 1: Set Up The Software

You''ll need to either sign up for a remotely hosted poll service or to install a CGI script on your own in order to manage your polls.

While a remotely hosted poll is not as customizable as one you host on your own, it''s definitely easier to set up. One of the more popular of the many free remotely hosted poll services out there is PollIt. You can have your poll up and running fast after registering and filling out a couple forms: http://www.pollit.com/webpolls

The other option is to find or write a CGI script to run the poll on your site. This gives you the ability to customize the poll to look exactly as you want it and to fit in with your site. It also eliminates the links back to the poll host that many remotely hosted ones have. You can find a good one here: http://www.cgi-world.com/pollit.html

STEP 2: Write Your Question

The goal of your poll is to create a more interactive website for your visitors and to collect information for yourself. Choose topics where responses would interest both the visitor to your site and yourself. Ask a question about the topics your site covers to find out what your visitors want more information about.

You may even ask questions directly related to your website. Ask "what do you want to read more of" and list several topics your site covers or may cover in the future. Ask "how often do you read our daily gardening tips" and find out exactly how popular they are.. or aren''t.

STEP 3: Post Your Poll

Placement is key! You won''t get a heaping response to your poll unless it''s very well written. Place the poll towards the top of the page where it will be visible when the page loads. While some of the remotely hosted services offer polls that pop up when the page loads, these will generally get less response than one integrated into your site well.

With CGI-based polls, you can usually use SSI or Server-Side-Includes to include your poll right in your webpage without doing much editing. Do a search at any major search engine for more information on this.

STEP 4: Use Your Results

Once you''ve acquired enough votes to get an idea of what your visitors are voting overall, use this information to improve your site. Build your site based on what your visitors really want to see. If they tell you they want to learn about topics over other topics, focus more on the ones they''re interested in.

Hopefully this will lead to a more successful site for you in the long run. Your users will benefit from a more interactive site and a responsive website owner who tailors the site to their wants and needs.

About The Author

Dan Grossman runs http://www.websitegoodies.com where you can find over 250 hand-picked resources, articles, and tools! Dan also publishes the free weekly "WebDevPortal" newsletter for website owners! Subscribe today and get articles like this every week: subscribe@websitegoodies.com?subject=article-subscribe', 242, 'Website Polls For You And Your Visitors, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Website Polls For You And Your Visitors plus articles and information on Web-Design

Choosing A Color Scheme

When you begin the design of your Web site, one of the first things you need to do is decide on a color scheme. Although choosing colors seems like a relatively easy proposition, it''s not easy at all. In fact, it''s hard.

One of the pluses we have as Web designers is that millions of colors are at our disposal. Unlike the print world, we do not have to pay for each color we use. If we want to use a specific hue of yellow, for example, all we need to know is the hexadecimal code for that particular color.

One of the pitfalls of having millions of colors to pick from is that some people go crazy and use every color imaginable on their Web site. This is a big no-no. Not only does it look unprofessional to use 20 different colors on your home page, but depending on the colors you choose, your page may not be readable.

It is extremely important to pick hues that complement each other. You will want to use a background color that contrasts well with the color of your text. People are used to reading black text on a white background. I keep this fact in mind when I design my clients'' Web sites. Although I have never stuck with the black and white color scheme, I try to use a dark font on a light background. It makes for easier reading and a more pleasant experience for my visitors.

Color affects our emotions. For example, the color red makes us hungry. If you''re on a diet, it wouldn''t be a good idea to set your table with a red tablecloth!

Colors like blue and green are cool. Have you noticed in the summertime how sitting in a blue room automatically makes you feel refreshed?

Yellow is a wonderful brightener. It is cheerful and warm -- like the sun.

When using colors on your Web site, you need to consider the mood you want to create and the audience you are designing for.

If you are designing a Web site for children, red is an excellent color choice, because it attracts the eye and stimulates our metabolism. Red is cheerful and exuberant.

Blue is an excellent choice for a business site because it exudes professionalism, wealth and power.

If you are designing a Web site for a nature group, greens and browns are natural choices because they are colors that are commonly found in the outdoors.

Another important consideration when choosing color schemes is cultural differences. For example, black is the color most commonly associated with mourning in the United States, but in Japan, white symbolizes sorrow. In Malaysia, green is associated with disease, and red symbolizes anger in Indonesia. As you can see by just these three examples, color is interpreted quite differently depending on the country. You must be careful if you don''t want to insult your visitors.

Choosing an appropriate color scheme for your Web site is extremely important. Your color scheme must be carefully considered because the wrong choices could adversely affect your visitor''s experience at your Web site. You only have one chance to make a good impression. Don''t blow it!

For more information about choosing color schemes, visit the following resources on the Web:

The Color Schemer

http://www.godigitalstudios.com/www/color

Clear Ink''s Palette Man

http://www.paletteman.com/

Project Cool Developer Zone

http://www.projectcool.com/developer/reference/color-chart.html

VisiBone Web Design Color References

http://www.visibone.com/color/

A book that illustrates excellent use of color on the Web is "Web Site Graphics: Color" by Jeff Carlson, Toby Malina and Glenn Fleishman. For more information about this book, visit http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1564965163/

About The Author

Joanne Glasspoole is a Webmaster and freelance Web designer. Visit her Web site for Internet and technology news, insightful articles, and links to excellent Webmaster resources to help you grow your online business. http://www.glasspoole.com', 242, 'Choosing A Color Scheme, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Choosing A Color Scheme plus articles and information on Web-Design

Website Design Basic Concepts

So, what''s in a website design anyway? And, how do you get a design that is appealing to the broad and varied tastes of all those Internet surfers out there?

This is critical. Your website design is the first impression you make on your customers and visitors. There are a few sites in my favorites and bookmarks that I consider poorly designed. I still have them, because they have information I want. Lucky for the site owner that their content was that good! But one day I will find another site with the same information and a better design. Then guess who will be in my favorites and who will be left out? Maybe your content is great too, but don''t take chances on a poor design. Think how much more repeat traffic and referred traffic you will get if you have both great content and great design.

Design Taste Varies - OK, design is a matter of taste and target audience to some degree. What looks good to one visitor may not be so great to another. Here we have the old adage of "one man''s trash is another man''s treasure". But there are solid basics that go into good site design. Creating a distinctive visual style and applying it consistently is the best way to bind a series of subjects and web pages together.

Layouts - The layout of your site is an important design element. A webpage is a document, plain and simple. It is like formatting a letter, an outline, a report, or an advertisement. Establish a layout grid and a style for handling your text and graphics, then stick with it to build a consistent rhythm and unity across all the pages of your site. Make it easy to follow, pleasing to the eye. Learn to use tables and nested tables, lists, and even well designed frames for controlling layouts.

Color - Color has a lot to do with target audience as well. What appeals to a teenager may not work with a target audience of baby-boomers, and so forth. But anybody can appreciate color coordination. Color coordination can be learned. Yes, it''s a lot easier if you have a natural "knack" for these things, but you can learn basic color coordination techniques that make the difference between "tacky, yuk!!!" and "soothing to the eye".

Safe Colors - Everyone does NOT have 16 million colors on their computer. Learn to use the websafe 216 colors. Notice that''s 216 colors, not 256 colors. This is a matter of video card capability and you are at the mercy of the viewer''s personal computer system. Your best bet is to stick to 6 x 6 x 6 bit color resolution (216 colors) to cover the majority of Internet users. The 216 color palette gives you plenty for design options. Sure, not as many as 256 colors or 16 million, but still plenty to accomplish what you want or need to do with color.

Page Load Time - Now I''ll be the first person to admit that I have made *personal* web pages which have large graphics or music .wav files and other things that take awhile to load. The point here is, they are my personal websites, *not* my professional or commercial websites. I may use these long loading pages for demo-ing several techniques, or chatting with friends and other developers, but never never never for professional site design (unless my client insists, in which case I do not use their site as a demo to other potential clients!). This doesn''t mean you have to give up everything on professional sites. It just means take it easy, use only one high-load-time element or two, learn to compress your graphics properly, and if you''ve got that much "stuff" then break it up into more than one page.

Don''t Overdo IT - A typical mistake among developers is to overdo it when putting together a website. Try to use extras in moderation. Some common things that get overused are:

graphics
background images
bevels and other graphic tricks
excessive frames
text scrolling, animated .gif''s, page fade-ins

Too much of something just comes off as being "cutsie", tacky, or unoriginal...but used properly it can add just the right touch. Learn to use things that compliment your site''s content, and not to overdo it with extra techniques and tricks.

Readability - Make your pages as easy to read as possible. Black text on a white or off-white background is the easiest to read. There are plenty of hard-to-read pages that use backgrounds the same shade as the text (dark text on a dark background and light on light), or what I call the "neon" look with bright color on bright color.

Learn to use the tag and give your readers a font that''s easy on the eye. I always think it''s such a shame to see a site full of great content and then left in the default Times New Roman font. Use a sans-serif font - arial and verdana are good choices, then put "sans-serif" generic font in your last html tag attribute to cover anyone that may not have a specific font you listed as a first choice or second choice.

Browser and Monitor Compatibility -. Learn to make your web pages compatible with both Microsoft Internet Explorer(IE) and Netscape Navigator. After preparing a site, test it in both browsers and ondifferent screen sizes or resolutions. Typical figures are 80% of Internet users are on the IE browser, 80% using 800 x 600 resolution, and most on a 15" or 17" screen....but, can you really afford for your site to look poor to 20% of the market? The answer is NO. Make your site compatible with both browsers and take that silly "best viewed with..." graphic off the site! Furthermore, use alt tags in your graphics for people who surf with images turned off, or on smaller browsers which don''t support them.

Using Java - Personally, I like Java and use it in site design. However, you have to remember many people turn it off for one reason or another. Or they may be using a browser that doesn''t support it.Therefore, if you use a java driven menu (quite popular nowadays), you better have some alternate navigation.

About The Author

Kim Eyer, of EyerStation.com publishes the WebSiteOwner eZine for webmasters and small businesses. To get your monthly copy and access to its support website, send a blank email to eyerstation@carolina.net with the word "Subscribe" in the subject line.', 242, 'Website Design Basic Concepts, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Website Design Basic Concepts plus articles and information on Web-Design

10 Web Site Design And Writing No-Nos

1. Don''t load your web site with a lot of high tech clutter. Your visitors may miss your whole sales message.

2. Don''t use unnecessary words or phrases on your site. You only have so much time to get your visitor''s attention and interest; make ever word count.

3. Don''t make the mistake that everyone will totally understand your web site message. Use descriptive words and examples to get your point across.

4. Don''t write your strongest point or benefit only once. You should repeat it at least 3 times because some people may miss it.

5. Don''t push all your words together on your web site. People like to skim; use plenty of headings and sub headings.

6. Don''t use site content your target audience isn''t interested in. If people are coming to your site to find info about fishing don''t include soccer content.

7. Don''t use 50 different content formats all over your web site. Use the same fonts, text sizes, text colors, etc.

8. Don''t use words your web site visitors might not understand. People are not going to stop and look in a dictionary, they will just go to another site.

9. Don''t let selling words and phrases go unnoticed. Highlight important words and phrases with color, bolding, italics, underlining, etc.

10. Don''t forget to use words that create emotion. All people have emotions, people will have more interest when they are emotionally attached.

About The Author

Over 40,000 Free eBooks & Web Books when you visit: http://www.ldpublishing.com As a bonus, Bob Osgoodby publishes the free weekly "Your Business" Newsletter - visit his web site to subscribe and place a FREE Ad! http://adv-marketing.com/business', 242, '10 Web Site Design And Writing No-Nos, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', '10 Web Site Design And Writing No-Nos 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 (46957, 'Why You Want to Include an FAQ In Your Site', 'Congratulations! You''ve got a brand new site and it''s doing pretty well. You check your statistics every day and the hits and page views keep climbing, your links are all in order and everything looks very good. On top of that, your guestbook is filling with great comments and you''re getting a few emails now and then with praise and perhaps a question or two.

Now is a good time to sit back and examine the subject (or subjects) of your site. What is the theme? What are you trying to accomplish? Then once you''ve got your site visualized, start to think about it from the perspective of a new visitor. Put yourself in their shoes, and assume you know nothing. What questions would you have? Write down these questions or type them into a document as you think of them.

What you are creating is a list of frequently asked questions (commonly abbreviated as FAQ). These are questions that your visitors may have about your site, the subject or theme, or even about you. Just about any question is valid, as long as it is helpful to your visitors.

Let''s create an example of, say, a web site about model railroading. Now, what questions would you have if you surfed to that site? You might want to know "what is it?", "when did it start?", "how much does it cost?", "why does this site exist?" and "who is the webmaster?".

That last question is more important than it seems at first glance, as putting a face behind a web site increases it''s credibility and makes it more likely that your visitors will (a) return, (b) tell their friends, and (c) purchase something (if your site is commercial). Some web guru''s will tell you never to include information the webmaster - these people simply do not understand human nature. In general, people will trust another person far more easily than they will trust a web site or a machine.

Once you''ve got your list of questions, go ahead and create one or more web pages (create as many as you like). Add the questions to the pages, along with the answers. If you feel like linking to articles within your site go ahead. I would avoid including external links at this point, as you want to get people interested in your site, not someone else''s.

Remember to keep your answers short and to the point. You are not trying to duplicate your web site. Your goal is to give your visitors some quick answers to their questions to get them more interested in looking around further.

As you are adding your questions and answers, you will most likely come up with additional questions. By all means, add those to your frequently asked questions as well.

Some webmasters like to include a form at the bottom of their questions to allow people to submit additional one''s if desired. This is a great idea, as it is an easy way to improve your web site''s interactivity - which is usually very good for getting people to return later.

I would not recommend, however, doing what I''ve seen some webmasters do - automate this function. I guess the idea is to get your visitors involved in answering the questions. In this case, the FAQ becomes more or less a moderated message board. I prefer just to receive my visitors questions in an email, which I can then either answer directly or add to the FAQ when I get the chance.

FAQ''s are great for answering simple questions that your visitors may have before they send you an email. It is important to remember to include a link to the FAQ in a prominent place on every single page of your website - you want people looking at them when they have questions.

In summary, FAQ''s tend to pull visitors into your site and make them feel better about it, which means they are more likely to return for more again and again.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm', 242, 'Why You Want to Include an FAQ In Your Site, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Why You Want to Include an FAQ In Your Site plus articles and information on Web-Design

Choosing the Right Web Designer

Creating your web site can be a tricky process. Choosing the best web design company for your site is extremely important. Unless you run a web-based business, you probably do not have web design experience within your company. Building your web site will take time and a little homework!

To create a web site for your business, follow these 4 simple steps:

Establish your goals

Determine your budget

Pick a web design company

Pick a web hosting company

Establish Your Goals

Before you begin looking for company to help you design and build your web site, take the time to understand the goals of your web site. This will be extremely important to help set expectations with the web design company you choose.

In order to set your web site goals, ask yourself the following questions:

Why do you want a web site?
Are you selling something?
Do you have a catalog of products that changes on a regular basis?
Who is your target market?
Do you already have a brand?
What is your industry?
Who are your competitors?
Do they already have web sites? If so, what do they look like?
If you''re selling something, will you accept credit cards over the internet?
How soon do you want your web site?
What happens if you never create a web site for your business?

Take the time to answer each of the above questions and if you have time, write the answers down on a sheet of paper. These are the same questions most web design companies will ask you before they begin to create your site. If you have these questions answered up front, you will have some criteria for choosing the right web design company. For example, if you are a real estate agent, and want to publish listings on your web site, you should seek a web design company that knows about the real estate business and has created web pages for other real estate agents.

Determine Your Budget

How much do you want to spend on your web site. Web sites can cost you anywhere from $100 to $100,000 depending upon what you want it to do. Know your spending constraints before you begin negotiating with design companies. Whatever you do, do not tell a web design company what your budget is!! Always get pricing based on your needs, not you budget.

Pick a Web Design Company

Your choice of a web design company is a very important step. Take your time to investigate all of your options. Here are some important items to consider.

Design vs. Build

Depending upon the scope of your web site, you may need to choose two different companies. Building a web site is a highly technical process. Designing a web site is a highly creative process. Many advertising firms specialize in web site design which does not necessarily require any web development skills whatsoever. The process of creating a web site is similar to the process of building a new home. Before you ask a construction company to start building, you first seek out an architect who creates a blueprint of your house taking into account what you want (number of stories, square footage, etc.). Creating a detailed blueprint before construction begins can help you accurately estimate the final price. Without the blueprint, you may end up paying a lot of money for a house that does not fit your needs. Creating a web site is exactly the same except most web site "builders" also claim to be "designers". The good news is that you can look at other sites a web design company has created (like looking at other homes that a home builder has made). Make sure you ask the web design company what their process is for designing a web site vs. building a web site. They should understand the difference between these two concepts. If they don''t, they''re probably builder that think they can also architect.

Evaluate Experience

Has the web design company created web sites similar to yours? Do they have relevant industry experience? As with any services company, choosing someone that has relevant experience. If you want to sell products through your web site and accept credit card payments, does the web design company you are considering have experience doing just that?

Review the Portfolio

A well established web design company will have a solid portfolio of web sites that they have created for other clients. Ask for links to other site the design company has created and review each one. Do you like what you see? Do the sites have a style that appeals to you? In addition to reviewing web sites, ask for customer references. Contact their clients and ask them about their experience with the web design company. Were they happy with the results? Did they get what they paid for? How much did they pay? Would they recommend them? How long did it take? What didn''t they like about the company? How responsive was the company when they had questions?

Compare Prices

Pricing for creating a web site can vary. Typically, web design companies will charge one of three ways:

Time and materials: price is variable based on the actual number of hours spent working on your site. For example, a web design company may charge you $75 per hour. If it takes 100 hours to create your web site, your price would end up being $7,500.
Fixed Price: some design companies will charge you a fixed fee based on a fixed set of requirements. If you outline your requirements very carefully, many web design companies will quote you a single price.
Component Pricing: some design companies will charge "by the page". By creating a price based on the number of pages, you can control the cost by designing a specific number of pages. Buyer beware: some design companies will charge by the page but will have "special pricing" for components such as custom graphics, animated images, and the like.

The most important step in pricing is to make sure the potential design company outline all of the prices associated with the work and puts it all in writing. Never enter into a deal unless all of the costs are well understood up front. Also make sure that you understand what "done" means. Try and structure the payments such that a significant portion of the fees (20%) are not due until you "accept" the final web site. Include the agreed-upon dates in your contract and provisions for what will happen if these dates are not met.

Solicit bids from multiple web design companies and compare both the pricing models and the prices themselves.

There are thousands of web designers across the country and they should all fight feverously for your business! Be picky! If a web design company dismisses any of your questions regarding their design process, pricing, or client references, take your business elsewhere!

About The Author

Andy Quick is co-founder of Findmyhosting.com (http://www.findmyhosting.com), a free web hosting directory offering businesses and consumers a hassle free way to find the right hosting plan for their needs. Feel free to contact Andy at andy@findmyhosting.com in case you have any questions or comments regarding this article.', 242, 'Choosing the Right Web Designer, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Choosing the Right Web Designer plus articles and information on Web-Design

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Choosing the Right Web Designer