Design Website

5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back

2009-08-24T06:24:00.001-07:00

5 Ways to Keep Visitors Coming Back

A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers -- all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

Tags : legal website design, website design classes, website design schools, internet website design, cheap website design

Ways To Improve Sales Through Your Website

2009-08-09T03:49:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has been marketing online knows that the lifeblood of a business is the traffic of a site. More visitors equal more sales. However, here are some ways that you can tweak your sites with to improve sales without the need to get more visitors.

The first method is to weave in your personal touch in your sales message. Nobody wants to be sold to by a total stranger, but many people will buy what their close friends recommend to them. If you can convince your audience that you are a personal friend who has their best interest at heart, they will be convinced to buy your products. Remember to speak to an individual in your salesletter, not to your whole audience.

The second method is to publish testimonials and comments from your customers. A good idea would be to publish both good and bad comments; that way prospects will be really convinced that these testimonials are real. When prospects see testimonials on your website, they will have the confidence to buy from you because human beings follow the herd mentality; when others have bought and proven it authentic, they will jump on the bandwagon and buy too.

Use visual representations for the problems and solutions that your product offers. Not everyone will read your text copy from the head to the tail, but most people will pay attention to images on your website.

Offer quality bonuses to accompany the product. When you offer bonuses that complement your product, your prospects will feel it's a very good deal and it would be stupid to miss it. Be sure to state the monetary value of your bonuses so that people will be even more compelled to grab your good bargain.

Lastly, ask for the sale! Many people entice their prospects with the benefits of their product, sell to them with stories of how it has solved many problems, even offered killer bonuses but forget to ask for the sale. Give a clear instruction on how to buy your product (e.g. "click the button to buy now!").

Tags : legal website design, website design classes, website design schools, internet website design, cheap website design

5 Important Rules in Website Design

2009-07-28T07:21:00.001-07:00

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

1) Do not use splash pages

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

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

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

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

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

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

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

5) Avoid using audio on your site

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

Tags ; legal website design, website design classes, website design schools, internet website design, cheap website design

Effectively Using Overture/Yahoo To Get Website Visitors

2009-07-24T18:31:00.001-07:00

Overture or now known as Yahoo because of Yahoo’s takeover, was the original inventor of the use of the P4P or Pay for Performance. Overture saw that the internet was fast becoming the easiest and most convenient way to shop, and advertising was going to hit at an all time high because of the many businesses in the arena.

To get a person to go to a site than others, it needs to be very visible. Providing ads that could direct potential consumers and costumers to their site would allow them to have an increase in traffic as well as sales. Yahoo provides a service that can put a site or company’s ad in their sites that can be shown when certain keywords are inputted.

Yahoo offers a chance for any company to increase their traffic by using their services. With more people being aware of your site, there would be more traffic and visitors to your site given the chance to view your pages as well as your products. With even a small percentage of successful sales, with a high traffic volume this could still be a substantial figure for your company.

Getting a consistent substantial flow of website visitors is every company’s goal. Many methods are devised and utilized to ensure that there would be more people to boost the sales and to be aware of the existence of such a product or service. Website visitors are potentially the life blood of your internet based business.

Yahoo/Overture utilizes the same principle as Google’s Adwords. In fact, they are very similar to each other that they use keyword and keyword phrase searches and to determine which ads to show per search. When a person types in a keyword or keyword phrase to search for anything, the search engines gives out the results in a page. Then at the right side of the page, you will see selected ads that have paid for their ads to be viewed with certain keywords and keyword phrases searched.

For example, Lets say you run a car parts retail/wholesale site. You choose keywords that can prompt or trigger your ads to be shown in the page when a keyword is searched. When a search engine user types in Honda Accord, your ad may come up if you have designated that as one of your keywords. You don’t need to fully optimize your site with Search Engine Optimization methods and techniques.

While some labor so hard to make their site one of the high ranking sites per keyword search, you get the chance to be on the top of the list or at least in the first page of a search result increasing your chance to be clicked on. With that, you drive traffic and website visitors to your site a lot faster.

You will have to pony up some cash when using this service though. There are different ways Yahoo/Overture will charge you. It may be in the number of Keywords or Keyword phrases your ad uses or in the many times your ad is clicked on. Others offer many other services like having your ad show up not only in the search engine pages but also with some third party sites.

Third party sites support ads that have the same theme or niche as them. With more areas your ad is shown, you increase the chances of people knowing about your site or product. With more website visitors you increase the sales of your site which makes your investment with your ads a wise one.

With so many competitions in the internet based businesses, it is necessary to take a huge leap forward from the pack by advertising. Yahoo/Overture will be a great place to start. Many have utilized their services and have reaped the rewards of this decision. It’s a marketing strategy that will increase your website visitors as well as increase your sales resulting to profit.

It takes money to make money, while there are some methods that are basically low cost or free, using a marketing service such as what Yahoo/Overture offers will provide results faster and on a larger scale. Many businesses have learned this the hard way, don’t be counted with them.

Tags ; legal website design, website design classes, website design schools, internet website design, cheap website design

3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website

2009-06-30T23:05:00.000-07:00

Before you start worrying about marketing your website on the internet it always pays dividends to look at the website itself and get the fundamentals right before looking to shout about it from the virtual mountain-tops.

You may already have thought about the following 3 ways and some of you may already have them in place on your website. If so ? congratulations ? you''re well on the way to having a website that will bring you more business. So here they are then ? the 3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website..

1. You''re Fishing For Visitors ? You''ll Need This To Hook Them.

Ever been surfing on a website that held your attention and then the phone rings? You take the call, take some notes, get distracted, visit another website and before you know it you''ve forgotten all about the website you were viewing. It happens all the time and if you don''t have a Bookmarking tool on your website it will be happening with the people that come to your website. A Bookmarking tool is just a simple link or logo that your visitors can click on in order to bookmark your website or add it to their favourites. It is best to have the button located on the homepage but an even better option is to have a bookmarking button on every page so a visitor can actually bookmark each specific page of your website for safe-keeping. Look to the left of this article and you will see the bookmarking button we use ? click on it to see how it adds this specific page to your favourites ? nifty eh?

2. ''X'' Marks The Spot.

Visitors come to your website and if you''re lucky ? they like it and click beyond the homepage. Excellent. But they can''t find what they''re looking for. Uh oh, you could be in trouble. There''s a lot of information on your website and Mr. Visitor doesn''t have time to sift through it all to find what he''s looking for. You''d better hope that he''s either very patient or that you''ve provided him with a simple map to help him get to the ''treasure'' he is looking for. A Site Map is an essential item ? particularly on larger websites.

There is nothing more frustrating than hunting around for something and wasting time when just a simple one pager that presents a summary of all the information on your website could be used. A Site Map should be reachable from all pages of your website in just one click and should have clickable links on it so that a visitor can zoom straight through to their desired location without having to hunt around. If you don''t give them a map your visitors may become frustrated searching around for that desired piece of information and they may leave your website never to return.

3. Don''t Make Your Visitors Have To Write An Email To Contact You

If you are inviting enquiries or contact from visitors to your website you need to provide them with a way of doing this that is as easy as possible for them. Just posting your email address on the website is not the best solution. Why? Because when they click on it they need to then create an email from scratch. Do you know how busy your visitors are? They hardly have time to read the content of your homepage ? never mind create an email from scratch. The solution? You need to use a simple form. A form enables you to standardise the responses that you receive and it also makes it very simple for your visitors to get in touch with you ? all they need to do is pop in their name, email address and tick a few boxes and that''s it.

Making it easy for your visitors to contact you isn''t the only reason that using a form is a great idea. Doing so means you can get some information back from each person that fills in the form. You can ask them how they discovered your website, which other websites they like to visit ? you can ask them anything! Anything that is going to help you learn more about them, more about who they are and more about what will make them buy from you. You think they would tell you all this if they were creating an email from scratch? No ? of course they wouldn''t! That''s why you need a form.

Mike Cheney, www.magnet4web.com (c)

About The Author

Are You Getting Your MagnetMail? - Mike Cheney''s World-Famous Free Magic Mail To Make Your Website Magnetic, Get Yours Now: www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=magnetmail', 242, '3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', '3 Simple Ways To Dramatically Improve Your Website plus articles and information on Web-Design

Speed Up Or Lose Out! How To Improve Your Websites Download Speed

2009-06-28T23:05:00.000-07:00

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

One possible cause could be a slow download speed of your web site''s homepage or the web site as a whole. There is nothing worse than having to wait for a web site to load up. Studies indicate that the majority of visitors will only wait 3 - 5 seconds for a homepage to load up before clicking elsewhere. If your homepage doesn''t load up in this time (from a standard internet connection) you are running the risk of losing lots of visitors before they''ve even read the content of the homepage.

They Won''t Hang Around!

You should always assume that most visitors will be connecting to the Internet using standard equipment - not super-charged fast connections. The main culprits of slow download times for a homepage are images. Just remember - every part of every web page you view has to travel down the phone line and onto your screen - the larger the item the longer this will take to happen. It is for this reason that you will sometimes notice the text on a web page loads up on your screen before the images. This is because of the simple reason that images are larger in file size than text and therefore take longer to come down the phone line.

The more large images you have your homepage the slower it will be to download. Nobody is saying get rid of all images from a homepage - as with many things in life - they key to success is balance. Try not to sacrifice your web site''s aesthetic for quicker download times but, at the same time, don''t have large images or animations on the homepage, as these will take longer to download.

Does Your Homepage Need To Go On A Diet?

As a rule of thumb it is recommended that a homepage be around 40 - 50 Kilobytes in size. Any larger and will be a slow downloading homepage, any smaller and it will be quicker than average. One of the best ways to decrease download times is to reduce the number of images being used or optimise them by reducing the number of colours they use or cropping them slightly.

Other pages on your web site are less important than the homepage when it comes to download speed as by this point users will already have made the commitment to enter the main body of the web site and will therefore be willing to wait a little longer for the information they require.

Mike Cheney, www.magnet4web.com

About The Author

Are You Getting Your MagnetMail? - Mike Cheney''s World-Famous Free Magic Mail To Make Your Website Magnetic, Get Yours Now: www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=magnetmail', 242, 'Speed Up Or Lose Out! How To Improve Your Websites Download Speed, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Speed Up Or Lose Out! How To Improve Your Websites Download Speed plus articles and information on Web-Design

Breathe New Life Into Your Half-dead Website By Using Words That Sell

2009-06-27T23:04:00.000-07:00

This article may come as a surprise to you.

Especially since it is written by a web designer. Let me explain......

Rescue Your Web Site from Boring Words and Poor Design.

The difference between a successful website design and a site that brings in zero or very little business is not how nice the graphics are, not the colors you choose. It''s not the flashy animation, and it''s not your precious company logo.

I''m not saying to remove these elements. Some of them are important. But they''re mostly ego-driven. They are "me" messages, and have absolutely nothing to do with what you want your visitor to do.

And what is that you ask? The answer is of course. You want your visitors to buy something.

People who are considering doing business with you are only interested in one thing; "What''s In It For Me?"

One of the first steps toward a successful website is writing copy that tells the reader what''s in it for him, in a style that is easy to read.

Make More Cash

Study any website that makes money and I promise you''ll see the following copy elements in place:

In the main body copy, the text color is always black with a white background, making it easy to read. This should be obvious, but it''s amazing how many websites out there do not follow this very basic guideline.

Testimonials, and other secondary elements commonly use a contrasting font such as courier, courier new. The background in light blue, beige, or yellow shade to make it stand apart from the white background of the main body copy.

Verdana is the most widely used font for your body copy. This font was actually developed for use in the web. Times New Roman, Arial, and Georgiana are also popular. Never use more than two different font faces in your sales copy.

The use of yellow highlights, italics and bold font-style for emphasis.

Headlines and Subheads are usually a contrasting color from the black body text. A shade of red, dark green and dark blue are good colors. However, do not use more than three or four different colors.

Sentence and paragraph font size is commonly between 8pt. and 12pt. Never smaller than that, and never bigger.

Headlines and sub headlines usually between 14pt. and 18pt.

Paragraphs never justified. Most common is left-margin with no indent.

How To Write Successful Headlines

In your sales copy you need an attention-grabbing headline and a compelling sales message full of benefits, clearly describing what your product or service is all about.

Legendary copywriter Ted Nicholas author of 14 best-selling books including "Magic Words That Bring You Riches" has these excellent tips on writing headlines

"Start with a well thought out headline."

"Five times as many people read the headline as the body copy. It makes sense, therefore, to spend the major portion of your effort on headlines."

"A good headline motivates action by stirring an emotion"

"Write as many as 250 headlines before settling on one"

13 Proven Headline Words

Announcing...

Secrets of...

New...

Now...

Amazing...

Facts you...

Breakthrough...

At Last...

Advice to...

The truth of...

Free...

How would...

How to...

How To Write Attention-Grabbing First Sentences

Joe Sugarman (of blu-blocker sunglass fame) and author of best-selling book "Advertising Secrets of the Written Word" has these tips on writing first sentences;

"Keep it short, sweet and almost incomplete."

For example:

It''s easy.

It had to happen.

It''s time.

It''s crazy.

The sole purpose of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence.

How To Write Attention-Grabbing Ending Sentences

"You must plant seeds of curiosity for the reader." "At the end of a paragraph offer a reason to read the next paragraph."

Using sentences such as.....

But there''s more.

So read on.

But I didn''t stop there.

Let me explain.

Now here comes the good part.

These tips represent just the tip of the iceberg on breathing new life into your half-dead web site.

We''ll cover all of the other necessary elements in future articles. Stay tuned.

I hope that you have found this information to be helpful in your pursuit of excellence. Thank you for reading.

Regards,

Dave Peterson

About The Author

Dave is not only a Professional Website Designer. He also incorporates exciting state-of-the-art marketing strategies and expertise that help clients put more cash in there pockets. Providing great value to his clients.', 242, 'Breathe New Life Into Your Half-dead Website By Using Words That Sell, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Breathe New Life Into Your Half-dead Website By Using Words That Sell plus articles and information on Web-Design');

How to Create A Homepage That Works

2009-06-27T23:02:00.000-07:00

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

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

Your website''s homepage needs to contain much more important messages than a simple welcome statement or brief history to your company. Why has someone landed on your website in the first place? What problem are they looking to solve? What type of information do they seek? If your homepage doesn''t convey that your website has the answers to these questions in the visitors'' minds then it''s game over - they will leave, never to return.

3 Seconds To Make The Right Impression

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

A lot of businesses also lose sight of the fact that their homepage should not only convey what the business is about but also what the website is about. What can visitors do on the website? What types of information can they find here? What are the best things about the website? If you don''t convey all these vital messages quickly via the homepage people will not stick around trying to find the answers themselves deeper within the site.

Put Yourself In The Shoes Of Your Customer

As with many marketing approaches the key here is to take a step back and imagine yourself as a customer viewing the homepage for the first time. What would you want to see? Perhaps client comments to instil a sense of trust. Or maybe press clippings that illustrate the profile and respectability of the company?

Whatever you decide to place on the homepage keep it snappy. Less is more. It''s a cliché but it holds 100% true as far as your website''s homepage is concerned.

About The Author

You can get free access to lots more of my articles plus a FREE Special Report "How To Turn Your Website Into A Customer Magnet" worth a value of £47 ($85) here: http://www.magnet4web.com/website_services/?page=freeguide', 242, 'How to Create A Homepage That Works, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'How to Create A Homepage That Works plus articles and information on Web-Design

Content is Crucial!

2009-03-12T05:21:00.000-07:00

Content is undoubtedly the most important element of a website. It is the defining factor for a website, that which catches the interest of your visitors and keeps them hooked to your site.

Unless what you say holds the attention and interest of the visitors to your site, the rate at which they would they hit the "back" button and say "bye - bye" to your site, will astonish you!!!!

So it is right to say that CONTENT IS KING!! And make sure you treat it like one! It is imperative for website owners to understand and follow the right process to develop content for their site.

Here are some of the basic points which should be kept in mind while developing content for your website ?

1. TARGET AUDIENCE

The first step is to define your target audience. You should have an absolutely clear picture in your mind as to who exactly will visit your site. Once you know that, you should write your content in such a way that talks to them.

2. CONCENTRATE ON BENEFITS NOT FEATURES

When describing a product you are selling or a service you are offering, concentrate on their benefits not their features. Make the visitor realize that they just have to buy your product. After all, that''s the only reason why he would stay on your site.

3. GIVE THEM WHAT THEY''RE LOOKING FOR, OH! AND QUICK!!

Visitors to your site are there for a purpose: They either want to buy your product, access the information you are offering or subscribe to your offer. And don''t forget! They don''t have much time to spare ?so you have to give them what they are looking for quickly, without any delays! Hence, your first few paragraphs of content ideally should hit the bull''s eye and get the message across!!

4. MAKE IT EASY TO READ AND FOLLOW

Keeping in mind your target audience, write and structure your content in such a way that it is easy to read, grasp and follow.

Divide your content into easy to read paragraphs. (Make sure the first few sentences of which carry the punch lines.)
Use bulleted lists

5. KEEP THEM HOOKED

Whatever you do, don''t let them leave your site without making your point. Your content must talk to your visitors: Keep them reading on ?It should be able to make a sale..and yet be subtle and informative?..

Follow these simple steps and see the difference!!!

About The Author

Akanksha Sinha - a freelance Web Content Writer and Web designer.

http://www.mygoogly.com/akanksha.htm

aks_design@rediffmail.com', 242, 'Content is Crucial!, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Content is Crucial! plus articles and information on Web-Design

Top Six Ways To Make Your Visitors To Hate YOU!

2009-03-11T05:16:00.000-07:00

We will take a look at why your visitors may hate you maybe already do! There are many things that make YOUR visitors dislike you, but we take a look the top sex things that make your click the back button on their browser.

1. Broken links

Hyperlinks that do nothing when clicked are the pain in the butt for any surfer. Test your site often to ensure that all links work as they should.

2. Not putting your contact info on your site

If you are selling a product you must have a way your visitors can contact you! When visitors are thinking about buying a product they like to know where to contact you if there are problems with it and most won''t even buy from a site that has no contact information.

3. Outdated information

It''s OK to have old information that''s about history (Since it likely won''t change), but when it''s about a baseball team or about an event that''s going on all the time, outdated information is a no no.

4. Slow loading times

If you own a professional sites, you must have a normal speed server, if not and your pages are slow you will lose your visitors. Also make sure you haven''t packed them with too many images and flash.

5. Bad templates

Templates are one of the most powerful tools a web site has, not only does it tell the surfer how hard you or they worked on your site, but how professional your company is. Don''t use different colors for every image or use text that''s to small for visitors to see.

6. Broken links

Hyperlinks that do nothing when clicked are the pain in the butt for any surfer. Test your site often to ensure that all links work as they should.

About The Author

Matt Colyer is the owner of the Marhen.com Network and is a part-time SEO. He also is a php, CGI and ASP developer.', 242, 'Top Six Ways To Make Your Visitors To Hate YOU!, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Top Six Ways To Make Your Visitors To Hate YOU! plus articles and information on Web-Design

How to Make Your Site Attractive to Potential Link Partners

2009-03-10T05:16:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I receive a link exchange request from someone who wants a link from my directory (my high-ranking directory directly accessible from the index page), and in exchange, they''re willing to link to my page from one of their zillions of link pages about 18 jumps away from the home page. Needless to say, the proffered page has a Google PageRank of 0, and chances are it''s not even indexed by any search engines.

What an enticing offer.

If you want people to trade links with you, thus increasing your PageRank and traffic, you must offer them a valuable link in return. Not all links are created equally. Here are some tips for making your site attractive to potential link partners:

Build a directory of links pages sorted by categories that relate to your web site. Avoid putting all of your links on a single page. Avoid putting tons of links on any one page in your directory. Avoid naming your links page "links.htm(l)".

Put a link to your directory on your index page. Every page in your subdirectory should have a link from that directory page and in turn link to that directory page. This helps spread Google PageRank more evenly to all your links pages and your directory page. Link pages with high PR will attract more link offers.

Avoid impersonal link managing services; give your links directory a personal touch and manage link exchanges in-house. If cutting and pasting a link onto one of your directory pages takes more than 30 seconds, you need to go back to webmaster school anyway.

Avoid tricks meant to keep from transferring PageRank to other people''s sites.

Don''t hide the link to your directory page.

Don''t force links to open in a new window. Most surfers have pop-up blockers that make this a pain to work around. I know you want to keep visitors from leaving completely, but let''s face it, if they''re browsing a links page, they''re already bored with your site. Get over it. Someone else will come.

That''s it. Follow these steps, and not only will people be more willing to link to you, but you''ll get a lot of offers as well. It''s more time efficient if people come to you than to hunt links on your own.

About The Author

TC Thorn wmakes a living from affiliate marketing and advertising. This article first appeared at Webmaster Articles.', 242, 'How to Make Your Site Attractive to Potential Link Partners, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'How to Make Your Site Attractive to Potential Link Partners plus articles and information on Web-Design

Size Does Matter!

2009-03-09T05:16:00.000-07:00

In this article we will be looking at why you should keep your web page size small.

As any good webmaster knows you should keep the web page size small, but why? It''s really simple, both spiders and visitors hate web pages that take forever to load because it''s harder to spider the web page or for the visitor they just don''t have time to wait for your web page to come up, after all most web sites are not that great, so why wait if your the visitor?

You should keep images down in size, the best way to do this is with image compressors. Image compressors will crush the size to make it load faster, but there is a down side to using image compressors because they can make the image colors look like they are out of place and horrible looking. The best way to prevent this is by only doing this to images that are not photos instead this should be used on art work images and try to use the image compressors on images that are smaller, so it''s harder to see the image colors out of place.

A web page should use more HTML than images because this helps cut down the size of your web page. Web pages also should not be too wide or long. Instead cut the web page into two or three web pages, this will also help your visitors not to be forced to scroll down the web page to much and help them scan (Most surfers scan pages for the info they are looking for.) the page better to find the information the visitor is most interested in.

Flash can really slow web pages down even worse robots can''t read Flash and if your visitors don''t have high speed (Most Internet users still use dial up.) Internet it can take forever to load, like I said at the top who is going to wait to just see your web page when they can visit someone else''s site with almost the same information as your sites? Flash really looks great and can really make your site look outstanding, but there are other ways to make your site look great without Flash. If you have to use Flash try to make/get one that loads fast on dial up and don''t use a lot of it on your web site.

Java scripts can put a major load on your server and slow it down. Robots can''t read Java scripts and robots dislike Java scripts. What makes me mad about some web designers is when they use Java clocks, if the visitors need to know what time it is they can look at the clock on the left side of their computer and even if the computer doesn''t have one they can look at the clock in their house, it''s that simple with the Java clocks you don''t need one on your site!

You should try to keep your web page size between 10K and at the most 30K, so both the spiders are happy and most important your visitors are happy.

Matt Colyer began as a SEO Specialist in 1997. He founded Superior Webmaster in 2004 as a source of articles and tutorials for Web site owners looking to improve their Web site.', 242, 'Size Does Matter!, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Size Does Matter! plus articles and information on Web-Design

Web Design: Use it to Showcase the Message

2009-03-08T05:15:00.000-07:00

If you are designing a web site for which the achievement of high conversion rates is a priority, focus your design efforts on showcasing and highlighting the content and copy.

For sites where conversion rates are a priority, the primary purpose of design should be to present the message in such a way that it delivers the maximum impact.

>> So "good" design doesn''t matter?

That''s not what I''m saying. I''m saying that design serves a function. For an entertainment or arts site that primary function may be to present images in an attractive way. That''s fine.

But for a site that is created to generate sales, the text must come first. Everything...from the architecture of the site to its design must work towards supporting your message and delivering people to the final checkout page.

>> Sounds obvious. Why make the point?

I make the point because the presentation of the message is often the last thing on the minds of web groups.

Web designers are higher on the food chain in these groups. All too often the writing of the message becomes a secondary consideration. "The site will look like this. We''ll arrange the pages like this. And by the way, we need someone to write the words."

This attitude of "text comes last" is nonsense and it has been from the day the internet first went commercial.

Hundreds of millions of visitors have always known that their primary need on arriving at a site is to find the key messages. "Am I in the right place? Will I find what I want on this site?"

Our visitors know that the words are the most important element on a web site.

Google knows that the words are the most important element on a web site. (Unlikely aside from the Googlebot: "Cool design. Better rank this page higher.)

The only people who haven''t understood this so far are web group managers and web designers.

Even marketing people insist on just dropping in for-print-approved text on their sites, without any thought as to the special needs of the medium. (Would they create a radio ad simply by using the sound track from their TV commercial? I don''t think so. Every medium has its own demands when it comes to the words, the web included.)

>> How to design to showcase the message

The first step is to bring the writer in at the beginning. The designer will find that the writer has a number of priorities and needs in mind. He or she might say:

"This is the page''s primary message. We need people to really get this on the first screen."

"We have three separate audience needs to address here. I need these three headings to have equal emphasis, preferably on the first screen."

"This message is just the first step in converting a visitor to a buyer. We need a strong pathway of three levels before he or she is ready to buy."

"This sales message is complex, it will take some space and longer copy. We need to format the text so that people will keep reading. We need strong subheads, some indented passages and emphasis at the following points."

Once the writer has outlined the needs of the copy, the designer can then focus on showcasing the key points in the message, giving the correct emphasis to the various headings, subheads, body text and links.

The designer''s job here isn''t to make the page "pretty", it is to deliver the message with the right emphasis, and with each point in the correct sequence.

>> How does a designer know what to do?

In some senses, this is new ground for designers online. Until now, too much emphasis has been places on design for its own sake, instead of using it to support the copy on a site''s pages.

If a designer wants to know how this works, he or she should go sit next to a direct marketing designer/copywriter team while they work.

See how the team communicates. See how the designer listens to the writer and places a great deal of emphasis on the type. Watch how the designer spends a lot of time selecting the right font, the right type size and color. See how a conversion-focused designer pays massive attention to the placement and appearance of every element of text.

Why? Because in direct marketing the response rates are intimately connected with the presentation of the copy. It matters where on the page each text element is placed. The font and its size and emphasis matters. The final formatting of the text matters.

Online? When you are building pages with a view to maximizing conversion rates, you become a direct marketer. That means thinking like a direct marketer, writing like a direct marketer and designing like a direct marketer.

>> Concluding points...

As it stands on the web right now, we have a couple of groups of designers.

There are the general web designers who create beautiful sites, without regard to how the copy should and can work harder.

And there are the online direct marketing designers who design single page sales sites that are created to maximize sales.

At some time in the future it would be good to see these two groups learn more from each other.

It would be good to see the general web designers learn more about increasing conversion rates by learning some of the skills of the online direct marketing designers.

It would be good to see the online direct marketing designers expand their skills beyond the scope of single, scrolling sales page.

And it is essential that every online designer pays a great deal more attention to the writers and the showcasing of every page''s message.

Nick Usborne is a freelance copywriter, author and speaker. For more articles and resources on writing for the web, visit his site, http://www.excessvoice.com.

To find out more about designing for high conversion rates, read his review of AWAI''s course, Graphic Design Success.', 242, 'Web Design: Use it to Showcase the Message, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Web Design: Use it to Showcase the Message plus articles and information on Web-Design

Designing Beautiful Artist Websites ? 12 Tips To Showcase Your Art

2009-03-07T05:06:00.000-08:00

1. Who needs an artists website?

Not everyone! If you are currently exhibiting in multiple high-end galleries and making a handsome income, a website may not be for you. In fact, it might actually work against you ? some galleries may not like the perceived threat of you showing your work independently on the internet. Better to make use of your gallery''s websites.

On the other hand, any artist who can classify themselves as either "emerging" or "mid-career" will probably benefit from having their own website to promote their work. At this stage of your career it is important to be able to have a place where anyone in the world can easily access and view your work. It is also important that your work looks as wonderful as you know it is!

2. Who are you trying to impress?

Are you trying to engage a Soho gallery to sell your $20,000 paintings or sell $5 prints to children in Korea? "Art" encompasses a huge variety of media, audiences, and budgets, and you need to be very clear about who you are targeting with your site. That Soho gallery might not be impressed when they see your online-store selling prints and art cards ? but on the other hand, you could make a very handsome living if you really knew how to market those art cards. If you want to have multiple marketing strategies, you might even need to think about more than one website and maybe using a non-de-plume.

3. How should your website fit in with your overall art marketing strategy?

This is maybe the most important question you will need to consider in developing a website presence. A website is not an end in itself ? it is only really effective when it is part of a larger overall marketing strategy for your art. This would include old- style hard-copy portfolios, lots of in-person gallery visits and presentations, regular (physical) showings of your work, and developing relationships with the art world. An effectively planned website can greatly compliment and simplify your other marketing efforts.

4. Is there a real market for art on the internet?

There is art business transacting on the internet, although we have not been able to find reliable statistics on the level of sales or the segmentation of the market into sales of originals and reproductions. It is probably fair to say that well-known work from established artists will sell because this art has a known market-value. For emerging artists, the picture is more complex ? there is something to the experience of an original work of art that can never be seen or felt on a computer screen.

The sale of reproductions is another issue ? their lower cost makes them a less risky gamble for the customer especially if your website provides a satisfactory return policy.

One thing is for sure ? it will be increasingly important to have a website presence as an artist as more buyers become comfortable with the internet.

5. Should I have my own website or should I simply use one of the many artist website portfolio services?

This is an excellent question. There are many great artists website portfolio services available online today. As an example, check out Absolute Arts (www.absolutearts.com) and Artspan (www.artspan.com). These services are really online galleries where for a variable fee you can upload images of your work together with bios, artist statements, resumes, etc. The advantage of this type of approach is that it is a "connector" site ? meaning that a lot of people visit there including dealers, galleries, etc. That doesn''t mean that they will actually see your work as there are thousands of artists represented by these services ? but there is a chance.

A great example of the value of this type of website was the jurying process for the 2005 Florence Biennale. Hundred of artists were selected simply because their work looked great and they had it available to see on these large connector sites. We think that this type of jury process will become more prevalent in the future as galleries and show curators become moresavvy with the internet.

The down side to these gallery-sites is that there is no flexibility to show your work they way you would like to and their selling fees are normally very high.

Remember the times you''ve been taken into the dimmer room in a commercial gallery? How that art which looked fairly good on the main gallery wall suddenly became something you had to take home under your arm? That is how a good website should showcase your work too. Choices of background color, layout, image size and quality, fonts, logos and text all combine to represent your work in the most beautiful way. That is what you can have with your own website ? as well as complete control. Another advantage is that if you want to sell your work online it is much less expensive to do it from your own site.

For our art we use both website options and we find they compliment each other very nicely!

6. What do galleries and art dealers like to see when they look at an artist website?

Galleries have about as many views of how work should be showcased as there are stars in the sky. But the wonderful thing is that these skills and preferences have been developed through the process of really selling art. Don''t ever under-estimate the experience and skill required to do this consistently ? at Beautiful Websites For Artists we take out hats off to good art salespeople.

There are, however, some common elements which most dealers and galleries would agree on which could be summarized as follows:

? Keep it simple and elegant ? Keep the focus on the art itself ? Don''t overpower the look of the art with a site that looks too busy ? Be VERY careful of "Designerish" effects like flash movies. In the time it takes to play your exotic flash-based entry page, the gallery will have already moved on to look at the next artists website. ? Everything you would have in a hard-copy portfolio should be there ? bios, artist statements, resumes, etc as well as clear information on how to contact you by phone, email, fax, and snail-mail. ? Be aware of the potential positive or negative reaction you might experience from selling reproductions of your work online. Some galleries will be impressed that you are obviously business-savvy enough to be able to sell your work in this way. Others might consider it a threat to any potential sales relationship they might have with you.

7. How can I showcase my work in the most beautiful way?

There is really no getting away from the fact that you need to have visual design skills to create a beautiful artist website. One of the main reasons we started Beautiful Websites For Artists was because we were tired of seeing so much beautiful art showcased so poorly on some of the ugliest websites you could hope to find!

That said, here are some basic thoughts:

? Keep the website simple and elegant ? Keep the focus on the art itself ? Structure the site into different galleries and sections to compliment the work ? don''t put everything on a few pages. Think of a gallery with different exhibition and information spaces. ? Choose a background color that compliments and does not overpower the work. Think of the colors you would use in a physical gallery to showcase your work ? neutral colors like crèmes, whites and grays are normally safe. Black can also look surprisingly good ? it has the effect of totally focusing the attention on the art itself ? Lean towards a minimalist layout ? a "busy" site design will normally detract from the work. ? Choose fonts, logos to harmonize with the work ? Copy should create the underlying feeling or environment for the site ? it can create a sense of mystery or openness to compliment the feeling of the art. ? Use high quality images from professionally photographed work ? the "Garbage in ? garbage out" principle applies here too!

8. How will customers and galleries find my website?

There are really three primary ways that someone would find your website. They could find you through a search engine like Google. Typically after your site has been up for a couple of months, search engines will find you easily if someone was to perform a search on your name.

Lets say however that your work is classified as "Southwestern Art" and someone did a search on that term. It is very unlikely that your site would be listed in the first few results pages because there are so many other sites in competition. Getting your work to show up in the top results of such a search will require optimization of the website for search engines during the design process AND a lot of work from you afterwards to link your site to as many possible relevant sites on the internet. This is a lot of effort ? no matter what anyone tells you!

The next way that people will find your site is very simple ? you will tell them! Example Phone Conversation with Gallery dealer:

Dealer (Bob): That sounds nice Michelle but I''m a very busy person. I''d prefer to take a look at your work before we arrange a meeting. Do you have a website I could look at?

Michelle: Well of course Bob, please check out my work at www.michelleartist.com.

Dealer (Bob): OK Michelle ? let me just take a look. ??.. Oh My gosh, what awesome work! I''ve never seen anything like it. I''m sending out a truck right away to come and pick up your work. Do you accept credit cards ? I''d like to pay you $100,000 right away so that I don''t miss this chance. And would Tuesday at 12 noon be convenient for an interview with Art in America?

Well ? we can dream! But you get the idea. This is actually the most powerful way we have found to make use of a website. If you think of your audience you are probably going to require a highly focused marketing campaign to a relatively small number of potential clients and partners.

Of course you might build your art career around selling thousands of reproductions ? in which case understanding how to rank highly with search engines is important.

Another way to tell people website is to participate in online forums. There are a number of these ? some specializing in art subjects. If you become visible in some of these forums people will check your website.

Email marketing is yet another way to tell people about your site. You can use mailing lists you have developed yourself, or you can purchase email mailing lists. In addition, Rich-Text emails allow you to showcase your work as beautifully designed images ? just like a web-page.

The third primary way in which people will find your website is through on-line advertising. For example, if your art is minimalist and modern in style, a banner add on an interior design website focused on the same minimalist ethic could draw a lot of traffic to your site. Some artists have experienced considerable success in this way!

9. Do I need to be able to sell my work on the internet?

Another important question. It really depends on what you are selling. If you want to sell originals for thousands of dollars, our experience suggests that a buyer will probably want to see your work in-person, or have an existing relationship with you. In which case you could easily transact the sale over the phone.

On the other hand, if part of your business model is to sell inexpensive reproductions, you probably would want to have at least basic e-commerce capability on your site. That way, business can be transacted on the site regularly without you having to personally supervise each sale ? you still need time to be an artist remember J

To some customers, the fact that you have an e-commerce capable website also signals that you are "real" and "a serious business".

Some people still have issues with purchasing over the internet, but it is becoming a trusted buying environment.

10. Should I develop my own website or pay a designer?

It really depends. Some things to bear in mind:

? Do you have visual design skills/training? Be honest - Many great artists don''t J ? When do you want the site ready (Next month or next year?) ? How much of your artist-time can you afford to give up to develop the site and what is the $ value of that time? ? Will you need to invest in new software or even a new computer to do the work? ? Will you need to invest time and/or money in software training?

11. What should I look for in choosing a website-designer?

The most important thing here is to remember what you are trying to create ? most likely you want a beautiful online gallery space to elegantly show your beautiful work ? this is very different from building a high-volume website selling printer ink cartridges and paper rolls!

So, simply put, you should not be interested in technical jargon as much as the ability to design a space to present your work. You might also want to consider a designer proficient in both web and print-based design. That way, should you choose to, you can coordinate the look and feel of all your marketing materials ? website, letterhead, brochures, etc.

Also be careful of some "high-end" designers. If you take a look at some websites from design firms, you will notice a lot of visual complexity and sometimes high- tech effects that can be cumbersome and slow. This will not showcase your art well as it draws attention to the design rather than the art!

There is no getting around it - you have to do your homework!

12. How much does a website cost to develop??

An art website could cost you anything from a few hundred dollars to many tens of thousands of dollars. Typically, the bigger design firms have larger overheads and will be significantly more expensive. On the other hand, Joe down the street can probably build you a website for $200 ? but you probably don''t want that website J

At Beautiful Websites For Artists we have packages ranging from $500 to $2000 for simple elegant artists websites with different levels of functionality. We can also develop fully customized sites to your specifications with prices based on requirements.

In addition to development costs, you will need to pay monthly web-hosting and ecommerce fees that could range from less that $5/month for a simple sight to $100/month for a site with complex ecommerce functionality. Typically, the hosting cost for a typical site is between $5 and $25/month

Josse Ford and Daniel Tardent provide creative services for artists including web design, artist weblogs and marketing materials at Beautiful Websites for Artists. Visit our website at http://www.beautifulwebsitesforartists.com', 242, 'Designing Beautiful Artist Websites ? 12 Tips To Showcase Your Art, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Designing Beautiful Artist Websites ? 12 Tips To Showcase Your Art plus articles and information on Web-Design

Caveat Scriptor: Use the Advice of Those Who Know Before You Build a Site

2009-03-06T05:14:00.001-08:00

~A man [woman] is a success if he [she] gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he [she] does what he [she] wants to do. Bob Dylan~

I''m smart. Wicked smart. Too smart for my own good. At the same time (as they said when I was as kid and as it still applies), I''m too big for my own britches.

So I put those prissy pantalones to some good effort and I teach others how to write. I win a few awards, send a few hopefuls off to higher learning institutions where they in turn win their own awards and accolades. I do this till my seat gets burned one too many times by the politics of academia, and I go into freelance writing.

I research for 1000s of hours, submit to literary contests and magazines, start working writing gigs, and keep researching. I build a web site. With what it costs to maintain an ISP and web hosting account and little else, I create this ambitious masterpiece, believing I am now a self-taught web host, writer, teacher, and confidant for academic writers, mental disability writers, and elder memoir writers.

But as your confidant, I have to confess: as much as I''d like to think those 300 hours of study and application for usability, keyword-rich, to-the-letter-of-the-law of interstate/inter-country/internet navigation design and creation make me a self-taught smartass, I did little but the legwork by myself. Actually, five virtuosos of the web world made making a website possible:

Jakob Nielsen After creating a really bad mess of a site overloaded with spinning, flashing, color blobs of coolness, I discovered www.useit.com/alertbox and Dr. Jakob Nielsen. His stellar advice, delivered in a no-nonsense tone, is backed by his many years of theoretical and practical work. After reading and studying articles such as the following, I completely reconstructed my site:

Current Issues in Web Usability

Misconceptions about Usability

Ten Most Violated Homepage design Guidelines

Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2003

Usability for Senior Citizens

Writing for the Web

Ed Zivkovic As I was catching on to using the experts to build a user-friendly, usable site, I was catching on to the language that indicates the writer knows what he''s talking about. This is the redeeming value of Ed Zivkovic''s site, Tips for Work at Home Webmasters, at www.ezau.com. He uses candor and directness. He provides technical content in understandable terms. And defying the popular and trendy, he tells you directly and honestly what is crap, what is not crap, what is effective website technique and what is a waste of dough. Try some of these instrumental articles for starters:

Domain Name and Web Hosting Hell
Exit Traffic Exchange-Traffic multiplier Alternative

R.I.G.H.T.S., www.rightsforartists.com As any artist/writer will attest, the work that goes into creation is an interminable challenge. But we do it because we like it, because we are good at it, and because we have to do it. We are compelled to create. But we do our own work, not the work (or art) of others. This site contains all of the legal and ethical guidelines for copyright; R.I.G.H.T.S., a coalition of contributing artists (rather than a corporation or organization, that is) thoroughly, relentlessly provides information, definitions, answers, and directions for copyrighting and protecting creative work.

Firelily Designs Just as much about the science of such vital concerns as color design for web users with color vision deficiency as about aesthetics of web design, this site practices what it preaches-as it preaches, well, teaches, graphic design. I don''t create my own web graphics. That would take me a year or two to master, when I have enough to do with getting words crafted into readable forms. But I found the advice on color at www.firelily.com fascinating and functionally useful.

Angela Hoy, Writers Weekly There are writers newsletters aplenty. And then there''s Writers Weekly. What does the site and the owner have to do with web design, specifically? They are proactive protectors of writers and creative people, in general. Hoy stands up for the rights of freelancers by refusing the requests of tightwads who solicit her to recommend writers to work for 3 bucks an hour on copy for them so they can make millions while the writers starve. Hoy encourages the ethics of hard work by way of informative how-tos. And Angela Hoy, with husband and co-owner, Richard Hoy, pours an acid tongue on the plague that is the scamming POD publisher or the conniving money-charging agent-in a section of her [their] site called "Whispers and Warnings." For the newbie, novice, wannabe freelancer, or even for the work at home woman or man creating a website she or he wants safe from scummy scammers, www.writersweekly.com is an advisory imperative.

Robert Woodhead of Self Promotion.com Finding www.selfpromotion.com shaved centuries off of not only my design and development but my publishing and promoting the site. With uncluttered pages and cutting-edge (constantly updated) information, Woodhead (who even makes self-effacing jokes about his name) walks a web wannabe through every stage of the process, and then provides [shareware] support by helping you submit your site to hundreds of search engines and indexes that you need to have crawl your site for rankings-the latest (2004) must-have for any online business.

Of course, if you were to look at my Favorite Files, at the 900+ categories, subcategories, and links, you would find that many others pulled my smart ass up by the seat of the pants. I name a few of these helpful gurus here, too:

Andrew Starling''s Top Ten Sites Compared, in the Web Developer''s Virtual Library at www.wdvl.internet.com

Jill Whalen''s www.highrankings.com

Jim Heath at www.viacorp.com

Keith Instone''s www.usableweb.com, 970 Links about Web Usability

Kevin Lee''s Free Keyword research Tools and Keywords revisited at Click Z Network, www.clickz.com

The PSP Interactive Zone, www.pspiz.net

www.smallbusiness.sbc.yahoo.com

Assistant Professor Stan Ketterer''s Design Fundamentals News Writing/ Newsletter coursework at www.cas.okstate.edu

Stephanie Hetu at www.stephaniehetu.com

Sumantra Roy''s SEO course, Choosing the Correct Keywords for a Site, at www.thejunglemarketer.com

Karen Zoldan of www.bridgemarketing.com

As you might have figured out, I write this not to share any of my own personal technological truths-which are wanting. I write this not to embellish the careers of any affiliates. I don''t have an affiliation with nor do I know the people in the Top Five-who do not need my small time embellishment or exposure. I write this not to create an entity I had no previous knowledge of creating-though how I do like to brag.

I compose this guide to humble myself to the fact that I was flying by the seat of my pants in most cases-except where I was lucky enough to intuit some strategies (which are still in the making, so don''t get an attitude when you visit my site and find it still needs work: I know it does).

I compose this guide to honor those who put in way more than 300 piddly hours of research, study, and practice to find out what works to make it work even better.

And I compose this guide to help you avoid even 300 (not so piddling when you are doing it yourself) hours of stitching and tearing out the stitches of the britches of a tailoring project. Smarty pants just had to do it the hard way. May your way be easier.

N.H.-born prize-winning poet, creative nonfiction writer, memoirist, and award-winning Assoc. Prof. of English, Roxanne is also web content and freelance writer/founder of http://www.roxannewrites.com, a support site for academic, memoir, mental disability, and creative writers who need a nudge, a nod, or just ideas?of which Roxanne has 1,000s, so do stop in for a visit, as this sentence can''t possibly get any longer??.', 242, 'Caveat Scriptor: Use the Advice of Those Who Know Before You Build a Site, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Caveat Scriptor: Use the Advice of Those Who Know Before You Build a Site plus articles and information on Web-Design

Write From Home: Lessons From The Editors

2009-02-10T06:21:00.001-08:00

Writers talk about rejection all the time ? just part of the job. But getting rejected by a no-pay publication really scrapes the barrel. I know: it''s happened to me more than once and now that it''s been years [of therapy] later, I can admit lessons learned.

1. Competing Market

My first novice article submission was to an AboutCom site. The writing was good, and loaded with links to other helpful sites. It was the latter that got the piece booted. The website editor simply did not choose to publish articles that might lead readers to sites similar to her own.

This goes directly to the "study back issues" mandate offered by experienced writers. Even if you don''t agree with a specific editor''s approach, you need to write to those specifics or submit elsewhere.

2. Preaching to the Choir

Animal organizations are usually sorely in need of donations, whether financial, by way of goods or content for newsletters. However, an article on the care and feeding of feral cats, garnered from years of experience in rescue work, was rejected on the grounds that it was targeted to the wrong readership.

Acting on that advice, I searched out and submitted to "how-to" publications directed at readers not involved in stray cat rescue, and published the article multiple times. For example, a gardening ezine was interested in it from the point of view of "pest control" rather than any humane reasons per se. Semantics aside, people who might never have read the thing in some radical animal rights newsletter were potentially reached.

3. Regurgitating

There may be nothing new under the sun, but at least try to give your article a unique twist or perspective. To my knowledge, I''ve never been rejected on the grounds of simply rehashing; however, as an editor myself, I''ve turned down many submissions due to repetitive themes and outlooks.

It''s shocking how far some writers go to avoid writing: I obtained permission from a recent journalism grad to reprint a wonderful article of hers that I''d stumbled across. While doing research into the topic (for purposes of artwork), I found the exact same article. Verbatim. Written by someone else.

Use those No/Low-Pay Markets

I''m still using those free articles to get paying jobs: clips from a couple of humor parenting stories written nearly five years ago pulled in two assignments from national US print publications. Similarly, I base everything I write on rejection lessons learned over the years: study the publication (not just the guidelines); put yourself as a reader of that magazine; flip your angle, dig deep and work hard for originality.

Published freelance writer and copyeditor, Stephanie Olsen, is publisher of JustMarkets. For paying, telecommute writing jobs and markets (your only source on the web six mornings a week!), visit http://www.justmarkets.com. Get your Free Market of the Day, bi-weekly newsletter and Welcome Gift today.', 248, 'Write From Home: Lessons From The Editors, Writing-Articles, Writing-Articles articles, Writing-Articles information, about Writing-Articles, what is Writing-Articles, Article Writing Information', 'Write From Home: Lessons From The Editors plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

How Your Online Business Can Generate Loads Of Free Traffic From Articles

2009-02-10T06:20:00.001-08:00

The biggest challenge facing any online business today is how to generate enough traffic and leads for the business to succeed.

By the time the online business owner is through with paying to establish their new business, there is hardly any cash left for the most important task that has to be undertaken by every brand new enterprise, which is advertising to generate leads and ultimately badly needed customers and clients for the new online business to take off.

It gets worse because many people, who launch online businesses like joining lucrative affiliate programs, do so without spending any money and also expect to succeed without ever having to reach for their wallets.

And even if the online business entrepreneur were to have a generous advertising budget for their brand new online business, most of the initial efforts would mostly end up being a waste. This is because in most cases the entrepreneur will not know enough about the business at this stage.

The answer to both situations is posting free articles all over the net with a well written resource box that has all the information to help lead loads of traffic to your site.

Posting articles has taught me a lot about what works and what does not work. I must admit that it continues to be both an entertaining as well as a highly profitable experience for me. And it can be for any online business entrepreneur. All it requires is that you ensure that you install a meter on your web site or blog to carefully track the traffic that you are attracting with your articles.

Then you must really be prepared to test and test and test again. Even when you start to experience some minor successes with your articles, that is in fact the time you should increase the number of tests you are carrying out with your free articles marketing campaign.

Tests teach you a lot and with each new test you introduce, you learn something new and valuable that you can use to improve your business even more.

And what is more, when you have found a way to build up your opt-in email list as you go along (this can easily be done by offering some valuable information or e-course available only via email) you will actually be growing your client data base. Growing the list of your prospects and clients whom you can email regular updates to later is extremely important.

It is important to ensure that your articles are both interesting and useful to your target market. Avoid any sales letter-approach here. In fact the more you sound like an expert genuinely out to help, the more successful your articles marketing campaign will be.

You can of course find loads of valuable information on how to write articles (even if you are not a writer) and where to post them at my blog. See the resource box of this article for the address.

Christopher Kyalo is a writer/marketing expert who has made money online only by posting free articles. Visit his blog NOW which is loaded with valuable free information at; http://www.big-online-story.blogspot.com', 248, 'How Your Online Business Can Generate Loads Of Free Traffic From Articles, Writing-Articles, Writing-Articles articles, Writing-Articles information, about Writing-Articles, what is Writing-Articles, Article Writing Information', 'How Your Online Business Can Generate Loads Of Free Traffic From Articles plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

How to Write Articles to Sell Your Book

2009-02-10T06:14:00.001-08:00

Selling books online means that you need to get interested readers to your website or to your Amazon listing. One great way to get people to your website is writing articles for republication.

My author friends asked me to share what I''ve learned about writing articles for the Internet. I''ve spent thousands of dollars learning what I''m going to share with you. In return, please help me grow my ezine subscriber base.

There are six categories you need to understand about article writing:

1. Article Structure

This article follows a typical article structure for email delivery. Note that articles you submit directly on websites need a different format. Each website explains their individual requirements.

a. Article Title: (How to Write Articles to Sell Your Book) You need a title that gives a benefit to the reader. There are hundreds of articles telling you how to create a sizzling title. Learn how to use keywords (more about this soon). My first title for this article was "How to Write Articles to Promote Your Book." A stronger benefit to you, the reader, is "sell your book." Another title tip: change your titles when submitting to various websites so you know which title gets picked up more. Another title for this article could be "Sell More Books: How to Write Articles." After you submit your article, search for the title and you''ll see where it goes and which title works best. For instance, my article "Feng Shui, Design Psychology and Bed Placement" posted on EzineArticles didn''t do as well as "Feng Shui, Design Psychology and Sleeping" posted on thephantomwriters.com.

b. Article Author: (Jeanette Joy Fisher) A comment on names: if you haven''t started with a website or published yet, don''t use a name that can be spelled different ways. I wish I used another name because Jeanette can be spelled many ways. At least Fisher only has two spellings. I''m doomed to having ten websites for my book titles instead of just one for me. If I had used Joy Fisher, my life would have been easier.

d. Article URL: This is the website link where your article is posted for either preview or copy for others to use.

e. Article Autoresponder: (mailto:Howtowritearti...@writertoauthor.com) This is an automatic email service which sends out the article if you send a blank email. Click on the link and get this article in your inbox. You may want to replace letters inside the email address with... so you don''t get a lot of junk email. The person asking for the article needs to fill in the blanks. This is because spiders search for email addresses on the Internet. Unscrupulous, mean people use them to send viruses. I lost two computers when I first created a website and listed my email address.

f. Author Contact Email: (mailto:jeanette...@gmail.com) Notice how the joy is left out. People who post your article are supposed to notify you, but many don''t. And they will post your article without the byline, without links to you. Just accept that some of your hard work will be stolen, but most of your republications will help you.

g. Word Count: Number of words in the body.

h. Formatted to (65 Characters per Line) You need TextPad or another way to keep your articles formatted to 65 spaces per line - -letters, commas, spaces, etc. I talked my author friend Pamela Armstrong (SurvivingHealthcare.com) through TextPad; this took a couple of hours. One easy way to shorten the lines is to sign up to gmail, yahoo, or hotmail, and email your article to yourself. When you do this, you may find that many of your words have strange marks in them -- this leads to the next article component problem.

2. Article Format

Most writers use a program like Word to create their masterpieces. Word has fancy "curly" quotes, apostrophes and other smart fonts that don''t transfer into email and onto some website reader''s screens. You can remove the smart quotes in Word; avoid using the emdash and other symbols such as three periods. If you copy your Word document into TextPad, you will see black bars in the problem areas and the spell check will catch the curly quotes. To remove the smart quotes in Word: go to Tools, Auto Correct Options, Autoformat, uncheck "straight quotes" with "smart quotes," and the same in Autoformat As You Type.

3. Keywords and Article Titles

The keywords are the words people search for related to your topic. When I first wrote "Staging Homes for Top-Dollar Sales," I had the keywords mixed up. There are 3,160 results for Google''s keyword search for "staging homes" and 35,300 for "Home Staging." However my article, "Staging Homes" is listed at the top of the search and my article "Home Staging" is on page two. Your goal is to use the keywords in your title that people interested in your topic search for and to get your article listed on the search engines where it''s easily found.

4. Article Content

If you cut and paste information from your book, tone down the writing style; make it informal, and concise. Your content needs to relate to your book''s benefits without being a sales letter. Chose a major benefit that the reader will enjoy from reading your book. What is your answer to: "Why should I read your book?" "What will I get?"

a. Introduction or Hook: Just like home shoppers won''t get out of their car if curb appeal doesn''t attract them, you need your first sentence to grab the reader with a benefit for reading your article.

b. Body: Web readers need short paragraphs filled with BENEFITS. You must give a strong reason to motivate a stranger to want to read on. Keep giving reasons why your information gives answers to their problems. PAIN. Feel the reader''s pain and offer solutions. Your title should open the way for this with something like: "Change Your Credit and Buy Your First Home." STORIES. Use stories to illustrate the pain felt by your target audience. For instance, tell a story about a family who fixed their credit and bought a home.

c. Headlines and subheadings: Use other keywords to break up your article with subheadings. This makes your article easier to read online. Tip: before you start writing your article, check for keywords and make a list for reference to cover in your article.

d. Conclusion: Even when you write a list, such as "Top 10 Ways to Save Money," you should end with a summary inspiration. You want to leave the reader wanting more so they follow your link to your website.

5. About the Author, Author''s Resource box, Bio, Biography

I''ve seen so many articles on this one topic, there''s most likely a book on it. Examine the way experienced writers create motivating calls to action. Your purpose is to show that you''re the expert with the solution to the reader''s problems. Your goal is to get the reader to follow your link for help. Refuse to list your articles where you won''t receive a live link to your website or to your book page on Amazon.

6. Article Submit

You can submit your articles through article distribution services for a charge, by email to article announcement groups for free, or directly to hundreds of websites online. One way to find websites matching your niche market is to do a Google search, such as: "real estate investing" + "submit article." I use Bill Platt''s thephantomwriters.com service and EzineArticles.com. From these two services, my articles appeared on over 11,000 websites. I simply don''t have the time to submit to all the other places.

If you write a compelling article in the proper format, your message will be picked up by ezine publishers, web masters, and maybe newspapers. And, like me, you will sell your books.

Jeanette Fisher, Design Psychology professor, is the author of interior design and real estate books. She is part of the Writers to Authors group whose mission is to help writers sell their books. For help writing and selling your books, go to http://www.writertoauthor.com/

Please sign up for Jeanette''s newsletters and help her increase her subscriber base in return for this article. For more about Jeanette, see http://www.jeanettefisher.com', 248, 'How to Write Articles to Sell Your Book, Writing-Articles, Writing-Articles articles, Writing-Articles information, about Writing-Articles, what is Writing-Articles, Article Writing Information', 'How to Write Articles to Sell Your Book plus articles and information on Writing-Articles

Increase Your Website Sales Instantly

2009-02-02T06:34:00.001-08:00

If there''s one thing that I''ve learnt so far, it''s that nothing beats good copy. You may have found a way to bring in 10,000 visitors a day to your site, but if your copy is lousy, you''re just wasting your effort. Web sites are only as good as their copy, so if you want to run a successful website, check and double-check your copy!

Listed below are thirteen tips to better your copy and increase your sales:

1. Use short benefit-focused headlines.

Grab your readers attention from the very first line by piquing their curiosity. Ask a question or make a statement that causes a question to be formed in the minds of your readers. This will get them to read on as they attempt to satisfy their curiosity. Be creative, or if that fails, be informative.

2. Make your copy short and to-the-point.

Your potential clients love easy-to-digest material, so keep your paragraphs short. Three or four sentences per paragraph are fine, anything more is not.

Check the format of the page too. Make sure the column width of the copy is around ten words across. Learn from the experts - newspapers publishers have known for years that narrow columns and short paragraphs keep people reading.

3. Make use of lists.

Bullet or numbered lists have to be the best things around for copy writers. The human eye naturally gravitates toward a list. A list is akin to an oasis in a desert. People who are inclined to skip over long, wordy sales copy will still look at bullet lists. So use this fact to your advantage by listing the killer benefits of your offer.

4. Put yourself in your targeted visitors'' shoes.

Ask yourself, "why are they at my site?" People only want two things:

free content such as articles or tips about your service or product

how you can solve their problem or challenge - the top benefits you offer.

5. Aim your copy at your targeted market.

Focus, focus, focus. I dare say that in any venture, be it online or offline, the most important factor that determines its success or failure is the amount of focus. If you spread yourself out too thin, then you''re heading towards failure. The biggest mistake that can be made is not to define the target audience before writing the copy. When spread-shot promotion tactics are used, the focus is lost on too many groups. In the end, the website loses the visitors'' attention and loyalty.

Choose one defined audience first and aim your copy at them. Don''t worry about the other audiences, you can add special links for them later when you become successful.

6. Give your Web visitors a lot of free information.

Everyone is attracted by free stuff, and that will be one of the reasons why visitors come to your site. After visiting you five to ten times, they are more likely to buy from you. Include on your website your updating schedule, or put up a email group, so that people can be notified by email whenever there are updates on the website.

7. Create useful links.

Instead of the highly cliched "Please click here" link, experiment with other more useful-sounding links. Examples can be phrases that describe the link''s destination, such as "free ebook download on cooking", or "list of top ten products".

8. Keep your language simple.

Utilise the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle when you are preparing your copy. Also, write your copy as if you are speaking with a friend. Nothing kills the sale faster than a dry and run-of-the-mill sales pitch.

Use "you" and "your" words liberally and "I", "me" and "us" words infrequently. Everyone likes to hear, or read about themselves. They like to feel like they are the centre of attention.

Using "you" and "your" will help them feel that the product may address their needs. Always remember, the focus of the copy should be the prospective customer, and not the person selling the product.

9. Write a list of five to ten benefits of your service.

Forget about lengthy descriptions of you and your mission. Nobody reads them, so shift your focus to the more important aspects of your website.

Concentrate more on the benefits you can give your visitors. They came to learn about how they can benefit from your service, so make sure they will be convinced enough to say, "This is amazing. I want this!"

Tell the reader how the product or service will benefit them. Throw the technical details aside. They don''t belong in your sales copy, they belong in an appendix on a linked page for those who are interested.

Sales are made by appealing to the reader''s basic needs of comfort, security and acceptance. Your copy should explain how your product can address one or more of these needs.

So try using benefit-focused statements such as "Reduce your monthly bills by $200 with our product" or "Be able to function in the dark" to market your product or service, and you should start to see an immediate increase in interest!

10. Get rid of the hype.

Your visitors are intelligent people and they are not going to believe in hype. On the contrary, hyped up copy will just turn them away. Don''t make ridiculous claims and while your offer may be really too good to true, don''t state it that way.

11. Publish customer testimonials.

If you don''t have any, you should solicit some immediately. Your current customers will be more than happy to support you if you provide good service and a solid product. Ask them for their opinions and comments regarding your product. Get permission to use their words and publish them on your web site. Testimonials are a very powerful selling tool that you can not afford to ignore.

12. Offer a solid, no questions asked, money back guarantee.

Go on, offer such a money back guarantee, and stick by it. Why? Because what better way to get someone to buy your product than knowing that they can do so risk-free?

Besides, you will be surprised at how few people will be unsatisfied enough to make use of your guarantee. Sure, some customers may take advantage of it, but I think the increase in your sales should be more than enough to offset the few unscrupulous characters you may meet.

12. Ask for the sale!

You''ve got the killer benefits stated down, and you''ve got a solid money back guarantee. Now don''t stop there. Many web sites neglect to ask the customer to buy. So lead your customer through the purchase process. Be sure to thank customers for their purchase and inform them how and when they will be receiving the product that they have just purchased.

Alvin Poh has been specialising in web development, content distribution, advertising and marketing strategies since 1995. His goal is to provide practical information based upon his years of experience to help webmasters, website designers, and self-employed people achieve their goals in today''s competitive Internet. At his site, you can learn how to make money online.', 242, 'Increase Your Website Sales Instantly, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Increase Your Website Sales Instantly plus articles and information on Web-Design

Build A Successful Website For Dummies

2009-02-02T06:33:00.003-08:00

So you want to build a website here I will explain some simple but also key aspects that are commonly taken in to consideration when a website developer creates a website.

1) Website Design - The website design must be neat meaning that everything looks like where it is meant to be (nothing out of place or out of proportion). Also your sites design is related to the topic of your website e.g. your site is about flowers then your design must have flowers.

2) Site Navigation - Visitors must be able to get where they want to go without going through a maze a good way of putting it if you can get there in 3 clicks it should be fine. Also it helps when search engine spiders go through your site since it makes it easy for the spiders to index the site.

3) Domain Name - Domain name is important since it is one of the first thing that your visitors will see. Your domain should relate to your site topic or business name. Length of the domain usually 6-8 characters is a good length and easy for visitors to type.

4) Scroll Bars - don''t make your website pages too long so your visitors have to scroll for hours it is also a good option to just create another page and don''t make people scroll side to side.

5) Returning Visitors - make your visitors return to your site by adding one or all to your site:

- Email Newsletter (Ezine)
- Community Forums
- Online Tools
- Online Games
- Useful Content
- Competitions and Prizes
- and so on

5) Website Logo - Make your logo unique and brandable so that people will remember your logo and then will remember your site and products.

These are some simple points that you may take into consideration when you build your website if you need some further assistance have a look at your competitors website and see what they have done. Remember what you put in is what you get out of your website and on that note GOOD LUCK and enjoy the whole process of building your very own virtual property.

Martin has been making a living with affiliate revenue for the past couple of years you can by joining Martin''s Webmasters Newsletter for free.

Add your website links for free to Sorve.com Directory and also Search Engine Directory

', 242, 'Build A Successful Website For Dummies, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Build A Successful Website For Dummies plus articles and information on Web-Design

Colorblind People, Can They Really Read Your Web Site?

2009-02-02T06:33:00.001-08:00

I once created a notepad-like editor. It is possible with this editor to write Russian text on a western Windows without using a Cyrillic keyboard in front of your computer.

This software is equipped with an on screen Russian keyboard which is situated under the text field of the notepad like editor. The keys on the screen based keyboard is displayed with both Latin and Cyrillic characters. The Cyrillic characters are displayed in red and the Latin are displayed in Black.

http://www.russianeditor.com

One day, I got an angry e-mail from one users of the product.

He wrote

Don''t you know that "so and so" many people have one form or another of colorblindness. I can''t read the Russian character in the keyboard. Could you change the color of the letters?

At that time I used a bright red color for the Russian characters and the keys were in gray.

I have since of course changed the color. Now I use a more darker red color to represent the Russian letters.

I myself don''t suffer from this problem, but I while ago I surfed around on the Internet and found a cool website that is all about colorblindness and remembered the e-mail and the adjustment I had to made to the Russian editor.

On that site is a tool which you can use to see how your website would look if you were a colorblind person. The URL is http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php

You just type on your URL and you can then see how your web page will look for a person with different forms of colorblindness.

I learned there that there are different forms of colorblindness.

In fact the term colorblindness is a little misleading, because most people with color blindness don''t see the world in black and white. They can see colors, but not all colors. Total colorblindness is very rare. Color deficiency is a much better term to use.

Different form of color deficiency affects large number of people.

Colorblindness is in a large extent a gender problem, because it is affecting males much more often than females.

Here are some facts, I''ve learned!

About 8 % of males have some sorts of color deficiency.

For females this figure is under 0.5%.

On the http://www.vischeck.com/vischeck/vischeckURL.php you can check for 3 forms of colorblindness:

Deuteranope (a form of red/green color deficit)

Protanope (another form of red/green color deficit)

Tritanope (a blue/yellow deficit- very rare)

There are more types of colorblindness, but these tests will cover the most common types.

They also offer the same color blindness function with a plug-in software for Photoshop.

Colorblindness is not a problem if the text on your web site is in blank on a white background.

But, if you mix text with color on a colored background, this can create a problem with your web site for many viewers.

It is more common to make mistakes if you mix the wrong colors on external images and banners that have text in one color and the background in another, than to mix the wrong color with raw text.

About The Author

Per Strandberg is a web marketer and software designer!

Explore Web Niches with The Niche Market Database!

at ==> http://www.niche-exploration.com

He has a site on data storage and backup information at http://www.data-backup-and-storage.com

He also has a site on Russian language learning at http://www.homeworklang.com', 242, 'Colorblind People, Can They Really Read Your Web Site?, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Design Information', 'Colorblind People, Can They Really Read Your Web Site? plus articles and information on Web-Design

Website About-face Secrets Revealed

2009-01-30T23:17:00.001-08:00

In my endure commodity entitled, Maximizing The True Amount Of Your Cartage (found at http://tinyurl.com/2cf84), you apparent the accent of breeding absolute responses from all your visitors.

The body of this action resides in the abstraction accepted as website conversion, and how it can accomplish you bags added p.rofits with abundant bottom work.

In essence, you can clasp added amount from the aforementioned traffic, artlessly by converting a college allotment of visitors into paying customers... and the best way to do this is by accretion your about-face rate!

Now there''re absolutely abandoned two above factors affecting website conversion, they are 1. Website Mechanics, and 2. Ability Copy.

Let''s attending at anniversary briefly:

1. Website Mechanics

This refers to the ''mechanical'' aspects of your website.

For example, how fast it loads. Internet surfers are an abrupt lot, and studies accept begin that if your website accept not loaded aural 8 seconds, you''ve absent them.

Another breadth of affair is how able-bodied you present your website to the visitor, does the architecture chronicle to the product? Consistency is an absolute law of alignment and you should accouter it''s abounding abeyant on your site.

2. Ability Copy

Entire encyclopedias accept been accounting about copywriting and there''s abandoned one acumen why - it''s that important.

Web copywriting is not just an art. It''s a science, a paint-by-numbers blueprint that you can administer for massive profits online.

Copywriting, adverse to what abounding think, is added than words alone. It encompasses abounding factors that aftereffect in one simple cold - accepting your visitors to yield action!

It''s your absolute action and presentation COMBINED with the ability of words, which makes the sale.

While accretion about-face amount can about-face any money- accident website into a money-spitting one after added plan or traffic...the absolute catechism is:

Are you accomplishing it - or are you continuing to accomplish these aforementioned mistakes over and over again?

About The Author

Ewen Chia is an able advice administrator and banker with a ablaze affection for creating different superior agreeable adolescent internet marketers can account from. Visit his websites today:

http://WebsiteConversionSecrets.com

http://InstantMarketingSecrets.com

http://www.Marketing-Make-Money.com', 242, 'Website About-face Secrets Revealed, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Architecture Information', 'Website About-face Secrets Revealed additional online writing and advice on Web-Design

Creating a Basal Web Architecture Template

2009-01-30T23:14:00.001-08:00

A "template" is artlessly a architecture architecture which you can administer to all (or most) of the pages in your web site. The aboriginal advantage of application a "template" arrangement is that it allows you to accomplish your a lot of important architecture decisions at the beginning, and afresh just focus on content. The additional advantage is that it allows you to bound actualize new pages based on your accepted design.

The disadvantage is that abounding template-based websites attending homogenized and assume to abridgement a different character. Designers who acquaint templates tend to use the aforementioned formats over and over again, admit the aforementioned all-encompassing images, and use the aforementioned techniques.

Just as important, templates are generally not ready-to-go appropriate out of the box. They about consistently charge modification, and generally modifying a professionally able arrangement is difficult because the artist will accept acclimated techniques you may not absolutely accept or are specific to the accoutrement he or she acclimated to actualize it.

So it is bigger not to anticipate of a web arrangement as the affectionate of affair you buy from an online arrangement store. Rather just anticipate of it as a basal page architecture that can be acclimated over and over again. The best arrangement is accordingly one that uses "standard" techniques that can be adapted after the use of specialized accoutrement or programs (like Front Page or Dreamweaver).

Creating a Basal Template

If you are not accustomed with web design, try alive with a "bare bones" arrangement to activate with. There are two agency you can go. You can plan with basal html and tables, or you can actualize your basal arrangement with CSS. Since CSS is rapidly acceptable the new standard, it is apparently bigger to activate with CSS -- abnormally if you accept not yet become acclimated to amalgam web pages with tables.

CSS stands for "Cascading Appearance Sheets", but at the alpha it is not important to accept what that means. What is important is to accept that CSS allows you to actualize a set of formatting ambit in a "style sheet" (a seperate file) which you afresh can actual calmly administer to your alone pages. In added words, you seperate the "style" from the "content".

A simple appearance area can accommodate just three or four architecture elements. Here is an archetype which you are chargeless to archetype (right bang and "Save ambition as" to a area on your harder drive, afresh change its name to "sample-1.css".)

Style Area Sample (be abiding to change its name to "sample-1.css").

This arrangement contains a analogue for the physique text, a attack basal (with a accomplishments image), a "navbar", and a analogue for two banderole styles, h1 and h2.

Now that you accept a appearance area you can activate architecture your web website by creating a basal home page. Here is an example which embeds the appearance area referred to in the antecedent paragraph. You can get the html cipher by just aperture the page in a browser window, searching at the "Source" code, and extenuative the consistent book on your harder drive as, for instance, "sample-1.html".

Now you should accept two files in the aforementioned area on your harder drive -- "sample-1.css" and "sample-1.html". You can get the angel book by just appropriate beat on the angel in the sample page and extenuative it to the aforementioned area on your harder drive.

Your additional footfall will be to actualize the pages referenced in the "navbar", so accomplish abiding you anticipate of names for these pages afore proceeding (e.g., howitworks.html, products.html, about.html, sitemap.html, contact.html). Afresh body your hyperlinks into the navbar. (Look at the cipher of the sample book to see how it is done.)

Once you accept your basal home page with links, this afresh becomes your template. Just save it as "howitworks.html", "products.html", etc., and accomplish the changes to the specific pages.

The aftereffect (once you upload it all to your host server) will be a basic, anatomic website absolute a amount of appropriately interlinked pages. It will aswell be seek engine affable because the architecture is not chaotic with scripts, and the a lot of important elements are acutely laid out at the top of the page.

For added web architecture tips and techniques see the Linknet Business Resource Library.

Rick Hendershot is a business consultant, writer, and internet administrator who lives in Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He publishes several websites and blogs, including The Linknet Arrangement of Websites. This arrangement provides an bargain way to acquaint your website, and get as abounding as 100 low amount links.', 242, 'Creating a Basal Web Architecture Template, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Architecture Information', 'Creating a Basal Web Architecture Arrangement additional online writing and advice on Web-Design

Using Server Ancillary Includes to Simplify Your Web Design

2009-01-30T23:04:00.001-08:00

An "include" book is a section of cipher that can be put into a seperate book -- for archetype -- your aeronautics bar -- and again "included" in a amount of added pages. This has the actual advantageous advantage of acceptance you to absorb bendability over a actual ample amount of pages, and again accomplish changes to all of those pages by just alteration the cover file.

For instance, say you wish anniversary page in your website to cover a abbreviate branch that abnormally identifies your site. I commonly alarm this a "site-id". It would apprehend something like this:

ForSaleTours.com - provides advice and sources for basic tours for the absolute acreage industry. We explain altered methods of accumulation video and audio to aftermath basic representations of your home to enhance its amount and to accomplish the purchasing acquaintance of abeyant buyers bigger than it contrarily ability be.

To set this up so it appears in a host book as an "include", you commonly accept to do three things:

1. Accomplish abiding your server allows SSI (server ancillary includes). If you accept admission to your web website ascendancy console you should be able to amount this out. Or if not, ask your web host abstruse abutment people.

2. Create a "host" book and accord it a book addendum so your server recognizes it contains cover files. A accepted addendum is .shtml

3. Create your cover file. It can usually accept any of a amount of altered extensions: .html, .htm, .php, even .txt. This is the book that will be included aural added files.

4. Embed the actual cipher aural your .shtml book to point to the cover file. If the cover book and host book are in the aforementioned binder on the server, it will attending like this:

If the cover book is amid in a altered binder (on the aforementioned server), the cipher will attending like this:

In the aloft archetype you accept to accomplish abiding the about aisle to the cover book is set correctly.

Now if you wish to accomplish a all-around change to, for instance, your "site-id", you just accept to change the cover book (once), and this change will be busy through all the pages that cover that file.

Include files can be put to abounding artistic uses that acquiesce you to do things that are contrarily actual impractical. And if you accept a website with a ample amount of pages, this address can save you a abundant accord of time.

For added web architecture and online business tips see the Linknet Business Resource Library

Rick Hendershot is a business consultant, writer, and internet administrator who lives in Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He publishes several websites and blogs, including The Linknet Arrangement of Websites. This arrangement provides an bargain way to acquaint your website, and get as abounding as 100 low amount links.', 242, 'Using Server Ancillary Includes to Simplify Your Web Design, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Architecture Information', 'Using Server Ancillary Includes to Simplify Your Web Architecture additional online writing and advice on Web-Design

Build Web Pages from the Top Larboard Bend Down

2009-01-30T23:02:00.001-08:00

There are two important affidavit to body your website from the top larboard duke bend down.

The aboriginal one is that this is the way humans (at atomic in the western world) apprehend pages. They tend to activate at the top and apprehend arise the bottom. And they tend to attending at the larboard cavalcade afore they attending at the right. This is why your web pages should accommodate the a lot of important account and anecdotic advice abreast the top.

Some designers abatement into the addiction of creating a accepted "image oriented" attack to arise on all the pages aural a site, in adjustment to accord it a constant look.

The botheration with this is that it wastes the a lot of important web page absolute acreage on non-specific material.

You absolutely wish anniversary page to accept its own focus, and the best way to do this is to actualize characteristic advice at the top of anniversary page. If you have to use a accepted attack you may accede application a clear with some address for customizing the argument for anniversary different page -- for instance by abrogation a atom for a different headline.

The additional acumen is appropriately important. The Search Engines apprehend your pages from the top larboard down -- back this is the way the cipher usually appears in your html documents. The Search Engines attending for h1 tags abreast the top in adjustment to actuate what the page is about. Then they attending for keywords -- abnormally in the top allocation of the page in adjustment to reinforce their abstracts about the accountable amount of the specific page.

In added words, you should use the top allocation of anniversary page to focus on those things that acquaint the Search Engines what anniversary page is about. The a lot of important apparatus are:

- the "title" tag (the page appellation that shows up in the appellation bar of the browser)
- the above account h1 and h2
- the aboriginal few paragraphs of text
- the names of cartoon and the "alt" tags of cartoon abreast the top of the page
- outbound hotlink text

For added web architecture and cartage breeding tips, see the Linknet Web Business Resource Library

Rick Hendershot is a business consultant, writer, and internet administrator who lives in Conestogo, Ontario, Canada. He publishes several websites and blogs, including The Linknet Network of Websites.', 242, 'Build Web Pages from the Top Larboard Bend Down, Web-Design, Web-Design articles, Web-Design information, about Web-Design, what is Web-Design, Web Architecture Information', 'Build Web Pages from the Top Larboard Bend Down additional online writing and advice on Web-Design