>

Learn from them

Approaching retirement age I was made redundant last year and decided to create my first web site, initially knowing little about it. I hope that, by reading about my experiences, I may save you both time and money if you ever find yourself in the position of wanting to build a site with little initial knowledge.

eBooks I bought five or six ebooks on how to make my web fortune from the one-page web-sites that you see on the web. The prices ranged from $9.95 to $29.95. It would be unfair of me to say that they were of no use, as you can always pick up the odd pointer, or contact. However, with the benefit of hindsight I would not have purchased any of them. Instead there are free, better written books which give you at least the same pointers, and often have more substance. You can download from my web site, for free, two excellent books by Ken Evoy, which will provide you with a good basic knowledge to move forward. Don’t get carried away with the sales hype contained in some of these “get rich quick” single page sales letters that offer huge free bonuses and an imminent price increase.

Universities and colleges There are various colleges and universities on the web which promise you the ultimate in web creation, site marketing, search engine optimization and much more, “all under one roof” They usually have libraries of “how to” books and membership is by monthly subscription with some offering a lower fee for the first month. Have a look, by all means, I looked at three and claimed my refund within the stated period. I found that I could obtain similar information offered for free with a little searching, and that what they really offered was convenience.

Web Design software I initially purchased a web site building package for $69.95 and was soon disappointed by its lack of functionality. I then looked over the shoulder of a friend whilst they showed me the workings of a top-end product costing nearly $400.00 but I found it to be too complicated with too steep a learning curve too be quickly productive. I posted a request for help on the Warriors forum and there were more recommends for a particular product than any other. So I decided that my first web site would be a review of that product, which I would create as a trial, before I went on to build a site that would aim at generating income.

What should the web site be about? Several of the books that I read suggested that the subject matter should be about something that you enjoy doing and therefore you will create your site with more passion and enthusiasm. Whilst this is sound advice I found that the need to create a trial site, which would force me to learn the basics, was more than a sufficient driving force.

Domain name & Web hosting Go for a dot com registration and pay no more than $10 per annum. Don’t go for free hosting, you get what you pay for. I looked at hosting sites that offered complete package with hosting, autoresponders, SEO and linking software and much more. Whilst everything was conveniently in one place they failed to convince me that each product would stack up well if they were competing in each niche market. I therefore opted for the best of breed approach and a little less convenience.

Search Engine Optimization This was probably the subject that I was most worried about as I new that it referred to making a web site as easy as possible for the search engines to find, but I had no clue as to how to go about it. I have a free ebook that you can download entitled “Search Engine Optimization Made Easy” which will give you the basics to carry out this process. The book is really a plug by the author of SEO software for his excellent product. I was fortunate in that the web design software I selected also, somewhat unusually, held my hand through this process, carefully pointing out page, by page, what I needed to do.

Article Distribution I was aware that, in order to succeed, I should submit articles to the numerous Article Directories present on the Internet. There are two ways to do this. By purchasing one of the two major pieces of software to assist me in doing it myself, or to use a company to do it for me. I looked at each way and found that, whilst both software solutions cut out some of the tedious manuals tasks of submitting to over 150 directories, it was still time consuming. Having examined the market place carefully, discounting any company who charged for a fixed number of submissions, I opted for one who for a fixed quarterly fee would submit any number of articles.

Link software Again, so that I would get more site traffic, I new that I should get other sites to link to mine and that I would have to manage those links and the emails back and forth etc. I initially started to design an Excel spreadsheet linked to Microsoft Word but decided that I would still have to create the links pages by hand. My advice is to obtain software which houses all your links in a searchable database, handles all of the emails, including template housing, and that automatically creates the HTML link pages for you.

About the Author

? Paul Lewis 2006. Paul Lewis is the author of an in-depth review of web site design and building software, XSitepro.

You can see detailed functionality, and much more, by visiting the XSitePro full review at http://www.reviewxsitepro.com. He is also CEO of Demovision Systems who specialise in Talking Heads. Examples can be seen on the About Us page at http://www.reviewxsitepro.com

>

If you want to design a web site, you should follow nine rules of thumb.

1. General Impression

Your web site is like a window display of your business. If the impression that it creates is not good enough visitors will simply leave.

Your site must be:

Neat Organized Attractive Professional

It is better if your site shows less than too much. Over crowded websites, with too many flashy elements, create a negative effect on your visitors.

2. Message

The first question that visitors ask themselves when coming to your site is “What can I gain from here?” Visitors are not impressed that much by promotional offers of free goods and services. They are looking for ways in which your site can be useful to them. If your site should offer one or more of the following:

Entertainment Information Advice Helpful tips

Contact with people who share same interests, links to other interesting sites. Your corporate site should provide information about your business and products and services. A business site should be simple to navigate and offer products and services that located in a simple way and ordered quickly.

3. Fast download

Your site should load as quickly as possible. Market research shows that the average surfer leaves a site that fails to load in 7 seconds. For a dial-up modem that means a maximum of 56 kilobytes. So avoid large graphics and flash animations. The opening page of your site should not overwhelm your visitors with too much information or you risk loosing them. Many Internet sites offer advice on how to increase the download speed of your site. Look for such articles read them and follow the suggested advice.

4. Graphics and Design

The graphical design of a website is crucial for a positive first impression. Every graphic element should help present the main idea of your site. Funny images are not appropriate for a business site, but they can be a good choice for an entertainment one. Graphics load slowly so use them sparingly and efficiently. Try to keep the overall size of your web pages around 30k. Individual pictures should be about 6-8k. Additional 2k adds about one second to download time. Right-click on an image and check its properties to find out its size. The choice of colors is also significant since different colors provoke different feelings. The warm colors like orange and red increase the pulse rate and stimulate the senses. Cold colors like blue and green have the opposite effect. Yellow is considered a happy color because it reminds us of the sun. Select the right colors for the emotion that you want to create. People read a text from top left down to bottom right. Place your images accordingly. Images that have a directional aspect should point to the most important part of your page. If you use the image of a bird its beak should point to inside the page and not outside. This is valid for all images: Faces should be turned to the center of the page. Cars should face the center of the page. Neckties, roads and other prolonged objects should point from left to the right and from top to bottom. You should put your navigation bars down the left side of your page, as well. This will keep them visible for your visitors.

5. Readable texts

Here we do not consider choice of words (we will deal with this later on), but rather the appearance of words on a page. To impress word should be surrounded by sufficient white space. Use dark texts on light backgrounds (preferably white). Dark backgrounds make visitors feel confined and depressed. Bright backgrounds make texts difficult to read and red, orange and purple backgrounds can be dazzling. The text color you choose is equally important, different browsers interpret colors in different ways. A text that looks fine on your browser may be illegible on a different one. Divide your text in columns to make it simpler and faster to read. It is easier to follow a column than a large chunk of text that stretches across the whole page. Choose fonts that are available on all computers and that are easy to read like Arial, Times New Roman, Garamond and Courier. Exotic fonts like Gothic, Script, Westminster, or Cloister look attractive in headings, but not all users have them installed on their computers. In this case, your visitor’s browser will render the missing font with a system one and ruin the effect that you are aiming at.

6. Easy Page Flow

Most people do not handle well large pieces of information. We have already suggested that you divide your page into columns that would separate the text vertically but you should also use headings and sub-headings that separate it horizontally. Write short statements for the key facts on your page and use the statements for headings. Examine each section to check if you can break it into smaller pieces. Write a short statement for each of these pieces and use these statements as sub-headings. Use the same font for all your headings and subheadings. Make them bold and increase the font size for headings. It will make simple to spot the large and bold headings and subheadings that are the same size with the text but bold. If you follow this advice, your visitors will be able to see the key points of your page at a glance. Write your headings carefully, because if you grab your visitors’ attention with them they will stay and read on. If you want to attract your visitors’ attention to other parts of the text you can make some sentences bold or change their color. Use this approach carefully, because some colors are difficult to read even on a white background.

7. Navigation

There are two reasons why you should put your navigation bar on the left side of your page -

People read from left to right and from top to bottom. Web surfers expect to find navigation bars on the left of web pages. It is a good idea to put a button at the bottom of a long text that would allow the visitor to return to the beginning of the text. When you create a page design that you like use it on every page of your web site, it will make your web site predictable and will help your visitors find the information they need. Save a blank page with the layout, columns, logos, standardized graphics, alt tags and navigation bars built in. Use this page as a template for all pages that you create for your web site and just fill in the content that you like.

8. Privacy and Customer Opinions

It is invaluable to get prospective customers to trust you, if you run a corporate site. Tell your visitors how you are protecting their private information. Set a privacy page that explicitly lists how and what information you collect from your visitors, how you keep their e-mail address, how you accept and process their orders, who has access to this information and what precautions you take with information collected from minors. People like to know what your customers think of your products and services. Invite your customers to share their opinion, they would love to know that it is appreciated. Make a dedicated page with the opinions of your customers. Offer links to their web sites in exchange of their opinion. This can be beneficial for both parties involved.

9. Spelling, Grammar and Word Choice

These are of crucial importance. If you are not careful here, all your efforts are in vain. Poor spelling and careless grammar and punctuation are the easiest way to lose visitors. Spelling and grammar mistakes tell that the site owner is lazy, careless, and unprofessional. Your visitors would not like to do business with you. What can you do? Take steps to polish your own writing. Hire somebody to check and edit your writing. Hire somebody to write the text of your pages for you.

About the Author

Arnab Ghosh has 4 years experience of internet, web development & web design. Now he runs his own webdesign & web development company named Mod Studio India at Calcutta,India which can be viewed at http://www.modstudioindia.com.

For your website to be successful, it has to contain the proper web design. This isn?t too hard if you?ve been designing websites for years and have had the time and experience to perfect your technique, but for everyone else, web design can seem somewhat daunting. Don?t worry, though, it doesn?t have to be. Just remember that using common sense, and applying your own taste are the best things that you can do for your web design strategy.

For your website to be successful, it has to contain the proper web design. This isn?t too hard if you?ve been designing websites for years and have had the time and experience to perfect your technique, but for everyone else, web design can seem somewhat daunting. Don?t worry, though, it doesn?t have to be. Just remember that using common sense, and applying your own taste are the best things that you can do for your web design strategy.

However, just because you think your site looks good, doesn?t mean that your visitors will read it. Nor does it mean that they will come back a second time. Therefore, web design only starts with your own taste, and must also include other techniques that will ensure continued success.

There are five basic things that you need to look at to develop your web design strategy. They are as follows:

1. Your Website Title ? Every successful website must first have an excellent title. A truly great title needs to be interesting, catchy, and applicable. ?Bob?s Website? isn?t exactly the most attractive way to make a first impression. The title is, after all, the first words that will catch the visitor?s eye. If the title doesn?t work for your readers, they won?t click it on the search engines, and they won?t stick around if they arrive at the site. Give yourself time to brainstorm great website title ideas, asking friends and family for inspiration, and using a thesaurus for some dazzling words.

2. Columns ? The number of columns used within your web design will alter the entire perception of your website. The standard first website will usually have a rather plain layout, consisting of only one column, however, the majority of readers actually prefer two-column pages to allow for written content in one column, and navigation links within the other. This web design is much more attractive, and makes navigation throughout your website much easier. Though the three-column website does have its fans, it is not necessarily any better than the one- or two-column web designs. However, if you have a great deal of complexity to your website and you need additional navigation options, or if you need additional writing space, then the extra column might work well for you.

3. Colors ? Although it might seem that colors are among the simplest decisions that you need to make for your web design, once you get started, you may find that it?s more challenging than you first thought. Colors are very important to the overall appearance of your website, and will influence people?s decisions to find out what your site has to offer, and their decision to return. If your website design is bland, it will make people believe that your website is dull. If the colors are too bright and are hard on the eyes, staying at the website will feel unpleasant. If the colors are warm and comforting, making the customer feel at home, they are more likely to feel that they like your site, and will stick around and return more frequently.

4. Navigation ? When building your web design, don?t forget that navigation will be key to allowing visitors to properly benefit from your site. The key is consistency and easy access. Every page on the website should link back to the homepage so that visitors don?t get lost among the different pages of the site and finally give up and go elsewhere. You?ll also need some sort of index which appears in the same way on every page, so that users will always know where to look when they want to head to the next page of interest.

5. Content ? When it comes to web design, content is among your most important features. If your content isn?t good, nobody will have any reason to visit your site. Among other site-specific pages, your content should include a minimum of a homepage, which tells visitors what your site is about, and why they?d want to visit. An ?about us? page is also advisable, telling visitors who you are and why you?ve got the website. Use this space to show people that you know your stuff, and they can trust your site for reliable information and resources. When visitors understand you better, they?ll feel more comfortable visiting your site.

Most importantly, don?t just follow a template, do something new, and keep it fresh. People won?t want to keep visiting a site that never changes. They want to see updates, or they won?t have any reason to return. The more often you update your site, the longer people will spend visiting your site in order to keep on top of things. Once a week is ideal, but once a month should be your bare minimum. When it comes to web design, you have to be up to date!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

>

In the world of web design, there are plenty of mistakes you can make, and in this article, I’m going to look at what I believe to be the top 10 biggest. You need to check your site for these mistakes right now, and fix them if they’re there - otherwise you’re going to be annoying your visitors and driving them away from your site.

1. Too Many Ads. When you’re trying to make money from your website, it’s all too easy to try to fit in more ads than you really should, or start using ad formats that are too intrusive. If you’ve put a new ad on your site, go to the site as if you were a visitor, and ask yourself honestly: is this just too much?

2. Plugin Overload. You’ve got to keep media that uses plugins to a strict maximum of one per page: that means that if you’ve got Flash, then you can’t have a media player, or if you’re using Java then you can’t have Flash. It’s not as bad to use the same plugin twice, however.

3. Flash Intros. Please, don’t use a Flash intro on your website. You’d think everyone would realise they’re a bad idea by now, but every web designer still gets clients who just don’t seem to realise that Flash intros are universally mocked and hated. Don’t be one of those people.

4. Unclear Layout and Navigation. Many websites, especially business sites, seem to suffer from some kind of disease where even the very simplest task takes ten steps to achieve. If people are emailing you to ask you how to do things on your site, then you need to improve your layout and navigation. Remember: if there are certain tasks people seem to want to do more often, put them on the front page.

5. No Marking for External Links. There are two kinds of links: internal (to other parts of your website) and external (to other websites). For the benefit of your visitors, though, it’s best if you mark external links, either by making them a different colour or using some kind of a symbol (a box with an arrow is the usual one). It’s also good to make the external links open in new windows, so people aren’t leaving your site altogether when they click them.

6. Unclear Linking. You might think it looks better to only show links when people put their mouse over them, or not make their colour stand out too much from the rest of the text, but it’s not - while it might make the design look nicer, it makes it far less usable. Use a clearly contrasting colour for links, and preferably underline them.

7. Unlabelled Email Links. It’s a very bad idea to ever use a link that will send email (a mailto link) without clearly marking it with the word ‘email’. If you just make clicking people’s names send email, you’ll annoy visitors who just clicked wanting to find out more about the person.

8. Broken Links. You’ve got to check all your links regularly to make sure that they all still work. There’s nothing worse than finding a site that looks useful, only to find that it hasn’t been updated in years and none of the links work any more. Yes, a website does mostly run itself after a while, but that doesn’t mean that you should neglect the essential maintenance it needs from time to time.

9. Strange Fonts. Stick to the most common web fonts: that’s pretty much just Arial, Georgia, Tahoma and Verdana. If you’re using more obscure fonts, then most visitors probably won’t have them - and the ones that do will find your text hard to read. The only time you should use non-standard fonts is in your logo or in headings, if they are displayed as an image.

10. Badly-sized Text. It’s important to keep your text around the standard size (preferably just below). Making text too big or too small makes it hard to read and annoying for many visitors. The best thing you can do is use relative text sizing (not pixels) that allows the browser to respect the user’s preferred text size. You might also consider offering buttons on your site to decrease or increase the size.

About the Author

Information supplied and written by Lee Asher of Eclipse Domain Services
Domain Names, Hosting, Traffic and Email Solutions.

>

Web Design and Development: The Right Tools for the Right Job

As any webmaster knows, designing and developing a website can be a daunting proposition. There are millions of websites out there to compete with, and whether your site’s purpose is to promote your business, inform, or entertain; web design is an important consideration if you want traffic. It’s tough to attract visitors and even tougher to keep them on your website once they arrive.

Fortunately, there are many tools out there for webmasters to make the tasks of design and development easier. Wading through the sea of web tools can also be a time-consuming process. In designing your website, you should be aware of all the components that go into successful development and how to use them to your best advantage.

The first step, other than developing great informative content for your visitors, is to put everything together in an attractive, user-friendly format. If you need a little help in manipulating HTML coding or CSS (cascade styling sheets), you might visit www.xhtmlandcss.com for advice and tutorials regarding these components. CSS in particular is an invaluable tool for webmasters; these are the programs that control the set of styles for your fonts, tables and many other attributes of your website. The ability to manipulate CSS allows you to customize sites such as web forums and blogs and create a website that stands out and gets noticed. You can also amplify the attractiveness and user-friendly attributes of your websites with e-mail and forum signature generation tools from www.needasig.com and brighten your format with free smilies from www.thesmilies.com. Internet users love extras, and adding customizable interactions such as signatures and smilies will help keep visitors coming back.

Once your site is developed, you must then undertake the task of optimizing your website for search engines. There are many ways to do this. One is to use relevant keywords throughout your content and page tags–without overusing them–that will help visitors find your website when they’re looking for information. Using a keyword generator such as the free tool at www.keywordmine.com is an easy way to find plenty of relevant keywords and phrases. When incorporating keywords into your content, you should make sure the text reads well. The practice of keyword stuffing to boost search engine ranks not only endangers your listings with search engines, it also turns visitors off to your website and will keep them from coming back.

Another component of website optimization is getting your website listed with search engines. If search engines can’t find your website, neither can visitors! After you have created great content with relevant keywords and lots of user-friendly extras, you should then begin the process of getting your website out there for people to find. You can submit your website URL and descriptions manually. Major search engines such as Google, MSN and Yahoo include links to their submission process for manual submission. However, these links can be difficult to find. You may want to consider using a search engine submission service to submit to several search engines at once; there are many good, free submission services that cover multiple search engines. It is important to remember that submitting your website once is not enough to get it noticed on the Internet radar. You should carry out the submission process on a regular basis. However, you also must realize that submitting your website too often can get your URL banned from some search engines. It is a good practice to submit to search engines every 30 days.

Beyond search engines, you should also list your website in as many relevant directories as you can find to increase your site’s exposure. Strive to find directories that don’t require linkbacks to your website for listings, because reciprocal links carry far less weight with search engines than strictly inbound links. One excellent directory service that doesn’t require linkbacks can be found at www.submiturlhere.com. You can find many directories for your website; just make sure they are relevant to your content.

If you have multiple websites or long website URLs, another great tool for you to use is URL redirection. You can get a short, easy to remember and easy to post URL for your website that will sit well with search engines and make it simpler for you to advertise your websites on forums and in e-mail messages and signatures. Free URL redirection tools are available at www.smoothredirect.com. Once you have more experience with URL direction, or if you are already an experienced webmaster looking for more ways to optimize your website, you should consider making use of tools like URL cloaking, path forwarding and frame killers. The website www.kingofurl.com offers free advanced redirection tools without those annoying, visitor-detracting banner ads you want to avoid.

Tracking visitors to your website is another important aspect of running a successful site. You should install a web counter that is invisible to visitors, but allows you to find out where your traffic is coming from so you can concentrate your promotion in effective areas. For example, a good web counter will not only tell you how many hits your website receives, but whether they are new or returning visitors and how they found your website, whether through a directory, a search engine, or an e-mail promotion. You can find free web counters with excellent tracking tools at www.webstatservice.com for your website.

There are many components that figure in to web design and development. Today’s webmaster is fortunate indeed to be able to find free tools for optimization and integration. Make your website interesting, interactive, and accessible to search engines through submissions and directories, and the visitors will come. While you’re designing and developing your site, be sure to bookmark comprehensive web tool repositories such as www.webmasters-cavern.com for easy access to great information. The more you know about web design and development, the easier you will be able to navigate the complexities of the Internet and find cyber-success for your business, informative or entertaining website. Making use of free web tools is a great way to get ahead of the competition!

About the Author

Praveen owns a number of successful websites including Webmasters Cavern, Free Smilies, Submit URL here, Free Web Counters, Dieting Tips and many others.