Web Site Design

2007-11-16T04:01:00.000-08:00

Tips To Design Your Links
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Bogdan_Popescu]Bogdan Popescu

It is a fact that links have always been a vital part in the internet navigational process. Depending on the links and also on the content of the site that the link leads to, internet users decide on the worthiness of coming back to that site or not.

One cannot fail to notice the latest trends imposed by web 2.0, the emergence of a new writing genre designed to cater for the new needs and tastes of internet users and also the transformation process that search engines undergo.

Broadly speaking, users go from page to page selecting only the most important information or just the information that is easier to spot; they need to be able to make a quick assessment of the page content, get the information they are seeking and go to another page.

Usually, web authors employ hypertext links to create or reinforce concepts: a list of related links can serve as the focus of a site. The problem posed by links has little to do with the web but is rather related to the concept of hypertext. A collection of links does not have the same effect on the reader and is not as legible as conventional linear text.

In the case of linear text, readers have to work harder in seek of needed information. Links also become a technical problem, because most web pages have a certain rank on search engines due to links. Links are to be used as a reinforcement of, not a substitute for content.

What is worth mentioning when tackling the link issue is that designers are supposed to use relevant link labels, give consistent clickability cues and also differentiate links that have been clicked from those that haven't.

1. Use relevant link description

Users' confusion must be avoided at all costs. In this respect, they should be able to look at every link and be able to predict to some extent the destination or the website they are about to visit. A negative example in this case is using the label - Click here-, which is rather confusing and does not provide any kind of information about the link destination.

Another relevant case is that of embedded links; when employing embedded links, the link text should accurately designate the link's direction. Users have a certain tendency towards ignoring the text surrounding embedded links; consequently, it is recommended that you should not create embedded links that use the surrounding text in order to provide hints about the link's destination.

2. Be aware that textual links do have certain main characteristics like: underlining and color.

The second trait is not as important as the first one, i.e. underline can be eliminated in some cases like the one when an area functionality is absolutely obvious - for instance, we could think of a site menu where everybody expects a content summary as a presentation.

Thus, you should provide users with sufficient clickability cues. Trying to put the cursor over different parts of the page is time consuming and not quite "affordable" with a view to gain more traffic. At the same time, it's worth keeping in mind that there area certain clickability expectancies regarding different regions of a web page; for instance, items on the center, left, right side have a high probability of being links.

3. Use different colors for visited and unvisited links

Links that were clicked must differentiate one way or another from the ones that were not; the best way of doing that is the color contrast; links are supposed to stand out on the computer screen as much as possible; in this respect, bright, vivid colors are preferable - links should differentiate from linear text in any case.

Conversely, links that were already clicked should employ a rather pale and "washed" color. The effect of using different colors but both at the same level of chromatic intensity might result in a failure to establish a concrete content relationship between those links, users won't be able to tell visited from non-visited links.

Even though some compromises would be acceptable (like using other colors), using blue for text is an exception. Blue is a color with the most notable perceived affordance of clickability.

4. Colors for text are to be avoided

It is recommended that colors should be used for hyperlinks only. Nevertheless, there are generally recognized and allowed colors for certain words such as red for "error" or green for "ok".
Technically speaking, when referring to document colors, it is advisable that you specify all of the colors (BGCOLOR, TEXT, LINK, VLINK, ALINK), to ensure an enjoyable and legible composition.
The main reason reinforcing this idea is that some users may have certain colors set as default, so if you don't specify all the colors of a document, they may end up with an illegible document. In addition, even when using a background image, you should still specify BGCOLOR, because the user may not have the image loading on. [http://www.avangate.com/articles/design-links-92.htm]Read more tips here

Read more free [http://www.avangate.com/articles/website-usability]web site usability articles

Copyright © 2007, [http://www.avangate.com]www.avangate.com all rights reserved. This article was written by Bogdan Popescu, member of Avangate Web marketing Team. Avangate is a complete ecommerce provider for shareware sales incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional software marketing services and sales tools.

This article may be reproduced in a website, e-zine, CD-ROM, book, magazine, etc. as long as the above information is included in full, including the link back to this website.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bogdan_Popescu http://EzineArticles.com/?Tips-To-Design-Your-Links&id=700126

Posted By: IllusionTechnologies
http://www.illusiontechnologies.com

Web Site Design

2007-11-15T02:41:00.000-08:00

Some Brief Information On Website Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Joe_Solaman]Joe Solaman

Now more than ever is the time to get a website designed and launched for you business or organization. If you are looking to expand out and reach clients and customers on a global scale then a website is the best way to go about this. If you are in a business that strictly serves your local community then having a website for potential clients to view your products and or services on the Internet is something that more and more businesses are using as part of their advertising budget.

However before you run out and hand over the task to the first website designer that you find on the Internet, there are a few things that you should know. With the advent of cheaper website design software, more and more people are marketing their services as website designers on the Internet now. For this reason alone you should be as selective as possible when you are deciding just who is going to do the work on your website.

When you use a reputable website design company you are assured that a team of experts will be available to do the job. When a team of website designers does the work on your website a graphic designer does the graphic design work and a writer writes the script and all the other tasks that are involved in the total project are also handled by specialist in their particular area of website design.

The last thing that you should do is to hand the total project over to one person who claims that they are capable of handling the complete job. Trying to save a few bucks on a cheapie website is a mistake that many people live to regret and they are inevitably stuck redoing their website while their competition is out promoting theirs.

Written by Joe Solaman. Find the more information on the latest [http://www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk/webdesign.asp ]Preston Web Design as well as [http://www.dolphinpromotions.co.uk ]Web Design Company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Joe_Solaman http://EzineArticles.com/?Some-Brief-Information-On-Website-Design&id=755218

Posted By: Illusion Technologies
http://www.illusiontechnologies.com

Web Site Design

2007-11-14T01:43:00.000-08:00

Why Hire a Web Designer
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Alexa_Peters]Alexa Peters

A lot of online business owners start with very little extra money . You have to do everything yourself -- the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to your product's marketing needs. As your business expands over time, you will find that your simple "homemade" site might not be enough to cover everything, and you will have to take a day or two (which you don't have) away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started everything with very little money too, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a website designer than just finishing up a job that you don't want to do.

When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the "dirty job" to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you're halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy.

On the other hand, the web designers you hire are professionals so they are very good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won't have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably would be able to.

Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the reality is that the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!

So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!

Normally, if you want to have professional designers custom build your site, you must be prepared to dish out at least a few thousand dollars for a very basic website. that does not have if you know where to find the best deals, the best designs for the lowest price. Here's a rough guide:

Have you ever seen those advertisements in newspaper classified ad sections that offer a 5-page website at $500? These companies are established companies with physical locations, therefore they have to increase the amount they charge to pay off some overheads: office rent, designer's wages, advertising costs and so on. More than likely, you will get a cookie cutter site that is like every other site, except for the name of your site.

Therefore, it would be wise to find freelance designers who work from home. These people are often working from home so they do not have a high operation cost like that of a company. And they will be able to design images with quality similar to those of designers from big companies, so it's a "no-brainer" choice.

It just takes a little bit of effort but you can find the good in hiring a web designer. And if you find a good one, it will be well worth the effort.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alexa_Peters http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-Hire-a-Web-Designer&id=784749

Web Site Design

2007-11-02T01:23:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design

2007-10-31T22:34:00.000-07:00

Good Website Design Practices
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Dudley]Michelle Dudley

Your website is where your business resides--it's kinda like the headquarters of an offline company. That is why it is very important to practice good design principles to make sure that it reaches out to the maximum number of people and sells to as many visitors as possible. Make sure that you have clear directions on navigation your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that your visitors can get around without any confusion.

Reduce the number of images that you have on your site. Too many images make your site load very slowly and most of the time they are often unnecessary. If you feel that any image is essential to your site, make sure that you optimize it using image editing programs so that they see a minimum image file size. Keep your content's paragraphs at a reasonable length. If your paragraphs are too long, you should split them up into separate paragraphs so that your text blocks won't be so big. This is very important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure that your website complies with web standards at W3 and make sure that your website will be cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks out of frames in FireFox and Opera, you could lose out of a lot of prospective customers and visitors.

Avoid using script languages on your website unless it is absolutely necessary. Use script languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your website and even crash some browsers. Some scripts are not supported in all browsers, so some of your visitors may lose out on some important information because of this.

Use CSS to style your page content because it saves a lot of work by styling all the elements on your website in one go.

Would you like to know about a website tool that anyone can use and that everyone will want to use? Visit http://www.squidoo.com/siterubixwebdevelopment and find out how you can get a free 7 part website building guide.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Dudley http://EzineArticles.com/?Good-Website-Design-Practices&id=776263

Web Site Design

2007-10-29T21:50:00.000-07:00

Website Design Training For Rewarding Career
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Michael_Bustamante]Michael Bustamante

If you are someone who enjoys creating interesting designs and layouts on computers, you could benefit from website design training. In the contemporary world of computers and Internet marketing, training in website design can lead you to an exciting and rewarding career as a professional website designer.

Website design training focuses primarily on the areas of graphic art and electronic media. You will become familiar with the latest web design and computer-based design and illustration software, which may include GoLive, DreamWeaver, and FrontPage. You will learn how to use HTML, XHTML, CSS, and JavaScript; you will also learn about e-commerce, Internet marketing, scripting and authoring. The goal of website design training is to teach you to create web pages and websites that look good and are easily navigated.

The field of website design is constantly changing and evolving, and it is important that you receive an education in website design that is current and up-to-date. Before you begin your website design education, make sure your chosen school will be able to teach you the latest techniques and methods used by professional website designers.

The website designing course will most likely cover Visual Art, Graphic Design, Web Design, and Computer Aided Design (CAD), among other related subjects. Website design training from a two-year program will lead to an Associate degree, which will be adequate for an entry-level position; however, an advanced degree would greatly increase your knowledge and skills for better employment opportunities. You could continue your website design education at a four-year college to obtain a Bachelor degree (BA) or a Master degree (MA).

If you are interested in learning what it takes to be a professional website designer, you can begin researching website design training today. For in-depth information about [http://www.schoolsgalore.com/categories/3/website_design_training.html]Website Design Training, please take a moment to visit our website today.

DISCLAIMER: Above is a GENERAL OVERVIEW and may or may not reflect specific practices, courses and/or services associated with ANY ONE particular school(s) that is or is not advertised on SchoolsGalore.com.

Michael Bustamante is a staff writer for Media Positive Communications, Inc. Find [http://www.schoolsgalore.com/categories/3/website_design_training.html]Website Design Training and Website Design Education, as well as Colleges, Universities, Vocational Schools, and Online Schools at SchoolsGalore.com

Copyright 2007 - All Rights Reserved by Media Positive Communications, Inc.

Notice to Publishers: Please feel free to use this article in your Ezine or on your Website; however, ALL links must remain intact and active.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_Bustamante http://EzineArticles.com/?Website-Design-Training-For-Rewarding-Career&id=710390

Web Site Design

2007-10-27T02:16:00.000-07:00

Custom Website Design - The Opposition
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dustin_Schwerman]Dustin Schwerman

What is a custom website? I would say it is one designed with your business fully in mind. It's the classic process of optimization, but not only for the search engines, not only for your visitors. Naturally, these are important parts of the process, but they are not the parts that have to do with making your website unique. A truly original website is one that is optimized for your business.

This means, above all else, that templates are not an option. There is no such thing as a custom template. There are custom layouts that can then be used on every page of a given site, but by its very nature, a template is generic. It may be visually impressive, it may even suit your business nicely, but it is not designed specifically for you.

Adding your own text, applying your own graphics, does not fix the limitations of the template. This is not to say that a template cannot make an effective site; it is to say it cannot make a custom site. For that, you need unique graphics. You need a layout intended for your audience. You need a linking structure that suits the structure of your business.

Stock images, ready-made layouts, pre-designed programs, are all very useful for establishing an on-line presence quickly and cheaply. That’s the point. The aim there is a nice look without a lot of effort, a functional design without a notable cost. You don’t need a web designer, you don’t need a graphic artist. Just drag and drop your text and images, and in a few easy steps, you have a presence on the Internet.

But not a customized presence. Not a presence optimized for your business. For that, you need a web designer, either one as part of your team or a hired professional. This is important to note, because there are web design companies that provide template options. These can be impressive, with their variety of pre-made, easily adaptable layouts and designs.

I would argue, however, that if you plan to hire a web designer to create a custom site, you should avoid and ignore the term template. There are plenty of places to get layout templates on line, and many of them are inexpensive, free, or included with other services such as web hosting. Naturally, if you favor ease over novelty, you should take advantage of these inexpensive options.

If, on the other hand, you want a custom website then you should take advantage instead of the skill and experience of professional web designers. Naturally, it isn’t as quick; it isn’t as cheap. There are benefits and hindrances to everything, and the cons of customization are additional cost in money, time, or (most likely) both. But the benefits are having a site created with your specific business in mind. Graphics and links, text and programs, all specifically created to communicate the essence of your product, service, or idea. Anyone can establish an on-line presence. The goal of custom website design is to give your business an on-line personality, and to make it exactly the personality that you wish to convey to your visitors.

Copyright © 2007 Dustin Schwerman.

Dustin Schwerman is the primary web designer at [http://www.trulyuniqueweb.com]Truly Unique--Affordable Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in impressive, custom sites designed to capture the essence of the businesses they represent, as well as creating useful web-based programs to improve and simplify some of the tasks of running a business. Their goal is to provide these services at affordable, pragmatic rates based on effort involved, rather than arbitrary costs based on number of pages or hours.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dustin_Schwerman http://EzineArticles.com/?Custom-Website-Design---The-Opposition&id=718949

Web Site Design

2007-10-24T01:47:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design - The Must Do's for a User Friendly Web Site Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize]Sean R Mize

There are large companies out there that hire graphic and web site designers to make sure that the design of their web site is the best. But not all companies can afford the fee of these designers. So if you have a business online and want to polish your web site design, here are some useful must do’s for you.

1. Flash animations are not search engine readable. So if you are using them, you are missing one important way of getting more traffic to your site. Additionally, they are usually in large files so they do not load fast. People may get bored waiting for the page to load. So get away with flash animations.

2. Also, there are times that your page may load slowly if there are a lot of texts or graphics on your web site. You can actually compress the images to make sure that your page will load even the customers are not yet done counting 1 to 5.

3. Check for broken links on your site. You know, you can lose a lot of clients if there are many links that are not working on your site. These broken links will drive away the clients from your site.

4. You can validate the HTML on your site with the use of validation services online. They can help you fix these code errors on your site. Once the HTML codes are right, you can make sure that the customers will have better experience.

5. You should also know if your site is compatible with other browsers. Of course, you would not want to lose other clients just because they are using other browsers. So have your site designed to be compatible with any browser the clients may use

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

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Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize http://EzineArticles.com/?Web-Site-Design---The-Must-Dos-for-a-User-Friendly-Web-Site-Design&id=662627

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-10-22T05:28:00.000-07:00

Website Design - Usability Versus Accessibility
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Rich_Goldman]Rich Goldman

A big mistake many people make is to confuse usability with accessibility. Not only are the two very different, but the tendency seems to be that one is deemed less important than the other. Although they must both be taken seriously, it's true that many of the ideals surrounding accessibility still apply to usability and vice versa.

Optimising a site's usability will help to make it more accessible, or at least provide a better frame to build upon. If your wider audience finds the site hard to use, it'll almost certainly be problematic for those with disabilities or learning difficulties. By the same token, the degree of consideration that goes into addressing accessibility is just as valid when it comes to usability.

Putting The User First

If you strip all the fancy stuff away from Web design, pages are ultimately being built for people to use. Forget showcasing every Flash gimmick you can muster from your repertoire or bombarding people's browsers with bandwidth busting images, and you're left with providing the best content delivery service you can offer. Before you even start formulating ideas or beginning to think about firing up Dreamweaver, you should have it clear in your mind that usability is about putting the needs of the user first. Remember that designing anything from shoes to sites is judged on how the final product performs.

This will then help you conduct one of the most important stages in most design processes and especially software engineering: requirements elicitation. Most professional new media agencies will already be familiar with this procedure, and will use it to establish a stable understanding of what it is the user expects to see, with project success dependent upon meeting it. Whether you are being commissioned to create a site for a specific client or hope to launch something that will more directly attract traffic, it will be an essential exercise to acknowledge what the end user's expectations are.

Requirements Elicitation

The key point to remember about understanding user requirements is that you're unlikely to get them spot on first time. This means that a consistent stream of communication throughout the design process is paramount to getting as close to their expectations as possible. Talking to the users, recording what they say and trying to pin down exactly what they mean is the only sure-fire way to meet their needs.

It's also important to bear in mind that the people you're designing for are not necessarily privy to the kind of 'developer speak' you might be comfortable using. This is where the production of graphical diagrams or descriptive case studies can be effectively used to portray how you see the project going. Navigational flowcharts, example site maps and perhaps data flow diagrams for eCommerce solutions are all good ways of presenting complex info without bewildering others with technical jargon.
Similarly, there's no reason why a shared direction for the way visual elements are going can't be achieved with page mock ups. Flat digital drawings of possible template designs can be put forward and scrutinised, before a period of prototyping more sophisticated page elements, interfaces and navigational structures gets under way.

Professional Help

if you're not overly keen on conducting widespread usability studies yourself, or perhaps realise that it isn't viable, you can always rely on the services of others.

Professional consultancies or specialist agencies are common, and offer a range of complete solutions that span all the major processes. Usually they will also give your site a preliminary evaluation to ascertain whether it really requires the full usability treatment, and how best to pursue everything. it then really comes down to identifying what needs and goals are motivating the Web site, or establishing what it's expected to achieve. This can lead to a detailed analysis of what the target demographic will be, so a cross section of the audience group can be studied.

A sample of 'typical users' will usually be asked to attend testing sessions that will observe participants as they experience the site. This can range from simply asking them to navigate through the content freely for a certain length of time, to setting them certain tasks and scenarios.

While encouraged to 'think aloud' at all times, their feedback is monitored and recorded either by sophisticated tracking software or by video. Designers are encouraged to sit in on the sessions and hear how users perceive the site, and perhaps whatever improvements they might suggest. At the finish, all participants are asked to submit their overall impressions of the site during thorough interview sessions. All the findings are then compiled into detailed reports that will form the foundation of any future design revisions and new projects that arise from the findings.

Conducting User Surveys

When rounding together a sample of your users isn't a realistic option, there are other ways of getting feedback. Many sites will include email addresses or contact forms so visitors can submit their thoughts, but this doesn't ensure that you'll receive the kind of valuable response you want. it can be more useful to provide electronic questionnaires that will gauge user opinion more effectively.

Using a specialist program will allow you to publish sophisticated interactive surveys quickly and easily. The benefit here is that the results can be logged to a server before a more detailed statistical analysis can be processed and interpreted when administering any practical improvements. There are some off the shelf software solutions that will perform remote evaluations of user actions as they happen in real time. This kind of approach must be made clearly known to visitors before they participate, as tracking their behaviours covertly would compromise areas of the data protection act, and certainly result in mistrust if it were discovered.

However, some interesting data pertaining to areas of the site or the actual interface would be revealed from the way different people approach the content. Just by tracking link paths or cursor activity, you would be able to ascertain how navigation was perceived, and perhaps how effective the visual signposts such as menus, buttons, and anchors are at directing the actions of your audience.

This provides one of the truest pictures of user perception, because the subject is likely to behave as they naturally would when casually surfing the Web. When under more strict 'lab' conditions they may feel pressured by the environment or the presence of an examiner, or feel conscious of the time they are taking to perform. It would also have an adverse effect if they expected to use hardware, peripherals, operating systems or browsing software that they may not be acquainted with.

By making judgments on how typical visitors interact the site in their own homes of workplaces, it will help to differentiate how the novice or experienced user fares without any disruptions.

---- [http://www.magneticcode.co.uk]Magnetic Code website design favours clean code, usability and accessibility in all its designs. ExpertFound.com is in their portfolio, and includes this [http://www.expertfound.com/health/weightloss/fatloss4idiots.php]Fat Loss 4 Idiots review and this [http://www.expertfound.com/business/smallbusiness/homebusiness/paidsurveysetc.php]review of Paid Surveys Etc

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rich_Goldman http://EzineArticles.com/?Website-Design---Usability-Versus-Accessibility&id=665469

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-10-20T05:17:00.000-07:00

Have You Been Ripped Off by a Web Site Designer?
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Adrienne_Devita]Adrienne Devita

With the Internet business growing every day by leaps and bounds, it is obvious there will be an increasing number of people looking to rip us off. But did you think it would be web site designers?

Unfortunately, many new web design companies are thriving on the Internet, and they have absolutely no experience to be in this business. There is no law or credential a web site design company even needs to get started. Taking a class or two in school, or using an easy template for your client’s web site is unacceptable. Would you let a doctor remove one of your failed kidneys without checking his credentials? I certainly hope not.

I have known far too many clients and acquaintances in the past few years that gave up on their web site, got ripped off for thousands of dollars without getting one customer to their site, and they are now struggling to pay the bills from it all.

It is true what they say, knowledge is power. So without programming, web site design, SEO search engine optimization, AdWords PPC services, copywriting, and all of the other skills needed to get the best web site going, who do you trust?

Did you enjoy school? Either way, it's time to get back to doing your homework.

A professional looking web site is only a door way. It is what's on the other side that you need to investigate. You might open that door to find nothing but white space, no support, not enough experience, but you will find a person ready to take your check or credit card. Picture someone sitting in an empty room in a chair, rubbing their hands together greedily while you walk up and hand them your money. Would you go through with it? Of course not.

I am going to show you a few techniques that will help you find a more experienced web designer. Ready with pen in hand, or fingers on typewriter for that cut and paste key?

1 - Type your keywords into the search engine for whatever you are looking for online

2 - Copy the web site domain name, for example, http://www.websitenamehere.com

3 - Go to Yahoo, then copy and paste that entire domain name with the http:// into the search box

4- How many links does it show?

5 - None? Get out of that white room and run like the dickens!

6 - Are the links only links on their site?

7 - Start being very cautious and get your first foot out the door, but investigate further.

8 - Click on the links that aren't related to their own web site. Are they clients? Are they valid sites? Investigate the client sites and repeat the same thing as in Step 3. If they are an SEO and web site design company and their clients have no links, they didn't get a lick of off-site SEO. But maybe they didn't pay for it and it wasn't included?

9 - Contact their clients. Write or call them and ask them how the company was to work with, and did they get what was promised and paid for? Did they find their money well spent?

10 - If not, then keep looking until you find an open door with a lot of experience, SEO techniques, optimization, and happy customers.

This is one SEO technique you can use to check on your potential web site design company's experience and skills. It is simple and will save you thousands if you use it to your advantage.

If they contacted you (and I would never do business with anyone that does without your asking them to contact you), ask them for e-mail addresses or phone numbers of past clients, and check their links using the steps above. Whenever [http://adwordsandseoservices.com/2007/10/03/web-site-design-rip-offs.aspx ]web site design companies call my business number who do not know what I do, I research them while they are talking to me, and when I start asking pointed questions about their web site, THEY hang up on ME! A telemarketing company hung up on me because I called them on their products and services. I consider that a compliment.

Even if you do not want to come up on the first page of Google for your web site search results for free (although I am not certain why), you will still need an on-page SEO optimization and web site design expert so you pay less per click using [http://adwordsandseoservices.com/2007/08/07/adwords-and-seo-optimization-services-provided.aspx ]PPC advertising. There are various methods of online advertising, and it all starts with getting the best web designer, first.

Adrienne DeVita

Web Site Design, AdWords and SEO Specialist http://www.AdWordsandSEOServices.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Adrienne_Devita http://EzineArticles.com/?Have-You-Been-Ripped-Off-by-a-Web-Site-Designer?&id=764010

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-10-19T00:13:00.000-07:00

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-17T22:46:00.000-07:00

Custom Website Design - The Cost
By

[http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dustin_Schwerman]Dustin

Schwerman

I would be remiss if I got into a discussion of custom
website design without discussing the cost involved. There
are always hindrances for any benefit, and before you
decide for certain if originality is the path to follow, you
should consider the detriments involved. In this case, the
costs are mainly money, time, and effort.

In terms of actual monetary cost it should be noted that the
cost is not owed to the custom nature of the site. The cost
is essentially a prerequisite based on the fact that you are
not able to use less expensive templates. If you want an
original design, you will need a skilled designer.

Presumably, you are reading this article because you are
not, yourself, trained in that field. This, then, means hiring a
professional.

Professional web design can be costly. Even simple sites
often cost more than $100, and more complex sites can
range to $500, $1,000, or more. The most advanced sites
can cost several thousand dollars to design.

Since your site is to be customized, it is likely that you will
also need graphics, multiple pages, and specialized
programs. Thus, you would be best served seeking out a
website design company that charges based on overall
complexity, rather than in discreet amounts by hour or page.
Hourly rates in particular should be avoided, as you will
likely require several revisions to get the effect you want.
Which leads to time. These sorts of websites are not simple
drag-and-drop processes; they often require detailed
stylesheets, complex programs, and unique graphics. If an
immediate on-line presence is required, you may very well
lack the time for custom work. Additionally, as noted
above, you are not likely to get the proper effect from the
first design. The greatest advantage of customization is
likewise a potentially significant disadvantage; everything is
subject to change. The site is not done until you say it is.

Literally, until you say it is. If you want to optimize for your
business, you can’t just give your designers some
instructions and leave them to handle things. Your input will
be required. You know your field, your audience. You
know which pages are most important, what functions can
improve your business. Your knowledge is an integral part
of the design process, which means that you will have to
spend your own time and effort considering the site,
communicating with your designers, and making decisions
about the options and drafts they present.

Custom website design can be useful. I would argue that
the most effective website is one created in this manner.
But this doesn’t mean that there are no costs or penalties
involved. Time, money, and effort will all be required to get
the site up and running the way you want. If you desire
your web pages to be created in this manner, then don’t shy
away from these costs, but go into things with them in
mind—and take advantage of any opportunity to minimize
them.

Copyright © 2007 Dustin Schwerman.

Dustin Schwerman is the primary web designer at
[http://www.trulyuniqueweb.com]Truly Unique--Affordable
Custom Website Design. Truly Unique specializes in
impressive, custom sites designed to capture the essence of
the businesses they represent, as well as creating useful
web-based programs to improve and simplify some of the
tasks of running a business. Their goal is to provide these
services at affordable, pragmatic rates based on effort
involved, rather than arbitrary costs based on number of
pages or hours.

Article Source:

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dustin_Schwerman

http://EzineArticles.com/?Custom-Website-Design---The-Cost&id=718950

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-14T03:14:00.000-07:00

Graphic Website Design- How You Can Do It Yourself Fast, Easily and Cheap Over and Over
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Christopher_James]Christopher James

Graphic website design is not as hard as it sounds. With a little professional touch and very short learning curve, within minutes, you can get your self into web site graphic design in a way you never imagined if you know the exact secrets of doing it. I am here to tell you exactly how you can supercharge your graphic website design portfolio if you are not a professional, by revealing to you how you can leverage the work of expert graphic designers with web site design skills to create the kind of websites that artists who design graphic websites are paid highly for. At the end you will be able to use this knowledge to design your personal graphic web site.

To start with, it is a fact that you cannot design an affordable design in few minutes without first learning about things like color matches and other technical junks that people will admire and respect, this is why you need professional quality. This problem can easily be overcome by getting blank graphic designs that is created by professional graphic designers, then inserting your specific needs by following simple instructions a little child will understand, such as, click here-save-export and so on.

For example, if what you need on your site is a header, then get blank headers that are created by professionals; if you want your color match to be blue, then get a blue blank header. If your header text is “ get fast solution to chicken recipes here”, then insert the text into the blank header and so on. Do this for ecovers, logos, brochures and other graphic website designs. You will get a professional quality website graphic design only those in the know use.

Once you get your blank graphics, you need a system such as software to simplify the process for you. With software, by choosing just your colors, fonts, shadows, bevels and any other style you want, you will see your graphic in few minutes completed.

This is the excellent secret many graphic designers don’t want you to discover. You can get these blanks from graphic design websites on the net. However, the best graphic design website I know that can give you lots of excellent header, logo and ecovers, together with or without pictures is found at the link below.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Christopher_James http://EzineArticles.com/?Graphic-Website-Design--How-You-Can-Do-It-Yourself-Fast,-Easily-and-Cheap-Over-and-Over&id=722416

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

Why Your Website Needs a Great Navigation System
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Dominic_Foster]Dominic Foster

Traditionally the navigation menu is placed just below the header area or on the left hand side of the web page. Usability studies have shown that web site visitors instinctively look in these areas first.

Wherever you decide to place your navigation menu, remember that consistency is important. The most important thing is to place your navigation menu in the same spot on every one of your web pages. If you use an image to represent a navigational button, use the same image and the same color for that image on each page of your website. For example, if you use an image of a green house in the left hand corner of your web page as your "Home" navigational link, use the same green house image in the left hand corner of every one of your web pages to designate the "Home" link.

Your visitor should be able to find what they are looking for within 3 clicks of your home page. This is usually not a problem for small sites. However, if you have a large site with many pages, you will need to design a navigation menu that provides access to all areas of your website without getting your visitor lost or confused.

You may want to use a bread crumb trail type of navigation system for large sites (Homepage > Category > Subcategory > Content). Another option is to use a dynamic menu that changes according to the page your visitor is, but be aware that search engines may not be able to spider sites using dynamic menus.

Usability studies have shown that a navigation menu should contain no more than 8 links. The more choices a user is given, the more difficult it will be for them to make a decision. Also, if you have many links, your visitor may get the impression that your site is complicated and difficult to navigate.

If you have only a few links, use mouse rollovers to visually enhance your website. You will need to add some Javascript that pre-loads the rollover images and then add "onMouseover" events to your image links. Alternatively, use CSS for text rollovers that change the link color when the mouse cursor hovers over a link.

Navigation links should be considered the most important part of your website for two reasons:

1) They are used by your visitor to find content on your site.

2) They are used by search engines to spider your site.

The reason users visit your site is to get information. If visitors can't find the information they are searching for, they will click away, perhaps never to return again.

While different search engines have different rules on how they spider and rank a site, basically a "bot" or "spider" will visit a site, search for a "HREF" link and follow the links to other pages, indexing the pages as it goes along. If the "bot" or "spider" doesn't find a "HREF" tag on a page, it is blocked from going any deeper into the site. As you can see, you need to design your navigational system so that a search engine can spider all pages of your website.

When designing your website, take the extra time to design a good navigational system. It is vital to your success!

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dominic_Foster http://EzineArticles.com/?Why-Your-Website-Needs-a-Great-Navigation-System&id=228306

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

CSS Website Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=David_Sielicki]David Sielicki

Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS for short) have slowly but surely become a website design standard over the past few years. It was not that many years ago that people used Frames to position their content across their web pages and Tables gradually replaced this. Many low-end website developers are still very comfortable with Tables, as it ‘does what it says on the tin’. However, more and more people are now moving over to CSS, as virtually all the layout options can be achieved using the code.

One major problem with CSS is that not all Web browsers produce the same results and it has not been helped in the past by the various browsers employing their own way of interpreting certain CSS conventions. You can think your CSS design looks OK in the current version of your preferred browser and can then be crestfallen when you view your Web pages in another version that has destroyed the formatting. Therefore, when moving over to CSS, it is important that you use the capabilities that are consistently supported across the entire range of popular browsers. It is interesting that the new version 7 of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has fixed a number of earlier anomalies, but many people are now waking up to the reality that IE7 has in fact caused problems arising from their earlier workarounds!

So why not bother with CSS, if Tables work for you? The principal advantages are as follows:

1. Web page code is generally much easier to follow;

2. The amount of code used to achieve the same result is much less. The general view is that by switching to a CSS layout, the typical page size reduction is between 50 - 60 per cent;

3. Download speeds for CSS pages are generally faster than their Table-driven counterparts. This is because browsers have to read through the table code twice before they are able to display the contents. They do this firstly to figure out the structure and then again to understand the content. It should also be recognised that a Table's contents can only be presented to the screen in one go, whereas CSS content will drop in separately, thereby giving a better user experience. It is also possible to govern the order in which specific screen elements appear, so the user is not distracted by the more bulky and slower to load image files. Furthermore, because all the code involved with CSS page layout is held in one external CSS document and is cached, it is faster than Table layouts that need to be interpreted every time a new page is displayed;

4. It is much easier to edit existing pages and to add new pages, particularly in the area of subtle formatting amendments. For example, you can change the font or colour scheme across an entire website in literally minutes;

5. CSS delivers enhanced accessibility. In recent years the number of people using web browsers on hand-held devices has risen significantly and CSS plays an important function in delivering content to PDA's etc through additional CSS documents. This just isn't possible with Table-driven layouts;

6. CSS is considered to be more Search Engine friendly because they can spider CSS pages quicker. However, it remains to be seen if this has any tangible benefits such as an improvement on the your page ranking.

On the flipside, there are a few disadvantages to CSS web page design you should consider:

1. As compared with Tables, CSS involves a much bigger learning curve;

2. Because of cross browser support issues, the time spent implementing workarounds should not be underestimated;

3. New browser versions can catch website developers napping if you are not careful. You can find that earlier workarounds have been overcome and the look of your website has changed overnight.

Ultimately, your decision on whether or not to move over to see CSS will probably depend on your level of technical capability and the time you're able to devote to understanding CSS layout alternatives.

David Sielicki is Features Editor with [http://www.fetcher.co.uk/] Fetcher the UK’s products and services directory. He is also a freelancer with [http://www.webaffinity.net/] Web Affinity

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Sielicki http://EzineArticles.com/?CSS-Website-Design&id=406359

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-04T03:05:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design - 8 Steps to Web Site Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=James_Krawder]James Krawder

If you are interested in web site design, there are 8 steps that you need to understand when it comes to web site design. By coming to an understanding of these 8 important steps, you will be well on your way to enjoying web site design success.

1. When it comes to web site design success, you need to make sure that you understand how to make a web site visually appealing.

2. In addition, in your efforts towards quality web site design, you need to ensure that any web site you build is user friendly. How easy is it for your visitors to use.

3. Content is fundamental when it comes to your web site design efforts. You must ensure that the content is interesting, informative and entertaining as necessary.

4. Along these same lines, you will also want to make sure that you apply search engine optimization principles to the creation of the content for your website.

5. As part of your web site design efforts, you need to ensure that you properly install metatags appropriately throughout your web site.

6. Of course, as part of your web site domain efforts, you need to make certain that you select an appropriate domain name for your web site.

7. Consider adding keyword enriched articles to your web site in order to enhance the amount of traffic that is drawn to your website.

8. Make certain that if you are interested in professional web site design that you set up a solid technical support system for your clients.

Use these eight steps to design your web site and you will be on your way to web site success.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Krawder http://EzineArticles.com/?Web-Site-Design---8-Steps-to-Web-Site-Design&id=701916

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-03T05:34:00.000-07:00

The Advantages For You In A Custom Web Site Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins]Lee Hopkins

A custom web site design is a great asset to any business, regardless of its size. It not only brings more customers to your business, but also makes people remember your company. To develop web site materials that are creative, unique and compelling, you are giving your business the edge it needs to compete with other businesses. A custom web site design also gives your business that professional appearance customers trust.

You can find several companies online that will create a custom web site design made specifically for your company. At www.intrinzicdesignz.com, you can create a website design by picking a pre-made template that is relevant to the services or products that your business offers. This online company offers you the opportunity to develop web site materials by yourself -- so you can be sure that your website will be unique and specific to your business. They also have a custom administration area so you can maintain your custom web site design by yourself. With reasonable prices and a website design by you, this is an ideal way to promote your company's products.

Another online company that will develop web site materials for you is www.customwebsitedesign.com. This custom web site design company has a long name but it provides a great service to businesses needing custom web site designs. They offer a variety of graphics and information that you can put on your website and offer buying and selling options for customers who visit your page. Their custom web site designs are attention-grabbing and give potential customers a reason to return for more.

Several online companies provide custom web site design services. The professionals at www.webdesignoffice.us are no exception. These highly-trained designers can give you the best possible custom web site design to increase your customer base and give you a competitive edge against others in your industry. You can also be sure that their affordable rates and packages are ideal to fit your custom web site design needs, while still working within your budget.

Custom web site designs are vital to the success of a company in today's online world. You can do a custom web site design yourself, but hiring a custom web site design company will give you that extra touch of professionalism. It will also save you time -- so you can concentrate on making your products and services superior to that of your competitors instead.

Lee Hopkins the author of over 130 articles on business communication, and is recognised world-wide as one of Australia's leading experts in online business communication, including Social Media or Web2.0 as it's also known as.

To connect with him, please call him on +61 8121 4444 any hour of the day or night; if he's asleep you can leave a voice message!

Visit his site at http://www.LeeHopkins.com to find many more articles on business communication. Whilst there, why not pick up a complimentary copy of his 'Social Media White Paper', which explains all about this latest seismic change to the business communication landscape!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins http://EzineArticles.com/?The-Advantages-For-You-In-A-Custom-Web-Site-Design&id=640266

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-02T23:04:00.000-07:00

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-09-01T04:21:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design - 4 First Steps to Web Site Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize]Sean R Mize

The internet can rightly be considered as the most important source of information exchange and sharing today. The number of websites on the World Wide Web is rising constantly. As a result of this ever increasing number of web sites, the field of web designing is becoming very important now. Never before was it as important as it is today. As the number of web sites is increasing at a very fast pace, all web sites need their unique selling points to stay in business. If they do not pay all due attention towards these small points, they will not be able to survive the competition. This is the reason that web site designing has become as very important art and science in the present world.

If you want to design a web site for your web base business, you can either design it yourself or you can hire a professional who can help you in this regard. Your web site can be a really good one if you pay close attention towards those issues which are vital to the success of your online business. First of all, you need to be sure about your business’s requirements. If your business is a selling business, you need a specific type of web site, if it is entertainment oriented; your web site needs to be designed in an entirely different way. Once the frame work is there, you must pay attention towards the space you have on your web site. You can sell some space to other web sites by placing their links on your web site.

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Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize http://EzineArticles.com/?Web-Site-Design---4-First-Steps-to-Web-Site-Design&id=650652

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-30T02:26:00.000-07:00

Profitable Web Site - Designing Your Web Site to Make it Profitable
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=James_Krawder]James Krawder

The way your website is designed can help you or hinder you in making more profit from it. If you want your website to make money for you, you need to design it properly. There are certain web designs which allow you a greater leverage to earn lots of profits from the websites. You must pay close attention to the design of your website to make it more profitable for your self.

The internet business can give you lots of profit if you are able to make your website search engine friendly and also if you are able to generate more traffic. If your websites has a number of visitors, the chances of getting more business increase. In this way the chances of seeing an increase in the volume of business increase. If you can achieve this target, there will be a lot of other ways as well which can help you in generating money out of your website. The design of your website should be friendly with the mechanism which the most popular search engines se.

The test of your website design is that when a search engine tries to search some relevant information, does your website lands in the top ten? If yes, it is perfectly designed to get more traffic and as a result it can give you lots of business not only by the increase in the sales but also by providing promotional support to other websites. The way your website is designed can be the key to success for your online business.

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Krawder http://EzineArticles.com/?Profitable-Web-Site---Designing-Your-Web-Site-to-Make-it-Profitable&id=549458

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-29T03:35:00.000-07:00

Quick Web Site Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize]Sean R Mize

With the Internet daily visited by billions of people worldwide, web site designers are becoming increasingly popular. No wonder why so many people are dying to have a very competitive website. If you are a web site designer who wants your expertise become more rewarding, here are some tips for you.

1. Find the right client. Having talent for web designing isn’t enough but finding the right clients can make it more lucrative. There are big and well known websites looking for talented people like you. Clients can also be found in a number or freelancing sites that offer good money.

2. On presenting yourself to your potential clients, make sure to show them your updated portfolio and proficiency. Never leave a client unsatisfied. It will be for sure that recommendations for your services to other clients will happen if you make it a habit in making your clients happy and feel satisfied with what they got. Be sure to ask them for referrals. They might know some people who own websites who might require your services.

3. Always make it a point to update yourself with the latest web designing trends and keep up with the competition in your area of expertise. There are free tutorials you can take advantage of or you can just attend proper schooling if need be.

4. Be sure to price your work correctly. Charging too much, your potential clients might see you as overconfident. Charging too little, they may think you don’t have confidence in your work. The level of competition keeps on getting higher with so many great web designers in the Internet. You should be able to present superb service that is priced sensibly.

5. There are also affiliate programs you can involve yourself with. You will be given a percentage of profit by many websites if your site points to theirs and assist them in making some revenue. Charging membership fees can be an option especially if you have excellent quality content on your website and you can limit access to a certain part of your site.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: [http://www.secrets-of-internet-success.com/ezwebdesign.html]Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize http://EzineArticles.com/?Quick-Web-Site-Design&id=693411

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-27T00:22:00.000-07:00

Some Little-Known Facts About Website Design and Hosting Companies
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins]Lee Hopkins

To start a website, you can either do it yourself or you can utilize the services of a website design and hosting company. Rather than looking amateurish, though, a website design and hosting company will create professional graphics and components for your website. This will help your appear more professional in the business world and cause website visitors to remember your page and tell others about it.

If you want to plan a website for yourself or for personal purposes, you will still need to get a website design hosting company. Without a website design and hosting company, you can develop web site materials all you want, but nobody will ever see them. For a monthly or even annual fee, you can get a website design hosting company to host your website so it can be accessible by anybody using the internet.

For whatever purposes you want to use your new website for, a website design and hosting company can fulfill all your needs. If you are designing a website for your small business, a website design and hosting company will provide you with a quality website and hosting services that are convenient and specific to your business needs. Whether you're developing a blogging website or just a personal website, a website design hosting company can meet those needs, too.

If you shop and compare, you can likely find a website design and hosting company that is affordable and fits your budget. Website design and hosting companies provide flexible and unique services that fit your needs, too. You tell the website design and hosting company what you want for your particular website. Then their highly-skilled consultants develop web materials that are specific to your company's services and products to help produce the best possible results. The website design and hosting company that you hire works for you and if you are not satisfied with their services, there are many more companies to choose from.

Today, a business cannot be competitive without an online presence. A website design and hosting company makes this possible. With affordable rates and flexibility, a website and design company can provide businesses of any size with a site that fits their needs. Similarly, if you just want a site for your personal use, a website design and hosting company can help you with that, too. Websites are not only beneficial to businesses, but they can be a fun way to keep in touch with family and friends, too.

Lee Hopkins the author of over 130 articles on business communication, and is recognised world-wide as one of Australia's leading experts in online business communication, including Social Media or Web2.0 as it's also known as.

To connect with him, please call him on +61 8121 4444 any hour of the day or night; if he's asleep you can leave a voice message!

Visit his site at http://www.LeeHopkins.com to find many more articles on business communication. Whilst there, why not pick up a complimentary copy of his 'Social Media White Paper', which explains all about this latest seismic change to the business communication landscape!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Lee_Hopkins
http://EzineArticles.com/?Some-Little-Known-Facts-About-Website-Design-and-Hosting-Companies&id=640269

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-25T05:04:00.000-07:00

Adhering to Web Standards to Improve Business
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ashish_Sinha]Ashish Sinha

Taking web standards into account when designing a web site may not be a primary concern for many site owners, but when it comes to finding an extra edge to improve their business, they are more than willing to do anything required to increase revenues. Let's see how complying with Web standards can help a business web site.

What are the Web Standards?

On the Web, the main standards are the languages used when creating web sites. The most wide-spread ones are HTML, XHTML and CSS. HTML or XHTML are used to create the backbone of web sites - the structure. CSS, in turn, is used to style, format and position the structure and content.

What is Web Standards Compliance?

Put simply, web standards compliance is using web languages correctly. This involves using HTML tags properly and the way they were and are intended to be used. For instance, one of the most common mistakes against the web standards is using table tags for layout, while the correct usage is to use them only for tabular data (information to be put in tables).

Advantages of Web Standards Compliance

Creating quality, Web standards compliant code has a number of benefits:

• Web site forward compatibility

• Web site increased site download speed

• Web site browser compatibility

• Web site easier site maintenance

• Web site broader target audience

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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ashish_Sinha http://EzineArticles.com/?Adhering-to-Web-Standards-to-Improve-Business&id=676342

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-24T01:53:00.000-07:00

Is Flash Design Really That Bad?
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=John_Melwak]John Melwak

Flash design has been a controversial issue among Web designers for a long time. Most designers I have spoke with either love it or hate it. It seems to be there is no in the middle here. Well, for the designers that like flash (one of them being me) things are changing - slowly changing may I add. New products from Macromedia and new search engine technology may be shifting the way to flash. Designers are discovering that it is possible to add Flash to Web pages without sacrificing either accessibility or search engine promotion.

Let me give you some examples of using flash in a way that can compromise your design.

1. Entire site being designed in flash is a definite "NO NO" for the search engines.

2. Using flash navigation systems without having a secondary HTML navigation.

3. Large flash intro pages that have a No “Skip Intro” button.

Keeping design in mind usually what's bad for search engines is bad for actual visitors on your site.

You can design great visual effects in flash but what good is it besides it looks pretty to the search engines. The search engines cannot see all the flashy and sparkling moving images and text. What this means is that content is not being seen by the all important spiders. Thest spiders are fed to our websites from popular search engines such as google and yahoo. Right now these spiders go through our html code and look for links to the next pages. With flash there is no html with links so the spiders cannot go to the next pages and move on to the next site. Right there your site has not been indexed and will not show in the search engines, or maybe it will, one page being the index. This is not good as you want the search engines to index every single page on your website. After all, the more pages you have out there the better the chances of someone finding your website.

Lets move on to using flash in your design that will NOT compromise the search engine spiders.

1. Always have a “skip intro” button if you do have flash intros. I suggest not to have flash intro at all, the visitors patience if there connection is on the slower end is very low. 90% of them will move on to a new site if you intro is not up in a couple of seconds.

2. Use the accessibility features of Flash MX. I dont use flash MX anymore, there is a newer flash version out. Designers can actually add descriptive text that will be read aloud by technologies that are equipped with Flash Player 6. It helps but does not guarantee spiders will read it.

3. Try to consider using flash to enhance your web pages, instead of creating full flash websites of full flash pages. You want to give search engines what they want, and right now its html, css, text links, alt image tags and of course your title and description.

4. Use flash to add interest and interactivity. Make a flash tutorial or demo with the text in html under the flash movie.

Well thats pretty much it. If your going for the flashy designs and love flash, go for it! Just remember to include text and content links combined with your flash so your site gets properly indexed.

www.webcoastconcepts.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_Melwak http://EzineArticles.com/?Is-Flash-Design-Really-That-Bad?&id=680183

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

Quality Website Content
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Theresa_Momber]Theresa Momber

Keep it simple. People using the internet are looking for quick easy information. Give it to them. The typical internet user wants to sift through quickly to find what they need. If they click on your site from a search engine and it takes more than about 1.5 seconds to load, there’s a good chance they’ll hit backup before they even get a chance to see what you have to offer. Resist the urge to load your site with large image files and impressive Flash files which will just drive potential traffic away. Strive to keep your load time short.

Keep it easy to read. If they wanted to read a book they’d go straight to Barnes & Noble. Keep your content short and easy to find. Long paragraphs are your enemy. Stick to short paragraphs and sentences. Make use of bullets and numbering. Make keywords bold in select locations. Use italics where appropriate. The typical web browser is skimming. Make it easy for them.

Be original. Write your own articles if at all possible. Search engines love unique content and you can improve your rankings if your site has a great deal of original content. If you are not confident in your skills as a writer, consider asking someone for help or even hire a local college student. Just give them a bullet list of points you want to make and ask them to write it up for you.

Use spell check. Any decent word processor will have a spell check function as well as a grammar check function. Make use of them. You want your website to look professional and misspelled words say to viewers that you are unprofessional, incompetent and untrustworthy. It’s harsh, but true.

Proof read. Don’t rely on spell checker alone. There are a great many spelling and grammar mistakes that word processors will not pick up. You may have a missing word, duplicate word, phrase or sentence. You may have simply used the wrong word like ‘too’ instead of ‘two.’ Get someone else to proof read for you. It’s harder to catch your own mistakes than someone else’s.

Keep it relevant. Make sure your content is consistent with the aim of your website. Make sure it is relevant to the needs of your viewer. If your website is selling garden products, it might be best to avoid writing articles about your favorite sports team. You can start a new website for that.

Keep it current. Don’t let your content get out of date. Review your articles regularly and update as needed. Check to make sure your facts are still true. If you have links to outside websites, and you should, make sure they are still active. Make sure any contact information on your site is up to date. When you are finished reviewing, start again.

To learn more please visit http://cashcrafters.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Theresa_Momber http://EzineArticles.com/?Quality-Website-Content&id=675187

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-22T00:29:00.000-07:00

Website Designing Factor For Seo Friendly Website
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Neyaz_Alam]Neyaz Alam

* Using of Frames - Frames can impact many SEO-related issues as the separation of URLs can devalue the links coming to the page(s) and dilute the ranking power of a single document over multiples. There are technology solutions like CSS that can make framed pages usable, but classic HTML frames are particularly difficult to rank at the search engines.

* Avoid subdirectories - If there are not too many pages on your site (up to a couple of dozen), it is best to place them all in the root directory of your site. Search engines consider such pages to be more important than ones in subdirectories

* Graphic header - Very often sites are designed with a graphic header. Often, we see an image of the company logo occupying the full-page width. Do not do it! The upper part of a page is a very valuable place where you should insert your most important keywords for best seo.

* Graphic navigation menu - Internal links on your site should contain keywords, which will give an additional advantage in seo ranking. If your navigation menu consists of graphic elements to make it more attractive, search engines will not be able to index the text of its links. If it is not possible to avoid using a graphic menu, at least remember to specify correct ALT attributes for all images

Speeding Up Your Web Page

* Images - A good rule of thumb is to strive for no one image being larger than 10 Kb. you should call them in your HTML with the height and width specified in the image tag.

* HTML - Once you have your images down to a reasonable size, try streamlining your HTML. You will find sites out on the Internet that advocate removing all extraneous tags, to the point of removing the final and . You can remove all the unnecessary attributes created by some editors, and use the defaults of tags as much as possible.

* Page size - With small images and clean HTML, you can still end up with a page that takes forever to download because there is so much information. If you are striving for a speedy download, limit your page total size (including images) to about 30 Kb.

* Tables - Nested tables are a common cause of slow pages. They are so tempting to use as they improve the layout enormously, but they take a long time for the browser to render. It's not that the page didn't download, but with multiple tables in tables, the browser has to work harder to display the page. It cannot display any part of the page in the tables until it has figured out how to render all the tables that are nested.

Optimizing Bandwidth and Cleaning Out the Code

* Unwanted Spaces - we cleaned up in our website recently to save space and bandwidth. Spaces between tags are usually invisible on the screen, but they take up space. Check spaces If your web page editor permits multiple page search and replace, search and replace them

* Image Borders - By default, images do not have borders, but many web page editors automatically insert border="0" in their image tags. This adds up to 10 bytes per image which can be eliminated. The instructions for borders on images can be put into the style sheet if necessary.

* Excessive Comments - Web designers often use comments to help them with the layout of their coding in their HMTL and CSS pages. These are great, but they also take up space. Consider leaving them in your template pages and eliminating them in your final pages.

* Excessive Tabs - . It can help make the code easier to read but using bandwidth so remove all unnecessary tabs.

Neyaz Alam

SEO Expert http://www.varshyltech.com ( website designing company India )

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neyaz_Alam http://EzineArticles.com/?Website-Designing-Factor-For-Seo-Friendly-Website&id=667648

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

Web Designer? You Don't Need No 'Stinkin' Web Designer!
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Ron_Scott]Ron Scott

RIVERSIDE, CA August 4, 2004 –- “Historically, small business owners have had a limited number of options to choose from when it comes to the development of an on-line presence,” says Pat Spinelli, owner of The Web Site Tutor, a Riverside, California 1. web site design and training firm.

According to Spinelli, “Until now, small Southern California business owners have had two choices. They have had to out-source the development of their web sites to a professional or sign up with a hosting company offering ‘free’ on-line templates. If they have an unlimited source of funds and the need for a dynamic, interactive site, outsourcing is definitely their best bet.”

“Entrepreneurs who are working with limited funds, however, have a need to look at less costly alternatives,” she says.

“Until now the only real alternatives to costly outsourcing have been on-line templates,” she says, “but most on-line templates have three major drawbacks. To use them one has to sign up for a year’s hosting at three to four times the ordinary cost, most templates offer limited functionality, and most cannot be optimized for search engines without a knowledge of HTML."

The Web Site Tutor offers an interesting alternative. “We believe we are the first company in Southern California to offer on-site tutorials and on-going marketing assistance which can save undercapitalized business ventures not only a great deal of money but provide them with a far greater degree of control and flexibility,” she says.

According to Spinelli, web design is child’s play. “We can teach anyone who is reasonably computer literate how to design a functional web site in four hours or less and at a fraction of the cost of outsourcing,” she says.

Building a functional site, however, is only the beginning of the process. According to Spinelli, “A well designed site has to be optimized as it is built and that is probably the most important part of our training program.”

“All too often, small business owners hire someone to design a web site, get their sites marginally optimized and then registered with search engines. And the process ends there because they have been led to believe that this is all that needs to be done to build a successful on-line business.

“Successful sites are driven by on-going promotional campaigns that go beyond these essentials," she said.

“We keep our clients abreast of the latest promotional strategies that will drive traffic to their sites both in the near and long term," she continues.

Before business owners spend a penny on a web site, Spinelli recommends they review 10 key questions designed to help budding entrepreneurs decide whether a web site is a wise investment. See Key Questions.

The Web Site Tutor’s tutorial program carries a no risk guarantee. After the company's initial tutorial session and 30 days thereafter, if a business owner decides to abandon the in-house development process, they will take over the site and credit the cost of training to its completion.

At the present time The Web Site Tutor’s tutorial services are restricted to Southern California. They start with a four-hour training session and are followed by 30 days of on-going technical and marketing support.

Copyright 2002 Ron Scott, The Web Site Tutor, [http://www.websitetutoring.com]www.websitetutoring.com. This article may be reproduced in any form whatsoever as long as it is attributed to the author.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ron_Scott [http://ezinearticles.com/?Web-Designer?--You-Dont-Need-No-Stinkin-Web-Designer!&id=46 ]http://EzineArticles.com/?Web-Designer?--You-Dont-Need-No-Stinkin-Web-Designer!&id=46

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-19T23:21:00.000-07:00

Should I Post Coaching Fees on My Website?
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Kenn_Schroder]Kenn Schroder

Someone you just met offers to sell you an empty box for a hundred and fifty bucks.

You look at him as if he's crazy.

That's what it's like when a random visitor comes to your coaching website, sees your fee is $150 per hour, and then is asked to contact you about becoming a client.

The problem is that your fees are presented "out of proper context."

By "out of proper context," I mean that your website visitors see your fees but can't see what they're actually getting for that fee. In other words, they don't see value you provide.

And, who wants to pay $150 for an empty box? No one.

So what should you do?

Fill the box with value!

You need to make sure that prospective clients can see, feel, smell, and taste the value you provide as a coach. You need to make sure that they understand what they're getting, and why they should hire you.

Well, how do you do that?

First, accept this harsh reality: People aren't looking for a coach; they're looking for solutions to their problems. And saying, "I'm a coach and my hourly fee is $150" is, from their point of view, an empty box with a price tag.

So, to fill the box with value, you need to present what you do in terms of what they want - the elimination of painful problems and the attainment of desired results.

On the elimination of painful problems: People know their problems intimately. They love to share them with their friends. They are always on the lookout for how to solve them. They feel the impact of their problems daily. They want help. Thus, showing you can eliminate problems is tremendously valuable.

On the attainment of results: While results are often more difficult to visualize, when people begin to see what's possible, they get very excited. This is what they really want. This is where they see value.

Therefore, on your website, before you present fees, show them you can solve problems and attain results.

Here are more ideas to really stuff that box with value:

Build trust through multiple interactions over time (ex. newsletter, autoresponders). Educate them with helpful information like articles.Provide coaching credentials and point out why they are valuable. Show your professional associations - familiarity is good.Give examples of others you've helped - it proves your value. Ask questions and invite communication. Listening and caring is very valuable.

What's the key to all of this? Make sure that you put your services in proper perspective - value versus cost. Only then can potential clients make a fair decision to hire you or not. Fill that box with value!

Kenn Schroder helps coaches who are struggling to attract clients. He provides web design, web marketing and search engine optimization to help you build a client-attracting coaching website. Get your FREE report and FREE newsletter to help you build a practice full of clients. http://www.CoachingSitesThatWork.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kenn_Schroder http://EzineArticles.com/?Should-I-Post-Coaching-Fees-on-My-Website?&id=687293

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-18T02:41:00.000-07:00

Finding The Perfect Web Design Agency
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Gabriel_J._Adams]Gabriel J. Adams

Before you start on your search for the perfect web design agency, it is important to have a clear idea of what your goal for your web site will be. Based on your goals, you will be able to better focus on the individual qualities and characteristics that various web design agencies bring to the table.

In general, there are four basic business objectives that creating a website can accomplish. These include:

Gain new customers and retain old ones

Sell products to new target markets

Reduce the amount of paperwork and administrative duties you have to perform

Increase the awareness of your product

More than likely, you hope to have a website that can accomplish all of these tasks. Nonetheless, you will likely have one area that is of particular importance to you. While this may change as your company changes and your customer base expands, you need to go into the planning of your website with clear objectives.

Once you have determined the main purpose of your website, you can then set out to find a web design agency that can best help you meet those goals. Believe it or not, you might not always select the same web design agency to work with for your business. As your business goals change, you might find it better to utilize the talents of a different web design agency that has more experience with that particular area of business and web design.

Regardless of the web design agency you select, the better understanding you have of what you are looking for, the more smoothly the web design process will go. Of course, you may not have the exact details of the design created in your mind. After all, that is part of why you are hiring a professional to help you with the job. At the same time, you should take the time to sit down and chat with the professional about your goals and about the general philosophy of your business. That way, you will be sure to have a great site up that reflects your business in as short of time as possible.

Need a good web design agency? Visit http://www.nationalwebdesign.co.uk/

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Gabriel_J._Adams http://EzineArticles.com/?Finding-The-Perfect-Web-Design-Agency&id=683300

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-17T03:55:00.000-07:00

Profitable Web Site Design - Advanced Ways to Make More Money With Web Site Design
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=James_Krawder]James Krawder

Web site design is just growing bigger and more profitable by the second with the booming number of websites that are mushrooming on the web every single day; the web is growing larger and can accommodate everyone. Using your website to attract other opportunities is the crux of profitable web site design.

1. If you are a good graphics designer or know how to make website templates you can indeed make a profit selling graphics and templates. If you are interested in learning to create your own graphics and templates you can learn good graphic creation software like Photoshop for example.

2. You can also participate in affiliate programs. There are many sites who will give you a percentage of their profits if your site points to theirs and that helps them make a sale.

3. You can also design entire sites for people, including the graphics. For that all your need to know is basic HTML and if you wish to pursue this on a professional level you can also learn the workings of popular shopping cart software for people who have small businesses and need a good site designer.

4. If you have good, quality content on your website you can restrict access to a certain part of your site for which you can charge a membership fee. This is of course only after you have enjoyed a certain amount of success with your content that you can expect people to pay for your content.

5. You can also offer a pay-per-use service. Renting a service is equally popular as is selling one and you can have customers coming back or recommending others.

Want to learn more about it? Download the free ebook, [http://www.secretsofim.com/7Steps.htm]Steps to Article Marketing Success.

Do you want to learn how to build a massive list fast? Click here: [http://www.secrets-of-internet-success.com/listbuilding.htm]Email List Building

Want to learn more about driving traffic like I do? Download my free traffic guide here: [http://www.secrets-of-internet-success.com/tripleyourtrafficfast.htm]Traffic Generation

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=James_Krawder http://EzineArticles.com/?Profitable-Web-Site-Design---Advanced-Ways-to-Make-More-Money-With-Web-Site-Design&id=663822

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-16T02:05:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design Color For You
By Maricon Williams

Color is an attitude. It can make you strong, weak, wild,
wanting, passionate and complete. Colors can influence our
behavior, feelings and psyche. In fact, colors are oftentimes
used as treatment to psychotics and other mentally incapacitated
persons.

However, when it comes to web designing, many designers
overlook the enigmatic power of colors. It can bring life to any
image, text or graphics. It can create the atmosphere needed in
order to capture the viewer's decision and loyalty. These are
the reasons why colors should be on our topmost list of things
that need to be considered in mounting a web site. You don't
want a drab looking site, do you? It will appear, melancholic,
chaotic, plain and boring. Thus, colors must be chosen in order
to complement the site's ambiance, feelings and purpose.

Web browsers only see 256 colors. However, there are times when
the number may not appear as such because no browser shares the
same 256-color pallet. Nowadays, web browsers are sharing 216
common colors. Thus, in order to complement to other web
browsers, web designers must stick to the 216-color pallet. If
they go beyond this color pallet, chances are the colors may not
exist on other browser. In order for the browser to display that
particular color, it will need tiny dots from the colors native
to the browser. The process is called dithering. Unfortunately,
this will result to the distortion of some tiny dots. Further,
this will make the image appear speckled and without a solid
color. In connection to texts, dithering will make them blurry
and hard to read.

Verdict: Web designers must use browser safe color when using
solid color as a design element. However, caution must be
exercised.

There are times when we feel we are tricked by our eyes. In
fact there is what we call mirage? An optical illusion and there
is a long list of optical illusions that can otherwise trick us.
But there are times when we are neither tricked or deceived in
fact it is an act of science. How do this happen?

At the back of our eyes, there is a thin layer of tissue. This
layer of tissue contains millions of tiny light-sensing nerve
cells which are called rods and cones. Our eyes have ample
decoding cones. These cones are the ones responsible for
responding to specific wavelengths of light. Say, when you look
at a red box, the cones that have detected the red wavelength
become exhausted and fatigued. As a result, opposite cones in
the eyes start to enter and different colors are made apparent.

Eye fatigue is one of the important considerations in designing
a web site. Thus, avoid colors that are tiring to the eyes. It
can result to disaster and can further result to giving of wrong
notion or idea to the viewers. Colors like red and yellow,
strains the eye faster than any other colors. Thus, limit the
use of these colors. Use them on areas that need emphasis and
focus. This will surely pull viewers attention. Other that those
areas - a big no-no!

About the Author: Please visit Web Development Services Pros
site at http://www.webdevelopmentpros.com for comments and
inquiries regarding this article.

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-14T04:53:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design
By Peter Hartley

These days if you are in business and don't have a website you
are missing out on an abundance of customers. Everyone that has
a computer in their house will be using one of the search
engines (google, Yahoo, Msn etc.) to look for your business.
There are over 20 million searches done every hour on the
internet in the UK alone. If your business is not appearing on
these search engines then you are losing out to your competitors
that are looking for what you do.

You will be asking yourself I have done without a website till
now so why would I need one? It is a good question If you are
currently doing well with your business then that is great but
can anyone turn round and say that they don't want anymore
business? If you do say that then what happens if your business
starts to lose some customers then you will start to try and get
new business elsewhere. A website is THE way to generate extra
enquiries and more business than any other means of advertising.

More and more people these days are turning to local searches
and with broadband the internet is connected in their house 24
hours a day 7 days a week. In all honesty do you even know where
you keep your yellow pages anymore? There is really no need as
with the internet if you need a plumber in your area goto yahoo
and type in plumber ( your area ) and a list of sites will come
up with plumbers in your area. If you are a plumber how much
would you pay to have your site appearing on those searches
above your competitors? How much would that be worth to you in
business terms?

The answer is easy... A lot. 5 or 10 years ago that listing in
the yellow pages would mean as much to you as the listings you
get on the search engines today.

A website for your business could be for several different
reasons. You could use your website as a brochure to advertise
the products you offer how much more could you show on your
website compared to an advert in the paper? Instead of having a
few lines in the paper explaining your business you could have
10 or 20 pages outlining what you do and the products you offer
and give a more in depth description of all your products. For
an ad in your local paper for say 3 lines of text would cost you
say £50 for 1 week if you had your own website it would cost say
£250 per year and the website would be online and available to
view 24/7 365 days a year.

You could also use your website to keep your existing customers
in the know on exactly what you are offering. If your existing
customers go onto your website and sign up for your newsletter
everymonth you could email them any product updates you have. If
you don't have the time to email you could also have a news
section on your website that can be updated on a monthly basis
and that would allow your customers to log into your website and
view any updates since their last visit. New business is good to
develop but your existing customers are already doing business
with you so why not use your website to maximise the sales you
get from your existing customers.

All in all a website for your business is an essential to to
maximise profits for your business. To generate new business and
also to keep your existing customers up-to-date with any changes
or product ranges that they could be interested in. More
business or not the choice is yours.

About the Author: Peter Hartley has been designing websites
successfully for 3 years. For more information on prices and
packages please visit
http://www.lastminutevillaholiday.co.uk/web_design.htm

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-13T23:12:00.000-07:00

Web Site Design By Using A Template.
By Colin Visser

If you are like may others on the internet, then you would like
to have a web site of your own. The problem is, you don't know
how to design a web site, and you can't afford to pay a web site
designer to design a new site for you. So how do you get around
this problem? Actually it is very easy - and as always there are
options! There are many talented web designers on the internet,
and they will allow you to purchase a web site design from them
for a very reasonable price. The designs available to you are as
varied as the people that made them. There is literally
something for everyone - a design for all tastes and all
purposes - just waiting for you to come along and use it.

These pre written web sites are called web site templates, and
some of them are extremely well done. Web site templates are
usually created one of three ways - they are : Html, Adobe
Photoshop and Macromedia Flash. If you know how to edit html, a
template can be a quick and easy way to turn your ideas into a
new web site. I can already hear some of you saying "That's no
good to me, I can't write html!". That's ok! There is the
photoshop style of web site template that you can try. Do you
have a digital camera? Have you ever put a title on your photos?
Have you edited your pictures or made a collage out of them?
(multiple pictures joined into one..) If you have, then you can
probably make your own web site using Adobe Photoshop - or a
similar photo editing application. The photoshop templates do
all the initial design work for you, you just have to fill in
the text areas with whatever you want to say. It really isn't
that hard to do. The software will do most of the work, you just
need the 'content' to fill in the provided spaces. Have a go at
home using your own digital photos, and when you have made a
couple of pages download a photoshop template and make a
complete web site. Of course you will need someone to host your
new site, but as most ISP's include a small 'home page' area
with every account, you can probably put your new site there to
begin with. The next type of web site template uses Macromedia
Flash to create it. Web site templates designed using Flash are
usually animated and can have some quite advanced visual
effects. The downside to using Flash templates is they are not
really intended for novice web designers - the Flash software is
quite complicated - but the results can be well worth the
effort.

As a side note, search engines have a very poor understanding
of Flash web sites, and if you want to create a commercial or
business web site, then you would be better off using html or
photoshop for your design.

The final option for designing a web site by template is to
find a template that you like the look of, and have someone else
turn it into your web site. By purchasing a web site template
you will greatly reduce the cost of the design of you new web
site - and as a bonus, you will know from the start what it will
look like when it is finished :-)

When you use a template to design a new web site please be
aware that you are not the only person on the web that is using
that template. There could be other web sites using the same
design - but with the enormous number of web sites on the
internet it is unlikely that you will ever find one of those
sites. If you want to guarantee that your web site is completely
unique, then you need to design it yourself, of you will have to
get it designed just for you. Good luck with your new web site!

About the Author: Colin Visser is the owner of
http://webdziner.biz which has Web Templates | Free Software |
SEO Software | Scripts and Free Hit Counters for your web site.

Source: http://www.isnare.com

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-11T03:58:00.000-07:00

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Designs

2007-08-10T02:30:00.000-07:00

5 Web Site Development Tips to Turn the Tide In Your Favor
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Theresa_Cahill]Theresa Cahill

It always pays to be on the alert for sage advice from others, and recently I found something that got me thinking... and now sharing... with you.

In a nutshell, say you want to put together a website of any type - affiliate, shopping, books, clothing, retail, wholesale, etc.

Before you start ask yourself this most important question, "Who will be my competition?"

The answer is simple. Online you are up against the Barnes & Noble's, the Amazon's, the Wal-Mart's... the list is endless.

Will your little website scarf the business away from these biggies? Of course not. Don't even dream.

So what can you do? Here are five ideas to get your web site designed in the right direction:

1. Develop a website designed to draw your visitors in. Since you can't be the best in terms of traffic and pricing (not up against the giants of your industry) you need to come at your business from the opposite direction. For every customer you draw to your site, give them a reason to stick around and then come back for more. Free stuff works like a charm. But make sure it is quality free stuff or you're missing the point.

2. Pick a niche. Versus trying for a conglomerate of everything do your homework and research specifics! Be the only one on your block that provides CDE (not ABC) widgets. If they can only get them from you, or you have the best source, they must come to you. The narrower you focus your site, on keywords and terms people are searching for, the greater you up your odds of being successful online.

3. Speaking of keywords, pick the right ones. If you go to great lengths to design and develop the prettiest, best, etc., website all about XYZ widgets, but no one is looking for them, what good will that do you? Not a darn lick of good. So do your homework first, then set to the task of developing your website around searched-for terms.

4. Maybe you're coming at making money online from the wrong direction. Versus products and stuff, where once again people can go to Barnes & Noble or Wal-Mart, what the internet provides is the perfect arena for savvy marketers to develop informational websites. Think about it... students, teachers, your mother and aunts and uncles all get online to LOOK THINGS UP right? Why not develop first a site that supplies that searched for information and then, on the side, suggests products and services to further that cause? It's easier to get someone to first come read then to come buy - especially if you're an unknown starting out.

5. Have a plan and set aside a budget. Most people love the idea of having their own spot on the web, but if it can't be found among the billions (yes billions) of other web pages, what good is it? Marketing and advertising takes money, patience, and persistence - in that order! - to develop website recognition. Think about these costs before you pour your heart into your design. To "break even" online means covering your hosting, your design (time or hired help), product inclusion, research (again time which is money) and marketing and advertising. Too often hundreds if not thousands of dollars are spent up front only to leave the proud but now poor website owner without the means to market and advertise. A website gathering dust is no website at all.

Having your own spot online - and making money from that spot for some - is the goal and dream of many internet users. The reality is yes your dream can go from rambling around inside your brain to a "physically virtual" place online. Just be sure to do your homework up front to develop that website you've been dreaming about!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Theresa Cahill and her partner Jeff Greer invite you to make wise decisions when planning your next online move. [http://www.moltenmarketing.com]Marketing strategy is a skill not luck. Come visit us at [http://www.moltenmarketing.com]Molten Marketing for more information.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Theresa_Cahill http://EzineArticles.com/?5-Web-Site-Development-Tips-to-Turn-the-Tide-In-Your-Favor&id=648300

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Design

2007-08-09T04:18:00.000-07:00

Importance of Website Design and Development
By [http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Lepcha]Sharon Lepcha

A website is an online identity of a company or of an individual involved in Internet Marketing. The task associated with the website is to represent a company, sell company’s name, attract more visitors, generate more business leads, promote more sale of company’s products and services and ultimately, help to gain more return on investment.

In this era of advanced technology, electronic commerce have highly dominated the marketing practice, and due to easy availability and affordable cost of the Internet, people are running after it and making huge profit at the comfort of their home.

As a serious online business person, what is important for your business is, to prepare a website that is well designed, attractive, easy to navigate, highly usable, good content, full of relevant information, enough functionalities and are capable of retaining visitors for long and make them come back again.

We know, Web is the visual interface and what people look on the Web will be manipulated and interpreted into their mind and perception. So being a website designer and programmer, you must be careful about the use of color effects, lights, visual effects, positioning and size of contents and use of search engine friendly technology, so that people must remember your website name first and search you first on the Web.

To achieve all the above mentioned strategies, your website building needs a professional touch from qualified [http://www.midassoft.biz]website designers and developers who can put their best acquired knowledge and experience to make a suitable portal that can turn each visitors into potential buyers.

In fact, there are two types of website design such as, static and dynamic website design. You can opt for static as well as dynamic website design where former is based on simple HTML code and latter is developed with advanced and sophisticated technologies based on the information provided in the database. Dynamic website is actually selling these days, because apart from its beauty and diverse applicability, it gives the ease of quick and self information updating facility to site administrator without being proficient technically.

Another important factor for a well designed and programmed website is the quality search engine optimization service. Search engine optimization is the basis of search engine marketing success, because website optimization process spice-up the website with relevant keywords, facilitate one-way link, enhance link-popularity and place website at top or near the top of search engine result page that ultimately help in attracting motivated buyers and more traffic to website.

If you want to excel high in your online business, aforesaid strategies of website design and development must be dealt with great care. There are numerous such companies which can give promising website designing and development solution at an affordable rate, at the same time, false promise making dudes are also in plenty. For affordable Web site design and development services, you can even think of any offshore website design and development company with thorough research on their portfolios.

Sharon Lepcha is a content writer and an emerging author in the field of technology. She is associated with Midas Web Technologies, one of the best [http://www.midassoft.biz]web site design company in India specializing in software development, e-commerce web site design, web programming, custom application development, internet marketing, link building and professional [http://www.midassoft.biz/seo-india/seo-services-india.php]seo services.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sharon_Lepcha http://EzineArticles.com/?Importance-of-Website-Design-and-Development&id=357554

Illusion Technologies: Web Site Designers

2007-08-08T05:22:00.000-07:00