What Makes a Bad Website?

by: Corazon Padol


When you're surfing the Web, you probably only think about one thing when you look at a Web site: whether or not it's fun. Some of the website authors are wondering why there is a few visitors visit their site.

Here are some tips to avoid you from creating a bad website:

Before developing the website you have to planned first. Make a story board that will be your guide in developing the site. You must arrange the hierarchy of the most important links in the main page.

Most importantly, you must create a home page that presents a professional image to the world. Your home page would be the gateway to your site. It must look like a road map, the index and the table of contents that tells the visitors where to find the information they need to make them stay at your site. It would be the mirror of your company or organization. So, if the design is not good, that will be the the first impression to your company.

You have to figured out what are the important elements should be included on the page. It must have a unique and interesting content. You have to know who are your target audience and what are the things that will get the attention of your visitors. You have to think of something new and unique on your content to convince your visitors to stay.

Put significant informations in your site to give them a useful information that is appropriate in your site. You should be able to tell why a website exists, and what information it's trying to provide. If the purpose of the website is confusing or unclear, that's a good sign that you should look for a different site. The word must be spell correctly.

The design must be clean and stunning look that will impress your visitors. The design must depend on the kind of services that your site are offering. Avoid using of blinking text that will irritate the eyes of your visitors. Avoid also many graphics or images that will take long to load your page because some visitors maybe bored in waiting for your page to load. Use the text color that will be visible to your readers.

Your site must be easy to navigate. The buttons must be consistent on its size and design. Using buttons with different colors and sizes looks unprofessional. Make sure that when you put the buttons on top of the home page, they're on the top of every other page.

The site must be indexed by the search engines so you have to consider the successful page optimization so that your site will be given the chance to rank on the search engine. In order for your site to be sited by many client or visitors your site must get a rank from search engine. Read some information about Search Engine Optimization(SEO) to have an idea on what will you going to do on your site.

You must have a quick response to your client or customer and give them the service that they needed. Apply good relation with your customer. Give them a word of Thanks for giving you the opportunity to work together with their company.

Always update your home page so that the visitors will always see new stuff or different from your site when they visiting your site. This will cause them to visit your site frequently.


About The Author
Corazon Padol, SEO for Webworksfirst, the best choice for your professional web design and other web development needs. For more information visit http://www.webworksfirst.com/.

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Is Your Website Design Professional?

by: Isaac Chu


In business world, you need a professional image, a professional sales team. Similarily, as one of your company member, is company website performs in professional fashion? Company website is your online sales team, do you know how professional it is?

#1 You have a beautiful website background?

In personal website, we can always find some beautiful background image or eye-catching background color. In some company websites, they also use some company photo, factory photo or product photo as the website background. Actually, it is not the right way to do. The right way is "Make it simple".

You will never find a background image in Yahoo, Google. People visit your website is looking for information not the beautiful background. Moreover, the background image have disadvantages: loading time will be longer and distract the visitor attention. Think again what information the background image can bring to your customer? If no, take it off.

#2 Full of image

Dont make your webpage in full of image. Use image only if image can present more clear than text. For example, you can use image to present the order process. Size of those images should be small enough, you can take a look on the article about "Image Optimization".

Remember, company website is not a comic.

#3 Page Frame

Many websites use frame to make the navigation easier. However, more and more website designers dont use frame in the design. It is because frame will distort the whole design and also make the visitor confused and difficult to find the information. Also, using CSS or Javascript can provides similar effect but can keep the design consistency.

#4 Visitor Counter

Put a visitor counter on the web site. This can let visitor know how many people visit the website before, get their attention and build up their confidence. This look true, but we suggest you to take it off.

Actually, these counters are not accurate and can be trigger manually, no one will believe these counters. Why don't put a testimonial with a real customer name instead of this counter?

#5 Under construction

Have you see those "Road Construction" image? Or those "Under construction, please come back later"? Dont waste your visitor time. If your webpage has not finish, take it away. I can't remember have I try "come back later".

If you really need to put this "Under Construction", we can give you some suggestion. You can package it to become a re-visit event, for example:

- On which day the web page open, the first 100 visitors complete the registration can get a free gift or discount.

- Raise the visitor curiosity, tell them what surprise they may get once the webpage open.

- Make it like a fiction. Everyday you put some additional information on it, make the visitor re-visit. This can greatly encourage the visitor to visit again.

Remember, no one like those boring "Under Construction". Turn it into a marketing event.


About The Author
Isaac Chu is Project Director of Evinco Solutions Limited. Evinco provides innovative business software, include emarketing web solutions, email marketing software, e-catalog publishing software, invoicing software, and electronic cheque writer. Visit: http://www.evinco.com.hk.

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Locating The Right E-commerce Provider

by: Akhil Shahani


E-commerce refers to the buying and selling of goods and services on the internet. The term is interchangeably used with e-business and refers to all forms of business activities such as e-tailing, B2B commerce, intranets and extranets, online advertising or an online presence in any form that is used for some type of communication such as customer service.

As a business owner, you need an e-commerce provider to enable you to do business online. There are a zillion companies out there which provide e-commerce solutions such as web designing and hosting services. Quite likely, all of them will claim to be the best at their jobs!

This piece is intended to help entrepreneurs like you who have a problem choosing the right e-commerce provider. Using the following guidelines will help you make a better decision.

Seek professional services: Don’t depend on Do-IT-Yourself tools, as you risk wasting time and money, and the results are not guaranteed. At present, there are so many professional service providers that you are sure to find one to suit your needs and budget.

Choose a 2 in 1 provider: You might get stuck in a situation where your website requirements need hosting services support. Hence, the company you choose should be able to design your site and host it as well. Selecting such a firm will save you time and frustration and might possibly work out cheaper. You can even benefit from some design firms that offer discounts on hosting packages.

Look for models: Have a look at some of the previous sites designed and hosted by the company you are talking to. If the company has worked on websites for your type of business or industry, chances are that they will be able to work on your project with relative ease.

Assess capabilities: Sometimes your e-commerce provider may not be able to provide support for everything you want to accomplish through your website. For example, they may be unable to provide a payment gateway or a merchant account to your shopping cart. Or they may not have equipped your online store to accept credit cards. In such cases you might be forced to take help from another company, which is not an optimal situation.

Ask key questions: If you’re satisfied with the technical capabilities of several vendors, consider the following questions before deciding on the e-commerce provider:

 Is the company reliable?
 Do I get satisfactory answers to my business questions?
 Do they actually pay attention to what I’m trying to do online?
 Can they add real value by providing guidance and suggestions for improvement?
 Can we sustain a relationship over the long term?

If at least one of the vendors fares well on the above questions, then you’re on the right track; else step away and try other companies until you get what you need.

The internet is helping businesses with marketable products reach a much larger audience at lower cost, and you can’t afford to be left behind. Getting the required support from your e-commerce provider is therefore vital to your online strategy. Remember to choose yours wisely.


About The Author
Hi, I am Akhil Shahani, a serial entrepreneur who wants to help you succeed. Over the years I have run many successful businesses & made many mistakes on the way. I have created http://www.aykya.com to help you benefit from all I've learned on my journey. Please visit us & download our special 'Freebie of the Month' as a thank you for your visit.

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Why HTML Is Better For Web Design

by: Chris Lowden


Why HTML is better for web design.

Flash and heavy image websites may look good, they often do. But how effective are they? Not as effective as you may think. Most people think once a website is created it is going to found by everyone on the internet. They couldn’t be more wrong. This article will talk about why HTML is a key to a website and its success.

HTML is the only language search engines can understand, anything else is like a foreign language. Search engines cannot read flash. They cannot read JavaScript. They cannot read images. That is why you are going to want to find a web designer who is going to be able to create a strong based HTML website.

Now I am not saying that if your website is heavy in flash, JavaScript and images it’s not going to be found. You still have you Meta tags, you did remember those right? Search engines work on keywords, word that people are going to use when finding your website. If you have read my article on Better Goggle Rakings you will be familiar on this, if not, I would suggest reading that next. If your website was developed in flash, you will still have the Meta tags working for you, but those can only take you so far. Websites that are heavy or well balanced in content are better. When a website is made in flash the text is imbedded in the flash file, the swf or it is loaded externally. It is not directly in/on the page for the search engines to find. Same goes with JavaScript and images. With images you have a little lead way, the alt tag. For those of you who are unfamiliar with HTML code, the alt tag is what you code into an image. So when you hover over an image, you will see the popup with the title written in it. But if you content is on the image, forget about getting a good ranking. A general rule of thumb, websites should have about 200 words of content, rich with keywords and unique content.

HTML is great and all, but there are a few things it cannot do for you. Animations, sometimes good, but are often used wrong. Floating menus, animated menus and drop down menus. Again, these can look very good if done well, but they are invisible to search engines. Links are a big thing to them too, search engines love to see a lot of links, incoming and outgoing to websites. If you are linked with websites of a higher page rank thank you is can be better for you and help your page rank. Now with that said here are some things that HTML will give you that other languages cannot. Keyword related navigation, again, back to the links. The links on your website should relate into what they are taking you too. Sounds obvious huh? You wouldn’t believe the amount of links I have seen taking me somewhere else other than what the menu said. Real text; keyword rich, unique content that will bring your customers to your page along with good page rank from Google. Lastly, with HTML, the page is your canvas, free to do anything you want and still have it be effective enough for your customers to be able to navigate you site.

So what’s a website with out any images? Not a whole lot in my opinion. But you just said websites shouldn’t have images on them. Wrong. I said that a website with heavy imagery is not always good. Take my website for instance, images all around you, but the pages are balance with my content, content that is keyword rich. So read some tutorials on Photoshop, slice it up and put some quality content in it and you should have a pretty effective website. Just keep in mind all of the above. Websites that look stunning are not always a good thing. Your website should look good, but it should be effective and smooth for the user to navigate through.

Having your website created by me will not only guarantee you a strong design and strong functionality. It will rank well in Google, keep your customers coming back and they will not be getting them lost in the navigation.


About The Author
Chris Lowden

I have been doing web design for a number of years now. I have always loved the internet, so I decided to pursue a career in it. You can visit my website here.

http://www.chrislowden.com

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Good Search Engine Ranking

by: Chris Lowden


So you want to rank well on Google? Who doesn’t?

Search engines have become a lot smarter from when websites first hit the market. You can’t repeat the same keywords over hundreds of times like you used to. Google and other search engines will see you as a spammer and ban your website from the engine. People used to trick search engines with gimmicks and tons of computer generated incoming links. This means, your website actually has to be a use to people in order to get ranked well.

So now you are asking yourself, if I don’t need gimmicks to get me ranked, what do I need? Money, right? No! You don’t need money either. When people use search engines, they don’t just type in something random. They type something specific, something that they are looking for. So when your website has quality and unique content, that is what will get you ranked well. When your content is unique, it makes it stand out from the crowed and found easier. Let’s say you are looking for a salt water fish tank, you aren’t just going to search "Pet Supplies" or "Aquariums". You are going to search exactly what you are looking for, "Salt Water Fish Tanks." Makes sense right? Same premise for your Meta tag keywords, if your company is selling fish tanks, you keywords may include, "Fish Tanks", "Salt Water Fish Tanks", "Fish Supplies," "Home Aquariums." See how it all works now?

Your website or company depends greatly on search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Yes people are going to find out about your website via word of mouth, but not everyone is looking for the same thing. For example, if I were to find baseball spikes, I wouldn’t go tell my friend who plays tennis. I am going to tell people who play baseball. My point is that while word of mouth works and is great, it is very slow. By having your website optimized correctly to be found on the internet makes it easy to be found, found very fast. So more baseball players will find the spikes they are looking for and buy them from your site.

Let me guess, you just had a website made? Looks pretty good, full of graphics, maybe some flash and just enough content for your customers see what you are all about. Am I right so far? While those websites aren’t great, they do get the job done, but they aren’t helping you at all. Websites with a lot of flash and imagery are never really good. No you scroll up and look at my website. Was I right? While my website does have a lot of images, it is well balanced by my content. Search engines cannot read images or flash. They can’t read those floating JavaScript menus or the menus that move up and down as you scroll. They may look nice, but they will not help your rank with search engines. Search engines need to be able to go through your website and follow your navigation from page to page. Search engines never forget, they store your information in their databases and index your pages so that when someone is searching they can see your information displayed. Without text there is nothing to index, images and flash cannot be indexed which means they cannot be found by your potential customers. Here’s a free tip, a general rule of thumb, every page on your website should have a minimum of 200 characters of text. It’s better if it’s content that is unique, unique means it will stick out from the crowd and found easier because it is original.

Now you’ve learned a little about how search engines work and what they look for. On to exploring the few vital things you can do for your website other than avoiding what we already talked about in the above paragraph.

# Meta Tags – Key words for finding your site, descriptions that will show on search engines.

# Title Tags – The text that shows up in the top left of your browser’s windows.

# HTML Coding – Good, clean HTML coding, none of that extra stuff FrontPage tosses in.

# HTML Navigation – Text navigation, simple for the search engine to follow, simple for your clients to read.

# Affiliation – Search engines love to see link exchanges. Links to higher ranked pages may in turn help your rank.

# Keyword Focused Content – The more words in your text that people search for, the easier your site is to find.

Let’s talk about IMDb.com, I know they aren’t selling anything, but they are huge. Their website is pretty simple, no large images throwing your eyes away from content. Clean HTML coding, HTML navigation, very focused content. As far as their website goes, it’s very easy for the developers to generate a page when a new movie comes out. All they have to do is throw in the content and update the page. IMDb has thousands of pages, which search engines also like to see. The more pages your website has the more important it looks to them. That is when you search something related to movies; IMDb is going to show up as one of the top contenders. Not to mention how long they have been around and their reputation for having so much unique content. Search engines also like to the age of the website, the older the website, the better. To them, if the page has been around for awhile then people must like it and it must offer some pretty good information.

If you or your company specializes in more then one thing, it will be a little bit harder for you get achieve good rankings in more then one field. If you are specialized in unique fields it may be a little easier on you. If you are a web designer or into computer graphics, it is going to be a lot more of a competitive market for you. Anyways, back to your company, it will probably be in your best interest to try and rank in one specific field instead of all of them. So if you sell tools, hardware, but the market is too competitive for hammers and screwdrivers try and rank for drills or wrenches. Something else in your market that is popular, but not as competitive.

I know all of this sounds good, if you can get it all to work to your advantage, great. But if you are not the type of person to do all of this for yourself and you need to hire someone, there is going to be money involved. For someone to get the whole package like we have been talking about it is going to cost a lot of money, but it doesn’t have to. You are already at a web designer’s website that specializes in all of the above. I am only a small freelance designer, but I do big projects without the cost of corporate firms. If you are interested in my services and already have a website, send me an email with your existing URL and tell me what problems you have been having or what you would like to accomplish. If you are looking for the entire package head over to the contact page fill out the form.

I hoped you learned something by reading this and if you skipped down to the end, head back up to the top. It’s a lot to remember, but if you can apply it, you may see more traffic. Keep in mind, all of this is not going to happen over night. Search engines index pages at different times, if you don’t see anything different after two weeks, try submitting your page manually.


About The Author
Chris Lowden

I have been doing web design for a number of years now. I have always loved the internet, so I decided to pursue a career in it. You can visit my website here.

http://www.chrislowden.com

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Professional Web Design

by: Bradley Glen Smith

Professional web design is becoming more important in today's ever-chaging marketplace. Whether you are trying to establish yourself as an online presence or acquire more clientele, professional web design has become crucial. What is it that distinguishes you from your competitor? How often do you find yourself wishing you had an online presence? Are you an entrepreneur? Would your business be better served by professional web design?

So, how do you think your business could be better served by professional web design? Could it be one of the following reasons:

* Flash Environment--Interactive WebPages
* PHP Environment--Dynamic WebPages
* HTML Environment--Static WebPages
* Search Engine Optimization
* E-Commerce Development
* Sales Page
* Video Tutorials
* Product Launch
* Affiliate Program
* Lead Capture--Acquiring New Clientele
* Recreating a Professional Look
* Creating A Link Directory

eYouCanDoIt, Inc. realizes the importance of professional web development and what it means to your business in terms of deadlines. That is why we strive to complete your professional website in two weeks. After gathering the necessary information to complete your website, we give ourselves a deadline of two weeks. This helps us ensure that your professionally-designed website is completed in a timely manner.

Professional web design and focus on your website is important to us. For that reason, we limit ourselves to five projects every two weeks. After your website is completed, your professional web design comes with one full year of support on operating and adjusting your website.


About The Author
Bradley G. Smith is a freelance Professional Web Designer. He designs web sites for entrepreneurs and small businesses. View his portfolio at the following link: http://www.eyoucandoit.com

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