"10 Ways to Achieve Superior Web Site Design"

by Maricon Williams

In order to achieve online success, one must have effective and reliable products and services and great web design as well. Many people are judging the book by its cover this is the reason why your website should also be superior.

Here are 10 ways to carry out in order to ensure that your website design will turn out to be a superior one:

1. Keep those banner programs away. Avoid plastering your pages with every banner program you can think of because it is like broadcasting to the whole world that you are a neophyte in the industry. Besides, it is useless when you are just starting out.

2. Proof read the whole site. Poor grammar and spelling is a manifestation of being unprofessional. If you can not pay attention to small things like that then how can the potential customers know that you can make a product or service great? Always have some rounds of spell check and have someone proof read the site. That way you can be assured of its content quality.

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3. Evade "clip-art" type graphics. Learn to make your own graphics that will exude your business character and identity. You can get your hands on with Adobe Photoshop. However, if you are short on money, Macromedia’s Fireworks is a good alternative.

4. Forget about yourself! Nobody wants to hear about you. They want to hear about your products or services and how you can help them. So instead of focusing on yourself, focus on the functionality of your website. That will give lots of visitors that can turn out to be your customers.

5. Keep a consistent design. Inconsistent designs, backgrounds and navigation systems make the visitors feel lost. They will feel as if they have transferred to another site. To avoid this thing to happen, utilize a consistent web site design.

6. Stay away from excessive backgrounds. If you do not know what background to choose, stick with a plain one and blend it with a well contrasting text. The result will be an easy to read website.

7. Use small images. Use images that are small in file size. To do this, you can compress your images to a more reasonable size.

8. Keep your font size readable. Have your fonts at reasonable size. The content fonts should not exceed size fourteen and should not go down lower than size twelve. Using gigantic fonts are the biggest indicator of someone who knows nothing about designing online!

9. Keep your site clean and organized but not boring. Don’t scare your visitors away by crowded and messy website with neon colored texts. If that’s your kind of web site – my golly – change it! And you got to do it fast before a number of visitors already transferred to your competitors.

10. Check with every browser. Every web browser interprets code differently. Some may display the page perfectly however, some may do it atrociously thus, to be safe check with different browsers to test the compatibility.

About the Author

For Inquiries and Comments about the article and for additional information about web designs, log - on to http://www.webdesignsprovider.com

"Simple steps to increase traffic to your website"

by Sara Tompson

Every website owner wants their website to be popular; some just might not admit to it! To increase traffic to your website, I suggest the following to start with:

Unique content

Visitors and Search engines love unique content - nobody likes to read the same paragraphs over and over. Your visitors will return to your website and search engines will rank your site high for being unique.

Get linked

Getting linked is very important, the majority of your visitors will find your website through links, whether they be on Google or a directory website. Our advice is to submit your website in appropriate places - directories that are suited to your website. Search engines will find your website automatically, so don't waste your time submitting to them!

Keyword rich text

Most websites are set up to achieve a goal - whether it be to sell a product or service or to promote something or someone. CJ Website Hosting recommends you think of a dozen keywords that you would like people to search for (in search engines) to get to your website. Once you have the list, try to put them within your website content - but keep the sentances making sense - search engines will spot keyword spammers!

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Link to relevant websites

Linking to websites can be as powerful as being linked. If you link to websites that are relevant to your websites content - you will receive brownie points for doing so. Search engines categorise your website depending on what you link to, for example, if you linked to several "home made recipe" websites, search engines will guess that your website has something to do with home made recipes.

Use heading tags and appropriate titles

Heading tags such as <h1>, <h2> tag. Make sure your title tag is short and to the point - including a URL in your tag is a big no no.<title> etc.. are known to be vital HTML tags. Not only do they tell visitors what your page is about, they also help search engines to categorise your site. Same goes for the

Other tips include; making your website standards compliant, minimilising the amount of HTML code on your pages (by using div based layouts), utilising the alt and title attribute and using URL rewriting techniques.

About the Author

Sara Tompson is a support engineer at CJ Website Hosting. Research interests include SEO and Accessibility in web design.

"7 Ways of Building Customers' Trust With Your Web Site"

by Herman Drost

When I purchase something from a web site I first check who is behind this site. If there is no contact information or
anything about the owner of the site or his/her company I
move on.

Unfortunately the Internet attracts some people who are
dishonest and prey upon unsuspecting people to make quick
money for themselves.

Therefore your web site must put your visitor immediately
at ease and convey honesty and integrity about it.

Here are 7 essential ways of building customers' trust:

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1. Provide contact information – visitors will easily become
frustrated if they have a question to resolve but can’t
contact you. At least place an email address or contact
form on your web site. Some people prefer to talk to a real
person rather than use electronic communication so provide
a telephone number and even a real address not a P.O. Box
number. Answering one or 2 customer questions may be enough
to win his or her trust before purchasing from your
site.

2. Create an “About Us” page – here you can tell a little
about yourself and/or your company. Another nice touch is
to include a photo of yourself. The more you can establish
a personal bond with your potential buyer, the greater your
chances of success.

3. Include Testimonials - testimonials is a wonderful way to
showcase your product, establish credibility, and improve
sales. It takes some work to get them but it is well worth
it in the long run.

Here’s how to get a testimonial from your customers:

a) If you have a service oriented business, then ask for a
testimonial after you have completed the work for them.
This is because you are still fresh in their minds and they
still have a desire to thank you for the excellent work you
completed.

b) If you are selling a product i.e. e-book or software,
ask for a testimonial after they have paid for the product.
Send a reminder to them 1 or 2 weeks later.

You may even provide an extra incentive by giving away a
copy of your product in return for a testimonial.

c) Make sure the testimonial is verifiable - ask them to
include their contact information such as an email address
or web site address. You may even ask for a small photo to
go along with what they have written. Don’t just make up a
testimonial as this will look false and unprofessional.

d) Testing- try different ways to introduce your
testimonials. Sprinkle them throughout your web site
content as shown on http://www.isitebuild.com then link to
the rest of them on another page. You may also want to
strategically place them in your sales letters
(http://www.isitebuild.com/web-site-promotion), emails or
promotional materials associated with your business.

4. Be courteous – often customers can’t communicate exactly
what they have in mind because they don’t have your
expertise. Try to clarify what your product or service will
do for them to make their life easier. If you put their
fears at ease you will have a happy customer.

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5. Use secure transactions - someone sending you his or her
credit card number, home address, or other personal
information should be able to do so through a secure link
from his or her browser to your server. Make sure you use
Secure Socket Links or 3rd Party Verification in all
information transactions that involve sensitive data.

6. Accept refunds - always accept reasonable return and
refund requests. Deal with them promptly and
professionally, no matter how the customer acts towards you
during the process. It may be a hassle, but this instills a
lot of trust. A customer’s biggest fear is that he/she may
not receive what he wants or may not be able to return it.

7. Provide a guarantee – if you provide a guarantee for your
product or service it will place your customer’s mind at
ease. The longer the guarantee the better. If you have a
service oriented business, you might include a statement
such as:

”We will work with you until you are satisfied”

If selling a product you may say something like:

”If for any reason you are not satisfied with this product,
I will offer you a 90 day money-back guarantee”.

Conclusion:
Online transactions and communication can be
impersonal because you don’t meet your customers face to
face. If you follow the points mentioned above, it will
quell their fears and allow you to make more sales based on
the credibility and trust you have established from your
web site.

About the Author

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable
Web Site Design and Web Hosting. Subscribe to his
“Marketing Tips” newsletter for more original articles.
mailto:subscribe@isitebuild.com. Read more of his
in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

"Developing Your Website: 10 Tips for Getting Started"

by Juliet Austin & Nathaniel Richman

1. Be clear on your purpose.

Building a website can be a long and arduous procedure if you are not sure what you are doing. However, if you have a clear focus as to what you expect your website to do for your business/organization, things will flow much more smoothly. The purpose can be anything from selling widgets online to keeping members of your soccer team updated. Regardless, figure that out before setting sail on your journey.

2. Establish your target audience.

Your target audience will affect what sort of content your site includes as well as how it will look and function. Obviously, writing for kids will be much different than writing for adults. For business websites, a narrow and specific target market, will not only make it easier for you to market your product or service, it will also make it easier for customers and clients to find you.

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Also, consider how many graphics and "bells and whistles" you'll want. If your audience is not very computer literate and generally includes people with slow Internet connections, it doesn't make sense to include large, slow-loading graphics, animations, and video clips. You want your site to be user friendly and don't want your visitors to leave because they've become frustrated with the navigation or because your website loads too slowly. Conversely, if your audience is the younger generation, including flashy graphics and other "fun" elements might be more appropriate and even necessary to grab their attention.

3. Determine your budget.

One can spend anywhere from $99 to $10,000+ dollars on having a website developed. Your purpose should help you decide on your budget. Remember, a website should ideally be a work in progress. Don't worry if you can't do everything you want with it initially — you can always add to it later, and it will work better for you and your customers if you keep it up-to-date and fresh.

4. Assess the value of your time.

Many people have undertaken to create their own websites, especially with the advent of desktop publishing programs. Still, they expend a huge amount of time and energy and end up unsatisfied with the results. While it may be true that "anyone" can design a website, the same could be said about any type of work. If it takes you hours and plenty of frustration to cut your own hair, wouldn't you be better off going to a barber or hairdresser?

If you have a flair for design, feel confident in your writing and marketing skills, and have the time, knowledge, and passion to build your own website, go for it! If your time would be more productive doing your own work and contracting out the web creation, that might be worth considering.

5. If hiring a professional website designer, make sure you are comfortable working with him/her.

Do you feel he or she understands your vision? Does he or she provide useful ideas and solutions you hadn't thought about? Have you looked through his or her past work? Do you feel like you're getting professional service? Is the price right for your budget? What is included in the fee you will be paying?

6. Think about how you'd like the website to look and function.

Often you will have a logo and/or other graphics you'd like to build a design around. You probably have some colour and style preferences. Perhaps a certain font has caught your eye. If you're stumped and lacking ideas, go surfing! Look through a wide variety of websites — both your competitors' and other successful businesses/ organizations. Write down (or bookmark) the sites you like and what appealed (or didn't appeal) to you. Do the same with magazine ads. You'll get a lot of inspiration.

7. Organize and formulate a layout for the information you'd like to include.

Assign page names to each distinct "chunk" of information and, if the total number of pages is sufficiently high (over 12, as a rule of thumb), group them into sections. This will make navigating through your site that much easier. Your designer should be able to make some recommendations in this area.

8. Make sure you understand the importance of effective website copy (text).

Your website copy will be determined by your purpose and your audience. On the Internet, people have very short attention spans. If they don't get the information within a few seconds they'll usually move on to the next website — possibly your competition's. Furthermore, the more you know about writing web copy, the more customers you will draw in. You can learn some basic copywriting skills yourself, or you can hire a professional copywriter to write it for you. Always make sure you know what you want to say and say it concisely. If you have the need for a lot of text that can always follow further down the page or on another page.

9. Choose a domain name and find a hosting company.

Your website will need to reside somewhere so that others will be able to access it. And, you'll probably want to register a domain name, such as www.mybusiness.com. Doing so rather than using the long, awkward name (and free web space) provided by your Internet Service Provider (ISP), sounds much more professional and is much easier for customers to remember. Choosing a good domain name can also help you get found in search engines, such as Google. You'll also get related email addresses, such as info@mybusiness.com, which, again, sound professional and reinforce your domain name. There are plenty of hosting companies out there at a variety of prices. Find one that suits your needs. Your web designer or marketing consultant should be able to help you with all of the above.

10. If you have a business website, develop a strategy on how you will market it.

Having a website without visitors will get you nowhere. An analogy is writing a fantastic book, hiding it in the library, and not telling anyone about it. You will need to drive traffic to your site. There are numerous ways to do this. You can either learn to do this yourself, or hire a marketing professional to help you. Although hiring someone will increase your initial costs, it can pay off in the long run when you have more potential customers visiting your site, and ultimately increasing your sales.

© Juliet Austin & Nathaniel Richman, 2005.

About the Author

Juliet Austin and Nathaniel Richman assist professionals, businesses and organizations in designing and promoting websites that get results.

www.nrichmedia.com
www.julietaustin.com
www.marketingaprivatepractice.com

"Web Site Design Mistakes"

by Halstatt Pires

Some wise human once said "Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't nearly enough time to make them all yourself." Hence this article. Here are five of the most annoying and common web design mistakes.

1. Slow download time - Don't be that site that is filled with the coolest gizmos in the world. You know, animation, music and other "cool" things. Why? Because nobody is going to go to it because it takes too long to download. A nice clean site that downloads quickly will get you much further than a site with all the fixings that takes forever to download.

2. Unreadable text - If a user has to struggle to read the text on your web site, chances are they won't. Here are some common readability issues:

A. Low contrast text and background - Don't use light colored text on a light background. Also, don't use dark text on a dark background. Text is most easily read with extreme contrasts between the background and text. Black on white is about as good as it gets for readability. Red on black is pretty bad. Yellow on white isn't so hot either.

B. Text on a busy background - Text is most easily read on solid color background. Putting text on textured backgrounds can make it much harder to read.

C. Small Text - Text that is really tiny may look cool, but is hard to read. If you must use small text, make sure changing the text size in a browser will change the size of your text. Using style sheets can some times over-ride a browser's ability to increase text size.

3. Unpleasant designs - Designs that use too many colors, colors that clash, or a messy layout, are just plain hard to look at. A site should be pleasant to look at, not a chore.

4. Long pages - Long pages are a problem because your force people to sift through piles of information to get what they want. Pages that focus on just a few topics with links to related topics on other pages are much better. This approach allows the reader to isolate the specific subject they are interested in.

5. Poor Navigation - It is extremely important that a user be able to access all pages of your site from every page. Users will often enter your site from a search engine listing with a link other than your home page. You do not want your visitors at a dead-end with no way to access the rest of your site. You will have wasted the traffic and given the prospect a bad impression of your business.

As you surf the web, you should keep a list of annoying things you find on other sites. Every so often, check your site to see if you have the same problems. Regardless, if you avoid the common web design mistakes listed above, you will stand a better chance of running a successful web site.

About the Author

Halstatt Pires is with Marketing Titan- an Internet marketing and advertising company comprised of a search engine optimization specialist providing meta tag optimization services and Internet marketing consultant providing internet marketing solutions through integrated design and programming services.

"3 Rules of Website Designing and Layout"

by Purva Mewar

Now that you have got your domain name registered, your next worry is about
designing a website or getting it designed, depending on your budget and knowledge.

To help the newbie's start it right - Design your website before getting
the domain name registered. Why park an empty domain on the web just like that? Why waste even a single day after registration? right? So a better
idea is to keep your "small but complete" site ready. As soon as domain name registration notification arrives, upload the pages. You can keep adding value forever.

"Small but complete" is what is being explained thru' this article. Keep
3 things in mind. Simplicity, appropriate content & Easy navigation.
Try striking a perfect balance between them and you are bound to succeed.

Simplicity: Keep everything about your website simple. Flow of content,
language, layout and terminology. Considering the potential of your visitor (who might be your future client/buyer/affiliate) and his technical ignorance, you will do yourself a great deal of good sticking to simplicity.
However stylized or hi fi your site is, if it can't hold the traffic or visitor's attention- its pointless

Appropriate content: Content is the king. No augments. Always look at
content is two parts. One, keeping the visitors in mind and the other keeping the spiders. Visitor needs emotional convincing and the spider - logical. Meta tags and keywords are what will come in handy with Spiders, visitors can be reached across better if we can help them identify and relate to our message or proposal in a more emotional manner. He will not buy from your site because you have designed you site in java or your because he found your core key-phrase in the anchor tag! He will have to be aspired... thus, content is the soul of site and you will have to keep it ticking...

Navigation: Let your site be very easy to navigate. A closely weaved
theme, and therefore a well presented index will help the visitor to gain focus and think in a certain direction. A SITE MAP IS A MUST. All the pages, as you keep adding them to your site should find a place on the site map. Spider should be able to reach all your pages thru site map. Another important thing to keep in mind is try to connect each link page
from one other station besides sitemap. Connect your internal pages with each other according to their theme. No orphan pages. No broken links...

About the Author
The author is Purva Mewar webmaster of two Work at Home Business websites,www.yesearnformhome.com and www.work-at-home-earn-extra-income.com

"Custom Website Design Strategies"

by Nathan Drew Sire

Web site design has certainly, in the past decade, evolved tremendously. More clients now are demanding custom design, as opposed to the 'cookie cutter' sites of yesteryear.
Where once there existed a limit as to the types of fonts used, the types of coding languages used, and the styles themselves, there is now the possibility for more variety in Web site design than ever before. This has come about because of the advances in technology that did not exist even a few years ago, and it has opened up many creative avenues for Web site designers in the creation of custom designs.

Web development overall, has to be more competitive, and take into consideration the needs of clients now, when literally billions of Web sites compete for attention online on a daily basis. A Web site is the first impression the owner of an E-commerce business makes on their own potential clients, and the competition factor, has now led to the burgeoning of more creative designs and implementations to deal with this competition factor.

Web development now needs to speak to the needs not only of the clients that are building the Web site, but the needs of the visitors who are, overall "potential prospects' of the Web site owners.

E-commerce needs have created some rather unique approaches to Web development, from the most beautiful to the most garish, unfortunately. In an attempt to have their own E-commerce sites 'noticed', some business owners have become too individualistic, and there does abound many sites that are not easily navigable, nor especially pleasing to the eye. A Web designer needs to use good judgment when making choices about how much is 'too much' individuality.

Web site designers can avoid the pitfalls of becoming overly creative, and yet do much now to make a client's site, very appealing and eye-catching by keeping a few simple rules in mind:

• Are the colors pleasing to most visitors, without being garish and hard to view?
• Are the fonts easily read by most visitors, which means not too large (too much scrolling), or too small, (too much squinting)?
• Is the navigation and usability of the site what it can be? Can visitors find features easily?
• Is the site clean and uncluttered? It should never look like your grandmother's attic, where thirty years of junk abounds in every corner!

At the same time, the E-commerce functionality can be maintained with advanced creativity, as navigability and usability can be implemented flawlessly also. The new advances in technology now have led to the following changes that increase the ability to improve creativity:

1. A staggering number of font sizes that can be flawlessly implemented to distinguish a site. Up until just a few years ago, Web masters were limited in the choice of fonts, and font sizes. Times New Roman and Arial were the two standard fonts used, as some browsers could not effectively display other fonts with any reliability, changing fonts that were not Times New Roman and Arial into the Sans Serif, which is not all that attractive. This was a big deterrent to the creative use of fonts. With new embedding technologies, this is no longer a real problem, and many designers are now using great new fonts that make a site 'stand out' effortlessly.

2. Original layouts can be more easily implemented due to the emergence of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) technology. Prior to CSS, it took much work (and therefore much money) to create designs with 'punch' as every design demanded hours upon hours of work with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), the old standard for writing and creating custom designs. CSS has freed Web designers from these restrictions, and of course, saves clients a great deal of money spent on man hours, leading more clients to demand great looking custom designs.

3. Navigation and usability have also increased, once the restrictions were lifted from the creation and development of custom sites. Oddly enough, for some reason, many years ago, it was thought 'common knowledge' that all sites should contain a left-hand navigation bar, and nothing else. This was the old standard that designers had used for decades and no one thought to question this practice. This gave rise to sites that were for the most part 'cookie cutter' varieties, each having the same standard layout and left-hand navigation bar layout. Creative use of right-hand navigation bars and other techniques have created sites that are very much different in layout and navigation than the old standards, and this has not proven to be a detriment for most E-commerce businesses. In fact, uniqueness seems to be more memorable, and may indeed be a competitive edge in itself.

4. The emergence of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) HTML technologies has opened up a whole new world of creative fonts, creative color schemes, and creative layouts. With WYSIWYG, designers can see exactly how a site will appear all through the process, eliminating much of the time consuming trial and error that preceded this. Even novice designers and those that seek to create their own site can benefit from WYSIWYG, as most Web site creation software and online sites used for Web site design incorporates this technology, which is easy to use for almost anyone and requires no coding language knowledge.

5. Better flash techniques have also been discovered and employed in the past several years, leading to greater effectiveness of flash sites, and faster upload speeds (a problem with flash prior to the technological advances was slow loading). Sites that employ flash now have a more professional look and feel to them, and flash is used often now in the construction of online videos and games that appear on sites and educates and entertains visitors.

The past decade in technology has indeed lent itself to the emergence of superior creativity in Web site design and Web development by Web masters. Gone are the old days of stagnantly designed sites, the 'same old, same old' fonts, dull colors, and slow-loading and ineffective flash. It seems now, that the sky is the limit with customization of sites, and this can only be called one of the best developments of this century. Beautiful sites, that will hopefully bring beautiful results to personal and E-commerce clients, are now standard, and the future looks brighter than ever for Web site designers and developers!

About the Author
Nathan Drew Sire, President of Captain Media, services the web design/development market. He's been developing code since eight years old. Learn more about his company at www.captainmedia.com