Effective Website Design For Massive Traffic

by: Brian Daniels

STEP 1:Do your homework

Plan and think about your content. Think big, have a vision of at least a 100 page site. The pages should have "real content", as opposed to link pages, resource pages, about/copyright... etc pages.

STEP 2:Buy Domain name:

Invest in an easily brandable domain. You may want "google.com" and not "mykeyword.com". Keyword domains will go no where, whereas branding and name recognition are the in thing. The value of keywords in a domain name have never been less to Search Engines. Get them

STEP 3:Site Design:

As a rule of the thumb: develop for MS Internet Explorer. As for text content, it should out weigh the html content. Spiders are not to the point they really like eating html 4.0 and the mess that it can bring.

Use less of these heavy stuff: flash, dom, java, java script. Go external with scripting languages if you must have them - there is little reason to have them that I can see - they will rarely help a site and stand to hurt it greatly due to many factors most people don't appreciate (search engines distaste for javascripts is just one of them).

Arrange the site in a logical manner with directory names hitting the top keywords you wish to hit.

Don't clutter and don't spam your site with frivolous links like "best viewed" or other counter like junk. Keep it clean and professional to the best of your ability.

Visit Google.com and learn from them. Simple is retro cool - simple is what surfers want.

Your site should respond almost instantly to a request. If you get into even 3-4 seconds delay until "something happens" in the browser, you are in long term trouble. That 3-4 seconds response time may vary for site destined to live in other countries than your native one. The site should respond locally within 3-4 seconds (max) to any request.

If you need help, visit http://www.xcelweb.com for the latest web design packages.

STEP 4:Check Page Size:

The smaller the better. Keep it under 15k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 12k if you can. The smaller the better. Keep it under 10k if you can.

STEP 5:Build Content:

Build one page of content and put online per day at 200-500 words. If you aren't sure what you need for content, start with the Overture.com’s keyword suggestor and find the core set of keywords for your topic area. Those are your subject starters.

STEP 6:Check Keywords’ placing

Use the keyword once in title, once in description tag, once in a heading, once in the url, once in bold, once in italic, once high on the page, and hit the density between 5 and 20% (don't fret about it). Use good sentences and spell check it. Spell checking is becoming important as search engines are moving to auto correction during searches.

STEP 7:Cross links:

Link to on topic quality content across your site. If a page is about food, then make sure it links it to the apples and veggies page. Specifically with Google, on topic cross linking is very important for sharing your Page Rating (PR) value across your site. You do NOT want an "all star" page that out performs the rest of your site. You want 50 pages that produce 1 referral each a day and do NOT want 1 page that produces 50 referrals a day. If you do find one page that drastically out produces the rest of the site with Google, you need to off load some of that pr value to other pages by cross linking heavily.

STEP 8:Put it Online:

Make sure the site is "crawlable" by a spider. All pages should be linked to more than one other page on your site, and not more than 2 levels deep from root. Link the topic vertically as much as possible back to root. A menu that is present on every page should link to your sites main "topic index" pages (the doorways and logical navigation system down into real content).

Don't put it online before you have a quality site to put online. It's worse to put a "nothing" site online, than no site at all. Go for a listing in the ODP. If you have the budget, then submit to Looksmart and Yahoo. If you don't have the budget, then try for a freebie on Yahoo.

About The Author

Brian Daniels (sales@xcelweb.com) is the founder of www.xcelweb.com, a company dedicated to online Internet Marketing and Web Design. He has just released a new Ebook dedicated to Internet Marketing.

Top 10 Design Issues According To Web Marketing!

by: Martin Lemieux

When it comes to designing your site, there are 2 ways you can ultimately go. a) Designing for yourself and no one else, b) Designing to fit web marketing and customer attracting methods.

Here are the top 10 issues you should always consider:

1) Flash vs. HTML vs. ASP vs. PHP: The type of code you use for your site may have a huge impact.

- Flash is not yet ready to fully intergrate within web marketing. Although technology is advancing, search engines aren't moving quickly enough to include this style of coding in their rankings.

- ASP, if your site is completely data base driven, make sure that your code is writen into the page, not being pulled from tables everytime. Also, make sure to pre-plan your meta tags within the data base. Too many data bases out there never implement a meta tag strategy.

- PHP/Java : These are both safe programming methods, just remember to keep it clean and simple. Don't forget to test your programming.

- HTML : Probably always going to be the programming method of choice when it comes to servicing search engines and user friendly web sites.

2) Always test your site for bugs. Even if you think your programming is perfect, most times it's not. Search engines / Visitors will browse your site with more ease. Test your site here: http://netmechanic.com/toolbox/html-code.htm or here: http://www.thewebclinic.com

3) Make your site look as proffesional as you can. If you can't hire a web designer / graphic designer, go out and spend a little bit of money and buy yourself a really great template for your site.

4) Put up your site for reviews! This is so important because other people's reviews will reflect exactly what your visitors will think. Openin up to some reviews will create more sales. You can add your site for review here: http://www.webproworld.com/viewforum.php?f=4

5) Promote proper "Title Tags". While promoting your site, make sure to create a proper title tag that best describes your entire site. Also, make sure to include your entire title within all the "Link exchanges" that you make!

6) Do not break any search engine / spamming rules! This is crutial for your long term survival. Spamming is only a quick fix with a high price attached to it.

7) Implement a link building strategy for your site. Make sure to include a link exchange program within your site when you are designing it. So many people add it on later and it seems like it doesn't belong with the site. Less people will want to leave your site if your link resources looks like the rest of your design.

8) Always expand your information. Search engines / visitors get bored quickly. Bringing in fresh, new content will keep them interested and keep them coming back.

9) Try not to get wrapped up in the "Google Dance". Too many people start watching their online performance instead of increasing it. Promote daily and always stick with it.

10) Create banners, towers, buttons for people to use. It never hurts having someone take your buttons and adding them to their site for nothing in exchange.

Stay up-to-date with web marketing news. Whether it be "http://www.webproworld.com", "http://sitepronews.com", or "http://www.smartads.info/newsletter", always keep up with standards of marketing online! Good luck with everything!

About The Author

Martin Lemieux
Smartads - President
Affordable Web Design & Web Advertising
http://www.smartads.info / http://www.smartads.ca
Eye Catching Print Design
http://www.3dimentionaldesign.com
Marketing Tools
http://www.smartads.info/newsletter / http://www.thewebclinic.com

How To Design A Search Engine Friendly Website

by: Arif Hanid

There are many websites that fail to target their required traffic, even if they’ve had some search engine optimisation work done. One of the main causes for this is simply because the website isn’t search engine friendly.

This is a basic essential that needs to be incorporated into the design of all websites at the outset – think of it as the foundation to establishing your search engine optimisation strategy.

This article aims to highlight the areas a web designer should think about and incorporate into their design for search engine effectiveness:

1. Search Engine Friendly Pages

It is important that when you design your website you not only bear in mind what your website requirements are, but also what the requirements are for search engines. Best way to approach this is to remember that search engines don’t really care about how nice or complicated your graphics or flash movies are, or how snazzy your javascript is. Instead search engines look at the code behind your page. Therefore if you want to impress a search engine, then your code needs to be nice and easy to read. Now from this I don’t mean adding ‘comment’ tags and breaking the lines of code up with spaces, but to ensure that the elements the search engine is interested in, i.e. Title tag, Description tag, Keyword tag (these days only some search engines really use the keyword tag), Alt tag, are readable near the beginning of the code. Search Engines don’t like wadding through lines and lines of javascript to get to the core areas that can help you page’s ranking. Therefore careful planning and positioning of your page elements is required.

TIPS:

• If you’re using table for laying out your page then make them simple and not too complex.
• Avoid using frames.
• If you need javascripts for navigation purposes, then use smaller scripts to call up the bulk of the javascript from a different file.
• Think twice on how to use graphics – make them relevant to your content and use the Alt tag for all images.
• Position the main content of the page before the images, or at least with the images nested between the text.

2. Keywords

Having good keywords is one of the most important areas to consider when designing a website/webpage.

One of the best tools for this is Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com), which allows you to identify good competitive keywords for your pages.

In general the range of keywords associated to your pages can be very extensive therefore for good concentration and prominence of keywords it is advisable to carefully select the top 10-15 keywords. You can always export the results to Excel and try out other competitive keywords if the ones you selected initially do not produce any noticeable benefits.

TOP TIP: Wordtracker offer a one day subscription to their service from which you can squeeze nearly 2 ½ days worth of use! Here’s how – Sign-up for the service on the evening of Day 1 (the service will be available almost immediately so you can start searching for your competitive keywords straight away). You will also be able to use the service for the whole of Day 2 and strangely for the whole of Day 3! Enough time to get some good keywords for a lot of pages!

3. Content

Many search engines look at the main body of the page and identify keywords and phrases that are used within the text.

TIP:

Use competitive keywords relevant to the purpose of the page within the main body of the page.

Always try and ensure that the keywords are prominent within the text body, i.e. they appear near the beginning of the page, they are defined using the ‘heading’ tag, they are typefaced in bold, or they are used as hyperlinks.

4. Page Title

This is arguably one of the most important areas of a page and needs special attention to ensure that a good title is selected.

Similar to many other areas of designing a search engine friendly page, the Page Title should also have a good keyword which describes the page content.

To keep within the limits of many search engines the number of words for the Title shouldn’t exceed nine.

5. Page Description

Another important area to work on for good ranking is the Page Description.

This is the text found under the META Description tag and is displayed to users in the search results. Again, it is a good idea to pay attention to the use of good keywords when writing the description, which should be short (not more than 20-25 words) and sells your page before the user has even opened it!

6. Graphics

We’ve covered the use of graphics briefly above, emphasising the importance of using an Alt tag containing the relevant keyword(s).

Although the use of images can be nice and very appealing to a website, it is also important to bear in mind that they shouldn’t overpower the textual content of your page. As a general rule of thumb it is best to stick to a 70/30 ratio (70 text/30 images).

7. Site Map

A Site Map is a fantastic way for search engines to find all your juicy pages on your website. There are many free Site Map tools available on the web that’ll create your site map instantly.

8. Navigation Links

Navigation links to other pages on your website should be nice and easy. There are some engines which find it difficult to navigate through to the other pages on your website if the nav bar is too complicated, e.g. complicated pop-ups, use of flash, etc. Therefore if your site does have complicated navigation then it’s always a good idea to implement simple text based hyperlinks to your common pages at the bottom of every page on your website.

Following the basic suggestions above will help lay the foundation to apply further good search engine optimisation advice which will make the difference in your overall search engine ranking.

This finer area of SEO is beyond the realm of this document and will require further investment based on individual needs.

About The Author

Arif Hanid
Internet Marketing Manager for Ambleton Computing.
Experts in all areas of Internet Marketing, inc. SEO and Web Design.
www.ambleton.co.uk
arif_hanid@ambleton.com

Design Web Site Around Affiliate Programs

by: Stephen Bucaro

When starting a Web business, most people choose a topic for their Web site and then look for products and affiliate programs related to that topic. In this article, I suggest searching for a group of related affiliate programs first, then designing your Web site around those programs.

There are many affiliate directories and affiliate network Web sites where you can search for the best programs. For this example, I use Commission Junction http://www.jc.com This affiliate network site provides a vast amount of searchable information on over 1200 affiliate programs.

On Commission Junction's front page, click on the link "Search all advertisers". This will take you to a page with a drop down list where you can select a category. In order to search the information on Commission Junction, you must be a member, but membership is free. After you login to Commission Junction, go to the bottom of the page to "Find Advertisers & links". Here you can get a list of all advertisers, search advertisers by keyword, or browse for advertisers.

Click on "Browse for advertisers". This takes to to a table where you can arrange the affiliate programs based upon "EPC" or "Network Earnings". EPC is the average earnings per 100 clicks. It reflects the affiliate programs ability to convert clicks into commissions. Network Earnings is a rank, on a scale of one to five, of an affiliate program based on the amount of commissions paid. In the head of the table, click on the name of the parameter you are interested in. This rearranges the entries based upon that parameter.

After you arrange the entries, you have to page past all the "New" programs. I guess Commission Junction puts the new programs at the top of the list to help promote them. As you analyze the data you will discover that the programs that pay the highest earnings per click do not necessarily provide the highest total earnings.

Some important points:

- Commission Junction is not the best affiliate network. Their fees to advertisers are too high. Search Google for other affiliate networks and affiliate programs.

- Join several good programs. You don't want to build your Web site around one program that may be discontinued.

- Don't join too many programs. It takes time and work to promote each program.

- Don't be in a rush to join affiliate programs. Take your time and select a profitable category and high quality programs.

Most people get an idea for a Web site, and then look for related affiliate products to sell. Why not research affiliate programs first? Then you can learn what categories of affiliate products and services are going you earn you the most money. You can then design the topic of your Web site around the most profitable product categories and affiliate programs.

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Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

About The Author

Copyright(C)2002 Bucaro TecHelp. To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit http://bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter Send a blank email to subscribe@bucarotechelp.com

The ‘Website’ CHECKLIST : Domains, Hosting, Web Design

by: Teeyes Siva

This article is meant to all who already have a website or who propose to buy it. Website – the term comprises three things : Domain, Hosting (Web space) & Web Design

There are numerous company offering these services. I am here to discuss few points with regards to top and essential things you need to have a thorough check when you get a WEBSITE thru one of these companies.

Now to the article,

Every day, I get few phone calls of this sort :

• Sir, My domain expires in next few days, but the company which registered it is out of business, Please RENEW it”
• Sir, I want to transfer the domain to your server but I don’t have the domain control panel”
• Dear Support Team, The domain is registered thru ‘X’ and his name is listed as REGISTRANT and Admin Contact, help me”
• I have a website since 1998 but I am not getting any enquiries thru it. So what’s the point in having it renewed ? “
• My website is down most of the time, can you do anything on it? “

If you look at the above, you could observe the common problem. Thus, a checklist is required for any WEBSITE. Lets see one by one :

Domain NAME Registration : CHECKLIST

Once your domain is registered, check these things :

1. Is the DOMAIN NAME Registered with an ICANN Accredited Registrar ? (Visit : www.icann.org)
2. Does the REGISTRANT NAME and ADMINSTRATIVE CONTACT show your name/email ?
3. Did the Domain Registration Service Provider give you the Domain CONTROL PANEL with username / password to manage/modify name servers & contact details in real-time ?
4. Do you have the OPTION to get REMINDERS at the time of RENEWAL, well in advance ?

Web Hosting (Web space) : CHECKLIST

1. Support, Support, Support – is the KEY issue when it comes to Hosting. Check the response time of the Service Provider before making an option.
2. How skilled the technical persons are ? Just put in few queries and see how they respond ?
3. Get a quick look at the Service Provider Website and make sure its professional looking with user friendly navigation and layout.
4. Check if they have listed TESTIMONIALS, list of sites hosted with them, discount options for bulk purchase, payment modes. Also make sure there are NO Hidden charges. The key part to look is : the BANDWIDTH offered for each hosting plan.
5. Multiple Domains in single hosting space. This is an added advantage and saves your money. You can ask for this option if not provided.
6. Make a deep study on the Hosting Plan you choose. Check all the essential features are provided. To name a few, POP3 mails, SMTP support, FTP Account, Control Panel, Web mail, Spam Controller, Antivirus, Web Statistics.

Website Design : CHECKLIST

1. Does the website designer provide you with free minor updates or for a nominal fee on a yearly contract basis ?
2. Is the website professional looking and appeals to the global audience ?
3. It has been 3 months since your launch and there is NO fruitful enquiries and you are UPSET. Wait…..go to : www.google.com and put your website name and click search. Does it show up anywhere in the results ?
4. Does the website designer provided you with monitoring service ?
5. Does the website take lot of time to load. Make sure it loads faster even on slow connections. Too much of Flashy animations, bigger size jpegs are NOT an option for your site. CONTENT is the King. Make sure your website ‘delivers’.

The above is just a tip of the iceberg. I have compiled the most essential facts of a WEBSITE Registration, Hosting and Web Design.

Do write to me with your comments and views. My email : siva@aalphanet.com

Teeyes Siva
Sales Head – Aalphanet.com

About The Author

Teeyes Siva heads the Sales Operations @ aalpha NET (www.aalphanet.com) , India’s leading domain name registration, web hosting service provider. He can be reached @ siva@aalphanet.com or 00 91 452 3105858.

How to Prepare Your Project before You Order Website Design

by: Oleg Lazarenko

Are you serious about get this website done fast and clear and want to make money with your website? Then you will absolutely need some good web design agency to build the website of your dream and that it the aim, right?

Web design studios may be local and virtual. Local studio may be your choice if you live in a big city and you know at least couple of web designers across the road. It is much easier for you to use their services then to chat on ICQ with sales managers or try to explain them your project by phone. But wait! Virtual Design Studios give you ultimate choice between quality and price. You may search the Internet to get the best quote. There are thousands good companies from all over the world waiting for your order and the more choices you have the better for your business.

Let’s face it: people who come to web design agencies fall into two categories in most cases: the first one is people who have little or no knowledge about Internet development and came because they want professionals to help them.

The second one is users who could make some money online, they usually good informed and know a lot of things about web design, promotion, link building, search engine optimization etc, but they also know that professionals can and will do design better. That’s the point of web design agencies: we make tools for online business: clean and quality, original and unique.

If you belong to second category so you probably had some experience in site building and know what you can expect form web design companies but I believe following text may be useful even for you as my advices will help to reduce production time and design efforts and finally total project cost.

If you never had a chance to build your website I strongly recommend to read this article. It may be your guide in the world of professional web design.

Now let’s see how you can make life easier to your web design company. You can think: if I pay the money it is not my problem how to get the best website but that will be wrong attitude: the better YOU understand what you need the easier and faster it can be achieved by designers.

First of all you need to sit down, take a peace of paper and take some notes:

The first thing you will have to deal with has nothing to do with the web design itself, it's more related to content writing but it must be defined and will effect the rest of your actions. So first of all you need to decide:

1) What is the topic of your future website?

2) What is the goal of the site you are making?

3) What are you trying to achieve with your site. Specify a goal, preferably in one short sentence. All the time you will have to remember: only if you clearly understand what you need you will be able to explain this to web Design Company

4) Write a good description of you goals, aims and themes. Write how you are going to achieve them. When I say “good description” I mean really good, so that somebody, how knows nothing about your project could understand what you need and what you want. Web designers can not read your minds, so do not even test them. They simply cannot do that. I may recommend to give your description to somebody you trust but who does not involved in your company and knows nothing about your project. Ask your wife or your best friend, if they understand everything that will give you the idea that description was done correctly.

5) Search for competitor’s websites and note good ideas they implement on their websites. Let design company know what you like and what you do not like. Ask them not to copy the stuff from competitor’s websites but to create something better. I’m sure designers will come with something unique and beautiful if they will only know that you accept it.

These are the main points you have to be aware before starting order website design from web design studio. These tips will help you to save tones of money and efforts. Select Design Company wisely and as I said before: the better you understand what you need the easier it will be explain to designers.

You may reprint this tutorial for free as long as the content, About the Author sections and all links remain unchanged.

Thanks for reading.

About The Author

Oleg Lazarenko
Production manager of Metamorphosis Website Design Studio - Custom design, Website Templates, Web design Articles and Tutorials.

Elements of Graphic Design for Your Website

by: Kelly Paal

We’ve all seen them. Poorly designed web sites that make you cringe as soon as they load. But how do you keep your website from becoming, well, ugh. You could hire a professional web designer, and that’s expensive, or maybe you already hired a professional, or someone who claims to be professional, and you don’t like what they’re doing with your site. It all comes down to the K.I.S.S. principle; keep it simple stupid. And you’re probably asking well what does this really mean for web design.

Here are some basic graphic design/web design principles that you can use on your site:

1. Background, be careful what color you use for the background of your site. Yes I know that you’re trying to get noticed, but really they’ve already decided to look at your page so why does it have to be orange? Seriously though, consider how long you want people to be on your site, half an hour, one hour, more? Whatever the time chose your background color and then sit in front of your computer and stare at it, for awhile. Is the color easy to look at? Difficult? Does it make your eyes water? Does it make you calm? If you can look at the color for about fifteen minutes without a problem you’re okay.

2. Text, related to the above be careful what text color you use. Follow the rules above for determining a text color. It should be easy to read, and look at.

3. Font, no more that three fonts on the entire website. I mean that! A big mistake that I see a lot of times is the use of more than three different fonts, it get’s hard to read no matter how neat you think it looks.

4. Font size, no more that three font sizes either. Now I don’t mean three font sizes for each of the three fonts you’ve chosen. I mean no more than three fonts with a total of three sizes throughout the entire site, and if you can get by with less even better. It will simplify your site.

5. Scrolling, this is a big one literally. I’ve been on too many sites where I had to scroll down so far that my computer beeped at me. This is really important on your main page. Keep it very sparse, generally any information that someone has to scroll more than one full page down for will not be read.

This is only a start of course but it’s a start and it is on these issues that I see so many problems. Always remember that simplicity is best.

Copyright 2004 Kelly Paal

About The Author

Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography (www.kellypaalphotography.com). She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

How To Design Your Website

by: Vinay Kumar

This article is for people who are new to web designing and want some idea how to design your web site so as to gain maximum traffic on their website.Here in this article i will show you how to present information want in your web site. Many people while designing their web sites do not consider the needs of the user .I myself,a few days back was looking for some information. Like all of us do,i opened google and typed in the keywords and i certainly got many good links on the screen .I went on and clicked on one of the link.On reaching the page,i found some more links but no information .I went inside the link looking for information and again i found more links but still no valuable information .I got frustrated and i logged off from the net.

You see what happens when you go to find something on the web.It is a huge mess of millions of links with very little raw information .So first understand the needs and then give what you have to present .You don't have to design the page more flashy and with moving pictures,adds,banners etc. Retinal studies have shown that web surfers actually avoid banners. Yes, their eyes look away! Click throughs have plummeted to under half-of-a-percent.People just don't like banners on a web page. Try to include text links than adds or banners. Make the site more simple in view.Have a clean web site.Even keeping a white background and black text is enough for enticing people .What matters is the content of the site and the valuable information it is presenting.It is indeed good to make the site more attractive and more lively but the fact is that most of the people don't know how to do it the right way.The design should be simple and soothing to eyes.The best thing to confirm this is to send your design to your friends and ask for their advise .

Your main purpose should be to convey your views and idea's as quickly and as simply as possible .Don't make them run from one link to another because that will result in loss of interest in your website.The web site should be properly linked.Every page should contain link to every other page in your website.Everything should be in front of the eye and easy to reach.Give attractive text to each of your link.Say something that is tempting and makes them to click it.Select the keywords that describe's your page the best.Do not trick people here because the most important thing is to build trust,so that people come to your site again and again.

If you include hundreds of links to other web sites in your web site and think that you are providing a bank of information to your customers.You are wrong .Avoid it.If you still want to include links to site, put very few links giving in detail what these sites offer and when and why to visit them .make sure that the sites are offering valuable and quality data.Visit each of the site personally and ensure that it is a good link,relevent to the data in your site.Remember your every move,every link,every page leaves a mark on the customers mind about your web site,so be carefull in providing these links.

The last and foremost important thing is to be honest.Donot play any tricks or provide fake links just to make the site more filled with information.

I hope you learned something from this article.If you have some queries on any topic related to this please let me know at vinay_141@yahoo.com.i would try my best to answer you.

About The Author

Vinay is a computer science graduate from MIT.
He is also the founder of www.sourcecode.co.nr
His educational background is basicly in the area of software programming.
vinay_141@yahoo.com

Five Common Web Design Mistakes

by: Charles Nixon III

There are often many mistakes encountered when creating a webpage or website. Learn about the top five website mistakes, and how to avoid them.

Mistake #1

Web page size. If your website takes longer than 10-15 seconds to load you should consider optimizing it for the web. This is one of the biggest mistakes a web designer can make. You may have cable and love to fill your website with graphics, but if your visitors don't have cable or a fast connection at all your chances of getting them to wait that 10 to 15 seconds for your page to load is very slim.

Mistake #2

Flashy ads. Ok, so you have to bring in some cash some how right? So you sign up to a bunch of banner ad affiliate programs. Only problem with this is their banners are animated and constantly flashing while your visitors view your website. This can be good in some cases for getting some extra cash. But visitors can be easily annoyed by these banners.

If your trying to get customers, having these flashy banners increases your chances of your visitors leaving. Lots of people may be drawn into these ads (probably your best customers) and if they click that ad, they are now a customer to someone else thanks to your affiliate program.

Mistake #3

Confusing Navigation. Before you build a website you should make a sitemap for how everything is going to be setup. Come up with a plan to have some form of contact information on each page. If your visitor comes to a page and wants to purchase something and they cant find a contact link they will most likely change their mind while searching for it. Keep your navigation consistent on each page. If your visitor has to learn to use a different type of navigation system on every page they will become easily annoyed.

Mistake #4

Confusing Content. You want to make everything easy to read and navigate. If you know someone thats in their teen years you should come up with some questions to ask them about your website. Like: What do you think my site is about? Would you buy this product on my website? Can you understand the information on this(blank.html)page?

If you can get a teen, or even any average person to answer these question's honestly you can find ways to change your setup so that anyone and everyone is drawn in to purchase from you.

Mistake #5

Advertising. When you advertise your website the number one thing that you do not want to do is spam. It is very easy to advertise your website all over the web for free! You can use forums, article submission groups, online communities, chat groups, news feeds, and much more. If you do resort to spam this could hurt your website sales. A lot web surfers will go around and if they find spam they will report it to someone that will post it on a website that degrades or gives bad reviews on your website.

If you can avoid these five mistakes that almost every webmaster experiences than you will be on your way to success in no time.

About The Author

Charles Nixon - Website Designer Driven by Creativity Building websites to increase sales, and build web presence Did you start your business to create a website? or to run your business? With competitive pricing and your project delivered on time and on budget CharlesNixon.com may be the web design firm for you!
http://www.CharlesNixon.com/
Charles@CharlesNixon.com

Web Templates: Replacing Designers?

by: William T. "Chip" Lane

I’ve seen articles (and websites) that suggest you can buy a website template and skip the expense of hiring a professional website designer. Recently, I read several testimonials from the very satisfied customers of a website template vendor that mentioned how quickly they were able to get their sites done. The template vendor commented that he/she had known people to complete their websites in around two hours.

With experiences and statements like these, it not surprising that more and more people are attempting to build websites themselves. I think that’s great in a way. For those of us who are concerned about the trends in the web industry and community, it’s great to see more people becoming web oriented and involved.

However, I think there is a misunderstanding by many of these people about what a website template really is – and is not. At this point, I think it only fair that I should mention that I am a professional website designer (the person you supposedly don’t need anymore). I should also mention that this is not my sole motivation for questioning this idea of templates replacing web designers. As a matter of fact, I think website templates are extremely useful. I recommend using them to my clients as a way of getting a great graphical look for their site. What I hope to convey is that template consumers need to know what they are and what they aren’t getting with a template.

Consider an analogy for templates: pretty boxes for very important gifts. If you buy a pretty box, and put all the right stuff inside it – won’t everybody want to open the box and use the contents? Doing it yourself will save time and money – so why not? Sounds good, and the people who wrote those testimonials would certainly think it was a good idea – right?

But let’s consider the contents of the box. Aren’t you the best possible source for information about your company, organization, product or service? Of course you are! So the content of your box is bound to be great – right? Well – yes and no. Good web designers know that their clients are the best sources for the information that needs to be presented on their websites. However, they recognize that not everyone can organize that information in the optimal way for inclusion in a web page. If the contents in the box are wonderful, but jumbled, or hard to get out of the box, people may not like the box (or worse yet – the owner of the box). Just as a badly considered gift (even a beautifully wrapped one) may offend someone, a poorly organized site can actually harm your efforts.

Take the analogy a bit further. Assume that all concerns about the content are dealt with: it’s perfectly organized and you’ve got a knack for writing copy that would make most professional journalists green with envy! Voila: great looking presentation, content and organization! Now you’ve got it made – or do you? Where is the box? Your audience needs to find this incredible box before they can open it.

A website template, no matter how beautifully designed or filled, is a box in the middle of a desert. Without adding content and description meta tags, titles, alternate content, proper use of text links and alternate navigation and registering the site with search engines, directories and obtaining useful links (to name but a few of the technical considerations), your pretty box may remain in the middle of that desert. It does no good for anyone if it isn’t findable on the web.

A website template is a pretty box. Pretty boxes make a difference or we wouldn’t all spend so much time wrapping all the gifts we give. Some people make their own boxes and wrapping paper – and that’s really great. But most of us buy mass-produced boxes and wrapping paper. It saves time and money. So do templates. But none of us would assume that boxes or wrapping paper would make up for a poor gift. Website templates make sense if they are kept in perspective as a specialization of labor in the production of websites. They are not however, a substitute for the experience, knowledge and judgment of professionals who have a vested interest in your success.

About The Author

Chip Lane is the owner of Lane Web Design (http://www.lanewebdesign.com) a full-service web design and consulting firm located in Mebane, North Carolina.
You are welcome to republish this article as long as the link is kept active.
chiplane@lanewebdesign.com

Optimal Website Design

by: Elizabeth McGee

The idea behind good website design is to offer your viewer a logical flow while making it interesting and easy to navigate.

Lead your viewers to the starting point and then direct them through your site without confusing them.

Here are some excellent tips that can help you develop a user friendly site and please your visitors senses. Give yourself a chance before they get away.

1. Use lots of white space.

Don't feel that because you have a whole screen that you need to fill it up with stuff. Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that list the subject of your page and below that expand on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section. Don't cram a lot of pictures and ads. If you have an ad keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader.

2. Don't use animation and flashing objects.

As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is important but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitor and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Don't force it on them.

3. Every page of your site should contain an 'about' link.

The internet can be a rather cold and quiet environment. If someone can come to your site and find out about who you are and what you are about, they can feel a little better about doing business with you or taking advice from you. Always include your business address and phone number and email address as well. This lets viewers know that you are serious about your business and that you welcome contact.

4. Include a 'Privacy' Link

Viewers like the reassurance that you have a policy that follows privacy guidelines. They want to know that you will not sell or give away their information. In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners won't do business with you unless you have it.

5. Always keep your links in blue.

Why does that matter you might say? It's an expectation that viewers have along with the links being underlined. There's certainly no law that says they need to be as such but people spend a lot of time on the internet and it's good practice to keep your navigation consistent and recognizable. If it's not you may lose out on clicks.

6. Keep navigation consistent

Keep your site's navigation consistent. What you do on your index page should be done the same way on the rest of your site's pages. Keep the colors consistent as well. Don't force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars and links the same for each page.

7. Understandable buttons and links.

Title your links appropriately. Don't use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to sports equipment don't label the link 'Great Outdoors', call it 'sports equipment'. If you have a link to 'cameras' don't label the link 'hotshots', label it 'cameras'. Your viewers don't want to waste time figuring out what things are. Be clear with your labeling.

8. Focus on the 'YOU', not the 'ME'.

Make it obviously clear to your readers that you are there for them. What can you do for your reader? What benefits are there for your viewer? How can you make their life or business better or more profitable? Request feedback on their success. Find out what they want to know or how you can offer them what they need.

9. Make sure your page loads fast.

If viewers have to wait for a page to load they will click elsewhere. Here's a site that will help you determine how well your page loads. If a page doesn't load in 8 seconds you lose 1/3 of your visitors. Here's a great free tool to help you check your website's load time:

http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm

10. Use a site map.

A site map will give visitors a "guide" on viewing your site and also eliminate confusion, especially with larger sites. It's a road map for your visitors to follow while they are on your site. Sitemaps will also increase rankings and placement within the Search Engines.

About The Author

Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. You can contact Elizabeth at mail@pro-marketing-online.com or visit her website at http://www.pro-marketing-online.com
Copyright © 2004 Adlite Enterprises
http://www.pro-marketing-online.com All Rights Reserved.
webmaster@pro-marketing-online.com

Designing your Web Site for ALL Browsers

by: David Bell

Let's face it. Building a web site that browses consistently on multiple platforms and multiple browsers is not always as easy as we would like.

It is safe to say that most designers spend most of their time building their sites on a given platform. Those with the highest standards should, upon completion, take a look at their creation in different browsers and different platforms.

Sure, you could see how it looks in Window 98 with Internet Explorer and let that be good enough, but do you really want to risk a bad web experience for millions and millions of potential visitors? Consider this....

A recent statistic I saw reported that 12% of internet users were Macintosh users. Ignoring this fact is like creating a catalog that can only be optimally viewed by one in eight of your customers.Furthermore, not all of the Windows users are using Windows 98. Windows 95 continues to be widely used, and Windows 2000 and NT represent a significant percentage of visitors.

It would be remiss to ignore the small, but growing contingency of Linux users. Though small in number at this time, the popularity of the OS grows daily.

Platform issues aside, Internet Explorer, despite Microsoft's inclusion of it with all Windows Installations, does not represent the only browser option. Netscape continues to enjoy a strong following of users numbering in the millions, and Lotus Notes is being used by numerous corporations as the "standard" browser and e-mail application.

Then, of course, there is AOL. Although basically an IE engine "under the hood" AOL continues to include certain differences. Considering the vast numbers of AOL users, this browser must not be overlooked. If your site does not look good in AOL, then you are risking turning away a huge percentage of potential visitors.

It should be clear that cross platform and multiple browser compatibility is a must. Therefore, understanding a few very basic and simple techniques to help keep your pages looking their best in the most places is also a must. Following, you will find a few tips and ideas to help you do just that.

#1 Paint the canvas your visitors will see

As a web site designer wanting to be as efficient in my work as possible, I have configured my Mac to use two monitors. As my mouse leaves the screen of one, it appears on the other. Thus, I have a canvas that, on most days, is 1856 pixels wide over 32 horizontal inches. If I want to, I can easily boost that to over 2000 pixels wide. But, my clients and the average visitor on the web do not have two monitors. In fact, most of them have the screen resolution set to 800 X 600 or 1024 X 768. What's more, every single time I have gone to a client who uses AOL, their browser window opens to what looks to be a 640 pixel wide default no mater how large the monitor or screen resolution.

On one of my first projects, I had designed a site to a modest 700 pixel wide format with a nice top navigation area. I went to my clients office to get some "point and discuss" feedback to find her new 21 inch monitor -- set at 640X480 resolution. My designs looked terrible!

If you intend your web site to appeal to the broadest range of visitors, you need to design in a way that will look good even at low resolutions. Check with some of your typical visitors and see what kind of resolutions they normally use.

#2 Use Tables to Control Width

Tables are great things when trying to control the way text and images go together. In order to achieve a nice looking design, using tables is the first technique to consider.

Tables can be assigned a fixed width in pixels or a fixed percentage of the window width. There are advantages to both approaches. If you are not concerned about the relative vertical arrangement of objects in a table cell, using the fixed percentage allows for more fluid layouts.

If, however, you want to keep text wrapped around an image with more consistency, using the percent approach could lead to major differences. Text will wrap quite differently in a cells of different pixel widths.

To have better control, consider using fixed pixel width. However, you must now start making some compromises. If you want to offer a site that looks good at 640X480, you will need to set your table width to 600 -- 620 MAX! You will want to center the table in the window to provide a nice look when wider windows are used. However, if your visitor has monitor resolutions set to 1600X800 and has the browser "maximized" your page will have 500 pixels of blank space on either side of your 600 pixel table.

Fortunately, few people will be browsing at this configuration. My experience visiting clients, friends, and family suggests that, even if monitor resolution is set at over 1000 pixels, the actual width of the browser window will be reduced to something less.

You must decide if you will risk an odd looking page for those few who have HUGE monitor resolution or risk the annoying scroll bar for those with the basic 640X480

#3 Compromise your Font Use.

Supposing you select a fixed width table and have a cell that is 300 pixels wide. You write a headline in this cell, pick a font, and size it to look just right. Good for you. Too bad that headline will come up different on different systems.

Even on the same computer, there are very slight differences between how Netscape and IE render fonts. Remember the 1 in 8 visitor using a Mac? For technical reason it is beyond the scope of this article to describe, fonts are significantly smaller on a Mac than on Windows. Don't forget that your visitors can also set the default size for font display in their browser, too. If they do that, you are really starting to lose control of how fonts are displayed!

One solution is to use cascading style sheets, but that technique goes beyond the casual designer's typical experiences. The other solution is to compromise. Make sure that it looks good on the predominant platform -- currently Windows -- but don't use the smallest font possible either or your Mac visitors won't be able to read it!

#4 Check Your Final on Multiple Platforms

I commit to my web design clients that their site will be look good to ALL visitors. To make sure this is the case, I have an Intel computer as well as my Macintosh. I have the Intel computer configured to boot into Windows 98, Windows 2000, and Linux. I test all the pages I design in these environments. I test in both Netscape and Internet Explorer on the Windows systems and the Mac. I enlist a partner to test with Lotus Notes and AOL.

This may seem excessive, but frequently there will be some little thing that shows up in one of the platform/browser configurations that requires some minor correction. Would it be good enough if I did not make the correction? Probably. However, it is always best to make a good first impression and on the web, where you have about 5 to 7 seconds to get visitors to commit to take an actual look, every little thing counts.

If you do not have access to multiple platforms, enlist your friends. Stop by a library or a Kinkos and use their computers (often these places may have Macintosh computers as well as Windows computers).

These four simple suggestions are the beginning of a journey toward the much larger goal of making the content of your web site universally available to your visitors. Ultimately, reaching this goal depends upon many factors. However, progress toward this goal must commence with awareness.

Understanding that your site will appear differently on different browsers and based on different user preference settings is an important first step toward awareness. Using tables and being conscientious with your use of fonts takes you one step further. Checking your work on various systems will begin to hint at how much further you have to go.

But, every journey must begin somewhere....

About The Author

David Bell
http://www.wspromotion.com/
Advertising research and development center

Do You Own Your Web Site Design?

by: Richard A. Chapo

Your web site has been up for a few months and you are making money hand over foot. While surfing sites one evening, you are shocked to find a competitor using your design. You find out your designer sold them the same design. They must be breaking the law, right? It all depends on whether you own the copyright to your web site design. Many site owners are shocked to find out they do not.

What is Copyright?

Copyright is a method of protection for authors of original works such as literature, computer programs, music, artistic pieces and photographic images. The protection provided by copyright arises under Title 17 of the United States Code. A copyright gives the owner the exclusive right to do or authorize others to: reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies, publicly display and generally use the material that carries the copyright in exchange for something, typically a royalty or fee. The copyright owner often grants this use through a license agreement, but can sell it outright.

Who Can Claim Copyright?

Copyright protection is created IMMEDIATELY upon the creation of a fixed form of the material in question and granted to the person that created the material. For instance, I automatically own the copyright to this article upon completing it. I am not required to file for an official copyright with the US Copyright Office to prove that I am the owner of the content. However, if I want to sue a person for using my article without permission, I must first register it.

What If I Hire Someone To Create A Web Site For Me?

If you hire a person or company to handle the design of your site, the complexities of copyright become a major issue for you. Specifically, the issue of "work for hire" is critical in determining whether you own the design.

"Work for hire" refers to the relationship between your business and the person creating your web site. If this person is an employee of your business and creates the material within their scope of employment, then your business owns the copyright. However, what happens when the designer is not an employee? In such a situation, the following must occur for the copyright to automatically transfer to you. The work must be specially ordered or commissioned for use as:

1. A contribution to a collective work,
2. A part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work,
3. A translation,
4. A supplementary work,
5. A compilation,
6. An instructional text,
7. A test,
8. Answer material for a test, or
9. An atlas.

It is my opinion that the design of a web site does not fall into any of the above categories. As a result, you do not own the copyright to the design and can do nothing about the fact that one of your competitors is using the design. Obviously, this is not the answer that most site owners want to hear. So, what can you do to protect your business?

When you hire an outside party to design, alter, amend or improve your site, you must have them sign a written contract. The contract must include a clause clearly establishing that the copyright to the material produced is vested with you, not the designer. You should then file the contract with your important documents as some designers "forget" that assigned the copyright to you. Presenting a copy of the contract and noting that it allows for the recovery of attorney's fees usually solves the problem.

The issue of copyright ownership of a web site or aspect of a site pops up often. Finding your design being used on another domain is bad enough, but it can get worse. If you sell your business, the attorney for the party purchasing your business will always ask about the copyright of the site as part of the due diligence process. More than a few business deals have fallen apart when the lack of copyright ownership is discovered. Obtaining copyright at the outset of your business effort will avoid serious problems in the future.

About The Author

Richard Chapo, Esq., is with SanDiegoIncorporate.com. He can be contacted at Richard@sandiegoincorporate.com.

This article is for general education purposes and does not address every facet of the subject matter. Nothing in this article creates an attorney-client relationship.

Designing Your Website's Directory Structure

by: Stephen Bucaro

Any kid, and their grandmother too, can make a webpage. There are many "wysiwyg" webpage design applications that let you create a webpage as easy as typing text. But only a few people can create a WEBSITE. The stumbling block is knowing how to link webpages together to form a website. I have seen many websites that consist of a single webpage - about a mile long!

The first problem is that websites are contained in virtual directories. You know that your webpages can be found at yourdomain.com, but the actual path to yourdomain.com on the web server may be known only by the system administrator. And the system administrator can move your website to a different folder, or even a different computer, without changing its virtual address.

The second problem is that most people don't know how to write a relative link. Relative links have the advantage that you don't need to know the path to the webpage that you want to link to, you only need to know where it is "relative" to the webpage containing the link.

Designing Your Directory Structure

The first step to implementing a website is to design the directory structure. Let's design a directory structure for a simple download website. The website consists primarily of articles and digital material that visitors can download. You could just dump everything at the top level of the website. Good luck maintaining that website!

To keep the files organized, you need to create sub-directories (folders) on the website. Even though the website consists only of articles and digital downloads, you need five sub-directories, as described below.

• articles
• downloads
• general
• common
• cgi-bin

You understand what the "articles" and "downloads" sub-directories are for, but what are the other three sub-directories for? It's standard practice to provide certain features on your website, as listed below.

• About
• Contact
• FAQ
• Privacy Policy
• Search
• Sitemap
• User Agreement

Each of these features requires a webpage. Instead of dumping the webpages at the top level of the website, or mixing them in with articles or downloads, let's put them together in a folder named "general" (I'm sure you can think of a better name).

All of your webpages use certain things in common, for example, your logo graphic. If your web server provides SSI (Server Side Includes) all your webpages can share a common header file and a common footer file. You might also define all your website's styles in a common style sheet. Let's put all of these files in a folder named "common".

Your contact page might use an email form. If your server provides server-side scripts, you would place the email form script in a folder named "cgi-bin". Cgi-bin stands for "Common Gateway Interface - Binary". Few people use CGI any more, and those that do don't use binary files, but the folder name has stuck as a traditional place to store scripts. Almost all websites come with a preconfigured cgi-bin folder, and the website may be configured so that the cgi-bin folder is the only folder with rights to run scripts.

I would also recommend that you create certain sub-directories for some of the above mentioned directories. Most web pages contain images. You could dump all the images in the same folder with the webpages, but when you get more than about 50 files in a folder, it becomes difficult to maintain. You should create an "images" sub-directory in the articles, downloads, and general directories. The downloads directory should also have a "files" sub-directory to store the downloads.

This arangement of directories and sub-directories will provide good file organization for the example website. Understanding my reasoning for this directory structure should help you to design a directory structure for the website you have in mind.

Default Page Configuration

Every website has at least one default webpage configured (also called the "home" page). The default webpage is the webpage that is returned when the user enters or clicks on a link containing only the domain name, without a specific file name. On a Unix or Linux web server, the default webpage will usually be "index.htm". On a Windows web server (IIS), the default page will usually be "default.asp".

The website administrator, or if your webhost provides the required "control panel" feature, you can actually configure any page to be the default page. If your web server has more than one default page configured, I would recommend removing all but the default page that you intend to use.

Now, let's assume that all of your webpages need to link to an image file named "logo.gif" stored in the "common" folder. The relative link on your default webpage would be as shown below.

"common/logo.gif"

The website file manager interprets this as "look in the folder named common for the file named logo.gif".

However, the link on any webpage contained in one of the sub-directories would be as shown below.

"../common/logo.gif"

The website file manager interprets this as "go up one level, then look down in the folder named common for the file named logo.gif".

This difference in the link may not be a problem unless you use SSI or ASP (Active Server Pages) to build your webpages from a common header file and a common footer file. Then you need a different link in the common file depending upon whether the page linked to the common file is the default webpage (where you would use common/filename) or a webpage contained in a sub-directory (where you would use ../common/filename). There are several ways to solve this problem.

1. If your website has a server-side scripting engine like ASP or PHP and you know how to program, you could implement code that selects the proper link.

2. You could use the complete path, including the domain name, on all pages. This will cause problems if you ever have to move your website to a different web host (Until all the dns servers across the planet have been updated).

3. You could put your home page in a sub-directory, for example "common", and make your default page into a re-direct to your home page. Then you would use "../common/filename" for all links. The following meta tag, placed the head section of your default webpage, will immediately redirect the users browser to your real home page.

meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0,url= "http://yourdomain.com/common/homepage.htm"

In this article, I showed you how to design a directory structure for your website and how to create relative links to link all your webpages together to form a website. Website visitors don't like to do a lot of scrolling, so try to keep your webpages to only two or three screens high. Please, no more websites that consist of only one mile long webpage!

Copyright(C) Bucaro TecHelp.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

About The Author

Stephen Bucaro
To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp.

Integrating Advertising into Your Web Design

by: Stephen Bucaro

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you'll want to put some thought into how you'll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can't point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

Ads as a service

Advertisements can provide useful information, as well as content. In that case, the ads become content. Here's an example. Rather than post ads that pay you the highest commission, post ads that provide the best value to the visitors to your website. These are ads where the value is so good you might respond to the ad yourself. This type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

Another example is ads for gifts around the holidays. People expect and are not turned off by an increase in ads around the holidays. Finding gifts for everyone on your list is difficult work, and people appreciate gift ideas. Again, this type of ad is more of a service than an advertisement.

You can safely exceed the normal ratio of ads to content if you hide the ads in the content. An example of this is product "reviews". For example, computer magazines are almost 100 percent advertising posing as product reviews.

2. Repetition of ads and ad management

I have seen websites that display the exact same banner on every page. If I didn't respond to the banner on the first page, what makes them think I will repond to it on the second, third ... hundredth page?

Displaying the same banner on every page of your website is annoying to your website's visitors, and a money losing propostion for you. Keep your ads fresh. Ads are boring enough without repeating the same ad over and over. Display a variety of ads, and use an ad management system. An example of an ad management system is a banner rotator.

3. Ad type relative to response rate

I have heard claims that text ads receive the highest reponse. I'm sure these results are not related to whether the ad is text or graphics, but more likely related to the fact that text ads are usually placed in the more responsive areas of a webpage. All thing being equal, a graphic ad will always get better response than a text ad.

A graphic ad will get higher response than a text ad, and an animated graphic ad will get higher response than a static graphic ad. But animation can be taken to an extreme. Some types of animation are annoying and not only does the ad get a low response, but it also causes visitors to click away from your website.

Examples of annoying animated ads are banners that flash or jiggle or do something else that distracts the visitor so they can't read the webpage content. Those visitors that don't click away will scroll the webpage so this type of ad goes off screen while they try to read the webpage.

A secret few advertising designers know is that the graphic that will get the most attention is a picture of a human face. People are genetically predisposed to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself while you're browsing the web. If a webpage has a human face on it, that's the first thing you will look at.

Where to position ads on your webpage

To discuss where to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a page into five sections as listed below.

1. Header
2. Footer
3. Left Margin
4. Right Margin
5. Center column

Note: There is a sixth area of the webpage which is the popup window. There are many forms of popup windows; pop-over, pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite way to use popup windows is the self-closing popup window. Because of popup window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today, and, from my own experience, when I tried using popup windows, the page views on my website dropped by 50 percent.

The most common position to place advertising banners is in the header section of a webpage. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate of banners in the header section of webpages has dropped to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what I call "battleship size") banners. I don't know of any studies that show this works.

Using banners in the head section of your webpage is a waste of processor time, but most webpages still use them. Making a sale this way is a long shot. Banners in the footer section of a webpage are even less responsive.

Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on the web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from ads in the left and right margins of a webpage. Most websites are designed with the menu in the left margin and possibly ads in the right margin. This means if the user has a low resolution display, depending upon the width of the webpage, the advertising may be off the screen.

Place your menu in the right margin and use the left margin for advertising. This places the user with a low resolution display in the positon of having to scroll to view the menu. Too bad. They should get a bigger display. Website revenue comes first.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in the center column of the webpage along with the content. As visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they come upon the ad. It's unavoidable.

If you imagine the center column of your webpage divided into three parts; top, middle, and bottom, the most responsive position for your ad will be right in the middle. As the visitors are reading the article on the webpage, they are forced to look at the ad as they continue to the lower part of the article. This might be a little annoying to the reader, but let's hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.

I would recommend placing your ad at the bottom of the center column. As visitors read the article on the webpage, they end up looking at your ad. This is almost as effective as placing the ad in the middle of the column, and a lot less annoying to the reader.

As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your website highly profitable. But, ad positon is not the only determining factor, don't forget the ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to response rate.

Copyright(C) 2004 Bucaro TecHelp.

Permission is granted for the below article to forward, reprint, distribute, use for ezine, newsletter, website, offer as free bonus or part of a product for sale as long as no changes are made and the byline, copyright, and the resource box below is included.

About The Author

Stephen Bucaro
To learn how to maintain your computer and use it more effectively to design a Web site and make money on the Web visit bucarotechelp.com. To subscribe to Bucaro TecHelp Newsletter visit http://bucarotechelp.com/search/000800.asp

Basic Web Design Principles

by: Zoran Makrevski

Home Page

Home page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.

If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link “skip intro” should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.

Navigation structure

Place the navigation on the place where the people are used too look for it. Don’t experiment with the navigation! I can’t stress enough this. Keep the navigation system same on ALL pages. Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your site.

Font size

Your font size should be enough big so your text can be read without effort. There are many people who will not bother to read very small letters. Don’t loose your visitors because of font size. Optimal size seems to be 12-13 points. Visitors should be able to read your text easy, without any effort. Broke big chunks of texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.

Line Length

The length of a line of type should be comfortable to read. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be about 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Somewhat shorter lines of about 40 to 50 characters may be more appropriate for larger displays. If the line is too long the reader must search for the beginning of it; if it is too short it will break up words or phrases awkwardly.

Creating emphasis

Creating emphasis is an important and integral part of designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and good judgment it can help direct and inform the reader. When these qualities are lacking, or someone feels that every word is important and must be emphasized in some way then your web page starts to look like a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!

Graphics

It’s well known that one picture worth more than million words. This rule applies on Internet too. Do your best to show clear, attractive photo of your product. If you offer a service, find a photo which will best describe him. However, be careful about file size. Don’t compress your photo to that level to not be clear, but also don’t leave the photo on full quality. That will make file size too big, and will increase download time.

Gif vs. JPEG

Less experienced web designers many times use wrong format to store their picture. Here are few guidelines which will help mistakes to be avoided. If your photo has small number of colors (less then 64) GIF will be better choice. Make sure however to reduce the palette size too. That is, if your image have10-15 colors only, reduce your palette on 16 or 32 colors.

Also, if your image contains text, GIF format should be your choice. JPEG use loosy compression method and will cause text and edges to become blurry.

If you are saving a photograph – save it as JPEG

JPEG images can contain over 32 million different colours. That is much more than the human eye can see.

If you want to incorporate large text into a photographic image, JPEG may be a good format to use. While the edges may still get blurred, danger of it becoming unreadable is slim. If you think your image is more important than the text, go ahead and use the JPEG format.

Speed

Do your best to reduce the download time. We live in a busy world and people are not will to wait long time. Try to reduce size of your graphics as much as possible without to destroy the image. Image must look good, but size (in KB) should be as small as possible.

Test before publishing

Do your homework, and do it well. Your visitors will not bother to send you an E-Mail that some of your links does not work or that some of your images does not appear. Even if someone do so, it is quite embarrassing. Perform spell and grammar checking. Remember that in many cases visitor will build his opinion about you or your company on base on your web site. When published, site should not contain any “under construction” or “coming soon” messages.

About The Author

Zoran Makrevski is founder and CEO of SEO.Goto.gr.
Since 1998 has focused on E-Commerce and attempts to bring more traffic to the customer sites bring him in the SEO industry, and he is running his own company today.
Search Engine Positioning Firm
SEO.Goto.gr

The 5 Biggest Mistakes Almost All Web Designers Make -- And Why These Mistakes Could Cost YOU A Fortune!

by: Jason Mangrum

Huge Mistake #1: Creating a Website with Flash -- Did you know in a recent study, top internet marketers discovered that having a website created with Flash, actually DECREASED the response from prospects and customers by as much as three-hundred-and-seventy percent?

Here's why: Your prospects and customers are most likely visiting your website using all types of different computers, connection speeds and internet configuration settings...

What may look GREAT to one visitor, may not even appear for another! You could very easily have shelled out hundreds or even thousands of dollars to have a website created using the Flash technology, only to find out that some of your visitors will never see it! (not to mention the loading times can cause your visitor to close your site, never to return again.)

Huge Mistake #2: The "Internet Catalog" Approach -- You see this everywhere. Good, honest and hardworking businessmen and women get online to sell their products or services, and have a site created for them that contains a link to just about everything they offer on one page. Their thinking goes along the lines of, "...well, I don't want to leave anyone out. If they come to my site, I want to make sure I have what they're looking for..." -- This way of thinking could not be further from the truth.

Here's why: There's an ancient rule that goes back to the very beginning of direct-marketing on the internet, taught by the richest, most legendary and well-respected internet marketers of all time...

"When you give your prospects too many choices, they become confused and aren't sure what to do next. Confused people never buy anything."

Huge Mistake #3: Optimizing Your Sales Site for the Search Engines -- You'll see this taught in nearly every "internet marketing" course, manual or eBook out there... "You must optimize every page of your website for the search engines!" -- In fact, this false teaching is accepted as 'gospel truth' so often, that most web designers will offer to do this for you at no, or little extra cost...

What they DON'T understand is that certain words and phrases must be either re-worded (to make it "keyword rich") or taken out completely, just to be looked upon highly by the mighty search engines -- and this could KILL your sales, literally overnight.

Here's why: When you or a hired web designer optimize your SALES page (i.e. any web page designed to sell your products and services) to get a higher listing in the search engines, you're going to have to sacrifice the pulling-power of your sales copy (i.e. written sales material) just to get those higher listings. Sure, this can bring you more traffic -- but what good is all the traffic in the world, if your visitors arrive at your website and aren't compelled enough to read why they should order your product?

For years, it has been taught that you should always try to find a "balance" of SEO (Search-Engine-Optimization) mixed with promotional copy designed to sell your products and services...

WRONG AGAIN! -- The truth is that you should NEVER optimize your sales page for the Search Engines. Instead, you should create tiny "entry pages" for each keyword related to your product or service, (highly optimized for the Search Engines) and have them link to your main sales site! (we can show you exactly how to do this quickly and easily and get *massive* targeted traffic from the Search Engines - without ever *touching* your sales site!)

Huge Mistake #4: Having a "Graphics-Based" Website -- Sure, graphics can certainly help us to visualize a particular situation or circumstance, product or service... But did you know that having a graphically-driven website can actually DISTRACT your visitor away from your sales message?

After all, your sales message (or "web copy") is THE #1 most important factor in a website that makes money. If your visitors are paying more attention to your "professional graphics" than your sales message... you've just lost another sale.

Here's why: You've got approximately seven seconds from the time your visitor arrives at your site, to the time they decide whether to buy your product, get more information or LEAVE. If you've got a graphically-intensive website, your website will most likely still be loading past your seven-second time limit.

That's a "customer-killer" in and of itself - however, the real reason lies within the fact that the bigger, brighter and more beautiful your graphics are, the more they will distract your visitor from your sales message. And if your visitor is distracted even for one second, it could mean the difference between getting a sale, and losing a customer.

Huge Mistake #5: Designing a Website with ZERO Marketing Experience -- Most web designers have no idea how to make money on the internet, with anything other than their design services. It's not their fault - they simply have no or very little marketing and sales experience. After all, they're just website designers...

However, having your website designed by someone with ZERO internet marketing experience is like buying a street-car without an engine... it won't go anywhere, and it'll just waste your time and money!

For more information on how to have your website designed (or re-designed) by a well-known expert in the field of direct-response internet marketing, go here: http://www.ImmWebDesign.com

About The Author

Jason Mangrum is CEO of ImmWebDesign.com, a Joint Venture specialist, contributing author to such #1 bestsellers as "The E-Code", "Desperate for Money", "30 Days to Internet Marketing Success", author of "The Path of Manifestation" and creator of the "Instant Marketing Miracle - Automated Joint Venture Software." He has also been a featured speaker at prestigous events such as Marc Goldman's "Joint Venture Summit of the Century" and the world-famous "Spiritual Marketing Super Summit."

Use Feng Shui Techniques To Design a Harmonic Website For Your Business

by: Jakob Jelling

By following feng shui guidelines and techniques, you can build and design a business website that is not only visually attractive but also attractive to wealth and prosperity. The elements that are part of a business website are somehow equivalent to the objects distributed through a working space since the website is the electronic version of the actual business' offices. Therefore, the website design and the elements that will be in it should follow feng shui guidelines in order to be properly balanced.

The colors used to design your website are very important and you should choose it carefully. If you want a website which feels lively and active, it should contain yang elements, while if you wish it to be quiet or passive, it should have yin prevalence. Yang colors are all the bright and cheerful ones, while ying colors are all the dark shades. Therefore, a website with predominance of a light and bright color would be more yang than a dark or off colored one where yin would have prevalence.

It is important that you keep your business' website general appearance clear and tidy. A messy or cluttered website would not only make the user feel overwhelmed but it would also be an obstacle for your business prosperity. Your business website should be designed having its graphics and written content clear and organized. Besides this, the general appearance should be as natural and easy to follow as possible. Anybody who visits your business website should feel welcome and comfortable in it, and this should be achieved by providing a clear and welcoming main page and allowing an easy navigation through the entire website.

The lines you use for your business website and its graphics are also important regarding feng shui harmony. Straight lines and shapes with cutting edges are not natural and when having too many of them it can be harmful for your business' prosperity. Therefore, you should try to use as many curved and smooth lines as possible, since this would not only help you adding nature inspired elements to the website but also bring wealth to it.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.fengshuicrazy.com Please visit his website and learn all the feng shui tips you'll ever need!

How Web Design Can Affect Search Engine Rankings

by: John Metzler

Uniquely built web sites can create unique issues when promoting your site on the search engines. From a basic 3 page brochure site, to a corporate site with hundreds of dynamically generated pages, every web site needs to have certain design aspects in order to achieve the full effects of an SEO campaign. Below are a few points to take into consideration when building or updating your web site.

1. Size Matters.

The size of a web site can have a huge impact on search engine rankings. Search engines love content, so if you have only a few pages to your site and your competitors have dozens, it's virtually impossible to see a top page ranking for your site. In some cases it may be difficult to present several pages of information about your business or products, so you may need to think about adding free resources for visitors. It will help in broadening the scope of your web site (which search engines like) as well as keep visitors on your site longer, thus possibly resulting in more sales.

2. Graphics-Based Web Sites.

While web sites that offer the visitor a more esthetically-pleasing experience may seem like the best choice for someone searching for your product, they are the most difficult to optimize. Since search engine robots cannot read text within graphics or animation, what they see may be just a small amount of text. And if we learned anything from point #1, that will not result in top rankings. If you really must offer the visitor a site jam-packed with graphics, or even a Flash experience, consider creating an html-based side of your site that is also available to visitors. This site will be much easier to promote on the search engines and your new found visitors will also have to option to jump over to the nicer looking part of your site.

3. Dynamic Web Pages.

If most of your web site is generated by a large database (such as a large book dealer with stock that is changing by the minute) you may find that some of your pages do not get indexed by major search engines. If you look at the URL of these pages you may find that they are extremely long and have characters such as ?, #, &, %, or = along with huge amounts of seemingly random numbers or letters. Since these pages are automatically generated by the database as needed, the search engines have a tough time keeping them up to date and relevant for search engine users.

One way to combat this problem is to offer a search engine friendly site map listing all your static pages just to let them know that yes, you do have permanent content on your site. A good internal linking system also helps in this case because if search engines see links going to and from these dynamic pages, they may index and assign them decent PageRank values. The link popularity of your site may carry more weight in this case as well, so if you can't offer as much static content as your competition, make sure you have an aggressive link campaign on the go.

4. Proper Use of HTML.

There is quite a bit of sub-par web design software out there. Word processors usually have a way to create HTML documents which can be easily uploaded to a site via ftp. However, in many cases the code that the search engine robots see is mostly lines and lines of font and size formatting, not actual relevant content. The more efficiently written web sites usually achieve higher rankings. Our choice for web design software is Macromedia Dreamweaver, as it is an industry standard. It also makes using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) a breeze, which can drastically cut down on the amount of text formatting in HTML code.

And there are some no brainers too. Web sites with abnormal amounts of hyperlinks, bold or italicized text, improper use of heading, ALT, or comment tags can also expect to be thrown to the bottom of the rankings.

5. Choosing a Domain Name.

The golden rule to web development of any kind is to keep your visitors in mind above all else...even search engine optimization. When choosing a domain name, one should pick either your business name (if you are making yourself known by just your name, ie. Chapters or Kleenex brand tissues) or a brief description of your products. Domain names can always help with search engine optimization, as it is another area of your web site that important keywords can appear. Exclude long-winded domains such as www.number-one-best-books-on-earth.com as no one will ever remember it and it will be hard to print on business cards or in print ads.

If you need to change your domain name for any reason, you obviously don't want to lose your existing rankings. An easy way to do this, and one that is currently supported by most search engines, is the 301 redirect. It allows you to keep your existing rankings for your old domain name, while forwarding visitors of that site to your new one virtually seamlessly.

6. Using Frames.

Just don't, it's that simple. Frames are a thing of the 90's (and in the Internet world that is eons ago) and are not even supported by some search engines. The ones that are able to index your site through frames will most likely frown upon them. Whatever you are trying to accomplish by using frames can usually be done with the help of PHP includes or CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). Some browsers are not frames-compatible, so there's the danger of some visitors not being able to see your site at all. Bookmarking of individual pages within a frame becomes difficult without lengthly scripts being written.

7. Update Your Information.

Not only does information printed two or three years ago look badly on your organization when it is read by a visitor, it is also looked down upon by search engines. Web sites that continuously update and grow their web sites usually experience higher rankings than stagnant sites. When the trick to SEO is offering visitors the most relevant information, you can bet that the age of web pages is taken into consideration by search engines. Consider creating a section of your site devoted to news within your organization, or have a constantly updated resources area.

Many shortfalls of web sites can easily be attributed to designers who just don't keep the user or search engines in mind. Search engine algorithms are quickly improving to try and list the most user-friendly sites higher, given that the content and link popularity are there to back it up. So first and foremost, know your target market and make your web site work for them before focusing on search engine optimization. If you build it (properly), they will come.

About The Author

Copyright John Metzler of Abalone Designs, November 2004. This article may be freely distributed if credit is given to the author.
Abalone Designs is a family-run Search Engine Optimization firm in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Visit www.abalone.ca for a free personalized analysis of your web site.
john@abalone.ca