7 Ways To Make Your Web Forms Better

Since many people who design web forms have never designed any form of any kind in their lives before, it 's hardly surprising that plenty of the results could do with a little improvement. And if you've spent any time on the web, you'll know just how annoying bad forms can be. In this article, then, we'll look at seven quick and easy ways to make your web forms much better.

1. Remember the Rest of the World.

This one is a call-out to American websites especially: don't forget that your site will have more than just American visitors! It 's very insulting to be asked to register for something, only for the site to demand my state and zip code, leaving no space for me to choose any other country or enter a postal code in any other format than five digits. To save the trouble of the whole thing, I usually just go for 'California' and '90210'. A bad entry for that person 's database, just because they didn't consider me when they designed their form.

2. Don't Use Huge Drop-Downs.

Likewise, though, if you are nice enough to let me choose a country, don't make me do it from an alphabetised list of every country in the world! The same thing goes for lists of states, counties, and so on. Drop down lists that are long enough to have scroll bars are just plain difficult to use and inconvenient. I'd much rather just type the name myself, thanks.

3. Always Offer Suggestions.

So someone can't get something they filled in on a form . Their username or domain name or whatever was already taken. What do you do? Please don't just say "sorry, that one 's taken, please try another". Come up with some useful suggestions of alternatives that are available, and let me choose them easily if I like them. Do try to be more imaginative than just adding numbers to the end, though, unless you want all your users to be called 'jane23436'.

4. Don't Punish Double Submitters.

There are some people, let 's face it, who just aren't all that sure how the web works. They've been taught that you have to double-click computer things to make them work, and so double-click they do: on links, on buttons, on everything. At some point, one of these people is likely to click twice on your submit button. You should allow for this in advance, instead of punishing them for it with an error. You might even consider using Javascript to grey out the submit button once it 's been pushed once, which solves the problem in most cases.

5. Stop Being So Picky.

Come on, now, do you really need my birth in dd/mm/yyyy format? Couldn't you figure out what I meant if I wrote a month out in words, or if I only put in a one-digit day, or a two-digit year? Of course you could. Don't throw my input back and ask me to fix things that a little server-side scripting could just as easily fix for me.

6. Display Warnings on the Page.

There are few things more annoying than websites which pop-up those little alert boxes, causing the computer to make a loud 'ding!' sound as they do so. If there 's something I need to go back and fix, add the warning to the page itself, preferably with a red border or background to mark it out for my attention. Don't make me read a dialog box, click OK, and scroll back up myself to hunt for my mistake.

7. Only Ask for What You Need.

Last but not least, this is a rule that could make so many web forms so much better. If the information you're asking for isn't absolutely crucial to your dealings with me, don't ask for it. Every second I spend filling in a form is a second I spend getting more frustrated with your website, and more likely not to finish what I've started if something goes even slightly wrong. Your site should be set up to figure out as much as it can about me automatically. Don't ask what language I want to use. My browser tells you that in its HTTP headers. Don't ask which country I'm from. You can detect that with my IP address. Save me time, and I'll be much more likely to appreciate your site.

About the Author

Floyd Bogart has been in the Marketing field for his entire 26 year career. He is now focusing all of his efforts to online marketing. For more information on website design go to:

http://websitedesign.hijackmyebooks.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Award Winning Web Designs - The Significance of Color

I wonder if you knew that visitors to your website form an instant opinion? And they form it about you and your offer. This instant opinion is created subconsciously. It happens automatically within the visitors mind. It happens automatically. Your site visitors can't help themselves. It matters not a jot how clever the text is on your page. You can have paid an expensive professional to produce your copy for you. The visitor need not read a single word, and yet they will form their instant opinion.

The quality of the images on your web page won't make any difference. Their quality doesn't affect in this instant opinion. You might think if you make an unrepeatable offer, that your visitor is bound to be swayed by that! I'm sorry, the instant opinion clicks in, and your brilliant offer lies unseen. This is because the instant opinion is made when your web page is displayed to your visitor. You may have guessed there is something subliminal at work here. In a way, that is right. Immediate opinions are formed by visitors to every single website. You may have already worked out that the answer is colors. When your web page appears to your visitor, the colors you've used go to work on the subconscious of your visitors.

The reason this happens is because we all react psychological and intuitively to colors. There isn't anything we can do about this. Colors has an affect on each of us. This is one of the reasons why companies can invest millions in getting the colors exactly right for their products and marketing promotions. They invest this money as they know how the psychology of color works. In their business propositions, the big companies understand that the use of appropriate colors is a key element. And so it is in web design. The colors of your web pages also convey feelings and emotions to the subconscious mind of your visitors.

By the psychological power you could encourage your website visitors to leave your page the instant they see it. This can happen even if the copy on your website is compelling. The chances are that visitors who are put off by your colors are unlikely to read your copy anyway. But all is not lost. In the same way that colors can be a turn off, it is possible to create a positive feeling through the use of colors. This isn't a new discovery. The psychological power of colors is well known in the offline marketing world. It 's been around with us for decades. It doesn't make any difference whether you know about color power, your subconscious mind is affected.

What we need to do in our website design is to ensure the color combination on our web pages convey a positive feelings. Your choice with your color selections is to send a sense belonging, trust and warmth. Conversely, the feeling sent may be one of distrust, coolness and rejection. Here is a list of colors showing the types of feelings each will evoke:

RED
Love, strength, sense of power, energy, excitement, danger, leadership etc

ORANGE
Comfort, friendliness, confidence, courage, steadfastness, playfulness, cheerfulness etc

YELLOW
Curiosity, intelligence, brightness, amusement, caution, joy, organization etc

GREEN
Harmony, nature, healing, life, food, health, money etc

BLUE
Patience, love, peace, tranquility, trustworthiness, stability, acceptance etc

PURPLE
Wisdom, independence, nobility, ambition, dignity, luxury, royalty etc

BROWN
Earthiness, nature, durability, tribal, comfort, reliability, primitive etc

BLACK
Elegance, sophistication, health, dramatic, power, formality, style etc

WHITE
Goodness, easy, simplicity, cleanliness, purity, fresh, innocence etc

Finally, be aware that your website color scheme should reflect the product or offering you make. What happens is that the subconscious mind of your visitor will attempt to reconcile the colors with the message. If it can't, it will lose interest. And you will lose your visitor. You should spend time in determining what are the right colors for your web pages. Try and make sure your colors and message are in harmony. If you can achieve this, you will produce better results from your website. In summary, the difference between the right and wrong color scheme on your website can be the difference between profit and loss.

About the Author

Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur and business consultant, and author of the ebook CASH COLORS. If the subject of award winning web designs is of relevance to you, CASH COLORS shows how to make your web page colors work for you, as opposed to against you. http://www.cash-colors.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Website Design For Real Estate: Avoid These Costly Mistakes

For those in the real estate business, having an online presence is a must. From being able to contact and interact with potential buyers and sellers to showcasing the properties you have available, the quality and effectiveness of your website design can have a major impact on the success of your business. Unfortunately many realtor 's websites do not project a professional image. Here are a few tips to make certain the website design for your real estate agency helps add to your bottom line.

Tip Number One: Make sure your home page is clean and fast loading.

Your home page is the first page most of your clients will see. Make certain to make a good first impression. Your home page should have a clean layout and very few graphics. This will allow the page to load fast. Especially in this day of high-speed internet access, there 's nothing that says "unprofessional" like a slow-loading web-page.

On the same note, make sure the company that is hosting your website provides you with a fast enough server for your site. If you haven't chosen a hosting provider yet, be sure to ask potential hosts to give you links to other sites on their servers. You can then check to see how fast these sites load.

As far as content goes, you first page should include a message about your real estate company - focusing on the benefits that you provide the customer. You should also include your contact information. Make certain to have your website designer include a contact form on your website so people can get in touch with you directly through the site.

You home page should also include easy navigation to the other sections of your website. Make the links to the other sections very descriptive so surfers can find their way to what they are looking for fast. Do not try to fill your home page up with photos and descriptions of all your latest listings. Instead, place a simple text or text and small image link to that section of your site.

Tip Number Two: Keep your website theme constant throughout the site.

Your real estate web site may be composed of several different sections. For example, some real estate websites have one system running to showcase multiples listings, a blog integrated into their site to keep customers up-to-date on the latest news, and often several regular pages describing the city or town the agency is located in. Because each of these sections may have been created with different programs, the color schemes and fonts may not match.

Be sure to have your website design company make the theme match as much as possible throughout the site. This may be as simple as creating a header image for the top of every page in the site, to a more complicated customizing of the style-sheets to create a completely integrated theme for the entire site.

Tip Number Three: Keep your real estate web listings up to date.

Imagine a potential client coming across one of your listings on your website and deciding it 's the perfect place for them, only to call and find out it was already sold or rented days or weeks ago. You've likely just lost the chance to ever do business with that person. To prevent this from happening, make certain someone on your staff is responsible for keeping all the listings on your website always up-to-date.

Depending on the program used to manage the listings section of your website, this might require some extra training to make sure whoever is responsible can perform these updates as quickly and efficiently as possible. The investment in time and training will certainly be worth it though.

By taking these tips into consideration, you should be able to better communicate with your website designer about your real estate site. This will help ensure you are able to project a professional image online too, increasing your marketing reach and your bottom line.

About the Author

When you're ready to get going on your real estate website, come grab the latest web design news and tips for free at http://www.IMByDesign.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Design Web Site Build - The Value of Color

People who visit your website usually form an instant opinion about you and what your website offers. This instant opinion is created subconsciously. It happens automatically within the visitors mind. You might wonder why this happens. It matters not a jot how clever the text is on your page. You can have paid an expensive professional to produce your copy for you. And yet your visitor will still form their instant opinion without even reading a single word of your costly copy.

The quality of the images on your web page won't make any difference. Their quality doesn't affect in this instant opinion. It also doesn't matter how great your offer is. You might be providing a superb bargain or proposition, but again this isn't going to influence the instant opinion. This is because the instant opinion is made when your web page is displayed to your visitor. By now, you are probably wondering just what it is that has this power. Exactly what can have an immediate reaction in your site visitors. You may have already worked out that the answer is colors. When your web page appears to your visitor, the colors you've used go to work on the subconscious of your visitors.

The spooky thing about this is that as a web page viewer we can do nothing about this. Colors evoke an intuitive reaction which we have no control over.' There isn't anything we can do about this. Colors has an affect on each of us. Companies have known about this years. You will find they spend millions in developing the appropriate colors for their new products and marketing campaigns. What they fully understand is the psychological power of colors. And they use this to the maximum in their promotions. In their business propositions, the big companies understand that the use of appropriate colors is a key element. And so it is in web design. The colors of your web pages also convey feelings and emotions to the subconscious mind of your visitors.

The color scheme on your web pages can tell your visitor different things. The colors could convey a negative message, in which case be prepared for your visitors to leave your site very quickly. This can happen even if the copy on your website is compelling. The chances are that visitors who are put off by your colors are unlikely to read your copy anyway. The good news, however, is that you can use colors to engender a really positive reaction. You may be aware, that the psychological impact of colors isn't a new phenomenon. In fact, it 's been with us for years and years. Whatever our role in life, colors convey emotions to our subconscious mind.

For example, a particular color scheme could convey a good feeling in each of us. However, a different color scheme might convey not so good feelings. If you do this, then you will be conveying a trust, sense of belonging and warmth. If you get your colors wrong, you could be conveying negative feelings like distrust, rejection and coolness. The following list of colors indicates the feelings and emotions with which they are associated:

RED
Energy, sense of power, danger, strength, love, excitement, leadership etc

ORANGE
Steadfastness, confidence, courage, comfort, friendliness, playfulness, cheerfulness etc

YELLOW
Brightness, organization, intelligence, caution, joy, amusement, curiosity etc

GREEN
Money, harmony, life, food, nature, healing, health etc

BLUE
Trustworthiness, patience, love, acceptance, tranquility, stability, peace etc

PURPLE
Luxury, nobility, dignity, independence, ambition, royalty, wisdom etc

BROWN
Durability, comfort, tribal, earthiness, reliability, primitive, nature etc

BLACK
Power, health, sophistication, formality, style, dramatic, elegance etc

WHITE
Cleanliness, purity, easy, goodness, simplicity, fresh, innocence etc

Finally, be aware that your website color scheme should reflect the product or offering you make. What happens is that the subconscious mind of your visitor will attempt to reconcile the colors with the message. If it can't, it will lose interest. And you will lose your visitor. It is important therefore that your website uses the right color scheme. If you can achieve this, you will produce better results from your website. In fact, by getting the right colors on your website you could be looking at the difference between making a profit or a loss.

About the Author

Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur and business consultant, and author of the ebook CASH COLORS. If the topic of design web site build is of interest to you, CASH COLORS shows how to make your web page colors work for you, as opposed to against you. http://www.cash-colors.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Is Your Website Designed to Provide Access for the Disabled?

Is your website accessible to people with disabilities? It seems like today, website owners are more concerned with mobile web design than they are with making their sites available to the millions of people around the world with disabilities. It makes sense from a business perspective to make your website as accessible as possible to everyone, but it is also becoming a legal matter and much for many businesses and organizations.

The World Wide Web is classified as a form of Information and Communications Technology, or ICT. Laws and policies regarding ICT accessibility that are already in existence are being considered in terms of the Internet. In addition, more and more legislation addressing ICT accessibility is being enacted around the world.

Although the Internet is for the most part unregulated, laws can apply to the Web as ICT. Many countries currently have government laws, policies, regulations and recommendations in place regarding Web accessibility. An abbreviated list of these countries includes: Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Israel, Japan, Spain the United Kingdom and the United States.

The Americans with Disabilities Act and Internet Accessibility

In the United States, rulings regarding the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) resulted in the determination that State as well as local governments and the business sector must provide "effective communication" during Internet communications.

A significant point of the ADA policy rulings is that communications in graphical format are almost impossible for people with visual disabilities to understand. Screenreaders cannot make sense of graphic images: text format is absolutely essential, including text for navigational tools, graphs, tables and charts.

You can find out more about the ADA and rulings regarding the Internet at the US Department of Justice (USDOJ) website.

Implementing Universal Design

Whether laws are governing your website today or not, it is in your best interest to make your site accessible to all Internet users - especially if it is a business website. How can you accomplish this? By implementing the elements of Universal Design on all of your web pages. Your entire website will then be available to the widest range of Internet users possible, regardless of the type of technology or equipment they use, disabilities, age, or level of education.

The following are some of the specific ways you can apply Universal Design principles to your website:

1. Provide text browser support

2. Present documents in text format rather than in frames or PDF

3. Avoid requiring visitors to download software to view information

4. Add "Alt" tags to your graphics so screenreaders can "read" images

5. Hyperlink all photos with descriptive text

6. Hyperlink video and audio clips with captioning

7. Provide email or voice/TTY phone number alternatives for on-line forms

8. Avoid relying on color to convey information

You can obtain more complete information about website accessibility guidelines from resources such as W3 online.

Depending on your skills, you may or may not need assistance redesigning or developing your next website for full accessibility. Whether you make changes to your website design yourself or rely on professional assistance, remember to evaluate the results.

There are many free evaluation tools available online that can help you test web pages on your site for accessibility. For a comprehensive evaluation that would ensure compliance with web accessibility laws, you will need to rely on the expertise of a knowledgeable professional as well as evaluation tools.

Additional Benefits of Web Accessibility

Whether you need to bring your website to full web accessibility standards to comply with legal requirements, or you're primarily interested in providing access to those with disabilities, you'll discover some surprising additional benefits.

A website with a flexible design is more accessible to people browsing the Web with limited technology, such as dial-up Internet connections or outdated computers. Your fully accessible website will also be available to those with temporary disabilities, such as people recovering from surgery or accidents. With the right equipment, even people with limited or no literacy skills will be able to browse your website.

Regardless of what type of website you have, focusing on web accessibility will benefit your visitors as well as your business in a variety of ways.

About the Author

Download Web Legal Kit today to learn about email compliance measures.

Find out how you can protect your intellectual property with copyrights, trademarks, and patents, including search functions.

http://www.weblegalkit.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Best Web Sites Design - Why the Right Colors are Critical

People who visit your website usually form an instant opinion about you and what your website offers. They can't help themselves. Their instant opinion is formed in their subconscious mind. You might wonder why this happens. It matters not a jot how clever the text is on your page. You can have paid an expensive professional to produce your copy for you. The visitor need not read a single word, and yet they will form their instant opinion.

You might also have invested in some really great pictures or images on your site. I'm affraid this will carry zero influence on your visitor 's instant opinion. It also doesn't matter how great your offer is. You might be providing a superb bargain or proposition, but again this isn't going to influence the instant opinion. This is because the initial reaction to your website is instant, and occurs the moment the page appears in the browser of your visitor. You might wonder what it is that is so important that it has this effect on your web page visitors? You may have already worked out that the answer is colors. It is the color scheme used on your website which causes your page visitors to create that instant opinion.

The reason this happens is because we all react psychological and intuitively to colors. There isn't anything we can do about this. Colors has an affect on each of us. This is one of the reasons why companies can invest millions in getting the colors exactly right for their products and marketing promotions. They invest this money as they know how the psychology of color works. The right colors can be the critical factor in the success of big company products. What webmasters have to realize, and this can be very important, is that the same color psychology applies to our web pages.

By the psychological power you could encourage your website visitors to leave your page the instant they see it. No matter what your website is about, it may simply be unsuccessful due to the colors you're using. Forget the text, it might never be read! The good news, however, is that you can use colors to engender a really positive reaction. This isn't a new discovery. The psychological power of colors is well known in the offline marketing world. In fact, it 's been with us for years and years. Whatever our role in life, colors convey emotions to our subconscious mind.

What we need to do in our website design is to ensure the color combination on our web pages convey a positive feelings. If you do this, then you will be conveying a trust, sense of belonging and warmth. Conversely, the feeling sent may be one of distrust, coolness and rejection. Here is a list of colors showing the types of feelings each will evoke:

RED
Sense of power, strength, leadership, excitement, danger, energy, love etc

ORANGE
Steadfastness, friendliness, playfulness, courage, cheerfulness, comfort, confidence etc

YELLOW
Curiosity, intelligence, joy, caution, amusement, organization, brightness etc

GREEN
Health, money, life, harmony, healing, nature, food etc

BLUE
Trustworthiness, love, tranquility, stability, acceptance, patience, peace etc

PURPLE
Dignity, nobility, royalty, independence, ambition, wisdom, luxury etc

BROWN
Comfort, reliability, tribal, earthiness, durability, primitive, nature etc

BLACK
Power, sophistication, wealth, formality, dramatic, style, elegance etc

WHITE
Cleanliness, fresh, purity, easy, goodness, simplicity, innocence etc

Finally, be aware that your website color scheme should reflect the product or offering you make. The reason is that your visitors' subconscious minds will look to reconcile the color with the message. If they are irreconcilable, you will find your visitors click away from your page very quickly. And you may never see them again. The important issue therefore is that it is essential the right color scheme is used on your website. If you can achieve this, you will produce better results from your website. In fact, by getting the right colors on your website you could be looking at the difference between making a profit or a loss.

About the Author

Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur and business consultant, and author of the ebook CASH COLORS. If the subject of best web sites designs is of relevance to you, CASH COLORS shows how to make your web page colors work for you, as opposed to against you. http://www.cash-colors.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Web Design Training Services - Learning why the Right Colors are Key

People who visit your website usually form an instant opinion about you and what your website offers. They can't help themselves. Their instant opinion is formed in their subconscious mind. You might wonder why this happens. This reaction comes regardless of the words and text on your web pages. The visitor need not read a single word, and yet they will form their instant opinion.

You might also have invested in some really great pictures or images on your site. I'm afraid this will carry zero influence on your visitor 's instant opinion. It also doesn't matter how great your offer is. You might be providing a superb bargain or proposition, but again this isn't going to influence the instant opinion. This is because the second your page is displayed your subconscious mind goes to work, and the instant opinion begins to form. You might wonder what it is that is so important that it has this effect on your web page visitors? This may surprise you, but the answer is colors. Your visitor 's instant opinion of your website is primarily due to the color scheme which you have used.

The reason this happens is because we all react psychological and intuitively to colors. We can't help ourselves. Colors bring us these emotions and feelings whether we want them or not! Companies have known about this years. You will find they spend millions in developing the appropriate colors for their new products and marketing campaigns. Big companies realize that colors are a psychological feature, and they can influence our reception of their marketing. The right colors can be the critical factor in the success of big company products. What webmasters have to realize, and this can be very important, is that the same color psychology applies to our web pages.

The fact is, the color scheme you use on your web pages can have the effect of causing your visitors to very quickly click away from your website. This can happen even if the copy on your website is compelling. The chances are that visitors who are put off by your colors are unlikely to read your copy anyway. But don't despair. By using a different color scheme it is quite possible to influence your web page visitor to react positively to you and your offering. This isn't a new discovery. The psychological power of colors is well known in the offline marketing world. It 's been around with us for decades. Whatever our role in life, colors convey emotions to our subconscious mind.

What we need to do in our website design is to ensure the color combination on our web pages convey a positive feelings. In essence, you might send a sense trust, warmth and belonging. The last thing you would want to do is convey feelings of rejection, distrust and coolness. The following list gives an idea of the emotions associated with their respective colors:

RED
Love, leadership, strength, sense of power, danger, excitement, energy etc

ORANGE
Courage, cheerfulness, friendliness, steadfastness, confidence, comfort, playfulness etc

YELLOW
Brightness, organization, curiosity, amusement, caution, joy, intelligence etc

GREEN
Health, harmony, money, food, life, nature, healing etc

BLUE
Patience, acceptance, peace, love, stability, tranquility, trustworthiness etc

PURPLE
Wisdom, nobility, dignity, luxury, ambition, royalty, independence etc

BROWN
Tribal, durability, primitive, nature, reliability, comfort, earthiness etc

BLACK
Formality, power, elegance, wealth, dramatic, style, sophistication etc

WHITE
Goodness, purity, simplicity, fresh, easy, cleanliness, innocence etc

In summary, the color scheme you use on your web pages need to be reflected by the product or offering you make. The reason is that your visitors' subconscious minds will look to reconcile the color with the message. If they are irreconcilable, you will find your visitors click away from your page very quickly. Which means, your visitor will be lost. It is important therefore that your website uses the right color scheme. If you do this, your website will produce the results you're looking for. Be aware, your color scheme can cause your website to make a profit or a loss.

About the Author

Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur and business consultant, and author of the ebook CASH COLORS. If you're interested in web design training services, CASH COLORS teaches how to make your web page colors work for you, as opposed to against you. http://www.cash-colors.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Top Web Sites Design - Why Color is a Key Element

People who visit your website usually form an instant opinion about you and what your website offers. They can't help themselves. Their instant opinion is formed in their subconscious mind. You might wonder why this happens. This reaction comes regardless of the words and text on your web pages. The visitor need not read a single word, and yet they will form their instant opinion.

You might also have invested in some really great pictures or images on your site. I'm afraid this will carry zero influence on your visitor 's instant opinion. It also doesn't matter how great your offer is. You might be providing a superb bargain or proposition, but again this isn't going to influence the instant opinion. This is because the second your page is displayed your subconscious mind goes to work, and the instant opinion begins to form. You might wonder what it is that is so important that it has this effect on your web page visitors? This may surprise you, but the answer is colors. Your visitor 's instant opinion of your website is primarily due to the color scheme which you have used.

The reason this happens is because we all react psychological and intuitively to colors. We can't help ourselves. Colors bring us these emotions and feelings whether we want them or not! Companies have known about this years. You will find they spend millions in developing the appropriate colors for their new products and marketing campaigns. Big companies realize that colors are a psychological feature, and they can influence our reception of their marketing. The right colors can be the critical factor in the success of big company products. What webmasters have to realize, and this can be very important, is that the same color psychology applies to our web pages.

The fact is, the color scheme you use on your web pages can have the effect of causing your visitors to very quickly click away from your website. This can happen even if the copy on your website is compelling. The chances are that visitors who are put off by your colors are unlikely to read your copy anyway. But don't despair. By using a different color scheme it is quite possible to influence your web page visitor to react positively to you and your offering. This isn't a new discovery. The psychological power of colors is well known in the offline marketing world. It 's been around with us for decades. Whatever our role in life, colors convey emotions to our subconscious mind.

What we need to do in our website design is to ensure the color combination on our web pages convey a positive feelings. In essence, you might send a sense trust, warmth and belonging. The last thing you would want to do is convey feelings of rejection, distrust and coolness. The following list gives an idea of the emotions associated with their respective colors:

RED
Love, leadership, strength, sense of power, danger, excitement, energy etc

ORANGE
Courage, cheerfulness, friendliness, steadfastness, confidence, comfort, playfulness etc

YELLOW
Brightness, organization, curiosity, amusement, caution, joy, intelligence etc

GREEN
Health, harmony, money, food, life, nature, healing etc

BLUE
Patience, acceptance, peace, love, stability, tranquility, trustworthiness etc

PURPLE
Wisdom, nobility, dignity, luxury, ambition, royalty, independence etc

BROWN
Tribal, durability, primitive, nature, reliability, comfort, earthiness etc

BLACK
Formality, power, elegance, wealth, dramatic, style, sophistication etc

WHITE
Goodness, purity, simplicity, fresh, easy, cleanliness, innocence etc

In summary, the color scheme you use on your web pages need to be reflected by the product or offering you make. The reason is that your visitors' subconscious minds will look to reconcile the color with the message. If they are irreconcilable, you will find your visitors click away from your page very quickly. Which means, your visitor will be lost. It is important therefore that your website uses the right color scheme. If you do this, your website will produce the results you're looking for. Be aware, your color scheme can cause your website to make a profit or a loss.

About the Author

Brian McGregor is an internet entrepreneur and business consultant, and author of the ebook CASH COLORS. If the subject of top web sites design is of relevance to you, CASH COLORS shows how to make your web page colors work for you, as opposed to against you. http://www.cash-colors.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Web Design Avoid Mistakes and Follow the Best Rules

Good web design is easy to reach just sticking to a small set of rules, principals and avoiding some common mistakes.
Excellent web design skills are born out of years of experience, but for the beginning avoiding classical mistakes will give you a very good start.You also must keep abreast to the changes in mentality, skills and sophistication of today web visitors.

Fifteen years ago if you had a website with excellent graphics, flashy banners, and some animation elements you had a great website. Today you need to have content: relevant, unique, useful, you really have to solve some problems for your visitors. It is still important the website to look good but the content is the king now. Do you see the shift, which definitely are part of the learning curve, and competition on the internet marketing, which is different now vs. 15 years ago?

I will share with you some of the golden rules and common mistakes for website design.
1) Keep everything simple and intuitive. Long ago I read a book, which opened my eyes. Do not make me think: a common sense approach to web usability by Steve King is one of the best books on websites design.
I hear you, and I will explain. Do not make me think is just a cry loud for simplicity and intuitively. If you have to fill in a form and you have no idea how to do it, if you want to navigate from point A to point B but you do not have a direct link to do it, and so on, it is something wrong with the logic of your website design.
It is more than that, after years of browsing the web, visitors to a website expect certain conventions, and just breaking them is a great way of losing visitors. Example: people expect to find the navigation at the top of a page or on the left side; logos are mostly found on the top left. I suggest looking at how large companies such as Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay structure their pages, the language they use and emulate them.

2) Choose carefully the fonts. Not all the visitors have all the fonts available, you have to go with one of the font everybody have. They are: Arial, Verdana, Times, Courier, Geneva. All are easy to read. I think Verdana font looks great and is cited as being the easiest to read on the web, Arial as well. Do not make any sense to buy new fonts and use them because a user, who does not have that particular font, will end up using the default on his browser.

3) Always ensure that there is a good contrast between any text and its background. The best combination is black text on a white background or white text on black background. Do not use white text on pale background; it is not user friendly because it is not easy to read.

4) Do not use all available colors on your pages, limit to 2-3 colors per website. Be considering to users with color blindness or contrast perception difficulties. You can help yourself with a software packages: Color Wheel Pro.

5) Make your website easy to change. You must be able to easily change your pages without completely redesigning them. The ability to add or remove content from a website is fundamental to the ongoing success of your website.
You do not create a website once and expect to be rank well in Google without to update frequently your website, improve your content, add new ideas and delete the ones which are not relevant.
The best structure of a website has a horizontal navigation, use cascading style sheets, and avoid unconventional layout and complicated backgrounds.

6) Be consistent, it is part of do not make your visitor think. At least about how to use your website, how easy is to navigate, and the same pattern and rules must exist in all the pages of the website. Using CSS correctly you can make most of this happen automatically. Try to learn a lot about cascading Style Sheets, this will make possible to separate the appearance and layout of your website from the content. This way the update and maintenance of your site will be easy to accomplish.

7) Concentrate on content, make the website relevant. Correlate your content with your pictures, without to abuse them. Do not use a lot of animation. Try to keep focus on content, update frequently, add more useful content. Create links to frequently visited website. This will help your ranking by search engine.

8) Avoid complexity you will save development time and make website easier to use.
All the above are common sense but following these principles will help you keep from trouble. It is possible to outsource the website design , it will cost you decent amount of money just to create just the initial layout. The real problem will appear later when you want to maintain your website; you will be charge be minimum half hour price for any 5 minute change and will add up considerable amount of money in time.

Personally I want to be in charge with the maintenance of all my websites.

About the Author

Michaela Cernescu is an experienced eBayer, Education Specialist trained by eBay, Internet Marketer, Digital Products Writer and Affiliate.
http://www.mc-ebay-resources.com
http://www.ebookscamp.com
http://www.emrauction.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

6 Reasons You Need a Website

If you don't have a website, then you might not realize all the great things they can do for you. Maybe you think there wouldn't be any point, because your business is too small or maybe you don't even have a business! Perhaps you think it'd be a lot of work for little reward. Or maybe you paid big bucks for a site back during the dot-com 'boom' days, only to get nothing but trouble out of it and shut it down a year later.

Whatever your situation is, though, you need a website, and I'm here to tell you why.

1. People Will Look for You Online.

Sooner or later, someone 's going to type your name into a search engine. What do you want them to find? Nothing? These are people who want to find you, and if you don't have a website then you're letting them down they expect you to be online. For many people, you might as well not exist if you can't be found with a search engine. Not having a website is like not bothering to get listed in the phone book. Whether it 's customers or old school friends you're hoping for, very few people are going to find you if you aren't online.

2. Websites Cost Next to Nothing.

Once, it cost a lot to run a website. But those days are long gone. There are 'pay as you go' services out there now charging as little as $1 per gigabyte of bandwidth. If you're sensible about the size of your pages, that dollar could last you a whole month, or even longer! If you don't want to pay for design, it 's never been simpler to do it yourself, or find free software to do it for you. Really, it 's never been cheaper to have a website than it is today.

3. Websites are Great Advertising.

Whatever you're advertising your services, your products, or just yourself. A website is a great way to do it. Every other kind of advertising going costs a premium, especially if you want to target a specific kind of person, and there 's no guarantee that they're paying attention. Websites are like brochures that are free to reproduce, interactive, and quickly distributed to people who are already looking for them. No advertising medium even comes close to the ease-of-use and effectiveness of a website.

4. A Website is a Worldwide Presence.

On the web, it doesn't matter whether someone is next door to you or on the other side of the world. They can see your website just the same as anyone else can, at no extra cost to you or to them. Phone and post both cost enormous amounts long-distance, but a website lets you send information anywhere without any extra effort or expense. You can make friends and contacts in places you've never been and will never go. Suddenly, working globally is no more effort than working locally.

5. Your Website Can Make You Money.

There 's a lot of money on the web, and it 's not hard to get some. The longer you're online for, the bigger your share can get. If you have something to sell, you can sell it worldwide, thanks to credit cards. Doing business online eliminates almost every overhead there is: all you need to do is have the goods. If you've written something useful, you can put it out there with a few ads. You won't get rich overnight, but you can set up a steady trickle of income... and there 's no limit to the number of trickles you can set up.

6. Your Website Can Save You Time.

Giving out information takes time, whether it 's on the phone, or in brochures, or even if it 's just emailing your family. Websites are designed to save you time. All your family and friends can read your online diary (known as a weblog), but you only had to write it once. Customers can see your whole product catalogue without ever needing to talk to you or visit you. This is the power of the web: things on it are written only once, but can be downloaded endlessly. A good website runs itself, and keeps being useful to people for much longer than you'd expect.

About the Author

Floyd Bogart has been in the Marketing field for his entire 26 year career. He is now focusing all of his efforts to online marketing. For more information on website design go to:

http://websitedesign.hijackmyebooks.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

The Importance of Good Web Design

The following rules summarize the work of web design experts who are completely familiar with all the aspects of web design. Heed their advice to avoid any web design surprises.

In designing the web pages for a website you should adhere to following rules:

1. Pages required: Your website must contain following pages:

* Feedback is necessary to obtain the suggestions of your visitors.

* Contact us is necessary to establish a relation between you and your visitors. You should provide your EMAIL so as visitors should feel that will be given full support.

* About us page should be included in order to publish the information about your organization. This information could be year of setup, country from which you operate etc.

* Home page should be included where links to all the other pages should be provided and the link to Home page should also be given from all the other pages.

2. Basic Ideas: Website is like an introduction of your company to perspective customers at distanced location. The products or services that you offer to your customers should all be displayed in a presentable manner. It is said that first impression is the last impression and your website is the first impression to your target potential customers. The impression created by your website in visitor mind is not enough to catch visitors attraction he will simply avoid your website.

Your Website must be:

* Neat which means that site should not be overcrowded with too many links.

* Organized means that the different contents from different sections of website should be placed in different pages.

* Attractive means that the color selection for WebPages should be as such that it should look nice. The background color should be light and the design should be able to catch visitor attention at first look.

* Truthfully, the only difference between you and web design experts is time. If you'll invest a little more time in reading, you'll be that much nearer to expert status when it comes to web design.

* Professional means that unwanted contents should be avoided and all like contents should be placed in proper headings in pages. At first site it should be able to show the visitor their interests for joining your website.

* Small size of WebPages means that too much flashy content in desire to make webpage look attractive would increase the size which will cause delay in opening at client site. And the visitors will simply avoid surfing these type of websites. So too much unnecessary flashy content should be avoided.

3. Message: The first question is why anyone should surf your website? If you are able to answer this question well your website will be definitely entertained by visitors.

Visitors always look at their interest in surfing your website. Remember most of visitors are not impressed free products and services. If you could offer following:

* Entertainment which may include games etc.

* Information which may include latest business news etc.

* Links to other interesting sites.

* Your website should be simple enough to visitors for search of products and services offered by you to them. And they should be able to order theses products and services at their convenience. Your website should also support large number of payment options. The popular payment methods are: Credit card, Paypal, Wire transfer etc. Adhering to any one payment option will cause the visitor to betray which will defame your organization.

4. Easy and Fast download: Your site should download on client site in a few seconds. Market research shows that the average number of surfer leaves a site that fails to load in 7 seconds. Fast download of our website at client computer will be possible only when you avoid large graphics and flash animations. The Home page of your website should not annoy your visitors with too much links and unwanted messages otherwise you may loose your visitors. You can also search for tutorial on how to increase speed of your website in search engines and implement in your website.

5. Website text: Choice of words does not matter what matters is appearance of words in WebPages. Dark texts in light background will be an impressive scheme while dark background unable the visitor to read the text. Those fonts should be chosen which are easily available on every computer. Some of fonts are: Times New Roman, Arial, Courier and Garamond. In the case visitor do not have required font installed on their computer your message will not visible n their computer and which will lose their interest in surfing your website.

6. Privacy: Visitors should get a trust on you that their private information is being protected by you from other visitor and does not allow for access and updating to other visitors. You should highlight your privacy policy and security aspects.

7. Spelling and grammar: You should be careful in text you write that you should not commit any spelling mistakes that will show your inefficiency. You should check it twice before finalizing the content for your website. You should not make grammatical mistakes as well.

You can't predict when knowing something extra about web design will come in handy. If you learned anything new about web design in this article, you should file the article where you can find it again.

About the Author

About the Author:

Hans Hasselfors is the founder of http://www.SubmitYourNewArticle.com. You may find varied web design articles in our article directory.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

When Web Design Gets Annoying!

The Internet is home to various artists, web artists, and designers both professional and amateur. It can afford to provide individuals with opportunities to freely explore their artistic capabilities and publish content to a borderless audience.

However, unluckily, alongside this freedom of expression afforded to everyone is the capacity to offend sensibilities. Some website provide great utility and aesthetic pleasure others are bound to get annoying.

There are ways and means in order to avoid getting annoying, and its best to start by knowing when web design of a website does get annoying.

Using colors that just do not work

Colors in good and sensible does are a good means in order to attract attention and communicate ideas and emotions to an audience. They can help add interest to a dull site full of text, and even introduce and maintain a certain mood (as in scary websites using black as a background).

However, there is a fine line between too much and just about right. What gets annoying when it comes to colors is when readability is compromised, and combinations are too loud for comfort. When readability is compromised, it can pose great discomfort to the site 's visitors when they try to decipher the text that they want to have access to. Using too many colors and colors that do not complement each other tend to make the website look goofy and awkward, and can make the website lose whatever credibility it can possibly gain.

Too many clicks to get to the end of the road

At the end of the day, people who visit websites do so in order to access information and content in a website. Some websites tend to re-route visitors through too many clicks before they get to the content they want to get to assuming that the content is indeed somewhere in the multiple pages they are made to access. Obviously, that gets annoying. Rule of thumb says that a maximum of three clicks (but preferably less) should be enough in order for someone surfing a site to get to the information they want to get to.

Excessive graphics that take too long to load

Graphics and pictures, when relevant and are the primary content meant for the website, are a welcome part of a website. However, when they just serve the purpose of aesthetic enhancement, graphics and pictures that take too long to load and inevitably, slow the process of accessing primary content become a major reason for discontent and displeasure among visitors.

It is also helpful to note that not all visitors of the website are equipped with optimal download or Internet surfing speeds; excessive graphics that are too large and thus, take too long to load are not only unwelcome but also a great inconvenience to a great number of people.
Navigation that 's over-the-top and difficult to follow

Overcomplicating the navigation of the website can greatly hamper the efficacy of the website to communicate its content, and can hurt the accessibility of many pages to its visitors. At any point during their visit to a site, it is important to assure that the visitors have some way in order to trace back their steps and return to content they previously accessed, as well as carry on with accessing other content.

For simplicity 's sake, many websites solve this problem by having a constant button present on all pages for visitors to return to their main menu page, or their cover page.

Fonts that simply do not work

Depending on the browser and fonts installed by the users on their computers, extremely decorative and highly uncommon fonts may not be displayed the way the web designer intended them to appear and may oftentimes even compromise the readability of the text per se.

In order to avoid this from happening, many web designers opt to stay within the bounds of major font families (Helvetica, verdana, and the like). That way, they are assured that most (if not all) of their visitors will be viewing the site as designed, and thus have greater control of the way the page will be displayed in the end.

There is never a "perfect" template for design as it is open to the subjectivity and artistic limitations of designers. However, understanding the behavior of site visitors can only help make shape design innovation and utility move towards greater heights.

About the Author

Jo Han Mok is the author of the #1 international business bestseller, The E-Code.
He shares his amazing blueprint for creating million dollar internet businesses
at: http://www.InternetMillionaireBlueprints.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Web Design - The Importance Of Planning A Website

From the earliest days of internet communication organizations and business individuals have keenly established the World Wide Web as being the most popular avenue in bringing themselves to the attention of customers.

Websites are basically created in a special code, or language known as Hyper Text Markup Language, better known to all as HTML. This language is what makes an internet website possible; this is the building block and allows for the structure. The structure of a website includes headings and even the type font of the text used.

HTML language writing is very time consuming and many new ways and HTML creation software programs have been developed to make the process of creating a website faster and easy. In fact one may develop an entire website without knowing a word of HTML. What separates... one website from another is the actual site design in both visual aesthetics and functionality.

There are many things that must be considered when planning a website. The sites intent or purpose must be considered as well as the sites targeted audience, content structure and many aspects of design compatibility. The site must be compatible to computer operating platforms and the abilities and tastes of the intended audience.

The first thing a website designer should ask themselves is why this site is necessary. The site designer should then create a statement that clarifies the purpose of the site and what visitors may expect to achieve from the site. This will inspire the site designer to plan and provide a detailed outline of how the site may be modified in the future should the need arise. It is best practice for web masters to plan with a long term objective.

The web site designer absolutely must create this site with the intended audience clearly in mind. A website designer should understand the reasons and motivation visitors will be entering this site and also consider if there may be enough attraction for these visitors to return again some time.

Perhaps content is considered to be the most time consuming task in creating a website. Planning the content of a website is vital to a sites success. Generally it is best practice for the site designer to plan for regular changes in site content. Naturally this is particularly evident when the site deals with recent events and news and agendas. A websites content may also be used for best advertising of a particular product or service.

Certainly a website should be visually appealing, graphic should be crisp clean and attractive, but must not take a long time to appear to a website visitor. Many web masters consider a 5 second rule, some aim for less, but more is never recommended when it can be avoided.

Having a website compatible in all computer platforms and browsers is also very important. This is becoming even more essential in latter days as the volume of computer savvy users grows and Internet Explorer is not the only name they know. This is a particularly tricky issue for website designers in finding the middle road and right code and commands that will display a page effectively in all browsers and platforms.

Websites have certainly shaped the way businesses are run today. Consumers are now purchasing a great many items online; having a website has become almost essential to a business today. A professional looking website will instill a sense of security for customers shopping on the internet, and without question, will attract a higher financial turnover.

About the Author

Discover Kevin Sinclair 's system for making profits regardless of whether anyone joins your network marketing business.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Web Design with AOL and WebTV in Mind

Will it be important to your business to include AOL and WebTV in your web design strategy? If you believe so, then you will find the following web design points very handy when designing for each one.

Designing for AOL users:

- By default, all AOL clients are provided with Internet Explorer. Therefore, that will be the browser that your design will need to cater to. You'll need to make sure that everything on your site is IE compatible.

- AOL utilizes a proxy cache in order to accomplish traffic reduction. This means that whenever the first AOL user accesses your website, AOL will save a copy of your page. Then, the next time another AOL user attempts to access this same page - within the same twenty four hours - AOL will provide them with the cached version, not necessarily the most recent version on your server. If you have changed your page within the last day, then all subsequent visitors within that twenty-four hour period will not see the most recent version. To compensate for this issue, you'll need to include HTTP cache-control headers in your coding to create expiration dates for each of the pages on your website.

- AOL 's default setting is to compress images. To work around this, be sure to encourage your AOL-using visitors to turn off their image compression options. This is quite simple to accomplish in AOL, by going to the Internet Properties dialog box.

- Your pages should be kept simple so that minimal scrolling is required on your website. Also, make certain that your sites aren't any wider than 625 pixels so that your users won't be required to scroll horizontally, either.

Designing for WebTV users:

- A WebTV screen is 544 pixels wide, while its height is 372 pixels. Though vertical scrolling is possible, any pages that are over 544 pixels wide will be automatically scaled to fit the screen. In order to accommodate an automatic reduction in resolution, you should specify your table widths in terms of percentages, instead of pixels. Fixed tables will be restricted by WebTV by either compressing or wrapping them to a size that it can use. This includes any graphics on your page. Furthermore, because of the reformatting of tables by WebTV, image slicing may not display correctly at all.

- The WebTV additionally automatically converts any frames into tables. This means that any static elements of a frame that are seen in a browser will not stay static if a scrollbar is present. Furthermore, the "back" buttons won't work properly.

- Users of WebTV browsers are capable of changing their font sizes to the way they like them by using their preferences to choose from small, medium, or large. The only font types they'll be able to see, though, are Helvetica and Monaco. When viewed on television, website backgrounds usually work best when they're dark colors with light colored text.

- Some navigation issues faced by WebTV users are that they don't use a mouse to navigate. Their links are surrounded by selection boxes which may be selected by using the arrows on the remote control, or with a keyboard.

- The title of the page, located in the title bar, will be shortened to a maximum of 35 total characters. Therefore, to avoid having essential parts of your title cut off, keep its character total to 35 or less.

- As the technology for television screens is different from that of a computer monitor, when it comes to generating images, the result will be less sharpness and clarity on the TV screen. White backgrounds and any areas with a great deal of yellow or red will result in distortion or blotchiness on the page.

- Forms can work with WebTV as long as they're kept simple, using clean HTML code. Flash 1 and ColdFusion will also work well, but you will likely run into problems if you try to use SSL, CCI, ASP, and other server-based technologies. PDF files and Java applets are a write-off for WebTV users.

About the Author

Mark is the director and face behind 15Degrees-North, One of UK 's most successfull Affordable Web Design companies. Where you will find articles and resources to help with Search Engine Optimisation, Marketing and Web design.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Web Design. First Impressions May Be Your Last

The perfect web page is not only nice to look at, but is easy to use. Most web visitors stay only seconds before they leave your site. That is one sad fact you must come to terms with. There is no second chance for a first impression, as they say. You must grab their attention and hold it.

Here are some of the most often overused designs you will come across and ones you may do well to avoid.

Background music

Music has become so overused and misused that it is downright annoying. If a visitor hears music without requesting to hear it, they may leave. If they again hear the same music on each page they visit, you can bet it will not be long before they will be gone forever. If you have a music site and have samples for visitors to listen to, that is another story, but at least give them the option to turn it off or on at will. Do not force them to listen. Personally, I leave my speakers off because I am sick of the whole thing. I especially hate it when a person on-screen starts talking to me when I did not hit the play button. In addition, music takes longer to load and the visitor may leave before the music ever comes up because they are tired of waiting.

Popup windows

Pop up windows used to be cute; used to be. Now I find them another of the oh- so- annoying attempts to get you to sign up or buy something. I realize we are all in this business to make money and we all must use the devices available to us, but use some common sense and don't beat people over the head with all of theses techniques at once, a little goes a long way.

Here are some essential practices to follow:

Give your visitor an easy way to find what they are looking for by including a navigation menu, a site map and perhaps even a search bar if you have a lot of information on your site.
Pay attention to the font size so that your pages are easily read. Too large of a type makes for a strange looking page and too small makes people squint or worse yet, leave altogether.
Do not use strange color combinations unless your site is all about art or very esoteric. Black background with white type for example you will see but I can hardly stand to look at it!
Take care not to over-use images and be careful of their file size. Large file sizes make pages load slowly and you are then faced with the same situation, people leaving before the page loads. Most image editing programs have the capability to reduce file size.
Be sure every link in your site is working. It also goes without saying that you must test every link on your site before you place the site on the web. Broken links are a sure sign of sloppy work.
Make more paragraph breaks than you normally would in a written paper. This makes it easier to scroll and read and keeps your visitor on the page.
Check your site in different browsers as they do not all behave the same. . The most important is Internet Explorer, but many people prefer Mozilla Firefox as well as others.

Hire A Designer?

You can see that there is a lot to think of when it comes to web design. There are many ways to get a simple web site up quickly. Many hosts have web templates that you upload images to and type directly into the page. This is fine for an informal site and for the initial learning phase, but soon becomes old and looks the same as everyone else. You can buy software designed for this purpose which is what most people eventually do, or you can hire a designer if you have the funds and lack the desire or the time to learn yourself.

If you are a business owner, for example and are using the website to sell products you will have many things to do rather than spending countless hours learning the process of web design. There is a time to hire a designer and this makes sense not to waste all your time doing everything in your business. After all, you cannot be the bookkeeper, the human resource manager, the warehouse manger and the web designer! You need to concentrate on the big picture. If on the other hand you are a work at home business, you may find it helpful and perhaps necessary to do everything yourself.

No matter which way you choose to go, remember the design of your website is the most important first impression you may ever make and perhaps the last.

About the Author

Web Design with ad words,affiliate marketing and ebooks.

Sales and business advice from the best in the field.

http:///www.SimpleSalesAdvice.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Top 10 Reasons To Avoid Cheap $500 Website Design Companies

You need a website and you just found a company advertising the cheapest rates around. This is a no-brainer, right? You're going to save a boatload, right?

Unfortunately, more and more disaster stories like this one are surfacing: "I hired one of those $500 companies to build my website, but they did a horrible job, they never finished, nothing works properly, and now they don't return my calls!"

If you're thinking of cutting corners, be warned! Here 's a little preview of what to expect:

1. No Talent. A talented web designer is a prized possession. A web designer with little or no talent works for a $500 web design company, which lacks the artistic creativity of a professional design house.

2. Poor Communication. $500 web designers have no formal education. This limits their expertise and communication skills. So be prepared to expend a much greater effort and more time building your site. Some phrases you'll soon be familiar with:

"Can you please repeat that?"
"I thought we went over this already!"
"You said you'd call last Monday!"
"This is the third time I'm telling you!"
"You said the project would be done by now!"

3. Bait & Switch. Many companies advertise $500 websites just to pull you in. The final bill is often many times that amount. Make sure to see a contract up front and read the fine print carefully. Most $500 websites come with an obligatory 2-year hosting fee of $39 monthly, $49 monthly, and even $59 monthly. So you end up paying for a nice website but getting stuck with a cheap one instead! Not to mention unreliable hosting that you're stuck with for two years.

4. Atrocious Copywriting. A website is only half graphic design, the other half is copywriting, the words used to grab your audience 's attention. Copywriting is crucial. Your website has only 6 seconds to captivate visitor interest before it 's "Asta La Vista, Baby." And, no, they won't "Be back." Do you think $500 designers work hard to ensure that visitors actually stay on your site? In fact, most cheap web designers charge extra for their atrocious copywriting. But what are their writers' qualifications? Are they university trained? Do they have real-world marketing experience?

5. Irresponsible. What separates a good work ethic from a bad one? The answer is simple--salary! Imagine you worked at a job paying $13,000 a year. Now imagine the boss asked you to stay late every night. How would you feel? But how would you feel staying late for $100,000 a year? Sure, we all like to think we'd go all out no matter what. But if we be honest with ourselves, reality is a bit different. Bottom line? Getting paid less will show in one 's work and dedication.

6. Shoddy Outsourcing. Some $500 designers outsource coding, scripting and HTML overseas to third world countries. What do you get? An outdated website that 's horribly designed, that doesn't function properly and that is virtually worthless. It pays to buy American.

7. Boring Templates. $500 web companies use dime-a-dozen templates, giving you no control over the finished product, and making your site look like every other site out there. Ask them to change the design, and their answer will be "I can't." Ask them to shift the text, and their answer will be "I can't."

8. No Guarantees. $500 web designers make you sign a contract tipped in their favor. Ask to take a peek and you'll read, "The website is complete only when the designer says it 's complete. The client has no say in the matter." They know you won't be 100% pleased with the finished product!

9. Unreliable Resources. Ever notice how some websites download faster than others? Guess who builds the websites that take ten years to download? You guessed it! Same deal with website downtime. Ever notice how some websites you visit often suffer downtime more than others? If you want to ensure that your website will be there in the morning, or that your site will download at lightning speed, steer clear of those $500 designers who rely on cheap resources.

10. Can't Deliver. Most $500 designers have limited expertise. Some don't know flash, others don't know how to create contact forms. Some can't create search functions, others don't know log ins. Make sure you ask the right questions. If not, you risk getting stuck with a company that can't deliver what you need.

Putting things into perspective, when you hire a $500 web design company, you take on all the headaches and frustration of dealing with an inferior staff, lesser quality and questionable service. In other words, you get what you pay for. Sure we all like to save money if we can. But you shouldn't buy a website at a rock-bottom price for the same reason you shouldn't buy a $9 pair of shoes--because you'll be wasting your money and getting what you pay for. Top quality web design and copywriting is a matter of price.

Sometimes your budget is limited and the $500 web design company may seem your only option. Dedicated design houses usually care enough to offer payment plans. Just ask.

The moral of the story is that you get a much better value by partnering with a reasonably priced web design house. You work with a dedicated team of kind and friendly professionals who always deliver what you want on time, within budget, and in a way that 's going to make your website impress prospective clients and convert them into paying customers!

About the Author

Richard Cagney heads the SEO/SEM division of the affordable custom website design and marketing firm All Access Unlimited (http://www.allaccessunlimited.com), in Stamford, Connecticut. AAU provides high conversion marketing to companies aiming to expand and grow in the American and world markets.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Tips To Make Your Website Load Faster

Your web pages have great content, a nice design. So why are people not clicking through to other parts of the site? In many cases, the problem is the load time. People are abandoning your site for the simple reason that it just takes too long for the thing to load!

How Fast Does It Need to Be?

Fast load times are extremely important: usability studies say users rate them as one of the most important things about a website. Users would much rather use a quick-loading site of average quality than a great site that loads slowly. You have no doubt done this yourself at some point.

What is the limit? Ten seconds according to certain studies. These studies say that over a third of users will leave a website that does not load within that time. You are probably thinking that in the age of broadband, download speeds do not matter. But remember that in the US, over half of all Internet users are still using slow dial-up connections (if you are, you have my sympathy). Other countries do not have quite as many dial-up connections left, but broadband is certainly nowhere near universal.

So, you need to pay attention to the size and download speed of your site. Those 10 seconds on a 56k dial-up connection correspond to about 70KB in page size. That means that your HTML and graphics should add up to 70KB as an absolute limit. That is quite a stringent requirement, and makes every byte count.

Reduce Graphics.

The first thing you need to do is keep the number of graphics to a minimum. Do not have graphics for things where Atext or CSS would do, or where they do not enhance your information or design significantly. You should consider the web to be a text medium, and justify every graphic.

Compress Your Graphics.

Once you have removed the unnecessary graphics, you might consider compressing the ones that remain. Try turning up the JPEG compression higher, or reducing the number of colors. You might try using a GIF, if your graphics do not have very many different colors.

If you cannot compress the graphics any smaller, you could always resize your graphics to make them smaller!

Clean Up Your HTML.

You would be surprised just how bloated HTML code can get with unnecessary tags, especially if you use a WYSIWYG editor, or design your site using tables. Design your site using CSS as much as you can, and use HTML Tidy (or another HTML cleaning program) to clean up your HTML. Do not ignore the extra bandwidth taken by CSS, though, and try to keep that as small as possible too.

In many cases, a simple cleaning-up process can reduce the download size by as much as half - it is especially effective for pages that contain long articles because of the number of unnecessary tags many editors insert at the start of new paragraphs.

Switch Web Hosts.

Sometimes, despite all your efforts, your site still loads slowly. In these cases, your web host may be to blame. Test from a few different connections and computers to make sure. Try testing the speeds by putting up a completely different page. If it is consistently bad, then it may be time to move hosts. First email your host about the problem and give them a week or so to fix it, as they may just be having short-term problems.

When you are switching hosts for speed, look around at sites that are already fast. Find out who they are hosted by and do a search for hosted by [hosts name](with the quote marks).Then, you can check out several sites hosted by that particular host to check out speed.

About the Author

To find more information about the internet and websites visit http://communication-tips.com

Article Source: Content for Reprint

B2B vs B2C Website Design Usability

There have been many discussions and training programs on the Internet about website design conversion techniques, however, almost all of these refer to the B2C (Business-to-Consumer) business websites. Very few, if any at all, focus on the B2B (business-to-business) and/or professional services business. Due to the fact that the B2B and professional services websites' goals are substantially more complex than those on a typical B2C website, the impact and cost to the company resulting from each design mistake becomes less apparent compared to those on a B2C website.

In a classic B2C e-commerce website, every single design decision directly and measurably affects the website 's conversion rate and other metrics. This means that B2C website owners can see, from their own statistics software, how much money they lose every time they get their website usability wrong. However, for the B2B and professional services industry, their websites do not usually close sales online, and hence, they can turn away the vast majority of users without ever knowing how many sales they've lost as a result.

You see, many B2B and professional services companies don't even consider themselves as engaged in e-commerce because they mistakingly assume that any website without a shopping cart is a non e-commerce website. The reality is, typical B2B products or services cannot be purchased through a simple "Add to cart" button because they are usually custom-tailored for the client and/or the prices may vary depending on the customer. Thus, the lack of an "Add to cart" button does not mean that B2B and professional services providers should ignore their website usability. The site should still support the many other stages of the buying process, including the post-sales stages, which are crucial to customers' long-term brand loyalty. In reality, the more complex the scenario, the higher the need for supportive user interfaces.

The main goal of a B2B and/or a professional services website should be to generate leads; not to create sales. Not all users who visit your site are ready to buy from you instantly, and you shouldn't assume so. In fact, many prospects use websites during their initial research stages and only stick with the sites that were helpful for future reference. For this reason, your website should have readily accessible information on your products and services with simple, user-friendly menu structures to assist the user in finding the right information easily and effectively.

B2B websites must also provide a much wider range of information than what 's common in B2C. A B2B website has to offer simple facts that are easily understood by an early prospect who is just looking around to see what is available. It must also offer in-depth white papers and information to help prospects determine whether your products or services can offer the right solutions to their company 's problems.

One mistake that many B2B website owners make is hiding important information behind registration barriers. In today 's world of mass spam, junk mail, and unwanted telemarketers, users are often reluctant to give away their contact details unless you can convince them that you have the right solution to their company 's problems. Hence, hiding information behind registration barriers are usually not a good idea. It is still strongly recommended that you try to acquire their contact details as part of the lead generation process, but you should reveal enough information to gain their trust before requesting these details. Anything less will just cause them to browse to a competitor 's site.

In conclusion, B2B purchases are often big-ticket items or service contracts. The sites' products and services are often extremely specialised, with complex specifications. Decisions made on B2B sites can usually have long-term implications. Customers aren't just making a one-time purchase, they're often buying into a long-term relationship that includes support, follow-up, and future enhancements and add-ons. For these important reasons, you should pay more attention on your B2B website usability to support the user in their early researching stages if you want to generate long-term business sales.

In the future articles, I will show you some conversion techniques that you can use right away to generate more leads through your business website. Until then, have a great day and best wishes for you, your family and your business in 2008.

About the Author

Binh is the General Manager of "Market Ease Business Promotions" (http://www.marketease.com.au), a web design and development company from Port Adelaide who work with small, home-based, and b2b businesses helping them leverage the power of the internet to generate more leads and achieve more sales.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Very Important Rules of Any Website Design

Designing a website, though quite simple to some, requires the designers and the planners to combine thoughts of what message you are trying to project. Below are a few rules that I suggest for a good quality web development plan.

1.Navigation
The single most important part of the website where more people falter is the navigation factor. The ease of navigation in your website can set you apart from your competition. The idea is simple, the easier it is for the user to browse through your website, the more pages he or she is going to end up reading and this could result in more profits for you depending upon your business model. The idea is to carefully plan your entire website before you start to actually design it. I do this with a paper and pencil. Thinking through about the various pages and the way they would be interlinked helps a lot to an easy navigational system on your website. Search engines love html(text) navigational systems; as it gives them an easier path to follow on your website.

2.Readability
You must have at some point of time encountered a website that had a, what I call eye-unfriendly color scheme. Some website owners think this will attract visitors where it does the exact opposite. Most of the times you would end up closing the eye unfriendly website without even bothering to see what the content is. So, it is again very important to make designs that don't hurt the eye. Your website represents who you and your company are. You need to choose the colors carefully keeping in mind that the entire website must have readable text and your message must be clear within each page.

3.Screen Real Estate
The golden rule is the "Content is the King" rule. If you give a good deal of your real estate to your content you are attracting more people. You should plan how you will divide the space amongst your content, advertisement, graphics and navigation menus. Compare your layout from other new websites that have attracted you. An easy layout makes it easier for your web page to be read, don"t bunch up a lot of text in one area as visitors wont even read it. Make your body paragraphs short and to the point. Your message will be read lot more in small sections rather than one big huge text block.

4.Quick Loading Web Pages
How quickly your page loads is a very key parameter for the users to like or dislike your website. We have all clicked off a website when it does not load instantly, the web is to big to wait for some websites to load, I personally think next and press the back button. I am proudly guilty of this action myself. So make sure you have limited flash and smaller images on your website. Huge flash or images will up your load time drastically. So keep it simple!

5.Compatibility
Any discussion on a good website design will not be complete without the mention of the websites compatibilities. A good designer will always test the website in multiple browsers and in multiple resolutions. It is good to plan a layout which is compatible on all the browsers and looks alright on various resolutions and nowadays also the hand held devices. Planners may however also want to consider a target group of audience and then plan the best possible layout for them and have alternatives for the others. Make sure everyone can see your website efficiently!

About the Author

Creatively yours,
Todd Herman, Senior Vice President
GlobalWebsiteCreations.comPresident
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Article Source: Content for Reprint