Author : Suzanne AimeeWeb sites serve many purposes and in todays fast-paced world of instant information and you have about 2 2 seconds to capture a visitors attention before they are off to another site This article provides you guidelines to help you plan and build a web site It touches on a variety of topics and is not meant to be an all-inclusive source but rather a basic guide to arm you with knowledge and resources for building your own site or researching web development companies

The Planning Phase

Before you begin to build, understanding the purpose of your web site is essential Some questions you may start with are as follows: Is your web site informational only? Will you need ecommerce functionality? Who is your target market? Is it for general audiences, specific to a geographical area or vertical market? What is the message you are trying to convey? Who are your competitors? To get a better overall picture, you might also try brainstorming with colleagues or soliciting feedback from your customer base

Once the purpose of the site is determined, the next step would be to determine the site structure such as navigation, customer logins and access, secondary menu items At this stage of development, think of your site as a document with a table of contents Your table of contents has main headings (chapters) and sub-headings (sections) Main headings or menu items should consist of a general overview about the topic, product(s) or service(s), sub-headings or menu items should contain details on specific topic, product or service provided in the overview pages (for more information on navigation, please refer to the section on sitemaps)

In conjunction with the structure of your site, start thinking about the design and content that will be added This process can in and of itself require a separate planning session Some items you will need to consider when designing: web standards (W3C Standards - Usability, syntax), cross-platform browser compatibility (will my page appear correctly on Firefox (Mozilla), Internet Explorer, etc ), page loading times are graphics and images optimized?

Tips for Using Graphics and Images in Your Web Site:

- Graphics and images should have a purpose and be placed strategically with corresponding text They should only be used to help convey your message
- Site colors should help establish your corporate identity or brand
- Consistency in colors and structure should be used throughout the site

Adding Content

Content is king Keep your content concise and relevant, remember the 2 2 second factor People searching for specific information usually want it immediately and generally will not spend time searching through page after page to find it The key here is to provide enough information to grab their attention and once you draw them in and contact has been initiated, that is when a more in-depth dialog can begin Content is also relevant for the placement in search engine results

Important Pages to Include

Privacy Policy Make this page accessible throughout the site Typically placement for this is at the bottom every page next to the copyright A good example of standard policy can be found at www bbbonline com

Contact Us Make this page easy to find and access You will want to make it as easy as possible for interested parties to contact you NOTE: If you intend to apply for programs such as the BBB Online Privacy Seal or TRUSTe, full disclosure of your contact information is required

Site Map If you have a large site, a site map assists visitors in finding the specific information they are looking for In addition to human or manual navigation, a site map is a useful tool for web crawlers (spiders) This will ensure that all of your pages get indexed in the search results Google offers a free site map tool

Terms (Optional) This page depends on the products or services you are providing If you are building an informational or brochure site, it is probably not necessary to include However, if you’re offering downloadable information, 3rd party links or products it is advisable to not only have a terms and conditions page but to have it reviewed by a lawyer to ensure your liability is covered

Choosing a Hosting Provider

There are several hosting options available and with that much competition, the least of your worries should be price Things to consider when selecting a hosting provider: amount of space and bandwidth, dedicated or shared hosting, Windows or Linux (Linux is open source and Windows is proprietary) and features such as scripts, ecommerce capability, SSL, SQL databases

The Calling Card

Web sites are your calling card to the world and first impressions do count! Investing the time, energy and resources into building a functional and attractive web site is well worth the effort This article was written by Suzanne Aimee, President and Founder of Able Web Professionals, Inc. (AWPI). AWPI offers web site design and development services as part of an overall marketing strategy. To learn more about us and our services, please visit us at: http://www.ablewebpro.com

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Author : Karen ScharfI often talk about the importance of split testing your web pages to ensure that you’re earning as much as you possibly can from your website Split testing can be as simple as running a page for a few weeks, then replacing it with a new page and seeing which one converts better This is a rather inaccurate means of testing, but nonetheless, it is doable

The most effective way to split test your web pages is to use software or a hosted service to automate the process In choosing a split testing platform, you will want to keep these criteria in mind:

Is the platform transparent?
You don’t want your website visitors to think they are part of your scientific experiment, like they’re lab rats or something OK, that might be a little exaggerative (is that really a word?), but you do want to ensure that the split testing platform is invisible to web surfers

The platform should use cookies so the visitor will see the exact same page on each consecutive visit There shouldn’t be any type of counter or display evident on the page being tested All of the reporting should be done in the background

Is the platform easy to install?
Particularly if you’re using a software program (as opposed to a hosted service), you want to pay attention to the system requirements If you’re a non-techie entrepreneur, you’ll probably want to stay away from a software that requires a SQL server on your own PC

On the other hand, there are some great options that rely only on a MySql database on your web server, and, since you’d be interacting with a web interface, you never have to touch the database at all

Is the platform easy to implement?
Most split testing platforms require you to make some type of change to your web page - and it’s usually in the form of adding a piece of coding to the page header and/or body tag Anything much more than this might get too overwhelming, and you run the risk of abandoning your split testing efforts before you really get them off the ground Look for a platform that is easy to implement and easy to use once it’s up and running

Is the data easily accessible?
There’s no point in running split tests if you can’t quickly and easily see the results Look for a platform that will provide visual representation of your data, such as bar charts or line graphs or pie charts

If you’re a techie, you might also want to consider a platform that provides access to the raw data so you can manipulate it and use it elsewhere The big benefit of split testing comes from what you do with the results!

What type of testing does the platform allow?
If you’re brand new to split testing, a simple A/B platform might be all that you need But if you have a high traffic website, if your main income is from the internet, and/or if you’re looking for data on multiple variables, you’ll want to consider a split testing platform that will run multivariate testing

The price range for software and services varies greatly, as does the time commitment involved But, since split testing has the ability to improve website conversions and increase your bottom line, it should definitely be seen as an investment in your business!Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her FREE Can-Spam checklist and FREE email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

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Author : Juhani TonttiYour target is to make a good residual income, which is a great target To do it once and to make multiple incomes That is the most economic way to make money from home Most new online marketers are led to believe, that the secret to success is in driving huge amount of traffic to their sites If you are looking an answer to the question of how to make money on the internet, it is not the amount but the quality of the traffic, which determines the success!

There Are Two Basic Ways To Increase The Profitability Of Your Site

Yes, the first one is to target your traffic and the other one is to call your motivated visitor into action These two are the ways to make money online Let us think, how you can target your traffic?

The targeted website traffic means, that your marketing reach people, who are already interested about your offer and are actively looking for it

What you need to make more residual income is a highly targeted traffic That means that the website visitors want to do what you have planned, i e to subscribe something or some other call to action

How You Can Generate A Highly Targeted Traffic?

When you want residual income, the quality matters You have actually determined the quality in your business plan All big choices you have made there When you want to guarantee that the quality of your traffic is high, your marketing strategy have to persuade visitors, to select them

If you want a real valuable traffic, which has already got an idea of your website, before they land on it, start to write articles, which support your business plan The optimized marketing articles have many good points, but the strongest one is the power to presell the idea of your website and to select the visitors That will increase the conversion rate dramatically

Generate Positive Visitor Responses

The absolutely easiest way to maximize the results of your site is to maximize the conversion rate That is the way how to make good money and what is best, how to make regular residual income A higher conversion rate is a sign of better quality and of better customer satisfaction You offer, what the market is looking for!

Let us do some math If your site converts 1 percentage, it means that you make a sale from every hundred visitors If you manage to increase the conversion rate to 2, you will need only 50 visitors for one sale or if you still get one hundred visitors, you will double the sales

How You Grow Your Conversion Rate?

There are many ways to do this The main thing to think this issue is to think it from the customer perspective and to answer to the question, how a customer could benefit more from your website

You can build easier site navigation, faster loading time, easier reading, flexible payment options, unique offer packs, growing product value and of course by writing more effective copy

By building a highly targeted traffic and then by calling these motivated people to action, that is the way to make better profits quicker and with smaller efforts More brainpower than work hours! That is a highly synergic strategy with which you can maximize the residual income value of your website Start it today!Juhani Tontti, B.Sc., Marketing. The Quality Means Better Conversion Rate, Which Increases The Residual Income Of Your Website.

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Author : Ross TodoroffLiquidNet, the famous web hosting services provider, announces that it has recently launched Themza com - a new online project aimed at offering a wide variety of free templates and web design themes for PHP script-based websites such as blogs, image galleries and content management systems New skins are being continuously added to the list of the Joomla templates, WordPress, Moodle and 4images themes currently available for download in zip format to all the users contemplating a new personal or business website and searching for an appropriate template to accommodate its contents, as well as to those simply looking for a fresh new theme to replace their current outdated one

Users can get acquainted with the layout and the functionalities of each particular skin by examining the demo versions provided or by simply clicking on the respective thumbnail image for a larger view All they have to do is download the preferred template to their personal computer and then upload it to a website of their own, provided that they have already obtained an up-to-date version of the script the template in question pertains to Users are also given the opportunity to pick an appropriate package optimized to accommodate the various free themes should they still have not found an adequate hosting service for their open source script-based website or in case they are unable to handle the whole script installation process all by themselves

Themza com offers free, ready-made design templates for the two most popular stable Joomla versions - Joomla 1 0 and Joomla 1 5 Using this advanced open source content management system software, users can create personal web pages, non-profit and small business platforms, corporate portals, intranets, extranets, online shops, no matter whether their website is about IT technologies, mobile solutions, nature, music, sports, cars Most of the templates are made available in more than one skin color and offer various banner, logo and sidebar layout configuration options, customizable header and footer areas, advanced drop-down menus, modules for posting Latest News, Polls, etc

Themza com also offers Moodle course management system templates to educators who want to create an e-learning collaborative community website and deliver online courses, lessons, quizzes, assignments, surveys, workshops, instead of the traditional face-to-face courses Using Moodle they would be able to build not only a single-teacher educational platform but also a multi-student online university portal, which could in a way replace attending the lectures in person Based on well-proven pedagogical traditions, it gives instructors full control over all settings of an e-course through a user-friendly WYSIWYG HTML editor and offers multi-language, multi-course and multi-format support

Beside CMS templates, Themza com offers also WordPress and 4images themes for blogs and image galleries, respectively WordPress is a popular publishing platform suitable both for keeping a personal online diary and for maintaining larger business pages that need regular website updates Using some of the many available plug-ins users can thus customize WordPress so that it does not even look like a blog any longer 4images Gallery, on the other hand, is a web-based media gallery management tool for accommodating large volumes of photo collections and presenting them in an orderly manner Beside image formats such as jpeg, gif, png, tiff and bmp, 4images supports also a number of video formats, among them avi, mov, mp3, mpeg, swf and rm

Nick Blaskov, CFO of LiquidNet, said that all users can download for free any of the readily available, turn-key, yet highly customizable skins currently on offer, and create professionally appearing personal blogs and corporate homepages, content-rich e-learning portals, colorful online photo galleries and many more quickly and easily, that the web design work invested in the creation of the free templates this new website is offering answers all the requirements of the respective online software and its specific design theme integration manuals, as well as the requirements of even the most demanding Joomla, Moodle, WordPress and 4images users, and that Themza com will start offering Drupal and Mambo content management templates in the near future as well

About LiquidNet

LiquidNet provides a large number of professional services in the fields of web hosting, reseller hosting and domain name registration On the whole, the number of the webmasters who currently use LiquidNet’s services totals 450,000 For more information:

LiquidNet US LLC
1040 SE 7th Court, Apt 307
Dania Beach, FL 33004
USA

1 800 574 0902 US TOLL FREE
+44 208 780 1724 United Kingdom
+61-2-8014-7483 Australia

E-mail: templates@themza.com
http://www.themza.com
http://www.liquidnetlimited.com

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Author : James CannonToday users prefer video to text or audio, and the distribution model for video has only begun to see success on the web Learning to take advantage of the development of web software to create the best web sites that encourage sharing of content and web development and design chores across the community is critical to the success of the web developer and designer over time

The skill set necessary for successful web design is wide and varied among users, the people at the end of the computer’s interface with the world With so many people participating with so many interdependent skill sets, the success of the web designer and developer in the endeavour to create the best web web sites utilizing the latest web tools and software is wholly dependent upon the efforts of the community as a unit While the individual user can create content and submit it, it requires vast amounts of user interaction to provide the type of feedback and criticism necessary to perfect the content delivery system

Inherent in the concept of web software and especially the web marketing plan is the idea that web content should be focused on being user friendly and easy to use overall, for a wide majority of users so as to facilitate even those who might not otherwise have a chance at uploading a video or implement an on-line program The easy to use and implement nature of the web design and concept of everything for everyone is intended to facilitate the creation of idea based, high value video content

With this ease of use factor firmly in mind, the web developer or designer is obligated to enlist the aid of the web affiliate marketing and development community that has already established their presence on-line The ancient adage that it takes a village to raise a child is most specifically implemented in this case, as it takes a good deal of exposure to affiliate marketing and advertising in general to begin to get a grip on the true nature of successful web marketing Learning from and interacting with the web marketing community is highly advised for the web marketing newcomer interested in successful use of web applications and web e-commerce

As web software and development become more and more well developed and the new web community grows, it is essential for the web marketer to focus on web collaboration, as the efforts of the community are of great assistance to the success of the web marketing The web community is a good source of like minded collaborators and web affiliate marketers who are more than willing to help build the web community and benefit from web collaboration This attitude of massive networks of people supporting people in the web community is a concept uniquely and exclusively embodied in the web environment of today’s internet

Working with the web community is a good first step for building the web marketing hopeful’s new web e-commerce platform in rapid fashion, and it is also a useful long term strategy for building a network of web developers and designers that are familiar with web software, web development, web design, web tools, web collaboration, the web community, web e-commerce, and other new web concepts and marketing opportunities With the assistance of the web community, the novice web designer can benefit from the knowledge of his direct forebears Founded in April 2004, royalatlantisgroup.com is a privately held established ecommerce firm specializing in online website design, website development, website branding, graphic design, web programming and custom application development.
http://www.royalatlantisgroup.com

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Author : Karen ScharfWhether you’re driving traffic through organic search, pay per click, affiliate marketing, direct mail, email campaigns, social media, whatever, your landing page will make or break your conversions Follow these few simple tips to create a landing page that produces results:

Create multiple landing pages for different purposes
While you probably already know that each page should focus on its own keyword set, you may not have considered that each landing page should also focus on its own traffic source

A visitor coming to you from an organic search will more than likely be at a different point in the buying cycle and a different place on the “know-like-trust scale” than someone visiting your website from your Facebook page

Utilize different calls to action
Just as website visitors will be in different phases of the buying cycle and on different places on the know-like-trust scale, the way you communicate with these site visitors will be different

You’ll probably want to use gentler, kinder verbiage with organic traffic, such as “request additional information” while you can be more personable with your Twitter traffic such as “give it to me now!” But no matter who the audience is, be sure to include your call to action in various locations throughout your page

Keep it clean and simple
When it comes to landing pages, the simpler the better Pretend you’re setting up the page for a 3rd grader Your visitor needs to figure out exactly how to do whatever it is you want him to do in three seconds or less If a 3rd grader can’t complete the task with relative ease in a few seconds, chances are your site visitor is not going to stick around to figure it out either

Make sure your landing page has one call to action Do not use technology for technology’s sake Eliminate every possible distraction Make your copy easy to read Take advantage of eye tracking And test, test, test

Don’t ask for more information than is necessary
Do you really need to know your visitor’s company name in order to email a free download? If not, remove it from the form But be careful not to go over board with this technique If you’ve been in business for five years and all you have is a list of first names and email addresses, you’ve done something wrong along the way

Progressive information gathering is essential to the lead scoring process, so consider where your landing page fits into your marketing funnel before arbitrarily wiping out all your form fields

Tell your visitors what you’ll do with their information
Let your readers feel secure when providing you with their personal information by telling them exactly what to expect Will they be receiving a download via email? Will they be added to your mailing list? How often will they hear from you? By letting your visitor know what to expect upfront, you’ll be assuring yourself of more qualified leads who actually want to hear from you

Test, test, test, test, test
Before you publish your landing page, test it in different browsers Test on different operating systems Test for mobile display Once your landing page is live, split-test your headlines, your graphics, your body copy

Test our calls to action, test your email follow up Try different combinations and tweak every component until you find the perfect fit for the optimal conversion rate Karen Scharf is an Indianapolis marketing consultant who works with small business owners and entrepreneurs. She offers several whitepapers, free reports and checklists, including her FREE Can-Spam checklist and FREE email pre-flight checklist to ensure your emails get delivered, get opened and get read. Download your copies at http://www.ModernImage.com.

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