Archive for May 25th, 2008

The Key to Better Websites [ Part B ] Design

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Kim and Charles Petty

Introduction

Importance of the latter :

Design, design, design. To put the wonders of a good design into perspective, imagine when we are purchasing a T-Shirt. First of all, what do we look at? The design of the T-Shirt, of course. Well most people do, other than the material factor. But let’s assume the all other factors are constant, wouldn’t the design or looks, become the key aspect then?

2 ) Design

Putting oneself in another individual’s shoes, as usual. Here are another two situations.

Situation A : A website with good design and breathtaking graphics. (Good color schemes with matching theme), pictures. (Optimum resolutions and relevant) and proper fonts and word sizes.

Situation B : A website inversely equipped with hideous graphics and pictures in terms of resolution, quality and relevancy. (Red pictures with a bright green background) Fonts used were not matching albeit too fanciful. (Too small, artsy font-types)

Situation A, visitors that enter the website are immediately awestruck by the design and artwork. The well placed pictures and designs will somewhat symbolizes the positive nature of the company/website. As we know, most people DO judge by impression.

As for Situation B, the shabby environment due to severe lack of creativity and badly taken pictures wouldn’t exactly help in attracting visitors. Fonts that were hard to be read, let alone comprehended, and mismatching themes in terms of color, isn’t exactly welcoming, is it?

Analysis: Now, the main idea here is to always plan your websites, try to get other individuals for feedback and perspectives. Each mindset might differ, but at least you will get room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, even a plain website with proper design would generate plenty of positive implications, but the key idea here is to at least maintain an impressionable website.

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3 Ways to Start Building Your Opt-In List

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by John Neyman

The light bulb has finally started flashing in your head and you realize that you need an opt-in list to make money on the Internet. You’ve read hundreds of articles on the subject and sought expert advice. You’ve head all the stories of people creating a profitable business with opt-in lists.

With that light bulb still flashing away you finally decide to do something about it – start a list of your own. But how do you get started? And better yet, how do you build a list big enough to generate an income from?

It can be pretty scary when you’re first starting out. Do you need a web site? An opt-in form? Should you use an autoresponder service or a script on your own site? How should you format the messages? How many should you send a week? The list goes on and on.

The answers to a lot of these questions will greatly depend on how experienced you are on the Internet. If you have no knowledge of CGI or PHP, then hosting your own script may not be an option. If you don’t know HTML or don’t have direct access to your on-line files, then editing your pages to insert the code for an opt-in form will not be possible.

These, unfortunately, are just some of the obstacles that you will need to overcome if you want to give this ‘Internet Thing’ a go. Having your own web site is almost a necessity. Without one, you would only be able to promote other people’s products (as they would have their own web sites for you to send traffic to through your affiliate links).

Below are three easy ways that you can use to start building your opt-in list:

Offer a free report that contains links back to your web site or even includes an opt-in form on one of the main pages. You can also make it necessary for your visitors to fill out your opt-in form before they can access the report.

Join some of the Fire Sales and Giveaways that other marketers are running (sometimes called Joint Ventures). Add your gift to the site and when visitors want to download your gift make them fill out your opt-in form first.

Exchange ads with other opt-in list owners. You run an ad for them and they run an ad for you. Granted you probably won’t be able to join up with someone who has a huge list (as they won’t be getting much exposure in return) but if you can find other lists that are of a similar size to yours, you should be in with a chance.

Building a profitable opt-in list won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. Keep at it and be creative. Try things outside of the box; put a twist on an old idea. And most of all – be persistent.

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

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Good Design Practices

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Kim and Charles Petty

Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practice good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

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Why Choose XSitePro Over Other Website Building Software?

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Allison Thompson

For those of you who are actually interested in setting up your own online business you will understand the importance of having a good looking website. Today rather than using the services of a website developer if you want you can create and then build them for yourself. In this article we will take a look at one of the most popular of all the website building software programs now available that even a complete novice can use and which is called XSite Pro.

Compared to many other website building software packages now available XSite Pro contains a very comprehensive set of tools and applications that you can use. All of which will you to design and then build websites which meet your own particular requirements. Every site that you build using this software package will be completely viable and so will help you to move your online business in the right direction.

The biggest advantage to be had from using XSitePro over some other website design software programs is that it is extremely user friendly. Certainly there are some programs around which when you try them you discover that you need to have a degree at least in order to just understand how they work. However with this particular software program the person who will be actually using it is kept in mind by the designer. All the tools available on this particular program are very easy to gain access to and can very simply be used.

As well as being user friendly this particular website design software package contains every tool the user will need in order to get a very successful and professional site layout. It allows you the chance to produce eye catching home pages as well as the chance to incorporate and edit text on to the site. Which in turn means that you are able to include those words that are vital to getting traffic coming to your site. Therefore increasing the chances of your site being ranked higher in the various search engines people use to search the web for what it is they want.

Today for those of you who chose to buy the current version of XSitePro will be able to upgrade to the new version (XSitePro Version 2) when it becomes available for free. Plus with each version of this software program you are provided with a easy to use and understand manual. The manual has been designed so that it can assist you with being able to access and use all the features that come with this particular website development software program.

Once a person has actually purchased XSite Pro and loaded it on to their PC before they actually use it they are provided with some tutorials. These tutorials explain fully how each of the applications and tools work and how a they can be used to their maximum effectiveness. The tutorials will also teach you how to use the tools and applications provided in this software correctly. But as well as the initial tutorials there are also videos which will further help you to understand and appreciate the benefits to be gained from using this particular software package over the others for building your website(s).

Finally a big advantage to be had from using XSitePro is that it offers the best customer and technical support to those that purchase and use it. The company that developed and designed XSitePro have realized that it is important to provide good quality support to their customers even after they have made their purchase.

Therefore if you really want to make a go of your own online business and can not afford to get a website developer to create and build a website for you. Then you should seriously consider investing some money in buying XSite Pro.

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Who Is Your Audience?

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Kim and Charles Petty

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

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Why Hire A Designer?

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Kim and Charles Petty

A lot of online business owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves — the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product’s marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they will find that their simple “homemade” site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you’re someone who started everything with no money too, so you’re pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don’t want to do.

When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the “dirty job” to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you’re halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy.

On the other hand, the designers you hire a professionals so they are good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won’t have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably will be able to.

Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!

So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!

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Search Engine Friendly Pages

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Kim and Charles Petty

There is no point in building a website unless there are visitors coming in. A major source of traffic for most sites on the Internet is search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista and so on. Hence, by designing a search engine friendly site, you will be able to rank easily in search engines and obtain more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, reads the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of that. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using meta tags, you are making the search engine robot’s job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Stop using wrong HTML tags like to style your page. Use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) instead because they are more effective and efficient. By using CSS, you can eliminate redundant HTML tags and make your pages much lighter and faster to load.

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The Importance of A Good Design

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

by Kim and Charles Petty

Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

Similarly, the same case is with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you really mean business.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the “salesperson dressed shabbily” anology, and you will get my point.

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Web Design Tips – shopping cart by ssDaytona Shopping Cart Project

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

shopping cart by ssDaytona Shopping Cart Project We would like to sell our products online directly from our website or as a separate page or via a link to and from our website. We have about 40 products to sell. This order…

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[aabusiness] Organizational Silos – How To Deal Effectively With Them

Sunday, May 25th, 2008

Web Design Tips Home & Family Matters Dinner Ideas Health & Fitness Horoscopes AngelVoice Headlines and more… http://www.web-source.net/syndicator.htm ########################################################

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