Web Power Mall

Posts Tagged ‘web design’

When coming up with your first small business website, there are 3 essential queries you ought to raise yourself:

1. Who is your target audience?
2. How will your audience realize you?
3. How can you convert your guests into sales?

These queries sound obvious, but it’s amazing how many individuals do not bother…and then moan that “our website does not bring us any business”.

one) Who is your audience?

Offer a nice deal of thought to your target market.  Who do you would like to draw in to your website?  Why?  The answer to that is additional than likely to sell them something – a product, a service, or an plan perhaps.

Claiming that your market is anyone and everybody is far too imprecise, and your website can lack focus, and fail to maximise its potential. Ideally you must be aiming to make a niche.

2) How can they realize you?

Making a niche can additionally help you with the search engines, and drive hot leads to your site.

Think about what keywords your target market would possibly type into a groundwork engine to search out you.  Truly do the searches yourself.  Who comes up in the high 30?  As a result of that is where you wish to be.  Are your competitors there?  Observe their sites.  Do they work?  How are you going to improve on them? Establish one thing distinctive concerning your business that sets it but the rest.

Those keywords – or keyphrases to be a lot of accurate – need to be incorporated into your pages of your website – in the page titles, in the headings, and in the interior links.
Be specific along with your keyphrases. They will be less competitive than the additional general single word searches, and will additional accurately target your market. You will should localise or specialise to urge in that prime 30 – and also the high 30 is where you wish to be to drive traffic to your site. As I am certain you are aware from your own expertise, if you haven’t found what you’re wanting for in the first three results pages, you look elsewhere.

The key to achieving high search engine rankings is building inbound links to your internet pages – that’s pages on external websites that link to pages on your site. Crucially this link acquisition should be a natural growth – where inbound link count will increase at a gradual pace. The pages that link to yours should be relevant, on-topic and ideally  contain the identical keywords – particularly in the linking text. Search engines rank pages based upon their name – your ranking can be determined by what other (ideally high ranking) pages say regarding your page.

3) How will you exchange your guests into sales?

Don’t just tell them what you do or sell.  Tell them why they want it (yes, need – not would like).  Supply incentives, freebies, discounts – anything to urge that dialogue started.

Current research indicates {that the} human brain makes a judgment regarding a web page inside a twentieth of a second! That doesn’t leave you terribly long to make an impression. Thus, make sure that you have got your Unique Selling Purpose (USP) clearly visible on your home page -  and preferably prominent on each one of your alternative pages. After all, it’s not a only if the house page can be the first page {that the} visitor sees, significantly if they have found you via a pursuit engine.

Then make positive that you simply list your bullet-pointed guarantees. Guests must perceive why you’re completely different from the remainder, and why they must cater to you and not your competitors. And as we’ve discovered, they have to understand this pretty much instantly.

Lastly, make certain that your web site features a funnel-like structure. Establish your important pages – sometimes the “decision to action” or purchase pages – and make positive all roads lead to those pages. Your internal links – like their external equivalents – ought to describe the target page. If you sell blue widgets, do not call your products page “Merchandise”, call it “blue widgets”, and create positive {that the} links pointing at this page also say “blue widgets”. This can not only facilitate the search engines determine and rank the most necessary pages in your web site, it will also lead your visitor to that every one important conversion.

To learn how to prevent hair loss and find a hair loss treatment, visit provillus. provillus is a quality natural hair loss product by a reputable company and it does have a money-back guarantee (up to 90 days). Get your provillus and stop hair loss now!

My name is Chris Diprose and I am the Manager of Internet Design Australia firm Kanga Internet.  I’ve got been an energetic member of the Joomla Community for many years and have a longtime business based mostly upon Joomla Development in Melbourne, Australia.  My main focus is Search Engine Optimization for Joomla Content Management System.

This article focuses on the first few steps within the Net Development and Design of a good search optimized web site in Joomla.  Okay let’s get into it.  Once I’ve got setup the standard Joomla installation there are some component sorts that are obligatory to put in and I believe these to be:- a sitemap part and a SEF URL changing component.  These are by way the most important parts to own on any Joomla Installation.

What is a SEF URL changing component and how does it relate to Net Design in Joomla?  SEF stands for Search Engine Friendly and a traditional installation of Joomla features a URL like this: index.php?option=com_content&task=read&id=five&Itemid=6

When it comes to go looking engines they’re extremely sensible in many ways that however the traditional Joomla URL describes nothing concerning the internet page and its contents and thus they very do dislike it in many ways.  It’s what I call, Search Optimization Stunted (SOS).  I favor this term because it describes exactly what it desires; some facilitate!  This can be where a SEF URL changing component comes into play.  These varieties of components take the conventional Joomla URL and change it into something more meaningful to each us and also the search engines. e.g.: get-blue-widgets-here.html

From my Net Design & Development experience this is the single most important component installation you can create on a Joomla Website.  I want to detail my personal best picks.  There are a few accessible to us however I think the JoomSEF part to be the most effective of the simplest when it comes to Search Engine Friendly URL’s.  There’s only one drawback to choosing this element and that’s a hidden advert in the code from the initial makers.  If you search on Google for “Joomsef patch” then you ought to be able to search out a tight article on how to induce around this problem.  Trying at the “better of the rest” of the SEF components we have a tendency to find a new element (Could 2007) called sh404SEF which is ad free, if you search on the Joomla extensions website you may realize this one.  I think it to be strongly primarily based on JoomSEF; in look, feel and functionality I have noticed this.  Another SEF friendly element for Joomla is OpenSEF.  When OpenSEF was released about a year ago it absolutely was nice however since that point there has been no updates and also the project has lagged means behind Joomla development.  Having said though, it still does a affordable job of converting Joomla URL’s to look engine friendly however I found in my testing that it proved to be duplicating too several URL’s.

Which ever one you decide on, download the element and then using the Joomla Administration interface install the component.  Then go to Website->World Configuration->SEO (tab) and ensure “Search Engine Friendly URL’s” is set to yes.  Guarantee your htaccess.txt file in the root directory of the Joomla installation is modified to .htaccess and follow the directives in the file in the way to turn on “mod_rewrite” – this is straight forward.  Then just attend the JoomSEF part and configuration and flip it on.  Once this can be done you should be generating friendly URL’s on the front end interface thus you ought to go and check.  It’s as easy as that!!

Okay therefore lets move on to what I take into account the subsequent most significant factor to do to your Joomla installation once the SEF component is installed and working a Sitemap.

In my books there’s extremely only one legitimate and tight sitemap part and it is called Joomap.  The quality version of this part does not output a tight XML file for Google therefore I also suggest looking out on Google for “joomap patch” and you should be ready to seek out a writing to lead you through editing the Joomap part also.  The installation of this component is the same as before, we have a tendency to do it through the Joomla Administration interface.  With no alternative configuration when installation we have a tendency to can simply go straight to the component and choose it.  Currently we tend to simply opt for the menu’s we have a tendency to want to incorporate in our sitemap.  Generally these are main menu and top menu.  Now we have a tendency to just produce a brand new menu item and select the component to link to it, being Joomap and the remainder takes care of itself.  Simple!!

One other advantage of Joomap is that it permits you to hook in to Google Sitemaps.  On the admin interface these could be a Google Sitemap URL given.  All we tend to need to try and do to generate a dynamic Google sitemap is to copy paste this URL into Google webmaster interface and currently whenever Google needs to download your whole website sitemap it gets a dynamic version – which is considerably higher than just hoping Google will notice all of your pages!  With this sitemap it tells Google all of your pages and where they’re so it can scan them additional affectively.

Okay currently I have lined off the primary 2 steps in Search Engine Optimization for the Joomla Content Management System.  These are the primary two steps every Internet Designer and Developer ought to take when they need to Search Optimize Joomla.

Do you want to stay ahead of the pack in the race for the top Google rankings? Visit: increase web traffic. With increase web traffic you can quickly and easily get first spot on Google every day, without wasting another dollar ever again! Start increase web traffic, time for you to be first on Google!

Starting out a website involves a few main ingredients that you need, as well as many optional pieces. In this article, we will discuss the essentials you need to at least be viewable on the internet. Main components are having a domain name and web hosting for your files, the actual physical files like HTML, that make up the design of the page and the option to secure your content against non encrypted attacks. Let’s take a look.

Domain Names

To help people browsing the web to remember how to get back to your site, you need a domain name. A memorable domain name is something like google.com, which everyone knows. Upon getting your initial site up and running, you could choose the route of a cheap domain name provider to help start your web business. These companies almost always provide similar features to the big companies and are a great alternative.

Web Site Hosting

You need a location to store your web site files. No matter what type of content you are displaying, including images or PDF files, they have to be accessible on a computer server that is always on. This is where an affordable web hosting solution comes into play. At a price of five dollars or less a month, you can normally get an inexpensive hosting solution that will host your sites files.

Web Site Design

The web site is comprised of files, including HTML files, Image files, Videos or Flash. A web developer can create this for you or you will do it yourself. The better the skills of the person doing it, the better your site will look like. Web hosting sitebuilders or Dreamweaver may be used to get your site up and running quickly. Again, the tools used will be directly related to quality.

Secure Hosting (Optional)

Many sites use a brochure style setup with static data, so the need for optional secured hosting is not a requirement. If your site is collecting information such as credit card data, then you will need to looking into buying ssl certificate for your website to ensure your visitors data is protected. With collecting any credit card info or sensitive data, you must use a web certificate to make your site change from http to https. The https is what makes the data encrypted when sent over the internet so people cannot abuse the information being transmitted. It is a necessity for these sites, but not for regular sites.

Those are four basics you need to start any web site and will get you started. You then need to decide what additional components you may need to also include in your web site package.

Web surfers are basically an impatient bunch and if a website is hard to figure out because the links are not obvious, they will click away never to return. Website navigation is an extremely important elements when it comes to determining the effectiveness of a website. This article is about the key principles of designing website navigation.

To be effective website navigation must first and foremost make sense to the average person. There is nothing wrong in being creative, but you should notice that all well-designed site have very similar navigation layouts.

As a designer it is important that you keep in mind the core purpose of the site and the intended visitors when designing navigational elements. Most of the sites either inform of a product or try to sell it. Therefore there are some basic guidelines to follow:

Make sure all navigational elements are clearly links by using standard conventions for links such as buttons, menus, underlining the text or changing color on mouse. It is also not a good idea to use unclear names for links.

Using non-standard links is OK, as long as you tell visitors that it is a link. For instance, you are developing a website with a map showing some different cities and you would like the visitor to click on the city name and learn more about that city. Do not forget to inform the users that if they want to know more about the city they should click the city name.

It is very important that you remember the “Three Click Rule” used by the majority of web designers. Many studies have been conducted and they showed that most users will not click more than three links to get to the info they look for. Hence, make sure that to access any page on your site the user will need no more than three clicks.

Using flash movies on your site is not recommended. Remember to keep your site design simple but attractive. But if by any chance you decide to use one make sure you also use META REFRESH tag which will automatically take the visitors to your homepage and do not forget to provide an easy to see and clickable button or link so that the visitor can skip the entry page and go directly to the home page, as if you do not do it many people will simply click away. Do not forget that majority of visitors look for information not entertainment.

Navigation Element Locations

Top Menus – a top of the page menu bar is usually located directly below the page header graphic that contains the site logo. Items in top menu can be either single links or expanding menus. Items can be either graphics or just plain text. In each case, every element should be hyperlinked, so the visitor can click it and be taken to the information described.

Left Side Navigation – it is usually implemented as a text area or column on the left top area of the webpage. It is similar to the top menu when it comes to items, as they can also be either single links or expanding menus.

Right Side Navigation – it is not commonly used, but if used, it is usually implemented as either a column or text area on the top right portion of the webpage. This area is usually used for advertisement and rarely for site navigation.

Bottom Menus – bottom menus can be either a menu bar or footer. When it come to menu bars graphics and text links are used, but with footers only text links.

Important Navigation Elements

Internal Page Links – Every page on the website should be within two or three clicks from the home page. Al l the pages that are especially important should be accessible with just ONE click. The kind of website will influence which links should be displayed in a prominent way.

Login Boxes – they should be displayed in a special way. General locations are top left, top right or the page header.

Shopping Carts – it is important that if you use a shopping cart on your site, a view cart button is prominently displayed on each page. Usually it is placed in the top right side inside the header or just below it.

Order Buttons – these should be fairly large and easily visible. You will receive more orders if there are less clicks to get to your order page.

Breadcrumbs – by this we understand both links and a graphical representation of where you currently are on the site. Their most common location is the top left below the header. Every word and term is a link to the previous page. They are in the form

Home-> Articles-> Marketing

External Links – external links can be used anywhere but are most frequently used inside the text areas on a website. External Links can be references to more information located on other sites, to products you would like to recommend or to pretty much anything else.

Advertisements – usually these are banners, graphic or text with an associated hyperlink. There is no fixed place where you should place your ads, and you can put them below the top banner in the left and right margins below the navigation elements, in the footer or within the text. Studies show that ads “above the fold” are more effective.

(“Above the fold” is the area of a page which can be seen without scrolling).)

Downloadable Items – if you offer downloadable items such as audio, video or pdf files, make sure that you tell the user haw big the file is and whether they need an application to use the file. If a visitor needs a particular application to use files from your website, make sure you link to this applications. When offering pdf files, do not forget to place a link to the free Acrobat reader.

Site Map – it is a great method to layout your entire website for the visitors. (It is also great for search engine crawlers).It is simply a list that displays all the pages on your site with a clickable link to each page.

Summary

A good navigation system can increase the numbers of pages viewed by each visitor. More page visited will result in more sales, signups and will surely make your site more successful.

I’m not sure if every web marketer is similar to me. I often think, “If I had only known then what I know now.” By “then,” I mean my early year or two in my adventure into the jungle of web business. I could easily fill a large book with significant things that I didn’t know how to do but that I attempted regardless. In truth, I could fill a multi-volume set. It’s a bit embarassing.

Occasionally I try to keep new Internet marketers from mimicing my mistakes. Tips that if I had known them at the time I began my first Internet business venture I could have started making a decent income sooner, could have spent less time by doing it the right way the first time and wouldn’t have to tell embarassing stories about myself now. I hope you find these useful.

My advice for today is this: Assume that any page of your website is likely to become a landing page.

You see, I believed that every visitor to my websites would come first to my home page. They would all digest the valuable content there and progress through my site in an orderly fashion, like third graders in line on their way to gym class.

If I had discovered someone who could tell me how my prospects would actually discover my site and navigate around it, my sites would have been designed very differently. I guess I should have either hired a consultant or used an online marketer to professionally build a business website for me–one that actually had a chance of meeting my goals.

My business would have reached a decent level of success much sooner if I had known these things:

* Most people find their destinations by using search engines

* Search engines view the web as a collection of pages, not a collection of websites

* Each individual page on your site and mine should be authored in a way that it contributes to the websites main purpose (sell, obtain leads, whatever)

* Having tracking software that would allow me to diagnose how real people move through my site’s pages

* More quickly discovering that, cumulatively, the interior pages of my website receive more first time visits than my home page

* Recognize that an aesthetically pleasing page is not the same as a productive page

* We should all “bite the bullet” and spend some money wisely in the early stages of our business development, because that will lead to greater income sooner than if we behave as the iconic Mr. Scrooge

I truly enjoy building websites, so that is not something that I would have wanted to have outsourced. But, when I build my first site, I needed to learn so much more before I moved on to the fun part–fun part for me, at least. However there are lots of things that I should have outsourced (and that I now do) when I was first beginning.

OK, so you have come round to the idea that you need an internet prescence. You are fully aware that the future of advertising and gaining new clients will be internet based. What has worked in previous years such as newspaper advertising may well now be a thing of the past. We all have to move with the times if we are to continue to succeed.

The scary thing for many new webmasters is all of the initial costs of setting up a website. I will never forget just how expensive I thought it was when I had my first website built nearly ten years ago. It was based on the subject of speech therapy for stammering and I was investing in this new site at a time when I did not have a great deal of money. It has however one of the best investments that I have ever made. The website certainly enabled a lot of people to find out about the stuttering therapy service that I offer.

The initial costs of setting up a website include paying for the design, the domain and the web hosting. Then there are the ongoing costs of web promotion; there is of course no point in having a top notch website if nobody ever visits it.

So how can we obtain a web design service for an affordable fee? Just like it is in other forms of business it is not so much what you know but who you know. It is a good idea to ask your friends and colleagues if they know of any professional web designers, especially if these friends or colleagues already have a website. This way you may be able to secure a deal on “mates rates”.

The second way is to speak to freelance web designers as these people usually offer cheaper rates than the web design agencies. Many up and coming web designers start up on their own on a self-employed basis and are normally happy to offer a discount whilst they are building up their portfolio.

When it comes to your business website design, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to assure that it performs well to serve its purpose. Here are five very important rules of thumb to consider to make sure that your website performs well.

1) Don’t even think about using splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you sometimes see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Eye tracking studies indicate that, while such banners might distract visitors to a website, modern visitors are accomplished at not noticing the content that the banners contain. Unless your business plan is advertising, the last thing you want to do with your visitors’ time on your site is to direct their attention away from your content (and the action that the content is designed to achieve).

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

Your navigation menu should mimic what your site visitors have used many times before. Make it evident that your links to other pages are just that; they should be like directional sign posts on a highway. If you insist upon an animated, dynamic menu or a multi-level dropdown, also provide a tradition, text-based static menu in one of the traditional menu locations, such as along the left panel of the site. Besides, the static menu will contribute toward your search engine optimization efforts.

4) Provide a clear indication of where the user is

If your site is well designed, users will easily flow from one page to another. However, along the way, they may feel like returning to a previously visited page to read it more carefully, to remind themselves of details or to compare one set of features to another. Provide a way for them to retrace their steps or to know how to get from “point g” back to “point c.” Using a breadcrumb trail serves this purpose very nicely.

5) Use audio only for clear purposes

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on at your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure the visitors have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

If you have ever viewed a website where you could listen to some type of music or watch a video then you have undoubtedly visited a site that utilizes a popular form of multimedia interaction known as flash. These types of sites are growing more and more common. Website builders and creators are beginning to recognize that a more interactive undertone must be used in order to keep website traffic up. However, interactive sites are not the only ones benefiting from this type of design.

While it was somewhat problematic in the beginning because of broadcast regulations, radio stations have now begun to break free of the legal red tape and are now permitted to stream their broadcast over the Internet at their station’s website. For almost all of these applications a flash plug in is necessary to hear the streaming audio.

The flash website design found its way onto television websites also. These have been a true boom for the networks. Not only can they make many of their television shows available for viewing online, but they also add what is referred to as a bumper commercial to the show. This bumper commercial is not associated with the television broadcast and is used to not only cover the expense of posting shows for viewing online but it also helps the network to earn a profit as well.

Internet based movie rental businesses have also benefited from aspects of website development using flash. One particular company’s website allows members to watch a selected group of movies for free. This feature has been the determining factor in many people selecting this online movie rental company over the others.

In truth, it is very hard to think of a website that could not benefit from a flash design. No more is interactive audio and video solely for the MySpace and YouTube’s of the world. The simple fact is that it really does not mater what kind of website it is, the benefits of flash can make any site more compelling and capable of generating increased traffic. As long as traffic continues to be the driving force of any website, then it is a beneficial thing indeed. If your business relies on the internet, you may want to think about contracting a web development company and get onboard with flash applications.

Anyone might be able to find more articles within About.com or by searching within Bloglines.       

Your website is where your business resides — it’s like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good SEO web 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.

Web design tip number one – Use black text on a white background.

Web design that converts visitors into customers must make sure that any sections of text greater than 2 lines uses dark text, preferably black text on a white background.  For blocks of text in your web design you need to forget about fancy font colours and dark backgrounds in your attempt to achieve visual appeal.Not keeping your web design simple so that your message is easy to read is a major mistake made by many designers.

The web design reasons for it include…

In order for you to be able to sell to your potential customers.

1. It is important to make it easy for people to absorb the information on your web site. This is done with a clean well designed structure andand colours.
2. Research indicates that having more than a 15% background tint will negatively impact on the effectiveness of your sales message.
3. Your web design needs to be all about conversion and less about the branding.

Small business will benefit from the simplicity of selecting a dark text on a white background for main body copy section on their sites. It will be the most effective and least expensive strategy in most situations.

Research your keywords early in the process.

Research of the most commonly searched keyphrases used to find your product or service is a critical step.  Then once you know what they you need to make sure that these keywords occur on your website.

To grow your business, you web site needs to be seen and that need to come mostly from search engines ranking you for your key words.

Web design is often a less about the design, and more about the copy, because if the copy does not contain the frequently searched for keywords/phrases, then you are never going to get in front of a customer. So make sure that you know which keywords you should be being found for and place these strategically in your text throughout the site.

Web design tip number three – Make your website, visually appealing.

Some graphic designers may be worried that black text on a white background is inconsisitent with making your web site visually appealling.

The truth is that your web site needs to be found in the major search engines and for your information to be clearly communicated (i.e. easily read).  But you must also at all times present your information in a professional manner to engender the customer trust required in order to purchase from you for request information from you.

By the following of these three simple rules above in your business, you will benefit from more sales leads, signups and sales conversions from your web design.