Archive for November, 2008

Contents of Your Website

Thursday, November 27th, 2008

Those who are thinking of putting a website in the internet must be overwhelmed by different designs or format that will make their own sites competitive. Actually, all they need are the basic things to have their websites rank among the pages of the search engines like Googe, Yahoo and MSN.

1. Avoid focusing on the home page, keywords and titles.
When customers visit your site to see products or services they were looking for, motivate them to buy your products. Provide a clear and unambiguous information and ensure that he gets interested in your products or services for him to linger. Of course, search engine optimization and better rankings can’t keep your customer on your site.The customer visiting your site must have read all necessary informations about the product or services. If there are other information, you can keep the information on separate pages. The customer can navigate to these pages if you provide suitable and easily visible links.

2. Knowing your target clients
In this kind of business, you don’t really know who your customers are and what they want to buy. Design a website that will attract clients by asking them about their choices, and why they like the products. You may also offer price discounts,or a guarantee that you’re better than your competitor and your product descriptions are better.

3. Responding faster to clients questions.
Be sure to reply immediately to your customer. Send email to your existing clients and ask them to complete a survey or even while they are browsing on your website. To know your customer you can check credit card records or ask your customer to complete a simple form with name, address, gender, age, etc. when they purchase a product. Website business is an extension or replacement for a standard store.

4. Giving enough contact information
When selling product or services in website, always provide contact information, preferably on every page of your website. Include your complete mailing address, telephone and cellphone numbers and an email address for them to reach you. Your customers must feel that you are a real person. Customers may need to contact you about sales, general information or technical problems on your site. It is very important to have your email forwarded to another email address if you do not check your website mailbox often. When customer wants to buy online, provide enough choices like credit card, PayPal or other payment services which they can use to buy your product in 24 hours a day; maybe your customers are from other countries.

5 Things to Avoid in Website Design

Sunday, November 23rd, 2008

Designing your website needs extra attention to minute detail. This is to ensure that it will perform best as expected to serve its purpose. Here are seven rules to avoid when designing your website.

1. Splash pages
These are the first pages you see in a website. They are beautiful image with texts like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. They actually don’t have any purpose for being there. Oftentimes, your visitors immediately click on the “back” button when they see splash pages. Remember, the moment your visitors click on your website, present to them up front what you have to offer them minus the splash page.

2. Excessive banner advertisements
Banner advertisements do not really add value to your websites. These ads are usually just ignored. What you can do is to include more valuable content and have relevant affiliate links into your content. Your visitors should feel the desire to buy and not be pushed to buy.

3. Complicated navigation menus
Simple and clear navigation menu is imperative. Don’t be amazed by flash based menus or multi-tiered drop down menus.If they don’t know how to navigate, you yourself push them to leave your site.

4. Confusion on where the user is navigating
Make sure that while your visitors are so engrossed in browsing through your site, they must know which part of the site they are navigating at the moment. Your website must be designed in such a way that they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site so easily. Never confuse your visitors so they won’t leave your site immediately.

5. Audio on your site
Visitor stay at your site reading your content. They might be annoyed by some audio on your website. However if you really want to add audio, make sure your visitors have some control over it such as volume or muting controls.

Tips on Improving Usability of Your Website

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

High Tech website design, no matter how brilliant is your website design is, if the contents of your site ia as useful as an empty brain. To ensure that your website improves the usability and serves its functions optimally, this are some tips:

  1. Suitability of Typography of your content is the first method. Be sure to use CSS to space out the lines in accordance, if you are making use of a large blocks text. Also the font size of your text is big enough to be read easily. Some sites make use of Verdana font, it may look neat and tidy, but it strains really your eyes while reading the text.
  2. Enabling visitors to find content as easy as possible what they want on your site. In this second tip be sure that you provide the visitor all the feasible means to find a single article that he wants without hassle. Providing a glossary or index of articles or an SQL-driven database search engine, it will be assured that your visitors is at eased in your site.
  3. If the website doesn’t load completely within 10-15 seconds, internet users will surely leave that website. To enable the visitors to retain in your site, make sure that all the data needed are there and can be easily delivered as soon as possible. This third tip defines the retentions of visitors.
  4. Lastly, always test every link on your website before it goes online, be very careful about that since it reflects your professional image.

5 Things to Consider Before Choosing a Free Web Host

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Are free web hosting accounts really FREE?  The truth is they will actually cost you more money,time, and customers. This is the case if you have a site intended for business purposes and your site isn’t a simple one. Before you sign up for any free web hosting account, consider the following points:

1. Bandwidth.

A free web hosting will not offer you the best that they can give without any fees. If ever they offer a free account, expect a limited bandwidth. It will take you longer for your page to load. No visitors will stay in your site if it takes them more than 10 seconds to load the pages of your sites. That also means that you won’t get enough customers and your sales from your free web host.

2. Advertising

Free web hosting companies seem free  but in your sites advertisements will be posted and pop up ads, too. Most visitors, to be honest, will not like this. And the sad part, it will affect your traffic and sales even.

3. Web Space

When you get a free web hosting, you can never expect enough web space. Confirm with your free web space provider or the ones you are considering to ensure enough web space to include all of the needed elements of your web pages.

4. Reliability
Many times, your traffic flow is limited and exceeding this may cause your site to be disabled. Some companies, however, may send you bills for exceeding the limits. Before you decide , find out what the rules on traffic are and what the limit is.

5. Limitations

Your free web host have uploading rules on the the size of photos, icons, and more.  Again, check what your web hosting company really offers before you sign up for free web hosting. If you can’t upload what you like for your site, there’s no point into getting anything free.

In conclusion, better invest in a good webhosting company. Remember your purpose for setting your website is to get visitors and sales. Your site may initially cost you money but the gains will surely be to your advantage.