By: Balwinder

“What makes a great web page?”

People ask me this all the time, though they often encounter
difficulty boiling the question down to so few words.

Every serious website operator wants to know how to create
and maintain the best possible website that makes them the
most money and builds the largest subscriber base!

The following “commandments” represent the ideals towards
which every new or existing website should strive.

1. Thou shalt have a Purpose

Clearly define the site’s purpose and ensure all content
(pages, graphics and text) tightly focus on that purpose.
Discard all extraneous material… only give people exactly
what they came for!

2. Thou shalt be Lightweight

Use only small, fast loading graphics. If you must use large
graphics use thumbnails and image slicing to diminish the
size of every file to less than 12-15kb. Use standard
optimized gif’s and jpg’s and avoid anything that requires
the user to download a “plug-in” to view your content.

3. Thou shalt Load Fast

Each and every page on your site should weigh in under
30-60KB total, including graphics and navigation.

If your pages must be larger, such as the case with long,
1-page sales letters, make sure the top part of the page
loads fast so surfers can read your headline and
introduction while the rest of your sales letter loads
further down and out of site.

4. Thou shalt not use False Code

Use only html. Never use java, xml, dhtml or other forms of
code that require a surfer to keep their browser set up
“correctly” to accommodate your page. This is especially
true when using “cloaked” pages that require the use of
javascript in order to work correctly.

5. Thou shalt respect the Search Engines

If you want search engine traffic, use whole web pages that
don’t incorporate frames. Search engines get confused trying
to read content from most frames pages because the designers
don’t set them up with the proper information in the
correct frame.

6. Love thy Surfers and Visitors

Design for “last year’s” technology so surfers using 56K
modems can download and use the site quickly and easily. If
you design only for people with high-speed Internet
connections (DSL and cable) you have eliminated 85%+ of your
potential market.

7. Thou shalt not Annoy

Use only stationary text and graphical layout elements. No
Scrolling text, marquees, or animations of any kind,
including rollover buttons.

This “eye candy” steals valuable bandwidth and adds little
to a site’s main purpose, especially for returning visitors
who just want information, not a carnival sideshow.

8. Thou shalt Not Scroll Left or Right

Design your pages so they never force a visitor to scroll
left or right, no matter what the resolution settings on
their monitor. Sites that read “best viewed at 800 x 600″
really say “look at it my way because I don’t care about
your preferences or limitations.”

9. Thou shalt stay Consistent

Include a standard navigational structure on every page.
Though it may mean a serious challenge for the designer,
users should only need to click once to find every major
section of a site.

Also, this includes using standard link colors in all text
links. Blue: hyperlink; Purple: visited hyperlink; Red:
active hyperlink.

10. Thou shalt Know Thy Traffic

Use a site-wide statistics program that enables you to
determine what brings someone to the site, where they go
once they arrive, and when and where they leave.

This critical information helps with marketing efforts as
well as identifying parts of the site that need tweaking or
adjustment to help you increase sales. If everybody bails
from your site at the same page, knowing this can help you
change the page so people go from “bail mode” to “buy mode”!

Article Written By: Balwinder

For More Free Resources visit www.greateducationonline.com

Article Source: http://greatarticlesformoms.com

By: Denise Willms

Buying a ready-made website from someone else sounds like an ideal way to start working from home. The hard work of building the site and developing the business has already been done. All you have to do is step in and reap the profits.

Right?

Not exactly. Having built a few websites, and businesses, from scratch and now having purchased one, I can assure you that in some ways, yes, buying a website from someone else is easier than building your own. But in other ways, it can be even harder.

We purchased WAHM-Articles, and here are some of the reasons why that was a good move for us.

1. I knew the sellers. Not personally, but I knew their reputation and was confident I could trust them.

2. It was in a niche I wanted to break into. I had worked with a lot of WAHMs with my Virtual Assistant business, and discovered they were my favorite people! I wanted to use my talents to give more support to the online WAHM community, and WAHM-Articles was an ideal solution.

3. It had good backlinks and a Page Rank. One of the hardest parts of launching a new site is finding your first backlinks and waiting for your first visit from Google. That part had already been done for me.

4. It had content and authors. If I had started an article directory on my own, I would be struggling to find my first writers. This site already had writers who submitted articles regularly.

5. It didn’t have a newsletter or a mailing list, but it had a membership list - people I could contact and invite to sign up for our ezine.

6. The sellers provided after-purchase support for as long as I needed it.

7. The website was a good idea, but the sellers just didn’t have the time to promote it properly.

If there were so many pluses to buying a site, why would I say that it might not be a good idea?

I wouldn’t recommend buying a website if:

1. You don’t know how to manage a site. If you can’t build or manage a website, you probably shouldn’t buy one. Building and maintaining your own site - even though it can take a lot of time - is invaluable experience to have before you begin managing a ready-made one.

2. You don’t know the seller. Make sure you know who you’re working with and that they can be trusted.

3. You don’t know why the site is being sold. Is the owner ditching it because she doesn’t have time for it, or because it wasn’t a good idea in the first place?

4. The seller does not provide after-purchase support. There are a lot of little details that need to be ironed out even after a site has been transferred over to you. If you’re buying a site, find out how long the seller will provide after-purchase support and get everything in writing.

If buying a site still sounds like a good idea, you will need to create a business plan and a marketing plan for your new business. Even a developed website will not automatically make money without planning and work on your part. And finally, make sure everything, including the hosting and domain name, is transferred to your name before the transaction is over.

Article Source: http://www.wahm-articles.com

Denise Willms,a homeschooling mom of two, helps her clients get targeted traffic to their websites by writing articles and press releases for them. Subscribe to her newsletterWAHM-Articles Ezine, and receive 105 Power Tips to Get Your Online Business Noticed and Profiting.

By: Bill Kernodle
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.
Article Source:

http://www.article-buzz.com

Information 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

By: Don Resh

The best way to get traffic to your website is to be at the top of the results page of a search engine. Since there can only be one at the top for every search query, your being actually there is next to impossible with the millions of sites and billions of articles contained within the internet.

However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t strive to be part of the top ten in a results page. A good way, to rise through the rankings of search results is by having an article in each page of your website that contains at least 250++ words. This article should contain keyword and relevant content about your website or your product.

Link exchange programs are like merchant clans or chambers of commerce and industry. By being part of a link exchange program, you agree to display the links of other partner sites in your website. The links that will be placed in your website are those links that lead to other websites that are in the same category as your website. For example, if you have a gaming website, then most of your links will be other gaming sites as well. In return for placing their links on your site, they will reciprocate by placing a link on their webpage to your site. How does this increase traffic to your site? If in a search query, one of your partner sites shows up but yours does not, the searcher is redirected to that site. If your partner site does not have the product or idea needed by the searcher, then the searcher will probably click on the link to a partner site. There’s no guarantee that the link will be yours, but it gives you a chance.

Banner exchanges work much like link exchanges but you will need more space on your website to accommodate other website banners. If you are obsessive when it comes to the cosmetics of your website, then you probably won’t want this one. With so many banners flying around, you can get to look like the United Nations. Be that as it may, a potential active link is still one point in favor of your site being visited by someone.

Ezine article writing and newsletters are another way to herd some website traffic in your direction. You write hundreds, even thousands, of articles to saturate the web. Embedded within these articles are links to your website. Having all those articles around is much like having mini-websites scattered all over strategic places. With these articles, you can also give the reader an option to subscribe to your newsletters. If they accept, then you are right at their front door ready to make your sales pitch (email presentations in this case).

If you want it all to yourself, you can turn your site into something similar to Wikipedia. The only difference is that you have merchandise to sell on each page of your website while Wikipedia does not. Using this method, you are guaranteed a top ten placement in any search engine in the internet. Of course, this would mean a lot of work. But if you really want good money, then you have to give good effort.

The methods for increasing website traffic I mention in this article are just some of the many other ways available on the internet. The most successful are those that entail newsletters and ezine articles and link exchanges with other websites. You decide which method works best for your marketing efforts.

A problem that search engines encounter often is the design of websites that purely use advanced programming such as C++, JavaScript or CGI. If the navigation links within your site are powered by these advanced scripts alone, the search engine will not be able to fully browse your site. You need to provide links done in basic HTML so that the engine can read your website.

It takes months for a website with a new domain name (,com, ,org or ,edu) to show up on search engines. Google has imposed an ageing delay on new websites so that it doesn’t waste time on indexing websites that don’t last long. If you want to change your domain name, I suggest you rethink your plan and use what you have instead. A cosmetic facelift of your existing web pages along with several good quality SEO articles will serve you better in the long run. After all, you will be working with what you already have. If you know all the insides and outs of your website, then it would be so much easier to revise than replace because of familiarity.

Some internet marketers make the mistake of placing keyword density requirements above that of article quality. At first glance, it does make sense to optimize an article for your keywords rather than be concerned with artistic considerations or honest, from the heart writing. However, bear in mind that not everyone will buy your product or idea. You know that what you sell is sellable only to a certain target market. If you prioritize keyword optimization in your article rather than writing the article for the sake of the product you want to sell and for the information of your target audience, chances are you will attract buyers of another commodity that you do not have.

The keyword here is relevance. A person searching the internet for something he needs will filter out the search results by using the relevance criterion. My suggestion is, write the article for the sake of your product and for your target customers’ information. Place the priority of keywords as a secondary consideration. It’s all about relevance. I know that it would be a plus for you if you manage to pull in lots of traffic even though they don’t want anything to do with your site. Believe me, misleading a person in the internet is a risky business. That person you mislead can hit back by starting-up an email brigade against your website.

Be specific with your keywords. Don’t generalize. The biggest disadvantage of internet shopping is that customers are not able to scrutinize the product personally. What they usually do is find out from other sources what the product is all about, how it works, etc. When they decide to finally buy, they know what they’re looking for and will mostly likely use a specific name brand as part of their search strings. Your keywords need to be able to match those strings in terms of number of words matched and how the order of those words match. Others will search for stuff by using its sub-categories. For example, when looking for bras, women need to spell out their torso and cup size.

So, the bra size can be a 36 B or a 36 C. Then there are colors to choose from like red, burgundy and black. A bit more specific is the bra classification. Is it a half-cup or a push-up, or is it a sport bra? With these factors in mind, you can conclude that a woman looking for a bra in the internet can type in “black push-up bra 36-C”. Do you have key phrases to match those search strings? Are the words in your key phrases arranged in the same order? The final consideration is the literature where those keywords are embedded. If the article is just a jumble of words full of keywords, the search engine will most likely discard your website in favor of another. This will decrease the ranking of your website in the search results page. In worst case scenarios, they may actually ban your website from showing up in search results.

A lot of SEO experts claim that it isn’t the keyword, but the article that brings you success. Based on what is written above, I tend to agree. Do you?

Article Source: http://www.article-buzz.com

Information about the Author:

Don Resh is CEO of WebForce, Inc. He is a respected authority on Internet Marketing. For more on Keyword Optimization see: www.bizbuildsoftware.com/keywordbloodhound/ www.WebForceSolutions.com www.BizBuildSoftware.com www.TurboMaxSoftware.com

By: Robert D 

What makes a great website? How does the design of a website affect its popularity? If these are just some of the questions that come to your mind read on. Sometimes, it requires a trained eye to find flaws in a website’s design. If you are wondering how a website analyst analyses a website or what criteria a website critic bases his opinion on, here are a few pointers to help you make a website that is both commercially successful and gets critical acclaim.

A vital aspect in the success of any website is its user friendliness. If you own an e-commerce website, it is important that all your products are easily accessible. For example, you could boast of having the largest database on the internet, but if it takes a user a long time to find what he is looking for then the database does not amount to much. Look at any successful e-commerce site and you will notice that they have a search feature that allows users to find what they are looking for without much fuss. As a matter of fact, no matter how advanced your website is, if a critic cannot find what he is looking for when he is reviewing your site chances are your site will not receive a good review.

Another thing you need to look out for is that not all internet users have broadband connections. Even in the United States, only 60% of all internet users are using broadband connections; this means if your site is heavy on graphics and does load quickly you are loosing precious traffic. Make sure that you check your website with various internet connection speeds; many websites actually have a dial-up and broadband version of the same website. An ideal website has to be a blend of speed and features. If you are planning on using newer technology, test the website with all major web browsers like Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox and Opera. Website critics also make it a point to test a website with various browsers to see if the website is cross browser compatible.

The ideal website has to be a blend of graphics, content and ease of use. Also remember that search engine optimization can translate into website design and content changes. If you are getting a website developed from the ground up, make sure that you allow for search engine optimization based changes. Sometimes search engine optimization requires removing /adding certain components from a website; it is always a good idea to work in collaboration with a search engine optimization firm while your site is being developed.

If you are not satisfied with the way your website looks or if you are not satisfied with the traffic your website is receiving, it is always a good idea to get professional feedback. You can visit websites like www.website-evaluations.co.uk that offer critical inputs on all aspects of a website from the design to the search engine friendliness of the site.

Website Audits

Just like a financial audit, a website audit is designed to carry out a comprehensive analysis of a website. A website audit takes into account the user friendliness of the website, the design and other aspects. Once the website has been thoroughly analysed using various criteria, a complete report is created that outlines the various pros and cons of the website. In addition, a website audit also offers suggestions to improve the quality of the website. If you are looking for a comprehensive over view of your website, the best option is to go for a website audit like the one available on website-evaluations.co.uk . Make sure you discuss the findings with your design and development team so you can make the most of the website audit.

Article Source: http://www.article-buzz.com

Information about the Author:

Robert D is the author of this article on Website Evaluation. Find more information about Website Critique Service here.