Wikipedia describes Web 2.0 as an often-misused phrase that refers to second-generation Internet-based services that allow people to share and collaborate in previously unavailable ways. If you cut through the marketing hype of this term, you’re left with a simple concept: the web is no longer a static medium with limited or one-way communication. Fully utilized, static church websites, with little or no reach, can be transformed into community-building, self-propagating, communication powerhouses with enormous reach. Is this important to your ministry? No. It’s not important; it’s critical. Let me explain.

A church, by its very definition, is a community of like-minded individuals who share and collaborate on a common belief and mission. More importantly, in Christian churches, the spreading of this message is accomplished by members of that community sharing their beliefs with others. By utilizing the communication vehicles currently associated with the term ?Web 2.0,? you effectively replicate your physical church and mission on the web. Unlike your local congregation, however, the web-enabled version has instant global reach.

Here’s an example: as a pastor you give your sermon to your congregation on Sunday morning. The reach of this sermon is limited to the people present, and anyone with whom they may verbally share that message. What if that same sermon could be available globally, appearing automatically in subscribers? podcasting software halfway around the world, within hours of the original? What if these same subscribers were to share that sermon with friends, the original propagating from MP3 player to MP3 player, around the world? Suddenly, your non-congregational reach is exponential. Not only is this scenario possible, it is readily available. Believe it or not, podcasting refers to only one vehicle of what currently constitutes ?Web 2.0.? There are many other such vehicles, each with its own ability to reach separate web populations.

Given the Great Commission all Christian churches are tasked with, utilizing these tools is critical, as any means of exponentially increasing your listener base should be. To follow is a short list of features which should be utilized in your current church website design, or used as a checklist for commercially available systems.

Audio Library: Sermons are the most tangible commodity of a church, and subsequently, should get primary attention. An audio library, distinctly separate from the previously mentioned podcasting stream, allows you to make all recorded features, from sermons to music to instruction, available for online listening and download-capable for later use. This feature should be extremely easy to navigate for your users so that they can quickly locate specific recordings.

Video Streaming: While still bandwidth intensive, video, like audio, can be a very effective medium for spreading the gospel. Where possible, audio should be used unless there are significant visual reasons to do so otherwise. Visual presentations and performances are better candidates for this than the typical Sunday sermon.

Podcasting Feeds: A podcast feed is an audio subscription initiated by users who click on your feed link. If you have ever subscribed to a favorite television series with a Tivo, then you’re already familiar with how a podcast works in conjunction with podcast software, such as Apple iTunes. By clicking on your podcast link, users are subscribed, via their podcast software, and subsequent sermons will download automatically for them, becoming instantly available for use on their MP3 players. This is a separate feature from your Audio Library, as podcasts should be regularly scheduled recordings, as a rule of thumb. You may have a great variety of recorded material available, but you may not want every recording linked as part of a regular podcast feed. Make sure any system that you are considering makes this distinction.

Blogging: Blogging is the perfect online mechanism for your pastoral staff to reflect and provide guidance between Sundays. Pastoral staff blogs can help bring repeat visitors to your site and provide a platform for personal insight, that goes beyond the confines and structure of Sunday’s sermon. Entire search engines exist for blogs and, because of this, ministries have an enormous opportunity to reach entirely new readers. The most effective blogging will involve having your own blog server versus a freebie account in a shared environment.

Newsletter Management: Electronic newsletters simply cannot be ignored for effective ministry due to their viral nature. A commonly used marketing term, viral marketing refers to the act of one person sending or forwarding information, they found helpful, to others who they know might benefit from it. In other words, an effective newsletter not only finds its way to the subscribers, but they typically forward meaningful newsletters to others. Many factors influence the effectiveness of this method including subscriber management, the quality of the content, and the focus on gaining new subscribers.

Forums: Adequately moderated, church website forums can provide the perfect means for developing a community around your online ministry. Topics can be discussed or debated, church classes can have their own forums for collaborating on teachings, and questions about the faith can be answered. While there are some obvious requirements for moderation, a good system will allow several layers of control that provide a balance of administrative control and management ease specific to your needs and abilities.

Image Galleries: Image galleries provide far more than the obvious display of happy times within your congregation. A well-made gallery will allow optional user interaction, such as rating and voting, in addition to commentary. Most importantly, make certain your system has the ability to send pictures as e-cards. As previously mentioned, this feature is viral in nature, allowing users to send selected images as postcards with greetings to friends, again, greatly extending your online reach.

Events Calendar: No church website design would be complete without a full-featured, fully searchable events calendar. Events can be the lifeblood of a church, and getting the message out, about those events, is mission-critical.

User Polls: While sometimes overused in secular websites, user polls on a church website can be extremely effective for several reasons. Religion and politics have long been the start of many a debate and. as a result, most people are very willing to give their opinions on either topic. By providing effective, anonymous polls, you not only encourage user interaction, but you can gain a better understanding of the mindset of your site visitors. Many times, this can provide great material for sermons!

Email to friend: This little feature should appear on every page of significant content throughout your church website. Its function is to provide a means for site visitors to email a specific page they think might be of interest to their friends. This feature, while seemingly small, is also viral in nature (one person receives it and sends to another) and can have a significant impact in your ministry?s reach.

Search-Engine Optimization: Whether you are attempting your church website design by hand, or are using a commercial system, make absolutely certain that you don’t overlook good search-engine optimization practice. Without going into a long description of the function of each, make sure that any system you use automates accurate meta tag creation, has a reciprocal link-management system and, if your site is dynamic (database- driven). that URLs are rewritten as search-engine friendly. Overlooking these items will result in decreased search-engine positioning, so pay close attention to these. As your site grows, the more important the automation or near-automation of these functions become.

Multi-Lingual Page Translation: While there is no true 100%-accurate page-translation service available, there are some that do an outstanding job. Make sure that all your content pages have some form of multi-lingual translation capabilities. The more languages you can translate into, the more lives you are likely to impact on a global scale.

RSS Feeds: RSS feeds provide a similar subscription method as podcast feeds do, but they are focused on textual content versus audio. These feeds can be established throughout your site and alert subscribers to changes in content, without them having to browse your site. Areas of your site that do not frequently change (like your statement of faith) are not good candidates for an RSS feed, while constantly updated content areas are. Forums, for example, are great places to deploy an RSS feed, as replies and responses to ongoing threads update frequently.

About the Author:

Brooks Patton is founder of The Church Site Project, an integrated, web-content-management system, and online church community suite, designed to meet the needs of modern church website design standards.

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Website Redesign : Demolition or Remodel?

According to latest industry numbers, consumers are using the web to make purchasing decisions in everything from their HDTV to their personal physician to where to take their children for gymnastics class. In fact, according to a recent study conducted by Hall and Partners, more than one quarter of all consumer electronics (CE) purchases are researched online. So, if you’re web site hasn’t been updated since you built it three years ago, it’s time to take inventory and rebuild your site with new and improved web tools that can add value to your business. Like architects, many web developers see website redesigns as either demolitions or remodels. With either approach, it’s important to consider what you are trying to accomplish by retooling your site.

• What are your company goals?
• What is your marketing message?
• How are you going to drive people to your new site?
• Can a new site add value to your existing customers?
• How can you put more of your business processes online

Demolition If you plan to demolish your existing site, it is critical to take the time to develop an Internet Strategy for the next version of your site. If possible, take a brief survey of your company’s existing customers to determine what they’d like to see you your website. Is there a way your site could make doing business easier for them? Ask the person who answers your telephone if they have ideas for the website. For example, we had a recycling company whose secretary took 100 calls a day from people looking for recycling locations. We developed a simple database that allowed customers to put in their address and locate the collection center nearest to their home. The volume of phone inquires dropped dramatically. Another company reduced their customer support staff by two employees by simply putting technical help manuals online. When meeting with your web developer, it’s important to be clear about whom your target audience is and what it is you want them to do when they arrive at your web site. If you’re about to create your first web site, you can use these tips, too:

1. Define the basics. What does your web site need to do? If the goal is to have 250 people a day to view the site, determine what action you’d like those 250 people to take.
2. Create a useable site. Include user-friendly navigation menu; fast-loading pages; a contact form; a phone number; your picture, and endorsements from customers.
3. Build your site with current technology. You should be able to control your content without relying on a web development company to update the text.
4. Determine how you’ll measure whether or not your Web site is succeeding and how you intend to monitor it.
5. Develop an online marketing budget. Plan for marketing by making sure your Web site is completely ready to receive traffic. Don’t promote a Web site that’s missing parts or you’ll waste people’s time and they might not come back.

Remodel A “re-model” redesign is not as time-consuming as starting from scratch. However, it does take planning to make a successful conversion. One of the areas companies should consider is how much of the existing look and/or framework they want to keep, and whether the text needs to be refreshed. Remodels make the most sense if you have an existing content management tool that can be utilized in a redesign, or if you have a heavy investment in customer web applications. For budget reasons, reusing existing tools may make sense rather than building them from the ground up. If your budget is very tight, often simply retooling the home page of a site makes a significant difference to website visitors. If you can update the site with a feature that attracts new visitors or provides good, current information, you will often improve the conversion rate of visitors to customers.

This article lists the 5 golden rules of good web site design. Follow them, and you are guaranteed to produce a well designed web site.

Rule 1: A good web site design should have 3 levels of web pages - no more, no less!

This simply means that from the Home page of your web site (Level 1), there are 2 lower levels of linked web pages. Level 2 consists of the ‘chapters’, or topics, of your web site, and Level 3 consists of the sub-topics of each Level 2 topic.

The reason for this is that it has been proven that humans are comfortable navigating down 3 levels on a web site. Any deeper than this, and they can very easily become ‘lost’, which quickly results in them looking to make their escape! Alternatively, any less than 3 levels, and a web site appears to be too ‘light weight’ to be worth spending much time looking around - end result, the same as when it is too deep!

Rule 2: A good web site design has between 5 and 15 Level 2 web pages.

The reasoning behind this rule is as follows:

Any less than 5 Level 2 web pages, and it is difficult for your web site to ‘get noticed’ by the internet search engines, which also means that human visitors won’t find it either!

Any less than 5 Level 2 pages, and it is unlikely that your website will have sufficient content to encourage human visitors to ’stick around’, or to revisit in the future. Limited ’stickability’ will have a detrimental effect on the profitability of your web site!

Any more than 15 Level 2 web pages, and it is unlikely that all of your web pages will ‘get noticed’ (i.e. indexed) by the internet search engines. When this is the case, your time will be more profitably spent designing another web site!

Any more than 15 Level 2 web pages, and many human visitors will simply find your web site to be too big and unwieldly to be bothered looking around - end result, they look for a quick escape!

Rule 3: A good web site design has between 5 and 15 Level 3 web pages per Level 2 web page.

The reasoning behind this rule is closely tied in with the reasoning behind Rule 2, which in simple terms is - too much, or too little, web site content penalises you in terms of the volume of ’stickable’ traffic (i.e. human visitors that actually ’stick around’ long enough to buy something!) that is attracted to your web site.

Rule 4: A good web site design is easy to navigate.

The reasoning behind this rule is very simple - if people have to spend time trying to work out how to navigate around your web site, they won’t bother! Everybody is pushed for time, and, unless you are very, very lucky, there will be a lot of other web sites that supply similar information to your web site - the trick that you must master is to link together the information on your web site in a way that is very easy for your visitors to find.

A simple approach to achieving this rule is as follows:

1. Place a navigation button for each Level 2 web page down the left-hand side of your Home page. 2. Place direct links to your Level 3 web pages at the appropriate points within the text of your Level 2 web pages. 3. On each of your Level 3 web pages place a link back to the Level 2 page that it was accessed from. 4. On each of your Level 3 web pages place a link back to your Home page. 5. On each of your Level 2 web pages place a link back to your Home page.

Rule 5: A good web site design has an attractive ‘Look and Feel’.

The reasoning behind this rule requires no explanation! Your web site must be ‘pleasing on the eye’. In practice, this means:

1. Avoid using lots of bright colours. 2. Mainly stick to black writing on a white, or pale background. 3. Avoid patterned backgrounds. 4. Avoid cluttering up a web page with too much text or images. 5. Break your text up into small paragraphs - ideally no more than 3 or 4 short sentences per paragraph. 6. If your page contains a lot of text, break it up with headings to allow people to quickly scan it for the bits they are interested in.

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Tips for SEO

Custom Website Design Company India Professional web site design - $149. Go for Custom web site design at affordable price and be unique.

SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings, and could be considered a subset of search engine marketing. The term SEO also refers to “search engine optimizers,” an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients’ sites. Some commentators, and even some SEOs, break down methods used by practitioners into categories such as “white hat SEO” (methods generally approved by search engines, such as building content and improving site quality), or “black hat SEO” (tricks such as cloaking and spamdexing). White hatters say that black hat methods are an attempt to manipulate search rankings unfairly. Black hatters counter that all SEO is an attempt to manipulate rankings, and that the particular methods one uses to rank well are irrelevant

About the Author

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Making the right choice when it comes to the web design company that you will use can be very difficult. Thanks to the cheaper and more user friendly software programs that are now available just about anyone in the world can create a web site and have it live in a matter of days or perhaps even hours. That is not to say that this will be a good or even pretty good web site. Most likely this will be the most basic and low quality of all web sites and nothing that would attract and impress the visitors that you have. Sadly this is so common place anymore that people will take what they can get, hence the reason why so many new web sites are running around the web today. If you are looking for an affordable custom website design solution company then you need to be looking in the right places and not always looking at the lowest price to be the marker.

The matter of web design should be looked at from the perspective of retail purchases that you will make. In light, the lowest price is not always the best idea. Why? Well the truth is that the lower the price the lower the quality in most cases. While the item may be the same, it will not be made as well as the higher priced models and in truth may cost you more money down the road when you have to spend more money to replace it. The same goes for the web design services. What could be gained by having a cut rate web site designed when you have to hire someone else at a greatly inflated rate to fix and repair the entire process because of the poor quality? So you can see that it is not always the best idea to go with the cheapest of them all. In most cases the absolute cheapest of all of them will invariably be the one that causes you the most problems. The customer service may be poor or they may be nothing more than a scam that takes away all the money and leaves you with nothing.

An affordable custom website design solution company will provide all the necessary information that you require upfront. There will be valuable customer service in place and you will find that the answers that you require are answered quickly and honestly.

About the Author:

Affordable Custom Website Design Solution Company Affordable ecommerce web site design offered by Jatech.

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How To Choose A Website Designer

 by: Steve Lillo

Now that you have decided that it is time to create a website for your business there are many questions you must answer. One of the most important questions is “Who should create my website?”

I like to use the analogy of playing music; in as little as a few hours, some people can strum a few chords on the guitar and play a song. But to really play the instrument and make your instrument sing requires experience and understanding. Likewise, although there are tools which are readily available to assist in the process, effective website design requires experience and understanding of many diverse areas including: marketing, Internet graphics options and limitations, effectively creating a site from the perspective of search engines, the differences and limitations of different browsers and computer platforms as well as knowledge of the software and coding required to move beyond simple static html pages.

It is also vitally important that your designer understand you and your business and know how to most effectively communicate you and your uniqueness to your Internet audience. To answer our question, well look at some important pieces of information that youll need to find out before you choose your website designer.

What do you want in a website? What are your needs and intentions for having a website? Does the prospective designer listen to and understand your needs and intentions? Have you checked other similar businesses to see what they are doing on the Internet? Can a prospective designer offer any suggestions for improving upon what others have already accomplished? The more clarity you have about your intended results for having a website, the more accurately you can communicate your needs to your designer and the more likely it is that you will achieve these results.

Is the designer experienced in website design? How long has the designer been creating websites? What is their background? How long have they been using the Internet? Three years is a long time in Internet terms. More than four or five years is a seasoned veteran. Ideally, your site designer has a variety of experience.

What are the designer’s strengths and weaknesses? The range of skills required for creating any type of website is more diverse than you can imagine. If a designer tells you they have done or can do any project, Id suggest you take that statement with a grain of salt.

Is the designer easy to work with and talk to? Is she/he able to communicate technical information so that you can understand it? The process of creating a website can often be an overwhelming process for some people. Consider hiring a designer with whom you have a good rapport and find communicating with easy.

Look at some of their previous clients sites. Do they all look the same? Do they load quickly? Are they easy to navigate through? Do you like their previous work? Do they accurately reflect their clients business? Does the designer custom create each site or would they have you select from a list of prepackaged sites?

What is your budget and what is the typical cost for the designers projects? As a generalization, the larger the company, the more they charge for their services (and often the more elaborate the sites they create.) Companies which create sites from a prepackaged template often cost less but dont provide you with custom solutions which may more closely meet your needs. Site designers who are getting started will often create your site for a lower fee, essentially using your project to develop their skills.

Your decision should be based on many of these important questions. Also use any other questions you find useful when hiring any other service business for a project. Comparing website designers is sometimes like comparing bananas to bicycles instead of apples to apples. Dont be afraid to ask questions. You might consider writing pros and cons for each designer on a sheet of paper to develop a more objective point of view.

The selection of your website designer is an important step in the creation of a successful website. With time and patience, you too can join the thousands of businesses with successful websites.

You have a great product. You also have a great company image and marketing model. Now it is time to implement all your plans and bring together a website. You know very little about websites. Finding websites that have failed is easier than shooting fish in a barrel. Many people come into the internet business with the notion that if they are on the web, they are guaranteed to make money. Not so. The internet market is flooded these days, and in order to get noticed, there is a way to do things.

So, your first idea for a website is one with lots of things that move, flash, talk, or whatever. Most people think this is the best way to draw attention to their website. It draws attention, but if no one knows what your company is, they won’t find the website this way. It also can be a little annoying to visitors. Websites must be picked up by the search engines in order for people to start finding them. However, search engines do not like all those elements because in the search engines view it is the equivalent of a novel, when all they are looking for is a one page report. Granted, once you are a large established business like a television network or a shopping corporation, people will come to your site no matter what, and search engines lessen the penalty for using lots of heavy files.

Now you think you want the easy way out and want to go with a template website. Templates are a cheap and quick way to get a website live on the internet. There are different types of templates, but the ones you want to stay away from are those which are nothing but images. These websites are created in a photo editor so that all the components of the site like buttons, information, and descriptions are all just pictures of text, and not actual text. Search engines use programs that review your website to read what it’s all about. If all they see are image files, it doesn’t really tell them anything about the website. You also run into the same problem of presenting a book rather than a piece of paper. Images are large files, while pure text is not. It is in fact quite small in comparison.

So you realize you are going to have to put some work into the site to have it look how you want, and also be functional for search engines looking at it. Text is very important. All your buttons should be text. All your descriptions and company information should be text. Choose a layout that is easy to navigate with menus to locate all pages within the site. Also important is a site map. A site map will help you keep your site organized and it will help the search engines when they come to visit your site.

Choose a search engine optimization company that will help review your site. They can pick out things you may not notice. For example, design editors can help clean up html code and find any spelling errors. They can also help you choose the best web site design elements that will make your site look how you want, and also make it search engine friendly.

About the Author

This article was written by Angela Oliver for Web Submission Services as an informational piece for website owners. Please visit Web Submission Services for more information about web site design and search engine optimization. -

Are you losing customers because of a poor website design? A slow-loading site can mean web shoppers give up - meaning shoppers are likely to abandon a website if it takes longer than four seconds to load, a survey suggests.

The research by Akamai revealed users’ dwindling patience with websites that take time to show up.

It found 75% of the 1,058 people asked would not return to websites that took longer than four seconds to load.

The time it took a site to appear on screen came second to high prices and shipping costs in the list of shoppers’ pet-hates, the research revealed.

Akamai consulted those who shop regularly online to find out what they like and dislike about e-tailing sites. About half of mature net-shoppers - who have been buying online for more than two years or who spend more than $1,500 (?788) a year online - ranked page-loading time as a priority.

It found that one-third of those questioned abandon sites that take time to load, are hard to navigate or take too long to handle the checkout process.

The four-second threshold is half the time previous research, conducted during the early days of the web-shopping boom, suggested that shoppers would wait for a site to finish loading.

To make matters worse, the research found that the experience shoppers have on a retail site colours their entire view of the company behind it.

About 30% of those responding said they formed a “negative perception” of a company with a badly put-together site or would tell their family and friends about their experiences.

Further research by Akamai found that almost half of the online stores in the list of the top 500 US shopping sites take longer than the four-second threshold to finish loading.

The survey questioned 1,058 net shoppers during the first six months of 2006. Consultants Jupiter Research did the survey for Akamai.

About the Author

Find out more about accessible web design at Accessibility101, SEO at Hobo, and Internet Marketing at InternetMarketing101.

RVTraderOnline.com, an online showroom of over 75,000 recreational vehicles across the US and a division of Trader Publishing Company has undergone a website redesign to become more user-friendly and provide even more opportunities for dealers, suppliers, and manufacturers to target active RV enthusiasts.

With the advent of a Dealer Spotlight ad on the homepage, dealers are given the opportunity to outshine competing homepage ads with a larger ad on the left side of the page and directly to the left of the homepage search function. This way, no matter what the visitor searches for, they are sure to notice this particular ad and give the dealer maximized exposure and a superb chance to make a good first impression on RVTraderOnline.com.

Scott Vollmer, the Business Development Manager of RVTraderOnline.com shares his feelings on the website redesign, “this is a long-awaited change that we have been developing and testing for months. After nearly 5 years of the same website design, we?re ready for a new approach, more streamlined maneuverability for our users, and more unique ways for our advertisers to reach and harvest leads.”

RVTraderOnline.com is the leading online classified ad service bringing RV buyers and sellers together in one virtual marketplace with over 500,000 unique visitors per month, (WebTrends, 2005). Advertising their inventory on RVTraderOnline.com, dealers and independent owners alike are reaching RV enthusiasts who are interested in researching and purchasing new and used recreational vehicles online.

Headquartered in Norfolk, VA, RVTraderOnline.com is part of TraderOnline.com?s network of websites covering new and used vehicle categories such as boats, trucks, motorcycles, ATVs, aircraft, equipment and collector car vehicles, and general merchandise. TraderOnline.com is a division of Trader Publishing Company, the nation’s largest distributor of photo-classified ad publications. For more information about RVTraderOnline.com, call toll-free 888-813-7304 or visit www.RVTraderOnline.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jackie Moniot is the Marketing Manager of RVTraderOnline.com, a division of Trader Publishing Company, the nation’s largest distributor of photo-classified ad publications.  

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This article lists the 5 golden rules of good web site design. Follow them, and you are guaranteed to produce a well designed web site.

Rule 1: A good web site design should have 3 levels of web pages - no more, no less!

This simply means that from the Home page of your web site (Level 1), there are 2 lower levels of linked web pages. Level 2 consists of the ‘chapters’, or topics, of your web site, and Level 3 consists of the sub-topics of each Level 2 topic.

The reason for this is that it has been proven that humans are comfortable navigating down 3 levels on a web site. Any deeper than this, and they can very easily become ‘lost’, which quickly results in them looking to make their escape! Alternatively, any less than 3 levels, and a web site appears to be too ‘light weight’ to be worth spending much time looking around - end result, the same as when it is too deep!

Rule 2: A good web site design has between 5 and 15 Level 2 web pages.

The reasoning behind this rule is as follows:

Any less than 5 Level 2 web pages, and it is difficult for your web site to ‘get noticed’ by the internet search engines, which also means that human visitors won’t find it either!

Any less than 5 Level 2 pages, and it is unlikely that your website will have sufficient content to encourage human visitors to ’stick around’, or to revisit in the future. Limited ’stickability’ will have a detrimental effect on the profitability of your web site!

Any more than 15 Level 2 web pages, and it is unlikely that all of your web pages will ‘get noticed’ (i.e. indexed) by the internet search engines. When this is the case, your time will be more profitably spent designing another web site!

Any more than 15 Level 2 web pages, and many human visitors will simply find your web site to be too big and unwieldly to be bothered looking around - end result, they look for a quick escape!

Rule 3: A good web site design has between 5 and 15 Level 3 web pages per Level 2 web page.

The reasoning behind this rule is closely tied in with the reasoning behind Rule 2, which in simple terms is - too much, or too little, web site content penalises you in terms of the volume of ’stickable’ traffic (i.e. human visitors that actually ’stick around’ long enough to buy something!) that is attracted to your web site.

Rule 4: A good web site design is easy to navigate.

The reasoning behind this rule is very simple - if people have to spend time trying to work out how to navigate around your web site, they won’t bother! Everybody is pushed for time, and, unless you are very, very lucky, there will be a lot of other web sites that supply similar information to your web site - the trick that you must master is to link together the information on your web site in a way that is very easy for your visitors to find.

A simple approach to achieving this rule is as follows:

1. Place a navigation button for each Level 2 web page down the left-hand side of your Home page. 2. Place direct links to your Level 3 web pages at the appropriate points within the text of your Level 2 web pages. 3. On each of your Level 3 web pages place a link back to the Level 2 page that it was accessed from. 4. On each of your Level 3 web pages place a link back to your Home page. 5. On each of your Level 2 web pages place a link back to your Home page.

Rule 5: A good web site design has an attractive ‘Look and Feel’.

The reasoning behind this rule requires no explanation! Your web site must be ‘pleasing on the eye’. In practice, this means:

1. Avoid using lots of bright colours. 2. Mainly stick to black writing on a white, or pale background. 3. Avoid patterned backgrounds. 4. Avoid cluttering up a web page with too much text or images. 5. Break your text up into small paragraphs - ideally no more than 3 or 4 short sentences per paragraph. 6. If your page contains a lot of text, break it up with headings to allow people to quickly scan it for the bits they are interested in.

Gary is the owner and webmaster of Profitable-Online-Business.com. This website has been created to offer simple, straight forward instructions to enable any ‘non’techy’ to create an effective, and profitable online business.

If you have a computer, chances are you’ve tried your hand at website design. Perhaps it was just something simple that you made with a graphical editor on a free hosting site like Geocities or Google Sites. Perhaps you really got into it and bought tons of books on HTML, Javascript, PHP, and anything else you could get your hands on. Honestly, either way is just fine. You can design absolutely spectacular sites with high usability either way, so long as you start with a clear design in mind. That’s why I’m going to show you how to plan your website design first, and then how to implement it. I will also show you how to avoid some common mistakes that beginning web designers often make.

First, let us talk about some terms. When I say website design, I simply mean the creation of a website. Whether through the actually use of HTML code or through a point-and-click WYSIWYG(What you see is what you get) editor. When I say usability, I’m talking about how “user friendly” your site is. This could be everything from font size to layout to the interactive and dynamic elements of your site.

This leads me to the next topic: the website design itself. Now just wait. I want you to stop before you do anything else and just think about what you want this site to look like. Take out a piece of paper and a pencil and draw your layout. Think about what your audience will be expecting. Think about a color scheme. Think about other pages and sites that you’ll be linking to. Then take a look at some of your competitors sites and see what they did. Does it work for them? Will it work for you?

When you draw up your layout, ask yourself the following questions: “Where are the navigation links?(links to other pages on your site),” “Where are the links to other sites?(your affiliates perhaps),” “Are you going to have ads on your site, and If so, what kind(text, pictures, both?) and where will they be?,” and finally, “Where will the main content go? What will that content be? How should the audience to react to it?”

Now, consider your color scheme. What is the main subject of your site? If it’s a conservative subject like business or finance, you’ll want to use “cool” colors like blue, green, or gray. If it’s a more personal subject, like dating, or something artistic, like painting, you’ll want to use “warm” colors, like red, orange, or yellow. What is the mood of your site? If it’s somber, use darker shades. For a calm look use medium shades. And if you want a child-like or carefree kind of site use bright shades. (A note about children’s sites: the actual color is less important here than the shade. Use bright, extravagant colors for a children’s site.)

Now look at some of your competitors. What kind of layout and color scheme do they use? Does is seem effective to you? If so, it’s perfectly acceptable to try and emulate it, but don’t be a copy-cat. Your website design should be unique. If you’re competitors all do the same thing, maybe you should try taking a different course. Stand out from the crowd with your website design and it will be more likely to get noticed.

So now you’ve got a basic idea of what you want your site to look like. Now you’re left with one more big question: “How can I make this work in a way that my audience will be able to use it effectively.” That’s right, it’s time to talk about usability.

Usability is as much about code as it is about flow. Your site should allow the user to see what they want to see, but also make them see what you want them to see. This is sometimes easier said than done. As an example of what I’m talking about, let’s talk about ads.

First of all, you can assume that the user looking at your site is looking at your site because they saw a keyword they were interested in(i.e. they searched Google for your sites topic). So whatever ads you include on your site should fit nicely with your main content. A great way to accomplish this is with Google AdSense, but that’s another article. The point in this is that you want your ads to be relevant, but you also want them to grab the user’s attention. The best place to do this is at the top or right-hand side of the page. If you have an article-based site or a blog, you might try to incorporate the ads into the content of your site by placing them between each paragraph. That way your users see ads about things they might want, and you want them to see the ads. This increases the overall usability of your website design.

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It doesn’t matter whether your website is of a personal nature with just a few pages or a larger e-commerce website, having a well-designed site is very important. Believe it or not, website design is something that matters to your visitors. It can make all the difference in whether they leave your site or bookmark it. The following are 7 tips for improving your website design.

1. Pages that load quickly. If your site does not load at least within ten or 15 seconds, chances are that most people will simply leave. You may have speedy Internet connection, but keep in mind that not all folks do. Remember, 56k modems do still exist.

2. Text on your pages should be easy to read. You will want the size of the text to be big enough, and a background color that does not obscure the text. To be on the safe side, it is recommended to use black text on a white background. If you would like to use a little more color, choose carefully, making sure that the page is still easy to read..

3. You will want your website to be easy to navigate. All text links and graphic elements such as buttons and tabs should be easy to read and use. Links found within your article should flow appropriately. You don%u2019t want your visitors leaving because they were not able to figure out how to get your Flash menu to work.

4. Both your website design and layout should be consistent with one another. If you were to switch from one style to another to often, you may confuse your visitors. It only makes sense that if the website design is suddenly too different people are bound to think that they are at another website altogether.

5. Stay away from music and sounds. Not many people like to suddenly be forced to listen to a certain type of music when they click on your site. They may already be listening to their own music. If you think that your site really does need music, turn it off by default and provide a button for visitors to click on if they want to listen.

6. Focus your web design on browser compatibility. For example, not all people use Internet Explorer. Be sure that your site can be viewed using Mozilla, Safari, Opera and Firefox. If at all possible, you may want to test your website on both a Mac and PC. Sites targeting markets such as technology should be careful, because these readers are more likely to use some of the newer browsers and gadgets.

7. Consider your website design for all screen resolutions. Chances are, you like to surf in 1240×1080 with your screen, but remember, some folks still use 800×600, or even 640×768! A website that looks great in high resolution may not be so easy to view correctly in 800×600.

If you have any doubts, consider these tips for improving your website design and test, test and test! You could ask for advice from friends or family if you want. They are not as familiar with your website design, and will likely be able to point out things that you overlooked.

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India website designers graphic design company-web site ecommerce development, logo brochure catalogue design company and prepress services -

Individuals who are new to website development will often compartmentalize the web page and fill every available space with either text or graphics. After all, why shouldn?t you maximize the site design by including as much information as possible?

There seems to be an underlying fear that if there is ?white space? the website will look incomplete. The term white space is a common term in publishing. For instance when a newspaper is developing an advertisement they will seek to allow for some areas of the advertisement to be free from text or graphics. Most publishers have learned that white space provides a sophisticated look while drawing attention to a very specific selling point.

The best way to describe it is to use music as an example. There are times when musicians will use a very roots-oriented approach to their music. They may sing with only a guitar. This approach of stripping away everything else helps the listener experience a more intimate encounter with the music. Sometimes adding more actually reduces the overall effectiveness of the music or, in the case of web design, the message.

If your online visitor has to take a significant amount of time to locate the important information they hoped to find on a web page they will likely lose interest rapidly.

Cable television contains reality television shows that attempt to help individuals sell their property. In most cases the very first thing the experts note is the clutter that may be distracting guests from visualizing the possibilities of the property. The experts will generally paint rooms a neutral color and most of the furnishings are removed from the home. The episodes generally end with the homeowners with a contract and very impressive reviews from those attending an open house.

Many web designers are reverting to a more minimalist approach to their webpage design. The use of links is a key strategy while removing unwanted clutter.

The use of great photos and a significant amount of organized white space allow visitors to concentrate on the reason they came to the webpage in the first place.

Another reason white space may be an important element in site design is to allow for the inclusion of advertising. If you fill every available space you eliminate advertisement from being a consideration on your webpage. In effect you may be driving away customers and advertisers at the same time.

For some, the thought of intentionally carving out white space in a web design requires a new way of thinking. I would encourage you to take some time and visit some of the most successful websites and see how much white space exists. What can you eliminate from your site design that gives it room to breathe?

About the Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

Individuals who are new to website development will often compartmentalize the web page and fill every available space with either text or graphics. After all, why shouldn?t you maximize the site design by including as much information as possible?

There seems to be an underlying fear that if there is ?white space? the website will look incomplete. The term white space is a common term in publishing. For instance when a newspaper is developing an advertisement they will seek to allow for some areas of the advertisement to be free from text or graphics. Most publishers have learned that white space provides a sophisticated look while drawing attention to a very specific selling point.

The best way to describe it is to use music as an example. There are times when musicians will use a very roots-oriented approach to their music. They may sing with only a guitar. This approach of stripping away everything else helps the listener experience a more intimate encounter with the music. Sometimes adding more actually reduces the overall effectiveness of the music or, in the case of web design, the message.

If your online visitor has to take a significant amount of time to locate the important information they hoped to find on a web page they will likely lose interest rapidly.

Cable television contains reality television shows that attempt to help individuals sell their property. In most cases the very first thing the experts note is the clutter that may be distracting guests from visualizing the possibilities of the property. The experts will generally paint rooms a neutral color and most of the furnishings are removed from the home. The episodes generally end with the homeowners with a contract and very impressive reviews from those attending an open house.

Many web designers are reverting to a more minimalist approach to their webpage design. The use of links is a key strategy while removing unwanted clutter.

The use of great photos and a significant amount of organized white space allow visitors to concentrate on the reason they came to the webpage in the first place.

Another reason white space may be an important element in site design is to allow for the inclusion of advertising. If you fill every available space you eliminate advertisement from being a consideration on your webpage. In effect you may be driving away customers and advertisers at the same time.

For some, the thought of intentionally carving out white space in a web design requires a new way of thinking. I would encourage you to take some time and visit some of the most successful websites and see how much white space exists. What can you eliminate from your site design that gives it room to breathe?

About the Author:

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. HighPowerSites is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with http://HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com

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Building an Innovative and Effective Website, by making full use of available technologies, is crucial for the future success of your current or future online business. There are literally 1000’s of great ideas out there, but finding the right ones and applying them to your website, is where the real trick lies.

Applying the best tips, tools and other design principles to your website, can bring you untold success on the internet. At the same time, using powerful and innovative ideas in the design and development stages of your website, will level the playing field for your business, and raise it’s competitive edge on the internet.

We have been doing web development for more than 7 years now, and during this time, many important design and development principles have come to light. Don’t waste valuable time by making the same mistakes many other web designers and webmasters do. The following 8 powerful website design principles will assist in helping you make the right choices for your online business :

1. Do-it-yourself OR outsourcing ?

Before you start compiling your new website, you have to establish your skill level to tackle the specific project. If you have sufficient html understanding, a good idea of graphics and colors, plus fair writing skills, you mostly can do the website design yourself. If, however, you don’t have a fair understanding of html, it would be advisable to outsource.

2. Dynamic vs. Static web pages

Do you want your site to be static, i.e.. no input from visitors, or dynamic, i.e.. fully interactive, with visitors being able to log on, take part in forums, post information, etc ? Many new and fantastic scripting languages are available to make your site more dynamic and bring it to life.

3. Web Site Title vs. Domain

Before registering a domain for your site, take some time to think of related words or names that best describes your business. Compile a few possibilities and then check for availability on the internet. The best ones would normally already be “taken”, but innovative thinking can get you very far !! When compiling you main page, use this domain name and extend it to your website’s main page title tag. This is step 1 in getting future good search engine rankings.

4. Build your site around important keywords

When building the content part of your site, remember to include a fair dose of important keywords and phrases that best describe your business. These keywords, the words and phrases people use when searching for relevant information on the internet, should also be extended to all the important tags of every web page of your site. Be careful though not to overdo it, as search engines penalize “keyword stuffing”. Also use full sentences and make them sound natural. The clever search engine algorithms have recently just become even more advanced, and can now track unnaturally sounding sentences !

5. Optimized Title, Description & Keyword Tags

Each page of your website should be individually optimized in terms of the message you want it carry. Every page is different and there for a specific reason. If the page info and page tags do not match in terms of keywords, the page will not show up in search engine results. Search engines want to give searchers relevant results, and by not applying this principle, your site will not rank well.

6. A Site Map with links to all pages

Assist the search engines by making it easy for them to index your site. If all pages can be reached from a central point like a sitemap, you will firstly make sure that the search engine spider finds all your site pages, and secondly help visitors to find relevant info and pages quickly. Sites with good structures and fresh content gets spidered more often.

7. All pages back-linked to the Site Map and Home Page

Visitors to your website will not necessary land the index page or sitemap. It is therefore imperative to give them a way to get to your index, site map and other important pages. A well structured informative website also receives more return visitors.

8. Standard background & fonts on all pages

By keeping pages uniform, you ensure your visitors know they are still on your site. Having various banners, backgrounds and fonts will only confuse visitors. Try to stick one font, or two at the most. The human eye needs to adjust every time it reads text written in a new font. Do not irritate your visitors by using many different fonts - they will leave in a flash !

If you have an existing website, but nothing much have been happening for you, try to apply these 8 principles and see what good transpires…

About The Author Brian is a freelance writer, website marketing and SEO expert & webmaster of 3 websites, including Rank Advance : http://www.rankadvance.com. brian@rankadvance.com Comments (0) June 28, 2008 Which Website Designs Actually Work Filed under: Uncategorized — @ 5:00 am The design of a website should be simple, easy to navigate, complete with essential contents and with immediate graphic visibility. The content of the website should be a reflection of your business. Therefore the design should be such that it allows the user to access your site easily. When you design a website keep in mind that people use different computers and web hosts that use different browsers, and may display the same page of your website differently on different browsers. Some of the older version of browsers may not even display your pages and do not support new modifications and new tags. When you design a website, ensure that it is tested with the latest version of browsers - Internet Explorer and Firefox to benefit from all the new application softwares in use. You can also check your design on BrowserCam,which allows you to choose different browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions, and remote access to any of their testing machines. It also allows you to submit multiple URL’s. It actually allows you to view how your contents will look like when loaded on different browsers. It is very annoying when it takes a long time to open the pages. It means that the loading time is more, making the system slow. The user might as well move on to another site where the information is quickly available. It happens when the size of graphics is very high. Keep the graphic size adequately small. You can speed up the response time by having same images on different pages. In this condition the images get loaded from the cache rather then the browser itself. It is very useful for title bars. How to use the graphics to the best advantage can be studied on Web Graphics and Web Page Backgrounds. In a nutshell keep the loading time low. The design of the website should permit easy navigation. Building a small text menu at the bottom of the screen will aid in navigation. Web Site Navigation gives detailed information on navigation. The web design should have consistency, because it helps your site to be recognized with a brand name. The background, colors, fonts and other buttons should have uniformity throughout. Stick to the standard fonts. Check Web Fonts for more details. For viewing the website a resolution of 800×600 is best without straining your eyes. Study what others are doing and take the best out of them to design your own eye catching website. About the Author To find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: PluginSuccess.com - Website design firms come in all shapes and sizes. When choosing which firm you would like to build your website, there are many factors which you need to take into consideration. There is no point having really nice looking website if no one can see it because it has poor optimisation. Most web desgn firms will offer additional services such as optimisation, website promotion and may also submit your website to the search engines. For me the website they have created for you should be fully optimised anyway and I would also expect the web design firm should submit the site to the search engines as a matter of course. It is always worth asking to make sure. Once they have produced what hopefully is an outstanding website you then need to ask them if they would include a link to your homepage from their own website, preferably their homepage. Search engines these days take these backward links into consideration when they decide where to position your site in their results. As a general rule of thumb the more backward links you have the more visitors to your site you atre likely to have. If you want to promote the website even further, google adwords is a favourite of mine. This is where you pay to be seen on the right hand side of the results in Google, in the sponsored search section. In my opinion article marketing is the best way to gain extra visitors to your website. Writing articles such as the one that you are reading is a way of gaining extra backward links not only by submitting it to the article directories but also via other webmasters using the article on the websites, blogs or ezines. This is because you are able to include a link to your website at the bootom of the article. Text paid adverts on a quality website is a further option that people use to promote their website. If you are looking to receive an income from your website a program like google adsense could be the answer. I hope you have enjoyed reading this article, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact me. About the Author Stephen Hill has a number of websites including: stuttering constipation symptom lasik laser treatment Comments (0) June 27, 2008 Starting a Career in Web Development and/or Website Design Filed under: Uncategorized — @ 5:00 am In this article, I will touch on 4 ideas to find a Web Developer and/or Website Design position. The ideas are not in any type of order, but you will get the idea: create an online portfolio, write good cover letters and resumes, and get a bit aggressive in your job hunt by sending interest letters to employers of interest even if they have not posted a job opening. Idea 1. Create an online portfolio Have you ever heard the saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”? Well, it works. Having a portfolio tells a lot about your skills. Employers can actually see your work. To show off your business or writing skills, write a paragraph describing each project. Include the programming languages or software you used to development the project. Write a small web application and set a generic user name and password for potential employers to use so they can check out your work. Be sure to test it first before letting anyone else use it. Idea 2 is the most time consuming and frustrating part of the job hunt. Unfortunately, we need them. When writing resumes and cover letters you must write them to fit a specific job, which means you will have many versions. When saving them to your hard drive name them “companyname_resume”, and “companyname_coverletter” (or something like that) so that if you get an interview you will have the exact resume with you that you sent to them. No more wondering which resume you sent to them or showing up at an interview with a different resume and coverletter than the employer has on file. Or for less work, create company folder names on your hard drive and save the resumes and cover letters to the company named folders. Idea 2. Write good cover letters and resumes (online, printable, and plain text layout) An online resume is an html version of your cover letter and resume. This one is a good way to show off your design and development talents. The printable copy is your professional MS Word formatted resume - create a link to it from your html version. When asked on the job boards to upload a copy of your resume, use the MS Word copy. Be sure to add your URL to your portfolio. The plain text copy (use Notepad) has no bullets, underlined text, or bold text and everything is flushed to the left for pasting into a text area on job boards like monster.com (http://monster.com), CareerBuilder (http://careerbuilder.com), and Dice (http://dice.com). I have tried one other idea with pasted resumes on job boards: I take the main keywords from my resume that match their job description and place them at the top of the pasted resume (separated by commas). This makes it easier for their scanning software to pick up your skills. If your resume does not have the keywords in their job description, add them to fit into your resume. Idea 3. Get aggressive. Don’t wait for a job opening to appear. If you know of a company or companies you would like to work for, send them a copy of your MS Word cover letter and resume. Before doing this, call the company to get the name of their hiring manager or Human Resource person so that you can specifically use that person’s name on your cover letter and envelope. Idea 4. Start learning keywords used within your career field Learn your career keywords. It is very impressive to use career keywords when talking to a potential employer or showing off your skills. It makes you appear very professional and shows that you know what you are talking about. Not only will you learn the new keywords to increase your gift of gab, but you will learn a lot more about your career field. The best way to get started with this is to write down all the career keywords you are unfamiliar with from job descriptions or information technology articles. Study them and find out exactly what they mean and how they are used. Also, subscribe to a few of the industry magazines both on and offline and read some other resources for your career field: Web Developer.com (http://www.webdeveloper.com/tocs/index.html, ColdFusion Developer’s Journal (http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/), Oracle (http://www.oracle.com/oramag/index.html), Graphic Design (http://www.graphic-design.com/) Try to find someone who is in the same career field - someone who has been in the field for at least 5 years. They will surely be able to give you tons of advice. If you don’t know any one personally, find a forum online like SitePoint (http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/) and become a member. I have many more information technology job hunting ideas to share with you all, but I think I better make this particular article short before I end up writing an entire book (no time for that at all). If you would like to contact me with questions, feel free to contact me at atlantaitpeople@yahoo.com. About the Author Regina Stevens is the founder of Atlanta I.T. PEOPLE, http://atlantaitpeople.com. She teaches basic website design and how to use Microsoft applications. She also, as a hobby, writes computer and IT job market articles that can be found on many websites. - Whether or not you are a designer or would-be designer, do pay attention to these mistakes. They are what distinguish the professional from the amateur. They will also help or hinder your website?s placements on search engine listings. And, they will determine whether or not your visitors stay for a time at or leave - never to return - your website. MISTAKE #1: Huge graphic files, along with too many graphics. These are the culprits that slow the downloading of a website. Resize the images and lower the resolutions before uploading to the website. Visitors have no patience for waiting to see your website. MISTAKE #2: Confusing navigation. If visitors and/or the search engine spiders (that visit and index your website) can?t easily find their way around your website, they will leave as fast as a click of the mouse. I love using roll-over buttons, but also realize that for the spiders I need to post text-based links - usually at the bottom of the pages. MISTAKE #3: The lack of a unique title for each and every page. I have a search-engine-guru friend who stresses the fact that so many pages lack this important feature. Without a title, your website pages will have little or no chance of showing up in the major search engines. When we include keywords in our titles, we increase our chances of top listings. These are super important because no one will find your website just because you have built it. MISTAKE #4: The use of ?Mystery Meat.? Vincent Flanders and Dean Peters in their Web Pages that Suck books compare websites that are confusing - you don’t know what they are about or where they are going - to mystery meat (meat disguised by gravy, etc.). Be obvious - most users are not into guessing what it’s all about. They may surmise that we don’t know either. MISTAKE #5: Using Flash Intros for the home or landing pages. Even though these can be quite clever and design-rich, most web-surfers I know and talk with, hate them. They take time to load and often produce confusion and ?mystery meat.? It is more expedient to use content that introduces you and/or your website to your visitor. MISTAKE #6: No or little attention to the use of keywords. It used to be that we would load our meta tags with keywords and a description of what our website was all about. We should still do this, but most of the search engines don?t rely on these today. It is imperative that we use the important keywords throughout our website?s content. MISTAKE #7: Adding animation for effect. In the beginning, everyone thought this was fun and cute. Maybe for a youngster?s website if used cleverly. But, animation gets old fast. It is like having a blinking neon sign outside your motel room?s window. MISTAKE #8: Not using alt tags. Alt tags describe your graphics. They are especially for those visitors who have either turned off the graphics or who are using a reader program for the visually or aurally impaired. I find them to also be helpful in describing an object you want your visitors to click on. If you avoid these eight MISTAKES, you will have a good start to a successful website. Chris King is a professional website creator / designer, storyteller, writer, free agent, and fitness instructor. You will find her business website at http://www.creativekeys.biz where you can sign up for her monthly Internet Tips E-zine. In addition visit Chris? information website at http://www.creativekeys.net and her blog at http://www.curiositycubed.blogspot.com Comments (0) Next Page » Pages About Categories: Uncategorized Archives: July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 Meta: Login Comments RSS Valid XHTML RSS Blogroll Ads Cash Business Ads Cash Business ASD Online Business Opportunity ASD Surf Domain Hosting Packages Surf Program Pays Daily Web Hosting Website Development © 2007 ASD Ad Cash Surfing Generator Online System is designed by Business Directory -- Made free by Cheap New York Hotels and Scrabble Words