Website Designing: The Accessibility Factor

Today when there is a sea full of websites all over the web world it becomes extremely difficult to sustain a considerable amount of traffic to the site. This threat appears like a killer for any website owner. In order to overcome this threat what websites really need to do is create super duper web presences for themselves. This web presence can be created right from the website designing process itself.

The question now arises why emphasize on presence when you are already there in the web. Even though your website is there it is important to make it accessible to the users because until your website is accessible no user will spend time on your website. This will appear to be a great loss to your business since websites are the most important tool of communication between you and your users and the accessibility of the website is the most essential factor that can keep them glued to your services.

The accessibility factor of a website depends a lot on the user end also. It is possible that your end user is not being able to view your audio or video content because their system does not support such high end services. It is thus advised that web designers keep this factor in mind while doing website designing for a site. It is true that video and audio inputs make the website more attractive and happening, but what is the use of having attraction when essential content itself is being restricted.

Make sure that your website follows a proper style sheet while drawing the HTML format of the website. Though styling and colouring of the website is important and essential to make it look expressive and attractive it is equally important to make sure that the tags that are used on the HTML are properly closed. Even if a single tag is misplaced, the internet will not be able to read your webpage.

In order to make your webpage accessible, it is important that you use them appropriately. Make use of diagrams and tables too. It is not necessary that the diagrams and tables be for decorative use only, you can also use them as a medium to add additional information which will attract the user’s attention more than otherwise.

When a user comes into your website, the first thing they notice about you is the nature, whether you are welcoming or not. Yes a welcoming website can be distinguished from an unwelcoming website from their navigation. A broadly expanded and open navigation is an ideal situation which is most used by welcoming websites. User friendly navigation is the best technique of retaining your clientele using simple website designing.

Naman Jain is an expert in Internet marketing, presently working with Rupiz Media, one of the leading internet marketing company, offering online marketing services, SEO services, email marketing and search engine marketing over the globe.

Handy Tips For Designing A Good Website

Techno geeks would claim that designing a website is as easy as 1-2-3 with all the available software and programs. With just a few clicks on the computer a website will be “born”. And if it is true that the success of an online business largely depends on the design of the website, why then do some online business fail? Something must be amiss with the design of the website.

Practicing good design principles is a must if you want to have a website that will reach out to potential customer as well as yield the desired sales. The web abounds with graphics and a web designer might be tempted to enhance the appearance of the website by using so many graphics and images. However it is not advisable to load the page with so many pictures as this would slow down the loading of the page. Most internet surfers who uses dial up connections would surely leave a slow loading page and click on the next link. If you really think that a picture is essential to the website it is advisable to use image editing programs. Pictures that will be featured should have a relevance to the content of the website. A picture of your favorite pet would be inappropriate for a website dedicated to dental services.

Another important factor to be considered in web design is to know the target audience. The font used as well as the layout should cater to the prospective audience. The design of the site should have a relevance to the purpose of the website. For example, if the website will sell dog food, it wouldn’t do to incorporate flashy model cars. If the target users of the website belong to the senior group, using the smaller fonts favored by the young generation is not advisable since the senior readers would need to make font modification in their own computers just to read the content of the website.

The page layout is equally important in web design. The front page will serve as the “face” of the business and as such should be able to provide the visitors with information regarding the company and the services and products it offers. The page should be clean and uncluttered with many unnecessary images and bouncing animations. The color of the text should be complimentary to the color of the background for easy reading. It is a known fact that glaring and vibrant colors as well as rotating and bouncing animations could distract readers. And readers who leave the site would mean lost sales.

Easy navigation should be a feature of a company website who wants to achieve marketing success. Nothing is more frustrating to a visitor than a site where the navigation bar is hidden by so many other features. It is comparable to finding a sock from a mound of clothes.

Content of a website should be clear and concise. Surfers are “lazy” individuals and they won’t have the patience to read overly long paragraphs especially if it lacks substance. Keeping it sweet and simple is very appropriate for the content of a website who aims to attract loads of traffic in order to generate more revenues.



Dolphin Promotions are a web design and SEO company based in Blackpool in the UK.

Do You Need An HTML Form?

If you have an internet business, adding a simple HTML form to your website, such as a feedback form or a contact form, can be a tough task. For those who are new to programming, creating a simple form for your website can be difficult.

If you do not have a contact form and you need to immediately provide a way for your visitors to contact you, then you should simply post your email address on your Contact page. However, if you want to create a sophisticated online form to collect information from your visitors and respond to their questions, you will need some help.

Installing the HTML form on your website is the easy part. If you are not familiar with how to create the code for a form, there are many different online tutorials that can teach you how to create the code. After that, you will need to create a file that will process your form after someone fills it out and send the answers to you via email. The code used to process an HTML form is often referred to as Formmail. Formmail is written in a programming language called PHP, which is more advanced than HTML. There are many websites where you can download the Formmail file for free. Formmail has been used to process and email the results of web forms since 1997.

When you download Formmail, make sure it has code that prevents spam from being sent through your HTML form. There are many different versions of Formmail floating around the internet, and some have built-in spam protection while others do not. Many times, inexperienced programmers will put a form on their website that does not include code to at least try to prevent spammers from utilizing the form to send spam to hundreds or even thousands of people. As a result, those who have been spammed complain to their internet service provider, who then directs the complaint to the hosting company that handles your website. This can be a huge problem.

Another problem with Formmail is sometimes it works with certain web hosting companies and not with others. Formmail is written in the PHP programming language, and sometimes certain web hosting companies have certain versions of PHP running on their servers that are not compatible with certain versions of Formmail. In addition, some web hosting companies do not allow the websites they host to use Formmail to process their forms due to the risk of spam being sent through unprotected Formmail files, which can crash a server if too much spam is sent at once.

If you do not have the patience to create a form yourself, there are more than a few form creation tutorials on the internet that provide a simple way for you to create a form without doing any programming. There are also third-party HTML form services that will help you create the form and process it for you on their own servers.

I hope this information will help you decide how you want to get an HTML form up and running on your website. If you do not have the patience to do the work, use an outside service that creates the form for you. If you want to learn to do it on your own, then try creating your form with the help of some online tutorials. Either way, it is important to have an online form so that people have a way to contact you directly through your website.

Author of this article is Jim Pretin. He is the owner of www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make free HTML forms.

Website Design for Newbies

This is an article that every Website Designer newbie should read. I think it is simple and has a couple of useful tips for web designer newbies.

In making your website, You must pay attention to the fundamental designs and details, to create a pleasant looking and yet optimally functional site. Several rules should be observed before it can qualify as a search engine friendly site.

1.Do not use flash intro or ezine subscribtion pop-ups

splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very flashy intro with words like "welcome" or "click here to enter". In fact, they are just that -- unnecessary luxuries for your site. Do not let your visitors leave your slow loading website! Give them the information they need to know up front without the splash page. Opt-in list popup ads can be unwelcoming if you set it to load as soon as they enter your page. A discreet Opt-in form anywhere on the page can be a better way to get your visitors to join your mailing list. You can also set the popup for time-release so it deploys later.

2. Do not use too much banners

Even the least net savvy people have learned to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website space. Instead, provide more valuable content and insert affiliate links into it, and let your visitors decide if the product is good instead of being given an ultimatum to buy. Flashy banner ads do not account for most of the successful clicks like text ad links do.

3. Have a nice and presentable navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from fancy dropdown menus . If your visitors don't know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4. Have a clear indication of where the user is

Try to provide a root map for menus and submenus, e.g. "You are here : F.A,Q". Visitors like being in control when browsing your site, because this gives them the ease to concentrate on what your site is about.

5. Avoid using video or audio on your site

Video and audio can help your marketing endeavor,if you use it wisely. If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your articles, you will want to make sure they're not distracted by an audio message looping on and on on your website. If you must add video or audio then, make sure they can adjust it -- volume or muting controls would work fine.

Author of this article is Devan Kumar

How to Select Domain Names for Websites

This article shows you how to select a domain name for your website. This is something you should do even before you build your site.

Selecting a domain name is the first step in the process of online marketing. Picking a name for your site is not a difficult task, but, should be given due consideration. Although it might not affect your search engine rankings, it is your identity for both search engines and users.

If your company is into more than one product or service, which is not co-related, you should create separate sites for all of them. If you decide to spill your main site into multiple sites, be sure you do not create a duplicate site by copying your main one into a separate domain altogether. Such practices can be easily detected by search engines and you then stand the chance of being blacklisted by them.

As per SEO experts, it is always better to use different hosting companies for all your sites. If you have multiple similar-looking sites on the same server, the search engine might consider it them as duplicate websites. Make corresponding changes in your IP address whenever you split domains.

A number of search engine optimizers create 'mini' sites to enhance their traffic influx or strengthen their link exchange programme. Most of these sites have very little, or no content whatsoever – another problematic area, as far as search engines are concerned. Do not try to create ambiguous links to boost PageRank; you will be easily caught by search engine spiders.

Domain names can be booked for a meagre amount. Therefore, you should register a site name made up of your main keyword. You can make use of 'domain forwarding' to get traffic from your secondary keywords as well. For example, for a main site called homeloans, you can use domain pointers like homeloan, home-loan, or home-loans, etc. The basic catch is to use various combinations of your home site's name.

SEO services providers often suggest the use of subdomains in order to get more traffic. These are also known as prefix domains and are considered as separate domain names altogether. For a website that talks of distinctly-related issues, creating different domains and subdomains is a great idea. A server redirects each subdomain to a different folder, thus increasing your flow of traffic.

These issues should be taken care of by webmasters as they demand a lot of technical know-how. It is imperative to remember that each of your domain names should have suggestive keywords incorporated into it in order to catch the search engine spiders' attention.

4 Marketing Tips for Resourceful Webmasters!

Here comes yet another informative and interesting article that I have to share with webmasters visiting this site. Although all tips are basic and essential it happens every now and then that they get forgotten.It is a really good reminder.

The internet is a sea of knowledge. Getting your information to 'float' by the right audience can be like finding that one special grain of sand on the seashore. Paying big bucks for marketing can strain your already limited budget. What is a webmaster to do? Let's discuss four valuable and proven ways to market your site without breaking the bank.



1. Join forums. Yes, even if running a forum is something you already do, join forums similar to what you have and become a moderator. No, I do not mean for you to siphon traffic from that site to your site. Rather, show yourself useful to that community and you will naturally draw people to your site. Bonus: Very helpful if you can offer a link to your site in your signature too!



2. Business cards. A good idea and not that pricey. Search the internet and you can design your own cards right online. I'm not talking about cheap cards, but professionally done cards. Check out how many cards you can get for less than $100! Give them away like crazy and watch your traffic soar.



3. Create content. There are some decent sites online where you can get other people's content and put it on your site. It can be especially helpful when you don't have the time or knowledge to get the job done. However, you will have to link back to their site and you may lose traffic. Why not consider writing an article yourself? You may not be the best writer but your ideas may be valuable. You'll value the link back to your site!



4. Business associations. Whatever field that you are in, join that field's association. Do not rely strictly on internet contacts, you need to push away from the keyboard, get in your car and go out and meet people. Attend special meetings and conferences...sell yourself in person instead of online. People still like to meet people in person; you will benefit tremendously by the face to face contact.



You are continuously marketing yourself whether you utilize paid schemes or one of the points mentioned above. Never rest on your laurels and take nothing for granted. Life is not constant while change is. Learn what works for you and build a proven marketing strategy. Who knows, but once you have reached the pinnacle of success you just may be able to afford much more comprehensive - and expensive - marketing strategies.




Author of this article is Matt Keegan. He is the webmaster for The Aviation Employment Board and the Corporate Flight Attendant Community. Both sites are top performers in their respective categories.