Web Design Development Articles

My first site wasn’t necessarily picture perfect, but it was immensely valuable.  The experience of putting it all together was great, giving me both the confidence and some of the tools necessary to make gains on future projects.

Here are three things I learned from building my first website.

You can’t break anything.  Building a site isn’t like building a house or an engine for a car.  If you goof, the whole thing doesn’t fall apart.  You can’t do any real damage.  You can go back and make adjustments until it’s just the way you want it.  That may seem obvious, but when you really understand that on a deeper level, it liberates you.  It gives you a green light to experiment and improve.  It also expands your comfort zone considerably.

There’s more than one way to skin a cat.  I had an idea in mind for my first site and I set it out to create that vision I’d been holding in my imagination.  After a little trial and error I realized that I could accomplish what I wanted using the framework that I had in place, but that there was a much easier way of doing the same thing.  I tossed that framework, rebuilt, and followed the best way to reach my goal.  The point is that I could’ve reached the same ends through different means.  That’s one of the coolest things about building a site.  You have flexibility.

Learning from others makes a difference.  By nature I’m a do-it-yourselfer.  I like attacking projects on my own without any assistance, figuring things out as I go along.  Fortunately, when I was building my first website, I didn’t go about it that way.  I was just worried enough about my ability to get things done that I consulted a few website building tutorials and even purchased an ebook to help me get the results I wanted.  That study and expert guidance really paid off, too.  It made the process much easier than trying to learn on the fly.

Those are just a few of the things I learned while building my first site.  Those three lessons stand out because they’re still principles that matter to me today.  One every project I tackle, I try to combine a willingness to be creative with flexibility and expert guidance.  I’ve found that combination makes building every website–whether it’s your first or your hundredth–easier and more productive.

1. Frames or no frames?
In deciding whether your site should or should not have frames, please note the following:

(a) Advantages of frames:

• Allows a faster loading time since fixed.
• Navigation bar or header made at the top in the frame gives easy access to the visitor, i.e., no scrolling back and forth for the user.
• Improve the navigation by providing a clear structure.
• It makes changes to be made very easy if fixed with CSS.

(b) Disadvantages:

• Search engine crawlers can not navigate through the frames i.e. no indexing in the search engines.
• Many visitors find frame annoying.
• A visitor cannot bookmark any specific page of your website.
• The URL of every page remains static. All pages will open under the same URL.
• Another common problem pertains to Refresh and Reload . When a visitor tries to refresh any page, it will take him back to original frame set.

(c) Research what kind of site you want and who are your potential visitors. If you are to cater to a wide audience and are interested in getting your site crawled by search engines, you will find one option and that is, “better go without frames”.

(d) Do not forget to offer a site map or index to facilitate the navigation and access to any information you provide.

2. Charts:

(a) Too many graphic slows the load time. Keep in mind that the majority of users when entering a page that takes long to load, usually get tired and go.

(b) Also keep in mind that many users to navigate more quickly “shut down” the graphics load. However, a website with little or no graphic is “boring” and unattractive. The visuals help to keep the visitor. Incomplete sentence

(c) Use graphics, but with prudence. Text offers an alternative to graphics, especially if they link to other pages.

3. Do not forget to check that your website is working properly with the two most popular browsers (Internet Explorer and Firefox). As majority of the users around the world explore internet on these browsers only.

This morning was my granddaughter’s birthday. She came running up to me, all dressed up, and obviously excited about something. She began tugging upward on her sleeve, exposing her armpit. She said, “Look, papa!” I had no idea what she was trying to show me. She proudly showed me her other armpit. I was still dumbfounded, but thankfully, her mom and grandmother explained that she was showing off wearing deodorant.

Everyone commented what a big girl she was. She walked off brimming with pride.I thought to myself, I wear deodorant every day and never get special attention. I thought about why, as children, we get so much attention for the smallest of details. As adults, recognition for the smallest achievements seems to go away. Or does it?

Let’s take your website design

You’ve just finished your site design and published it to your hosting company. It’s drop-dead gorgeous. You know this because you designed it or oversaw the development. The entire site is designed using Flash and the show itself is breathtaking. It moves, shakes, has a lot of cool features and has great audio, too. Everyone you give your domain address to say it’s beautiful.

Those are the compliments you hear, but what’s deafening is that no visitors are finding your site; Flash is pretty much invisible to search engines, especially content-the most important thing. Although your site is ‘pretty,’ visitors who stumble across it leave without buying or contacting you.

It’s amazing how many sites are designed to look good but fail miserably to monetize. Techie nerds-design masters-rarely have strong business sense. We all need computer technology engineers, but sometimes it’s best to consult with a website marketing expert before, during and after site development.

Five important, often neglected site development tips

The very first thing is choosing the domain name. Website names, like marylewisrealty.net, are generally a tough task to place in the search engines. Why? Because people aren’t likely to search the words Mary Lewis when they’re looking for residential property to purchase or to sell. However, people are likely to search, say, “Los Angeles homes for sale.” Your domain name should answer viewers’ questions and describe your products or services.

Content is king! Most sites fail to offer good content. We live in a what’s in it for me world. You have to offer something that’s worthwhile in the visitor’s eyes; you only have seconds to capture their attention. Content must be up-to-date and proofread, a common mistake website managers miss.

Make sure that all links are working. Dead links will chase away viewers forever: search engines will penalize your site.

I once had a client come into my office who thought being able to clip a floppy disk on to someone’s shirt pocket was his ticket to wealth. Mine was the electric fork to go with the electric knife found in so many households. I suggested that he should first try to sell his clip-floppy disk idea to 10 people. He said that he was having trouble selling it locally. He soon realized that spending money on a product that no one wanted was a waste of money and time. Do research and find out if there’s a demand for your offering.

Don’t get too high-tech crazy. Don’t overuse graphics and animation on your site. Keep it clean; help each visitor stay focused on the desired outcome, a sale or contact. Think twice about sound, too. Some people surf the Web while at work and will close your site at the speed of light when it’s revealed to everyone that they’re goofing off.

Lead the viewer through the process, and don’t forget a call to action. Ask for the sale!
Search engine and site optimization is critical, which isn’t a one-time occurrence. Many site owners pay SEOs (search engine optimizers) to get them placed on the top 10 pages of Google, Yahoo, MSN, etc. The SEOs will achieve this task but usually with keywords or phrases that really does nothing for the site. Smart search engine optimization (SEO) is a science; it requires good content, creative thinking and making all the right moves. There are so many little mistakes in site design that will penalize your site’s ranking. Most site owners, designers and hosting companies are unaware of land mines.

I always suggest getting a SEO expert involved in your site development from the beginning of the project, which includes hiring good, professional writers and editors.When your website produces great results, it’s the best compliment your visitors can give you.

By the way, I put on deodorant today and I did feel pretty good about myself.

Once you have registered for clickbank and CJ (if you have not done so, please do so immediately). There you will be given your affiliate links - your best friends other than qualified traffic. These links are the links which links the affiliate products and services to YOU, and trace the commissions (if sales are made) to your account.

The thing is, newbies usually try to promote the link directly to people, by direct email or pay-per-click campaigns such as PPC. These approach now are not as effective as before, and they seem ‘hard selling’ with little customer interaction.

If this happens, you’d likely lose the sale. Most of the time, if you put up the link, there’s only a slim 1-2% chance of people buying, the remaining 98-99% will just ‘browse’ and leave, leaving you to pay for the cost of the PPC click (also known as paid advertising). Email links are usually ignored unless the people you mail already know you.

The trick now is to create a ‘browse-through’ page where interested people will scour around to pick-up information that they’re interested in (these are ‘warm’ leads) and you give them an ‘offer’ (which can be anything i.e. free ebook, or free ezines etc - i will share more of this later) by ’signing up’ for the freebies. By doing that, you will build your list, personal to the page they were interested in. This starts a you-them relationship, and you can start building friendship and networking with them. Let’s start with free websites - they’re called blogs.