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Website Basics
The Basics You have a flourishing business ? everything is in its place. You just miss one important piece of marketing: an Internet Presence a website. Like everything in business, getting a website needs planning. Getting an effective website needs even more planning. Here are some basic things to know and plan: The WWW What is the www or the internet? Basically a network of websites from all over the world you can access via your computer for which you need an internet connection and a browser. Internet connections are available from ISPs, and most of the popular browsers are free downloads from the internet. Just like writing/typing an address on a postal envelope, you type the website address in the browser beginning with http://www. and ending with either .com, .net, .org, .biz, .nz, .uk, etc. So if you want to access the microsoft website, you would type http://www.microsoft.com in the browser and hey, presto! You get all the information about microsoft and its products on your browser. Just click on the available links and you are on your way. Your Website Your website will be a bunch of pages all linked together via hyperlinks. You can ofcourse have a one-page website or as many pages as you like - depending on the amount of information you want to share with your visitors. Hyperlinks are text or images pointing to another page, just like the heading of this article points to my website. Your Audience As the web has grown, so has the types of people who access it and how they access it. As we say, it is impossible to please everybody. It is very difficult to design a website which will be accessible to all. Carefully choose your content and design, keeping in mind who your target audience is and what type of equipment they use. Equipment here means the computer and other hardware and also includes the software used for connecting to the internet and browsing it. The best way to reach more people is to use pure HTML, and keep the use of scripting languages like JavaScript, Java, and other plug-ins to the minimum. While this may not make your site flashy,stylish or trendy, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that your site is accessible to most of the people. Afterall, that is the whole point of this exercise, right? Designing your website means knowing your audience and their requirements.
Content
Now that introductions are over, lets get down to the core of your website: Content. The most important aspect of any website, content is the one thing that will keep your visitors at your site and keep bringing them back. The content should depend on what you want to let your visitors know - about the company, the products, the services. Keep the content interesting, updating it often for repeat visitors. Often this can mean providing more details about different aspects in your business, like seasonal discounts, etc. Your visitors will visit your site again and again if the content is relevant, and there is something new everytime they visit. Layout A well laid out website will be a successful one. Whether you design the site yourself, or outsource the task to a webdesigner like us, first layout your ideas on paper. Choose text, color and graphics carefully, they all contribute to the page load time. Starting with your Home Page, keep it fast-loading, with a good navigational structure. Try to follow the same layout for the whole website. Change the layout only for different sections and not different pages. If the navigation bar is at the top on your HomePage, keep it at the top in all the other main pages. Consistency in layout is very, very important. These are just some of the basics about building a website. There are many more, some requiring a article all about themselves. Keep visiting, as I plan to write about as many as I can. Ofcourse, you are welcome to email me your suggestions/comments about what you would like to read about in webdevelopment. D.zigns dzignerwebs Tasneem Rangoonwala is the Web Development Co-ordinator in D.zigns Enterprise Solutions, offering web design and related services as a freelancer.
Website Design: Color Me Blue
Chris, a new consulting client, asked me to help him increase sales on his affiliate marketing site.As he was describing his site and the problem, I thought, "This is going to be a quick fix."How wrong I was!His site was excellent. Other than a few minor points, it followed all my basic rules for a successful affiliate marketing site.The site was focused around a single theme in a profitable niche, with an exce...
Website Promotion And Design Tips
Are you thinking that it is about time your small business had an internet presence, however are not too sure how or who to go to build and promote the website.This article will hopefully be of benefit to you as it will give you free tips on website promotion and on how to obtain a website on the cheap.Many people believe that it will cost them thousands to have a website designed and this fact alone puts many people off. Due to the large numb...
Becoming A Website Designer
The ability to create simple, attractive and functional webpages is a highly marketable skill. There is a huge and growing demand for websites and web content, especiallyfor smaller organizations who often can't afford to hirea full-service web design firm.Readers often ask me whether it's necessary to take expensiveweb design courses or to learn HTML right away to get startedin this niche. Is there a cheaper way of learning these skills?If I were in your shoes, my best investment would be to learnhow to use a popular and well-supported website creation software package.Notice that I said "popular and well-supported."...
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How Important Is Content To A Successful Website
Content is the most important part of any website.The Internet was created in the first place as an information source. If the content on your site does not provide the information needed by its users it will provide little in the way of value to your visitors who surf for information on many subjects. They require answers or solutions to their problems, needs, desires and wants. Provide the answers and they will return again and again.A website is simply a way to communicate whatever message you want to get across. This message needs to answer visitor's questions or satisfy their need for knowledge. To achieve this aim you will need a content rich website. The content will need to be relevant up to date and well organized and sho... |  |
| Hacked Off With Css?
For those not familiar with CSS Hacks, they are ways of using styles/classes that only apply to particular browsers. They are used to overcome the display problems mentioned previously by exploiting CSS structure and code. Most involve simple punctuation tricks to fool the problematic browser into accepting a different style to the browsers that display correctly.CSS Hacks work, but there are two main points to consider.Firstly, the validity of the CSS may be affected. Invalid CSS hardly seems worthwhile as the main aim of CSS layout is to embrace web standards.Secondly, designers have performed Hacks to satisfy current and past browsers. They have failed to look in the other direction ? will it be futureproof? With the launch of the next version of Internet Explorer this summer (and many more to follow), one h... | |
| Increase Sales On Your Website! Use Graphics!
How many times have you clicked on a website only to find a screen full of text? You read a large-scale headline and then all you see is text, much like reading a letter. You scan down the page looking for something to attract your attention.Do you know what you're really looking for? You're looking, subconsciously or not, for a picture to show you what's in the web site. You want to "see" what you're getting into.A website without graphics is losing a major portion of the audience it's owner hopes to attract. Think about it for a moment. Whenever you are reading, your mind's eye is creating visual images of the perception of the words you are reading.There are ... | |
| Good Web Design ? What Is It?
There is unlimited possibilities when it comes to designing a website. Flash, Database, content management, Client Login, etc,etc. A question to ask yourself when deciding how to do your website is:How can I most effectively present my information ... | |
| Three Things You Must Do When Designing And Building Your Small Business Website
If you are going to have a web presence for your small business, it only makes sense that it should actually help you get more business. In order to do so, your website design should focus on performing only one function ? and that's to convey your sales message to your site visitors in an effective and efficient manner.No matter what your web designer tells you, simplicity is best when building your small business website. While having a website with lots of bright colors and flashy interactive graphics might win web design awards, it will probably not help you win customers. In fact, the more complicated your web design, the higher the risk that your sales message will be lost amidst all the fancy bells and whistles... | |
| Size Does Matter!
In this article we will be looking at why you should keep your web page size small.As any good webmaster knows you should keep the web page size small, but why? It's really simple, both spiders and visitors hate web pages that take forever to load because it's harder to spider the web page or for the visitor they just don't have time to wait for your web page to come up, after all most web sites are not that great, so why wait if your the visitor?You should keep images down in size, the best way to do this is with image compressors. Image compressors will crush the size to make it load faster, but there is a down side to using image compressors because they can make the image colors look like they are out of place and horrible looking. The best way t... | |
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