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Literature
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Website World
2 Surefire Ways to Maximize Your Adsense Earnings
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Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the list that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in. What is it that they are doing wrong?
Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the...
Most webmasters know that Adsense generates a sizeable source of additional advertising income. That is why most of them use it to go after high paying keywords. They have with them the list that tells what the keywords are and have already used various methods of identifying them. And yet after putting up these supposed-to-be high paying keywords into their pages the money they expected to come rolling in is not really coming in.
What is it that they are doing wrong?
Having the pages is with the proper keywords is one thing. But driving visitors to those pages is another matter and often the factor that is lacking.
The thing is to get visitors to your high paying keyword pages you need to optimize your site navigation.
Stop for a moment and think about how visitors are using your website. After a visitor has landed on a certain page they have the tendency to click on another page that sounds interesting. They get there because of the other links that appears on a page that they initially landed on. This is site navigation. It is all about enabling visitors to move about your site. And one way of maximizing your Adsense earnings.
A typical website has menu links on each page. The wording on these links is what grabs a visitor\'s attention and gets them to click on one of the links that will take them to another page of that website. Links that have \'free\' or\'download\'are oftentimes good attention-grabbers.
This navigation logic can also be applied to driving traffic to your high paying pages. There are some websites that are getting a lot of traffic from search engines but have low earnings. The trick is to try and use come cleverly labeled links to get the visitors off that pages and navigate them to the higher earning ones. This is one great way of turning real cheap clicks to real dollars.
Before you begin testing if this same style will work for you and you website you need to have two things. Something to track and compare and some high earning pages you want to funnel your site traffic to. An option is to select a few of your frequently visited pages. This is ensuring fast result to come by.
Now the next thing to do is think of ways to get visitors viewing a particular page to try and click on the link that will take them to your high earning pages. Come up with a catchy description for that link. Come up with a catchy and unique description for the link. Think of something that people do not get to see everyday. That will trigger their curiosity enough to try and see what that was all about.
You can also use graphics to grab your readers\' attention. There is no limitation to what you can do to make your link noticeable. If you are after the success of your site you will do everything it takes just to achieve that goal. Just be creative. As far as many Adsense advertisers are concerned there are no written and unwritten laws to follow regarding what they write. Just as long as you do not overstep the guidelines of the search engines then go for it.
Also remember that it is all about location location and location. Once the perfect attention grabbing description has been achieved you have to identify the perfect spot on your page to position that descriptive link to your high paying page.
There is nothing wrong with visiting other websites to see how they are going about maximizing their site navigation. “Hot pages” or “Most read” lists are very common and overly used already. Get to know the ones that many websites are using and do not try to imitate them.
Another way of doing it is to try and use different texts on different pages. That way you will see the ones that work and what does not. Try to mix things around also. Put links on top and sometimes on the bottom too. This is how you go about testing which ones get more clicks and which ones are being ignored.
Let the testing begin. Testing and tracking until you find the site navigation style that works best for you site. About the author
For more useful tips & hints please browse for more information at our website:- www.youradsenseprofits.com www.adsense.reprintarticesite.com
We at Dow Group provide big range of marketing consultancy services from email marketing to web design development and marketing solution in Beirut and Dubai
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7 Reasons Every Company Needs a Website
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A lot of brick & mortar companies still don t have websites and they seem fine with that decision. But is it a good one? I don t think so. In fact I think any company without a website in their marketing plan is shooting itself in the foot. Here are all the things a website can do for your company:
Generate more leadsThese days the most common complaint I hear from growing companies is "we need more leads". A website can help. Any site that has "can?t-find-it-anywhere-else" information attracts prospects and if the site attracts enough of them you?ll gain a following. From followings ...
A lot of brick & mortar companies still don t have websites and they seem fine with that decision. But is it a good one? I don t think so. In fact I think any company without a website in their marketing plan is shooting itself in the foot. Here are all the things a website can do for your company:
Generate more leads
These days the most common complaint I hear from growing companies is "we need more leads". A website can help. Any site that has "can?t-find-it-anywhere-else" information attracts prospects and if the site attracts enough of them you?ll gain a following. From followings leads are generated.
Qualify those leads
When surfers visit your site you should always encourage them to take the next step. Whether this is purchasing one of your products signing up for an online newsletter or filling out a survey your visitors want to know what to do next. Provide them with several different ways to respond and your website will separate browsers from buyers.
Attract new visitors
Web surfers are not traditional bricks and mortar types. Most are comfortable stopping by introducing themselves and even purchasing your products without ever meeting you face to face.
Stay open round-the-clock
We all know how disappointing it is to drive to a store only to find it closed. With a website in today s market any company can be open for its customers 24/7. Even though your employees are sleeping when an inquiry comes in at 2 a.m. your customers appreciate that you were open when it was most convenient for them.
Increase media access to your company
A good website offers a press room so media editors and reporters can help themselves to the information they need. You ll find that there s a direct correlation between how accessible your website is to the media and the number of media contacts your company gets.
Self-serve service
The Post Office now offers an online service called Delivery Confirmation. After paying an additional 40 cents at the postal counter you can track online where your package is in the mail system. What was once an overhead service for the Post Office is now a self-service function for its customers (and a new source of revenue). What if your company could transfer service functions to its website like obtaining owners manuals tracking shipments or answering frequently asked questions?
Load sales tools onto your site
One of my clients loads their latest PowerPoint presentations onto their website. That way a sales rep in Boston can give a presentation to a prospect in Wyoming without either of them leaving their offices. Think of the travel savings if you adopted this approach.
by Jay Lipe
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Banner Design Success Techniques
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Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor\'s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs. Teasing your curiosity \"Do Not Click Here\". How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity...
Banners have been a major part of the World Wide Web world since its early days. Copywriters burn the midnight oil looking for new designs that will grab the visitor\'s attention and compel him to click on their banner. This article discusses some of the most successful banner designs.
Teasing your curiosity
\"Do Not Click Here\". How many of you have seen this slogan in a banner? What did you do when you first saw it? If you are like most people, when you first saw it, you clicked on it. What makes this simple sentence so powerful that it compels the visitor to click on it? The answer is curiosity !!!
Copywriters and web designers are always looking for ways to arouse the website visitor\'s curiosity. As banner designers their goal is to attract the visitor to the banner, usually completely ignoring the other elements on the web page that are more important to the website owner. However, because the \"Do Not Click Here\" slogan tells us nothing about what is on the next page, it arouses the visitor\'s curiosity and makes it almost impossible not to click on this banner to see what’s behind it.
Simple integrated design
When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first introduced their product, \"Google\", to potential investors, they mentioned Adwords as a backup option in case they didn’t make any money. We all know how lucky they were that they eventually needed to use that backup plan. What made these\"boring\" ads such a great success?
Unlike other ads, Adwords neither arouse the visitor\'s curiosity nor disturb the main flow of the web page. In fact, the opposite is true. Adwords are meant to look like part of the search results giving the user the feeling that those ads are there because he asked for them. No one has any doubt that this simple design helps Google to promote both their search engine and the Adwords advertising program.
Take part in the action
Banner designers wisely used interactive technologies like Flash to develop type of banners that invite the user to take part in the action. Drawing the user into the action can be accomplished in many creative ways. Some web designers use popular old games elements as part of the scene. You all know the famous game pacman. One of the banners that I like the most is the one where the user is allowed to let pacman \"eat\" few dollar signs. At the successful completion of this mission, a nice slogan is revealed asking him to open a saving account that will earn money with a fixed interest rate. The idea behind those interactive banners is simple: Let the user take part in the action and then at the right moment when his mind is less resistant, show him the sales message. Those interactive banners proved to be very efficient. Their biggest disadvantage is that most webmasters will not allow that kind of banner because it distracts too much from the web page content.
Back to Black and White
Website designers are always seeking to be different with their design ideas. One banner fashion trend that can be found lately is Black and White banners. Although research shows that blue and yellow are the most efficient color to use in a banner, Black and White banners have been seen a lot lately. It’s probably something that will eventually vanish, but the idea behind it is to be different and to make the user wonder what’s up and hopefully click on the banner to find out.
Get Out of the box
Have you heard about the milliondollarhomepage.com? If not, check out this website before continuing to read this article. This website has proven that creative thinking not only can bring you money but also create a whole new trend. Right after the milliondollarhomepage.com got the internet community\'s attention, many designers used this idea to deign a banner on which they sell a 10x10 pixel area. Like the original concept, this banner design had its impact. Advertisers are investing money on these ad spaces while at the same time visitors are curious enough time after time looking at those unorganized pixel banners to click on them.
What about the next trends
What the next trends of banner design will be is something that probably no one can accurately predict. It\'s up to some web designer to come up with a new concept that proves to be efficient. There is no doubt that in the future we will see new ways of designing banners, especially when more and more advertising budgets are being spent on the internet instead of commercial TV and other types of advertising media. I guess we will just need to be patient.
Warren Baker, Internet business consultant.
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Basics of Web Design
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Graphics:1.Think small, like 10-12KB per image. Yes, depending on the source, the number of broadband users is going up. But slow pages are still really annoying, even if you\'re on a T1. And huge images are a primary cause of slow pages. It\'s easy to optimize your images.2.Always use graphics that fit the content. Just because you have an adorable photo of your dog doesn\'t mean you should have it on your Web site about Web Design (sorry, Shasta...). The main exception I would make to this is for design images. These are photos or graphics that help make up the design of the page, and are not...
Graphics:
1.Think small, like 10-12KB per image. Yes, depending on the source, the number of broadband users is going up. But slow pages are still really annoying, even if you\'re on a T1. And huge images are a primary cause of slow pages. It\'s easy to optimize your images.
2.Always use graphics that fit the content. Just because you have an adorable photo of your dog doesn\'t mean you should have it on your Web site about Web Design (sorry, Shasta...). The main exception I would make to this is for design images. These are photos or graphics that help make up the design of the page, and are not intended to illustrate the content.
3.Do not use images that blink or move or change or rotate or flash or do anything on your page. Or use them sparingly. There have been many studies that show that flashing graphics are distracting and annoying to people. In fact, in one focus group I watched the browsers actually physically cover up flashing graphics so that they could read the rest of the page.
Layout:
4.Stick with standard layouts. I\'ve seen some pages that use 6 or 8 frames on one page. Another site used a layout where you had to scroll to the right to read everything on the page (but you never had to scroll down). These layouts are cute, and you might find them fun to build, but they will drive your readers nuts. The reason that the 3-column layout is so popular on Web sites and newspapers is because it works. You might think it\'s boring, but you\'ll keep more readers if you stick with something simple that they can understand.
5.Whitespace is more than the CSS property, it is a function of your layout. You should be aware of the whitespace on your pages and how it affects how the content is viewed. Whitespace is just as important in a Web layout as it is in a paper layout.
6.Use your graphics as elements in your layouts. Graphics can be more than just graphics when you use them as actual elements in your layouts. An extreme example is when you wrap text around an image, but any image you have on your site is a layout element and should be treated as such.
Fonts:
7.Serif for headlines and Sans-Serif for text. If you\'ve taken any type of print design, this might be exactly the opposite of what you were taught. But the Web is not print. Sans-serif fonts are much easier to read on computer monitors because the screen resolution is not as high as in print. If you use serif fonts for normal text, the serifs can blur together on the screen making them hard to read. Your printer friendly page should use the opposite fonts (serif for headlines and sans-serif for text).
8.Limit the number of different fonts. One of the best ways to make your Web site look amateurish is to change the font over and over. Sure, it\'s possible to do, but limiting your page and site to 2 or possibly 3 standard font families is easier to read and looks more professional.
9.Use standard font families. Yes, you can choose to use \"Rockwood LT Standard\" as your font on your page, but the chances that one of your readers will have that font as well is pretty low. Sticking with fonts like Verdana, Geneva, Arial, and Helvetica may seem boring, but your pages will look better and the designs look correct on more browsers.
Advertising:
10.Don\'t be greedy. If you have any control over the number of ads on your site, be aware that your readers are not coming to read the ads, they are coming for the content. If the ads overwhelm the page content, many readers won\'t stick around long enough to read your purple prose. Yes, it\'s important to make money from your Web site, but if your ads drive people away, you\'ll ultimately lose money.
11.Treat ads as you would any other image. Keep them small, avoid blinking/flashing, and keep them relevant. Just because you can have an ad on your site, doesn\'t mean that you should. If the content is relevant to your readers, they\'re more likely to click on the ad.
Remember YourReaders:
12.Test your pages in multiple browsers. Writing Web pages that work only on the most modern browser is both stupid and annoying. Unless you are writing a Web site for a corporate intranet or a kiosk where the browser version is completely fixed, you\'ll have problems with people not being able to view your pages.
13.The same is true for operating systems. You can\'t assume that just because your page works in IE5.0 for Windows it will work in IE5.0 for Macintosh.
14.Write content that they want. Unless you\'re writing a site purely for yourself (and if you are, why is it posted to the Web?), make sure that your content covers topics that your readers want to read.
By: Jennifer Kyrnin
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Blogs Are Your Internet Marketing Secret Weapon
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These days blogs are among the most important secret weapons that internet marketers can employ. They are a terrific way to have opinions stated in an un-moderated and public place where ideas and insights can be shared among everyone who wishes to read them.For internet marketing blogging builds credibility for the website through the many opinions and ideas that are shared there. The company and its bloggers become recognized by their readers as a resource for useful information. Therefore people will not only visit once but will return again and again to find out what else is new.
Blogging...
These days blogs are among the most important secret weapons that internet marketers can employ. They are a terrific way to have opinions stated in an un-moderated and public place where ideas and insights can be shared among everyone who wishes to read them.
For internet marketing blogging builds credibility for the website through the many opinions and ideas that are shared there. The company and its bloggers become recognized by their readers as a resource for useful information. Therefore people will not only visit once but will return again and again to find out what else is new.
Blogging itself is an extremely inexpensive quick and simple way to reach out to thousands of website visitors. It draws people who are in your direct target market making relationship building a much more natural process once that visitor takes their use of your website one step further and makes a purchase of whatever product or service you are selling - and have been covering in your blog.
Blogs make you an expert in your field. That's right with the right researching and writing skills (or with a skilled writer and researcher in your employ) then you can become an expert in your field as far as your website blog is concerned. To be an expert all you need to do is keep up with the latest in your industry within your blog posts and maintain it regularly.
To make sure that you're headed in the right direction with your blog check up on other website blogs in your industry to see what they have posted. Naturally this doesn't mean that you should be posting the same things as your competition. In fact that is among the worst things that you can do. Certainly you're allowed to share an opinion now and then but your blog will need to stand out if it is to be taken seriously. If you are simply reiterating what others are already saying then you will be seen as old news and will be overlooked in favor of the original thinkers.
To start your own blog on your website you need to have the right tools in place. Blogger and Blogware are only examples of the many different options that are available to you.
When you post on your blog make sure that you're doing it because you have something to say and not because it's time to post. Your blog posts need to be interesting if you are to keep a steady readership. If you're not interested in what you're writing then the odds are that your visitors won't be interested in what they're reading.
To keep up the interest don't take yourself too seriously. Of course you are allowed to write about serious and important topics in your industry and about your products but you can also include some trivia and humorous commentaries that directly or indirectly relate to your blog topic and will amuse your readers. This is perfectly acceptable in blog posting and is in fact encouraged. It allows the readers to feel that they have made a real "contact" with you and that you take a real joy in what you do.
Blogs aren't just good for creating regular visitors to your website but they are also quite beneficial for bringing in new visitors as well. You'll find that when you are writing about any given topic in your industry you are using the words and terms that apply to your topic. As these words become more frequently used throughout your website for example within your recent and archived blog posts search engine spiders will pick up on their use and may increase your ranking for those keywords.
To sum up here is what you need to benefit from your blog:
• The right blogging tools • The motivation and commitment to contribute regularly • Something relevant to say! • Some skill in writing - if you don't hire someone who does • Some knowledge in your industry - if you don't hire someone who can research this information • Some perspective not just vague ramblings
If you have these you're all set to start taking advantage of what blogging can contribute to your internet marketing strategy. These days blogs are among the most important secret weapons that internet marketers can employ. They are a terrific way to have opinions stated in an un-moderated and public place where ideas and insights can be shared among everyone who wishes to read them.
About the author
For more useful tips & hints please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com
We at Dow Group provide big range of marketing consultancy services from email marketing to web design development and marketing solution in Beirut and Dubai
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Customer Service Management Software Buying Tips
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Thinking of buying a customer service management (CRM) software? Here are some tips to guide you... Customer Service Management software is often considered to be of paramount importance in any organization.
Any company or organization has their customers or clients. And companies like to keep records of the clients? preferences order history and the other different types of interactions between themselves. These records are very useful for the company to understand the client satisfaction and its impact on sales and productivity.
Customer service is an essential aspect of any company. Customer...
Thinking of buying a customer service management (CRM) software? Here are some tips to guide you...
Customer Service Management software is often considered to be of paramount importance in any organization.
Any company or organization has their customers or clients. And companies like to keep records of the clients? preferences order history and the other different types of interactions between themselves. These records are very useful for the company to understand the client satisfaction and its impact on sales and productivity.
Customer service is an essential aspect of any company. Customer service management software solutions help automate this and several related functions within the organization.
Customer Service Software Features
Therefore before embarking upon the various processes involved in the purchase of such as customer service management software we should know what the key features of the customer service softwares are. Let us have a look:
Customer Contact Management: This helps keep a record of the various interactions between the customer and your company.
Sales Management: This helps to track and record the various sales related communications correspondences and the related reports.
Accounts Management: This helps to keep a track of the financial aspects of every customer transaction and includes various functions such as invoice generation and tracking of payments received.
Reports Generation: This helps generate various types of reports for various types of management analyses.
Customer Service Management Software Buying Tips
Now that we have an idea of what features are included an ideal customer service management software let us look at the various things a company or organization needs to consider before buying a customer service management software.
Requirements Analysis: Before buying a customer service management software it is essential for the company to analyze their requirements. Most of these softwares are available either as separate modules for each feature / function (as mentioned above) or as a combination of any 2 or all the 3 modules. It is important to know what the requirements of your company are and buying only what you need.
Cost Analysis: As is the case with any purchase decision it is important for any organization to have a through understanding of the cost outlay which will be needed for the purchase and implementation of the customer service management software.
Vendors Analysis: It is the next logical step. Find out the vendors who supply what you are looking for. Make a list. Ask them for quotes. While doing this analysis have a look at the vendor s history and talk to their existing and past clients. It does not hurt to ask the vendor for a demonstration of the software. Also talk to the vendor about the various training and IT related aspects of the buying decision: know whether the vendor will provide training sessions for your staff whether the software will be compatible with your existing platform and whether all your earlier customer service management software modules can be integrated with the new software.
Software Trial: Most vendors will have a trial version of the software. Have the trial version installed. During that time you will have the opportunity to use the software hands-on and understand its various aspects in person. You will actually see for yourself if the software is easy to use and fits in with your particular requirements or not. Such a trial will always give you a better idea of the usability of the software as compared to a demo.
Negotiate the Deal: Different vendors will have different costs. It is in the company s best interests to negotiate the deal to their best advantage. Some vendors may offer a lot of freebies in order to bypass this stage. Don t get swayed by that. Rather ask for and get a good discount especially if you are a big organization.
Implementation of Software: While the software is being implemented observe the process and give feedback from time to time. Often these activities are planned phase-wise. Go through these implementation phases with your vendor before the installation process begins. Ask for a detailed process if need be so that you can be aware of all the various steps and changes which you will have to go through while the software is being implemented.
Track the Performance: Once the customer service management software has been implemented do keep tracking the related performance benefits or problems which have arisen due to the software s implementation. This will be a good method of measuring and tracking the performance of the software.
Armed with these tips you can go ahead and look into your organization s needs and understand if you need a customer service management software in the first place and if so how to go about purchasing the right software for your company.
By Madhavi Ghare
Published: 1/18/2008
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Do you know who is killing your email marketing?
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Imagine you take a trip to your post box down the road today to pick up the mail. To your surprise, you find nothing. Not one word. All you see is just an empty hole in the wall with zip in it. Annoyance would be the prime emotion here. Maybe even a dollop of disappointment.
But what if you find out that all that airy space exists simply because the post office decided to send all your mail back? Now that would get you in a bit of a boil, wouldn\'t it? Frothing at the mouth, wouldn\'t you want to tear all those bespectacled post office workers into little vulture-sized meat bites?
And then what...
Imagine you take a trip to your post box down the road today to pick up the mail. To your surprise, you find nothing. Not one word. All you see is just an empty hole in the wall with zip in it. Annoyance would be the prime emotion here. Maybe even a dollop of disappointment.
But what if you find out that all that airy space exists simply because the post office decided to send all your mail back? Now that would get you in a bit of a boil, wouldn\'t it? Frothing at the mouth, wouldn\'t you want to tear all those bespectacled post office workers into little
vulture-sized meat bites?
And then what if I told you that your email marketing business is going the same way? What if you suddenly learned that the email newsletters you\'d subscribed to are now doing the boomerang dance? What if you\'re an email marketer and your subscriber isn\\\'t even getting your mail? What if he\'s just getting a stripped down version of it?
Is that smoke coming out of your ears?
The Wild West Lives Again!
In the Wild West the rules were simple. If I didn\'t like you, I\'d shoot you. Email isn\\\'t dropping to the floor quite that quickly, but there is a definite pattern evolving that you should be aware of. Someone has put your email marketing on a poison drip, and by golly, if you ignore it, you\\\'re one dead puppy! Read how Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are systematically working to weed out HTML mail and what you need to do to minimise your damage.
Who\\\'s Paying for Whose Fault?
Spammers are the baddies, and spammers don\'t care. Bandwidth can span the breadth and depth of the Grand Canyon and it won\'t make any difference to them. You can be sure they\'ll find a way to top it up with their junk. It was also obvious, even several years ago, that control of spammers was improbable. They know very well what they are doing. All they have to do is go to an offshore provider when anti-spam legislation is passed. What\'s to stop them? As long as there is one country in the world that will allow spammers to send their poison, they will.
Does anyone really believe that every ISP on the network is going to spend the resources to closely examine the specific content of each and every large-scale email transmission to see if it\'s okay or not?
The answer has to be no, since this doesn\'t avoid the cost of spam in the long term. It simply transfers it from a cost of bandwidth to a cost of administration.
The harder commercial email pushes, the harder the network will respond by pushing back.\"Big\" email is a lame duck -- and will soon be a stone cold dead one. Even with filters in place, my email account bulges with mail I didn\'t ask for, and would never reply to. ISPs (Internet Service Providers) on the other hand, are watching this rainstorm with increasing concern. Every day, the volume of email threatens to blow the dam, and they\'re not going to sit back and take it.
How an ISP\'s Worry Becomes Your Headache
Bandwidth costs money. The more email you get and send, the more it\'s costing your ISP. They can\'t charge you more (or may not want to charge you), and so the easiest way out is to send your email à la Elvis: Return to sender!
The biggest offender here is HTML email that clogs up the system with a reasonable amount of imagery. It\'s the graphics that generates business for you and me, but it\'s also this very factor that is clogging up the pipe. This has led several ISPs to take some very radical decisions that border on telling you what you can and cannot read.
A Growing Menace Called Filters
Filters that are easy to implement seem to beat the system, so that\'s the option that many ISPs consider first. In an attempt to control the traffic, they simply install cheap and nasty systems that send any mail that\'s considered\'spam\' right back to where it came from. This seems noble until you consider the following. These filters may be stopping legitimate mail from entering your mailbox.
If mom sent you a mail with a word which the filters pick up but don\'t like: Bounce, bounce. It would go bouncing back! If you had the word \'search engines\' in it, maybe they\'d decide that word signified spam. Kaboom! It\'s back to where it came from. Suddenly, your business that depends on the mail getting through is being vetted by an unasked police patrol run by goons. You\\\'re not getting across to your customers, and even worse, your customers\' mail may not be reaching you.
What\'s worse is that as an email marketer, you would tend to take for granted that you would get an \"undeliverable\" note when this happens. I understand it\\\'s not always true; you can send out thousands of messages and remain blissfully ignorant of their eventual fate.
Why HTML-Based Marketing Will Be Easier To Kill
Macromedia Flash went through a fashionable phase and had to be dumped in favour of good ol\\\' HTML. HTML, while great on the web, is a pain in the neck in your inbox.
To counter this, many a software developer is seriously working out ways to have HTML-like effects within your email without the code and bandwidth that goes with it. This software, though available today, is quite expensive and not a very viable option except for larger companies. The rest of us have to contend with the inescapable fact that any email over a certain size will be treated as an HTML file and fair game for the intrepid filters to play\'shoot the ducky.\'
HTML will always be bulky, and is already denied or stripped by some carriers and destination ISPs, so it will always be a hazard. Some companies and email marketers have decided they are cutting out HTML altogether. It\'s too much of a risk when you don\\\'t even know whether it\'s been dumped or stripped.
How Can You Go Past This\'Doomsday Scenario\'?
Two possibilities: text and online HTML.
Text is faster, and has stood the test of time. But it\'s devoid of colour and formatting and more tedious to read. The better bet is to use HTML to link back to the website or online email newsletter. Businesses that get their customers trained to fetch their newsletter off the web will have fewer problems because they\'ll have few occasions when they will have to send emails out to their customers -- and then only very short notices or informative \"drip feeds\".
The kind of email you would then send would rarely have the kind of signature that causes the spam filters to scream. Most of these filters are weighted, and there are very few stand-alone telltales that send email into instant oblivion.
My guess is that small emails, even if numerous, will escape filter security, because it requires a certain minimum amount of text to make a spam offer. Emails, smaller than this minimum will probably not be checked at all, owing to sheer volume.
The Hero Doesn\'t Die In The End
The saddest part of this whole scenario is that people like you, me and a dog named Spammer are all trying to achieve the same thing -- bulk up the profits. And in doing so, we are all part of the gloomy picture. But don\'t despair.
Unlike you, Mr Spammer doesn\'t want to be traceable. You do, because you\\\'re legit. Make use of your legitimacy, and drive your customers back to your online newsletter or website.
And simultaneously drive the spam merchant out of business!
source: http://www.psychotactics.com/marketing-strategy
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DRC Systems,the best PHP development company
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DRC Systems - The best PHP development company India, provides website design and development solutions for all businesses.DRC Systems offer Website Development Solutions you need to make your business a successful. We have experienced technical and functional team with Web Application Development in B2B, B2c, real estate, health, e-learning, entertainment, social media, banking, finance, insurance, online publishing industries. We have completed more than 200 projects for our clients all over the world. We are one of the Technology Leader in: PHP development, ASP.net development, RoR development,...
DRC Systems - The best PHP development company India, provides website design and development solutions for all businesses.
DRC Systems offer Website Development Solutions you need to make your business a successful. We have experienced technical and functional team with Web Application Development in B2B, B2c, real estate, health, e-learning, entertainment, social media, banking, finance, insurance, online publishing industries. We have completed more than 200 projects for our clients all over the world. We are one of the Technology Leader in: PHP development, ASP.net development, RoR development, Shopping cart solutions. We are well equipped with resource set that takes care of Software Development, Design Solution, Product development, Web Application Development, Hire Dedicated Resources, e-Marketing areas of the services.
As your website should be self explanatory, easily accessible, innovative, user-friendly, quick to load our expert PHP Website Development team with friendly customer support solves our client\'s complex technical problems and helps you effectively manage your business online. We develop unique and eye-catching websites designed by using web design tools which represents you on global platform to generate more revenue. We improve your web presence, Increase the flow of targeted traffic to your website, Help you acquire new customers and retain the old ones, Are innovative and appealing to keep the visitors engaged, Are easy to load − as graphics and images are embedded judiciously.
PHP Development Services by DRC Systems has the scalability, robustness, integration, and support for web standards making it the perfect fit to create and deploy modern web applications. We assist organizations to organize their association, resource scheduling, customer and supplier management systems as web applications. The advantage of our services are Low development and maintenance cost, High performance and reliability, Ability to embed itself into the HTML code, Runs on different platforms such as Windows, Linux and Unix, Supports a wide variety of databases such as MySQL, Informix, Oracle, Sybase, Solid, PostgreSQL and Generic ODBC and Compatible with servers like Apache and IIS.
DRC System Website Development Company, always believe in essentiality of prompt service as key essence to the success, important for both that is for our customers and in turn for us with more business pouring in as a result of references. The factors that make us favorable among the other offshore software development centers are: highly skilled manpower, infrastructure support, commitment, quality and cost effectiveness are a few ones to be listed. More than just these words here, our work and incessant communication will justify our claim.
by: robinjackman
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E-commerce is the crucial way for 21st century business
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Electronic commerce also known as E-commerce. To call 21st century as an E-commerce world it is not wrong because, in this century most of business are converted as online or internet business. E-commerce represents the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet and computer network. Exchange of inquiries, orders, invoices, transfer of funds etc. happens directly over the internet. Internet business increases their popularity more and more. In this century, online business is going speedily. Electronic commerce is the most crucial way to make our product popular over the internet....
Electronic commerce also known as E-commerce. To call 21st century as an E-commerce world it is not wrong because, in this century most of business are converted as online or internet business. E-commerce represents the buying and selling of products or services over the Internet and computer network. Exchange of inquiries, orders, invoices, transfer of funds etc. happens directly over the internet. Internet business increases their popularity more and more. In this century, online business is going speedily. Electronic commerce is the most crucial way to make our product popular over the internet. So this time is to make our traditional business as an online business it is useful to increase our business growth and popularity of product. E-commerce helps in both B2C (Business-to-consumer) and B2B (Business-to-business) business.
To convert our hand to hand and paper business into online business we must need to develop an E-commerce website. There are many framework and platform are available to develop a website like PHP, ASP.Net, Java and also huge number of company which provide website development services. PHP is an open source platform and is also free. Expenditure is very low to develop an ecommerce website using PHP. PHP is the most effective tool to develop a website for small and big enterprise.
There are different kinds of e-commerce solutions like Payment Gateway Integration, Secure Shopping Cart Solutions, Credit Card Processing Integration, and E-Commerce with Content Management System Solutions for your customized web applications. Select as your business requirement. There are various future and advantage to use an above e-commerce solution that is following.
1.Ability to expand our business into global market in low expanse.
2.The cost of marketing and product promotion is very small.
3.Easy to manage a product and their price.
4.Maintain report of item in few minute.
5.Time saving for both vendor and customer.
6.E-commerce useful in both tiny and big enterprise.
7.Save consumer time.
8.Sent information about new product to your customer by using mailing facility.
To stay in this fast going business world we must need to change the way of business and be ready to accept new technologies to grow up our business. E-commerce technology helps us to stay in this era of internet and it also support to increase our product selling.
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Getting Your Site Indexed in Alexa
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Although Alexas search results are driven by Google this is a definite must in your search engine marketing plan.The reason is that Alexa will provide statistics about your website that no other search engine or web directory will provide.
These statistics include:
your site ranking on the internet what sites are linking to yours *Detailed traffic statistics *Site thumbnails *Site Speed
these are just a few examples.
You can also use Alexa to search for your keywords. This will tell you who your competition is for the keywords you have selected. You can more carefully study your competition...
Although Alexas search results are driven by Google this is a definite must in your search engine marketing plan.
The reason is that Alexa will provide statistics about your website that no other search engine or web directory will provide.
These statistics include:
your site ranking on the internet what sites are linking to yours *Detailed traffic statistics *Site thumbnails *Site Speed
these are just a few examples.
You can also use Alexa to search for your keywords. This will tell you who your competition is for the keywords you have selected. You can more carefully study your competition find out who is linking to your competition and use what you learn to raise your rankings in the search engines as well as find better keywords for your website.
Alexa also has its own crawler and even though you may show up in the search results powered by Google you still want to have Alexa crawl your site.
Alexa like Google may discover your site on its own. However it's been my experience that Alexa only updates my site when I visit Alexa and make updates. This includes the thumbnails.
The first step that you should take before submitting to Alexa is to type in the domain name of your site to see if you are listed.
If you are listed study the thumbnail for your site and see if needs to be updated. You should also check your site description as well as contact information and if it needs to be updated update it.
Alexa will require that you verify your website in one of two ways. The first is to enter your email address and Alexa will send you a confirmation email. The other way is that you can verify is to create an info.txt file and upload it to the root directory of your website. You can then click the verification link and Alexa will verify your site.
If your site isn't listed for some reason you will need to submit. Alexa gives detailed instructions as well as information on creating a robots.txt file.
If you want to find out who your competition is and get a competitive edge then Alexa is an indispensable tool to help you. Use the detailed information you'll find on this site and you can easily raise your rankings in the search engines and get more traffic.
Although Alexa results are driven by Google you want to make sure that you actually submit your site to this search engine so that you can get detailed stats as well as check out your competition.
About the author
For more useful tips & hints please browse for more information at our website:- www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com
We at Dow Group provide big range of marketing consultancy services from email marketing to web design development and marketing solution in Beirut and Dubai
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How to find a good freelancer ?
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Whether you currently deal with a freelancer website, or are just looking for the best place to find a freelancer, the biggest problem you face is how to find a good reliable freelance, one that will do the job properly with good quality work and finish it on time. Many sites offer you, the webmaster, a place to post your projects to be bid on by freelancers. All of these sites let you contact offshore workers that live in countries where wages are only a fraction of what they are in the more industrialized nations. This allows you to keep your project budget low and save money by keeping your...
Whether you currently deal with a freelancer website, or are just looking for the best place to find a freelancer, the biggest problem you face is how to find a good reliable freelance, one that will do the job properly with good quality work and finish it on time.
Many sites offer you, the webmaster, a place to post your projects to be bid on by freelancers. All of these sites let you contact offshore workers that live in countries where wages are only a fraction of what they are in the more industrialized nations. This allows you to keep your project budget low and save money by keeping your full-time staff small.
So, how can you find this \"diamond in the rough\"? You know, that reliable individual who delivers quality work on time and within agreed upon budget?There is no simple answer.The best you can do is using the tools provided by the freelance website to try and minimize your risk.
Unfortunately, most of the existing freelance websites use a very poor rating system that only allows a webmaster to rate a freelancer on a scale from 1-10.This system doesn\'t take any of the more important variables into account, such as the complexity of the project.
The complexity of a project is important. A freelancer doing many simple and inexpensive jobs may have an excellent rating and do very good work for that kind of project. But,there is no guarantee they can handle a more complex project. Since the more complex projects cost more to get done, at least one freelance website has developed a rating system that takes complexity into consideration by using the dollar amount of the project as part of the rating formula to provide the webmaster with additional information.Thereby, hoping to make the webmaster\'s decision a little easier.
Here are a couple of additional suggestions for hiring a freelancer:
Do Not Post a Budget !!!
\"Why not?\"you ask. If you post a budget, most freelancers will bid based on the budget amount. Unfortunately,a reasonable cost in one part of the world is insanely high or ridiculously low in another part of the world.
For example, you want someone to create a logo for you. Any decent graphic artist should be able to do that. So, it probably is safe to go with the lowest bidder. But, suppose you need a sales letter written for an Australian audience, do you really think someone is Eastern Europe or China will be able to do as good a job as a native Australian? Probably not, but, the cost of living is a lot higher in Australia and that individual would need to charge more for the same amount of work.
Do Not Hire Outside of Your Expertise.
But, you say,\"If I was an expert, I wouldn\'t need to hire someone else!\" While that may be true, you do need to be sufficiently familiar with the area of work to be able to accurately describe the project, to know what and isn\'t technically possible and know whether the bids you receive are reasonable for the amount of work involved.
If Necessary,get advice from someone who does know the area of work. Most sites provide a message board for you to negotiate with the bidders anonymously before you select one of them for the project. Pay careful attention the freelancer\'s reaction to the project. The ideal candidate is one who loves his work. Ask them to describe similar projects they have done in the past or to provide samples of their work if feasible. Graphic artists, web designers and writers will be able to provide samples. Programmers and some others may not be able to provide samples but they may be able to provide references if they haven’t already been rated by other webmasters.
Following the steps above and keeping the lines of communication open will dramatically increase your chances of having a successful experience with your chosen freelancer. It can save you both time and money as well as help you manage your business in the most effective manner. After all, you face all of the same challenges in dealing with freelancers as you face in dealing with any employee, plus the additional challenges created by being in different geographic locations.
By: Warren Baker, Internet business consultant.
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How to Making The Best Use Of Search Engine Optimizing Software?
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These days blogs are among the most important secret weapons that internet marketers can employ. They are a If you own an online business you know the importance and advantage to be seen on search engines like google yahoo MSN and lycos. Today search engines generate most of the traffic (Customers) that will come to your site and buy your services software products or e-materials. No matter what the nature of the business is you need to spend money on optimizing and preparing your web site for the visit of spiders. Spiders are the robots that index your site to the database of the search...
These days blogs are among the most important secret weapons that internet marketers can employ. They are a If you own an online business you know the importance and advantage to be seen on search engines like google yahoo MSN and lycos. Today search engines generate most of the traffic (Customers) that will come to your site and buy your services software products or e-materials. No matter what the nature of the business is you need to spend money on optimizing and preparing your web site for the visit of spiders. Spiders are the robots that index your site to the database of the search engine.
Why spend thousands of dollars on search engine optimization when you can do it yourself? Yes it is true. By using technology and some good reading you can raise your site to the top most ranking in the matter of days. The cost is nominal and will not go above $150. Search engine optimizing software will not only save you money but it will also allow you to do things the easy way through the various wizards. Almost all the work for you is done by the software allowing you to spend time with the site itself.
One such software is Web Position Gold. With features like automatic submitter reports and traffic analysis it is a gem of a software program for any serious business owner or web master.
Let us take a close look at some of its features. The most important feature of this software is the Submitter. It is a real time saver. You just select the web pages or files and search engines you want to submit and it does all the submitting while you do something else. It even keeps track of everything to make sure you don t span the search engines and that all the pages are submitted.
The search engine ranking reporter is another feature you will love. Running reports using thousands of keywords at a time is no problem. Keywords are very important in the search engine industry. These words are used by your visitors to reach your site. So it is important to run popular reports on what words are best for your business and this software does it for you. It also includes a handy feature where you can spy on your competitors.
With all the above features the software still offers more. The Page Critic supplies expert custom-tailored advice on how to optimize each of your new or existing web pages. Page Generator creates optimized web pages based on keywords and details you enter about your business. Upload Manager remembers all the optimized Web pages you created changed or added. Scheduler activates the Reporter daily weekly or monthly to automatically check your web site s rankings. Add an excellent and qualified customer care team that answers e mails within hours and provides a toll free number web position gold is a serious requirement for any business that is serious about its online presence.
We know that a web site cannot succeed without proper search engine optimization. However an expert will charge a lot of money and learn about your business before he starts work. Search engine optimizing software gives you the opportunity to do that work at a fraction of the cost. Not only is the cost factor important but you are the best judge of your company hence you can use that power to stay on top with all the repetitive work done by the optimization software. If you own an online business you know the importance and advantage to be seen on search engines like google yahoo MSN and lycos.
About the author
www.the20seotools.com www.seo.reprintarticlesite.com
We at Dow Group provide big range of marketing consultancy services from email marketing to web design development and marketing solution in Beirut and Dubai
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How to Successfully Market Your Website
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Once you build a website your job is only half done. Now you must market it to your prospects so they visit - often. Here are some of the most common ways to market your website:
Offer freebies
The web was actually created to enable the free exchange of information. Only in the past 15 years has it given rise to commerce. To honor that spirit of free information make sure your site gives people the information they need for free. Offer free white papers articles free downloads research findings or blogs. Once you do this the viral nature of the web will take over and visitors will refer...
Once you build a website your job is only half done. Now you must market it to your prospects so they visit - often. Here are some of the most common ways to market your website:
Offer freebies
The web was actually created to enable the free exchange of information. Only in the past 15 years has it given rise to commerce. To honor that spirit of free information make sure your site gives people the information they need for free. Offer free white papers articles free downloads research findings or blogs. Once you do this the viral nature of the web will take over and visitors will refer your site to others.
Drive traffic to your site with traditional media
Every one of these traditional marketing vehicles should feature your web address: Business cards letterhead envelopes invoices fax cover sheets trade show materials company vehicles signs voicemails press releases media kits advertisements and direct mail pieces.
Submit to the top search engines
Google dominates today s search engine market but don t overlook others such as MSN and Yahoo. At my site www.emergemarketing.com these three engines account for 93% of all visitors. If you re unfamiliar with search engine submission consult an expert.
Build links to your site
To increase your site s visibility first increase the number of links it has to other sites. Find appropriate sites to link with to first checking out your competitors sites. Who do they link to? Then visit Google and type in keywords that you feel are relevant to your site. Which sites come up? Chances are good that these same sites would be good link sites for yours. The more links you create with high traffic sites the higher your search rankings will be.
Add your address to a signature file
Your signature file is the several lines of text that appear automatically at the end of each email message you send. Adding a link to your website (along with your phone number and email address) in your signature is equivalent to attaching a business card to each email you send. If I m your prospect and you; ve just emailed me I can now click on the link to your site and take the next step to learn more about your company.
Encourage sign-ups
At your site you can encourage visitors to sign up to receive regular communications from your company. Whether these are email newsletters promotional emails or product updates is up to you. Use your site as a guest register to capture email addresses for future marketing use.
by Jay Lipe
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Keys to Branding Your Small Business
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OK these Ten Commandments didn t come from the Mountain. And they re not carved on clay tablets but on a high-tensile polyfiber instead. Yet any marketer worth his or her salt must follow these commandments in order to find the Promised Land.During the 19th and early 20th centuries a rancher would mark his cattle with a brand. This brand depicting an image unique to his ranch distinguished his cattle from another s in the event of a broken fence. Branding in today s modern marketing world operates much the same way. It seeks to distinguish a product or service from the competition and create...
OK these Ten Commandments didn t come from the Mountain. And they re not carved on clay tablets but on a high-tensile polyfiber instead. Yet any marketer worth his or her salt must follow these commandments in order to find the Promised Land.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries a rancher would mark his cattle with a brand. This brand depicting an image unique to his ranch distinguished his cattle from another s in the event of a broken fence. Branding in today s modern marketing world operates much the same way. It seeks to distinguish a product or service from the competition and create a lasting impression in a prospect s mind.
Pay dear attention to your branding programs from the outset because they work to strengthen the "link of trust" between your company and its buyers.
Shaping your brand image
To start consider first the personality of your company. Is it sexy or sweet? Tough or tender? Is it more like John Wayne or George Clooney or Andy Griffith? And if you think all this is hooey consider these questions: Do Marlboros really taste better than other cigarettes? Is H&R Block superior to the tax accountant down the street? No but a big reason these companies are leaders is because they ve successfully built a personality around their brands.
Name; The first step
How different would you be if your name was Clem or Matilda? Your company name sets a tone for your brand right from the start. Names can be generated from invented words (Xerox) initials (IBM) and founder s names (Johnson & Johnson). Some of the best names though communicate a benefit (U-Haul or Budget Car Rental).
Logo; Your company s symbol
A logo is a distinctive symbol or mark that visually represents your company. To get one that passes muster with the quality police I recommend hiring a design firm. Because your logo is one of the first visual brand elements your buyers see put some time and money into it.
If your logo will appear on fax cover sheets fax it to yourself. If it will appear on billboards enlarge it to 5 feet and see what it looks like (don t laugh I actually did this for a client). Put your logo through the quality checking paces before you use it. You ll be glad you did.
Taglines; A memorable definition
I m a big believer in taglines. In 10 words or less a good tagline can communicate the core essence of a brand to the market. And for small businesses it can be one of the most efficient marketing weapons in their arsenal.
A tagline is simply a short description of a business reason for being. It could incorporate elements of its expertise its target audience even the markets it serves. A tagline can be both direct and subtle - whatever it takes to get the prospect to say to themselves "Oh I get it."
If you re unfamiliar with taglines work with a copywriter or marketing consultant. In an hour or two they can take the core essence of your company s brand and translate it into a memorable and pithy tagline.
Once you have a tagline always connect it to your logo as a standard practice. Either place the tagline below your logo or alongside it. But whenever your logo appears your tagline should there with it.
Fonts and typestyles
Using the proper fonts and typestyles also define your brand. Try to standardize fonts and typestyles that appear routinely in your marketing materials. Use only a select few.
Hint: If you re working with an advertising agency or marketing firm make sure their designs use fonts that are readily available. A client of mine once worked with a designer on some marketing materials. The problem was the designer chose a very creative font that ended up also being hard to find. In the end the client had to shell out hundreds more dollars to buy the font for its printer because they did not have it.
Colors: Creating a mood
How do you feel when you walk into a yellow room? When you see a sign with a red background color what s your first reaction? Colors generate emotional reactions and it s important to carry that over into your branding program.
So here is a quick list of common colors and the emotions behind them:
Color Emotions behind the color
Red Stop passion
Yellow Caution cowardice
Green Go safe
White Purity virtue
Black Luxury prestige
Blue Authority calm
Orange Strength stimulation
Brown Warmth comfort
When deciding on your company s color pay attention to the colors used by your competitors. You don t want to shoot yourself in the foot by choosing a color already associated with your competitor.
The sounds of your brand
One company I call on the telephone plays rap over its on-hold system. I don t know about you but I believe there s more to music than 3 bad chords and rotten lyrics. I hate being on hold with that company. And their relationship with me suffers ever so slightly each time I call. If your business has on-hold messaging or your retail store has background music make sure it s appropriate.
Publish some guidelines
As your company grows consider developing a brand manual. It can be as simple as a 3-ring binder that records how you want brand elements to appear. It should cover the use of your logo type sizes/fonts/styles guidelines for color or black and white and where certain brand elements should be located on the page or screen.
This is a great resource for internal staff to follow and can also be used for new employee training.
Remember...
Your brand shows up in a wide variety of marketing vehicles. To help you identify all the places your brand can be found I ve developed a comprehensive Branding Checklist. For a free download click here.
In the end hold your branding efforts to the highest standard possible. Spend a little extra to keep your brand high-quality and consistent across your company. Your customers (both current and new) will thank you for it.
by Jay Lipe
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Managing at a Distance
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New websites help managers at small companies keep closer track of their freelancers\'work.Small-business owners have long used the Web to connect with freelancers from around the globe. Now a growing number of them are going further-and using the Web to manage and compensate those far-flung workers.Making the move possible are websites such as oDesk Corp.\'s oDesk.com and Elance Inc.\'s Elance.com. These marketplaces provide ways to help employers keep closer track of the work freelancers are doing, as well as handling financial transactions between them. Elance charges employers a one-time fee...
New websites help managers at small companies keep closer track of their freelancers\'work.
Small-business owners have long used the Web to connect with freelancers from around the globe. Now a growing number of them are going further-and using the Web to manage and compensate those far-flung workers.
Making the move possible are websites such as oDesk Corp.\'s oDesk.com and Elance Inc.\'s Elance.com. These marketplaces provide ways to help employers keep closer track of the work freelancers are doing, as well as handling financial transactions between them. Elance charges employers a one-time fee of $10 to get started; oDesk is free. Both sites profit by taking a slice of freelancers\' earnings.
Jeffrey B. Meltzer, owner of Universal Hardwood Flooring & Moulding Inc. in Los Angeles, says he typically employs about 10 freelancers at any given time through oDesk. He says the site simplifies what used to be a cumbersome process of partnering with independent workers because it serves as an impartial third party for transactions.
\"In the past, freelancers required money up front,\" says Mr. Meltzer.\"They didn\'t trust sellers would pay them so sometimes it took longer to structure the agreement than it did to do the work.\\\"
Keeping an Eye Out
Elance and oDesk offer ways to assure employers that they\'re getting their money\'s worth. For example, oDesk invites freelancers to take tests on subject matters that pertain to the services they offer to provide, such as computer programming, email etiquette and technical writing. They can then post their scores to their profiles on the site. Elance requires freelancers to complete a 30-minute admissions test specific to the kind of services they want to provide, as well as submit proof of identification.
Harry Campbell
\"I don\'t need to question whether or not it\'s a piece of fluff they\'ve put on their resume,\" says Charles Sieg, founder and chief executive officer of Renkara Media Group Inc., a developer of mobile-phone applications in Chicago. The company, which launched in spring 2008, has hired about two dozen freelancers through Elance, he says.
From there, oDesk and Elance use different approaches to keeping employers in the loop as projects get done. ODesk requires freelancers to be logged into the site whenever they\\\'re working on a project, so it can track their work hours. Meanwhile, the site takes screen shots of freelancers\'computers up to six times an hour at random intervals, and employers can review these immediately after. However, freelancers also can reject a screen shot if, for example, it was captured while they were taking a break to check Facebook. In such instances, employers can decline to pay freelancers for the amount of time each screen shot represents-10 minutes.
Elance helps keep employers in the know by encouraging-though not requiring-freelancers to be signed in while they work. (Those who don\\\'t must log their own hours to get paid.) Elance also lets freelancers send employers screen shots of their work. Further, employers and workers have access to a secure digital workroom to chat with one another in real time, as well as exchange files or images.
Employers are required to compensate freelancers on a weekly basis for hourly projects, but for fixed-price assignments, employers who use Elance must pay freelancers upon completion of milestones for project work. On oDesk, payments for fixed-price project work depends on an agreement between both parties. Employers don\\\'t need to take any action to make payments; unless they specifically reject a claim, payments automatically go through.
Settling Disputes
If there is a dispute, such as a rejected claim, both sites offer to help settle it. Jerry Villarreal, owner of Nuesion LLC, a small Internet marketing firm in Houston, says he filed a complaint with Elance late last year against freelancers he had hired through the site to complete a large Web-programming project. He says the freelancers repeatedly missed deadlines both parties had settled on and that cultural differences made it too difficult to resolve the matter.
\\\"I was prepared for a long battle,\\\" says Mr. Villarreal, but adds that Elance provided a swift refund for the weekly payments his company had already made. Both sites claim such disagreements are rare.
Still, all that online oversight may hold some downsides for freelancers. Loss of privacy isn\'t usually a big concern, since freelancers must agree to the rules when they opt in.
But Sara Horowitz, founder and executive director of Freelancers Union, an advocacy group for independent workers, based in Brooklyn, N.Y., says business owners might be inclined to make premature assessments of a project or micromanage freelancers.
\"There will always be cases where people are poking their noses into the work before it has been completed,\" Ms. Horowitz says.
By: SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN,staff reporter in The Wall Street Journal\\\'s New York bureau.
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Nigel Peck
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This article is based on part of a larger book Website Findability by Michael Heraghty.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to separate the stylistic elements of a page such as layout colour and fonts from the content of the page such as paragraphs and images. We call this Separation of Content from Presentation.
If you don t understand CSS at all then you may decide not to use it for your site. However I would suggest that the advantages to be gained from using CSS not just for Google are well worth the time invested in learning it. For an introduction to CSS see CSS Is Easy by Kevin...
This article is based on part of a larger book Website Findability by Michael Heraghty.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to separate the stylistic elements of a page such as layout colour and fonts from the content of the page such as paragraphs and images. We call this Separation of Content from Presentation.
If you don t understand CSS at all then you may decide not to use it for your site. However I would suggest that the advantages to be gained from using CSS not just for Google are well worth the time invested in learning it. For an introduction to CSS see CSS Is Easy by Kevin Yank or see the many other quality articles over at SitePoint s CSS Section.
So why is CSS good for Google?
CSS allows for smaller file sizes
CSS allows you greater control of page structure
CSS allows you to hide certain content from browsers while it still gets picked up by Google
CSS allows for smaller file sizes
By taking styles out of the HTML page and putting it into a standalone (imported) style sheet (.css file) you can reduce the overall amount of code in your web pages. Pages with less code have smaller file sizes and Google prefers pages with smaller file sizes (many other search engines do too).
Though Google doesn t offer specific advice on this matter the search engine optimisation community is generally agreed that 100KB is a good upper limit for page sizes.
CSS allows you greater control of page structure
CSS allows you to structure your document according to HTML standards without comprimising the look-and-feel of the page.
Google rewards pages that are well structured though many designers choose to ignore standards and guidelines as much as possible because they (incorrectly) believe standards lead to bland pages. Using CSS designers can create attractive pages with much flair while adhering to the findability design principles identified in the book (yes you ll have to buy it to get more!).
CSS allows you to hide content from browsers while it still gets picked up by Google
Using CSS you can hide content from certain browsers in certain situations. For example you may have some content that you only want to appear in print or you may want certain content to only be shown on screen and not in print (such as page navigation). The advantage is that Google will still index all of the content and you will still get the benefit that content brings.
by Nigel Peck
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Over view of web development
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Web development has consistently proved itself to be a lucrative business option and perhaps it is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today since its dawn in the late 90s in the US and Europe. The growth of web development is majorly pushed by medium and small business firms, and even the big names are also somewhat intimately related to web development. The potential of the internet to reach global audiences makes it almost indispensable for any company, whether small or large to make an online presence. From this point of view, web development is significant as it is the process...
Web development has consistently proved itself to be a lucrative business option and perhaps it is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today since its dawn in the late 90s in the US and Europe. The growth of web development is majorly pushed by medium and small business firms, and even the big names are also somewhat intimately related to web development. The potential of the internet to reach global audiences makes it almost indispensable for any company, whether small or large to make an online presence. From this point of view, web development is significant as it is the process of developing any website to convey essential information regarding the products or services that any company has to offer just about instantly to the customers anywhere in the world. To automate the business workflow and to create a brand value for the internet users, web development seems to be obligatory these days.
Web development is a rapidly growing industry owing to the fact that most of the business entities are aware of the great advantages of the internet technologies and have therefore felt the urge for making their online presence for reaching customers all over the world. Web development is both an art as well as science and it includes all the aspects of developing a website on the internet. More precisely, a web development company simultaneously takes care of web design, programming using different languages, server administration, managing of content, marketing and finally testing and release. The progress of any business solely depends on the number of prospective customers and an online presence together with quality content and valuable information increases the chances of conversion of visitors into customers manifold. Amazingly enough, one time investment on web development can serve the purposes for years to come.
A well developed web site must essentially comprise of some user-friendly features like remote login, taking orders, viewing reports, options for online transactions, knowledge and opinions sharing etc. To get the best out of a web development company, the task of web development should be left over to professionals, but to find out the right one is even more difficult at the first place. Planning is the most important part of successful web development. A business must identify the purpose and intention of the website aimed at. A web development company should first determine the target audience of the website they might be developing. The planning also includes designing the website to make it attractive as well as user friendly, determining the programming languages that are compatible for using and maintaining. Content is a very important part of any website and should therefore be arranged according to hierarchy of logical sections. Clarity of information is another important aspect of web development. With clear and precise information web developers can be able to produce code out of virtually anything that one desire to develop.
by: charlesalfred
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Retailers Pressured to Drive Lifetime Customer Value
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Some 58 percent of retailers say the top business pressure that influences their loyalty-program decisions is the need to develop lifetime customer value according to research conducted by Aberdeen Group reports MarketingCharts.
Lifetime customer value is defined as the present value of future cash flows through long-term customer relationships.
"In times of stagnant growth retailers need to develop lifetime customer value through improved customer retention re-activation and acquisition strategies " said Sahir Anand senior analyst at Aberdeen and chief author of the customer loyalty...
Some 58 percent of retailers say the top business pressure that influences their loyalty-program decisions is the need to develop lifetime customer value according to research conducted by Aberdeen Group reports MarketingCharts.
Lifetime customer value is defined as the present value of future cash flows through long-term customer relationships.
"In times of stagnant growth retailers need to develop lifetime customer value through improved customer retention re-activation and acquisition strategies " said Sahir Anand senior analyst at Aberdeen and chief author of the customer loyalty benchmark report.
Among retailers 93 percent say they execute loyalty programs as a standard offering for their web store or catalog channel customers. Such campaigns may include point perks rewards coalition marketing frequent buyer offers and private-label credit cards.
However the tactical nature of these loyalty campaigns targeting short-term retail demand often overshadows lifetime customer value according to Aberdeen.
"Loyalty campaigns are executed without due consideration to ideal customer segments tools coordinated cross-channel marketing needs and long-term customer relationships " Anand said
Cost-benefit issues surrounding loyalty programs are top-of-mind for retail marketers and measurement of ROI on customer loyalty programs is continuous the study found. Determining such an ROI is a much simpler process than other retail solutions such as POS merchandising or pricing Aberdeen said.
Repeat visit (61 percent) incremental sales (58 percent) and overall satisfaction (57 percent) have emerged as the three most significant factors used by retailers for justifying spend on loyalty elements operational costs and upgrade/deployment of loyalty software applications.
As for technology used to enable loyalty programs the top priorities among best-in-class companies are database marketing end-to-end loyalty marketing software loyalty card-processing software and CRM applications Aberdeen found:
Aberdeen conducted the survey of 231 retail enterprises between May and June 2008 to determine the current state of loyalty technology and process integration in retail.
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Secretive website WikiLeaks may be posting more U.S. military video
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(CNN)For a website devoted to exposing secrets,WikiLeaks.org is pretty good at keeping its own.Not much is confirmed about exactly who founded it and runs it,who donates money to allow the five or so full-time people and hundreds of volunteers to keep it going, and where it all happens.Despite such murkiness, WikiLeaks has gained international notoriety since it started posting classified documents and other secret information from a European base in January 2007.In April, video of a U.S. military helicopter strike in Iraq that killed two Reuters journalists raised questions about the attack, as...
(CNN)For a website devoted to exposing secrets,WikiLeaks.org is pretty good at keeping its own.
Not much is confirmed about exactly who founded it and runs it,who donates money to allow the five or so full-time people and hundreds of volunteers to keep it going, and where it all happens.
Despite such murkiness, WikiLeaks has gained international notoriety since it started posting classified documents and other secret information from a European base in January 2007.
In April, video of a U.S. military helicopter strike in Iraq that killed two Reuters journalists raised questions about the attack, as well as howWikiLeaks got the military tapes.
Now, rumors abound that WikiLeaks is poised to post more video of Americans at war, perhaps involving U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan that killed civilians and prompted a military report critical of what happened.
The Pentagon has taken notice. In a secret 2008 report leaked toWikiLeaks, the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Center called the website a potential threat to U.S. forces and counterintelligence efforts.
\\\"Recent unauthorized release of DoD (Department of Defense) sensitive and classified documents provide FISS (foreign intelligence and security services), foreign terrorist groups, insurgents and other foreign adversaries with potentially actionable information for targeting U.S. forces,\\\" said the report posted on WikiLeaks.
To Julian Assange, the website\\\'s director and only public face, it\\\'s all about providing information necessary for citizens to make decisions that shape their future.
\\\"All the information in a society, all the happenings in a society, is relevant to choosing to support\\\" a government, political parties and particular leaders, Assange said in an interview posted on WikiLeaks on June 1.
More revealing was an April interview on the U.S. comedy show\"The Colbert Report,\" in which Assange acknowledged to host Stephen Colbert that the goal of posting secret documents was to gain the\"maximum possible political impact.\"
For example, Assange told Colbert, he titled the video on the Iraqi helicopter strike that killed the Reuters journalists\"Collateral Murder\" because,he said,that\'s what happened.
At the same time, Assange said, WikiLeaks always provides to the public all the video or documents available so that viewers can decide for themselves.
\"If people have a different opinion, the full material is there for them to analyze and assess,\"Assange told Colbert.
WikiLeaks publishes anonymously submitted documents, video and other sensitive materials after vetting them, it says.It claims never to have fallen for a forgery.
A scouring of Internet sources found some basic information about the website, including that it was started by a group of activists that included Chinese political dissidents and it survives on donations.
Assange,an Australian journalist depicted in media reports as a former computer hacker,described WikiLeaks in a January interview as run by five or so full-time people supported by hundreds of volunteers.
His work with WikiLeaks won Amnesty International\\\'s 2009 UK Media Award in the new media category for \"Kenya: The Cry of Blood-Extra Judicial Killings and Disappearances,\"a suppressed report on police killings by Kenya\'s National Commission on Human Rights.
In the January interview posted on the Medien-Okonomie-Blog, Assange described an almost covert operation with no headquarters that needs roughly $300,000 a year to function as a mostly volunteer organization.
\"But there are people who can\'t afford to continue being involved full-time unless they are paid,\"he said, estimating the costs would approach $1 million year if that happened.
He explained the value that WikiLeaks provides to the mainstream media by publishing otherwise unobtainable information.
\"We take the most legally difficult part, which is not the story, but usually the backing documents,\"Assange said in the interview.\"As a result there is less chance of legal action against the publisher.\"
For its own legal troubles,Assange said, WikiLeaks relies on lawyers donated by mainstream media outlets including The Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.
The website\'s biggest U.S. splash was the April posting of what it said was video from a U.S. helicopter involved in an attack in Baghdad that killed nine people-including the two Reuters journalists-and wounded two children.
A U.S. Army intelligence analyst was arrested two months later, allegedly for leaking classified military information, the U.S. military said.The website Wired.com identified him as Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, and said he had leaked the video of the helicopter assault.
Wired.com reported that Manning confessed to the leak in a series of online chats with a former computer hacker. He allegedly owned up to leaking other items to WikiLeaks, including the classified Army document assessing the threat level of the website, as well as State Department cables, according to the article
Public airing of the video forced the Pentagon to defend the actions of its troops in a report that concluded the Apache helicopter crews had no way of knowing the journalists-Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh-were among suspected insurgents on the street.
Now Assange is described as living on the run, and the Iceland Parliament has passed a proposal intended to make the country a haven for whistle-blowers such as WikiLeaks.
By the CNN Wire Staff
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Selling Tips: How to Serve Your Customers?
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Look Ma No White Shoes!The used car salesmen in white shoes and belt with a loud plaid jacket has become an archetype of selling. As a result you may -- like me -- have tended to keep sales in the closet depending on the admiration of your network and the kindness of strangers to bring in revenue. Do you do your best to provide value without asking for reciprocity? Do you write newsletters blog offer complimentary introductory session or other benefits to prospective clients but back away from selling to them?
How thoughtful. How generous. How unhealthy.
Yes unhealthy. Because when you dot...
Look Ma No White Shoes!
The used car salesmen in white shoes and belt with a loud plaid jacket has become an archetype of selling. As a result you may -- like me -- have tended to keep sales in the closet depending on the admiration of your network and the kindness of strangers to bring in revenue.
Do you do your best to provide value without asking for reciprocity? Do you write newsletters blog offer complimentary introductory session or other benefits to prospective clients but back away from selling to them?
How thoughtful. How generous. How unhealthy.
Yes unhealthy. Because when you dot invite your customers to reciprocate when you dont issue clear open and regular invitations to buy you consign your business to a kind of financial anorexia.
The person suffering from anorexia has a distorted body image and can languish and even die from starvation while being convinced that they are fat. What s more they are convinced that being fat is a fate worse than death (literally).
Financial Anorexia
Do you have a distorted image of what it would mean to profit from serving others? Would it be okay with you if people saw your business thriving? Or do you cling to the notion that somehow starvation is a more artistic or enlightened path? Heaven forfend that your clients or customers would think you are in business for the money!
And of course you aren t in business for the money any more than a healthy adult lives to eat.Yet your business needs money just as certainly as you need food and the more up front clear and effective you are at selling the healthier your business and your relationships with your customers.
Sounds good in principle but how do you sell effectively without pressuring your customers and alienating your audience? Keep reading.
Selling to Serve
Your customers and clients -- like you -- have a lot more on their minds than whether or not your work can help them. They could be crying out for what you offer but distracted by slings and arrows of everyday fortune: leaky plumbing aging parents boomerang kids -- the list goes on and on.
In order to help them you ll need to open your mind to selling. How do you keep selling from co-opting your values and your vision? The answer is to build service into sales and vice versa.
Tips For Selling That Serves
Begin with the end in mind.Stephen Covey had this one exactly right. (If you haven t read his classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People it s well worth your time.) Before you sell anything to anyone remember why you are going to do it.
This first key is the most important. If it is missing you will run out of steam before you even begin the sales process.
Remember the archetype of the white-shoed car salesman? It runs deep and unless you consciously establish the service foundation for selling every time you write copy or tell someone about your work you risk getting blind-sided by shame. And guess what? As soon as shame starts to burble up in you your customers pick up on it. Yuck!
Walk a mile in their shoes. What do your just-right customers need to know in order to make a decision? What could get in the way? What are the stakes if they fail to act?
How many couples would not be together today if one partner hadn t been willing to hang in there when the other hesitated?If the course of true love doesn t run smooth why would the course of deciding to buy something that s a good fit?
When you stand in your just-right customer s shoes for a while you ll see what steppingstones they might need in order to buy something that will truly serve them.
Are those steppingstones for everyone? Of course not. Is that a problem? No and to find out why not keep reading.
Dance with no as well as yes. When you are clear about who you are serving and how open your heart even wider so that people who don t need what you offer or who are not ready to buy are free to decline. Rather than arming yourself against someone s decision not to buy open yourself to it.
Imagine a prospective client or customer considering and then deciding against your offer. Watch them closely in your minds eye without pretending to know what they are thinking. Just watch.
When you let go of what you think that they think about you what do you see? Do you notice that they are simply taking care of themselves as best they know how? Good. Now notice how your heart eases as you unhook your self-esteem from their choices.
This hearts ease completes the circuit from intention to serve to decision to sell to blessing all of your prospects whether or not they decide to buy. Selling becomes a conversation in which you advocate for those folks who want and can benefit from your work so that they can notice consider and decide.
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Service Marketers;How's Your Packaging?
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When a shopper picks up a product in a store what s the first thing they notice? The packaging right? The same holds true for someone buying a service.
Yet instead of a folded carton with colorful graphics you are the packaging for your service business. Intangible points of contact including your clothes your briefcase maybe even your breath all burn a lasting image in your buyer s mind.
Here are some of the more common packaging elements all service marketers should pay attention to:
Your clothes All your technical expertise won t mean diddly if you wear a tie dye t-shirt and striped...
When a shopper picks up a product in a store what s the first thing they notice? The packaging right? The same holds true for someone buying a service.
Yet instead of a folded carton with colorful graphics you are the packaging for your service business. Intangible points of contact including your clothes your briefcase maybe even your breath all burn a lasting image in your buyer s mind.
Here are some of the more common packaging elements all service marketers should pay attention to:
Your clothes
All your technical expertise won t mean diddly if you wear a tie dye t-shirt and striped bell bottoms to your first client meeting. "Always dress better than you need to " says Sue Morem author of How to Gain the Professional Edge; Achieve the Personal and Professional Image You Want. "Even when dealing with a casual company remember you are not a part of that company; you re an outsider."If you re not sure what to wear find a personal shopping consultant.
Briefcase
I ve seen people use briefcases that looked like they carried the first batch of Pony Express mail. Resist the temptation to use that briefcase Uncle Joe bought you at Wal-Mart and instead invest good money in one at a reputable luggage store.
Briefcases are one of the few personal effects almost every business person carries into a meeting and this simple item speaks volumes about your image.
Your notebook
When you pull out some paper to take notes do you pull out a sturdy professional looking notebook or just a pad of paper? This item which sits on the table throughout the meeting may go unnoticed by many of your buyers. But then again it may not.
Etiquette
Saying please and thank you. A firm handshake. Looking someone in the eye when talking to them. "Etiquette is the equivalent of the ribbon and bow on a package " says Morem. "Good etiquette lets others know you are in control and finishes off your image." For a good primer on professional etiquette consult her book.
Proposal covers
Up until five years ago I routinely faxed my proposals to prospects. Then one of these prospects said to me "Jay I have two proposals here. One is handsomely bound and the other is faxed. Which do you think I should go with?" Point taken. When final packaging your proposals estimates or RFP s use the highest quality binding system you can afford.
Envelopes
Do you still hand-address your envelopes? A lot of business people I know do and I sure wouldn t penalize them for it. But if your competitors are ink jetting their envelopes your image will suffer ever so slightly.
Email address
What image does your email convey? If your email address is studmuffin@yahoo.com or hottie@yahoo.com you might take a step back and ask yourself what image does this convey? If you re after a professional image for your service business and you have an email address that doesn t synch up with this image you might want to consider upgrading it.
Domain name
These days with the costs of taking your business online dropping precipitously your business really should have its own domain name. I m not knocking AOL or Yahoo. But if you want to project the image of an established business that operates in a professional manner having your own domain name is a giant leap. For more information about availability of certain domain names visit InterNIC at www.internic.com .
Email fonts and colors
I ve received some very professional looking emails. I ve also received some emails that were laughably amateur. Increasingly these days buyers and sellers make initial contact through email and casual fonts or background colors that bury the body text penalize you right from the start. Consider your email address and template as "wrappers" for your business and treat them accordingly.
Voicemail greeting
Talk about a moment of truth for your business. The vast majority of business calls (including calls from your prospects) reach voicemail thus underscoring the need for a professional well-crafted greeting. Don t have your daughter recite her new poem or feature a rap version of "Old Lang Syne".Keep it simple...and professional.
Punctuality
At the root of being on time is respect; respect for someone else s time. So be on time for all appointments. If you do run late call and let someone know. If you re running a meeting end on time or announce that the meeting may go longer and give anyone an opportunity to bow out.
If you think any of these packaging elements aren t worth investing in then you ve missed my point. Each one of these is a defining contact point between your service business and your market and forms an important element of your packaging. Pay attention to your packaging; your buyer will.
by Jay Lipe
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Still don\'t have a website...
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Still don\'t have a website...What are you waiting for?
A lot of brick & mortar companies still don\'t have websites and they seem fine with that decision. But is it a good one? I don\'t think so. In fact, I think any company without a website in their marketing plan is shooting itself in the foot. Here are all the things a website can do for your company:
Generate more leadsThese days, the most common complaint I hear from growing companies is \"we need more leads\". A website can help. Any site that has \"can\'t-find-it-anywhere-else\" information attracts prospects, and if the site attracts...
Still don\'t have a website...What are you waiting for?
A lot of brick & mortar companies still don\'t have websites and they seem fine with that decision. But is it a good one? I don\'t think so. In fact, I think any company without a website in their marketing plan is shooting itself in the foot. Here are all the things a website can do for your company:
Generate more leads
These days, the most common complaint I hear from growing companies is \"we need more leads\". A website can help. Any site that has \"can\'t-find-it-anywhere-else\" information attracts prospects, and if the site attracts enough of them, you\'ll gain a following. From followings, leads are generated.
Qualify those leads
When surfers visit your site, you should always encourage them to take the next step. Whether this is purchasing one of your products, signing up for an online newsletter or filling out a survey, your visitors want to know what to do next. Provide them with several different ways to respond and your website will separate browsers from buyers.
Attract new visitors
Web surfers are not traditional bricks and mortar types. Most are comfortable stopping by, introducing themselves and even purchasing your products without ever meeting you face to face.
Stay open round-the-clock
We all know how disappointing it is to drive to a store only to find it closed. With a website in today\'s market, any company can be open for its customers 24/7. Even though your employees are sleeping when an inquiry comes in at 2 a.m., your customers appreciate that you were open when it was most convenient for them.
Increase media access to your company
A good website offers a press room so media editors and reporters can help themselves to the information they need. You\'ll find that there\'s a direct correlation between how accessible your website is to the media and the number of media contacts your company gets.
Self-serve service
The Post Office now offers an online service called Delivery Confirmation. After paying an additional 40 cents at the postal counter, you can track online where your package is in the mail system. What was once an overhead service for the Post Office is now a self-service function for its customers (and a new source of revenue). What if your company could transfer service functions to its website like obtaining owners manuals, tracking shipments or answering frequently asked questions?
Load sales tools onto your site
One of my clients loads their latest PowerPoint presentations onto their website. That way, a sales rep in Boston can give a presentation to a prospect in Wyoming without either of them leaving their offices. Think of the travel savings if you adopted this approach.
by Jay Lipe
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The 10 Commandments of Successful Marketing
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I. Thou Shalt Not See Marketing as a Department
When you get right down to it everyone in your company is a marketer. From the receptionist whose voice is the first thing your buyers hear to the delivery person whose rear-end may be the last thing they see every one of your employees plays a pivotal role in the orchestration of your marketing efforts. Good companies imbue every employee with healthy reverence for the customer so that the company from every point of contact it has with its market knows how to market.
II. Thou Shalt Follow the Ninety Day Rule
Your customers prospects and...
I. Thou Shalt Not See Marketing as a Department
When you get right down to it everyone in your company is a marketer. From the receptionist whose voice is the first thing your buyers hear to the delivery person whose rear-end may be the last thing they see every one of your employees plays a pivotal role in the orchestration of your marketing efforts. Good companies imbue every employee with healthy reverence for the customer so that the company from every point of contact it has with its market knows how to market.
II. Thou Shalt Follow the Ninety Day Rule
Your customers prospects and champions (those who refer business your way) should hear from you every 90 days. People are just too busy to remember you otherwise. If you don t follow the 90-day rule you risk getting shouted down by any competitor of yours who does.
III. Honor the Concept of Tinkering with All your Heart
If you re a 70 s child like me you remember the hugely successful rock group Fleetwood Mac. But I ll bet you didn t know that their seemingly overnight success came only after years of tinkering. That s right before the release of their monster album Rumours they endured no less than 14 personnel changes across 10 years. In marketing as in rock and roll success seldom happens with your original line-up.
IV. Thou Shalt Not Quit
Moses and the Israelites wandered the desert for 40 years without giving up. You owe it to yourself (and maybe Moses too) to try any new marketing initiative at least three times before throwing in the towel. Your prospect could have been out of the country the first time you ran it and tending to his sick mother the second. Repetition is a marketer s best friend.
V. Thou Shalt Feed Thy Prospecting Funnel
Suspects become prospects who then become customers. And these customers then generate referrals who create more prospects and the cycle begins anew. For thousands of years this marketing process (also known as the prospecting funnel) has governed marketing activities for all companies and I feel safe saying that it will continue this way for another thousand years.
VI. Remember Thine Marketing Time by Keeping it Holy
Successful marketing campaigns don t take the summer off nor are they created "when I have the time." You must make the time. I ve found it s helpful to consistently carve out the same day and time each week to work on marketing tasks. For me it s Friday afternoons; for you it may be different. But whatever day and time you choose honor it with all your heart.
VII. Thou Shalt Jettison One Program Every Year
I can t count the number of stressed out marketers I ve seen over the last 15 years. As task after task is added to their plates nothing is ever removed. Stop this madness at once and identify one marketing task each year to eliminate. Too often someone keeps doing a task (e.g. issuing a report) yet it s not adding value. Eliminate one marketing task a year; your health depends upon it.
VIII. Thou Shalt Not Cut Marketing Spending During Slow Times
From 1980 to 1985 McGraw-Hill Research analyzed 600 companies and their marketing spending. After 1985 McGraw-Hill concluded that those firms which had maintained or increased their advertising during the recession in 81- 82 boasted an average sales growth of 275% over the next five years. But those companies who cut their advertising saw paltry sales growth over the next five years of just 19%.
When is the right time to market your business? All the time.
IX. Thou Shalt Honor Exiting Employees
I once had a travel industry client run a report that showed where their new referrals came from. The second highest category was ex-employees. It turns out vacation shoppers were asking these ex-employees where they could book a Vegas package just like the neighbor?s they d heard about and the ex-employees were referring them back to their old employer. When you treat your departing employees with a dose of good will they may just turn into your unpaid sales force and refer business your way.
X. Thou Shalt Thank Often
Sadly we live in an age of boorishness. But a savvy marketer can do his part to bring civility into an otherwise uncivilized world. Among the countless ways to thank customers are thank you notes gift certificates and appreciation lunches to name just a few. These thank you s don t have to be showy. Just make sure the thank you is classy and considerate and the kindness will eventually be repaid.
Sure we all break these commandments from time to time and end up seeking forgiveness. But if you consistently break these Ten Commandments of Marketing you risk an exodus - a customer exodus.
by Jay Lipe
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The Basics on Pay-Per-Click Advertising
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Imagine if you could advertise ONLY to people who have actually expressed an interest in doing business with you? That s basically what happens whenever a prospective customer or client types a phrase into a search engine that s relevant to your business. But how do search engines decide which sites are worthy of top placement in their search results? It turns out that some of the results are ranked by the search engine s computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using Pay Per Click Advertising.
Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC for...
Imagine if you could advertise ONLY to people who have actually expressed an interest in doing business with you? That s basically what happens whenever a prospective customer or client types a phrase into a search engine that s relevant to your business. But how do search engines decide which sites are worthy of top placement in their search results? It turns out that some of the results are ranked by the search engine s computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using Pay Per Click Advertising.
Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC for short) is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business. Businesses buy advertising on specific search phrases and are then charged each time a person clicks through to their web site.
How does this work?
Try running a search on a major search engine like Yahoo or Google for a common consumer product like "DVD players." When reviewing the results you ll likely see a set of results labeled as "Sponsor Results" or "Sponsored Link". Some results may appear in the same format as the main search results on the page while others are listed within colored text boxes along the site of the page. All of those results are paid advertisements from the sites listed within the ads.
The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. In the example search for "DVD players" the current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click - one penny more than the #2 advertiser.
The ads are purchased through pay per click advertising suppliers and the two largest happen to be owned by Google and Yahoo. Google s program is called Adwords and displays results on Google.com AOL Ask Jeeves many smaller search engines. Yahoo s program is run by an acquired company called Overture and the results appear on Yahoo MSN AltaVista and many other syndication partners.
Why should I pay for traffic?
For businesses that have had success with search engine optimization the idea of paying for visitors is not particularly enticing. However if you can make more money off a visitor to your web site than it costs to get them there why wouldn t you pay for those visitors? Keep in mind that you can choose exactly what search terms you want to advertise on and you only pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad so it generally comes down to deciding how much you can afford to spend for those visitors rather than whether it s worth doing at all.
How much should I spend?
The main factors influencing how much money can be spent on a PPC campaign are:
1. How many searches are conducted per month using phrases relevant to your business?
2. How much are you along with your competitors willing to pay for those terms?
The average monthly ad spend on PPC advertising is a couple thousand dollars but this varies immensely from less than $50/month for regionally targeted and niche businesses to millions a month by large national retailers.
The goal of any advertising campaign should be to bring in more money from the campaign than it costs to run it. Pay Per Click is no different but the level of detail you can measure in PPC is significantly higher than most types of advertising. For example with relatively inexpensive (some are even free) tools you can determine which ads are generating sales or leads for your business. Beyond that you can determine how much money you spent on a specific ad to generate a sale or a lead. By measuring what s working you can aggressively advertise on terms that prove to be winners for your business while shutting down ads that don t deliver.
Tips for Success
1. Advertise on a large number of relevant search phrases. Brainstorm beyond the first dozen terms that come to mind to describe your business. Advertise on the terms used to describe your products the product names product codes and the questions a prospect might type into a search engine that your services answer and more.
2. Build unique ads for each search phrase. It takes a lot more time to write a unique ad for each search phrase relevant to your business rather than creating one ad for all of your search phrases but the extra work will definitely be rewarded. Ads that are aligned with the corresponding search term receive more clicks which will mean more targeted traffic and in some cases paying less per click (on Google Adwords) due to the intricacies of how the advertising is priced.
3. Send visitors to the most appropriate page of your web site. If you place an ad for a specific product within your online store don t send visitors to your homepage and force them to dig for what they just searched. This will frustrate your visitors and increase the chance that they ll hit the dreaded Back button.
4. Track your results. Spending money without measuring the return on your investment is not a good business practice. At the very least consider installing the free tracking tools available through Google Adwords and Overture to measure which terms are delivering results for your business. Beyond that consider using a 3rd party statistics tool with conversion analysis to compile the results of your various pay per click programs into one easy to manage interface.
Go for it
People are searching for what you sell at this very moment! If your site is not showing up near the top of the results your competition thanks you.
by Ed Kohler
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The Real Truth about Business Plans- What the Consultants Don't tell You!
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Do you have a Business Plan? Congratulations but you are in a small minority. And if you have a plan is it integral to your business and instrumental to its growth? If the answer to this question is yes then you need to read no further. However in Empower Business Solutions experience even if they have a plan most business owners leave it languishing on their bottom shelf gathering dust!
Our dirty little secret is this: most business consultants are only interested in selling their time or their Business Plan in a Box but know that for a business plan to be useful it has to be part...
Do you have a Business Plan? Congratulations but you are in a small minority. And if you have a plan is it integral to your business and instrumental to its growth? If the answer to this question is yes then you need to read no further.
However in Empower Business Solutions experience even if they have a plan most business owners leave it languishing on their bottom shelf gathering dust!
Our dirty little secret is this: most business consultants are only interested in selling their time or their Business Plan in a Box but know that for a business plan to be useful it has to be part of a Business Management System. But this is a much harder proposition for the consultant to sell particularly to small business owners who are just looking for a quick fix. So most consultants just sell a quick fix solution.
Once owners have prepared their "fill in the blanks" plan they expect it to transform their business overnight just by its mere existence. And because this does not happen it ends up on the bottom shelf.
Business Plans do work but you have to make them work. It is not a one-off exercise. If you buy a Business Plan in a Box you need to understand that you are responsible for maintaining the plan.
You also need to satisfy yourself that the product you buy is not just a fill in the blanks product. These plans always end up on the bottom shelf. They don t show you how to do your strategic analysis (which is never a fill in the blanks exercise- no matter what someone tells you).
Business Planning is a real soul searching exercise for the business owner. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Even if you prepare your plan yourself (without a coach) get someone else involved to keep you honest! Looking at examples of what others have done can help but your business will have different strengths and weaknesses and will operate in a different marketplace. And lastly make sure the off-the-shelf product you choose will show you how to implement your plan into
your business.
When a good consultant prepares a Business Plan they will:
undertake a rigorous (and challenging) review of the strengths & weaknesses of your business
show you how the plan should be implemented into your business process
give you at least one review of your performance against your plan six months after the plan has been delivered.
While this will require a larger investment than a Business Plan in a Box and is a harder sell for a consultant this will ensure that your plan does not end up on the bottom shelf and that your investment is not wasted!
Business Planning is not an easy process. It takes time and commitment. You don t just do it once.
This is not what business owners want to hear and what most consultants won t tell you because it might cost them a sale. But the rewards from a well implemented business plan are worth many times your investment.
by Dr Greg Chapman MBA
Director- Empower Business Solutions
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The top 3 free tools that anyone new to SEO
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The top 3 free tools that anyone new to SEO try are:1. Google Suggest
Most SEO experts complain that Google doesn t provide a suitable tool for detailed keyword research and to some extent they are correct. However the Google Suggest tool whilst rather crude does give an indication of the number of searches performed on certain keywords. Simply type in your keyword. Simple but rather effective.
2. Google PR Toolbar
The Google toolbar offers a Page Rank checker which is invaluable in using when exchanging links with other sites. The page rank checker isn t installed by default so you will...
The top 3 free tools that anyone new to SEO try are:
1. Google Suggest
Most SEO experts complain that Google doesn t provide a suitable tool for detailed keyword research and to some extent they are correct. However the Google Suggest tool whilst rather crude does give an indication of the number of searches performed on certain keywords. Simply type in your keyword. Simple but rather effective.
2. Google PR Toolbar
The Google toolbar offers a Page Rank checker which is invaluable in using when exchanging links with other sites. The page rank checker isn t installed by default so you will need to ensure you check the Page Rank option at installation. Once installed the toolbar will show you the page rank of any page you are currently browsing. Page rank is a key factor when deciding on link exchanges with other sites and this tool saves time when deciding the quality of other sites.
3. Google Analytics
Google analytics is a must have for any webmaster. I ve been amazed to find that many corporate websites don t have any analytics tool in place and many simply rely on basic data supplied by the hosting companies statistics tool and by browsing server logs. Google analytics is not only free but provides such detailed statistics that once you have tried it you will never stop using it. It s simple to install (all that is needed is to install 2 lines of code to every web page) but it s arguably one of the better analytics tools to available to SEO experts.
The world of SEO can be confusing for those trying to get a grip with its ever evolving principles. However the 3 tools mentioned in this article will provide a good grounding from which to further enhance your education and understanding of SEO principles.
About the author
The author is an avid SEO expert with an interest in online poker and can regularly found contributing articles to PKR Poker.com
We at Dow Group provide big range of marketing consultancy services from email marketing to web design development and marketing solution in Beirut and Dubai
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Website Copywriting - Important Element of Your Website
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The wide reach of the internet is now attracting more and more business firms to provide their services online. Effective website copywriting service becomes an important element of your website since it is appealing and fresh content that attracts prospective customers. Website copywriting is the general term used in relation to web content development and is one of the major steps involved in website development processes which also include site design inclusion of multimedia contents and graphics incorporation of easy navigational tools and optimization.Copywriting professionals are an integral...
The wide reach of the internet is now attracting more and more business firms to provide their services online. Effective website copywriting service becomes an important element of your website since it is appealing and fresh content that attracts prospective customers. Website copywriting is the general term used in relation to web content development and is one of the major steps involved in website development processes which also include site design inclusion of multimedia contents and graphics incorporation of easy navigational tools and optimization.
Copywriting professionals are an integral part of both web content development firms and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) firms. Often the services of copywriting professionals are similar to that of professional technical writers. The difference is that technical writers' emphasis will be on technical aspects such as writing the operation manual of an electronic device whereas copywriting professionals will give emphasis on promoting the product such that on reading the content readers gets impressed and will be persuaded to buy the product. Often website copywriting companies have both of these professionals employed with them to suit varying customer requirements. Since website copywriting is an important element of your website finding highly creative copywriters is one of the first steps to take when thinking of taking your business online.
Modern day website copywriting services are extremely challenging to web companies because the contents provided online have to satisfy both online readers and search engines. To implement effective copywriting services most web companies have highly skilled copywriting professionals who are experienced in the field. These professional copywriters have to update web pages frequently with fresh and unique contents so that the websites will be lively and informative to visitors.
Copywriting professionals also play a key role in optimizing web pages to achieve higher search engine rankings. For the purpose copywriters have to incorporate various elements intelligently within their contents and these elements include the right phrases and keywords which should be repeated in an appropriate manner in the content so that the page will get noticed by major global search engines such as Google Yahoo and MSN.
Website copywriting services also include creating content for online advertisements commercial emails and related web promotional services. As informative relevant and professional content is the key element which tempts visitors to come back again and again to a website website copywriting is indeed an important element of your website. About the author
Contact Bob Kruse at Viral SEO Services for fast and affordable website content writing and search engine copywriting services. Our service spectrum also includes Article writing and Article submissions.
We at Dow Group provide big range of marketing consultancy services from email marketing to web design development and marketing solution in Beirut and Dubai
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Why do you want a website?
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It s time to be brutally honest. The answers to the questions on this page will help you determine the direction your site will take. Don t answer quickly - pour a cup of coffee and think about it.
Why do you want a website? Are you selling or telling or both? Do you want a site that presents information that rarely changes (show information a line of products) or a dynamic site with information that changes regularly? Who do you want to attract to your site? Will people be buying products from you? This includes selling yourself. Perhaps you are a teacher who wants to publicize her...
It s time to be brutally honest. The answers to the questions on this page will help you determine the direction your site will take. Don t answer quickly - pour a cup of coffee and think about it.
Why do you want a website? Are you selling or telling or both? Do you want a site that presents information that rarely changes (show information a line of products) or a dynamic site with information that changes regularly? Who do you want to attract to your site? Will people be buying products from you? This includes selling yourself. Perhaps you are a teacher who wants to publicize her classes nationally or a designer interested in establishing an Internet presence. Who are your main competitors?
If you could describe yourself and what you do in a sentence what would it be? Where to you see yourself in five years? In ten years? What benefits do you expect your website will provide you?
Do you have an idea you would like to market? Perhaps it s a new technique or a self published book. What can you offer your visitor? Why will your site be a better choice to visit than another one? Why should they revisit your site? Will you be encouraging E-mail perhaps by creating an informational newsletter? Are you comfortable sharing your knowledge and abilities with others?
This is what your website can do for you:
Establish your presence on the web
Provide information
Build familiarity of your product
Reach an International market
Test new products and/or markets
Provide customer service and build customer loyalty by:
Selling your product
Offering 24 hr service
Answering frequently asked questions
Making demonstrations and explanations available.
Making changing information available quickly
staying in contact with sales people
requesting consumer feedback
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IT
Search Engine Opitimization
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What makes Search Engine Optimization so vital?The arena in which all the companies/sites work on the internet is equal, they get an equal platform and are equally placed in the beginning. In the case of small to medium websites, a visitor comes to know about them through search engines. Statistically put, around 76% of the web users in U.S and Canada use search engines. It can be concluded that search engines are the major referrers to a particular website. If a company knows how to place itself in good position on a search engine, its traffic will increase tremendously, and so will the sales....
What makes Search Engine Optimization so vital?
The arena in which all the companies/sites work on the internet is equal, they get an equal platform and are equally placed in the beginning. In the case of small to medium websites, a visitor comes to know about them through search engines. Statistically put, around 76% of the web users in U.S and Canada use search engines. It can be concluded that search engines are the major referrers to a particular website. If a company knows how to place itself in good position on a search engine, its traffic will increase tremendously, and so will the sales. But unfortunately many of the businesses and websites do not know how to place themselves better on search engines. That\'s where Search Engine Optimization comes in.
How does SEO work?
Starting from the starting, in order for a website to appear on a search engine, either it has to be manually submitted, or it has to be crawled by the bot of a search engine (eg. GoogleBot). Now, in order that the search engine rank the newly found website higher, SEO is required. The importance of ranking can be estimated from the fact that the results on the first page is viewed 78% more than those on pages 11-30.
Having good keywords and high amount of back links (link popularity) is the key to SEO.
The more sites that link to you, the better you are placed on the search engines. Of course, the usage of the keywords (you are targeting) on the content of the site also has a significant impact on the rankings. Search engines like Google, pay a lot of attention to the backlinks part. It also improves the rankings if the links are from the sites that have content related to your site.
Coming to content, a famous saying goes, \"Content is the King\". Whether it be some articles, or detailed information about the product you are selling, it will have a lot of impact on your rankings. Try to keep the articles unique and to the point.
Don\'ts of SEO
Some companies try to use a short cut in SEO, the \"Black Hat\" SEO. What they do is rather than getting genuine backlinks from related sites, they create many websites, and give the link to the website they want to optimize. This results in instantaneous appraisal of rankings. Be warned that these methods are usually caught soon and the site in question may be permanently banned from the search engines.
Another big NO in SEO is over-using Flash and image content. This is because a search engine cannot read the text in images or Flash. This, however, has a workaround. One can use alt tag in images to provide the keywords for the image. Small captions above the image or the Flash content also helps.
SEO Tips
Though meta tags are considered dead in SEO, they can be useful in categorizing or ranking your sites higher in some of the less advanced search engines.
Another way would be placing the keywords in the hyperlinks of the site. This makes an impression that your site has a lot of outgoing links to the relevant topic. This also improves the rankings.
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CSS Controlled Web Design - Tables are for sitting at...
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By now most web designers are aware of the many benefits of using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control the formatting and appearance of text elements within their web pages.Indeed if applied as outlined in one of my articles from 2006 ( CSS - Weight-Loss for your Code) Cascading Style Sheets can substantially cut down the amount of code needed to present a web page in a polished and professional manner.
What few designers realise however is that CSS is capable of so much more than just handling a page's text formatting.If used to its fullest capability the Style Sheet is capable of controlling...
By now most web designers are aware of the many benefits of using CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to control the formatting and appearance of text elements within their web pages.
Indeed if applied as outlined in one of my articles from 2006 ( CSS - Weight-Loss for your Code) Cascading Style Sheets can substantially cut down the amount of code needed to present a web page in a polished and professional manner.
What few designers realise however is that CSS is capable of so much more than just handling a page's text formatting.
If used to its fullest capability the Style Sheet is capable of controlling just about every aspect of page layout and presentation even to the extent of replacing a Hyper-Text document's traditional table-based design structure.
Quite aside from saving the web developer a substantial amount of coding time this approach also cuts down the amount of code needed to display a web page properly to an absolute minimum. So much so that in the recent redesign of one of our web sites the use of CSS controlled HTML cut the average document size from 24kb to less than 5kb.
The key to designing CSS controlled web pages rests in the use of DIV Tags and DIV IDs.
For example a traditional table structure would look something like this:
Please note that angle brackets have been replaced by square brackets to display the following code correctly.
[table width="800" align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"]
[tr]
[td width="560" align="left" class="one"][h1]Example Text[/h1][/td]
[td width="240" align="left" class="two"] [img xsrc="images/exampleimage.jpg" width="200" height="100" alt="Example Image"][/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
With CSS control exactly the same look and feel can be achieved by the following two DIV Tags:
[div id="content"][h1]Example Text[/h1][/div]
[div id="image"][img xsrc="images/exampleimage.jpg" width="200" height="100" alt="Example Image"] [/div]
The DIV ID passes control of layout and appearance to the CSS which handles it as follows:
#content {
position:absolute;
width: 560px;
height: 100px;
;top: 10px;
left: 100px;
font-family: Arial Helvetica sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: normal;
color: #000000;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
#image {
position:absolute;
width: 240px;
height: 100px;
top: 10px;
left: 660px;
font-family: Arial Helvetica sans-serif;
font-size: 12px;
font-weight: normal;
color: #000000;
background-color: #FFFFFF;
}
On the face of it it may seem like this entails some extra work on the designer's part but don't forget that at the same time as controlling the DIV Tag's position and appearance the CSS also handles all text formatting and that the above Style Sheet will only need to be written once in order to control an entire web site.
Then of course there is the fact that the above example is an immensely simple one. Imagine for a moment the sheer amount of code which is saved by using CSS over the course of writing an in-depth web page.
The end result is an HTML document which has been stripped of all unnecessary code and is consequently extremely 'light-weight' and easily indexed by search engines.
Additionally it is also possible to radically alter a page's appearance at the click of a button without ever changing any of its HTML code. This approach is very capably demonstrated at the CSS Zen Garden where more information about the power of CSS controlled web design can be found.
Furthermore like HTML CSS is undergoing constant revisions and will doubtlessly grow to play an even more important part in web design during years to come. Therefore now may be a good time to further acquaint yourself with the full functionality of this essential web design element.
By Sasch Mayer
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Getting Started with FTP
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Getting Started with FTPHow to find and configure an FTP program So you need to use FTP to transfer your files? Sounds like trouble doesn t it? Well no need to worry it s not as bad as it sounds. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol which is just another way to transfer files between computers. (Remember http stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol which is used in your Web browser). To begin using FTP you will want to get an FTP program that makes it easy to transfer and rename your files. My suggestion is WS_FTP from Ipswitch. You can download a free trial version at the Ipswitch Home...
Getting Started with FTP
How to find and configure an FTP program
So you need to use FTP to transfer your files? Sounds like trouble doesn t it? Well no need to worry it s not as bad as it sounds. FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol which is just another way to transfer files between computers. (Remember http stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol which is used in your Web browser).
To begin using FTP you will want to get an FTP program that makes it easy to transfer and rename your files. My suggestion is WS_FTP from Ipswitch. You can download a free trial version at the Ipswitch Home Page.
If you prefer to find one on your own you can go to ZDnet s Shareware Library and search for "FTP Client" or "FTP program". Of course your program may have a different appearance than the images here but you should be able to get the general idea from these tutorials.
Now install the FTP program on your computer using the instructions provided at their site in a readme file etc. Once you have the program installed start it up. If you are using WS_FTP you will get a screen like the one below. If you don t get this screen click the "Connect" button. You should now see a window similar to this:
WS_FTP Setup Window
The first thing you will want to do is set up the program so it can connect to your Web host. So click on the "New" button (there should be something similar in most FTP programs) to begin. You will then be able to fill in the information needed into the the proper fields. Here a list of some of the most common fields and what you need to place in each one:
Profile Name:
Type in a name you can remember later. I usually use my name and the name of the Web server I want to connect to. In this case I would be connecting to my ISP which is named Lcc.
Host Name/Address:
This is a very important field. Normally your Web host will tell you the address you need to use to connect to their server using FTP. Most often the address is ftp.servername.com or ftp.servername.net. If you are unsure contact your Web host to get the proper FTP address.
Host Type:
This can almost always be left on Auto Detect. This will let the program figure it out on the fly and configure itself accordingly. If this does not work you will need to find out from your Web host what Host Type they are using.
User ID:
This is going to be your user name you were given from the Web host to use on their system. In most cases it is the same user name you use to log into their other services.
Password:
This is the password you were given from the Web host to log into their services. You should have received this with your user name. The box will only show the star symbols and not your password itself when you type it in.
Account:
This is almost always left blank. I have never had to use it. If you do need it you will need to contact your host for the information.
Comment:
You can add your own comments and decriptions here if you wish. It is not a required field.
Anonymous
You will only need to check this box if you are connecting to a host that allows anonymous FTP. In most cases you will leave this box unchecked. It is usually used if you connect to a site that allows you access to download files only.
Save Pwd
Check this box if you want the program to save your password so you do not need to retype it each time you connect. If you feel safer uncheck the box so anyone using the program would have to type the correct password to connect to the server.
Finally hit the "OK" button at the bottom. If everything is correct you are online and the server is not too busy the program will connect to the Web host.
If you are not online hit "OK" go connect to the Internet and return to the program. Hit the "Connect" button and you should see your profile window again. If not use the drop down button to find the Profile Name you entered earlier. When you have your profile window back hit "OK". Now you should be connected to your server!
Well that does it for the configuration tutorial. The next section will help you with sending your files to your web host so they can be seen on the Web. So let s go on to the next section: Sending Files with FTP.
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How to Create User-friendly Web Site Font Sizes with CSS Relative Font Sizing
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Looking for an easy way to designate CSS font sizes for your website that will work well with modern mainstream browsers for Windows or Mac computers? Need to also make sure your website s font size approach is universally accessible meets W3C s WAI Accessibility Guidelines U.S. Section 508 requirements or other accessibility requirements? This tutorial will show you one possibility that can meet those needs by using CSS relative font sizing.
What about browser support? See Cross-browser Cross-platform Fonts Testing.
Skill Levels: This tutorial assumes a basic familiarity with...
Looking for an easy way to designate CSS font sizes for your website that will work well with modern mainstream browsers for Windows or Mac computers? Need to also make sure your website s font size approach is universally accessible meets W3C s WAI Accessibility Guidelines U.S. Section 508 requirements or other accessibility requirements? This tutorial will show you one possibility that can meet those needs by using CSS relative font sizing.
What about browser support? See Cross-browser Cross-platform Fonts Testing.
Skill Levels: This tutorial assumes a basic familiarity with CSS.
On this page:
Why Use CSS Relative Font Sizing?
Step 1: Set Up an Initial Relative Font Base Size with CSS
Step 2: Add CSS Relative Font Sizing to the Footer
Step 3: Designating Heading Font Sizes with CSS Relative Sizing
Step 4: Designating a Contrasting Font Family for Visual Interest
Step 5: CSS and Typography
Cross-browser Cross-platform Fonts Testing
More on CSS and Fonts
New and Popular CSS Books
Recommended by WebsiteTips.com
Using relative font sizing allows font size scalability / flexibility by users which is also an important reason why this approach is considered best practice for fonts. Since it provides scalability which means flexibility for visitors at this point relative font sizing designations are far more universally accessible and more user-friendly than absolute font sizing. In fact relative font sizing is recommended by the W3C s Accessibility Guidelines U.S. Section 508 requirements and other accessibility guidelines and requirements. (See More on CSS and Fonts below for resources.)
As you ll see below I use CSS font size keywords for the base font size for footers and main text content while I use em relative units for headings (more on em relative units in Step 3: Designating Heading Font Sizes with CSS Relative Sizing).
The reason I use CSS font keywords for the base font size and elsewhere along with em units for headings is for scalability - flexible font sizing. The font sizes will scale relative to each other if the user increases or decreases font sizes with the browser. In addition this is a user-friendly approach that also happens to meet W3C s WAI Guidelines and U.S. Section 508 requirements too. Using percentages is another way of designating relative font sizing.
I personally find CSS font keywords a little simpler to use than percentages but both approaches can work well when you understand how to work with the cross-browser differences. Font size keywords are based upon the browser default font size while em and % units are based upon the parent element font size and are influenced by the CSS cascade. From CSS Discuss-Wiki Using Keywords:
In modern browsers rendering in Standards Mode body {font-size: medium;} produces text equal in size to the browser default whatever size that may be and equal in size to that from body {font-size: 100%;} and body {font-size: 1em;}. The keywords differ from em and % in that each keyword is always based upon the browser default while em and % are based upon the size of the parent element which is subject to cascade of ancestor sizing.
Internet Explorer 6 in Quirks Mode and earlier Internet Explorer versions treat small rather than medium as the browser default and each of the other keyword sizes correspondingly larger. As a consequence authors using keywords should ensure that their documents are rendered in Standards Mode and understand that early Internet Explorer versions will not size them the same as current browser versions.
Due to their immunity to cascade these keywords are referred to by the [CSS specs] as absolute-size even though they are always relative to the browser default.
At the time of this tutorial (late November 2007) version 4 and version 5 browsers are barely on the radar in Web site stats logs so this tutorial only lightly touches on those old browsers in the section below Cross-browser Cross-platform Fonts Testing.
Tip: Font Size Increases and Site Layouts
What about a site s design breaking if the font size is increased by the user?
Well it s also important to allow for font size increases and decreases with your design and layout too. Test your design and layout by increasing the font size in various browsers. Your design and layout shouldn t break or create unreadable text by increasing the font size at least a couple of notches or possibly more depending on your site s target audience. If it does break or the text becomes unreadable in some way you ll need to make adjustments to the CSS for your layout and possibly make other changes. Planning flexibility and scalability from the start is the way to go. If that isn t the case though you may need to do some retrofitting by reworking some of your CSS and possibly some of the design elements to make them scalable. (These issues are beyond the scope of this tutorial though - maybe that s a good topic for a tutorial to come huh?)
How much text size increasing is reasonable for testing?
You ll undoubtedly get different answers to that. An important consideration should be the visitor needs for a particular website project although we typically don t know whether or not visitors use larger font sizes (an obvious exception of course is if you re building a site specifically about and for the vision impaired). So my own recommendation is to make sure your layout doesn t break and the text is still readable when increased at least 2 or 3 notches in the browser. You might need to test to a greater extreme if you need to build a site that must adhere to U.S. Section 508 or other government or company requirements.
Step 1: Set Up an Initial Relative Font Base Size with CSS
The approach I explain here is one I ve developed revised and used over several years an approach that I ve found to work consistently well regardless of a site s specific design or browser. I don t consider my approach to be the only way to go - rather I consider it as one possible approach of many that can work well cross-browser and cross-platform. It s important to cross-browser test your own project to ensure acceptable results.
First here is the basic HTML without any font styling:
CSS Font Sizing Before We Begin - the Unstyled Web Page. (A separate popup window will open.)
I begin the font declarations in my style sheet by adding the font keyword small to the body element along with the font families using CSS shorthand to combine the rules into one declaration:
body {
font:small Verdana Geneva Arial Helvetica sans-serif;
}
View the results as a live HTML page:
CSS Font Sizing Step 1: Results of Adding the base font size. (A separate popup window will open.)
Step 2: Add CSS Relative Font Sizing to the Footer
After designating the base font sizing I then need to designate only exceptions to that base rule such as headings navigation bars and footers. I typically use smaller text for the footers such as:
#footer {
font-size:x-small;
}
View the results as a live HTML page:
CSS Font Sizing Step 2: Results of Adding the footer font size. (A separate popup window will open.)
top?On this page? menu
Step 3: Designating Heading Font Sizes with CSS Relative Sizing
As mentioned above I prefer to use em relative units for headings. I find the cross-browser cross-platform results to be similar and it s easy to implement. The em relative unit sizing is relative to the CSS font base size designated above in Step 1: Set Up an Initial Relative Font Base Size with CSS.
The W3C explains the em relative unit
The em unit is equal to the computed value of the font-size property of the element on which it is used. The exception is when em occurs in the value of the font-size property itself in which case it refers to the font size of the parent element. It may be used for vertical or horizontal measurement. (This unit is also sometimes called the quad-width in typographic texts.)
Why don t I use font size keywords for headings too? Using em units is much more versatile allowing me to use finer tuning to font sizes than font size keywords which are limited to only seven keywords available: xx-small x-small small medium large x-large and xx-large. Using the em unit for headings along with setting the base font size with the font size keywords is a good combination overall and works well cross-browser.
Here s how I designate em relative units for headings using the example started above:
#content h1 {
font-size:2.50em;
}
#content h2 {
font-size:2.15em;
}
#content h3 {
font-size:1.85em;
}
View the results as a live HTML page:
CSS Font Sizing Step 3: Results of Adding the headings font size. (A separate popup window will open.)
That s basically it! This sets up the very basics for a website project s font sizing needs in a solid way that works well regardless of the site design or browser.
As I develop a new website along with other CSS rules for layout and design I ll then add other font size rules where needed such as navigation and special notes boxes. I always test all along the way - font sizes as well as all other CSS rules. That way it s easy to identify potential problems and fix them immediately.
Tip: Font Sizing Font Families and Colors
Note that I don t necessarily use the exact font sizing shown above for every project. The font size designations vary depending on the Web site project. The h1 heading size is usually the largest and they decrease in size from there.
In addition it s often more visually interesting to use a contrasting font family for headings which you ll see in Step 4: Designating a Contrasting Font Family for Visual Interest below. See also WebsiteTips.com s Web Resources Typography Tutorials Books for lots of great ideas for your site s typography.
Also website designs frequently use different colors for each heading too as shown in Step 5: CSS and Typography below.
Step 4: Designating a Contrasting Font Family for Visual Interest
The above covers the very basics of setting up relative font sizing using CSS. At this point frankly the typography is rather boring since so far I ve used the same font families and same colors (black text white background) for the headings content and footer. CSS makes it easy to create much more interesting typography with your site designs. For starters try a contrasting font family for your headings.
In Step 1: Set Up an Initial Relative Font Base Size with CSS above I designated sans-serif fonts for the body element which is inherited by all the elements within it. For contrast then I could try a serif font for the headings such as:
#content h1 #content h2 #content h3 {
font-family: "Times New Roman" Times serif;
}
View the results as a live HTML page:
CSS Font Sizing Step 4: Results of Adding contrasting font family to headings. (A separate popup window will open.)
Tip: Combine CSS Rules
As you can see above you can combine your CSS rules when they are the same. While this helps shave off some CSS file size I also find it easier to keep CSS rules more consistent such as using the same font family for all the headings.
Tip: Cross-platform Fonts
Keep in mind that not all computers have the same fonts installed and there can be quite a difference between Windows and Mac computers too. If you choose fonts that are similar in style and size to each other within your CSS font families list you ll have more similar cross-platform results. See WebsiteTips.com s section on cross-browser cross-platform fonts Typography Tools Cross-Browser Cross-Platform Font References Information.
Also as you experiment with different font families for those headings you might need to adjust your font sizes a bit too. An h1{font-size:2.0em} font declaration for one font family might be way too big or way too small with a different font family. That s also why I recommend choosing groups of font families with similar characteristics cross-browser and cross-platform.
Step 5: CSS and Typography
For the last step here I ve added some colors and other CSS rules just to give you a small sampling of typography possibilities that are easy to implement using CSS.
For example you can use the CSS text-transform property to ?transform? the text such as: uppercase capitalize or lowercase. That s an especially handy property to use for headings. You can also add spacing between the letters if you wish which can add interesting effects using the CSS letter-spacing property.
In addition you can use CSS margin and padding properties to help visually group text and headings together better. For text within paragraphs and bulleted lists you might also consider adding space above and below each line of text by using the line-height property.
The CSS below shows a possibility for what I consider basic typography with CSS. I ve used all the above mentioned properties - text-transform margin padding line-height as well as colors for each heading.
body {
color:#000;
background:#fffdea;
}
#content h1 {
color:#00331a;
background:transparent;
text-transform:uppercase;
letter-spacing:0.15em;
margin:30px 0 0 0;
padding:0;
}
#content h2 {
color:#b57111;
background:transparent;
margin:10px 0 0 0;
padding:0;
}
#content h3 {
color:#5e2208;
background:transparent;
margin:30px 0 0 0;
padding:0;
}
#content p {
margin:2px 0 20px 0;
padding:0;
line-height:1.65em;
}
View the results as a live HTML page:
CSS Font Sizing Step 5: Results of Adding Typographic Elements with CSS. (A separate popup window will open.)
Another version changing only the CSS:
View the results as a live HTML page:
CSS Font Sizing Step 5: Alternative Results of Adding Typographic Elements with CSS. (A separate popup window will open.)
Those are just basic typographic elements added using CSS. There s plenty more you can do with CSS and typography to make your designs look highly professional. CSS Zen Garden is one example of a multitude of possibilities using the same HTML template. WordPress themes are full of examples using the basic WordPress templates to create totally different looks.
top?On this page? menu
Cross-browser Cross-platform Fonts Testing
In addition to local testing the markup and CSS in this tutorial have been thoroughly tested in the multitude of browsers via BrowserCam.com with several versions of Windows Mac Linux and a multitude of browsers for each OS. The result is quite similar in each browser.
For Netscape 4 and other very old browsers however you might wish to hide the font size designations from them or specify font sizes specifically for old browsers if you must designate font sizes for them for a specific project.
In addition all the markup and CSS is based on W3C Recommendations and validates. No hacks are used.
It s always a good idea to do thorough cross-platform cross-browser testing for Web site development work.
More on CSS and Fonts
Here at Websitetips.com s Articles Tutorials and Tips section:
CSS Tutorials Tips (section homepage)
Converting Existing Content to CSS
Here at WebsiteTips.com s Web Resources section:
Accessibility Tutorials Resources
Accessibility Tutorials Resources Section 508 ADA and Web Sites
Accessibility Tutorials Resources W3C and Web Site Accessibility
CSS Tutorials Resources CSS Fonts CSS Typography
Typography Tutorials Resources Typography Tutorials
Typography Tools Resources Cross-Browser Cross-Platform Font References Information
More on Color
Here at Websitetips.com s Web Resources Color section:
Color Tutorials (Resources on the Web)
Color Charts at WebsiteTips.com
Color Scheme Tools at WebsiteTips.com
Color Blender Color Scheme Tool (up to 10 ?midpoint? blended color shades within your chosen 2 colors)
Colormatch Remix Color Scheme Tool (beautiful harmonizing color schemes with up to 9 eye-catching colors)
Colour Scheme Chooser (monochromatic analogic complementary split complementary triadic and double contrast colour schemes)
Color Charts Color Tools (Resources on the Web)
Books on Typography and Design
Recommended by WebsiteTips.com
by Shirley E. Kaiser M.A. SKDesigns
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What is the difference between Java and HTML?
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The main purpose of HTML is to format text in a readable way while the main purpose of Javais to manipulate data to create complex interactive applications. HTML can be referred to as a web mark-up language. The coding is created with HTML tags however different Browsers interpret HTML differently. HTML is static and has little programming capabilities other than Server Side Includes.
Java is what is called a full-featured development language cthat is used to write stand alone programs. Java is platform neutral which means that it (theoretically) should run under many different operating...
The main purpose of HTML is to format text in a readable way while the main purpose of Javais to manipulate data to create complex interactive applications. HTML can be referred to as a web mark-up language. The coding is created with HTML tags however different Browsers interpret HTML differently. HTML is static and has little programming capabilities other than Server Side Includes.
Java is what is called a full-featured development language cthat is used to write stand alone programs. Java is platform neutral which means that it (theoretically) should run under many different operating environments... such as Windows 95/98 (not earlier) MacOs NT 3.5 (and up) etc.
Java applets (derivative of Java) are small programs that download over the Internet and are viewable by Java-enabled browsers. Again because of Java's cross platform properties applets generally run identically on any browser that is Java-enabled.
To be a lot more creative with some dynamic effects games etc. then Java applets are powerful allies. Since they also work well with Javascript (no relation to Java) you can create some very content-oriented pages. Not all browsers / versions support applets so testing is imperative.
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Multimedia
iPhone Apps Development Advantages For Your Business
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Accessibility and convenience are main keys to help any business succeed. Now Users want anything and everything to be no far away than their fingertips. The tremendously popular iPhone device with it\\\'s seemingly so many options of use have made this device very popular in all age groups.If you are looking an iPhone app developer who can make iPhone apps for your business, then Weblineindia is a perfect decision for you. For business iPhone apps there could be a key factor to adapting their product to the marketplace and for the right audience. As with your business iPhone application advertising,...
Accessibility and convenience are main keys to help any business succeed. Now Users want anything and everything to be no far away than their fingertips. The tremendously popular iPhone device with it\\\'s seemingly so many options of use have made this device very popular in all age groups. If you are looking an iPhone app developer who can make iPhone apps for your business, then Weblineindia is a perfect decision for you. For business iPhone apps there could be a key factor to adapting their product to the marketplace and for the right audience. As with your business iPhone application advertising, keeping your company on the forefront of the minds of users and promoting your business iPhone apps is very important. For the iPhone apps, WeblineIndia\'s iPhone app developers can create an iPhone app that can help keep your company in mind whenever users use their iPhone. Some advantages of Business iPhone Apps Development: Instant satisfaction: Everyone loves to receive fast service. If your company or business has an iPhone app then you are right where the user/customer needs you to be and when they are ready for your product or service. Easy to use: Apps for iPhone which are very easy to use can be more enjoyable. This would make your business app for iphone more desirable to use versus the more traditional methods to develop your products or services. The more enjoyment the user receives in using your business app for iPhone, the better relationship with customers can translate into higher sales and revenue. Attract new customers: In any business, to attract new customers and having them aware of the benefits of your product is the key to producing more sales. With a well developed iPhone app, companies can advertise their service to a growing tech savvy audience. This is an innovative way to present your company to the marketplace and will also help with your company\'s brand recognition. Increase revenue: All businesses are in the making money business. A high skilled iPhone app developer will give you suggestions about iphone apps that they will create for you and that will relate best to your businesscompany OR the product you are selling OR services you are offering. A well designed iphone app can present company with new ways to increase profits and sales with additions to their current products or can introduce many ways to generate revenue from new offerings. Enhance customer experience: Visitors can get benefit from being able to access your company\'s service with very easy way. Your iPhone app can have a feature where a customer user can send a message to your company, day or night from your company business iPhone app keeping the communication lines open is a big benefit for any business relationships. An iPhone app developer can help you and your business succeed with the right iPhone app for you. Weblineindia\'s iPhone developers are highly skilled and experienced in iphone development. Hire iphone developer from Weblineindia and get best iPhone app for your business. Our iPhone development team had made so many iPhone apps for various industries. Have a look on Weblineindia iPhone application Development Portfolio at - http://www.weblineindia.com/our-works/ by: seo.s4i@gmail.com |
5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Website's Legibility
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Websites that make their customers work to read them are not the best way to get business. Miniscule fonts text in colors that make it hard to see against the background color and lines that are piled on top of each other are problems but they're easy to correct. Let's jump right in and look at five easy fixes: 1. Format your text using CSS.Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the way to go - use one style sheet and control how text looks on your entire site. Make a change to the style sheet and your whole site is updated. It makes life a lot simpler. 2. Make the font size big enough to read.Consider...
Websites that make their customers work to read them are not the best way to get business. Miniscule fonts text in colors that make it hard to see against the background color and lines that are piled on top of each other are problems but they're easy to correct. Let's jump right in and look at five easy fixes:
1. Format your text using CSS.
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are the way to go - use one style sheet and control how text looks on your entire site. Make a change to the style sheet and your whole site is updated. It makes life a lot simpler.
2. Make the font size big enough to read.
Consider your target audience. Even if they are a group of teenage girls looking for new shoes it's never a good idea to use tiny type. It doesn't have to be enormous but up to a point larger type is better. 12-pt Verdana is better than 8-pt Verdana.
3. Make the text contrast with its background.
The more contrast the better. Black-on-white or white-on-black are examples of the highest contrast you can get. Use colors if you like but if you squint at the page and your text basically vanishes there's not enough contrast.
4. Give the lines room to breathe.
Don't stack lines on top of each other. Use the line-spacing directive in CSS and give it some space; I'll often set line-spacing to 140% of the height of a typical line.
5. Break text up into chunks.
No matter how good a writer you are people don't want to read endless pages of text. Break it up by using headlines that reflect the subject of the paragraph(s) to follow so people can scan down to the parts that really interest them or use bulleted lists to change the pace of the writing and slow down the scanning.
And finally (not one of the 5 Easy Ways to Improve Legibility but still quite important) check your spelling. Nothing irritates me more on a web page than spelling errors - it simply makes you look like you don't care enough to get it right. Use that ubiquitous spellcheck tool.
Making your website's content more legible is easy. It doesn't take a lot of time mainly common sense. The payoff will be text that's more readable customers that stick around long enough to get your message and improved credibility with your visitors.
Copyright 2006 Debbie Campbell
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7 Website Design Mistakes to Avoid
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1. Not planning your website
Before you start creating your website design you must know and be very clear about your purposes and goals for your website.
* Who your website is intended for* What benefits can your website give to the intended group* What you want the intended group to do as a result of visiting your website
Only with a well-defined purposes and goals then you can clearly and directly convey your message to your intended group through your website.
2. Using too many colors and font styles
Keep your website design to no more than 3 colors and font styles. Using too...
1. Not planning your website
Before you start creating your website design you must know and be very clear about your purposes and goals for your website.
* Who your website is intended for
* What benefits can your website give to the intended group
* What you want the intended group to do as a result of visiting your website
Only with a well-defined purposes and goals then you can clearly and directly convey your message to your intended group through your website.
2. Using too many colors and font styles
Keep your website design to no more than 3 colors and font styles. Using too many colors and font styles confuse your website visitors.
Think through these:
* How long would a confuse visitor stay in your website?
* What is the chance of this visitor returning to your website?
* Will this visitor recommend your website to his friends?
Your website design has to be pleasant to the eyes of your visitors to keep them surfing in your website.
3. Contact information not placed in an easily seen location
The 100% safe way is to use a ?contact us? button. The ?contact us? button is used so commonly that hardly any visitor can miss it. Place the ?contact us? button on all your web pages. If you are selling offer your visitors multiple ways to connect to connect to you at their convenience.
* Through phone
* Through email
* Through on-line support
* Your office address
4. Information out of date
When your visitors see any out of date information in your website it reflects poorly on you. Your website is a direct reflection of you and your credibility. When they see your website as good they are inclined to trust your website.
Every single bit of information counts. Always update your website promptly whenever information changes. Do not run the risk of losing the trust of your visitors unnecessary.
5. Broken Links
Broken links is a hyperlink that leads to web page that does not exist. In most cases when you click a broken link you will see the Error 404 page.
Test-run your website and fix-up any broken links. When you do an update to your website test-check your website to ensure all links works.
6. Orphan Pages
Orphan pages are web pages with no links pointing to them.
One quick and easy way to solve this problem is to put a link to ?Home? on all your web pages.
7. Slow loading times
Do not overload your website with images and applets. Not only does it slow down your web pages loading time it turns away your visitors.
Source : Tips & Tricks: Website Design tips & mistakes
Posted by David Parker at
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Stupid HTML Email Design Mistakes
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Ben Chestnut make focus of web Designers at silly design mistakes when they try to create HTML emails.
Mistake #1: Not designing for preview panesMistake #2: Assuming images will workMistake #3: Too many images not enough textMistake #4: Not testing in different email programsMistake #5: Neglecting your footerMistake #6: Too fancy-schmancy
He also give Tips to deal with these Design mistakes.Read at HTML Email Design Mistakes. Web designer need to pay special attention to the tips Ben gives to avoid each of these mistakes.
By David Parker
Ben Chestnut make focus of web Designers at silly design mistakes when they try to create HTML emails.
Mistake #1: Not designing for preview panes
Mistake #2: Assuming images will work
Mistake #3: Too many images not enough text
Mistake #4: Not testing in different email programs
Mistake #5: Neglecting your footer
Mistake #6: Too fancy-schmancy
He also give Tips to deal with these Design mistakes.
Read at HTML Email Design Mistakes. Web designer need to pay special attention to the tips Ben gives to avoid each of these mistakes.
By David Parker
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Ten Tips on Writing for the Web
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1.Use CSS to set your text at 10 or 12px which is an optimum size for readability.
2.Use sans-serif text such as Verdana Arial and Helvetica. You can specify "Verdana Arial Helvetica sans-serif." as your font in CSS.
3.The maximum width for easy reading is 400 - 440 pixels. Use tables or CSS to control this.
4.Use absolute control of the width of the text columns. Set them so the lines of type run around 10 to 12 words per line.
5.Black text on a white ground is the easiest reading. Other colors tend to blur the text slightly because of anti-aliasing. However a stark white...
1.Use CSS to set your text at 10 or 12px which is an optimum size for readability.
2.Use sans-serif text such as Verdana Arial and Helvetica. You can specify "Verdana Arial Helvetica sans-serif." as your font in CSS.
3.The maximum width for easy reading is 400 - 440 pixels. Use tables or CSS to control this.
4.Use absolute control of the width of the text columns. Set them so the lines of type run around 10 to 12 words per line.
5.Black text on a white ground is the easiest reading. Other colors tend to blur the text slightly because of anti-aliasing. However a stark white background is hard on the eyes. Use an off-white (a very light grey) or an eggshell blue colored tile for your background. If you prefer to set a color try pale khaki CCCC99
6.To relieve the denseness of continuous type use headlines and subheads. Use bold ONLY for emphasis such as in subheads. Text all in bold is fatiguing to read because the blackness of the letters begins leaving shadow trails. It is also confusing to text readers.
7.Add photos and illustrations to illuminate passages. Make sure you put a minimum of 20px space around your graphics to give them some breathing room.
8.Information is more easily retained in "clusters" which equal about a screen full in length at a time and then broken by some type of graphic or change in structure. The change in structure could be no more than a bolded topic header or a drop cap or even the equivalent of a side bar with some information in it.
9.To relieve the monotony of text pull out a paragraph to use as a
side bar. Or put a short description into a box with a link to "more"
10.Use bullets to
::reduce wasted space
::create visual interest
::make information easier to understand and absorb
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Top Tips for Web Design
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Content is King. The most important thing to remember about popular web sites is that they are always rich in content. Stick to your subject. Don't try to be all things to all people. Keep your goal in mind. Creating a web site is challenging and fun. The temptation to put as many bells and whistles as you can on a page is almost overwhelming. But unless your site is involved with bells and whistles don't do it! The purpose of designing a site carefully is not to make it look cool or win awards. It's to accomplish the intended goal of the site. It's a good idea to write down the goal of...
Content is King. The most important thing to remember about popular web sites is that they are always rich in content.
Stick to your subject. Don't try to be all things to all people. Keep your goal in mind. Creating a web site is challenging and fun. The temptation to put as many bells and whistles as you can on a page is almost overwhelming. But unless your site is involved with bells and whistles don't do it! The purpose of designing a site carefully is not to make it look cool or win awards. It's to accomplish the intended goal of the site. It's a good idea to write down the goal of your the site before starting any design work. It will help you make design designs for the site as a whole.
First impressions count! Think about the message you are sending to your customer. The first page of your web site should be a concise description of the website. Don't make this page too busy - entice visitors to dig deeper into your site through the use of inviting text and interesting graphics. If you are serious about your business buy your own domain name and don't use a "free" hosting service.
Design sites not pages. Your primary concern should be the site's overall design. When starting to design a new site from scratch you should try to create a design that will make sense to users has a consistent look and feel and is not to difficult to extend in the future. The consistency of design of a site is one of the factors that differentiates amateur sites from professional ones.
Make it easy to get around your site. Your customer should be able to easily navigate to any page in your web from any page in your page. It's important to link in a consistent well thought out manner that users can learn to navigate. Have clear links to your pages and if are selling a product make it easy for people to buy it! Show your business name address phone number and E-mail address on each an every page. Invite customers to contact you with their questions or comments. Add links to other sites only when necessary or on a special links page at the end of your site. You want visitors to go through your site before surfing off to another!
View your site through the eyes of a stranger. Once you have completed you site outline view it in other browsers. Does it look like you wanted it to look?
Don't forget to tell the world about your new site. Make sure that your URL is on all your company business cards letter heads brochures phone systems etc. Swap links with other related web sites and consider banner advertising. List your site with the major search engines but read their rules of submission first!
Keep your site current. Come up with a reason for people to visit and revisit your pages and recommend them to their friends. This could be a series of articles giving tips a daily cartoon or other attention catching event. The words most likely to attract visitors are: Free and Special. Be sure you offer something of value if you uses these words!
Survey says... Ask users about your site. Create a survey and give a reward for responding. Ask friends to check out the site then grill them on what they thought about it. This can be valuable input on what improvements are needed. Often users can be thrown by things a designer might never see as a problem. Don't ever stop looking for ways to improve your website. Subscribe to professional E-zines and keep surfing the web doing market research. What are your competitors doing better? Ask for feedback from your friends relatives and customers. They will often see things with fresh eyes.
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CRM
People and CRM
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A well implemented CRM strategy will ensure that you align your employees to your vision of customer centric module. Whether you are building a customer knowledge infrastructure, developing new customer experiences, automating your sales force, or deploying new direct marketing systems, this approach ensures that the resulting new processes deliver the right results. And by addressing your employees\' concerns early on in the process, you are also ensuring that they change alongside the company, and that the resulting sense of pride and mission is communicated to customers whenever employees interact...
A well implemented CRM strategy will ensure that you align your employees to your vision of customer centric module. Whether you are building a customer knowledge infrastructure, developing new customer experiences, automating your sales force, or deploying new direct marketing systems, this approach ensures that the resulting new processes deliver the right results. And by addressing your employees\' concerns early on in the process, you are also ensuring that they change alongside the company, and that the resulting sense of pride and mission is communicated to customers whenever employees interact with them. The Benefits of Effective CRM - Reduced operational costs
- Increase customer satisfaction and the service encounter
- Expand the target market and attract new partners
- Increase the number of opportunities and develop additional streams of revenue
- Acquire a greater degree of information about the market and competitors
- Long term gains of profitability and sustainable income
- Provides additional room for an organisation to move forward and innovate new ideas and concepts
- An effective CRM facility will highlight all the areas of inefficiency and what operational procedures need to be updated and modified
- Provides a strategic element to service interactions
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