A List of Free and Useful Websites

With millions of users all over the world, the Internet has become the source for complete and reliable information. It is undeniable that there is nothing you cannot find by browsing the web - whether about science, economy, or entertainment. And since the Internet is considered to be the BEST in information resource, we have provided a list of free and useful websites that you can have access on with ease.


   1.      Instructables.com – a website that offers step by step instructions for do it yourself projects. This is a web-based documentation platform where passionate people share what they do and how they do it, and learn from and collaborate with others.


   2.      Piknik.com – a fast, easy, and fun photo editing site that makes your pictures fabulous. Tweak to your heart’s content, then get creative with oodles of effects, fonts, shapes, and frames.


   3.      Yelp.com – provides you with a fun and easy way to find and talk about great local businesses.


   4.      OpenTable.com - a leading provider of free and real-time online restaurant reservations for diners and reservation and guest management solutions for restaurants.


   5.      Supercook.com – a new search engine that offers great recipes you can make with only the ingredients you have at home.


   6.      BabyDogNames.com – A good source for cool puppy names. This website also provides you with helpful tips on taking care of your new puppy dog and showcase many different dog breeds. Look for dog articles full of friendly advise for your best friend.


   7.      Flightstats.com – provides worldwide flight on-time performance information to the global travel and transportation industries. Also shows which cities are currently experiencing airport delays.


   8.      Gasbuddy.com – helps you find cheap gas prices in your city. In total, they have 243 websites to help you find low gasoline prices.


   9.      Space.com - the world's No. 1 source for news of astronomy, skywatching, space exploration, commercial spaceflight and related technologies.


  10.      Alexa.com – see a website's ranking using this tool. Websites are ranked based on their popularity, and Alexa publishes the three-month trend allowing users to see which websites are growing of late. The lower a site is ranked, the better.


  11.      Clicker.com - a free website that offers a simple way to find, share & watch TV online.

  12.      Wikipedia – An online encyclopedia that is renowned as the 7th most visited educational website.


  13.      TaxiFareFinder.com - calculates how much your cab fare may cost in your city. Just type in the addresses and go!


  14.      Freecycle.org - promotes waste reduction by matching up a person who wants to throw something out with someone who has a need for the item.


  15.      Mint.com – a website that connects to almost every US banking financial institution with internet banking capability, from checking to credit cards, to retirement accounts and more. Access all your balances and transactions together, on the web or your phone.


These were only few of the useful websites which you can access for free. Better head on to these pages and see how they can quench your thirst for information.

A Search Engine Friendly Web Design

Many often asks, what are the importance of having a search engine friendly web design? Some web design experts over-looked at this matter. For them, creating an eye-catching web page is enough in order for them to satisfy their clients. But on the real world, having a web design alone is never enough if you really want to achieve high ranking in Google, Yahoo, and Bing.

If you won't focus on making your web page a search engine friendly one, you are only getting a good volume of traffic but with a poor conversion rate. Always bear in mind that search engine friendly design is a complex issue.

In order for you to come up with this aim, you must incorporate some SEO or Search Engine Optimization strategies. SEO is a tool to optimize a website for the commercial web search engines, but it doesn't just ends here. SEO is actually optimizing a site for people who use search engines, and this includes both web search engines and site search engines. Likewise, search engine friendly design is not only designing a website for the commercial web search engines. Search-engine friendly design is actually designing a website for people who use search engines.

In other words, a search-engine friendly web design is believed as a design and coding philosophy that allows the creation of a website that will not only appeal to the consumer or end user, but also be structured in a fashion that search engines can easily index. Actually there are numerous benefits of designing your website to be search engine friendly. This will set a strong foundation for your website to achieve a higher ranking in the search engine organic results, generating more traffic, and at the same time having a professional and strong appearance.

When analyzing a website for search engine friendliness, one thing that most SEO experts look at is the perceived visual affordance or Clickability. Clickability is said to be a key element of search-engine friendly website design. It explains that all links on a website and individual web pages should look click-able from the perspective of searchers/users.

The idea of having a search engine strategy does not only make sense, it is becoming a need to all amateurs and professionals in the industry of web designing. Remember that having a compelling content and right keywords are not enough. The density of keywords, the proper coding techniques, meta tags, header tags and placement, all play a crucial role in your search engine success – along with having a search engine friendly website design.

Making Money with Web Hosting

Who among us would not want to earn money. Even business owners are taking their chances online just to make a living. So it's no wonder why almost all activities on the web were grabbed by a wide range of individuals and businesses looking to put more cash in their pockets. And if you're searching for nothing but the best, web hosting could be your ticket to success!

Web hosting is probably the basis of all web sites. It helps us attract visitors, it displays what we are desperately trying to get across, and it allows us to survive in the competitive world of internet. A good step to make your way into this industry is through the Reseller Hosting Service.

Reseller hosting is a new fad in the web hosting market where individuals like you and I can become web hosts. Meaning, we can sell web hosting without having to buy all the things that goes along with setting up a business.

This type of hosting works in a very simple way. It allows you to purchase a web hosting package and then resell it for a higher price or at any price you want. So can you imagine how big money reseller hosting can give you? By increasing the resell price, one can easily make money. It may look difficult but for a person who wants to do this, all they need is to have a large amount of space to offer. Reseller hosting can start for as little as $20 a month. That means you can have a full featured web hosting business without any major start up costs.

You might be wondering as how you can resell the web hosting package that you've purchased. Well of course you have to do some networking thing. Building your own web hosting website could be the best way if you want to earn high in this kind of profession.

Finding a forum or websites that are similar to yours are great choices as well. These areas are populated with thousands of interested clients, which can turn into your clients. But if this was not good enough for your reselling job, you can advertise through blogs and buy text link ads which many website owners usually do.

Also, you could even start marketing in a local newspaper or a newsletter that goes out to professional companies who are always looking for alternatives. Nevertheless, there are plenty of consumers out there. You just need to be creative and put in the effort, in order to get anywhere.

Bear in mind that providing excellent customer service at affordable rates is a must. The better you are able to market your site and position yourself as a reliable, trustworthy expert in your field, the more clients you will find lining up to use your service, especially once you top it off with high quality service. Once you begin reading more about the web hosting business and learn how others are making a profit, you may feel more comfortable in your ability to do the same.

WickedInnovations offers the best web site development services, visit their main site at www.wickedinnovations.com

The Basics of Building Websites

Before implementing different techniques in promoting your products and services via the Internet, you should first create your own business website. Actually, building a website is not that difficult once you know how to do it. Read this blog more further and get knowledgeable on how to build a website.

You can start creating your website from planning its content. It is believed that the site content is not only an important part of your page, it is also the initial phase of building a successful high-potential website. If you don't have sufficient knowledge on writing a page content, it is then advisable to hire a good content writer who has the ability to find and incorporate the correct keywords for your website. Once you have finished your content, choose the most profitable website concept for you by analyzing and using the competition.

Of course, having a website alone is not enough. You must make it properly optimized through a plan called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. This strategy will ensure that your web pages are accessible to search engines and are focused in ways that help improve the chances they will be found. However, don't expect that your new website will be indexed immediately to search engines especially if they don't find it friendly. Thus, it is preferable to give your site a strong and eye-catching website design. Remember that your web design is a reflection of your business, the quality of your product. The best web site design includes informative content, simple layout, easy navigation and fast loading graphics. It allows users to search for and locate the information they desire in the quickest and most convenient manner possible.

Taking note of the graphics, web designers believe it to be as important as the content of your website. Good graphics can give your visitors or customers a creative idea of what they are looking at. Designing graphics is not only important, but their position in the website mostly decides the success or failure of your business.

Furthermore, bear in mind that the use of HTML codes were also useful in building high-quality web pages. HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and is the main programming language that makes the Web. HTML files are plain text files with special "tags" or HTML codes that a Web browser knows how to interpret and display on your screen.

Before putting an end in your web building process, don't forget to select a unique domain name for your site. Selecting a domain name is perhaps a vital step in the entire process of website building. Having your own domain instead of an extension of someone else's, gives your site better credibility, recognition, and visibility with the search engines and directories.

Building your own web site is becoming more easier with the rise of different tools. Knowing how to build a website and develop information on the Web might be a business necessity or a job skill allowing you to potentially connect with millions of people.

10 Tools for Usability Testing

You alone can never assume that your website carries all the goodness and professionalism, unless your visitors said it so. Developing a site does not circulate with only one opinion, thus, it needs different feedback in order to get properly optimized. This is where usability testing comes in.

Like in everything we do, we cannot expect to have a “close to perfection” results at the first time. Of course, we need to do it over and over again just to make ourselves satisfied. In the part of your website, it needs testing as well. Web developers and designers, although skilled and talented, cannot produce the best web pages without knowing the side of their users. Indeed, getting and implementing a user's feedback is vital in building a strong business. There are many great options to perform quick and easy usability tests using a variety of online tools. Here are ten of them:

1. USERTESTING.COM – With UserTesting.com, users, speaking their thoughts as they browse, will have their screens and voices recorded. The resulting videos will immediately be made available online for the website owners to watch.

2. FEEDBACK ARMY – a usability testing tool that is guaranteed cheap and simple. Feedback Army charges a flat $15 for 10 reviewers to answer 4-6 questions on a given URL. The difference of this tool from Usertesting.com is that you are not allowed to select your audience demographics, only simple text answers to your given questions.

3. USERFLY – Userfly.com allows you to watch videos of your real users. It records the user's visits and letting you play them back to see every mouse movements, click, and form interaction. You can replay the exact session they had on your site to better understand what they did and why they did it.

4. CONCEPT FEEDBACK – this tool makes usability testing easy in three steps. First, post your website. Second is to get feedback from the experts. And lastly, share your
   website evaluation with your team or client.

5. CLICKTALE – a usability testing tool that is similar to Userfly.com. It lets you watch the actual browsing behavior done by your visitor - from mouse movements to keystrokes.

6. CLIXPY - a web usability testing tool that is very easy to install. When users browse your website Clixpy traces everything they do and then plays it for you, giving you the opportunity to extract any information you may need.

7. CRAZY EGG – crazy egg is a tool for usability testing that lets you discover exactly how visitors are using your website – then optimize it to increase your conversion rate.

8. FENG-GUI – Feng Gui is probably the most interesting among all the tools. It “simulates human vision during the first 5 seconds of exposure to visuals, and creates heat maps based on an algorithm that predicts what a real human would be most likely to look at.”

9. FIVE SECOND TEST - Fivesecondtest works by enabling your testers to have five seconds in viewing your image and then must answer the questions you have set.

10. SILVER BACK - a program that records all on-screen actions performed by the user as well as video capture of the users’ face, which provides additional clues to user behavior.

Accelerating SEO strategies with Social Media

Social media does not only stand as a hobby for most Internet people, it also serves as a great standalone strategy for online marketing and even SEO. Let's just depend on the fact that social media marketing has been so widely adopted by those SEO experts due to the massive impact that social media has given directly on search engine listings.

There are actually 3 types of social media. The first one is the owned media, wherein the advertiser owns it to have a brand controlled, cost effective, and longevity strategy. Examples of this are your websites, Twitter accounts and Facebook accounts. The second type is the paid media where the advertiser pays a third party to use the channel. And the last type of social media is the earned media. As explained by Covario's Arnel Leyna, SEO and social media are the new "earned media." Earned media is most effective at the top of the funnel (for awareness, opinion and consideration), which supports and drives PPC media further down the funnel.

Making the most out of combining SEO strategies with social media marketing tactics can be a daunting yet overwhelming task. One should initially identify its target audience before performing the said agenda. After all, targeting your market will serve as a strategy that sets the stage for the tactics you’ll use to execute your game plan.  Read on to get a better understanding of how SEO and social media complement each other.

From a marketing standpoint, you can look at the benefits of SEO and social media two different ways. First, a social media marketing program cannot be implemented without an optimized content. This is a waste of  time and money. Perhaps useful social content such as blog, video, images, and audio, that cannot be discovered via search is a lost opportunity to reach an audience that is looking. Second, implementing SEO programs without leveraging the content distribution and linking benefits of social web participation makes link building for SEO a never-ending battle.  The nature of the social web encourages participation.

Although few people agrees that SEO and social media has different benefits, the two do have an impact on each other. As stated by Teddie Cowell, SEO director, "There is a very strong relationship between search engine marketing and social media. Anything that raises awareness of a brand or particular website, such that it encourages people to search specifically for the brand or website, or increases the probability that a searcher might select that brand or particular website over another within a search engine results page (SERP), is always good for search engine marketing”.

Social Media had really created a reason that made search engine optimization easy to apply. It's that, it just depends on how we will use it and what actions we will do to benefit from the two as a whole.

The Basics of Blogging

Have you heard that blogging acts as an effective marketing strategy for both website promotion and search engine optimization perspective? Blogging is arguably the simplest way to drive traffic to your website. In fact, it's a part of the marketing strategy used by most online entrepreneurs. Blogging is powerful yet easy to do. Whether you're familiar with blogs or not, do understand that they are the key factors in your online marketing.

A blog is an abbreviated version of "weblog," which is a term used to describe websites that maintain an ongoing chronicle of information. A blog features diary-type commentary and links to articles on other Web sites, usually presented as a list of entries in reverse chronological order. As defined in Blogger.com, "A blog is a personal diary. A daily pulpit. A collaborative space. A political soapbox. A breaking-news outlet. A collection of links. Your own private thoughts. Memos to the world."

One important factor to keep in mind when writing your own blog is to make sure that each individual posts can stand alone by offering valuable content.  This will help your SEO efforts in many, different ways. First, you'll be adding relevant, keyword-rich content to your blog. Secondly, people will be more inclined to link to your blog if it offers value. This will improve your link popularity, which in turn will boost your search engine rankings.

Blogging, as we all know, carries a wide array of benefits that may not only promote your online business but can add up to your SEO strategies also. Here are some of them:

Blogs can do many things that can help your website to earn high search engine ranking. In most cases, blogs can achieve solid ranking faster than regular websites. A blog is easier to publish than a regular website, so you can post content to it more often.

Blogging is a great way to keep in touch with your customers. People like to see new and updated content when they are looking into an opportunity or business.

Blogging is free! Thus, making it a very budget-friendly method when it comes to online marketing.

Blogs make a great contribution in link building.

It allows traffic from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

A blog is ideal for long tail search terms and long tail rankings.

Fresh contents are needed for updating your blogs. That means your site will be crawled more often by search engines and your content will be seen as having a higher quality as well.

Comments and track backs in blogs encourage interaction.

Marketing your online business through blogging is not as easy as you think. It demands a little patience, time, and hard work.

Tips on How to Start Your Career on Web Designing

Isn't it time to learn some tips on how to make and start your career on creating a web design on your own?

In web designing, we all apperceive that Adobe’s Dreamweaver and Flash are some of the best  and most essential tools by abounding webmasters to productively make a different, attractive, easily accessible and functional website. There a lot of tools that most webmasters are using. Here, design is very important. Design is the action of selecting the appearance and the layout of a site. The focus is not only aloof on appearance, it’s additionally on function. You also have to choose appropriate colors and images in relation to the site's theme.When making a design consider these following tips:

• Make sure each page in your website has something valuable to offer. It must provide compelling content or something useful or interesting to visitors, If you don't have that then you should rectify the problem before worrying how  to present it.

• Don't divert your audience with blinking or scrolling text, animated GIFs, or auto-loading sounds. Having this makes a visitor annoyed and distracted. How can they concentrate reading your site when there are some flying objects around the page that bothers them?Another problem is that a reader can't read the scrolling text clearly if they don't have any freedom to scroll them on their own pace instead they are forced to read the text at whatever speed you assigned it. In that situation, your visitor will read only two sentences then leave. That is why always keep your visitor's interest in mind.

• Do not upset your audience with pop-up windows. Nobody likes pop-up. I don't like pop-up either since it really disturbs me when I'm busy working. The reason why site owners have pop-up is because of their own self interest but suddenly when an idea cross into my mind. I pause and think, what if the reader and site owner did switch situation? Do site owners or do readers have to do the same thing? That is why I realize, always remember to put ourselves in their place and try to be considerate to others.

• Image backgrounds yell incompetent, because only sloppy sites that used them. Another reason why backgrounds yell low quality is because sites that use them are frequently treating their user aggressively in many other ways as well and also having an image as a background makes a page to load slowly. That is why you must put good, easy to load background to attract users.

• Make it easy to find stuff like putting some thought of organization, minimizing the number of clicks, put a limitation to the page length for articles. Do not forget to put the home page on every page so that the user won't get lost and also include menus on every page of the site.

• Don't flood your websites with some flashy multimedia and uncompressed image files.

• Make sure that your site is graspable, easy to read and the links must be properly anchored or assigned.

Make sure that you have to place your contact information on your site so that the user can easily access you if they need assistance, or if they are having a problem with the navigation. Always assure that the design you made is working well online.

Website Optimization: The Key to High Rankings

Millions of companies, including yours, were creating their own websites online with the purpose of reaching the target market all over the world. And for you to achieve this goal, you must ensure that your website is fully optimized for the search engines.

Search engines tend to be a free source of targeted quality traffic, and understanding how they work should be a top priority for any marketer with a Web presence. You can spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on advertising, but the search engines can give your site massive amounts of traffic for free.

Optimization of your website solves your problem of making lot of efforts to invite potential customers on your website. Basically your website should adopt various SEO (Search Engine Optimzation) tactics in order for it to become more search engine friendly. Techniques such as marketing, link building, keyword optimization, content writing and traffic building.

HOW TO CAPTURE THE EYES OF SEARCH ENGINES

1.You must first create a well designed site and establish a unique marketing strategy. It would be best if the website is attractive and complementary to the company profile and it gives the audience the information that is targeted to the products, services the company provides.

2.Next, is to get your title tags right. Title tags should accurately describe the web page’s content; or if it is the homepage, then the title tag should describe what the site is all about. Title tags are very important, and factor greatly in the ranking of the websites in the search engines.

3.Another factor which is to be considered important is the content of the articles released on the website. To make your content work you should provide quality to your content for your online users. The content quality can be improvised with the support of experienced and skillful content writers. It is very much necessary for every website to update the content regularly so that the attention of the user does not move your website to any other website.

4.Optimize your website by choosing the proper keywords. Keywords are said to be the back bone for every website to gain high rated ranking on the search engine’s list as the online users prefer to navigate the websites which holds reputed rank. You should choose the keywords according to the methods of SEO.

5.There are also other techniques that were essential for optimizing a website. Such as, submitting articles with one-way links; reciprocal link exchanging; directory submissions; blog posting; RSS feeds submission; and particpation in forums and social media.

When you are running a Web development business, you need to at least have a basic understanding of search engine marketing and web optimization. And take in mind that there is no secret trick to achieve a high site ranking or success on the search engines - it takes patience, time, and hard work.

Improving the Customer Experience on Your Web Site

Search Engine optimization and web design alone were not enough if you want to successfully improve your website and make it more easier to navigate. In terms of enhancing your current web page, customer experience is one of the aspects in Web development that often gets lost somewhere between the HTML and the FTP.

For most web developers, retaining their costumers or visitors isn't an easy job. One must need to constantly prioritize and refocus the customer retention strategies. Based on a study conducted in 2007, only 50% of the study group of employees from different companies was loyal to brands marketed by the companies they were working for. Given this fact, it's not alarming to think that not many customers would stick to the same products either.

In a report, "Why Web Sites Fail," analyst group Forester Research said that every customer who has a bad experience on a Web site tells 10 other people about it. And according to consulting firm Creative Good, you can kiss frustrated customers goodbye. In one of its e-commerce surveys, Creative Good found that 62% of online shoppers have given up at least once while looking for products on a Web site. And 42% of those shoppers actually abandoned the Internet and made their purchases through traditional retail channels.

Of course, once visitors come to shop at your online business store, you want them to have that smooth, risk-free experience. Actually it's not the big issues that cause the problem; it's the little things that make or break their shopping experience. As we all know, the more you improve the overall customer experience on your Web site, the more you'll improve your order-conversion rate, the metric used to describe the rate at which Web-store visitors become paying customers.

As we'll notice, there are several factors that affects the costumer's experience. That is why we've provided few things that you can do to make your Web site more customer-friendly.

• Most visitors prefer using the search tool. That's why a good search tool is essential. A good search tool for ecommerce websites should include the capability to use Boolean search terms such as "blue and pillowcase" to match only blue pillowcases or "comforter or duvet" to match either comforter or duvet.

• Also, being able to search within a set of search results will also help a potential purchaser whittle down a large number of search results to something more manageable without having to perform a new search.

• In some cases bracketing prices and displaying products within ranges such as less than $10, $10-$20 and so on, works better.

• Try showing the number of user reviews, popularity, the star rating, by brand or sorting the products by name in alphabetical order ascending and descending. The more opportunity you give your customers to sort the data in the order that they're most interested in seeing, the better service you provide them.

• When displaying search and filtered results, it helps to provide options in the number of matching items that can be displayed per page.

• Don't limit your customers' options by categorizing products in just one way.

• Avoid having categories that result in only one or two results. Instead, opt to use broader categories that encompass a larger number of products so you give customers more results to choose from.

• Always provide a clickable breadcrumb trail that shows visitors exactly where they are in your site as they search for products.

• Give customers a detailed production descriptions, provide plenty of photographs and, if you're selling products where size is a factor, then give them information about sizing such as how generous or otherwise a size is.

• Also tell them if the product is available now and, if it is on backorder, when it should ship.

Simple changes to your website search, navigation, product descriptions and checkout process can increase conversion rates and result in customers who love your site rather than tolerate its inadequacies or worse, shop elsewhere.

The Importance of Logo and Web Design in Online Marketing

Among many elements of a successful online business, it is the logo and the web design that plays the most important role. If you want your website to excel high in search engines, you must therefore provide an eye-catching web image and a brand logo. Why? Well basically an online business has a greater chance for success if those visitors and consumers recognize its brand logo. It will also make a business's site more attractive to potential advertisers and partners.

Moreover, a serious online business person should also consider preparing a website that is highly-designed, attractive, easy to navigate, reliable content, informative, and are capable of getting visitors for long and make them come back again.


IMPORTANCE OF BRAND LOGO
When we think of a large business, one of the things that will come to our mind is their logo. Like any other companies, the logo serves as the brand's cornerstone. The company's identity is visually expressed through its logo, which, along the company's name, is the main thing that makes the business unforgettable.

Logo, as defined, is the smallest and the shortest form to convey the identity, thoughts, vision, and intentions of a person, or a corporate. This could be used by social groups or organizations to express their ideas, or views on different social aspects. Logo’s can also be used by a group of educationist, trying to promote physical sciences, social sciences, historical interpretation/facts, geographical facts, and many other educational fields with a view to spread knowledge among the people interested in that area. Logos can be as simple as text to a very nice, cool and hip design.

For most companies, logo designs were very essential for it represents the business' image. The name of your company and its logo are the first thing that people see, so you should really put high emphasis on these. It is a big representation of your company. Logos must reflect very well what company does, services that provides and the image the business they want to represent. The entire company brief should be reflected in one single image named logo.


IMPORTANCE OF WEB DESIGN
Research shows that people creates opinions about the look of your website in 1/20th of a second. The aesthetic of your design is thus an important factor in the success of your website and online business.

A web design is the skill of creating presentations of the page's content that are delivered to the  internet users. The intent of web design is to create a website - a collection of electronic documents and applications that reside on a Web servers. The website may include text, images, sounds and other content, and may be interactive.

Based on this description, we can conclude that a website with less visual details will not possibly make it over the Internet because visitors will not stay long enough at boring and lifeless web pages. Having a visually appealing website will probably get and keep the user's attention - this plays an important role for online business owners. In addition, the design should highly depend on the function of the website. If you're deciding to hire a designer, make sure that he understands your goals fully well.

Testing Tools for Cross-Browser Compatibility

It is a fact that many people today are using different web browsers when surfing for information in the internet. And as a web designer and/or developer, it is your role to ensure that the web pages you've created are compatible for most of the commonly used browsers these days. The term used for describing this kind of work is the “Cross-browser Compatibility”.

Cross-browser Compatibility is defined as all critical elements of a website, web application, HTML construct or client-side script  being viewable in a particular browser. Due to the broadening of the browser market today, the cross-browser compatibility method claims that a website should support browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari in addition to Internet Explorer and Netscape.

Since this compatibility is in demand for web developers like you, here are some useful tools that will help you in testing and fixing cross-browser compatibility.


CROSSBROWSERTESTING.COM

This online site serves as a browser test center wherein you can check your website's cross browser compatibility. The site offers live testing configurations which allow you to test your website live via your browser and remote VNC sessions. And you can also interactively test your ajax, javascript, and flash on all operating systems. Moreover, with Cross Browser Testing, you can check your website's design across every browser.

The site is a huge time saver as well, for it reduces the wait time when requesting a Windows XP, Vista, or Win 7 configuration from around 60 seconds to less than 30 seconds.


BROWSER SHOTS

Browsershots is a free open-source online web application that tests your website's compatibility on different browsers by taking screenshots of your web pages rendered by real browsers on different operating systems. Once you submit your site, a number of distributed computers will open your website in their browser. Then they will make screenshots and upload them to Browsershots' central dedicated servers for review.


BROWSER LAB
Browser Lab is an easier and faster way to do cross- browser testing that integrates with Creative Suite 5 or CS5. By using this tool, you can: fully preview your web pages across multiple browsers and operating systems; quickly and accurately test the web content with powerful diagnostic tools; save money with an online testing lab vs. dedicated testing hardware; and you can launch BrowserLab directly in Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 to help avoid testing disruptions.

With Browser Lab, you can enjoy an always available, up-to-date testing lab without the hassle of maintenance or local upgrades.


SPOON BROWSER SANDBOX

This tool enables you to run several web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera without any installation. The Browser Sandbox is a great resource for Web developers and IT managers interested in testing upcoming Web browsers and technologies without the problems associated with installing a new browser on their desktop.

BROWSRCAMP

Browsrcamp allows you to test the compatibility of your design with Mac OS X browsers. Through this tool, web developers and designers can take control over a Mac OS X system pre-configured with all the Mac browsers. Browsrcamp is supposedly the easiest way to test every aspect of your website on Mac, including Javascript, DHTML, Ajax, and Flash.


LITMUSAPP

The Litmus application allows you to preview your campaigns across 34 email clients and devices in minutes. It will provide you screenshots of your email newsletter as it looks around all major email clients, therefore serves as a comprehensive pre-flight check for every campaign. Also, Litmus can see your email on the most popular mobile devices. It even lets you scroll your email on the device.

LitmusApp is the only service in the world to provide cross-browser landing page and website testing in addition to email previews.


ANYBROWSER SITEVIEWER

In some cases, web designers may have put a lot of time and effort in creating their websites, but that effort is wasted if majority of the Internet users are unable to view it. Some sites are even not usable at all by some users. That is why the AnyBrowser Site Viewer was created. This tool enables you to view your own site as your visitors do.

The tool lets you see HTML pages in different screen sizes. You can move from link to link viewing pages as they’d appear in a variety of browsers and check for text-only purity. Also, the Anybrowser Site Viewer allows you to select specific page elements.


BROWSERA

Browsera is used as a testing tool, not just a screenshot tool. It locates cross-browser layout problems automatically by comparing each browser's output. It also crawls the pages on your site and actually test them for layout inconsistencies and scripting errors. This tool runs entirely in the cloud, so there's no installation required.


NETRENDERER

IE NetRenderer is a free cross-browser compatibility testing tool. This allows you to check how a website is rendered by Internet Explorer 7, 6 or 5.5, as seen from a high speed data center located in Germany. This web rendering tool is also suited for web designers working on Apple iMac and Linux workstations. It enables to verify web designs natively on all popular Internet Explorer versions, without the need to set aside several physical or virtual Microsoft Windows PCs just for that purpose.

Web Design: The Evolution

The Internet has undeniably evolved these days, and so as the art of designing websites. Perhaps some of us witnessed the changes in web designs as the years pass by, from text-based with minimal images, no real layout, boring headings and paragraphs to table-based designs, Flash, and finally CSS-based web designs. After the creation of the first web page, websites became more interesting with the booming of designing tricks, text effects, colors, and codes.

As the internet became more powerful, people with great minds tried to completely change the looks and features of every web sites. They added more colors, texts and effects. Well probably this is the beginning of the web design's evolution. People tend to create compelling web pages in order to attract visitors and keep them interested.

THE FIRST WEB PAGES

It was in August 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee created the first website. Back then, the site was just composed of a simple text-based page with a few links. “Brochureware” is the term used for the early web design model since it only delivers marketing materials on the screen. The design was reduced to scanning sell sheets and stick them on a page with some links.

To sum it up, websites during this time were boring and simple. But bear in mind that there was only a few hundreds websites until the end of 1993.

IN 1994...
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was formed; which enabled the web design industry to rise up to the next level. This online site sets HTML and Javascript as the standard for marking up good web pages. HTML gave early designers an idea of how to create table-based designs.

FROM 1996 to 2000...

Around this time was the production of 3DML, a web design language for creating three-dimensional websites; and the introduction of Flash. Flash made it possible to create complex and interactive sites with animated features. Web designers often use this technique to create strong pages. Somehow, this tools were more effective than those early table-based designs wherein the designer had to write lots of codes and implementing style on each, making it a very difficult job for him.

THE INTRODUCTION OF CSS-BASED DESIGN

It was on the early 2000's when the CSS-based design gained its popularity. The technique of CSS was liked by the designers for it is not a table-based web design technique after all. The CSS carries tons of advantages compared to the Flash designs. Such as it separates design elements from content, which ultimately meant that there would be greater distinction from the visual aspect of a web layout to its content. Designers can also change the entire look of a CSS-based site without ever having to touch the content.

THE WEB DESIGN TODAY

The web design today is much more matured and optimized. Most designers create quality layouts in order to attract visitors successfully. They uses advanced techniques such as embedding video on the page to provide dynamic contents, state-of-the-art icons and images to highlight important points on a site, and 3-D effects to make websites more trendy.
Not only that, tools such as HTML, Flash, and CSS matured from a rigid, structure-bound technique to a highly extensible hybrid. Web sites were also accompanied now by tech people including web developers, SEO, coders, and internet marketing professionals.

We don't have any idea of what will websites look like in the following years, but we do know that evolution is an ever-changing process. Web design will continue to expand its definition, evolve in its complex environment and change in ways both predictable and unforeseen—just like it’s been doing since day one.

Add a little more to your web design business

If you are one of those people who have outstanding abilities in web designing and web developing, you can now give businesses a more growing income by including web hosting in your web development services.

Web hosting empowers anyone with a computer and internet connection to own a piece of cyberspace. In your space, you can have news, bulletins, documents, data, files and your own mail server to accept mail, all in the context of you or your business. Through this service, you can make up to $50/month per site, hosting your client sites.

If ever you offered hosting services to your clients, you'll be assured that they will come back to you to make changes and updates. Take a look at this scenario: for example you get paid $500 – $1000+ for a site design. If you charge your client for hosting you could have $50 extra/site per month. You could make up to $1100 to $1600/site per year instead of just $500 or $1000 per site. Therefore, assuming you have 100 clients, this could lead up to $110,000 or $160,000 per year instead of $50,000 – $100,000 per year. Also remember that your client might come back to you to update and maintain the site which means more money for you.

In web hosting, you can also maximize your profit by getting a shared hosting account such as a reseller hosting account. Reseller hosting is a form of web hosting where the account owner splits up the allotted disk space and bandwidth to host multiple domains or resell web hosting. There are two ways to benefit with this kind of account. Webmasters with multiple sites can host their websites under one account for one low monthly fee. On the other hand, web developers can resell hosting as a value added service and make more income. A good reseller account will give you far more room to move and even greater cost effectiveness which means even more profit and less effort.


2 accounts that offer hosting reseller packages:

Windows hosting resellers –
this one will give you the freedom and choice to run ASP, ASP.Net as well as PHP sites with MySQL or SQL Server databases. With Windows hosting you can use all your favorite web design tools and you’ll have the vast resources of Microsoft development products like Visual Studio at your disposal.

Linux hosting -
This offers the cheapest hosting solution available but does not support ASP or ASP.Net.Net applications.

Start hosting your clients now and be surprised at how much extra money you can earn for very little effort.

Tools for managing your website's content

Web masters use different tools in order to maintain a quality website. Some of the tools they've been utilizing is the Content Management Tools.

CMS tools are software systems that allow companies to take control of their Web pages through managing the content as distinct from the web design. These tools keep track of every piece of content on a site, just like a local public library keeps track of books and stores them. A major advantage of using a CMS tool is that it requires almost no technical skill or knowledge to manage. The days of writing HTML for large Web sites are losing its number as content management tools takes in.


Content Management Tools:

Joomla
a free, open source content management system.

Joomla is designed to publish content on the world wide web and intranets.
It allows web designers to construct sites by combining modules, and requires no knowledge of programming to use.

The system includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization.

It is used by MTV, Harvard University and IHOP to manage websites.


WordPress
Is used to build and maintain a website or blog. It was originally intended as an easy way to set up a blog.

a software application powered by PHP and MySQL.

WordPress is suitable for just about anybody - from the absolute novice to the advanced programmer.

This tool has a rich text editor with advanced multimedia support.

WordPress's community distributes a large number of modules for almost any popular website feature

It is free and open source CMS tool.

MediaWiki
A content management system tool that allows users and webmasters to easily add or edit content.

The most popular wiki platform, the software that runs Wikipedia and thousands of other websites.
is a free application, registered under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

Plone
An open-source content management system that allows content experts to publish web pages without using HTML or relying on a technical expert.

This tool can be used for in principle any kind of website, including blogs, internet sites, webshops and internal websites.

It can be used as a document publishing system and groupware collaboration tool.

Plone has flexible and adaptable workflow, very good security, extensibility, high usability and flexibility.



LightNEasy
A lightweight CMS aimed at the normal user, not requiring any programming skills.

It includes a built in gallery and a versatile news module. Templates can be made from any HTML/CSS design.

This tool is not only a CMS, it actually creates plain, pure web pages for your whole website, making it SEO friendly and fast loading.

The system uses a modular structure and allows plug-ins for adding features.

Working Closely With Your Website Designer

Having a website is one of the most important things if one engaging in online business. And even if  his work is mostly done in the real world, you will still get a lot of help from the site. Thus, in order to make the most from the site, a lot of effort must be first put into developing it.

However, it is not uncommon for business heads to leave all the site design work, from conceptualization to actual development, to their programmers. After all, they often argue, it's their work. But as it turns out, this one is actually going to be a bad mindset when working on your site.

The truth is, even if you are not a designer or a programmer yourself, you will still need to contribute greatly in order for your site to come out good. After all, you and your business will be the one to benefit directly from its performance. Thus, it is important for you to know a thing or two about the whole design process.

One of the things that you need to know in order to assist in the design process is HTML programming. Though this one might intimidated a lot of business heads, learning HTML is actually very easy and you need not to be an expert on this one, all that you need to know are the basics. This way, you will still be able to catch up with and understand the work being done by your designer. This also has an added advantage in that you will be able to work on the site even if the designer is not available.

Aside from the basic programming knowledge, you might also want to learn more about the other aspects of the the design process, such as photo editing and content writing. Again, you do not need to be highly proficient in these, but you should have a fairly good amount of know-how. This way, you will be able to contribute greatly in the development of the sight.

And speaking of contributions, it is important for you to work closely with your designer in coming up with the site. Remember that you will be the one who will have a final say on the outcome of the designer's work, so you need to closely monitor him to ensure that everything goes the right way. On the other hand, you also need to be a bit more open to other ideas and take in cues from your designer for good site layouts.

Visit WickedInnovations for more details about web site design services, http://www.wickedinnovations.com

DESIGNING A WEBSITE FOR YOUR BUSINESS: THE BASICS

There are many ways of promoting your business, but there's this one idea that is said to be really efficient: have a website! If you have a business, you should also have a website in order to create awareness among your costumers.

There is no case whether a business is big or small, as long as you achieve its main intent, and that is to make money. Entrepreneurs grab every opportunities just to make this goal possible.
   
Having an online presence is vital for it builds relationships with clients and prospects. Also, through this, future costumers, potential employees, and business partners can easily find out more about your business and the services you are offering. Well, it's really not enough to just have a web-site, you must have a site that looks professional so clients will take you seriously.

For sure the question “how will I create my own web site?” was already running inside your mind. Well, first you must fully understand the cornerstone of web designing. We've provided some basic things than can quench your thirst for information. Plus, we also gave some additional sources for more data.

DESIGNING A WEB PAGE. When designing a web page, you should think first about the design itself. Even if you choose to become a programmer, you should also be knowledgeable in the basic of designing. Having an intellectual design can make your site look professional.

Here are some info that might help you understand web design:

Grid Design- The process of aligning page elements to an evenly spaced (invisible) grid, which makes for an aesthetically pleasing design.

Web Typography- refers to the use of fonts and spacing in the web.

Usability– This is the process of designing a user experience that promotes interaction and eases the user through the site navigation and action flows.

Design Inspiration-  of course any designer should have inspiration. To gain this, one can browse different website designs for ideas.


 WHAT IS HTML & CSS? HTML and CSS are the building blocks of every web page you see. HTML is a language used for describing web pages.
HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language
A markup language is a set of markup tags
HTML uses markup tags to describe web pages

HTML markup tags are usually called HTML tags:
HTML tags are keywords surrounded by angle brackets like
HTML tags normally come in pairs like and
The first tag in a pair is the start tag, the second tag is the end tag
Start and end tags are also called opening tags and closing tags
HTML documents describe web pages:
HTML documents contain HTML tags and plain text
HTML documents are also called web pages

 While CSS, on the other hand, is short for Cascading Style Sheet, this is used to describe the presentation of a document written in a markup language. Its most common application is to style web pages written in HTML.

CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets
Styles define how to display HTML elements
Styles were added to HTML 4.0 to solve a problem
External Style Sheets can save a lot of work
External Style Sheets are stored in CSS files

To simplify it, HTML is the foundation of your house (beams, bricks), while CSS is the looks (paint, decor, and furniture). In short, you can't learn CSS without fully understanding HTML. And you can't build an HTML page without using CSS.

Additional resources:
W3Schools – An excellent reference and learning resource for HTML and CSS.
W3C Validator – A tool for checking your HTML and CSS to ensure it complies with professional standards for programming — otherwise known as “valid code.”
A List Apart – A fantastic website about all things web design, with a focus on web standards.
Net Tuts – An excellent resource for web development tutorials.
Designing With Web Standards – One of the must-read books on web design, written by “The Godfather” of web standards, Jeffrey Zeldman.
CSS Zen Garden – Both fun and amazing at the same time. See what types of design possibilities are possible just using CSS.

For web design services, visit http://www.wickedinnovations.com

Making Sense Of Google Analytics

Getting traffic is definitely the most important thing for any website owner. And understanding how traffic comes and goes is crucial in maximizing the traffic that you get. Thus, web analytics is a must to do for any site operator.

And this is the part where using Google Analytics comes in. But what the heck is it anyway? As the name says, Google Analytics, or GA for short, is a tool for studying web statistics. It is distributed free of charge by Google, either as a stand alone software or integrated into their other web marketing programs.

GA tracks down all visitors coming to the site from various sources and referrers, such as search engines, and compile them. These are then presented to the user as statistical data. Often other types of information is also present in the data, like those coming from pay per click networks and email marketing materials, as well as PDF links. And when integrated with other Google market analysis tools,  such as AdSense, GA will also show data from the areas covered by these.

Because of the large amounts of data that GA present, it can be quite confusing for many first time users. However, once you get the hang of it, it should become much easier. However, there are some items that you need to take note from the very start.

The traffic chart at the top of your GA page is the easiest to notice. It is also the most important, as it gives you a visual overview of your site's traffic. Here, you can adjust the coverage of the chart by simply selecting your desired dates. You can also immediately compare different data sets by choosing the time periods you want to display.

Below the traffic chart graph is the Site Usage section. Here, you will see a breakdown of site traffic into its components. There are six sections in here, three of which provide you with important general data. The Visitors section obviously gives you the actual number of people going into your site. Page views, on the other hand, tells you how many times each page of your site has been accessed. Lastly, the New Visitors section gives you an idea of how many new visitors you are getting, this is very important as it will help you determine your increase in reach. Each section also has a View Report option so that you can see a more detailed analysis.

In addition to these major features, GA also has a map overlay section, which gives you a breakdown of the countries from where people are accessing your site. This is especially important for those that want to market their sites globally. The application will also give you a lowdown of where the traffic actually comes from: whether it is a direct access, a query from search engines or a link from other sites. These information will then come in handy for search engine optimization purposes.

Making Web Design Easier

One of the most important things that you need to have when putting up an online business. After all, how can you do your business on the web if you don't have a website that they can head to. However, as it turns out, building a website is also, for many, the hardest part of it all.

Indeed, whenever you think of web design, you will probably be thinking of professional designers who go through complex computer codes and advanced programs. And when most think about such professional web designers, they often think often as very expensive employees, thus many small businesses easily shy away from the idea of web design and online business. However, knowing what to do will actually help you make the process much easier.

Here, the first thing that you need to know is what you are supposed to offer to your audience. It is often not uncommon to see people thinking of putting up a website but have no clear idea of what to put in it. To avoid such hassles, you should have a concrete idea early on what your site is supposed to be and how this would relate to the people who are more likely to visit your site. This will help you in picking out the design elements that you would want to include in your site, making sure that everything would fit in to the wants of your would be visitor.

One thing that you really need to consider at this stage is the kind of content that you plan on putting in to your site. You will often see some site dishing out a lot of things that they think are what visitors want, only to find out later that they are entirely wrong. Here, it would actually be a good idea to go out of your way as little and interact with your would be visitors first to really know what they want and what would be valuable for them.

Once you have everything prepared, then its time that you start creating your website. Here, there are a few things that you would want to keep in mind to guide you along the way. One thing is that web visitors want to get the information that they need quickly. Thus, you need to ensure that everything will load as quickly and properly as possible. Here, you might have to let go of all those fancy design elements that can bog down your site, and instead opt for a much simpler design. Also, be sure that you give your visitors an easy way to go around of your site.

The truth of the matter is, the whole web design process can be quite complex. That is why many firms simply let the designers take care of everything. However, knowing a thing or two about how you would want your site to come out will definitely help both you and your designers make things easier.

Choosing Between Web Design and SEO

As you might have already known, having a good web design will certainly attract a lot of traffic into going to your site. Indeed, a flashy animated intro will surely grab a lot of user attention and will entice them to enter your site. And a lot of videos and interactive content will really get them hooked to your site.

However, as it turns out, while these great attention grabbers will get heads turning into your direction, they can also have a large effect on your SEO efforts. And why do I have to be concerned about that, you might probably ask. As you have already known, the search engines have now become to leading tool for many users. Thus, search engine optimization becomes important in order for you to get to the top of the search engine pages and be the first one that users see.

This is where the elements of your site's design also becomes very crucial. One of these is the ever popular flash animation for your site's intro. While this one do get your viewers' attention after only a few seconds, this does have one catch, it can not be detected by the search engine's spiders. And since this one is located right at your homepage, which can be considered as the gateway to your site, it will certainly spell disaster for your site's ranking, since it is the first thing to be crawled by the spiders.

However, there is still a remedy for this one. By surrounding your flash content with descriptive text, you can actually make your flash elements visible to the search engines. This can either be a simple caption or additional instructions, which will also prove useful to your users. Alternatively, you can provide a site map that search engines can explore instead of your flash home page.

But, of course, there is also a flip side to this concern. While being too flashy can damage your search rankings, obsessing with getting page one rank can also ruin your site. Putting in too much keyword rich content will get your web site's look very muddled. Also, too much optimization can affect the usability of your site for visitor.

The best remedy for this quagmire is, of course, striking a balance between your site's web design and its search engine visibility. Decide and which parts of your site will require more optimization and which ones can be used for flash animation. Also, organize your site's design, such that these two elements integrate into each other. This might take a lot of work, but it will produce a very good site.

To Get Or Not To Get A Template

As many of those in the online business world have already known, website design is perhaps the hardest part of the field. You have to work on a lot of mind numbing code just to change a few images. Thus, many site owners are now turning to templates for their site designs.

However, there are still purists who insist that it is better to work on a site design yourself. They say that this will make your design more flexible and you have a lot more options than what templates can offer. So why would you go for templates then?

One of the biggest draws of website templates is that it is easier to work on. All you have to do is download your desired template and put in your content and you automatically get a complete website. This one will surely save you a lot of time in having to do everything yourself. Also, this means that you don't even need to get yourself a designer.

Also, the template is rather very cost effective. Most are being sold for only around a few dollars each and some are in fact given for free. This one is definitely very affordable as compared to the thousands of dollars that you need to shell out to get a web designer. And here's another interesting bit. Since most of the templates are actually made by some of the top web designers today, you will actually get the sane results without having to pay them big time.

But of course, though they are indeed very useful, web templates aren't really that perfect. For one, since many of the popular web templates out there are, well, very popular, a lot of people are actually using them. This means that if you go for them also, you will end up looking just the same as tons of other sites. And as we all know, being unique is very crucial if you want to catch attention in the net.

Also, a big downside of many web templates is that they offer only a small amount of customization options. Thus, even if you want your site to look one of a kind, you will still be stuck with what you have. This one will definitely not be a good idea.

This is the part where having a web designer right beside, or at least know how to design yourself, will come in handy. With those, you will still be able to tweak your template in order to make the most out of it. Also, you will have more flexibility in creating your templates.

As, you can see, the question of whether to get a template or a designer is unlikely to be settled anytime soon. In fact, each site administrator will have his own preferences. But if you only know how, you can actually make the most out of both worlds.

Improving Your Site's Navigation

One of the most important aspects of web design that site managers need to most concern about is its usability. After all, even with a flashy layout and all the other stuff, a site still won't catch on to users if they keep scratching their heads on how to go along the pages. Thus, in order to retain your visitors, you need to make sure that your site is fool proof when it comes to usability.

Navigation is perhaps the foremost issue that designers need to contend with when developing a site's user interface. It is not uncommon for users to leave a site simply because they can't go anywhere from the home page. Thus, in order for your users to easily make their way around your site, you need have an easy to use navigation bar placed in a convenient location.

For this one, it would be a good idea to place your navigation bar either on the top or at the left of your pages, since these are the first ones that your visitors will look into. Make sure that they are large enough (not too large though) and visible to your users. Also it would be a good idea to put in a smaller and simpler looking navigation bar at the bottom of your pages for extra measure.

Still on the topic of navigation bars, you probably have noticed those bars with animations appearing on them whenever the mouse moves over them. These has become very popular with many sites nowadays. However, though they really look good, they do have one downside. Since most of these menus are made with external scripts, like Flash, those browsers which don't have support for these would not be able to display them. To save your visitors the hassle of having to install additional scripts, it would be better if you stick to the tried and tested way of simply using hyperlinked texts for your navigation bar.

Aside from the main navigation bar, you can further improve your site's navigation by putting in additional navigation buttons. Two of the most important buttons that you need to have are the home and back buttons. Place these in a convenient location, so as not to have your users fumble for the browser control panel for the same functions.

Telling your visitors where they are in your site is also important for user navigation. Thus, it would be a good idea to put in these headers on top of the pages themselves. You don't really need to be elaborate on this one, as simple text will do. What you need to indicate here tough are the specific folders and subfolders where the particular page belongs.

Lastly, don't forget the site map. Many site developers actually do forget this one, probably because of the hard work that needs to be done to make it. However, this, of course, is a bad idea. The site map is very useful for your visitors in case all of your site navigation systems fail. Thus, you should have this ready at all times.

Web Site Promotion Methods

One of the things that a webmaster needs in order to be sure that his site will make it big in the world of the internet is to make it known to web users. In fact, website promotion is a large part of site management, as much as web design is. Luckily, there are countless of useful tips and tricks to make this hard task a little bit easier.

One of the easiest means of website promotion is through the use of web advertisements. Here., all you have to do is to put your ads into other websites and people are guaranteed to see them. You can either use a standard ad or go for one that has a link back to your site, so that users can easily connect.

However, one thing that you need to note about this method is that you need to carefully choose the site where you are going to post your ads. Use those sites that are closely related to your own, else, your ads will be nothing than another piece of graphic on the site. Also, you can try out sites that are specifically made to carry ads like yours, these will have a wider reach.

In some cases, even with plenty of your ads scattered all over the net, there would still be times where no one would bother to visit your site. Then here, you need to be a bit more aggressive in promoting your site. Email marketing is one of the strategies that you can use. With email marketing, you go and send introductory information about your products or services to prospective clients. You then pursue them to visit your site to get more information, as well as purchase from you.

However, while email marketing will definitely get you the desired clients, there is s till a catch. Unlike ads, where all you have to do is put them on and forget (well, not quite. But you do get the idea), email marketing requires you to put in a lot of effort in order to respond to the queries that will likely come your way. On the flip side, you also need to send out hundreds of emails at one time, as many of them will often be ignored by your target clients.

Another method of site promotion that has become popular with many online businesses recently is through search engine optimization. Search engine optimization, or SEO for short, is basically promoting your web site, such that it appears first in the listings of search engines. This way, your clients will be able to see you first every time they search for something within your field.

Take note that all of these methods have their pros and cons, as have been mentioned. Also, no single method will work perfectly for you. Thus, it would be a good idea to implement several of these in order to ensure a successful promotion campaign.

Creating Your Flash Banner

To many web design specialists, using Flash in a site is often a big problem. Not only that, there is often compatibility issues with users' computers (missing or outdated players), Flash also can't be read by the search engines, rendering it pretty much useless. Thus, they often try to avoid using it as much as possible.

However, Flash does have its own set of advantages. For one, it enables you to put in animation and videos into your site. This makes it attractive to your users. And not only that, but with this added feature, you will be able to put in more information, again, for your users' convenience.

And one of the places that you will find good use for Flash is your site's banner. After all this is the first one that your viewers will see, so you definitely would want to catch their attention. However, as have been mentioned, certain user issues will likely hinder you from using Flash banners. But with a few simple reminders, not only will you be able to use them, but you will also be able to make the most out of them.

One of the things that you need to seriously consider is the compatibility issues. Depending on your target audience, you can easily gauge whether or not they have the necessary tools to be able to view your Flash banner. For instance, if you are going after and audience that is is specifically into the type of sites just like yours, then you can safely assume that they would have the necessary plugins installed into their browsers for this. On the other hand, if your audience is of a broader range, then never quickly jump on this one. In fact, if this is the case, you should always assume that not all of them might have installed the plugins.

Another useful tip when making your banner is to actually consider designing it for use with an older version. For instance, the latest release of Adobe's Flash player is version 9, so you might want to design your banner in Flash 7 or 8. This way, more of your users will be able to see your banner, as some of them will likely have not yet been able to update their systems.

It is also important to take into account that not all of your audiences will have plugins installed. Thus you need to deal with this also. The easiest way that you can do this is by simply putting in text descriptions by using the ALT attribute in your code. Make sure that your text descriptions are concise and direct to the point in order for your users to easily understand what it means.

Choosing Your Blog Host

Blog writing is definitely one of the best ways that you can use to get information across to people. In fact, blogging have become a very crucial tool that many organizations have incorporated it into their information campaigns. However, a blog would end up becoming totally useless if you don't know where to put it up in the web.

And that's where the blogging platform, or blog host, comes in. Choosing the right blog host to get yours online can really mean the difference between getting read and being just another of those unknowns on the web. But, this isn't going to be easy, since there is many blog hosting sites available online.

professional web site design

And even before that, you need to think about whether to get a hosting site or put it online yourself. The main advantage of hosting a blog yourself is that you have total control of how it operates. You can even set restrictions to further limit or delimit access to your blog. The main disadvantage with this one is that you actually need to own a server or at least a computer that can handle all the incoming traffic. Besides, you will have to pay for the space to put it on the web, i.e. you have to buy your own domain name. And both can be quite expensive. Thus, this one is more suited for corporate blogs or those kids who can afford them.

For the rest of us, there are plenty of free hosting sites out there. Here are two of the more popular ones and the pros and cons of getting each.

Blogger is, by far, the leader of the pack in terms of market share. The main draw of the site is its ease of set up. In fact, all you need to do is to click the large “Create your blog now” button and it will automatically whisk you to the blog creation page. Creating your initial blog post is also very straightforward ad intuitive. The best part of using Blogger is that you can tweak the CSS code to add more style to your blog's overall appearance.

The only downside with the site is that it has no categories to sort your entries. This can be especially problematic when organizing your posts, but nonetheless, this doesn't deter from Blogger's other features.

Coming in close is Wordpress (both the .com and the .org). Though this site doesn't really allow you to customize your blog (its major drawback) in much the same way as Blogger gives, it still has plenty to offer which compensates a lot for it. For one, it offers real categories so you won't get too confused in sorting your posts.

Second, and more important, Wordpress allows you a greater deal of traffic management. The site has a built statistics analyzer, so you can determine how much traffic is actually going to your blog. It also offers users a good spam protection system so you wouldn't need to worry about your blog being flooded by junk comments.

There are still other blog hosts that you can try out. But for the most part, these two will surely be the best ones available.

web development services

Online Web Editing

One of the most tedious parts of building a website is editing it. In fact, you will most likely be spending several hours just working on one page. And to top it all, it would definitely be even harder if you don't have with you one of those point and click editors available today.

Indeed, getting one of these editors isn't that easy. For one, the best packages out there will set you back by at least three hundred dollars. On the other hand, trying out one of those free editors might leave you shortchanged, as many of these often don't have all the features that are available with top end editors. Besides that, you will have to go through all the hassle of downloading and actually making them run on your computer.

Luckily there us another way for you to edit your web site without having to install all of theses programs just to edit your website. In fact, if you are in a hurry, you can actually go online and edit your site there. You see, online HTML editing sites are now fast becoming popular among designers as a good alternative to using software to construct your pagers. This online sites provide designers with a place to edit their sites.

One particular site is HTML Editor.org (www.html-editor.org). Here, you can quickly open your pages and edit them, either in a graphical manner or through code writing. After editing, you can then reuplaod your pages to your site's hosting server.

One good thing about using online editors is that you don't need to install additional software in order to use them. Also, they are actually quite easy to use, since their interfaces are usually presented similar to that of popular programs, which means those familiar with this programs can quickly adapt to editing online. And since almost all of them are free, these are proving to be a good and cheap alternative for designers.

However, one major downside of using online editors is that they, like any other free service, often do not offer the full range of functions that can be found in full fledged website authoring software. Most often give only basic HTML editing capabilities, while others will provide support for, at the most, three coding languages. However, this can be easily remedied by using an assortment of sites to meet your needs.

One thing that you need to keep in mind when using online editors is that, though they will be able to provide you with a quick editing tool, they are not suitable for use in the whole site. Most usually don't have an HTML validation feature, so you will not be able to know if your codes will be accepted or not. Thus, it is still a good idea if you have web site authoring software on hand for this purpose.

The Benefits Of Hiring An SEO Company

Search engine ranking is very much important for websites, as this determines how one will plays in the eyes of viewers. Thus, many administrators have given a lot of effort in doing search engine optimization work in order to increase their rankings. However, there will come a point where your rankings do not change, no matter the effort you put into it.

This is the time where you might want to consider getting yourself the services of an SEO company. However, many site administrators often think that outsourcing SEO is just a waste of time and money. But contrary to this, hiring a company to do the work for you, in fact, offers plenty of benefits than doing everything on your own.

The biggest thing that you will be getting from hiring an SEO company is that it will take all the burden off from you. Since optimization is such a laborious task, outsourcing will certainly help in alleviating that one from your worries. And with that gone, you can then focus yourself into doing other things, like managing other components of your online business.

Aside from saving you a lot of time, hiring an SEO company will also actually save you a lot of money. How will this be so, you might ask, if you are the one to pay them? Actually that is indeed true, you do have to pay them. However, this is actually very small compared to the cost that you will incur when doing it by yourself, as you will likely have less experience doing it and will have to rely on trial and error methods.

Since SEO companies are especially trained for the job, they will be able implement methods specifically design for the job. Thus, they will be able to provide you with much better results. And another thing that you can get out of hiring an SEO company is that they will be able to better manage your optimization tasks for you, making it all the more organized and easier to analyze.

And you will definitely get more out of the money you pay them, as many SEO companies now offer their clients a complete package. This includes not only optimization work, but also web site design, thus, you will essentially be able to accomplish more with less, since you need not to get separate services for each.

Lastly, the search engine optimization services companies go well beyond search engines and web design, as they offer a multitude of customer support services. And the best part of it is that they are open 24 hours a day. Thus, you will be able to get in touch with them easily everytime a problem occurs.

Making Your Visitors Stick

One of the most important indicators of your site's traffic is its bounce rate. The bounce rate is basically the percentage of your visitors who immediately leave your site after viewing a single page. Since a high bounce rate is an indicator that many of your viewers are not encouraged enough to explore your site further, you definitely want this one as low as possible.

So how can you lower your bounce rate? There are actually many ways that you can do this depending on the nature of your visitors viewing habits. Thus you need to study first the traffic that comes in and out of your site to be able to come up with a strategy that will surely work.

One of the most important things to consider here is where the bounce is coming from. Take note of the several ways that your user can bounce from your pages. Perhaps the most common of these is the users simply clicking on the back button in their browsers to leave your site. On the other hand following the outbound links posted in your site also contributes to a larger bounce rate.

Whichever way the user will immediately leave your site, this can often only mean one thing: that your site does not have the thing that the user is looking for. Thus, in order to keep your viewers engaged to your site and lower your bounce rate, you need to be able to provide your visitors their needs.

Content is the first and foremost consideration when making people engaged to your site. Thus you need to provide relevant content regularly in your site. Also, it would be a good idea to listen carefully to your viewers' comments in order to determine what they need and want. Also be sure to provide them with new content frequently to sustain their interest in your site.

Good site organization is also a useful strategy in keeping your viewers hooked to your site. You should arrange your site's content so that it is easier for users to locate the particular one they are looking for. And here's a sure tip that will make your site more organized: never put everything in one page and instead distribute it to several pages. This also adds another bonus in that it will encourage your viewers to visit your site's other pages and make them stick longer. Also, you can link several relevant articles together in order to entice your visitors to browse through your other content.

Usability is another important aspect that will make your users stay longer in your site. Make sure that your site is easy to use and as simple as possible, even for those new to it. Additionally, you can actually add user instructions to make everything easier. Also make sure that everything works properly in order to be of better use to visitors.