Every once in a while I run across a site that makes me say, "WOW, what a useful resource!" Open Source Web Design (OSWD) is one of those sites.

As you can probably tell by the articles I’ve featured on MyWebResource, I’m a strong advocate for using templates to streamline website development. As a designer, I produce free templates to give back to the Internet community, and I really enjoy doing so, but occassionally, the idea machine comes to a screeching halt. That’s where sites like OSWD prove to be invaluable.

I found OSWD by chance one day when I was searching the net for template sites. I was looking for some fresh ideas to help me get out of a slump I was sliding into. You can only do the standard 3 column layout so many times before you really get bored.

When I started browsing the OSWD directory of templates, I was impressed with the overall layout and design of the site, but was a little disappointed in the lack of features. I quickly got over my disappointment after looking at a couple hundred of some of the best website designs I’ve laid eyes upon. I consider myself a reasonably good designer, but many of the designs at OSWD really stand out from the crowd.

What impressed me more than anything else about OSWD and the hundreds of templates you’ll find there is that most of the designs are, at minimum, W3C XHTML 1.0 Transitional and CSS 2.0 compliant. Many are XHTML Strict! In the years that I’ve been on the web and browsed thousands of template sites, I can tell you from experience, to offer so many high quality, standards compliant templates is rare, very rare!

I like the OSWD site and community so much, I’ve even started working on traditional "static" designs again after spending the last two years doing XOOPS themes almost exclusively.

To the Administrator and community of OSWD, my hat is off to you. You’ve produced a resource that is by far one of my favorites, and I strongly feel that every webmaster should have your site bookmarked. If for no other reason than to keep their finger on the pulse of what is new and hot in standards compliant design.

In this article I will be writing about Website Design, how it affects sales, and how it compares in importance to other aspects of Website Management. Lets list the different aspects of owning or managing a Website.

Domain Name: How important is the domain name you choose for your Website? Many people say it is not important at all, yet I have number one listings in Google, Yahoo, and MSN for the key phrases that exactly match my domain name. It matters a lot.

You need a domain name that matches keywords and phrases you will also use in your Website that people are searching for. Many people think their company name should be their domain name. If you have a lot of money for advertising to make your company name something people search for, I agree with you. If you do not have that ad budget, then you need a generic domain name that is a phrase people already search for.

Web Hosting: How important is choosing the right Web Hosting Service for your Website? Again, this is important in many ways. You need your Website to load fast. If your Website loads slow, people will leave without buying anything. You also need to choose a Web Hosting Service that gives good tech support. There are a lot more things to consider when choosing a good Web Hosting Service, but make sure you rate this high on your list of things that are important to your Website.

Web Design: How important is Website Design? Your Website needs to look professional and trustworthy in order to create buyer confidence. A poorly designed Website will cost you sales. However, and this is the part that web designers will hate me for, it is not as important as many of the other aspects of Website ownership and management.

Many web designers know nothing about search engine optimization, picking a good domain name, hosting, Website promotion, or other issues. They only know design. That is a good thing in my opinion, but they should let their customers know they are a designer and cannot help their Website be competitive in the marketplace. Yes, there are some designers that know more than just design, but many do not. Keep this in mind.

A beautiful Website that gets no traffic and makes no money might as well be an ugly Website. An ugly Website that has traffic and makes money gets more beautiful by the dollar.

Search Engine Optimization: How important is SEO to my Website? Extremely important! Again, many web designers do not know how to properly optimize a Website for the search engines. It is important to have someone who specializes in SEO to go over your Website and make sure it is ready to get crawled and indexed by the search engines.

There was a time when SEO was all-inclusive with link building, Website promotion, search engine marketing, etc. Times have changed somewhat and the search engines have become more complicated, so now many people specialize in certain aspects of SEO.

I define SEO as coding the Website properly, writing text that contains the proper amount and correct keywords and phrases, search engine submissions, and some link building techniques.

Search Engine Marketing: What is SEM and how important is this to my Website? Search Engine Marketing by my own definition is marketing your Website through Google Adwords, MSN AdCenter, and other keyword
purchasing programs as well as purchasing links, ads, and sponsored listings.

Again, many people are specializing in an area they have success with these days. I am very good at SEO, but I have limited experience with SEM. Therefore, I can make your Website ready to be crawled, do link building, and write text that helps you attract good search engine rank and traffic, but I would not be the guy you would hire to manage your Adwords program.

Website Promotion: Yet another category with a relationship to SEO and SEM. How important is this category? In my opinion it tops the list. What is Website Promotion? This category includes Article Marketing, Press Releases, Link Popularity, Buying Traffic, Blogging, Forum Posting and more.

Why do I consider it more important? First, none of the things mentioned here can stand-alone. You need to consider all of the different aspects as important. However, search engines change constantly. Depending on search engines for all or most of your traffic and sales is putting your life in Google’s hands basically since they account for 60% of all searches now.

If you are comfortable with one company having that much control over how well you do on the web, then ignore Website promotion and just do SEO and SEM. You need traffic from many different sources if you want to be successful. That way if one source dies out, you are not affected nearly as much as someone who only had one or a few sources of traffic would be.

Focus on getting traffic from every source you can. Post comments in Blogs and Forums related to your topic. That means actually join the forums or blogs and actually get involved in the conversations there and post quality comments. Be helpful to people at the forums and blogs. Ask questions. No one will mind that a link in your SIG line goes to your Website is you are a real participant. If they do object at that point, find a new place to join.

Start your own Blog. You can put up two if you really want to benefit from Blogging. A Blog within your domain name or on a subdomain can help you add fresh content to your website more often. That helps with the SEO. You can build a Blog on another domain name and promote links to pages within your Website and benefit from a little link popularity while also giving customers another way to find your Website. Doorway pages used to be the way to go. Blogs on their own domain name have replaced doorway pages as the way to go.

Article Marketing means writing articles and submitting them to article directories, writing quality articles and offering them to topic-relative high-traffic Websites as exclusive content, and press releases are a great source of traffic that builds link popularity as well. The traffic you get from people who read your article are many more times likely to convert to a sale than the traffic you get from search engines.

I will get new customers and signups due to this article you are reading right now. Article Marketing and Website Promotion work very well.

I hope this article has helped you to understand that owning or managing a Website is about a lot more than just getting a domain name, designing a Website, and picking a host. “If you build it, they will come” does not apply to Websites.

Ineffective functional specification for Web projects such as Web sites, Intranets or Portals contribute largely to delays, higher costs or in applications that do not match the expectations. Independent if the Web site, Intranet or Portal is custom developed or built on packaged software such as Web-, enterprise content management or portal software, the functional specification sets the foundation for project delays and higher costs. To limit delays and unexpected investments during the development process, the following pitfalls should be avoided:

Too vague or incomplete functional specification: This is the most common mistake that companies do. Everything that is ambiguously or not specified at all, developers do not implement or implement in a different way of what site owners want. This relates primarily to Web features that are considered as common user expectations. For example, HTML title tags, which are used to bookmark Web pages. The Web steering committee may specify that each page contains a page title, but does not specify that HTML Title tags needs to be implemented as well. Web developers therefore may do not implement HTML Title tags or implement them in a way, which differs from site owners’ visions. There are other examples such as error handling on online forms or the definition of ALT texts for images to comply with the disability act section 508. These examples look like details but in practice, if developers need to modify hundreds or even thousands of pages, it amounts to several man-days or even man-weeks. Especially, the corrections for images as business owners need first to define the image names prior that Web developers can implement the ATL texts. Ambiguous functional specification can result due to the lack of internal or external missing usability skills. In this case, a one-day usability best practice workshop transfers the necessary or at least basic usability skills to the Web team. It is recommended, even for companies that have usability skills or rely on the subcontractor’s skill set, that an external and neutral consultant reviews the functional specification. Especially, as such reviews relate to marginal spending as compared to the total Web investments (e.g. about $10 K – $15 K dollars for a review).

Future site enhancement not identified or not communicated: It is crucial that the Web committee identifies at least the major future site enhancements and communicates them to the development team. In the best case, the development team knows the roadmap for the coming three years. Such an approach allows the development team to anticipate implementation choices to host future site enhancements. It is more cost effective on mid- or long-term to invest more in the beginning and to build a flexible solution. If Web teams do not know or even ignore future enhancements, the risk for higher investment increases (e.g. adding new functionality in the future results in partially or at worst in totally rebuilding existing functionality). Looking at the financial delta for a flexible solution versus a solution just satisfying the current requirements, the flexible solution has proven to be more cost-effective in practice from a mid- and long-term perspective.

Planned functionality not aligned with internal resources: Many companies look at site functionality only from a site visitor perspective (e.g. facilitation of searching information or performing transaction) and corporate benefits (e.g. financial benefits of self-service features). However, there is a third dimension the impact of site functionality on internal resources.
Site functionality that can heavily impact internal resources are for example:
- Web sites: providing news, online recruitment, online support, etc.
- Intranets / portals: providing content maintenance functionality for business managers

It is crucial for the success of site functionality that the Web committee analyzes the impact and takes actions to ensure operations of the planned functionality. For example, providing the content maintenance functionality to business owners and product mangers with an associated workflow. This functionality is effective and can generate business benefits such as reduced time to market. However, in practice, business owners and product managers will need to write, validate, review, approve and retire content. This results in additional workload. If the Web committee has not defined in the Web governance (processes, policies, ownership and potentially enforcement), it may happen that this functionality is not used and hence becomes useless.

Wish lists versus actual needs and business requirements: The functional specification is not aligned with user’s needs or business requirements. This is more common for internal applications such as Intranets or portals. In many cases, the project committee neglects to perform a sound internal survey and defines functionality by generalizing individual employees’ wishes without any sound proves. Capturing the feedback of internal users across the organization allows determining the critical functionality. To effectively perform a survey a representative set of employees need to be questioned. Further these employees need to be categorized into profiles. The profiles need to be characterized by for example, frequency of usage of the Intranet, estimated duration by visit, usage of the Intranet to facilitate their daily tasks, contribution to the business, etc. Based on this information the Web team can then prioritize the functionality and choose the most effective and relevant functionality for the next release. Less critical or less important functionality may be part of future releases (roadmap) or dropped. If such a sound decision process is not performed, it may happen that functionality is developed but only used by few users and the return of investment is not achieved.

Not enough visual supports or purely text based: Textual description of Web applications can be interpreted subjectively and hence leading to wrong expectations. To avoid setting wrong expectations, which may are only discovered during development or at worst at launch time, functional specification need to be complemented by visual supports (e.g. screenshots or at best HTML prototypes for home pages or any major navigation pages like sub-home pages for the major sections of the site such as for human resources, business units, finance, etc.). This allows reducing subjective interpretation and taking into account the users’ feedback prior development. Such an approach helps setting the right expectations and to avoid any disappointments at the end once the new application is online.

We have observed these common mistakes, independently if companies have developed their Web applications internally or subcontracted them to an external service provider.

Website Development in India has become one of the fastest growing industries. Main reasons for this rapid development are high quality output, easy guiding tools and cost effectiveness. Indian Web development companies are in great demand from all over the world.

As fas as website design in India is concerned, many professional web development companies are there in Delhi. If you are serious about your web presence and want to monetize your business online, choose a professional website marketing company Delhi, which has experienced and qualified people. Web designing in Delhi is of high quality and will give you sure results. For increasing the ranking of your site on major search engines and improving targeted traffic, you can take the help of a good SEO company Delhi, India. These SEO companies will help you achieve your ultimate business goal.

A professional website design company studies your business in brief, tries to understand your business need of that website. These web development companies, Delhi have got full knowledge on flash designs, frames, mouse-over links, query strings, images and image maps. They will tell you what is the best to use and where. If you have a requirement of a simple site or you want a very dynamic, complex website with a great design, flash features, java script and other graphics, you can get all done here at a reasonable rate. A Delhi based web marketing company knows interaction of site with a search engine. They know which design will benefit you the most.

Web design companies in Delhi, have got cutting edge technological set up and a great working environment. A SEO company not only optimizes your site once but also sends you regular updates and recent developments. They will guide you about the most effective way to optimize your site and to get best result out of it. This is very important in updating and colleting search engine update which is most difficult part.

Creating a website that is Web designing and web development are not all but regular maintenance with recent updates is important. Regular updates are essential for any website to remain in competition. Visitors always want something new every time they come to your website. With the same old content and information, you will not get enough traffic. Search engines too track this. A professional web design company will provide updates as they are hired on a contractual basis.

To obtaining the maximum advantages of latest market and industry trends, it is good to make a website that speaks about goals and objects of your website. Why people outsource from Delhi or say India? By outsourcing the same work from Delhi, they get an economical work of a high quality and timeliness. These are the main advantages but it has other benefit points too. If they get their work done from a web development company Delhi, they gain good competent skills, low operating cost, shared responsibility, latest technical knowledge and best output in a reasonable time. This is the reason of increasing web development and SEO companies in Delhi. It also increase a healthy competition that will result in a better product and will also generate more and more job opportunities for Indian people.For more information about Seo company Delhi, Website development company Delhi,Logon to-:
http://www.brickblue.com

Google Sitemaps enables Webmasters to Directly Alert Google to Changes and Additions on a Website and that’s just one of 7 Benefits.

Telling search engines about new pages or new websites use to be what the submission process was all about. But major search engines stopped using that process a long time ago.

Google has for a long time depended on external links from pages they already know about in order to find new websites.

For webmasters and website owners Google Sitemaps is the most important development since RSS or Blog and Ping, to hit the Internet.

Using RSS and Blog and Ping enabled webmasters to alert the search engines to new additions to their web pages even though that was not the primary purpose of these systems.

If you’ve ever waited weeks or months to get your web pages found and indexed you’ll know how excited we webmasters get when someone discovers a new way to get your web pages found quicker.

Well that new way has just arrived in Google Sitemaps and it’s a whole lot simpler than setting up an RSS feed or Blog and Ping. If you haven’t heard of Blog and Ping it’s a means by which it’s possible to alert the search engines to crawl your new website content within a matter of hours.

If you’re a webmaster or website owner Google Sitemaps is something you can’t afford to ignore, even if you’re also using RSS and/or Blog and Ping

The reason you should start using Google Sitemaps is that it’s designed solely to alert and direct Google Search Engine crawlers to your web pages. RSS and Blog and Ping are indirect methods to alert search engines, but it’s not there primary purpose.

It works now, but like most things it’s becoming abused. Search Engines will find ways to combat the abuse as they’ve done with every other form of abuse that’s gone before.

Abusing the search engines is a short term not a long term strategy and in some cases certain forms of abuse will get you banned from a search engines index.

You may also be thinking, don’t we already have web page meta tags that tell a search engine when to revisit a page. That’s true, but the search engine spider still has to find the new page first, before it can read the meta tag. Besides that meta tags are out of favour with many search engines especially Google, because of abuse.

If talk of search engine spiders leaves you confused, they’re nothing more than software programs that electronically scour the Internet visiting web sites looking for changes and new pages.

How often the search engine spider alias robot, visits your website depends on how often your site content is updated, or you alert them to a change. Otherwise for a search engine like Google they may only visit a website once a month.

As the internet gets bigger every second of every day, the problem for search engines and webmasters is becoming evidently greater. For the search engines it’s taking their search spiders longer to crawl the web for new sites or updates to existing ones.

For the webmaster it’s taking longer and becoming more difficult to get web pages found and indexed by the search engines

If you can’t get web pages found and indexed by search engines, your pages will never be found in a search and you’ll get no visitors from search engines to those pages.

The answer to this problem at least for Google is Google Sitemaps

Whilst still only in a beta phase while Google refines the process, it’s fully expected that this system, or one very similar, is here to stay.

Google Sitemaps is clearly a win-win situation

Google wins because
it reduces the huge waste of their resources to crawl web sites that have not changed. Webmasters win because they alert Google through Google Sitemaps what changes or new content has been added to a website and direct Google’s crawlers to the exact pages.

Google Sitemaps has the potential to speed up the process of discovery and addition of pages to Google’s index for any webmaster that uses Google Sitemaps.

Conventional sitemaps have been used by webmasters for quite some time to allow the easier crawling of their websites by the search engine spiders. This type of sitemap is a directory of all pages on the website that the webmaster wants the search engines or visitors to find.

Without sitemaps a webmaster runs the risk of webpage’s being difficult to find by the search engine crawlers, or never being found at all.

Do I need Google Sitemaps if I already have sitemaps on my websites ?

Google Sitemaps are different to conventional sitemaps because they’re only seen by the Search Engine Spiders and not human visitors. Google Sitemaps also contain information that’s only of value to the search engine in a format they understand.

Creating Google Sitemaps in 5 steps

1. Create Google Sitemaps in a supported format ( see end of article )

2. Upload Google Sitemaps to your Web Hosting space

3. Register for a free Google Account if you don’t already have one

4. Login to your Google Sitemaps Account and submit the location of your sitemaps

5. Update your Sitemaps when your site changes and Resubmit it to Google

From your Google Sitemaps account you can also see when your sitemap was last updated and when Google downloaded it for processing. It will also tell you if there were any problems found with your sitemaps.

Google Sitemaps can be used with commercial or non-commercial websites, those with a single webpage, through to sites with millions of constantly updated pages. However a single Google Sitemaps file is limited to 50,000 web pages. For websites with more pages, another Google Sitemaps file must be created for each block of 50,000 pages.

If you want Google to crawl more of your pages and alert them when content on your site changes, you should be using Google Sitemaps. The other added benefit is it’s free.

If you’re expecting this special alert process with Google Sitemaps to improve your Page Rank, change the way Google ranks your web pages, or in any way guarantee inclusion of your web pages, Google has made it clear it will make no difference.

Google Sitemaps web pages are still subject to the same rules as non Google Sitemaps pages.

If your site has dynamic content or pages that aren’t easily discovered by following links, Google Sitemaps will allow spiders to know what URLs are available and how often page content changes.

Google has said that Google Sitemaps is not a replacement for the normal crawling of web pages and websites as that will continue in the conventional way. Google Sitemaps does however allow the search engine to do a better job of crawling your site.

The Google Sitemap Protocol is an XML file containing a list of the URLs on a site. It also tells the search engine when each page was last updated, how often each page changes and how important each page is in relation to other web pages in the site.

Google Sitemaps 7 Benefits You Can’t Ignore

1. Alert Google to Changes and Additions to your Website Anytime You Want

2. Your Website is crawled more Efficiently and Effectively

3. Web Pages are Categorized and Prioritized exactly How You Want

4. Speed up the process of New Website and New Web Page Discovery

5. No Waiting and Guessing to see when Spiders crawl your web pages

6. Google Sitemaps is likely to
set the standard for Webpage Submission and Update Notification which will extend the benefits to other Search Engines

7. The Google Sitemaps service is Free

Exactly how to create a Google Sitemaps file to upload to your website is in the continuing part of this article in Google Sitemaps.

Web design is an artsy interface. It is all about blending, harmony, unity and functionality. Its beauty and usability combined. Given is the fact that each web designer has his own style of making his design communicate. It varies according to the art influences that they have, their preferences and the stuffs that they want to incorporate in a certain design.

Time is one great influence. As we move forward, we are discovering lots of things to make our design better and more effective. Two of the new designs invading the internet nowadays are the design with the use of 3D objects and robots. This design is made possible by the use of 3D software, production technologies and other sophisticated materials.

When it comes to 3D objects, a simple spreadsheet can edit the same. Anyone skilled in the matter can control the object’s chamfers, fillets, dimensions, shell thickness and more. After that is to go into details. Even the minutest style element detail must be given a leeway and must be considered so as to yield a productive output.

3D software allows the designer to edit the image continuously. The style tools are just around the interface for easy access. This access can speed up the design process of the object. It can be edited and refined in an easy manner.

The evolution of these 3D tools will give a wider leeway to all the designers. As a result, design will be enhanced so as to make it catchier.

Another worthy discovery is the use of robots on the website. Robots can be easily downloaded. There are numbers of sites that are offering them. Through robots, you can give ample information. They are recorded so that the moment the viewers set their eyes on your site, they immediately hear the information. No need to scroll, no need to type. The information is readily made available to them.

These additions will surely uplift the web design’s aesthetic and functionalism aspects. More discoveries are yet to come.

You know exactly what your organisation does and what your website offers its users. This information has probably become second nature to you, but first-time visitors to your site won’t know this. As such, make sure you don’t forget to tell them what you do.

As soon as new site visitors arrive at your website the first thing they need to know, before anything else, is what you do. You can talk all you like about how great you are, but unless you spell out what you actually do, they won’t even know what you’re so great at! This oh-so-overlooked yet such basic of information can be communicated to your site visitors in a number of different ways:

Page title

Don’t just use the page title to tell me who you are; tell me what you do too. If your company is called Bloggs Ltd don’t only place the words, ‘Bloggs Ltd’ in the page title as there’s plenty of room for more information. If Bloggs Ltd sells widgets, a good page title might be: ‘Bloggs Ltd – Buy widgets online’.

Note in this example, ‘Buy widgets online’ was used to describe what Bloggs Ltd does, and not ‘Widget seller’. When describing what it is you do be sure to speak the language of your users, and don’t talk from your point of view. From your point of view you sell widgets, but from their point of view they want to buy widgets online, so do bear this in mind when authoring the page title.

The page title is the first thing that appears on screen, and especially on dial-up modems can be the only thing that displays for the first 10 seconds or so. For many web users this is the first piece of content they’ll read on your site.

The page title is also very important for search engines, which place more importance on the page title than any other on-page element. Descriptive page titles are also essential for blind web users utilising screen readers, as it’s the first thing that gets read aloud to them upon arriving at the page.

Tagline

A good tagline is one of the most important usability features on any website. A good tagline should be explanatory and not vague, clear and informative and about four to eight words in length. A tagline is different to a company slogan, in that the former describes what the organisation/website does whereas the latter is designed to evoke certain feeling or create a brand.

‘Priceless’ and ‘I’m loving it’ are slogans by Mastercard and McDonald’s respectively – they differ from taglines because they don’t describe what the organisation does.

Taglines are so important because no matter on what page site visitors enter your website, they’ll always be able to quickly gain an understanding of what your organisation and website offers. This can be especially true for site visitors coming into internal pages from search engines – by telling these site visitors what you do through the tagline, they may be more likely to explore your site beyond the initial page on which they enter.

Taglines are also good for search engine optimisation, as they appear on every page right at the top of the page, an area on to which search engines place importance.

Main heading

The main heading on the homepage is one of the first pieces of text web users notice, especially on clean well laid out websites. Sticking a ‘Welcome to our website’ may seem to be friendly and welcoming to you, but to task-driven site visitors it doesn’t help in any way shape or form. A quick summary of what you do and/or what the website offers, in just four or five words can
be highly effective (and very search engine friendly too!).

Opening paragraph

Perhaps the most important place on the homepage to tell your site visitors what you do, the opening paragraph must be short, succinct and straight-to-the-point. Just one sentence is enough to put across this most basic yet fundamental of information.

When writing this opening paragraph, remember to front-load the content (this rule actually applies to every paragraph on the website). Front-loading means putting the conclusion first, followed by the when, what, where and how.

Don’t write a story with a start, middle and conclusion – generally speaking on the web, we scan looking for the information that we’re after so put the conclusion first. This way, site visitors can read the conclusion first, which in this case is what your organisation actually does. If they want to know any more, they can then continue reading or jump to another section of the page. (To see front-loading in action, read any newspaper article.)

Exceptions

So, does every website need to tell users what the organisation does in these four different places? Well, not necessarily. We all know what Mastercard and McDonalds do, so it could definitely be argued that websites for household names need not explicitly say what they do. What these sites should do instead is tell us what the website offers, and this message can (and should) be put across in any of the above four ways – how else will site visitors quickly be able to find this out?

Conclusion

People are going to visit your site who don’t know what you do. Before you can even begin selling to them you must tell them what your organisation and website does. In addition to fulfilling site visitors’ immediate need (finding out what you do) you’ll also be boosting your search engine rankings. If your organisation is a household name, then instead of explaining what you do, it may be wise to tell site visitors what they can do on your website.

One of the very first decisions we make as internet marketers involves the critical choices in designing websites. We each have differing opinions and viewpoints of just what our site should look like. More often than not, these decisions are based on personal opinions or selections limited to the templates of the respective applications utilized for building the site. But there has to be more to this than personal preference – with no real basis for the logic and methodology tha should go into making the decisions!

What about this logic —beyond the appearance – lets also look at the "sales" potential of one design versus another. Think about it, why do some websites sell better than anothers? Do you need a marketing degree to create a website? Does design have much impact on sales?

You may not realize this but many of the successful internet marketing businesses already figured out that design, or layout of the website should be as much of a marketing decision as the ad copy. Why is that?

Web designers (and individuals with software apps) can do some amazing things with graphics and colors. You will also have a much more professional looking site when an expert applies his or her handiwork. However, it is critically important to understand some of the key elements that smart marketers make certain appear (or NOT appear) on highly profitable sites. After all, having a "pretty" site does you no good if you are not getting traffic or revenue from sales. Being aware of these will enable you (or your selected designer) to keep in mind this balance between marketing and design. The three key elements are color, graphics, and layout.

COLOR: Designs with a dramatic color can make compelling choices for setting a mood. But reading on a computer screen demands as much contrast as possible, otherwise the reader will develop vision fatigue. You do not want to irritate or tire your visitors in any way or they may leave, so be certain that the main body of your website copy is black writing on a white background – or as close to that ideal as possible.

Colors also change appearance on different monitors, so what looks cool and calm on one monitor may be bright and glaring on another. Simple works.

GRAPHICS: Striking, bold graphics can be a real eye-catcher for visitors. Still, successful internet marketers are pretty much unanimous in stating that you should avoid flash graphics as much as possible. Again, they tend to tire visitors eyes or create a distraction from the written copy. Even if they are initially impressed by the work it may subconsciously annoy them. Simplicity is again the best way to go.

LAYOUT: The first ‘fold’ of your site is similar to opening a tractional paper letter. If you remove a letter from an envelope that is folded in three, you will obviously view the top ‘fold’ first.

This fold is what individuals will see without scrolling down the page. It is CRUCIAL that important elements like descriptive headlines, your contact number, newsletter subscription form etc. all show in the first fold. Do NOT place banners here unless they are the main element of your business as you will be giving prime space to other websites and your customer (which you fought hard to get in the first place) will be gone just as quickly.

These are just some of the important elements you should be aware of when designing your site. This "balance" will greatly increase your sales potential – once you incorporate this into your design criteria. With both design and "sales-ability" used as the foundation for the website in the initial design phases you will reap the financial benefits for years and years.

You’ve spent money and time creating a logo, letterhead, and brochures for your business. You care about your company message, and you want customers to know you care about quality. You’ve hired professional graphic artists, designers, and printers to do the job.

But what have you done about your small business Web site design? Does it match the quality and look of your other marketing materials? Since the Web has more reach than the rest of your marketing materials, it should demonstrate the highest quality. And yet so many business owners have hired amateurs, relatives, teenagers, or created McWeb (fast setup, cookie-cutter) sites themselves.

An important distinction about the Web is the amount of time you have to create interest for your visitor. You have only seconds to make a great impression. How are you using yours? Now is the perfect time to see if your small business Web site design needs some tweaking to make that great impression. Visit your own Web site and check out our three-step approach below to see if it’s time for you to consider a change.

1. Before you click to review your Web site home page, ask yourself what your current business goals are. Do you want to sell product? Do you want to sell services? Do you want to provide information for prospective buyers? What do you want to accomplish? Your goals and your business may have changed since you first put up your small business Web site. Deciding on your current business goals will help you to decide on the main focus for your small business Web site.

2. Discover what your firm’s largest strengths are. This can be done through customer focus groups, surveys, interviews, or informal processes. The result should be something similar to your unique selling proposition or how customers benefit from doing business with you.

3. Now, visit the home page of your Web site. What is the first item that you see? Put one and two together, and shouldn’t your small business Web site home page immediately feature your biggest strengths or a means to your goal (or preferably both?)

The Web is filled with what not to do. Yesterday, I saw a consulting Web site that I couldn’t tell was an accounting site until I clicked through three pages. A speaker’s Web site had a huge picture of the speaker that took forever to download and was not by any means Mr. America. And a photographer’s site had a long, irrelevant Flash movie about the creator’s dog. I don’t know of any customer who is going to sit there and try to guess what business you’re in. They’ll just go to other sites and do business with the small business Web site that has a clear message for them.

If you want to make money on the Web, use your seconds wisely.

How do you keep visitors loyal to your site? That is the question.

The answer?

Reward them so they will keep on coming back.

Customers have the tendency to readily sign up for anything being offered to them when they know that they are getting something for it. And chances are, when they see that you deliver what you promised, they would gladly come back for more to see what you have to offer the next time around.

Example of prizes are discount coupons, sweepstakes entry, free trial, etc. This way, they will be more inclined to register and turn over their personal information to you.

You can also give them free samples of what your site offers. The more you reward these people, the more familiar they will be with your service or product. This will result in better responses. Maybe they can even give out recommendations for new customers.

But before you can attain this level of marketing and reaching customers, you first have to make your site work. Since your site will be your initial marketing material, you need to make sure that your message will get through to them.

Here are some of the kinds of messages you need and need not use on your site.

Make them short and convincing. Do not include detailed product descriptions, information or long and winding stories about you and the company.

Make use of short titles and bulleted points or emphasis. Using these, your customers will be able to take in important information in a glance. You may want to put up a summary at the top and link it to the information you want read. Help your readers access quickly what interests them and what they want to know.

Be sure to set up a way for customers to effortlessly update their information or unsubscribe.
Check your site from time to time to make sure that all your information is up to date. Nothing can make visitors run away fast than a site with outdated information.

Do not spam. Avoid this at all cost.

Be different. Try to include some point of difference, attitude or special service that makes you different from all the others.

Lastly, support your promotion. Do not just sit back after you have sent out your promotion. Try following up. The best time should be the earliest time possible.

So do you know how to get more loyal customers?