5 Critical Questions To Ask BEFORE You Hire a Web Designer

Whether you're building a website or a blogsite, the investment in a designer can be fairly significant. It's at this point that many service business owners decide to cut costs and have their 16-year old nephew design their site. This works out well until something breaks (with technology, it's never a question of IF it will break, only WHEN) and your nephew is out of touch because he just started his first year of college and can't be bothered. What are you going to do?

To run an online business, your website is your key to success. People arrive on your doorstep (site) like they might in a retail establishment, and decide within 5 seconds if they're going to stay and look around or if they're going to leave. It pays to invest some money in your site, as your site is the first stop on the like, know and trust journey that prospects experience with you. You need to be perceived as legitimate, as a "real" business, and as the solution to the problems that ail your prospective clients. If you're not able to design your own site, an experienced website designer can help finesse this relationship with your visitors.

How can you determine if your designer will create a site that you like and is useful? I've heard many horror stories over the years about the experiences that services business owners have had regarding the creation and maintenance of their websites. Here are 5 critical questions that you should have answered before hiring a web designer:

Read entire list here: 5 Critical Questions To Ask BEFORE You Hire a Web Designer

10 Rules to Keep Your Website Visitors Engaged

By Deepak Dutta (c) 2007

Do you know that most visitors leave a website within 10 seconds of landing on the home page? And they may nevër return to the same site. To keep your website visitors stay longer, you need to engage them. Follow these 10 simple rules to build a set of core loyal visitors who will return to your site frequently.

1. If you have a brick-and-mortar business and you want an online presence, don't just hand over your printed brochure to the web developer for your site's content.

2. Get good text, picture, and video content related to your products or services and organize them into categories for your website publication. How do you get content? You can ask your kids to write content for you. Today's kids are information savvy and know how to do research on right topics. They can help take pictures and videos of your products and provide narrations. If you cannot leverage your kids talents and you don't have time to develop content, buy them from online sources, like distributors of private label rights to articles and stöck photographs. You need a small content set to launch your web site.

3. Ask your developer for some sample websites he has developed in the past and review them. If you find clutter, music, unprofessional graphics, etc. in those sites, run away from the developer. Tell your web developer to use basic search engine optimization techniques for your web site. Use a developer who uses content management systems (CMS) to develop websites. You or your kids and spouse will be able to maintain and add content regularly to a CMS without much effort.

4. You must have an About US page in your website that explains the expertise of your company and your unique selling proposition. Also, you should provide a telephone number and an e-mail address for contact.

5. Publish a weekly tips section in your website. If you are in a business for a long time, you have a wealth of knowledge about your business, market, and technologies related to your business. Make it a habit of jotting down one tip every day. You will have plenty of tips for your weekly publication.

6. Don't use guest books, testimonials etc. These are so Web 1.0 concepts. Use a forum. Let your customers interact among themselves. Develop a value network. You get into the insights of your customers' minds by reading their posts and your visitors know your products and services by talking to each other. As a result, you will be able to provide improved products and services and ask for a premium price.

7. Promptly answer all your visitors' e-mail. This is one thing you should nevër delay. Use your visitors comments, e-mail, and other form of communications to generate ideas for new articles and tips.

8. Tell your web developer to include an RSS feed on your site and publish filtered news related to the market you serve and emerging technologies in that market. Don't use a weather report. Nobody comes to your site to chëck the weather.

9. Publish a frequently asked questíons page related to your products and services. It helps save your visitors' time and effort when they are looking for information on a particular topic related to your website.

10. Did you know that the average person must be exposed to an offër around seven times before they will make a purchase? Make your website an advertising platform for your most popular items. Advertise them throughout your site but don't use any 'in-your face advertising' techniques. You can use side bars for this type of advertising with interesting anecdotes, pictures, etc. Be creative and use your imagination.

Your website is your publishing medium. It is not your online catalog. You want repeat visitors who spend their time at your site for valuable information. The possibility of visitors turning into a paying customers improves when they stick around your site longer.

About The Author
Dr. Deepak Dutta is the creator of SemanticBay.com - an interactive social network website based on user shared text and picture contents on any topics. His other website ClassifiedsForFree.com - is one of the oldest online classifieds sites.

Things To Consider When Evaluating Your Website

You have either put a lot of effort into your website or you have paid someone else a lot of money to put the effort in for you. Either way, whatever the purpose of the website, you want to get the most out of it. The question now becomes, how you can tell if your website is likely to succeed.

Why?

The first thing to do is to ask yourself why you have set up the website. Are you trying to sell a product or provide information or something else? What do you want to happen when a visitor lands on your pages? "For a man without a destination no wind is favourable" (An old saying attributed to many). If you do not know exactly what you want to happen, how can you expect the visitors to your website to know and do it? You are the one who ought to have the site set up to direct people to their destination. If you don't know what that is, then all is lost.

Your visitors probably know why they visited your site. You too must know why they came and help them do what they came to do. If your website does not provide what they need they will move on to another one. Just because you are getting all the traffic you could hope for does not mean that your site will succeed.

Your Website's Conversion Rate

You will need to measure your success rate. There are a number of ways to do this. One is the Conversion rate. Simply put, the conversion rate is the rate at which you convert visitors into buyers. Or if you are not selling it is the rate at which you convince people to do whatever it is you need them to do. It could be to sign up for your newsletter of subscribe to something else, etc. If you have one hundred visitors to your website per day and you convert two, your conversion rate is two percent.

It is a reasonably good measure of the quality of your website. If your site is not converting, you will know that you need to make changes to the site. However, it could also mean that you marketing or advertising campaign is sending untargeted traffic to your site. In other words sending visitors who are not in the least bit interested in what you have to offer.

SEO & Traffic Generation

The whole point of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is traffic generation. The idea is that you optimise or fine tune your website so that it gets to the top of the search results when people enter a search term that is contained in your website. You do this to get traffic. If your site is not properly optimised people are unlikely to find it. Unless of course you have found some narrow niche that nobody else has heard of, which will not bring a lot of visitors. SEO involves using the correct keywords in the correct way and arranging the contents and menus in the right way and most important of all is link building.

To rank highly, at the time of writing, the single most important thing to do to rank highly in the search engines is to increase the number of links to your site from quality websites which have content related to the subject of your site.

Content

It may sound obvious to most people but, the content of your website should be based on the subject of your product. For example if your website is set up to sell computers then it should contain articles about computers and computing etc. not gardening articles. If you have articles on unrelated subjects they will only serve to confuse your visitors and undermine your website's and your own credibility as a source of products and information about computers or whatever your website is promoting.

The content should be keyword rich but not saturated or you may show up on spam radar. The content should be broken up into manageable paragraphs and properly laid out with headers for each section, making it easier to read and navigate.

Navigation

Getting the visitors to your website is only half og th battle. You then must give them what they want. What do they want? Well, the first thing they want is to find their way around your website without pulling their hair out in frustration. These days there is far too much competition on the internet for that to happen. They will move to another website at the first sign of difficulty.

Arrange all the links and buttons in a way that is easy to read and understand. Do not over fill each page. If there is too much choice people do not make a choice they just get confused and... you guessed it. They move to another website.

The first page they land on, usually the index page should be interesting. It should be obvious to them that they have landed on a page with the content they came for and the way to navigate to that content should be very clear. Do not try to give them everything on the front page.

Ease of Use

How easy is it for your visitors to accomplish what they came to do? Do they need to fill out pages of information or can the do their business in a few clicks? If people have to figure out the puzzle that your website is they will move on unless you have something so attractive and necessary that they will stay at all costs. If you have a product like that then you can not charge enough for it.

It is always a good idea to have a professional web designer look over the site and point out any obvious flaws. I say obvious flaws because not all corrections are obvious and are often discovered through trial and error. You should keep tweaking the website in a continuous attempt to improve it. There is always room for improvement. Though it is also said that you should not fix something that works. I think that the best thing is to make gradual changes and if they are not a major improvement, at least they will not be a major disaster.

If you are not confident enough to do the coding and graphics etc. for your own site, there are many professional web designers out there who live for it. So don't let it stop you from getting you name, product or information out there.

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http://daforuiner.wordpress.com/2007/05/11/some-things-to-consider-when-evaluating-your-website/

How to Choose a Professional Web site Design Firm

Choosing a professional Web site design firm can be a daunting task. With all of the different companies out there, how do you know what is the best option? The following paragraphs will outline key areas of consideration before choosing a Web site design company.

To begin searching for a Web site design firm, there are several ways to begin the search. The first option is through an internet search by typing in the phrase “website design” and your city or state, i.e., “website design New Jersey”. Many people prefer this method because it enables them to find companies within their geographical area. However, limiting your search to your geographical area is not a necessity because this is a service that can be offered from anywhere around the world.

Another popular and very successful way of finding a web design company is through referral or word of mouth. Nothing is more powerful than knowing someone who has had a positive experience with a particular company and then using that information to conduct additional research to determine if that firm would be able to meet your design needs.

After compiling a list of potential Web site design firms, it is vital to determine the experience of the Web site development team. This one factor will tell you a significant amount about the degree of skill or knowledge that they may hold. However, determining the type of Web site design that they conduct on a regular basis is also important. Do they specialize in e-Commerce web site design services or just regular Web site design and maintenance? This is imperative because they should have a significant amount of experience regarding the type of site you are looking at having created.

An experienced Web site design company may also have examples of Web sites that they have created. By examining past projects you will be able to grasp a better understanding as to the style and variety that they will be able to offer. Do you want a simple, clean layout that is easy to navigate through and professional? Or, do you prefer a site with Flash that offers a more creative or artistic presentation?

Before narrowing down to a specific Web site design company, it is crucial to research the pricing structure to determine if it is competitive with industry standards. Do they charge an hourly rate? Or is it based on a per-project basis? These are important factors to consider, because hourly rates can quickly rise if the estimated completion time is extended.

Once you have a list of Web site design firms that you feel are able to offer the services that you are interested in at a reasonable price, it is important to make sure that they are reputable by seeing if they are listed on the Better Business Bureau or any Web site Design Associations. This will give an idea as to the history that they have within the industry or warn you that it may be a potentially fraudulent organization.

The final area of consideration before choosing a Web site design company is the support that they will be able to offer. This can be determined by several factors which include ease of contacting the design firm and whether they also offer site hosting. The last thing you want to have happen is not being able to have an active working relationship with the Webmaster because he/she is not available during normal business hours. If the company provides Web site design and hosting, they will be able to offer you the added convenience of a suite of solutions that enable your Webmaster to have easier access to make changes to your Web site, and you will experience the benefit of having to work with only one group of people rather than trying to communicate between multiple companies.

By following the key areas of consideration listed above, you will be able to create a systemized method of choosing a Web site design company. In addition, this will eliminate the stress that is often accompanied with making a major decision and enhance your success of finding a professional Web site design firm.

Establishing a Web Presence from a Small Island

Even if you choose not to sell online by taking credit cards, a business Web site can be a virtual marketing brochure that you can update on demand with little or no cost. Your presence on the Internet can be a useful marketing tool by providing richer pre-sale information or post-visit contact. This might temporarily differentiate your resort or operation from your competitors'. Emarketing has lessened the disadvantage that small businesses in the outer islands have faced for years when competing with larger businesses with broadband and communications galore.

Ecommerce has redefined the marketplace, altered business strategies, and allowed global competition between local businesses. The term "electronic commerce" has evolved from meaning simply electronic shopping to representing all aspects of business and market processes enabled by the Internet and other digital technologies.

Today's tourism business emphasis is on ecommerce — rapid electronic interactions enabled by the Internet and other connected computer and telephone networks. Rapid business transactions in taking booking deposits and unparallelled access to information is changing consumer behavior and expectations. The ability to "BOOK NOW" is driving more sales.

Many small tourism businesses assume that the Internet has little value to them because they feel that their service cannot be easily sold online due to all sorts of old traditional ideas. But inexpensive information processing and electronic media can help most small tourism businesses provide better, faster customer service and communication.

What tools do I need before putting together an Internet marketing plan?

Simple answer is fewer than you think!

If you want to have an online presence, you only need several basic technology tools at your disposal to guarantee that you will be successful with your Internet marketing plan for your tourism product. Without the following in place, it will be difficult to successfully market your business on the Web:

Web site:

You must have a Web site to successfully market your company on the Web. And you need a domain name that reflects your company's identity and brand. Using your company name as a domain name is a good place to start, although keywords and phrases are also another way to also do some SEO along the way.

Check out your competition:

You will find that Web sites have varying degrees of sophistication. Make sure that yours reflects your industry. If you are a Spa, for instance, you cannot get away with a low-tech text-heavy Web site, you'll need a softer feel.

Reliable ISP or Web host:

The inadequacies of your service provider will come across to customers as inadequacies of your company. Make sure you do your homework first and research potential Web hosts. The key factors in choosing a provider are connection speed, site uptime, spam policies and support. In addition, watch for hidden costs.

Also, make sure that certain technologies are available to you should you need them. For example, you may want to run server-side scripts to extract information from your database to include on your site. Many basic Web hosting programs do not include such functionality.

Email:

Customers and guests need to be able to contact you by email. All staff in reservations and sales should have an email address. Train your staff to use email for guest service. And make sure your email address is easy to find on your Web site and your marketing material.

Email newsletter:

An email newsletter can be a key component of successful online marketing. Its success hinges on the number of customer email addresses you successfully collect, so it is helpful to have a strategy and set up your Web site with that in mind.

How to Create Your First Website

The following is a quick reference for new/soon to be webmasters, the information contained in this article is simply what has worked for me in the past, all webmasters will develop their own unique ways of going about their daily business.

1. Web hosting

This will be your second hardest decision when it comes to launching your website, when first starting out it is ok to settle for free hosting, many free hosts will also give you a free sub domain, more about that in #2 Domain Names.

If you do settle for a free host you must ensure this is only temporary, for the most part free hosts have terrible uptime and are littered with mandatory banners and or pop ups/unders, this is not a good way to develop a recurring customer base, and if there are 9 banners and pop ups on your site you better be getting paid for them.

In order to choose the correct paid host you have to figure out what your site will need to run, is it an ecommerce site? do you need php/mysql? 35 databases etc. You are the only person that will be able to decide the requirements for your site.

If you are unsure as to exactly what your site needs there are many sites out there that have databases full of web hosts and web host packages/prices.

2. Domain Name

In order to run any website you will need a domain name, no one will ever find you without one, chances are at this stage no one will find you anyway.

There are a few different ways we can go about obtaining a domain name, if you know exactly what you want and have some funds to purchase your .com go ahead and take that plunge, but if your not so sure you have found that perfect name, or if you don’t even know what kind of domain you would like, feel free to settle
for a sub domain.

Now in the eyes of a lot of well established webmasters a sub domain from a free host or free domain company is a not a good way to go, I got that a lot when I was starting out, lets face it, with a sub domain no one will ever take you seriously www.widgets.freedomains4life.com is not very professional
or memorable, but it’s a starting point none the less.

Basically what we are trying to do with a sub domain is get your site on the net, that’s all, get it live so you can view it, make changes, fix bugs etc, we don’t want to launch a site that is not user friendly or just plain ugly.

Now after you have your site up at your free sub domain from your free host we have got to start looking at a real .com you will not get anywhere in this business without one. So search around the internet a bit, find a good registrar, at the time of this writing moniker.com, godaddy.com and networksolutions.com all seem to be decent sites, the latter a little pricier than the former but they all have their own pros and cons.

Now, this decision may be the biggest decision of your current project, do you go with a keyword rich domain or take the road less traveled and snatch up a brandable domain? Now you may not know exactly what I’m talking about when I say brandable, if your really new to the game you might not even know keyword rich so I'll try to put it in layman's terms for you.

A keyword rich domain is using the most highly sought after keyword for your site/product etc in your domain name, if I was creating a site on DVD players my domains would possibly be something like this dvdplayers.com, portabledvdplayer.com, hddvdplayer.com etc, a great tool for this is the Overture Keyword Selector found here, google it.

If we want to take our domain the other way and make it brandable much like Google, Yahoo, eBay etc, there really is no “How To” guide, for me caffeine and advil seems help, if you are planning on taking this route I’ve been told using other languages is good, beware the the actual meaning of the term in another language though, the urban legend of the Chevy Nova in Latin America comes to mind, Google brandable domains see what you can find.

3. Web Site Design

If you already know how to code in HTML, PHP etc then you are well on your way and can probably skip this step, if not you have quite a way to go. If you want to create a website it is imperative to learn how to code, you don’t want to pay between $500 and $5000 to create a website on a whim then continue to pay someone every time your site needs updating.

Take a look around the net for some tutorials regarding HTML in order to establish the base of your site, I’m not going to lie, there will be alot of reading and very long nights involved in learning web design, but it will reward you with unlimited possibilities when it comes to creating personal web sites or online communities etc.

Coupled with the design of your site you will at least want to learn the basics of graphic design, the worst thing you can do is buy a brandable domain and throw a generic logo that can be found on 96 other sites on it, this will greatly reduce your ability to stand out from the crowd, after all if you see 96 signs with the same logo but different company names how are you going to remember the 33rd company?

If you absolutely do not want to learn graphic design you can have a logo or layout designed for you at a relatively cheap price, just make sure it is 100% original and you have all .psd files etc before finalizing the transaction.

4. Content is King

Ask any webmaster, they will all agree, content is king, this is the absolute best way to have your site noticed and stand out from the crowd. One well written, keyword rich article pertaining to the content of your site will get you more visitors and a higher search engine ranking then one hundred plain product pages.

Now, I recommend you write your content yourself, whether it is the actual content that brings your site together or an article you've written about your sites topic, it is best to write this yourself. The reason for this is if you don’t actually know everything about your "widget" this is a good way to learn about it, also people will respect the article more and it gives you a feeling of self satisfaction when you finish a nine page article.

If you have trouble writing long articles or putting together a correct sentence you are not left out in the cold, there are many sites out there that have other webmasters as well as freelance writers dying to write an article specifically for your niche, I at one point a few years ago had 6 articles written for me for $7 each, not to bad when you think about the amount of traffic you may get from these articles being on your site. Google
freelance writers or contract writers and you will most likely come up with some decent results.

5. Marketing

I don’t care what your site is about, there comes a time when you will have to promote it, if you are just starting out chances are you have a very limited budget, so some tips on how to get visitors to your site for cheap. Forums are a great way to establish a following online, join some forums that relate to the category of your website, spend some time each day posting and getting to know the other forum members, be sure to keep an updated signature (assuming the forum allows signatures) so that anyone reading your post can also view your current project, but don’t expect results right away it often takes months to actually see the users coming from these forums, but be patient and develop a rapport with them, you never know you may even meet a future business partner.

Another way to start instant traffic is to purchase an ad campaign on a site related to yours, this may be a little difficult, some sites prices are very high, the best way to get the most for your money is to purchase links or banners on an up and coming site, if you attempt to purchase banner space on the top site in the business it could easily cost you $200 a week, by buying from the up and comer you will receive a few less visits, but it will cost alot less too.

If the site you are trying to develop is for a product, for the sake of an example we will say candy apples. Another great way to promote it is in your local area, take a day and visit all the local businesses have samples for the staff, ask the craft stores if they wouldn’t mind handing some business cards out for you, if you’re lucky and you have a decent product they may let you sell from there store front, I have heard of this happening many
times and people just don’t realize how powerful local business' can be.

6. Update, Update, Update

This is exactly how it sounds, no visitor wants to come to a site that has the same article or look on the homepage for six months, they will simply become bored with it and find a different site promoting the same product. In order to survive online you must update your pages.

If you have a content site, write an article a week, its not hard, but it gives you 52 articles a year, that’s a good starting point and will encourage people to link to your site.

If it is an e commerce site, update the home page with specials, have contests, anything to keep the visitor interested and coming back for more, a content (pardon the pun) visitor is a return visitor.

So now you should now what direction you're going online. Just remember, take your time, don’t throw up a sloppy site, and never ever give up, the internet is probably one of the hardest places to make a living, but the feeling of euphoria you get when you know you can, tops any other high you can experience.