The Explosion of the Mobile Web…..Is Your Website Ready?
Just a few short years ago, it was a good bet that you would read articles like this one on your PC or laptop. Today, it’s just as likely that you are reading this article on a smartphone or tablet computer. So what’s changed, what happened? The mobile web happened, that’s what – and the Internet will never be the same. So, what’s the mobile web?
Loosely defined, the mobile web is a way of accessing the Internet via a wireless network, using a handheld mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer.
The Explosion Of The Mobile Web
The mobile web is growing at a phenomenal pace, and is forecast to overtake the desktop web in 2014. In other words, more users will access the Internet using a mobile phone rather than a PC for the first time.
Approximately 900 million people currently access the web with mobile phones, compared to 1.4 billion desktop Internet users. In 2014, mobile web users will outpace desktop users (approximately 1.7 billion mobile users to approximately 1.65 billion desktop users). By 2015, the number of mobile web users is expected to increase to 2 billion.
Assuming an annual growth rate of about 2 percent annually between 2010 and 2015 in cell phone subscriptions (77 percent of the world’s population will have cell phone subscriptions in 2010 and 87 percent will have subscriptions in 2015), about 6.35 billion people worldwide will have a mobile phone subscription and approximately 1 out of 3 subscribers (or 2 billion out of 6.35 billion) will be accessing the Internet on mobile phones. (Source: Wikimedia)
And according to the August, 2011 edition of eMarketer, 33 percent of mobile users are looking to access local content relevant to their GPS positioned location.
Is Your Website Ready?
So, what does all of this mean to you? It means more people than ever will be viewing your website through a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet computer, via a wireless network. It also means that if you want to survive and thrive, you have to adjust and adapt, and make your website mobile web friendly. The good news is, it’s easier than you think.
“Within the Alexa top 1,000 sites, 40.1 percent of all sites are mobile-friendly. These sites represent the world’s most popular web properties, like Google, Facebook and Yahoo!
Beyond the top 1,000, mobile friendliness still holds strong but is not yet as widespread. Of the top 10,000 Alexa sites, 29.7 percent perform well on mobiles. Once the input data is broadened to include the top 500,000 sites, the total number of mobile-friendly sites drops to 19.3 percent.” (Source: mobiThinking.com)
If you haven’t already done so, the very first thing you need to do is bring your website up to speed visually. In other words, you want to make sure that users of mobile devices can view your site optimally.
The quickest and easiest way to do this is to run your site through the MobiReady online testing site. This is a free service that evaluates mobile-readiness using industry best practices & standards.
The free report provides both a score (from 1 to 5) and in-depth analysis of pages to determine how well your site performs on a mobile device. There are also other tools that will allow you to test your site for mobile readiness. In fact, here are 10 Excellent Tools for Testing Your Site on Mobile Devices.
Personally, I have serious doubts about the accuracy of these types of testing tools. For example, I ran my site through MobiReady, and it gave my site a 2 out of 5 score which, according to their analysis is bad. I got the exact same score before and after I mobil-optimized my site.
Here’s the problem: I’ve had many friends and colleagues of mine, all with different makes and models of smartphones, on a variety of platforms, tell me that my site looks just fine on their phones. So while testing tools may be a useful resource, the true litmus test is what users of mobile devices are seeing – so be sure to ask them.
That being said, there ARE things you can do to mobile-optimize your website.
How To Make Your Website Mobile Compatible 1. Have a fast-loading site. Chances are, most mobile-web users who are using their phones to access the Internet are using a slower 3G connection. You can help these users out by making sure your website code is clean, which will not only make for a faster-loading site, but faster downloads as well.
2. Don’t use flash. Not all mobile devices can see flash? Personally, I’m not a huge fan of flash sites anyway. But if you absolutely, positively have to have a flash site, be both smart and considerate. Make sure you have an alternate HTML version of your site as well.
3. Have a clean, easy to navigate website. Remember, mobile users are viewing your site on a tiny little screen. In addition, there is no mouse and not all mobile devices are equipped with a touch screen. So don’t make it harder for mobile users to view or utilize your site than it needs to be. Clean up the clutter and streamline your content. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If you keep it simple, your site will be user-friendly for everyone.
4. Use HTML phone numbers. Don’t make mobile users have to type in your phone number. Use HTML so that they can simply click to dial the number.
5. Avoid horizontal scrolling. Mobile users prefer to scroll vertically as opposed to horizontally. It’s easier and less of a hassle for them. Always create your content as a single column of text that wraps for mobile users.
6. Use images sparingly. As I mentioned earlier, most mobile users are using a slower 3G connection. As a result, heavier images can take forever to load. To avoid this problem, you should use images sparingly on your website. But if you do choose to use images, they should be lighter-weight jpeg, gif or png format. Also, make sure to compress your images to avoid zooming.
7. Voice Search. Google’s Voice Search on smartphones, has increased voice search usage by approximately 600% in the past year. Since mobile devices don’t have a traditional keyboard like a PC or laptop, voice search makes searching quicker and easier for smartphone users. So you should definitely keep an eye on this trend for SEO purposes. Bear in mind, people tend to search differently when speaking as opposed to typing. For example, while you might type-search “best virtual assistants,” you might voice-search “what are the best virtual assistant services?” Again, it’s a trend you should keep an eye on.
Indexing Of A Mobile Site
Google mainly recommends the following for better indexing of a mobile site.
• Google has a separate mobile bot for indexing mobile friendly pages. So, always redirect this bot (check for user agent ‘Googlebot-Mobile’) to the mobile version of your site. This bot should not see the normal site.
•Use the XHTML Mobile doctype so that search engine bots can clearly identify the page as mobile friendly.
•For each page, there should be a link for the standard view of that page. It will help Google to categorize mobile pages and its corresponding standard pages. (Source: The Right Way to Build a Mobile Site)
By David Jackson
Things To Keep In Mind Before Hiring A Web Design Company
With the present boom in e-commerce, a well designed website that attracts the attention of potential customers is indispensable to the owners of various small-scale and large-scale industries. Endowing the website of a particular company with a prominent online presence requires an in-depth understanding of the needs and business objectives of that company. Therefore the business owner would do well to sit and discuss his requirements with his web designer. Most importantly, the website should be so interesting as to keep the viewers glued on to the page. However, shoddy work is often noticed in websites for which a hefty amount had been paid. This can prove to be distressing for small business owners who often lack the means of employing a professional to redo the damage. Thus, the foremost criteria for building up a good website are to get hold of a good professional website designer who understands his employer’s objectives. It would be of immense benefit to follow a few guidelines to help identify a competent web designer.
Before embarking on the search for a competent and affordable website designer, it would be better to keep in mind a few points:
- The website should inform the customers about the kind of services provided by the company.
- Whether the site will require frequent information updates.
- The budget of the particular company.
- The needs and tastes of the targeted audience.
- Whether the company will depend on search engines to optimize it’s sales.
- The web designer should be acquainted with all the above criteria in order to create a profitable website.
The next stage is starting to look for a web designer. Here again certain things need to be considered:
- It is recommended that the business should check the portfolio of the web designing firm with whom they are entrusting their work.
- It should also talk to the previous clients of the concerned web designing company in order to ascertain whether they got the right service and guidance from the website development firm.
- Besides understanding the pros and cons of the company’s objectives, the web designer should also be able to improvise and build up a site that is capable of standing out from the crowd of other websites.
- The company should also ask the web designing firm to show them examples of their previous work. This will reflect on the capability of the web designing company to design professional websites.
- The website should also be easy to navigate. In order to retain the impatient online reader the web designer should ensure that no information is more than a couple of clicks away.
- It is important to form a long-term relationship with the web designer. Otherwise it will prove costly to add new features to a website, if the original website developer who built it is not there to update it.
- It is important that the website should load quickly. The concentration span of the average reader is very little. Therefore if the page takes longer to load it will have grave repercussions for the company. Prospective customers will veer away from the site.
- While designing a website, the web designer should stick to the particular layout which users have become accustomed to.
- If the company wants an e-commerce website, then the website should be so designed as to make it easy for buyers to buy products online.
- The web designer should not use too many special effects as this will lead to increase in loading time, which in turn might have a negative impact on visitor retention.
Following the above mentioned points, will increase the chances of getting hold of a competent web designing firm who understands the business of its customer and provides valuable services which helps in meeting the cherished business goals.
Why Search Engine Spiders Can’t Index Your Pages
HTML Problems Can Prevent Indexing. This is a common problem. Your web designer has created a beautiful page with nice graphics and great Flash animations. Unfortunately, it seems that search engines won’t list your website no matter what you do.
This can have several reasons:
1. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Is Meaningless To Search Engines
Search engines use very simple software programs to index your web pages. A web page that looks great to the human eye can be totally meaningless to search engines.
Search engines cannot see content that is presented in images (GIF, JPEG, PNG, etc.), Flash elements, JavaScript and other script languages or other multimedia file formats.
If you use JavaScript links for your website navigation then search engines might not be able to find your website page.
Solution: Check your web pages with a search engine spider simulator. Spider simulators will show you how search engines see your web site.
If you use IBP’s search engine spider simulator, you can even enter the name of the spider, so that you can test if Google and Yahoo get different results when they visit your web pages.
2. The HTML Code Of Your Web Page Contains Errors
Some HTML errors can prevent search engine spiders from indexing your web pages. While most search engine spiders can deal with minor code errors, some of them will send faulty information to search engine spiders.
For example, your web page could contain a tag at the top of the page that tells search engines “the web page ends here” although your main content has not been reached.
Solution: Check the HTML code of your web pages with an HTML validator tool. You can find an HTML validator in the free IBP trial version.
3. The HTML Code Of Your Web Pages Doesn’t Contain The Right Elements
If you want to get high rankings for a special keyword then this keyword must appear in the right places on your web page. For example, it usually helps to use the keyword in the web page title.
There are many other elements that are important if you want to have high rankings.
Solution: Check the HTML code of your web page with IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer. IBP’s Top 10 Optimizer compares your web page with the top ranked pages and it will tell you in detail how to change your web page so that it can get top 10 rankings.
4. Your Web Server Sends The Wrong Status Codes
Some web servers send wrong status codes. When a search engine spider requests a web page from your site then your server sends a response code. This should be the “200 OK” code.
Unfortunately, some servers send a “302 moved” or even a “404 not found” response code to the search engine spiders although the web page can be displayed in a normal web browser.
In that case, search engines will think that the web page doesn’t exist and they won’t index the page.
Solution: Use the search engine spider simulator to find out which response code your web server returns to search engines. If the response code is not “200 OK”, IBP’s search engine spider simulator will return a warning message. ( Editor’s Note: You can also check your status code with our free HTTP Server Response Code Checker )
If you want to get top rankings on Google and other search engines then you must make sure that search engines don’t misunderstand your pages. Use the tips above to make sure that search engines see what you want them to see.
Autor: Jason
How a Blog Could Revitalize Your Website
O.K. so you think you have an idea or even a product to sell through your brand new internet business.
Internet marketing is a brilliant business to be in. There are boundless opportunities to run online businesses which can make incredible amounts of money, if you have established that there is a market for your chosen niche or product, and have done the necessary research.
All set, ready to go?
Er, not quite.
You should establish a presence in your market before you unleash your product to the world.
If you are about to start an internet business, then you should be wondering about attracting traffic to your site. There are many advertising options available, but if money is tight, some of these options may not seem practical.
Advertising can be expensive especially if you are not too sure what you are doing. Money can be swallowed up very quickly if you do not study advertising techniques.
Promotion can take many weeks or even months to show results, and then may not be effective.
Many courses and books sold by some of the gurus are sometimes out of date. Outdated material and tactics which you pay for then find they just do not work.
You may have an excellent website, but bear in mind blogging is now probably more effective than a static site.
Of course, the most traditional way of running an online business over the last few years has been websites, and is still a very successful method.
However, blogging has moved to the fore because search engines seem to favor blogs over the standard static website.
For those who can constantly add to or update their blog, visits by search engines will become a more regular practice, which will give you more chance of a high ranking in the search engines.
The reason is that search engines seem to prefer blogs over traditional static sites and it is possible to see a page on your blog ranked on the first page in Google within 24 hours.
With a blog, you are updating on a regular basis, sometimes daily, and search engines love sites which are constantly updated, giving you a better chance of getting ranked more highly.
Therefore, blogging is probably the best way to build traffic to your site at the same time enabling you to become an expert in your field in a very short time.
A blog is very easy to use and so adding content to a blog is easy to do. A blog is similar to a diary or journal with which you can keep up-to-date with your thoughts and ideas.
It is easy to keep your customers updated with information or products.
You can build a relationship with your readers, thereby building confidence and respect as you are projecting yourself as an expert.
A blog also allows your visitors to post comments, so you are also creating an interactive environment which of course further develops your relationship with your visitors.
If your subject is one you are passionate about, then writing 300 words each day should not be very difficult. It should be simple to find endless ideas to write about. Adding to a blog on a daily basis will not take very long. You need only write about 300 words every day, and it gets easier the more you write.
Always make your content informative and good quality. Don’t ever give rubbish to your readers. Your readers should always be treated with the greatest of respect. After all, once you build up a large líst of members, who hopefully trust you because you have always given them quality, they will then trust you enough to purchase the products you have recommended to them.
The easiest way to set up a blog is to use a Google service called Blogger or WordPress. You can simply go to the website, choose a user name and the rest is simple. You can be up and running in minutes.
A big disadvantage with Blogger of course is that your blog is owned by Blogger and may be shut down by them without notice. Many thousands have been shut down without notice.
By far the best option is to set up your blog with WordPress because you will have full control over your blogging activities. Set up your blog with WordPress and host it on your domain.
The only downside with WordPress is that you must set your blog up yourself.
The power in your blog comes from the quality information you put into it, attracting readers to your blog and therefore establishing you as an authority and giving you credibility in your market.
Once again, the more often you can update your blog, the more often the search engines will visit. The more you can write, the more exposure you will get.
Your blog post does not have to be a great literary work, it can just be a paragraph or two on your specialist subject, but always make your information quality content, between 350 and 700 words.
You should use your blog to help build a líst of members, because it is one of the best ways of building a relationship with people who are keen to receive information from you.
Building a relationship will also build trust and confidence. Your readers will look forward to receiving e-mails or blogs from you in which you can recommend products and services.
The keyword here is recommend, rather than sell or promote. If someone feels that you have recommended – not sold – to them, then that will go a long way to build loyalty and trust.
If you can build loyalty and trust with your subscribers through your blog which establishes you as a respected expert, then you are on your way to a successful internet business which can easily earn you a substantial income.
Author
Ray Carr
For more information on creating a Blog for your site, please contact us.
Website Designers – Helping You Achieve Your Online Goals
Practically every business today has a website. Whether it’s designed to sell products or services online or purely act as an information port, everyone seems to have one.
Being that the online industry is extremely competitive, there is a lot of pressure on having a web site that is more effective than those of your competitors. Great website designers work with you to make this happen. Depending on the extent of the services that they offer, some designers can take care of your website’s entire effectiveness, allowing business owners to focus on other important aspects of their business.
The purpose of a web site is to attract visitors and not only convince them to do exactly what you want them to do once they get there, but make it easy for them to find what they need to.
One of the first things a website designer will do is discuss your business and your online objectives. If you are in a competitive online market, then you’ll need to enlist in their Search Engine Marketing services. Whilst having an eye-catching web site with amazing images and state-of-the-art graphics will certainly turn visitor’s heads, it’s actually getting them to your web site that’s of foremost importance.
Website designers who have Search Engine Marketing knowledge will carry out a number of things both on and off your website. From an on-site perspective, they’ll need to ensure your web content includes careful distribution of all of the most highly searched keyword phrases that relate to your business and web site. Once your Search Engine Marketing needs have been catered to, your website will be in a good position to rank in the Search Engines ahead of your competitors, meaning you are more likely to get more traffic, enquiries, leads and sales.
When a website designer builds your web site they will design it in a way that quickly engages your visitors, so as not to make them click off your site and onto another one. Now that your site has been properly marketed and your visitors engaged, it’s a matter of feeding them the right information that will persuade them to buy your products and/or services.
Once website designers have finished designing your web site they’ll often build it using a Content Management System (CMS) which will enable you to make any necessary changes to your website’s content, images or layout. A lot of website designers will charge you a set rate for hosting your site as well as giving you access to your Content Management System.
So if you’re about to launch a new business, speak to a web designer as they’ll often be able to tell you if they think you’ll need a website. Having one can make the difference between an average performing business and a highly successful one.
by Suzanne Carter
The Heart of a Company Logo – Can it Be Simple or Complicated?
There are two ways of looking at the choice of logos:
1. Simple logos are better because they are easy to remember.
2. Complex logos are better because they are unique and professional looking.
One reason many people prefer simplistic logos is that they are easier to recognize and easier to remember. One simple logo that everyone recognizes is the big “M” for McDonald’s. This “M” could stand for a number of different companies, but it is universally recognized and remembered as standing for McDonald’s.
There are those who believe a simplistic logo cannot pass on a message or clearly identify your products and services. Of course, you don’t always have to convey a message or explicitly detail your products and services. There are many fine logos that simply represent a company.
When drafting your logo, make sure it is easily reproduced, and also remember how it will be used. A complex logo may not reproduce well on a number of different materials. If you are planning to use your logo on the internet, take care when choosing your colors. Check to see what colors work best with web browsers. Clearly, it is important to know where and how you plan to use your logo before you begin choosing colors.
One thing is true of all logos – to be excellent, a logo must be easy to recognize and easy to remember. While there is no list of things that help make logos memorable, a couple of things that help are the company’s branding and high visibility of the image. There are some rules to guide the creation of a logo, such as using the least number of colors when designing a logo.
When you own your own business, you will surely want to choose a professional image to represent your company and yourself. Keep in mind that your logo will represent you business in a number of venues, so it must truly represent your company’s brands and perhaps show your company’s colors. Your logo will represent your business for a long, long time. That is why you must take great care in choosing one that really represents your business well.
The Importance of Choosing the Right Colors for Your Website
Colors have psychological impacts, they are attributes of eyes, but are the chemistry of the mind. Colors are perceived though pupils and its effects are produced with associated nerves to the brain neurons. Light reflecting through objects in different wavelengths and frequency stimulates different “cones” or color receptor cells of the retina in the eyes and makes perception possible for different colors.
Colors influence people through psychological changes and are associated with certain feelings and meanings. Colors exist everywhere else, it is omnipresent. Colors represent cultural, social customs and emotional values and its use in arts, printing, designing, websites, graphics, etc. – these days are unavoidable.
Choosing proper color is an essential constituent for your website and its graphics; as visitors to your website first encounters colors and graphics before they read your textual descriptions.
Colors are used in website design and graphic design for various forms; use of colors can be for backgrounds, navigation, logos, and navigation buttons to emphasize, highlight, symbolize your text description and outlining your site.
Despite the fact that your website is enhanced and fabricated with textual and graphical design, if you are using the wrong color combinations, then you are annoying your own visitors rather appealing them. As a result, to attract your customers, it is important to understand psychological behavior of your customers to your websites chromatics. The use of wrong colors results in the wrong impression.
Below are the details for color interpreted through different professions, culture, and physiology science:
Red: Red is a color of intensity, stimulants, love, gaudiness, blood, war, excitement, speed, heat, leadership, masculinity, power, passion, strength, energy, financial loss, Danger, fire, radicalism, aggression, stop, anger, and revolution.
Blue: Blue is a color of peace, unity, harmony, depression, coldness, ice, tackiness, winter tranquility, calmness, coolness, confidence, water, ice, loyalty, conservatism, dependability, cleanliness, technology, winter, idealism, and obscenity.
White: White a color of peace, innocence, cleanliness, simplicity, security, humility, sterility, winter, reverence, purity, coldness, surrender, cowardice, and fearfulness. Black: Black is a color of power, sophistication, Evil, death, fear, anonymity, anger, sadness, mystery, formality, elegance, wealth, style, remorse, mourning, and unhappiness.
Green: Green is a color of nature, spring, good luck, illness, greed, vigor, generosity, go, grass, wealth, money, fertility, youth, environment, envy, misfortune, jealousy, aggression, and inexperience.
Purple: Purple is a color of spirituality, royalty, nobility, enlightenment, sensuality, creativity, wealth, gaudiness, ceremony, mystery, wisdom, mourning, profanity, exaggeration, confusion, arrogance, and flamboyance.
Brown: Brown is a color of richness, stability, anachronism, dirt, dullness, filth, heaviness, poverty, roughness tradition, calm, depth, natural organisms, and nature.
Yellow: Yellow is the color of joy, happiness, optimism, idealism, gold, summer, hope, air, sunlight, hazards, dishonesty, avarice, weakness, cowardice, and illness.
Orange: Orange is a color of energy, flamboyance, playfulness, balance, heat, fire, enthusiasm, overemotional, warning, danger, fire, aggression, arrogance, flamboyance, and gaudiness.
Even choosing color is a professional skill in graphic design business, as it is not only just the colors, but are the color that stimulates the mind of your viewers. Graphic designs inevitably comes with colors, and selecting the best ones for your business is an expertise.
Here is a more in depth description of colors and their psychological effect from this interesting article.
- Purple and violet are psychologically inspiring for the spirit, and benefit the pineal gland, cerebral cortex, right eye, central nervous system and upper brain function.
- Indigo aids concentration, insight and imagination, and promotes peace of mind. Physically it benefits the pituitary gland, left eye, sinus, nose and eyesight.
- Blue is linked to integrity, honesty, loyalty, kindness, commitment and endurance. It benefits the throat, thyroid, parathyroid, lungs and mouth.
- Green promotes compassion and unconditional love, forgiveness, contentment, nurturing, harmony, and generosity. Physically it is linked to the heart, circulatory system, arms and hands.
- Yellow stimulates humour and logic, efficiency, warmth, self-awareness and personal power. It corresponds to the solar plexus, stomach, liver, gall bladder and pancreas.
- Orange is required to stimulate sensuality and passion, vitality, optimism and enthusiasm, tolerance and hospitality. It affects the reproductive organs, genitals, gonads, prostate and spleen.
- Red will arouse instincts of self-preservation and survival, stimulating the senses and bringing out the spontaneous primal urges. It relates to the base of the spine, adrenals, kidneys, bladder, colon, spinal column, legs and blood.
by Bharat Bista
Writing Compelling Content for the Web
Content is one of the most valuable things you can focus on during development of your website. Consider each page of your website a chance to capture or lose your audience. If a web page has paragraph after paragraph of text, many visitors won’t bother to begin reading. There are various other things to be leery of when writing for the web. This article covers eight tips to help you succeed when writing content for your website.
Entice with Communicative Headings
Visitors decide whether to invest their precious time reading your content, typically after scanning a heading or two. Consider which headline will receive more attention:
• PHP solutions for the Web
• Three eCommerce PHP Solutions for the Web
While both could be headings for the same content, the second heading will attract more attention because it clearly denotes what will follow. Additionally, it adds a level of expertise. It is also important to keep your headings concise. When headings wrap to multiple lines, they start becoming paragraph-like and readers cannot scan them. Sub-headings are another way to make your content easier for visitors to scan. Once readers have decided your heading is worth investing more time in, they often scan the sub-headings to jump to the section that is most applicable to them.
Conclude Before You Expand
Every page of your website should cater to the most impatient reader and clearly state what the page is about in the first few lines. Most readers won’t want to read an entire page to get to the point. Write an introductory paragraph that summarizes the most important parts.
Many successful writers outline the points they want to get across, fill in those points and only then do they write their first paragraph. It is not necessary to write from top to bottom and this method can help you write a stronger introduction.
Create Effective Lists
It is quicker to scroll down a web page than it is to read from left to right and keep your eyes wrapping from line to line. For this reason, readers appreciate lists. However, it is important not to use overwhelmingly long lists. Studies have shown people can remember 7 things at a time. A list of seven bulleted items is digestible, while a list of 50 is intimidating. If it is crucial for you to list 50 points, break up your lists with sub-headings so readers are able to jump from section to section efficiently.
Write Clearly and Succinctly
Whether your visitors are coming to gain information, make buying decisions or simply be entertained, respect that they don’t have all day to read your content. If you are wordy, you can expect your visitors to drift to competitors’ websites. However, don’t sacrifice clarity for brevity.
Similar to print writing, each paragraph should contain only one idea. The attention span of a web reader is shorter than that of a print reader though, which makes it important to trim your paragraphs to a few sentences each.
Eliminate unnecessary words. For example, there is no need to say, “at this point in time” when you can say “currently.” It is useless to say “an awful tragedy” when tragedies are awful by nature. Avoid describing an object as “round in shape” when you can just say round.
Avoid the passive voice. For example, replace, “My life has been made easier by templates” with “Templates simplified my life.”
The above paragraph helps illustrate that examples are useful; however, I should specify that repeating yourself is not. Do not say the same thing in three different ways.
Use consistent language. Consider your audience when writing in first, second or third person and be careful transitioning from one to the next. Jumping from a formal paragraph to a first person story sounds like two authors wrote the content.
Finally, read your content aloud and trust your first reaction. If you have to re-read to put the emphasis in the correct part of the sentence or to understand your point, you can bet that others will too.
More importantly, have someone else read your content – preferably, your target audience, not your business partner. You are too close to the ideas you want to communicate and others may find ambiguities that you will certainly want to clarify.
Create Content Relative to Your Audience
Know your audience and speak to them, not at them. Whether your objective is to sell toilet seats or convey a change in the stock market, play to people’s emotions. Don’t use technical terms for a less than savvy audience.
Don’t assume your readers have been to certain pages of your website before others. With a growing dependence on search engines, visitors often arrive at a website two tiers down from the home page. Consider the visitor’s point of view: If I knew nothing about this company or website, would I understand this page?
Be cautious of tangents, information and links that will distract a reader from the web page’s primary purpose.
Specify Links with Style and Language
Links are another way visitors can scan your web pages as they stand out from normal text – or at least they should. Make sure your links differ in color or style from other text on your website. Using “click here to learn more” is a waste of space. Instead, use “learn more.” Your links should tell readers where they are going, but they shouldn’t be reminded they need their mouse to get there.
Be specific with where the link is leading to. There are many websites that break up articles into two or more pages. Readers are more apt to click on a link that says, “Part 2: SEO Tips” than they are to click on a link that says “next.”
Proofread – Forward and Backward
There are some people who are a captivating force to typos and grammatical blunders. While some will gloss over these errors, the people who do notice are typically repelled. Websites with typos look unprofessional – or worse – like the author didn’t care enough about the reader to take the time to proofread.
Tips for proofreading:
• Use spell check and grammar check.
• Read backward. When we read forward, our eyes skip over small words and miss mistakes.
• Have someone else proofread your content.
• If in doubt, look it up!
Trusting copy/paste is a common mistake; be sure to proofread your content after it is on the web page.
Conclude with Action
Although many of your readers won’t make it to the end of your content, it’s important to summarize for those who do. Include your overall point, as well as where you would like to lead your reader to next. If you are fortunate enough to have your readers want more, don’t miss a chance to provide it!
For example, I would like to conclude by articulating that web writing has similarities to print writing (entice and be concise!) but differs in that readers are more impatient and can easily “surf” elsewhere. The more you understand how people read on the web in general and what your audience wants to know, the more you will keep visitors coming back for more.
Resource: WebAssist
5 Crucial Components of Website Design
Professional website developers know the importance of web design and the role it plays in making a website successful.
Designing a successful website is no easy task, especially for someone who is new to the world of web development. With the help of web development applications many people can and do create decent websites. But decent in most cases is not good enough to make a site successful from a traffic or financial standpoint.
There are five crucial components of web design that you must focus on in order to make a site valuable to its visitors and successful for you.
• SEO – Getting free traffic to your site.
• Usability – Ease of navigating around the site and finding desired information quickly.
• Aesthetics – Visual appeal.
• Content – Valid, up-to-date, relevant information.
• Graphics – Eye candy that relays relevant visual information to the visitor.
SEO
Before you ever lay down a byte of HTML code for a site, you have to know and understand at least the basics of SEO and how it fits into the design. SEO is the art of designing a site in a fashion that gives the site an advantage for obtaining free and abundant traffic.
The number one aspect of SEO is selecting keywords relevant to your site. The keywords you select should be based on high usage, low competition and relevancy to your topic. Once you select keywords you can then begin the development of your site. Keep in mind keywords are a critical aspect of the design. The keywords you choose will be applied within the design in strategic fashion to benefit the flow of traffic to your site. To understand more on how to implement SEO you should read and learn more about this important subject. If you don’t, your website success will be difficult to achieve.
Usability
Your website must be easy to navigate and designed in a way that makes it easy to find information. Visitors will not stay long if it takes more than one or two clicks to get the information they want or if it takes brain power to figure out how to get the information they want. One of the goals of your site design is to keep usability easy, and simple. To do this, apply the following three fundamentals of usability.
• Provide a site search tool. A visitor in a hurry can quickly find the info they desire then move on to the action they desire.
• Provide simple, intuitive and consistent site navigation. This provides visitors the tool they need to leisurely explore their way through your site.
• Provide logical and simple to follow content. Forget Expensive PPC Advertising – There is an Alternative!
The message of a site should start off in a simple and basic fashion with well defined links pointing the way to more detailed information or explanation as needed.
In the cases above, the goal is to make it easy for your visitor to find the information they want without frustration or difficulty. Doing this well will have a positive effect on increasing the return of your visitors.
Aesthetics
A website has to look clean, uncomplicated and strike a balance in layout that is pleasant to the visitor. Pleasing aesthetics come about when the colors of a site complement each other, the graphics blend and lend continuation of the theme and the layout brings unity and openness to the page.
Often overlooked by novice designers is the color palette of the site. While you can select color in a willy-nilly fashion and still provide a visually appealing site, a better idea for color selection should be based on an understanding of the color wheel and proven color strategies.
Many web designers often view a web page as an opportunity to blast a visitor with lots of information in hopes this will convince the visitor to take action. Usually this results in a quick exit due to the overwhelming visual effect and complicated look. A better approach is to provide less content and open space (referred to as white space) to allow visitors eyes to scan and explore with ease.
Content
An important feature of any website is the quality of the text content. Visitors come to a site expecting to find answers to their questions, solutions to their problems or for entertainment value. The content offered at your site must be well-written and without grammatical or spelling errors. It also has to be relevant to the theme of your site, with valid, up-to- date information for your visitors. Content is King!
Graphics
You can have a functional and usable website without graphic elements. However, if there are similar sites to yours that employ graphics, guess which site will get the most traffic. The necessary companions to any well-designed site are the images and illustrations that grace its pages. The images can’t be any willy-nilly graphic that you might think is cool. Graphic imagery has to support your branding, and communicate the message you are trying to convey. Before you incorporate graphic elements into your site, take some time to look around the web. Notice what looks good and how elements are laid out. These same layouts techniques can be used as models for your site.
The Internet is a highly competitive business arena. To be successful with a commercial website, you have to keep these five crucial web design elements in mind. Contrary to what many will tell you, it is rarely possible to have commercial success without the benefit of a professional website. This is not to say that you must hire a professional, however you must implement professional design elements to improve your chances for success.
