Does your website facilitate the new breed of laymab users?

Does your website facilitate the new breed of laymab users?
There is a dramatic surge in the number of layman users
Internet has got virtually deep down penetration across the globe, and the profile of its users has also gone a sea change. Over the years, the internet has come out from the prerogative of select users of scientific and defense community to mass accessibility. And probably this is the temperament of this so called cyber age where people have just started to treat computers as just another thing that is indispensable to modern human existence.
Today the use of computers is not necessarily confined to high–tech professionals, but has spanned over all functions and disciplines including common man for his everyday’s purposes. Hence, there is a awful number of users who browse through the Internet on a periodic basis, and their surfing skills are at best rudimentary. Time is ripe for making your web site superbly user friendly.
This new breed of users with minimal exposure to browsing is vulnerable to encounter a little more difficulty in even a web site that is otherwise user friendly. Here is an important point not to be missed out that this new breed of surfers can be a great prospect for your site when their needs are understood and correspondingly catered to.
The need of the moment is to make your site excessively user friendly so that they are not lost on the web, and they do not just wind up browsing in sheer hopelessness. They need to be guided through simplistic features to help them know what to do next in order to get what they are looking forward to.
This sort of users lacks fundamental competence to search the stuff on the Internet effectively, faces hiccups in navigating web site and looks in astonishment while dealing with typical annoyances on the web. Their utter inability to understand your site often lead them to another site in search of ease, and it does constitute losses for you!
Designing your web site in such a manner as will enable them to learn quickly and steer clear the way to enriching experience is what is required in this regard.
But before making your web site layman friendly, it is essential to get the pulse of the browsing tendencies and habits of layman users.
An insightful look at the online behavior of layman users
Here are some interesting observations on the typical behavior of relatively new users while they use the Internet.
It is quite amazing to learn that new users have been found to practice a novel method to log on to a particular web site whose URL is known to them. They have been observed to type in the URL in Google search, and subsequently clicking on same URL in the returned search pages.
A report from Metacrawler, an Internet research firm, reveals the fact that search queries like “hotmail.com”, “www.hotmail.com”, “Google”, “Yahoo” etc. are among the top search engine queries. It implicitly proves that people do not seem to know that they can access any site by simply typing its URL in the browser address bar.
While going through the returned search pages of Google, new users tend to read the titles of the pages, which they think are closest to their search criteria, and click on such hyperlinks. Hence, the titles of the pages in search results have to be strategically written.
Haphazard pieces of information clustered all through the page not only confuse the users but also scare them. Unsystematic organization of content on the page and a low count on readability make them feel that desired information is non-existent on the page. The randomness of content simply turns them off because they do not bother to look deep; they just scan and skip.
It has been found that new users are not comfortable with pop-up advertisement windows. They mistakenly close other windows, ponder over how to go back, or even close dial-up connection in their attempt to deal with the pop-ups. It has been seen that layman users are not at ease to manage multiple browser windows.
Helping layman users to browse with confidence and convenience
In the light of the above observations, a couple of simplistic features might be added to your web site in order to tap the traffic of layman users. Definitely such features will be contributing to the overall usability of your site in a positive way.
You can not afford to miss the listing of your web site in prominent search engines. It has nothing to do with your offline advertising campaign however aggressive it might be. Such advertisement will of course help your URL gain popularity, but chances are not distant that some new users end up complaining that your web site could not be accessed. Not to mention here, getting listed in the search engines has got its own bundle of benefits.
If you wish to have your own start page for the users of your site, it pays to place search engine links or a search box onto that page. This will help layman users to stick to your start page.
It is clear now that the titles of the pages in search results are crucial for clickthroughs. Therefore, the title of your page should be in accordance with the key words you are optimizing the page for. The title should be enticing and relevant enough to be clicked on. Each page of your site has to be individually optimized for a particular key word for a good traffic.
There can not be any hard and fast rules in using pop-ups and newsletter subscription windows. It essentially depends on the proficiency level of users who visit the site. It is always preferable to have test run of such features before implementing them throughout the site. Once you experience the loss of traffic due to such features, it is a subtle indication that such features are not for your site. The crowd visiting this site is dominantly layman users, and hence it is to be a lot more user friendly.
The learning advantage
In short, capitalizing on the idiosyncrasies and rudimentary skills of this new breed of Internet users can open the gateway of more traffic and hence more revenues that can eventually translate into your web success.

2011
07/26
CATEGORY
Tips and Trick
Web Design
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Free Web Design Advice

Free Web Design Advice
In this article I will give advice and tips of where to find a low cost website design company and also about the best ways of producing a cool website.
How many people or companies are advertising their services for web design?
The answer is a great deal. They surely can not all be asking for huge sums of money to build and design quality websites. There must be some who offer cheap, affordable websites.
If you think about a company or person who is just starting out, they have not got a very large portfolio of previous work and clients to show, and in this situation are likely in these early days to offer you a competitive rate. Once they become more established they will then no doubt increase their prices.
To find these companies which are just starting out, I would advise looking on auction websites like ebay, looking in Yellow Pages, looking in newspapers such as a paper we have here in the Midlands called bargain pages. Looking on the internet on search engines and asking family and friends is also other avenues to explore.
Once you have found a company you need to think about the content for your website, the colours and also about graphics. Do you want it have flash design? These are all things to think about.
You then need to think about hosting, who will host your website? It may be worth asking the web designer if they can recommend a host.
Then once you have had your site built you need to promote it. Building up a regular and constant stream of backward links is very important as this will result in your website obtaining a higher page rank and more visitors.

2011
07/26
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Formulate Your Confident

Formulate Your Confident
Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion is an ability of designing a website with imaginative thoughts and eye-catching look. In this method you know how to distribute your thoughts concerning your harvest and services to broad-spectrum community. Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion offers the websites which are includes the source of your connectivity towards the international market. An attractive design of the website can improve the probability of accomplish higher earnings in the international website section.
If you believe of website devise it is significant from business peak of view. A well designed website for all time illustrates patrons. Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion includes the vital principle of a website is to make available functional in sequence regarding your harvest and services to clients. Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion Formulate confident that consumers find the accurate memorandum the instantaneous they look through your website. Since it is very imperative to furnish the client the meaning which is proper for your dealing in this way you can augment you’re the commerce on the web site.
But guests find the website to be motivating and revealing they will absolutely approach reverse and replicate trade with you. In Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion you find the truth that a great number of citizens stay your website is for eternity appreciative. In Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion the websites with boring color arguments never manufacture the collision so as to you wish for on your clientele. Articulate fine bye to average website intend. And construct your website’s devise remarkable and eye-catching.
At the present time there is an assortment of types of websites being premeditated. They can consist of self-motivated pages and static pages, energetic pages: These WebPages are considered in a technique that they can react to the contribution specified by the closing stages consumer. In Web Design Delhi Services company e-fuzion the sheets can be tainted or customized depending on revolutionize finished through the web master.

2011
07/25
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Do the Silktide Shuffle

Do the Silktide Shuffle
The free Silktide Sitescore is one of those tools that every webmaster should know about and use. However, you should also take it’s results with a grain of salt. As with many tools like this, there is a way to manipulate your results in your favor, if you know the tricks. Nevertheless, for legitimate uses, it is an invaluable resource that will help you raise the bar on the overall quality of your website.
One feature of the Silktide Sitescore tool that I, personally, have a bitter sweet opinion of is the “Visitor rating” feature. If it were used the way it was intended by visitors, it would be a fantastic addition that provided somewhat useful feedback to webmasters as to the overal look of their site. In its current form, the “Visitor rating” feature offers very little useful feedback and is quite often abused. Silktide has attempted to offset some of the abuse by adjusting the scores to compensate for spammers, but this still has it’s flaws.
I would like to see Silktide enhance the “Visitor rating” feature by requiring email validation with comments. This would help strengthen the integrity of the results, while providing “useful” information to the webmaster of the site being rated. After all, isn’t that the point of such a tool?
Beyond my minor complaint above, I still find this tool to be a wonderful service to the webmaster community as a whole, and I fully endorse its usage. I’m quite eager for the launch of their full-blown service and have already applied to be a BETA Tester. As good as their free service is, I’m sure their paid service will be much more useful.
Well, what are you doing reading this article? Click on over to the Silktide Sitescore service and see what all the hype is about.
Happy Webmastering!

2011
07/25
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Dazzle Your Web with Web with e-Fuzion

Dazzle Your Web with Web with e-Fuzion
One of the big compensation of designing websites this way is that you can get the web design looking exactly how you want it. Designs for websites that have been done in Photoshop are called treatments or mockups. Generally Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion which creates two or three treatments for a website and then show them to the website owner, who chooses the best. If you are manufacture the web design for yourself, then you could show the treatments to a friend or a member of your family. Frequently, you may find that you will want to make changes to your web design in order to improve it. Most treatments go through different versions before they are perfected to the ultimate web design layout. Furthermore, it’s much easier to make changes to a web design in Photoshop than it would be using html. Therefore, Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion includes with the aid of the web design program of your choice, you could finalize the look and feel of your current design. Making changes will be much harder and could be more expensive if you leave them pending until the end of the project. Showing your web design to some potential customers can always be a wise thing to do. With this done, Web Design Delhi company e-fuzion will provide different idea about what people think about web designing. Throughout feedbacks received, you can then enhance your web design so that it helps the website meet its goals.
Websites are implicit using html, which is a fairly simple computer language made up of tags. In their simplest forms, tags are ways to add extra information to the text. For example you can add an h1 tag to some text if it’s the page heading or you could add a tag to some copy to turn it to a link. This was fine to use in web design in the days when the pages were only created by academics to share their latest discoveries. But if you are creating the web design for a modern website, you would possibly want it to look more striking.

2011
07/25
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Customize those error pages!

Customize those error pages!
Let me ask you this question. How many times have you made changes to the page structure of your site? Ten times? 100 times? 1000 times? If you have a large site, the number of changes can grow rapidly. This is especially true if you deal with dynamic sites that are driven by a complex scripting language and a database.
Now let me ask you one more question. How many times have you “fat fingered” the keyboard when typing code? I cannot speak for anyone else, but I do it all the time. Now, what happens when you are coding hundreds or thousands of lines of code? Are you going to catch that one little mistake, or are your clients going to catch it?
So, what happens when a link is no longer active on your site, or when you “fat finger” while typing your code and a link cannot be found? Error pages are generated. The most common of these is the 404 error. This error is generated by your web server software to let the end user know that it cannot find the file specified. The big issue here is that this page does not include a link back to your site. And unless you are the server administrator, it may not include your email address, in which case the end user cannot notify you of the dead link.
There is a new trend among hosting providers to capitalize on your dead links. That’s right. They are making money from pages that don’t exist on your site! You might think this concept is silly, but I assure you, there is big money in error pages. Just think about how many times a day end-users might “fat finger” typing in URLs. Let’s just say it happens 1,000 times per day (and I’m probably being conservative here). Now multiply that by an average of $0.10 per click for the credit the host receives when the end-user starts browsing their “convenience page”. If you are quick at math, you figured out that that equals $100 per day! Now, if you take into consideration the size of the Internet and start scaling this figure accordingly, you can easily see where this is a seven-figure industry.
What can you do about this? How can you stop your web host from profiting from your visitors without your permission? How can you start getting a piece of this very lucrative pie? The answer is really quite simple.
Most web hosting providers will allow you to customize at least a minimal subset of the configuration parameters of the web server for your hosting account. I’m going to show you exactly how to do this for Apache, the most common web server application on the Internet. Similar steps can be taken for IIS or any other web server application, but I trust that you can use Google™ to find those specific commands.
Ok, the first thing you want to do is come up with a template for your error pages. I suggest you use the basic layout of your site so you can maintain a sense of consistency.
Next, you will need to decide what content to display on the page. You should let your visitors know that they have stumbled across a dead link, but you also want to provide a streamlined method for them to find their way back to your site. I recommend using the appropriate error message in the page title and at the beginning of the page using h1 tags. You should append a description of the error message to your page title and display this description using h2 tags in your page.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
</body>
</html>
Now you need to provide a easy “one-click” path to your website. This can be accomplished using a simple text link in the page footer.
Example:
<html>
<head>
<title>Error 404: The page you are looking for was not found</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error 404</h1>
</h2>The page you are looking for was not found. Please check the URL and try again.</h2>
To return to the [Company Name] homepage, click <a href=”http://yourdomain.com”>here</a>.
</body>
</html>
Now, upload your template as error404.html to your website’s root directory (usually public_html).
To get the above template to function correctly when a user comes across an invalid link, all you need to do is create a .htaccess file, using your favorite plain text editor, with the following line in it and place it in the root directory (usually public_html) of your website.
ErrorDocument 404 http://yourdomain.com/error404.html
For each error type you wish to provide a custom page for, simply repeat the above steps, adjusting the file name and ErrorDocument statement appropriately. To gather a complete list of server response codes, search Google™ for “Apache error codes”. (Adjust as needed for your server software.)
As you can see, this process is extremely simple and only takes about five minutes. If you are good with HTML and you have a Google AdSense™ account and other affiliate accounts, you can easily customize your template to include your AdSense™ search box and your affiliate links. If you are really savvy, you can use a free script like CaRP (RSS to HTML converter) to provide relevant content on your error pages and further enhance the likelihood of driving the end-user to your site.
Of course, if you are not that good with HTML but still want to retain your customers, there is hope. I’ve created a very clean template that does all of the above for you. All you have to do is update a few variables in the code and you are ready to go. Simply go to my site and search for MyErrorPages. It’s a free script that you are welcome to use on as many sites as you like.
Now that you see how easy it is to customize your error pages and retain your valuable visitors, what are you doing here still? Customize those error pages!

2011
07/24
CATEGORY
Technology
Tips and Trick
Web Design
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Do’s and Don’ts of Launching a Small Business Website

Do’s and Don’ts of Launching a Small Business Website
Launching a small business website can seem like an enormous task ,although it does require some research, if done right it might be just the marketing tool your business needs. The road to a website is filled with website designers, website developers and graphic designers. This in itself is very confusing. A website designer is someone who produces the design. A website developer is someone who creates more of the program side to your websites rather than the actual design. Nowadays most website designers are also developers. A graphic designer is the person who makes the images at the top of web pages, the buttons, and menus on a website. The whole process should not be so difficult and full of surprises. Therefore the 6 Do’s and Don’ts should be a great start to help you launch your small business website.
Don’t concentrate on images and how pretty your site will be. Remember that your sites’ purpose is to answer your customers questions and inform your customers of what you have to offer, such as services and products. Don’t use too many images because if your site is so “new age” a lot of people will not be able to navigate and find their way around it therefore they will get frustrated and not stay on your site and that would defeat the sites purpose.
Don’t compare web designers by their price. Not all web designers are created equal. You must not only compare the price but the type of service you will require such as internet marketing and updates, will they continue to create the site until you are satisfied, and can they write the content. Some designers will create you a site and mail you a CD with the files and you will then have to figure it out on your own how to get it on the web. Others will help you choose a domain and a hosting company, upload your files to your site, and will write your content. Writing on the web is different from writing in print. A good content writer will know what to say to keep your visitors on your site. Keep these things in mind when choosing a web designer.
Don’t hire a web designer until you are ready. Once you are finished shopping around for a web designer, do make sure you have purchased a domain name, hosting, have a general idea of what you would like your site to look like and written your content, if you will be doing this yourself. This is important! Web designers work virtually, that is directly on-line (through the Internet). You might not actually ever meet them. This style of work is very different from working face to face and have times set up as to when you will meet. It actually benefits you, the designer can get your website on-line faster. Therefore it is important for the web designer to have all your information. If they have to wait a week or so for you website content then you will be pushed to the back burner.
Do request a quote from a few web designers before you decide on one. Once you have looked at some websites find a few who you like and request a quote from them. Explain that you are interested in a website, explain a little bit about your business, how many pages would your site need and what are other services you would need from them. Ask them to send you a price detailing what would be included. Understand that this is a quote and if you are requesting any other additional services there will be an additional cost although designers will usually let you know beforehand.
Do plan on keeping your site up-to-date. Keeping your site updated keeps your customers coming back to either find out what’s going on with your company or about new promotions or sales. It also gives your customers the impression that you care about keeping them informed and that you value their business. The benefit of having a website is it’s easy to update and don’t cost much. Usually a web design firm will have special packages for updates. Find a designer who also can provide updates and when your site is finished discuss an update schedule and what they can suggest to keep your site looking fresh.
Do find a designer who specializes in small business. Small design firms understand the needs of another small business and are more likely to be more personal with your questions. A big design firm might have 5 people working on your website and they might not all have gotten the e-mail that stated what you want. Whereas a small design firm would have one person working on your site with whom you communicate directly.
This guide to launching a small business website is just the tip of the iceberg. The best thing is always know what you are going to receive in return for your hard earned cash. Make sure that your website is like an investment and that you are actually going to receive a return on your investment. Also, don’t be afraid to ask questions! Most designers will answer most of your questions, no problem.

2011
07/24
CATEGORY
Tips and Trick
Web Design
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Form vs. Function (Which shall prevail?)

Form vs. Function (Which shall prevail?)
Form and function is both vital to a web design. Form is one base and function is another. Function without form is boring. Nonetheless, even if the form is impressive yet not functional it will be disappointing. Thus, there must be a symbiotic relationship between the two in order to give life to the site.
If a site is more of a marketing tool, it must incorporate visual and multimedia images to keep its form accurate. On the other hand, it must also offer helpful content in order to convey its marketability purpose.
The first thing that designers must do is to attain a good balance. In other words, function must first be known before its form can be developed. The equilibrium is always hard to achieve. In fact, some web designers are spending several years in order to perfect the form and function.
Equilibrium between balance and form is a must. However, the usual key problem is that sites often do not balance form and function. What are we to do then?
When this happen, do not put form over function. Always make function a priority. Then, create an attractive form to create it. What is the reason behind the choice? Basically, visitors come to the site in order to quench a need or expectation. If you put form before function, you will be sacrificing the visitor’s best interest. Aside from that, visitors also have a short attention span. They have no patience. If you make things complicated and not functional, it will just create a domino effect that will make them leave the site in a matter of five seconds. This will mean no sales at all. Not profitable, therefore not good!
In designing we have to do away with the usual mistakes that sacrifice the site’s functionality. Here are some of its examples:
1. Using font color that is painful to the eyes and in contrast with the background.
2. Using fonts that are smaller than size 12.
3. Misplacing graphics and other elements.
4. Placing so many unnecessary images in the page making load slowly.
5. Using uncommon and hard to recognize links.
6. Making a totally graphical design that can make the visitors clueless and frustrated.
The key to an effective website lies not so much in how flashy its form is but how intimate can it answer the needs of the visitors in order to elicit their buying or subscribing potentials.

2011
07/24
CATEGORY
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Web Design
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Form an Excellent Sheet T Fulfill Daydream

Form an Excellent Sheet T Fulfill Daydream
A good website is a brilliant platform to showcase your products and services in a detailed fashion and impress prospective customers beforehand. With no dearth of Web Design Delhi and around, it is recommended that expert help is employed for constructing or revamping your website. Not only professional web site designers are well tuned with the state-of-the-art enterprise web solutions, their services facilitate regular fine tuning of the web site for best results. These professional bodies in Web Design Delhi are generally also proficient at software development and render simultaneous software designing of your website for more efficient outcome. Website design Delhi taken rather casually by most companies in India, even in the capital city, New Delhi. While the commercial ventures far and wide are increasingly adopting online identity, most fail to go for it with proper focus on optimum utilization of the web platform. Each commercial venture that goes online expects enhanced business prospects just by going online, realizing little the difference between a website for the heck of it and a good website development. The matter of fact is that vivid online presence of your business truly expands your market horizons beyond geographical boundaries with the ubiquitous World Wide Web. Many Web designing and development companies in Delhi also offer enterprise resource planning and ERP solutions. Learning to render your website viable makes all the more sense considering that you are functioning in the thick of competition with new offline and online ventures mushrooming in thousands in your area of work every day. Imperatives to a competitive website are many, but all of it eventually boils down to one simple strategy – having a Search Engine Friendly Web Design Delhi. The crux of it all is to design and develop a highly user-friendly, informative, and relevant and keyword optimized website.
The fundamentals to a good Web Design Delhi are logical and hence easy to learn. As majority of Internet users put keywords in search engines to find relevant results, the importance of keyword optimization is an evident requisite throughout a website structure.

2011
07/23
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Do You Need a Website or a Web Designer?

Do You Need a Website or a Web Designer?
Never underestimate the power of the internet. An increasing number of people use the internet to search for a business or service so having a web presence is an important media for promoting your company. Web design is a real skill and if your website is to not only look good but work well, it should be constructed by a professional web designer.
Have you noticed these days that so many websites all look the same – square box in the middle of the screen? That’s because it’s fairly easy and cheap to use the many templates available to build a simple website. There are many web designers or friends of a friend out there that will offer to do you a website for a few hundred pounds but there are many technical issues to consider to ensure really professional results.
A good website should have the following attributes:
Strong corporate identity
User friendly navigation
Quick to download
A useful resource
Expandable – needs to incorporate technology that allows
scalability
Visually attractive to encourage usage
Must work in all browsers on all computers PC and MAC
Good investment / value for money
Search engine friendly
Remember that first impressions count and a badly designed website is worse than having no website at all. You wouldn’t get a friend of a friend to do your company brochures or service your nice new car you would go to a specialist, so why take the risk and compromise on quality with your website.
A well designed website with good graphics and strong corporate branding will last for years and should be a good investment for your company. Updating the content is simple and inexpensive.
You can start with a small but well designed website that fits within your budget. The key is to ensure that your website is expandable so that as your business grows it can be added to – you may even wish to add a database or e commerce functionality at a later stage.
We believe that Flash is really designed for use in the entertainments industry and we do not recommend using it on a business website. Even with the increasing availability of broadband Flash can be very irritating for users, it serves no purpose, it can detract attention away from the important messages on your website and it will adversely affect your search engine rankings. Strong visual affects can be achieved using other methods.
Using HTML is the most popular and cost effective way to design a website. These can include original graphic designs and are text driven to incorporate relevant search terms, which is good for getting your site recognised by search engines.
DYNAMIC websites incorporate a database and offers more user functionality. A dynamic website can be classed as a web application and is a powerful tool for gathering and providing data for your customers who will be able to log in and search the site quickly for information. If you require a dynamic database driven web design you will have to budget for the back end coding required to build the database. This will be more expensive than a HTML site and will need specialist hosting.
As a less expensive alternative it is possible to build a HTML site which links to a third party database which you can access through your existing ISP.
An E-COMMERCE WEBSITE is an online secure shopping facility so that customers can purchase your goods by credit card over the web.
graphic design Scotland and web design Scotland

2011
07/23
CATEGORY
Tips and Trick
Web Design
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