WebMastersLoom

Don’t mess with those links! When you’re designing your site, you should leave your text links in their natural state–blue and underlined. We all want to be creative and not do the bland, expected, normal thing. We want to change our links to red, green, yellow, even black–anything but blue. And we have the urge to take off those underlines.

Resist the temptation. It’s hard. But there’s a good reason to leave them alone.

From the earliest days of the web, text links have been blue. People intuitively recognize that blue, underlined text is a link. They know they can click on it.

The combination of blue and underlines means “If I click on this, it goes somewhere”. We’re conditioned to recognize those distinguishing characteristics. We’re like Pavlov’s dogs–we see the link and instantly know what it means. There’s no time wasted in trying to figure out whether or not that particular word or phrase is clickable.

If you mess with the natural appearance of a link, you lose that instant recognition. People have to stop and think (and often click) to figure out what your colors mean. I have watched countless people try to navigate websites and spend half their time figuring out what’s a link and what’s not. They have no way of knowing.

In addition, people scan a page for links. They like to be active on the internet, and they like to know what they can do. When they recognize a link in your copy, it’s a clear signal of someplace to go. Visitors want to know what their options are. It’s not a good idea to make life difficult. They’ll appreciate coming across a site that’s easy to use and doesn’t try to confuse them (for once!).

It is becoming more acceptable to use other colors for your text links, as long as they remain underlined. But if you can, it’s still best to use blue. This is because so many people use underlined, colored text on their sites that is NOT linked. Visitors have a tendency to get confused. They never know what to expect. With blue, it’s obvious.

Some people have brought up the point that if we stick to the status quo, there will never be any improvements in the system.

My answer: In a medium like the web, forward movement will never be a problem. The web continues to push ahead, regardless of whether your site jumps on the bandwagon or not. There will always be new growth, no matter what your site does.

The question is, when is it appropriate for your site to adopt the latest fads? To answer that question, you must keep in mind your site’s purpose and your audience.

If your site is technology oriented, and your visitors are technically-minded and on the cutting edge, then going for the latest trend is more appropriate.

But if your site is focused on an average web user, it’s different. If you’re sellling a product/service, communicating information, or driving any specific action, you need to keep your visitors focused on that goal. You shouldn’t distract them with trying to learn a new set of skills and standards just so they can navigate your site.

Never move faster than your audience is ready to move. At this point in time, people still struggle with being able to recognize links. A majority of people have a difficult time finding what they want. If they are still struggling, your site needs to accomodate them.

As more and more people become comfortable with advances in technology and design style, it will be appropriate to incorporate those advances into your site. Just wait until your audience is ready.

Final thoughts: If the context of your site makes it clearly obvious what is a link and what is not, it is sometimes permissible to use a color other than blue for your links. For this to work, your copy should have no colored text that isn’t linked (with the exception of headings) and no underlined text that isn’t linked. Only use another color if you are sure that visitors won’t have any trouble recognizing your links.

The main point: Visitors shouldn’t have to think about what is a link and what isn’t. Whatever you can do that maintains instant recognition is great. Go for it!

Do you place back-issues of your Newsletter on your website?

There are two good reasons why you should:

(1) It shows potential subscribers that you’re serious about your Newsletter

(2) Newsletters are rich in keywords, so it’s a very good idea to turn back-issues of your Newsletter into HTML documents and then submit them to the major Search Engines

Here’s a little trick that will help you format your Newsletter as an HTML document:

Copy the text of your Newsletter into a text editor such as NOTEPAD.

Then copy the text from NOTEPAD into Microsoft Word. You’ll notice that in your Word document, each line ends with a Paragraph Mark.

Now go to EDIT | REPLACE.

Place your cursor in the first field, where it says ‘Look For’.

Now click on ‘More’ and then on ‘Special’ and select the first item in the list (’Paragraph Mark’). The symbol for a paragraph mark will now appear in the first field (a hat followed by a ‘p’).

Now place your cursor in the field below, where it says ‘Replace With’ and type . Then click on ‘Replace All’.

You’ll find that every single paragraph mark in your Word document has been replaced with .

Now copy the entire Word document into a new NOTEPAD document and save it, using the file extension .html (Note: NOTEPAD doesn’t offer you the option to save as an HTML document, but don’t worry; just type .html after the name you gave the file, and it will be saved as an HTML document).

Close that html document and then open it again and you’ll find that your Newsletter is perfectly formatted, with the exact same line breaks that you had in the email version of your Newsletter.

Using this technique it takes me about 45 seconds to turn a back-issue of my Newsletter into an HTML document!

(c) 2000, by Michael Southon

I ask myself that question about once a month. My website looks fine to me, but what are other people seeing? And what are the Search Engines seeing? Here’s a checklist of 10 ways to optimize your website for peak performance:

1. Browser Compatibility

The first thing is to look at your website through other people’s browsers. I do this regularly and I’ve sometimes been shocked at what I saw!

ANYBROWSER http://www.anybrowser.com

2. Broken Links

About 5% of all links on the Internet are broken. A site that contains broken links gives a bad impression to visitors and is a frequent cause of lost sales. Also, the major Search Engines and Directories will not list your page if it contains any broken links or missing images.

Here are some free link validators:

LINK SCAN http://www.elsop.com/linkscan/quickcheck.html

NET MECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/maintain.htm

WEBSITE GARAGE DEADLINK CHECK http://websitegarage.netscape.com/O=wsg/tuneup_plus/index.html

3. Web Safe Colors

Are the colors on your web site displaying properly on other people’s browsers? You may have a beautiful shade of lilac on your index page but it could look very strange on someone else’s computer.

There are only 216 colors that you can safely use on the Web. These colors display solid and consistent on any computer monitor or web browser that is able to display at least 8-bit color.

The Web Safe Palette contains six groups of colors with 36 colors per group. These 216 web safe colors can have any combination of the following RGB (Red Green Blue) values: 0, 51, 102, 153, 204, 255 (each RGB value must be divisible by 51).

Here’s a good palette of web safe colors:

WEB-SOURCE SAFE COLORS http://www.web-source.net/216_color_chart.htm

4. ALT Tags

ALT Tags allow you to give an alternative to people who have the ‘view images’ function turned off in their browser. Let’s say the navigation system on your website is a series of buttons that link to other pages on your site. If you don’t have ALT Tags, people who have the ‘view images’ function turned off will be unable to navigate through your site - in place of your button they will just see an empty space.

But an ALT Tag allows you to tell those people what that button does. For example, if the button is a link to your ‘Site Map’ you could insert the following ALT Tag:

ALT Tags also allow you to raise your keyword density. For every image that is not hyperlinked you could insert your main keywords. For example:

5. Meta Tags

Meta Tags are so important they deserve a whole article on their own. The most important Meta Tags are the Title Tag, the Keywords Tag and the Description Tag.

The Title Tag should be no more than 64 characters (longer than that and it will be cut off in some Search Engines).

The Keyword Tag should contain about 5 to 10 keywords that appear on your page. Never include words that do not appear on that page - in some Search Engines your website will be penalized for this. Do not repeat the same keyword - this is called ‘keyword stuffing’ and is also frowned upon by the Search Engines.

Separate your keywords with spaces (not commas). This allows the Search Engines to combine your keywords into phrases, for people who do ‘phrase searching’.

The Description Tag should be no more than 200 characters. Include as many of your keywords as you can. Remember also that your Description Tag must be enticing - it must make people want to visit your site.

Here are some programs that will generate your Meta Tags for you:

WEBSITE GARAGE http://websitegarage.netscape.com/turbocharge/metatag/

META MEDIC http://www.northernwebs.com/set/setsimjr.html

MULTI-META-MAKER http://www.multimeta.com/tools/multimetamaker.html

6. Load Time

A slow-loading index page is one of the main reasons for lost sales. The generally accepted maximum time for a page to load is around 15 seconds. Here is a free service that tells you how long your web page takes to load:

NETMECHANIC http://www.netmechanic.com/cobrands/FutureQuest/load_check.htm

Your pages should be no more than about 30Kb in size. To calculate the size of your web page, highlight the HTML document and then click on ‘File’ and ‘Properties’ and note down the file size. Then do the same for any graphics you have on that page. Then add those figures together to get your page size.

If your page is less than 30Kb and takes more than 15 seconds to load, the problem is most likely with your web host. The solution is to change web host. Here are 2 services that will check the speed of your web host’s server and compare it with other web hosts:

HOST COMPARE http://www.hostcompare.com/testtools.htm

CNET WEBSERVICES http://webservices.cnet.com/ping/

7. GIF (or JPEG) Cruncher

Shrinking the size of your images is one of the best ways to get a faster-loading web page. You can usually reduce a GIF or JPEG image by 40% to 50% without losing any significant definition or sharpness.

SPINWAVE http://www.spinwave.com/crunchers.html

8. HTML Optimizer

Another way to make your page load faster is to compress (or optimize) your HTML code. An HTML Optimizer removes all blank spaces in your HTML code and also removes certain unnecessary tags.

On average, an HTML optimizer will reduce the size of your page by 15% to 20%. That percentage may not seem much, but the saving in load time is much higher, as your visitor’s browser will parse your page much more efficiently.

A word of caution: in most HTML Optimizers you will find an ‘Options’ menu that tells the program to ignore certain parts of your code. Make sure your Optimizer does not compress embedded script tags - if they get compressed, the script will usually not work.

ADVANCED HTML OPTIMIZER http://www.pcbit.com/htmlopt/

9. WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER Tags

The WIDTH, HEIGHT and BORDER attributes are essential for each image that you have on your website. When you hyperlink an image, always make sure that the BORDER attribute is set to zero (BORDER=0). If you don’t do this, your hyperlinked image will have an ugly blue border around it.

The WIDTH and HEIGHT attributes allow your page to load faster, as the browser knows in advance how much space the image requires. To find out the width and height of any image, just double click on the image file. This will automatically open ‘Microsoft Photo Editor’ - your image will appear, with the width and height of your image (in pixels) displayed on the tool bar.

10. HTML Validator

Always check the validity of your HTML. Some Search Engines give lower rankings to pages that have poor quality HTML (such as incorrect nesting of elements).

Here are some free online validators:

HTML HELP http://www.htmlhelp.org/tools/validator/

BOBBY http://www.cast.org/bobby/

WATSON http://watson.addy.com/

(c) 2000 by Michael Southon

The very name CGI used to send chills up my spine. For years I put it in the ‘too-hard-basket’. But like most things in life, CGI is not as scary as it seems. If you have a cgi directory on your website and you know how to FTP files, chances are you can have a CGI script up and running in less than 20 minutes.

CGI (Common Gateway Interface) is not a programming language but a standard that allows visitors to interact with your website. CGI scripts can be written in a number of different languages but most are written in Perl (Practical Extraction and Reporting Language).

This article gives you details of five free CGI scripts that will do the following:

1. Mail out your Newsletter from your server
2. Track the number of times your free E-Book is downloaded
3. Rotate banners on your website
4. Create your own auto responders
5. Allow visitors to recommend your website to friends

At the end of this article are details of where to download these 5 free scripts. But first, here are some basic guidelines on how to configure and install CGI scripts:

1. CGI programs usually come in a zip file. Unzip the file and open the README file. This document will give you instructions for configuring the program file.
2. Open the program file using a text editor such as NOTEPAD (the program file will usually have the file extension .cgi but may have other extensions such as pl).

In most CGI programs you will have to configure the following 4 items:

3. Uploading

Upload the program files to your cgi-bin (or a directory off your cgi-bin) using ASCII mode. Never use BINARY mode, as this will play havoc with the line-breaks in the script.

4. Set the File Permissions using CHMOD

CHMOD (changing mode) is the term for setting security permissions on files. The README file will usually tell you the permissions that you need to set for each file. The script file will need to be set to 755. This allows the file’s owner to read, write, and execute the file; anyone else can only read and execute it.

You can set the permissions using telnet, but the easiest way is to use the built-in option in your FTP program.

5. Calling the Script

Now that you’ve configured the script, uploaded it and set the permissions, it’s time to try it out! You do this by ‘calling the script’ using a URL in an HTML document. This is what the URL for calling your script will normally look like:

http://www.yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/script.cgi

Again, the README file should have specific instructions on how to call the script. In addition, most CGI programs are accompanied by a web page that contains the form your visitors would use to call the script.

And now here are the details of the 5 free CGI scripts I mentioned earlier:

Subscribe Me Lite

Subscribe Me Lite is a program that allows prospects/customers to automatically subscribe and/or unsubscribe themselves from your mailing list. It has a built-in mass mailing form for sending out your newsletter or updates.

More Information: http://www.cgiscriptcenter.com/subscribe/index2.html

Rob’s File Tracker

Rob’s File Tracker is a perl script that counts file downloads or click-thrus to any file. Very useful if you want to know how many people are downloading your free E-Book.

More Information: http://www.robplanet.com/cgi/tracker/

AdRotate Pro

AdRotate Pro is an ad rotation program that’s easy to setup and easy to use. Features include unlimited rotations, expiry by date, views or clicks, default ads for when all ads are expired, and customer reports.

More Information: http://www.vanbrunt.com/adrotate/

MasterRecommend

This script allows visitors to recommend your website to a friend by sending an email, without leaving your website. The program will also send you a copy of your visitor’s message (nice to know what your visitors think about your website).

More Information: http://www.willmaster.com/master/recommend/MasterRecommendmanual.html

Master Auto-Responder

This is a standard auto-responder program. The script allows you to set the “From:” and “Subject:” lines for your auto-response.You can also choose to receive a copy of each email that the auto-responder receives.

More Information: http://mastercgi.com/howtoinfo/howautoresponderswork.shtml

If you need more help installing your CGI scripts, here are two excellent free tutorials:

• http://spider-food.net/install-a-cgi-script.html
• http://www.stefan-pettersson.nu/scripts/tutorials/installcgi.html

(c) 2001 by Michael Southon

Everyday we hear that another company goes out of business.

When and why does a dot-com become a dot-bomb?

After checking few dozen defunct companies, I think the main reasons for dot-coms failure are:

• Poor business plan. In the last years, a lot of investment capital was spent on poorly planned companies that clearly couldn’t reach profitability.
• Poor company promotion. This applies both offline and online. Two newspaper ads and word of mouth are not enough.
• Poor financial management. Fancy offices, free food, does it ring a bell?
• Poor Human Resources management. With lots of cash in their hands, many start-up companies hired too many people or, even worse, hired unqualified staff. The hiring of friends and relatives often returned no value on investments.
• Errors in the company’s Web site. Sometimes hundreds of errors could be found in one Web page. Yes, those Web site builders should go back to school- if they ever went to school for HTML at all.

I’ll focus my comments on the last reason:

How Errors in the Web Site Can Affect the Company’s Health

It’s clear that you can make money on the Web if you have customers. You have customers if you have viewers- “traffic” in the geek’s language. And you get traffic if your site is easy to find — near the top — in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs). That’s not so easy to achieve.

First of all your site has to be indexed by the search tools: Search Engines and Web Directories.

Although some Search Engines will eventually find your site by themselves, most of the time this only happens if somebody links to your site. In the case of a NEW site, having existing links is almost impossible. Rather than wait for links to be made, start a submission campaign.

A big no-no is submitting a Web site using submission software. Using software of this type may be quick and easy, but some Web Directories and Search Engines do NOT accept automated submissions.

It’s true that manual submission is a time consuming process — you’ll have to read AND follow each Search Engines’ submission guidelines, to effectively perform the submission ? but it’s a necessary step.

Most of the defunct sites I’ve checked had only a modest presence and visibility in the Search Engines.

Let’s say that you submitted your site correctly, you waited a reasonable amount of time - usually few weeks ? for the Search Engines to process your submission, but your site does not appear near the top in the Search Engine Results Pages.

You’re wondering why, right? Well, one or more of the following reasons might apply:

1) Your submission was not accepted by the Search Engines. If you used spamming techniques, such as:

• Repeating keywords in the keyword meta tag or using text in the same color as the background, some Search Engines might refuse to index your site.
• Page redirection — including cloaking — or building artificial links farms can sometimes be seen as spam by some Search Engines. These links farms involve building Web pages for the sole purpose of creating links to the targeted site. For more about spam please read my article:

“Search Engine Spamming Sucks!” [ http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com/articles.html ]

Some Search Engines also have difficulty in indexing pages that use frames or Flash.

2) Your submission was accepted, but your site is not listed in the Top 10-30. Because very few people check pages after the first 30 results, you want to be in the Top 10-30. There are many reasons why a site is not listed high.

The most common reasons are:

• The lack of your main keywords in the content of the page, in the Title tag and in the Description and Keyword meta tags. Ultimately it all depends of the Search Engines? algorithm- the criteria used by the Search Engines to rank pages.
• HTML errors. Examples include unclosed tags, unquoted attributes, improperly nested tags, missing the ALT attribute on images. Any of these will affect your site’s accessibility, reducing your potential client pool.

A Web site with HTML errors can look fine in Explorer, strange in Netscape or Opera and totally unreadable in a text browser. Although Explorer has the largest market share, an important percentage of net surfers use other browsers. Don’t forget the more than 50 million people in the USA with disabilities. Many of the latter use text/voice browsers.

Other Types of Errors in Web Sites

Proper HTML coding is very important but the structure and the layout of the pages are equally important. I saw sites without ANY way to contact the company: no email address, no “contact page”. I saw sites so crowded that it was almost impossible to find my way around. I saw sites with ugly color schemes. I saw a site so “heavy” that it took nearly three minutes to download the Home Page.

According to statistics, users have very limited patience when it comes to loading a page. If after eight seconds they cannot see the page, they leave. And we all know what that means or the success of a Web site.

I not only saw all those errors in sites that are now gone but I also found them in sites that are still alive, including, incredibly, some Fortune 500 companies’ Web sites.

So Do We Dot-Com or Not?

The answer is a resounding YES! But with one condition, learn from your predecessors.

How can a dot-com become profitable? I don’t pretend to know ALL the answers. If I did, I would be millionaire by now.

Advice for Forming and Managing Your Company:

• Develop a sound business plan, with clear, credible ways to get to profitability. Venture capitalists are much more cautious than a few years ago. They invest less and are more selective in this risky business. They want value returned for their money. After all, statistics show that 9 out of 10 startups fail.
• Handle your money wisely. Enough said.
• Hire only the people you REALLY need and be sure ALL of them are professionals.

Advice Regarding the Web Site that Supports Your Company:

• Do the right thing when you prepare the Web site. Hire reputable professionals to build and promote your cyber adventure. If you already have a Web site, remember that a Web site can easily be redesigned and properly resubmitted to search tools.
• Have your site designed according to W3C Recommendations - the Official HTML coding rules. Yes, this takes time and it’s much easier to use an HTML editor, but the results are much better when properly coded by hand. Watch your site’s accessibility and usability. Don’t forget to test and validate the code. Talking about testing, do yourself a favor: check the spelling on your pages.
• Do not use spamming techniques. You might not be caught today, but one day the Search Engines OR your competitors will find you. Search Engines sometimes will use this reason to ban your site FOR LIFE.

For more about spam please read my article:

“Search Engine Spamming Sucks!” [ http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com/articles.html ]

• Avoid gizmos: JavaScripts, Flash or frames. Bells and whistles will NEVER help your page’ ranking. In fact, it will hurt your site’s indexing or ranking in the Search Engines and will annoy most of your viewers. So, just don’t do it!
• Have interesting content in your pages, content that grabs your viewer’s attention. No matter how beautiful your site is, no matter how much professional promotion you made, if the site doesn’t grab viewer’s interest, he will leave ? you guessed it — to your competitors’ sites.

Also, use the Title tag, the Keyword and Description meta tags in your HTML coding to list targeted keywords from the contents of your pages. This helps the Search Engines rank your site higher.

• Promote the site thoroughly. Submit the site properly to Search Engines and Web Directories and pay special attention to the link popularity issue- contact Webmasters of related sites to ask them to include a link to your site. Yes, it takes time, but it’s worth it.

So, let’s see: do we dot-com or not? You bet we do! There are tremendous opportunities on the Internet. Find your niche, follow the rules, work hard and you’ll make it.

It will not be easy but if you believe in your dream and set realistic expectations, you’ll be successful.

Good luck!

Choosing a domain name is a very important first step for anyone starting a business on the Internet. This name is the first impression that strangers are going to have about you and your business. You are going to need to give this decision some real thought.

It is very likely that you have a name in mind already. Something catchy, perhaps? Something that has meaning to you. Maybe you always wanted to name your business after you grandchild, or your favorite pet. I strongly urge you to reconsider.

In the very informative book, The Invisible Touch, Harry Beckwith has some unique ideas about naming a business. He touches on saying your proposed name out loud, slowly. How does it really sound? He cites the name Facial Aesthetics. Sounded out slowly, it becomes ?fa shil ass thet icks?. Doesn?t sound so good now, does it? Get opinions from others, and then really listen to what they have to say, objectively.

The next thing to consider is whether or not your name says anything about your business. Some years ago, I was friends with a lady who had a business named ?Heather?s Feathers?. So, what do you think that this business sold? Feathers? Birds? Bird products? Nope, it sold emu oil. And Heather was her 4 year-old daughter?s name. Consider what you would think of when you see a business name.

You may love your family name. If you are thinking of naming your business after yourself, however, you really need to give it some thought. I have never forgotten these two businesses, whose names I saw on billboards years ago: Crouch Equipment and Tick Insurance. Now you may say to yourself that I remember these names after years. True, but not for their products or their service!

You also run a risk if you choose a name that is too, let me say? mystical. You may know what you mean when you name your business Mystic Blue Nights, but how many other people will?

Don?t choose a domain name that reads like a book. It is difficult for the average person to remember long domain names. It may be descriptive to get lowcostdiabeticrecipesforalloccasions.com, but it is not going to be memorable, and you run the risk of people misspelling it and not being able to find you. Watch out for the use of dashes, too. People don?t expect them, so instead of visiting your site, Pickles-R-Us, they could wander to your competitor ?pickelsrus? instead. Trying to be clever and tweak a competitor?s name could backfire on you.

If the name that you really want is not available as a .com, go and look at the .com site before you choose .net, or one of the other extensions that are becoming available, such as .info and .tv. People think .com first, and if they are looking for you and put .com in by mistake, you sure don?t want them to end up at some porn or hate site.

You are going to have to live with your choice of domain names for a long time. Take your time and choose wisely.

As a webmaster you already know how important it is that your web pages download fast. In a nutshell, if your pages are slow, then you’re losing visitors. And if you’re losing visitors, you’re losing money.

To speed up your download times, most web design experts will suggest that you optimize your GIFs and JPGs so that they download faster. They’ll suggest that you make your images smaller or remove them altogether. Or they’ll simply suggest that you put less stuff on your pages.

All of these methods work. The problem, however, is that they all involve doing things that you don’t want to do. You don’t want to squeeze any more quality and color out of your images. The same goes for your content - you put it there because you want it there. Basically, there’s only so far you can go with these approaches before you really start to ruin your page.

Fortunately, there’s one way to get your pages opening faster without having to compromise your images or your content. This is a simple and effective method, but one that is rarely discussed by the web design experts.

To understand this approach, it’s important to recognize the difference between “perceived” download time and “actual” download time. The perceived download time is the time it takes to have enough stuff displayed on your page for the visitor to be able to start studying your content. The actual download time is the time it takes for the entire page and all its contents to be fully downloaded.

The perceived download time is the one that really counts. Why? Because once your visitor has something before his/her eyes to read or look at, then there is much less risk that he/she will click away because your page is taking too long to load.

So how do you improve your perceived download time?

Simple, you break the content of your page down into two or more tables.

You see, web browsers will not start displaying the contents of a table until it has compiled the entire table to the end. Once a table is compiled it will display, and the browser will start compiling the next table.

That means that if you place the entire contents of your page inside one big table, the browser will have to compile the entire contents of your page before anything will be displayed. The result: your visitor spends all that time staring at a blank screen.

However, by putting some of the content towards the top of the page into a table of its own, the rest of the page can be downloading farther down, while your visitor is busy studying the stuff that’s already displayed.

I’ve used this method to great effect on my own website. I went from an actual download time of up to 20 seconds (staring at a white screen) down to a perceived download time of rarely more than 3 seconds (often as low as 1 second)!

The ironic thing is, my page is now bigger (in terms of Kilobytes) than it was before I made the change. That’s because 2 tables take more HTML than one.

But boy has that extra bit of HTML paid off!

Make a test page now and try it out. Your hit counter will thank you for it!

Introduction

Creating your web site can be a tricky process. Choosing the best web design company for your site is extremely important. Unless you run a web-based business, you probably do not have web design experience within your company. Building your web site will take time and a little homework!

To create a web site for your business, follow these 4 simple steps:

1. Establish your goals
2. Determine your budget
3. Pick a web design company
4. Pick a web hosting company

Establish Your Goals

Before you begin looking for company to help you design and build your web site, take the time to understand the goals of your web site. This will be extremely important to help set expectations with the web design company you choose.

In order to set your web site goals, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Why do you want a web site?
2. Are you selling something?
3. Do you have a catalog of products that changes on a regular basis?
4. Who is your target market?
5. Do you already have a brand?
6. What is your industry?
7. Who are your competitors?
8. Do they already have web sites? If so, what do they look like?
9. If you’re selling something, will you accept credit cards over the internet?
10. How soon do you want your web site?
11. What happens if you never create a web site for your business?

Take the time to answer each of the above questions and if you have time, write the answers down on a sheet of paper. These are the same questions most web design companies will ask you before they begin to create your site. If you have these questions answered up front, you will have some criteria for choosing the right web design company. For example, if you are a real estate agent, and want to publish listings on your web site, you should seek a web design company that knows about the real estate business and has created web pages for other real estate agents.

Determine Your Budget

How much do you want to spend on your web site. Web sites can cost you anywhere from $100 to $100,000 depending upon what you want it to do. Know your spending constraints before you begin negotiating with design companies. Whatever you do, do not tell a web design company what your budget is!! Always get pricing based on your needs, not you budget.

Pick a Web Design Company

Your choice of a web design company is a very important step. Take your time to investigate all of your options. Here are some important items to consider.

Design vs. Build

Depending upon the scope of your web site, you may need to choose two different companies. Building a web site is a highly technical process. Designing a web site is a highly creative process. Many advertising firms specialize in web site design which does not necessarily require any web development skills whatsoever. The process of creating a web site is similar to the process of building a new home. Before you ask a construction company to start building, you first seek out an architect who creates a blueprint of your house taking into account what you want (number of stories, square footage, etc.). Creating a detailed blueprint before construction begins can help you accurately estimate the final price. Without the blueprint, you may end up paying a lot of money for a house that does not fit your needs. Creating a web site is exactly the same except most web site “builders” also claim to be “designers”. The good news is that you can look at other sites a web design company has created (like looking at other homes that a home builder has made). Make sure you ask the web design company what their process is for designing a web site vs. building a web site. They should understand the difference between these two concepts. If they don’t, they’re probably builder that think they can also architect.

Evaluate Experience

Has the web design company created web sites similar to yours? Do they have relevant industry experience? As with any services company, choosing someone that has relevant experience. If you want to sell products through your web site and accept credit card payments, does the web design company you are considering have experience doing just that?

Review the Portfolio

A well established web design company will have a solid portfolio of web sites that they have created for other clients. Ask for links to other site the design company has created and review each one. Do you like what you see? Do the sites have a style that appeals to you? In addition to reviewing web sites, ask for customer references. Contact their clients and ask them about their experience with the web design company. Were they happy with the results? Did they get what they paid for? How much did they pay? Would they recommend them? How long did it take? What didn’t they like about the company? How responsive was the company when they had questions?

Compare Prices

Pricing for creating a web site can vary. Typically, web design companies will charge one of three ways:

1. Time and materials: price is variable based on the actual number of hours spent working on your site. For example, a web design company may charge you $75 per hour. If it takes 100 hours to create your web site, your price would end up being $7,500.
2. Fixed Price: some design companies will charge you a fixed fee based on a fixed set of requirements. If you outline your requirements very carefully, many web design companies will quote you a single price.
3. Component Pricing: some design companies will charge “by the page”. By creating a price based on the number of pages, you can control the cost by designing a specific number of pages. Buyer beware: some design companies will charge by the page but will have “special pricing” for components such as custom graphics, animated images, and the like.

The most important step in pricing is to make sure the potential design company outline all of the prices associated with the work and puts it all in writing. Never enter into a deal unless all of the costs are well understood up front. Also make sure that you understand what “done” means. Try and structure the payments such that a significant portion of the fees (20%) are not due until you “accept” the final web site. Include the agreed-upon dates in your contract and provisions for what will happen if these dates are not met.

Solicit bids from multiple web design companies and compare both the pricing models and the prices themselves.

There are thousands of web designers across the country and they should all fight feverously for your business! Be picky! If a web design company dismisses any of your questions regarding their design process, pricing, or client references, take your business elsewhere!

About The Author Andy Quick is co-founder of Findmyhosting.com (http://www.findmyhosting.com), a free web hosting directory offering businesses and consumers a hassle free way to find the right hosting plan for their needs. Feel free to contact Andy at andy@findmyhosting.com in case you have any questions or comments regarding this article.

1. Don’t load your web site with a lot of high tech clutter. Your visitors may miss your whole sales message.
2. Don’t use unnecessary words or phrases on your site. You only have so much time to get your visitor’s attention and interest; make ever word count.
3. Don’t make the mistake that everyone will totally understand your web site message. Use descriptive words and examples to get your point across.
4. Don’t write your strongest point or benefit only once. You should repeat it at least 3 times because some people may miss it.
5. Don’t push all your words together on your web site. People like to skim; use plenty of headings and sub headings.
6. Don’t use site content your target audience isn’t interested in. If people are coming to your site to find info about fishing don’t include soccer content.
7. Don’t use 50 different content formats all over your web site. Use the same fonts, text sizes, text colors, etc.
8. Don’t use words your web site visitors might not understand. People are not going to stop and look in a dictionary, they will just go to another site.
9. Don’t let selling words and phrases go unnoticed. Highlight important words and phrases with color, bolding, italics, underlining, etc.
10. Don’t forget to use words that create emotion. All people have emotions, people will have more interest when they are emotionally attached.

An autoresponder is useful for, well, responding to people who send you inquiries through email. They are actually more than just merely useful - they are an essential tool in any webmaster’s toolbox. Used properly, they can enhance your visitors experience and virtually guarantee that they will come back time after time. Used improperly, they annoy people and push them away from ever coming back.

What distinguishes proper from improper use? People should receive messages when they would normally expect to receive messages. Here are some examples:

• Proper: I expect to get a thank you message after signing a guestbook. I should only receive one message.
  Improper: adding my email to your mailing list because I sign your guestbook.

• Proper: I also expect to get a message if I use a form on a website to send a message to the webmaster. This verifies to me that it is indeed more than likely to get to the intended person.
  Improper: again, adding my email address to your mailing list.

• Proper: If I sign up for your newsletter I expect a thank you email and, of course, the newsletter.
  Improper: Adding my email to anything other than the mailing list which I asked to be added to. Also, sending anything other than the newsletter is generally improper although an occasional status email is acceptable. Never send separate advertisements unless it is clearly spelled out on the newsletter signup page.

• Proper: Following your written privacy policy to the letter in regards to how the email address (and other information) is to be used, and to summarize that information on the page where it is asked for. You should also have a link to the privacy policy on every single page of your web site.
  Improper: Not having a written privacy policy and asking for information. Not explaining how the information is to be used on the page where it is asked for. Not following your written policies.

• Proper: Including autoresponder links on your website to deliver articles and information to an email box.
  Improper: Using these links to add email addresses to your mailing list.

• Proper: If you make articles available for reprint, it is always a good idea to include autoresponder links to make it easy for publishers to get those articles in a suitable format.
  Improper: Using these autoresponder links to add people to your mailing list.

• Proper: Allow visitors to sign up for an email course using an autoresponder.
  Improper: Adding email addresses obtained in this manner to your mailing list.

• Proper: Follow up for an order or other communication. For example, a “did you receive your order okay?” message a few days after the order was taken is excellent customer service.
  Improper: Sending more than an acknowledgement and follow up message. The person ordered something, he did not ask to be on your mailing, advertisement or nag list.

I am sure you see a major common thread in all of this - don’t add people to your mailing list unless (a) you tell them you are doing to, (b) you give them the chance to say “no”, and (c) they explicitly give their permission. NEVER assume your visitor wants to be added to your mailing list - make him explicitly ask by filling out a form, checking a box (off by default) or some other similar means.

Autoresponders have some excellent uses:

• As an acknowledgement or thank you for something.
• As a way to get something delivered in email form (reprint publishers love this method of obtaining articles).
• As a way to deliver a series of something (like an email course) to someone.

One use of autoresponders that drives me crazy (and ensures that I will never return to that site) is common with contests. Let say I sign up to try and win a million dollars. I try and of course I don’t win. Now I get these silly reminder messages for the rest of time, telling me in all manners that I’ve won, or almost won, or could win, or might win … I usually hit delete a few times, then quickly unsubscribe.

All right, so now you know how to use and not to use autoresponders. So where do you get them? They are available all over the internet. If your site is hosted on a paid host (such as Addr.com), you may find that they offer unlimited autoresponders. If so, take advantage of them. These are generally single-message autoresponders.

GetResponse.com has an excellent autoresponder service. They offer a limited function free version, and one of the most functional paid versions that exist. Their prices are reasonable and the autoresponders always seem to work perfectly.

AWeber.Com has another excellent autoresponder service. Of course, any good guestbook package has the ability to send a customizable message to the signer. Good forms packages also include this ability.

Now, what do you put into an autoresponder messages? Whatever you said or implied you would, plus some ticklers to try and get your visitors to come back to your site.

Thus, if you send back a thank you message for signing a guestbook, you can also include a short list of some of the other features available on your website. Perhaps a small article or even a link to a “free gift” for signing the guestbook.

Remember, don’t make the two mistakes of autoresponders. First, do not waste your opportunity. You are sending a person a message which he asked for or expects, so be sure to include more than just “thanks for signing my gustbook”. At least put the URL of your site, and include a paragraph about it.

Second, do not abuse your opportunity, as that will just get the message deleted. I’ve found it is generally NOT a good idea to put blatant advertisements in these messages, especially for pay-to-surf, MLM or affiliates. Why not? I believe these things are best left to your website or to a newsletter or ezine specifically tailored for them. A major exception is in a newsletter itself, as, like magazines and newspapers, advertisements are expected in order to cover the costs of the publication.

In summary, autoresponders are an excellent tool which all webmasters would be wise to use to their advantage. Just be sure to use them properly.