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Casual Articles - Your Website Is You
Squiddo is one of the most effective ways of generating highly targeted traffic to your site, online store, auctions or blogs. The main reason behind this is that squiddo is a Web 2.0 website whose specialty is that its content is mainly contributed by its users and net surfers like us.Squiddo could be understood as a kind of social encyclopedia including thousands and thousands of pages called lenses created by users on numerous topics. A lens (squiddo page) can include text, images, video, audio, opt-in boxes, tips, links, RSS feeds, monetization and anything that you can think of.There are a number of advantages of having squiddo lens. It would help you build traffic to your site, blogs and online stores. It would help you build subscriber lists. You can market your online business and sell your products and services with squiddo. It would also help you build your reputation as an expert in your chosen niche. It allows you to create a number of deep links to the inner pages or shopping pages of your site. Squiddo can also let you build authoritative resource page on each and every topic that forms a part of your niche. The most important thing is that the combination of all these would
Having the content from all four pages under a single "About Us" umbrella page makes much more sense because users will simultaneously be able to read about your company, what others have said about your company and employment opportunities all on the same page. Even if they don’t read it directly, words like "Great!" and "Fantastic service" may jump out, lending credibility almost subconsciously.
It may seem counter-intuitive to not list things individually, but the broad term "About Us" logically implies anything about the company, such as contact information, history, and employment. Its much like the principle of having shoppers to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy milk. They automatically know they must go to the store to find milk but they will also pass many other things along the way and potentially find other things to buy or like about the store.
If you need evidence that good interface design and design in general really do pay off, you need only go so as far as the Apple iPod. There are many arguably better MP3 players on the market, but with its simple yet robust user interface and stylish design, it remains dominant in the marketplace. Websites are no different. Users want style, simplicity and robust usability. It is a designer’s job to apply these concepts in a relevant way to any industry
As a result of increased Internet access and computer ownership, E-commerce has gradually grown in importance during the past decade. The Internet is slowly but surely turning into the most important international market and thus the need for each company to have a website in order to present and sell their services and products has become imperative. Although many companies prefer to have the content on their website written in the language of the country of residence, recent figures stress the fact that this is not the best approach.It has recently been proven that over fifty percent of Google queries are submitted in other language than English. It was also shown that visitors are more likely to buy from a website with content in their own language. Last but not least, the sales of the companies with multilingual websites are a lot higher than those of the companies with a single language website. The obvious conclusion is that, in order to reach foreign clients and to compete on the global market, a company should have a localised website.Apparently an easy process, website localization implies several important steps. The text on the website needs to be translated with the greatest
If you use a funnel to fill a bucket, but the bucket is full of holes, you cant hold water. Optimization funnels people to your website, but good web design keeps them on the page.
The same can be said of well developed backends. If someone made an MP3 player with 300 buttons, no one would use it. It would simply be too difficult to use to be worth anyone’s time.
You can lead droves of people to your site with optimization and do amazing things with well developed backends, but if your content isn’t organized and presented in a way that is easy to understand, familiar and interesting, customers will move on. Period.
Custom Made Website Is You
If your website appears dated, poorly designed or confusing and user-unfriendly, this directly reflects on your company. Your company then appears dated, poor and unfriendly in turn. Your custom made websites is a direct extension of your entire company and to many customers may be the only way they may interact with you. You wouldn’t wear sweatpants to an important sales meeting. People wouldn’t take you seriously. Web users are exactly the same. If your website is not well designed and easy to use, your customers may not take you seriously, deciding that your entire company may be equally lackluster and incapable of meeting their level of expectations.
The Bounce
Web users make nearly instantaneous decisions when deciding on whether a website is worth their time to explore further or not. Users quickly scan an entire page in an attempt to find any content that is relevant to their search. If no recognizable elements related to their search are found within the first precious moments of a visit, users will "bounce" and click back to look at other options. Research suggests you have as little as four seconds once the user arrives to tell him why he should stay.
Q: What stops users from bouncing?
A: Good design.
Giving customers what they want is the #1 key to customer satisfaction and retaining users. Quickly providing customers with what they are looking for keeps customers at your website. Good design accomplishes this. Web Design is for Customers You’ve got a lot invested in your business. This is your website. Your paying a lot of money for all this, so shouldn’t your website be exactly how you want it to be? Your favorite colors, your fonts, your layout? Not always. The design of your website must be made with the end users in mind, not what your favorite color is that day. Customers are the most important users of your website. If they are not taken into consideration, or if personal tastes trump commonly held conventions, users will bounce.
This isn’t to say that you must always end up with a site you hate for the sake of customers. You are the expert in your industry. Graphic designers are experts in conveying the information of your industry to the rest of the world. Both client and designer must actively work together to achieve the desired goal of a beautiful site that works for everyone and sets the clients business apart from the competition. Neither client nor designer can accomplish this alone.
Where did that button go?
Interface design is the method of directing users to the information they are looking for. Good interface design directs users to the information they are looking for in the quickest possible manner. We’ve all seen menu bars, floating icons, and buttons galore. Nifty little flash navigation with moving strings of clickable links. How often have you visited a site with hundreds of links and buttons and were paralyzed by the number of options available? Or a site with moving flash links that, once the novelty wore off, very quickly became a pain in the ass to actually use? How difficult was it to find what you were looking for? Did you stay long enough to hunt through menus to find what you were searching for in the first place? Flashy does not mean usable. More often than not, it hinders the usability of a website and the ability of the user to find the content they are searching for quickly and efficiently.
As technology develops and websites and web applications become more and more robust and complex, the need for well designed interfaces grows proportionally for the success of a website. In order to attain the core goal of delivering information information quickly to flighty users who are searching for it, a number of avenues can be taken including sub-grouping menus and eliminating redundant content as well as providing constants such as login and search boxes in familiar, consistent places.
The consolidation of content onto individual pages is also very important for not only search engine optimization but also for the users’ ability to quickly find related information. For example, having individual pages for items such as:
* About us
* Contact us
* Testimonials
* Employment Opportunities
Having all of this content on 4 separate pages means the user must click between 4 different menus in order to find each group of content. Many do not have the patience, and don’t necessarily care about the other options.
Having the content from all four pages under a single "About Us" umbrella page makes much more sense because users will simultaneously be able to read about your company, what others have said about your company and employment opportunities all on the same page. Even if they don’t read it directly, words like "Great!" and "Fantastic service" may jump out, lending credibility almost subconsciously.
It may seem counter-intuitive to not list things individually, but the broad term "About Us" logically implies anything about the company, such as contact information, history, and employment. Its much like the principle of having shoppers to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy milk. They automatically know they must go to the store to find milk but they will also pass many other things along the way and potentially find other things to buy or like about the store.
If you need evidence that good interface design and design in general really do pay off, you need only go so as far as the Apple iPod. There are many arguably better MP3 players on the market, but with its simple yet robust user interface and stylish design, it remains dominant in the marketplace. Websites are no different. Users want style, simplicity and robust usability. It is a designer’s job to apply these concepts in a relevant way to any industry w
The ropers at Annie Oakley's Real Western Dudette Ranch were all riding high in the saddle. It was just before their first travel trade show in Chicago, and they just knew they would rope in big sales.Annie and her all-woman cowpoke staff were confident thousands of American working women were just itchin to pay $1995 or more to learn the fine art of cattle roping and bronco busting. Annie sent her two best cowgirls; figurin’ if they could handle cattle, they could sure rustle up some sales. The cowgirls brought to the show a couple of hay bales, a big sign with genuine spurs dangling from it, a table clear across the front of their booth loaded with hundreds of small snapshots of the cowpokes in action, a four-page story Annie had hand wrote to give out. They wore their most trail-worn chaps and their fanciest boots.Dang! Three days later, Annie's seasoned cowgirls left the show more tired then after three-week cattle drive, ornery with their throats as dry as dust. They had only four leads, and had made no sales. Annie was as irritated as a stepped-on rattler; she had spent over $5,000. and was sure it was the show promoter's fault her cowgirls were not mor
The Bounce
Web users make nearly instantaneous decisions when deciding on whether a website is worth their time to explore further or not. Users quickly scan an entire page in an attempt to find any content that is relevant to their search. If no recognizable elements related to their search are found within the first precious moments of a visit, users will "bounce" and click back to look at other options. Research suggests you have as little as four seconds once the user arrives to tell him why he should stay.
Q: What stops users from bouncing?
A: Good design.
Giving customers what they want is the #1 key to customer satisfaction and retaining users. Quickly providing customers with what they are looking for keeps customers at your website. Good design accomplishes this. Web Design is for Customers You’ve got a lot invested in your business. This is your website. Your paying a lot of money for all this, so shouldn’t your website be exactly how you want it to be? Your favorite colors, your fonts, your layout? Not always. The design of your website must be made with the end users in mind, not what your favorite color is that day. Customers are the most important users of your website. If they are not taken into consideration, or if personal tastes trump commonly held conventions, users will bounce.
This isn’t to say that you must always end up with a site you hate for the sake of customers. You are the expert in your industry. Graphic designers are experts in conveying the information of your industry to the rest of the world. Both client and designer must actively work together to achieve the desired goal of a beautiful site that works for everyone and sets the clients business apart from the competition. Neither client nor designer can accomplish this alone.
Where did that button go?
Interface design is the method of directing users to the information they are looking for. Good interface design directs users to the information they are looking for in the quickest possible manner. We’ve all seen menu bars, floating icons, and buttons galore. Nifty little flash navigation with moving strings of clickable links. How often have you visited a site with hundreds of links and buttons and were paralyzed by the number of options available? Or a site with moving flash links that, once the novelty wore off, very quickly became a pain in the ass to actually use? How difficult was it to find what you were looking for? Did you stay long enough to hunt through menus to find what you were searching for in the first place? Flashy does not mean usable. More often than not, it hinders the usability of a website and the ability of the user to find the content they are searching for quickly and efficiently.
As technology develops and websites and web applications become more and more robust and complex, the need for well designed interfaces grows proportionally for the success of a website. In order to attain the core goal of delivering information information quickly to flighty users who are searching for it, a number of avenues can be taken including sub-grouping menus and eliminating redundant content as well as providing constants such as login and search boxes in familiar, consistent places.
The consolidation of content onto individual pages is also very important for not only search engine optimization but also for the users’ ability to quickly find related information. For example, having individual pages for items such as:
* About us
* Contact us
* Testimonials
* Employment Opportunities
Having all of this content on 4 separate pages means the user must click between 4 different menus in order to find each group of content. Many do not have the patience, and don’t necessarily care about the other options.
Having the content from all four pages under a single "About Us" umbrella page makes much more sense because users will simultaneously be able to read about your company, what others have said about your company and employment opportunities all on the same page. Even if they don’t read it directly, words like "Great!" and "Fantastic service" may jump out, lending credibility almost subconsciously.
It may seem counter-intuitive to not list things individually, but the broad term "About Us" logically implies anything about the company, such as contact information, history, and employment. Its much like the principle of having shoppers to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy milk. They automatically know they must go to the store to find milk but they will also pass many other things along the way and potentially find other things to buy or like about the store.
If you need evidence that good interface design and design in general really do pay off, you need only go so as far as the Apple iPod. There are many arguably better MP3 players on the market, but with its simple yet robust user interface and stylish design, it remains dominant in the marketplace. Websites are no different. Users want style, simplicity and robust usability. It is a designer’s job to apply these concepts in a relevant way to any industry
Look at all the most successful athletes and business people, they ALL have coaches. So what does that tell you? Well, for one thing, stop being so darn independent!Ever since childhood we were taught in school to NEVER look at another student's test or discuss how to solve a problem. Sure there are times when you worked together when working on fun kid projects in the classroom and singing "Yankee doodle" together, but for the most part they wanted us to think for ourselves.Unfortunately that's not how the real world works if you want to be a success more quickly and easily. To put it simply, you are not the smartest person in the world and you cannot possibly do everything by yourself.You readily accept this fact if you wanted to learn how to play the piano, martial arts, or sports because you know you need a coach. If you don't, and if you are not a prodigy, then you are going to waste years of your life trying to be cheap and doing everything by yourself.Yet when it comes to your success on how to make money on the internet, most people does not make that same connection! No experience mixed with no guidance is a recipe for disaster.And without a mentor to
This isn’t to say that you must always end up with a site you hate for the sake of customers. You are the expert in your industry. Graphic designers are experts in conveying the information of your industry to the rest of the world. Both client and designer must actively work together to achieve the desired goal of a beautiful site that works for everyone and sets the clients business apart from the competition. Neither client nor designer can accomplish this alone.
Where did that button go?
Interface design is the method of directing users to the information they are looking for. Good interface design directs users to the information they are looking for in the quickest possible manner. We’ve all seen menu bars, floating icons, and buttons galore. Nifty little flash navigation with moving strings of clickable links. How often have you visited a site with hundreds of links and buttons and were paralyzed by the number of options available? Or a site with moving flash links that, once the novelty wore off, very quickly became a pain in the ass to actually use? How difficult was it to find what you were looking for? Did you stay long enough to hunt through menus to find what you were searching for in the first place? Flashy does not mean usable. More often than not, it hinders the usability of a website and the ability of the user to find the content they are searching for quickly and efficiently.
As technology develops and websites and web applications become more and more robust and complex, the need for well designed interfaces grows proportionally for the success of a website. In order to attain the core goal of delivering information information quickly to flighty users who are searching for it, a number of avenues can be taken including sub-grouping menus and eliminating redundant content as well as providing constants such as login and search boxes in familiar, consistent places.
The consolidation of content onto individual pages is also very important for not only search engine optimization but also for the users’ ability to quickly find related information. For example, having individual pages for items such as:
* About us
* Contact us
* Testimonials
* Employment Opportunities
Having all of this content on 4 separate pages means the user must click between 4 different menus in order to find each group of content. Many do not have the patience, and don’t necessarily care about the other options.
Having the content from all four pages under a single "About Us" umbrella page makes much more sense because users will simultaneously be able to read about your company, what others have said about your company and employment opportunities all on the same page. Even if they don’t read it directly, words like "Great!" and "Fantastic service" may jump out, lending credibility almost subconsciously.
It may seem counter-intuitive to not list things individually, but the broad term "About Us" logically implies anything about the company, such as contact information, history, and employment. Its much like the principle of having shoppers to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy milk. They automatically know they must go to the store to find milk but they will also pass many other things along the way and potentially find other things to buy or like about the store.
If you need evidence that good interface design and design in general really do pay off, you need only go so as far as the Apple iPod. There are many arguably better MP3 players on the market, but with its simple yet robust user interface and stylish design, it remains dominant in the marketplace. Websites are no different. Users want style, simplicity and robust usability. It is a designer’s job to apply these concepts in a relevant way to any industry
There are millions of people online searching for that secret or their own little business, which they think will lead them to the big pot of gold on the other side of the rainbow. The truth is that many of these people have never earnt a cent online. Chances are they never will.Why? They are always looking for ‘the secret’ that all the Guru’s know. Time to face facts - there is no secret! Atleast not what you might be thinking about. The only secret that truly everyone knows, but chooses to ignore is HARD WORK! your product. If you don’t know, then HOW would you know who wants it?1) Firstly, to be truly successful online you must know and abide by two rules: Know-your-product rule – You have to know what it is that your selling – Know-your-client rule – You have to know who it is that would want to buy it. If you don’t, then how will you know WHERE to find your clients?2) Free or paid Advertising? If you’ve joined or considering businesses like EDC Gold, passport to wealth, emerald etc, which will mean that you have already, or will be spending $997, $1300 etc on just the start-up cost, then the last thing you want to have to do is spend more money in
As technology develops and websites and web applications become more and more robust and complex, the need for well designed interfaces grows proportionally for the success of a website. In order to attain the core goal of delivering information information quickly to flighty users who are searching for it, a number of avenues can be taken including sub-grouping menus and eliminating redundant content as well as providing constants such as login and search boxes in familiar, consistent places.
The consolidation of content onto individual pages is also very important for not only search engine optimization but also for the users’ ability to quickly find related information. For example, having individual pages for items such as:
* About us
* Contact us
* Testimonials
* Employment Opportunities
Having all of this content on 4 separate pages means the user must click between 4 different menus in order to find each group of content. Many do not have the patience, and don’t necessarily care about the other options.
Having the content from all four pages under a single "About Us" umbrella page makes much more sense because users will simultaneously be able to read about your company, what others have said about your company and employment opportunities all on the same page. Even if they don’t read it directly, words like "Great!" and "Fantastic service" may jump out, lending credibility almost subconsciously.
It may seem counter-intuitive to not list things individually, but the broad term "About Us" logically implies anything about the company, such as contact information, history, and employment. Its much like the principle of having shoppers to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy milk. They automatically know they must go to the store to find milk but they will also pass many other things along the way and potentially find other things to buy or like about the store.
If you need evidence that good interface design and design in general really do pay off, you need only go so as far as the Apple iPod. There are many arguably better MP3 players on the market, but with its simple yet robust user interface and stylish design, it remains dominant in the marketplace. Websites are no different. Users want style, simplicity and robust usability. It is a designer’s job to apply these concepts in a relevant way to any industry
There are a number of key differences between link farms and web directories. The most prominent difference between the two is that web directories are valued by the search engines, while link farms are considered to be spammy. Link farms are generally built by webmasters who wish to cheat the search engines. They try to jam a bunch of links on a page with the hope that it will rank well. In most cases, it doesn't, and the search engines may ban websites that feature this. Web directories are much more legitimate. They are designed to help people find what they are looking for on the web.A web directory could be likened to the traditional yellow phone book directory. With a web directory, you have a bunch of websites that are placed in various categories. When you click on the category page, you will have a list of websites. Each website will have a title that comes in the form of a link, and they will all have descriptions which tell you what the site is about. By reading these descriptions, you will be able to determine whether or not you're interested in visiting the website. Link farms are the exact opposite. They tend to have a bunch of links on a page that don't have any descriptions. If y
Having the content from all four pages under a single "About Us" umbrella page makes much more sense because users will simultaneously be able to read about your company, what others have said about your company and employment opportunities all on the same page. Even if they don’t read it directly, words like "Great!" and "Fantastic service" may jump out, lending credibility almost subconsciously.
It may seem counter-intuitive to not list things individually, but the broad term "About Us" logically implies anything about the company, such as contact information, history, and employment. Its much like the principle of having shoppers to walk to the back of the grocery store to buy milk. They automatically know they must go to the store to find milk but they will also pass many other things along the way and potentially find other things to buy or like about the store.
If you need evidence that good interface design and design in general really do pay off, you need only go so as far as the Apple iPod. There are many arguably better MP3 players on the market, but with its simple yet robust user interface and stylish design, it remains dominant in the marketplace. Websites are no different. Users want style, simplicity and robust usability. It is a designer’s job to apply these concepts in a relevant way to any industry while achieving the goals of the client and the expectations of the users. Being Familiar Users require some amount of familiarity with the layout and design of a website they have never used before. Conventions become conventions because they work and users are used to working with them. This is especially true in cases in which e-commerce is a focal point. If something looks strange, out of place or markedly unconventional to a user during any part of the buying or checkout process, they may bounce in the middle of making a transaction.
If you went to a restaurant, and the server brought you out food before you were even seated, food you didn’t order, gave your bill to another table and did everything out of order, then when asked why they responded "Because I like it that way," you would leave immediately and likely never return. The same is true of web and e-commerce design. Familiarity in design and function provides a sense of stability and security to online transactions and improves overall customer satisfaction. Being Different By the same token, if your website looks exactly like your competitor’s or every other site on the web, users are not provided with a reason to stay with you over your neighbor’s site, especially if they are not familiar with your customer service or products. Setting yourself apart from the rest of your industry in a design sense is the surest way to create a buzz and project yourself towards your target demographics. A balance between familiarity and differentiation must be achieved to both retain customers AND be more visible and interesting than your competitors.
Tips for working with Designers
1. Communicate with your designers regularly. Have them keep you up to date on design direction and revisions.
2. Have a detailed idea of your target audience(s)
3. Ask yourself, "What do users expect from me?"
4. Decide on a visual style such as "Sleek and Fast" or "Earthy and warm". Descriptive adjectives are great for conveying visual style.
5. Learn about your competition. How can you differentiate yourself?
6. Have an idea of the different individual pages you would like your site to have. This helps designers create an interface.
7. Give the designers copies of all relevant content related to both your specific business and the industry in general. This gives them a pool to draw from to learn about your industry and content with which to create the website.
8. Always keep in mind, design is a process. There are usually many iterations of a site design on the way to the finished product and often the finished product can be very different from the initial concepts. Very very seldom is something produced correctly on the first version.
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