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Casual Articles - Attracting Your Traffic-Website Design With a Professional Feel
The director of telemarketing operations at a financial services company looks out across his 3600 square foot call center on a typical Monday morning. “Look at all those empty chairs”, he laments. “It is sickly Monday and my partiers are taking their usual unscheduled day long break”. The problem of the “three day weekend” or absenteeism in general doesn’t just affect the manager in this setting. What about the other 80% of the work force who showed up? They are now burdened with additional duties while filling the vacancies that have temporarily developed.With the challenge of recruiting qualified workers becoming more difficult all over the nation, the last thing American businesses can afford is to have major portions of its existing work force abusing drugs – on or off the job. The truth is that most employees do not engage in illicit drug use and most do not want to work side-by-side with drug abusers. A majority of employees are parents who are concerned about the effects of drug abuse on their children, now and in the future. Given this profile of the typical American workers, it is clear that substance-abuse prevention can and should be viewed as a common concern of both employers and employees.We interviewed one company that
Very simply, a project manager is the person who takes responsibility for everything. This is not to say “the one who does everything”. It is not too likely that a project manager even has the skill sets that would make her capable of doing everything that need to be done for a project. She’s simply the place where the buck stops. Have you been watching The Apprentice? When a project fails, who is the person most likely to hear “You’re fired!” Unless she is exceptionally good a deflecting blame, it is the Project manager!So what skill set does a successful project manager really need? One skill or art is the ability to be a good team leader. Among other things, a project manager requires an inquiring mind. You must be able to gather information from the right people and to assimilate this information quickly in order to make projections and wise decisions. All this is needed in order to plan and develop a project. Plan, plan, review and plan. If you are not good at planning and scheduling in detail, you might want to reconsider being a project manager. Often a project manager must also present and sell the plan to her manager and /or customer. Thus good presentation skills are also needed.Once decisions are made, she must ma
Not everyone can afford professional website designers to build their site, however if you are selling a product it is advisable to pay the extra money for a website designer; however, if you are well versed in website design you could take on this challenge yourself. For informational websites, the prospect of doing the work yourself can save you money and still result in a good looking website. This article will help point out some key areas you should focus on when designing your own website.
Software:
Unless you are an HTML guru, you are going to need some website design software. There are many different software titles out there ranging from free to hundreds of dollars. I recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver: it is easy to use, has a ton of features and allows you to have complete control over your website with very minimal HTML knowledge. However Dreamweaver is expensive and may not be within your budget. If you have Microsoft office you can use Microsoft FrontPage to build your website. FrontPage is not as easy to use as Dreamweaver in my opinion but is still very capable of producing an excellent website for your company. There are also a lot of free Programs out there that you can use but be warned, in most cases they will not be as easy to use and may require more knowledge of HTML code to be effective.
Templates:
If you’re not a designer and are having trouble coming up with an attractive and organized website design, templates are an excellent way to build up a professional looking website in a very short time. There are thousands of free templates, simply go to a search engine and search for website templates. Free templates are a toss up however in terms of quality. Sometimes you can find good free templates, and other times you will spend hours looking and not find one decent template. For times like these I suggest you turn to buying a template. Premium templates typically cost up to $80 or so and are very well designed. They look just as good as any major website you’ve ever visited and can include flash animations if you so desire. A template is a very wise investment and is well worth the money. Keep in mind, however, that you will still need some kind of site building software and you may need image editing software (windows paint isn’t going to cut it). Photoshop is typically recommended, but with its large price tag, you can opt for more affordable solutions. Also, some hosting services will provide you with professional template for free just by using their services. Hostmonster.com and Web.com hosting services offer this extra bonus. After you get your software and/or templates, you can finally sit down and formulate your plan of attack. Don’t underestimate good planning as it is much easier to have all your angles figured out ahead of time than to keep redoing your site mid-stride. Don’t even touch the computer yet, take out a pencil and paper and jot down your design on paper. This pre-design should be mostly for layout and navigation, obviously you don’t need to draw each image. Write down how you want the layout of your site to be, where you want navigation, content, advertisements, products, links, etc. Be detailed in how you want your navigation to be designed. Do you want very general category navigation and then have that expand when you click on it, or do you want more specific links visible right up front on the main page. Doing this now will save you time later. Now you will need to focus on three basic aspects of website design.
Overall Appearance:
If you purchased a template then you are all ready to go here, just decide on text and link colors and your set. But if you’re starting from scratch you should begin to decide how you want your site to look. The background color should be very light. White is preferable, but you don’t have to have a white background, you can use a very light gray or blue, but the key here is to keep it very pale, very light. By making the background light, you have a bit more freedom in which colors to choose for the rest of your site. This is really up to what the sites topic deals with or what types of products you are selling; however, it is advisable not to use a large amount of varying colors. The colors you choose should go well together. Try a couple sample pages with very simple layouts with tables or layers and just change their background colors and text colors to see what looks good. Don’t be afraid to ask for others opinions also, just because you like the website doesn’t mean anyone else does. Think of it as painting the interior of your house. You may like lime green and purple on every wall, but if nobody else likes t
To all webmasters, whether your a writer or a not, now is the time to start putting those creative writing skills to good use!With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is why article writing, submissions and publications are also getting popular.There are already many tools that people can use to make the process of distributing their articles more easily. Though this is invaluable in getting the contents more exposure, which is only half of the story.Let us take a look first at the common mistakes that some people make before submitting their contents to article directories:1. Confusing the reason to promote the articles with the reason to write them.In article writing, there are three key benefits why you are promoting them; branding, lead generation and promotion, which are all part of your optimization efforts.But there is only one reason why you write an article, and that is to inform your audience. If the article is not focused on this primary and most important purpose, it will fail to achieve the three promotion benefits be
Software:
Unless you are an HTML guru, you are going to need some website design software. There are many different software titles out there ranging from free to hundreds of dollars. I recommend Macromedia Dreamweaver: it is easy to use, has a ton of features and allows you to have complete control over your website with very minimal HTML knowledge. However Dreamweaver is expensive and may not be within your budget. If you have Microsoft office you can use Microsoft FrontPage to build your website. FrontPage is not as easy to use as Dreamweaver in my opinion but is still very capable of producing an excellent website for your company. There are also a lot of free Programs out there that you can use but be warned, in most cases they will not be as easy to use and may require more knowledge of HTML code to be effective.
Templates:
If you’re not a designer and are having trouble coming up with an attractive and organized website design, templates are an excellent way to build up a professional looking website in a very short time. There are thousands of free templates, simply go to a search engine and search for website templates. Free templates are a toss up however in terms of quality. Sometimes you can find good free templates, and other times you will spend hours looking and not find one decent template. For times like these I suggest you turn to buying a template. Premium templates typically cost up to $80 or so and are very well designed. They look just as good as any major website you’ve ever visited and can include flash animations if you so desire. A template is a very wise investment and is well worth the money. Keep in mind, however, that you will still need some kind of site building software and you may need image editing software (windows paint isn’t going to cut it). Photoshop is typically recommended, but with its large price tag, you can opt for more affordable solutions. Also, some hosting services will provide you with professional template for free just by using their services. Hostmonster.com and Web.com hosting services offer this extra bonus. After you get your software and/or templates, you can finally sit down and formulate your plan of attack. Don’t underestimate good planning as it is much easier to have all your angles figured out ahead of time than to keep redoing your site mid-stride. Don’t even touch the computer yet, take out a pencil and paper and jot down your design on paper. This pre-design should be mostly for layout and navigation, obviously you don’t need to draw each image. Write down how you want the layout of your site to be, where you want navigation, content, advertisements, products, links, etc. Be detailed in how you want your navigation to be designed. Do you want very general category navigation and then have that expand when you click on it, or do you want more specific links visible right up front on the main page. Doing this now will save you time later. Now you will need to focus on three basic aspects of website design.
Overall Appearance:
If you purchased a template then you are all ready to go here, just decide on text and link colors and your set. But if you’re starting from scratch you should begin to decide how you want your site to look. The background color should be very light. White is preferable, but you don’t have to have a white background, you can use a very light gray or blue, but the key here is to keep it very pale, very light. By making the background light, you have a bit more freedom in which colors to choose for the rest of your site. This is really up to what the sites topic deals with or what types of products you are selling; however, it is advisable not to use a large amount of varying colors. The colors you choose should go well together. Try a couple sample pages with very simple layouts with tables or layers and just change their background colors and text colors to see what looks good. Don’t be afraid to ask for others opinions also, just because you like the website doesn’t mean anyone else does. Think of it as painting the interior of your house. You may like lime green and purple on every wall, but if nobody else likes
Accurate time estimation is a skill essential for good project management. It is important to get time estimates right for two main reasons:1. Time estimates drive the setting of deadlines for delivery and planning of projects, and hence will impact on other peoples assessment of your reliability and competence as a project manager. 2. Time estimates often determine the pricing of contracts and hence the profitability of the contract /project in commercial terms.Often people underestimate the amount of time needed to implement projects. This is true particularly when the project manager is not familiar with the task to be carried out. Unexpected events or unscheduled high priority work may not be taken into account.Project managers also often simply fail to allow for the full complexity or potential errors and stuff ups, involved with a project. The 2004-2006 Wembley Stadium project in London is often used as an example, although there are countless others of less profile.Time estimates are important as inputs into other techniques used to organise and structure all projects. Using good time estimation techniques may reduce large projects to a series of smaller projects.Step 1 - Understand the Proje
Overall Appearance:
If you purchased a template then you are all ready to go here, just decide on text and link colors and your set. But if you’re starting from scratch you should begin to decide how you want your site to look. The background color should be very light. White is preferable, but you don’t have to have a white background, you can use a very light gray or blue, but the key here is to keep it very pale, very light. By making the background light, you have a bit more freedom in which colors to choose for the rest of your site. This is really up to what the sites topic deals with or what types of products you are selling; however, it is advisable not to use a large amount of varying colors. The colors you choose should go well together. Try a couple sample pages with very simple layouts with tables or layers and just change their background colors and text colors to see what looks good. Don’t be afraid to ask for others opinions also, just because you like the website doesn’t mean anyone else does. Think of it as painting the interior of your house. You may like lime green and purple on every wall, but if nobody else likes
Search Engine Optimization is the process of making your website and individual web pages friendly to the search bots (spiders) and the human reviews of web pages and sites for the directories. This is a simple fact: if your webpage does not rank in the top 20 for your keywords you don’t have a website, what you have instead is a very expensive electronic broacher. Lots of people think that if you have your brother in law put some keywords into the meta tags that is all that there is too it. Which would be the same as your neighbor knows some first aid, so you go to him for a triple bypass surgery, sounds ludicrous, but I see people that believe that and bet their online presence on it. If SEO were that easy it would be great, however that is not the case.Here is a very simplified breakdown of SEO. The URL is to the title, which is to the description, which is to the headings, and the headings are to the alt tags, and then keywords, keyword phrases and proper keyword density in the content. The headings, the title, the alt tags and the URL have the keywords and keyword phrases incorporated into them, followed by the bottom header of the title again and find links. Oh and make it look natural.
Overall Appearance:
If you purchased a template then you are all ready to go here, just decide on text and link colors and your set. But if you’re starting from scratch you should begin to decide how you want your site to look. The background color should be very light. White is preferable, but you don’t have to have a white background, you can use a very light gray or blue, but the key here is to keep it very pale, very light. By making the background light, you have a bit more freedom in which colors to choose for the rest of your site. This is really up to what the sites topic deals with or what types of products you are selling; however, it is advisable not to use a large amount of varying colors. The colors you choose should go well together. Try a couple sample pages with very simple layouts with tables or layers and just change their background colors and text colors to see what looks good. Don’t be afraid to ask for others opinions also, just because you like the website doesn’t mean anyone else does. Think of it as painting the interior of your house. You may like lime green and purple on every wall, but if nobody else likes
How Toyota Captured the #1 Market Share . . . Through Solid Decision-Making!Toyota is arguably one of the most recognizable brand names in the world. Toyota captured the Number 1 spot in automotive sales, by creating high standards for quality, reliability and customer acceptance.In short, the name Toyota has become synonymous with the standard of excellence to which many aspire.Reaching this standard didn't happen by accident. It was accomplished by having a consistent and effective decision-making process at every stage of their marketing and product delivery process.Toyota recently launched a marketing campaign appealing to buyers' personal aspirations. The previous campaign, "Get the Feeling" gives way to "Moving Forward", a series of ads proclaiming Toyota vehicles will be there as drivers hit milestones in life. The company felt they needed a change because customer mind-sets have changed, and their business needed to follow the market.This shift in direction came about because their marketing strategy was able to identify the strategic keys to the company's future growth and make customer centric decisions. While Toyota may not have used the exact process we are recommending, it is clear by looking at their st
Layout:
Layout is extremely important in designing your website. A confusing layout, a misaligned layout or a disproportioned layout can have a detrimental effect on the design of your website. If a visitor is confused by the layout or misdirected, then that visitor may simply go somewhere else. People are very finicky and it takes only a few seconds for a visitor to form an initial impression about your site.
If you are selling a product or providing information, that is the first place a visitor should look when visiting your website. Put your main content towards the center of the page near the top. That content is typically why the visitor came to your website in the first place, so that content should be the first thing you provide them and the first thing they see. If a visitor doesn’t find what they came for right from the beginning, there’s a good chance they will simply hit the back button and find somewhere else to get their product or information.
The proportional aspect of your layout is also very important. Modern websites are typically designed with two or three column designs. One column is used for the sites content, while the other column(s) are typically used for navigation, updates, advertisements, etc. When deciding on the size of certain section, the content portion should be at least 50% of the total width, more if possible. The actual size of the columns is a judgment call, but typically the sizes should correspond to the content they contain.
In addition to column widths, the height of the header is also very important. The header typically will contain your logo, some advertisements or product promotions, and typically some navigational components. The header, much like the columns, should not be overwhelming and the content portion of your page should be visible without even having to scroll down the page.
By implementing these simple guidelines, your website will have the proper, user friendly layout.
Navigation:
Navigation is one of the most important aspects of designing your website. Without a clear navigational layout, your visitors will feel lost in a maze and find another site to visit. You want your site’s visitors to be able to find the information they need fast and efficiently, and failure to do so will cost you in traffic and ultimately sales.
There are many different ways to layout a navigation system for your website. The best way is to have your sites main categories in one area, and your sites contact info, policies, about page etc in another. This separates your “sales” navigation from your “information” navigation and keeps things a bit more organized. Its best to place navigation where the viewers expect to see it, there’s no need to get creative with placement here. Larger navigation areas are best suited for columns on the left side of the page. You can place navigation on the right side, but most visitors will expect to see those main shopping or information categories nesting on the left. The navigation column should be wide enough to fit each category on a single line of text. If a category has a long title and wraps around to a second line, that’s OK but its better to fit them on one line.
Every category you want visitors to see should be visible on ALL pages. Ideally visitors should not have to hit the back button to find the links they want. Expanding menus are an excellent way to display subcategories for the corresponding main category. They will save you space because only the subcategories under the main category that was chosen will show at a time. Its advisable not to use java script menus for e-commerce sites unless you know how to create them correctly; in addition, not every visitor’s browser will display java correctly, so stick with HTML.
Your company/policy information categories should be placed at the top and bottom of your page in the header and the footer and if you have a shopping cart mak
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