Web Design - Make Your Own Style

Internet has flooded with myriads of websites with various functions. In fact for a single product or service there are hundreds or thousands of websites. Some of these websites are popular and some of these are not. The design of website plays a major role in the popularity of a website. So all websites endeavour to become attractive and for that most of them take the services of a web design company.
If you have an online presence and you want your website to be popular then look at the design of your site. Is it worth attention? Is it stylish and at the same time simple? Is it full of easy navigation tools? Can users use it without any difficulty? All these are vital questions and a good web design is the single answer. Its importance is becoming clear to a number of businesses who are competing for online customers and they are realising that these issues are worth investing in. that is why marketing people are working closely with web designers.
Due to its importance web marketing has become a clearly defined area of specialisation in its own way. In fact web design has a number of aspects to it. A Website's visual look is important. So if you are creating a website for latest gadget's online sale then your site must give a professional look with simple designs and easy navigation buttons. Instructions should be clearly written. Whereas if your website is for fans of a popular rock star then the look must be stylish and full of substance. A good web design requires the designer to be visually literate and capable of creating exact moods and visual environments through their work.
One more important aspect of web design is to consider the behaviour of a website. Do the web pages open with good speed? Online audience expect a web page to open in seconds. If it doesn't, they will go elsewhere. So image handling and sizing for the web is important aspect of an effective web design. If large images are used, the page would load too slowly. A web design company consider these issues also and provide consultation regarding them. Therefore, web design companies are worth choosing for generating revenue out of a website.

Web Design Tips - Web 2.0 Skyrocket Your Google Rankings With Social Proof

Web 1.0 is gone. Web Pages where the content is created by the company that owns the web site is very quickly becoming a thing of the past. MySpace, FaceBook, YouTube, Digg just to name a few sites. The future of the internet is that the users of the web pages will create the content that is seen on the pages. Why else would Google pay an absolutely large fortune for YouTube, a site that does not directly make any money? Because the future of the internet is here, the users will create the content that they want to see on the internet through sites such as these. So, the train is going. The question is, are you on it? Or will you get crushed underneath it.
So, how does a reputable business use the power of these user created content sites? In this day and age word spreads very quickly on the internet. Give poor service, or have a poorly performing product and everyone will hear about it very quickly. Just a couple of unfavourable product reviews on the internet and your product is as good as dead in the water. Alternately, if you have a product that you want people to hear about what better way to get some favourable product information on the web. Even better if you can get third party product information. Video, Blog, Podcast, Internet TV. All great internet mediums to get your product out there to the masses. Great ways to create traffic to your site. And a great way to send your Google PageRank through the roof. If you want organic search engine traffic to your site then you just cannot afford to ignore this any longer.
YouTube quite literally had billions of video views last month. I think the figure was somewhere about 4.3 billion. Even if you had just a very small percentage of this traffic you could still get thousands or even tens of thousands of view for your video, just through YouTube alone. Blogging is just huge and getting bigger. Have a look at the hottest entries on Digg to see what people are 'Digging'. How cool would it be for you if they were "digging' your product? And, for those skeptics, these are not professional videos. There is no huge start-up costs associated with these videos. Many of them are created on small handy cams or digital cameras with the ability to shoot video.
So, how are you marketing your website? Are you floundering on Google on Page 653 where nobody can find you? Or maybe you are paying a large amount in PPC advertising so that people can find you. If you are ignoring the power of Web 2.0 as a way of driving free, organic traffic to your site, then you are destined to remain in the backblocks of the internet. People are achieving phenomenal results in Google in just a few hours or days using this strategy. Harness the power of Web 2.0 and let the world see what you have got to say for yourself!

How Do You Get the Product Images and Descriptions From the Suppliers Site to Your Site?

Here is the more frequently asked question I get in regards to this; How do I get images of products and descriptions from drop shipper's web site to my own - Also, am I allowed to change the images? First things first - The best way I can suggest (if you are doing it on your own) to get the product images and descriptions to your site is to get them on your local computer first.
Here is what you do -
1. Open up, and log into your account with your drop ship supplier.
2. Find the the area where all of your product information and images are (all of your marketing material).
3. Start finding all the products that you want to include on your website.
4. Open up a word document.
5. Go back to the supplier website and start to copy the name and product description.
6. Paste the info to a properly labeled word document.
7. Get the image for that product and save it on a folder you created for "product images"
8. Save the product image(s) under the same name that you have the product titled in your word document (so no confusion later on)
9. Do this for all of your products that you are wanting to list on the site. Now that you have all of your product descriptions and images on your local computer you can start to modify them anyway you want. This is the main reason I suggest taking them to a word document, so you can remember to make the changes to the content. Remember how much I talk about making sure the product descriptions are never just copied "word for word" from your suppliers website to yours? If you are good with a photo editing software then to answer the above question, Yes - you can modify the images to make them work for your website.
Once you get done with all of these steps and the re-writes, you are ready to load them to your website. All you will have to do is simply copy and paste the info from your word document to your website shopping cart (the section where you add products). When you get to the place the shopping cart is asking for images, you can browse through the image folder you created, and get any images, or modified images with ease, because remember, you saved them with the appropriate names so you would not be confused. If I am going to be adding products myself, this is generally the way that I do it! I have tried doing it so many ways, but this works the best, plus it provides me with a back up of all the brand new content and information I just created for the site. If my site ever goes down for what ever reason, I will always have access to my content, and that is a good feeling. Especially if you have over 1000 products. That is a lot to have to redo.

How Not to Set Up a Dropshipping Business - 5 More Tips (Part 2 - Web Design Issues)

I went over some of the basic fundamentals last time (or at least what I think are), so this time I wanted to dive a little more into the actual set up process mistakes, and other various mistakes regarding the design and domain name.
1. Use a Business Name Domain Name - Purchasing a domain name that is the same as your business name, or personal name. In some cases it is ok to purchase the domain name that goes along with your business name, but let me explain what does not work well (for branding purposes). Lets say growing up you had the nickname - Great White Dino, and you created your business name as Great White Dino LLC (or something). If you are setting up a dropshipping business selling electronics, "GreatWhiteDino.com" will not really work that well for branding, (nor will your personal name). It is much easier to start ranking a (brand spanking new) domain name that has some form of the main keyword you would like to get ranked for in it.
2. Not using a Search Engine Friendly (SEF) Shopping Cart - If you are not using a shopping cart that is SEF then how are you going to make your product pages unique? Naming of the pages need to be SEF, the URLS need to be SEF (no sessional ID garbage), naming folders and even being able to change the image names and alt text is something to consider.
3. Use a Template Website Builder (Or Worse, Try To Learn HTML yourself) - You will always be faced with the decision of building the site from scratch by hiring a designer, or to build the site yourself by using a template builder (or worse - trying to learn html, css or any thing else for that matter). My recommendation is to always have the site custom built for you by a professional that knows what they are doing. Remember tip two above as well, because hiring a web site design firm will help you get the site designed in a SEF manner.
4. Just Copy and Paste Content Provided To You By Supplier - One of the biggest mistakes I see new to dropshipping business owners make is just taking the product descriptions that are provided them by the dropshipper and copy and pasting them right into their website. There is no telling how many businesses in the past (and currently online) are using the same exact content. You will have major duplicate content issues with Google and your product pages will probably never rank. They will never ranked because they will never get indexed because of the duplicate content.
5. Thinking You Are A Website Designer - This one is very simple to understand. You are a business owner. You do not need to be wasting your time learning to program or design sites. (this one kind of ties into the third one, but you get the point) If you can spend your time running the business, you will always have more of a chance for success with your Internet business.
With so many things to consider when setting up a dropship business I wanted to give you the "not to's" focused on web site design, because this really is one of the biggest areas of mistakes that I see made during the set up process.

Canada E Commerce Website Design and Web Developments

Then, with the advent of the internet the ability to have an item shipped to your door was made easier. This has led to the huge increase in Canada website stores and, conversely, Canada e-commerce website design. Today, billions of dollars in purchases flow through Canada website stores and many businesses exist only in an online format. Needless to say, many entrepreneurs are opting to become involved in this potentially lucrative arena. However, it is not as easy as some assume. In fact, the need for high quality Canada e-commerce web development is critical in order to maximize the potential of an e-commerce website.
In the past, Canada website stores were primitive in design. Ten years ago, if you wished to purchase online you simply copied down payment addresses that were posted on the website and sent off a check. When people began to realize the internet was a safe venue to make purchases streamlined payment processes were developed. (This is visible in modern Canada e-commerce website design) One of the first it was Paypal. But this involves sending electronic payments through a third party site. But, consumer confidence began to grow as this happen and innovative methods of Canada e-commerce website design were developed.
Shopping cart software was the best development in the Canada e-commerce website design realm. Essentially, shopping cart software allowed for a click of a mouse to move an order to a secured section of the Canada e-commerce web developments where previously stored shipping and payment information were saved in an encrypted manner. This radically streamlined the purchasing process and has significantly contributed to the growth of online sales.
But please do not think you can slap shopping cart software on to any Canada e-commerce web development in a haphazard manner. If the Canada website stores are not effectively designed then it will be useless as far as commercial pursuits are concerned. For example, if a visitor has to search all over the site for the checkout function then the site will be deemed to possess a poor Canada e-commerce website design and probably will not receive any repeat business. Actually, the person would probably not complete the first purchase. So, it is critical that the first steps taken in Canada website stores ventures entail the use of a properly designed website.
Of course, having a brilliant idea for an online Canada e-commerce web development sales venture does not automatically make one Canada e-commerce website design literate. This should not be a problem, however, because there are a number of exceptionally talented Canada e-commerce web development professionals who can properly integrate any commerce design with an aesthetically pleasing visual design. Also, a solid professional Canada e-commerce web development company will also aid in the not just the operation of the web site as well.
E-commerce is the present and future of all commerce. Most people realize this and that is why they play significant resources in their online Canada e-commerce web development. Being involved in e-commerce web developments, however, is never enough. One has to go about things properly. That means it is important to bring in a reliable professional Canada e-commerce web developments team in order to maximize your online commerce.
As an affordable designer of award winning Alberta website designs, we offer front page search engine listings and global marketing with every website we create. Based out of Alberta, Canada we are a very reputed, global webmaster and web development company specializing in branding and consumer interaction.
We start your web development with a detailed fact finding discovery session, were we identify your companies online objective, target audiences and your specific branding message. Creating a successful design is about understanding the companies our service represents on a personal level to truly appreciate your business objectives and challenges.
We are more than an website design studio, web developments shop, or programming house, we are GlobalWebsiteCreations, dedicated to online company brands and consumer interaction.

Reserve Space on Your Website For Advertisers

If you have a website, why not reserve some space for advertisers. Other businesses in the same category might want to have a link on your site in the form of a text or banner ad.
This serves two purposes. Advertisers get a one way link out from your site which is more valuable to search engines than a reciprocal link and they also get the benefit of your traffic.
You on the other hand can gain by charging a monthly fee for the ads and also give your visitors more options. They will come back to your site. If you get five or ten text ads in an ad space you could make an extra couple hundred bucks per month or even more. You could format your space in an "ad box" saying something like "Support our Sponsors".
If you are in business to succeed why not utilize your valuable web space and start earning extra.
Put an ad on your site that says something like "Advertise With Us" and link to a page with more details.
Advertisers are looking for good places to put their ads. If your page has a good "PR" rating, high link popularity or rank high in search engines then you are certainly a good candidate for advertisers.
Don't ignore this opportunity. Who knows? You might make more money with your website in advertising revenue than sales. Why not use your site to it's fullest potential?
Please consider some of these ideas to help you with your online moneymaking projects.

Getting Along With Your Web Designer

You're all ready to get started creating your web presence and you've found a skilled web designer to build your website for you. Do you know what he needs from you to do an efficient job? Good web design requires cooperation between the architect and the user to create a product that will serve its intended function, and you don't have to be an internet expert to do your part. There are a number of things you can do when working with a web designer during the building and maintenance phases to smooth communications, reduce confusion, get work done faster, and get the results you want.
Building a New Site
If you're starting from scratch, your first job as a customer is to define what you want the designer to build.
Start by doing some research on the internet to see what kind of sites your competitors have and how they are organized.
Look at different layouts and navigation styles and decide what you like best.
Know what colors and text styles you like and provide good, high-resolution copies of your logos and company graphics.
Decide what kind of information you want people to find on your website. Do you only want to sell stuff, or do you also want to provide technical information about your products, processes, or services?
Discuss with the designer how to organize your information with efficient navigation and page design.
Do you need the customer to provide you with information through the site? Make a list of what information you need to collect and discuss with the designer how it can be collected and conveyed to you.
Do you need to use information or graphics from your suppliers on your website? Get the supplier's permission to use their information. Never use someone else's exact copy without their permission, this is plagiarism.
Write your own content for your website. Remember, you are the expert on your products and services. Even if you are a bad writer, draft the information you want to present on each page and hire a professional writer to polish it for you.
Define when the website will be considered completed. At some point, the initial design needs to be considered finished, and any additional changes from that point forward should be considered updates to be billed separately.
There are also some things you shouldn't do:
Don't ask the designer to start over with a completely new design in the middle of the project or when it is nearly complete. Nothing irritates a designer worse than when you approve a design, then change your mind three weeks later and decide you don't like it anymore after the website is more than half finished. It creates a lot of extra work and will often cost you more money. It also delays the designer in working on projects for other customers, making everybody unhappy.
Don't keep adding to the design requirements as you go along, making the project bigger and bigger. This is called mission creep, and it hinders the designer in knowing how a project is going to be completed and giving you an estimate of duration and cost. Sometimes changes are unavoidable, but it's best if you can lay out all your plans at the beginning and stick to them.
Don't make the designer guess what you want. Give as specific instructions as you possibly can and you are more likely to get what you want faster.
Website Maintenance
Once the site is completed, you will probably occasionally need to make changes to the site to update information, add new products, or remove outdated or discontinued items. Here are a few tips to make this process more efficient as well:
Be specific, and don't make the designer hunt through your website to find where the changes need to go. Provide the exact page and location on that page for each change that needs to be made. If some pages contain similar information, copy the URL of the correct page from the address bar in your browser and include it with your list of changes. Designers work on a lot of websites and may forget where everything is in yours if they haven't looked at it in a while.
Try to send changes by email whenever possible. Copying and pasting text from an email or Word document is a lot faster than retyping text from a fax or a document sent by mail, and adding a graphic that is already in a digital format (.jpg or .gif) saves time over scanning it from a brochure and cleaning it up first.
If you are making small changes within a body of text such as list, a restaurant menu, or a description, highlight the changes with a different color text so that they can be found with a quick visual inspection instead of a detailed reading and comparison with the old version. If you need to remove text, make sure you show what is to be removed. If you simply omit it from the new copy you send, the designer might not notice that it's gone.
If you think something may be broken and needs to be fixed, describe exactly the steps you took after entering the website to recreate the error. This helps the designer pinpoint the source of the error faster so he can proceed with fixing it.
These are just some basic things you can do to forge a more effective and profitable relationship with your web designer. If you can do your part to make his job more efficient and be an easy client to work with, he will be more happy to serve you in the future, and you'll get what you need with less trouble and less worry.

Do I Need a Business Website?

In this day and age, I cannot image any business that does not need a website. People like to have the option to learn more about your company, whether the products you have or how your company got it's start, from the comfort of their own homes. We live in an instant gratification society. If you can't give them what they want now, the will move on to a company that can. This is the same with information.
I guess the question shouldn't be "Do I need a website", it should be "where can I get an affordable website".
Now, if you can make your own site, the only problem you have to worry about is hosting. This is your most affordable option. Hosting is very affordable and painless. From 9.99 a month and up, you can reserve a domain name and hosting. A great domain and hosting company is kittypickles.
If you have some basic HTML, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc skills, you can simply purchase a template for your business. They come loaded with graphics, menus, and some even come with flash animations. All you have to do to them is customize it with your information. A good template site is templatemonster.
If you are not familiar with site design software and code, then you'll either need to research design firms or find a free-lance designer to create your site. If you choose to use a firm, be sure to compare. Make sure to take a look at their portfolios, check them out on the better business bureau, email past clients. Also, keep in mind that price doesn't always equal quality. Some new firms offer great rates while they expand their portfolio.
If you'd like to contact a free-lancer, place some ads in Craigslist. You'll find many great designers and coders here, all of which are pretty affordable.

Why Your Website Should Include an About Us Page

I want to talk about the importance an about us page can have when it comes to marketing your home business. By the time you finish reading this article on you will know a few tips to make your about us page a pre-sell page for your website and products.
Think about how you surf the Internet when you land on an interesting website. Do you find yourself clicking on the frequently asked questions page as well as the about us page?
Depending on the depth of the website you may very well go to these two pages before you spend much more time looking at the rest of the website. As a matter of fact, the average person spends less than one minute on a website so they are going to choose what they look at carefully.
This is why it is worth having your about us page right up front where they can find it. You're about us page gives you a chance to build some credibility on your background and what are trying to do with your website.
You can also include various things such as pictures, videos, audio, and these sorts of things. It doesn't have to just be business oriented either.
It's a great place to include little bit about your wife, kids, your hobbies, how your business is doing, etc. You really can get a lot of mileage out of an about us page if you try to think of it through the eyes of your visitor.
If you have any doubts about how to do this go check out the about us page on your top competitors websites. Jot down notes and begin to formulate a plan of how you want to develop your own page properly.
The thing you have to remember is that your visitors probably do not know much about you. Even if you've been around as an established Internet marketer over a period of time very people few people know who you are.
As a matter of fact as Internet marketers we tend to live in a very shielded world compared to the average surfer. Once you realize that people really do not know who you are it should help formulate your plan to bring out your about us page in a positive manner.
Hopefully this article has given you some ideas on why your website should include an about us page. You also should have a few tips now on how to properly develop yours and get the most from it.

Marketing Tools For Your Home Based Businesses

Starting a home based online business is not that easy. First, you are just one of the many budding online entrepreneurs hoping to make a mark in the Internet. There's always a risk that you will fail especially if you don't have the right amount of exposure and contacts. You can't also expect to have your business flourish right off the bat since there are just too many competitors, no matter which field or industry you are in.
So how do you make sure your online home-based business? You need to learn a couple of tricks in order to make your venture competitive, if not successful. These are basic Internet tools and methods that help businesses in getting enough exposure and profits, things that every budding online entrepreneur like you should learn.
First, you should have a good, catchy, and easy to remember domain name. Your domain name is the first thing your customer will remember, so make it catchy. Your website likewise has to be easy to navigate, and equipped with commercial tools like a shopping cart as well as a payment system.
You should also learn search engine optimization or SEO. This is using the keywords most of your clients will search for in various search engines. When you have the right keywords in your website, then your website will rank highly in search engines, which mean more traffic and more earnings for you.
You also have to learn the AutoResponder or AR which helps you capture the essential contact information of those who visited your site. With this tool you can get the e-mail addresses of your visitors, and then you can send them newsletters or e-mails regarding your new products and services, and even special promos. Thus you don't need to hope that your visitors will remember your website, since chances are they will visit it because of the email and newsletter you sent them.
You can also opt to put a blog or RSS feeds since it builds trust as well as maintain the good relationship you have with your clients and visitors.
You also need to put in articles to your website. Remember that visitors value information before the products and services being offered. So you have to put concise, easy to read articles on your website. This will provide good information to your visitors and in turn, entice them to buy your various products.

The Reasons Why WordPress is Now the Best Website Builder Software

WordPress is now the best software for designing, building and maintaining a website. Originally developed and designed for bloggers to create personal blogs, WordPress is now the world's most popular blogging platform. Recently it has been further developed and enhanced so that now it is also the best system for creating any type of website you might need. And it is free!
Yes that is right, the WordPress software is open source and as such it is free to download and use on your own website or blog. If you are thinking of building your own website then you do not even have to look for any other type of site builder system as WordPress does it all.
If you are not technically minded then you will be happy to know that in order to use this impressive content management system you will not require any specialist technical skills at all. If you can use Microsoft Word then WordPress will be easy!
You do not need to learn or code html or employ a programmer to build your website for you as with WordPress you will be able to it all yourself. No more wasted time or money as you can get WordPress today for free and start building your new site instantly.
One this amazing content management and site building software is installed on your web host's server you will need to find and choose a Theme to use with your site. The theme you choose will determine the layout and colors of your new website and can be changed with one click of your mouse so it is very easy to try different themes until you find one that you like.
If you want to change the whole look of your site in the future just find and install a different them and you are done. Once again there are many hundreds of free themes available as well as more complicated premium themes, which you may have to pay for. With WordPress it really is quick and easy to create a very impressive website.
To add different functionality to your site you have access to thousand of WordPress Plugins. These are small packets of code that you can seamlessly add to your website or blog that perform individual functions to enhance your website and make it do what you want. Again most of these are free to download and use.
Any website built with WordPress is easy to promote due to the fact that RSS feeds are built into the software and these are a great tool for letting everyone know about every new page or blog post on your site. The search engines, especially Google, just love WordPress and any sites built with this software will rank higher and quicker than any site built with more traditional methods or software.
If you need a great website that is easy to build and manage yourself then there really is no other choice. Do not waste your time looking at alternatives as WordPress already does everything you need. WordPress is the best software for building websites and it is free!