Why Mobile Websites Are So Important

In an attempt to grow your business, you’ve spent countless hours and plenty of cash to develop an interactive app to draw mobile users to your brand. You connect with them through all the social media outlets, and you text message them special savings and deals to lure them to your website. But have you configured a mobile-friendly website that allows users to interact with your brand on their time?

If you don’t have a mobile website, you may be doing your business a major disservice. According to signalnews.com, 16.7 million users over the age of 13 rely on their phones for Internet access. If your site isn’t compatible for mobile use, you might be losing out on a lot of traffic.

How do you connect with all those on-the-go users? Many of today’s mobile users look to their devices as more than a talking piece; most phones are designed as tools for entertainment (videos, music, and general web use) and real-time information exchange. The integration of Qwerty keypads and touch-screen options has given users the web at their fingertips, with a serious emphasis on function and speed.

The most important aspect of a mobile site is the ability to provide content to the lightning-fast smart phone user while still making the site accessible to older models. This can be achieved in a number of ways, including sites designed to detect browsing from mobile devices. These sites remove barriers of entry for mobile users, redirecting them to mobile-friendly sites with information and interaction opportunities designed to engage.

In conjunction with redirection, businesses that use mobile sites as part of a marketing strategy reap the rewards of creating equal access for on-the-go users. Mobile sites can be enhanced with downloads specifically geared toward phone users and can even allow users to take advantage of the applications without downloading. For users with older devices, consider incorporating a simpler version of your mobile site. This version would allow those users to take advantage of your information or applications without waiting for excessive download time.

No matter how you choose to implement your mobile site, pay close attention to the options and features that draw clients to your original site. Finding the balance between conventional content and interactive mobile options will make for a powerful marketing tool capable of engaging users anywhere, anytime.

The Importance of Cross Browser Testing

When it comes time to turn your site from a mockup to something fully functional, you'll want to make sure that it works great for everyone visiting your site whether they're using Internet Explorer, Firefox, or any other browser.

Here's a quick explanation of cross-browser testing and some useful resources for designers and developers:

1. Your site will look different in different browsers. That's because browsers understand some code slightly differently (kind of like the difference between American English and British English).
2. Your designer should be testing to make sure that your site works well in all modern browsers. At Insivia we test site functionality in at least Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari (and Google Chrome), and Opera.
3. There are ways to check which browsers your audience is using to see your site. Google Analytics is a good tool to access this info.
4. New browsers are becoming more and more standards-compliant (meaning they all follow the same rules for code), so hopefully this will be one less headache for designers and developers.

Useful links and resources for designers and developers:

• Check out how well your browser renders sites using the Web Standards Acid Test.
• Freelance Folder lists some great free tools for designers to test cross-browser compatability.
• Mac and PC users alike can delight in Safari 4, which has ridiculously useful tools to help you see sites in different browsers and versions.

5 tips for website owners

So you've got a website or you're thinking of creating a website? What are the top 5 tips we can give you in ensuring your website is a long term success?

1) Plan, plan and plan some more.

Building a well constructed, targeted, information rich and SEO focussed website takes a lot of time, effort and ultimately money. As the website guardian, it is your job to ensure that all of the long term targets and objectives are met, that improvements and fixes are implemented quickly and that the whole system is meeting or exceeding expectations. With larger e-commerce projects and bespoke web applications the importance in planning increases exponentially. The web site will be interacting with more internal systems, encrouching into other departments remits and generally throwing it's weight around more. The importance of planned introductions and improvements can not be underestimated. Knee jerk reactions to implement a new piece of functionality often causes more problems than leaving things alone.
It is worthwhile investing in a suitable project management solution - be that offline like MS Project/OmniOutliner or online like Basecamp - these systems will help you to plan your workloads, timescales and delivery dates more accurately.

Write a full and detailed website spec

There are a multiple reasons for doing this, but the two main ones are that it ensures you get what you want and deliverables are set and agreed by all parties. It it will also help you to think about all the nuisances of your project - for want of a better phrase, 'it will get the creative juices flowing'. Quite often, it's only when writing the full website spec do you realise, 'Oh, actually I need it to handle the lack of VAT on international exports' etc. Writing a spec is a good thing and will result in a happy website owner/developer relationship.

2) Preparing copy and photographs takes time

Creating interesting, key word rich and well written copy is a skill. If you don't have the skill or time to dedicate to doing this properly pay a professional to do it for you. This is often an area that customers think they can cut some costs and do themselves - and more often than not it's very evident in the final result. Copywriters aren't hugely expensive and they will do a better job than you will!
Similarly good photography can make a website. instead of using the camera on your mobile phone, pay for a professional to come and take some pictures. This is particularly important if it's product photography or location focused.

3) Don't ignore the importance of the Search Engines.

Think of Search Engines such as Google as being the pathways from the street to your company's front door. If you have a fantastic looking building, great products and a happy demeanor it's not going to get the customers in from the streets - the pathway to your door will do that.  So it is imperative that you build your website with the search engines in mind - no matter how big and well known your company is, you will need this at some point. The current economic climate (2009) is proving that even big, well established, brands feel the pinch from time to time.

Have a separate SEO budget.

If possible, keep your Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) budget and web development budget separate. Although the two are intrinsically linked, they are two different things and can even be handled by two different companies. Similarly, don't spend the budget for one thing on extra funding for the other. You need a balanced and well thought out strategy. After all, investing all your money in a website that no-one can find is almost as bad as investing all the money in optimising a website with poor design and a lack of features - either way the result is the same: a lack of sales.

4) Keep it fresh.

The initial build of a website is exciting and takes up a lot of resources.  However you must not forget that this is now your mouthpiece to the world - you need to keep the momentum up and the new content flowing. Not only for search engine purposes but also to keep your customers coming back to you. They will be interested to see what you're working on, what new products or services you're offering and how you can help them improve/expand/reach more customers.
So consider it your job to ensure that content is added monthly as an absolute minimum - it will be worth the effort in the long run.

5) Nothing lasts forever

Almost everything has a shelf life, particularly in our 'rapid change' world, where technological advances mean improvements can be made quickly and with sweeping effect. So you need to consider that your website will have a shelf life. What is possible now will be different in 3 years time. What is de-riguer now will be old hat soon. You need to continually evolve to stay with the pack. It is worthwhile bearing in mind that websites typically have a life cycle of between 3 and 5 years.

In Conclusion

Of course there are a million and one things to consider when running a website, but these tips might help you plan for the long term or at least give it a cursory glance.

What type of website does your business need?

Quite often we are approached to produce a website when the client doesn't really know what they need. This article aims to discuss the types of website available and what they are suitable for.

Brochure Websites

A brochure, or static website, is a site that often has no database interaction. Quite often these are set up ‘just because we need a website’ - after all, ‘everyone has a website now’. A brochure website tends to have a similar level of information to a standard printed brochure, i.e. who you are, what you do, how to find you etc. These sites can be optimised for search engines, however they are often too small to have any significant impact. Typically, if someone queries a search engine with your company name you would be found, however you are unlikely to be found with a keyword unless it’s very specific.

Flash Websites

A Flash website is one that uses Adobe Flash, a programme that requires every user to have a browser plugin to view the website. The real benefit of a Flash website is that you can use advanced animation, music and video. They are brilliant for showcasing your work and mean any fonts and images can be used on the site. The drawbacks are that they are not indexed well by the search engines (meaning poor performance in search listings i.e. people will not be able to find you on Google et. al.) and that they are not very accessible or easy to update.

Maintenance of a Flash website would need to be carried out by skilled staff and a redesign, which is a part of every website's life cycle, means effectively starting again each time. More traditional websites built using modern coding standards can be reskinned with relatively little rework.

Part Flash/Part HTML/CSS

For clients wanting some animation, video or sound we often recommend a Flash/HTML mix. This is where the bulk of the website is coded in HTML/CSS but elements of it are in fact Flash movies embedded into the page. This offers a 'best of both worlds' solution to having some Flash whilst being easier to update and redesign.

Content Management Systems (CMS)

A Content Management System (CMS) is a web-based tool to allow any authorised user access to edit the website. The idea behind a CMS is that day-to-day maintenance is handled by the client who, typically, has no prior experience in web page programming. By using modern programming languages and WYSIWYG (pronounced ‘wizzy wig’ - meaning ‘What You See Is What You Get’) editors look and work in a similar way to Microsoft Word, but convert the content in HTML (the language of the web).

We find that people who are proficient in Word can easily work our CMSs with the ability to create new content, add content, insert images and basically control what is in the website.

A database powered CMS will store the content of the web page in a database table, meaning it’s searchable and can have various meta data attached to it. It also means that you can have various version of the same page (for example, the live version, older versions and perhaps a new version that is not yet complete.) This makes a CMS a very powerful tool for managing the site content.

There are a few options with CMSs, but the main ones are:

Off the shelf Content Management Systems

Off the shelf CMSs allow you to quickly and easily set up a website. They are often open source, meaning they're free to download, and are well supported. They usually lend themselves well to being re-skinned to whatever design you want.

There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to using an off the shelf CMS, notably:

Positives

• The system is pre-built so there are no development costs
• Well supported
• Well tested with regular updates

Negatives

• Functionality limited to what the package offers
• Hacking older versions can be common place
• Updating systems can be difficult
• What happens if the system is no longer supported?
• Altering the system is often very complicated

Bespoke Content Management Systems

A bespoke CMS is one built to your exact requirements. It will do precisely what you want it do and will look exactly how you want it to. Obviously a bespoke build will carry a greater level of development work and, ultimately, cost. Most web agencies worth their salt should have previously built a CMS. If they have any sense, they’ll have built it in a portable and scalable way, meaning the core code can be lifted from project to project and modified to suit each individual set of deliverables.

As with the off the shelf systems there are, of course, pros and cons to a bespoke build. They are:

Positives

• It will do exactly what you want it to do
• It will look exactly how you want it to
• Additional functionality can be added for things like Google Maps, Flickr imports, RSS feeds and other rich media

Negatives

• Initial build costs
• Longer time scales than off the shelf systems
• Greater requirement for testing and snagging

eCommerce

Selling on the internet is now a massive industry. The overheads are low, the audience is huge and the potential is only restricted by budget and commitment.

Deciding which approach to take is probably dependent upon your requirements and what else the website needs to achieve.

Off the shelf eCommerce

Like the off the shelf CMS, there are many benefits to using an off the shelf eCommerce system, however the negatives are also similar. There are a 101 different eCommerce packages on the market, some good and some bad. Deciding which one to use is difficult.

We tend to use Magento (http://www.magentocommerce.com/) for our off the shelf eCommerce implementations - it's a free to use package that is very flexible and has many great features. It can be restyled and customised relatively easily. The main drawbacks come when you want to add functionality that was not part of the original system.

Bespoke eCommerce

A lot of our Bespoke eCommerce applications are set up because an off the shelf package doesn’t offer the functionality required. Setting up a bespoke eCommerce application is simple in its basic concept, however additional things like reporting, printing invoices and picking lists add to its complexity.

Most of our eCommerce packages are integrated with Paypal or with Protx, who are payment gateway providers.

Get Started With WordPress

Want to start a website? “Go with WordPress.” – That’s  short-and-sweet answer for all. 

This long article is meant for newbies who wish to start a new WordPress site or blog.

WordPress Explained

First thing first, what is WordPress? As described in developer’s own words:

“WordPress is publishing software with a focus on ease of use, speed and a great user experience. WordPress is blessed with an active community, which is the heart of open source software.”

“WordPress is a powerful personal publishing platform, and it comes with a great set of features designed to make your experience as a publisher on the Internet as easy, pleasant and appealing as possible. We are proud to offer you a freely distributed, standards-compliant, fast, light and free personal publishing platform, with sensible default settings and features, and an extremely customizable core. ”

In layman term, WordPress is an open-source web application that provides a convenient way to create, publish, and manage contents online. WordPress was mainly used as a blogging platform at first but as the software revolt; it is widely used in building and maintaining websites.

If you are into history, read About WordPress.

Benefits of WordPress

WordPress is free, easy-to-use, features rich, SEO friendly, and most importantly, WordPress is widely supported. The system itself is supported by a huge group of talented volunteers; and there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of developers and web designers working 24/7 on WordPress plugins and templates.

What’s about WordPress template and plugin?

A WordPress template is the design codes (in css and php files) that decide the outlook of your website/blog; while WordPress plugins are functional codes that provide extra functions to your website/blog.

Details for each of these at below.

WordPress.org vs WordPress.com

People always confused with WordPress.org and WordPress.com. WordPress.org is all about the software (where you can find supports, documentations and download links on the software); WordPress.com on the other hand, is where you can host a free blog online using the WordPress software. Blogs hosted on WordPress.com will have long URLs like http://www.myblog.wordpress.com – just like what you get from Blogspot.com.

WordPress Templates Explained

The beauty of WordPress is that the design of your blog/website is ‘seperated’ from the backend system.

The appearance of your WordPress blog/website is controlled by a series of files named template or theme. You can modify your blog/website designs easily by editing your files in the template folders (without touching the backend system). Once you get the stylesheets and template files configured, the design will be reflected thru out your blog/website and there’s no need to edit the designs on page-by-page basis.

Do I need to create WordPress templates myself?

Yes if you want to; but it’s not a must. As a matter of fact, most WordPress bloggers do not create their own blog/website templates. There are plenty of templates available (for free or for an affordable price) online. If this is your first WordPress blog, I would suggest you start by using templates built by others.

Where can I get those beautiful WordPress templates?

A simple search on Google should get you infinite WordPress templates. Alternatively, you can find beautiful templates from WordPress themes gallery sites as well as related blogs. 

Some links to get you started:

Official WordPress Website

• Themes Directory 

WordPress Themes Galleries

• WP Themes 360
• Top WP Themes
• WP Theme Designer

WordPress Plugins Explained

A WordPress plugin is like an extension on the basic system. Plugins can extend WordPress to do almost anything you can imagine –polls, dynamic listing on related articles, on-site rating systems, images gallery, SEO features, auto-generate XML sitemap… etc.

Similar to WordPress template, you don’t have to create your own plugins. Benefit of WordPress – there are plenty of volunteers developing plugins and sharing the codes for free. There are almost infinite number of plugins available online that you can get just about any tasks done with these existing plugins.

More info? Visit plugin directory at WordPress official website.

Setting up your first WordPress site

You should be able to install WordPress in most hosting providers and personal computers on Unix/Linux system. The latest WordPress version requires PHP Version 4.3 or greater and MySQL Version 4.0 or greater.

Details of server requirements and recommended setup can be found here but I think 99.99% users should be fine without reading the specifications.

Installing WordPress on local computer

Before installing WordPress, you need a mini-server installed in your computer – something like WAMP should be good enough. When you are done with WAMP (or whatever system you are using on your computer), go download WordPress installation file and follow the ‘Famous 5-Minute Install’ guides.

Quoting from WordPress official website (http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing_WordPress)

1. Download and unzip the WordPress package, if you haven’t already.
2. Create a database for WordPress on your web server, as well as a MySQL user who has all privileges for accessing and modifying it.
3. Rename the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php.
4. Open wp-config.php in your favorite text editor and fill in your database details as explained in Editing wp-config.php to generate and use your secret key password.
5. Place the WordPress files in the desired location on your web server: 
   – If you want to integrate WordPress into the root of your domain (e.g. http://example.com/), move or upload all contents of the unzipped WordPress directory (but excluding the directory itself) into the root directory of your web server.
   – If you want to have your WordPress installation in its own subdirectory on your web site (e.g. http://example.com/blog/), rename the directory wordpress to the name you’d like the subdirectory to have and move or upload it to your web server. For example if you want the WordPress installation in a subdirectory called "blog", you should rename the directory called "wordpress" to "blog" and upload it to the root directory of your web server.
6. Run the WordPress installation script by accessing wp-admin/install.php in your favorite web browser. 
   – If you installed WordPress in the root directory, you should visit: http://example.com/wp-admin/install.php 
   – If you installed WordPress in its own subdirectory called blog, for example, you should visit: http://example.com/blog/wp-admin/install.php

Installing WordPress on web host

If you are planning to run a WordPress website from the beginning, look for a web host that can auto-install WordPress for you. There are plenty (and I really mean P-L-E-N-T-Y) of good web host that supports such easy installation features – why sweat for all the hassles to install WordPress manually?

Why Marketing for your Website is Important

You may have been running your business for a very long time, and enjoyed moderate success, but you don't quite know how to enjoy the success all your competitors are experiencing, and you're looking for ways to expand the reach your company is capable of. With the advent of the Internet, many small businesses are experiencing new growth and added profits when they take their unique company to the Internet and establish an online presence with a custom Web Design, and a solid Internet Marketing Strategy to marketing their company online.

• Reach a Greater Number Of People

  With the help of a beautiful and optimized website, and some help with Social Media Marketing, more and more people who are interested in the services you offer will be able to learn about your business. If they like what they see, they'll stick with you. This can supply you with an enormous amount of exposure that your small business has never experienced before.
  

• Increase Your Presence Within the Community

  You won't just attract people from other parts of the country or the world with your website. People in your location who might not have known about your business through the traditional forms of marketing that you may be using, can discover your company as they use search engines looking for a local business that specializes in your product or service. This way, you can increase your presence and visibility on a more immediate level as well.
  

• Make Your Customers Part of the Conversation

  The unique nature of online marketing makes it easy to make your customers feel like they're invested in the company. With a simple solicitation for their contact information (presumably in return for a free 'something'), you can occasionally send them newsletters and mailers that will inform them of new reasons to keep them coming back for more.
  

• Educate Your Customers On Your Products

  With the help of an effectively optimized and informative website, you can tell established or prospective customers more information on your product or service than traditional marketing methods would allow. This way, your customers will feel more knowledgeable about what you offer, and as such will be more comfortable paying money for it.
  

• Possess A New Avenue For Selling Your Product

  If you have the means and the motivation to create an online store for your business, as well as a way to ship your products to customers outside your local area, you can provide whatever you sell to people all around the country. The comparatively minimal cost of shipping your products and maintaining an online store is nothing compared to the immense profits you can experience when you extend your customer base to the rest of the country and beyond. Even customers in your area can take a look at what you have through your online store, and later choose to buy it from your location.
  
  

Now that you know these top five ways in which a website is an important part of your marketing plan, it's our sincere hope that you can create an online presence that will dramatically benefit your company. With the help of an effectively designed and optimized website, you can bring in new revenue streams to your brick and mortar business and create a niche for yourself online, enabling you to experience success the likes of which you've never seen before.

When Should You Redesign Your Website?

The great thing about a well-designed website is that it can breathe new life into your web presence, and by extension, into your whole business.

The nature of the Internet, though, means that no website stays great for more than a few years, tops. Some of the site’s original luster and strength does wear off over time. It’s the reality of participating with the world online: change happens faster in the 21st century.

So when it comes to the frequency of changing your website’s design, you might find yourself asking, “What’s the magic number?” Well, there isn’t one. But for starters, take a guess and cut that duration in half.

In some industries, a new site design is just about obsolete after 12 months, while designs in other industries can maintain their usability and visitor appeal for as long as 4 or 5 years. Most businesses and non-profits are somewhere in the middle.

No company, however, is immune to the reality that the Internet is changing all the time—sometimes faster than we want it to.

The design and functionality that encouraged your visitors just a few years ago to spend long periods of time on your site, exploring more of your products and services, probably isn’t doing a lot for your on-site activity today. In fact, some site designs that get left behind by their owners can actually work against that organization’s goals in the long run.

The average website should have its look and design updated about every 3 years. How do you know if it is time to renew, change and rejuvenate your marketing message?

1. Old Design: Styles change and evolve with time. Older looking websites will date your business as not keeping up with the times. 7-10 years ago websites were designed for smaller monitors, many were full width and many had simple boxy looking designs.
2. Uncompetitive Design: Look at your competition and compare your design to theirs. Do you appear like a leader in your niche? If you are a local business such as a restaurant or a medical office, compare websites with similar sites in other cities.
3. Changed Strategies: Do you now have new business goals, strategies or products? Are you selling to the same market niche? You will need to update your website if your business direction has shifted.
4. Not Converting: If your website is not generating leads or sales, then you may need to start over. Does your website answer the questions your visitors are trying to find? Do you have a clear offer and action that your visitors are guided into? Top producing websites are designed to be selling machines.
5. No Traffic: Your website design may be preventing your website from being ranked well on the search engines. Perhaps your website was designed all in Flash? Maybe you never optimized your website for keyword phrases? Search engine optimization or SEO is an important part of generating business. After all, with no visitor traffic, you will generate no sales.

Social Bookmarking Sites: Increases Traffic For Your Site

Social bookmarking is a Web-based service that allows you to store and manage different web pages that you want bookmarked. Of course you can only get the results you want if you go about things the right way. Without proper social bookmarking tagging it is going to be harder for others to find your links. If you do not use the right tags, no one is going to find the site you have bookmarked so it will be pretty useless for the most part.

The tags need to relate to the topic of the web page listed to keep things organized. There are generally no limits to how many tags or keywords you can use. It is going to be much more to your benefit to stick with a few specific tags rather than an abundance of them. If you get carried away you are going to end up annoying users so be strategic with your social bookmarking tagging.

You want to be specific and strategic with your tagging and not just go at it randomly. If you purposely tag your bookmarked sites with keywords that are completely irrelevant just to get people to come onto a certain site, once they find out they are going to get annoyed and can bury your site. People are going to appreciate the fact that you have tagged appropriately and will then pass on the information to their friends and your business will grow slowly but steadily. You will see the improvement in the success of your business after properly content tagging in social bookmarking.

Social bookmarking tagging is one of the easiest and most effective social media tools you can use. This is one of the best social media tools you can use and it is important not to overlook it. If you want some extra help with tagging with your social bookmarking tagging you can always download a program like Live Writer. It will help make things as simple as possible and help you determine which tags are going to be best for each web page you bookmark.

When social bookmarking correctly you can drive a huge amount of traffic to your business. While individual bookmarking does come with its own set of advantages, social bookmarking is really where it’s at. With social bookmarking you can share your business and other links with Internet users from all over the world. You are also provided in return with a list of bookmarks that contain information helpful to you.

Why Ecommerce Is So Important

he Internet is an unlimited space for the growth of any ecommerce industry and many possibilities and opportunities are constantly becoming available for anyone to create their own online business. This new media is an open area for communication and the exchanging of experiences and wide range of opportunities across the globe. If you want to grow and expand your business, you will need to embrace this new opportunity and set up an interactive business in the cyber community.

Any Ecommerce website expansion is a significant obligation and commitment for any online trade. The main goal of any ecommerce trade is to expand business by an ever growing website presence. It is a platform that requires more and more traffic in order to succeed. The users and visitors are potential clients, need to be persuaded to come and surf and then buy your products or services, you have to identify and feel their wishes and requirements. This requires you to think like a buyer. We must appreciate that everyone will have their own shopping experience and method, however it is possible to create a general flow whereby you can direct a client, without him or her actually knowing they are being ed. Always remember that clients can be quite capricious, so try and think out of the box as well as catering for the ordinary client.

You should continue this list of questions and ask yourself what is needed, always remember you must start with a good plan. If all features and details are planned and included into your draft, then you will have far less and unexpected chances for failure.

The internet community now boasts millions of users all are potential purchasers, all of them have an internet connection and are surfing the net 24/7. Thus, think how wide your business can be or could be, don't think too rural. Think how much you could expand your business window from a simple website. Websites are designed popularize products and services around the world. If you try to embrace as many people as you can, you will gain more flow and potential sales profits, traffic and high numbers are a pre cursor to converting traffic into sales.

Also you must consider other competitors on the network who may have the same goals as you. Do you run away from this point? Do not think that competitors will only destroy your clientele and your faith in overall victory, this is absolutely wrong!Direct competition only makes you stronger and makes you to think day and night how to develop your business. You can and must use this power of competitive network. If you think laterally your network with have useful contacts and creating links you establish a good linkage and network. It will work for your website and boast your overall awareness far more than that of your competitors` websites. Improvise and develop your website from various points of view. If you need some additional support and advice, then you are welcome to contact ecommerce web design Birmingham company. They will provide you with a range of services in all web building spheres, making sure that you will have a full control of your own website.

Top Five Web Design Tools

Just like in most other professions, a web designer’s set of tools is what brings a concept into fruition. There are many applications available to our disposal, but there are some that just stand out from the crowd. The tools in this article are what’s regarded as the most popular tools used for web design.

1. PHOTOSHOP

Adobe Photoshop is a very popular commercial graphics editor available for the Mac and Windows operating system. Created for professional photographers and designers, it is the ideal application for manipulating images and creating web graphics. Photoshop has all the necessary tools and options you need such as: Filters – which automatically adds effects to your image or a selected section of your image, extensibility and automation with Brushes, Actions and Scripting, and workflow enhancement features like Layer Comps and the Revert option.

2. DREAMWEAVER

Adobe Dreamweaver is a commercial application for web development that’s available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Its featured-packed suite of tools and options include: syntax highlighting and very smart Code Hinting, a built-in FTP client, project management and workflow options that make team work effortless, and Live View – which shows you a preview of your source code. Dreamweaver tightly integrates with other popular Adobe products such as Photoshop, allowing you to share Smart Objects for quick and easy updating and editing of graphics components. 

3. ADOBE FLASH

Adobe Flash is the best software to use for web site animation. It has gained a lot of popularity and there seems to be a huge demand for Flash web sites. The reason Flash is so popular is because you can do fantastic animations while still keeping the file size low and so that sites can load fast. If you are interested in developing web animations Flash is without a doubt the best. There is also a huge online community of Flash developers so if you have questions or need resources like articles, tutorials, sound loops, flash files - it is all readily available on the Internet.

4. FIREWORKS

Adobe Fireworks is a commercial raster and vector graphics editor hybrid from Adobe that’s available for the Mac and Windows operating systems. Designed specifically for web designers (unlike Photoshop), Fireworks brings you a plethora of tools and options that make full web layout prototyping a breeze.

Among its notable features are: "slices" for slicing and dicing a design mockup into HTML/CSS for rapidly creating prototypes (though you should avoid using auto-generated source code for the end-build), the ability to package an entire site design as a PDF with clickable components for interactive and impressive site prototypes, and optimization tools for making your web graphics as lightweight as possible.

4. SWISH FLASH

Advanced Flash Creation Tool For The Graphic Artist Or Web Professional
Creates Stunning Flash Animations and Websites with Ease
Includes over 350 Preset Multimedia Effects
Includes over 180 Ready-to-use Components and Vector Shapes
Import Images, Graphics, Sound and Video from all popular formats
Export Presentations to Flash, Video, EXE, GIF Animation or Image Sequence
Powerful Scripting Language for Advanced Users
Tools to Control Motion, Draw Shapes, Edit Text, and more
NEW! Project templates - Instant Results Using the Wizard Panel
NEW! Drawing Tools - Shape Operations, Knife Tool, Component Tool
NEW! Improved Motion Path - Editable Bezier Curves, Convert a Shape to Path.

An Attractive Web Design In Your Business:- Secrets Of Pulling Profits

The appearance of your website determines the success of your business. Before you design any website, you should ensure that it is fully loaded with the exact information. A well-designed website attracts more customers. Make sure that your website works well with the browsers. This makes it easy for your clients to browse through your website design. You should include interactive elements in your website, for instance chat box and forums. This encourages your customers to visit your website more frequently. Ensure that the pictures and graphics in your web design are balanced. Too many of them slow down the speed in which a website page takes to load. Before you release your website on the internet, make sure that it has the capability to load faster.

Using colors that relate to theme of your website is very important. For instance if you are selling beauty products, you can use bright colors like pink. If you have any extra advertising space on your website design, you can sell it to earn more income. When you website has all the right information, it is an easy way of reaching your customers.

Templates are a perfect way of designing a website. You can customize them to meet your specific needs. They provide all the basics you need you need in building a web design. Use them to enhance the appearance of your website design. There are varieties, which you can choose. The templates feature the latest technology. You should ensure that your website has excellent graphic design. If you are a web designer, you should design a website that can attract more customers for your client.

Make sure that your website design is not plain. Use a great designing concept when creating the website. The logo of your website should be attractive. If you want to gain more profits in your business, make sure that your website is aesthetically appealing. When targeting a large market, use web design, which is applicable. Ensure that that your website can easily capture the eyes of your reader. Updating your website regularly is very important.

Your website design should gain readership. It should be easy to navigate and interesting. You can use your reader’s testimonials to improve the appearance of your website. Make sure that the font size of your website is easy to read. Do not use fonts that are not easy to read. Determine the goals you want to achieve in your organization before building any website. By using the latest tools and software’s, you can easily create a powerful web design.

Web design is very crucial for every business. If you do not have one, you should make a point of building a website now. It is the easiest way of pulling in more profits in your business. Website advertising is a perfect way of reaching more customers. Enjoy enormous benefits by creating a website. The internet has made it easy for to attain a good image of your business through website design.

Why SEO Important To Website?

SEO is an abbreviation of Search Engine Optimization. This is the process of structuring a web page so that it is found, read, and indexed by search engines in the most effective manner possible.

This makes your web site and its content attractive, relevant and visible to search engines and web searchers.

Why is this important? Consider what it would be like if no one could easily find your place of business, or even your telephone number. Most businesses could not continue for long in such a situation.

The same thing can happen with your web site if people cannot easily locate it. Traffic volume, if it existed at all, slows to a crawl. Potentially valuable customers never even know you are there.

"Wait!" you say. "I had a web site created, and the address is included in all of our advertising. Why wouldn't people be able to find it?"

Certainly, existing customers or those who are already familiar with your company should be able to find your site without any great difficulty, but this may not be the case.

Can you be sure that every potential customer has been reached by your advertising? What about the people who don't read the magazines or newspapers where you chose to place advertisements?

Did they hear the right radio station? Did they watch the right television show? Did they get one of the thousands of brochures you mailed?

So, what about the search engines? Those people could just enter a few words into a text box, click a button, and voila! There is a link to your web site. Aren't search engines wonderful?

Yes, search engines can be wonderful, and the scenario above can happen, but not without some work. This is where SEO comes in.

A case in point

Let us consider first a web site that I know of which is extremely difficult to find. This particular site is for a fine restaurant in the community where I live.

I didn't know the address of their site, so I went to Google.com, entered the name of the restaurant into the text box, and clicked the search button.

Many links were listed, but none seemed to have anything to do with the restaurant. To the search terms I added the name of the city where the restaurant is located.

Here were links that did pertain to the restaurant, but they all seemed to be links to news articles and reviews, not to the site of the restaurant itself. What was wrong? Did they actually not have a site?

Luckily, one of the news articles did mention the web site address. It is a very beautiful site, pleasing to the eye and ear. It was created as a Macromedia Flash presentation which is embedded into a single web page.

Why did I have so much trouble finding it? I think it might have something to do with the fact that the creators of the site don't seem to understand SEO.

How does a web site get into search engines' listings? The major search engines use computer programs (commonly called robots or crawlers) to follow links from one page to another and retrieve the contents of each page.

The contents of each page are indexed and added to the search engines' databases.

How the search engines work

How are the pages indexed? How do the search routines really work? Only the operators of the search engines know for sure, and this is generally very closely held proprietary information. The process is continually improved, as all useful computer software is.

The information that the operators of the search engines will release, combined with the results of research into why certain pages are at the top of the list of results of certain searches, help us in our process.

Using this information, we can make a reasonable determination of what techniques can be used to enhance a web site's visibility and effectiveness in the search engines.

Through an analysis of your existing or proposed web site, we can recommend and implement changes that can dramatically improve your site's chances of being found.

Some of these changes may alter the actual content of what is displayed on a page. Many of these changes, however, have no effect on what a user sees when visiting your site.

So SEO can really help you. Why not take it a little further and get your site listed for all kinds of searches. that should really bring the traffic in, right? It just might, but probably not for very long.

When using various search engines, you may have noticed that some search results have little, if anything, to do with what you were looking for. Some of these pages may even redirect you to another web site altogether.

The owners of these pages have one goal: to get you in the door (so to speak), no matter what lies or cheats they have to use to do it.

What not to do

The following search engine optimization techniques are often called spamming, and should be avoided at all costs:

automatically generated doorway pages;

cloaking and false redirects;

keyword stuffing;

hidden text or hidden links;

pages loaded with irrelevant words;

duplicated content on multiple pages;

misspelling of well-known web sites;

unrelated and centralized link farms;

other methods that try to trick search engines.

These and other similar techniques, while sometimes effective in generating an increase in traffic to your site, quickly fail.

Imagine putting a "Detour" sign in the street in front of your place of business, forcing traffic into your parking lot. Yes, your parking lot is full, but how many of those people actually wanted to be there?

How many of those people will want to shop there after witnessing such a trick? How long will it take the local police to remove the sign?

The same thing happens to web sites that use such nefarious techniques. People are brought to a site where they had no intention of going. Do you think they will stay to shop?

When the operators of a search engine discover these types of tricks, they will often remove the site from their index entirely.

How do you rank?

The next time you use a search engine, look for your own site. What words would someone search for that should bring them to your site? Is your site listed in those search results?

SEO is the tool that can be used to insure that your site is listed as close as possible to the top of the relevant search results.

Without SEO it will be as if those customers drive by your shop without even knowing that you are there. Should SEO be important to you? You can bank on it.-

Notice:This article was written by Dan Johnson, Technical & Marketing Consultant at Webnauts Net.

It may be reproduced on a web site, CD-ROM, e-zine, book, magazine, etc. so long permission is received from Webnauts Net and the author's name is included in full, and, if the reproduction is by electronic media, a link back to this web site is included.