Originally posted by Shannon G. Pearson swpearson@telus.net at www.alon-cohen.com

Web page design is an art, but you don’t need an art degree or be a rocket scientist to design effective web pages for your website. You just have to be aware of several important aspects that every web page should have. These components will ensure the visitors to your website like what they see and keep coming back. And it’s them, wanting to do business with you, which is important. Right?

How we do business has changed drastically over the last decade and we all know this is due to the World Wide Web and the Internet. Businesses no longer have the time to wait for the mail to bring them the information they need; nor do they have the time to manually search for shoe retailers in Cuba. Today everything is at our fingertips and time is more expensive and in shorter supply than ever. Things have to happen quickly, from gathering information to buying leather shoes in another country.

So, with this constant time crunch, no one is going to waste his or her valuable time on a poorly designed web site. Here are some important components of a successful web page and web site; things that should be a part of the planning that goes into their design.

Time is Money
Web audiences are not captive. Most visitors to your web site will not stay long if they have to wait for your page to load. 15 seconds is the average and if they are VERY interested they may wait for 30 – tops. Fancy power-point or Flash introductions and large graphics look impressive but they are slow to load which guarantees lost business. This also goes for banners, pop-up windows, and background music. Make the copy on your web page easy to read – dark type on a light background is the best for three reasons: it is easier to read (this means a happier visitor) ;it’s easier for printers to reproduce and many browsers can’t print light type on a dark background. Another no-no for web page design is the use of scrolling pages; they waste time and are annoying. Visitors will often leave right away. To avoid scrollbars, design your web pages for a resolution of 640 x 480. If your page has so much content the scrollbars are necessary then make sure that the top visible part is enough to keep your visitors interetsed. If you remember to keep things simple, your visitors will be back.

Repeat Visits – the Purpose of Web Page Design
If your web pages load quickly and your content is obvious and easy to see you are already ahead of the marketing game. But to ensure repeat visits from your customers you need to make sure navigation throughout your site is as easy as possible and that there is a consistency between every page. Make sure there are always links back to the home page and every page should be accessible via at least two links from the home web page. And give your visitors something useful whether it’s links to other sites, reference information, free stuff, or software. Everyone likes to get something for free – this is virtual marketing and it works.

Make Life Simple
The Necessity of Easy Web Page Maintenance and Contact Information

Everyone likes things that are simple. That goes for you and your potential customers. Visitors to your web site and web pages don’t want to work hard at contacting you. When designing web pages make sure that on every web page your contact information is readily available; otherwise, visitors will get frustrated and leave. Your customers, like shoppers, want variety when they visit your web site. In order to keep your customers happy and returning you must constantly be changing your shop display (rearranging the content and look of your web pages) to keep their interest. But if this is difficult and hard to do, you will find yourself avoiding the task thereby losing business because of customer boredom. Shoppers don’t come back if it’s always the same old thing. When you initially design your web pages and web site you want to make all the pages easy to maintain. Ask yourself: How often will changes need to be made? Can frequently changed areas be placed on separate files for ease of update? If you design your web pages with these questions in mind, your customers will never be bored and continue to come back to you.

Never Sacrifice Content for Creativity
If you spend time and money for a fancy, flashy web page but slack on the content you are only cheating yourself. Are you trying to sell your web site design or your product? Each page must have your message visually prominent, don’t draw attention to the wrong things on the page, i.e.: blinking text, moving graphics, etc. These things are distracting and annoying and annoyed customers won’t come back. The use of frames in web page design is out. Did you know that half of the search engines can’t index frames and that older browsers, palm pilots, and cell phones can’t navigate web sites and web pages with fancy graphics, animation, or frames? If your site can’t be navigated, potential customers won’t find you – you will lose money.

Search Engine Optimization
Search Engines are our friends. Say it. Mean it. Live it. When designing your web pages always keep in mind that it’s the search engines that guide people to your site. But they need the right signal to do this. Search engines guide visitors to your web site through the use of keywords. Without keywords you will receive no exposure. When designing web pages you must optimize every page for the search engines by including keyword rich titles, keyword rich meta tags and keyword rich introductions. If you use graphic headlines (which look great) you will lose the opportunity to place keywords that will get great search engine position. This costs you business. The same goes for using a Flash or image introduction – you will effectively cripple your search engine positioning efforts.

Designing web pages isn’t as hard as you would think. It takes a small amount of creativity and a lot of common marketing sense. And if you don’t want to do it yourself you now have enough of an understanding of the necessary elements of good web page design that you can oversee those you hire to do the job. One note about hiring web page designers; as with many things you do get what you pay for; ask questions and don’t be afraid to voice your opinion. And always keep this in mind…If you can make the experience of visiting your web site a painless, rewarding exercise, then you will have customers that tell their friends about you and will return over and over. Just watch your business grow.

Originally posted by Michael Milley mikemilley@hotmail.com at www.alon-cohen.com

So you’ve got a great idea for a web business – maybe you even have the site designed – but where are you going to keep it? You need to find someone to host your site. Web hosting services are where most individuals and small- to medium-sized businesses keep their websites. Their actual web pages are located on a web hosting company’s computer.

You might ask why you need a web hosting service when you could keep the site on your own computer? Even if your page is personal and meant only for friends and family, you need a computer that is online all the time. Anything much beyond a text-only site would load slowly onto the internet even with a DSL or cable connection. Your personal computer just isn’t designed for hosting a web site, and setting up the necessary hardware and software is a hassle, not to mention expensive. Only big, established internet companies host their own sites. Web hosting services already have all the tools to get your pages up and running. A host keeps your web pages on its computer so that they can be accessed day or night by the worldwide audience that surfs the net.

Whether you’re putting up a fan page for your favorite concert violinist or you’d like to sell your line of hand-made violins and accessories on-line, there are web hosting services to meet your needs. When looking at hosts, consider things like the overall size of the data on your pages, how much activity you expect to have, what extras you might want, as well as price.

If the site you have in mind is relatively small or meant primarily for informational purposes, you probably don’t need a lot of space on a host server. You are also not looking for a high bandwidth (the amount of information transferred to and from your site over a period of time). You may even be able to get free hosting through your current internet service provider or a company that places ads on your page.

However, if you want to set up a professional or commercial web site, your site is likely to be larger, so you’ll need to get more space. And you don’t want customers or potential customers waiting for your site to download onto their computer, so you probably need more bandwidth to accommodate more activity.

If you’re putting up a commercial web site you may also want to think about the options that your host service can provide. CGI can allow your site’s users to fill out a form online and have it converted to an e-mail message to your company. If your site offers products for sale, security is an important consideration. Your host should offer secure SSL connections to help prevent fraud.

Many web hosting services offer more than just a place to park your site. Most offer e-mail addresses to go with your site. Web hosts may be able to provide activity statistics for your site allow you to track the use of your online business. Some web hosts will help design your site and register a domain name for your web pages. At Alon-Cohen.com Internet Solutions we offer full service web hosting, with packages ranging from smaller, personal sites to 2-Gigabyte sites with many additional features.

Originally posted by Cheryl Duffey cheryl.duffey@verizon.net at www.alon-cohen.com

When designing a website, you must first consider your goals. Are you providing a service, conveying information, featuring entertainment, or selling something? If you are providing information of a serious nature, your website design should reflect it. An informational website addresses a specific issue. Such a site would be geared to the people who will be using it, with links to other useful sites. Information should be accurate and current. If you are providing a service, you need to state your services and provide a way for customers to access them. Entertainment sites may have graphics and music and other features. Personal sites showcase one’s interests and talents. They are usually self-designed and may be of limited appeal. Retail sites will have pictures of the items, the prices, and a way to place an order. You select items, place them in a shopping cart, then proceed to checkout. Your website design will reflect your goals.

It is a good idea to visit other websites to decide what you would like to integrate into your own design. Ease of use is one of the most important factors in website design. A user-friendly site will be successful in terms of popularity and frequent use. Sites can be very simple with one page, or very elaborate, consisting of several pages with links to other sites with related information.

If you have a target audience, the website should be designed to be attractive to this group. A youthful audience may respond to music and flashy graphics. Audio and video clips will make a site more dynamic, but an older crowd may prefer something simpler.

Many sites have features like chat rooms and message boards where visitors to the site can communicate with each other about common interests. A feedback feature allows users to ask questions or make comments through e-mail. Feedback can help you to make improvements to your site. An “about us” feature gives information about the site and its creators. This makes your site more personal.

Some shopping sites give the consumer options like custom design and a virtual model. By providing measurements and body type, a virtual mannequin is generated. You then have an idea of how the clothing will look on you without trying it on first.

A retail site should be designed with the shopper in mind. It should be easy to use, with accurate descriptions and pictures, and checkout should be simple and secure. Most sites allow you to register your personal information and log in and out with a password. Credit card numbers and other sensitive information is encrypted and access to it is limited. Online customer service lets you track the status of an order or report difficulty using the site.

A website should be designed carefully and thoughtfully. It should reflect your goals and personal taste. A professional website designer can bring this all together. They possess the technical knowledge and the experience to make a successful website.

Originally posted by: Jenifer Underwood, C.P.S.M.
Market29, Inc. http://www.market29.com
jen@market29.com

In my opinion, the best way to track online advertising campaigns is to combine the information gained from web statistics tools with the information from third party ad campaign tools. I say this for a few reasons.

As a programmer, I love data projects! However, I also value efficiency. I could technically write program code to read in the data from web server logs, format it into tables, create queries and develop reports with graphs. It would be a feasible project. However, my time is expensive and this task has already been done many, many times. Why would I write the same code if I could purchase it (already debugged) for a reasonable price? Needless to say, many ISP’s offer this service free of charge! I would be a fool not to tell you this.

I have similar feelings about third-party ad tracking campaign tools. These typically are not free but are well worth the minimal investment for the specialized information you receive in formats you can use and understand. These tools create specialized views of your campaign results, unique visits, clicks, actions, purchases and a variety of custom configured activities. They key here is the unique visit or user session. Many programs count hits not unique visits. Hits are a completely arbitrary figure. They include all the images contained within one web page, web browser refreshes and other web server hit data that is not relevant. Hits do not take user session state into consideration. For example, one web page with four images would be considered five hits on a web server when in reality there was only one user session. User session is imperative – hits are bogus. My point here is that these programs were coded to take into account the oddities of web marketing and can give you a very specialized picture of your campaign.

Web statistics programs and ad campaign managers contain different views of web site data. The former gives you an overall picture of your web site activity and the latter gives you an accurate idea for return on investment of an individual ad campaign. With the advent of specialized web campaign tracking programs tailored meet the unique reporting needs of marketing professionals, structuring and reporting results in financial terms a business organization understands for tactical decision making is much, much easier! If you are still importing server log data into a spreadsheet or database and creating queries – STOP! Unless you are the type of person that enjoys typing on a typewriter rather than taking advantage of a word processing program, then using web statistics tools in conjunction with ad campaign managers is hands-down the best approach for tracking results for your online marketing efforts!

Originally posted by: Cheryl Duffey cheryl.duffey@verizon.net at www.alon-cohen.com

If you would like to add shopping capability to your website, you will need shopping cart software. Retailers can build an online store with full service shopping options. Shopping cart software handles transactions and sets up a system to process orders and maintain a catalog.

When a customer is shopping your website, they place items in the shopping cart. They can add or remove items until they are ready to proceed to checkout . Product information is tracked on the server when a shopper clicks “add to cart”. The most basic shopping cart software keeps track of user information in the form of items ordered and quantities. This information is necessary to process the order.

There is no limit to the number of items to be sold on the website. The size of your product line does not matter, since items are only processed when placed in the cart. The shopping cart keeps track of the quantity in stock. Inventory holding costs are kept low, as the retailer can carry the amount of inventory necessary to fill current orders.

You need to know what type of server the software runs on, in order to avoid incompatibility. Problems with browser compatibility lead to increased CPU time. If there are many visitors to the site, the browser becomes overloaded and the page will not be displayed.

Many shopping carts can be set up within an hour. You add HTML tags to you web pages to get started. You will need a credit card merchant account to accept credit cards for sales at your website. Some carts are set up as a subscription service. Shopping cart software is also available for purchase and self-installation, or a website designer can install it for you.

Custom database applications are available, depending on the needs of the retailer. Shopping cart software can track shipping and handling costs. It can provide online calculation of taxes, which completes the transaction quickly and efficiently. A feature that many customers like is “express checkout”. If a shopper uses a certain site frequently, the software recognizes them by name and keeps their credit card information on file. Unless there is a change in payment information, the customer presses a button and the transaction is completed. There is no need to re-enter account information. For security reasons, the information is encrypted, and the account is accessible through a customer password. These conveniences suit the needs of customers and retailers.

The retailer is provided with an efficient means of record keeping , and a reduction of paperwork. Through data collection and reporting, you can collect customer feedback and keep track of consumer trends. Shopping cart software can also create a dynamic presentation of your product catalog, maximizing sales and site loyalty. The shopping cart should be dependable and easy to use. It should allow you to fill orders quickly and keep your business running.

With an effective shopping cart, a company can expand the reach of their products and their marketing campaign. A shopping cart is a cost effective way to manage a catalog and provide customer service. Your website designer can help you decide which shopping cart is best for your needs.

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Please Note: This article only touches the surface on some of the things that you should check. Should you require a consultation on choosing the right shopping cart solution for your web site feel free to http://www.ecommerce-shopping-cart.biz.