Archive for October, 2008
What Makes a Web Site Stand Out
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Does your website stand out from the others in your market?
There was time when fancy animation and flash were real big and everyone went out and put that on their websites, hoping to stand out from the crowd.
Things have definitely changed since then. Even the color of your text and your background make a big impact on how people see your website.
It’s important to understand these concepts Before you set out to build your website. Plan it carefully.
Here are some basic things you should keep in mind:
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Do Not put flash and animation on your website! This has become to annoy visitors! Most nowadays won’t even stay at a website that has flash on it. And unless you know how to do it properly flash and animation take a very long time load. People today are in a hurry and won’t wait around for it to load
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I’ve seen websites with all kinds of backgrounds and some are nice and fit the market the owner is with. But there have been some that are just plain ugly and make me leave. Be sure to keep your background image or color to what your market will appreciate.
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The text area is another big issue with some websites. You do no want to have a black background and then red or yellow text colors. This makes it very hard on the eyes and you need to consider who is visiting your site, do they have difficulties reading, are they older? The best combination so far is to keep your text area white with black text, this is the easiest to read through for most people. For important information you want to make sure some sees, make that text a bit bigger than the rest. Also, you should always have the size of your text set to 12 this will also make things easier to read.
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Images, I have seen some pretty badly placed images, and some images that just don’t have anything at all to do with the market. Make sure you are using images properly. Do not make them very big, remember the size of most computer screens is 1024 with 32 bit settings. So keep you images within size, like around 800pixels this makes things easier for your visitor. Be sure that your visitors don’t have to move left to right to see your pages.
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With videos there is a right and wrong way to go about putting videos on your website. Most do not want to go to a website and get blared out by the audio or video immediately. If you must have your video or audio start as soon as someone lands on your website, make sure that you have a pause or stop button in plain site and easy to find so they can turn it off if they choose. Keep your audio and videos down to about 2 minutes, so they can also read your website without spending a lot of time there.
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If you are planning on selling products on your website, make sure that you place the buy buttons in easy to find plain site so there is no mistake as to what you want them to do and why. Also tell them exactly what to expect and when, so there is no confusion on what will happen once they purchase something from you. Place a call to action link in several places on your website also, this will entice them to purchase.
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If you are website is just for list building, make sure that is all that is on your website. Do not put anything else on there but an opt in form. If there is more than one action, your visitor might get confused and just leave even though they might of wanted your report or ebook or whatever you were offering.
These are just a few of the things you need to keep in mind when planning your website. If you do then your visitors will have a pleasant time visiting and will remember you and possibly tell their friends about your website and come back again.
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12 Essential Web Site Building Blocks | Smiley Cat Web Design
Posted by: | CommentsI just came across this great article on some essential blocks you should use whenever you are creating any website for any reason. Click the link to learn more about these 12 essential building blocks.
12 Essential Web Site Building Blocks | Smiley Cat Web Design
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She has some awesome information over there.
Laura
Niche-Marketing Know How
Posted by: | CommentsIs Niche-Marketing stopping you?
Let me take away all that confusion for you.
Within this article you will discover some simple steps you can take action on and start doing niche-marketing to build your own online business.
So first, just what is niche-marketing?
First you need to know what a niche is. A niche simply put is a group of people that share a common interest. For example: golfers are a niche group of people that share their interest in golf.
These niches can be big, medium, or small, it all depends on how many people share the interest.
Niches can and are very profitable if used correctly, between the passion people have for their niche they can build a spot for themselves and make money by offering products and/or information about their niche.
There are many different ways to accomplish this, but the most important way is to follow your own passion. You can of course follow a profitable niche, but it won’t build you a business. You need to be passionate about your niche so you can stay with it. If you do decide to follow only profitable niches you can build a number of sites and benefit from each one.
Here are 3 main keys to research your niche:
- Do a Google search to see how many other people are promoting this niche
- Head over to eBay and see what is hot
- Go to places like Clickbank or Amazon and see what type of products are selling
Once you have discovered a good niche to market in, you now have to decide how you are going to deliver the information or product to the people looking for it.
Here again there are many different ways to do this:
- You can learn to build a website
- You can put up a blog and write about the niche
- You can find affiliate products to promote
These steps are the basic steps in finding the right niche with the right products to sell. Niche-Marketing isn’t difficult once you understand the basics.
Just do keep in mind it is much easier if you do follow your passions and not the money. By following your passions the money will come once people see how passionate you are about your niche. You will be known as the expert they can rely on to answer their questions and help solve their problems.
You can easily learn how to do this and put it all together with little time involved on your part with a complete blueprint telling you how to take action.
I do hope this has helped you to better understand Niche-Marketing and how to find your niche.
If you want to kick start your business then head over to http://laurasbasicstowebdesign.com/success and get your hands on the Niche-Marketing Know How Interview with Erik Stafford.
Niche-Marketing doesn’t have to be difficult or overwhelming, with the information you will learn with the Niche-Marketing Know How Interview it’s a steal.
I hope this will help you at least overcome one of the obstacles standing in your way to success.
Laura
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Building Your Foundation, First
Posted by: | CommentsWelcome to your first lesson on building your website.
The very first thing you need to do is decide on what your website is going to do, there are many different types of websites. From, landing pages, membership sites, salespages, and informational websites, and the list goes on….
So first decide what type of market/niche you would like to go into. I have learned and discovered that the best place to start in deciding this is, is to start with your passions. Now I hear a lot that some people just don’t have a passion, but I don’t believe this at all.
Everyone has something to offer. Their passions, what they do at work, and any kind of training or knowledge they have, all these could be possible markets you can go into.
Before, you think your passion or knowledge is profitable for you, you need to do some research to see if others are willing to pay for this.
The first place to start is to see if anyone else is marketing in this niche. Go to Google.com and type in your passions, like golf, and see what others are doing. One thing to keep in mind is not to be too broad with your niche, like golf, has millions of websites, break it down to like golf shoes, or whatever. You want your results within Google.com to be less than one million results.
So dig deep if you have to, don’t be afraid to dig deep within your niche, usually the deeper the better as long as there is people looking for your specific product or service.
ps
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How To Find the Website Building Tools
Posted by: | CommentsThis area seems to be frustrating to so many folks. Just how and where do you find the proper tools to build your website? There are soo many different answers to this question and I have found that it isn’t always on what are the proper tools, as much as what YOU feel the most comfortable with.
There are a lot of web designers out there that swear by Frontpage and/or Dreamweaver, and then there are others that build their websites completely in Notepad or with a simple HTML editor, so what is the best way to build your website?
This completely does depend on you and what level you are at.
I personally use a HTML editor called Kompozer I have used many others throughout the years, but I have found that I personally, perfer to see what I am doing while I am doing it and I don’t have this big budget to purchase things like Frontpage and/or Dreamweaver and have found that a simple no cost HTML editor such as Kompozer does the job just fine.
With any new type of software there is always a learning curve to go through, but I have found not only for myself but for some I have taught, that the simple HTML editors that you can download free, work just as good as anything else out there.
Now keep in mind, I’m discussing building a website, Not designing graphics or that stuff.
With these editors you do not have to know much at all about HTML or how things work, but it is highly recommended you at least know some basic HTML, which will not take you years or months to learn.
So for the tools that you need to have in place to build a website -
1. An HTML editor of some sort. I highly recommend you give Kompozer a try, it’s free and it’s easy to use
2. You will need an FTP program, so you can take what you saved to your hard drive and move it to your hosting account. For more information on FTP you can read my article at How to get your website online
3. You should also get an autoresponder so you can collect your prospects information to build that list! Now I’ve used free and paid companies, and have come to the conclusion that the paid way is the way to go! So if you need to get your hands on a good autoresponder I highly recommend Aweber!
4. Of course you will need hosting and there I recommend Hostgator
5. Then of course a domain name which you can get at Godaddy
There you go 5 important tools you need to have, at no cost to little cost to get your first website online and collecting information or sales for you.
Until next time Take Action!
Laura Miller
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