• Read the terms and conditions of your web hosting provider and ensure that you know what you are getting for your money.

• Choose a plan that is appropriate for you. Some web hosting providers lure you into believing that they provide you with “Unlimited bandwidth”. No one can provide with Unlimited “disk space” and “bandwidth” just because it is a saturated market out there amongst the web hosting providers and there is no one in the world to be able to provide you with the same. It is a marketing gimmick and it helps if you are aware of this fact. What is required here is your acuity and decision making skills - You ought to know approximately how much traffic your website must be getting to determine the bandwidth and the disk space. The hosting providers can manage to con you into believing that you have access to “Unlimited” Bandwidth and disk space because they know that most small business owners and webmasters do not need a lot of these parameters and hence they get to improvise.

• Please do ensure that you know your web-hosting provider’s policy with regards to increasing your bandwidth requirements if you envision your web site’s traffic. Higher number of hits on your website would mean more bandwidth requirements. Just keep track of the surges in traffic and ensure that your provider gives you the flexibility of increasing the band-width as and when required. Also, pay special attention if you intend to include videos, blogs and mp3 content on your site. You need to make a lot more space available for all that content and you have to think about all this when you talk to your web-hosting provider.

• Does your hosting provider have a range of hosting services - ranging from shared common hosting to Dedicated servers or virtual servers? Does your service provider also provide you with other relevant products like email, traffic boosters, blogs, photo sharing utilities and a whole lot of things depending on your unique requirements?

Building a website isn’t as easy as it was earlier. Its difficulty level has now evolved along with the innate complexity of the Internet itself and your success is now attributed to prudent and acute decisions that you ought to make while considering your Internet Strategy for your offline or online business.

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

We have to know the beginning in order to relate it to the present and the future. In the case of web design, history is conclusive and clear and it is interesting to dwell a tad in a world of imagination, art and craftsmanship. Together we go back…

In the late 1960’s, internet was used to transfer data between computers through the telephone network system. The transfer was made possible by transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP). It was developed by Advanced Research and Projects Agency. It was primarily developed for US military needs however, it was later used by some universities.

In 1969, aside from the creation of ARPANET, Generalized Markup Language (GML) was also created. This was made possible by the brilliant minds of Charles Goldfarb, Edward Mosher, and Raymond Lorie. GML was then used to facilitate text management in large information systems.

It was in 1980 when American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee built on GML and published a working draft of Standard GML, or SGML. This was later on adopted as the standard system by government agencies, research companies and schools. Few years after, a scientist working at CERN, the Nuclear Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, by the name of Tim Berners-Lee, invented the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) to define the structure of Web pages. It is a standard hypertext language protocol and browser program that interrupts the html version and converts it into text. HTML was used in a lot of contents and multi-media images or anything that uses tables, graphics, audio, video, and mathematics symbols.

Berners-Lee is also responsible for the early developments in the web’s ability to link academic papers like books researches and studies electronically. Another contribution was the inception of the concept of internet to answer the intellectual and emotional queries of people around the world.

It was also in 1980’s when the web experienced a rapid evolution. The changes are now used by business, education, government and other companies and entities. This is the ear when the World Wide Web was developed by a scientist who has explored communication methods through computer network.

Early on, browser programs were only capable of viewing texts, but nowadays, they have already developed into a wide range of computer platforms. Aside from that, there is also lots of authoring software available these days. In fact, it has turned very user-friendly that children can very well understand and use it!

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

Gucci has a website that rivals some of the major car makers for quality, use of multimedia and focus. You can choose from sites oriented to several different continents. One of the intriguing features of the Gucci site is its frame-by-frame layout of their current ad campaign. The value of the advertising in keeping Gucci “current” is made evident by its prominence as a website feature.

Some fashion websites that you wouldn’t expect to see doing it are retailing to the public directly from their websites. There’s a corporate area for promotional materials and haute couture, and a retail section for deals on the latest products. Companies that engage in online retail include Dior, Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein - not a great surprise - along with Versace; Armani; Giancarlo Ferre and Prada, companies that you wouldn’t expect to see retailing on the web.

A well developed website can take the designs showcased in model photography and on the runways and present them in a manner that makes them much more accessible to women other than twenty-something anorexics. Visual tools can be used to rotate a dress, suit, jacket or pair of pants 360 degrees. Short video pieces can show a garment and provide voice-over describing its practicality, range of use, glamour or whatever factor the company wants to highlight.

Web searches on fashion turn up a large selection of generic fashion sites that gain their revenue from advertising. One of their principal content highlights is always a list of designer web sites. In one case, apparelsearch.com, the site lists fashion designers and design houses in three categories: website for corporate information, for retail opportunity, and for wholesale connections. That is valuable, down-to-the-rack-sale advertising for even the most well established houses. And it’s free.

Fashion designers that cater to men, women and children can lay out their product lines for “the entire family” in one location - something that is difficult if not impossible using the magazine format. At best, the marketer would be buying ads in three different print genres. The web also allows fashion houses to segment in other ways. Click on Donna Karen and you’ll find a web site that offers her accessory line up. Try DKNY and you’ll find clothing.

Designers use the web in many functional mixtures. Fendi has an area for media inquiries that includes press releases and photos. It has an e-shopping area (U.S. only) for accessories. For the rest, there is a list of their boutiques in the United States. And there is an absolutely incomprehensible video with a maddening electronica overdub that will not stop repeating itself and drive you crazy, just like alongside the runway. Armani has a full-blown merchandising area, along with a list of its retail site in the country. You can order the items you don’t need to try on, and find out where to try on the items that require a fitting check.

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

Relevant Experience

The web design company you choose for your project should have relevant experience. If you would like them to design a e-commerce website, it is best to choose a web designer who has e-commerce websites in their portfolio. Your web design company should be ready to submit a proposal for your website project along with a contract. Beware of companies who don’t give you a formal contract. The contract should outline exactly what the web designer will do and how long it will take, the price, and what you have agreed to supply. A formal contract is the best way to avoid disagreements between the web designer and you. Make sure your contract outlines every possible problem that can happen.

Different types of websites

There are different types of websites such as: static HTML (brochure type), e-commerce (with a shopping cart), database, Flash and a website with your own content management system. All of these must come into perspective when you are looking for a web design company. For example if you are looking for a fully interactive Flash website you better make sure that the web design company you choose has done many Flash websites. There is a difference between companies who can do Flash headers for a standard HTML site and web designers who can create a full flash website. Your best bet when choosing a web design company is to have a face to face meeting when discussing what it is you would like to have your website look like , also some sketches and some addresses of websites that you like. This gives the web design company the chance to fully understand what you are looking for and a better chance to give you an accurate proposal.

Things to take into consideration

Does the web design company have an update package? You must know that after your website has been created, from time to time you will require updates. Maybe they will be small maybe not. If the web design company you are choosing does not have an update package, you should inquire about the price of updates after the initial design. You should take the price of updates into consideration before you begin the design process. Make sure the web design company or web designer you choose sets realistic goals for the timeline. Usually if it sounds too good to be true then it is.

Many web designers have their own personal style. For example my personal style is clean and bright colors. Some web design companies love Flash and always build Flash websites. This would not be ideal if you are looking for an extremely search engine friendly website.

You would also have to consider guarantees. Does your potential web design company offer a guarantee? Most web design companies do not. So when you find one who does, you can know that they feel very confident in their capabilities. Another thing to consider is: Does the web design company display a phone number that they can be contacted at. Sometimes as a client you would like to speak with someone, not just get a reply to an e-mail the next day.

How to a find a web design company

There are a few ways to find web design companies in your area. One way is to search the web for: “Vancouver web design” or “Sarasota Web design”, obviously depending on the city closest to you. You could also search the Yellow pages for web design companies. Most web design companies who can afford to advertise there have already built a pretty go reputation and have been in business for a while.
Another option is search the web and when you see a website you really like, check for a link on the bottom of the page or on a contact page.

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

1. Be aware to beware. First, you have to have the basic knowledge of web design techniques. It is a well-settled fact that before you enter a business, you yourself must have a good grasp of its totality. When you are knowledgeable, you know when a design is excellent or when mediocre. Another, you also know when to criticize or appreciate the work of your web designer.

If you are not aware of the surrounding circumstances of your business, chances are you will easily be deceived or your business will sooner or later go down the drain. You do not like that to happen, do you?

So, keep those thinking caps and explore your business world. Spend some time reading about web design and everything about websites. Go to your local bookstore and invest on books and other facilities.

2. Talk with basis. Get in contact with the experts in web designing. From them you can learn the ins and outs of web design services.

Another, talk to some of the designer’s former clients and ask them about the services of other designers. Learn from their mistakes as well as their achievements.

Don’t just peruse a number of great sites, be sure to know the reason why they are best. From it you can glean the gist of what you should be focusing.

3. Bear in mind that graphic design is not the be-all and end-all. Graphic design is not the only basis in choosing a web designer. Though it is an important factor to consider, still that only forms part of what makes a feasible and lucrative website.

Other factor to consider is the designer’s quest for equilibrium between form and function. If form is what matters the most for him, then that could be pretty dangerous. Next, is his organizational skill. Is he good in organizing the page layouts? Better be sure about it. Good navigation is also another factor. This is because viewers get bored easily. They can change their minds to your drawback with just a flick of a finger. Therefore, you must have a good navigation to keep them from getting bored. Good navigation must also be coupled with user-friendliness so as to be used easily and hassle-free by the visitors. The most important factor to consider is the ‘call for action’.
The designer must be adept in the purpose of mounting a website. Is it to make the visitors buy a product or subscribe a business?

The website is there to serve a goal. Be sure the web designer caters to that goal!

4. The lowest bidder may not be that good. It is not just about getting the website done. It is about getting it done right! Quality may sometimes have a crucial link with price because of the maxim - You get what you pay. Moreover, web designers who have the lowest rate are usually inexperienced and hard to work with. Do not sacrifice the quality over a meager sum. It will surely spoil your business!

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

Prices vary tremendously, so first you need to shortlist companies that are clearly reliable and reputable. So how do you do this?

Check how long they have been established as Web designers as the industry is known for it’s “here today, gone tomorrow” operations.

A company that has been around for a few years is much likely to be a safer bet than the one man start up that is offering discount prices. Who would you trust more - the car dealership there has been established 10 years or the new one that has just sprouted up last week?

While their website may tell you how long they have been established, this may not necessarily be the correct information. Of course, limited companies will file records at Companies House which you can check to see how long they had been established. However, a far easier and quicker option is to check how long their website domain name has been registered .

You can do this by going to www.domaintools.com and typing in their Web address into the Whois lookup search box. This gives you information on the registrant, their address and the date the domain was first registered. While this is not entirely foolproof, it does give a good an indication and you should be wary of any company where a domain name is only a year or two old.

Look at their track record. They should have a good portfolio of the sites they have built available to see via their website, as well as customer testimonials. Their portfolio is a good indication of their design skill — if you like the websites in their portfolio, then they are likely to satisfy you on the design side.

Check the company works from an office. Web design is an industry with a multitude of different operators — from freelance work at home designers to large new media agencies. If the company works from an office, it is more likely to be still here next year than the guy who just does it from home.

Does the company have online marketing expertise? Look for a company that it is experienced in marketing websites online as they can give you lot of free information to help market your website. Not all designers know about online marketing.

While the above tips are not exhaustive, I hope they go some way to helping you choose a good web designer.

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

How can you find a web site builder that meets your needs? First, you have to know what you really need. What are you planning to do with your website? If it is just simple stuff like putting up a personal website and throwing a few pictures up for friends and family to see, you won’t need too much. It is a safe bet that pretty much any web site builder will work for you. If on the other hand, you plan on making sales from your website and doing some serious business and traffic from it, you’ll want to be sure that the site builder you choose will be up to the challenge.

Look for a free trial or a free demo you can use to test out the functionality of the site builder. Most companies will let you take their website builder for a spin before you buy. Having the chance to work with the web site builder before you commit to it can make a big difference as to your comfort level before you buy. You’ll get a chance to put the site builder through its paces and decide whether it meets your needs.

Are you locked in to their templates or can you build your own from scratch? Many web site builders out there will force you to use their templates and not allow you to make any significant changes to the template. If you can’t find a template from their selection that you like, you’ll simply have to deal with it. Know though, that there are some site builders out there that will allow you to strip the template right down to bare bones and build your own custom graphics, headers and footers to create almost any kind of look you want while retaining the easy to use aspect of the site builder.

What else do you get with the web site builder besides a template and some easy to edit text? Do they offer a free domain name? Do they give you enough disk space to host lots of images and pages? How many pages do they let you create? How many sites can you create with their web site builder? If there is a limit, what does it cost to raise the limit on any of these options? Knowing the answers to these and other important questions will allow you to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. Two companies may seem to offer the same price point and the same features but you will often find major differences in pricing between the two of them to accomplish what you need.

Do your research and you will be well on your way to a web site builder that meets your needs and gives you quality, professional results at a reasonable price.

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

So, how do you design a web page that pays? First off, you need to determine who will be getting the pay-off. It could be you or the web visitor, or better yet, it could be both of you. For example, an informational web page will be valuable to a reader looking for information and valuable to you if you have affiliates, links to products, or other sites you want to promote.

When building a web page or looking for a home based business, affiliate programs are worth considering because they add value to the site for the reader and can provide enough revenue for you to keep the site going. The best affiliates offer products that are in some way related to your site. In other words, if you have an informational web site relating to pet health, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have affiliate links for tax software. You will be much better served with affiliates that sell pet vitamins, pet toys, or other pet related products.

If you want to create web sites or design a web page so that you can make money from affiliate programs, it is a good idea to research affiliates and the topic before you proceed. Making sure that affiliate programs exist in conjunction with the information you want to provide or the home based business you want to promote will prove to be very valuable later on as you try to get the site off the ground.

You will also want to make sure that you will be able to provide credible information to the site’s visitors. For example, you will have a hard time building a web page devoted to coaching soccer if you know little about the subject. And without credibility, you stand little chance of getting site visitors to stop by once, let alone, again and again.

Credibility will also prove to be important when you look for affiliates. Often times, your site will need to be reviewed before you are allowed to participate in the affiliate program. If you design a web page that is not up to par, you will have little chance of being approved.

In short, take your time and do your homework. That is the only way to create web sites that truly pay off for you and your visitors.

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

After years on the Net, I believe you need to learn how to design your sites yourself, and here’s why …

The Internet is made up of two elements:

1. Text
2. Pictures

Yes, audio and video technologies are growing fast. But if you hope to sell on the Net, it’s critical to appeal to your audience, those folks who are willing to pull out their credit cards and buy your products. A huge percentage of these are still on dialup and certainly aren’t very sophisticated and fancy techniques will isolate you from many of them.

So what are your choices if you want to build a website?

1. Buy a template:

This can work sometimes. I’ve bought them myself and they do look great. But there are some real problems with templates:

* They can be expensive - especially if you want multiple websites. Good templates aren’t cheap. The few I’ve bought are in the $60-$70 range.

* If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can waste your money on templates that won’t work for you. For instance, you will often see templates with icons, pictures, company logos, “Buy Now” buttons and more. Yes, they look great. But when you download the images they are not editable because if they are in jpg or gif format, you can’t make changes. The most common ‘editable’ images are in ‘psd’ format. If you own image editing software, like Photoshop (which usually sells for about $600), you can make the changes you wish. But if you don’t own this kind of software then forget it - your images can’t be changed.

* Editing templates isn’t easy. You might unwittingly purchase a template that allows 8′ of space - and your copy needs 10″ of space. Now what? Cheaper templates require the purchaser to “slice” them. This is tedious and time consuming and requires editing knowledge that most people don’t have. Higher quality templates allow the owner to edit them without slicing, but they are more expensive.

* Even if you can edit your new template, do you really think that you should allow a designer to dictate the placement of your sales copy? Beautiful design does not equal sales. Just because something looks good doesn’t mean it’s a good sales site. Many novices are impressed with the good looks of a template, but Madison Avenue beauty doesn’t equal profits on the Net. Earning money comes from effective direct response marketing which means testing the elements on your sales page and changing them until you have a winner. If your design is forced on you you are limited in the changes you can make.

2. Pay a website designer to build a site for you:

* Hiring a professional can be expensive. I currently have a goal of building two websites each week for a year. Let’s assume I pay someone $500 to build a website (which is quite a reasonable amount for a well done site - it often costs much more.) That means I will be paying $1,000/week, every week, for a year. My money is better spent on marketing than design.

* Every time you want to make a change on your site, you must wait on a designer to make the changes. This is expensive and can be time consuming if the designer is busy with multiple clients.

* Just like a purchased template, most web designers are focused on looks and appearance, rather than functionality or sales. All the best marketers acknowledge that plainer sites are more lucrative because the focus is on the copy, the words, rather than fancy graphics or beautiful colors. Take a look at the top money-making sites on the net. They rarely are flashy or dramatically impressive.

* Relying on a web designer creates dependency. Generally the motivation of entrepreneurs is freedom so waiting for another person to make even the smallest changes to your site isn’t taking you in the direction you want to go.

3. Buy site-making software:

Every program I have seen involves a learning curve. One popular site builder, for example, has a 500 page manual, is expensive and a lot of the learning doesn’t transfer to other site systems. I looked at another one recently with a 300 page manual. The time that you spend learning these methodologies could be spent learning an HTML editor that will make you fully capable of building your own sites, whenever you choose, for almost zero cost.

Spend the time and learn do it yourself websites. I personally spent two weeks in ‘Dreamweaver Hell’ several years ago. All reviews indicated that Dreamweaver is the best HTML editor, so I bought a book and determined to learn the software on my own. The first book wasn’t long enough so I returned it for a second - and longer - book, which eventually was exchanged for an almost-1200 page manual. There were moments of frustration, tears, triumph, cursing and the thrill of success, and I emerged able to put together websites whenever I chose.

Saying “I want to be an Internet marketer” and not learning how to build websites for yourself is like wanting to be a dentist - and refusing to learn about teeth; like being a star athlete - and refusing to practice your sport. So what if your first sites won’t win a design award? You’ll get better. And you will be independent. Isn’t that the entire point of working on the Internet?

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.

Eight Simple, Yet Essential, Web Design Principles
by: Alan Richardson

As the internet evolves from its infancy into maturity, website development, design and marketing becomes more and more sophisticated - and more and more complex. Content manipulation, various scripting methods, fancy graphics and effects… and on and on… allow us to create some impressive web sites.

A good gauge of this complexity is the a slew of new internet-related acronyms which popup on a consistent basis. Heck, I don’t know what half of them mean. But one acronym I do know - and it’s not an internet creation - is nevertheless key to the development and design of any successful business website. Perhaps you’ve heard of it - K.I.S.S. As you probably know, it stands for ‘Keep It Simple, Stupid!’. And it’s a methodology widely employed by the best web developers, designers and marketers in the business. A philosophy that provides the foundation for all successful revenue-generating web sites.

From the largest, multi-product online business conglomerate to the one-page one-product mini-site, the purpose is the same. Provide visitors, whether internet savvy or first time surfers, with an online experience that’s fast, efficient, easy to understand - and dare I say it… yes, enjoyable.

Whether your an entrepreneur building your own web site, or reviewing one built for you by a web development and design expert, it is important your web site, your online business, adheres to these eight simple, yet essential, design principles. Heed them, and online success is sure to follow. Ignore them, at your peril. Here they are.

Each web page must have a purpose - and that purpose must be clearly stated. While a consistent design ‘look and feel’ is vital across all pages of your web site, each page has a specific function to perform. And that function should be clearly understood by all visitors to your web site. Whether it’s to elicit feedback, provide feedback, promote your company, present product information, etc., all play a role in your ultimate goal of growing your business.

Navigation around and through your business web site must be clearly visible and easy to use. See my article on web site navigation for more details.

Avoid distraction and clutter by minimizing usage of fancy flashing and moving objects, which provide more sizzle than steak, and make your essential products or services harder to find.

All business websites should have contact information clearly visible. A ‘Contact’ page is minimum. It’s also advisable to include contact information on every page of your web site. You never know when the urge to turn from prospect to customer will strike your visitor.

Not everyone has broadband. Yes, there are still a fair number of users surfing the internet with slower, less efficient, dial-up access. That may change in the future, but it’s a reality today. Ignore this substantial customer base and you’re business will surely suffer. To avoid this pitfall, pay careful attention to eliminate internet-clogging elements on your web site. When possible, use text instead of graphics, static graphics instead of animation, several smaller pages instead of one large page. Do this and you can feed quite well on the desertions from your flashier competitors.

For those who are broadband users, who are not negatively effected by all those ‘bells and whistles’, who may actually enjoy such an impressive display, remember, ‘form follows function’. This is especially important on a business web site, where functionality is key. All else is fluff and distraction.

For those of us who may be ‘visually challenged, make sure your web site is easy to see. Avoid fancy fonts and use the more legible standard-bearers, such as Times New Roman, Courier New, Arial and Verdana. For standard text, use font sizes of at least 10 pt… 12 pt is better. On many a web site, font sizes of 8 pt or less are used, perhaps in an effort to avoid the need to scroll. Let me tell you… it’s much better to scroll than to squint. For when I squint, I usually stroll… right out of the site. It’s also a good practice to limit the use of italics as they too are harder to read. Lastly, pay attention to text and background color. Although white text on a black background looks cool at first glance, it can quickly strain the eyes. You don’t want to do anything that will cut your visitor’s journey through your business web site..

Whenever possible, limit page lengths to no more than two page-downs. It is better for performance (page loading) and visitor attention when pages are short, quick reads. If necessary, breakup your text into multiple pages, with a ‘continued’ designation at the bottom of each page.
There you go. Eight simple, yet essential, web site design principles that can spell the difference between online business success or failure. Always remember, you’re never more than one-click away from visitor abandonment. K.I.S.S. your website and it will reward you abundantly.

Alan Richardson is a well-known internet consultant and publisher with http://www.optimalwebservices.com - a Web resource firm in North Easton, Massachusetts, offering free advice and information for web-based small businesses and entrpreneurs.

To read other articles by Alan, click here.
To signup for the free ‘Optimal Web Services for Small Business’ ezine, click here

Samantha Huggens distributed this articles and. she owns a site, turbulence training. Feel free to look at her vince delmonte website and 7 minute muscle website Thank you.