The Biggest Misconception

I have spent more than 5 years in the industry of Internet Consulting and website design & development in the India. One thing that has bothered me a lot during my career is the misunderstanding of what it takes to have a successful business website in place.

The biggest misconception is that a website is just a simple thing to do, and any teenager can create a very good looking website these days. This is very valid, but this will never get a business any benefit as the website is not an objective rather than a mean to promote a business website. It is like any other media; if used in the right way, it will pay back and with full speed more quickly than any other media.

So, what is it that you should look for as a business leader when deciding to take your business online? Simple: a professional or a company that starts bottom up.

What does this mean? This mean you need to have somebody to look at your business objectives and then transform them into an online business plan that enables your business goals and processes. It is like when you want to build a house, you will first need to hire an architect who will look into that landscape, your likings, the weather in that specific area, etc...

The price of making the wrong decision by having things done in a high level of ignorance and poor assumptions can be VERY HIGH.

Guidelines for Effective Web designing

Web design, the important aspect of a website has its relevant worth and significance in promoting, developing and garnering traffic to a web site. It needs to be unique and eye catching backed by rich and intuitive layout and copy. Following are a few guidelines of web designing.

Catchy Content Content, if rich and valuable will surely enrich the value of your web designing. It needs to be unique, error-free and well researched so that people can get relevant information and find it easy to browse through your site just according to their needs and requirements.

Good Graphics "First impression is the last impression". While concentrating over web designing, one needs to focus on this aspect and put due effort towards creating quality graphics and photos. Web designing should be in tune with proper optimization of photos and graphics.

Navigation of site Studies shown visitors want to get in to one site within 3 clicks and not more than that. Taking this 3 click rule under consideration, make your site easily reachable. While web designing, make sure every area of your website is easily accessed within 3 clicks. If needed, navigate in all major web sites.

Proper Links no frames Check the links of your site to determine that these are valid and lead to the original destination. Take assistance from the free online services which are specially set up to check the links of sites. Avoid frames to be used in your site as very often they make it hard to book mark individual pages of your site.

These are a few of several important guidelines that should be taken in to consideration while website designing. Your site should be unique in all respect, it should draw more traffic and garner more clicks. And it is only a good and effective web designing that ensures the same.

Summary: Web designing needs to be object oriented. It should be intuitive and value loaded. It needs to be unique and eye catching backed by rich and intuitive layout and copy. Here are a few guidelines about effective web designing.

Thanks to Tarun Gupta, is one of the most prolific writers in the affiliate marketing domain with his articles being published in numerous search related websites and newsletters. He is the founder director of web development and Web Designing India

Web Design Tips for Real Estate Websites

When it comes to web design there are certain things that should be considered and one of them is what the website is about. Real estate websites are one of the many types of websites on the Internet today. And for these websites to be successful they need to take into account certain design factors. The following tips will help any realtor design a successful real estate website.

First of all, you want to include photos of all the real estate that is for sale. If you have listings without photos you will miss out on most of the traffic and potential online sales simply because people want to see what they are buying and this is especially so with real estate. If I want to sell my property then the first thing people want to do is see photos of the home or else tour it in person. The next question is the price.

When people want to buy property they want to see the photos first and then know the price. This allows people to quickly determine if they can afford the home or not. Of course, I may be willing to sell my house for cheaper than the asking price but giving potential buyers an idea of the selling price will help you get more hits. That's because people today want instant information. They don't want to call or email you for photos or for the price. They want to see photos of the real estate on your website along with an asking price. Then, if they are still interested they will be willing to ask for more information. So, make sure that you also include a "submit a question" link on your website so that potential buyers can ask about your different properties.

Another great design tip is to break up the real estate photos in sections by location. So, all the real estate of one city in one link and real estate of other cities in other links. That makes it easy for people looking for real estate in one particular location. Or you could separate real estate by zip code. These design elements really depend on where you live and the amount of links or zip codes you would need to include.

These are just some tips for real estate websites to really gain traffic and do a good job of selling real estate over the Internet.

Web Designing Tips

More and more people are getting fond of web design. Whether for work related purposes or for personal-use purposes. Some people get short courses to study web designing and some rely on e-learning and get web designing tutorials on-line. For people who works as a web designer, they know the do's and dont's of web designing, for most of them at least. For those who don't, especially those who are new in the field, here are some basic tips that would help in enhancing your web designing skills.

Keep your index page short

For the convenience of your visitor, don't place all your content on the index page. Remember that you can use several pages on making a web site. Having a single-page site with all the contents there will make a visitor dizzy and confused.

Create a toolbar or menus easy navigation This will make your visitors stay in your site longer. After reading the content of your page, it is more likely that your visitor will look for other pages on your site that would interest him. Using short, clear and precise words will also help the visitor know the content of the page where your link is going. I suggest to place the navigation menu on top and the other main links on the right hand side menu. You can also use a drop-down menus if you have many links.

Clean layout design

Align the contents of the page properly. You can use as many tables as you need to be able to insert the images or whatever you need for the page. Beginners tend to put as much images as they can, thinking it would be nice to look at, but it is advisable to put minimal photos. For a safer design, you can also use templates.

Use uniform fonts

As much as possible, use only two to three kinds of font face and the suggested sizes are ten to fourteen points. Just use different font styles, italics for instance, to emphasize keywords. Also, use a font that is available on all computers to prevent having a messed up design.

Cross browser compatible

Keep in mind that there are other internet browsers other than what you are using. At least make sure that your codes and design are compatible to the major browsers like Internet Explorer 5+, Mozilla Firefox 1.0, Opera 7.0 and Netscape Navigator 6+ .

These are just basic tips and suggestions on web designing but are guaranteed useful. These can be used as guide on building your own site but still the overall design is in your hands.

Thanks to Mets Aquino, recommends ProAdultOutsourcing -- the leading provider of Internet Offshore Outsourcing Solutions

5 Tips to Create a Great Website

While the design layout and desired goals of nearly every web site are different, there are some common elements that go into creating a great web site that will appeal to your visitors and the spider-bots of search engines willing to index your pages.

1. Be descriptive with page titles and on-page section headings. Your web site's main page should never be titled "Home". Use titles that describe exactly what the page or site is about so that the search engines and humans who see your site listed in search results will know what clicking the link to your page will offer them.

2. Keep your graphics and other media to a minimum, and file sizes as small as possible. Obviously this rule doesn't apply to image galleries or other similar pages, but for the average web page nothing can turn visitors away faster than large media files that take too long to load. With images that you do use, be sure to include a descriptive "alt" tag. This has two purposes, for visitors who are viewing (or listening to) your web page in text-only mode, it lets them know what your media file represents, and for search engines it gives their spider-bots more information to rate your pages on.

3. Use valid XHTML coding. There are an increasing number of people browsing the web on mobile devices and you'll make more friends (and repeat visitors) with them if your pages load properly and fast for them. Unless you have the knowledge or money to provide a special mirror of your web site that is designed specifically for mobile devices--which is the best option--by using valid XHTML you will at least insure that your pages are optimized as much as possible for the widest range of mobile device users.

In addition, most search engines seem to favor web sites that are using valid XHTML more and more, so it is to your benefit all the way around to use it.

4. Don't stuff your text with keywords just because you've heard that can raise your search engine rankings. First, the search engines are getting better and better at recognizing this tactic and penalizing sites that use it. And second, all of your SEO work should be done with the goal of increasing your site traffic, but what good is getting lots of traffic if the stuffed content on your pages only turns your visitors right away? Create your content for human visitors, then develop your SEO strategies around it. Not the other way around.

5. Avoid trend-scripting. By this I mean that utilizing the latest web technologies and scripting techniques is fine when it improves your user's experience on your web site, but don't add fancy do-hickies just for the sake of having them.

If you run a web site about Goldfish, visitors will be coming to find information on Goldfish there, not to be impressed by your fondness for AJAX and Web 2.0 functionality.

Give your visitors exactly (and only) what they expect and want from your page, and they will say you've created a great web site.

Thanks to Scott Bannon, earned his first online revenue in 1995 and has made a full time living online since 2000. Get valuable advice and tips from Scott's free blog for webmasters, O'Bannon's Leap, where he chronicles the ongoing leap of becoming a webpreneur.