Custom Website Design

With the importance of the internet now long beyond debate, it has become imperative to have a strong web presence. One of the best ways of achieving this is through a well branded, professional and user friendly website that will help you to connect with and relate to your present and prospective customers.

Once you have realised your need for a website, the next step is to hire a professional web designer or web developer who possesses the expertise to translate your requirements into an information rich website, leaving you to concentrate on what you do best!

Hiring the right web designer can be a daunting task for those of us who lack the essential insights on what to look for in a good web designer.

Here are some tips that will help you in choosing the right Web Designer / Design Company:

1. Ensure That Your Site Has Quantifiable Goals

It is good practice to spend some time in planning and defining your website’s goals. Having clear and quantifiable goals for your website will help you in highlighting what you want your website to do and what is needed to get it done.

2. Purchase Your Own Domain Name

One of the smartest things you can do is to purchase your website domain name yourself as opposed to getting it done through the web designer. By purchasing your own domain name, you can make sure that you have complete control over your website. Web designers may come and go but the domain control will be yours.

3. Ask For Customer References

While you are in the process of choosing a Web Design Company, ask them for customer references, preferably with numbers you can call. Talking to past customers will help in knowing more about the designers, their expertise, style of working and respect for deadlines.

4. Establish Their Track Record

Building a good website is not a one time affair. To get real value from your website, it must be updated regularly. Hence, it pays to make sure that you can trust your web designer and make sure that they will still be in business years from now.

5. Check Their Designs

A good way to judge a web designer is by looking at websites they have designed recently and seeing if they are in a style you like. Pay attention to factors such as usability, navigation, layout and their potential to be found on the internet.

6. Meet Them At Their Offices

Before making a final decision on the web designer you choose to hire, meet them at their place of work. This will help you to know more about their setup, professionalism and style of doing business.

7. Pay For An Original Design

Never pay a web designer for a template. Not only will search engines penalise you for having non original content but you will have lost the chance to have a unique site developed that truly fits your requirements.

8. Check To See If The Designer Develops SEO Friendly Code & Uses CSS

Simply creating a pretty website is not enough in the midst of so much competition. Good designers understand that for a website to do well, it must be Search Engine Friendly (SEO) and should be designed using CSS instead of tables.

9. Site Should Confirm to Current Legislation

Make sure your website conforms to the current legislation. In the UK this includes the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the Data Protection Act, the EU Freedom of Information Initiative and the Companies Act 2007.

10. Develop a Marketing Plan

Your web presence is incomplete without a comprehensive SEO and online marketing plan. Remember, your site won’t sell itself!

Picture this…

There is a person looking for a computer on the internet, but he has trust issues so he wants a computer with a 10 year guarantee - he searches for this indistructable computer using a search engine and types in “computer 10 year guarantee”. imagine being able to target this consumer not only from a geographic perspective but also from a phychographic one.

At no time in history has there been a medium where this is 100% possible. search engine marketing allows businesses to laser target website visitors and to custom make their offering to suit the clients needs to exact specifications.

Think about it you have something to offer that is quite generic and in the past it was difficult to differentiate your product, now there are many differentiating factors that can be applied online. Whether it is to overcome risk perceived or status needs, affordability, better service or any other factor reflected by the search criteria chosen by the target market.

This is how…

No 1 you have to know what people are looking for and fortunately search phrase statistics are available and can be researched online. This information is invaluable as it is unbiased market research, a person does a search in the privacy of his computer screen so there are no external pressures to be sociably accepted or not to hurt the feelings of the interviewer. What they type in is exactly how they feel and what they want.

Once the most viable phrases have been selected the website content, layout and functionality need to be designed in such a way to make the targeted visitors (self-qualified prospects) feel at home when they arrive and prompt them to enquire or buy.

It is then necessary to get the website ranking in the first page of millions of search results, beating other websites to the punch. This is done by making the optimised page search engine friendly and giving the phrases high relevance with optimisation techniques like key word densities in the meta area and body text, link popularity.

Measurement and testing like in offline promotional campaign it is crucial to measure its success. The site statistics need to be monitored and evaluated. This gives insight into visitor behaviour, if for instance vistors are leaving after less than one second it might be that the home page is loading too slowly and visitors are not seeing the content, or if they do spend more than a second but do not go deeper into the site it could mean that the unique positioning of the site is not clearly conveyed.

Testing should be done, one aspect at a time, many a rookie web marketer makes the mistake of changing several things at the same time and then doesnt know what caused the change in visitor behaviour.

This is how to do it:

- Make changes to Website over a predetermined test period
- Make one change at a time (to evaluate its impact)
- Keep a record of changes
- Extract the Following Information From the Site Statistics (over test period)

Number of visitors (v)
Number of page views (pv)
Duration - percentage of visits longer than 2 minutes (d)
Enquiries - number of enquiries (e)
Working out the success rate
Visitor to page view ratio (vpr)
vpr=pv/v
Average duration - divide each months visitor durations longer than 2 minutes (mvd) by total to get average visitor durations (avd)
avd=mvd/tvd

Average enquiries - add number of enquiries to get total enquiries (te).
Divide monthly enquiries (me) by total enquiries (te) to get average enquiries (ae) [ ae=me/te ]
Success rate (weighted average) = (vpr*2)+(avd*3)+(ae*5)
Give vpr, avd and ae a relative weighted number out of ten based on the importance

We now have a weighted average for page view, duration and enquiries. When making changes to a website (one at a time) one is now able to test how this change influenced design. Should there be an improvement in the success rate, then you know that the change had a positive impact on visitors, the inverse is obviously also true. This way one can optimise the design and get a higher visitor conversion rate.

The first place to start is with keyword phrase research before you publish your website. Think about researching for the keywords which are best suited to your website. Keywords are the words that the visitors input into the search engines in order to find the information they are looking for. You must try to find out a keyword phrase that has good search volume and at the same time that has least competition. There are online tools available such as http://inventory.overture.com which will help you find effective keywords.

Once you have chosen the keywords and created the website, you can now publish it. After publishing the website, there are few more steps that you need to pursue in order to improve the visibility of your website in all the major search engines such as Google, MSN, Yahoo, etc…

You should try to use your keywords several times on each page, this is called keyword density. This is the best way to show search engines that your webpage should be in the search results for that specific keyword phrase.

Next, you should now consider adding a HTML Sitemap as well as XML Sitemap. A sitemap helps your visitors to get an idea about the structure of your website as well as it provides search engine spiders a pathway to all the inner relevant web pages of the website to get indexed. The sitemap also provides information to search engine spiders about new content and date of the modification to the webpage. A sitemap can be integrated in two versions, the HTML version for the visitors, and the XML version for the search engine spider.

Once you have uploaded the sitemaps, you should check your website against valid HTML and CSS. Validation is very important for a quality website that wants to rank fr the long haul.

Once your site is up and running, apart from updating new content frequently (at least 3 times a week), it’s important to check for dead or broken links. If you find a dead or broken link, remove those links immediately or correct the file path. These links will reduce the credibility of your website to visitors and search engines.

You will also want to check for backlinks. Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. The number of backlinks is a sign of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Backlinks are also called as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links. Search engines frequently use the number of backlinks that a website has as one of the factors for determining that website’s search engine ranking.

One of the advantages of internet marketing is that it is very easy to test your marketing results. This is very essential – you should use tracking software to keep track of which ads, keywords, etc are bringing you sales and traffic. We recommend using Google Analytics because it gives quality feedback and is free to use.

Remember, focus on the most effective methods, and keep testing – you can continually refine your marketing and improve your presence on the internet.

A website which is carefully created with chosen keywords, pertinent original content which is updated often has a chance to perform well in major search engines while generating high traffic.

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.

Joomla! is the latest buzzword in the IT world today. So what exactly is it? Joomla is a Content Management System that has a host of powerful online applications and also helps you in building websites. Joomla allows web designers as well as end-users to effortlessly and easily maintain and manage a dynamic website despite having little or no knowledge or proficiency of the code. This powerful content management system is controlled by a CSS stylesheet and one single XHTML document. Joomla gives the user total creative control over the appearance of the website by availing of the many Joomla templates available. Best of all, you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to avail of this award-winning software. Joomla is available free-of-charge for anybody to download.

How Joomla! templates help
With Joomla you won’t ever again need to hire a web designer for huge sums of money. You can choose a free Joomla template from the many available and build your own website or upgrade your existing one for free, and all this in less time than you ever thought possible. All it takes is a click of a button for you to change your website into a text editor right in the browser itself. With Joomla templates you can easily add new pages and add or edit pictures, menus and text as well as video and audio, then click the “Save” button and you’re done! That’s all it takes for you to design or re-design your own website- literally at the click of your fingers!!

What are Joomla! templates?
A Joomla template functions as a basic foundation design within the Joomla Content Management System. You could use a pre-made Joomla template or custom-make Joomla template for total creative control over the appearance of the website and presentation of the content. The Joomla template is designed so that when you insert your content, it inherits the colors, text size, navigation, link styles and menus of the template, giving your content a completely new look.

One of the advantages of Joomla is that flash joomla templates can be easily and instantly applied to give your website a totally new look. The graphics, positioning and colors can be altered without any change in content. Joomla templates that use CSS or cascading style sheets help to produce layouts without having to use tables. The advantage of this is it is easier to validate the template code to the standards of the World Wide Web Consortium and it also does better in search engines, loads faster and is easier to maintain.

How to create a Joomla! template
There are plenty of joomla template tutorials available online for all those who are intimidated at the thought of using Joomla to re-design their website. Go ahead and avail of a joomla video tutorial for a first-hand look at how to build joomla template as well as the many ways to use it.

Most online tutorials give you step-by-step explanations and instructions on all aspects of joomla including:
•What is a joomla template, how it works and the difference between a template with and without content.
•Components of a template and the functions they perform.
•The unique process of designing an active web page as opposed to a static (X)HTML web page.
•How to build joomla template.
•How to use a pre-made joomla template as well as how to custom-make joomla template to suit your own individual preferences.
•How to create layouts using the innovative cascading style sheets instead of conventionally used tables.
•Joomla’s table-less design and its implications with regards to the World Wide Web Consortium standards.
•How to style modules and place them as well as new techniques and tricks for rounded corners, variable page widths and text resizers.

For some internet marketers, web directories is not something they would have preferred if only they are given a choice. But without a doubt, web directories are sure-fire ways of driving website traffics.

These directories are effective ways of building PR (page rank) that helps websites get good rankings in the Google search engine. Google uses page ranks to grade the results based from the searches that visitors are making. Having a higher PR is having a better listing compared with others.

PR are based on the backlinks that you have and its quality. So it follows that the more backlinks you have, the higher your PR will be. You will also get better rankings.

This is the essence behind using web directories and linking. Once these combination have worked successfully, you can expect an increase in your website traffic.

To get a list of web directories, all you have to do is type in the keyword in the search engine. Then, all you need to do is choose from among the number of lists given.

Linking like crazy to other websites.

Ok so maybe submitting links is not really an easy task. Since there are not many computer-generated linking technologies yet, you have to submit them manually. But if you think of the benefits you will be getting from these links, it will be worth all the trouble.

Having a good content is important in making genuine backlinks.

There are two effective ways of doing this:

First, is the use of media or downloads. It is a fact that majority of website visitors are very much inclined to downloading and media. In addition, many people welcome them as something different from the usual wordings they encounter most of the time.

You will notice that once you have created a number of these on your site, the number of websites traffic you are getting will double. People are likely to come back to check on if updates to the media that you have on your site.

The second one is article writing. The good thing about articles is that you can post them to as many sites as you can, as long as their theme is related to yours. This way, you can have your backlinks spread all over the Internet through the resource box placed at the end of each article. With your articles, you get to reach more consumers that you cannot normally do if your article is only posted on your site.

Besides, articles are well-loved by search engines. Provide them with quality contents and you are sure to be read by these engines.

Giving more of your attention to search engines.

Search engines plays an important part for all internet marketers. They are a great way of driving website traffic. Google rankings are depending heavily on the backlinks used and the page ranks of each sites.

Going to forums or discussion pages.

This is a way of getting your message out while generating website traffic in the process. Just like web directories, you can just type in the keywords on the search engines to get a list of forums you can join.

You may have noticed that some people posts questions on forums. If you find that they are somehow related to your topic, fell free to answer the query being asked.

To register in forums, put in your URL. On the signature part, put a short description about your website. If you are planning on posting regularly to these forums, you can also change signatures to display the development happening on your website.

If you maintain your posts on a regular basis, you can have a steady flow of website traffic.

These are just some of the many ways you can do to be able to drive traffic to your website. There will always be new and easier ways of doing this. But for now, these are the ones being widely used. They also have proven their usefulness in the online marketing world.

Keep on using these strategies in order to maintain your website traffic. You can always come up with your own also.

The Internet has provided us with new ways of doing things such as communicating, gathering information and making business transactions. Websites form the backbone of the Internet. They are primarily created to be able to serve as a tool for people to live their lives in this modern world.

The use of Internet application is very important especially to the people who have impairments. 20% of the American population is affected by some kind of disability. The Internet has been able to give the disabled avenues through which they can perform functions that they have not been able to do before.

Usability

The usability of websites is one of the pressing concerns of web developers today. Usability refers to the easiness of navigation and overall access of information through a website. Websites are now being developed to be able to provide maximum usability to the widest range of surfers. A website’s features must be able to assist the surfers rather than be hindrances.

There are many perceived benefits from improving the usability of a website. Not only will the surfers, particularly those who have some kind of impairment but also the web developers, the businessmen and the whole Internet community as well.
Improved website usability will result in end-user satisfaction. A survey which involved people who were trying to avail certain services and products from the Internet revealed that 39% of all availing attempts are spoiled because the buyers are discouraged by the poor usability of the website. Improving the website will definitely end in user satisfaction.

Usability will also result in the competitiveness of the website. There are millions of websites that are out there today, and the number is growing faster than ever before. What separates the popular ones from the not-so-popular ones is website usability. People want to access information through websites and they are particularly looking for two basic features: quality of content and access. There’s no sense in designing a website with poor information. Poor access tools will also make a website not likable even though it contains well written contents.

Page Length

There are many factors in determining the usability of a website. A website with good usability will have quality contents, good accessibility, navigation and readability. The length of the pages might seem like an impertinent thing when it comes to usability, but it is actually a factor to consider in website development.

The Internet browser is like a portal which takes people to wherever they may want to go in the virtual world of the Internet. This is why the length of the web page is important. The pages must be designed in a way that they accommodate and present the information to the visitors in a comprehensive way which is easy on the eyes.

Short versus Long

When it comes to determining the length of the page, it all boils down to a simple yet important decision- whether to use short or long pages. In determining this, one should always remember that the length of the web pages may not be uniform. The length of each page must correspond to its contents and its purpose.

In determining the length of the page, one must consider the following:

1) Contents

Again, the length of the page is dependent on its contents. The homepage which contains the overview of the webpage utilize short pages most of the time. Pages which contain information which can be easily be browsed should also utilize short pages. Pages containing long graphics should be put in short pages as well.

If the page contains information that need to match the size of its paper counterparts, the said web page must be long enough to do so. Sitemaps and other such pages must be long enough to accommodate all the information needed.

2) Go back to the goals

The overall determination of the length of the web pages must be structured within the whole planning process for the development of the website.

3) Scrolling

A developer can choose between providing a scroll bar or a page link in developing pages which contain reading materials. If speed is deemed as a key factor in the reading process, the developer might want to use a link instead of a scroll bar.

These are just some basic ways on how to improve a website’s usability with the proper determination of the web pages. These should be integrated with the other ways of improving website usability.

Usability study normally precedes the interface and technical design of the website construction process, which involves establishment of complete user profiles, creation of the interface model or sample and extensive user testing.

The ideal web interface design demands for organized approach in the designing process. However, to guarantee optimal performance, web usability testing is needed. This domain testing allows inexperienced users to supply data regarding what really is working, as have been expected and then what is not working. Only as soon as the subsequent repairs are constructed and done can a website be considered to achieve optimized user interface.

This procedure, though in several cases takes a few repetitions, provide the necessary and important information and evidence for the finished web interface functionality and design, resulting in a website interface that conveys clear messages to visitors, regarding where they actually are, easily predict what is about to happen as well as where buttons will take them and what they need to do to accomplish their goals. The ease and simplicity of all these activity is what defines a usable website.

The experience of the user is the main factor to acceptance; this is where interface design comes in the designing process. Whereas product engineers give emphasis on technology, specialists in website usability concentrate on user interface.

The significance of a great interface user design is the driving force of a product’s acceptance or rejection.

If visitors have hard time learning and using, a complicated website, even an excellent product can fail. Interface design must make your product simple to use and understand, so that it results to user acceptance.

Here are guidelines for creating website usability:

System status. Your system must always update users regarding what is happening, through correct feedback within a reasonable time.

Simple words. Make sure that your website speaks the language of your visitors, having phrases or words familiar to them. Construct information that appears in a most natural tone and in consistent order.

User freedom and control. Note that internet users at times encounter mistakes in system functions and need an “emergency exit” in order to easily leave that undesirable situation. Support in your system “undo and redo”.

Consistency. Visitors must not need to question whether different situations, words or actions represent the similar things. Follow platform principles or guidelines.

Retrievable instructions. Making actions, options and objects visible and easily retrievable. Your visitors do not need to remember certain information from a particular part of a dialogue “to another”.

Efficiency and flexibility of use. Use accelerators to speed up interaction between experts and the system. Construct it in such manner you’re your system is able to cater both the experienced and inexperienced users. Permit users to customize frequent actions.

Users help. Display error messages in plain and simple language that accurately indicate what the problem is and then propose a solution.

User interface and design principles:

1. Structure. Your web design must establish user interface persistently, in useful and meaningful ways that are based on consistent and clear models easily recognizable; put all related and similar things together.

2. Simplicity. Design your website simply, making common tasks easy to do, clearly communicating in the language of the user, and providing shortcuts that meaningfully are related to those longer procedures.

3. Visibility. Design your website that it keeps all materials and options visible without disrupting your visitors with redundant or extraneous information. Never overwhelm your visitors with too much alternatives.

4. Feedback. Your design must keep your visitors well informed of certain actions, changes of condition, errors or certain exceptions which are of interest and relevant to them through concise and clear language.

5. Tolerance. Your design must be tolerant at the same time flexible, reducing misuse and mistakes by permitting “undo and redo”. Likewise prevent errors from occurring by accepting different sequences and inputs by translating all logical actions.

How your website interface is designed either makes or breaks your business. Although website functionality is a significant factor, the manner by which it imparts that functionality or user performance is likewise as important. A website that is hard to manage will not be used at all. Period.

There can be no argument about the importance of design in attracting Internet users to a particular web site. No one would bother to explore the contents of a site if it does not contain eye-catching graphics that can please the visual sense of the users. With so many kinds of web sites existing online, it is extremely challenging to attract users and keep them interested in the site.

But a web site developer does not simply apply graphics freely on a site. Graphics should be used in the correct manner, or else, users might get turned off because the graphics featured just overwhelmed or confused them.

While it is true that attractive design is important for reasons that need not be explained, the choice of design must be carefully considered against the fulfilling the needs of users. When done successfully, it could be safely said that the web site has achieved its goals.

Graphics used in the Internet is inextricably linked to multimedia. Multimedia is a combination of graphics, text, sound, and animation to express a message to users. The multimedia features that will be incorporated to a web site should be dependent on the content. In general, multimedia and graphics should serve as supports to content, and should have precise, instructional purpose.

According to research, animated images can facilitate the transfer of learning in a positive way if it is utilized to show a vital part of the concept that is being illustrated. On the other hand, animation can serve as a barrier to user recall and performance.

Here are the guidelines in incorporating graphics to web sites:

1. Justify the usage of the graphics
The most obvious problem that can be seen on web pages is the over-usage of graphics. The main downside of this is that complicated, unnecessary graphics can take a long time to download, and this, of course, will not sit well with users. The graphics to be applied should support the transfer of data and should also be in relation to the accompanying text.

2. The difference between graphics with text-redundant data and those containing information that is non-redundant is that the former facilitates and ushers in the learning process, while the latter does not either help or slow down learning.

3. Consistency should be a priority in graphic design

4. Web pages should be marked up so that text will be downloaded before the graphics. In this way, the users will know immediately if the page has the information that they are looking for, and if not, they will be able to save precious waiting time knowing that they do not need that certain page.

5. The loading of graphics should be controlled as such that loading will commence from top to bottom, and the users scrolling down the page will encounter said graphics.

6. The downloading of pages should be fast in order to save users waiting time, and in order to reduce the chances that they will get frustrated that they will abandon plans to download. Here are several ways to achieve fast download periods:

-Keep the physical size of the graphics to a minimum
-Images should be combined in order to minimize the number of server connections. Remember, the more connections that exists, the slower the download time will be
-Decrease image resolution
-Limit the colors that will be used for the images
-Limit the use of animation

Animation is very much a part of web graphic design. The primary difference between web text and graphics and contents that are print-based is the dynamics. Moving displays attract the attention of users as long as the frequency of the display is regulated. Too much animation display can irritate and distract users. An animation that is perpetually moving can destroy the readable quality of the web page.

The usage of blinking texts should be avoided. It has long been regarded as an overused feature and the latest browsers no longer support it.

In designing a web site, there always exists a conflict between the desire to have total control over the appearance of a page and the need to permit users to establish their own preferences. The general appearance of the page should be made by the designer, but there are certain elements that users should have control over, such as color and text background, and the option whether to display graphics or not.

It takes a considerable amount of effort to establish and maintain the attractiveness and efficiency of a web site. If the guidelines above will be followed, all the efforts of web designers will bear desirable results. They only have to remember that the benefit of the users will always be the basis for everything.

In this short article, you’re about to discover 3 of the most important web design secrets you can use to get the far more affiliate sales out of your current website visitors!

Let’s get started:

1. Create fast loading web pages.

The faster your site loads, the better. Often people have expensive flash sites that look good, but they’re causing a lot of your visitors to leave before they get to know you.

If you do want to use flash, DON’T have it be the page your visitors first see (an exception might be a corporate site or one for the sole purpose of putting on your business card).

A large amount of visitors will NOT be patient and wait for it to load. You’ve got to keep in mind that the web is a place where people can quickly click away.

If they don’t see what they’re looking for, they’ll leave because there are many more sites for them to look at.

You must capture your visitors’ interest quickly. Let them know you have what they’re looking for.

If you have flash because you want to show your music or work, then have it within your site. Pull people in first.

Otherwise you’re going to be throwing away your time and money spent getting people to your sites.

2. Use the power of words to grab your readers’ attention, not just images.

Creating headlines are a powerful way to pull right visitors into your site and let them know you have what they’re looking for.

For great headline ideas, go to the bookstore or Amazon.com and check-out magazines that your visitors might read. What headlines do they use to grab people’s attention and get them to buy?

You can then adapt the headlines to fit what your site has to offer.

Images then compliment the text by helping to convey a story your text tells them.

This is why you’ll notice all of our sites to sell the products are low on images and heavy on sales copy. The images alone don’t sell any of the products, but they do HELP sell it by making the sales copy more effective.

A good way to explain this is if you were hiring somebody to mix your music. If all they had was an image of the mixing engineer hard at work and you knew nothing else about him, is that enough to sell you?

It helps, but the answer is most likely no way! You still have a million questions about the engineer. Who has he worked with before? How much does he cost? Why is he or she worth that amount? Is he or she easy to work with? And the list goes on and on.

Simply put, “The more you tell, the more you sell.” Answer your visitors’ questions and concerns. Don’t be concerned about having too much text, as long as what you’re saying is of actual concern to your visitors.

3. Decide what action(s) you want your visitor to take.

Remember this and repeat it as you design your sites, “The confused mind takes no action!”

This simply means you need to spell-out and make clear exactly what you want your visitor to do.

* Do you want them to check-out a recommended product?

* Do you want them to sign-up for your newsletter?

* Do you want them to buy your product or service?

* Do you want them to read your articles on your website?

If so, make it easy for them to do so… and make it clear exactly what they should do.

Don’t hesitate to directly tell them to sign-up for your newsletter, read your articles, or take a specific action.

You may think it’s obvious. But, a reader that stumbles across your website and does not know you may not.

An example of the power of this advice is if you have a link that says “Click here to see articles” you will usually dramatically increase the amount of people clicking on that link than if it only said, “Articles.”

All you’re doing is spelling out exactly what your visitor should do.

When designing your sites, think through where your visitors are coming from (search engines, articles, press releases, etc..) and then give them what they’re looking for.

The bottom line is this… keep your site straight forward and simple (the less options, the better) and have it focus on the visitor. Give him or her exactly what he or she is looking for.

As a result, you skyrocket the amount site visitors, affiliate commissions, or customers for your primary venture!