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Have you ever visited a website and noticed a bright, flashing virtual neon sign prominently featured on the site? Perhaps this sign hinted at some cool item you had to purchase, a book you had to read, or a movie that you absolutely must see. Did you ever click on such a sign? Of course you have! These signs are called banner ads and when such an ad is composed with a brilliant design it will attract attention. That is why any serous online business should look into the development of a solid banner as a promotional tool.

The internet has been in a state of flux for many years and if there was one constant it would be the presence of the classic banner ad on multitudes of websites. There is a good reason for this. Banner ads are simple and effective. This is why they have been the hallmark of website advertising since the internet first starting growing in popularity a decade ago. Of course, the proliferation of so millions of banners creates the need to stand out from the crowd. This is where a solid development team comes into play.

Despite one decade of success, many people erroneously believe that banner advertisements are an internet marketing dinosaur. That is, placing such ads on a website will not generate revenues. This statement is simply not accurate! The real reason why some banner ads do not work is because their design is flawed. Simply placing a banner ad on a website is not enough. The ad has to be aesthetically pleasing and visually effective as well.

Again, the success of a banner ad campaign will center greatly on the design employed. A bland advertisement will yield lukewarm results. On the other hand, a truly original, visually stunning, and lively banner ad will work wonders for a website marketing campaign. That is why it is always critical to seek the services of an experienced and talented development team. Such a team understands the proper aesthetics for composing a proper banner ad and will provide a finished product that will deliver results.

The placement of a banner ad also contributes to its success. In general, banner ads are placed either at the top, the bottom or the middle of the page. The selection of where to place the ad, however, should always be a deliberate one. Some ads make work well at the top while others work better at the bottom of a website. It is critical that the placement of the ad complements the design of the website. This is so the visitor to the site will be more inclined to click through the ad. A solid development team understands and takes banner placement into serious consideration when crafting the design of the banner. This way the ad and the website work in concert together for maximum benefit.

Banner ads still have a great future in the world of internet marketing. If you want to explore your options for such a campaign then it is best to work with a reliable development team that can craft a banner that will boost traffic to your website. This, of course, can significantly aid in boosting business. And that is, after all, the primary goal of any business.

What is it about a company website that really draws your attention? For many, it is the design of the site. For others, it is the ease of use, operation and navigation of the site. So, it goes without saying that if you wish to develop a functional commercial website it should embody all of these aspects. However, it is also important that the visitors to the site also remember your business. After all, you do want them to become your customers and not someone else’s. This is where the development of creative and stunning logos comes into play. Let the truth be told, a solid company logo can do wonders for the success of a business.

Imagine visiting a website that sold sporting goods equipment and the website’s logo was merely the words “sporting goods” in basic times new roman font. Sure, people can read it but what impact will it have? Probably none! Now, imagine the same website with the following logo design: the words “sporting goods” centered in the drawing of a foot locker that was overflowing will all sorts of sporting goods items. That would be a memorable design and customers would develop a positive response to your company thanks to such an image. Yes, well crafted logos can do a lot for an online business’ success!

Logos serve a number of purposes and one of the most important involves branding the company. Website logo branding creates a product identity that customers recognize and this makes them more likely to frequent the company. How successful is branding? Well, everyone knows that McDonald’s logo is the Golden Arches but how many people can identify Burger King’s? Very few and this is one of the reasons why McDonald’s does so much better in the consumer marketplace than Burger King. So, it is most definitely advisable that your web development includes serious consideration to the design of an impacting logo.

It is also important to note that “any old” logo simply will not do. That is, your logo design must be carefully thought out and properly devised. This process involves arriving at a logo that is easily recognizable, provokes a positive response in consumers, and remains memorable. If all of that sounds difficult – don’t worry. A solid, experienced website development team understands the components and facets that make a great logo. As long as you provide the development team with clear instructions as to what you are looking for the team will be able to craft logos that will aid your company.

It is, however, not out of the question that arriving at the proper design may require drafting a number of different logos. That is fine. Website development is a process and not a product. As long as the end result is a solid and visually appealing graphic that aids in the marketing of your online venture, then the process will be worth it.

It’s certain! You cannot survive highly competitive business environment if your website cannot survive on the web. If you are into eCommerce, then having a website with cutting edge content is a matter of life and death for you.

However, there are hoard of websites that are like a herd of sheep. One odd trendsetter leads and others follow. The time has come that demands to make one’s website different from the other. The responsibility lies on the shoulders of the ecommerce web designer to create something unique every time. Web content of ecommerce websites is also going to play the most crucial role as the whole gamut revolves around the contents. The search engines are scanning the content to rate the relevancy of the keywords. Keywords are going to live by their names and that makes the task of a web designer more challenging than ever.

Thankfully, Drupal ecommerce modules are a promising happening. Drupal is open source software for content management. It supports websites of all genres ranging from individual to entrepreneurs. Most content management systems can work on Drupal Core, a very basic version. This version provides for some fundamental facilities like search, caching, multilevel menu, RSS feed, etc. But these plain vanilla versions are not going to add flavor for an ecommerce website designer. Ecommerce website designer needs an extra embellishment that will exactly serve the purpose. As on 1^st August 09, the Drupal website had over 4600 modules written and contributed by the Drupal community. Content Construction Kit, Views and Panels were some of the most dominant modules contributed by the communities.

Drupal & ecommerce: profitable combine

Ecommerce websites designed using Drupal are able to manage virtual economies. Ecommerce website designers can embed features like invoice generation, sales summaries, subscriptions, taxes and shopping carts. It allows ecommerce transaction through the likes of PayPal and eWay.

Other than these features, some characteristics of Drupal make it the best of the lot. These include:

• Search engine friendliness: your site can certainly get Google friendly with contributed modules like smart .htaccess and RL optimization.
• Ecommerce website designers can write secure codes and make their site as secure as required for ecommerce.
• Drupal caters for specific content requirements of an ecommerce sites.

  Drupal modules for ecommerce

• Affiliate Drupal Shop: This module allows affiliate marketing of products on Drupal websites. This module lacks updates and does not rank very high on users’ charts.
• Alipay – ubercart: This is very famous Chinese gateway for payment.
• Adyen – ubercart payment: this module is capable of integrating payments through various sources like cash cards, bank transfers and even mobile phones.
• Amazon store: Amazon Product Advertising came up with this module. It allows instant installation and usage of Amazon Associate Stores.
• Authorise.net Advance Payment Gateway: Based on Customer Information Manager, this module allows storing customer information on authorize.net servers.
• Barcode: This module allows managing barcode directory into your Drupal module.
• CA Taxonomy: Along with ubercart 6.x-2.0 condition checks for nodes and their taxonomy terms can be set.
• Caixa Penedes: It enables payment gateway for the ecommerce package.
• Contenture: This module is for content publishers who use Drupal for micro-payments integration, via this revolutionary system.
• Other than these, various modules provide for Scandinavian, Chinese and Dutch direct payments.

Finally, an open source free content management system like Drupal is only paving way for future technologies that will change the face and formulas of the way we shop. Ecommerce website designers must equip themselves to get in line with this cutting edge technology that is only going to make our world much easier.

We back all of our web services by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. As an affordable and award winning Vancouver website designer, we are a full time, professional Vancouver website company with BC website designers offering free hosting and free front page search engine rankings with all the Vancouver websites we create. Todd Herman, CEO Premiumwebsites.ca.

The good old question, “How do I increase my website in the search engines?”  The first time I heard that sentence it was in the early December 93 and that set off my quest for a top spot not to mention even a spot on JumpStation search engine, now if i could only get my website on there. lol. So my first question was ” how do I get my website listed in this website.”  I’m reading how many people are in this list and wow if someone would only notice  my website! (me)  lol. Which brings a quote to mind, for the time  “Specialization becomes increasingly necessary for progress, and the effort to bridge between disciplines is correspondingly superficial. Now a days, its not like that at all its sad but true one has to do what ever they must do to survive in the S/E’s as long as its white hat SEO »”>SEO your good to go.

Obtaining top 5 S/E listings has come down either two things, how much money you got or  free time you have, let me explain. This does not have to be rocket science and the below bullet points have become a reliable system of mine. I have narrowed it down some for you to focus more on whats needed to obtain a front page search engine listing.

A SEO should know that that on-page SEO is only the face of a stable high ranking project, we all shoot for the top spot (more on that later.)  The bottom line is, as long as your website has clean up to date code, and all your metatags, images tags, header tags, not bold its tacky and unprofessional (use italic same effect), and mention your key words (words you want to be found for) on average once every 150 words.  You only need to preform a few  core optimization actions.  From your home page main navigation,  link to a web page with your main keyword/s  in it (website_portfolio.html).  Also name a few images that are on the page the same as well.

What most people dont know is S/E’s spiders read everything, as much info as you can give them.  At this point in my career my philosophy is;  its not about how high your link is its the stability of it when you get it  there is what matters.  You must consider this as your doing your on-page optimization, including image tags and metatags are full, (title, description tags only needed but make sure you  have the open directory tag <meta name=”googlebot” content=”NOODP, follow” /> .  So The Open Directory doesn’t hijack your title is search listings. (Google search this critical issue as your ranking will drop by pages with in hours!)  So make sure your index page is optimized good before you start your offline campaign.

This I would suggest a professional SEO  doing,  it should not cost you any more than 150 – 200 CAD to get your index page optimized,  as not everyone can afford to have the whole website optimized as some site run over 100 pages.  I’ve ranked top 5 spots for over 35 keywords for one index page without keyword spamming and I’m going to tell you how I did this, in order:

• Implement keywords with image, meta, header and name tags
• Index (home) page passes WC3 Markup standards
• Search out the top 50 article directories on the internet (listed below)
• Write or outsource 20 articles about each keyword (main website  services)  this was added to my home page.
• Made sure that each article was no-less than 600 words
• Make sure all the articles have a 2% maximum keyword density ratio (Some will say this is unimportant but remember, the more info you can give the spider when hes/shes there, the better keyword ratio varies.
  
• Made sure my 3 article hyperlinks in my article signatures contained my main keywords (shoot for the most searched keywords for your website service)  most article directories accept 3 hyper links in the signature.
• Make sure whom over is doing my article submissions does NOT submit my articles to link farms (Google search needed here)
• Proceed to CanadaSEOPro (Google search here) and purchase 1000 one way back-links
• They include article writing and manual submissions, one stop critical SEO shopping (notice italic effect)
• Make sure I don’t use any automatic article submitters that the S/E’s can detect its automation and penalize such domains with the hyper links (in your article signatures) .
• Sit back and wait approximately 4 – 5 weeks maximum
• Receive a link report from CanadaSEOPro, do a search for my main keyword/s making sure I do a screen capture saving that image as this is my first front page search engine listing , which you will own for over a years time.

I do this campaign on average every one and a half years and do the campaign again for the same MAIN keywords with the same links,  just change your not so important keywords, you have up to 25 – 30 proven keywords to play with on your home page. Make sure you change the content on your home page preferably on a daily basis, add a keyword related news feed and widget to your website, S/E’s love new, informative content.

Without a doubt, one of the most critical areas used by the top search engines to attach importance to a web page is link popularity. Google, specifically, had devised its own method for arriving at this importance ranking. The name of this system is Google Pagerank. There are two major components that define the web page’s link popularity and they are:

- The volume of links directed to the do it yourself SEO web page in the form of in-bound links to the website.

- The specific quality the in bound links possess

In short, the more volume of in-bound links directed towards a website, the better the affect on the website’s search engine ranking. In a way, the search engines consider each inbound link a ranking of the popularity of the site. The more votes a website gets the more important the website will be considered. Inbound links have a specific meaning and value to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, and Ask Jeeves.

These meanings can include the number, duration of linking time, and overall quality remain a major component of the search engine algorithms. The aesthetic quality of in-bound link centers on the importance of the web page providing the in-bound link. As a result, acquiring a inbound link from a webpage on MSNBC would be considered of much higher worth than a link that is placed on an unknown website that has a low Google PageRank.

See you on top!  Todd

As a Website Editor you have a fully maintained site or internal network (intranet). This system of information distribution is seemingly helpful though it continues to be far from ideal. The content of your pages are tirelessly hard to maintain and update without a full time specialized member of staff specifically in charge, so much of your content becomes dated and wrong.

Generally the systems for updating and maintaining are fairly complex so once again hard to track and function. This information could lead you to having out-of-date prices or offers still displayed, inaccurate information being displayed or shown and ultimately leaving you unguarded in the event of negative legal matters (this incorrect information possibly leading to customers or clients taking legal action for one reasons or another). This caution and common problem is an everyday issue when using professional, specific manual online tools such as Dreamweaver and FrontPage. These problems are what Content Management Systems are created to smooth over.

A Content Management System cradles and secures the design, maintenance, displaying and distribution of corporate information. It creates the complete end to end journey of the particular website, from providing templates and tools to facilitate the content, onto the display and then to finish. .the final archiving.

It also provides the user with abilities to manage the content and shape of the site, the appearance of the published content and the journey and navigation maintained for the end user.

Internet Content Management systems are controlling and creative systems, implemented fully as a web application in order to create, manage and maintain HTML content (HTML being the integral language that is written to create today’s web sophisticated web pages). The systems are used to operate and control mass amounts of internet documentation and their related images. They successfully guide the functions of editing, site maintenance, subject control and content implementation.

These systems allow users little understanding of HTML, however the platform still gives them the freedom to write and create web content and product. In short Web Content Management Systems facilitate web editing to another level of user, as explained users with minimal knowledge of programming languages can manage, create and produce web material with little effort or special training.

The majority of these systems use an enhanced database to store content, higher descriptors such as metadata (data about data) or other tools or creditors that may be needed by that particular system. It is common for XML to be used in interchanging data over the Internet and it is normally used to manage and facilitate versatile presentation options.

The page content will be displayed to web surfers based on a pre-determined group of templates. These templates can occasionally be processed as XSLT files which facilitate the journey of information onto your pre-determined website. The majority of Content Management Systems use server side caching to allow greater storage of information and quick access to that information. These are used generally on sites that are not edited on a regular basis but achieve plenty of internet traffic and hits.

A ‘fat client’ is a computer in client-server architecture networks which normally allows mass functionality free of the central server. The administration is usually completed through browser based interfaces the pre-mentioned ‘fat client’ is used by some more specialized systems.

Different and aside from web site builders, as previously mentioned website content management systems allow people to make changes and maintain their sites in a completely non-technical and user friendly capacity. However generally these systems and processes will still need an experienced Web Editor or HTML coder to set up more dynamic and thorough features and end content.

We back all of our web services by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. As an affordable designer and award winning Vancouver website designer, we are a full time, professional Vancouver website company and BC website designers offering professional website with free hosting and free front page search engine rankings with every Vancouver website we create.

Welcome to a new information and tips blog on website design and developments in the Vancouver area.

Although the concept of search engine optimization can be somewhat a headache, there are a number of basic search engine optimization techniques you can use to improve your organic search results. Keep the following in mind when trying to achieve top rankings for your website.

1. Meta Tags.

Meta tags are unseen lines of code at the top of each web page that gives information to the search engines about your page. Include the title tag, keyword stag, description tag, and robots tag on each page.

2. Build and update your sitemap regularly.

Building a site map is a effective way of giving search engines the information they need to crawl your entire website. There are plenty of free sitemap builders on the web that can help you generate a solid sitemap. Once you create a sitemap, submit it to Google and Yahoo and as many search engines as you can.

3. Ensure that all navigation is in HTML.

Way too often, navigational menus are in java script form. Though navigation technically still works in this format it is not optimized. build your navigation in HTML to enhance internal links throughout your website.

4. All images must include keyword ALT text.

Your image’s alt text is crawled by search engines. If you don’t include your keywords in alt text, you’re missing out on a huge potential for improved search engine result placements. Label all of your images associated to that specific keyword.

5. Use limited flash content.

Content generated through java script or flash is a big no-no. Some webmasters like to use flash because of the presentation. If you must, use it sparingly, but only after your site has been properly optimized with basic search engine optimization in mind.

6. Make sure that your website code is clean.

Keep in mind when optimizing a web page crawlers are basically only looking at your source code. When programming your web pages, having W3C compliant code can make all the difference. Run your code through a free W3S validation program before promoting.

7. Place keywords in your page content.

Search engines crawl your website and web pages for keywords. Shoot for a keyword density of between two and seven percent. Google likes your page to be at the lower end of this scale and Yahoo at the upper end. So I put mine in the middle.

8. Submit your website to search engine directories.

It’s always a good idea to let large search engine directories know that you’re out there. Submit your website URL to directories like Google, Yahoo, and DMOZ.

9. Build links to your website.

Create one-way links to your website using articles or forum posts. All major search engines value the importance of your website based on how many others websites are linking to it.

10. Learn the basics of optimization.

Optimizing your website for search engines takes time. Apply these basic search engine optimization rules to your web pages and it will come, but you’ll have to be patient. If you’re new to website SEO »”>SEO, or even a veteran, start by prioritizing which pages are most important to you and go from there. Soon you’ll find your website headed to the top

Todd Herman.

Good day, I have been a senior website consultant for over 14 years now. In my travels I’ve worked with some of the most talented web developers in the industry also with some of the most Mickey Mouse website developers known to man. Now… knowing a few tricks, learned over the years has helped me to decipher between the junk developers and the top notch developers. Here they are:

1. Never ever go on a developers word alone, get the facts, who they have worked for and any ask for any contactable references. Also make sure you can personally contact some of the other businesses/companies or client’s they/he/she has worked for.

2. Never ever tell developers your website budget, if it is over the amount they are estimating then they will tell you that’s what their estimate was, but in reality they were thinking way. So always let them give you their quote and never tell them your budget ever. With the correct website developer, this will possibly drop the cost of your website considerably.

3. Never let a website developer tell what you need for your company, your website yes but not your company. They may suggest some unnecessary features that are not needed as a productive web usability factor. The goal for this is to get the cost of your website up as much as they can. Do you blame them? A safe bet is to get as many estimates as you can, usually around 4 or 5 will do. Then you can bard er each developer with the others ones lower price, thus lowering your web development cost.

4. If a web developer says he’s the best in his field, he very well might be in his world, but he’s not. There is always some one better. They are out there they are just really busy and hard to find. Try doing a Google search with the word “company” in the developer you search for. Chances are that if they are a reputable company, then they will have everything you need for references, past customer testimonials and active website developments.

5. If you check a web developers web profile and it has not been active (nothing new) for my months then chanced are that there is a reason for this. Stay away.

6. Working with a part time developer, being they work full time or they are still in school will drastically increase your website production time as they are not able to finish at a full time production rate? Thus them asking for more money and more time to complete. Unacceptable, there is no reason for a 7-10 page website development to take more than two weeks time to 100% completion including small scale content management systems.

How to choose the right website designer?

7. A website development estimate is just that, an estimate, not a firm price. A lot of website developers will give you a estimated price then jacking up the final cost, telling you it took longer or that they needed to use some special form material. Unacceptable! There is no reason got a professional website company not to give an accurate solid bid (not estimate) and make them hold up to their part of the agreement.

8. Make sure you have a solid, tight contract with any website company. Signed by both parties. read the web developers small print it usually indicates extra fees or added fees due to timeline.

9. Make sure you get a solid timeline (time it takes to develop your website, from start to finish) for your website development and make them stick to it. Valuable company dollars can be lost with out an active, productive website.

10. If you must sign a contract why can we as website developers? I suggest with any website company making up your own contract stating your time-line and the functionality features that you want for your website in specific detail. Any professional website developer will gladly sign your contract if they have nothing to hide. If they deny your contract, this is sign of an in-experienced website developer or a plan to get more funds for your website. stay away!

11. Allot of website developers no matter how cost effective their price is and how experienced they say they are, UNLESS they have their company website link at the bottom of most websites they have developed in their web portfolio then stay away. In other words if they can not verify the websites they have created by a footer link on most of the websites they have built then chanced are its not their web portfolio and its a scam of some kind. Stay away!

12. Low costing websites (usually website templates) are just what you get for your money, a low effective website that sits there and does not effectively have any website usability features or search engine presents.

13. Use your common sense, if your website development terms do not feel right, chances are it probably isn’t. Get someone to look it over and always read the fine details. This is where most web developers add their extra fees and material cost that they hit you with on the end invoice. make sure that the website developer sticks to the terms set in your contract, its not only their contract its yours to protect you to. I hope this helps potential website clients to get more out of their website developments.

We back all of our web services by a 100% satisfaction guarantee. As an affordable designer and award winning Vancouver website designer, we are a full time, professional Vancouver website company and BC website designers offering professional website with free hosting and free front page search engine rankings with every website we create.

You are making a website design search engine optimization and growing you’re business harder than it needs to be. Nothing is more frustrating than spending the hard earned time and money necessary to design the perfect website, to find that it isn’t producing the results you had wanted. There’s a lot of dismay on the web about what is essential to succeed online. A lot of people think it starts and stops with a great website. Honestly the truth is, that is only an appreciable part of it.

At some point you have considered website design and SEO. You may have even tried to design your own website with applying SEO »”>SEO and not reached the effect you hoped to obtain. Like many other online website design and marketing techniques, website design and SEO together can and does work, by applying yourself and comprehending which keywords your website is being found with, by keeping familiar of tendencies in the industry and responding to them. With some fundamental awareness that you have previously been missing, you can open the avenues to new and exciting openings for profits that you have been absent from.

Let’s begin with the presumption that you want more visitors to your website, to effectively grow your business. With 86.7% of Internet users using search engines to find websites [Enquiro Search Study] it’s apparent that your website has to come up high in the search engines rankings, so you can get your piece if not most of those potential customers. There is more additional information than just getting your website a high ranking and implementing Analytics to your group of tools is what will help you get the most out of not only your website design and SEO tactics, but ALL your online marketing crusades

Analytics, as distinct by Wikipedia is the measurable extent of the actions of visitors to a website. In a commercial view, it non-specifically refers to the measure of which components of the website work towards the business goals; for instance, which pages stimulate visitors your purchase of your website.

There is an immense number of uses for website analytics. Website owners can use it to estimate website function and navigation as well as measuring customer interest in different advertisements and marketing campaigns, or it could be used to construct replication of the “whole picture” of your website’s lucrative gains. We want to center our attention on website analytics for website design and SEO goals in this article.

Good keyword phrases are more competitive today than ever, it takes more work to drive traffic to your site, and once you do you have to quickly obtain the interest of your visitors. Those visitors are very valuable and are the result of significant SEO efforts.

Therefore, it is critical to understand how visitors got to your site (which engines are driving traffic and which keywords), and even more critical to discover what they do once they get there. You need web Analytics reporting to tell you when and where people are leaving your site, where they are spending their time and much more.



Langley Website Designer
Chilliwack Website Designer
Vancouver Website Designer

When you look for a web developer today what is it that you look for? Is it the expansiveness of the service packages the developer offers? Is it the amount of experience the development team possesses? Is cost the primary area of consideration? Honestly, all these aspects are quite important.

However, it is also critically important to stick with a web development company that thoroughly understands all the new technological innovations that are emerging. This is because a website development team that understands the value of up to date technology solutions will provide their clients with what is necessary to remain competitive in the marketplace. And, yes, it being modern is critical to remaining competitive.

The reason that modern technology is so important is that visitors to a website want to achieve their purpose in the easiest manner possible. Case in point, when they navigate a website they do not want to stumble around the site trying to figure things out. They want an easy to use site that is up to date with all the modern commercial website innovations they expect. A solid website developer today knows this and will deliver on this end.

Similarly, the individual who owns the website will expect the same with the operation of the website on his end. Someone who owns a commercial website that deals with hobbies and collectibles understands his primary business. He may not be all that well versed on computer technology. That is why the ability to operate user and publishing functions on the website is so very important.

If the website’s owner has to struggle with the operation of the site then he is not going to achieve his desired results. Also, he will find his time and resources drained with a website that is not functioning as expediently as he thought. A quality website developer today realizes this and will ensure such a problem does not occur. How will he ensure this? By including all the modern software and technological enhancements needed to make operating a website as easy as possible for the client.

Website developments is a rather catch all term. Can it be possible for a web developer today to stay on top of all the innovations? Well, that is up to the developer. While it may be difficult to stay on top of all innovations, a quality developer will stay on top of enough aspects to provide a solid and expansive service.

For example, many website development companies also offer search engine optimization services. In the past, much of this was achieved by placing links individually on various directories and websites. Today, there are enhanced software programs that can expedite and streamline the placement of back links. A smart website developer today would use such a product since it would greatly benefit his client’s goals.

Langley Website Designer
Chilliwack Website Designer
Vancouver Website Designer