Todd Herman's Internet Business Info & Tips Blog

Presence on the Internet is a must for any business. If you don’t have a website then you are losing out on valuable branding and sales opportunities. What you need is a professionally designed website that has been designed by a professional website company. A proper website designer is the only person that can make your website work for you.

There are so many website companies around that at times it becomes virtually impossible to choose the right one. And if you don’t choose a proper website designer then all your investment in creating a website will go down the drain. The website will just sit there are do nothing except you paying the host for hosting the website. This is certainly something that you don’t want. Given below are four ways you can choose a professional website company.

1. Check out their track record – It is a must that you check the track record of the website company that you are planning to hire. Check whether they have had prior experience in designing websites of businesses that are similar to yours. Look for samples of work and ask for customer testimonials. You may also want to spend some time on the Internet and see whether someone somewhere has mentioned something about them. You can also ask in the local business community and see what they have to say.
2. Look at the cost – Cost is something that you must keep in mind when choosing a website designer as your website company. There are companies that charge a bomb and there are those that charge very less. You must keep other things in mind like quality and experience before you choose one of the companies. You may also want to visit multiple companies and get their quotes. This will also help you negotiate and get a good deal.
3. See whether they can give you support – Your website designer should be able to give you constant support. It should not be the case where you part ways after the website designing is completed and it is hosted in the cyber space. You should have access to customer support and should be able to contact your website company anytime you face any issue. After sales service is vital in website designing and you must choose a company that has a reputation for good support.
4. Look for other benefits – Your website designer should be able to give you additional benefits apart from designing and hosting your website. A professional website company covers every aspect of a company website. It designs and hosts the website also markets it. So, you should look at their marketing capabilities and whether they can execute a successful SEO campaign for your website. They should also be able to help you with the content if and when you need it.

A professionally designed website from a professional website company has immense potential as a marketing tool. When you have a website designer that designs a website that is appealing to people and also has useful content in it, a lot of your work is done.

To mark your presence on the Internet you must choose a reputable website designer as your website company.

 If you are planning to get a website for your company,  one of the most important things on your list would be the website designer.  This is the person who is assigned to design the look of your website based on your dictates. Granted, the all-around plan will come from you – but the designer must also know how to best execute it so the results look great. Because of this, it is very important that you are able to hire the best person for the job. After all, the future of your business will depend on it.

When looking for a website designer to handle the design aspect of your company website, it is always best to ask your fellow online business owners. In fact, it helps to take note of sites where in the layout and the design impressed you – then you look for that little credit at the very bottom part regarding the website company that made the website. It is always best to look for three or four of them, so you have options. Take note of the name of the company, the email address and any other contact information. Once you have it, the next step is to compose a proposal letter. It is very important that you also know what to put in the request proposal itself.

Aside from the usual greetings and background of your website designer, you should also throw in a paragraph or two about what you expect from the website designer in terms of design execution (read – any flash layouts or just basic html). Adding the budget range is also a great idea, but some like to hold off and compare their options by asking the website designer how much he plans to charge for that particular kind of job. Who knows, they usually end up quoting a lower price point than your budget. When all the responses come in, choose the two cheapest ones to call and discuss specific matters. You may also want to set up a phone interview or personal interview, too.

When selecting a website designer, ask the following important questions during the interview process:

• How long have you been working as a designer?
• Who are your biggest clients?
• Do you have contact info  for these clients?
• How soon can you get the job done?

This allows you to know about the key things such as level of experience and the time of turnover (for it can be difficult to have a really good designer but takes ages to complete the website). You may even ask if he can offer you special packages as a bonus. After all, most website designers for website companies are freelancers so they try to get as many jobs as they can.

If you want your website designer to succeed, it really pays fior itself to hire a award wining graphic designer. After all, the website is the place where business is transacted. It is where people see what you can do. If they like what they see in terms of design and navigation, the chances of your business becoming a success becomes greater. See you on top.

Hiring A Professional Plus Affordable Website Designer

Whether you’re an industry professional or an up-and-coming web guru, there are fundamental ways to improve your websites performance.  This brief and informative guide will talk you through each technique in order to improve the speed, navigation, and click through rates of your website.

1. Reduce bulky content.Flash based imagery can look nice and improve the aesthetics of your website, but these types of content always increase the load time of your website.  Some older browsers can be incompatible with newer flash.  This is a hassle for potential clients with slower Internet connections or those who might be viewing your website from a mobile phone. If you’re not careful, your potential clients will leave before your site has time to load.

   Make it a best practice to only include the bare minimum amount of high-resolution imagery or flash based content.  Think about the gain you’ll get from extra flash or imagery.  Is the gain worth the risks?  If the answer is no, then it’s not worth adding extra flash or imagery.

   It’s easy to optimize imagery for web use.  Programs like Photoshop or Dreamweaver always include an option to export images in a web friendly format.  These formats reduce the number of colours with limited impact on the quality of the image.

   Limiting text on your site will give it a streamlined look and make browsing easier.  You probably have a lot to say, but writing concisely is a virtue.  Don’t go into too much detail on your site’s landing page.  This is the first thing that clients will see and you don’t want your site to look cluttered.  You can always go into greater detail later in your specific sections.

2. Navigation is critical.Main panel navigation is the hub where users move throughout your website.  A good navigation bar will increase click through rates.  It should always remain fixed in one place across your site.  Main panel navigation oftentimes will either be vertical links or horizontal links directly under the page banner.  Avoid using bulky flash or java-script drop-down menus.  These can be tricky for some users to use and can behave unpredictably in different browsers.
   What do you want to convey? No one likes going in circles.

   Think about each section of your website and analyze how many clicks it would take to get there.  Look for any potential loops your clients might fall prey to?  Some important sections to include should be: Home, About us, and Contact.  Make sure these sections are easy to find and stand out.  Include a search form near the main panel navigation.  If you’re not using a content management system that has searching build in, you can use Google search for free [http://blog.jayesh.com.np/2008/06/how-can-i-embed-google-search-box-in-my-web-site/].

3. What you see is what you get.Take the time and learn clean HTML coding.  If you’d like to improve your websites performance, learning basic HTML is a must.  WYSIWYG strands for “what you see is what you get,” except you’ll usually get more code than you asked for.  WYSIWYG editors often include redundant and extraneous tags that slow down your website and increase load time.  WYSIWYG can make your site look different depending on the browser your clients are using.

   Many content management tools like WordPress and Movable Type allow users to edit content without looking at code.  This is great for writing quick blogs or bulletins, but avoid using a WYSIWYG when designing the core of your website. There are many free online guides to learn HTML, check out W3schools.com.

By using these three basic rules to improve your websites performance you can make access to your content easier and faster.  Learning these techniques will benefit you for life and is easy and fast

Creating a good website is not an end of the task. Rather, it is just a beginning. All efforts should be taken to make a website attractive and user friendly. Supposing that all strategies are adapted to drive maximum traffic to the website, will that be sufficient to maintain traffic and visitors regularly?

A visitor may land up on the website or a webpage after clicking some or the other link from the hubs, blogs, articles and other networking sites. But will that ensure that he stays navigating on the site for some time? Will a visitor like to come back to your site again and again?

Well, there are various strategies that can be implanted into the website to attract and retain a visitor. Some of these are:

Decide a keyword: Whole of the business and the website shall rotate around a keyword. The keyword shall logically relate to your business. This keyword must be used in the content at the right places. Visitors who come looking after a keyword shall find relevancy of the keyword with the website content.  Only then will he come back for more information.

Get the right content:  this is probably the most crucial aspect of a website. Visitors are looking for the website that provides them with the information they are looking for. if the content is crisp, clear and concise, it will compel visitors to come back to the website.

Create an attractive design: The design of the website should be appealing to the visitor. A well designed website is a powerful tool that will pull visitors to the site. Soothing color, matching theme and design are a must.

Not to forget, there are three main features of a successful website that will attract and retain visitors. These website multimedia features if used properly in the website can produce a high quality website. And these three aspects are:

Website Audio:  it is not uncommon these days to add video to the website. It certainly can add an attraction for the visitors. Audio, if used creatively and limitedly can give a feel and character to the website e.g. a signature tune playing at the background of the homepage or while the site is loading, can give a distinct identity to the website.  Visitors will certainly like to make a comeback to the website.

Website Video: Indeed, the popularity and convenience of watching videos on the internet is on the rise. Users are finding it advantageous to watch the information than read it. But the videos shall be of short length, may be of less than a couple of minutes only. Otherwise not only it shall be difficult to retain visitors’ interest, but also will make website slow loading. If short but interesting videos pertaining to the theme of the website are added, visitor is bound to come back for a second look.

Flash: Presently, the most common feature that can be found on almost all websites is Flash. It makes animation, graphics and imagery interesting to the viewers. It adds activity to otherwise monotonously presented information. A simple Flash animation can convey a point more creatively than pages of information. Here, a point must be kept in mind that overdose of Flash will make the website sloe loading; and many a times, browsers are not compatible with Flash.

A proper mix of website audio, website video and Flash imagery will make a website interesting to the visitors and they will certainly like to come back to the site again and again. The entertainment quotient created by website multimedia like website audio, website video and Flash will ensure that visitors get hooked on by the site. Todd H

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

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.