5 Important Rules in Website Design

When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

Who Is Your Audience?

Understanding the type of people who visit your site is a very important task because you can use that information to enhance your site to suit them. As a result, you will gain more loyal returning visitors that come back again and again for more.

What is the age level and what kind of knowledge does your audience have? A layman might linger around a general site on gardening, but a professional botanist might turn his nose at the very same site. Similarly, a regular person will leave a site filled with astronomy abstracts but a well educated university graduate will find that site interesting.

Take your audience’s emotional state into consideration when building your site. If a very irritated visitor searches for a solution and comes across your site, you will want to make sure you offer the solution right up front and sell or promote your product to him second. In this way, the visitor will put his trust in you for offering the solution to his problems and is more likely to buy your product when you offer it to him after that.

When you design the layout for your site, you have to take into account the characteristics of your audience. Are they old or young people? Are they looking for trends or are they just looking for information served without any icing on the cake? For example, introducing a new, exciting game with a simple, straightforward black text against white background page will definitely turn prospects away. Make sure your design suits your site’s general theme.

Try to sprinkle colloquial language in your sites sparingly where you see fit and you will create a sense that your audience is on common ground with you. This in turn builds a trusting relationship between you and your audience, which will come in useful should you want to market a product to your audience.

The Importance of A Good Design

Your website is the hub of your online business; it is the virtual representation of your company whether your company exists physically or not. When you are doing business online, people cannot see you physically like how they could if they were dealing with an offline company. Hence, people do judge you by your covers. This is where a good design comes in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professionally, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

Similarly, the same case is with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the opposite, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are giving your visitors the perception that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and you care about professionalism. You are organised, focused and you really mean business.

On the other hand, you should also have anything related to your company well designed. From business cards to letterheads to promotional brochures, every little bit matters. This is because as you grow your business, these items become the face of your business. Once again, think of the “salesperson dressed shabbily” anology, and you will get my point.

Better Search Engine Ranking

If you are setting up a website, follow these simple rules to improve search engine rankings of your site. You can also follow these techniques if your website is not ranked high in search engines for certain keywords. Concentrate on the home page of your site and once you learn the techniques, you will be able to apply them to the other pages of your site that will have multiple high ranking pages.

1. Find keywords (or key phrases) relevant to your website. Go to the overture keyword selector tool (type key phrase overture inventory in Google) and check the popularity of the keywords you want to use. Avoid highly popular keywords. Highly popular keywords are very competitive and the least popular keywords are search engine traffic starved.

Select a dozen keywords and key phrases from the middle of the list. This is a very important exercise and you should spend at least a couple of hours, if not more, researching different keywords. While you are researching your keywords, check your competitors by doing a search in a couple of popular search engines like Google, Yahoo, etc., using those keywords. Keep a record of your competitors’ urls and other information because you don’t want to waste your time doing the same search again in the near future.

2. Use the keywords you selected into the meta tags of your home page. Meta tags are located in the head section of a web page. Go to one of your competitor’s website and select View and then Source from your web browser’s menu to view the html source of the web page. You will see the meta elements.

The two important meta tags are keywords and description meta tags. Don’t leave them blank. You can list your keywords, separated by comma, in the keywords meta tag. Construct a catchy description using your keywords for the description meta tag.

3. Use the keywords in your title tag. The text you use in the title tag appears in the title bar of the web browser. The title tag should be less than 64 characters long. Again, the key is to use a meaningful title using the keywords. Don’t just make a laundry list of your keywords for the title tag.

The title tag and your meta description may end up in many search engine listings. So, spend sometime to make these two elements interesting, meaningful, and relevant to your site.

4. Use the keywords in top heading (h1) tags of your page. Use one keyword (or a key phrase) for each h1 tag. Use these h1 tags for the headings of your contents.

5. In the home page content, use bold, using the strong html element, to highlight some of your keywords.

6. Italicize some of the keywords in your page.

7. Use the keywords in alt tags of images. You should always use the alt tag for all images.

8. Encourage others to use the keywords for text anchors when they link back to your site. Better yet, publish your own short link text with keyword anchors, bold and italicized key phrases and give it away for link exchanges.

9. If possible, use the keywords in your domain name. Try different arrangements of the keywords to come up with an available domain name that you can register.

10. If you are using php or asp or any other web programming language for your dynamic website, make your url search engine friendly using url rewrite techniques. Search the phrase url rewrite in Google to know more about url rewrite.

Keep in mind these simple rules every time you want to launch a website. Spending a few days upfront in the preparation of your site will pay off in the long run with better search engine rankings.

Our services at leader excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

11 EASY WAYS TO GET FREE TRAFFIC

In this world you only have two types of assets: Money and Time. The easiest way to drive traffic to your site is to buy it. But if you are an Internet marketing beginner you probably don’t have much money to invest in traffic building. In that case, you will need to invest your time.

The following traffic techniques are time consuming, but they are 100% free and will get you a fair amount of targeted traffic. If your site is properly optimized for monetization, you will soon be earning enough money to invest in buying traffic, and save your precious time to build new money making websites.

So here are 11 surefire free traffic techniques:

This tip is so obvious it will not even be counted, but it is often overlooked: submit your site to the major search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and to as many other search engines as you can.

1. Use this proven Bum Marketing technique, write 5 to 10 articles and submit them to the free article directories. Of course you must include a link to your site in the article itself or in your bio box. The articles should be optimized for a keyword your site is targeting.

2. Find blogs related to your topic and leave useful comments with a backlink to your site. In the same way you could go to answers.yahoo.com, and answer questions related to your site’s topic. Off course put a link to your site in each of your answers. Another thing you should consider is joining the most popular forums that deal with your site’s topic and becoming an active poster. Include a link to your site in your signature.

3. This one can be very powerful. Write a press release about your site and submit it to press release sites such as prweb.com. If you are not familiar with press releases, take some time to do a little research: a press release is not written like an article.

4. If you are happy with a product or service you have used, write an unbiased testimonial and trade it for a backlink to your site.

5. Start a blog on blogger.com and a blog on wordpress.com, link them to your site and submit them to the hundreds of free blog directories. This will get you plenty of quality traffic as long as you keep your blogs updated.

6. Try posting ads with a link to your site on all the free classified ad sites you can find (such as craigslist.com). The best ones will allow you to post a live link. But don’t neglect the other ones. If your ad is well written, people will go out of their way and type your url in their browser. Off course you must post in the appropriate category.

7. An easy way to get extra free traffic is to add a link to your site in your email signature.

8. Start a page on myspace.com and on any other high page rank social bookmarking site you can find. In the same way, go to Squidoo.com, open a few accounts, create a few lenses and link them to your site.

9. Submit a viral video to youtube.com. You don’t really need any video producing know-how as a simple PowerPoint slideshow with some background music will do the job perfectly.

10. Search your main keywords on Google and see if you can exchange reciprocal links with related websites that come up in the top results.

11. You could write an ebook or a short report (say 10 to 20 pages), or find a product with giveaway rights that you can brand with a link to your site. Then submit it to all the free ebook directories you can find online.

This last tip is not free, but is worth the extra buck. Check out the misspellings or variations of your domain name, or those of your competitors. If you find a good available domain, grab it and redirect the traffic to your site.

Now all this looks like a full time job! These techniques work, but you don’t have to use them all at once. Just pick the one you feel the best with and act now. Invest 30 minutes to an hour daily in building your free traffic. Then step to your next favorite technique and within a few weeks you should be earning enough money to afford to buy traffic and concentrate your time and efforts on building your online business.

Our services at leader excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leadersexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

Looking For A Web Host? Here’s What To Look For.

Choosing the right web host is a little like choosing the right shop for your business. In saying this I don’t mean location but size and facilities. We will discuss location in another article.

In starting a business you would need to have a business plan. Part of this plan would include looking over facilities available and how they would suit your needs. When choosing a web host you need to do the same. There are certain requirements you would make sure you have. You would also check out the location.

How much disk space do you need on the server?

How much room (disk space) do you need. Here it is wise to get whatever you can afford. Most websites will run on just a few MB. But it is wise to allow for future expansion. Do you plan to run a membership site with lots of downloads? Here you may find that 500MB may mot even be enough. You will find that there are plenty of hosting providers that offer up to 1GB for very reasonable rates.

What is Bandwidth?

Basically it is the uploading and downloading from your site. Each time you get a visitor to your site they view your site page or pages depending on how many they view. Each time a page is downloaded or viewed by your visitor they are using bandwidth. Hosting companies will limit the amount of bandwidth you use. This information has appeared on your visitors computer because their computer has downloaded the information. This downloading is calculated and is called bandwidth. The more bandwidth you have the more surfers you can have without having to pay additional fees. You should always be able to upgrade to a bigger package and get more. Several companies also offer unlimited accounts.

Will You Require A Database?

The short answer is yes. In fact you will need to make sure that you can run a number of databases. There are many web applications that require a database to run. Let’s say you want to have a Blog on your site. You could download the free script from Wordpress. To install it you need a database. There are so many applications that require databases that you should consider at least getting 5 or 6 available as a minimum.

Which Control Panel?

There are a number of diverse ones used by hosting companies. There are two that stand out for simplicity of use. You need to be able to easily know how to use them. The two I like best are Direct Admin and cPanel. Both are first-rate. Many webmasters avow cPanel. I personally prefer Direct Admin better, I think it is the easiest to utilize. The control panel is where you work at the back of your site. Here you will be able to set up email accounts, new databases and much more.

Other Things You Need To Look For

There are add-ons that you should expect from your hosting provider. One important one is a site creator. Does the hosting account come with an easy to use site builder? One of the easiest to use in the industry is the Drag And Drop site creator. This is a really powerful creator being able to create dynamic PHP sites.

Some hosts also provide a members area with marketing information and free downloads. Many of these down loadable products could be useful in setting up your new site.

Location is everything. At the start of this article I mentioned location. Your web host is not responsible here. Location is completely up to you. You create the location by SEO (Search Engine Optimization). There are many things you can and need to do to increase the traffic to your site. This is another subject we will deal with at a later date.

5 Ways to Make Your Website Sticky

A very successful website will have many return visitors. Your goal should be to have an increasing number in this section of your traffic reports. The more times they frequent your site, the more likely they are to purchase something or tell others about it. Here are 5 things you can add to a site to make this happen”

1) Forums are a great place to start

People on the web today like to be heard. It is sort of the Web 2.0 scenario you hear being thrown around. If you give customers a place to either voice their opinions, or to just meet other people, then they are more likely to stick around.

2) Get blogging today

By starting a blog, and using this as much as you can, you are telling the world that you actively update your site. You can find other sites to post about, or write good information for everyone. Either way, they will come back to see what the latest news is on your blog.

3) Polls are great for return visitors

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Games are great for user activity

People at work love to mess around and goof off. And since most IT departments don’t monitor the internet, people at work will find quick simple games they can play when they need a break.

5) You need new stuff every day

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

HOW OUTSOURCING CAN SAVE TIME AND MONEY

Outsourcing offers an extensive range of advantages, It saves time as well as money for the companies involved with it. What is more, by making the outsourcing process a hassle-free affair, it eventually provides the company an opportunity to grow. Business outsourcing has been gaining popularity day by day, It is not without reason why it has become a part of every business these days.

Outsourcing of business processes is a method as per which the company hires a group of free-lancers or a professional BPO firm to deliver the work needed. Companies prefer to outsource some of the important processes to third party service providers as business outsourcing gives them enough time to focus on the core activities of their business. After all, when it comes to establishing a particular business in the field, core activities play the most important role,outsourcing easily allows this to happen.

Many companies now prefer to outsource the non-core work so that they can spend more quality time in developing ideas and strategies to generate more profit out of the business. When you outsource,it means that you hire independent professionals to share your business workload. The growth of your business depends upon how focused you are on these activities, That is the reason why large business houses never perform the non-core works themselves.

A good outsourcing system works like a contract where a big company hires a small BPO firm to handle some of the non-core business processes, such as customer service, data entry work, and even major work like finance and accounting. Business outsourcing basically involves the outsourcing of front office and back office functions. The third party service providers hire clerical and white-collar workers at a low remuneration and perform these tasks in a highly efficient manner.

With the rapid growth and advancements in the field of business and technology, such outsourcing services are spreading its wings everywhere. Business outsourcing companies are becoming more and more promising and are in great demand through out the business world. As per the contract between the BPO firms and companies, it becomes the responsibility of the business outsourcing firm to complete the task on time, and within budget as the companies are paying them to do.

Besides time, the outsourcing process also saves a significant amount of money, which eventually increases the financial bottom line for any company. Perhaps, the greatest advantage of business outsourcing is that it saves precious management time and resources for the company, which they can utilize in the more important core activities. When outsourcing the organization can better focus on the core competencies of the business.

However,a small organization may not be able to afford to outsource the non-core processes to large BPO firms. If a company is too small to afford a large outsourcing company it is then recommended to seek the services of a group of free-lancers. When an organization chooses to go for business outsourcing, they do not have to pay the huge salaries that trained staff demand and they save on various other costs, including cash advances, bonuses, house rent allowances and other ad-ons as well.

Any businessman who handles regular staff and employees knows all the headaches associated with handling the payroll,tax implications,health care costs and various other issues. A lot of non-core problems can be avoided when you outsource. Then you get more free time to do what you do best-focus on business development and strategizing. When you decide to outsource,you do not need to get involved with identifying,interviewing and hiring people.

Adsense Is Essential For Content Sites. Here are 3 Reasons Why.

Firstly you need to understand how Adsense works. If you understand this you will know why it is essential for your content site.

Google supplies a javascript which the webmaster inserts on the pages he wants the ads to show. Each time someone calls up that page the script will pull those ads from the Adsense program.

The ads are targeted to the keywords the page is optimized for. The visitor to the page finds not only the content but also ads that relate to the content. If the visitor clicks on an advertisement, the webmaster receives a portion of the payment the advertiser pays the search engine for the click.

The search engine is the one handling all the tracking and payments, providing an easy way for webmasters to display content-sensitive and targeted ads without having the hassle to solicit advertisers, collect funds, monitor the clicks and statistics which could be a time-consuming task in itself.

There is never a shortage of advertisers. The Adsense program is always able to pull up new advertisers for your site. Even though the search engines provided little information for the webmasters. The webmasters are more concerned about making money from the search engines.

The search engines have come a long way in understanding the needs of webmasters and publishers. This is the first reason why Adsense is essential.

With its constant development is the manifestation of more highly developed system that allows full ad customization. Webmasters are given the opportunity to select from many different types of text ad formats to better harmonize their website and fit their webpage layout.

The different formatting enables the site owners the possibility of more click through from visitors who may or may not be aware of what they are clicking on. It can also appeal to the people visiting thus make them take that next step of looking up what it is all about. This way the people behind the Adsense will get their content read and making profit in the process.

The second reason is that Search engines have made great improvements which give webmasters the ability to monitor how their ads are performing. They are also able to customize reports so that they can get details on page impressions, clicks and click-through rates. They are also able to track how their sites are progressing and also the earnings based on the webmaster-defined channels.

Webmasters and publishers can now also easily spot trends of their visitors. They can also track specific ad formats, colors and pages within a website.

With the real-time reporting at hand, the success of the changes made will be assessed swiftly. There would be time to sort out the contents that the public are making the majority clicks on. The ever-changing demands would be met while generating money for the webmasters and publishers.

These more flexible tools are also allowing the webmasters to group together web pages by URL, domain, ad type or category. This will provide them some precise insight on which pages, ads and domains are working best.

The last and final reason is that the advertisers have realized the benefits associated having their ads served on targeted websites. Thus increasing the possibility that a prospective web surfer will have an interest in their product and services. All because of the content and its constant maintenance.

As opposed to those who are not using Adsense in their sites, they are given the option of having other people do their content for them, giving them the benefit of having successful and money-generating web sites.

Adsense is all about targeted content, the more targeted your content is, the more targeted the search engines’ ads will be. And you will make money.