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Why Should One Have a Website? – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Rama Banerjee in Featured

A website is a simple collection of web pages consisting of images, videos or other digital assets. The data of the website is hosted on a web server that is accessible via the internet. All websites join the World Wide Web where the data can be accessed all over the globe.

There are so many reasons as to why one should have a website. Some of the following genuine reasons are cited below.

• Marketing: it is the best way to compliment an existing marketing plan. One can tell customers or people about their business’s services and the word of mouth advertising becomes easier.

• Educate: a website is also used to educate clients about what a businessman can do for them. Whilst giving information about the businessman himself, the business man can educate the customers about why they need these services.

• Leadership: Companies, who follow the online strategies, find themselves in a leadership position. It helps increase exposure in the global marketplace. Companies ignore the risk of having the web run of existing competitors and exploit the web to their own advantage.

• 24/7 Access: owning a website helps broaden one’s business. The internet offers an efficient way of helping customers compare prices and shop online. If the competition is online, then the business man or representatives have to be online as well. Customers sit online 24 hours a day even if the business hours for the day close.

• Resources: surfing online helps reach new and potential clients as the website gives all the information required about the business. Online customers have immediate resources for references and referrals.

• Interaction with Customers: there isn’t any other way to keep customers from coming back. Through the website, a business man can interact with his or her clients. The businessman can also interact with them through newsletters, polls, surveys, chat rooms etc. It shows how much the businessman cares about his clients and it is one of the best ways to keep them coming back.

• Instant Legitimacy: as a client, one must know about the company, the product is bought from and it runs a respected business. A well designed business leads to increase in business sales.

• Survey Your Audience: the website is a two-way interactive communication street. When a client or customer visits the website, they read up about the products and services and information given. A businessman can handle is potential customer base by setting up a survey to find out what the clients want and need.

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Rama Banerjee – Professional Writer, in Ours Group of Companies, invites you to visit our Latest Technical News section. For web development assistance visit our Search Engine Optimization Services Section. We welcome you to be part of Ours Group of Company. © Copyright – Rama Banerjee. All right reserved Worldwide

A Selection Of Useful Web Scripts You May Want To Consider Installing On A Web Hosting Account

By Dirik Hameed in Featured

There is a huge range of web scripts available that serve a variety of purposes. You need to pay for some of the scripts but others you can download free of charge. The following article highlights a few web scripts that may prove useful for utilizing on your webhosting account.

If you’re looking for a content management system for your cpanel web hosting account you may want to consider award-winning Joomla, which can be utilized in website and application building. Joomla is available to download for free. Joomla conveniently offers back-end administrator access and front-end content access. The website and the administrators have different system control levels facilitated by Joomla. Joomla has a large number of extensions, the majority of which are free to download, and Joomla itself is simple for the user to utilize.

If you would like to upload videos to your cpanel web hosting account then you might want to consider PHPmotion to meet your website hosting needs. PHPmotion works with a wide range of video formats, for instance avi, divx and mpg. The videos can be edited or deleted at any time and you can change things such as the video title, description and related tags. You can also make the videos private or public, allow or prevent comments about the videos, as well as allow or prevent video embedding. You can download PHPmotion for free and you can also utilize it for music-sharing and picture-sharing websites.

If you want to do business website hosting through your web hosting account then you should consider BigCommerce. This e-commerce software incorporates a drag-and-drop design function which means you can easily design the look and layout of your online store. Some useful functions include an automated email marketing facility and flexibility in displaying the photos you upload to the site. Other convenient features of the software include coupon and gift certificate creation, promotional banner creation for the various pages of your website, a customizable Returns system and an automated inventory control function.

phpAdManager is a great tool for managing banner ads on your website. This tool offers complete control over the banner ads as well as full statistics for each banner. Both graphic-based and html-based ads are supported.

If you want to use your webhosting account for community chat purposes, you might want to consider Pinguchat. There are a range of front-end features, including who’s online, quick private chats, inbox and outbox, YouTube embedding and file sharing features. Pinguchat has a multitude of back-end features as well, for instance the ability to enable and disable YouTube embedding, set the maximum number of room users, add or delete and edit rooms and the ability to make any user admin or a moderator.

There are a multitude of web scripts that can really enhance your web hosting account so you can get the most out of website hosting. You will find a variety that serve the same/similar functions as well as those that carry out different functions so compare prices (some are free, some need to be bought) and particular features to find the best ones for your needs.

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For UK web hosting visit UK Web Solutions Direct at http://ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk/. UKSWD expertise in cpanel hosting UK – http://ukwebsolutionsdirect.co.uk/uk-web-hosting.php

How to Create a Website – a Guide For The Beginners

By Daniel Locker in Featured

How can you create a website for your business?

You can go to website Builder Company and pay for the website creation or you can create a website yourself.

For a long time I thought that in order to create a website you must be a programmer or a computer science engineer, you need to know technical languages as HTML, PHP, ASP and even C++ (I heard these names few times, but never knew what it means). I was wrong…nothing of the above is necessary.

First of all you just need to know what a website actually is. I will try to describe it assuming that the reader of this article knows nothing about website building. Website is a number of pages with text and images which are located on hosting server. Instead of keeping them in your “Documents” folder, you need to store them on a large computer that is called a server, so your pages could be accessed by other people via search engines or directly using your domain. This server is called web hosting. There are hosting companies that provide you with hosting solution for your website.

Additional element of a website is Content Management System (CSM). Once your pages are hosted you will need to have Content Management System to be able to change content, update information and upload new images. The lack of user friendly CSM will make the changes in your website very difficult and expensive.

Searching for “create a website” in Search Engines will show you a lot of companies that can create a website for you and companies that provide software that you can use to create your own website by yourself.

I have checked two kinds of website building solutions: one is free website builder (powered by Google) and the other one is a solution that allows you to create a website for free, but charges you for hosting.

“Google Sites” provides a solution for anyone who wants to build a simple website for his business. The hosting is for free, you can integrate images and videos using “You Tube” and “Picasa”. There are Help Topics for every function and Help Forum that you can search for answers, if you have some questions about implementing specific design or function. Free Google site currently don’t support Forum and Virtual Store implementation. But it is a really great solution for a small business that needs to be seen on the internet. It is absolutely free.

Second solution is website builder software that provides you with a 30 days free trial and charges for hosting solution afterwards. “Live City” is a great solution for businesses that their need is to have a website, which can be changed during time. A website created in this system can grow with your business. You can create a simple website to provide information about your business or you can create an ecommerce site by simply integrating virtual store element during the creation process. There is no need in any technical knowledge, no need to pay a lot of money to build virtual store. You can just add it with one click.

I have built a few websites in “Google sites” and in “Live City” sites. I have really enjoyed the simple drag and drop website builder used in Live City. It took me two hours to build a website; I greatly enjoyed the simple solution of designing the website, changing colors of background, tables, and fonts. The Content Management System is really convenient. It is a really great solution and the price is really low. Imagine yourself having virtual store for about 13$ per month.

You don’t need to have technical knowledge or high budget to create your own website. You can upgrade your business for free or for a minimal monthly fee and get visible online for all the potential customers who are looking for the service or product you provide.

Just choose the solution that fits you most. The sky is the limit!

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This article introduces the reader to website builder software, the great way to create a website for free. To start creating your site go to
http://Sites.LiveCity.com/i.asp?id=252837&t=2

Why Does My Website Suck? – A SPN Exclusive Article

By Scott Kasun in Featured

I’ve spent considerable time over the last week bringing a new employee up to speed on a variety of topics. He’ll be performing many duties for us (such is the joy/curse of working for a smallish firm), and among those tasks will be consulting with prospective new clients about their current sites.

After I walked him through the analysis of several sites, he finally posed a question to me, “just what makes a website suck?”

That’s not an easy question to answer – at least not succinctly. The reality is that a website can fail in many ways, yet still be a success. The tricky thing is that most site owners truly don’t know if their site is failing or succeeding, simply because they’ve never established any kind of measurement standard. BUT…that’s not what we are talking about here; we’re speaking only of “first glance” evaluations of websites.

So with that in mind, here’s a list of things we look at when we evaluate the sucktitude of a website.

Design Failures
The first thing we consider is the overall look and feel of the site. For the most part, we’re trying to determine if the site looks like it was developed in the last year or two. Here’s the thing – the details that make your website look sparkly new are the very things that make it look dated quickly. Designers and programmers can sometimes get caught up in the most recent trends, which are fantastic if you plan to facelift the site every 18 months. Otherwise, they become the green shag carpet of the interwebs.

Another comment regarding design: it’s extremely subjective. The same site that makes me wince in pain elicits happy squeals from others. I get that, which is why this list stays away from criticism about color theory and other important (and more subjective) elements of design.

With that said, here are some obvious design failures:

• "Floating Island" syndrome
  For many years, websites were developed to be viewed within a screen resolution of 800×600. Today that resolution accounts for less than 1% of all screens, and 85% of all visitors use a resolution greater than 1024×768 (stats courtesy of w3schools.com). Sites that were developed for smaller screens look like tiny islands floating on a massive background. Visitors feel pity for the poor, tiny, isolated website – and it’s doubtful that’s the feeling you were trying to evoke.
• Annoyances
  Most of these items have been discussed ad nauseam (and thankfully aren’t as common as they used to be), so I won’t bother to address why they make your site suck – just know that they do:
• Splash screens or entry pages. You know, those pages that cost a ton to build and then everyone clicks the "skip this" link.
• Sounds. Any sounds. Yes, even those "super cool" sound effects when you click links.
• Gratuitous Flash or rotating images. This decade’s version of animated GIFs (shudder).
• Funky navigation. Don’t make me figure out how your navigation works – I’ll simply leave.
• Reverse text, particularly black background with white text. Ugh.
• Outdated information. In this day and age of technology and access, there’s just no excuse.
• Left aligned or full width websites
  Early websites were all left aligned or full width. Typically when you see this now, it’s on a neglected site, a government site, or a neglected government site. There are some very creative designers that can pull this off, but it’s rare.
• Cheesy stock imagery
  There’s a reason that good professional photographers make the money they do. They can see things through a camera lens that the rest of us don’t. Want to know the single best upgrade you can do to your site? Replace all the images with professional photos that are specific to your organization. It’s well worth the investment.

Functional Failures These are a little harder to quantify, but site killers nonetheless. Obvious functional issues include things like broken navigation, sites that don’t work in all browsers, malware and missing pictures.
Additional failures include:

• Narcissism
  No one cares about you, or your website. There, I said it.

  Your site visitors only care about whether or not something you have will benefit them. Answer that question FIRST, before you tell them "About Us" or about your awards or anything else. Take a look at your site’s navigation. What comes first – About Us, or information about your products and services? Most websites need to have their navigation reversed in order.

  Quick tip: when writing copy for your website, spend 90% of your time on addressing what your prospects want or need, and 10% on info about your company. When people send us copy, it’s obvious they have done just the opposite.

• No Clear Message
  Yes, the picture of the blossoming flower on your home page is evocative and inspiring. Here’s the thing – it does nothing to tell visitors who you are or what you do. Oh, and there’s this little company called Google that would also like to know what you’re about so they can help searchers find you. Much like people, the search engines will simply move on if it’s too difficult to figure out.

  Visitors should be able to determine who you are and exactly what you do in 3 seconds or less.

• No Engagement
  This is the area in which more than 90% of all websites fail. There should be clear cut call to action on the home page that encourages visitors to click and see more of your site. A call to action can be anything – a contest announcement, newsletter signup, a download, contact form, even simply driving visitors to current/updated information on your site.
• Poor Search Engine Visibility…or worse

  Some sites are built strictly for credibility’s sake; the site owner simply wants their clientele and prospects to see that they have a presence. There isn’t a need to spend extra time and money to optimize the site for the engines. But for the majority of websites, SEO is an important consideration. It’s very easy to determine what sites have had optimization done and the level of competency.

So what’s worse than poor visibility? Violating the guidelines, which can get your site delisted and erase any possibility that a visitor could even stumble on it. Most site owners are oblivious to the fact that their site is breaking rules.

Feel Me
The last element to be considered is the most esoteric of all – the "feel" of a website. What is the" feel"?

It’s the connection users feel to the website, the emotions that are invoked when they visit. It’s the sense that the visual impact matches the image visitors have – or want to have – about the product or service they are after. It’s the difference between the About Us page for Wilson Sporting Goods and the About Us page for Franklin Sports.

It’s the final factor that turns site visitors into site ambassadors.

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Scott Kasun is one of the geeks at ForeFront Web, a web design firm based in Dublin, Ohio. Follow him on Twitter @forefront.

Presenting Information Well, Too Difficult for Web Developers? A SPN Exclusive Article

By Patrick OBrien in Featured

We all know that a well thought out site with clear layout and navigation makes the whole user experience far more pleasing for a visitor and encourages repeat and longer visits. So why then, when it comes to presenting numerical information do the majority of web developers get this so wrong?

Web site design has gone through many evolutions with techniques coming and going. Most of this evolution has revolved around page layout and site navigation, today a modern site does indeed present a clear and easy experience for the visitor. However, one area that seems to have been neglected is the display of numerical information. Perhaps this is due, in part, to that fact that not every site has numerical data to display or perhaps web designers are so focused on ‘look and feel’ that they neglect the clarity of information.

Getting visitors to a site is quite a task as we all know. So when we get them there we want them stay and understand the content. If that content involves numerical data then isn’t it worth making a little extra effort to present that data in a format that is both pleasing to the eye and enticing. So how do we do that? Well when you start to think about it, it really isn’t any different to the way we approach general site design. Today we wouldn’t dream of just chucking all the content at random on a page and expecting the visitor to make sense of it. So rather than just take the raw numbers and throw them into a table let’s give it a little thought. Think about what the data could be saying to user and then start to break it down into headline numbers and paragraphs as you would do with text information.

Numerical data can usually be quite easily segmented and totaled. Summing sections of data provide headline attention grabbing numbers, whilst segmenting provides the opportunity to paragraph the data making far more information easily accessible and far more interesting for the viewer. For example, let’s suppose we have a whole series of sales data and let’s imagine our organization sells four products. Our raw data is a set of individual sales numbers. Simply placing this data in one big table, although displaying all the data, does not really provide very much information. For instance a normal user would have no idea which product is most popular or whether there are any trends or seasonal variations. With a little thought and effort we can do much better, let’s start by segmenting our sales figures by month and then within each month segment further by product. For each product / month cell we have two numbers, the total value of sales and the number of sales. Providing this in just a simple table will be far more meaningful than our original raw data set. The user can now begin to see which product is performing well and also whether any particular time of year is good or bad. However we can still do much better.

Even at this level of segmentation we are still making the viewer work to see the story contained within the data. Now that we have the data sensibly segmented it becomes a fairly easy task to display in graphical format. Done well graphs are extremely powerful because they both present information in a visual format and add dimension to the data. Relationships between adjacent data and trends across the range are made crystal clear. Choosing the correct chart style is key for making this work really well. Should we use pie charts, bar graphs, line graphs and something more exotic. In our sales data example remember we are looking to provide some attention grabbing headline followed by a paragraph of interesting detail. A viewer of our information may first be most interested in which of our products is the best performing. Although a bar graph of total sales for each product would provide this information, a pie chart representing the product totals would be more attention grabbing. So for our headline let’s provide the user with a pie chart of total sales. Now all we need to do is provide the paragraph, well the choice with our example data is a multi-series vertical bar chart. We have a series of data for each product segmented by month. Along the x-axis we will plot month and the y-axis will represent value of sales. Each month on the graph will contain 3 bars, one for each product. This simple approach provides the viewer with a great deal of information in one pleasing view. The bar chart tells the complete sales story for each of our products showing both trends and easy visual comparisons.

That’s all well and good, I hear you say, but web pages don’t lend themselves to easily generating graphical display. Well that’s true but there are today a wide variety of software packages that have specifically been designed to plugin to web sites and make the task of turning the numbers into eye catching, story telling graphs easy for the web designer. Generally you set a few options, like colors and then simply provide the segmented data to the software. At page view time your visitor is presented with the graph image.

In summary then, with a little thought and a small amount of effort the numbers can really be brought alive and provide a compelling story for visitors.

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Patrick OBrien is an author of the popular JPowered site which has been providing web site software solutions since 1996. JPowered provides software to enable web developers to easily incorporate dynamic graphs and charts into web sites and applications. Web Page Graphing Software PHP Graphing Software

10 Basic Concepts for the Newbie Webmaster

By Skip Conover in Featured

This article is for new Webmasters, who are not techies with long experience. Its objective is to save you time in understanding things the techies know so viscerally that they don’t even know you need to know these things. If you are technically sophisticated you should save time and stop reading here. If you have just decided that you want to host your own web site, but you don’t have strong technical skills, keep reading.

There are many things you can do online without needing this information. For example, you can create a blog for free. WordPress.com, Blogger, and many others provide these services. These may serve your purposes very well. Their disadvantage is that some of them do not allow you to advertise, and they provide only minimal control of the look and feel of your site. If you are not interested in making money from your web site, this may be fine. They certainly represent a good place to start to develop Webmaster skills, but your site will tend to look like tens of thousands of other sites.

If you want to build a professional looking web presence, or you want to advertise, or you want to provide special functionality on your blog, here is what you need to know. This article is not an endorsement for any specific product. I mention several products in this article, but only for context.

1. Skills. You will need to know some basic HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language). But you can pick this up as you go along. Within every control panel of a site there is a toggle switch, which allows you to view the item you plan to show to the public in either WYSIWYG (“what you see is what you get”) or HTML format. Don’t worry about this too much, because when you don’t know an HTML command, you can always find it quickly with a search engine. An example is keeping your paragraphs together, rather than having unexpected line spacing. WordPress® takes every carriage return as a new paragraph, so if you want to put something on the next line without paragraph spacing, you must put the “br” command right where you want the carriage return in your existing paragraph on the HTML (hidden) side of your item.

Typing skills are a big plus. If you don’t have these, find a free typing program online. You can learn in a week. It helps to understand what FTP (file transfer protocol) is. Sometimes you do need to do things at the directory level on your hosted server. I use a program called FileZilla2 for this, but there are many other choices.

2. Hosting Service (Your Universe). Someone will have to operate the computers on which your web site appears. It is possible to do this in your home or business, but no one still reading this does anymore. There are many excellent services, and some of them provide basic functionality for under $10 per month. If you become a roaring success, you will have to pay more, but you won’t mind. Typically, you can put all the material you want on their system for no additional charge, but you will pay for the bandwidth you use. You will have to be pretty popular before you overcome the basic price.

3. Domain. You will need to create a Domain, which is the address your site uses. This will be you web address, and amounts to your URL (uniform resource locator). Your Host can do get this for you. You cannot have a findable web site without a domain. Each domain contains only one type of software, but you can create free sub-domains that operate like domains. Each one of these creates a separate database to contain the information of your site. Fortunately, the database is something that is normally provided by your hosting service.

4. One-Click Install. Good Hosts provide One-Click Install for the various web site options. You can create one type of web software into each domain or sub-domain. I have about 30 sites, and I am using both WordPress – (for blogging) and Joomla -(for basic web site functionality). You can also get programs that are purpose built for photo galleries, calendars, project planning, “wiki” style sites, or whatever you like. The ones I use are “open source,” meaning they are “free” and simply installed with no financial outlay to your hosting service. The advantage of these systems is that they have been battle tested very broadly, so most of the kinks are worked out of them. Why do programmers around the world contribute their time and money to developing these free environments? Read on.

5. The Control Panel. Every professional site, and some of the free ones, has a control panel where you can operate and adjust the appearance of your site to the general public. If you think of the Wizard of Oz, this is what the wizard does behind the green curtain. You must learn how to get to your control panel as a first priority, and this differs by the program you are using. By the time you get to this point you will already have found the control panel for your web host. I use Dream Host, which has excellent live chat functionality for support. I often get the help I need there when I don’t understand something.

6. Your Galaxy. Think of the software you just installed on your host as the galaxy within which your site operates. It is the macro-environment within which your site operates. Most of these systems have basic functionality already, so you can just begin to build your site, but you would do well to understand a few more things about your site before you do that.

7. Forums. Techies rarely provide true documentation (instructions) these days. Get over it! This is partially because they are so focused on building the next new thing, and partially because the environment is changing so fast that it is impossible to create a static set of instructions. Most decent software providers do have a Forum, where you can go for help. You register on their site for free, and then you are permitted to ask questions, or find questions previously answered through word search. If the software you are planning to use has no Forum, be very worried. Keep track of your user IDs and passwords!

8. Plug-ins, Widgets, Components and Modules. The reason techies around the world contribute to the “open source” environments is that they build smaller pieces of software that function with your galaxy, and they hope to charge you for that functionality. Each category has many choices (i.e. a calendar or clock for your site), and many of them are rated. There are free ones and commercial ones. If you see an unrated free one, chances are some aspiring software genius has created something, and he is hoping you will help him test it. The rated free ones often work perfectly well, and many good ratings can give you confidence in your selection. The commercial ones normally are endorsed in the sense that people have paid good money to use them.

9. Templates. The template is a “plug-in” which controls the look and feel of your site. Before you go too far in building your site, you should examine the choices of template in your galaxy, and install it. You may be able to do this later, but you take the chance of running into functionality problems.

10. Search Engines and Site Maps. It is no longer the case that you can just put your site up, and expect the search engines to find it. They are overwhelmed. You are therefore advised to go to each of the major search engines, register in their Webmaster program, and follow their instructions to have your site found. Search engines require “Site Maps” today, so their system can examine your site for content. This is an entirely different topic beyond the scope of this article.

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Skip Conover is an International Executive, Author, and Artist. His art is in collections in more than 20 countries. His first New York opening was in 2005. He turned his long time interest in Jungian Archetype into the Archetype in Action™ Organization, and he developed its web site at archetypeinaction.org

How to Create a Website that Sells

By Ken Hoffman in Featured

There are many differing opinions on the best way to create a website. However, when it comes to creating a website that actually sells, your choices become much more limited. Why? If you want a website that sells, you must follow proven principles from sales and marketing.

But the first step is to become crystal clear on what you want.

What is your primary outcome? Are you building your list? Are you providing content to interact with your prospects/customers? Are you selling a product or generating a lead?

Only when you know exactly what you are trying to accomplish, will you be able to achieve that.

*** Model Your Website After This Proven Method ***

A great selling website starts with great copy. But that’s only the beginning. Great copy alone won’t do it.

Advertising takes many different forms: websites, sales letters, brochures, video scripts, and many more. What do all successful sales promotions have in common?

Website Development Strategy That Will Drive Customers

By John Carroll in Featured

Take this one question quiz:

What should be the first step in developing a website?

1. Creating a design to use as a basis,

2. Deciding how the content needs to be integrated and managed,

3. Gathering content from corporate collateral,

4. Developing a strategic plan for your specific needs, or

5. Choose the most cost-effective hosting plan.

In just about any profession other than website development, your answer would be choice 4. After all, you couldn’t build a house without considering the layout, number of bathrooms, and features of the home. You wouldn’t create a design for a major advertisement and then plan the content and message of the ad. Yet, when it comes to website design, often the design comes first and the strategic plan for the site comes last.

The Evolving Web: What it Means for the Website Owner

By Chris Kaminski in Featured

As we work with clients who need web design and search engine optimization (SEO) services, we observe that many are unclear about what their existing or proposed websites can do for them. We share the highlights of what works and we aim to educate interested clients about changing web standards, good design, content, and SEO. While web has been changing and evolving since it began, now the changes come more quickly. Shifting search engine behavior can come as a shock when it brings a website’s position down in search engine results pages (SERPS) in a matter of days or weeks. Unfortunately, this is common. Sites with old and tired content are being hit hard.

In view of all this, we’d like for clients and readers to have the most benefit possible from the evolving web, with its real time searching, social media, and other developments. Such changes transform our websites over time, just as they change the world of business and
information. There’s a lot that goes into getting good results on the web, and the fact that it’s always changing creates a pretty complex situation for site owners.

Websites should change over time though many site owners would rather they did not. The alternative is not being easily found by search engines or users. Faced with this choice, most site owners find out and implement what it takes to keep up. With the search engine algorithm changes made recently, many know they must either fix the old site, if it’s fixable, and expand from there — or create a new
search engine friendly website that has potential.

From what we see, people are more likely to succeed on today’s web if they realize these “web facts” and act on them before the facts become painfully obvious:

-One must have a plan that works. How will people find the website, how will they be encouraged to browse, shop, download helpful tools, articles, or videos that you may offer? (This is what the conversion rate reflects.) How search engine friendly is the code and the over all
structure? How quickly do the pages load? Is there a plan for growth that allows for future changes, blogs, shopping carts and so forth? Is the site owner limited by an obsolete hosting platform?

-The conversion rate, mentioned above, is key. How does the site owner wish to benefit when more visitors appear? How can the casual visitor be converted into an involved and loyal user who chats about the site with friends and colleagues?

- No website is ever DONE, or complete. Any successful site needs updating regularly. More and more, sites need to look and feel current. Site users and search engines alike want to find a current site. One needs a plan for new and changing high quality content. One’s own site and the web in general is a moving target we need to stay after. New learning is essential. Putting the results of new learning into action is essential. A site needs a life of it’s own and should be built and developed for a lot of purposeful activity all around the web. We have a more dynamic Internet than we did even a few years ago, and that is a massive understatement! How does the website owner plan get the
website out into the world?

Thanks for reading today. We at Lone Bird Studio in Asheville, NC wish all current and future website owners pleasant learning and success with their web design and search engine optimization activities.

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Chris has been owner and head designer since he started LBS back 1979. His marketing experience crosses all media and Chris is settled firmly into web design and marketing. With his first website going up in 1997 Chris has himself as one of the leading Web Design Studios in Western North Carolina. Based in Asheville Lone Bird Studio has a proven record of results and satisfied clients. Check him out at
www.lonebird.com.

Do You Suffer From BlindWebsititis?

By Jill Whalen in Featured

When you review the keywords from which people clicked to your site, are they only peripherally related to what you offer? If so, your website is likely suffering from BlindWebsititis!

What Is BlindWebsititis?

BlindWebsititis is what happens to websites when those in charge of their content don’t come right out and say exactly what every page is all about. Instead, they use only corporate jargon, non-descriptive copy, or – in acute cases – no copy at all. It’s a horrible condition that affects hundreds of thousands of websites every year. Sadly, the pain of BlindWebsititis goes well beyond the hurt to the website itself; it often spreads to site visitors who have to try to guess what the company offers.

Even search engines aren’t spared from BlindWebsititis. Their symptoms include the miscategorization of the afflicted websites because there’s no way for them to assign relevant keywords.

Rather than dealing with the pain of BlindWebsititis, many users click away from infected sites as quickly as possible, in search of healthier ones that clearly say what they’re offering.

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