Continuing from the previous post about the basics of good design techniques.  This is predominantly aimed at new designers, or those wanting to take up design as a hobby or career.  Welcome to our world!

Footers are so often overlooked that I simply must mention them here.  Many designers don’t put any value on a footer in a design.  They are there merely to carry the copyright information and other company or site info.  They can be much more than that, as many newer designs can testify.  They can include links to other site resources, external links and carry other information designs to keep a visitor on the site.  The creative use of a footer can intrigue a user when they have scrolled to the bottom of a page and are about to leave.  Having something there to catch their eye or attention is a great way of redirecting them within the site.

Navigation is the second most important part of any site after the content.  If visitors can’t find their way around then they aren’t going to venture further than the home page, which makes the site a very expensive landing page.  Navigation is the only way people get around, and if it isn’t clear it will either baffle or confuse users, which is the best way to lose them.  Proper navigation reduces the frustration visitors might feel when moving around and removes a barrier between them and the content or product.

White Space is essential for any page that has content, be it written or graphic.  Not only does it add contrast between the background and the content, it also give the eyes space to move around the page.  There is nothing worse than visiting a page that has tight copy packed between other page elements in order to squeeze as much onto it as possible.  It might inflate the page count a bit, but the effective use of whitespace is a major contributor to whether a design works or fails.  Good use of whitespace gives the whole page room to breathe and making visiting it a much more pleasurable experience.

Detail is what you add when a design is almost finished, but needs a little more punch.  It can be anything from adding shading, gradients or shadows to graphic elements to little touches that add so much to the overall appeal of the page.  Be careful not to overdo it though as it’s all too easy to go overboard with finishing touches.  Learn when to say enough is enough.

These 7 tips are what I regard as essential basic training for would-be web designers.  You need to get each one exactly right in order to get the most out of every design.  The most important ones to get right are Navigation and White Space, as without them no design is going to work.  It won’t matter how much detail is on the page, or how clever your CSS is, if the content can’t be read or accessed by the users it’s a fail.

Advertiser

What your hope is, when you’re an advertiser, is to try and sell more of your product. It works like this. You could either invest a whole bunch of money investing in advertising (CPM or CPC) for your product and then hope that people turn around and buy it from you. Or, you can just put the product out there on the web, don’t invest any money yourself, take a little less profit (because you have to pay commission) and then let everyone that is selling your ads do the advertising. You get the power of a lot of people trying to sell your stuff instead of only one person trying to sell your stuff. The downfall is you lose out on some profits, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. You should. If you have a product to sell…DO CPA.

Publisher

Yes. Use it. Use it and love it. If you run a website that is all about exercise and this company comes along and says, “We want you to sell our sneakers on your site.”  Now it is your job to take those sneakers and, if you want to, endorse them and try to sell them. When doing CPA on you site, the readers expect that what you’re selling is good. If you sell too many products, they’ll get frustrated and leave. In this case, you can say some great things about the sneakers and if your already loyal visitors buy them, you’ll make a hefty chunk of change. CPA advertising pays the most, but that’s because it produces the fewest results in comparison to CPC and CPM.

CPA advertising has grown into a multimillion dollar business. There are people on the web that spend ten thousand dollars a day on CPC advertising so they can market someone else’s product. Then, they walk away making even more than the ten thousand they spent (obviously). The business is lucrative, but it’s obviously profitable. Affiliate companies keep popping up everywhere! ]]> http://www.tampawebdesign.org/cpa-advertising-as-an-advertiser-and-publisher/feed/ 0 http://www.tampawebdesign.org/the-things-to-be-careful-of-when-getting-hosting/ http://www.tampawebdesign.org/the-things-to-be-careful-of-when-getting-hosting/#comments Tue, 21 Jul 2009 16:29:29 +0000 admin http://www.tampawebdesign.org/?p=50

A lot of web hosts promise a lot of things, but when push comes to shove, they are very rarely able to provide what they say. I had an experience happen where I had a webhost guarantee that I would get five hundred gigabytes of bandwidth which is enough to get thousands of visitors to your site a day. I hit the front page of Digg and suddenly, my site was suspended from the web host. When I went in search of information as to why my site had been removed, they said I used too much CPU. So, I was screwed.

Fortunately for you, I have put together a series of things to look out for when looking to get hosting for your website. If you follow these bits and pieces of information, you are going to be able to protect your site and guarantee you stay up and running.

The first thing to remember is that a server typically costs about $100.00 a month to run on the web host’s side. Chances are, they’ll sell the server for $300.00 a month to make profit. I digress. Typically, that $100.00 gets 1 TB of bandwidth and that’s it. There’s no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. Here’s what a lot of shady web hosts will offer you with that one server:

• Unlimited bandwidth. Look…There’s no such thing as unlimited bandwidth. One server only gets about a TB of bandwidth. They can offer you near unlimited bandwidth, but the thing to remember is that you have to pay for it. The thing to look for when determining if a web host is shady is the cost. Are they saying you’re going to get a TB of bandwidth for $9.99 a month? They’re lying. What they’re actually saying is you’ll get access to a server with a TB, but you can’t use it all because they’ll also sell that same TB of bandwidth to another thousand sites. Sucks, huh?
• 100% uptime. I’m sorry, but there are always hiccups on a server. Whether they only last about ten minutes or they last ten seconds, there are hiccups and those ten seconds when there is a hiccup, people are potentially unable to come to your site. So, if a site says 100% uptime, I typically think that, instead, they get really bad uptime and are trying to get money fast. Typically, you’ll find web hosts getting 99.5% uptime. Crap happens.
• Ridiculously low rates. If you are being charged only $2.99 for a large chunk of hosting (even if it’s not unlimited), you should be careful. There’s a good chance that you’re sharing that hosting with a ton of people and therefore, are not going to get the benefit of all that traffic.

Knowing these details about hosting will protect you from getting scammed. There are a lot of good web hosts on the web. You just need to do some research and find the right ones.

As your website grows, more and more potential customers are going to be coming to your site and sending you questions and queries about different things. It may be a question about whether or not that product is in stock. Or, it may be a question asking which product you suggest for their body type: A or B. Or, finally, it may just be a question that is asking for more information about your particular service that your website may not be able to provide. So, it is obviously very important to stay connected to the life of your website. Here are a few things to do:

• Get high speed internet for your house and your place of business. You want to be able to log on and access your e-mail a few times a day so that you can reply to any questions or comments by a customer. It might seem like common sense, but a lot of businesses are still using slow internet and that’s just wasted productivity.
• Get a work phone that has e-mail access. Consider it a work expense and write it off the taxes. Whatever you do, though, consider getting a work phone. If you get a question in the middle of the day and it is really important, you can shoot a quick e-mail back with a quick answer that says, “If you need more info, I will send more.” This way, you can send more when you get to your computer. It won’t make the customer feel unwelcome.

You want to constantly have access to your e-mail. When running a very small business where you are pretty much the only employee, you have the burden of ensuring that it constantly grows. Having a Blackberry on your hip may seem frustrating since it is like you are constantly at work, when you are in the building stages of your business, you want your customers to feel welcome.

One of the big mistakes people make when owning a site is not getting back to their visitors. If a visitor sends an e-mail or comments, always reply. Even if you don’t want to get a cell phone with e-mail and just want to check at night, it is imperative you reply. People always remember who didn’t reply and this will only damage your reputation on the web, not help it. So, reply and you’ll find that those visitors not only return, but tell other people to check the site out. Stay connected. Your site depends on it.

As the World Wide Web has grown more and more, one of the biggest questions people have been asking themselves is whether or not they should have a website made for their company. More people are starting to hop online and people are obviously using search engines to find what they’re looking for. Topics that are geographically specific are searched every day such as Tampa Web Design for an example. With this in mind, a business owner needs to stop, sit down and ask themselves: Do I need a website?

The answer should be a complete and utter YES! There is no reason why your business should not have a website. People argue that since they don’t sell a product, they shouldn’t have a website because a website is only good for selling goods. That doesn’t mean anything. Having a website in that case means you are providing another way for people to find your contact information or to learn more about what you offer. People say that their business is so unique that no one would search it, which gets the response: if you can have a business about it, you can have a website about it.

The fundamental reason you want to get a website made for your site is it is an added method of people being able to find your business. Before the World Wide Web was big, people found businesses by going into their phone book. They’d open up their geographically specific phone book and look for a pizza place. These days, they can type in the keyword “city name pizza place” and come up with the results. By having a website, you can provide the visitor all the information they may need such as: what kind of catering do they do, what do they charge for a large cheese pizza, and so many other questions.

No matter what type of business you own, having a website is a great investment. Even though it costs a little money to get the site up and running, that doesn’t mean that you should forsake the great possibilities that can come from a website. By having a website, you are giving yourself the chance to really get your business out there. Depending on what you provide, it can mean a lot more business. There’s a reason people are constantly making new websites. It’s working. It’s making businesses money. You should make a website soon. Or contact us.