Why Do You Need A Web (website development) Designer
No commentsBy Catherine Harvey
When it comes to promoting your company, the best step you can take is to make the most of your web site, if you have one. If you don’t have one, get one. A large proportion of business is now carried out over the internet and this is where you will gain the most of your customers. Advertising your company over the internet is relatively cheap given that it will reach potential customers across the globe.
But it has to be done right. With a website where half the links don’t work or the content is irrelevant or badly written, not only will it not be found through the search engines but people will not hang around on it. You may find yourself getting lots of visitors but not generating any business from it and this just makes it dead money.
To this end, effective web design is essential. In the UK, you will find web design in Essex is a popular business due to its proximity to London. London being the capital of business, web design in Essex is suitably situated to assist these companies with the right sort of marketing strategy that will get them noticed across the planet. This is not the sort of coverage you could get with any other sort of advertising campaign.
So how can companies get the best from web design in Essex?
You need to have a clear, precise idea of what you want and to be able to communicate that effectively to your web design company. The more clarity you can show at this point, the more the web design company have to work with. This is also the ideal time to think about the SEO on your site. Search engine optimisation in conjunction with web design will ensure your website is seen by as many people as possible and that all the people landing on your site will find exactly what they were searching for.
The design itself should reflect in some way your product and be appealing to your target audience. You should have a target audience in mind as this will assist you design company. Something bright, vibrant and jazzy is great for a pop music website but not very appealing if you’re advertising aids for the elderly.
Many people think that the internet is all about visuals, catching people’s attention with pictures and colours and clever trickery with the way internet pages interact. However, if you want your site to appear in a search engine, it is vitally important that you have content on the pages too, particularly the home page.
Information that is unique, fresh, genuine and appropriate with a sprinkling of key words will direct the right people to your site and generate more custom.
Your information needs to be fairly obvious. Internet browsing and shopping is meant to be easy. Search engines provide a list of sites that are relevant to what you are looking for. Once the visitor is on your site they do not want to spend ages searching for appropriate pages or getting stuck on a half finished page where links do not work. They simply won’t bother and immediately return to their search results for a site that’s easier to navigate.
If you are serious about your business, then it is worth spending that little extra to get your website designed properly and ensuring the SEO is as friendly as possible. Your outlay will be returned by the custom generated.
SEO expert Catherine Harvey looks at what makes web design in Essex a well placed business in our technology age.
Creating a Newsletter..Know the Different Formats
By James Elliott
A professionally done newsletter can leave a significant impact on your target audience but only if it is in the appropriate format.
The most common formats for designing and distributing online newsletters are HTML, plain text and PDF. All these three formats have their own advantages and disadvantages. To select the best suited format for your newsletter, you need to keep in view your target audience and the kind of subjects your newsletter covers.
Lets see what are the differences, benefits and disadvantages of the three different formats:
HTML
Among all the three formats, HTML is the most popular choice as along with text, images, pictures and graphics can also be used. A newsletter in HTML format looks very professional and more appealing and where you can describe your topics elaborately and attractively. It is also much easier to create a newsletter in HTML format as compared to PDF format.
But along with advantages, HTML has some shortcomings too. A newsletter in HTML format doesnt guarantee that it would open in all types of browsers. It might happen that your newsletter might look disorganized and disorderly on some incompatible computers.
This carries the inherent risk of losing out on customers since subscribers tend to unsubscribe from a newsletter if it does not open properly. Hence aim at making the HTML design as compatible as possible and test it in various browsers and email systems before sending it to the readers.
You can buy readymade and tested HTML templates or you can also approach a competent web and graphic design agency in the UK, or the USA to create a compatible HTML design for your newsletter.
Plain Text
The plus point of having a plain text format is that you dont to approach any web expert for HTML coding or for making a complex PDF document. You can create plain text newsletter easily and much faster. In addition to this, a plain text newsletter has much less chances to be labelled as spam.
But plain text newsletter can be purely content dependent and rather boring. The plain text does not make the newsletter look either appealing or attractive. However, if your newsletter is rich in content and does not need the added support of images and graphics, then plain text is the best format. It helps you to convey your message quickly and conveniently.
PDF is not used that extensively in comparison to other two formats. PDF emerges as the preferred option for newsletters that focus on topics like food, places etc., which require appealing graphics to accompany the text.
But creating a PDF newsletter is time-consuming and troublesome. You have to write the content in MS Word document and then convert it into PDF document using some program. And it is difficult to read too as the subscribers first have to wait to download it.
These are the three main formats for creating a newsletter. Keep in mind your target audience and topic of your newsletter, decide which kind of format would work best for your newsletter. Or best approach a web and graphic design company in the UK, the USA or India, they can guide you and then create an impressive newsletter in a format which would be ideal for your company.
James Elliott is a website designer who works with a UK based web Design Company. Apart from working with the web design agency in the UK, he is also an amateur writer whose articles on web design, newsletters and graphics have been published in various newspapers, magazines and web portals.
Squidoo: Build a Free, Multi-Media Website With This Web 2.0 Hosting
By Ron Passfield
A Squidoo lens is designed to be a highly focused window to other directly related resources - blog posts, websites, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, web-based articles or e-books. Hence a lens is not an end in itself but a means to an end - a window on other information about a topic, issue, problem, product or service of interest to the reader. Each Squidoo lens you create has a unique URL.
There is no limit to the number of free Squidoo lenses you can create. At the time of writing this article, I have in excess of 50 Squidoo lenses which are catalogued in my “lensography”.
Each lens has AdSense ads and other ads that generate revenue for Squidoo, charities supported by Squidoo and the lensmaster (lens creator). The lensmaster can choose to give all or some of their share of this direct revenue to charity.
Squidoo lenses can be used for endless applications, for example, to promote a cause, support a charity, educate, showcase an artist or photographer or generate affiliate income.
Each Squidoo lens is made up of modules and widgets (like WordPress blogs) that can be accessed by a unique point-and-click technology. You don’t even have to know HTML to create and market your Squidoo lenses. There are even lenses on basic HTML and advanced HTML if you want to be creative. The design of each lens is limited only by your imagination.
In a very real sense a Squidoo lens can integrate many elements of Web 2.0 technology - blogging, Flickr, FaceBook, YouTube, RSS feeds and Twitter. Fundamental to Squidoo is the connections it creates - between people, between lenses, between resources and between social networks.
Squidoo enables you to contribute to Squidoo charities as a by-product of lens creation. You can also promote a charity of your choice, a location and community, a local artist or a local business.
You can recruit people to your favorite hobby such as scrapbooking, model trains, electronic toys, photography, model planes or stamp collecting.
You can even create a Squidoo Group, or join an existing group, to link to people who share your interests and passions.
What also appeals to me personally is the opportunity to be creative and extend my “learning edge” or “push the envelope”. The numerous Squidoo lens templates, modules and widgets provide endless opportunities to be creative and to develop different lenses for different purposes. For example, I have created a photographic exhibition, a simulated tropical rainforest walk and my e-portfolio.
Squidoo can tap your creativity, build your income, grow your connections and enhance your Internet presence. You learn Squidoo by building lenses - but beware, Squidoo is addictive!
Article Source : Article King Pro - Free Reprints and Distribution
This article is written by Ron Passfield, PhD, Top 100 Squidoo lensmaster and Giant Squid.
Ron’s Squidoo lensography provides many examples of web design for Squidoo lenses (with free website hosting by Squidoo):
Squidoo lensography
Locate A Web Developer For Your Website Needs
Saturday, August 30th, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
