Web Development Articles

Anyone who knows anything about web accessibility knows that images need alternative, or ALT, text assigned to them. This is because screen readers can’t understand images, but rather read aloud the alternative text assigned to them. In Internet Explorer we can see this ALT text, simply by mousing over the image and looking at the yellow tooltip that appears. Other browsers (correctly) don’t do this. The HTML for inserting ALT text is:

img src=”filename.gif” alt=”Alternative description goes here”

But surely there can’t be a skill to writing ALT text for images? You just pop a description in there and you’re good to go, right? Well, kind of. Sure, it’s not rocket science, but there are a few guidelines you need to follow…

Spacer images and missing ALT text

Spacer images should always be assigned null ALT text, or alt=”" . This way most screen readers will completely ignore the image and won’t even announce its presence. Spacer images are invisible images that pretty most websites use. The purpose of them is, as the name suggests, to create space on the page. Sometimes it’s not possible to create the visual display you need, so you can stick an image in (specifying its height and width) and volià, you have the extra space you need.

DENIC, the registry of the German Top Level Domain (TLD) has announced, that it has received the eight millionth application for the registration of a de-domain. The de-domain has the position as the world’s favourite Country Code TLD, ahead of .uk, which has about 3.7 million registrations. The de-domains are also numerically stronger than nearly all the generic Top Level Domains that are used throughout the world, such as .org, .net, .info and .biz. Only one the com-domain with more than 30 million domains is more often registered than the de-domain.

October 2004

.de 7.981.014 (Increment compared to one month ago: 89.793)

.at 367.987 (Increment compared to one month ago: 4.766)

.com 31.017.772 (Increment compared to one month ago: 750.631)

.net 4.999.073 (Increment compared to one month ago: 88.952)

.org 3.138.385 (Increment compared to one month ago: 37.607)

.info 1.919.331 (Increment compared to one month ago: 683.846)

.biz 1.041.432 (Increment compared to one month ago: 13.118)

.us 881.411 (Increment compared to one month ago: 6.395)

Often time I’ve browsed sites and seen the same thing - general rep websites or free hosted sites. Pop ups irritate me from the free sites as does the blatant ads getting in the way of the text, and if you have seen one rep site you literally have seen them all. Boring, unoriginal, and unprofessional.

But after all they are free, and free is good right? Wrong - not when it comes to your image online.

Regardless of the business you are in, it’s important you have your own website. Meaning you have a unique domain name with purchased hosting. There are many benefits to owning your own website and I’ll explain why:

1. Ability to Track Visitors
If you don’t know where your visitors are coming from, there is no way to know if your advertising is working or not. It’s a shot in the dark, and the internet is too large to take a chance like that.

While some free hosting companies offer the ability to edit your pages and add trackers, general rep sites usually do not.

Typos, misspellings, hideous grammar, exclamation overkill and run-on sentences all undermine a Web site’s message. Your reader will have to work too hard, and you won’t have that reader long.

Grabbing a reader’s attention is a key point in getting your message out, but there is such a thing as too much grabbing–and the wrong kind of attention. Negative attention can lose a great many visitors and potential clients.

Clean content and neat appearance are not merely a matter of aesthetics. It goes to the core of establishing trust and reliability between a Web site and visitor. Relate it to a deli. A potential customer heard about you through an ad. Cool ad, got his/her attention, so he/she stops by on the way home. On the outside everything looks nice, meets expectations, so the visitor walks in, looking for tonight’s sandwich goodies. Once inside it only takes a few seconds to notice the dust on the shelves, the dirty footprints, the unidentifiable smudges on the glass counter-fronts. No matter how good the food smells, if the counterperson has dirty hands or there are papers littering the floor, how many people are going to feel comfortable reaching over a crumb-covered counter to pay for their dinner?

The sad truth is, general Web users would love it if all our sites looked like Amazon.com.

They’d immediately be familiar with the interface, they would know how to find what they wanted, and they’d find it a breeze to check out and complete the purchase.

Or, if your site is crammed full of thousands of pages of content, make it look like Yahoo!. That’s what FindLaw.com has done.

The trouble is, the creative spirit hates to copy the work of others. We want to make out own mark, do something different, be original. And the more creative we are as individuals, the greater that compulsion becomes. As a result, we build flash homepages, with unfamiliar scroll bars and use strange icons in place of familiar words like ‘Home’ and ‘About’.

Or designers make a compromise and build a traditional homepage, but with a different look. They’ll move the navigation links from the left side to the right side - anything to look different!

And writers are no better. We’ll look for other ways to say familiar things in a different way.

The first step in setting up an online business…

Starting an online business for a brand new entrepreneur is a lot like falling in love for the first time. There is enthusiasm, the feeling of a new high in life and determination to make it work at all costs. All superior emotions, but making sure that your business grows will also take a sharp reality check. The reality is that along with enthusiasm and determination, you also need to be a smart marketer to make your business profitable. Marketing for profits has today moved beyond the traditional methods to include the Internet. A "Brick & Mortar" business works much better if it becomes a " Click & Mortar" business. Simply put, any business without a web presence is soon going to be yesterday’s news.

Setting up an online business involves creating a well-planned company website to promote your Internet sales as well as your offline business. So the key task here is to create a website. A website in effect is your company’s brochure on the Internet. It gives information on the company’s set up, products and services, promotional offers, new features/ products and information about the people spearheading the business. The difference here is that the website can do more than just be a static information providing page on the web. In other words, your website should be an interactive, intelligent brochure for your company. Other than giving information, it should also -

I want you to imagine a lemon. In your mind’s eye, see its yellow skin. Imagine cutting it in half with a knife. Now pick up the one lemon half and bring it up to your mouth and suck on the juices.

Do you notice how sharp the tangy lemon juice could be? Does it make you pucker? Do you notice how your mouth is watering?

…Good!

Now you realize the power of words!

See, one thing I was good at in the beginning of my online career was not getting any sales. Really, I turned it into an art form.

So with that said, I want to share with you my 5 all-time favorite ways of getting Zero sales from your website:

1. Headline and Sales Letter

I don’t need to have a powerful headline and a compelling sales letter for my site. And I definitely don’t need to go to http://www.thegaryhalbertletter.com and learn how to write powerful sales letters for fr*e. It’s too much work.

2. Contact Information

When marketing your website, it’s important to know which of your efforts are producing results and which of them are a waste of time.

You can learn a lot about this by analyzing your website’s statistics (assuming your webhost offers this service).

However, even with the best statistics programs, it can be difficult to determine where exactly your visitors are coming from. Did they arrive on your product page by clicking a link in your newsletter or did they get there by clicking the banner you’ve paid to have displayed on Yahoo?

The best way to answer this question is to track your links. You can do this by buying link tracker software or by employing a third-party service to do it for you.

However, if your budget is tight, there’s one way you can track your links without spending a dime.

This can be done by tagging a question mark followed by a piece of text at the end of your hyperlinks. This will not affect the way the link works, but will help you identify that link in your website’s statistics.

For example, http://www.yoursite.com/page1.htm?linka will point simply to http://www.yoursite.com/page1.htm as if the “?linka” were not there at all.

The internet is one of the world’s top sources of information, products and just about anything else you could possibly want. And, if you have spent any amount of time online, you must have noticed that much of it is free.

Many home business entrepreneurs get their start online using some of these free resources. In fact, some of them use freebees almost exclusively.

So, just what are these valuable assets that attract so many home business newbies? Here are just a few:

1. Email - one can get free email accounts just about anywhere (MSN Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Google GMail, Lycos) plus tons of others. Actually, free email accounts can be very useful, but that’s another article.

2. Autoresponders - there are many free autoresponders (getresponse, and freeautobot, just to name a few). Some are better than others but they are a useful tool.

3. EBooks - You can get free ebooks just about anywhere. These can prove very valuable as giveaways to get people to do some sort of action,like join your mailing list.

Most people know they need a website in order to publicise and promote their business but very few people know what they want in their website. Fewer still are those who can actually sit down and plan their websites well.

If you don’t plan ahead, problems will crop up later.

For example, who is going to take care of the website? What are the costs involved? Will you have the time to maintain it or should you hire a webmaster?

These and many more reasons should be compelling enough for you to plan your website well now. Planning your website also ensures that your website fulfills its purpose. It also prepares you financially for the costs of designing and maintaining the website.

Before you go online with a website, here are some issues to consider:

Domain Name

As a business website owner, your first task is to choose a suitable domain name which reflects your business. A domain name should also be easy to pronounce and easy to remember. To do this, first list down some domain names which you prefer. To project a professional feel, avoid cutesy names or names which have negative connotation. Those in the service or consultancy line might want to use their own names as domains. Next, check availability of the domains that you have chosen. What happens if the domain you choose is already taken? Go for alternatives, such as .net, .org or .biz, if .com is not available.