Web Development Articles

To the starting internet entrepreneur, there is nothing more discouraging then the erroneous realization that your dream for a self sufficient business cannot be realized without a heavy investment. This may be why so many people shy away from the internet; seeing all the flashy sites, many of which are $50 templates, people are afraid to enter the world of internet sales and marketing.

One obvious, but perhaps frightening option is to build your own. You may do this in a variety of ways from purchasing a hosting package that comes with templates, to designing your own. Many templates are of excellent quality and can serve as a great starting point for your ancient website. A great site for getting templates is Templatemonster, here you will find many templates that cater to your general business interest. You may easily integrate them into your site and start promoting your site in this manner.

There have been many significant changes to the face of search over the last several years with engines becoming more intelligent than ever before. Today’s users expect mainly fast, easy, relevant and satisfactory search results. In response to this search engines have responded by giving users more control over search results than ever through the emergence of alternative search engines.

One instance of these so-called alternative search engines goes by the name of Nutch (http://www.nutch.org/). Nutch is a two-year-old open source project, which has been hosted previously at Soundforge and backed by a non-profit organization. Since then it has been determined that the Apache license is the most appropriate, with Nutch no longer requiring the overhead of an independent non-profit organization. The board of directors and the developers both were in favor of the move to the Apache Foundation.

If you are going to be placing ads on your website, you’ll want to put some thought into how you’ll integrate them. Poor integration of ads into your website will cause visitors to click away fast. Successful integration of ads into your site can be highly profitable. Before I show you where to position ads, I want to mention a few important points about ads.

1. Ratio of ads to content

How many ads should you place on your website? There is an optimum ratio of ads to content. If your website has too high a proportion of advertising relative to content, the traffic on your website will suffer and you will lose money. If your website has too low a portion of advertising relative to content, the sales on your website will suffer and you will lose money.

What is the optimum ratio of ads to content? I can’t point to any studies, but I feel the optimum ratio is somewhere around 20 to 25 percent ads relative to content. Go much above that ratio and, despite more ads, the revenue from your site goes down. But, there are ways to exceed that ratio and still make more money.

The cost of setting up a web site is dirt cheap nowadays. You can register a domain for less than $2.00 as I write this (for .info domains). Hosting is also very cheap, and getting cheaper all the time.

So why are so many web sites springing up? Obviously somebody’s making money besides the hosting companies, so here’s some idea starters for you:

1. Sell your own products or services. They should be related to your target audience. You want to be able to take credit cards (at least with PayPal if not otherwise) on your site and deliver your product to your customers as fast as possible.

2. Sell another company’s products. There is no shortage of companies willing to drop ship items for you, all you have to do is make the sale and place the order with your fulfillment company, they do all the work, and you profit on the difference between their price and yours. There are ways to avoid the hassles some attribute to drop shippers.

Web sites are an Ongoing Part of Business.

All too many small business owners build a web site that is considered complete once the final copy is placed. Do not stop there, if you really want to make your investment into the Web part of a profitable marketing solution, you need to ensure that people return to your site, refer it to others, and use it as a resource in their lives or businesses.

They Will Come. Well, Some Will?

If you have a site that is ‘done’, you will certainly get new visitors to your site from links, search engines and other marketing, but those visitors will scan through your pages, get whatever information your site has to offer, return once more to see if you have anything new to offer, find nothing new and end their relationship with your site and company. How does that increase your profits?

"But I am no Writer."

1. The reputation of the web hosting company.

Most web hosting companies on the web have been in existence for at least 2 years and they are usually handled by experience and IT savvy network engineers who can provide the necessary support and services to their customers. However, there are also several "mom and pop" set ups out there which are handled by amateurs who are greedy to make plenty of your own money without even knowing how to do something as fundamental as setting up your user account. Be sure to check the credentials of the web hosting firm by either reading their about us or the technology they use for their server farm. Make sure you pick a company that has been around for at the very least 2 years and have a successful track record with 95% up time for all its servers. That’s a reasonable expectation as 100% is not a realistic aim in the computing world.

2. How much of storage space are you given?

Selecting the right emarketplace

Although, IT spending has been staying flat for the last several years, corporate spending in e-business is gaining significant ground and at present surpasses 20 percent of overall IT budget.

This means, more and more businesses are undertaking ecommerce initiatives, and as a result increasing sales, streamlining business processes and dramatically boosting productivity.

Most experts agree that average business, which is slow in adopting e-business applications, risks loosing its competitive edge to their more progressive rivals.

Emarketplaces provide with a great opportunity for small to medium size companies to test online business for a minimal risk. This is due to the factor that the e-business applications that come along with an emarketplace membership package are prohibitively expensive to develop in-house by most companies, and require large professional workforce to operate. As an example: product content development with required attributes, suitable for e-business, itself might feel like a daunting task for most offline companies.

So, as a company, what should be your first step in starting e-business through emarketplaces?

Naturally, out of hundreds of emarketplaces available today, you have to find one that matches all your requirements. Choosing right kind of emarketplace

Home Page

Home page should clearly indicate what the site is about. Provide top level navigation on the first page, your logo, and tell to the visitor what he can found on your web site. Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.

If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link "skip intro" should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.

Navigation structure

Place the navigation on the place where the people are used too look for it. Don’t experiment with the navigation! I can’t stress enough this. Keep the navigation system same on ALL pages. Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your site.

Why do some web sites reap huge benefits while others just get lost in the shuffle? Do some web masters have a secret that most of us have overlooked? Actually, there is a secret to unlocking the power of your web site and it has to do with words. When communicating via the web, words truly make all the difference. And the only way to get the most out of your website is carefully choosing what you have to say and how you say it.

Is There a Difference When Writing for the Internet?

As a writer for a multitude of projects, I’ve noticed one very important distinction when writing for the Internet. That distinction boils down to less verbiage with more impact. What that means to you is making sure each word counts. Because people scan verbiage on the web it’s important to use words sparingly but they must be words that have power. Why? Because behind every well-written message, you should hear: “I have something that you want or need and you can hardly wait to get it.” Consequently, to get it right, you have to use words effectively.

Content is King!

Want to increase your affiliate link click-through rates and profits?

Then you’ll need to learn how to master your domain.

One of my favorite episodes of Seinfeld was the “master of your domain” show where the gang bet each other as to who could hold out the longest without giving in to self gratification. Whoever ‘caved in’ would have to lay down the cash.

The question - will the domain master you, or will you master the domain? There is a price to pay if it master’s you.

In today’s power tip, of course, I’m talking about an Internet domain. One that describes your piece of Internet real estate. If your mother catches you mastering this domain, she may actually be proud of you!

If you’re not using this technique, you may be paying the price of lost customers. So let’s get right to it.

Affiliate programs are the most popular choice of making money online. However, they’re so common that most people recognize an affiliate link and are less likely to click on one because of the selfish notion that they might be contributing to someone else’s success. But that’s another Oprah …