Advertising through your own site can be delicate, depending on what image it sends to your global audience. One web site can easily break or increase your business so try to send a web site image which tells that you are a professional.

It is very important to appoint a balance between the design of the web site and its content. In this way you will have very profitable web site, your targeting audience is going to be very satisfied. The aim of web design is that web site’s appearance be very pleasant for seeing, and its structure to be easy to navigate through. The content explains the web site and it should reply to its subject.

One of the first things that must be done with the content is to divide it into the potential categories and than to classify it by the scale of the importance. In this way the structure of your web site won’t look clumsy with putting too many facts and pictures and that is why it is necessary to have a structure of web site like this.

The next crucial thing is the web site navigation. It is very important to make your web site navigate in an easy way because your visitors will appreciate it a lot. Not loosing their patient and have them to stay is your the most important guideline while making the web site. Your visitor will stay much longer to browse through the web site you have made if you afford them an easy navigation and fast down loads. Try not to put too many images, especially avoid some that are out of the web site content because these things make your web site navigate more slowly.

And what is about the design of the web site? Consider that as the most relevant part of your web site. It is recommended to always have it in some sort of balance. Design of the web site must reply to the products you are selling or to the services you are offering. Images that don’t describe the purpose of your web site are totally unwanted because that won’t make your business increase and that is for sure. Besides the images that will make your downloads slowly, inharmonious colours will also make your web site worse.

Unless you know what to look for, choosing a web developer can be a very difficult task. Because there are no licensing requirements for web developers, and the barriers to entry are almost nonexistent, the web development market has become flooded with individuals and companies of all skill levels and capabilities. This whitepaper provides tips for what to consider when choosing a web developer.

Tip #1: Look for Specialization

Many web developers claim that they can do it all. The truth is that most web developers are primarily either graphic designers or programmers. The fields of graphic design and programming are fairly specialized and it is uncommon to find people who are able to do both well. When looking for a web developer, we suggest asking the professionals to designate who will be designing your web site and who will be doing any custom programming. If it is the same person doing both pieces, we advise paying even closer attention to their portfolio.

Tip #2: Look for a Strong Portfolio

The sites that a web developer has worked on are typically strong indications of the type of work that you can expect from them for your own web site. When reviewing a developer’s portfolio, keep an eye out for aspects that you want incorporated into your own site. If you are looking for a bleeding edge design, then look for those types of designs in their portfolio. If on the other hand you are looking for complex programming, make sure you tell the developer that you would like examples of those types of sites.

Tip #3: Expect a Focus on Marketing

In the early days of the Internet, simply having a web site was enough because not every company had one. Today however, a web site is an important aspect of marketing for small businesses. Make sure that your web developer will perform search engine optimization on your web site and that they will help you increase your rankings in search engines.

Tip #4: Understand Who Will Host Your Web Site

How a web development company hosts the web sites that they create is an important but often overlooked aspect of choosing a web developer. Many web development firms simply act as a reseller for a company that performs the hosting. The danger with this is that if you experience problems with your web site or email it sometimes isn’t clear who is responsible for fixing the issue. This can result in finger pointing between the web developer and the company involved in hosting the site when a problem occurs. This can be especially problematic with complex web sites that perform e-commerce or other custom functionality. Make sure that you understand who is responsible for assisting you with any hosting or email issues that you have before signing on with a web developer.

Tip #5: Think Long Term

There are several long term considerations that should be considered in your decision of which web developer to use. Make sure that you understand how ongoing maintenance will be charged and at what point your initial project ends and the maintenance phase of your relationship begins. It is also important to make sure that if your web developer will register a domain on your behalf that they put it in your name or the name of your business. This ensures that you can gain complete control over your domain in the event that you need to make a change to your hosting without the assistance of your web developer. Additionally, make sure that you have a copy of your web site. We’re always surprised at the number of people who spend many thousands of dollars on a web site but don’t have a copy of it in their own hands.

Tip #6: Request References and Actually Call Them

Once you reach the point where you have a web developer that you want to use, we recommend that you request references and actually call them. This will be one of your best indications of how the developer maintains and manages client relationships and it provides one last measure of safety before you begin your project.

Of course, they do work in terms of visuals. If you visit a Flash web site you will see it. Just because a visitor can see the web site doesn’t automatically mean that the web site is working for your business.

What is Flash?

Flash is technology developed by Macromedia, a leader in web development tools. Flash movies are a compilation of many images, elements and text that is then compiled into a nice, tight little digital file that then gets put on the internet. Some designers build entire web sites using this technology. Graphic designers quite like the technology because it gives them a great opportunity to show how talented they are by developing interactive, moving, and quite honestly some very entertaining web sites. Remember though that the purpose for your business web site is to communicate with your existing and prospective clients, not to show everyone what a talented designer you hired.

What is Flash Good For?

Flash is great as an add-on element for some graphic components of a business web site. Recently the ability for web masters to compile digital audio and video into flash movies has been simplified and using flash to stream a video is a great example of a perfect use for Flash in a business web site.

Another example of where Flash is well used and well received is on web sites that are about presentation and not information. For example a rock band, kids web sites with little games, a photo gallery, a movie clip are all places where Flash is particularly well suited.

Does Flash have a place on the internet? Absolutely it does, but as a web site purchaser though, you have to ask yourself the question, “does Flash have a place on my business web site?”

Can Everyone See Flash

The short answer is no. Although widely available and a component of most web browsers when they are installed, not everyone has flash installed with their web browser. If a visitor who does not have a flash plug-in on their PC visits a site that requires the Flash plug-in, their web browser will prompt them to install it. PC and web savvy visitors will likely go ahead and do it, but some users (like my mother) panic if a pop-up window asks a question and they walk away, or surf away, thinking they just infected their PC with the latest doomsday virus. All of that said, a large percentage of people can see Flash without too much anxiety.

Things to Consider

The Intro Flash Splash

Flash is commonly used for “splash” pages or “entry pages” into web sites. We have all seen them, the animated movie or commercial that leads us into a more traditional marketing web site. Have you ever wondered why the Flash designer almost always places a “skip intro” link on this page? I believe it’s because they know that if they don’t allow people to skip the Flash splash screen that they are going to lose the visitor. Remember that most internet surfers are impatient and they are usually looking for information, not another commercial. Get people to your main web page and do it fast.

The trend of using ‘splash’ pages has declined in the past couple of years as the internet has matured. It is my belief, and widely shared, that if your web site is about good information, then an entry screen is just a road block to your visitors.

The Search Engine

Search engines send out automated robots called “spiders” that crawl through the internet and create massive databases of web pages. People then search for web pages based on key words that are embedded in to the web page in hidden tags as well as in the text that is on the web page itself. If it is important to you that people find your web site then it is important to you to create well written text and links on your web pages that the search engines can find, read and follow. Search engines can not see the text in a Flash page. Search engines can not see hyper-links on flash pages and therefore can not follow the links. Your web page will not seem very important to most search engines because to a search engine your web site will consist of one page and the only relevant information that the search engine will see is your meta-tags if they exist.

Having said all of that, there are arguably ways to get a Flash site indexed and catalogued by a search engine. It simply is not the easiest thing to do and you will likely require a Search Engine Optimization specialist to assist you.

Reciprocal Linking

If you are kind enough to put links on your web site for other web sites then you are providing them with a “vote of confidence” in terms of search engine rankings. The more web sites that link to a web site, in the eyes of the search engine, makes the linked web site more important. Taking that a step further, the more important the web site that links to you the higher the potential ranking your site will get. Likewise sites that provide you with a reciprocal link are in effect giving you their “vote of confidence” and in turn making your web site more important.

Remember what I said earlier? Search engines can not see hyper-links when they are embedded into flash. So although the links are appreciated they will not contribute to the search engines perception of how valuable your web site may be to the world and as a result all those “votes of confidence” are going to waste.

Make sure that people who provide you with a link from their web site to your is not embedded into a flash page. Links should be in pure HTML or Hyper-Text MarkUp Language. If you provide links to other web sites on your site, the same applies to you, use HTML.

Don’t Break my Back Button

Web-browsers all have a back button. As software users, and more specifically as web surfers, we use the back button as a matter of course. It is a good practice as a web developer to not ‘break the back button’. Unfortunately because of the nature of Flash, the back button doesn’t work for backward navigation in the flash web site.

Create a Bookmark if You Can

People like to bookmark pages on the internet so that they can quickly return to them later on. Web surfers do not always bookmark the index page, or the main page, of a web site. For example if you site has a nifty currency converter or a great mortgage calculator on it, people may simply want to bookmark just that page. You can not bookmark an internal page within a Flash site. You can only bookmark the main page. Try it. Visit a 100% Flash web site, surf around a bit, then try to bookmark the page you are looking at. It doesn’t work, because you literally haven’t changed pages from when you first arrived at the site, you have simply “played the animation” which made it appear as though you went to different pages.

Cost

The cost to develop a traditional marketing web site using standard design graphic, HTML and text is in most cases less expensive than using Flash. If you designer proposes to use Flash, ask the question, “how much would it cost to do the same thing without flash?”.

Making Revisions and Updates

If you have your web site built 100% in Flash, you have subscribed to a certain skill-set in your designer. If you want to make revisions you will always need to use someone who can work within Flash. The same theory applies if your web site is images, HTML and text. The distinct difference is that there are far more web masters that work with the later than in Flash. It also typically will take longer to make revisions to Flash sites and as a result your cost of maintenance can be quite steep.

The Source Files

Flash source files are the heart of a flash movie, element or web site. The file will be names something like mywebsite.FLA. This is the native un-compiled source file for a Flash file. Once the designer is ready to deploy the Flash to the web server the file is compiled into a different format. The compiled file in our example would be called mywebsite.SWF.

So to clarify, the original artwork and design is worked on in the .FLA format and the final file that goes on the web server is .SWF.

I see it time and time again where the designer does not provide the client with the source file for their flash elements or web site. They protect the .FLA files, and guess what, you have to go to them for updates and revisions. It does not matter how talented your new web master or designer is, if you do not have the source file with the .FLA extension for your Flash site you will not be able to update it. You should ask your designer to provide you with this source file if you decide to use Flash elements on your web site.

A Final Note On Flash

Please do not interpret my remarks here as me being “anti-flash” the fact is, it really is a great media technology. If you have the budget and want to develop your web site using 100% pure flash, there are some things you can do to mitigate some of the pitfalls that I have described here.

Use a javascript to detect the browser capabilities of the visitor and ensure that they have Flash plug-in to support the Flash on your site. If the result of this simple test is ‘no they do not support Flash’ then the right thing to do is direct them to an alternative HTML based web site with your content. So, although you can overcome the missing Flash plug-in you have to have two web sites designed (the Flash one and the HTML one).

In Summary

Flash is a great design tool to add elements to your website to ‘spice it up’.

Flash is great for delivering rich media like audio and video.

Use the theory, add flash to your web page, don’t add your web page to flash and you will deliver a great experience to your visitors.

If your web site is about delivering information, make the information first and the design second. Web sites that provide great content do not need to wiggle, giggle, blink, click and buzz.

Desc : Organizing a Cost Effective Small Business Web Site Promotion And how to promote your website!

How to: Promote your small business web site without costing you a nickel.

Small Business Web Site Promotion

The most important thing to remember when you want to encourage visitors to visit your web site is to make sure they will want to return again. ‘Visitors’ means not just human web surfers, but also the search engines and directories. Small business website promotion, no matter how much you promote your site, will be the look of the site that will keep visitors there and hopefully buy your products or services.

Optimize your Site for Search Engines; Check your links

Small business website promotion starts with a search engine spider indexing or cataloging your site by following the links from one page to another. Just as human visitors dislike a broken link, so do the spiders. If a link doesn’t work they’ll simply move onto the next page. No matter how sophisticated the search engine software is, it can’t index what it can’t find. Also remember that a spider will not be able to follow a link that requires a form submission or Java Script so small business website promotion is very important.

While considering the subject of links, if you are using HTML and CSS on your site, make sure that both work properly. A certain minimum level of requirements must be met so that your pages will display correctly. It is only if these are met that a spider can do its work. There are free facilities online that can check both of these for you.

* Make sure your links work.

* Do not use forms or Javascript if you want a search engine spider to find your pages

* Check that HTML and CSS work properly.

Do not make your Pages too big!

Most of us have heard the expression ‘size isn’t everything’. While this may not be true of many things, it does matter when it comes to web pages. People do not like having to wait an eternity for a web page to load. Search engine spiders may not fully index a page bigger than 150k in size. Remember that the size of a page does not simply depend on the actual HTML file itself, but includes everything on the page such as images, banners etc.

If you have a lot of images on your pages, then either reduce the number of them, or use a program such as Macromedia Fireworks to optimize them for the web. If the page has a big file size because there is a massive amount of text in it, then you should consider splitting the text into smaller, more manageable pieces and putting them on several pages and linking one to another. SEO Chat has a tool called “Page Size Lookup” which can tell you the size of your web page; you can check it out at

http://www.seochat.com/seo-tools/page-size/

* Keep the file size to below 150k

* Optimize images for the web

* Use a free page size checker to find out the actual size of the page.

Search Engines and Directories; What is the difference between a search engine and a directory?

People frequently use the term ‘search engine’ as a catch-all expression for anything they use to search the Web. They are different things though, and an understanding of the differences will enable you get use both effectively to promote your site more successfully.

How does a search engine work?

Search engines use highly sophisticated software to search the web for new pages. It then automatically creates and updates their indexes. Whenever they find an active hyperlink, they will follow it and add that to the index and so on. These ‘crawling’ programs are generally referred to as ‘spiders’.

Normally, all this is totally automatic, but sometimes human intervention is involved. The spider will return periodically to the pages and check for updated content. Often there will be a delay between you uploading your page, and the spider finding it, unless you submit your URL directly to the search engine itself. You can submit a web URL to Google ™ free of charge.

* Search engines are usually automatic

* They will revisit your pages.

* Spiders will find all the pages on your site as long as there are active hyperlinks for them to follow.

* You can submit a site to most search engines free of charge.

How Directories Work.

The primary difference between a search engine and a search directory is that a directory is compiled by a real person. Frequently the site owner will submit a short description of the site together with its URL to the directory compiler to be considered for inclusion. Directories are arranged into categories to make it easier to find what you are looking for.

When you submit your site to a directory, you choose the category you want your site to be featured in. A reviewer then checks to ensure that your site is in the most suitable category.

Another difference between a search engine and a directory is that whereas a search engine could list every individual page in your web site, a directory will generally only contain a single entry covering your entire site.

* Directories are compiled by real people.

* They are categorized.

* A reviewer checks to ensure your site is in the best category.

* A directory will usually only contain one entry for your entire site.

Shared Indexes and Hybrids

Things are never so straightforward though. Some search portals are a hybrid, combing a search engine and a directory. The search engine part returns automated results, while the directory gives human found results.

Normally, a hybrid will supply hits from the directory as the primary source, with the search engine results of individual pages as the secondary source.

Getting your Site Ready

It cannot be stressed too strongly that search engines and/or directories are by far the most important way of getting your site noticed. To do this, you have to properly prepare the site and submit your URL to them.

Keywords are important: Choose the right keywords

Think what your web site is all about. If you had to describe your site in one word, then that word is your first keyword. Then think about other words to describe your site. Make a list of them, with the most important at the top of the list and so on. You want a list of between ten and fifteen words. Since these keywords will be used in a variety of ways, it is important that you take some time selecting them.

Keywords are important because they are possibly the most important thing that a search engine uses to determine whether a page is included in the search results. Even although different search engines use keywords in different ways, most experts agree that the frequency and position of your keywords is an important factor.

* Select keywords to describe your site.

* Choose 10 – 15 keywords.

* Take your time picking keywords – they are extremely important.

Pick a Good Title for your Web Page

When you write a web page, there is always a tag. This goes into the section of your web page. The tag is what is shown at the top of your web page when it is displayed in a web browser. Search engines, however, often use the tag as the title of the listing in the results.

The tag looks like this

The name of my Web Page

Not only is it good practice to make your tag have a good description of the content of the page, but if you can manage to work into it some of your keywords, so much the better.

Why you should use Meta Tags?

What are meta tags?

Meta tags are a special type of HTML code that goes into the section of a web page. Site visitors do not normally see them, but search engine spiders do. Just as some HTML tags have an attribute with a value, so too do meta tags.

As far as optimizing your web page for search engines is concerned, the most important meta tags are keywords and description. The syntax for the keyword tag is as follows:

The description tag is as follows:

Unlike some HTML tags, it is not strictly necessary to have the meta tag closed, but if you want to have valid XHTML, then you do need to close all your tags.

Consider your URL

Since we are discussing matters that will influence how a page appears, it is worth considering the actual URL of the page itself. Since the URL that appears in your browser reflects the file path for the page, it makes good sense to have the file name reflect the navigation of the site.

You can see at a glance that this page refers to the Lower Square, which is part of the Castle, which in turn is part of Stirling. Not only does this meaningful URL impart information to the visitor, but for the web designer it makes sense to have the separate files arranged in a logical manner. This will only apply to pages that have not been dynamically created by a database program, of course.

* Choose a meaningful title for your page.

* Put your keywords into the /www.dmoz.org/). This is the largest human-maintained directory of the Web. Because it allows virtually anyone to access its resources, many search portals such as AOL, Netscape and HotBot take advantage of this and include their data into their own systems. This means that once you are included on the ODP database, you are also included in many others.

* There are places you can submit your site free of charge

* Google is probably the most important place to submit to.

* Yahoo is a good second choice if you don’t mind registering with them.

* Do not forget the Open Directory Project.

Paid Listings

Although Google and Yahoo do not charge you anything for submitting your site to them, they do not guarantee where or when your site will appear in their listings. However, they do have sponsored links that appear either above or beside the listing of search engine hits. These are useful for promoting your small business web site since they are targeted links. If, for instance, someone searches for “bagpipes”, then not only will they get a list of bagpipe related sites returned, but they will also see the ‘sponsored links”.

Free Promotional Techniques

Ad Swapping

This is one of the easier ways of getting your web site promoted. What it involves basically is that you display an advertising banner, button or text link on your web site, and other sites do the same for your ads.

The simplest way of swapping banner ads is to join an existing banner swapping network:

Banner Advertising

Banner networks work because you are provided with a few lines of HTML code to include on your web pages, usually near the top. The HTML creates banners from other sites on your pages. When a visitor clicks on them, they are re-directed to their web site. At the same time, you provide the network organizer with your own banner to display elsewhere.

There are many banner ad networks available, so choose with caution. Try to find one that will direct traffic to your site, by displaying your ad on related sites. In order for the network to make money, they will perhaps ask you to display 2 banners in return for displaying yours once.

No network will promise a 1:1 ratio, so avoid those that do. Do not consider paying for extra banners until you have proved to yourself that the free ad is generating enough visitors to your site. Although most networks will promise not to display ads for pornographic or other unsuitable sites, in reality you have no control over them.

* Banner ads are free

* Try to choose a network that is related in some way to your business.

* Avoid those that make extravagant claims about the ratio of ads.

* Be aware that you have virtually no control over what ads appear on your site.

* You might get buttons or text links instead of banners.

Peer to Peer Swaps

Although banner swapping can yield increased exposure of your site, sometimes a more targeted approach is required. The object of the exercise is to get your ad seen by as many possible visitors as possible, therefore if you can arrange a deal with the webmaster of a busier site than yours it could be advantageous.

You may have to compromise. In return for prominently displaying an advertisement for a busier or better known web site than yours, you might have to agree to less prominence on the other site.

Web Rings

These are networks of similarly themed sites which creates links from one to another to form a chain. You will display a web link icon and a list of at least some of the other sites in the ring. If you are just launching your web site it is probably best to try to join an established ring.

There are possible flaws in joining a web ring. You will need to allow space on your pages to display the ring logo. Visitors might think that you are part of an organization, and if some of the sites are badly built, you might be associated with the rest of them. You will have no control over which sites join the ring, and link to you and vice versa.

* Web rings are free.

* They are normally similar web sites to your own.

* You have no control over the quality of the other sites in the ring.

Article Submission Sites : What is an Article Submission site?

An article submission site, and there are roughly 250 of them, are an effective way of promoting your own goods and services as well as generating traffic to your web site. Their purpose is to provide webmasters, e-book editors and e-zine publishers with free content for their own publications. The articles are usually arranged into different categories, and the site is normally searchable.

How they work

You write an article or series of articles about what you have to offer on your web site. The purpose of the article is not to directly sell your goods. Let us suppose that your web site sells a wide range of possible gifts for all members of the family. Your article might be about, for example, birthday gift ideas for teenage boys.

The purpose is to make your article interesting enough and informative enough for it to be used somewhere else. Since you have included some biographical details about yourself, including your own URL, and your article is published exactly as it appears on the article site, your URL appears in the end-user’s web site. Thus you are getting free publicity, and the publisher is getting free content.

* Article submission sites get you free publicity.

* Publishers get free page content.

* Your URL appears wherever your article is used, and so generates traffic to your site.

Paid or free submissions

All article submission sites will allow you to submit your article for nothing. You register with the site, and you can select what category you want your article to appear in. When you write your article you will include the same keywords as you did when you wrote the HTML for your web site. Thus a search engine will find your site, as well as the article you wrote about it.

Some article sites will allow you to bid for better placement within their pages. Basically, the more you bid, the higher prominence you will get on the article site’s home page. Thus you are the first thing a publisher notices. Even if you are outbid for top spot, chances are you will still be on the home page. Since a lot of the sites also have separate front pages for each of the categories, even if you don’t achieve prime position on the site’s home page, you likely will in the category pages.

* Use the same keywords you used on your web pages.

* You can bid for increased placement on the article site’s pages.

Summary

As you can see, there are many ways that you can promote your small business web site. By far the simplest way is to ensure that your web site has carefully chosen key words for search engines to find. You can also submit your web site to search engines, ad exchange networks, web rings and article submission sites free.

About the Author:

Rajesh V. Tavakari, Senior SEO of http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/. Offering affordable website promotion and natural optimization services since 1998. Website : http://www.website-promotion-ranking-services.com/ . You may freely reprint this article on your website or in your newsletter provided this courtesy notice, author name and URL remain intact.

When it comes to business trends, this is a particularly useful one. The Internet has become something of a gift to business that extends far beyond the dot COM boom of the late 1990s. It has helped many companies to reach new customers, as well as to forge partnerships and woo investors.

The most obvious effect of web conferencing is reducing travel costs, but there are also a number of other benefits. Here are a few more reasons why this is a smart business decision:

Improved delivery of information: In the time it takes to organize a traditional meeting, one could be well underway with web conferencing. Companies can feed vital information to their employees quickly, with minimal impact on workflow. With features like remote desktop, computers can be accessed from anywhere and at any time. Meeting modern day challenges: The current business environment demands that companies think globally. Web conferencing tools create a portal to new customers where the business can make the case for their product directly. With remote support any company can effectively reach PC and Mac customers, constantly providing updates or product support. Improved efficiency: Since workers no longer need to leave their desks to attend meeting, this lead to more efficient use of company time. Remote desktop allows them to access other computers so they can keep working while getting additional files. Better project management: Projects can be closely monitored with frequent updates provided. Since web conferencing allows for meetings to be stored, even personnel that miss meetings can be kept up to date. Better IT support: Large companies understand the difficulty of keeping all facets of the company in synch. Computer issues can make this even more difficult. With remote support technicians can access computers whether or not they are on the network and quickly resolve problems.

Web conferencing is a key tool for helping business work not just harder but smarter. It not only speeds up the flow of information within the organization, but it can also be used as a training tool. Workers can attend important training seminars without leaving their offices and constantly upgrade their skills.

Tapping into the range of options provided by online conferencing is easier than most companies might think. Some companies such as RHUB Communications offer free trials and useful demonstrations on their websites. The software is either web based or downloadable, while some companies provide appliances that require no download. Some of these are similar in function to the RHUB 4-in-1 Web Conferencing Appliance which come with remote support for PCs and Macs and remote access to other computers.

The next step is to find a web hosting provider, but how do you evaluate web hosting, and then make a choice on which provider to pay your hard earned money too?

Choosing the correct host for your company’s needs is a very important step, if not the most important step when taking your business online. The host you choose is responsible for placing your website online, and keeping it there 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. There is nothing worse for a business to have a website that is not accessible by your customers, if your site is not online it has the potential to cost you a sale, and also sales in the future, if a prospective customer attempts to go to your website only to find it offline, the chances of that customer ever returning again are very slim.

Ok, so what should I look for in a web host

There are several factors that you will need to evaluate before making your short list of hosting providers, below I will outline the most important aspects that you will need to cover.

1. Firstly you will need to evaluate the requirements of your website. Will you need shopping cart facilities, what type of content will your website be providing, what methods of payment will you offer, you will also need to think in to the future as well, will you need the ability to expand the site, taking a business online is a very big step and should be a long term step as well so you will need to think long term with your planning. Write a short list of what your website will require to properly function.

Details you will need to account for.

Disk space and bandwidth. Disk space refers to the amount of storage your web host will provide you to store your website. You will need to account for the current size of your website now, and also allow for what disk space you will require in the future as your website grows.

Bandwidth refers to the amount of data (pages, files) served from your website to your customers, if your website will be subject to high traffic, you will need to take the amount of bandwidth the host provides.

Also you will need to check what programming languages your website will require, languages such as PHP, Perl/CGI, JSP, Cold Fusion and ASP may be used on your website to perform certain functions, your chosen web host will need to support the programming languages that your site requires.

Now that you have a list of your requirements, it is time to narrow down your list of providers that support all the features required.

2. Contact each of the hosts you have on your list, confirming what they offer and if it meets your requirements, also ask for a list of references you can contact, some of the best information about a web host can be gleaned from its customers, the question you should ask an existing customer is; “how reliable is the host?”. This question is the most important; it refers to two things, reliability of their hosting when it comes to serving of your website, and also refers to reliability of their mail system. Reliability of their mail system is just as important as serving of your website.

3. Technical support, test it out, call the web hosts technical support line at various times of the day and check how long it takes to get through to support staff, also send technical support an email to test how long it takes to receive a response. If you are on hold for 30 minutes waiting to talk to support about a problem with your website, that is 30 minutes that your site is offline, and also 30 minutes of your own time wasted with which you could be performing more productive jobs.

Finally you should choose a host that meets your expectations and with whom you feel comfortable with, approach choosing a web host the same way you would any other major business decision, because after all it is your money paying for the service.

All the exporters are aware of the glaring fact that internet or having a website can give a big boost to your exports business. But just having a website is not enough, you will need to promote the website so that propsctice buyers can find your website when they are looking out for products. Once they find your website, they will inquire with you.

Let us discuss some of the important things to be included or to be done to optimize your website for exports business, so that it gets more inquiries;

1. Complete Website
Your website design should be complete in all respects. The home page, about us page, products page, services page, contacts page should be completed in all respects.

2. Details, details details.
Be as specific as you can and provide the minutest of details that you can while providing the information on your products and services. Providing all the details will get 2 benefits, one the prospective customer will value you as a highly reliable source increasing your credibility and the content will food for search engines and probably help in ranking your website higher on search engines.

3. Search Engines
Register your website with all the major search engines around the world. Google, MSN and Yahoo are not the only search engines, they are more than 500 search engines around teh whole world. List your website in each one of them. Submitting a website to search engines is free and hence this will not cost you a dime. Also do not ignore the local search engines, every country has their own local search engines, so do register your website there as well.

4. Business Directories
List your website in some of the business directories, which are focused on your industry. There are many directories around and a couple of them are free as well. Consider listing with them.

5. Advertising
Advertise your website on various search engines. This will increase the awareness about your website and will also get you the much needed traffic. Many search engines provide some initial credit for promotional purposes. Surf the internet and you might get a promotional package which will allow you to advertise your website for free.

6. Contacts
You call prospective customers to your website and what if your contact page is incomplete. People like to have all the contact details, by all means of communication to get in touch with you. Instead of asking the prospective customers to fill up a form, give them your contact details in an easy to read and understand format.

7. Embassy
Inform the embassy of your country located in various countries about the launch of your website preferably by FAX, as it begets authenticity and email is treated as spam. Also inform the embassies of various countries in your contry about the launch of your website and request them to inform about your website to relevant companies. If you wish to send email to fax, SwissFax offers the best solution.

8. Chambers of Commerce & Trade Associations
Contact the chambers of commerce and trade associations world wide and inform them about the launch of your website.

If you follow the above steps, your website design will be optimized to bring more export business for your company. Web Design Temple offers web designing services, specialized for your exports business.

A mailing list is the lifeblood of your online business. The old adage “the money is in the list” cannot be true enough — if you had a targeted list of prospects to contact each time you have a new product, you will be able to save a lot of effort by marketing it to your existing list of targeted prospects.

You can actually build up a targeted list of prospects that are interested in your products by offering a relevant download on your website. For example, let’s take a look at a very good example — apple.com. When you download the free iTunes and Quicktime software from their site, they will ask you to fill in an optional name and email form so that they can send you offers on songs that you can purchase via — guess where — iTunes!

In reality, you do not need to offer such a “heavyweight” download such as a full-feature software like iTunes. You can attract prospects equally well with some quality freebies such as a simple report, a free wallpaper, and so on. The important thing is that your download offers enough value for the prospect to be willing to give away his/her own email address to get it.

Knowledge can give you a real advantage. To make sure you’re fully informed about Web Design, keep reading.

However, slapping together a simple download and putting a link on your website won’t be enough to attract qualified prospects. You will have to do some homework in order for your lead-generating mechanism to work well for you.

First of all, you must place your download form prominently on your website. Preferably, dedicate a page to it and link to that page from every other page of your website. That way, there is no way your visitors cannot find the download page, and when they do, you’ll get some of them converted into your prospects!

Also, you have to put a little effort into promoting your download. Explain and elaborate on the values of the download, and why your visitors should download it. You might think why would anyone want to pass on a freebie, but most of your visitors would be too lazy to take the effort to download it because most of their downloads just sit on the harddisk collecting virtual dust. It is hence important to show your visitors why they should download your freebie.

Sometimes it’s tough to sort out all the details related to this subject, but I’m positive you’ll have no trouble making sense of the information presented above. You can have a Wisconsin.

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• Do keyword research on your niche and don’t just use the one keyword but use many keyword phrases that relate to your niche. The main keyword for your niche could have a lot of competition and you could struggle to gain good traffic and a good search engine ranking. By using long tail keyword phrases there will be less competition and you will rank much higher in the search engines. So keyword research is always important if you want your blog to be successful.

• Make your blog posts interesting and give your readers good quality content. If you have bad content then your visitors are not likely to return to your blog. The best way to succeed with blogging is to have those visitors coming back to your blog over and over again. By offering good quality content your readers will return and be regular visitors to your blog.

• To earn money blogging to will need to have some advertising or affiliate links within your blog but just don’t overdo it. There is nothing worse than a blog that is just filled with advertising. It looks cheap and nasty and will turn visitors away very quickly. So don’t overdo advertising and be subtle with your advertising.

• Update your blog regularly. One problem that many bloggers have is that they start a blog and it all goes well for a couple of weeks. Then something else takes their interest and the blog gets left behind. For your blog to be successful you need to update it on a regular basis. Try to post to your blog at least once a week and more often if you can. The more you post to your blog the higher ranking you will get and the more successful it will be.

When your blog starts to become well known and attracting a lot of traffic you will start to become known as an expert in your niche. Maintain your good reputation by keeping your content good and accurate.

These tips are fairly easy and hopefully will give your blogging business a boost and have you earning that income that you dream of.