Digital Insanity

“Building Your Website”. This is video 6 in a series of 10 videos about how to start an internet business from scratch. From SubHub (www.subhub.com), membership site experts.

In this video, Mac shares with people more of his knowledge on e commerce and the best e commerce website designs. Enjoy!

You’ve spent hours/days/weeks on your website’s design; now it’s time to build it. The thought of actually building a website can make many a newbie affiliate marketer cringe and is often the biggest stumbling block on their road to success. But it can be done…

First, let’s look at some building basics. HTML (hyper text markup language) is the simple programming language that tells a browser what a webpage should look like online. HTML is made up of elements such as paragraphs, text, or headings. Elements are in turn, made up of tags, attributes, and some times content. Tags are simple descriptive terms that tell browsers what they are dealing with. Attributes are modifications to an element. Content is anything that goes between the tags.

Next, what about page building programs? If you have knowledge of HTML you can create a web page using only a text editor such as Windows Notepad or with text editors such as Coffee Cup or Hotdog. If you are a first time builder a WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) program is a great learning tool. There are hundreds of programs out there including Web Studio, Go Live, Front Page, and Dream Weaver to name a few. Creators of both text editors and WYSIWYG programs often give free online trials for their products. I’ve listed possible resources at the end of this article.

Now comes structuring your site’s content. Some of the things you might want to consider are the use of frame sets, as well as text size and font, headings, color, images, and links. Frame sets are used to divide a webpage into to different areas. Each area or frame contains its own webpage. A site without frames (or a regular page) consists of a single webpage. A regular page is less complicated to build and also easier on search engines.

Navigation is very important to your site. It should be usable and consistent on every page. If your site consists of more then one page it would be helpful to visitors to have links to your home page and a search function (for your site only) on each page.

Finally, In order to get visitors to stay (and hopefully click) your site must be unique, but not create sensory overload. You can add sparkle and shine to your site through graphics, audio, and video. The key is to remember not to get carried away and to check and re-check all links to make sure they work. Other possibilities include guest books, blogs, or message boards, free weather, news, or articles.

Building a website for the first time can be challenging, but fun. The possibilities for your site are as endless as your imagination. You can do this—so get out there and build!

New innovations in the mobile phone industry, such as 3G technologies and new handsets such as the iPhone, have led to an increase in so-called WAP website design. Small, low resolution screens, clunky interfaces, inadequate navigation and slow connection speeds are a thing of the past with this next generation of mobiles, and a shift in the way many web design Solihull companies look at the use of mobile web. But the question remains: How will this affect the future of web design?

The mirroring of traditional design values with those for WAP are clear in more areas than one. For instance, many of the optimisation tactics deployed in desktop sites also apply here. The submission of a mobile sitemap to search engines, well-positioned key content, outbound linking, adding your URL to directories and business listings, as well as keyword-rich page titles and metadata are essential for indexing purposes. Designers must ensure that their site’s navigation is easy to crawl through and efficiently coded.

Layout is as much an essential component of design with mobile Internet as it is with traditional mediums – clear, crisp and concise. The use of Flash for instance should be avoided, as long loading times are considered an absolute no-no in mobile designs. Creative flourishes like this need should be eliminated as user experience is key.

Wap designs must conform to the W3C’s mobile standards, which could mean anything from the creation of WAP-friendly CSS style sheets to the correct rendering of tables and images. These guidelines are fundamental in not only ensuring that web sites crossover successfully to the WAP platform, but also in search engine optimisation, as the search engines develop their algorithms around these standards, and getting indexed will hinge upon complying with W3C.

Using a WML, XHTML or CHTML mark-up language is the best way of ensuring that your mobile device can ‘read’ your site. The correct use of these codes is essential to guarantee that the spiders can index your web pages and go some way to securing healthy search rankings.

So what about the next gen of phones then, such as the iPhone? What is apparent is that the high resolution screens of these models enable a more visual experience for the user, meaning more symmetry between WAP and desktop Internet. These handsets are able to display what is in essence the full, ‘normal’ Internet. Some popular websites, such as Facebook, are even modified when loaded through these handsets to present a slightly-watered down, but essentially the same experience.

According to recent research by the end of the year in excess of one billion people will carry handsets that are capable of providing exceptional, next generation browsing. Now is the time for web design Solihull to implement WAP-accessibility and functionality in their sites to take advantage of this booming industry.

When creating an affordable Web site for your small business, there are certain things to keep in mind from a design perspective that can make or break your site. Even if you do not plan to spend a fortune on your site, paying attention to each of these items you will ensure that the final product is something of which you can be proud.

Here are 5 tips for designing your small business Web site, even on a budget:

Tip #1: Make sure your Web site loads in 5 seconds or less: Have you ever tried to view a Web site only to find that it takes 10 or 20 seconds to come up on your screen? Unless it has been recommended by a friend or you have some other burning desire to visit the site, you probably likely gave up and moved on. The first 5 seconds is very important in terms of the attention span of your visitor. During that period, you need your site to load and for the visitor to be able to “get” what your site is about. If it takes longer than this, your visitors will run out of patience and leave. Tip: if you want to show off a long flash presentation, try featuring it on a page other than the home page.

Tip #2: Limit the menu bar to 5 options: Your Web site needs to be singular in purpose and focused in appearance. If your site is trying to be all things to all people, it will end up being of value to almost nobody. The simplicity and focus of your site design is reflected in your navigation and symbolized on your home page by your menu options. If you believe your site requires more than five menu options, make some of them sub-menus that are available only after the user selects one of the five main options.

Tip #3: Make clearly visible a call to action: Ever shopped at an IKEA? Their stores have a non-traditional layout that allows you to look around freely and yet literally leads you from one section to another, right on through to the multiple cash registers and food goodies waiting for you at the end of your path. Let this serve as a model for how to set up your Web site: on every page, you need to make it abundantly clear to your site visitors just exactly what it is you want them to do. Do you want them to contact you? Order your product or service? Add a comment to your Web site? Whatever it is, make this call to action very easy to spot both textually and graphically from anywhere on the site.

Tip #4: Provide free and clear access to additional help options: You do not want to lose sales (or visits, or whatever your goal for your visitors maybe be) just because you failed to give someone the chance to ask a question. Just as with your call to action, make it clear to visitors that no matter where they are on your site they can easily locate help via phone, e-mail, live chat, call back, user forum, or knowledge database. Hint: present the various options in a prioritized manner depending upon anticipated user needs.

Tip #5: Show consistency among other design elements: The look-and-feel of your site as a whole is really just a combination of all of its individual components. Pay close attention to every detailed component of your new site. Use appropriate colors and graphics, pay attention to font size, make sure your messaging is readable and makes sense, and make sure images look crisp and appealing. Items that you think are minor might form the basis for whether someone chooses to stay on your site or find that of a competitor.

Whether you are designing your own site or hiring a professional designer, pay attention to these items and you will have a winning site for your small business, even on a budget.