Sunday, August 30, 2009

Customize Website Design For Churches

Customize Website Design For Churches to Have Significant Results
By Biswajeet Shroff

A website for a church must carry a unique identity for the church that possesses it. Everything right from the colors and contents to textures, graphics and images must reveal the church's individuality. There are countless companies that do website design for churches these days with template-based solutions. It is not erroneous to make use of templates particularly if the church's financial resources don't permit a customized solution. Nevertheless, there are a number of downsides when resorting to a template-based church website.

You mustn't be astonished if you come across in excess of one hundred websites for churches or maybe even thousands that have the identical look and feel. Regardless of how you consider the template design you selected is awesome, it downplays the look and feel when visitors view it on other websites. People will perceive that you are not one of a kind. The persona of your church is vanished or not even put across to start with.

A template-based church website does not promote recurring visits or bring more traffic to the site. It is logical for a small church to go for the cheaper solution such as templates. On the other hand, it must also be well thought-out that a website design for churches is not just meant to enhance your online existence but it is a strategic investment being done for an efficient online ministry. Any kind of investment must be carefully performed as it has a monetary value attached to it.

You can count on a customized website design for churches to derive many eye-catching advantages. You can provide a custom-based website a brand identity by putting together features that can be a sign of your church. In case of template websites, you are not left with any alternatives regarding the color combination and the type of design essentials to incorporate in your website. But if you opt for a custom solution, you have the liberty to direct the church website designer about the features that you believe would characterize your church's qualities in a dignified manner.

Make your site a spot of uniqueness. This is precisely the motive why you yearn for a customized answer. You should not want your website to give the impression of being like numerous others. You add value to your church by designing its website in a customized manner.

You can incorporate great interactive features into your website and augment your visitor's online experience. Template-based sites have limitations as far as design elements are concerned. If the company for the website design for churches offers certain interactive features, it will tally up to your monthly expenses which ultimately will charge you more money.

Your church's aesthetic appeal leads to repeated visits. People are fond of colors and attractive images by nature. We are shaped to exhibit that type of behavior. If the graphics and images in your website are pleasant, you can persuade them to keep coming back for more. A custom-based website for your church may not be the most financially feasible option but it is an outlay that deserves to be undertaken.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Are You Looking For the Perfect Web Design?

By Helen Cox

Every day worldwide millions of people log onto the Internet for business, entertainment and information. Anyone who has a website will cover one of these three aspects, which brings me to the point of web design. If you want your website to be found and used by the general public then you will have to have a site that is designed to appeal to your users.

There are many ways that you can entice someone to do business with you such as offering them a cheaper service than your competitors but on the Internet if you want someone to do business with you then your website needs to be user friendly and designed in a way that will make people stay on your site long enough to buy the products or services that are on offer to them.

The design of your website is more important than many people realise and often people design their sites with the wrong people in mind. A lot of people when they are first setting up their website will design their site in a way that appeals to them and in a way that they feel best reflects the business; this is the first mistake to make. When you are designing your website you need to do so with your target market in mind. You need to identify who you are aiming your website at, for example if you are aiming your site at a younger audience then your website should be quite funky and can include more flash as this will draw your audience in. If however the products or services that your business offers can apply to anyone of any age, such as mobile phones, you have to be careful when it comes to the design of your site as you need to design it in a way that will apply to all members of the public. The best way to go about doing this is by keeping your site simple and using neutral colours.

Your website needs to promote your business, you need to make people get involved in your business merely by the design that you have used. This may sound like a difficult thing to do but when you know how you can go about this with no problem at all.

When you are designing your website you should use limited colour and coordinate your website. As well as this you also need to remember that you need good unique content that is original. Your web content is the backbone of your website and it should be search engine friendly. You need to make sure that your site is easily readable and easily accessible for your visitors.

The design of your website can be the difference between your business being a success online and your business being a failure. You need to make sure that any phone numbers are placed in the top right hand corner under the sites logo and that your contact page should be clearly labelled. All of your pages should navigate to each other and the back to the main home page.

If you are struggling to get your site designed then you should enlist the help of a professional web design company to get the design done for you.

Helen is the web master of Discount Domains, who offer professional Web Design and Web Hosting services as well as all of your Search Engine Optimisation needs.

Please feel free to republish this article provided a working hyperlink remains to our site

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Helen_Cox

Getting Right From the Start - Tags & Design

By Rif Chia
I have met so many business owners whom are concerned over the performance of their website, only after a few years of operation online. It is a must to spread the message and educate the business world on getting right on your website framework. You can never imagine how much potential profits it can bring to the business. Remember what i am going to say will help your business website in search engine ranking which will improve your traffic.

Title Tag

I have said and wrote a number of articles on getting the right title and placing it just after the HEAD tag. The first line a spider read would be the TITLE tag and it carries significant SEO value because it tells the spider roughly what kind of content that webpage carries. Title tag is also displayed in search engine result on top of the description and it tells a searcher what he/she will be expecting from the website. Put your important keyword in your title, a good example would be Confectionery Packaging | Global Distributor for a packaging company.

Meta Description Tag

This is the description of your website shown in the search engine result. Write this description carefully with relevant keywords. Spiders see this as a reference to the content that webpage contains.

Keywords Density

Getting the correct keywords density ( around 3% - 3.25% ) is common. Keywords are important words that you believed a searcher may type and find you via the search engine. Identify the correct ones and you are on your way to the top of the SEPRS.

Nested Tables

I am not saying having nested tables are not good. Spiders simply do not like nested tables and to prevent them from further indexing a webpage, we try to reduce the use of nested tables. Replacing them with CSS would be good. Even my website is currently using a bit of nested tables and i am in the process of changing them with CSS scripting.

TITLE tag in a href

Many do not make use of this tag in their links. Having them is good and it tells the spiders what kind of link they might expect. It carries SEO value by further securing the correct keyword.

a href=http://www.ezbusinessneeds.com title=Search Marketing and SEO Web Design

ALT tag in img

Alt tag is commonly used to show text in case the image is unable to load in browsers. Spiders do not view image, they aren't human. So by providing spiders with ALTERNATIVE text will increase your target keyword density. This tag is normally used for blind personnel.

Well this shall end the TAGS for SEO Web Design. The next thing you need to know would be the scripting method that affects search engine indexing. I will write the article another day, see you around.

Rif Chia is the Founder & Private SEO Consultant of EzBusinessNeeds.com with more than 5 years experiences
SEO Web Design
http://www.ezbusinessneeds.com - Singapore SEO

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rif_Chia

Ten Top Tips For a Visitor-Friendly Web Site

By Rif Chia

Make it clear what you do

It may be obvious to you, but your site needs to spell out to visitors what it's about. You'd be surprised how many sites seem to make the assumption that visitors will know the company, understand their products or services and are familiar with all the latest jargon. Make sure your home page states clearly, in a paragraph or less of readable copy, who you are, what you do and what you've got to offer.

Fulfill your visitors' expectations

Another simple way to make your site more visitor friendly is to make sure it reflects what people are expecting to find when they reach the site, whether through a search engine, a banner or pop-up ad or a link from another site. You can do this by first looking at the search engines' search logs to find out what people want and how they ask for it (try Overture's Keyword Suggestion Tool), and then ensuring that your navigation and site messaging and content use those same keywords.

Put things where people expect to find them

Familiarity is a big part of usability. Research has shown that people expect site features to be in a certain place on the page. They look for the search box in the top right hand corner, the products or services down the left hand column, the check out in the bottom right hand corner, the main navigation along the top and the small print (i.e. terms of use, privacy) along the bottom.

Minimize the clickstream

More than 83% of Internet users are likely to leave a website if they feel they have too many clicks to find what they're looking for. So, for example, instead of splitting copy across several pages, with a click to move forward to each page, put it on long, scrollable pages with quick navigation links so that people can jump to the content they want, while staying on the same page.

Have an About Us and Contact Us page

Credibility is fast becoming a key usability issue. If people are going to entrust you with their credit card details or consider you a serious contender for their business, they want to be sure you really exist. We've all come across web sites that don't even have an address, never mind a telephone. That's why it's essential to have an About Us and a Contact Us page - to not only reassure people you're a proper business, but to give them a choice of contact options, including phone, email, directions and a map.

Increase your download speeds

Studies have shown that the average web site visitor will wait less than 9 seconds for a page to download - and the days of universal broadband are still a long way off. So instead of tedious Flash intros or bandwidth-hungry graphics, make your site as lean and nimble as possible. By stripping out the superfluous code, which is often created by web design software such as Dreamweaver, your site can be faster to load, even during peak traffic times, such as immediately after an advertising campaign. What's more, there are estimated to be 743 million people worldwide accessing the net by phone and PDA, so anything you can do to make your site faster and more accessible, will help ensure your availability to this huge new market.

Be search engine friendly

Search engine optimisation, because it focuses on making sites more appropriate to visitors' search queries, more content-rich and better-connected to other relevant sites can make a site more visitor friendly, as a natural by product of the process. In addition, a site map, breadcrumbs and descriptive text links (rather than just 'click here') are search engine friendly features which also enhance the visitor experience.

Know your weaknesses

As well as knowing where your visitors are coming from (ie. which search engine or link from another site), it's also worth knowing where your visitors are leaving from - the quit spots, in other words. If you check your server log files, and see that people are regularly quitting the site at a point where you don't expect, such as between two related pages, you can identify and fix errors in your navigation, download or transaction systems.

Create escape hatches

Conversely, you need to give visitors the opportunity to make a quick getaway. For example, every page should have a clearly marked link back to the home page. Likewise, your transaction process should offer people the chance to empty, as well as fill, their shopping baskets or opt-out from on-site processes, such as downloads, registrations or subscriptions.

Give a warm welcome to disabled visitors

According to the Disability Discrimination Act, web sites must be accessible to all members of the online community - including disabled visitors. Using Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) separates presentation from content, which not only makes the site accessible to people using assistive technologies such as voice browsers, but also enables visually impaired visitors, including the elderly (a growing online population) to resize formatting effects, such as colour and font size, to be easier to read. Other easy ways to improve your site's accessibility include ensuring links indicate content (i.e. not just 'click here') and giving informational images ALT descriptions and decorative images null ALT descriptions or alt="".

Fortunately, if your site is search engine friendly, you're already part of the way there. Assistive technologies work in a very similar way to search engine spiders, as they 'spider' the site, read the content and links and present it back to the user in a visitor-friendly format. Therefore, a site that's search engine friendly is already a good way towards being accessible to disabled visitors, as well as people using their phones or PDAs to access the net.

Rif Chia is the Founder & Private SEO Consultant of EzBusinessNeeds.com with more than 5 years experiences
SEO Web Design
Singapore SEO

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Rif_Chia

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Creating a Distinguished Web Site For Affiliate Marketing

By Terez Dunn

There are ways to impress your visitors and there are also ways to drive them off. And in the affiliate marketing industry, you are in dire need to attract more customers rather than driving them away and swearing never to return to that site again. That is why, before anything else and before knowing how to create a distinguished web site, you have to know that there are three things internet users hate while surfing the net.

First, they despise long hours of downloading a file. Second, they ignore web sites that are so out-of-this world. Alien-like terms and confusing methods are not really understandable by all means possible. Last, internet users hate it when the conditions and promises written in the site are not real. Web sites like these don't get any second chance for visitors to browse again. There is a wide selection so why settle for one right?

You, as an entrepreneur in the affiliate marketing world who is involved in this kind of program, must avoid this at all cost. You have to maintain an integrity that will make your customers to keep coming back for more. Below are 5 very good and effective tips on creating a site that will be distinguished by many.

Tip 1 - Make your site clear and understandable.

Your site must have a specific idea at hand. You have to establish an aim that will give the traffic a clear view of what you're aiming at. Design your site as something that even kids will understand. Either to inform, sell or entertain, it doesn't matter for as long as the people know what your site is all about. It should have consistency in every purpose.

Tip 2 - Design a site for the customers.

If you make a site because you wanted your prospects and existing customers to use it on their advantage, that would be the most perfect plan. Don't just put anything because you wanted it but because your customers would want it to be like so. Always consider the customer's need to revisit and reorder according to their needs. Remember what someone needs will always be what they want.

Tip 3 - Complexity is never an ideal choice.

Always choose something that is simple in the eyes of your customers. Showcasing different kinds of skills is not really what a visitor wants to see. They may not be impressed of something as complicated as a labyrinth. Point is, the content is what matters most. If the customers get the idea of your content and appreciate its existence, then you have made a good job on keeping it simple.

Tip 4 - Navigation made easier and more intuitive.

Probably, this is one of the most important aspects of web design. Easy navigation of a web page that has an intuitive appeal on your audience always works magically. When navigating a site, it has to be clear and logical. Important information must always be accessible and is easy to find. Don't design a web page that will frustrate your customers. Names of links must be self-explanatory and concise. One more thing, keep your data up-to-date.

Tip 5 - Make your site appealing.

Appealing to the masses through visual effects is rather subjective but will make a certain amount of influence to the perception of your customers. Be sure that your layout is uncluttered and the choice of color and font is appropriate. Images should not contain any obscene thoughts and remarks and ensure the good impression of what your affiliate website marketing business is about.

Would you like to have a real web site business? Terez Dunn invites you to visit his profitable online business website for everything you need to start and run your own online business. His services include advertising, mentoring, and a full service training and support package to help guarantee your success. Learn more here: http://www.tdunnsdreamjob.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Terez_Dunn

How to Start With Your First Business Website?

By Krunal Jariwala

With continuously increased penetration of internet, a website is a must tool in the hand of marketer. Any business, however small can not avoid the potential of having a good business website. A small business website, not more than few pages could actually help you to create a positive brand image of your business in the minds of your site's visitors, who could eventually turn into your customer. And all this could actually happen without meeting them.

Many of small businesses ask me how they should start with their first website and more importantly whether the website will pay back them? Developing a small website doesn't cost one more than few bucks. I ask them to compare the cost of developing a site with the other form of advertising or promotion. And again, a website is more interactive then any other form. More importantly one can easily track the performance of website using a free tool like Google Analytics.

Then what actually takes to start with first small business website?

Before you start, think about your goals behind developing a website
Define who will visit your website? Decide your target market or potential visitors
Find out what they look for when they visit websites like yours
Decide what information is more important for your potential visitors and how it will convert them into your customers
Define your products / services you want to offer to them
Doing this will actually define your Internet Marketing Strategy which will guide you through the rest of process.

Then what you need is a good Website design company, contact one you know, and ask them to help you in these. Provide them with the information you've prepared. Remember that having a more informative site will automatically produce good results, but that information should be related to your company, your services, and your products and must interest to your visitors.

You'll require deciding a good domain name for your business website, finding the good web hosting company to host your site. We'll look into what is domain name, and what is hosting in our next article.

Synergy Informatics provides affordable web hosting, web design and web application development services to local as well as overseas clients. We're a team of professionals, and we believe in achieving complete customer satisfaction by providing best quality services.

Synergy Informatics
A web hosting, design & development solutions company.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Krunal_Jariwala

When Web Development Starts to Take Into Account the User

By Al Keser

Up until a few years ago, web development was gone about in a utilitarian kind of way. Something needed to get done, and a quick and logical solution was found for it. Technologies such as cgi, asp, ajax all came about to give answers to difficult questions such as how to create dynamic pages. Php eventually won out by being the most efficient and easy-to-learn language along with MySql databases. With great support and free software, these were the best web development solutions out there for the common user.

It is that common user that made this evolution happen. When people who were not trained in web design started making their own websites, then finally the most accessible web development technologies became commonplace. But still, web development was not being done in a way that was turned toward the user. It was done in a functional way that solved any issues that arose, but did not ultimately help the user get around a site or ever find the website. That is when the push for css-based design and url re-write mods came to be.

One of the heroes of this movement in my mind is Dave Shea. He pushed for standards in web development and for the use of CSS-based designs that minimized the amount of html and improved the versatility of websites and made universal access and compatibility a must. By keeping the user in mind, designs became more artistic and creative. Javascript and Flash often get in the way of a good web experience for many users and CSS takes care of that partially by creating desired effects without having to use these two programs. Of course, there are always limitless possibilities with Flash design, but in terms of usability, it is inferior to CSS.

The push for Search Engine Optimization has also pushed web developers to make websites with easy to remember url's and well organized content that makes sense to users and search engines. Google's algorithm becomes smarter and requires that page content be readable to humans and not just robots. Good use of headers and semantic page content as opposed to spam-dexing has become more commonplace. Web development has helped with this by generating attractive url's and, through css, has done image replacement for header tags for design purposes.

Al Keser is a journalist, video producer and web designer. He is very up-to-date on New York web development trends and recommends Blue Fountain Media for all New York web design projects.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Al_Keser