Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » advertising

Top 5 Common Web Design Mistakes

Art — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 07:09:00 +0000

It is important for anyone who is a creator of a website to understand some of the most common mistakes that occur with web design. These mistakes, while common, can be easily avoided which is why it is important that you find out what these mistakes are. By finding out about the mistakes now, you can easily avoid facing some of the same problems with your website in the future. When these mistakes happen to occur, a website can lose a lot of traffic and viewers which is definitely unfortunate. Protect your website by preventing these common web design mistakes. It’s definitely doable.

1. Dysfunctional Search Engine

All websites should include a small search box on the page because it is most convenient for the website viewers. If they are looking for something in particular throughout your entire website, they can easily click into the search engine box and type in the words for what they are looking for. Without having a search engine, the website viewers may get annoyed and possibly even frustrated which will lead them to venture off onto another site. What is even worse than not having a search engine on your website is having a search engine that just does not work probably. You must make sure that your search engine is something small and easy to use for all viewers of the website. It should also be compatible with the layout of your website. Having a complex search engine box on your website will only further confuse website viewers which actually defeats the purpose entirely. Avoid this common mistake.

2. Too Much Text

Who would think that too much text could be a turn off for viewer? While website viewers want to find out important information when they head to your site, they don’t want to have to read through several pages just to get to the point. Paragraphs on the website should be short and to the point. All sentences should be short as well.

Most importantly, the website designer should make sure the text speaks to the reader and catches their eye. How can you do this? Use bold or italic text to highlight some of the most important parts of the content that you are displaying on your website. You can also use bullet or numbered lists for certain information because it breaks down all of the different types of information and makes it so much easier to look at especially for those who prefer to just scan over the website. And the truth is, most people prefer scanning over a website instead of reading all of the content. Here’s an example of how to use a bullet list so that the content will be easier to read:

Use Bold and Italics for IMPORTANT keywords
Use bullet or number lists to sort through important facts
Avoid lengthy sentences and huge paragraphs
Keep sentences short and to the point

3. Small Text

As a website owner, it is important for you to remember that people of all ages will likely be checking out your website. Keep this in mind when you choose a font size for the text o your website. Small text, size 12 and under, is often too small for senior citizens as well as people who have vision problems. Keep the text at a size where it isn’t too big to look ridiculous but it isn’t too small that some viewers cannot read the important information that you are listing on your website.

4. Not User Friendly

The problem that a lot of website owners face is making their website user friendly. When a website is designed, the sole purpose is usually to receive as much traffic as possible. However, many people forget this when they are actually in the process of designing their website. If your website isn’t user friendly, viewers will be turned off and you will likely receive less traffic. There are several ways that you can make you website very user friendly and best of all, it does not really take much effort to do this.

Add a search engine feature
Create a navigation system that allows viewers to navigate through your website quickly and easily
Create an FAQ section that answers questions that viewers have
Use a decently sized font
Provide detailed information and add pictures when necessary

These are just some of the ways that you can make your website user friendly. In fact, you may even want to create a section that allows viewers of your website to send in comments and suggestions on how you can continue to make your website user friendly. When you have a website, it is important to put the viewers first because they are the ones who can make or break your website.

5. Too Many Advertisements

We understand that as a website owner, you will need to advertise for other people and you may have affiliates whose advertisements you are placing on your website. It’s not that you can’t place advertisements on your website but placing too many of them all over a website can definitely be a turn off for most viewers. For example, if you use the Google Adsense program as a means of making money with your website, you will have the option to place advertisements on different areas of your website. If you place advertisements on the top of the page, bottom of the page, and on both sides, your viewers will feel surrounded by advertisements which definitely isn’t very user friendly.

Place advertisements on your website but do it in a tasteful manner. Sometimes, less is more and in this instance, that is definitely the case. Do not do yourself a disservice by placing tons of different advertisements on one page of your website. You can spread the advertisements out evenly through the different pages of your website. This will still allow you to display the advertisements that you want on your website without scaring your viewers away.

Conclusion

Avoiding these common web design mistakes is actually quite simple especially if you know how to prevent these mistakes in the first place. To run a successful website, you should make sure that your search engine box works properly, you sort through the text and use bullet points and numbers, keep everything user friendly, and avoid overdoing it with the advertisements. If you can avoid these mistakes, you can run a successful website.

Facebook is the New King – How to Advertise in Their Kingdom

Art — Thu, 13 Oct 2011 09:07:54 +0000

If it seems some days that we focus a little heavily on Facebook when discussing things World Wide Web in the 2010′s, it’s not because we’re personally addicted to Bejeweled Blitz. We are, but that’s beside the point.

A recent study released by EMarketer officially tolled the bell. Facebook, with its half-billion users, is about to become king of the advertising world. The estimates are that Facebook will receive $2.2 billion dollars in advertising revenue this year, accounting for 17.7 percent (or better than 1 in 6) of all online advertising dollars spent. Former champion Yahoo! will account for 13.1 percent.

If you are attempting to procure advertising for your site or service, then these are numbers that you cannot ignore. It also means that you are going to be fighting against other advertisers for the attention of those half-billion users. If you are new to this game, you could use some pointers. Here are some of the best bits of advice we found from those who are experienced in this game:

Split your ad campaign and test the results

The marketing world is long familiar with the fact that the change of so much as a single word or image can alter the flow of traffic to your destination immensely. To see this in action yourself, split your ad campaign. Post at least 2 different ads simultaneously, with some slight change between them.

What should you change? Here are a few suggestions others have listed:

Ad text – This one is obvious, and yet still undervalued. Change one adjective. Make one ad short and one long. Make one serious and one lighthearted.
Image – There are entire schools of thought based on how different images elicit different emotional and instinctual responses (look up “Semiotics” if you are curious about this field). Switch it up and see what happens.
Market targeting – Use Facebook’s different behind-the-scenes parameters to target different audiences. Facebook allows you to adjust your targeting by age, geographic location, education and interests, just for starters.

One important rule for all of the above: if you make any changes, make them one at a time. If you change multiple parameters all at once, and you see a difference in response rates, you’re not going to know for certain which ones were responsible for the differences you saw.

This leads us to the second major piece of advice:

Keep close tabs on your ad’s response rates

This is non-negotiable. If you want to know how well your ads are doing, you cannot just go on instinct or anecdotal evidence. You need to keep a close, scientific eye on their results. One page suggested that you would need to use third-party software to analyze the information, but from the reports we saw it seems like even the beginner user should be able to decipher it without too much assistance. Go to your ad’s “Report Manger” and download the information. You can easily upload it into a basic spreadsheet program from there.

The terms in your report are explained by Facebook, so we won’t waste space here repeating it all. What we will do instead is to remind you that you have several target goals that you are going to be looking at simultaneously. For your dollar you are going to have raw numbers of “Impressions”, “Clicks”, “Actions,” “Social Impressions,” and “Unique Impressions,” with corresponding proportions and percentages for each (“Click Through Rate” is Clicks divided by Impressions, for example).

You will need to decide which of these is how important to you on a per-dollar basis. If your goal is simply to generate higher name recognition, then “Impressions” is going to be more important for you. If you measure ad effectiveness by user participation, then “Actions” is going to be a greater target. Decide ahead of time which metrics matter the most to you, and focus on what most efficiently increases their values.

Some miscellaneous tips

In addition to these major ideas, there are some minor ones worth remembering:

Work with Facebook – This means a number of things, but the primary point you want to remember is that it is still people that approve or disapprove ads. You don’t get some automatic place just by throwing Facebook some money. In particular, read and follow the ad submission guidelines. If your ad runs into any trouble, work with their account representatives. Remember also that they are working on Pacific Standard Time (Facebook is based out of California). During business hours it takes about 1-6 hours to get your ad approved.
Consider your destination – You have the choice of sending your users to either a page on Facebook or your outside web site. Different authors have a differing opinion on which is better. It probably comes down to personal preference, though note that you will get more support from Facebook by keeping it “in the family”. Whichever you do, though, do it right. If you send them to a Facebook page, make sure the page is well-developed and maintained. If you send them to your external site, send them to a landing spot designed specifically for them. You’ll probably want to complete the loop by making your external site Facebook friendly.
Consider using Friends of Connections – Using this option will give your advertisement greater impression weight to people whose friends have interacted with it. This does narrow down your field of who might see the ad, but most marketers believe, rationally so, that it will increase your click-through effectiveness.
Test by time – This is only an option to those who can really stay on top of things, but one option to consider is to test your ad’s effectiveness by time of day. Facebook does not give you the automatic ability to select when you want your ad to run, but they do allow you to manually turn your ad off and on.

Keep up with the times

As a last bit of over-arching advice, keep tabs yourself on Facebook marketing. When we did our research, a common suggestion was to use the “Reveal Tab”. That seems to no longer exist. Facebook will probably continue to change their system on a rapid, unpredictable basis. As long as they do, and you want to succeed with your marketing, you will need to react just as quickly.

Free Hosting Is Not Always The Best Choice

Art — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 17:10:35 +0000

With the economy hitting not only the individual but also businesses, many are looking toward free web hosting services to house their online site. For monetary reasons, this looks great on the surface. But going free is not always the best choice and may, in fact, cost your business money in the long run.

Ads

While a company may offer hosting at no cost, they are by no means not making money off of your site. Nearly all free hosting offers will involve advertising placed on your pages. These will be completely out of your control. Some companies try to gear ads toward being relevant to the site topic but this isn’t always guaranteed. Add in the very real fact that your competition may be placed on your web site and this can equal a loss of revenue for you.

No control

Another downside to hosting for free is a severe lack of control. Most free hosting companies do not offer a control panel or an ftp access account to allow administration of a web site. This means you cannot make page changes on the fly or add in programs that may be needed by your business. If you are a retail business, this means no ability to add in a shopping cart or software that helps you control your inventory. Putting a bit of tracking coding is not an option unless you can have access to the page coding. Even attempting to change the look of your web site can be an issue. Some free hosting sites will give you access to templates and a few will even allow some minor changes made to backgrounds. But, all said, you are very limited to what you can do within your own site.

Support

Support is another problem with free web hosting. You’ll be limited to perhaps some online forum areas to ask your questions but you won’t have numbers to call, ticket support systems or one of many options offered by paid hosting. If your business site isn’t working, this can end up costing you a lot of money.

Affordable solutions

Paid hosting these days really doesn’t put a huge dent in your pocketbook. Some hosting companies run specials on a regular basis and you’re sure to find one that will fit your budget. You can find hosting from as low as $3-$5 a month, depending on what your business web site requires. Many of these companies also give a lot of great features for your money – including unlimited web space, unlimited bandwidth and a huge assortment of easy to install programs to get your site up and running quickly.

What it boils down to

When all is said and done, you need to ensure your business is hosted with a company that you can rely on for support and also one that gives you the needed tools to ensure your online site is a success. This is one time when you do not want to “tighten your belt” or “pinch pennies.” Do a bit of research and find a good, solid hosting company with a price you can afford.

SaasS Content Management with Clickability

Art — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:12:53 +0000

Previously known as cmPublish, the Clickability Platform is a CMS with a different approach on content management. Developed by CMS provider Clickability, this platform is delivered on an on-demand basis, as well as full service with the company’s “Innovation as a Service” solution. Aside from content management, the Clickability Platform also offers analytics, email campaign, web 2.0 and advertising among other functionality. While there is obviously far more to the Clickability Platform than content management, this is indeed the focal point of the package.

Core Technologies

Though a licensed commercial product, Clickability Platform is based on powerful open-source technologies such as PHP, MySQL and Java. It utilizes Apache as its web server and Velocity for the templating system. Even though you have to pay for a license, the leveraging of various popular open-source tools makes Clickability Platform a cost effective CMS product.

Clickability Content

The main content entity in the Clickability environment is the item. Authors have the ability to create content items by selecting various types of content from the navigation pane. This CMS gives you a number of different content items out of the box, including jobs, blogs, press releases, case studies and FAQs. Furthermore, custom content types can be created as well. The templating system is a major part of the process as it allows you to actually get the content on your web pages. These templates can be tailored to display numerous types of content in different sections of a single page. While this feature caters to beginners, Clickability Platform also has something for developers with advanced creation environments and other customizing assets such as stylesheets.

Additional Features

Clickability Platform certainly isn’t short on features. The package bundles streamlined content management capabilities alongside a host of SEO tools, Web 2.0, capabilities and the following list of features:

Newsletters – Publishers can create a newsletter of content and automatically distribute it to subscribers. They can also manage mailing lists and have the ability to provide subscribers with double opt-in capabilities.

Advertising - Adverting functionality is tightly integrated into the Clickability Platform. This allows administrators to create and maintain campaigns as well as all the details that go along with them. Because ads are considered content pieces, they have targets that provide administrators with a way to track and keep up with the history of their performance.

cmSideKick – Clickability Platform allows you to run your website in the browser and the intuitive cmSideKick in a second frame. cmSideKick is a utility that enables you to perform deep analyzation of statistics, allowing you to view your site in the administrator mode or selective views to modify certain areas. This is one tool that you are likely to put to great use in the Clickability environment.

Conclusion

Clickability has come a long way since its days as cmPublish. However, it has managed to maintain all the basics of content management and received some nice upgrades to compliment the emerging technologies and web trends. Clickability Platform is definitely a enterprise CMS solution and can help to satisfy the needs of businesses of all sizes.

How Does Cheap Web Hosting Stack Up? A Closer Look at Your Options

Art — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:29:36 +0000

Ever wonder why cheap web hosting is so popular these days? Well for starters, it provides individuals and small businesses with a means for creating a presence online. It makes sense – but why go cheap when you can pay for something that is more reliable? Besides, “cheap” doesn’t have the most appealing ring to it. Moreover, if saving money is the issue, why not cut your costs entirely by signing up with a free web host? If you are still struggling with the concept of cheap web hosting, this article will explain why it makes a viable option between free and costly alternatives.

Free Equals Limited

Most free web hosting providers leave you very limited and are not recommended for business purposes. For example, most of them will litter your web pages with banner and pop-up advertisements in exchange for their free service. This can be a huge distraction to the people who come visit your website. Many of them also limit you in terms of ownership. Sure, they may provide you with a domain, but it is generally attached to their website, leaving you with a name that is both hard to remember and unprofessional. Last but not least, free web hosts typically provide you with minimal bandwidth and disk storage. Once you start to generate traffic and popularity for your site, you will eventually exceed the allotted resources and have no choice but to upgrade to a premium package.

More Freedom at a Great Price

The limitations of free web hosting is what leads most individuals and businesses to more flexible yet affordable solutions. Cheap hosting delivers the features and flexibility you need at a price that is easily within reach. With so many providers offering service, several companies price their plans considerably low to keep pace in the highly competitive web hosting industry. Play your cards right and you can find a host offering service for under $10 a month. It isn’t hard to get yourself a package with a generous supply of disk space, bandwidth and features. Today’s cheap web hosting services are geared for individuals and businesses, providing email accounts, e-commerce applications and everything needed to open an online storefront. These plans are widely available so why pay extra for something that could end up setting you back?

Don’t Forget the Essentials

Cheap web hosting offers many benefits but it can also be a disaster if you overlook some of the critical aspects. Even though you are paying less for service, your hosting account should still come with acceptable customer service and technical support. Getting answers from the experts is important as your customers will surely be needing an explanation from you if something should go wrong. Additionally, you should never go for any cheap web hosting plan that advertises an uptime guarantee less than 99.9%. Excessive downtime is something you can’t deal with as it is the best way to cripple your web presence. When knowing what to look for, you can go in on a strict budget and come out with a great web hosting package.

Web Hosting Geeks' Blog » advertising

Top 5 Common Web Design Mistakes

Related posts:

Facebook is the New King – How to Advertise in Their Kingdom

Related posts:

Free Hosting Is Not Always The Best Choice

Related posts:

SaasS Content Management with Clickability

Related posts:

How Does Cheap Web Hosting Stack Up? A Closer Look at Your Options

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