To experienced Flash designer, these powerful tools have been both a blessing and a curse. On upside, they drastically reduce time it takes to create Flash pieces. On downside, low price of these applications makes them available to "Average Joe," and as a result, everybody and their dog is beginning to call themselves "Flash Designers." Their pieces, created without necessary technical know-how of what it takes to make a Flash piece accessible to lower-bandwidth viewers, are beginning to give Flash a bad reputation as being bloated and boring.

To you, prospective consumer, this overabundance of so-called "Flash Designers" presents an element of confusion. Should you get kid down block to design your Flash site for $300? Probably not. If you're paying a "design firm" in another city $10,000 for a site, are you getting best Flash site money can buy?

Unfortunately, my friends, answer is no.

We were recently contacted by a man who was unhappy with state of his site; after paying over $10,000 to a "Flash Design Firm," he had one look at what he got for his money and was shocked.

We were, too.

His site, at http://www.faustco.com/, breaks just about every rule there is. There are too many colors, too many fonts, and, as you know, Flash is intended to display images in "vector" format. Whoever designed Mr. Faust's site clearly had no understanding of this fact, and imported as many raster images as they could. This resulted in a site that not only has "chunky" appearance mentioned earlier, but also presents incredibly long download times to viewers trying to visit site with a standard 56k (or lower) connection. While Mr. Faust's business has been around for a long time, no doubt because they've been producing excellent, dependable products since day they began business, poor quality of his site's design will no doubt harm reputation of his company.

FLASH - WHY DO YOU WANT IT?

Like I said before, folks: Flash, "when created properly," can be best thing that ever happened to your site. Having personally experienced benefits of effective Flash design, I can honestly say that there is NO medium out there that gets people going to your site and subscribing to your newsletter list better than a well-done Flash piece. However, when looking for a Flash designer, beware: if a "company" doesn't have a Flash portfolio that impresses you in least, don't hesitate to delete their e-mail and forget they existed, no matter how low their prices may be.

If you're looking for a Flash designer, I'm naturally going to recommend you contact us now. Not only are we in our seventh year of putting people's businesses online, and not only have we been applying proven marketing concepts time and time again, helping thousands of people maximize responses to their offers (regardless of type of business they run), we've also got technical know-how of exactly what it takes to make a Flash piece that WORKS. When you order from us, you won't just be getting a site that LOOKS pretty and applies our years of marketing experience, you'll be getting one that loads quickly and gets your point across effectively.

And hey, if you've received a quote from another company and aren't sure if you'll be getting your money's worth, send quote to me. I'm not offering to beat their price, I'm offering something much more valuable: to relieve any confusion you might be experiencing and help you to become more informed of what good Flash design is. I'm standing by to help you now! mailto:customerservice@worldprofit.com

Q: What factors do you consider when it comes to use of fonts in a site?

A: A font is defined as, "A complete set of type of one size and face." Font shapes and sizes can portray many different emotions. If you use a font that does not fit with theme of your site, then it can appear disjointed. Just think...what font would you pick for a site called, "Giraffes-R-us?" A font can compliment graphics and copy or direct eye. If you want one thing to stand out, then you can imply change font. Imagine entire page was in a certain font and then title was in another. It would draw your eye to it as it is isolated and different from other fonts.

Q: What in your opinion makes difference for a site design that is effective vs. not effective.

A: Do I want to stay? I can look back at sites I have completed years ago and say that was a great design! Sure...I've learned more effects, more gold and silver textures and all that fun stuff that everybody loves, but when I look back at some of my old designs, I think wow. It's clean, it's solid, and I want to stay! I look at some sites that are cheap and I think "Wow, Somebody learned how to use Kai's power tools or Eye Candy!" You see, your parents and friends and co-workers may think that having everything beveled on your site is cool, but it just ends up looking cheap. We often confuse great graphics and effects with effective design. A site can have most wonderful graphics you've ever seen, but that does not mean that it is an effective design. Marketing, graphics, fonts, and colors must all work in co-relation with each other to produce a site that effectively gets you sales and visitors.

Q: Once design is done what is critical factor that online businesses must consider and plan for.

A: Realize that it takes hard work to make money online. We have very active site owners making sales daily, whereas some do not make any sales at all. Some people realize that they have to put an effort into e-commerce and then yes, there is a huge payoff! Online marketing and e-commerce does work! Understand though, that people are not going to visit your site and buy without any interaction from you. You must use all tools and know inside and out product that you are selling.

A system for success is critical. Most businesses new to web try to reinvent wheel. You don't have to do this! Over six years ago at Worldprofit we developed dozens of sure-fire ways to build a business online. How do we know what works? We only recommend to you, software, tools and resources we use ourselves every single day to build our own business. Ready to get started? Want insider secrets before you make costly mistakes? Email, mailto:customerservice@worldprofit.com