Costs. Costs, of course, are a key consideration for any e-Commerce web site design solution. You can usually purchase web site tools and services up-front or by subscription. Subscriptions can help you with your cash flow up-front. Usually you do not need to make any long-term commitments with subscription software or services. Subscriptions are good because as you become more knowledgeable of specific web site solutions you can add and drop web tools and services at will. Buying software up-front is good if you know that you will definitely use software for a long time (1 to 3 years).

Web Site Design Options

eCommerce web site design options can range from doing it yourself with web design software such as Microsoft FrontPage or outsourcing entire web site development to a web design company. For a business, a free site with a free web site builder is not answer. A free solution will not generate desire response from customer, is not search engine friendly, and is limited in growth for web site add-ons. A free affiliate site can be OK for making a sale, but have another method to generate traffic to your affiliate site as search engines will rarely give high rankings to cloned affiliate sites. Here are some e-Commerce web site design options:

Do-It-Yourself. Buy web design software and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, part-time web publisher, limited budget.

Do-It-Yourself Using Templates. Buy web site templates, web design software, and do it yourself. Good option if: technically inclined, marketing skills, supplement with low cost web design services.

Do-It-Yourself Using Web Site Builder Solution. Buy business web solution service. Good option if: not technically inclined, have marketing skills, and willing to make some investment. Do not waste your time with a site builder that just clones a snazzy web site. You will not get a web site that generates traffic or sales.

eCommerce Web Site Design Company or Consultant. Outsource your web design work. Good option if: not technically inclined, limited marketing skills, medium-to-large budget

As with any business there are risks. In evaluating an ecommerce web design solution it is best to know your objectives, have enough business knowledge to evaluate your web service suppliers as well as your business web tools, and maintain a positive cash flow.

A secret few advertising designers know is that graphic that will get most attention is a picture of a human face. People are genetically predisposed to look at a human face in their view area. Try it yourself while you're browsing web. If a webpage has a human face on it, that's first thing you will look at.

Where to position ads on your webpage

To discuss where to place ads on a webpage, we need to divide a page into five sections as listed below.

1. Header 2. Footer 3. Left Margin 4. Right Margin 5. Center column

Note: There is a sixth area of webpage which is popup window. There are many forms of popup windows; pop-over, pop-under, delayed, and exit. The polite way to use popup windows is self-closing popup window. Because of popup window blockers, popup windows are much less effective today, and, from my own experience, when I tried using popup windows, page views on my website dropped by 50 percent.

The most common position to place advertising banners is in header section of a webpage. Web users have programmed themselves to ignore banners in this position. The response rate of banners in header section of webpages has dropped to something like .0001 percent. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) has tried to overcome this problem by defining giant (what I call "battleship size") banners. I don't know of any studies that show this works.

Using banners in head section of your webpage is a waste of processor time, but most webpages still use them. Making a sale this way is a long shot. Banners in footer section of a webpage are even less responsive.

Actually Web users have programmed themselves to ignore all advertising on web. However, from my own experience, you can get some response from ads in left and right margins of a webpage. Most websites are designed with menu in left margin and possibly ads in right margin. This means if user has a low resolution display, depending upon width of webpage, advertising may be off screen.

Place your menu in right margin and use left margin for advertising. This places user with a low resolution display in positon of having to scroll to view menu. Too bad. They should get a bigger display. Website revenue comes first.

The most responsive position to put your ads is in center column of webpage along with content. As visitors are reading article on webpage, they come upon ad. It's unavoidable.

If you imagine center column of your webpage divided into three parts; top, middle, and bottom, most responsive position for your ad will be right in middle. As visitors are reading article on webpage, they are forced to look at ad as they continue to lower part of article. This might be a little annoying to reader, but let's hope your content is worth that slight annoyance.

I would recommend placing your ad at bottom of center column. As visitors read article on webpage, they end up looking at your ad. This is almost as effective as placing ad in middle of column, and a lot less annoying to reader.

As you can see, how you integrate advertising into your webpages has a major impact on your ability to produce revenue from your website. Poor ad integration will cause visitors to click away. Proper integration can make your website highly profitable. But, ad positon is not only determining factor, don't forget ratio of ads to content, ad management, and ad type relative to response rate.

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