Creating Sites That Work For YouWritten by James T Kendall
Let me preface this article by saying that I am not an Internet millionaire, but I have learned enough about Internet to make a living doing what I like to do, that is creating and running successful web sites. There are a few principles that all successful web sites have in common. An Effective Interface There are whole books written on this subject so I won't even attempt to cover everything in this short article. Suffice to say every successful web site has an integrated design approach that works. Integrated, in that all of graphics, text, etc. look like they belong together, that they work together to create a whole. That being said, most important aspect of web design may very well be speed. Pull up Yahoo in you browser, how fast did it load? By some estimates you only have 30 seconds to grab your visitors interest. Load time - speed that a site is displayed in a browser is critical. The most successful sites combine graphics optimized for web with text and ( more and more often ) nested tables with background colors to create pleasing interfaces that load quickly. Back-End Driven Content All successful web sites have content - articles, free services, inventory for sale, etc. Most of this content is managed by some sort of database/CGI type program. These days there are many alternative ways to implement online programs such as classic CGI/Perl solutions to ASP, PHP, and C; and data base solutions as diverse as MySQL to Oracle. My advice is to choose simplest solution available for you project, however you should make sure that it will be able to scale to accommodate your site's anticipated success. Further, make sure that there is not a ready made, free version solution to your programming problem before you hire a programmer or buy a commercial version. There are many excellent resources that list hundreds of quality, free scripts available for download. One note about content itself, it needs to not only be of high quality ( there is a lot of competition out there! ) but it needs to be constantly updated. If not daily, weekly updates are a must so that repeat visitors feel as if there is a reason to return. Repeat visitors are a very big key to continual growth. This makes a very good argument to use a programmable solution to manage your content, as scripts allow you to update content more effectively than you can manually.
| | Four Ways To Make Your Web Copy SELL!Written by Ron Sathoff
Is your web site getting visitors, but not selling anything? It's most common problem on Internet.If you check your web site statistics, you'll notice dozens, hundreds, even thousands of visitors stopping at your site, pausing for a minute, then clicking away. Your opening page gets tons of hits, but inner pages-often where you do all your selling-are lonely as a ghost town. Here are four quick ways you can improve words on your opening page to catch readers, hold their interest, and make sale. 1. Put a big headline at top of your page. Don't try to be cute. Simply lay out main benefit your site offers visitor. "Save Money NOW With Better Gas Mileage." I like to start headlines with an action word like save, learn, profit, or relax. This gives your headline energy. Don't be afraid to make your headline 15 words or longer. Long headlines get results. 2. Next give your page a bold subheading. Make it provide a clue as to how headline's benefit can be achieved. The subheading can also add one or two more benefits a customer will receive. "Here is what you need to know to spend 20% less each month on gas. Smart driving techniques, cutting-edge gas additives, and hard truth about SUV's."
|
