Love at First Site: Giving Your

Website Visitors right Impression Think of people who visit your site as blind dates. When you open door, your blind date usually knows whether they are attracted to you within first minute. How do they know? Easy. By how you look, what you say, and how you treat them. If you open door wearing same clothes you wore in 1987, say, "Wow, from my friend's description, I thought you would be a lot better looking," and sneeze in your dates face, not only will you never get a second date, your date will run for his/her life. The same rules apply to your website. When people do a search for something they want to buy, they usually have many sites to choose from. If yours does not impress them right off bat, it takes about five seconds for them to find another that does show them what they want to see. There are plenty of other fish in sea. You are just one among many. So what do people want to see, you ask? There are 3 standards of website excellence, and they are same standards you would use to judge your blind date: 1. How it looks: If I visit two different websites with purpose of buying something, and those two websites sold exact same product at exact same price, I would buy from site that looked better--the one whose design made me think, "Wow, these guys must be making good money if they can afford to hire a good graphic designer." The more money I think business makes, more I will identify them with value and professionalism. The bottom line is, you need to make web design a priority. There are plenty of people out there who have graphic designer friends willing to design their website for next to nothing. Those people have advantage because, even if they aren't superior business, visitors will perceive them to be superior. If you don't have any connections with graphic designers willing to do you a favor, see if you can find a starving artist willing to design layout of your site. If anyone has an eye for aesthetics and is willing to work cheap, it's a starving artist. Once you know what your site should look like, either you or a web designer can bring artist's vision to life. Take time to design something that represents your business or product well. Don't just throw up a website with gaudy wallpaper, out of focus pictures and graphics placed at random. Remember that first moment when you open door to a blind date. Remember how much appearances count for in this world.

Emerald is May's Birthstone

If you're still young enough to remember your birthday, you probably also remember special birthstone assigned to it. But at your age, we bet you don't really know SIGNIFICANCE of your birthstone and what power ancients felt would be bestowed about you by wearing it. May's Birthstone: Emerald Birthstone Properties: Symbolizes serenity and peace of mind. Alternative Birthstone: Sapphire Emerald is birthstone for May and also anniversary gemstone for 20th and 35th years of marriage. Some people believe wearing an emerald brings wisdom, growth…patience. It is perhaps this last attribute that may explain why a gift of emerald for an anniversary -- or any occasion -- is symbolic of love and fidelity. All Eyes on Emeralds Emeralds were once prescribed for eye diseases because green color was believed to be soothing to eyes. Early stone cutters kept emeralds at their tables to gaze upon as a way to give their eyes a break. Even 21st Century color specialists agree that green is soothing, restful, and relaxing for eyes. Today's versatile emeralds continue to be "easy on eyes," used in earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and other body adornment. The Color of Spring An emerald shines like green lightning, filling us with same wonder as civilizations that came before us. Ancient Egyptians mined emeralds in eastern desert region 2,000 years before Cleopatra’s birth, yet today recent finds in North Carolina may provide a new source for quality emeralds in U.S. Colombia, Brazil, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Madagascar, Nigeria, and Russia are where most emeralds are mined in 21st Century.