Website designers and designing

Written by Judy Gillis


How many times have you gone to a site someone recommended, only to have it take "forever" to load? You had been told it was a great site. But how long are you going to wait for fancy backgrounds, 300 dpi jpegs, or animated gifs to load onto your browser? Web designers are sometimes entranced byrepparttar bells and whistles. "Add sound [animations, photos, you name it] to your site" sounds nice, butrepparttar 134723 wav. files and large filesizes are tedious to load, andrepparttar 134724 consumer is in a hurry to find what he or she is looking for. Fancy pictures don't matter inrepparttar 134725 long run unless it's a "you have to see it to decide whether to buy" issue, and banners (although nice) take longer to load than text links. Two banners per page isrepparttar 134726 maximum I'd recommend. If you must have photos (one of my sites must) then two or three photos per page are all that most people's browsers can handle without slowing down page loading. Frames slow it down even more. Besides, some people have "disabled" frames on their browser preferences because they take too long to load. My philosophy is this: if you have a lot of material on your web pages, even though your business is great and you have a great product/service, you'll drive customers away rather than attract them. The internet set is very impatient. They'll go on torepparttar 134727 next selection onrepparttar 134728 search engine results. You'll be left byrepparttar 134729 phone or your computer screen wondering why someone hasn't called or emailed. If you are looking for a web designer, choose one that offers simple graphics and backgrounds and recommends small file sizes, is up front about cost and time involved, and suits your website torepparttar 134730 needs you have. For example: if you are looking to have someone design a personal site, then it's fine to have a few photos, a guestbook, perhaps an e-card service on your site. But if you want to sell something - it makes more sense to give your potential customersrepparttar 134731 information they want as

How to give your small business web site a corporate look

Written by Milana Nastetskaya


The Web is an amazing thing! You can be a 15-year old girl and make everyone believe you are a big-time executive who just can't wait to get home from work after a busy day of meetings and lunches, and relax by your big-screen TV with an expensive Siberian cat in you lap.

I am not exactly sure why you would want to do that, but it's certainly possible :-) Inrepparttar example below, however, you might find that sometimes boosting your online image is important to you AND your wallet.

Have you ever said to yourself, "I am just a person, not a company - why would anyone trust me enough to buy from me?" You ARE a company! If you provide a service or sell a product that others are willing to pay for, then you are a one-person company.

Just because you work out of your home office, doesn't mean you are less professional. Still many people today will not take you seriously if they see you talk fromrepparttar 134722 "first face" ("I" instead of "we", "mine" instead of "ours").

There is a remedy for this problem. You can reate a professional, more corporate look on your web site usingrepparttar 134723 skillful techniques I will share with you here.

1. Create a high quality logo on your web site. If you don't consider yourself a good graphic designer, hire a professional. The owner of gotlogos.com can give you an excellent quality for only $25.00. There is no good reason not to have it done.

2. Professional web site look. If you can't come up with good design ideas for your web site, consider using high quality web templates. This will immediately boost your credibility by at least 50%, so do this as soon as you can. Just go to http://www.freewebtemplates.com for a huge collection of templates and pick one out.

3. If you don't have your own domain name, get one ASAP! It is not even a question - you absolutely need one to be considered "inrepparttar 134724 game", so to say. I don't think I have ever shopped on a site that has an address like www.geocities.com/1234/~meg or similar.

4. Once you have your own domain, you can use a "real" business e-mail address. For example, my domain name is HelpingFoot.com. This means that instead of milana@earthlink.com I can use milana@helpingfoot.com. Ask your hosting company how you can set your e-mail address up to match your domain name.

5. Have you ever heard of a catch-all e-mail account? I have one and I absolutely love it! You can send me an e-mail to anything@helpingfoot.com: sales@helpingfoot.com, president@helpingfoot.com, service@helpingfoot.com and whatever else you can think of... and I will receive it in my mailbox. You can use this feature to create different "departments" in your business: service, sales, support, owner, etc. and when you get an e-mail you will know exactly whorepparttar 134725 sender was trying to reach. This will also create an impression of a bigger company.

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