Why You Should Use Graphic Templates

Why You Should Use Graphic Templates
By : Mark Buga

When it comes to graphics, most Internet marketers shy away from using graphic templates whether it's ebook covers, website layouts or promotional banners because they firmly believe that by using graphic templates, they are tarnishing their own business. They want to own a unique identity and hence will always find a professional graphic designer to do the job. Well, you're in for a big surprise!

When you purchase a graphic template, you will be able to customize it to an extent or even build a totally new design based on it! What's the point of using the template then, you say? Well, it serves as a source of inspiration and ideas for a totally new design. You can't derive anything from a blank canvas, right?

On top of that, you are actually saving a lot of precious time that you can otherwise spend on more important matters like developing new products or market your products. When you buy a pre-made template, you only need to edit a thing or two to give it an identity of your own, and that gives you more time and flexibility to work on other stuff.

Mike has his sites Unblock MySpace, MySpace Proxy, Free Proxy, Free Proxy Server and MySpace Proxy

Okay, let's say you argue that hiring a designer to do the job is equally fast. That may be true but don't forget, hiring a professional designer to do a custom design for you will cost you a lot of money. Unless you need a totally unique identity that you are aiming to establish firmly in your niche market, you don't need to get a designer to design it for you.

Not all graphic templates are suitable, so you have to be careful when choosing one. Consider quality over the price, and you're on your way to creating a positive image for your business while saving more time for more productive chores!
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Why Hire A Designer?

Why Hire A Designer?
By : Mark Buga

A lot of online business owners start with no money. They have to do everything themselves -- the preparation of a product, the development of a marketing strategy, the actual building of a website to cater to their product's marketing needs. As their business expands over time, they will find that their simple "homemade" site might not be enough to cover everything, and they will have to take a day or two away to simply dedicate that to the website expansion.

Sounds familiar? Chances are, you're someone who started everything with no money too, so you're pretty skeptical when it comes to giving away your money in exchange for something that you could have done yourself. However, there is a lot more to hiring a designer than just finishing up a job that you don't want to do.

Mike has his sites Unblock MySpace, MySpace Proxy, Free Proxy, Free Proxy Server and MySpace Proxy

When you hire a web designer to do your job for you, you are doing more than just handing over the "dirty job" to someone else. In fact, by paying a little money, you can let the designer worry about the little annoyances that always evade the main picture and only come haunting when you're halfway through the job. That way, you will be more focused and have more time to spend on your actual business strategy.

On the other hand, the designers you hire a professionals so they are good at what they do. By outsourcing your web design jobs to them, you won't have to worry when problems surface because you can always get them to fix it for you. Again, they will be able to pin point the problem and fix it faster than you probably will be able to.

Also, the work you pay for will turn out more professional than what you can achieve because the designers have been doing it longer than you have. After all, they do it for a living so they have to be good!

So, remember to not just work your business, but grow your business too!
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Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site
By : Mark Buga

As a web designer, you should design your websites to give your visitors the greatest ease of use, the best impression and most important of all a welcoming experience. It doesn't matter if you had the greatest product in the whole world -- if your website is poorly done you won't be able to sell even one copy of it because visitors will be driven off your website by the lousy design.

When I'm talking about a "good design", I'm not only talking about a good graphical design. A professional web design will be able to point out that there are many components which contribute to a good website design -- accessibility design, interface or layout design, user experience design and of course the most straightforward, which is graphic design.

Hence, I have highlighted some features of the worst web designs I've come across. Hopefully, you will be able to compare that against your own site as a checklist and if anything on your site fits the criteria, you should know it's high time to take serious action!

1) Background music

Unless you are running a site which promotes a band, a CD or anything related to music, I would really advise you to stay away from putting looping background music onto your site. It might sound pleasant to you at first, but imagine if you ran a big site with hundreds of pages and everytime a visitor browses to another page on your site, the background music starts playing again. If I were your visitor, I'd just turn off my speakers or leave your site. Moreover, they just add to the visitors burden when viewing your site -- users on dial up connections will have to wait longer just to view your site as it is meant to be viewed.

Mike has his sites Unblock MySpace, MySpace Proxy, Free Proxy, Free Proxy Server and MySpace Proxy

2) Extra large/small text size

As I said, there is more to web design than purely graphics -- user accessibility is one big part of it too! You should design the text on your site to be legible and reasonably sized to enable your visitors to read it without straining their eyes. No matter how good the content of your website or your sales copy is, if it's illegible you won't be selling anything!

3) Popup windows

Popup windows are so blatantly used to display advertisements that in my mind, 90% of popup windows are not worth my attention so I just close them on instinct everytime each one manages to pass through my popup blocker (yes, I do have one like many users out there!) and, well, pops up on my screen. Imagine if you had a very important message to convey and you put it in a popup window that gets killed most of the time it appears on a visitor's screen. Your website loses its function immediately!

In concluding this article, let me remind you that as a webmaster your job is to make sure your website does what it's meant to do effectively. Don't let some minor mistakes stop your site from functioning optimally!
About the Author

Mike has his sites Unblock MySpace, MySpace Proxy, Free Proxy
http://www.AdSenseThai.Net

Outsourcing Web design and development Company

Outsourcing Web design and development Company
By : Egb systems

EGB systems and solutions is an IT company. We have well trained and experienced staff. We have programmers, software testers and SEO. The working environment is very good. Our company is a full service web site design company providing all services such as website optimization, search engine submissions and promotion. Our motto is "If you think big, then you can achieve the goal".

Layout and Design All the web pages should have navigation aid so that it will be convenient for the user to move to the next page. The web pages should have graphics with less color.

Original Content Each web page should be unique. By doing this, the user feels like navigating towards the next web page. Any overlap of the content may lose the interest of the user.

There are so many ways you can make the web site attractive. Website design services include the following:

* Static web design * Dynamic web design * Website re-design Static Website Design A static website is the simplest way to showcase your business online. It is the easiest type of website to set up, but making changes to static websites require web programming knowledge.

Dynamic web design If you require regular or constant updates to your website, consider dynamic website services.

Web site re-designs As the Internet grows, outdated methodologies are causing more and more websites to fall to the side. It is important that you keep the look of your website fresh and maintain cutting-edge standards of design, navigation, and functionality. You should regularly schedule a complete redesign of your website, periodically giving your visitors a new and exciting experience. This service will ensure:

* Professional execution of the website. * Increases your user's usability. * Enhance the perception of your organization. While designing a custom Website for our clients, we ensure the following:

* Information architecture: structural design of shared information environments. * Accessibility

Flash website design is useful and helpful in creating innovative design of the website. This website also creates animation with sound effects, thereby leaving long-lasting impact on the users. Flash web pages are full of graphics and multimedia content. You can do flash animations and corporate flash presentations so that the user will be attracted to the website. You can utilize flash in your website in forms of:-

* Flash Introductory page * Animated Logo design * Photo galleries * Animation with background music * Flash Buttons * Flash Menus

In flash animation, combination of different fonts and effects and an unlimited number of text lines is possible. Our approach to web application begins with creating systems that meet functional requirement and serve large organization goal. We enhance the work quality and efficiency of the users. Our application development services include: * Strategy and planning - A complete needs analysis * User interface design - Application design, layout, and navigational controls * Software engineering - Full functional and technical documentation * Production and deployment -quality assurance Some of the types of applications we have developed: * Web database design and development * System upgrades and migration * Customer service systems * Feedback and communications systems * Online ordering, e-commerce systems, and online payment options Outsourcing is the practice of giving the project work to professionals. It is a term used when a company takes a part of its business and gives that part to another company. Need of outsourcing The reason of outsourcing is: * To reduce capital expenditure over a business process. * The management gets more time to concentrate over core competencies. * We need not depend upon internal resources. * Increases the flexibility to meet the changing business and commercial conditions. Types of outsourcing Offshore outsourcing: When a company on another continent is involved is offshore outsourcing. Near shore: This refers to outsourced projects outside the country, but on the same continent. Eg: US based company outsourcing to a company in Canada. Why should we outsource? Outsourcing depends on various factors: If we take an example of IT, there could be one of the circumstances favoring an outsourcing solution:- * Less of senior IT management * IT strategy not consistent with business strategy * IT budget is not predictable * High inventory costs Benefit of outsourcing Outsourcing is useful in increasing product quality, lowering firm consumer cost. * To focus on core competencies. * Benefit the economy in terms of productivity. Disadvantage of outsourcing Outsourcing may result in the loss of flexibility in reacting to changing business conditions and cost savings. If your company is outsourcing business process such as payroll, confidential information such as salary will be known to service provider. So we must be careful in choosing which process to outsource and which one not.
About the Author

Our company offer offshore, outsourcing services on web site design & development, IT consulting, custom software development, SEO, virtual assistant, data processing, medical billing & coding.
http://www.AdSenseThai.Net

Website Design That Works Part I

Website Design That Works Part I
By : Kevin Gallagher

Introduction.
Before you even think about opening Dreamweaver or your favourite html editor and start designing your site there are a few things I believe you need to do first. I am going to describe how to increase your work flow and give you some general tips and tricks that will speed up the design of your website project and help to get it showing up in search engines quicker .In future articles I will be going into greater detail of some of the topics I describe here. Now let's get started.

Purchasing and optimising your domain name.
The first thing you need to consider is your domain name. I suggest that you don't just use your company name, i.e. if your company makes tartan paint and your company name is "Hamish Paints" don't go for the obvious choice of hamishpaints.com. I would try and come up with a keyword rich domain name. Some search engine optimisers (SEO) would say that having keywords in your domain name doesn't make any difference to your listings but I disagree. Google will highlight your keywords in the search engine results page (SERPS), which leads me to believe that keywords do hold some weight, and besides it will make it clearer to the searcher what your site is all about.

What are keywords?
Keywords from a search engine optimisation (SEO) stand point are the key -words that are used to optimise your website for better listings on search engines. These are the words or phrases people are typing into the search bar of Google etc to find websites relating to what information or products they may be looking for.
Go to www.bruceclay.com/ and www.highrankings.com/ - two great websites where you can learn more about keywords and SEO.

How do I find and choose my keywords?
To find keywords that people may be using in search terms the first port of call should be the overture keyword selector tool and you can access this tool at http://inventory.overture.com/ or http://inventory.uk.overture.com/. If you want the UK results, here you will find an excellent tool for discovering keywords. All you need to do is type in words or phrases that are going to be related to your website and overture will show you related searches that include your term and how many times that term was searched on the last month. Now you can get an idea of what keywords you should be including in your domain name.

Please note that search engines don't like long main names so try to keep it as short as possible. Other great resources for keywords are:
www.wordtracker.com/
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
www.keyworddiscovery.com/

As we all know all the good domain names have been taken and it's almost impossible to get one-word domain names these days, so be inventive if you get stuck. I always find it helpful to visit www.dictionary.com and use the thesaurus to come up with names maybe I hadn't thought of.
Now that you are armed with a killer domain name you can go to http://www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/order/whois/ and check its availability.

Try and get the domain name extension of the country your company resides in as it makes it clear where you're from. I know most people want to get a .com but if you are in the UK I believe a better extension would be .co.uk as it shows where your from. This will also help in the SERPS when people are searching for websites in the UK you don't want to be competing with websites outside of your country if you can help it.

Building a holding page and creating a site map.
Now that we are sorted with our domain name and hosting the next step involves creating a holding page and submitting a sitemap to Google. First of you need to create your holding page, it's a good idea to create a holding page so your domain can build up some respect with search engines, you don't want to wait until your website goes live before submitting it to search engines.

Designing a holding page.
Keep it simple and describe all the services and products you may be offering in your site. Don't forget to use keyword rich text in your title tag, description tags, and body text. Use the keywords you discovered in "how to find and choose keywords" section. This is good practice for when you design your website proper but you have to remember this page will be unlikely to be viewed by many people however this isn't the purpose of your holding page.

A good idea here would be if any visitors did visit your site perhaps they would like to know when your website goes live or maybe they will have questions. I would therefore suggest you add a simple contact form asking for their name and email address to notify them when the site will be live or to answer any questions they may have. You could even use them to do some usability testing and describe in more detail the coming sections. Name it index.html or index.htm and put it in the root folder of your site and upload it to the server.

Creating a sitemap for Google.
A Google sitemap is xml document that contains information of every page on your website (not to be confused with a sitemap html page on your website). You need to upload this to the root folder of your server so that Google can access it and help index your website quicker and easier. You can create a Google sitemap with very little effort online by going to http://www.sitemapspal.com/ and follow the online instructions. Once you have created your site map you can go to www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/ and follow Google's instructions for adding a site map. You will find this service very easy to use and invaluable in getting your website listed properly on Google. Remember to update your sitemap xml document when your website is finished and every time you make changes to your website so that Google can index your new pages. Doing this now will save you time and effort later.

Now submit your website to the major search engines - right?
Wrong! It's a misconception that you need to submit your website to search engines. Please please don't pay anyone to do this, as it's not necessary. (Are you listening all you black hat SEO companies, shame on you). As you have created a sitemap in Google this is more than enough to get yourself listed in the search engines. The search engines will actually come looking for your website in due course. Engines like Google and Yahoo serve listing to lots of other sites. or more information on this visit http://www.bruceclay.com/searchenginerelationshipchart.htm. The one place you must submit your website is the Open Directory or DMOZ for short as this is where all the major search engines get their directory listings from. For more information on submitting your website to DOMOZ visit http://www.dmoz.com/add.html

Creating a rough draft of your site.
Now its time to start designing your site. Before we go ahead and start creating a website in Dreamweaver we will need to get the layout and design in place first. If your want a easier way to design your site and your are not familiar with Dreamweaver or technically minded you can always use website builder software to create your website. I would recommend this if you are just starting out, as this is a quick and simple way to get your website up and running. For information on using website building software visit www.umbrellawebsitedesign.co.uk/web_b.html. However if you want to get your hands dirty read on.

The Pen is mightier than the mouse.
The first draft of your website should be on paper. Illustrate where your are going to put everything on your final page, including images, text and links, and name them for quick reference. This will save you lots of time later on in Dreamweaver. You can even sketch out a sitemap of all the pages in your website showing what page links to what.

Creating a png file.
Now that you have a rough copy of your layout go ahead and open fireworks or image ready and start creating your site as a png file. Here you can start creating your logo and graphical elements you plan to use. You can create your navigation and add your menus and text so that you can easily refer back to them once in Dreamweaver. Layout everything as it would look like in a browser.This is a good idea as it's easy to make changes unlike in Dreamweaver where changes can be time consuming. Go ahead and save your page as png file.

Well that's it folks for part one In part two I will be creating a site in Dreamweaver, discussing cascading style sheets, usability, accessibility and validating your work to comply with W3G standards.
I hope you find this article useful.
Thank you and good luck.


About the Author
Director of Umbrella web designer for over 10 years
http://www.AdSenseThai.Net