Posts Tagged ‘Custom Web Design’

Social Networking – Why You Should Start Your Own Community

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

After the enormous popularity explosion that followed the launch of MySpace many Internet entrepreneurs and marketers found themselves wondering why they did not come up with MySpace first. The idea of social networking is nothing new but before MySpace it was not seen on such a large, user friendly, level. Quite a few Internet savvy people would have loved the chance to make a fortune selling advertisement space to major movie studios, television stations, bands, and much more. Surprisingly creating a website like MySpace is not nearly as difficult as you may be imagining.

In order to establish a social networking website it is necessary to invest in your own, customized, social networking software. This software is created by a developer that specializes in creating programs to be used for social networking and will be branded for your own use. While hiring a development company and setting up web hosting along with marketing can be expensive in the long run it will be worth it.

Even though many people prefer setting up their own profiles on sites like MySpace and using them to promote their own businesses setting up your own website will give you much more control over your promotion and increase your opportunity for financial success. When using third party sites you are totally dependent on their system and have to hope that there is no downtime, errors with messaging, or anything else that can have an adverse affect on your promotional efforts. You are also at the mercy of their staff that may or may not close or lock your account for a variety of reasons real or imagined leaving you to cool your heels until someone has the time to answer your support ticket.

Setting up your own social networking site will give you total control over the community. You will be able to invite your friends and business associates to sign up and then watch the news spread through word of mouth. Unlike other website ventures social networking leads to word of mouth news being spread because once a user has a profile set up they want the world to see it. Plus you will be able to set up a site that showcases your own interests be it body art, music, television, animation, or anything else you can imagine.

If you are interested in starting your own social networking website you will need to contact a web design company that specializes in social networking sites. Since there is a lot of work involved in the development and upkeep of any social networking site you will want to choose a company with experience in the field. Once you have found a web design company that has designed sites that are similar to your own vision contact them with any questions you might have. In many instances these companies will be able to recommend web hosting and even provide marketing assistance. With all of this in mind if you are someone that wishes you were the owner of MySpace it is time to invest in your own social networking site.

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Custom Web Design – 3 Things to Remember

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

When the time comes to hire a professional to design a customized site for your company it is easy to be influenced by the competition. Many small business owners make the mistake of creating overly flashy websites that have the latest technology and features. While this might create an impressive impression it might not be for the best. Before you give your designer a list of requirements that you feel will generate sales remember these three things.

First of all, your website must be easy to navigate. Visitors should be able to find everything that they need without hunting for it. Include links to all major parts of your website; “About Me, Contact Us, etc.” at the top of your website and at the bottom. Make sure that everything is easy to understand your clients should not have to spend an hour figuring out how to get around the site.

Secondly, the website must clearly state your companies name and contact information. When a visitor gets to your website they must be able to tell, right away, that it is your site. With visitors going to hundreds of websites each day they will eventually get confused. This will happen a lot if you are selling goods or services that will lead to your visitors doing a lot of comparison shopping. Your site must be able to stand out in the crowd by showcasing a brand name, logo, or other identifying graphic that will be memorable and easily recognizable.

Third, and finally, your website must be able to load in all browsers quickly. Web surfers are notoriously impatient and after a few seconds of dealing with a slow loading website they will move on to the next best thing. The only way to avoid this is to cut down on large graphics, excessive animation, and anything else that will slow an Internet user down. When you are trying to come up with ways to make your website load faster, always remember that not all users will have access to a DSL or high speed connection. Test your website out using dial up and test it in multiple browsers. Even though you might like your exciting flash entrance page a user with an older computer, outdated Internet Explorer, and dial up might get angry when your website crashes there entire system.

Always remember that it is your company’s services and products that matter. Do not let yourself get fooled by the flash that some company’s use to hide their lack of quality. Focus on what your website needs to educate potential customers and rank well on major search engines.

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Why Should You Build Your Own Social Network?

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Social networks like MySpace, Craigslist and Friendster are becoming the next big marketing tool for businesses. Have you ever thought about building your own social networking? You might think that you don’t really need to build your own social network or that it’s too much work to build your own social network but there are a lot of advantages that you get when you build your own social network.

You don’t have to build a social network that is as large as MySpace or Facebook. Personal or individual social networks are usually much smaller and much more geared towards a special niche audience. For example, many rock stars, movie stars, and sports stars now have their own social networks where people that are fans can connect with one another and get special updates and other exclusive information from the star.

Here are just a few of the advantages of building your own social network:

Information – When people sign up for your social network you get to collect their email addresses and information about them. This can be very valuable for a business because you can use those email addresses to send targeted marketing emails to customers that you already know are interested in your products. Plus you can find out information about your customers that will help you develop a better sales strategy for the future.

Access – Whether you want to publicize a new product launch or promote a product that you already have on the market you will be gaining access to customers that are already interested in your products. Having unlimited access to interested customers is well worth the investment to build your own social network.

Income – When you build your own social network you can also sell advertising slots on that social networking and collect income from those ads. So you are adding another revenue stream just by building a social networking site. As the site grows so will the interest that other companies have in advertising to the members of your social network. You can be selective about what types of companies you allow to advertise on the site. For the best results you should pick companies that sell products that are complementary to your own.

If you haven’t already considered building your own social networking site to go with your existing site or as a completely new project now is the time to start seriously considering it. More and more companies are going to start building community sites and competing for consumer interest so building your own community or social networking site now is a good idea.

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The 5 Most Important Elements of Custom Web Design

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

When you are having a web site built for your company it’s important to make sure the company that you hire to build the site knows the five most important elements of web site design so that the design of the site isn’t a complete failure. Your company web site can be what sets your company apart from your competition so it’s important that the site be great. When you’re interviewing web site design companies make sure that you ask them about these elements of web site design to make sure they understand how important they are:

1. Branding and appearance – Your company website is your calling card on the Web, and in order for people to recognize the brand name and recognize the product branding is very important. You need to have uniform branding from the package to the website and on everything in between. Any custom web site design that you done needs to incorporate your brand image and your company colors into the colors and appearance of the web site.

2. Navigation – Whenever you have custom web site design done for your company one of the priorities of the design needs to be navigation. A website is no good it’s difficult for the user to figure out how to get around on the site. You want people that visit the site to look around the site, read the content and maybe shop on site. If the site is hard to figure out and hard to get around they won’t stay on the site very long.

3. Load time – Flashy custom web site design that is full of animation or large graphics is definitely not the way to go for a business web site. Not everyone that visits your site will be using a high speed Internet connection and a custom web site design that is full of Flash animation and large graphics will take too long to load. Your visitors will just surf away rather than wait for everything on the page to load. People that are trying to access the site from PDA’s and cell phones won’t be able to load the site at all. Any custom web site design should be simple and clean with no Flash if at all possible.

4. Search Engine Optimization – Websites today need to be search engine optimized. Even if the custom web site design company you hire doesn’t search engine optimize the content of the website they should do search engine optimization on the tags in the HTML codes of the site.

5. Functionality – If the site that you are having built is an ecommerce site then the company that creates your custom web site design should make sure that the shopping cart and payment processing systems that you want to use will integrate seamlessly into the site. The shopping cart and the check out process should be tested and re-tested before the launch of the site.

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5 Tips For Choosing a Business Web Hosting Company

Tuesday, July 29th, 2008

Confused about how to choose a business web hosting company? It can be hard to know which hosting company to trust with your business website. After all, your website is your calling card online and it’s important that you choose a reliable, high quality web hosting company to make sure that your site runs smoothly. Here are 5 tips that can help you choose a quality hosting company for your website:

1. Don’t use free hosting services – You might be tempted to try out a free hosting service and save some money but remember the old adage “you get what you pay for”. That is definitely true when it comes to web hosting! That doesn’t mean that you need to rush out and get the most expensive hosting plant that you can find but don’t bother with the free hosting services, they will do more harm than good in the long run. Free services also often have a lot of add ons that you need to pay for like stats and website tracking info so even though the hosting is free the services that you need are not.

2. Check out how long the average help desk wait is – Somewhere on the site they will tell you how long it usually takes their help desk personnel to answer a trouble ticket submitted by a customer. The average help desk wait is 24 – 48 hours. If they say that the average wait is longer than that you should find another web hosting company.

3. See if they have live help available – These days most business web hosting companies offer live help through chat applications or instant messages during normal business hours. Live help isn’t always terribly helpful but at least you can talk with someone right away when you have a problem. If you can find a hosting company in your preferred price range that offers live help you should choose that company so that you’ll be able to get a hold of someone if you need to.

4. Check to see how many email addresses you get with your website – Any hosting company should offer you free POP3 email addresses with your website. Find out how many the company offers before you sign up and make sure that they offer more than you think you’ll need so that you can change email addresses or add and subtract email addresses as employees come and go.

5. Ask about their security protocols – This is important when you’re buying hosting services. It’s important for any business but it’s especially important if you’re going to be doing any ecommerce or asking clients or customers for personal information or financial information. Find out if the company allows you to install additional security and what security they offer as a standard part of their services.

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