How to design your site effectively

You decide you want to have a web presence. How do you design your website in a way that is effective? How do you effectively create website in a way that makes your clients want to come back? A client or visitor to your website may not want to come back if their experience on your website is tedious and cumbersome. Here are some tips to keep in mind when designing your website:

- Don't use a lot of animated graphics. In fact, don't use any at all because it makes the site look unprofessional.

- Don't use frames to design your website. You will be in for a lot of code redundancy and it causes the page to load slower.

- Use graphics at the lowest density possible. This allows the page to load faster.

- Try to get most of the content on one page preventing the user from having to scroll down to get the important information that your first page needs to prevent.

- Use links to navigate to the various sections of the site at the top, side, and bottom. Doing this allows a visitor can get to anywhere in the site from anywhere in the site.

- Always have link to get back to the home page on every page of the site.

- Use tables to lay out the sections on the site. This way, when one adjusts the size of the browser window, it does not alter the positioning of the paragraphs or sections on the page.

- Use headers and footers common to all pages and include that header or footer each time a new page is rendered. This way, if you have to change header or footer information, you only have to change it once.

- Use a white background for the main content of your page. The reason is that it looks much more professional and it is easier to read.

The wonders of content management systems

As you get serious about your web site, your time will become invaluable. A content management system is the best way to maximize your efforts.

What A Content Management System Does for You

A good CMS system will allow you to update can entire site by making a change one time in the admin that can carry over to all pages of your site. This means you can change the menu, side bar, page bottom, site design, or other sections of your site all at one time. So while some webmasters are changing every page, others can have the task completed in minutes.

Includes, Style Sheets and Content Management Systems

For the do it yourself webmaster, or a professional web designer looking to easily improve update efficiency, there is a middle ground between plain HTML pages and full-blown CMS.

Includes

By simply using an include on your sites, you can allow your entire site to be updated with one change. Includes are files that are included in a web page with one line of code. This allows all pages with that file included to be updated by changing the include file one time.

Style Sheets

Style sheets operate in much the same way as includes. One line of code calls a file capable of determining the look of text and graphics on the site. Entire site designs can be created with style sheets. An example of the power of style sheets can be seen at csszengarden. com/. Using style sheets can allow webmasters to change the entire look and layout of the site by changing one file.

In Closing

Manually changing a web site is for the birds. Use a content management system and you’ll actually have time to have a life beyond your site.

Only seconds

You've spent money and time creating a logo, letterhead, and brochures for your business. You care about your company message, and you want customers to know you care about quality. You've hired professional graphic artists, designers, and printers to do the job.

But what have you done about your small business Web site design? Does it match the quality and look of your other marketing materials? Since the Web has more reach than the rest of your marketing materials, it should demonstrate the highest quality. And yet so many business owners have hired amateurs, relatives, teenagers, or created McWeb (fast setup, cookie-cutter) sites themselves.

An important distinction about the Web is the amount of time you have to create interest for your visitor. You have only seconds to make a great impression. How are you using yours? Now is the perfect time to see if your small business Web site design needs some tweaking to make that great impression. Visit your own Web site and check out our three-step approach below to see if it's time for you to consider a change.

1. Before you click to review your Web site home page, ask yourself what your current business goals are. Do you want to sell product? Do you want to sell services? Do you want to provide information for prospective buyers? What do you want to accomplish? Your goals and your business may have changed since you first put up your small business Web site. Deciding on your current business goals will help you to decide on the main focus for your small business Web site.

2. Discover what your firm's largest strengths are. This can be done through customer focus groups, surveys, interviews, or informal processes. The result should be something similar to your unique selling proposition or how customers benefit from doing business with you.

3. Now, visit the home page of your Web site. What is the first item that you see? Put one and two together, and shouldn't your small business Web site home page immediately feature your biggest strengths or a means to your goal (or preferably both?)

The Web is filled with what not to do. Yesterday, I saw a consulting Web site that I couldn't tell was an accounting site until I clicked through three pages. A speaker's Web site had a huge picture of the speaker that took forever to download and was not by any means Mr. America. And a photographer's site had a long, irrelevant Flash movie about the creator's dog. I don't know of any customer who is going to sit there and try to guess what business you're in. They'll just go to other sites and do business with the small business Web site that has a clear message for them.

If you want to make money on the Web, use your seconds wisely.

Using myspace codes to improve your myspace page

MySpace is a great place for meeting new friends and keep in contact with relatives and friends who live far away. Everybody wants to enhance the MySpace profile in order to have a unique and attractive MySpace page.

Usually you want to keep some details private which are avaiable only by a few friends or relatives. But how can you do this? Myspace codes assist you in personalization of your profile. Here are some examples for codes which are quite useful.

Centering the profile - many of us want to keep our profile in the center of the web page just because it looks good. The code for this is available on many Myspace Codes websites. You just have to copy the code and paste it into the appropriate section of your MySpace profile. Then just save it and refresh your profile in order to see the centered page.

Hiding the contact table - What if you do not want to be contacted by others? Just use a MySpace Code snippet and paste it into your profile. You are still able to communicate with each other, but they can not contact you. This protects against a lot of spam. You can delete the code at any time and your profile is visible for other members.

Image Codes - you can use these types of codes in order to use your own images in your profile. Just upload them to one the the free image hosting websites and copy the URL of the image into a text box which comes up when choosing this option at one of the MySpace codes websites out there. They will provide the final code snippet which can be used in your MySpace page.

Hide myspace comments - you can hide you comments section of your profile just by using the appropriate MySpace cpde.

Remove add a comment link - If you do not want to receive feedback you can use a code snippet and disable the comments section for other members.

There are many other codes available which can be used to improve your MySpace profile and make it look better. It just takes a couple of minutes...