Sunday, 18 December 2011

2 - Content is King, Creating unique and original content for the website.


Common mistake made by developers and project managers is that they under estimate the power of content. Fresh, unique and original website content can attract and keep the audience more than a beautifully design layout. Web content should be search engine friendly with sufficient amount of targeted keywords, target your customers and describe your product or service in the best way possible.
Web is full of information now a day, so peoples wants quick, unique, interesting, easy to read and relevant content. Website material must be full of interesting facts and related details to keep the user on your page. Best way to write content is to put your self in your audience shoe and see if your content is convincing enough for your self to buy the service or product offered. There are lots of things you should consider while writing content for your website, few of these are as follow:

Keeping it Simple

Always keep your content simple. Use good grammar and avoid any spelling mistakes. Instead of using fancy and five syllable words try writing the material which is understandable to any one. Make it attractive with bullets, numbering and subtitles and always keep in mind people like lists. Short 400 - 500 words in tight and coherent information without any grammar or spelling mistake is best.

Titles

Titles must be catchy and informative and attract people to click on them. Instead of writing misleading words, use clear and to the point approaches. A best title should have multiple and descriptive keywords, and able to tell the audience what is the nature of your product or service.

Write Interesting Material that’s easy to scan

People never read a webpage word by word, they prefers to scan the information given on the pages. Creating a visual hierarchy by using bullets, numbering, colors and sizes with an appropriate font can really make it easy on the eyes. Always avoid hyped sales pitch instead try to be more appealing by using interesting facts and a little bit of humor. Be careful with the humor because sometime people might not get your sense of humor and get offended.

Avoid Plagiarism

The most important thing to consider while writing content for your web page is to avoid any plagiarism. Search engines never likes duplicated material so if you try to copy someone else's content there is a big chance that they will ban your website from the SERPs. Coping others web content is stealing someone hard work and it is an unethical practice, must be avoided at all cost.

Creating content is a process of writing interesting, unique, grammatically correct material without any spelling mistakes to attract audience to sell your product or a service. Sometimes it becomes difficult for project managers and developers to write contents, so it’s always good to hire a professional content writer or uses the services of the Freelance content writer. Writing web content is as same as writing in a newspaper, magazine or a book. It must have:

  • Good Title with descriptive Keywords
  • Correct use of grammar and no spelling mistakes
  • Interesting and amazing facts
  • Small paragraphs and lists with bullets and numbering to make it scan able
  • And always end it with a good summary.

3a - Project Development: Do it your self.


Project development phase starts with designing and creating a website architect. Some people like to do it themselves because they have resources, ability and required education for the task. Some prefer to go with the pro. DIY website design is a term used when a webmaster or the project development team starts creating their website on their own. Usually when a team of professional starts an online business venture they make sure they have a person who knows about the designing and the development of website. This versatility sometime help them with the budget and save lots of money and time, But it is only effective when you are qualified enough to do it yourself.

Website Builders:

It is good to decide it in the planning phase of a website project that whether you going to do it your self or you will be hiring a Pro. Sometime people go with Do it yourself website builder, which is available with lots of hosting services now days. These softwares are the next best thing when it comes to designing the basic website. They make it easier for person to get your website up and running with just few clicks, replacing some text and images with your own. Most of the time, these online builders are free to use or have a free trail and given as a bonus feature with a hosting service. The best thing about the website builders are the design libraries. They have template libraries with hundreds of pre made home page designs. You can use any design and include any feature from their library and save lots of time.

Content management system:

Content management system or we call them CMS is another example of a do it yourself or diy website designing. These are the softwares either available with your hosting service or you can just upload them to your website with the help of ftp. Content management system allows you to make changes to your website, add new features and create database without having to learn HTML, asp, php or any other programming language. They are easy to use and full featured systems which can be install and use with a very little technical skill. They improve site navigation and reduce the website maintenance cost and even if you don't have a budget to hire a pro you can still build a website with all the features and good design.

When you are setting up an online business sometime it is good to go with do it yourself website builders or CMS. It definitely saves you time and money and if you have the right qualification and knowledge about the website you can do the updates and changes in the future. Website is crucial for the success of an online business because they are the only way your potential customers will be able to reach you. A bad website with no architect, navigation and horrible design can drive customers away. So choosing a good website builder or content management system can really help you create a user friendly website and with right promotion your website will be a success.

3b - Project Development: How to hire a web professional for quality custom web design.


For a good quality custom website designing you always want to hire a pro. Professional web development for you online business can be a decision that put your website on the right track. When you are trying to do it yourself web designing you still need website design tutorials to know what you are doing and where you are going with it. Sometime learning a little bit about websites and trying to make a webpage can be very overwhelming, so it is time to go with the pro. Hiring professional web development staff can help you launch a beautiful design web page with a lot of features to attract audience toward your website.

When you need a website for your online business and have no idea what to do then hiring a pro will be the answer for you. Professional web designer can provide you with the beautiful and professional interface, search engine friendly site map and easy to navigate pages, in short a pro can create for you a user friendly website which you can promote successfully.

Professional web development process helps with cost management of the project and also provides some custom features which are difficult to get when using content management system or a website builder.  Usually cms have default features and you have to know the programming language to make any change and customize it according to your requirement. Pro web designer can handle this problem for you and change any current feature in the cms or add new ones to make your website user friendly and have all the bells and whistles.  

Although for some peoples it is hard to not able to have all the control over the things but at the same time when you hire a pro it take loads of your shoulders. You don’t have to draw diagrams and spend time in figuring out the layout and design of your home page, you just explain a pro what you want and when the project is completed you will get a quality website with a beautiful design.

A website is the most important thing for the online business. You are going to create an online brand with your website, so when you are choosing a website designer for your project keep these points in mind:

-         Web design experience
-         Professional Approach
-         Familiar with all the latest trends
-         You can contact the pro any time with your queries regarding the project
-         What programming language and what design and development tools they will be using because one, you want all the latest development tools to be used for your website. Second the page design must be according to latest trends. And third they must be able to write the code instead of using WYSIWYG software like front page and dreamweaver.
-         Programming language (asp, php) they use must be supported by your hosting service.
-         They have some good reviews from their previous clients.
-         Able to provide you with the working sample before starting the project.

Project Development is an important phase in the process of creating an online business. So if you want to hire a pro you have to take your time choosing the best designer for the job. A good professional will be able to design a user friendly interface and a website with all the features you need.

4 - Usability testing: Finalizing the Design which is Easy to navigate and user friendly


Whether you design it yourself and go with pro web designer its time to finalize your website and test its usability. Finished project must have all the features you desired and bells and whistle you planed for the website. It should have the Beautiful and a quality web design which is easy to navigate and user friendly.

The website has many forms of interaction. Navigation is an important example for that. Good navigation helps you browse your ways to desired pages with ease. To keep your visitors on the site it is good to have website navigation that keep them engaged. You can always have an option to have your website tested like any other software or game testing process.

Finalizing process for the website starts with gathering few independent peoples and let them view your website and browse the pages. In the end they give you their feedback, which will help you go through those pages once again and correct the mistake to make it more user friendly and create a positive experience for the visitors. We call it usability testing, a process to check and find out whether the users are using and interacting with your website as it was anticipated by the web designers.

You are not going to buy a shoe which does not fit in your foot right? A user is not going to be attracted to your website until it fits the requirements. Usability testing is the best way to discover how the visitors will perceive your website and whether they going to like it or not. Getting the desire audience for your online business website is critical for the success and usability testing helps you get your website to that point, from where you can attract users to visit your website and show interest in what you are offering.

It is a known fact that to get user attention, websitedesign must be easy to navigate and looks beautiful at the same time. Quality website always has these features and has a power to engage users. Usability testing is not a focus group or a process to validate your designing skills; instead it is used to find out which parts of your website are not easy to understand and what you can do to make it more users friendly.

5 – Website Promotion: Marketing and optimizing your website for search engines


When you complete the design and development of a website, test and finalized it now its time to start optimizing this website for the search engines. After the completion, promotion phase for your website starts which is equally important and crucial part of online business success. Search engine marketing helps to promote your online business and become a critical step in your online business process. Some people would call it an art of getting visitors for your website from different search engines.

Search engine marketing combine two techniques:
1-     Search engine Optimization
2-     Pay per Click

Search engine optimization is organic or a natural way to generate traffic from search engines for your website. Its is a process of making changes to your web site so that it will appear on top position in the search engines. There are few tips and tricks that help you create your seo strategy and get you to desire top position in the search engine result pages.

-         Check where you are standing. You should know your website current position on search engines and its competition.
-         Right amount of Keywords and a good description for your Meta tag.
-         Always choose the domain that contains word from you primary keyword phrase. Keep your domain name and urls user friendly and easy to read.
-         Good and sophisticated use of keywords in title, h1 tag and in the content.
-         Good navigation and internal linking within your website.
-         Always use original and quality content because “content is king”.
-         Sitemap is an important and always have one because it let search engine knows about each and every page of your website.
-         Always remember search engine spiders can’t read the images or flash movie So always use alt and title attributes for the images in HTML and try to avoid flash.
-         Social media
-         Link building

Pay per Click:

Sometime you want quick results and need a desire number of daily targeted visitors to your website, you will be purchasing sponsored links in the search engine. Using those sponsored links to generate target traffic toward your website is Pay per click or Pay per view. You pay search engines for every click or a view you get for your ad. Google adwords is a major pay per click system.
Main purpose for the search engine marketing is promotion of a website. With the help of SEM you use right keywords to get a best sponsored links, take your campaign to a shopping search engine or directory, get paid inclusion in the directories and optimized your page to get a top position in a search engine result page.