Forum posts to 'Web Development Forum'

Re: Importance of CSS in web development

wenkang gao — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 03:44:25 -0500

Nice article!
Hi,guys.
I'm a web designer.Noticed that there are many people having trouble with writting good quality XHTML/CSS/JS code, we think you may have interests in the one of the services we offer(such as PSD to HTML).
You can learn more about us at:
http://xhtml.WebOutsourcingServices.com
Good luck.

Posted to: Importance of CSS in web development

What is the first thing I need to start my ecommerce website?

christo yordanov — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:19:00 -0500

Get a reliable web host! No, really. You need a website that has all the features necessary to get an online business up and running, including:

* Domain name
* Email accounts
* Shopping Carts (e.g. Agora, OsCommerce, Zen Cart, and Cube Cart)

Those are all the freebies once you’ve got hosting.

What else do I need to run an ecommerce website?

* Dedicated IP Address
* SSL Certificate
* Payment Gateway

Without a Dedicated IP, you can’t get an SSL Certificate, without which you can’t get most payment gateways, without which you can’t accept credit card payments directly on your website. The explanation for this circular reasoning is simply that the combination of Dedicated IP and SSL Certificate ensure your website’s payments are encryted and secured, which is what payment gateways need to see as well.

An SSL Certificate is nothing more than a certificate that encrypts the sensitive payment information processed on your website. Without that little lock, many potential clients will not trust your website and will not buy your products. You can purchase an SSL Certificate for $99 or $119 per year.

And lastly, a payment gateway is a merchant that processes the payments from your website and more or less converts the electronic transaction into actual funds that go to your bank account, etc. we recommend Authorize.Net, as they are a reliable and affordable choice.

Can I use PayPal or Google Checkout instead of a payment gateway?

That’s a trick question, that is. Both PayPal and Google Checkout are payment gateways of their own. These two services (and others like them) simplify the checkout process by allowing you to send your customers to their services to complete transactions. This means you don’t have to purchase an SSL or Dedicated IP and thus will cut down on your costs.

---------

Author: Tiara Rea

Posted to: What is the first thing I need to start my ecommerce website?

Site Search As Key Performance Indicator

christo yordanov — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 19:07:11 -0500

Do you know what's happening in your own site search? Understanding site search is one of the most important KPI (Key Performance Indicator) you should measure.

According to a Forrester study, over 50 percent of major web sites fail in search usability. When your search fails to deliver, your conversion suffers. A low converting site will result is less sales and decreased revenue.

Search is not just another nice feature to have. You have to think of search as a revenue generating part of your business.

Your company works hard to drive traffic to your site. Many visitors will use your on site search instead of browsing through your site. Online shoppers want to use site search to expedite the shopping experience. The faster and easier they can locate the product they are looking for the more likely they'll buy on your site. The more roadblock you set in place to inconvenience the shopper, the more likely they'll buy from someone else.

Do you know what they are searching for? Are you in any way measuring what search phrases are queried on your site? It is not enough to have site search as a feature. You must analyze it. You have to understand it. Then, you have to make adjustments based on your findings.

The best place to start learning about your site search is through the search log files. If you don't monitor your log files, you will fail to gain an insight into what your customers are looking for on your site. Understanding site search is a KPI that should be part of your tactical operations. Learning about site search will tell you what your customers are looking for.

In addition to understanding what site visitors are searching for, you have to test what results yield from searches. For example, if your customers are searching for "return policy" what results are they shown? Are the search results relevant to the search queries? If the result you get is not the best possible result, you have to tweak you search engine.

The top few results must be relevant, because searchers are not interested in reading deep down your search results. Result number 10 is infinitely more irrelevant than result number 1.

Every reasonable search phrase should result in relevant search results. For example, if the site searcher types "return policy" in the search field, the search should result in some result. Every e-commerce site should have a return policy; therefore, the site search should yield the relevant result.

One of the worst possible outcomes for a search query would be no result. If a user types any relevant key phrase, it should result in relevant results. If they don't, your search is failing your customers.

Site search is a tool to enhance customer satisfaction. If it works as it is supposed to, it has done its job. If site search fails it becomes a frustrating experience instead of a positive experience resulting in lower conversion rates, lost sales opportunities, loss of revenue and unhappy site visitors.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Author: George Meszaros

Posted to: Site Search As Key Performance Indicator

Some Tips to Improve Slow Website Sales

christo yordanov — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:41:41 -0500

I've seen it many times. A new entrepreneur is excited because their website just went live after weeks, or even months, of hard work. But the excitement doesn't last long when they see that they have yet to make a sale. Or maybe they've only made one or two. They're not covering their expenses, and they're certainly not making enough to live on.

I make sure to tell them not to worry, because it's happened to all of us. Especially with a new website. And there is an answer. Or, I should say, a few answers.

There are some steps you can follow to make sure you are doing everything right to maximize your sales. Look through the list below. If you can say definitively that you have taken all of these steps, then you should see a big increase in your sales. Here you go:

1. Make sure there is a market for what you're selling

By now, you've probably heard a lot about finding your online niche. If you did your research properly, you should have found a market that has a problem that you can provide an answer for. That's probably the most important part of your business.

If you haven't done the proper research yet, get started now. Use a keyword tool like Nichebot or Wordtracker to find what people are searching for online. And visit the forums to see what people are talking about and what problems they need to solve.

Don't skip this step. It's important that internet users are going to want what you're selling or your whole business is lost before it even begins.

2. Make sure that you're selling something that solves their problem

If you've found the right niche, then you should have some idea about what their main problems are. Do some research to find out what they need to solve that problem, then offer it to them. That's the formula in a nutshell. Don't let your product stray from the main topic. Solve their problem, and you'll have success.

3. Make sure you're getting enough traffic

It's difficult to make a good decision about how effective your sales process is if you haven't had enough traffic to your website yet. I recommend waiting until you've had at least 1,000 visitors. Anything less and you won't really have enough data to work with. Be patient.

4. Find out where your traffic is coming from

It's important that you are getting targeted visitors to your website. Make sure that if you're using pay-per-click advertising you're bidding only on words that are right for your market. If you're selling cell phones, you don't want visitors who are searching for land line phones for their office. Remember who your visitor is.

5. Test different headlines

Your headline is the first thing your visitors see on your site. Make sure it's compelling and gets them to keep reading. How do you do that? Simply by testing different headlines and seeing which one works best.

You can do that by rewriting it every now and then and checking your stats, or you can split test your headlines using Google's website optimizer. Website optimizer is part of your Google adwords account. If you don't have an adwords account, you can get one free at a href="http://adwords.google.com">http://adwords.google.com.

6. Make sure your sales copy is effective

The last thing you want to do once you have a visitor reading your sales copy is to distract them with something that isn't leading directly to a sale. In other words, leave out any links to other websites, forget about adsense and banner ads, and don't start talking about things that don't relate to your subject.

Concentrate on your sales message and proof elements, and dispelling any doubts they may have about giving you their money. This includes using testimonials if you have them, a 100% satisfaction guarantee, and good strong sales copy that keeps them interested all the way through to your "buy now" button.

7. Test different price points

It's hard to know what's the right price for your item right off the bat. You may have it at the price you're willing to pay, but that may not be the price everyone is willing to pay. A lot of people will expect to buy something in your market within a certain price range. If your price is too high, they'll shop elsewhere. If your price is too low, yes too low, they might think that what you're offering is of poor quality. You can answer this problem by simply trying out different prices to see what works best.

8. Make sure your order processing works properly and is easy to use

Test all of the links from your "add to cart" buttons all the way through to your "thank you" page. You can normally run a $0 test before you go live with most shopping cart and merchant account systems. Obviously, if your ordering system isn't working right, you're not going to see any sales.

Also, make sure that it's easy to use. Get a friend to run through it for you. It may make perfect sense to you, but that doesn't mean that it will for everyone. Let some other people try it out and see if they get stuck anywhere. Chances are good that if they do, then others will too. If everything isn't as easy as possible to use, then some people will just leave rather than trying to figure it out.

There you go. Eight steps you can follow with your site to make sure that you are maximizing your sales. Just from my own experience, anytime I was able to say that I went through all of the steps above completely, I saw significant improvement, and found good success with my website. I believe that you will, too. Good luck.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author: Mark Yarrobino is the president of Maroon Enterprises.

Posted to: Some Tips to Improve Slow Website Sales

How To Choose A Website Layout

christo yordanov — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 05:13:18 -0500

The layout for a website is as important as the content that is chosen for the website itself. This is because the layout decides how easy a website is to navigate and how easy it is to find things on it.

You have probably noticed yourself that there are layouts which are fast and easy to use and ones that you spend more time looking for what you want than it takes to obtain the information once you have found it.

Overall people are more likely to visit and return to websites that are easy to use. Also layouts that are easy to use are usually easier to create. There are a couple of different aspects to a website layout. The first is going to be the design.

How is it set up? Where is everything located? Does it contain everything that you are looking for or that you want to have on your website? Keep in mind that you can use different layouts for different pages. Just because they belong to the same website does not mean that they are required to be uniform.

Though it does help to maintain a sense of uniformity it is not necessary and many people choose a variety of layouts and templates for their websites depending on the subject matter. In this way you can think of a website as a scrapbook each page presenting a different theme or event.

The choice of uniformity or choosing a variety of templates and layouts really depends on what you are looking for and how much work you want to put into the website itself.

You may also want to check to see if the website builder you are using supports multiple layouts. There are some which are single layout based. You are going to want a layout that is not too busy that it detracts from the purpose of your website which is the content on it.

The layout is also based on what you are presenting. If you are presenting primarily text you are not going to want a layout that is primarily for pictures and visa versa. You will also want a layout which provides all the link and page option requirements that you need.

Adding additional spaces is not difficult but you can cut work down considerably with the right template. You will also want to make sure that the background colors are easy on the eyes: bright colors and multiple colors are great. However, if you can not read the text because of the color or it is hard on the eyes chances are you will end up losing visitors.

After you have chosen the type of template, the colors and the pattern if necessary, it is important to make sure that everything you need, link and page buttons, banners and menus are placed in the proper place. There are a number of template options that will allow you to choose the placement of the various parts. Choose these options next in order to complete the layout for your website.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author: Jason Smith - XSitePro V2

Posted to: How To Choose A Website Layout

Importance of CSS in web development

christo yordanov — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 07:48:13 -0500

CSS style sheets have made it easier to handle web pages during web development. CSS or Cascading Style Sheets as the name suggests is a style sheet that allows you to easily link to other documents in your website. It allows you to retain control over the various elements in different web pages of your website.

CSS only defines the structure and content presentation of a website it has nothing to do with the design of a website. A single CSS sheet can control the font, positioning, colour and style information of an entire website.

9 advantages of using CSS

* Web pages are easier to load and uses less bandwidth

CSS style sheets are preferred by web developers for website development because they are lighter than table layouts, which consumes lots of bandwidth. The style sheet is downloaded only once and stored in the cache memory, so subsequent pages load faster.

* A CSS style sheet compliments well with HTML

HTML is insufficient when used independently in website development, but when combined with CSS they can result in technically stronger web pages.

* CSS allows you to position your element anywhere in the webpage

Web developers love to use CSS because it allows them to position their element where ever they want in the web page. If during any phase of web development the developer feels that particular links or columns are not going well with the situation then it becomes easier for them to position them easily using CSS. CSS reduces the risks associated with maintenance of the website.

* CSS is compatible with all web browsers

CSS is combined with HTML or XHTML by web developers for web application development because it is compatible with all web browsers. The sites that use CSS appear similar in all the web browsers.

* CSS can be used to create print friendly web pages

Most of the web developers love to use CSS for building their HTML based web applications because they allow them to create print friendly web pages. These web pages can be easily printed. The colours, images and other things which are difficult to be printed can be eliminated and printed easily.

* CSS style sheets allows the user to customize the webpage

Now days many websites allow the user to change the layout of the website without affecting the content. The CSS style sheets which are stored externally allow the user to make requisite changes by themselves. Most of the modern browsers give user the liberty to define their own style sheets like changing some font properties etc.

* CSS style sheets makes it easier for your website to feature in search engines

The CSS style sheets are favoured by web developers because they allow them to position their elements as per their wish anywhere in web application. Positioning helps to project the main contents first, so that it is easily captured by web spiders. CSS also gives cleaner HTML codes thus cutting down the job of web spider to search the real content from junk code.

* CSS allows the web pages to have absolute consistency

One of the reasons for using CSS during web development is that they allow consistency to all web pages. All the expressions and texts will get their characteristics from external style sheet. Web developers need not to worry about the change in characteristics of the elements because they can be easily altered at any stage of web development by using CSS.

* CSS lends portability to content

By using CSS you can make separate style sheets for different media. This provides you the great flexibility in presenting your content. CSS allows you to redefine the characteristics of elements in a website to suit the need of the situation. For e.g.: A separate style sheet will allow you to redefine the characteristics of certain elements so that they are easier to be printed. Also the user will never come to know that you had restructured the characteristics for their benefit.

CSS is created to make the things easier for your website and also to give you control over different elements in your website. Utilising benefits of CSS will give you popular user friendly web pages.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

About the Author: Sigma InfoTech is an Australian based Website Design firm, specialising in Website Development, Web Developer, Website design, Application Development Australia. Write editor to webmastergrace@gmail.com your comments and suggestions will be highly appreciated.

Posted to: Importance of CSS in web development