article : 5 Phases to Email Marketing

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When using email marketing to sell a product or service you can’t just start selling to your readers in the first email. The reason is the odds of the reader knowing who you are or what you are all about are pretty low, even if they subscribed to your newsletter from a form on your website. People do not purchase from those they do not know. So the key to a successful email marketing campaign is “warming up” your readers to the sell.

The "warming up" process can be broken down into five distinct phases. It's a good idea to keep these in mind as you work to warm up your lists.

Phase 1 -- "Cold Readers"

These are folks who have just filled out the form on your website, or whose details you have received via co-registration.

You know nothing about them, and they know nothing about you, so at this phase, your primary job is to introduce yourself, and begin to establish yourself as a source of credible and useful *free* information.

I emphasized the word *free* in that, because "cold" leads are very unlikely to buy anything from you, no matter what you do.

PHASE 2 -- "Curious Readers"

At this phase, people may have opened one or two of your emails and have at least decided to stay on your list long enough to find out what you're about, and what they can gain by reading your emails.

Another way of thinking of this group is that they are the ones who are actually opening and reading your emails, whether they open the first or the tenth that you send them.

Your job with this group remains essentially the same as was true at Phase 1 ... you are still in the process of "warming them up" to the idea that you are credible and trustworthy.

Again, not a time to be trying to sell them things, because few of them will buy, anyway.

PHASE 3 -- "Interested Readers"

These are the folks who have opened and read several of your emails, and now continue to read them. Perhaps they have "moved" themselves from your "cold" list by opting-in to one or your newsletters or free mini-courses.

By doing so, they have "told" you that they are interested in what you have to say, willing to read more of your emails, and may, in due time, buy something on the basis of your suggestion.

One way to know who your "interested" prospects are is to offer a free ebook or mini-course, and make them "register" for it by opting in to a second autoresponder.

Another is to run a survey form on your site, invite them to participate, and capture their contact information when they do so.

The point is they have taken some *action* based upon your previous emails, and have told you by that action that they are interested in what you have to say, and willing to read what you write to them.

PHASE 4 -- "Excited Readers"

These are folks who are almost ready to buy. They may have written you asking for more information, or visited your sales page several times. Maybe they are thinking about joining your business opportunity, but for some reason not quite ready to sign up and pay their money. They need some sort of "push" or "nudge" to get them to take action.

Maybe they need a "special offer" of some kind, or simply a personal follow-up email or phone call from you. Whatever it is, these are your *HOT* prospects.

PHASE 5 -- "Customer"

The final phase is, of course, obvious. These are the folks who have bought your product, joined your opportunity, or bought something that you promote as an affiliate.

In the long run, these are the folks who will make you the most money, because it will become easier and easier for them to act on your recommendations, as long as you don't betray their trust by endorsing poor quality products or programs.

You need to think of these folks as *friends*, because that is what they really are. They have now given you permission to send them follow-up offers and program endorsements.

Even though they may represent only a tiny percentage of the entire population of your list, these people are your long term gold mine group.

Treat them with respect, they have warmed up to you and what You have to offer. Maintain a high level of integrity and they will continue to follow you for years to come

Copyright © 2008 Top-Work-From-Home-Directory.com

About the Author Chris Stirling is the owner of Top-Work-From-Home-Directory.com His website is geared for people who are interested in finding an online work at home opportunity. If you would like to learn more visit his website at: http://www.top-work-from-home-directory.co

article : Article: How Search Engines Find Websites

by: Timothy Tye

One of the sweetest things for a webmaster is to go to a search engine - maybe Google, Yahoo, or MSN - type in a keyword, and voilà, they see their own website listed on the first page, or better still, ranked at the top of that page.

You can go to Google and type "Guide to earning a living without a job", you'd see that this website, HappyJoblessGuy, is ranked at the top spot of the first page. It's just less than 3 weeks since I started this website (many of you have followed it since Day 1, so you know I have not misrepresented the dates). How do I get there so fast? Well, that's what I want to share with you. And, if I can do it, so can you! But why should I teach you the secret? Because I firmly believe that everybody should have the opportunity to earn a living without holding a job. Whether or not you want to do it as a side income or a full time job is entirely your business. And what do I get in return? Quite honestly, I make HappyJoblessGuy into a very important website that helps lots of people.

I do say that, if this website provides you valuable lessons, please feel free to donate - especially after you have become successful. If asking for a donation makes the information not free, fine, regard what I am sharing with you as not free. In fact, regard it as priceless - you can name the price, any price, from zero dollars and more. In a future chapter, I will also show you how you can place a donation link on your website. If you are freely giving away valuable information that touches people's lives, you'd be pleased to see that some actually show their appreciation by donating back to you.

One of the easiest ways for you to earn money from home is through advertisements that appear on your website. I covered in the previous chapter how you can add Google AdSense to your website. If you are keen to see it happening, set up your website and apply for the AdSense account. Otherwise, all your success is a fragment of the imagination. I have seen it happening to my websites, now I am sharing this with you so that you can try it and start earning money too. But that's just the first step.

In order to be successful, your website needs one key ingredient: traffic. Yes, Virginia. No traffic equals no search engine ranking equals no money. Simple as that. And you know, you'd never get any traffic till you get a good ranking in Google and all the other search engines. But how do you do that? How do you get the search engines to find your website?

There are millions and millions of websites out there, how do the search engines find websites and rank each of them? That’s the whole purpose of this article, to supply you the answer. If you're on the verge of starting your own website, I hope it also provides you the motivation to get started. The reward is very sweet. Not only is there the pleasure of seeing your website listed for all the world to see, you also improve its traffic, and if you've added Google AdSense, it means getting more advertising dollars.

In the early years of the Internet, it was pretty easy to get a top rank on the search engines. Granted there were fewer webpages back then, search engines were also less sophisticated than they are today. If you ask me, do I prefer them now or back then, my answer to you is a resounding NOW. Although search engines today are more sophisticated - and there are more websites to compete with - today's technology allows for more relevant search results. Today's search engines are more sophisticated than years ago; now they are better able to recognize quality, and are not so easily fooled into ranking dubious websites. The likelihood that someone fools a search engine into providing his website an unfairly high ranking has diminished, and the likelihood of searchers finding the most relevant results has increased. How was this achieved, and how then can we increase the chances of our website to be listed?

The answer, quite simply, is by understanding how the search engines of today work.

There are many search engines out there, but the most popular are Google, Yahoo and MSN. Of these three, Google takes the lion share of all Internet searches - no small feat, considering Google was the newest player in the field. On the Internet, however, being newest does have its advantage. Google's search engine simply outshone the rest. It was more sophisticated and accurate. And looking at Google homepage, the search engine also appears deceptively simple. But behind that simple front lurks a mighty beast. As a result, close to half of all Internet searches today are done on Google. Yahoo is a distant second, MSN an even more distant third, and everybody else bites the dust. So if your webpage ever want to be anywhere significant on the web, it has to be ranked high on Google.

An entire industry has sprouted up to help people get their websites ranked high on the search engines. Many use honest ways to improve your website but there are also those that use dubious ways to try and fool the search engines. My advise to you is: don't ever try to fool the search engines. Search engines expect you to play by the rule, and if you let them catch you trying to fool them, they'd throw you out of the rankings faster than you can yell "Google!"

Rather than getting someone to help get your website ranked high in the search engines, however, I recommend that you learn to do it yourself. I may have mentioned it before but I'll say it again: you cannot be a captain who can't tell stern from starboard. You need the acquire the skill necessary to guide your website up the ranks, and I'm here to help you.

There is a lot to learn, and I'll break them down into different chapters:

- Choice of topic

- Content

- Keyword Density

- Search Engine Optimization

- Page Rank

- Back Links

- Promotion

In the subsequent chapters, I will go through with you how you can improve your website on each of the above areas. To reach these and other related articles, go to my website, HappyJoblessGuy

article : How to Creating Information Products

by: Robert J Kennedy

Information products are amongst the most popular items to sell online. Not only are they relatively easy to produce, they are also easy to market.

Maybe you've thought of writing and selling an ebook, but you abandoned the idea because you were unsure of your writing skills. Well, the great thing about selling information products is that you don't have to write them yourself.

Here are a few of your options.

Resale Rights (RR)

Not everyone has the time, skill, or inclination to write an ebook. And that's where resale rights come in.

With resale rights, someone else creates the information product, and you pay them for the right to sell it, and keep the profits you generate.

With some information products, all you have to do to receive resale rights is purchase the product. With others, you are given the opportunity to buy the resale rights after you’ve made your initial purchase. If you buy resale rights, you can set up a sales page on your own domain and begin promoting and selling the product as if you'd created it yourself.

Remember, other people will have resale rights to the same information product, so you might have a little competition. Also, with resale rights, you cannot give or sell anyone else the rights to sell the information product. To do that, you need master resale rights.

Master Resale Rights (MRR)

Master resale rights are like resale rights, but you can sell the right to sell the information product to other people.

Master resale rights open the door to greater profits. While you can sell an ebook you have resale rights to for $15, having master resale rights means you can sell the resale or master resale right to that information product for $50, or $100, or even more.

Private Label Rights (or PLR)

When you purchase private label rights, there are few limitations on what you can do with the information product you've purchased. You can put your name on the ebook as the author. Or you can break it down into a series of short articles, short reports, or auto responder ecourses. And if you buy a pack of PLR articles on the same topic, you can compile them into an ebook.

Hiring a Ghostwriter

The only real drawback to using resale rights is that a lot of other people will have purchased the same rights. So your information product won't be one hundred percent unique.

If you want an information product that is entirely unique, but don't want to write it yourself, you can always hire a ghostwriter to write it for you.

While a ghostwriter might create the information product, your name will be on it as the author, and you will be the only one who has the right to sell it unless you sell the resale rights or master resale rights to someone else.

Selling ebooks is one of the best ways to make money online. And, thanks to resale rights and ghostwriters, you don't have to be a writer yourself to make money selling information products on the Internet.

article : Installing Templates in Joomla

by: Jeff Hudson

Joomla is a template-based website builder. You build web pages based on available templates designed for Joomla. These templates can be downloaded for free or with a fee from many different sites on the Internet. If you are looking for a more professional template or one with personal touch, you can have a template customized per your specifications. It would be much better if you have the right knowledge in designing such templates so you can create your own.

Another thing to remember about Joomla is that the software is based on modules and positioning. The modules are the different contents of the web page. These modules can be positioned as desired. The template serves as the background and reference point.

Other modules and extensions can be added to the template and aligned or positioned depending on your preference. But for this particular tutorial, we will only discuss how to install a Joomla template.

Choose a Template

When you make a Google search on Joomla templates, you will get tons of websites offering different templates for free. Premium templates are offered upon subscription to their website. Browse through these sites and select the template you want to use for your site.

Once you have chosen your preferred template, download the file to your computer. Usually, the file is a compressed or zipped file. There’s no need to extract the file. You can directly upload it to your Joomla site.

article : Optimizing Keywords for Search Engines

by: Rahman Mehraby

All SEO experts believe in the importance of optimizing keywords for search engines. Search engines need to know enough about your keywords so that they can help your pages visibility. If you're optimizing keywords for every page of your site, search engines help those pages be found as well.

How's Optimizing Keywords Done?

Before any other things, you need to select your keywords carefully and smartly. Keywords aren't the words or phrases that you invent. You have to discover what searchers are typing to find what they want. Then, you choose the closest to the content you want to write and write with those keywords in your mind.

Use a Variety of them

To distinguish individual pages of your site from each other, optimizing keywords for search engines can help. Every webpage on your website should have its own keywords or key phrases. Search engines, then, realize your pages are different from each other. Also, they see what the difference is.

On the other hand, in optimizing keywords for search engines, it will be very useful if the keywords of various pages on your site are similar and/or relevant. This, of course, will be the best SEO tactic in terms of optimizing keywords and will enhance the content relevancy on your site.

Optimizing Keywords or Key Phrases?

Today only the known brands or very successful websites use keywords successfully. Does it sound disappointing? Don't worry! What I mean is that one single word (common name) can hardly bring you targeted audience unless you're well-known or famous for that single work.

So, what's the solution? You have to get involved in optimizing keywords for search engines in a precise way.

Use a string of words, a key phrase. The longer a key phrase, the more targeted your site visitors. Of course, there's some limit to it! These days, three-word key phrase or even four-word key phrase is the best to have.

For example, "affordable search engine optimization India" brings more targeted customer to your site than "seo India" or "seo packages" if you're an SEO company in India trying to sell lower-priced search engine services in your country.

Where to Use them!

You've carefully been optimizing keywords for search engines by now. The outcome should now be used at your title tags, alt tags, first two headings, beginning and end of pages, middle of pages, menu links, inbound links, etc.

This doesn't mean that you stuff the above positions with your keywords. Of course, the more inbound links with your keywords in them, the more benefit you get, specially from quality web pages outside your website.

How to Use them!

Once you've decide what key phrases to use and where and completed optimizing keywords, stick to them as they are. Never split them up by adding a word in the middle of such strings or words.

Key phrases should have appropriate weight, frequency and density on your web pages, not more not less than necessary. Otherwise, they will be seen as inefficient or spam!

Therefore, you should be extremely careful about how to use keywords or key phrases at your web pages.

How to Use Keywords Appropriately!

After you've completely done optimizing keywords for search engines, you should use them sufficiently and efficiently. This is something that search engines will find out easily. You also need to use good softwares or hire SEO experts to adjust this crucial point at your website.

While you've put all the above tactics into action, in your web pages, you could expect more targeted visitors. Obviously, this ends in having more customers who find you and buy what you've got to offer.

article : Simple SEO: How To Create Content The Search Engines Will Like

by: Chris Malta

Improved search positioning means greater exposure to targeted traffic, but few E-Biz owners really understand how to run an effective search engine optimization (SEO) campaign. According to Andy Jenkins, founder of online business forum http://StomperNet.com, “Your web site ranking is determined, in large part, by the quality of your content – it must be both compelling to your visitors and consumable to the search engine spiders.”

A Matter of Substance

Jenkins reveals two key practices that can help you cooperate with the search engines and give them the kind of useful information they’re after:

Avoid Duplicate Content

When pages living on separate domains are extremely similar, the engines will classify them as “duplicate content” and rank them very poorly. One page will go in their normal index; the other will be relegated to their supplemental index, where none its value is manifested. This often poses a problem for eCommerce stores selling numerous similar items.

Every page of your web site probably has some design elements that are the same, like your navigation bar, header and footer, and any special messages, like “In Stock” or “Money Back Guarantee”. To keep from ending up in the supplemental index, you should strive to have at least more original content in your product descriptions than exists in the permanent template layout of your pages. In other words, if you have two hundred fifty words of repeating content on each page, you should also have at least two hundred fifty-one words per page of new and different content.

If writing interesting, witty descriptions of your products seems difficult, it may help to try manifesting your copy in some form of ownership. For instance, if you’re selling a box of tortellini, talk about how simple it is to cook, how good it tastes with pesto sauce, how wonderful it is to enjoy with your family around the dinner table. You’re simultaneously engaging your customers, sharing the benefits of using your product, and avoiding the mire of the supplemental index.

Implement Latent Semantic Indexing

Search engine algorithms have grown increasingly complex over time. Optimizing your copy is no longer a matter of stuffing it with keywords: “This pasta site is the best pasta site for the pasta lover’s pasta needs.” Now, in fact, repeating a keyword or phrase too often will raise red flags, and may even cause your site to drop in the rankings.

The engines have learned to recognize the relationships between many words. So to rank well for a keyword, you need to talk about things that relate to it, also know as “latent semantic indexing”. For example, if you’re trying to rank for the keyword “pasta”, you might talk about carbs, marinara sauce, fusilli, linguini, and so forth. It’s okay to sprinkle “pasta” throughout your copy, but concentrate on using latently related words. You’re generating copy that’s interesting to the users reading it, and palatable to the engines ranking it.

(Tip: To discover keywords latently related to your keywords, perform a Google search with a tilde in front of the keyword – like “~pasta”. You’ll bring back results containing latently related words: noodles, recipes, Italian, etc.)

While the search engines regularly revise their algorithms, the basic principles of SEO remain the same. You don’t need to play games or try to trick the engines to show up in their results. Advises Jenkins, “The engines want to give users the information they’re seeking. So if you create a user-friendly site with good, valuable content, you’re going to do well – period.”

article : 12 Steps to Creating a Professional Web Design

by: Matthew Jurmann

Before we share some of the necessary steps used to create a professional web design and website, the following question must be addressed: What constitutes a "professional web design"? More often than not, a web designer or web design company claims to offer professional web design services for their clients. However, should they be promoting "web design services" rather than "professional web design services"? When measuring the professionalism of a web design and website, one must take into consideration a number of factors/steps:

1. Multi-stage web design process
2. Project collaboration tools (if project has more than one person involved)
3. High-quality design
4. Attention to detail
5. Current web design technology (CSS)
6. Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content
7. Usability
8. XHTML and CSS validation (clean code)
9. Standards-compliant
10. Optimization
11. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly
12. Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects.

To put it simply, what separates professional web design from web design is whether or not a designer or web design company takes into consideration the above items when designing and building a website. Other than paying for a respected companies name and reputation, the items listed above are why professional web design services tend to cost more than regular web design services - you're getting a lot more than a website - you're getting the total package of web design professionalism that will surely shine through once the website is completed and released to the public.

The good news is, you don't need to hire a professional web design company or professional web designer if you want a professional web design and website. Although there is a great deal of work involved, if you'd like to attempt to do the heavy lifting on your own, then the following professional web design tips will help you create a professional web design and website.

Note: You might be wondering why a professional web design company would give away their process and professional web design "checklist" for free. The answer is quite simple: there is only so much time in the day, and unfortunately we can't professionally design every website in the world. The more high-quality, professional websites there are in cyberspace, the happier we as professional web designers and lovers of websites will be. To be blunt, there is just way too much junk out there. Lets get started.

• Step 1: Multi-stage web design process

We've already written an extensive article on the basics of a professional web design process, so we're just going to list some of the article's key points for the sake of avoiding redundancy.

Stage 1: Conceptualization and planning (flowcharts)

When designing a website, one should not begin the process inside of a text editor (BBedit) or website builder application (Dreamweaver, GoLive, etc). Instead, the process should begin on a piece of paper or within flowchart software. According to Wikipedia, a flowchart is:

a schematic representation of an algorithm or a process.

In layman's terms, a flowchart provides a visual chart illustrating the structure of your website. How many main navigational items will your website contain? What will these items be called? Will there be any pages contained within the main pages? What will they be called? By planning out your website using a flowchart, you get a head start on:

1. Information organization
2. Usability
3. Determining the volume of content required

• Stage 2: Modeling (wireframes)

In the modeling stage, static "wireframe" mockups are created for each unique web page. To create wireframes, one may use either:

paper and pencil

mockup software such as Adobe Photoshop or our personal choice, OmniGraffle Professional

These wireframes contain a bare-bones skeleton which illustrate the layout of a particular web page. Where will the logo go? Where will the content be located? Will there be breadcrumbs? Will you have a login box? Each of these questions (and many more) are answered in the modeling stage. A few things one should take into consideration when creating wireframes:

be sure to include all important elements that will be used (logo, navigation, content placement, images/video placement, login box, search, breadcrumbs, etc)

reference the flowchart which you created in Stage 1

don't use graphics - wireframes are meant to be bare-bones: boxes/circles/ovals which illustrate the placement of objects

only use text to label the elements, don't use body text (thats for the third stage)

focus on clean, well-organized, user-friendly layout; avoid cluttered layouts

• Stage 3: Execution

The third stage in our professional web design process includes:

1. Creating the graphical user interface (GUI), also known as the design
2. Creating the content
3. Converting the web designs from images into code (markup) which web browsers use to present your website on the Internet
4. In the final stage, reference both the flowcharts created in Stage 1 and the wireframe mockups created in Stage 2 to create the final page layouts and designs. The design should be finalized in Photoshop or whatever image editing software you choose to use because it is a pain to make changes to the design once it has been converted into markup (code).

Trust us, process makes perfect

Following a well-structured web design process is by far one of the most importance steps that many web designers choose to neglect. By following a web design process such as the one we've just described, you increase the likelihood that your website will be well-organized, easily navigable, and user-friendly. If you're going to skip any of the items in our professional web design checklist, make sure that the web design process is not one of them.

• Step 2: Project collaboration tools

Note: If you are the only one working on your project, then you can skip this step. Project collaboration tools are only recommended for projects which have two or more people involved.

Communication is one of the most important elements in a project. When multiple people are building a website, there usually are quite a few e-mails sent back and forth between one another. The more e-mails exchanged, the longer it can take to find a certain e-mail and the easier it can be to misplace important bits of information. This was one of the biggest problems that our professional web design company faced when we first began - there wasn't an easy way to organize the e-mails, attachments, milestones, etc.

Thankfully, after a little bit of research, we discovered a project collaboration tool called Basecamp. Taken directly from the Basecamp website:

Projects don't fail from a lack of charts, graphs, stats, or reports, they fail from a lack of clear communication. Basecamp solves this problem by providing tools tailored to improve the communication between people working together on a project.

Basecamp (and project collaboration tools like it) allows multiple users to access a website which stores all of the messages, milestones, file uploads, to-do lists, time it takes to complete parts of the project, etc. that are associated with a project. No more sending e-mails. Everything is securely stored on the Basecamp servers. The only e-mails you will ever receive are notifications whenever something is contributed or changed within a project.

Basecamp has packages available that can be tailored to suit your needs. If you only need to use Basecamp for one project at a time, then you can signup for free. Unfortunately with the free version, there are no file uploads allowed. However, for a measly $12/month, you can control up to 3 projects at once, have 250 megabytes of file upload space, have unlimited people and clients, have a real-time chat that can easily be integrated into Basecamp, and much more.

When it comes to project collaboration and communication, nothing beats a web application like Basecamp. If you're serious about your project and want to have the best communication possible, then you must try Basecamp. A project collaboration tool such as Basecamp is especially useful for a professional web design company which handles a number of projects and clients at any given time. For project collaboration, there is simply no better way to communicate.

Plug over.

• Step 3: High-quality design

Who and what determines a "high-quality design"? There isn't one answer. Often times something that is appealing to one person may be extremely unappealing to another. Despite this fact, there are several things that a high-quality design should have:

Balance. Balance refers to the equal distribution of the heavy and the light elements on a single page.

Unity. Unity keeps all of the similar elements in the website alike and those that are diverse further apart; everything should be pulled into one integrated whole.

Emphasis. Emphasis involves the main points where the eye is drawn into the design; also known as "focal points".

Contrast. Not just color contrast, but also contrasting shapes, sizes, textures, and even typography.

Rhythm. Also known as repetition, rhythm brings internal consistency into your web design.

Since this is a broad topic and cannot be fully covered in this article, you can read more about the five basic elements of web design.

In addition to these five basic elements of web design, information overload is often times one of the biggest killers of a website design. Designers sometimes forget the saying "less is more" and somehow seem to believe that the more information that is stuffed onto one page, the better it will be. Don't become a victim of information overload. Keep your layout as clean as possible. Give different topics their own dedicated web pages. One of the biggest causes for information overload is not successfully planning out your website layout through the use of flowcharts and wireframes, discussed above in Step 1: Multi-stage web design process. Remember: white space is not necessarily a bad thing. As a matter of fact, white space is your friend, especially when creating a professional web design. Successful professional web designers learn how to use white, negative space to their advantage, and make it a key element of the design.

• Step 4: Attention to detail

When professionally designing a website, every little detail is thought out and planned. Should there be a line above the headers, and if so, why? If you use rounded corners for your main body, should you be consistent and use rounded corners for everything else? Does your logo look better with a reflection underneath? The only way to answer any of these questions is to experiment. Sometimes the best results come from accidental experimentation. Don't always be happy with the first design. Work to improve upon the design and go through a few revisions, each time asking yourself "What can be done to make the design look better?", be more consistent, and most importantly, give your website a stronger identity and image.

When we say "detail", we're not just talking about graphic design elements. No, graphic design is just the tip of the iceberg. We're also talking about typography (font faces i.e. Arial, Verdana, Trebuchet MS, font sizes i.e 10 pixels, 12 pixels, 18 pixels, font weight/style i.e. bold, italic, font placement), the use of negative space, and other elements of design.

Attention to detail is important because it is oftentimes the details in your design which make your website stand out from the competition (or from other websites in general). People get bored with the same old design - give them something different, unique, and attractive, and they will come back and visit. Heck, they may even become inspired by your design.

Remember: Less is more. Use details, but don't abuse details.

• Step 5: Current web design technology (CSS)

CSS - also known as cascading style sheets - replaced table-based website layouts years ago. The problem is, a lot of web designers are still using tables to create their designs. Not only is this unprofessional, but tables just plain suck. Here are a number of reasons why using tables for your web design is a bad idea:

Tables slow down your website. Everything inside of a table's cell is loaded before being shown to the user. This is especially apparent for people using dial up connections.

Tables make messy code and add unnecessary junk markup. File sizes are increased due to the excessive lines of code which means slower load times. Also, having to sift through hundreds (sometimes thousands) of lines of code just to make a change isn't a lot of fun.

Universal layout updates are difficult and time consuming when using tables. Making universal edits with tables involves opening each file, sifting through the code and junk markup, and making a change (again, on each page). Often times with CSS, all one must do is open the stylesheet and change a single value.

Tables should only be used to show data, not be used to design websites.

Tables limit your creativity and design. Table layouts are limited to boring, grid-based layouts. With CSS, you can place anything anywhere. The layout possibilities with CSS are endless.

CSS will save you time and increase your revenue in the long run. Updates and edits are much easier using CSS than tables. Because of faster load times, fewer visitors are likely to become impatient and leave. Longer visits = more browsing, more ad-clicking, lower bounce rates = more money for you.

Display your CSS website on tons of high-quality CSS Showcase websites. Tons of exposure if your website is featured. Table-based layouts are not welcome. Complete list on listible.com.

Some people will argue that table-based layouts are better than layouts which are built using CSS. However, oftentimes the person arguing that tables are better than CSS is the person who spent thousands of dollars on a table-based layout. Despite what anyone tells you, table-based layouts are inferior to CSS and should be avoided at all costs.

To read all about CSS, visit w3schools.com. Again, to be blunt, if your website is created using tables, it is not professional web design quality. Start using CSS stylesheets today and keep the tables in your spreadsheet application.

• Step 6: Well written, interesting, grammatically-correct content

One thing that greatly compromises the quality and credibility of a website is poorly written, grammatically incorrect, misspelled content. This kind of content is unfortunately present in an extremely high number of websites - especially "professional" company websites.

If you don't know how to write, then hire someone to write the content of your website. You'll thank yourself later. Even if you do know how to write, mistakes are easy to make. Run through your content a few times to confirm that everything makes sense, is interesting, and is spelled correctly. You'll look more professional and people will take what you have to say more seriously.

• Step 7: Usability

Website usability is extremely important. According to usability.gov:
In general, usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals and how satisfied they are with that process. Usability, as defined by Joseph Dumas and Janice (Ginny) Redish, means that people who use the product can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their tasks. Usability may also consider such factors as cost-effectiveness and usefulness.

If website usability is poor, then people can easily become frustrated and leave your website. A great deal of importance must be placed on website usability if you want your web design to be of professional quality. It is usually poor usability which separates the regular websites from the professionally designed websites. Usability is the most important element of a professionally designed website.

For a wealth of information regarding website usability, visit usability.gov and also read our Dos and Donts of Website Navigation Usability.

• Step 8: XHTML and CSS validation

Some people will argue that validating your website with XHTML and CSS validation from W3.org is a waste of time. To be blunt, they are wrong (for a number of reasons).

Accessibility. Without accessibility, you run the risk of being sued. For example: a disabled person who cannot use a "conventional" browser can sue you if your website is inaccessible to them. Although validation doesn't necessarily guarantee accessibility, it is an important component of exercising ones due diligence and is reason enough that you should validate your website's XHTML and CSS.

Cross browser compatibility. The more validation errors your website has, the higher the chances are that your website will not look the same in all web browsers. We will cover the importance of cross browser compatibility in the next step.

You look more professional with a valid website. Again, like having interesting content free of grammatical errors and misspellings, having a valid website makes you look more professional to your visitors. It tells them "Hey, I care about my website's image, I took the time to validate it".

If you're building a website for the first time, then you may find that your website has a lot of validation errors. Don't worry, this happens to the best of us. The more websites you build and the more time that you take to learn the rules of validation, the fewer errors you will get and the easier it will be to validate your website.

For more information about XHTML and CSS validation visit W3.org.

• Step 9: Standards-compliant

Perhaps the most difficult, time-consuming aspect of professional web design is making sure your website is standards-compliant.

Taken directly from Wikipedia:

Standards-compliant is a term often used in describing websites & user agents' (often web browsers) relative compliance with web standards proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

In layman's terms, if you want your website to be considered professional, then it must look and function the same in all major browsers. In addition, achieving interoperability lowers costs to content providers since they must only develop one version of a document.

As mentioned above, creating a standards-compliant website will take a good deal of time and can even involve using basic hacks in order for certain elements to appear the same across all major browsers. Major browsers include: Internet Explorer 6 (IE6 -PC), Internet Explorer 7 (IE7 - PC), Firefox (PC and Mac), Safari (PC and Mac), and Opera (PC and Mac). These browsers control the majority of the browser market share and therefore the website which you create should be tested extensively in each of these browsers to ensure standards-compliance. In addition, XHTML and CSS validation (as mentioned in Step 8: XHTML and CSS validation) are extremely important when programming a website to be standards-compliant. Validate your website, validate your CSS stylesheet, validate yourself (okay, you can't validate yourself, but if you could, would you?).

• Step 10: Optimization

Website optimization is another crucial factor that must be taken into consideration when professionally designing a website.

Website optimization includes:

Image optimization. Next to audio and video, images can severely compromise the speed in which your website loads. Always compress your images using Photoshop or your favorite image compression utility. By compressing images, you decrease the size of a file which allows a web page to load quicker which ultimately decreases the chance that your visitor will leave your website due to long load times.

Audio/Video optimization. Another major annoyance which screams "unprofessional" is having enormous video and audio files embedded in your web pages. Try to use Flash Video (.flv) compression for your video files and (.mp3) compression for your audio files. Not only are the file sizes smaller than using (.avi) or (.mpg) for video or (.wav) for audio, but the video/audio loads faster which means other elements on your web page will load faster, too.

Clean code (just say no to tables). In case you skipped Step 5, do not use tables when designing your website - use CSS (cascading style sheets). Tables have a ton of junk markup which will slow down your page load time, increase file sizes, and make editing and updating quite difficult.

Validate your XHTML and CSS. Although covered in Step 8, XHTML and CSS validation is an integral part of professional website optimization and therefore should not be skipped. Validate your XHTML and CSS.

• Step 11: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly

Professionally designed websites should be designed with a solid SEO friendly foundation. To make your website SEO friendly:

Don't use Flash. If you must use Flash, make sure it is used sparingly. Flash content is not crawlable by search engine spiders and therefore the content located inside of Flash files cannot be indexed in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, or Ask.

Don't use Frames. Search Engine Spiders have a difficult time crawling through a website that uses frames. Many Search Engine Spiders will receive the following message when visiting a website designed using frames:

“Sorry! You need a frames-browser to view this site.�

Keyword Research. Optimize your web pages by including keywords relevant to the content on your website. Use keyword research tools such as Wordtracker or Overture to find the best, most relevant keywords for your content.

Researched Keywords in Title of web pages. Arguably the most important element in SEO, make sure that your title tags include the keywords found in the keyword research stage.

Researched Keywords in URL. Be sure to include the researched keywords in the title of your web pages as well. For example, if a page on your website is about energy drinks, make sure that the file is saved as "energy-drinks.html". Use dashes instead of underscores, if possible.

CSS Navigation/CSS Stylesheets. CSS navigation guarantees that your website navigational text is crawlable by search engine spiders. CSS navigation also loads very quickly and anyone will be able to view the navigation using any browser.

Researched Keywords in Anchor Text. For hyperlinks inside and outside of your website, be sure to include the researched keywords in the anchor text of your hyperlinks. This helps search engines better determine what a particular page is about and will help that page rank higher with the researched keyword(s).

Images: ALT tags, no text in images. Not only are ALT tags required for XHTML validation, but they are necessary components of web accessibility. Try to avoid placing text inside of your images since search engine spiders cannot crawl image text. However, if you must place text inside of an image, use the text inside of the image as that image's ALT tag. Search engine spiders can read ALT tags, just not the text inside of images.

• Step 12: Abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects

The last step in creating a professional web design and website is to avoid the abuse of Flash, Javascript, and sound effects. Not everyone has Flash or Javascript enabled on their computer, and therefore your website should not be built around them. If you're going to use Flash or Javascript, use it sparingly.

Try not to use Flash Intros on your website. Most people hate waiting for Flash Intros to load, hate being forced to sit through them, and hate being surprised by the sound that many of them have. Do not create your website using only Flash. Again, what about the users who do not have Flash enabled on their computer? That could be a potential client, customer, or reader who you're missing out on because of an unnecessary technological limitation.

If you're going to use sound effects, make sure that they only play if the user enables sound on your website - never force sound effects onto your visitors. Nothing screams "unprofessional" like having a sound effect play each time a navigational item is rolled over or even worse, when the visitor lands on the home page of your website.

As a matter of fact, Flash and sound effects should generally be avoided when creating a professional web design. Javascript is the only exception as long as you program the website to work even if Javascript is disabled. Flash and sound effects are a nuisance to a lot of people, so for that reason alone, try to stay away from them.

The recipe to professional web design

These 12 steps make up the majority of the recipe which many professional web designers live by when designing websites. Of course, knowing the things that you know after reading this article and actually being able to create a professional web design are two very different things. However, as it does with anything, practice makes perfect. Now get out there and start building a professionally designed website! And hey, if you can't do it yourself, go to Google and search "professional web design". Chromatic Sites is in there, along with many other highly-respected professional web design companies.

article : What is E-commerce Hosting?

by: Mer Amer

E-commerce hosting is a hosting package designed for customers who require a complete online business solution for their websites. E-commerce hosting providers provide the infrastructure, systems and applications needed for a website to perform online transactions. Hence, it has become a very important requirement of online businesses since it enables the customers to transact over the internet easily and more importantly in a secure environment. Thus, it is of no surprise that e-commerce hosting has become one of the fastest growing hosting services, looking at the rate in which people are doing business through the internet.

The most common features of an e-commerce hosting are shopping carts that are used for online transactions. This service offers a fast and convenient way for online buyers to manage their purchases and make payments. The convenient navigation and ease of going through the motion of buying products has increased the popularity and take-up of shopping carts in websites. From web developers’ point of view, shopping carts provide the ability to manage the complexities of web purchases in a systematic and simplified manner. There are so many available shopping carts in the market that it is normal for one e-commerce hosting package to include three or four shopping carts to choose from. Names like Zencart, osCommerce and Agora are among the established shopping cart providers, providing end-to-end medium for purchases to be done over the web. These companies would normally provide a 24-hour technical support to provide immediate response to queries.

The other must-have feature of an e-commerce hosting is the Secure Socket Layer (SSL). With SSL, the security of an online website is going to be taken care of by the hosting provider. Since security is one of the most important, if not the most important feature of an e-commerce website, SSL guarantees the peace of mind of making transactions safely. With SSL, private information such as credit card numbers, telephone numbers and personal information can be sent through encryption that is virtually safe from theft.

The other functionalities that are important to look for especially for beginners are web templates for an e-commerce website. It would be of great advantage if users can tap in from the ready-made web pages of online stores and forms for customers to view, browse through and select products. These web pages can be very complex to develop, and thus it would reduce a lot of hassle and errors of doing it from scratch. Web developers can always build on these templates to create more advanced add-ons. The list of crucial e-commerce hosting services goes on with features such as online catalogues, customer order management, data collection, inventory management and analyses on customer demographics.

Overall, for online business owners and individuals alike, e-commerce hosting brings a lot of benefits due to its complete package, from the marketing of their products, purchasing by customers, and collection of data to eventually improve the business. Web owners can expect to proliferate their businesses, contributed by the convenience, security and credibility that come with a full-fledge e-commerce website

What is PHP Hosting?

by: Mer Amer

PHP hosting is a server-side scripting environment that is used to create dynamic web pages. PHP is an abbreviation for Hypertext Preprocessor, an open source language widely used by programmers and web developers. The fact that it is open source gives it a lot of advantages over proprietary programming languages. Due to this reason, PHP has been the most famous server-side scripting language and almost all hosting providers offer PHP hosting services nowadays.

PHP is an object oriented language. The way PHP hosting works is that the web server would filter a request document using PHP and generates the output from PHP to the web browser. These documents are usually in HTML format with PHP tags inside. The tags can be run on both Windows and UNIX servers. In terms of output text, PHP is capable to generate any format such as XHTML and XML.

With PHP, web developers would be able to perform any CGI tasks, such as generate dynamic contents or send and receive cookies. PHP is also capable of outputting PDF files, Flash videos and images on the fly at high speed. This is possible due to its ability to save the required files in its file system and forming a server-side cache.

There are a host of advantages of using a PHP hosting. For beginners, it is a relatively easy language to learn and work on. While for seasoned developers, there are a lot of advanced applications and features that comes with PHP hosting. In terms of cost, it is one of the cheapest hosting solutions as it is an open-source technology. There are also programming tools that come free with PHP hosting, contributed by programmers worldwide.

PHP is especially strong in relational databases, which are used for dynamic contents, product catalogs and e-commerce applications. The relational database application that comes with PHP is called MySQL, which is also open-source. It is known for its high reliability, precision and flexibility. These advantages have made it the more preferred alternative compared to proprietary databases systems.

Overall, PHP hosting is one of the most complete hosting packages available in the industry. It is perfect both for beginners who require easy-to-use hosting services and for advanced users who require powerful web applications. The value that it offers is even more significant due to its inexpensive pricing, especially compared to proprietary hosting services.

article: 7 Must Know Ways To Prevent Spam

by: Timothy Rudon

Spam is the bane of everyone’s existence. Unsolicited mail flooding mail boxes has caused many problems world wide. The widely accepted definition of spam is “Electronic communication that contains material of a commercial, solicitational, or illegal nature, directed as part of bulk distribution to any address.”

The first step towards fighting spam is to learn how spam works. A useful source is CAUCE or the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email and the SpamCon Foundation. Log on to the World Wide Web and read about ant-spam laws, government stand against spam, and coalitions that are working towards prevention of spamming. Be sure to take part in anti-spam community efforts by joining forums and groups.

Spam can be prevented from entering your mail box by:

1. Determining the IP address of the sender and blocking it.

2. Use blacklist services like SBL (http://www.spamhaus.org/sbl) or the RBL (http://www.mailabuse.org/rbl) that maintain lists of IP addresses that are know originators of spammers. Blacklist services are efficient in blocking spam as they use the latest methods in preventing spam.

3. Use the spam guard services offered by email services like gmail and yahoo.

4. White list services where only mail from known addresses are approved by the recipient.

5. Use heuristic engines that look for keyword patterns that match know spam rules and block messages that contain known patterns. Well known heuristic engines include SpamAssassin that has a high detection rate.

6. Networked vigilance an open source initiative that involves continued maintenance of a data base and then the mail server asks a centralized VR node, Vipul’s razor for spam listings.

7. Using Bayesian filtering engines like SpamBayes , http://www.spambayes.org/. This has its uses as well as downside.

Spam can also be blocked by configuring anti-virus software to scan emails for viruses. Desist from leaving your email address over the internet and signing up for freebies and news letters. Use a separate email account for this purpose. Stay abreast of anti-spam efforts and adopt the latest possible anti-virus software and firewall systems. Never open mails from people unknown to you and immediately report spam mails to the mail host/provider. Try standalone spam filtering software like Qurb eTrust Anti-Spam, iHate Spam, Spam Bully.

Experts at PC World reported that almost 75 percent of email is spam mail and that in their study they found that SpamCatcher was one of the most affordable and simplest of anti-spam tools. Another notable product was InBoxer which works only with Out Look.

Fighting spam is a world wide war and efforts are being made by software manufacturers, search engines, lay persons, as well as others.