Some wise human once said “Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn’t nearly enough time to make them all yourself.” Hence this article. Here are five of the most annoying and common web design mistakes.

1. Slow download time – Don’t be that site that is filled with the coolest gizmos in the world. You know, animation, music and other “cool” things. Why? Because nobody is going to go to it because it takes too long to download. A nice clean site that downloads quickly will get you much further than a site with all the fixings that takes forever to download.

2. Unreadable text – If a user has to struggle to read the text on your web site, chances are they won’t. Here are some common readability issues:

A. Low contrast text and background – Don’t use light colored text on a light background. Also, don’t use dark text on a dark background. Text is most easily read with extreme contrasts between the background and text. Black on white is about as good as it gets for readability. Red on black is pretty bad. Yellow on white isn’t so hot either.

B. Text on a busy background – Text is most easily read on solid color background. Putting text on textured backgrounds can make it much harder to read.

C. Small Text – Text that is really tiny may look cool, but is hard to read. If you must use small text, make sure changing the text size in a browser will change the size of your text. Using style sheets can some times over-ride a browser’s ability to increase text size.

3. Unpleasant designs – Designs that use too many colors, colors that clash, or a messy layout, are just plain hard to look at. A site should be pleasant to look at, not a chore.

4. Long pages – Long pages are a problem because your force people to sift through piles of information to get what they want. Pages that focus on just a few topics with links to related topics on other pages are much better. This approach allows the reader to isolate the specific subject they are interested in.

5. Poor Navigation – It is extremely important that a user be able to access all pages of your site from every page. Users will often enter your site from a search engine listing with a link other than your home page. You do not want your visitors at a dead-end with no way to access the rest of your site. You will have wasted the traffic and given the prospect a bad impression of your business.

As you surf the web, you should keep a list of annoying things you find on other sites. Every so often, check your site to see if you have the same problems. Regardless, if you avoid the common web design mistakes listed above, you will stand a better chance of running a successful web site.

For Cheap web design software

For A great range of products and WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE

For great INTERNET MARKETING VIDEOS easy to follow and understand.

The following are 10 simple yet very powerful ways to increase your sales significantly:

1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a “thank you” email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up with them regularly. The goal is to begin building a relationship with your customers so you need to keep in constant contact with them.

2. You could upsell to your customers. When they’re at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You’ll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

There you go. The great thing about these powerful strategies is that you can implement them immediately. As I said, they are easy to start using but the outcome could be a substantial increase in your conversion and/or buy rate which is the ultimate goal. It is extremely important to make your customer and/or prospect feel special and to provide them with additional value-added items that will keep them coming back.

For Cheap web design software

For A great range of products and WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE

For great INTERNET MARKETING VIDEOS easy to follow and understand.

Article writing has become popular recently.  Search engines have changed the way they rank web sites and have begun to place a stronger value on good content.  Correction:  they have become better at filtering out commercial content, sales pitches, and advertising posing as content.

One incredibly good method of achieving a web presence with good content is that of article writing.  Why?  It provides the content that the search engines are looking for.  It provides meaningful content for the individual searching the web for good information.  And it provides an avenue whereby the article writer can be noticed on the web.

Where does niche marketing come in?  First of all, lets define niche marketing as marketing that is designed to meet the needs of a small group of individuals (a niche), rather than the mass needs of individuals.  For example, a particular type of pet owner, a particular type of web user, or a particular religious faith might be considered niche markets.

For niche markets like these, traditional forms of mass Internet marketing, such as banner ads, classifieds, and traffic generation programs, are not as effective.  The mass advertising forms are much more effective, cost-wise, when promoting a product that has wide market appeal.

So what does the niche marketer do?  Assuming he has a web presence, and provides a quality product or other solution to the niche customer’s needs, he can become involved in article writing.  The articles would be of a particular interest to the niche customer.  They would contain valuable information that the niche customer cannot find anywhere else.

Sometimes article writers will write generic articles that really don’t provide any real benefit to the reader, thinking that an article is an article.  That is simply not true.  Think about yourself.  When you read an article, if you do not learn something new when you read the article, are you disposed to learning more about the person, company, or products represented by the article writer? 

The key to writing articles for a niche market and effectively gaining web presence by doing it, is to write quality.  Fill the article with useful information.  Show the reader that you really are an expert in your niche.  Give the reader a burning desire to want to hear more of what you have to say about their need.  And the only way you can create that burning desire is to give them quality information in the first place.

Good, well-written, articles are the key to niche marketing in today’s Internet marketing environment.  Write articles, submit them to the most-used article databases, and watch your web site traffic grow. 

For Cheap web design software

For A great range of products and WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE

For great INTERNET MARKETING VIDEOS easy to follow and understand.