Hear - Hear - Hlola is here!

Well guys,

i've found these release at one of Ran Arrousi's websites.
He is a wicked marketing wis that all he's doing is creating new ways to help people make money and to make money himself!

I always say that a Win-Win situation is the only way to go.

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CSS Website Design

Cascading Style Sheets (or CSS for short) have slowly but surely become a website design standard over the past few years. It was not that many years ago that people used Frames to position their content across their web pages and Tables gradually replaced this. Many low-end website developers are still very comfortable with Tables, as it ‘does what it says on the tin’. However, more and more people are now moving over to CSS, as virtually all the layout options can be achieved using the code.

One major problem with CSS is that not all Web browsers produce the same results and it has not been helped in the past by the various browsers employing their own way of interpreting certain CSS conventions. You can think your CSS design looks OK in the current version of your preferred browser and can then be crestfallen when you view your Web pages in another version that has destroyed the formatting. Therefore, when moving over to CSS, it is important that you use the capabilities that are consistently supported across the entire range of popular browsers. It is interesting that the new version 7 of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has fixed a number of earlier anomalies, but many people are now waking up to the reality that IE7 has in fact caused problems arising from their earlier workarounds!

So why not bother with CSS, if Tables work for you? The principal advantages are as follows:

1. Web page code is generally much easier to follow;

2. The amount of code used to achieve the same result is much less. The general view is that by switching to a CSS layout, the typical page size reduction is between 50 - 60 per cent;

3. Download speeds for CSS pages are generally faster than their Table-driven counterparts. This is because browsers have to read through the table code twice before they are able to display the contents. They do this firstly to figure out the structure and then again to understand the content. It should also be recognised that a Table's contents can only be presented to the screen in one go, whereas CSS content will drop in separately, thereby giving a better user experience. It is also possible to govern the order in which specific screen elements appear, so the user is not distracted by the more bulky and slower to load image files. Furthermore, because all the code involved with CSS page layout is held in one external CSS document and is cached, it is faster than Table layouts that need to be interpreted every time a new page is displayed;

4. It is much easier to edit existing pages and to add new pages, particularly in the area of subtle formatting amendments. For example, you can change the font or colour scheme across an entire website in literally minutes;

5. CSS delivers enhanced accessibility. In recent years the number of people using web browsers on hand-held devices has risen significantly and CSS plays an important function in delivering content to PDA's etc through additional CSS documents. This just isn't possible with Table-driven layouts;

6. CSS is considered to be more Search Engine friendly because they can spider CSS pages quicker. However, it remains to be seen if this has any tangible benefits such as an improvement on the your page ranking.

On the flipside, there are a few disadvantages to CSS web page design you should consider:

1. As compared with Tables, CSS involves a much bigger learning curve;

2. Because of cross browser support issues, the time spent implementing workarounds should not be underestimated;

3. New browser versions can catch website developers napping if you are not careful. You can find that earlier workarounds have been overcome and the look of your website has changed overnight.

Ultimately, your decision on whether or not to move over to see CSS will probably depend on your level of technical capability and the time you're able to devote to understanding CSS layout alternatives.

David Sielicki is Features Editor with Fetcher the UK’s products and services directory. He is also a freelancer with Web Affinity

Quick Web Site Design - 5 Easy Steps to Create More Money In Web Site Design

Web site design may sound like rocket science to you, but it really isn’t. In fact, anyone is capable of doing it, and in today’s business world, it is an essential tool to have at your disposal. Here are 5 easy steps to creating more money through quick web site design.

1. Decide on the focus of the website. Without this step, the rest are useless. You need to know before you begin what the main purpose of your site will be. Then you can commence on quick web site design.

2. Figure out what specific features you want on the web site. Some examples are a shopping cart is it is a merchant website of a password section to protect customer privacy. The more details you have, the better.

3. The next step of quick web site design is writing out your content. It is better to do this before you have everything else set in stone, because then you can make adjustments to fit your content. All successful websites are driven by good content, so spend some time doing this.

4. Make a list of section for the site. This part of quick website design isn’t quite as important as the previous step, but it still matters a lot. You really want to have a well-organized website.

5. The fifth and final step of quick web site design is to build the actual site and evaluate it. You will want to make sure that everything turned out just right and see if it competes well in the industry you are involved in.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks

Avoid These Fatal Web Site Design Flaws (If You Want A Profitable Site)

Web site design is not rocket science but you have to avoid certain fatal flaws or your site will never get off the ground. You must also sidestep these common design mistakes if you want your web site to reach its fullest potential.

In other words, there are certain vital elements of website design you must get right or it's game over before you even get started. These are the design elements which every successful site possesses, essential components every webmaster must consider when designing a profitable site.

The Right Keywords

Perhaps one of the most deadly design flaws has to do with keywords. Many novice webmasters fail to target the right keywords when designing their sites.

Keywords are the vital lifelines of any well designed web site. Basically, keywords are the exact words or phrases web users type into search engines to find what they're looking for on the Internet.

You must get this right or it may spell disaster for your site. You must target the right keywords and optimize your site for them in all the search engines.

Most SEO experts suggest you have your main keyword phrase in the domain name of your site. This domain name should be directly related to the topic of your site. If you design a site on gaming laptops, then these keywords should be in your domain. All pages on your site should be related to these main keywords.

But first you must make sure your keywords are good searchable keywords, i.e. a large number of people must be searching for these keywords each day in the search engines in order to supply a steady stream of interested visitors or potential customers to your site.

How Do You Find Good Keywords?

There are many free keyword suggestion tools that you can use. All the major Pay-Per-Click programs such as Google Adwords, Yahoo! Marketing (Overture) and MSN Adcenter have keyword suggestion tools.

Many professional online marketers use keyword research software like Keyword Elite but you can also use any free online keyword suggestion tools to see how many searches are made. This is a good site:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion/

Check and find good keywords related to your site and optimize your site for them. Don't pick the most competitive keywords because first page placement in the search engines will just be too hard to obtain especially for a new site.

Instead pick long tail keyword phrases which have fever searches but you will have a better chance of ranking high for these phrases. These long tail keyword phrases also have much better conversion rates than general (too broad) keywords.

Make sure your targeted keywords are in the title of your page and many experts suggest it should also be in the URL. Simple yet effective design elements which will increase your site's chances of success.

Exterior Links On Your Homepage

Another common design flaw is placing exterior, external links on your main homepage.

Most SEO experts suggest ALL your links on your homepage should be internal links pointing to your own content filled pages on your site. External links should be on a separate 'links page'.

If you want to use affiliate links, create a separate page for each affiliate product or program and link to this page on your site. Place your affiliate ID link and moneymaker on this content filled (reviews, how-to-use, testimonials...) internal page, rather than on your homepage.

To rank high, especially in Google, all your PageRank and visitors should be funneled into your site and not out to some external links. This is extremely important on your homepage - so make sure all or most of your links are internal links.

Simple Effective Navigation

You must design your site with simple effective navigation in mind. Visitors to your site must be able to access and move around your site with ease. Your site should also be fast loading even in this age of high-speed Internet for surfers are the most impatient creatures on the planet!

As a common courtesy, if nothing else, make sure you place a link back to your homepage on each and every page of your site. Instead of just calling it 'home' or 'homepage'; include your domain name or major keywords in this link: 'gaming laptop home'.

Have links to all major areas or topics of your site on each page. Make it easy for your visitors to find what they're looking for on your site.

Include a sitemap which lists all the major pages/content on your site. Make sure a link to your sitemap page is listed on all your webpages, never leave your guests stranded with nowhere to go.

These are just some of the most important design flaws which can spell failure for your site. Avoid them at all costs. So make sure you keep these design elements in mind when you're designing your next site or correcting your present one.

Creating a successful site will be much easier if you overcome these simple, yet all too common, web site design flaws. Give your site a fighting chance at success by sidestepping these mistakes, after all, sites like rockets are meant to soar.

...
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites, including two sites on Internet marketing. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools As for other mistakes in designing your site, especially where the overall look and feel of your site is concerned. Here's a good free PDF Report by Marlon Sanders entitled: 10 Graphic Design Mistakes Copyright © 2007 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Website Design - Usability In Practice

Adhering to 'better practice' development techniques such as CSS will go a long way to improving your site's usability potential. While not necessarily ensuring a more user-centred design, this will be beneficial to the kind of regular maintenance you may need to perform on your pages.

The great thing about using style sheets in particular is that you don't have to rip out inline tag formatting to tweak how everything looks or behaves. Remember that the production formula for a 100 per cent usable site that will never require any changes certainly hasn't been found as yet, and you'll more than likely want to gradually hone a live design in accordance with user response. CSS will provide much of the flexibility needed this without going all the way back to the drawing board, while also enabling you to explore other avenues of user provision and support.

A popular solution in accessibility circles is to build multiple style sheets into the design of every page so that colours, layouts and text styles can be switched to suit the needs of a diverse audience. This can also be a technique for improving usability, because it gives more choice and control over how the user views the site itself. Rather than focusing merely on making content more legible for disabled visitors, the logical extension of this idea would be to mirror the many usability mechanisms that feature within an Operating System such as Windows.

The desktop metaphor has continued to evolve in a direction that makes the personalisation of a workspace paramount, with menus, interface schemes, wallpapers and icons all able to be tailored independently. This has resulted in an environment that isn't constrained by one universal view, and can be adapted to meet the needs of different workloads, moods, tastes, requirements and abilities. Translating this kind of capability onto the Web may not be the simplest trick in the world, but the potential for letting users configure a design that works best for them shouldn't be overlooked.

Role Playing Games

Anyone familiar with 'user centred design' will know that working with 'personas', of pen portraits of potential users, helps you apply abstract principles of Web usability to a site. Personas are also great for translating accessibility guidelines, because they force you to think about how your target users, including those who are blind or unable to use a mouse, would perform the most common or crucial tasks within your site, such as ~gating a menu or checking out an order. Of course, it's only an approximation of how all people use the Web, but by having these issues in mind when you start building pages, you're less likely to end up with messy 'retrofits' to include further usability or accessibility features.

Holding The Users Hand

Many of the most basic practical design tips are actually the most important when it comes to usability. Apart from developing solutions for the specific expectations of the users you're trying to target, it will be equally important to ensure that nobody gets lost among all the content.

Doing your best to counteract this can range from remembering to give every page an accurate and appropriate title, to carefully modularising everything into more palatable sections. Text heavy content should be presented in a way that pushes the most valuable info to the fore without battling of overwhelming anyone.

Similarly, you'd be surprised how easy it is to lose novice users when pages extend beyond the length of the screen. Many people fail to realise that the browser's scrollbar is there to help gain access to document areas that otherwise would be ignored. Keeping your site real estate compact will therefore help to deliver things in short bursts and will also ensure that important navigational controls are always clearly visible.

Guiding visitors effectively around the site has to be considered a priority, and requires a narrative structure that reassures the user as they go about their business. This needn't demand much from a coding perspective, and can easily be achieved with a good use of headings and a consistent instructional voice. However, more sophisticated aids like dedicated help or FAQ pages will go a long way to raising user confidence if things go awry.

You might also want to consider the implementation of dynamic tools like rollover tips or info dialogs. JavaScript driven layers are perfect for quickly realising these kinds of features, with many online code libraries happy to let you download the listings with no fuss at all. As long as you remember to stick to the established conventions that characterise most of the interfaces your users will be familiar with, it's unlikely your designs will go far wrong.

The Road Ahead

As far as navigation goes, the roots of how well it works should be traceable to the planning put into the original site map. It's here that you should have ironed out any inadequacies in the way page links are structured, before translating it for real. But this isn't to say that errors or oversights won't be made during the practical process.

Take advantage of Dreamweaver's built in checking and reporting tools for analysing link tags, browser support, code syntax and spelling. The last thing any designer wants to do is lose visitors to bad links or find the flow is interrupted by a page loophole that can't be escaped.

In this instance, alternative routes of navigation may prove both beneficial and more troublesome as you increase the site's complexity. Giving visitors a number of different pathways to the same destination is sure to give you a bigger headache, but the impact on usability will be immeasurable. Visitors will appreciate the option of either leaping to the info directly or taking a more roundabout journey when casually surfing.

This is something that a good many commercial sites, and particularly search engines, will do whenever they decide a general revamp is called for. Kelkoo's recent re jig to their pan European domains made a real point of cutting back on the number of pages shoppers would have to traverse to reach the products they wanted. By allowing direct keyword searches, along with general category fishing, multiple results listings and the selection of suggested items from their database, they consciously thought about how best to cater for their market, and have gone some way to improve usability in the process.

Access All Areas

There are still too many misconceptions surrounding Web accessibility. it isn't just a 'disabled thing', it's not simply a question of providing text only alternatives, and most of all it doesn't mean sacrificing the look and feel of your site. if done properly, the result is a site that's easier to maintain, leaner on bandwidth, and will evolve gracefully as the Web itself continues to evolve and widen its scope.

Think of accessibility as the next stage of evolution, reflecting the ever widening reach of the Web and the maturation of browser technology. The online world these days is far more representative of the offline world, and the special circumstances of many users can't be ignored. At the same time, the coalescence of browser standards, especially CSS, means it's possible to create sites that adapt to personal circumstances and preferences.

----
Magnetic Code Website Design is an exponent of usability good practice. See ExpertFound.com, which is an independent review site for an example of their work, including this review of the Fat Loss 4 Idiots software, and this review of the Rocket Spanish package.

Top Ten Fonts for Website Design

The top ten fonts for website design might change in order, but for the most part the fonts that make up this list stay the same due to their popularity. In general, the top ten list includes Arial, Frutiger, Futura, Gills Sans, Helvetica, Lucida, Optima, Palatino, Agfa Rotis, and Univers.

The reason these fonts are so popular is because they are simple and easy to read on computer screens with low resolution. As a result, most of the time fonts that are unique, wild, and distinctive are not used on web pages so as not to distract the reader from what is trying to be said and communicated through the font on the page. Since the website uses content to get the point across, it is prudent to use fonts that are easy to read. If you make it difficult for a visitor to read the content, they will more likely leave than put forth the effort. Consider the following points as well when developing your fonts for your website.

- Big Fonts

This is your web page and likely your livelihood, not a term paper or research project that has a defined style. Because of this, you can use big fonts, bold them, make them stick out and attract the reader. You can drive your point home with larger fonts and they also will be significantly easier for your visitor to read. The object of your website is to present information that is easily seen, read, and found by visitors. So, go ahead and increase the font size even in regular text that is not in a heading or title. Many of your visitors will thank you because they will not have to put on their glasses or strain to read the text. Sometimes bigger is better.

- Sans Serif

If you have no idea about fonts, how they translate to your web page, or how they will affect your visitors and ultimately sales, then you should definitely stick with a san serif font. The reason for this is that these fonts are the most legible and provide the best readability for visitors in a low resolution atmosphere. Don’t take risks with your fonts, go generic and use a sans serif font. Your visitors will thank you for it and your sales will not suffer from it.

- Simple is Safe

Again, don’t let yourself get carried away with your fonts and designs. Instead, keep the thought in mind that simple is safe. If you want to be bold and brazen in your website design then don’t take that route with your fonts. Keep it simple, basic, and easy to read, and you will benefit significantly more than if you try to mix it up.

Michael Turner reveals step-by-step how you can increase search engine traffic in his free 7 part mini-series. Grab it now at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/

Web Design - Free Development Tool

When working on your web design you want to make sure your ecommerce business logo is a positive reflection of the work that has gone into building your site.

For some online stores there is a limited supply of financial resources from which to draw for a new logo or business graphic.

I recently stumbled across a service on the web that can provide free logos for use in any kind of application. You may wish to have a banner ad designed, a logo, a button or creative elements for a print campaign.

While I have no stock or personal interest in this company I do have an interest in web design and this service provides a unique tool in developing visual material for your site.

The team at logobogo.com developed the site following the success of a sister site called radiodaddy.com. The second site allows radio professionals to voice material for podcasts, online radio stations or even traditional AM/FM stations. This is also done at no cost.

I decided to give LogoBogo a try and posted my request. Within 24 hours I had three professional choices to look at from three different designers.

There are certain rules to follow when making your request, but the fully produced material I reviewed was very well done and something I would be comfortable using.

From a pure marketing standpoint LogoBogo is a draw for professional graphic designers because it allows their work to be seen by many and can often result in paid work if the customer wants to work on additional material with the same designer. For the owners the site is filled with advertising and Google AdSense which helps pay for the site expenses and upkeep.

The LogoBogo website boasts the ability to create 3D art, traditional art, logos, banners, paintings, gaming graphics and icons.

If nothing else you have a significant brain trust that can provide tips and suggestions for the implementation of graphics within your site.

If you decide to use LogoBogo I might suggest being as specific as you can about the graphic or logo that you need. If you have special colors, fonts or sizes you need be sure to pass that information along. These designers are offering their skills at no cost. The more detail you can provide the better the chances are that your logo will reflect your desired outcome.

Website design can be a very personal exploration and locating as many useful tools as possible just makes sense. Logos and graphics can help you maximize the visual impact of your web design.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. He is the founder of HighPowerSites and many other web projects. Get your own website online in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites.com at: http://www.highpowersites.com Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Scott_Lindsay

How To Create A Free Website

Learning how to create a website is not rocket science! It's just like learning anything else in life, that is to say, that if we don't understand something, then it is totally alien to us.

A website consists of several pages that are connected by clickable links. A web page is like a blank sheet of paper that you can write on and fill with your content.

We can use web editors such as MS Frontpage and Macromedia DreamWeaver and the like to create our web pages. If you already have Microsoft Office, then Frontpage should normally be included in that package.

The web editors that I use, such as Frontpage are also known as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). That means we can type in what we expect to see on our web pages and it will look exactly the same when it is published on the internet.

It is possible to download free web editors by carrying out a simple web search. There are numerous free ones out there! There are also many free tutorial websites on the internet that you can learn from. They really are very excellent.

To start off with, you can either create a web page of your own design or simply choose from a vast array of ready made templates, which also are available for free on the internet. Frontpage has many ready made templates to choose from.

It isn't necessary that you should understand the website programing language HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language). There are however, a few lines of code that you may wish to use in order for your web page to be found on the search engines. These are known as Meta Tags. I haven't given you an example here as it may not be seen in the published article.

You may choose to use a free web host just to get you started. There are several good free web hosts available. Again, just do a quick search and you'll find plenty!

Using a ready made web page template is a great way to learn. I myself used to learn by re-editing the content as well as changing things such as fonts, font size, text colour, inserting images, background colour etc.

When you get quite confident at creating web pages (and that won't take long) you can then progress further by adding additional web pages and linking them to your home page to form a web site. Believe me, it's a very simple process and you will get proficient in no time at all!

May I wish you every success with your new website ventures.

Warm regards.

Anthony Marquis

Anthony Marquis has been building websites for almost three years now, and first began by using the exact same method as described above.

If you would like more information on how to create a free website, you can visit: http://members.lycos.co.uk/websites4free

There is also a fantastic ebook on Search Engine Optimization that you can download absolutely free - straight off the home page. It will certainly help you later on when you become more advanced.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Anthony_Marquis

Culture and Website Localization

Culture and Website Localization

With the rise in ownership of computers and internet usage growing daily, the internet is fast becoming the primary port of call for information, shopping and services. In addition, those computer and internet users are increasingly from non-English speaking countries. At the end of 2002, it was estimated that 32% of internet users were non-native English speakers. This figure is constantly rising. In response, businesses have quickly become aware of the benefits of website localization.

Website localization is the process of modifying an existing website to make it accessible, usable and culturally suitable to a target audience. Website localization is a multi-layered process needing both programming expertise and linguistic/cultural knowledge. If either is missing, the chances are that a localization project will encounter problems.

In the majority of cases it is the lack of linguistic and cultural input that lets a website localization project down. In order to give an insight into the impact culture has on website localization the following examples depict areas in which a solid understanding of the target culture is necessary.

Language in Website Localization

Translating a website from English into another language is not as simple as it may appear. There are numerous factors that have to be taken into consideration when translating a websites’ content.

Do all the words, phrases, sayings and metaphors translate directly to the target language? Would it be wise to translate the phrase “everyman for himself” in text describing a company or product if this is going to be read by a highly collectivist culture? Does the content of your website use humour and if so will the target culture appreciate or even understand it? Native alternatives should always be sought and used in any website localization.

When translating into another language carefully consider the variants. If it is to be an Arabic website then is aimed at Tunisians or Iraqis, Egyptians or Yemenis? If you are targeting all Arabic speakers then ensure Modern Standard Arabic has been employed by your translator.

One must analyse the style of the language and the target audience. If the audience is foreign business personnel, the vocabulary, grammar and punctuation must reflect this. If the audience is informal or youth orientated then a more relaxed language must used. Just as we in the UK would identify the difference between a site using ‘posh English’ and ‘street English’, other cultures will have the same perceptions of language. Using the wrong language for the wrong reader in your localization project will lead to a misunderstanding of the site or company.

It is essential to assess what information is necessary to carry over into the new site. Do not assume that all information on the English site is automatically transferred over. One must evaluate the target culture and society. Is it a culture that relies on information rich writing to fully understand a concept or product or is a culture that relies more on images or one that needs little text to grasp ideas and concepts? If your English site employs a lot of technical language then consider how best to transfer these concepts without the use of language.

Pictures in Website Localization

Images carry many subtle cultural messages within them. These can speak volumes about your company or product. Pictures or images may have certain negative connotations that may repel viewers. This is now an area that thankfully is receiving attention in website localization.

For example, if a travel site in a Muslim populated country used pictures of scantily clad women in bikinis, disco dancing and beer drinking, the chances are that they would not be very successful.

When including pictures of personnel it is wise to tailor these to what the target audience will look positively upon. A picture of the Director behind a desk in an office will be fine for a seniority respecting society, but for an egalitarian society it is better to show the Director mixing with staff.

It is through pictures that websites can either relate to an audience or repel them.

Symbols in Website Localization

As with pictures, symbols can cause problems in localization. Icons using fingers such as an OK sign or V-sign may mean different things to different cultures. Our Western symbols do not always mean the same abroad. An oft cited example is the representation of the house referring to a home page, or a letterbox to mail. The use of animals in logos can cause embarrassment and further problems. For example, pigs are considered unclean in the Middle East and cows as holy in India.

Colours in Website Localization

Colours are also loaded with cultural meanings that need to be analysed in website localization. Choosing the wrong colour for your logo or background will not always have disastrous consequences, but avoiding them is always advisable.
For example, in Japan white is commonly associated with mourning. In China red is auspicious. In Africa certain colours represent different tribes.

Navigation in Website Localization

It is even the most taken for granted aspects of website layout that must be analysed properly for a successful localization project. In the West we assume that how we present websites is how it naturally should be done. This is far from the truth.

A common problem experienced in localization is the effect on layout through translation. Foreign scripts can make your pages need more room or less room depending on the target language in the localization. Not all languages read from left to right. Arabic is from right to left and both Japanese and Chinese are from top to bottom.

Access to certain pages is also a factor that can be considered as relevant. Highly hierarchical cultures may view a site positively if it is ‘member only’ access, whereas an egalitarian culture may find it disagreeable.

Content in Website Localization

Examining your written content in any localization process in critical to its success. This is not only important for proper transfer of aspects such as dates, currencies, and units of measurement but for the presenting the correct image.

For example, will the site focus on a product or a company? Both bring with them certain considerations dependent on the target culture. If a company is marketing itself in a culture that respects seniority and hierarchy, readers will want to see information on senior members. Along with their titles and rank they will also want to evaluate them through information on their professional qualifications, experience and contacts. These areas in the UK may generally be avoided as in our culture it is bordering on self-indulgence and boasting.

Conclusion

Culture affects everything we do, say, read, hear and think and even websites cannot escape the influence of culture.

The impact of culture on website localization is huge. The above few examples are literally the tip of the iceberg. The number of variables that have to be taken into consideration requires the expertise of both a website designer along with a cross cultural communications consultant. In tandem they can identify the issues that will impact on the successful localization of a site.

At a time where the internet is entering more and more houses it is crucial that companies involved in the internationalization of their business consider website localization and take care to use effective cross cultural analysis.

Neil Payne of http://www.kwintessential.co.uk is the Director of cross cultural communications consultancy Kwintessential.

Permission is granted to reproduce the article in full on the condition I am made aware of any intention to use it. npayne@kwintessential.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neil_Payne

Benefits of Website Localization

Benefits of Website Localization

Maximising profit today involves reaching beyond national markets. Accessing an international customer base is vital if a business wants to expand and participate in international trade.

‘Localization’ relates to the act of modifying a product to make it both usable and suitable to a target market. Website localization therefore refers to the process of taking an English, western-orientated, website and moulding it to conform to a foreign audience.

The World Wide Web, as its name suggests, is a means by which businesses can reach an international audience. Companies are now recognising that a key step in successfully approaching and selling to international customers is through website localization.

Website localization brings with it numerous benefits. The three main benefits of localization are:

Website localization crosses language barriers

32% of internet users around the world are non-native English speakers. With PC ownership and access to the internet most rapidly increasing outside of North America and Europe, this figure will increase even more. Website localization breaks linguistic barriers and opens doors to other continents.

Companies are now waking up to the fact that English is no longer ‘the’ international language but one of many including French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese. With the number of companies now realising the benefits of website localization, there are more pages in foreign languages than ever before. This means if your company’s site has not undergone the localization process yet, it will be playing catch up in the future.

Website localization builds credibility

If your company only has a site in English and your competitor in all major languages, which one will gain more credibility? Localization of your website demonstrates that you are a truly international player. In addition, through localization it shows that you understand, value and have respect for that particular country or region.

Website localization increases revenue

Billions of dollars, pounds and francs in potential revenue are lost each year due to lack of investment in website localization. Most internet users will naturally feel more comfortable and understand a company better if their information, products or services are presented in their native language. By undergoing the website localization process you access potentially millions of new customers.

It is clear that website localization is a must for any truly international business. In addition to the technical and programming elements of website localization many cultural factors must be borne in mind.

For example, has language been translated properly and cultural variations in terminology, phrases, metaphors and sayings been taken into consideration? Have symbols, graphics, pictures, colours and general layout been viewed for their cultural applicability?

Website localization is a huge investment and should not be viewed as a straightforward process. When localizing your site, ensure you get the expertise of both a website designer and a cross cultural communications consultancy to ensure your site has maximum impact on the target audience.

Neil Payne is Director of cross cultural communications consultancy http://www.kwintessential.co.uk

Permission is granted to reproduce the article in full on the condition I am made aware of any intention to use it. npayne@kwintessential.co.uk

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Neil_Payne

Rubric - Evaluation of a Web Site

Introduction

Among the ancients, according to Columella, Vitruvius, and Pliny, the word rubrica, or rubric, signified the red earth used by carpenters to mark on wood the line to follow in cutting it; according to Juvenal the same name was applied to the red titles under which the jurisconsults arranged the announcements of laws. Soon the red colours, at first used exclusively for writing the titles, passed to the indications or remarks made on a given text.

Today in academia we refer to a rubric as a scoring tool rather than as it was originally referenced: notes in red ink used in grading text. We maintain the spirit of the original meaning of rubric since the term still refers to a general rule or guide for judging something of importance. More specifically, a scoring rubric consists of a fixed scale and a list of the characteristics for describing performance for each of the score points on the scale. Since rubrics describe levels of performance, they provide important information to teachers, parents and others interested in what students know and are able to do. Perhaps most importantly, rubrics provide a clear statement to students, teachers and parents as to what is considered important and worth learning, even before the learning has occurred because "once educators incorporate multiple intelligent strategies into the teaching repertoire, it becomes important to rethink the approach to assessment."

"If you get something wrong, your teacher can prove you knew what you were supposed to do."

A Typical Rubric

A typical rubric is based upon what we have learned, rather than what we have been taught. As such it is an authentic assessment tool designed to simulate real life activities and experiences; more precisely, it is a scoring guide that differentiates between levels of development in a specific area of performance or behavior; they differ from traditional methods of assessment in that they examine activity in the actual process of learning, clearly showing us how our work is being evaluated.

Technical Requirements of Rubrics

All of the features below apply to what might be termed a valid rubric.

Features: All rubrics can be created in a variety of forms and levels of complexity, yet contain three common features: one, they focus on measuring a stated objective (performance, behavior or quality); two, they use a range to rate performance: three, they contain specific performance characteristics arranged in levels indicating the degree to which a standard has been met.

The descriptors (score, level and so forth) reflect a continuity in the degree of difference between say a 1 and a 2 and a 4 and a 5.

Each descriptor is constructed in terms of criteria language used parallel to all other sentences.

The rubric is coherent or focuses on the same criteria throughout. and hence refers to the variance of quality for the (fixed) criteria, and not in the language which shifts in importance or introduces a new criteria.

When multiple rubrics are uses there is an apt weighing, not arbitrary weighing of each criterion in reference to the others.

A valid rubric is one which should enable assessment of smoothness and formativeness of a presentation with valid inferences toward this presentation made to the degree that what is scored is what is central to the presentation. The proposed differences in quality should:

* reflect task analysis and be based upon work across the full range of presentation.

* describe qualitative, not quantitative, differences

* not confuse merely correlative behaviors with actual authentic criteria.

The rubric should be reliable in that a consistent scoring in terms of both judges and time using evaluative language (excellent, poor, or novice, expert) is translated into language which is highly descriptive (better than, worse than) which helps judges recognize the salient and distinctive features of each level of presentation.

Do You Need A Rubric?

Whether we are a student doing research, a shopper seeking a product customer satisfaction rating or a award program owner, all of us must realize that anyone can publish anything on the interest at anytime. Internet resources are not necessarily reviewed or "filtered" like books, magazines or videos which pass through an editor or editorial staff, or are selected by a librarian during collection development. Common sense says why not have an evaluation criteria rubric for internet resources review?

What would you include in the basic criteria for doing research?

Authority: Decide whether an individual, an organization or an agency who is recognized as an expert in a field who is knowledgeable, qualified and reliable.

* Authors qualifications and affiliation: Is the author or information provider clearly identified? Is the data included about the author?

* Is there a contact person or address available: Can the webmaster be contacted easily?

* Is there evidence of quality control? Is information presented on an official organizational web site; online journals that use peer review by editors or others; posting of information taken from books or journals that previously underwent a quality control process.

Accuracy: Cana it be verifiable, dependable and error-free?

Motivation: Is the author supplying real, reliable information or is he or she just trying to sell an idea or opinion?

Objectivity: Is the material presented selectively or in a unbalanced manner which is only one side of an issue or was some information left out? Is the information merely an opinion on an issue? To what extent is the creator trying to change our opinion?

Currency of Information: Relates to the date of information, publication date or date of last revision. As in printed sources, some work is timeless, like classic novels or much of history. Other work has limited life because of changes in the discipline like technology. Up to date links add to the validity of the entire site.

Designing a Rubric

Literally thousands of expertly designed rubrics are available on the internet. But to begin, rubrics can be either general or specific. General rubrics can be applied to various tasks or they can be specific like the one mentioned earlier for evaluating an individual web site. Both types of rubrics benefit the user and can also be analytical or holistic. If a rubric has two or more separate scales it is called an analytical rubric, as it takes apart or breaks up the rating system for each trait; a rubric that uses only a single scale is called a holistic rubric. A holistic rubric is more efficient when criteria cannot be separated, however an analytical rubric will yield more detailed information, and, therefore, more specific feed back.

But you can also adapt a rubric - modify or combine existing rubrics; re word parts of the rubric; drop or change one or more scales of an analytical rubric, omit criteria that are not relevant to the outcome you are measuring; mix and match scales from different rubrics; add a "no response: category at the bottom of the scale; divide a holistic rubric into several scales.

Meta-Rubric To Assess Our Rubric

The Chicago Public Schools web site lists the following criteria for evaluating scoring rubrics, which is criteria they have adapted.

* Does the rubric relate to the outcome being measured?

* Does it address anything extraneous?

* Do the criteria reflect current conceptions of excellence in the field?

* Are the dimensions and scales well defined?

* Is there a clear basis for assigning scores at each scale point?

* Can different scorers consistently apply the rubric?

* Can everyone understand the rubric?

* Is the rubric developmentally appropriate?

* Can the rubric be applied to a variety of tasks?

* Is the rubric fair and free from bias?

* Does it reflect teachable skills or does it address variables over which we have no control such as culture, gender or home resources?

* Is the rubric useful, feasible, manageable and practical?

* Will it provide the kind of information you need and can use effectively?

* Does it cover important dimensions of performance?

Value of Using Rubrics For Web Site Evaluations

We have included web site rubrics used by Adult Literacy and Technology Training Network and Blue Web'n to focus on the formal process of guided collaboration in the selection of web sites. (Internet version of this article).

There are obviously other groups who also adhere to a formal process by using rubrics and stated selection criteria's, which are not structured as rubrics but also serve the same purpose. Which is to provide consistency and integrity in selection of a web site to be included by the group or individual. A nother group is what are called collectively as rated web site award programs. Those who are members of an award program rating service or index, adhere to codes of conduct, listing requirements of each group and have a formal selection process which involves a published set of criteria, a mission statement and staff to help in selections.

Footnotes:

1 Catholic Encyclopedia

2 Father Ronald Nuzzi, A Multiple Intelligence Approach, (1997) Saint Mary's Press

3 Understanding Rubrics, by Heidi Goodrich Andrade Andrade, Heidi Goodrich. The effects of Instructional Rubrics on Learning to Write. Current issues in Education (on-line) 4.4 (2001). 15 August 2005. Moskal, Barbara M. Scoring Rubrics: What, When and How: Practical Assessment, Research and Evaluation, 7.3 (2000). 12 December 2002

4 Nancy Pickett and Bernie Dodge

5 Relearning by Design, Inc.

6 Chicago Public School System

7 Herman, Aschbacher and Winters (1992), Arter (1990) and ISBE (1994)

Rubric Resources

RubiStar: Want to make exemplary rubrics in a short amount of time? Registered users can save and edit rubrics online. You can access them from home, school, or on the road. Registration and use of this tool is free.

The Technology Applications Center For Educator Development: What are Rubrics? Assessment of Technology Skills, Rubrics for Technology Products, Applicable General Rubrics, Create your own Rubrics and Rubric Software.

ETE Teacher Pages: Active learning situations challenge teachers to determine grades in a way that accurately reflects achievement and that is acceptable to students, parents, and colleagues. "Rubrics" are guides for assigning scores to alternative assessment products.

APEX Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Denny_Lancaster

Create a Google Sitemap for Your Web Site

Google Sitemaps is a simple and fast way for your site to be constantly indexed and updated by Google.

This article will discuss the benefits of implementing this new technology, who should use it, how it works and how to create a Google Sitemap for your web site.

Benefits of having a Google Site Map

1. Speeds up the discovery and addition of your web pages in the Google index.

2. Enables Google to quickly find web pages that have been recently changed.

3. A method for your site to be listed and appear quickly in Google.

4. Helps Google to keep search content fresh, so people have the most up to date information available.

Who should use Google Sitemaps?

All site owners can use Google sitemaps whether you have one page or millions of pages, however it's mostly geared towards people that make frequent changes to their web pages.

Normally web pages on a large site will not all get indexed because the links are too deep within the site. By including all your pages in the Google Sitemap you have a better chance of them all being indexed as Google thrives on fresh content. According to Google, it won't increase your site's rankings.

How does it work?

Google sitemaps are created using XML (Extensible Markup Language). This is a coding language similar to HTML(though a little more complex). It is often used these days in syndicated feeds or blogs.

Here is the sample XML code you would include for each page of your site:

<.url><.br> <.loc>http://www.yoursite.com/<./loc>
<.lastmod>2005-07-15
<.changefreq>monthly<./changefreq>
<.priority>0.5<./priority>
<./url>

(remove periods for code to work)

Here is a breakdown of what each line represents:

location - name of your webpage ie http://www.yoursite.com

last modified - when you last modified the page.

change frequency - tells Google how often you modify that particular page, whether it's never, weekly, daily, hourly, monthly or yearly.

priority - sets the priority you want Google to place for that page on your site. You can prioritize your pages: 0.0 being the least, 1.0 being the highest, 0.5 is in the middle.

This is only relative to your site. It will not affect your rankings. Certain pages on your site may have more significance than others because they are updated more often ie home page, articles page.

How to Create a Dynamic Google SiteMap XML File

It would take a long time to create your Google Sitemap by hand especially if you have a site that contains 1000s of pages.

Fortunately Google provides the Sitemap Generator that allows you to generate a sitemap very quickly. It's a Python script that creates a Sitemap for your site using the Sitemap Protocol. This script can create Sitemaps from URL lists, web server directories, or from access logs.

You can read more about it here:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/login

Other Sitemap Generators.

Google has also compiled a list of third party generators.

Personally I use the free sitemap generator It's simple to use and quickly produces the necessary XML code for your site.

Here are the steps on how to create your Sitemap using this free Sitemap Generator:

1. Go to http://www.sitemapspal.com and enter your site's address.
2. Copy the code that it generates for your site and paste it into notepad.
3. Save the text file as sitemap.xml
4. Upload this file to the root directory (same place as your home page) of your web server.
5. Open up a Google Site Map account and submit your site's address.
6. Every time you modify a page or pages, login to your Google account and click on the resubmit button.
7. Repeat this procedure for all of your web sites.

Conclusion

Google is still the largest and most accessed search engine on Net. Each year millions of web sites get added to Google making your site harder to find. Creating a Google Sitemap will help your web pages stay fresh in Google's index.

Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW) owner and author of http://www.iSiteBuild.com. Affordable Web Site Design and Web Hosting. You can read more of his in-depth articles at: http://www.isitebuild.com/articles

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Herman_Drost

Add Audio to Your Web Site and Increase Your Sales up to 35%!

Ok, you've got your site built, you have traffic coming to it, a good product at a reasonable price.... hmmm... what else do you need?

What else could increase your conversion rate?

Audio!

All right I know what you're thinking... "Why should I go to all of the trouble of adding audio to my web site?"

Because it can increase your sales by up to 35%!! That's why.

Adding streaming audio it isn't as hard as you have been led to believe and you don't even have to pay a monthly fee either. You can start with sound recorder (Pre-installed on every Windows computer) and the free microphone that came with your computer.

Some of the things you can do with audio to enhance your site are:

* Create audio greetings

* Create audio testimonials

* Narrate tutorials

* Create audio ezines

* Add audio files for your visitors to download

* Create audio articles

* Add your band's music clips as tempting teasers to get buyers

* Read children's stories

* Tell Jokes

* Sing...

* Add music as a background to your web site (Tastefully - please!)

This list goes on and on.

Let's quickly cover a couple of the items on the list and see what the advantages are.

Create Audio Greetings:

Well, I think this one is fun. Don't you often wonder what that "Guru" sounds like? Or even what a web master who has created your favorite web tool or ebook?

Adding an audio greeting is actually about the easiest thing to do if you want to improve your sales. For most web sites, when done tastefully, the sales can jump up to 35%! People just trust you more and feel like they know you a little better if they hear your voice.

Also, excitement is contagious. If you are excited about your product, ezine or membership site you can hear it in your voice when you talk about it. SO CAN YOUR CUSTOMERS! And more importantly, your potential customers.

Audio Testimonials:

What can I say about this compelling reason, but this... what would be more believable to you - a web site with a bunch of written testimonials or a web site where you can hear the actual voices of current / previous purchasers explaining what benefits they got from the product? How do you even know for sure the written testimonials are real?

It's hands down the one with the audio.

All you need is Audacity (Which is free at http://audacity.com) to edit down too long testimonials - actually, is there such a thing as too-long testimonial? Maybe not - and the ability to have customers send you .wav files and a small picture of themselves.

NOTE: You can get a free script from Will Bontrager at http://willmaster.com that will allow you to accept files from your customers OR you can set up a seperate ftp account at your server for customer uploads. See other articles in this series to learn how to implement this.

Piece of cake!

There are a couple of other steps to adding the audio to your site, but I will get to that in other parts of this article series.

Create Audio Ezines:

Have you ever heard Jim Edwards "I Gotta Tell You" ezine? (http://igottatellyou.com) Or watched the multi-media ebook and ezine how-to tutorials in Epublishing Express? (http://epublishing-express.com)

It is so much more compelling to hear someone explain exactly what to do than read a dry ezine (No offense to all the other thousands of ezine writers out there) or ebook (Ditto to you ebook writers) and you learn much faster.

Did you know that you only retain about 10-15% of what you read once? But that retention goes up to 60% if you hear it at the same time and flies up to 80% for a multi-media presentation.

How many fewer customer service calls and emails would you get if you customers were retaining 80% of what you were teaching them? I can tell you... a lot!

Think of all the extra time you would have to promote your business, create new products (Audio and multimedia products of course!) Heck, even spend more time with your family and hobbies.

How much happier would your customers be if they were able to duplicate your success and complete your tutorials, assignments, or follow your direction?

Again - a lot! How many more of your customers would buy other products from you if you were successful in teaching them or helping them with your first product? I think you can see where I am going with this...

So, know that you know how important audio is how do you get started? The first thing you can do is go to http://easy-web-site-audio.com and sign up for the free Audio Tips Ecourse and get a new tip every three days on creative audio uses.

That's a good start :)

Remember those audio testimonials?

Here are some other free resources for all of you ebook and ezine writers to get you started: (Some long links may wrap)

Microsoft: http://microsoft.com (Free)

Additionally you can access lots of free content add-ons, tools, and tutorials when you go straight to the media section on the Microsoft web site.

Find it at Media Player v.9: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx (Free) Here you can upgrade to Media Player 9 (To store all of your audio files you have made in the easy access audio library) which is free.

Media Player 9 is the preferred media player for listening to streaming audio along with Real Player which is also free.

There are a lot of add-ons for the program, especially you want to get the one that converts your MP3s into smaller WMA files and save space on your computer. (It is a free teaser, they will probably try to get you to buy the full Plus! collection, but you don't have to!).

Visit http://www.microsoft.com/plus for more information on the PLUS! product if you think in addition to converting audio you might want to let the kids play around with Media Player too. :)

Remember all that extra family time you are going to have since you won't have hardly any customer service issues?

Real: http://real.com (Free)

Get the Real Audio player basic program which allows you to play Real Audio formatted files. A lot of online content is in this format.

Don't forget if you are adding Real Audio to your web site to get the free "Producer" which converts other types of audio files (> wav and .MP3 for example) into Real Audio files for uploading, streaming, etc.

Producer Basic (Free): http://www.realnetworks.com/products/producer/basic.html

If you want to stream from your computer or server (Warning advanced topic!) you can use the free Helix Server Basic. Helix Server Basic (Free): http://forms.real.com/rnforms/products/servers/eval/mbps.html

Also use the free PresenterOne to add audio and video to your PowerPoint presentations and stream them from your web site! http://www.realnetworks.com/products/presenterone/index.html (main page) and the free version is at:

http://forms.real.com/rnforms/products/tools/presenteronebasic/in dex.html (Approx. 20mb) since it requires Producer (Real Audio product with a free version see above) it includes it in the installation.

So if you are thinking of enhancing your PowerPoint slides and are going to download this, you don't need to download Producer separately.

Shoutcast: http://shoutcast.com (Free)

Start your own radio station for free. And obviously link to it from your web site and broadcast tutorial and educational content on your niche topic. Free to record and free to broadcast.

Live365: http://www.live365.com (Fee)

You can also start your own radio station starting at only $7/month.

Pirate Radio: http://pirateradio.com (Fee)

Purchase software for $29 one-time fee that will having you broadcasting in about 1/2 hour.

Keep your eyes peeled for more audio/video/multi-media related articles in this series. We will be talking about different types of audio files, conducting interviews, recording tutorials, adding audio testimonials to your web site, and more. :)

By the time we're done you will be an audio / video master!

"Techie" Teri Mramer is the busy web master at TreeFree Publishing, The Editor of Epublishing Express- The only ezine that teaches ebook and ezine publishing with screenshots and videos! http://Epublishing-Express.com Also author of "Easy Web Site Audio!" The Easy Web Site Audio tutorial! e-Manual comes with 15 how-to videos. Add audio to your web site in about an hour! http://Easy-Web-Site-Audio.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Teri_Mramer

Accessibility: Is your website causing you to loose potential clients?

Accessibility: Is your website causing you to loose potential clients?

With millions of people going online everyday the potential for your business is almost unimaginable! However, the great challenge is creating an environment that is positive, effective, and accessible to all of your potential clients.

No two people see everything exactly the same way. In addition to our own paradigms that shape how we interpret things presented to us, there are also very real obstacles that affect many people surfing the web. By removing barriers to accessibility and addressing these obstacles you open the door to new business and greater success.

"The power of the Web is in its universality. Access by everyone regardless of disability is an essential aspect." - Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director (Web Accessibility Initiative)

The most common obstacles facing many individuals are auditory and visual. This includes people with various levels of hearing, language barriers, color blindness, visual perception, level of sight, and complete loss of sight. Any of these challenges can render your site potentially useless to a visitor and potential client who may simply be unable to distinguish the color variation of your text on your background.

In the United States a new Bill has been proposed to legislate the web and enforce handicap accessibility standards for all government related websites. While there is currently no policy in place for the private sector, the issue has provided insight and opportunity for every business to be more accessible.

Some basic steps you can take to open your site to potential clients:

1) Make sure all of your relevant and core content is in text-based format. For example: if you have power statements as graphics embedded in your content they will not be readable by a speech synthesizer (a tool used by people to turn written content into an auditory format).

2) Make sure your images have alt tags that say what they are. If someone is using a Braille display to view the web, untagged images show up as a large blank space that could easily be interpreted as the end of the content.

3) Try changing your setting to quickly view your site in black and white. This is an option that people with color blindness in any degree often use so they can avoid missing valuable content. Check to see if your color palette allows text and hyperlinks to still be clear and readable.

New technology is bringing more and more people online everyday. Is your site ready and open to everyone?

Have a successful day! Leslie Durand, Marketing Coach and Emarketing Specialist

Leslie brings over 10 years experience in new media marketing to every project and a unique coaching approach to every client relationship. http://www.ldurandconsulting.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leslie_Durand

Viral Marketing Techniques Every Web Site Should Be Using

Viral marketing can work wonders for any business, web site or product. It can be a great source of sales leads, one-way links and targeted traffic. Yet, many marketers are not taking full advantage of this 'viral factor' in their marketing efforts.

How about you? Are you using any viral marketing methods with your web site? Or does the word 'viral' make you cringe?

Many people believe 'viral marketing' is a myth, one of those Internet follies that only happens on rare occasions when some fantastic product or site comes along.

In reality, viral marketing techniques can be used by any web site -- big or small. They can be used by any marketer who takes the time to put some simple steps into place. Viral marketing 'done right' can have many benefits. It will:

* increase your link popularity (often one way links)

* increase targeted traffic to your site

* build your brand recognition

* create targeted leads for your products

* automate your marketing efforts

Here are some simple viral marketing techniques you can try with your web site, product or business:

1. Word of Mouth We have all seen this phenomenon displayed with many products . People spread the word about some great movie or gadget and suddenly everyone knows about it. Human nature dictates we tell our friends about some great product we have bought or found. Nature of the beast, it's just the way we are; so why not take full advantage of it?

If you have a web site -- put up a simple 'tell a friend' form so your visitors can easily tell others about your great site. Easy and very simple to do but many webmasters don't do it. Similarly, if you have a newsletter, service, product or with any aspect of your site... just include a few sentences at the end of your copy, asking very politely, "if you found this service, product or web site helpful -- why not tell your friends, family and colleagues about it."

2. Branding Make sure you have a logo on your site or product. Branding your site is very important if you want your site or product to be noticed and talked about. For that matter, a catchy brand name can be a 'viral technique' in itself; so try and come up with one that springs from the lips with a distinctive ring to it!

People recognize brands, it gives them a clear image of your site or product. Include your brand or logo on every page of your site and on every product, service, material coming from your site or business.

3. eBooks Savvy marketers jumped on this new invention very quickly, they knew the 'viral' power of these little ebooks. Ebooks are electronic files that can be downloaded from any web site and distributed easily around the web. You can also have other webmasters or marketers, 're-brand' these ebooks with their own links. High quality ebooks get passed along very quickly and are great viral tools.

Anyone can write a simple ebook on the topic of their site. If you can't write, just get permission to use a collection of articles from the numerous 'article directories' on the web such as www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com . Ebook compiling software (in both .exe or pdf format) is relatively cheap or can be found for free on the net. Just Google to find it!

4. Viral Software Some simple software products or applications can be very viral, often passed around or downloaded from the web by thousands each day. These have to be useful or handy products that the users will desire: ecalendars, organizers, personal planners, link checking software, and so on. Many are desktop products that sit on the computer user's desktop; prime location in the marketing arena.

And the best examples of this kind of viral software have the company logo, sales message and contact email -- with LIVE LINKS to all of the above -- conveniently displayed within the product. These simple software programs can be great viral promotional devices that spread like wildfire across the web. (get an example of this below in the author's resource box)

5. RSS Newest player in the viral game! RSS which stands for 'Really Simple Syndication' and just by the nature of what it does; RSS is an awesome viral tool. Originally used by news organizations to syndicate their news stories, it is usually associated with Blogs because blogs use an RSS feed to distribute their content. Good quality RSS feeds are picked up and displayed by different web sites all across the web.

Since Microsoft has announced the next version of Windows will have RSS integrated into its operating system, new RSS applications will take viral marketing to heights that have not been witnessed before. Alert marketers are already gearing up for this viral explosion.

You should also be gearing up for RSS if you haven't already. Using a simple site like blogger.com (owned by Google) will give you a basic blog and RSS feed to spread your message or product to all interested parties.

These are just some viral techniques that will help increase your web presence. They will also boost your traffic and increase your links. Used properly, these viral techniques will also spread your web site, product or service around the globe.

What more can you ask for?

Get a Free DATEwise eCalendar & Personal Planner for your Desktop. It's
a perfect example of 'viral marketing' in action! Click here for Free Desktop Calendar
Copyright © 2005 Titus Hoskins of Free Marketing Tools

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Titus_Hoskins

The 6 Steps to Building Your Own Website

The 6 Steps to Building Your Own Website
For those who want a website of their own but are not sure how to go about it. here is the step-by-step process, without paying big money to someone to do it for you. The plan here is to do this cheaply and the total cost of setting up a custom website can be just a few dollars and some of your time. Once your site is online, the only on-going costs are your monthly or annual web hosting charges and the yearly domain renewal fee.
Here is the complete step-by-step website building process:

Step 1: Put your thoughts, ideas and plans on paper.
Draw a rough picture of how you would like your website to look. Got some coloured pencils? Use those also. Now work out what you want on your pages. For example, you may want to include these pages: - About Me/Us - Contact Page - My interests (if it is a personal website) or a Products page if you are selling something or a Service you are offering.

Step 2: Put it onto your computer.
You need a WYSIWYG HTML Editor (stands for What You See Is What You Get). There are many programs to choose from such as Dreamweaver and Frontpage. There are also programs that do exactly the same as those high-priced ones, they offer the easiest way to design a web site, especially for the first timer, and they are FREE. Simply download one, follow the instructions to get it running, and play with it. You can do no damage, so play with all the features and get a feel of it. Follow the manual they provide. Examples of free ones in NVU.
Often your website hosting company will provide you with a free HTML editor, so check with them first before you spend any money.

Step 3: Get a Website Template
When designing a new website, I suggest you start with a pre-designed template, rather than designing the site from the very beginning. This will save you countless hours of time without the aggravation or steep learning curve. Some website hsoting companies provide their clients with free website templates, so check your hosting company first before buying any.

Step 4: Get Your Domain Name
Once your website is set out on your computer, you'll need to decide on a domain name for your new website. Registering your own domain name means that surfers / visitors will be able to connect to your website by entering www.YourName.com into their browser.
Try to choose a domain name that is easy to remember and has something to do with your business or your name. For example: www.YourAfghans.com, www.BestKennels.com, www.DogBiscuitsExtrordinaire.com
A Top Level Domain such as .com is the most popular and easiest to remember. and you can register a .com domain name for just US$9.99

Step 5. Select a hosting company for your website
Your website is designed and you have registered your domain name, so why do you need to hire a company to host your site?
Hiring a web host who already has everything set up is a cost effective solution. Your website needs "space" on a server (a computer that is online 24/7/365) so that people can see your website, and this is what a hosting company provides.
Your web host will maintain your 24 hour connection to the web making sure visitors can connect to your website at all times.
Inexpensive hosting is availabel nowadays, and I recommend you go with a host specializing in your topic - for example, if you sell widgets, then find a hosting company that specializes in providing website hosting for widgets, or if your website is about dogs, choose a company that provides hosting for dog sites. These companies understand your needs and requirements better than a general hosting company.

Step 6: Upload your website to your hosting space.
"FTP" stands for "File Transfer Protocol" and there are lots of these programs available on the web and many hosting companies provide a simple Free FTP program for their clients.
This is a step that many people new to having a website have problems with. Basically, you'll be transferring your newly designed web pages from your own computer to the computer at your web hosting company.
Most WYSIWYG design programs come with a "web publishing" interface but the details are often confusing and difficult to follow. Rather than using the web publishing interface in your design program, use FTP to upload your pages as you will find it much easier.
There are many FTP programs you can try and they are not expensive. For example: CuteFTP, WS_FTP and Fetch for Mac.
But there is no need to pay any money if your hosting provides you with a free one, so check with them first.
All done! Your website is online for the world to see!
John Ross

http://www.VIPdogs.com providing website hosting solutions for breeders, owners and friends of The Dog since 1997. Includes free tools to ensure website building success!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_D_Ross

Increase Web Site Traffic For Free

You have a web site, its built and ready to make money, in one hand you have a few paid methods of web site traffic generation, and in the other you have some tactics to increase web site traffic for free. Before you go getting your credit card out, lets put some of the free traffic generating methods to use first. Now, the most popular free method most people use these days is article writing, but if not done correctly, could be a complete waste of time. Luckily for you, I'm going to tell you how to write the perfect article that will increase web site traffic for free.

Before we actually start writing our article, we need to know what the title is going to be. Depending on what your website is about, I would first grab what I think is one of the best FREE keyword research tools around. It's called good keywords and you can download it from www.goodkeywords.com. Once you have downloaded that, install it and do a search for your main keyword. For this particular article, I want to write about web site traffic. Good keywords will search overture, Ask and yahoo for the previous months search terms for your chosen keyword. When it returns your results, we want to weed out the best keywords we can use that will get us results. By this I mean the keywords that have little competition.

Forget about the top ten keywords for now, let's scroll down further and pick off some long tail keywords, or one's that return the smallest amount of competition. You can find out which one's will work best by picking the keyword out, typing it in Google and seeing how many websites we will be competing against. This article will be focused on the search term "increase web site traffic for free". By putting your keyword in quotations, Google will return the most relevant results, when I did this, Google returned 882 websites I would be competing against. Without the quotations Google returned a result of over 22 million sites! I probably wouldn't stand a chance of getting anywhere with this, but im going to focus more on the "relevant" results.

So, we do a little research, write an article about our keyword, and submit it to ezinearticles.com. If you use the keyword right at the very beginning of the summary, and then add something very similar towards the end, you should be able to achieve even better results. The summary is the bit of the article that will show up in Google's search results when someone looks for that particular information, and I have found that Google will place articles or web pages higher if the title has the main keyword at the beginning, aswell as something similarto the main keyword once more too.

My summary has the keyword right at the beginning, aswell as the term web site traffic towards the end. I wouldn't go too heavy with the use of your main keyword in the article either, although 2-3 work pretty well, and having one main keyword reference in bold also does wonders. If you go too far your article will be rejected, and you will then have to go through and edit your article before it gets accepted. Trial and error is the key, and I would also heavily recommend you never write an article that is less than 350 words long. If I look for articles I tend not to go for one's less than 350 words long, as there is no point. What important information could you possibly put in an article less than 350 words long? As Chris Knight, the owner of Ezine Articles points out in this blog entry - "It takes an exceptional writer to craft a high quality article under 350 words."

There are two options you have when it comes to writing good quality articles. You can get a ghost writer to do it for you, and have around 10 articles created for about $5 each, (Ghost writers can be found on sites such as scriptlance.com) or what I find is better, is to write the articles yourself! It's not that hard when you think about it, and gives you better satisfaction if the article does well! In fact I get satisfaction just by knowing that I have written an article myself. So get cracking, and drum up some good long tail keywords, write a few articles using the methods I have laid out for you today, and you will soon increase web site traffic for free.

This article has been written for a series of web traffic videos in production called Ultimate Traffic Videos! To find out what traffic generation methods work best, visit our site at http://www.ultimatetrafficvideos.com and learn how to increase web site traffic for free now!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Nathian_Jackson

Fast Web Site Promotion - 3 Top Ways to Make More Money With Web Site Promotion

The online world of business presents a lot of opportunities for those who are interested in them. The internet has recently emerged as the most important source of information exchange as well as of doing business. This platform has done wonders for many businesses. It has taken the human race to the point where a company can access the target market of 6 billion people. In this situation promoting your web site becomes really important.

If a company does not promote its web site or its products, it is not possible for the company to survive the competition today. The reason behind this fact is that competition is too high now. If you let people know that you are there, you stay there. Other wise other companies can easily snatch your share of the market. Those web sites which receive a good number of web site visitors have a lot of chances to earn money through web site promotion. If your web site is a well visited one you can help other web sites in their promotional plans and can earn a lot of money through this service.

First of all, you can earn through placing the links of other websites on your web site. This will give them a chance of getting more visitors, while you can earn through this activity. Similarly, you can place the banner ads of other web sites on your web site. Rss feeds are also a good idea. These steps will help you in making money through web site promotion.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Sean_R_Mize

Free Websites - Are They Really Free?

There is a proliferation of vendors now offering free websites on the internet. This is normally done in conjunction with a purchase or subscription to a newsletter. So, although you do not “pay” for the website, you still “pay” either for the product you purchase or your contact details. The usual products that include a free website are online money-making opportunities.

Website with a Product
You will get a turnkey website designed to sell the same product that you bought. This is just another method of marketing the product and making you an affiliate of the vendor that sold you the product. Provided you did your research before purchasing, this might not be a bad idea. Let’s face it, who better than an existing customer to market a product?

The drawbacks to this system are that you are generally locked in in two ways:
1. The vendor will specify the hosting company, which means that the vendor has some kind of deal with them.
2. There is normally advertising of some sort that you are not allowed to change. The advertising could take the form of a banner with a link directly to the vendor’s sales page or the original offer of a free website provided by the vendor. The latter gives the vendor the opportunity to build a list of potential customers through your efforts.

Website by subscribing to a newsletter
You get a turnkey website specifically designed to sell the product of the vendor giving you the website. The same two drawbacks hold true for this system as well.

In both instances there are certain things to be wary of. The hidden cost of getting the website “live”. This includes purchasing a domain name and hosting the website. In most cases you can purchase your domain name separately although you will still have to pay a small fee to the hosting company to transfer the name. You will also have to pay the hosting fee which, since you cannot shop around, is not usually the cheapest or offers the best service.

Another major negative is that you do not have full control over the website. As explained earlier, there will be some form of advertising on the website. This might not fit in with how you want your website to look. Even with a little bit of knowledge of html, you will struggle to change most of the features on the website. This puts you at a disadvantage since the vendor can change their website at any time, taking full advantage of any changes in the marketplace. This can become significant because you will be required to pay hosting fees for a year up front.

There is no teacher like experience and this has taught me, sometimes painfully, the knowledge I share with you. That knowledge is reflected in the products I endorse on my websites. Vanitha Arumugam is an affiliate marketer who owns http://www.vanles.net and http://www.varnles.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vanitha_Arumugam

Web Hosting: Which Is The Host With The Most?

So you want to publish a web site do you? Welcome to the club. These days it seems that almost everyone has a web site of some kind, and thousands more continue to be launched every day. It's challenging enough to design a site and fill it with interesting content, but when all is said and done another challenge still remains - where to host it?

A popular choice for newbie webmasters, and even experienced ones, is to secure a free hosting plan with a company such as Yahoo! Geocities, Tripod or Angelfire. While these are easy to setup and free of charge, they do have limitations. Most free hosts don't offer all the nice features that paid hosts do such as FTP access, CGI-BIN, or your own personal domain name. Instead you're stuck with minimal features and a generic URL such as www.freewebhost.com/marcswebsite. This somewhat limits your web site‘s potential. Most free hosts also require you to run banners or pop-up ads on your web site to make it worth their while - these banners and pop-ups can obstruct the view of your web page and ultimately annoy visitors and drive them away. Lastly, most free hosts have a daily bandwidth limit that is very small, so if you do get a lot of traffic you'll most likely exceed the allotted bandwidth and your site will be temporarily disabled. Overall I would recommend free web hosts for people that are new to web hosting and want to get a feel for how it works. I'd also recommend them for web sites that are personal in nature (such as an online journal) as well as web sites that don't plan to generate any revenue. Free web hosts are a great stepping stone to paid web hosts - I myself starting building web sites 4 years ago using free hosts, and today I run several high traffic web sites that are hosted on paid web hosting plans.

Now it's time to get into the good stuff - paid web hosting. Web hosting companies that charge money for their services are plentiful on the Internet, and feature a wide array of hosting packages at various price points. First we begin with so called "budget" web hosts, who claim to offer you the world for only $1 per month. Having used numerous such companies I feel I must tell you to proceed with caution here, as these companies aren't all that they are cracked up to be. Many claim to offer 24/7 e-mail support, which in my experience turned out to be 0/0 e-mail support. My e-mails were either never answered or answered a week after I sent them. Even when I got a response it was generic in nature and completely unhelpful. Also, expect frequent outages with these budget web hosts as they rarely even have their own web servers - often they are reselling space on someone else's web servers over which they have no control. One budget web host I used went down unexpectedly for 6 days, and they didn‘t even bother to notify their customers. As a result, my web site was down for 6 days and I lost most of my visitors as well as my hard-earned search engine rankings. Lesson learned: if the reliability and success of your web site is important to you, budget web hosting might not be the answer. However, this is not to say that all budget web hosts are bad - 1dollarhosting.com is one of the leaders in the budget web hosting arena and has quite a good reputation.

The next type of paid web host is what I refer to as a "mid-range" web host, meaning that they offer prices and service that will satisfy the majority of web sites out there. Mid-range web hosts like PowWeb, Your-Site.com and iPowerWeb offer packages ranging from $5 to $8 per month and provide the tools that most webmasters will need to run a web site, such as: CGI-BIN, tons of e-mail addresses, FTP support, visitor statistics and more. These hosts do have monthly bandwidth limits, but the limits are quite high, and most web sites will never reach them. However, if your web site features hundreds of file downloads and gets decent traffic you may be shocked at how soon you'll reach those bandwidth limits. When you do, your site may be temporarily shut down or you'll have to pay bandwidth overage charges, which can get pricey. Overall though, mid-range web hosts will be satisfactory for 90% of the web sites out there, and generally offer excellent uptime/reliability. In fact, many web-based businesses are successfully run using a mid-range web host. However, as mentioned previously, web sites that offer large files for download or sites that get a huge amount of traffic may find that a mid-range host doesn't quite suit their needs. These types of web sites may require "high-end" web hosting solutions, the next topic in our discussion.

High-end web hosts typically service web sites that are extremely popular, have a high amount of traffic, and/or require pretty much 100% uptime. Most businesses rely on high-end web hosts to host their web sites. Rackspace.com is an example of a well known high-end web hosting company. Pricing for high-end hosts varies, but typically runs from about $50 per month to several hundred dollars per month. Many high-end hosts give you your own dedicated server (which they support) that is reserved just for you and your web site. The mid-range hosts I discussed earlier typically host many different web sites on the same server - this is known as "shared" hosting. High-end web hosts offer stellar reliability, bandwidth, and just about every tool you'll ever need to run a successful web site. Another feature that some high-end web hosts provide is "co-location" hosting. In this scenario, YOU configure and provide the web server, but you get to plug it into their data center/network. This can be very nice because their data center usually has a fiber-optic connection directly to the Internet, offering blazing bandwidth and stellar reliability. People who run web-based businesses or extremely popular, high traffic web sites are good candidates for high-end web hosting.

Hopefully this brief overview gives you a good picture of the various types of web hosts that exist, and which one might be right for you. When you begin your search for a web host, always keep in mind the old adage "You get what you pay for" because it really does hold true in this case. Before you make the commitment to host a web site be sure to take some time and analyze what you want out of the web site, and decide which factors are most important to its success. Answering these questions will get you many steps closer to choosing the web host that's right for you.

Marc Eberhart is an IT Project Manager, webmaster, and all-around Internet junkie. His web site http://www.webhostingdiscounts.net/ offers visitors 40% off web hosting plans with top-rated hosting companies.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Marc_Eberhart