Is Your Site Ready for the Average User?

If you are using computers and surfing the Internet for some time, as is likely the case since you're visiting a site for webmasters, you would probably have acquire a large number of skills that allow you to find things on the Internet, navigate a site, contract with the annoyances that some sites pose, and the like. The problem with such skill is that it is easy to lose touch with how a large portion of Internet users really operate on the Web, and thus design a site that does not get advantage of the special needs of these "average users".

My use of "average user" here might emerge to some to have the suggestion of "novice user". With the explosion of the Internet reaching into many homes in the world, it seems to me that such users are repeatedly increasing in number. Where once upon a time when we think of a computer user we picture a nerd, now, just about everyone uses a computer, even my elderly parents. This extensive use of computers also means that the computer is no longer the region of an elite few who actually appreciate the innards of a computer. The average user is no longer that computer expert, but the large number of people who treat the computer as a use, somewhat the way we regard our toasters or VCRs.

How to Use Cookies in JavaScript?

Cookies are bits of information that a browser stores in your visitor's computer. They are helpful in that they allow you to store things like your visitor's preference when they visit your site or other types of data specific to a particular user. This session deals with how you can use JavaScript to create, store, recover and delete cookies.

What Kinds of Data Can Be Stored in a Cookie?

A cookie is essentially a string of text characters not longer than 4 KB. Cookies are set in name=value pairs, separated by semi-colons. For instance, a cookie might be a string like the following:

"theme=blue; max-age=60; path=/; domain=thedomain.com"
This example cookie has 4 variable/value pairs:

max-age, which is set to 60,
path, which is set to the slash character "/",
domain, which is set to "thedomain.com",
and theme, which is set to "blue".

JavaScript Availability to the site

Do you use JavaScript on your site page? While it is true that many people use browsers like Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla and Opera, all of which mostly support it, it is also true that there is a small number of people who use browsers that do not support JavaScript. This small percentage is not restricted to people using old browsers or those that have disabled JavaScript in their browsers. People who use handheld devices may not be able to read the content to generate using JavaScript on your site.

It is not to rely entirely on JavaScript to get the job done. That is, whenever use JavaScript in the pages; try to make the page work even if JavaScript is not available. By "work", it means that the visitor is still able to navigate the site and read the material on the page. In certain situations, better to use a combination of JavaScript and server side scripts to do the job: the JavaScript is used if possible; else, a server side script is invokes if the visitor hits a form button.

How to Create a Search Engine Friendly Website?

The below points tell you on how you can create a website or blog that is search engine friendly.

Add Text to Your Images, Flash and Videos

Validate Your HTML Code

Create Relevant Title Tags

Use Straight HTML Navigation Links on Your Website

Eliminate Apparent Content Duplication

Remove Hidden Text

Your Domain Name Should Be Your Website Name

Naming your site after your domain may appears to be very obvious to some of you, but you'll be astonished to learn that not each website is named after the domain name even when the webmaster owns that domain name.

Naming a site after its domain name is significant, for the simple reason that when people think of your website, they will think of it by name. If your name is also your URL, they'll mechanically know where to go. For example, when people think of thefreecountry.com, they don't have to speculate what URL to type into their browser to get there. The site name as same of the site URL.

On the other hand, if you're just starting out, you might favor the cheaper alternative of trying to get a domain name first, and then naming your website after the domain that you've acquired. So if you've acquired, say, the domain name "acme.com", then your website and business might be named "Acme" or "acme.com". I know this seems a bit like to put the cart before the horse, but that's the actuality if you don't want to lose out on the Internet.

Making Money from Your Web Site

If you hadn't already guessed, the Web is not going to be the source of wealth that a lot of people understood it would. Some people will get very wealthy, but some of them will earn nothing.

Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are a simple way for you to obtain some extra cash coming from your Web site. An affiliate program is where you partner with another company, typically an ecommerce company, to sell their product from your Web site. For every product you sell, you get a piece of the proceeds. The best known affiliate program sells books for Amazon.com, but you can sell something from car ads to fishing flies.

Advertisements

Many sites have advertising on them, and they are another way to add an income stream from your Web site. The money from advertising comes in two ways that the first from the number of people who outlook the ad and second from the number of "click-throughs" on the ad. Essentially, if your site gets a lot of hits it will get a better rate for advertisements. But even sites that have lower hit rates might have high numbers of clicks on the ad, and this will get you a improved rate as well.

Top 10 Tips to a Great Web Page

1. Know your audience, and keep them in mind when you write.
2. Keep your pages short.
3. Use tables of contents.
4. Keep images small.
5. Use Web colors.
6. Avoid lots of text.
7. Check your spelling.
8. Keep links current.
9. Annotate your links.
10. Put contact information on your pages.

What gives a site a professional appearance?

The site should include useful and interesting content, presented in an appealing manner with a quick download time. Your sites overall look should remain the same from page to page.

The site should load fast with a clear navigation system, unbroken graphics and links that work.

The site should use suitable graphics. Don't put in too many, and make sure to optimize the ones you do use to get better load times.

The site should have content that changes regularly, encouraging revisit visitors.

The site should have easily available contact information and you should give a quick response when people demand information or report trouble.

The site should have a newsletter that allows visitors to keep in stroke and tells them about new changes but does not crop those E-mail addresses for spam purposes.

The HTML should be Clean.

The website should be cross browser friendly and accessible to those using text only browsers.

Why You Need Internet Marketing

There is a common misunderstanding amongst numerous people with regards to Web Sites and it is that as soon as you have a Web Site people will start looking at it, and therefore it will draw new business. This is not actually true.

Spread the Word

There are a number of ways in which to let people know regarding your Web Site. The first and most understandable is via your current marketing efforts. Assuming you doesn’t already do Internet Marketing this will often include:

Business Cards

Complement Slips

Media Adverts

Invoices

Quotes

Receipts

Store Front

Company Vehicles

An Introduction to Accessible Web Design

Accessibility in Web Design addresses the issue in create Web sites that are available to all users, despite of physical capability or the way in which they are using the Internet.

In this article I will be introducing the concepts surrounding accessible Web Design, the present initiatives to amplify the accessibility of Web sites and the guidelines that you can use to make your site more accessible.

Why Accessibility Is Important

Why aren't all Web sites accessible? You may be asking yourself why this subject exists and why all Web sites aren't already reachable to all users. There are a number of reasons there to outline now.

Visually Disabled Users

Hearing Disabilities

Physical Disabilities

Cognitive and Neurological Disabilities

Beyond Disabilities

The Marketplace

Legal Requirement

Using Relative Font Sizes

Web sites, with few exceptions, middle on words. News, opinions, thoughts, ideas, stories, unique writing, e-commerce all words. Visual design and images are significant, to be sure, but if people can't read your words, what's the point?

In the fall of 2000, Jeffrey Zeldman notably said that relation font sizing was impossible because of an overwhelming diversity of browser bugs, starting with Netscape 4 and ending in the most modern browsers. Since then, Netscape 4 still hasn't gotten any better, and it still hasn't gone away, but at least we've all educated a thing or two about taming the browsers and making relative font sizing a reality.

Use relative font sizes in browsers that can handle them, and absolute font sizes in Netscape 4, which does not dependably support relative font sizes. You can do this even if you don't use multiple style sheets. In a minute, I'll give copy-and-paste solutions for the default Movable Type template and all default Radio themes. And a long explanation of the technique itself to help you realize it in other templates.

Why CSS is good for Google

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to divide the stylistic elements of a page such as layout, color and fonts from the content of the page such as paragraphs and images. We call this Separation of Content from appearance.

If you don't recognize CSS at all then you may decide not to use it for your site. However I would propose that the advantages to be gained from using CSS, not just for Google, are well value the time invested in learning it.

So why is CSS good for Google?

CSS allows for smaller sizes of files.

CSS allows you greater manage of page structure.

CSS allows you to conceal certain content from browsers while it still gets picked up by Google.

Using Your Web Site to Advertise Your Business

Web sites need additional than good content. A complete advertising campaign is the only way to make a Web site successful. You not only have to tempt possible customers to buy from you but you have to tempt them to buy from you NOW!

There are several key factors you must consider to achieve this:

What benefits does the customer get from buying the product? Does your product or repair make people smarter, faster, and more attractive? Do you have testimonials from your customers? Testimonials show your product's worth as well as set up your company's credibility.