Posts Tagged ‘website design’

As the most popular social media website around and the second most popular website in terms of new accounts, Facebook attracts members of all ages. With currently over a steadily growing 750 million active Facebook users, the opportunity for using this social media platform for business purposes arises.

Facebook allows users to introduce webinars, podcasts, blog posts, articles, products and services while connecting with current and potential clients. Create a community around your business and be discovered by those who are searching for your products and services through advertising and promotion online. It is these connections which lead to referrals, customers and return clients.

Privacy settings control which portions of your profile different connections can or cannot see. Using this function allows you to decide what aspects of your business are exposed to your friends and those not friended yet.

Engage with potential customers online by being helpful, informative and providing interaction. One good practice is to ‘like’ other businesses who may need your product or service. When they return the favor and ‘like’ your page, their individual fans will be exposed to what you do as well.

Remember, social media can be a positive experience, but as with anything else online, you should be careful of what you click on. Read my post on Viral Infections on Facebook to better prepare yourself before diving in.

Use the Facebook logo on your printed material, business cards and website. Don’t have a website for your small business? Contact me today for ideas to promote your business with a custom website design for a fair price!

To keep your customers involved in your business online, simple website navigation is an important factor. Imagine a natural flowing positive website experience, and consider these tips for a web design that is easy to navigate your way through.

The sections of your small business website that you want your websurfers to naturally land on should stick out like a sore thumb. Think about which parts of your website you want visitors to be sure not to miss. When someone cannot locate their particular topic of interest, chances are they could bounce off to another website. The object is to keep them digging for more, and eventually bookmark you and refer you to others.

In order for your website visitors to navigate easily, it may be a good idea to add a sitemap to sections with numerous pages. When a single tab grows large enough you may even want to make a short guide list for reference. On my website I created a Resources Sitemap which covers everything under my “Resources” tab on one page.

Consider having tabs across the top so your potential customers can find what they are looking for quickly and easily. Make the custom website design intended for function so everything is simple to find.

Group your most important links together on a sidebar at the left or right. Highlighting the links you think are the most important and using bold appropriately can easily guide your website visitors where they need to go as well.

Visit my blog and website on a regular basis for web design related tips, news and advice, and contact me by email to discuss your own small business custom website design.

Upon taking my own advice of “studying keyword analytics in order to find out what keywords your visitors use to locate your website”, I discovered a total of 15% of my website traffic in the last month came from “sidebar” related searches. I thought this was rather coincidental considering just last night I did a sidebar redesign for my stepbrother’s website, Masterson Construction Services located in the Los Angeles, California area.

Some of the terms I was found on Google’s search results were ‘website sidebar ideas’, ‘sidebar ideas’, ‘wordpress sidebar ideas’, ‘web design sidebar’, ‘webdesign sidebar’ and ‘side bar ideas’. There seems to be no problem planning website content, but my readers have a need for website sidebar ideas.

In this recent project the website’s right column had the same two pictures on each tab. By changing them each to the theme of the tab they were located under, the website visitor gets more of a feel of what each tab is about. Feel free to click through the tabs to see how the photos on the right side are unique on each webpage.

If you have a subject you’d like to see a post about, feel free to comment something of interest. Bookmark my blog and website for tips and advice dealing with website design and other internet related topics. Contact me by email for information on custom website design.

When filtering spam comments on your blog, a few considerations need to be focused on. Identify whether you are looking at an actual comment by a human or a program designed to add comments for the purposes of gaining a backlink.

Besides some of the add ons and plugins that are offered with most blogs to filter spam, you may still have to delete some spam that gets through those defenses. When you notice a comment has nothing to do with the post you wrote, chances are you can delete it for being spam. Sometimes you can recoginze blog spam comments by the website it links back to.

A great way to filter a large portion of blog comment spam is with the WordPress Akismet and the SI CAPTCHA Anti-Spam plugins.

Here are some examples of some actual comments on my blog that I approved:

Dear Rog,
MUCH BETTER! I like the new vid much better.

I very much appreciate this update my computer has had some issues so this will definitely help

The tips provided by you are very good and useful.
Thanks

I really enjoyed flicking through this. Think I’m going to look through your other posts!

Spam has always been a problem, and seems to be getting worse every day. A good way to tell if a comment is spam is to see if it has anything to do with your blog post or if it is just a general comment. Spam comments usually say something like, “while the sites we link to below are completely unrelated to ours, we think they are worth a read, so have a look” or “we like to honor other sites on the internet, even if they aren’t related to us, by linking to them. Below are some websites worth checking out.”

Bookmark my blog and website for internet related tips and advice, and contact me by phone or email about a custom website design for your small business website.

Recently my computer did an automatic update from the old Beta version of Internet Explorer to the new Internet Explorer 9. I was happy with the Beta version that I had been using for the last couple months, and the upgrade was a very subtle difference.

With the Beta Internet Explorer there were some issues uploading photos to Yahoo, which still seems to be a problem. The photo upload to Yahoo works fine in Firefox, so this error isn’t due to server related or Yahoo updates.

There were no problems with YouTube’s compatibility with IE9 Beta or Tinypic.com, and as suspected this is still the case. I also noticed the IE9 Beta version would not allow the user to log into Tinychat.com or Stickam.com to group video chat and that issue seems to be resolved as well.

Overall everything seems fine with the update to Internet Explorer 9 and displays properly for all my websites concerning video and audio. Have a look at Internet Explorer 9 at beautyoftheweb.com

Visit my blog and website regularly for news, tips, advice and updates in the internet world as we know it. Contact me today about a custom website design for your small business by phone or email today!

The communication evolution began in primative times with smoke signals. Soon with the invention of electricity, morse code and telegraphs became our primary forms of communication. Letters in the mail took a very long time until the telephone’s invention in 1876.

The telephone’s become a mainstream way to talk to people so far away, even to this day. From the telephone we added electronic mail, or e mail replacing envelopes and postage, currently referred to as “snail mail”.

The way we communicate is constantly changing. The primary form or communication used to be the telephone, although it still is very popular, video chatting is the growing alternative. With video chat on instant messenger, Skype, and even chatrooms such as Stickam and Tinychat, we’re becoming more comfortable with seeing who we’re talking to.

Smartphones have video and microphone capabilities built right into them and give the user the option of video conferencing at any time of the day. We use social media like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to keep in touch with every detail about each other’s lives, up to the minute. Communication with people isn’t the only factor, but now we even have the need to communicate with robots and programs.

With online shopping, banking and even remotely controlling lights and appliances in your home, we’re seeing communication go beyond the realm of just people. We have gadgets to communicate with other gadgets around the home and office, from the TV remote to the bluetooth on your cell phone.

How many more hours will we spend on the phone with a computer voice prompting us through a neverending path of virtual menus just with the hope and intention to instead have someone to whom we can explain our needs? Our evolution in technology has taken away the personal touch of talking to an actual person in the customer service department.

Now anyone can get in touch with anyone else with ease. I see 5 year olds with cell phones and his grandpa is checking his hotmail online. Grandma’s bluetooth is connected to her iPhone and my older relatives are reuniting and connecting on Facebook. It’s a great time to grab the communication revolution by the horns and see what it has in store for you.

I do website design to the latest standards in either a custom CMS content management system, or smaller, static websites for small business. Whether your needs are simple or of epic proportions, I can help you get the web design you’re looking for. Bookmark my blog and website for tips and advice in the world of web design, and contact me by phone or email today to discuss any of your small business website design needs.

Google has recently launched a realtime search engine integrated into their search results showing information as it is posted online. The updates include information from sources such as news articles, Yahoo Answers, Twitter tweets, Facebook updates, MySpace announcements and much more. The Google realtime results can be paused, and there is even a scroll bar to review other recent results. You can even use real time search results on your mobile phone.

Google has linked partnerships with both Facebook and MySpace so that data can be streamed for any publicly available posts. This is in addition to the partnership they announced with Twitter in October 2010.

Google determines whether a search is worthy of having realtime results associated with it. When high quality information comes in, then Google will show it. In other words, if Google thinks something has some “realtime” component to it, the search engine will show the section. If Google sees a spike in information on a certain topic or queries on a topic, it assumes there is a realtime situation occurring.

You can even go to Google Realtime and set alerts for real time search results, allowing you to view up-to-the-second news articles, blog posts and social media updates about hot topics around the globe. Google’s real time search engine in coordination with Google Instant Results gives the user a simple experience searching online.

Bookmark my blog and website for web design news and updates, and visit often for new blog posts on a regular basis. Need a custom website? Contact me by phone or email to provide me with details on your expectations.

Test drive the new Firefox 4 Beta and let the designers know what you think. Giving feedback to software design companies is a great way to offer your input about any bugs or defects in the programs they release.

As a web designer, I test code in many different browsers, and there’s nothing wrong with testing out a beta and replying to them with your opinions. Let them know what games work, how fast pages and videos load, and whether your favorite add-ons are compatible with the new version of Firefox. Let them know what websites have problems and if everything functions normally. My experience indicates no problems with the new Firefox 4.0, and my add-ons, including the webmaster toolbar, all work just fine.

You can even take Firefox 4 with you on your Android phone or Nokia N900 and enjoy all your favorite features such as add-ons, Sync, and the Awesome Bar anywhere you go.

Test drive the new Firefox 4 Beta and let them know what you think. From a web designer’s perspective, Firefox is probably the most useful website browser available. Keep posted on my website and blog for news, tips and advice in website design and other internet related topics.

The soon release of DupeFree Pro’s version 2 prompted the need for testers to work with an early version of the software. Being in it’s final stages of development, DupeFree Pro is looking for those willing to try out the new software and provide feedback. Participants will be asked to try out the software and discuss any improvements and bugs.

DupeFree Pro is a program useful to writers, that tests for word count, keyword density and duplicate content online. If everything goes to plan, the first version available to the public should be available in 6 to 8 weeks. To become a part of the team of software testers, simply submit a ticket stating why you should be a tester, your Windows operating system and how if ever you’ve used DupeFree Pro in the past. DFP v2 is initially going to be compatible with the Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7

Those chosen to participate in this project will be offered a very special deal when DFP v2 is released publicly as a thank you for any time and effort. As well as getting a copy of DupeFree Pro v2 to play with, testers will get access to a private forum area to communicate with DupeFree Pro and other beta testers. This will be the central area for logging in and working on bugs and issues. Please note this is a closed private beta with a limited number of slots availible, and DupeFree Pro is looking for users who really make use of the current program and who want to help shape v2.

Bookmark my blog and website for tips and advice in the world of web design, and contact me for details on how to get an affordable custom website design for your small business today!

Update: I recently applied to be a tester for the new beta version of DupeFree Pro and have been accepted into the private beta group! The programmers are now finalizing a beta version ready for the group and I’m hoping to have access to it and the private forum before the end of the week.

Listen Now Click right arrow | You may also Download the MP3 | Playtime 09:30 (min./sec.)

Listen to this truth behind custom CMS web design services report subtitled: A Report on Real World CMS User Experience. This conversation between myself and my dad, Jim Degerstrom, co-owners of Custom CMS Design, LLC, presents a major revelation about CMS Content Management Systems.

Many website owners launch an Content Management System and neglect to take advantage of the ability to add content. Having a CMS allows the website owner to take our advice and add original quality content often.

Download this custom CMS web design report in pdf or you could right click and open in a new tab to read along as you listen.

Consider these marketing tips and advice to maximize your CMS custom web design. Call and email me with any questions. There is no substitute to an easy to use custom content management system to help generate business and more website traffic.