What makes Joomla web site design so much preferable to others?

There were times when the development of websites took a developer weeks time to work on one project. Lengthy codes and use of different programming languages was required to be done in the earlier websites. So, it was never very easy for the person. But, with the growth of the demand of the websites from all quarters it became imperative that the development time of the website got reduced substantially lower. To meet this end, there was ever continuing work on the evolution of the programming languages which were more quick to work on and enabled the developer to make websites fast to meet the increased demand. There were two more factors which further fuelled the creation of the new programming languages. One of these was the requirement of the website development to be SEO-friendly and the other was to enable the vast amount of databases which were generated. PHP, MySql, HTML and others thus assumed increased important and so did the Joomla development as well.

Joomla, being based on the PHP, is actually a content management system. It has many inbuilt modules as well as third party add-ons and extensions which can be used by a Joomla development expert to design the website in days. It is possible to provide much distinct functionality to the joomla based website without having to write the lenghty codes for the same. Most of the functions can be found in-built as modules which you simply need to pick and place at the desired place on the site. At the same time, you manage the databases of different types in the way you want. Joomla design website provides a lot of control in the hands of the user or the administrator. The administrator is able to edit, add, delete any data from anywhere in the website. So, if you have to put up new content or new product images for the fresh arrivals or have to amend the prices of the products due to the off-season discounts, the administrator can very well do it without any trouble. There is a lot more which can be done as well.

Using Joomla design, you can create the websites from the most simple to the most complex ones. The creation of ecommerce sites or the sites which require a lot of data to be managed automatically, like those of the shopping malls, can be done easily using this platform of web development. There are inbuilt shipping modules, the invoicing modules and even the payment gateway integrating features that are easy to use and implement on the website. Another major benefit is that of the SEO friendly nature of Joomla design. There is a lot of support that can be taken from the joomla community as well. If you do not find anything inbuilt in Joomla, you have a good chance of finding it from the third parties or the community.

Zen Cart – A Search Engine Friendly Open Source Shopping Solution

Zen Cart is an open source store management system based on PHP and MySQL. It is freely available to the public for use. It has come out as a branch of the OSCommerce software as a separate project. The main differences between the two pertained to the development and incorporation of additional features like the gifts certificate/voucher modules in it and in the architectural changes in the layout of the module. The architectural changes were, in the earlier times, essentially the template based design modules. But, that has now given way to the CSS based design modules.

A Zen Cart developer can make use of the various features of Zen Cart to develop an ecommerce website for your online sale-purchase transactions. Some of these features include the multiple language support, sales and discounts features, local taxes incorporation, multiple shipping and payment options and others. While it gives an easy way out to the Zen Cart programmer to prevent detailed coding for the functionalities again and again, it does require skillful customization using its modules. The use of Zen Cart and other similar ecommerce carts has facilitated the quick designing process of the websites. You can now have your online store ready in a few days time. The greatest advantage of these software lies in the fact that the owner of the website can himself carry out the changes required like the replacement of the product photos, incorporating the discounts, setting up newsletters and many others. All in all, the administrator can do everything that can be done on the online store.

Yet another advantage of the Zen Cart ecommerce solution is that it facilitates the creation of the SEO friendly site. With internet marketing catching fever and every one clamouring hard to gain the maximum visibility on the most visited internet resources, notably the search engines, it would not pay if the SEO process is ignored by the Zen Cart developer. All the features of a website which make it SEO friendly shall be present in the ecommerce site as well. Some of these features are:

• Easy navigation: The coding of the Zen Cart is based on PHP and MySql and this makes it suitable for SEO since there is no problem of navigation of the pages. The time taken for loading of the site is lesser.

• Static URLs: It is possible to create the static URLs that are SEO friendly by using the Zen Cart third party as well as built in modules and add-ons. There are a number of software available for this. Or, even a seasoned Zen Cart programmer can do the needful in no big time. Therefore, it goes to meet one of the most perceivable criteria for doing the SEO.

• It allows you to have the meta tags for SEO for every page, product or category page. Even the image alt tags can be incorporated.

So, with all these essential SEO friendly features, it becomes important facilitators of marketing as well as sales processes.

Website Design – Strategies for Building Your Online Business

People often ask how can website be a brand when there are so many present online? They have a reason. It might become impossible distinguish your website from the others. How can you prevent your website from being lost into the jungle of websites out there on the World Wide Web? Does website design have a solution for this?
Interesting as it may seem, it is the web design only which has a solution for this. That your site is lost into a number of others is because the website design has not been done effectively in a professional way. The problem and its solution lie in the design itself. It is precisely the design which can create the elements of distinction so that the website leaves a lasting impression on the people’s mind. It is just the same as the product branding which bases itself on the product differentiation. Therefore, this is a key part of the overall strategy for building the online business. Unless the visitors see your business as separate from the others, there is less likelihood of your success, especially when there are many others providing the same.

Some of the activities that can be done for achieving these branding objectives are the following:

1. Study the competitor’s web design: Why not to make a beginning with the competitor who has been doing well online? Check out the different elements which he uses to make effective website design. You can benchmark your site with the one of the competitor element to element.

2. Write content as per the brand image of the company: If you are making the site for a company which has got a very good reputation offline and has a brand name for itself, you can not ignore the quality of the written content. The writing style of the content shall be in accordance with the brand image that has been developed by the company.

3. Pay attention to Prominence and placement of the different website design elements: Do you think that the company philosophy and its brand image warrant a prominent display of its logo over the others? Or, is it the products or the services which are to be highlighted more? If the company comes out with certain offers, do these need to be displayed prominently? These are the examples of some of the features of the web design which shall be looked into by the company. Relative importance of each of the element over the others needs to be clearly established.

4. Do not ignore the other pages: Do not put all the money on the landing or the Home page only. It is equally important to have the other pages designed well. Overloading of the home page with content, images or graphics shall be avoided. Space has its own relevance and it shall be given the place that it deserves on the web page. A confused look shall not come out of the website design.

Appealing landing Web page design: How and why to do it?

Landing page is the web page where the users ‘land’ after clicking the domain name URL of the website. In most of the cases, it is the home page of the website which is made the landing page but it is not necessary to do so. The other pages can also be made the landing pages of the website. If the SEO activity has been promoting the pages other than the home page, then there are good chances that the visitors might land at some of the non-home pages. The landing web page design shall have the capability to make the visitor to stop, have look around the page, visit the other pages of the site and finally, make a purchase.

So, there are three key objectives which a landing web page design shall achieve. Let us examine what are these objectives and how to achieve these. First, it shall be able to stop the internet surfer from further surfing or hopping over to the next website. It is estimated that the searchers take split second decisions on whether to stay on with the page that they have opened or move ahead. Therefore, the web page design where the visitors would be coming shall be designed in such a way that the visitors are compelled to stay on. The second objective is to make the visitors to explore other pages of the site. To make this happen, there shall be links to all the relevant parts of the site which the visitor would logically think to visit. The third crucial objective is to lead the visitors to make a purchase. This is the most difficult part to achieve and the effective website design can help to a great extent.

Based on these objectives to achieve, the landing web page design shall focus on the following:

1. What the visitors hope to find shall be displayed prominently.
2. The page shall enable faster navigation to all the other parts of the site
3. The text and the pictures shall be placed in a good structural arrangement on the landing web page.
4. All information in which the visitors are least interested shall be pushed down on the page.
5. The content shall be concise, comprehensive and written in an interesting way.
6. Make the banner graphics attractive, capable of stopping the visitors.
7. Do not get the webpage to have confused look. You shall avoid making the website design too colourful or filling every inch of its space with the content or graphics.
8. Incorporate the credibility enhancing features. These can be achieved by mentioning about the awards being won, memberships of the associations, trust seals from independent agencies and also the client testimonials in the text format.
9. Avoid putting in too much information on the landing page which will make it heavy and will take considerable time in loading. Clients may not wait till the loading is over.

A well made professional web design reduces the bounce rate and increases the conversion rate to make more customers.

The Power of Social Media Marketing in Achieving Top Google SEO Results

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Google SEO demands top ranking that is long-lasting. One of the key parameters which help in consolidating the top ranking in noted search engines, such as Google, is link popularity. However, creating quality inbound links is not easy at all. Does social media networking help in achieving high quality links? Let’s see how this concept has gathered a good momentum to achieve top Google SEO results.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing (SMM) is an online marketing strategy which uses social networks, to increase sales prospects, awareness, and marketing abilities of a business. Here, the website owner participates in online communities, blogs, and other social media sites, such as YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter, and so on to form social networks.

The members share data, links, sites, news, information, and opinions. In doing this, the social networking increases links, quality inbound links, and communication among likeminded websites.

Building Links

If you were to have an account in Twitter social media site, and link it to your website, you’d soon see how members flow in. One member brings in his followers too, to your website. As a result, there would be thousands of links pointing to your website from just few tweets.

Although building links through SEO is a monotonous job and you may not receive answers from most link exchange offers you mail, the same is not true for social media network.

Inbound, Quality Links

Along with links, you are also communicating with your tweets. Each link would ultimately reach to thousands of users across the globe. Search engine spiders automatically take a note of the links and index them. These are nothing but quality, inbound links as users come to your website to get some information or transact a deal.

The listing or ranking in search engine considerably increase. The inbound links that arrive through social media networks are natural links and not reciprocal ones. They are neither purchased nor negotiated by the other websites. As a result, the quality links help immensely in shaping the future of the website. Within days the website achieves top Google SEO ranking.

Communication and Management

Becoming avid members of social media sites brings prestige and awareness in the online world. If you have a good reputation, you can end up being listed in the first page of the search engine results when relevant keyword is searched in the search engines.

You can make a head start with this option by talking about your company with members in YouTube, MySpace, or Digg social media sites. Don’t forget about users who are avidly looking for opportunities to tarnish your image here as well.

Social Media Ranking

The power of social media marketing is immense. If you are a newbie entrepreneur and looking for top ranking in Google, try getting the top slot in social media network. As these sites rank well in search engines, you’d get more coverage and awareness if you were to optimize your website for social media networks.

The ranking would build awareness, prestige, and links for your website. SEO ranking would not be far away from this point.

The power of social media marketing is huge in achieving top Google SEO results. Directly, indirectly, it helps to boost the ranking. If you are not careful, it can even lower your SEO results. So, social media marketing is here to stay as a formidable online power.

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SEO and Website Design Guidelines for Webmaster

The importance of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) cannot escape anyone, who plans to create waves with his work of art. Today, websites need to have an appealing and aesthetic website design along with optimised content, graphics, and layout. As a webmaster, you need take a look at authentic guidelines on website designing and optimisation work before embarking in your endeavor. If you don’t do your homework well, you might well hit a wall in the dark. 

Content Focused on Target Audience

You need to understand the business conducted by the website owner before designing the website. For instance, the content should not only related to the subject your website is dealing, but also have a lucid and contemporary language, diction, etc to suit the readers or the target audience. 

Selecting the Right Keywords

Choosing the correct keywords and interspersing them in your website is one of the important factors that make a website design successful. Don’t forget that there are competitive keywords and some which are not so prominent. If you are targeting competitive keywords, ensure that you follow all the SEO rules to place them in your website. 

Creating a Site Map

Search engines give a lot of credence to sites which have effortless navigation. This signifies that there must a site map which gives the schematic orientation of the pages and the sub-pages. Although it is important to have consistency in design and layout, users are often left baffled with the numerous links and sub-pages in a site. 

Sometimes the Personal page would only consist for company information while contact information would be kept in a separate page. Nothing is wrong unless you are using something illogical or inconsistence in your navigation. However, a good site would always help users at any point of time to go back to where he was and go to yet anther new page. Site maps help in this endeavor brilliantly. The search engine spiders too depend on site maps to help them scan the website. 

Building Quality Links

All pages should be reached within a single or double click.  Don’t forget to fix broker links. You can use Google’s freeware, link checker tool, to help find out any broken links available in the site. A broken link, if available while scanning the site, automatically cancels the site from being scanned by search engine spiders. 

Validating HTML

You should ensure that coding is spic-n-span and without any errors. One mistake in an HTML coding can ruin the prospects of search engine spiders from scanning the site. You can use HTML validator tool to find out any coding errors in the site. 

Avoiding Bad Designs

Avoid using hidden text or links, cloaking or dubious redirects, sending automated queries to Google, loading a website with long refresh rate, etc. 

Lastly, keep your innovation and artistic flair in tune with SEO rules. You would surely make a top ranking website.

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Page Speed – New Google Ranking Factor for your Website

Google ranking has been a closely-guarded secret where search engine spiders scan a website keeping in mind some features of the site. Based on these readings, the data is placed in the algorithm and the website is ranked. Most webmasters involved in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) have conducted extensive research to find out this little secret to success. Page speed is an important factor that apparently seems to affect the ranking. Let’s find out what the hullabaloo is all about it – the page speed of a website. 

Loading Time of a Website

Having a page that can refresh at the quickest possible time is one of the most sought-after features one would look for. The traffic makes a beeline in the website that has the fastest uptime rate. This aspect has been picked up by Google. It has thus made this feature, as one of its parameters for measuring the search engine ranking. 

So, even if you create exquisite graphics or website designing that lacks in the uptime rate, you are not entertained by Google. Google has sufficient reason for this. JavaScript coding, flash files, heavy graphic files take ages to load. A user would often get impatient with the loading time. The result: he would simply leave the site. You lose a customer. 

Need for Page Speed

There are many factors other than heavy graphics or video files which affect the page speed. For instance, if you have an issue with the correct coding of the webpage, or increase browser flow, the load time can increase. You also need to use scripts that are search engine friendly and Cascading Stylesheet (CSS) scripting language. 

If the load time is less, the user would likely to have a hassle-free surfing. This follows that the bounce rate would also be less for you. To ensure that the website has the optimum amount of load time, Google has come up with software, known as Page Speed. 

Page Speed would also allow you to find out where you can tweak a little to shorten the load time. This tool can also be applicable to video files – an area where the load time is pretty high. 

How it Works

Page Speed is software that that helps to find out the areas where the load time suffers. It analyzes the web page and forwards advices on the page to the webmaster. When these advices are integrated into the page and necessary changes are done, the web page refreshes at a faster pace. 

This tool from Google can be downloaded for free. It also supports a page with FAQs, articles, how-to-use steps on the tool to enable webmasters to download and use the tool. 

So, next time to submit your website for ranking, make sure you have checked your site’s load time with Page Speed. Refresh rate has now become a major factor in search engine ranking – for Google at least.

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Website Design Services for Creating Effective Landing Pages

Landing pages are very important in adword campaign or Pay-per-Click (PPC) promotions. And, website designs must be apt enough to make the landing page effective and excellent to attract traffic and ultimately lure these surfers to customers. Although, many websites choose homepage as their landing page, the same may not be true for all cases. The landing page is a specialized page with subtle brilliance of website designs. Here are few of them mentioned below. 

What to Look for When Designing a Landing Page

When a web page is being developed for the purpose of landing page, the idea to give the users information they want. For instance, if the adword link was based on “cost effective digital camera”, the landing page should ideally provide a comparative study of the price range of different digital cameras. Then, explain why the gizmo is affordable. A button to buy this camera is also a must. 

However, if the homepage or contact us page is provided as the landing page for this adword, the users would feel frustrated and take time to know the real answer. Website designs must also be tweaked and altered to promote a landing page. 

Clear, Direct, and Simple Design

It is a must to have a simple yet clear and direct approach to the page. The user should not feel uneasy at the navigation or context of the webpage. The images, colors, fonts, etc should be simple to help users understand what to expect from the page. 

Ideally, a good landing page caters to a particular keyword and particular section of the society. So, each link in an adword should correspond to a unique landing page where the topic, sub-topics, and body content should match with the advert. 

“Call for Action” Content and Graphics

The main idea behind a landing page is to lure the traffic to become customers. Whether the users want to buy a product or subscribe to a newsletter, the notion remains the same – help them to act. 

This can best be done if the content and graphics used in the landing page “calls of action”. For instance, you may have a “Buy Now” button or a “Pick the Latest Issue” links at frequent intervals.

Promote the USP of Your Business

The page should identify how the offering would benefit the user, if the website services are availed. More the users come to know about the benefits of the products you are selling, the more they would like to buy the product. The content should be delineated in bullets and points to make it easy for the users to read and comprehend the text. The content should also be illustrated with images or illustrations. 

Less Uploading Time

On the technical front, ensure that you don’t stuff your landing page with Flash files or heavy graphic files so that the upload times takes a long time to complete. Just like website designing tips for any website where uploading time is managed using CSS and other coding tools, you need to effectively manage this part in the landing page too. 

Above the Fold

Don’t forget to use the most important content in “Above the Fold” space. This means that the reader should be able to get the gist of the landing page without scrolling the page. 

Lastly, website design of a landing page is not static but evolving each day for the better. You should keep a note of the tools and strategies developed for creating an effective landing page, continuously. And, edit to find out how the page performs in reality.

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Web Design for Search Engine Optimisation

If you are looking for an online presence, it is important to have a website that is optimised for search engines. In other words, a website which has a ranking way below in some umpteenth page would be useless as users would not go deep into the pages to fish out the website. What is really wanted in today’s scenario is a website design that caters to the needs to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Here are few designing tips and tricks to help a website get top ranking in search engines. Read on to know more. 

Professional Layout

A user spends roughly 8 seconds to decide whether to abandon the site or check it out further. If the user has to spend a lot of effort in understanding the layout or have too much cognitive stress, he would surely leave the site for good. 

A good website design should follow the accepted norms of website designs and layout. Moreover, the layout should be consistent throughout the sub-pages. White space should be adequate so that the layout does not have a cluttered look. A good layout has a professional touch in providing suitable space for various website design elements. 

For instance, if a website offers products for sale, each product reference should ideally be put in separate page. A page with relevant sub-pages of personal information of the website should also be provided. 

User-Friendly Navigation

Similar to the layout of the website, the website navigation should also be effortless for all types of users. In short, you should have navigation in a website design where users don’t have to spend time in understanding where to go to get their needs. 

A website design that is SEO-savvy also looks into some basic standard features in a website. For instance, the navigation should not only be user-friendly but also have apt linking to the home-page. There should be a site map and a bread-crumb navigation facility. Search engine spiders look into the navigation of the site in great detail before ranking them in search engines. 

Cascading Stylesheet

Although Cascading Stylesheet (CSS) was developed to give polish and sharpness to different graphic elements, such as tables, text boxes, etc, its effective use has been in optimising the website. Website designers soon realized that CSS code removed jargon from the source code. It also made unique colors and designs along with this attribute. 

As a result of this utility, search engine spiders could easily scan through the source code within minutes and get to the body text. With spic-n-span source coding text, the website designs also looked far more professional – and, SEO-savvy. 

Content Development

Website design is never complete without the content. An optimised website has to integrate useful content that is lucid to read and informative for the users. In fact, content should be such that users find exactly what they want in seconds of their approaching the site. This can only happen if the website content is interspersed with relevant keywords and phrases. 

In other words, apt keywords and phrases with correct density in the body text help a long way in ranking the website. Additionally, negative keywords should also be delineated in the source code to help streamline the optimisation effort. 

Lastly, don’t forget to stay away from some factors to make your website design SEO-friendly. For instance, avoid Flash, JavaScript-enabled animation, etc, as these are not entertained by search engines.

Blog – Boost Your Search Engine and RSS Traffic

One of the more recent secrets people are using to get their websites in the search engines, the last couple of years, is with Blogs. Blogs are short for web logs and are like daily dairies on the web.

Blogs started out as ways for Internet reality types to share their lives with other people on the web, without having to learn very complicated web design applications like Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.

Dreamweaver, the standard professional web design program takes a least 6 months to master. While FrontPage on the other hand looks a lot like Microsoft Word, and therefore can be used a bit more quickly by people just starting out.

Blogs are much easier to use than any web design software. They can be used to change web content from a browser, email, and even simple desk top software. Blogs are web pages created with automated software that date stamps all changes to content.

One of the secrets the web marketers use to get their new websites into the major search engines like (Google – Yahoo! and MSN) is called blog and ping. So many Internet fortunes are being built on this simple technique.

If you want your new website to be indexed (or included in the search engine database) you shouldn’t submit it to the search engines — instead you should blog and ping.

There is a new feature with Google and Yahoo! known as sitemaps, which will also get your site indexed, but most of us will do fine with learning first to blog and ping.

Blogs index and file your web pages automatically according to the way you specify in advance.

Google loves blogs and has its own web based application called Blogger. You can set up a Blogger account for free at Blogger.com.

You should use Blogs for your business to give updates to your customers and supporters every few days on your company’s news or inside information. You can also reflect on industry trends with your business blog.

What’s nice about blogs if you want to get your site in the search engines or keep the search engines up to date with your latest optimization or content efforts. You can post your new website or page to your blog page and link to that page.

The search engines will visit the blog page more frequently and index your new pages or web sites some times in a day or two. Also make sure when you post a new blog in Blogger.com you set up your account to ping (or notify) the other major blog directories that your blog has been updated.

Or if you want to get your new site into Google go to a high ranked blog listed in Google. If the Blog allows comments give a good comment on the blog. Then link back to the page you want indexed in the Blog.

Make sure you give a worth while or useful comment or it will be considered blog spam by the website administrators. Sometimes blog publishers disable the comment feature for this reason, therefore it is important to have your own blogs especially if you have more than one site. This will get the Google spider to index your new sites or web pages within a few days and consider your site for its database given the criteria of its algorithm.

If you are looking for a fast, inexpensive and efficient way to build a lot of content on your site, which the search engines will pick up, go to Blogger and open up a free blogging account and join the blogosphere.

- The Love Affair between the Search Engines, Blogs and RSS I have been extolling the SEO benefits of Blogs since almost two years ago. Although blogs and search engines don’t seem to enjoy the free for all love affair they once had, the search engines and blogs seem to still be married “for better or for worst”.

The romance and infatuation phase between search engines and blogs has waned because of blog spam. However search engines dare not divorce blogs because they tend to cook up regularly updated content.

Blogs are also search engine friendly in design. As publishers we love blogs because it is an easy way for us to update our sites with new content.

Many top marketers are extolling about the power of blogs and their natural extension RSS feeds. Almost every successful Internet Marketers today is using some variation of blogs and RSS feeds.

Everywhere you go the web gurus are talking about the great upside potential of blogs and RSS. RSS for the purpose of discussing this issue stands for Really Simple Syndication.

RSS is presently being used by Internet marketers to share their blog headlines with websites and desktops all over the world. Think of RSS as giving you the ability to blog without boundaries.

People on other websites and with downloadable RSS newsreader software can read your newest blog posts without visiting your site. Sites that value your expertise will in a viral fashion feature your RSS feeds and help generate traffic to your site.

This allows you to leverage traffic from other peoples sites who feature your blog. Moreover, your subscribers who read your RSS headlines on their desktop software will avoid email filters.

Before you explore or upgrade to RSS marketing experiment with desktop newsreaders like Tristana or News Gator. If you prefer to read RSS from your browser download and install Mozilla’s FireFox Browser.

RSS feeds will be the next phase in Internet marketing following the search engines, email marketing, affiliate marketing, and joint ventures.

By having people subscribe to your blog’s RSS feeds, or having them syndicated on other people’s websites you will be getting a running start on the explosion in blog and RSS marketing once Internet Explorer integrates RSS into its browser.

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