Design My Own Website

Archive for the ‘Other Misc Stuff’ Category

I’m an entry level freelancer and am trying to figure out some rough pricing.

I get this question a lot. Web Design contracting is not that difficult. The “hardest” part is getting clients.

As far as charging, it really depends on the type of website and how much maintenance.

Web Design As A Contract Job Can Be A Good Source Of Income

If you’re looking to do just local ma-and-pa type shops and professional services (like dentists) and throwing up a brochure type site with nothing too fancy, I would say you could charge $20 a month for everything. Some months they will want a lot of work, some months they won’t need any work.

So you might want to try just one or two and see how many hours you spend on maintenance and then from there adjust your pricing depending on how much time you find spending on maintenance.

However, if you use WordPress, much of the maintenance can be done by the client. WordPress content management is easy to use.

I would say that the initial build of the site you could easily charge $500 for, especially for small brochure sites for professional services type clients: a dentist, chiropracter, physical therapist, etc. You could do $500 for a professional service site (WordPress) and then $10 to $20 a month for maintenance.

Good luck and have fun!

It really depends on the purpose of your site and your timeline – if it’s not overly complex, you can do it yourself. Otherwise you will have to get a professional.

This is by far my favorite web design resource “Web Design Mastery” which I talk about often on my own blog.

The first part of Web Design Mastery, “Planning your website” , is exactly what you’re looking for as far as designing your site. It will also give you some good info if you end up going with a professional so you can speak the same language and know what kinds of questions to ask.

The rest of the resource is helpful if you will build your own site, it won’t be much help if you go with a professional in which case I’d leave it up to you if it’s worth $67 to buy it. I’m sure the info is out there for free or cheaper but I pretty much use “web design Mastery” for a lot so I don’t know what else would be out there. If your timeline is pretty liberal and you are on a budget, definitely keep looking.

As far as tips and tricks: Web Usability is very important and I think it is often not thought about enough.

I did write a quick article on a few common Dos and Donts (based off of “Web Design Mastery”) .. it’s on my blog but here’s the quick version of the Don’ts (and it might be common sense except for the last one)

Don’t:
poor load time
poor browser compatibility (i.e. too complicated)
slow loading graphics
too many graphics
too many animations
busy distracting backgrounds
poor use of frames
too much advertising
large welcome banners (even your own!)
overuse of java
overuse of any technology for that matter
confusing layout and usability ****

This last one is tricky because even if your site is nice and clean it can still be confusing. As an example, if you go to a bunch of membership sites where you need to register for an account, you’ll know what I mean – some of them have very very easy to find “Register” or “Sign up Now” buttons, others are very hard to find. Usually these should be in the upper right. Most “function” buttons (login, logout, register, etc..) are found in the upper right.. Put them somewhere else and users conditioned to see htem in the upper right will be confused. Also, why use “Sign Up” (two words) when “Register” works just as well and lets the user think less.

Another example of “confusing” or “not confusing” layout: shopping cart buttons. Thanks to Amazon and some of the early and big stores, people have been conditioned to see a shopping cart and know to click on it to go to their cart. So the words “Your Cart” or “Go To Your Cart” will be confusing. Even though the design is clean, it can be confusing.

Hope this is helpful!

Web design and seo have a very grave relationship and one needs to be acquainted with both to make his/ her web portal both eye catching for the web users and easy for the search engines to index and rank. The emergence of professional SEO marketers has made it possible for virtually any web portal to feature in the top searches on the major search engines.

The best part is where you optimize your web portal without compromising on the attractiveness and design of the specific web portal. The very foremost concern is that you can never ignore the design faade of a web portal as it also holds imminent connotation. It will be wise on your part to make sure you are well versed with web design and SEO at the same time and invest in both of them because: – they can assist you in flaunting yourself at the top ranks in search engine result pages (SERP) when someone types in a particular keyword related to your trade.

It also makes certain that your online presence is expanded to an unprecedented level and quality, organic traffic is drove on to your web portal in huge volume. This will also incessantly generate business specific leads and in no time your sales will reach a new high. This should also go as a relief, if you are involved in pay per clicks and other PPC programs. The guaranteed high ROI (Return on Investment) should motivate you to take up web design and SEO to a completely new level. Web design of your site should not pose a hindrance in the way of search engine optimization.

Those business entities that have a powerful and resourceful web site of their own; you should be very likely to fix it with actual personalized contented and not taking into account the design hindrance that comes in your way. Even if you have allowed your web site to take care of the more accessible genus of the World Wide Web, it should still possibly be created as a thoughtful and recognizable expansion of one’s enterprise. The explanations for doing so will be authorized, and cannot only just be unnoticed for the sake of achieving an initial time alignment.

Mark the words Web design is as essential to a business as seo is. The primary backbone about search engine optimization can be augmented with SEO friendly web design (exclusion of flash, etc) and the web site will be designed in such a manner that search engine crawlers can optimize the web portal with utter ease. And, you may not be alone amid those that have that sad thought-If I do this all Search engine optimization collectively and attain major ranking generally; people might deem that my site is consequently stale and unexciting.

This is an altogether wrong notion harboring in many a mind right now. Whether you are a fortune 500 company or a recent start up SEO can give your business the much needed online presence and proper web design will help you connect with your customers.

Mr. Pankaj is a SEO expert, providing SEO Services India and lot more. He came from a technical background. He did MCA from a reputed institution in India. After just one year and great success in the role, Pankaj was promoted to SEO Manager (Operations). He is passionate about internet marketing technology and love to spend the valuable time to research and operate SEO operations Team. Explore SEO Plan.

Author: Pankaj Kumar Singh
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Buying Camera in US, Pick up at Canadian border

What is a Domain Name and why do I need it?
A Domain Name is the unique www web address that visitors type to get to your website. Think of it in the same sense as your physical address and that in the same way they find your house, they use your domain to find your website. An example is my own website, to find it people need to type in my domain name to find it. It is mandatory to have a domain name.

Can I have any Domain Name?
A Domain Name must be available and not taken or registered by anyone else for you to have it.

Who owns the Domain Name?
After you register the domain name of your choice from ICANN – Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the people responsible for registering all domain names on the Internet, you will own this for the stipulated length of time as per your registration contract.

What is Hosting, and what do I get?
All websites require hosting, it is a bit like paying rent for your house except this time you are paying someone to have their computer on 24/7 and for you to store your website files on it so they can be accessed worldwide at anytime by anyone visiting your website. This is called a hosting server, you could do this yourself but it would mean leaving your PC on all the time and always connected to the Internet. Not worth it for the average person due to time and costs from your ISP and power companies. Let the experts do the website hosting for you for pennies a day.

Other Relevant Questions

How long will it take for my Website to go live?
If you use DIY website design it will be as quick as you can make it since you will take full control of this process. If you arrange for a bespoke website design plan your website designer will need you to provide all the relevant materials quickly (logos, content, contact details, sales copy etc) so they can put all these together ASAP and have your website ready and live in a few days.

What kind of support do I get afterwards?
Should you have any issues, queries or problems you need to know what sort of support you can reasonably expect to get. Are they available to help at all times or only working hours? Can you email or call them when you need to?

What length of Contract would I have to commit to?
Do they tie you in for any set periods?

What guarantee is available for any services you buy? Is it money back and for how long?

If you already have a Website which needs updating, can they help?

Are they a website doctor? Can they redesign your Website? Does this save you on the costs by simply fixing what’s already there?

Will your Website be ‘Search Engine’ friendly and show up in the search engines?

If you are a small one man business and would like to do better in your local area. Can they help or will bypass you in favour of bigger clients?

Are there any hidden costs?

Can you have an area of your website reserved for customers only?

Can you have an autoresponder to capture website visitors’ details?

Who owns the Copyright?
Will all your intellectual property and other assets and trademarks remain intact?

How would you update my Website?
Most websites come with CMS or content management system as standard these days. Will they show/train you how to use this so you can take control and change or update your website when you want to? This saves you time and money.

What if you are not an expert with computers?
If you can use Microsoft Word you can operate most CMS systems make sure you are clear about this before being hit with maintenance bills.

Can you get email with your Website?
All websites come with mailboxes for you and your staff and in some cases you can have an unlimited number of email mailboxes for your website. Be clear about this.

Can you forward my email to Yahoo/Hotmail/Gmail?
This can be arrange for email forwarding for you using the control panel that comes with your website. Ask your provider about this.

Can I see how many visitors my Website gets?
They should provide you with a stats program of some sort. If not ask to get Google analytics hooked up to your website.

What will a Website cost me?
Make sure you agree all costs upfront and avoid nasty surprises down the line.

Do you display ‘banners’ or ‘pop-up ads’ on my Website and share in my website revenue?
Some website designers do this. Make sure you are clear on this one and every other point in this article.

Michael Smith is the owner of Jax Internet ( http://www.jaxinternet.co.uk ) in Glasgow Scotland specialising in website design and hosting for small businesses. Visit http://www.quicksitemaker.co.uk for excellent website hosting deals.

Author: Michael Phiri-Smith
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Low-volume PCB Assembly

Websites way to start your online business.

Now a day’s online business is on high demand. Think whatever and it is available online in just couple of seconds and would be delivered at your door step in 24 to 48 hours. If your are working for long hours and don’t have time to go for shopping for your self or for your love ones, don’t be upset in this high tech world every thing is available online and will be deliverable at your doorstep in 24 to 48 hours even in India. 2 – 3 years ago online shopping and next day delivery facility was available in western countries only but from last few years these type of services are also available in India.

Many branded companies & marketing portals of India are offering these types of services online. Any one can start his or her products marketing & online sale just in few months buy developing thematic product website and promoting the website in major search engines like Google, Yahoo & MSN.
So if you have plan of online business just search for a Website Designing Company to design & develop your website and start your business right now.

So what are your waiting for think about a good online business plan, search and collect product knowledge, study and analyse market stats and observations, search a good company for hosting, designing and developing a website for your online business and also optimize and promote your website for major search engines like google, yahoo and msn for getting targeted traffic and leads.

Sherry Rishi

Website Designing Company

http://www.syruptechnologies.com

Author: Sherry Rishi
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
Provided by: Guest blogger

If you are planning on building a website for ecommerce purposes you need to know that doing so is a very different experience than any other type of website will be. Because the focus is on generating revenue the elements that you need to consider and incorporate will be very different than a website design that is aimed at educating the public about goods or services.

If you have decided that you want to try and sell products online here are a few things to consider when including ecommerce elements in your company’s web design.

Does the website design match the products?
This may seem obvious but for many people this is something that they overlook. It is not just about making sure that the site features the products you are trying to sell. The entire feel of the design also needs to support the impression you are trying to give potential customers. In a way, it’s a little like creating an overall brand except that in this case, it is focused more on the products that you are trying to sell.

Think about how you want customers to feel when they look at your site and the kind of customers that you want to attract. A fun and modern website design may be great for cutting edge products whereas if you are selling more traditional products or services you may need a more traditional site design. The wrong website design may confuse customers and they may end up going elsewhere to purchase their goods.

A simple design may be best
Remember that you want your website design to showcase your products. You want the products to stand out in your customer’s mind and not the site itself (although you do want them to remember your site enough to return to it more than once). A site that is overly flashy may detract from the items or make it difficult for them to even find the products that they are looking for.

If you do have an ornate website design already you may want to find a way to link it to a simpler, cleaner virtual storefront that incorporates some common website design elements but which may be less flashy and more straightforward.

Make it easy for customers to choose and pay for products
A shopping cart is essential to selling products online. Unfortunately the best shopping cart may be useless if customers cannot find it. Therefore it needs to be possible for them to find the shopping cart. It also needs to work consistently and mesh well with the payment system. If someone is unable to complete a transaction they will likely go to the competition and make their purchases there. This loss of revenue can be devastating for ecommerce website design.

By putting a lot of thought into your design you can create a powerful tool to raise online revenue. The look of the site, combined with the overall feel and the functionality can make or break your site so consider each choice carefully in order to make the best decision for your company.

Jeremy Horwitz is a freelance author who writes about various website design topics. To know more about Jeremy’s Ideas please visit his website. www.website-design-company.net

Author: Jeremy Horwitz
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Website design is the look of the website which tells us many things about the purpose of the website. Previously, website designs were only done to give websites a style but now with the advancement of web technology, innovation is taking place by adding fancy tabs and different links. Since there are new inventions and innovations of languages coming in every day, designing has adapted a whole new role of improvising web content with proper looks.

2010 was a rather fast year for web development where we saw the mobile taking over the PC very rapidly. 2011 is predicted as the year for mobile content as more people each day are accessing the web through their mobile devices. This new trend will have an impact on a lot of e-commerce and small business websites because in order to cater to this changing trend, many users will have to get Scalable websites which cater to the iPhone, iPad and the traditional browser at the same time. The latest trend amongst web designers is now the CSS for developing these flexible websites.
Getting a flexible website is quite beneficial for all because there will be no need to create separate and custom made websites dedicated for mobile users only. They will be able to build one website which will serve up the need successfully for various browsing platforms.

Every website is desperate for attention and unfortunately they get only 5 to 10 seconds of it on average, in that short amount of time, you have to grab their attention and if you are successful in retaining the visitor you will have another minute or two to present all the other information. The predicted trend for 2011 is that many websites will incorporate the “editorial layout” which will enable the visitors to find information on the website more easily. Websites with editorial layouts will have concise articles that have sub heading and large images.

The awareness for internet security is increasing day by day and people want assurance that the website they are using for transactions and money handling is secure. In 2011, website security will also be enhanced and people who have trust seals incorporated on their websites will have a better chance of retaining customers and shoppers on their websites. People who incorporate the EV (Extended validation) or the EV SSL certificate will have a better chance of customer conversion and lower desertion rates. The EV SSL certificate seal indicates to customers that this website has been thoroughly examined by a commercial certification authority and interactions with this website are safe.

2011 is the year for web design innovation and invention. There will be a lot more things heading our way once the tablet PC industry goes to competition in full throttle. This year is undoubtedly a turning point and a learning phase for all web designers. A lot of technological advancements are also expected in the near future of web designing and web development as many people are deserting JavaScript and turning towards CSS3. So there it is, quarantining the flash and increasing mobile phone compatibility with websites seem to top the list of the latest trend of 2011, Other things that follow are the increased use of photography, artwork and bold designs are the trends expected for 2011.

When it comes to technology, one can never be too certain about trends because we live in a world where change is taking place faster than we think and each day it is getting harder for normal people to keep up with the change. Some have already given up and are now living in the world where apple and blackberry are still fruits to them.

Author: Saad Muhammad Khan
Article Source: EzineArticles.com

Do not underestimate the importance of getting your site indexed when you are designing your own website.

For people who are looking to planning their own website, we tend to be business owners or those dabbling in internet marketing.

The most important thing to do with a new website is get it indexed quickly by search engines, and one valuable tool to do this is to use a sitemap.

Here are some simple steps I’ve learned to do this:

1) Go to http://whois.sc and type in your URL: e.g. designmyownwebsite.net. Once you get a search result, click on the “About Us: Wiki article on designmyownwebsite.net“. This will create a page on a high page-ranked website.

2) Create a sitemap.xml page. If you are using WordPress, use the Google XML Sitemap (it will do this automatically!). If you have a regular website, check out http://sitemaps.org. Once you have your sitemap (typically http://designmyownwebsite.net/sitemap.xml) ping it at http://blogsearch.google.com/ping

3) Submit your RSS feed to Pingoat.com and Pingomatic.com . If you are using WordPress, it will probably be here: http://designmyownwebsite.com/feed/rss2. For a regular site, create one at http://html2rss.com

4) Submit an article in your site or a page in your site (not just the root site) to social bookmarking sites Digg.com and Stumbleupon.com.

That should get you going!

Good luck!
WebDesignerScotty

Just a quick word out to you all.

I have been busy with website projects (fancy that) but I still plan to be back here soon with more interesting things. I think the most difficult is trying to figure out where to start. There is so much to talk about and so many different levels (I am guessing) of people coming in here. I almost want to just start from scratch and then go from there.

So with that said, what I hope to come back to soon -the basic steps of designing your own website. For now I am going to take a generic approach because there are so many reasons people are designing a website.

It can really be divided into two categories
1) Personal
2) Business

(And of course there’s quite a bit of overlap)

Personal I will say is generally a person, couple, or group writing about themselves, their life, or their experience.

Business I will say is generally a business (fancy that) wanting to sell a product or rather fulfill a need.

Personal can take many forms from a blog (like this), to a forum, to some other interactive site.

Business can also be a forum, interactive site, providing of services, providing of products, etc.

The design you take for each of those sites will vary greatly, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say most of the people coming here are for personal sites OR small online business sites which may overlap quite a bit with personal sites.

So what is the next thing?

1) Figure out the purpose of your site
2) Figure out how you would like to accomplish that
3) Go to other sites you like that may do something similar and get ideas for colors and designs
4) Pick a domain name (VERY IMPORTANT) and register it
5) Get a hosting company. With few exceptions I always recommend a paid hosting company. Free hosting or free blogging sites have their place, but in general hosting is so cheap these days ($5 a month!) that if you really are dedicating time to this, I’d say pony up the money – not only will you get a better product but in your mind you will be that much more committed (very important!!)

From there, you can go two ways
1) Design your site from scratch
2) Modify someone else’s site to be your site

I prefer the second – I don’t want to build my own car. I want to buy a new one (or even used one) and then customize and modify it for me (better wheels, nice stereo, and fuzzy dice!). This means you will have a combination of two things to look at

Fortunately there are so many ways to go about this. You can easily find many templates out there (I’ll point you to some when I go into more detail about this). At the same time you can build up some paintshop or photoshop skills to help with graphic design. You can also learn HTML, CSS, etc. to work on look and feel.

Okay, that’s the general direction. I’ll go into more detail on those steps in the next few weeks. Until then!

Hello, Scotty here.

I’ve been away for a bit. I apologize. I’ve had a busy time of it recently.

I want to put some actual real-life examples here soon (with video) of designing an online web site business from scratch from getting a domain to getting the site up and running. Stay tuned for that.

In the meantime, I just wanted to write a simple article on getting a business online and what it takes. In this internet age it is very easy to think about getting an online business and you may have the right attitude, guts, and time, but just don’t know how to focus it.

When beginning a home enterprise there are such a lot of things that cross an individual’s mind.

One of the toughest issues in beginning a home-based business is the person themselves. Beginning a home based enterprise can be frightening because there’s such a lot that goes into it. A home run enterprise isn’t something that you can pick up and start doing without having quite a bit of resource whether that is money, time, knowledge, etc.

The money aspect strikes fear in the minds of many we all stress about cash even if we have got a thriving company. Without knowing where that money is going can be even scarier. We ask ourselves so many questions when beginning a home business. What quantity of money will I need? How many hours will I have make a contribution to this business? Will I be successful? How long can I do this for? Am I smart enough to tug this off? Will someone help me?

Accept it or not, if you’ve got the right perspective you may have all these questions dealt with and be satisfied in virtually no time.

The base cost for starting an online business is actually quite cheap: $1 a month for a domain name, $5 a month for hosting, and then time to find a product, design your site, and market your site (all of which can actually be done for FREE though you can speed up the process spending some money as well).

That’s a total of $6 a month to actually get an online business.

The rest of it is patience, faith, time, dedication, and guts (and a lot of those overlap).

We’re talking about taking time to
1) choose a product to sell (affiliate, your own, etc),
2) design your own website using templates or from scratch.

By the way for templates, I cannot recommend highly enough that you use WordPress. For from scratch, check out my favorite resource: Web Design Mastesry.

3) Marketing your website.

And there are many MANY MANY ways to market a website, and lots of debate on which are the best. It’s not that they are all bad, it’s that they are all quite good and when you have limited time you want to naturally try the “best” way … becuase all of them might take some time. Some take some money, some are free (but take even more time).

4) fulfillment

I started a t-shirt company that actually did quite well. I stopped doing it because I didn’t like storing all the t-shirts (took up too much room dedicated to my comic book art and statues). But fulfilling orders can be tough. In this case a better idea would be drop shipping, affiliate marketing, or some other online asset.

It’s been said that 9 out of 10 businesses fail. I would agree. Some of it is money,but a lot of it is persistence. Online businesses is the best example as it takes money out of the equation (drop two Starbucks a month and you have your site) and really relies on persistence.

Is it hard?

Sure … but if you are willing to gut it through and enjoy the process, there is no reason you won’t succeed.

I suppose this is more of a pep talk then a technically enlightening post but I hope it helps. Sometimes I write these types of things for me too to remind me to continue to persist as well!

Take care!
Scotty