[dremi.INFO] Interactive Ajax Data Management with Codeigniter

Hi there! this is super fast tutorial, when I was take a rest at the room. Oh god, where is my cofee and PUNK music. Aha!

This tutorial will show to you, how to create Interactive and very fast data management on one page together, without refreshing any page. One thing make this better “You are in codeigniter class of dr.emi” So, enjoy this tutorial.

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CommonJS effort sets JavaScript on path for world domination

This has been a big year for JavaScript. New, fast engines have tested their legs. Libraries have matured. With the ECMAScript 5 draft proposal, the language is growing. However, the language remains largely in exile, to only be used in Web browsers. This year has marked a resurgence of efforts to make JavaScript useful outside the browser. This was patently obvious at this year's first European JavaScript conference, jsconf.eu.

There have been a variety of JavaScript platforms for programming outside the browser since 1996, starting with Netscape's server-side offerings. A system called Helma (best known in Austria) has been around almost as long. In 2007, AppJet provided a service (now discontinued) for creating and hosting server-side JavaScript applications. Aptana offers an IDE for front-to-back JavaScript Web applications called Jaxer. Through each generation of Web development, JavaScript did not measure up against Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, or other alternatives for general-purpose programming.

Several things have changed. The creation, proliferation, and discovery of JavaScript-driven HTTP requests gave rise to highly interactive websites and applications. This drove the need for faster JavaScript engines, which have since become available to every serious denizen of the Web and most of their unsuspecting extended family. Furthermore, these highly-interactive applications usually require significant programming both on the client and the server, much of which now overlaps. Particularly, the technique of Progressive Enhancement often requires a feature to be implemented both on the server—for initial rendering and the baseline user-experience—and on the client, for an enhanced experience.

JavaScript has a couple more things going for it. JavaScript is the only programming language that has ever shipped on every consumer computer, and it has done so for the last 10 years. In these post-QBasic times, HTML, CSS, and JavaScript have become for every ungainly, bespectacled troglodyte the gateway from social exile to deeper social exile. More noteworthy is that a growing number of graphic designers who would never confess that they knew how to program will readily hack with jQuery. There are a lot of JavaScript programmers. Also, despite its deplorable shortcomings, JavaScript is cool and people like it.

So, what is holding JavaScript back from world domination?

• JavaScript has no module system. To compose JavaScript scripts, they must be either managed in HTML, concatenated, injected, or manually fetched and evaluated. There is no native facility for scope isolation or dependency management.


• JavaScript has no standard library. It has a browser API, dates, and math, but no file system API, much less an IO stream API or primordial types for binary data.


• JavaScript has no standard interfaces for things like Web servers or databases.


• JavaScript has no package management system that manages dependencies and automatically installs them, except JSAN (not to be confused with JSON), which falls short for scope isolation.

CommonJS (née ServerJS) is an initiative that began in January with a post by Kevin Dangoor to his blog and the founding of a mailing list. In his blog, Kevin outlined the above problems and called for server-side JavaScript aficionados to band together, write some specs, and support interoperability on their respective platforms.

"[This] is not a technical problem," he wrote. "It's a matter of people getting together and making a decision to step forward and start building up something bigger and cooler together."

The call was answered.

One week later, with 224 members, and 653 messages posted, we knew Kevin had struck a nerve. It probably helped that Kevin was already known for creating the Python Turbo Gears framework, Paver, and is presently working on Mozilla's Bespin. The people behind Helma, Hannes Wallnofer and Chris Zumbrunn, showed up. Kris Zyp, of JSON extension fame, showed up with his JavaScript persistent-object store project, Persevere. Ondrej Zara brought v8cgi to the drawing board. Ihab Awad brought Google's Caja. Wes Garland brought a Mozilla SpiderMonkey-based implementation to the table.

One month later, we had converged on a specification for module systems and interoperable modules. Now, there are over a dozen compliant implementations of CommonJS module loaders, and hundreds of compliant modules.

CommonJS is a growing collection of standards, including

• Modules


• Binary strings and buffers



• Charset encodings


• Binary, buffered, and textual input and output (io) streams


• System process arguments, environment, and streams


• File system interface



• Socket streams


• Unit test assertions, running, and reporting


• Web server gateway interface, JSGI


• Local and remote packages and package management

So far, CommonJS has converged on specifications for modules (1.1), a system module (1.0), and a unit testing API (1.0). The intent is to drive for a binary API next; both ECMA TC39 (the technical committee responsible for ECMAScript) and the W3C (the standards body responsible for browser standards) are considering a joint pursuit.

Modules are a big deal. CommonJS modules represent the first time a JavaScript community has converged on a module system that is as good as (if not better than) the best of Python and Ruby's—supporting not only dependency management, but also scope isolation and relative module identifiers. Module systems supporting CommonJS can be written for servers, browsers, desktop applications, and secure sandboxes. Browser deployments can vary from XHR+eval (for easy debugging) to script injection (for production or debugging) either with a build step or dynamic, server-side support. This means that modules targeting CommonJS compliance are truly interoperable. The CommonJS module standard separates the concern of how your module system works from how modules should be written.

And the best part is that it's real. At jsconf.eu, several the CommonJS founder projects showcased CommonJS compliant module systems, a couple projects announced they were using CommonJS, and many others expressed interest in bringing CommonJS to their platforms.

NodeJS, a server-side JavaScript platform built on Google's lightening-fast V8 engine by Ryan Dahl, showcases purely asynchronous IO and event loop concurrency. Dahl spoke passionately about the pitfalls of threading and synchronous IO. "Threaded concurrency is a leaky abstraction," he claimed, and further, "Doing the right thing should be easy; doing the wrong thing should be hard." In most programming contexts, there are pervasive synchronous IO libraries and system routines. It can be hard to know whether an API will block, which makes it impossible to reliably write non-blocking code. Anyone who has tried to write a concurrent socket server knows that the road is littered with the bones of those who came before. Dahl's talk won him a standing ovation. Node is targeting a degree of CommonJS interoperability and presently supports the CommonJS module system. 

Narwhal is a cross-platform, multi-engine general purpose JavaScript platform brought to you by Tom Robinson and 280 North, the makers of Cappuccino, Objective-J, 280 Slides, and 280 Atlas. Narwhal presently supports Mozilla's Rhino, V8, Apple's JavaScriptCore, and desktop applications in Mozilla's XULRunner. Narwhal can also host its modules for use in webpages.

Narwhal supports CommonJS modules and has prototype implementations of IO, file-system support, and binary data. Narwhal also comes with a wealth of standard library modules collected and ported from every end of the Web for everything from command line option parsing to secure hashing. Narwhal works out of the box and includes a package manager, "tusk," that gives you instant access to literally dozens of installable packages. In all seriousness, the catalog is growing quickly because making a package is as simple as adding a package.json file to the root of a project on Github and as flexible as putting a Zip archive with a package.json anywhere on the Web.

Tom Robinson also ported Ruby's Rack Web application gateway and middleware framework to Narwhal, dubbing it Jack. Jack tracks the CommonJS JSGI specification. Jack applications can be run locally on Rhino with the Java Simple framework or Jetty, on JavaScriptCore with Tom's own Jill framework (comes with the narwhal-jsc package), and can be deployed on Google's AppEngine.

Francisco Tolmasky from 280 North also presented on 280 Atlas and Cappuccino, a Web application IDE and framework modeled after Apple's developer tools. 280 Atlas and the Cappuccino build tools are built on Narwhal with its JavaScriptCore engine adapters. Particularly, Francisco ported Ruby's Rake to Narwhal, dubbing it Jake. Jake can be installed by running tusk install jake. 

Julian Viereck and Ajaxian's very own Dion Almear gave a presentation on Bespin. The experimental Web-based IDE is in the midst of a refactor that will make it much easier to develop plugins, and will include server-side JavaScript components built on SproutCore, a server-side JavaScript framework that supports CommonJS modules.

Wakanda is an "end-to-end" JavaScript platform based on the SquirrelFish JavaScript engine that provides an impressive REST API for server-side JavaScript object persistence and a client-side object browser. Alexandre Morgaut's slides are on Slideshare.net.

Not everyone made it to jsconf.eu, and some that did make it did not present their projects. I got a chance to speak with Hannes Wallnofer about Helma NG, which supports CommonJS modules and the JSGI specification. Kris Zyp from SitePen's Persevere platform, like Wakanda, is an end-to-end JavaScript object persistence store with a JSON and REST API and a client-side object browser built on Dojo. Flusspferd is a collection of JavaScript to C++ bindings built on Mozilla SpiderMonkey, pioneered by Aristid Breitkreuz. Flusspferd supports CommonJS modules and the File-system Base proposal. Through an extension called JuiceJS by Ash Berlin, Flusspferd supports CommonJS's JSGI specification.

And there's more…so much more to come.

Further reading 

From jsconf.eu

• The presentations at SpeakerRate



• The presentations directly on SlideShare



• Tom Hughes-Croucher's article on the Yahoo! Developer Network Blog


• Get a glimpse of jsconf.eu through the lens of Mathias Meyer

If you want to learn more about CommonJS, the best place to start is the Wiki. Check out the Status to see what's going on right now. I'm sure everyone here knows something they would like to see done right—this is your chance.

Author: arstechnica.com

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Google Caffeine And The New Ranking Factors

Google Caffeine is the name given to Google's "Next Generation" search engine, which it will use to rank and index all the pages on the wonderful world wide web. According to all indications, this is not just another one of Google's infamous Updates, but a major "Overhaul" of its index and algorithm, the complex formula and calculations Google uses to rank all web pages, including yours.
If that doesn't sound ominous enough, according to Matt Cutts (Google Spokesperson) one database is already showing Google Caffeine, and the full blown version will be released after the holidays. The reasoning behind this, Google doesn't want to upset webmasters and site owners during the lucrative holiday buying season. In the past, other major Google Updates have come around this time of the year, most notably the "Florida Update" which severely affected many web sites and webmasters.

Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer ('09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google.



Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google's new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw conclusions and make predictions from your own small sampling of results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly, especially when you consider Google is probably still making adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the results.

However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is telling us about, mainly "Site Speed" or how fast your site loads will play a part in how it's ranked. We have also heard a lot about "Broken Links" and if your page or site has them, then it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to "Bad Neighborhoods" will probably still not be a good practice if you want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that "Over-All Page Quality" will play a greater role in how well your page ranks. Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a product, if that product doesn't have a high standard of quality, it reflects badly back on everyone concerned. Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the key to all their online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep that product fast, relevant, current and above all, something of high quality.


Therefore, expect "OnPage Factors" to play a much greater role in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt tags, on the page... will probably get you ranked higher in Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.


Recently, Google has been more aware and much more generous to webmasters by being more open and forthcoming in regards to how it indexes its pages. This time around, webmasters were even given access to a beta version of Caffeine which Google released last summer ('09) where webmasters could check to see how well their keywords and site would fare in this new search index. This beta site (www2.sandbox.google.com) has now been taken down by Google.

Like any professional search engine marketer who works online, I was constantly checking my sites and keywords in Google's new search engine. I have drawn some conclusions from what I have observed, but please be aware it is often very foolish to draw conclusions and make predictions from your own small sampling of results. You can end up with egg on your face very quickly, especially when you consider Google is probably still making adjustments and refinements on Caffeine as it analyzes the results.

However, there are certain ranking factors that even Google is telling us about, mainly "Site Speed" or how fast your site loads will play a part in how it's ranked. We have also heard a lot about "Broken Links" and if your page or site has them, then it will probably be ranked lower. Of course, linking out to "Bad Neighborhoods" will probably still not be a good practice if you want higher rankings within Google.

It should not come as a shock or a surprise, that "Over-All Page Quality" will play a greater role in how well your page ranks. Keep in mind, Google is like any other company putting out a product, if that product doesn't have a high standard of quality, it reflects badly back on everyone concerned. Google's SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) is the key to all their online revenue, they must do everything in their power to keep that product fast, relevant, current and above all, something of high quality.

Therefore, expect "OnPage Factors" to play a much greater role in Google Caffeine. Quality unique content, page design, good navigation, title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, traffic numbers, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. A perfectly optimized keyworded page, with the keyword in the title, description, meta tags, alt tags, on the page... will probably get you ranked higher in Caffeine, as well as most search engines on the web.

This may be pure speculation on my part, but one of the areas Caffeine will be addressing or incorporating is "Social BookMarking", that is the number of social bookmarks a page receives will determine how high it is ranked. I also believe one of the major reasons these bookmarks will become much more important has to do with the whole nasty issue of link buying.

Now, the integrity of Google's index is not in question, but any savvy marketer or webmaster knows any individual or company with deep pockets and huge resources can buy their way into the top spot. Despite Google's attempt to stop it, link buying and keyword positioning is a thriving industry on the web. Rightly or wrongly, money and unlimited resources will get you or your company to the top in organic search, regardless of which search engine you're targeting.

All moral and ethnical issues aside, the small webmaster and/or online marketer is stuck right in the middle, with Google on one side and these major multinational competitors on the other. Looming on the horizon is Google Caffeine, a new sheriff in town!

What new rules will this sheriff bring?

The major question here is this: has the importance of backlinking been downplayed in this new index in favor of the keyworded domain and onsite content and optimization? Has there been a major shift to listing more quality content rather than relying on the number of backlinks a site is receiving, even from important related themed sites? The major problem and question to Google is this: if links can be bought, how do you keep your organic results democratic and fair, which was the original intention of Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they started Google in 1998.

One possible solution is social bookmarking.

Will we see an ever growing importance of social bookmarks and links in this new index. It is quite easy to buy 1000 links, but getting 1000 or 10,000 "re-tweets" is a little more difficult, similarly getting two or three thousand "diggs" may be a little harder to pull off. Same goes for Del.icio.us bookmarks, Facebook fans... well you get the picture. Will Google's use of these new social sites make Caffeine faster, more relevant, more current and most importantly of all, can it bring some democracy back into their index?

Of course, nothing in Google's new index will be that cut and dry, that black and white. Other ranking factors such as age of site, past history and reputation, traffic numbers, authority branding... will all play a role in whether your site gets listed on that all important first page. However, on page factors may play a greater role - title, meta tags, description, keyword density, alt tags, page views, bounce rate, time spent on page, and the number of social bookmarks may play an increased role in achieving high rankings. Website speed or how fast your site loads may also be a new ranking factor.

Underlying this whole issue is the fact which many experienced webmasters/marketers already know, Google's SERPs is not a one-trick pony anymore. For very lucrative (monetized) keyword phrases, Google's results are broken up into Five categories... Info listings, Video listings, News Listings, Shopping Listings and Corporate Listings. Forget Caffeine, this is probably the fairest move Google has made in the last few years to make its SERPs more democratic.

Another even more puzzling issue for me concerning Google Caffeine is how much emphasis or ranking power will it place on "Keyworded Domains", domain names which have your keyword or keyword phrase in them. Will these domains be ranked higher? Webmasters and marketers for years have been telling us we should always pick domain names which have our major keywords in them. Just common sense really, someone searching for "brown widgets" will more likely than not find that item at a domain called brownwidgets(dot)com or brownwidget(dot)com. The major SEO reasoning, all your backlinks will inherently have your searched keyword in the URL, thus bringing it up in the rankings.

Against this whole backdrop, everyone has to realize the web itself is evolving, new sites like Twitter, FaceBook... have changed the whole cyber landscape. Likewise, the web user is also changing and becoming more web savvy in how they use the web. Will search engines, not only Google, take a back-seat role in how we find stuff on the web? As major sites are branded into the web user's psyche, will these users go directly to these sites, by-passing the search engines altogether?

As the web evolves, keyworded domains will become more valuable and this value will be reflected in the quality of the site. If you're making thousands or even millions from your keyworded domain, you can afford to invest in quality content and design. Cream rises to the top. Gradually, as these domains become more valuable, they will probably be snapped up by marketers and companies who know just how to exploit them. Thousands upon thousands of keyworded domains will probably be bought up by multi-billion dollar corporations who finally realize what the web has to offer. This new evolved web will probably be much more narrower in scope and very topic specific.

In the "next generation" web the re-direct shall be king!

Will the role of the search engines, whether it be Google or Bing/Yahoo, become less and less important, as savvy web searchers go directly to a site by typing in the keyworded domain to find what they're looking for on the web? Cutting out the middleman may just become a world wide passion as big multinational and fully funded corporations snap up all these valuable and lucrative keyworded domains, will we see these domains grow in importance and the search engines take more of a back-up role? Human nature dictates we always take the fastest route to our destination, and the web will be no exception to this rule.

Have all the smart people at Google figured this out already, and designed the new Google Caffeine to reflect the growing importance of the keyworded domain? Of course, we can only speculate when it comes to just what Google is planning and doing with its next generation search engine, but will onsite factors and your domain name play a greater role in their organic SERPs?

Regardless of what the new sheriff actually does, when the dust finally settles on all these latest developments, the keyworded domain will probably be standing tall, watching the sun rise on a brand new day.

About the Author: Titus Hoskins is a full time online affiliate marketer. His livelihood is derived from & depended upon search engine marketing & daily monitoring of targeted keywords, mainly within Google. He runs numerous sites, including: Free Marketing Tools & Internet Marketing Tools.

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Sitemaps and SEO

By WebAssist (c) 2009

Featured Video: What is Google Chrome OS?


Creating an HTML sitemap and a XML sitemap for your website could be the easiest thing you do to improve your exposure on the web. For those of you who pay close attention to the search engine optimization (SEO) of your site, this could be the one thing that gets you onto the first page of Google's results. For those who don't devote too much time on the SEO of their site - this is a good place to start. By submittíng a sitemap to various search engines, you are telling them that you exist and what pages your site has to offer the World Wide Web.



There are two types of sitemaps, HTML and XML. An HTML sitemap provides a useful directory of all the pages that are in your site. While XML sitemaps play an important role in helping the search engine "crawl" the various pages of your site. This Roadmap discusses the benefit of creating both an HTML sitemap and XML sitemap, and how you can go about creating them using a sitemap generator.




HTML Sitemaps

An HTML sitemap is a single HTML page that contains links to all the pages of your website. Normally, this is accessible via a link in your site footer, where it will be displayed on every page. With large sites, it is easy to get lost and struggle to find the page you are looking for. With a well organized HTML sitemap, your site visitors will be able to use this to easily find the page they are looking for.

From an SEO perspective, as the search engine's robot (or spider) crawls your site indexing pages, it may find some pages on your site easier using this sitemap, rather than through the general navigation. Therefore, sitemaps can benefit your site visitors and even play a role in enhancing your exposure on the web.

Take a look at WebAssist's sitemap to get an idea of what an HTML sitemap looks like. Notice that each page on the WebAssist website contains a link to this page in the footer.

XML Sitemaps

HTML sitemaps are designed to benefit your human site visitors, whereas XML sitemaps are created specifically for the search engines. All of the most popular search engines including Google, Yahoo and Ask.com utilize XML sitemaps as part of their process for indexing the pages of a website. A good XML sitemap will tell the search engine what pages are in your site, how often those pages are updated, and when they were last modified. This way, the search engines know which pages to revisit more regularly, and are likely to do a better job of indexing them. Here's an example of the XML you might include in your XML sitemap:


yoursitedomain/index.htm
2009-03-05
weekly
1.0




Notice that for the index.htm page of this website, we have provided details regarding the last modified date (), the frequency that this page is updated (), and the priority of this page in relation to the other pages of our site (). By providing this information as accurately as possible to the search engine, they will be better equipped to index your site, and give the correct pages the appropriate attention.

TIP: Be honest about the information you provide in your sitemap. If a search engine finds that you are not updating your site as often as your sitemap suggests, they may come back less often.



Creating both HTML and XML Sitemaps

Creating HTML sitemaps is as easy as creating a basic HTML page that contains links to all the pages in your site. However, you need to keep in mind that whenever you create new pages in your site, you will want to add those links on the sitemap as well.

Creating XML sitemaps manually can be quite a time consuming process. However, there are many great sitemap generators out there to help you automate this. If you Google "sitemap generator" you will find that there are a number of free and paid sitemap tools that you can use.

Here at WebAssist, we have developed Surveyor to help you create both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps. Surveyor is a Dreamweaver extension that you can use as part of your website development. For Dreamweaver users, this is the easiest and most efficient way to create sitemaps. Surveyor includes multiple step-by-step interfaces that guide you through creating your sitemap with all the necessary details, and then submits your sitemap to the five most popular search engines on the web. Surveyor even includes a reminder tool that you can schedule to alert you when it is time to submit an updated sitemap.

How Often Should I Submit My Sitemap?

You should be in the habit of submittíng a sitemap to search engines a number of times a year. This allows you to update the search engine on any new pages in your site. If you create new pages on a regular basis, you may want to submit your sitemap more frequently.

Conclusion

Both HTML sitemaps and XML sitemaps are a good step in the right direction to improve your website's exposure. You will most likely find your search engine rankings climb after submitting a sitemap for the first time. However, keep in mind that this is only one part of search engine optimization, and there is a lot more you can do to improve how search engines rank the pages on your site and your website's discoverability.



About The Author
WebAssist helps web developers and designers build better websites faster with Dreamweaver extensions, CSS templates, as well as pre-built PHP scripts and solutions.

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Making Your Website Multi-functional

By Danny Brown

In preparation for the upcoming winter fest, my wife bought me some Thinsulate gloves. These things are the coolest ever - transforming gloves! Basically they're fingerless and have a strip of velcro attached to the back of each glove. Attached to the velcro (and sewn to the glove itself) are mitten tops.

So, I get the best of both worlds. I have driving gloves if I want them, or simply fingerless gloves if the weather's cool but not too cold for full-on gloves. Yet when the cold snap comes in, I just flip a (velcro) switch and pull the mitten part over, and I have full gloves. Genius!

And as I flipped the Transformer glove from fingerless to full this morning, I thought of how we can transfer this to our blogs…

Make Your Blog a Transformer Glove

There's a lot of information available at the minute, and we're providing it to each other every day. It could be on Twitter, LinkedIn groups, PDF or ebook downloads, video uploads, Slideshare presentations and much more. Yet a lot of this is fractured.

Sure, we may offer (or receive) great information via any one of these mediums, but are we really taking advantage of what we can present and help with? Are we concentrating too much on one medium or solution and not seeing the bigger picture?

For example, are businesses offering a full solution to both consumers and partners/clients, or simply offering mouth service to one while the other chooses from the full menu? While some information needs to be kept separate, a lot doesn't (or can be a stripped down version).

Here's how it could work.

Integrated is Not Hard Work

Let's say you're a business with a new product and you need to educate both retail partners and prospective customers about all the great features and benefits. You know that social is one of the best ways to market this information, but how do you satisfy two different audiences?


You don't - instead, you satisfy them together, as one.

• Set up a blog as your information hub. This is where all the cool stuff will stem from.

• Make cool video snippets about some of the best features and how to make the most of them and embed on your front page and rotate regularly.

• Build relationships with expert bloggers in your product's niche and ask them if they'd be interested in guest blogging with exclusive access to your product range. This helps get brand loyalty and collaboration with your existing audience, who can help you grow while they, in turn, are officially recognized as product experts.

• Regularly include your audience by asking what they'd like to see on the blog.

• Have a Twitter account that can answer quick and easy questions from both consumers and sales reps. For more in-depth questions, direct to your blog hub.

• Write up the best tips and advice into downloadable content (ebooks or slide deck presentations). Encourage sharing.

• Award regular visitors and contributors with special discount offers or free samples.

See how quickly you can build up a resource centre for what is essentially two different audiences, yet can benefit from a single source point? And the single source builds itself, by allowing others to take the reins.

The Transformer Glove switch bit? That's your behind-the-scenes area for retail only. You have all the front-end support for both customer and retail channels, but then you have a password-protected area where only retailers can sign into, for special incentives and rewards on selling your product. This information can be delivered via point-of-sale messaging or similar.

Your Transformer Glove

Even if you're not in business, you can still make your personal blog your very own Transformer Glove with integrated solutions. Make your blog a little home from home to offer more answers about you.

If you look at my navigation menu, you'll see I've added a Photos feature. These are basically my Facebook photos, but all collected here (via the Fotobook WordPress plug-in). Now, instead of having to go to Facebook to see more personal stuff, you get it here.

This offers a two-fold solution - it brings fractured networks to a single point, and it also offers a little bit more about who I am. By sharing that I enjoy photography and music, for example, I'm offering a more personal side to the business voice that might normally be found here.

If you want to use a business analogy, it's (hopefully) building brand loyalty between provider (me) and consumer (you, the readers), just like integrated solutions for business can appeal to both consumer and client/partner channels.

Can you see the benefit of this approach? What else would you use?

About the Author:
Danny Brown is the owner of Press Release PR, a boutique agency specializing in search engine optimized press releases and social media PR. He offers consultancy advice on social media and PR to both individuals and corporations He has guest authored at leading web and search marketing site Web Analytics World and is a blog partner of the WebProNews and iEntryDad-o-Matic project. To read more of Danny's articles or interact with him, please visit danny BROWN - social media PR. business networks. He is also a regular contributor to the

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Top Ten Ways to Use Twitter for Marketing

Twitter is a micro-blogging site that asks you a basic question, "What are you doing?" It allows anyone with an account to write up to 140 characters in a text field as a means to update, comment, promote or communicate to others who are "following" you. When people follow you, they see what you've recently contributed when they login. They see your "tweets", which are the messages you leave.

And of course you can follow others who tweet about the things that interest you. As an Internet marketer you may want to follow other Internet marketers, for example.

Like anything, and this is especially true of working with social media, the more you give, the more you get. In other words, the more often you tweet the more activity you'll generate. Some suggest that you tweet a few times a day, every day. Not every tweet needs to be profound. But they should all be useful.



It's important that you don't abuse Twitter for marketing and promoting your products, services or affiliate links. Most of your tweets ought to be about offering your followers useful and valuable information. Only once in a while should you try to use Twitter to promote something. Otherwise you'll be perceived as a spammer, and no one wants that tag.

Imagine if you had a large number of people following your tweets? Some people have tens of thousands following them. If you had something to promote and you had a large following, you could quickly and efficiently alert a lot of people of your promo. It acts sort of like a mass emailíng blast to your house email list, but it's a heck of a lot easier and faster. This is the power of Twitter.

One thing that I've noticed with Twitter is that it can seem overwhelming at times. The sheer information on Twitter, the 'how-to's', tutorials and all the other ubiquitous advice on how to use and take advantage of it can seem hard to understand and implement. So here's an easy-to-understand list of the top ten ways in which you can use Twitter to market yourself, your business and your website.

The Top 10 Ways To Use Twitter for Marketing:

1. Use it to promote new pieces of content you or your company create to drive traffic to your site. From online articles to blog posts or from videos to webinars, each time you add something to the Web that is of value, tweet about it and include a link. (Most people on Twitter use www.TinyURL.com to take a long URL and make it short.)

2. Use it for learning new marketing ideas, strategies and techniques. If you follow the right people, and you have to be picky about who you follow, you'll get pointed to a good amount of useful tutorials, videos, e-zines and other things that teach you about marketing.

3. Use it to get new customers. Use Twitter's search to find people who may be interested in your product or service. There are many ingenious ways to search for people on Twitter. For example, if you sell red widgets you could go to http://search.twitter.com and find people who have tweeted specifically looking for red widgets. To do this, type the following into the search box: red widgets?

• You'll notice a lot of the results will be of others selling red widgets. These ones will all obviously have links in them to direct people to the site they're selling red widgets on. To weed these people/tweets out, use the negative sign like this: -http red widgets?

• Since every link has 'http' in it, using the negative sign in front of it will cause your search results to not include any tweets with links in them.



4. Use it to build your email list. Use Twitter's search to find people who may be interested in the monthly newsletter you send out to your house email list. Invite these people to join.

5. Utilize Twitter plugins or add-ons such as TweetMyBlog or The Twitter Updater, which both automatically make tweets of every new blog post you publish. Also check out TwitThis. When visitors to your website click on the TwitThis button or link, it takes the URL of the Web page and creates a shorter URL using TinyURL. Then visitors can send this shortened URL and a description of the web page to all of their followers on Twitter. Finally, look at TweetLater, a service that allows you to write lots of tweets at once and then schedule them to go out over time.

6. Use it to build buzz about an upcoming product or website launch.

7. Use it to better brand yourself or your business. Remember, when someone wants to learn more about you or your company, they are increasingly using sites like Twitter for research. You could easily use Twitter to establish yourself as an authority in your field.


8. Use it to update followers on breaking news regarding your company. If your company is mentioned in a new article, tweet about it and include a link to the article. Or if you're at a conference or trade show, you could tweet what you're doing and invite people to visit you in person.


9. Use it for business networking, master-mind groups (see Napoleon Hill), and getting yourself seen by high-profile people in your industry.


10. Use it as an instant messaging system to keep you and your team on the same page during projects. This is especially useful for those who work with teams spread out in different cities or countries.

By Jason OConnor (c) 2009

You should note that this top 10 list is not in order of importance or in any particular order. I suggest that you give Twitter a try if you haven't already. See if you can apply a few of these techniques and tactics to help you take advantage of Twitter as a marketing tool.


And one more important thing to remember is that there is no silver bullet in marketing. You should always be trying and implementing numerous tactics when marketing your business. Don't only rely on Twitter or any other one thing. Instead, use Twitter (or any other Web 2.0 site) as simply one more tool in your entire social media and marketing toolbox.






About The Author
Jason OConnor is a Web consultant. He writes for The Net Gazette, a Web marketing newsletter, and owns Oak Web Works, LLC, a Web design and marketing company.

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How to Make a Website Successful

SPN Featured Video: The Google Chrome Operating System

When doing business on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can make a website successful. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites don't make sales. There is much more to creating a quality website. To make a website successful, you must create a website that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase.

Selecting a Website's Niche

The first step toward how to make a website successful, will be to target your website for one specific niche. For example, if you are designing a website about wine, everything within your website should relate to wine.

Selecting a Website's Keyword Phrase

You must also select the most relevant keyword phrase for each webpage. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your webpage. For example, if your webpage is about 'making wine,' your best keyword phrase would be 'wine making.' You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your webpage, as this will enable the search engines to determine what the website is about. This is a very important step to make a website successful.

Using HTML Heading Tags

When you begin writing your content, it is very important that you use the HTML H1 heading tag with your main title at the top of your webpage. In addition, use the HTML H2 tags for your sub-titles. This is very important, as some search engines place relevance on the text displayed with heading tags.

As the default text for the H1 heading tag is very large, you may want to use CSS style sheets to display the heading tags in the font style and size you prefer.

Using META Tags Within a Webpage

Another step to help make a website successful is to include META tags between the HEAD tags of your webpage. META tags help the search engines to know what keywords are relevant to the webpage. They are also used to tell the search engines what the webpage is about. Many search engines will display this description within the search results.

Backgrounds and Text

It is always best to display a webpage with a white background and black text, as this will make the text easy to read. Distracting backgrounds will make the text hard to read. A good rule of thumb is to just use common sense and keep your website simple. This alone is a great way to help make a website successful.

Animated Graphics

If you're using animated graphics, it is important that you use them sparingly. Graphics that continually flash are VERY annoying and may prevent your visitors from returning to your website in the future.

Navigational Links

It is very important to include good navigational links on every page. They should be displayed at the top, bottom, left or right side of your webpage. In addition, your visitors should be able to get to any webpage within your website within four clicks.

Webpage Layout

Always be consistent with your webpage design. This is a very important step to help make a website successful. The layout for your website should be the same on each page. If you make it different, your visitors will become confused. In addition, it will make your website appear to be unprofessional. Your website design should include the same layout, logo, and navigation setup on each page.

Spelling and Grammar

Always make sure you proof read and spell check your webpages for errors. It is also very important that your webpage doesn't have any broken images or links.

Important Webpages

When you launch your website, it is very important that you include the following webpages:

About - The 'About' page is used to tell your visitors about you and/or your company.

Privacy - The 'Privacy' page is used to let your visitors know what you do with their personal information, such as their email address.

Terms and Conditions - The 'Terms and Conditions' page should be displayed on your website for your protection.

Site Map - A 'Site Map' is used to help the search engines index your website more easily.

You can learn more about all of these pages by doing a search through your favorite search engine. They are very important and will help make a website successful.

Website Interactivity

Another way to make a website successful is to make the website interactive. This can be done by including a targeted forum that complements your website, a form in which they can subscribe to an ezine, a feedback form to enable them to give their opinion, or an informative blog in which visitors can comment.

Web Browsers and Screen Resolutions

When you begin designing your webpage, it is HIGHLY recommended that you install the most popular web browsers on your computer. This will enable you to see how your website will display in different browsers. You will find that your website may look great in one browser and terrible in another. It would be wise to design your website to display properly in Firefox and then it should display properly in Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.

It is also important that you view your website through different screen resolutions. You can either open your webpage in your browser and then change your computer's screen resolution, or there are website's online that you can visit, such as Any Browser, to test your website.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you can begin to make a website successful in no time.

About The Author
If you want to learn how to make a website successful, visit Web-Source.net for a wealth of website design tutorials, video tutorials, HTML codes, CSS codes, tips, tools and resources.

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Successful Website Design Criteria

By David Smith (c) 2009

We believe you don't start the design of a new or revised website by sitting down with the designer and coder of the website. Rather, we recommend you review the approaches, ideas, processes and other methods listed below to determine if they apply to your situation.

Think about your audience. Are they looking for immediate answers and solutions? We bet they are. Most likely these visitors to your website are very much like you. Chances are you use the Internet more than other types of media to search for information. If a web page doesn't "grab your interest" within 8 - 10 seconds after landing on it... you move on!

As a "first step" we suggest that you start by reviewing the questions listed below. We are convinced that once you get to the last question... you will have a list of action items identified that will greatly improve the productivity of your current website. The success or failure of the site and/or business may very well depend upon the decisions you make after reading these questions.

What Do You Know About Your Clients and Prospects State of Mind?

When visitors land on your website, they have very little time to read what you say. They have a need for information or a product and don't want to listen or read verbose descriptions and comments. You have about 8 seconds to engage them and get them to take action. Do most visitors land on your website wanting:

1) information,
2) a "quick fix",
3) a bargain,
4) a large selection,
5) or a telephone call, etc.?

It is imperative to know the answers to these and many other questions BEFORE you design the pages within your website.

Do You Make Website Visitors Feel You Can Satisfy Their Wants and Needs?

Landing on any page within your website [especially the Homepage] must make the visitor know that you understand their needs, business, wants, and desires. The more you put yourself into the "mindset" of the website visitor, the better chance you have of converting their visit into something you want to happen i.e. buy, complete a contact us form, bookmark the page, pick up the phone and call you or any other method of measurable conversion.

What Approach Do You Take When Developing Pages Within Your Website?

What do you think you would want from your website if you were the prospective visitor or client? Assume you don't know as much information as you want in order to make an informed decision. Talk to these visitors in a language they will understand. If visitors want more insight or information, tell them to click on the more info link or give you a call. They will follow your direction ONLY if you have built some level of trust or understanding.

What are You "Selling" to the Website Visitor?

Are you focused on telling them about your product or service or are you making them understand that choosing your firm will deliver that special feeling they are seeking by making the purchase? Are you sure that you made the visitor know that you understand their needs, wants, problems, etc.? What techniques did you implement to get your points across?

How are You Going to Get the Visitor to Stop and Think About Your Service or Product?

Remember... they are ready to pass by your website in a blink of an eye. What are you going to do to engage them? The answer you come up with will be critical to the success you have in gaining their confidence enough to buy or call you. Make sure what you say is NOT the same old thing they are used to seeing or reading on other websites. Be boring and you lose! Address the issues that appeal to the visitor and they WILL STOP! This is hard work... but worth the effort.

What Kind of "Call to Action" Statements are You Placing on Your Website?

Turning a visitor into a prospect or client is one of the most critical actions of your website. How will you engage them? Once they know that you understand their needs and wants, they are more inclined to follow your CTA direction. Call to Action statements are critical to the success of any website's conversion. Guide them in a manner that is more telling, rather than selling. Don't be afraid to be assertive.

How Does Your Website Address the "Who Are We" Issue?

Again, it is about making the website visitor feel confident that they are choosing a reputable firm or organization with which to do business. They need to read about your success. This can be done by exhibiting your affiliation with associations, awards won, satisfied client statements, client success stories, examples of your work, etc. Show them you are a "player" in your industry.

Are You Prepared to Answer: "What Makes You Different"?

What have clients and prospects said about you and your company? Have they applauded you for your approach to doing business? Did they say you made them feel like you understood their needs and wants? Think back to the reasons clients buy from you. How did you meet their needs and wants? Give your prospective clients reasons to do business with your firm.

A final thought...

Make it your primary goal to understand the potential client. Look at your website through that client's perspective. Who are they? What makes them different? What do they individually want and need? Be informative... do more telling than selling. They will "get it" and appreciate that you have made them an educated buyer. Finally, tell them what you want them to do next. Get them to take the first step and be ready to deliver on the expectations you have set throughout your website!

Finally, be sure to hire Internet marketing professionals to do the job if you don't have the capabilities in-house. Too much is at stake to leave this part of your business to chance! We are pleased to provide you the insightful comments contained herein.

About The Author
We have 11 years of Internet marketing experience re building successful website promotíon programs and meeting the challenges of appealing to today's Internet visitor in the current economic environment. Call us at 631-423-0815 for further discussion on how we might be able to assist you and your team or to review the Full list of PDF documents on Internet Marketing and Conversion techniques. InternetConsultingAndCoaching.com

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The Tricky Issue of Duplicate Content & What Google Says About It

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2009

Being a full-time online marketer means you have to keep a close watch on how Google is ranking pages on the web... one very serious concern is the whole issue of duplicate content. More importantly, how does having duplicate content on your site and on other people's sites, affect your keyword rankings in Google and the other search engines?

Now, recently it seems that Google is much more open about just how it ranks content. I say "seems" because with Google there are years and years of mistrust when it comes to how they treat content and webmasters. Google's whole "do as I say" attitude leaves a bitter taste in most webmasters' mouths. So much so, that many have had more than enough of Google's attitude and ignore what Google and their pundits say altogether.

This is probably very emotionally fulfilling, but is it the right route or attitude to take? Probably not!
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Mainly because, regardless of whether you love or hate Google, there's no denying they are King of online search and you must play by their rules or leave a lot of serious online revenue on the table. Now, for my major keyword content/pages even a loss of just a few places in the rankings can mean I lose hundreds of dollars in daily commissions, so anything affecting my rankings obviously gets my immediate attention.

So the whole tricky issue of duplicate content has caused me some concern and I have made an ongoing mental note to myself to find out everything I can about it. I am mainly worried about my content being ranked lower because the search engines think it is duplicate content and penalizes it.

My situation is compounded by the fact that I am heavily into article marketing - the same articles are featured on hundreds, some times thousands of sites across the web. Naturally, I am worried these articles will dilute or lower my rankings rather than accomplish their intended purpose of getting higher rankings.

I try to vary the anchor text/keyword link in the resource boxes of these articles. I don't use the same keyword phrase over and over again, as I am nearly 99% positive Google has a "keyword use" quota - repeat the same keyword phrase too often and your highly linked content will be lowered around 50 or 60 places, basically taking it out of the search results. Been there, done that!

I even like submitting unique articles to certain popular sites so only that site has the article, thus eliminating the whole duplicate content issue. This also makes for a great SEO strategy, especially for beginning online marketers, your site will take some time to get to a PR6 or PR7, but you can place your content and links on high PR7 or PR8 authority sites immediately. This will bring in quality traffic and help your own site get established.

Top Positions in the Web's Largest Article Directory

Another way I combat this issue is by using a 301 re-direct so that traffic and pagerank flows to the URL I want ranked. You can also use your Google Webmaster Tool account to show which version of your site you want ranked or featured: with or without the www.

The whole reason for doing any of this has to do with PageRank juice - you want to pass along this ranking juice to the appropriate page or content. This can raise your rankings, especially in Google.

Thankfully, there is the relatively new "canonical tag" you can use to tell the search engines this is the page/content you want featured or ranked. Just add this meta link tag to your content which you want ranked or featured, as in the example given below:



Anyway, this whole duplicate issue has many faces and sides, so I like going directly to Google for my information. Experience has shown me that Google doesn't always give you the full monty, but for the most part, you can follow what they say. Lately, over the last year or so, Google seems to have made a major policy change and are telling webmasters a lot more information on how they (Google) rank their index.

So if you're concerned or interested in finding out more about duplicate content and what Google says about it try these helpful links. First one is a very informative video on the subject entitled "Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues" which is presented by Greg Grothaus who works for Google.
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Another great link is this page from Google Webmasters Support Answers by Matt Cutts. It has a lot of helpful information, including a video on the Canonical Link Element.

In yet another post, Matt Cutts discusses the related issue of content scraping and advises webmasters not to worry about it. This is a slightly different matter, other webmasters and unmentionables may use software to scrape your site and place your content on their site. This has happened to me, countless times, including when my content has been reduced to scrambled nonsense. Cutts says not to worry about this matter as Google can usually tell the original source of the material. In fact, having links in this duplicate content may just help your rankings in Google.

"There are some people who really hate scrapers and try to crack down on them and try to get every single one deleted or kicked off their web host," says Cutts. "I tend to be the sort of person who doesn't really worry about it, because the vast, vast, vast majority of the time, it's going to be you that comes up, not the scraper. If the guy is scraping and scrapes the content that has a link to you, he's linking to you, so worst case, it won't hurt, but in some weird cases, it might actually help a little bit."

As a full time online marketer I am not so easily convinced, I mainly have pressing concerns about my unscrupulous competition using these scrapings and duplicate content to undermine one's rankings in Google by triggering some keyword spam filter. Whether in fact this actually happens, only Google knows for sure, but it is just another indication, despite the very detailed and helpful information given above, duplicate content and the issues surrounding it, will still present serious concerns for online marketers and webmasters in the future.

About The Author
The author is a full-time online marketer who has numerous websites. For the latest web marketing tools try: Internet Marketing Tools. If you liked the article above, why not try this Free 7 Day Marketing Course here: Marketing Tools Copyright 2009 Titus Hoskins. This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

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7 Basics of Good Web Design

By George Peirson (c) 2009

Whether you are just starting a web design project, looking at revamping an existing site, or just wanting to double check the usability of your current web site you should consider these 7 Basics of Good Web Design.



These basics are aimed at new visitors/customers; your repeat customers will be judging your web site on different values. Just like wearing the appropriate clothes for a job interview, these basics will help you pick out the "look" of your web site so that you make a good first impression.



1. Fast Loading Web Site - Any way you look at it, a fast loading page should be your number 1 concern. The web is all about speed, fast searches, fast purchases, fast information. You can't have any of that with a slow loading page. Ask yourself this question - have you ever been on Google doing a search for something important and a link you clicked on didn't open up immediately? What did you do? Patiently wait for the page to open or move onto the next link on the page? My favorite sites open almost immediately.

So, a few suggestions: Make sure that your images are properly optimized. Don't use very many large images, save those for a different page. Keep any auto-running multimedia to a minimum, provide links to run media instead. Check your code for anything else that could affect your page loading times. Since text loads almost instantly go ahead and use all the text you want, just keep everything else under control.



2. No Meaningless Splash Page - Do you appreciate a fancy animation page that doesn't tell you anything and you have to wait for before the web site will open? Neither do I. The last thing I want once I find an interesting site is to wait through some animation before getting to the first page. This doesn't mean that I don't want multimedia on a site, I do. I just don't want an animation before the first page that forces me to wait for it to finish before getting onto the site. It's like having to wait for a salesperson to finish their memorized speech before you can ask them a question. No thanks! I like animation, just in the right place and at the right time. Plus, if I am a returning customer, I will have already seen that animation and don't need to see it again.



My suggestion is to use a smaller animation contained in your main landing page which also includes your main message and links to the rest of your site. It will make for a faster loading page (smaller file) and your visitors can go ahead with accessing your site without having to wait for the animation to finish.



One final note, don't ever put your logo as the only content on your landing page with a link that says "Enter Site". This just screams Unprofessional and will drive away potential visitors in droves. The last thing I want to do is to click on another link just to get into the site. This is a total waste of my time. I usually will skip a site if I see this.



3. No Annoying Web Gimmicks - Now that you have your visitor on your site quickly the one thing you don't want to do is to drive them away just as quickly. So, don't put anything annoying on that first page. No loud background music that makes them quickly hit the volume control or the back button on their browser. No flashing animations while they are trying to read your content. No popup, flyout, expanding ads that cover your home page. Basically, leave the gimmicks alone until you are sure that your visitor will stay on your site. Most casual visitors will leave your site in just a few seconds, no sense on driving them away more quickly.

Multimedia is great on a web site, just don't bombard your visitor with it first thing. If you want audio, then put in a nice picture with a link, like a picture of yourself with text saying something like "Let me tell you how to make fifty thousand this month!" If they are interested, they will click on the link and listen to your message; if they are not interested in audio, then you should be using a different pitch anyway.



Also, monitor what advertisers are putting on your site if you sell ad space. I am sure you have seen those ads with the animated dancing figure, cute the first time you see it. But after seeing it 10,000 times with every imaginable character I have added the company to a líst I keep of companies I won't do business with. So their animation has gone from "look at me" to "you annoy me" in my mind. Ads like these will impact your visitor's experience. So even if your site is perfectly designed, one misplaced ad can ruin all of your hard work.



4. Have a Clear Message - Too many web sites are a mish-mash of content. This is especially true of blog pages. Certain types of sites lend themselves to stream of consciousness content, but most don't. Make it easy for your viewer to understand what your web site is about, don't make them guess. Have a clear topic headline, followed by clear and concise text. This is also where a picture is worth a thousand words, but only if the picture directly pertains to your message.



You want your visitor to quickly understand what your message is. If they like your message, they will take the time to read the rest of your page and look around your web site. If they don't like your page, then it won't do you any good having them stay on your site anyway. So, don't make your visitors guess, let them know what you are about quickly and cleanly and you will have happy visitors. And when thinking about a sales page, a happy customer is a buying customer.



5. Coordinated Design - This one should be self evident, but it is surprising how many sites change their design for every page. You want your visitor to be comfortable in your site and one way to achieve that is by having a coordinated web design. Having a consistent logo, using a consistent color scheme, keeping your navigation in the same place. All of these help to create a coordinated design. This does not mean that you can't change colors or the "Look" on different segments of your site, but if you do, the changes should not be so drastic that it feels like you have moved on to a different site.

If you select one place for your logo, one place for your navigation, one look for your buttons or other common graphic elements and stick with those then you will be well on your way to a coordinated design. If you change colors for a different section, but keep the same logo location, the same navigation location, the same button shape, then your visitors will not become lost as they move from page to page.



6. Easy Navigation - Once you have grabbed your visitors attention you want them to be able to easily move around the different areas of your web site. This is done with easy to use navigation. There are three standard, accepted locations for navigation elements on a web page: along the top, on the left side, and at the bottom. I will usually put my main navigation either along the top or along the left side. I will then put text based navigation at the bottom of the page, this text based navigation is more for the search engines than anything else, but it also makes it easy for your visitors to move to the next page when they have reached the bottom of the current page.



Most people start reading a page from the top left and then read towards the bottom right. So navigation at the left or top will be seen as soon as someone enters your page. Also navigation at the left or top will not move or change position if the browser window is adjusted in size. The worst thing you can do is to put your main navigation on the right side of the page and have your page set for a large screen size. Let's say that your page is set for 1024 across with the navigation on the right, and someone views your page at 800 across, they will not see your navigation at all. The left side of your page will show perfectly, but the right side will be hidden outside of their viewing area. Of course by using floating or popup menus you can overcome some of these design limitations and keep your navigation visible at all times.



Unless you know that your audience will enjoy it, don't use Mystery Navigation. This is where your navigation is hidden within images, or spaced around the web page in some mysterious random order. This can be fun on gaming sites, or social networking sites, but in most cases the navigation should be easy to see and easy to use. If you do want to use Mystery Navigation, I would recommend keeping the text based navigation at the bottom of the page, just in case.



7. Have a "Complete" web site - And finally, no one wants to go to a web site only to find that the site is "Under Construction" and the content they are looking for is not there. These are words that you shouldn't ever use. If a section of your web site is not ready for prime time yet, then simply don't show it yet. It is better to have your site look complete and professional, then to have it look like a work in progress that should not be up on the web yet.



You can easily tell your visitors that you will be having more content in the future without having your site look like it is unfinished. Just use phrases like "Content Updated Weekly" or "New Products Added Monthly". Both of these will tell your visitors that it would be worth their time to come back and visit later, but neither one will make your site look unfinished. So no matter how small your web site is, give the impression that you have taken the time to complete the site before putting it up on the internet, this makes for a more professional presentation and a better visitor experience.



In Closing - By following these simple 7 Basics of Good Web Design you will be well on your way to having an easy to use and successful web presence. Just keep in mind what you look for when you first land on a web page after doing a web search in Google or Yahoo, or other search engine. If you want fast loading pages, make sure your pages load fast. If you want to be able to find what you are looking for quickly and easily, then make sure you have easy navigation. Just keep your first time visitor in mind, put yourself in their web shoes and make your web site an enjoyable place to visit and success should follow.

About The Author

George Peirson is a successful Entrepreneur and Internet Trainer. He is the author of over 40 multimedia based tutorial training titles covering such topics as Photoshop, Flash and Dreamweaver. To see his training sets visit www.howtogurus.com . Article copyright 2009 George Peirson

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10 Steps to Testing the Viability of Your Online Business Idea That Won't Break the Bank

By Donna Gunter (c) 2009

The economic recession is pushing more and more people to consider self-employment. Starting an online business is a very low-risk way to put your toe in the entrepreneurial pond because the start up costs are minimal, the overhead is low, and the returns can be high. Despite these benefits, however, an online business is just like any other and needs to be thoroughly researched before starting to determine if there's a need in the marketplace and how viable the business idea is.



The Internet is rife with exorbitant claims of how much money can be made as an online entrepreneur and that you can be rolling in the dough by next week. Remember, most "overnight" successes are 1, 2, or more years in the making, and online businesses are no exception to this rule.

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How do you determine if your online business idea will sink or swim? Here are 10 steps you can take to test your idea without breaking the bank:



1. Research. Comprehensive research is always the first step for any business idea. Brainstorm a list of keywords someone might use to find the product/service that you're offering, and then use a keyword tool finder to see how many searches have been done on these keywords. The keyword tool will also make suggestions of related keywords to try. Once you have a list of keywords, conduct searches (use quotation marks around your search term for stronger results) in Google, Yahoo, and MSN to see who else is out there. Evaluate the popularity of the sites you discover by checking out their Google Page Rank and Alexa ranking. Use the same keywords to see if articles have been written about your topic in the major article banks. You'll uncover your competition in this research, as well as potential strategic alliances. Employ a powerful bookmark program to help you track your research results.



2. Monetize the idea. After completing your research, have you discovered enough competitors in the marketplace who are making money from doing something similar? If so, how are they making money -- is it from the sale of info products, consulting services, subscription to their site, advertising, etc? If you don't see much competition, that usually means one of two things:

a. There's not enough demand for the product/idea or

b. You're ahead of the curve in seeing the profit potential.

Unfortunately, in most cases, that result means that there's not enough demand for your idea in the way that it's been presented.



3. The "so what" factor. From your research you should be able to clarify what it is that you're offering and what group of people need what you're offering. In order to be successful, your offering must pass the "so what" factor in light of your competition. To take this test, you must successfully be able to answer the following question after telling someone what you do, "So what? How is that different from what x, y and z are offering?" You can answer these questions best if you review the benefits of what you're offering (the What's In It For Me) rather than just a listing of the features, and if you can speak from the heart about your idea. An online business will take time to manage and develop, so you want to settle on something that you love. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, you quickly become a prisoner in a prison of your making.

4. Industry information. Set up Google Alerts for your industry keywords and track them from info posted on websites, blogs, and newsgroups. Reviewing the alerts you receive over the next few weeks should help you expand your view of the problems/issues with your subject, help you see the "movers and shakers" in the industry, and help you discover other places (blogs, discussion forums, social networks) where your target market hangs out online.



5. Test the waters. The easiest way to test your idea is by creating a blog. Buy a keyword-rich domain name for the blog and map your blog to that domain. Then begin to blog about your insights on your topic, or reprint articles others have written on your subject. The idea here is to begin to establish your online presence and your online brand.



6. Build a list. Once you've got a blog set up, you need to begin to build your marketing list. The easiest way to do this is to create a free giveaway on your site (ebook, video, report, audio recording) and a form for the visitor to input his name and email address to receive your giveaway. Your privacy policy should be readily available to them and outline how you'll use their info and what they can expect to receive from you. You'll also need an emaíl marketing service or shopping cart service to manage your list.



7. Crown yourself the expert. The only way to become an expert in an area is to believe that you are one. By virtue of the research you've already conducted, you know more than a large percentage of your target market. Therefore, don't hesitate to begin to refer to yourself as an expert in your industry.



8. Drive traffic. Once you build your blog, they (visitors) won't come without some encouragement. Create profiles on prominent social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Start writing articles about your topic and submittíng those to article directories. Discover if your target market hangs out on niche-specific social networking sites and start networking there. Interview experts in your industry and release the interviews as a podcast. Create a weekly email newsletter to stay in touch with the prospects on your email list. Create powerful inbound links by getting your blog listed on various blog and website directories.



9. Implementation time. Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither is a successful online business. Allow at least three months to give your idea a test run and evaluate it after that time. Have you been able to build a list? Are you getting traffic to your site? Are you attracting the attention of others in your industry? If so, you're ready to move to the next step.



10. Move forward. If you determine that your idea is viable, what's next? Creating info products or a membership site? What are your longer term goals to develop this idea into a business? The best way to harness all the info that you've collected thus far is to create a business plan. It doesn't have to be complicated -- it can be only one page, in fact. What you need to commit to paper is your offer, your target market, your ongoing goals for how to monetize the idea, and an outline of how you plan to grow the business over time.



It's not too late to get your start in an online business. Don't be distracted by the false promises of quick wealth overnight. Success takes time and planning, so invest some planning and research time into your business idea. That's the strongest foundation you can create for yourself to become a successful online entrepreneur.

About The Author

Internet Marketing Strategist and Boomer Biz Coach Donna Gunter helps baby boomers create profitable online retirement businesses that they love by demystifying and simplifying the tools and strategies needed to market and grow their businesses online. To claim your FR*EE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at OnlineBizU.com. Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at AskDonnaGunter.com .

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The Three Key Ways to Make Your Website a Success

Your company website can stand out and attract visitors in three simple ways. It must draw visitors in, keep visitors on the website long enough to understand what you can offer and keep visitors coming back for more.

If you feel that your current website is under-performing and the subject of online marketing brings you out in a cold sweat then check out our simple guide below to help you understand what you need to do…

1) Entice visitors

Your website has around three seconds to catch your visitors' attention or they're likely to click away. In order to keep your visitors interested you need a website which has an original design and layout and an enticing headline on every page.

Take a look at your website - are you happy with your design? Do you feel your headlines will compel your visitors to keep reading? If the answer to either of these questions is a no then it's time to make sure your website is reaching its potential.

Be honest about what your strengths are, if you have a great business brain but writing isn't your forte then contact a website copywriter to help you with the content on your website. Website copywriters are paid to write headlines that draw visitors in and make sales.

Also, contact a selection of web designers who have a good knowledge of marketing and communicating your message to your visitors. Ask them for ideas and a quote to see what they would do differently in terms of the overall look and feel of your site. It's never too late for a re-brand; if your site has been up for some time and isn't attracting visitors then you need to start to make changes.

2) Hold your visitors' attention

You should constantly be monitoring how long your visitors stay on your website for. If the average visitor sticks around for thirty seconds or less then it probably means that they've taken a look your website and then clicked away.

You need to be aiming to keep the visitor on your website for at least a few minutes so that they can read three or four of your main website pages otherwise they won't have a true understanding of what you can offer them.

Informative and enticing website copy is one way to hold your visitors' attention. Your website copy needs to be written to appeal to your target audience. It needs to be interesting, compelling and persuasive and you need strong calls to action on your website pages so that your visitors can easily contact you or buy from you.

If you don't have a dedicated marketing department or someone who specialises in online marketing then consider contacting a website copywriter. Website copywriters specialise in writing persuasive and targeted content for the web to help businesses generate enquiries and make sales.

3) Keep visitors coming back

Not all of your visitors will buy your products or contact you to make an enquiry the first time they visit your website. The majority of online customers will either compare your service and products to your competitors or take some time to consider their purchase before making an investment.

You need to make sure that your website has enough compelling, informative and interesting content to make visitors return. Weekly updates to your website via blogs and articles can provide a human element to the business and they are also a great way to share company news and advertise promotions.

It can take time to write the content for these so if you don't have someone in house who can provide the copy for blog posts and articles then consider contacting a website copywriter. Experienced website copywriters can produce compelling blog posts and articles for a variety of businesses in different industries, some even offer discounts for multiple articles or blog posts.

About the Author:

Pure Ink Creative are experienced website copywriters who can transform your website into a profitable success. These three simple steps can completely alter the performance of your website and turn it into a money-making resource.

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Identifying Target Markets For Your Brand

Identifying target markets for your brand is critical because your customers are the future success and growth of your business. But who are your customers and how can you find more like them?

In their book on leveraging creativity, Juicing the Orange, Pat Fallon and Fred Senn discuss the strategy of one of their clients, United Airlines, as it struggled to find a way to differentiate itself among the other legacy air carriers and the start-up, no-frills airlines that were chipping away at its market share. They decided to focus on the core market of frequent business travelers. These folks made up only 9 percent of United's travelers, but they represented 46 percent of United's revenue.

Their thought was that if they could appeal to the frequent business travelers, leisure travelers would follow. ("If these seasoned road warriors know which airline to fly, surely I can do no worse than flying with the same carrier.") This philosophy is similar to the secret of finding the best roadside diner: go where the truckers eat.

So focusing on your target audience may not be about finding the biggest group of people who can and will patronize your business, rather, it's about finding the best group of people. For United, focusing on the core market of frequent business travelers was their chosen strategy.

Finding Your Core Market

Your target audience is made up of the people who love of your business and what it offers. They are not everyone who will come in contact with your business.

In order to find your target market, start by refining your target audiences.

Just take a look at the customers you have now.

- Who are your best customers?

- Which target segment makes up the bulk of your customers, supporters, or members?

- What do all these segments or individuals have in common?

- Can you find others like them?

Recognizing what your customers have in common can help you craft a marketing strategy to draw in more of the same people, thus building your target audience into a successful business.

How much do you know about your best customers or supporters?

- What is their typical age?

- Are they primarily male or female?

- What level of education have they received?

- Do they have any special interests or hobbies?

- How much is their household income?

By combining demographic and psychographic information (see exercise, below), you can begin building a mental profile of your core market. One business may find that men over 55 living in the Pacific Northwest and are interested in pro sports are their best prospects. Another business might discover that highly educated, empty nester women with lots of disposable income are their most valuable targets.

The only way to develop marketing communications that resonate with your target audience is to become knowledgeable about their wants, needs, and motivations. So ask them. Set up a continuous feedback and communication loops between your customers and the company. Make two-way communications a part of your corporate culture. You might also consider designing a short survey and sending it to your current and prospective customers and see what kinds of offerings, messages, and services your business should be providing.

While most businesses have multiple target audiences, they should only have one core market in order to provide as much focus as possible.

Sometimes, discovering your core market is about deciding whom it is that you're NOT going to serve. Take Voce, for example, a premium wireless provider that isn't looking to sell mobile phones to the whole world (like AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and the rest). Voce targets only upscale users with the finest-quality handsets, a simple, albeit pricy, flat-rate plan, and an exclusive concierge service--24 /7 live customer support. Every call to Voce is answered by a real, live human being--with no annoying phone trees.

Because of their conscious decision of who not to target, Voce is able to align its offerings (high-end handsets), its service (Voce Personal Assistance) and its retail locations (boutiques in Beverly Hills, California, and at Neiman Marcus) with its preferred audience. You will not find Voce phones or plans at WalMart or even Target.

This targeting is what keeps Voce from simply becoming another wireless face in the crowd and from wasting marketing dollars on reaching people who can't and won't become customers.

About the Author:

Mike DiFrisco is the "affordable branding guy." That's because I believe that no one knows your brand better than you. So don't waste your time or money hiring an overpriced ad agency or consultant to develop the brand strategy for your business; you can do it yourself.

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