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 Issue #28 - August 18th, 2003 Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses
Brought to you by idesignbusiness.com http://www.idesignbusiness.com Issue # 28 Monday, August 18th, 2003 In this Issue: ARTICLES: ONLINE POLL: FREE RESOURCE: Welcome to another issue of the idesignbusiness newsletter. This issue focuses on a few website design fundamentals that all webmasters and business owners should consider. I hope you find these tips helpful whether you already have a website or are thinking about launching a new one. We would love to hear any questions, comments, or ideas for future articles, just email us at newsletters@idesignbusiness.com Did you miss the last issue? You can always visit our idesignbusiness Internet Newsletter Archive and easily view and search all our past issues. Neal St. Clair idesignbusiness Advertisement Promote Your Products & Services Using Email Marketing Are you using email to market you products and services, communicate with customers, and generate leads? If not, you are missing out on the most affordable and effective marketing tools available to small businesses. The idesignbusiness Mail Manager handles everything required to execute a professional email marketing campaign including email collection, contact list management, email delivery, and reporting. Learn how you can begin sending e-Newsletters, greeting cards, email promotions and more today. Online Poll Is Graphic Design Important to Your Business? ARTICLE Website Design - Fashion or Function? by Neal St. Clair We all want a great looking website that will grab attention, “wow” our visitors, and hopefully keep people coming back. A professionally designed website can certainly boost your brand and improve your website, but design can also be the number one reason why a website fails. I have included a few common website design pitfalls below that actually drive people away from your site! There are a number of variables that control the way people view websites. Different browsers, computers, screen sizes, and Internet Service Providers are just a few of the things you must consider when designing a site. It is important to find the right balance of “fashion” and “function” when designing a new site or evaluating your current site.
The good news, 95% of people are now using Internet Explorer, the bad news, 5% aren‘t! Don‘t get me wrong, I am not saying that one company or product should be the only option for web browsing, but I do wish they all had the same standards. If you have ever designed a website yourself, you will know what I am talking about. It is very common for a website to look great in Internet Explorer and then be unreadable in Netscape. The best advice I can give you is to continually test your site in both browsers while you are building it so you can catch inconsistencies as they happen. Trying to go back and fix code after you have completed the design and development can be a very difficult and frustrating chore. How does your site look in a monitor that is 800 x 600 Pixels? How about 1024 x 768 Pixels? If you‘re not sure, there is an easy way to find out. Windows users can go to their desktop, right-click anywhere on the screen and select “properties”. A dialog box will pop-up and then select “Settings”. From this window you can change your screen resolution. You have two options when designing for different widths, using a fixed width design or a % width design. For example, a fixed-width design means your site is never wider than 800 Pixels so regardless of the user‘s screen resolution your site never requires a horizontal scroll bar. A % width design means your site will vary in width based on user‘s screen size. This is a bit more difficult to pull-off, but can be very effective. Choose your colors wisely! Even the best designers with good intentions can design a great looking site using a beautiful color scheme that just won‘t work on the web. All browsers support a HTML color palette and these are the only colors that will look consistent in all browsers. You can click below to view the entire HTML color palette and each color‘s HTML code. HTML Color Palette How long does your site take to load using a 56K dial-up connection? You can have the best looking site on the web and if it takes more than a few seconds to load no one will stick around long enough to see it! A good rule is to try to keep each page on your site to 75 Kilobytes or less. idesignbusiness offers a free website consultation and we would be happy to take a look at your website. To submit your site for a free consultation, please click below: Free Website Consultation Advertisement Professional Websites for as little as $1.15 per day! idesignbusiness has created monthly website packages designed for small business owners and small business budgets. For as little as $1.15 per day, you can have your own professional website including all the great features below:
Learn more about Monthly Website Packages FREE RESOURCE: Each issue of the Internet Marketing Newsletter for Small Businesses will include helpful free online resources to promote your website. Every wonder if your webpages are error free? It is possible that you may have errors in your HTML code that will restrict your website to be displayed correctly in certain browsers and search engines. A single typo may be near impossible to find, but causing major problems for your website. There is a simple solution, and it is free to use. HTML Validator will analyze your website code and find any errors your pages may contain. It will even tell you how to fix them! Download HTML Validator today and eliminate careless errors from your webpages. ABOUT idesignbusiness idesignbusiness provides complete Internet services for small businesses. Increase Website traffic, build your customer base, and drive revenue using our cost-effective and result driven tools and services Please visit http://www.idesignbusiness.com for more information. SUBSCRIPTION NOTICE This newsletter is only sent to opt-in subscribers. If at anytime you would like to be removed from this list, please send an e-mail to newsletters@idesignbusiness.com with REMOVE in the subject line or click on the remove link below. Spread the word - Please forward to friends and colleagues. Copyright 2002 - 2003 idesignbusiness http://www.idesignbusiness.com |
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