Web design blog

Build Trust in Your Web page Visitors

admin — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 08:58:10 +0000

It is completely necessary that your web page must create the environment of trust otherwise, most of your efforts will be wasted. Have you ever thought – how to create the environment of trust for a web page? Do not panic, it is very easy to build trust for your online guests.

Here are simple proceedings you can take to get started.

Remember, your website design is the first impression. Take care it is professional and relevant to the subject matter.
Navigation must be intuitive and easy. If users can’t find what they are looking for easily, they will question our competence in providing what they want.
Make the web page personal by giving it its own tone and voice. Known principle: People buy people.
Use language that’s appropriate to the audience. It will build big empathy.
Regularly add new content to your website. It shows that the business is alive and active.
Review all links. Doubts will quickly form in your online guests’ minds if links do not work or, worse still, take them to error pages.
Spelling matter and good grammar. Errors always give the impression of sloppiness and carelessness.
Write articles for humans, not search engines optimization.

Google Inc.

admin — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 19:02:47 +0000

Google began in January 1996 as a study project by Sergey Brin and Larry Page when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in California. While conventional search engines ranked results by counting how many times the search terms appeared on the page, the 2 theorized about a better system that analyzed the relationships between web pages. They named this new technology PageRank, where a website’s relevance was determined by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, that linked back to the original site. A small search engine called Rankdex was already exploring a similar rules. Brin and Page firstly nicknamed their new search engine “BackRub“, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Finally, they changed the name to Google, originating from a misspelling of the word “googol”, the number one followed by 100 zeros, which was meant to signify the amount of information the search engine was to handle. Eventually, Google ran under the Stanford University webpage, with the domain google.stanford.edu. Google.com was registered on September 15, 1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4, 1998, at a friend’s garage in Menlo Park, California.

Tracking clicks on outbound links with Google Analytics.

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:09:36 +0000

Google Analytics can be used to track clicks on links that lead away from a website. However links which lead away from a website are not automatically tracked, we have to manually tag all outbound links with a special code. To do this, we have to use JavaScript customizations to the web page and to the links we want to track.

1. First we have to set up Event Tracking in an Analytics Tracking code. To do so, we have to add the following line to the tracking code after the page tracking object is set up:

var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker(‘UA-XXXXX-X’);

pageTracker._trackPageview();

2. Now we have to add a JavaScript method in the head of the webasite. This JS will delay the outbound click by a fraction of a second. Without this script, it can happen that a user clicks on the outbound link before the tracking code loads, in that case the event will not be recorded. The following line of the JavaScript code has to be placed in the section:

3. The last step is to update outbound links. We do it by adding the _trackEvent() method in the link’s tag:

And that is all, you don’t need to make any changes in Google Analytics.

To see statistics of clicks for this Event Tracking go to Analytics and then Content > Event Tracking.

How to hire SEO expert

admin — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 22:41:23 +0000

Deciding to hire SEO expert is a big decision that can potentially improve your website and save time, but you can also risk damage to your web site and status. Make sure to research the potential advantages as well as the damage that an reckless SEO can do to your website.

Remeber: No one can guarantee you a #1 ranking on Google.

There’s no priority submit for Google. Actually, the only way to submit a site to Google directly is through Google’s Add URL page or by submitting a Sitemap and you can do this yourself for free.

Rules when you select Search Engine Optimization company:

Can seo company which you want to choose show examples of their earlier work and share some success stories?
Do they follow the Google Webmaster Guidelines?
Do they offer any online-marketing services or recommendation to complement their organic search services?
What kind of results do you suppose to see, and in what timeframe? How do they measure their achievement?
What is their experience in your industry?
What is their experience in your city/country?
What is their experience developing international websites?
What are their most important Search Engine Optimization techniques?
How long have they been in seo business?
How can you suppose to communicate with SEO company? Will they share with you all the changes they create to your website, and provide detailed information about their recommendations and the reasoning behind them?

*SEO - search engine optimization or search engine optimizer.

Web Design Blog

admin — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 03:06:20 +0000

Web Design Blog – we came back after one year! Had fun then with web design and web development discussions and expected to have fun again!

Less means more. Which links are good to be acquired

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 12:46:56 +0000

You’re probably wondering why I began this post with words “less means more”, I mean, this is not any popular phrase input by web users in search of information. To write it I was inspired by a book by Gerry McGovern “Killer Web Content”, where in one of the chapters entitled “Less means more” he describes a particular human gene, which sits in us from the beggining of humanity and screams more. In case of this book it’s about effective content, which generate incomes and catch people’s eyes, but the idea suits well to many domains of human life and also to the issue of positioning.Every webmaster’s dream (do not mix it up with a spamer) is that his work could be appriciated and his websites visited by the biggest amount of people possible. Nowadays, where there is a lot of information, where we can find several pages of the same domain it is hard to be succesful. It is not easy to convince a web user that our site is the best, and as we know, not every Joe Blow has the finances possible to employ a company to position his site or to use Google AdWords campaign, which often are the key to succes. What is left is gaining knowledge and hard work.

In this rush a lot of begginer webmasters makes a huge mistake, because when they find out that links to our own site from other parts of the internet raises the position of our page, they stop further learning and thay contemplate on how to gain more links and then even more (“more” gene starts to talk) and 3-4 years ago it was accepted mor or less, now it can cause more harm than good.

Beware of unvaluable links!

It turns out, that choosing the links „less means more”. Gaining links from so called back-up, which often are offered on internet auctions for less than a bottle of coke is a waste of time and money especially when we want to sublink, for example our shop with mowing machines on a page with a rockstar. In positioning it is topic connection and the strength of a portal, from which the link is directed to us. The amount is also important of course, but in most of the cases it is better to focus on the quality. While positioning it is good to rethink our actions a couple of times, as taking decisions not thought over make bring only loss – while choosing the links it is good to analyze the portals with such programmes like alexa.com, where we can check the popularity of the portal, is it high in Google for particular phrases and check the amount of indexed subpages. However, in my opinion the best determinant of quality of the domain on which we want our link to be on is to check whether the page itself is high on Google. The easiest way would be to gain links at our competitor’s pages, but as we now this is not possible, but fortunately ther is a lot of portals connected thematically for whom we are not a potential competition.

Of course I do not state that links from other parts of the internet completly not connected thematically do not have any strength, because I do not know the algorithm of Google, and I do not know anyone who knows such thing, but I am sure that such links have less value, if not none.

As I mentioned before such actions were succesful, but systems where we can exchange links showed up together with spamers racing in making pages like descriptions, etc. Fortunately Google has changed the way of “valuation” (if I may call it like this) of such links, but I’ll write about it the next time.

Apache PHP MySQL that is installation of a server in windows

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 22:57:59 +0000

Thinking about novice webmasters I will show you today how to start a www server of www with PHP language and MySQL datas. Such platform is necessary both to testing or modifying well-known CMS systems (Content Management System – the System of content management) or also to work on personal PHP promissory notes it can be of use as a fully functional www server connected to the net (I however would recommend larger sinking in the subject for safety reasons – here however we will stick to the basics). There are ready-made packets under the windows system of ‘dwarf’ type, but as time goes by it can come out that they will bring us more problems than benefits, for example MySQL built-in in the well-known packet WebServ has great problems when we want to administer it from under the windows console, while the console itself in a standard configuration does not connect with the remote hostem. These are the reasons why I recommend applying original packets, what is more they are free and one can download them without any problems from the manufacturer’s site.

The installation of the Apache server will be the first step, this is the most popular www server and its installation in Windows is probably even simpler than the installation of a popular communication programme which is gadu-gadu. One can download the packets from the manufacturer’s site httpd.apache.org we choose the package for Windows according to the requirements for novice, I recommend choosing the package with msi extension (no mod_ssl) and we begin the installation as in the case of every other programme in Windows, during the installation the programme will ask us about some details, so we fill in:

the programme will ask us also about assumed locations, so C:\ the Programme Files \ Apache SoftwareFoundation in order to make our life easier I recommend personally to choose C:\ apache After finishing the installation we can manage our Apache as every other programme in windows choosing Start -> all programmes -> Apache HTTP Server from the menu Control Apache Server we can run our server, if the server starts an additional icon in tray should show up. We should check now if everything works, in order to do it in our browser we call out the address http://localhost/ if the text “It works!” appears in your eyesight it means that everything works Now when we checked the working we can enter the catalogue in which the file index.html that is htdocs (if you have installed it just like me it will be C:\apache\htdocs) is situated and remove it, in this catalogue we also publish our files. As one can easily notice it possesses a lot of options, however I will not describe it here.

I will add as a curiosity that I use Apache to make my life easier: when you send something to friends, for example pictures and movies from yesterdays party, which often have 500 Mb and sending it via e-mail is out of the question from known reasons, sending such files on services like rapidshare is connected with the necessity of dividing it on parts and from the downloader’s side with problems resulting from the necessity of awaiting. The solution is simple, we create next catalogue in the htdocs catalogu e.g. files and we place in it the package which we want to make accessible for others, for example this will be the package called img.zip the target address to this package will be http://localhost/the files/img.zip but as that localhost as the name itself tells is a local host we have to give the address of our computer to our recepients the address of our computer in the net, which is our IP. In case when you do not know your IP you can simply check it on ip-adress.com then we put this address in the local host place that is http://your_IP/files/img.zip. Now you have to send this link to all you want to send a file to and do not switch the computer off. Obviously “sensitive” in this place claim that such practices are dangerous as the file is accesible to all in the net and one should really not publish important data this way, but let’s think logically: who will be smart enough to write this address in the browser? If someone strange will even see our files then what will happen as we place these pictures on sides, blogs, social portals, everything depends on what we want to send via such method. You should also pay attention to the fact that with standard apache configuration giving the address of a concrete catalogue e.g. http://your_IP/the files/ will cause enlisting the catalogue files . To prevent it from happening one should put empty file index.html or turn off the catalogue enlisting option in Apache options.

WARNING: to make our server visible in the internet the possession of a public IP address is necessary, otherwise only an alternative which is a NO- IP type server remains.

The installation of a MySQL server similarly to the instalation of an Apache server should not cause any problems, because one only has to download the programe statement [Windows (x86] from the site http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/
I recommand using stable packets, because beta versions are published for advanced users and unexpected problems can happen. The installation process can practically boil to clicking next, however I recommend exact reading of the options of the programme statement, I for example install MySQL in the catalogue C:\ mysql to maintain an order in my files. MySQL system should be added to autostart and run everytime while starting Windows. There is a few versions of mysql as well as the ways of managing the datas, however in order not to prolong I will not be plunged into the subject. For me personally the console for creating new bases and management is enough, but if someone wants, he or she can always install the newest phpMyAdmin

Our next step which we will make is to install the PHP language. There are 2 ways to do it: the first is with the help of an instaler (I do not recommend) and the second way is so called manual all necessary files and practically ready zip package we can download from the manufacturer’s site http://www.php.net/downloads.php.We unpack the files to any catalogue e.g. we create on the disc C the php catalogue, so now we unpack the content of the package to C:\php. We find the file php5st.dll in our catalogue (I will mark that in the moment of writing this post the stable version is 5.2.x-x) and we load it to the system catalogue system32 (for Windows XP this will be C:\WINDOWS\system32),we similarly find the file php.ini-dist and copy it to the catalogue C:\WINDOWS and we change its name to php.ini. The next step that we will have to execute is the edition of this file. I do not recommend the system notebook because editing in it often finishes with problems, (I recommend Notepad++ to editing all files). We define the path to the catalogue of extensions, we find the option extension_dir and attribute the path to the ext catalogue that is extension_dir = “C:\php\ext” . If we have installed MySQL we have to define the additional extension so that this language could communicate with the PHP language and namely the matter is simple – we have to find the lines which define additional extensions that is ;extension = and exactly this will be ;extension = php_mysql.dll to start the extension we remove the semicolon sign from the front “;” and ready We could also attribute the path to a temporary catalogue TEMP : we find session.save_patch and attribute , for Windows XP this will be something like session.save_patch = C:\WINDOWS\Temp, I will not write here about additional options, because it had eventually to be about basic installation so now we save the edited file. The last condition so that the php language worked on our server is adding it to Apache through the edition of the configurational file httpd.conf, we can do this from menu start, but probably it is easier to visit a suitable catalogue that is C:\apache\conf on the end of the file we write:

LoadModule php5_module c:/php/php5apache2.dll
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
AddType application/x-httpd-php-source .phps

Find the DirectoryIndex line which informs our server about the perspicacious names of the files which have to be treated as the main site in the given catalogue, this looks significantly like this: DirectoryIndex index.html here add index.php, save it, close and ready now reboot your Apache server.

We can now write our own promissory notes or modify different (depends on what who likes) on our local ‘workshop’ without the need of sending after every modification of files with the ftp client, and even without the need of connection with the net. I am waiting for comments if you like my work

Creating dynamic AdWords advertisements and CTR increasing.

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:43:28 +0000

Creating dynamic AdWords advertisements is possible thanks to dynamic keyword insertion function. Because some time ago I looked for the answer on this question unsuccessfully, I decided to write about this matter. However, I will not write about what an AdWords is and how it works, because firstly, I assume that readers of this article had already contact with this system, secondly there is a lot of articles on this subject in the net. One can often use the function of dynamic advertisement insertion to generating a huge quantity of advertisements on hardly related key words at the same time reducing costs and increasing effectiveness. The matter is actually simple, all you have to do is to insert in the advertisement title {KeyWord:default_title}, in the place of DEFAULT_TITLE we write the title, which will show up in case when the written by an internet user phrase will be too long. Before { and behind } we can also write down a usual text e.g. a company’s name. In case when the whole text will be too long, we can give up the default title and write only {KeyWord}. Thanks to this, the displayed advertisement will contain key words written by an internet user with capital letters, (if we want the words in the title written in small letters all we have to do is to change the command on {keyword} – you know what I mean) what is more key words will be in bold .

For the example if we have an internet shop this can look like this: {KeyWord:} Delivery 0zł or {KeyWord:ForceTech} Delivery 0zł – where ForceTech is the name of our shop which will appear instead of the searched phrase in case when this will be too long. We also have to remember about including appriopriate key words in the group of the advertisements, in this example the most desired will be the names of devices which we sell, and so on the phrase bosch 550 we get:

As we can see the written in the explorer phrase is additionally in bold what encourages users to clicking in the advertisement and increases CTR. This way we can offer the user what he looks for. Remember that if you exaggerate with key words you can get the effect opposite to desirable! For example if you sell shoes made by X company and you place couple of different companies not connected with shoes and for example trousers, than the internet user in majority of cases will not buy anything, because he was looking for shoes and suddenly someone wants to sell him trousers, the effect is that you only lost your money and he will not look into Your shop anymore! Of course, there are exceptions from this theory… Let’s go back to CTR now, that is the interest ratio of clicking on the page to the views of the given advertisement. Why to enlarge CTR? Enlarging CTR has two advantages:

1. Higher position of advertisement with retaining the same costs and the possibility of decreasing the costs with retaining position.

2. Increasing probability of surpassing our advertisement over organic results (natural) and as Google investigations shows the upper left corner of a site is the most attractive place for an advertisement, anyway any special proofs are not necessary, because one can be easily convinced about this while advertising in AdWords.

Click to enlarge …

sponsored links over organic results
sponsored links
organic results ( natural )

I hope that someone will find it useful and I will be grateful if you link this entry on yuor blog or page.

Why is it worth to discourage in AdWords?

admin — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 10:53:16 +0000

Continuing the subject of Advertisements in Google AdWord I will show you something which is worth paying attention to in order to spend money wisely on advertising campaigns using words which discourage to clicking, but be aware: they discourage only certain group of people who would not buy our product anyway, thanks to what we reach a larger number of potential buyers with the same money spend.

For example, you create web sites and we want to gain a customer so a mistake would be to put a title for our advertisement like this: Webdesign in practice, instead we can use a word which will discourage novice webmasters, who seek knowledge, not someone who will make them a website, this is why let’s use this sentence, e.g. Webdesign Cheap. The word Cheap will discourage someone, who is not willing to buy something as it works subconsciously: a man does not even think about it and his subconscious knows that he will have to pay.

Example 2: let’s suppose that we run a sale of BMW cars, we do not want to pay for numerous entries of people who only want to find the given model of car only to see it and dream about it, so we use do not use here a phrase like New BMW, but New BMW 5 – salon.

While creating Google AdWords campaigns for e.g. an internet shop it is good to use dynamic AdWords ads, we can create advertisements thanks to this on a principle: the customer is looking for something so he writes it down and we on the basis of defined earlier key words offer him the advertisement which he wrote in Google a moment ago and here appears this common mistake ,because we forget that not only the person interested in buying will search our product but also in the majority people looking for it because of completely different reasons, e.g. willing to find out something about it, and we can only add the word shop at the end and it is already known with what we have to deal with.