By Christopher Raine

What does a website need? The simple answer is repeat visitors, this is what successful websites share in common, and this accounts for a major part of their traffic.

Why is this?

Well, experience shows that returning visitors are much easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The whole issue of credibility disappears.

So what do you need to do to keep your visitors coming back and visiting your site?

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By John Williams

A website is a handy and trendy marketing tool for business. For a good website, the visual web design must be attractive and must be able to grab the attention of a large number of visitors.

Web designing is an art and has to be done with interest and involvement. When done with involvement, the user-friendly feature will automatically get incorporated in the design. Stunning web design with good programming and marketing strategies will greatly increase the visibility of the website to the Internet browsers.

From this introduction it can be easily understood that web design is the key aspect of a website. For designing a user-friendly website here are a few tips which I gained through my experience in web designing. These useful tips, when implemented, will yield good user-friendly web designs.

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By Lawrence Roth

“I am an artist,” the man proudly proclaimed. “I don’t care,” the critic proudly responded. “ The frame is too large, the colors are dark and it will not match my furniture,” the critic further explained.

Many times web developers experience a similar scorn but not always from humans. A site has been designed with an interface that pops with beautiful GIFs and JPEGs, dazzles with Flash and functions like a charm with JavaScript. The search engines do not care. The content, the keywords and the tags do not correspond with the criteria of the search engines. Therefore, you are ignored.

It is a struggle between art and science that frustrates many. The responsibilities of web developing — the art — clash with the role of the Search Engine Optimization (SEO) — the science. That is why some companies and development firms are designating web developer and optimizer as two distinctive jobs.

Yet many smaller companies and shops still have the web developer fulfilling both roles. The problem is that optimization is becoming challenging and competitive. So here is some information to help start the optimization before, after or during the developing.

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By S McIntyre

A look of a website can make or break your business. First impressions always count. Here are ten tips to building a better business website.

1. Colour - A black background is not recommended. It’s hard on the eyes. I don’t know how many people have problems reading white or coloured text on a black background and with that said, don’t go neon pink or glaring orange either. Generally black text on white background is best. Ideally you can choose two colours, but make sure they match and use it consistently on all your pages to maintain fluidity and continuity.

For example: Reds and oranges which stimulates appetite works well on a food site while warm pastel colours matches a baby site.

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By Matthew Mckernan

Doing business in the 21st century will eventually require every company to have a website in one form or another. Whether your site is interactive or simply informational, there are steps you can take to ensure you’re on the right track to creating a successful web presence, seven to be exact (at least from our humble perspective).

While following these steps will not guarantee a successful website, it is certainly an intelligent place to start.

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By Jerry Bader

Tip O’Neill, the late Speaker of The House of Representatives is often quoted as saying “All politics is local,” meaning a politician that helps a constituent with a problem is likely to win that vote based on the personal assistance provided, irrespective of that politician’s stance on the larger, more weighty, geo-political issues. What then of business, is all business local or international?

Shopping Is An Experience

The world has changed dramatically since the days when neighborhood shopping was the main option, and people relied on their local merchants for products and services. The world of commerce today seems to be divided between two competing scenarios: on the one hand, people are more mobile than ever before, and more willing to travel to buy what they want, even with wildly fluctuating energy costs; and on the other hand, people are busier than ever and use the Internet to seek out the companies, products, and services they want and need.

What seems to be consistent is the underlying need to feel something, to experience the process. The higher the value, the greater the psychological component to the buying experience. The same is true for products and services that are considered non-essential.

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