May
13
Making user friendly Online forms
10:05 am
An online form allows prospects to take a variety of actions: contact you, subscribe to your e-zine, request information and, of course, order something. A form is a communication tool for them and a marketing tool for you. You need an online form to collect contact information and to get permission to communicate with prospects. Otherwise, once they leave your site, they could be gone forever.
An online form itself isn’t effective marketing, however. In fact, if you’re committing the following mistakes, yours could be costing you customers.
- Requiring unnecessary information : Do you really need prospects to provide personal information such as a company title, phone number, mailing address and registration of a login name and password? If not, remove these fields or label them as optional.
- Restricting open fields : Ever type so many characters that a field ended before you finished? Expand the length of your fields to account for long names, e-mail addresses and other information you require.
- Forcing repeat work : If your forms are not completed correctly, are prospects forced to start over? They won’t. Be sure to retain the information already entered while pointing out the area that needs attention.
Don’t just fix your forms; optimize them. Try these time-tested tips to make your forms better marketing tools:
- Include your contact information. Give prospects the option to call you instead of, or in addition to, completing your online form.
- Offer your e-zine. While they’re already contacting you, invite them to subscribe to your newsletter.
- Ask how they found your site. This optional question could give you insightful marketing information without putting off prospects.
Your online forms get prospects to make initial contact with you. Make this process painless because your online forms won’t get a second chance to make a first impression.
Filed Under Web Design, Web Standards and Website Marketing | 1 comment
May
06
File Formats in Web Graphics
10:27 pm
You currently can use only three image file formats in the Web Site Design: GIF, JPG, and PNG. These formats all compress images to create smaller files. Knowing which file format to use for which type of images is important. If you choose the wrong file type, your image will not compress or appear as you expect. Color depth (described in the “Color Basics” section of this chapter) is a factor in image file format as well. Of the three Web-based image file formats, JPG supports 24-bit color, GIF supports 8-bit color, and PNG supports both 8-bit and 24-bit color. The file format’s color depth controls the number of colors that can be displayed.
GIF
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is San Francisco Web design for online delivery of graphics. GIF uses a lossless compression technique, meaning that no color information is discarded when the image is compressed.
The color depth of GIF is 8-bit, allowing a palette of no more than 256 colors. In fact, the fewer colors you use, the greater the compression, which results in smaller file size. The GIF file format excels at compressing and displaying flat color areas, making it the logical choice for line art and color graphics. Because of its limited color depth, GIF is not the best file format for photographs or more complex graphics that have gradations of color, such as shadows and feathering.
Filed Under Tutorials, Web Standards and file formats | Add comment
May
05
Benefits of Google sitemap
09:16 pm
Google Sitemaps enables Webmasters to Directly Alert Google to Changes and Additions on a Website and that’s just one of 7 Benefits.
Telling search engines about new pages or new websites use to be what the submission process was all about. But major search engines stopped using that process a long time ago.
Google has for a long time depended on external links from pages they already know about in order to find new websites.
For webmasters and website owners Google Sitemaps is the most important development since RSS or Blog and Ping, to hit the Internet.
Using RSS and Blog and Ping enabled webmasters to alert the search engines to new additions to their web pages even though that was not the primary purpose of these systems.
If you’ve ever waited weeks or months to get your web pages found and indexed you’ll know how excited we webmasters get when someone discovers a new way to get your web pages found quicker.
Filed Under Page Rank, SEO Tips and Tricks, Web Standards and Website promotion | 1 comment
May
04
Say no to flash
07:47 pm
When Flash came along…
Millions and millions of years ago, man created an invisible entity, a power to which the world would kneel down and worship and would change the lives of everyone forever. Some called it the ‘World Wide Web’, but by some it was known only as ‘The Internet’.
In it’s early days of life, the Internet was slow and ugly and rarely reared it’s head in public. But over time it began to grow and flourish. It adopted HTML to promote it’s power and ideas, picked up CSS to fashion it’s wardrobe and used directories and Search Engines for PR. Soon, the Internet had a whole team behind it - a list of acronyms only a madman could contemplate.
But something was missing. There was no movie producer, no director to push the Internet to the big screen. Until Flash came along. Hailed as the saviour, the messiah - the chosen one!
Right I’m going to cut the insane metaphor here. Flash was not a saviour - it simply opened doors, many of which shouldn’t have been opened. It made bad websites worse, and generally made good websites… different.
Filed Under Web Design and Web Standards | 1 comment