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Showing posts from September, 2008

The 10 Commandments of Web Design

To try and make sense of it all, BusinessWeek.com canvassed a broad range of Internet luminaries to discover the design rules they live by right now. Contributors ranged from the guru of Web usability, Don Norman, co-founder of the Nielsen Norman Group, to the design director of NYTimes.com, Khoi Vinh, and John Maeda, president-elect of the Rhode Island School of Design. These 10 commandments of Web design for 2008 are the combined results of our survey. For the full list of contributors, see the end of the story. 1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash. Adobe's ( ADBE ) popular Web animation technology powers everything from the much-vaunted Nike ( NKE ) Plus Web site for running diehards to many humdrum banner advertisements. But the technology can easily be abused—excessive, extemporaneous animations confuse usability and bog down users' Web browsers. 2. Thou shalt not hide content. Advertisements may be necessary for a site's continued existence, but usability researchers say pop

Choosing a web site designer

A lot of people are hanging out shingles as web site designers these days. How do you decide which company to use? Selecting a web site designer is like choosing any service provider: the more you know, the better off you are. Local or long distance? You can locate a lot of designers by going on line and checking out web pages. Theoretically, you could choose someone in California to design your web site and communicate with him or her by telephone, fax, email, and snail mail. However, if you’re new to this, being able to see someone face to face could be important. Maintenance and upgrading are issues to consider, too. Experience counts. Look at the work a designer has already done. Ask for references and follow up on them. Ask about the working relationship, turn around time, pricing, follow up, and responsiveness. If you need an online store, find someone who is capable in all the technology involved. Avoid having your site be someone’s learning experience. If you do want to give

Heres a SHOCKER!

The disadvantage of flash is that it can't be indexed today or in the near future. DON'T hire a design that wants to build you a flash site or sell you a template that he downloaded for $25 from the web. If you want search engines to find you DON'T use flash. Flash is an incredible tool but it just a tool and should be use in appropriate places. Some designers will tell you that they add comments and that's good enough... WRONG. Search is very intelligent , using linking to you, depth of linking, and the quality of the sites linking to you. If you have a flash website then all your links, all your content, your footprint on the Internet is the one page that the browser loads when you first hit the website. Intros... I thought this was over years ago.. stop having intros. I mean really, if you want to show them a commercial then ask them on the landing page but its like you are forcing them to watch a commercial when most of us spend hard earned money to avoid them &q

FEED ME!

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PRG Design has created a new product called FEED ME! Want your classified ads on your site? Want to put other classified content on your website? Search engines love fresh content! Better listing is search engines means more sales! This product will take your ads on craigslist and list them on your website as your content. You work hard posting your ads and writing good copy, why not use that hard work on your site as well. This content will help search engines to recognize you as having a website with constantly updated content. PRG Design provides graphic design, Internet advertising, website development, hosting and marketing to our customers in New Hampshire and beyond. We are the one stop resource you need to grow your brand and your local, regional or global reach. No matter what your industry is, people are looking to the internet first so be there when they are looking for you. http://www.itswebrelated.com

PRG Design attaching live content to your site

we find relevant content published by 3rd parties and add this to your site. The more this content changes and is kept up to date the more google likes your site and the higher you come up in the engines. This content must be relevant to your topic and not detract from the users experience on your website.

Website Optimization Tips for Link Building and SEO

Since link building is one of the most important aspects of SEO, let’s take a minute to revisit some very important link building and website optimization tactics. Trust, timing and authority are three metrics that impact the target site for building links. Sites that rank at the helm of search engines (above the fold on the [...] read entire article

Float Works inc. Shoots to the TOP!

In 2 weeks we took a site that basically was unlisted and brought it to the top listing on google. Keywords for float works inc are: maine marine construction: google positions 5 maine mooring serivces: google positions 6 maine marine emergency services: google positions 5 maine mooring recovery: google position 2 We recently added the national weather services forcast rss to the site as well as a fresh design and reformatted the content.

Online Email Marketing insite

I had a small business client today ask me about email marketing. I really wanted to provide some direction to this small business owner rather then turn them away and have someone else take their money. Email marketing is Push marketing, I am pushing my message onto someone. Much like a television ad, not many people like them or want them but it can be effective over time, these are called impressions. It may take many impressions to achieve a response. "Local" Email marketing in a list purchase is only cost effective when you can remove as many filters as possible. here are some numbers to think about. Targets: building a list (x) suggested 1000 open rate: person actually opens the email (.01-3%) 30 responders: people that respond to the email (5%)1.5 sales: actual purchase of the item (10%) .15 Example: 1000 local targeted emails generates = 30 people may actually open the email = .3 will respond generating .03 sales. avg sale $19.99 est cost $500 (return -$500 ) You may