My New Website

Introduction
When I decided I needed a website for my business I had no idea of the planning involved. Like most people, I thought web design meant deciding on the graphics and the look of the pages and then by some magic it would all happen.

I have a friend who is in the business of web design and website development so I approached him for a quote. As a complete novice who is computer literate up to a point, I was amazed at the depth of initial questioning required to find out exactly what my requirements were.

I had no idea about the various aspects and the structure of the site and I found it mind blowing when I learned about the amount of work involved. So I thought other people would be interested to know more about this complicated process and I have asked my friend to supply the technical information for this article.

Stages in the Process

Target Audience
Before building a website there are important questions to consider. I was asked who would be my target audience. Who are my customers likely to be? Would they be children, businesses, home owners, sales people, parents or teenagers and so on?

The objective of the website
Then I was asked, what was the purpose of my website?
Did I want to sell products on line or use it to market my business and get more leads for possible customers? Maybe I would want to use it as an online brochure to showcase products. Another possibility was to use the website to foster a community so that I was in contact with other like-minded people, with chat rooms, online discussion and being supported by advertising on the site.

I hadn’t quite realised the scope of a website but as I was asked these questions it became clear that a lot of careful planning went into the preparation before building a website.

How to be Found on the Web
One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘Do you want it to be found by Google the main search engine?’ If I did then there was a whole process of establishing Keywords. So finding the best keywords are vital if you want to be found in Google. Generally most users only look at the first page of results so you will also want to promote your website to get on this page for your chosen keywords. By using a keyword research tool you can find the single most popular keyword for your industry.

Your Domain Name
Choosing a domain name is often quite a problem because every name you initially come up with will almost certainly have been taken. Domain names ending in .com are by far the most popular and internationally recognised; the snag is that it’s very popularity means that the majority of the shorter names have already been registered.
So looking at names with endings such as .net; .co.uk or .info may be able to provide you with the domain name you want. When choosing your domain name it is very important to include one or more of your keywords if possible as this can apparently help with search engine rankings. So although the name of your business is the obvious choice for a domain name, it is not necessarily the only option.

Creating a Site Map
The importance of creating a site map is to get it clear in your mind of all the pages you will have on your website so you can prepare the content for each page and begin to design the flow through the website, such as when a user adds a product to their basket, then enters their delivery and billing address and makes the credit card payment in the correct order.

The aim is to make the site as user friendly as possible so that there are no barriers to getting into the website. For that reason often user name and passwordz are set for the customer so that they are not put off making a purchase by having to register.

For a non e-commerce site things are simpler with a contact form which allows you to receive enquiries by email without publishing your email address on the website, thus avoiding junk email.Web forms can also validate the information before you receive it, so ensuring that the phone number provided does not contain words, and that the email address is in the correct format, for example. These things may sound very technical to us lay-folk but I assure you everything has to be decided in advance before starting on the construction of the site.

Copy
The next stage is preparing the copy. This is not the design of your website – just the words and visuals you want to have one each of the pages.

Having gathered all the previous information you will need to decide what imagery you want to use within the website content. As we all know, a picture speaks a thousand words and remains in people’s memory far longer than just words.

For each image you should also have a caption, as the caption of an image is the next ‘most read’ words on the page after the page title. Images and their captions need to be clickable. When you click on a picture it should take you to the next stage of the process such as the sale page or placing an enquiry if your website is for lead generation.

Navigation
Another important consideration when building a website is how you want your navigation to work. You can have links within the content of your website, in the text, so there are not just links from the menu. You will need to decide whether the links will open into a new window, retaining your original page open. Next time you go online, you will realise how much thought has gone into the way in which a website works.

Website Design
Finally we come to the design of your website. I asked my friend in web design Nottingham to comment about this and he says it is one of the most difficult stages of the process because it’s subjective. What one person might like, another person might not like. If you are setting up a website for yourself alone then you will probably have some idea of what you want to see on the site. But if, as so often happens, the website is for a large corporation there will be inputs from many people or departments and you can be sure that they will never all agree!

There are a number of ways to approach web design but ultimately you need to create a design brief for the designer(s) to work from. Look at other websites and your competitor’s websites to find out what you like or dislike. The design brief should give reference to the logo, any existing brand guidelines or schemes and fonts and colour schemes, and should also detail which pages of the website that the designer is being tasked with creating visuals for.

The very best results will be achieved by using a graphic designer, and beware – not all graphic designers are the same. A graphic designer who designs specifically for print is working in a different discipline than a graphic designer who designs for screen and specifically the web. So choose your designer carefully, look at other work that person has done and determine whether or not you like their style.

If you are working in the big time and budget allows, use multiple graphic designers who have all been given the same design brief and request three concept designs from each designer. If the client themselves also do a graphic design, even if it’s a back of the envelope scribble, you will then have 10 concept designs. The next step is to get them all together and select the preferred elements from each design. Then give the work to the selected graphic designer to work up as the final artwork.

The artwork should be finalised and agreed on by everybody before development of the site begins.

Production
Finally the preparation has been done and the site is ready to be constructed. Now for the more technical stuff! You will need to have decided which programming language to use to build the website. There are two main types for developing a website, one is Unix based, and the other is Windows based. Each one has advantages and disadvantages. If you are starting from scratch then it probably won’t matter, so you can go with the preference of your professional doing the work. My website is built on the Unix platform (apparently!) which is the same as many of the more well known websites such as Ebay, Facebook, Google and Amazon. Also your website hosting must be compatible with the development language with which your website is built.

Accessibility and Compliance
The website has to meet the current standards for website coding and doing so insures that disabled users, such as the visually impaired, can still access the entire website if they are using a Braille web browser.

Website Development
The best way to develop a website is on the web Server where the site is going to live. This way, those involved in reviewing the work can see work in progress and provide comments throughout the development.

Unforeseen items
There are always some things that arise in any project which you suddenly realise you have forgotten, so no matter how well the web designer prepares and asks the right questions, there will always be a last minute change or addition. The main aim is to minimise the number of glitches that might arise because they aren’t calculated in and they could cause extra costs and delays on the date of the web site going live.

Publishing Your New Website
The moment of excitement comes when your site finally is published to the internet and you see the results of all the thought that has gone into the whole process. I was over the moon to see my paper flags website go live. As soon as the site has gone live there is no substitute for real world testing though, so ask as many of your friends and colleagues to view the website from their own offices and give you their thoughts.

Reporting and Monitoring
Once your website is up and running, you might like to know how many people visit your website and from that number how many actually buy the products or place an enquiry. From these statistics you can work out the ratio of visits to sales and gradually make changes to improve the ratios. There are some reliable statistics packages such as Google Analytics or Web-Stat.com which allow you to collect and review website visitor data in near real time. All you need to do this is to have a small block of code inserted into each web page on your site.

Another useful service that Web-stat.com provides is to monitor the website and warn you by email or text message if the site is offline.

Marketing
Once the website is live there are lots of things you can do to market your product or service. The first step is to submit it to the search engines and at the same time write articles, and press releases. Getting links to the site from forums, blogs and other social networking spaces are other options. For more on this subject ask your designer about SEO

Conclusion
Wheww. What an amazing amount of work! I hadn’t realised when I started the process of getting a website up and running, how complicated it all is and how many factors you have to consider before even designing the website. The word web design is really a misnomer, as people often think it’s just about the graphic design on the home page, and the branding of the product. Unless you are a computer buff, most people have no idea how much goes into designing and building a website and the systems that support the work you want it to do. I hope that this article will give readers an understanding and insight into the whole process of website development from start to finish.

Free Tools For Effective Niche Market Research

It is a fact, although widely misunderstood and ignored, that thorough market research is the key to success in any business. It does not matter whether the business is offline or online, whether focused on internet marketing or on an unheard of niche business, unless your market research data backs up you seeing the vision of a profitable business, you will face an uphill battle trying to achieve the success you dream of.

Many, unfortunately, approach business in just the opposite way. Many businesses start because there is some technology, or code, or IP that is available. It maybe that the technology or the code available is unique, one that could have taken years to build or a team of rocket scientists to construct, but unless it is known that there is a market wanting it, the technology is all but something just to feel proud of, not to profit from. You can’t build a business because you have technology, you build a business because you have proven market data that points you towards profit IF you build the technology to support it.

What exactly does market research mean? And when do you know the data supports a profitable business? And how do you go about finding it?

Market Research is nothing more than evaluating the landscape that you would sell into in your niche area. A profitable market is one where you know for a fact that there are people that are willing to pay for your product or service, and that you can sell for more than what it would cost you to deliver (and build, maintain, support etc.). Effective market research is not just in knowing that there are people that will buy, but also in understanding who else offers the same or a similar product or service (or in other words, your competition). Market research is also in knowing that the desire for your product or service is large enough (in numbers with geography, seasonality etc. figured in) that you can effectively afford to lose business to your competition sometimes (because it will happen) and still can build a profitable business.

The focus of this article is to provide you with a few free tools that you can use for effective market research in identifying a niche area online. You could use this as a starting point to getting your research kick-started.

Amazon Marketplace

The first tool that provides you with a wealth of information to identify niche markets that you could research is none other than the “earth’s largest online marketplace”. Yes, Amazon.com. Amazon is a widely popular marketplace, and there are millions of products featured and sold each day. It could be a nightmare trying to figure out what is moving and what might be worth your research just going at it cold. Fortunately, it can be easier. As a start, just focus on one particular topic – Magazines – and on five hot categories – Movers & Shakers, Best Sellers, Hot New Releases, Most Gifted and Most Wished For. As you can see, you can easily navigate from one to the other as well. If there is a Magazine that is moving the markets, it is certainly worth exploring further as a niche. Watch the trends and you could easily spot something that will peak your interest as a niche area for a business.

With hourly updates to everything you see not just on Magazines, but on a variety of other hot products & topics, Amazon Trends should certainly be on top of your list for niche market research.

Google Hot Trends

Identifying a niche market category or topic is spotted not just by focusing on what the world is shopping for, but in today’s internet world, it is also spotted by focusing on what the world is searching for – right now! If a search topic is hot and volcanic, and pertains to a product, service, topic or category, then you can certainly derive that there is interest in the same. Of-course, world searches happen not just on products and services, but also on what makes breaking news, such as an event or perhaps a scandal etc.. The goal is not to focus on those, but on products, services, categories etc. Again, with hourly updates, Google Hot Trends should be in your arsenal of free tools for effective niche market research.

Yahoo Buzz

With live and updated coverage on a variety of topics, including Fashion Trends, Sports News, Video Clips, Politics & Government, Web Images, Lifestyle & Communities, Travel Information, Business News, Science News, Health Issues, USA News, News Worldwide and Global Trends, Yahoo Buzz should be a key part of what you follow to gain clues on what’s hot and buzzing in the marketplace.

Ebay, Walmart & Buy.com Marketplaces

Ebay, the world’s largest live auction marketplace is always buzzing with activity. What’s moving on Ebay is certainly worth exploring. Ebay Pulse is a spot you ought to visit often, as it features what’s most hot on Ebay.

Walmart, the largest offline super store, moves markets. Although not dominant online, Walmart.com New Arrivals are items to keep an eye on.

Buy.com, a near Amazon-like discount marketplace, competes closely with Amazon and is hub for Electronics and Computer related offerings. What’s Shaking at Buy.com shakes and moves markets.

Google Keyword Tool

It is not just sufficient to focus on what products and offerings moves the market, it is equally important to analyze how many searches are underway. In the online world, searches happen by keywords and key-phrases. Google Keyword Tool is probably one of the most important free tools you just can’t ignore as with it, you have one of the most valuable tools to exactly know how many searches are underway, how many advertisers are competing for it and how much they are paying for it. With the ability to search for the keyword by broad, phrase and exact matches, you will very likely need nothing additional to initially carve out your market niche.

These are a variety of other tools that go beyond what’s covered in this article, and some of them are at no cost. This article is just a start, and you will see continuing tips, tools and techniques at bvish.com.  Keep watching!

Buying A Boat – What Type Of Boat To Buy

When it comes to buying a boat its important to establish its main purpose. Is the intention to getaway for a weekend, to go on a fishing expedition or to experience the thrills of a jet boat and to tow skiers behind. These points can help to pinpoint whether its the excitement of a speed boat or the more relaxed pace of a motor-driven yacht or sailboat.

Also, is it the plan to use the craft inshore on a lake or river or is going out to sea the preferred option. And, its important to consider to the other responsibilities that come with owning a boat – such as the continuous care and maintenance needed.

If it’s the intention to look at new or used ski boats, there are a variety of places to check out. The first place to come to mind is the local boat dealers and brokerage services. It’s possible to get a good look at what’s on offer – if a power boat looks to be of interest, take it out for a on-water trail to see how it handles. Other places to look for new or used boats include the local and national papers, online classified ads sites, and auction sites such as eBay.

Or, if fishing is on the cards it will be necessary to look at one of the dealers that offer fishing boats for sale. When selecting the ideal fishing machine, its important to look at the type of angling to be done – is it for fun, sport, inshore or saltwater. All this can help in determining the ideal watercraft to go for.

Get Fit And Lose Fat With A Wii

My next door neighbour, Clare, is what you would call a ‘big’ girl. She loves her fast food, chocolates, biscuits, crisps ….in fact just about anything that adds the pounds and kilos to her weight. And to make matters worse, she hardly ever walks anywhere but prefers to drive instead.

So it’s not surprising that about 3 months ago, she felt that her weight was getting out of control and she needed to do something about it.

Did she take up jogging? Or go down to our local gym? Nope – she decided to buy a Wii console!

She claimed that because the Wii had some new-fangled controls that didn’t just involve pressing buttons like other games consoles, but that actually required you to put in some effort to play games, then she’d lose weight.

Needless to say, her husband and I were not convinced and thought that this was just another one of Clare’s mad ideas (that she does have a reputation for coming out with!).

With her Wii console, she also got something called a Wii Fit that looked like one of those step blocks used in gyms for step aerobics. Clare said that this connected to the Wii console and came with a Keep Fit game that had her doing various exercises every day.

The software also kept a record of her weight, body-mass index and improvements in her performance of doing the exercise schedules.

Clare stuck to her new “exercise regime” and I would often pop round for a chat in the afternoon and find her red-faced and breathless from having just completed on of her sessions.

And the result?

Well, in the past month, she’s lost an impressive 14lbs (6.4 kilos for those of you who’ve gone metric) and it’s very noticeable. We are all impressed (even though she does keep saying “I told you so”). You can find the Wii Fit for sale on eBay at bargain prices. I’m definitely going to get one to get fitter and in shape.

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Guru Alex Jeffries Step-By-Step Money Making Listbuilding System

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Alex Jeffries is a New Star in the Internet Marketing Guru bracket – you may not have heard of him…yet. He’s a Brit who started his online business on eBay importing motorbikes from Japan. He sold that 6-figure income business because it could not be automates. He was working very long hours and couldn’t leverage it. He KNEW there was another way to make money online.

He discovered it and this year expects to clear his first $1,000,000 online. I’m Susan Owen-Thursfield, one of Alex Jeffries first EVER coaching students. And I’m here to tell you that his Step-By-Step system is AMAZING and Foolproof!

My FREE ebook sets out just out successful his methods are and for a limited time only, I’m giving away this step-by-step How To Build A Proftable Business Online ebook FREE. Follow the step-by-step system and you’re GUARANTEED to make money online….

Heard it before? Not this you haven’t.

Alex Jeffries has put his reputation on the line to GUARANTEE this PROVEN system. He backs it up with evidence of his earnings and you can too. You will learn everything you need to know – NOTHING is left out – about SUCCESSFUL Listbuilding using a PROVEN step-by-step method developed by Listbuilding Guru Alex Jeffries. Build a profit pulling website, drive targeted traffic and build a massive list of RESPONSIVE subscribers and customers… in days. This works. I know, I did it.

As a sweetner, the FREE listbuilding ebook includes Master Resell Rights… You can give it away, resell it, or just keep it for your personal use. But Grab Your Copy NOW!

Just follow Alex’s PROVEN methods and you WILL MAKE SERIOUS money online! Two things though… This is NO Get Rich Scheme. You HAVE to TAKE ACTION and you have to actually FOLLOW the system. It works.

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