I was looking at a post about Illustrations in website designs. I was thinking of writing my own article and giving my thoughts and opinions on different websites that use illustrations in their designs.

However, after looking through some sites that use illustrations I came to the conclusion that for a professional website design I don’t like them. Every one of the sites I looked at came off as someone that was not serious about their online business.

Now…in the past I’ve seen them and thought they were cute and maybe it’s just my mood today or I’ve become more mature over the years but everyone I’ve looked at so far seems to represent a company I don’t want to do business with.

Again…maybe it’s just my mood today but take a look here and ask yourself, would you buy from them.

Tags: 50 Examples of Beautiful Illustration in Web Design
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I’ve listened to the argument about flash being the way to the future for the last 5 years or so. There are two camps those that believe it is the way of the future and those who do not.

However, the real truth is that every website is different. In most causes a little flash here and a little flash there is all most website need.
When going with an all flash website in most cases the back button will not work and it causes web visitor to become upset at the lack of functionality with your website design.

In addition to this, links do not change colors so your web visitor cannot keep track of which links he has visited and which links he has not. This can cause your web visitor to accidently revisit a page he’s already seen costing him (a potential client) time he may not have wanted to waste.

If the above problems don’t make you rethink the use of a total flash website design then you need to keep in mind that not every computer has flash. This means that a visitor to your website may see nothing more than a link to download a plug-in so he/she can view your site.

And we all know that most web surfers are apprehensive about downloading anything from the web. I don’t need or at least I shouldn’t need to tell you about the damage this can do to the amount of money your website is making compared to what it could be making.

Intros involving Flash are seen as a huge waste of time by most web visitors. They normally take a long time to download, especially if your visitor does not have a fast connection. While the content is loading, a visitor often heads to a different site to find the information or product he had originally tried to find from you.

Tags: Flash Website Designs
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There is so much that should go into a good website design that it makes a web designer have to wonder if he/she should be offering more services.
Eight years ago when I started my web designer business it was all about doing really cool graphic designs and building websites that were able to take the website visitor and convert that visitor into a paying client. But as the web has gotten more complicated so has the design business and what the client needs.

You see the problem is that most clients don’t have a clue about what they need. They are playing with the graphics and coming up with crazy ideas that I know are not going to work. As a web designer it is my job to step up and say “hey, are you insane”.

But what happens when I see them doing the same with the content and SEO?

Good websites don’t just feature good design it’s a combination of many elements that come together to create a money making website.

You can have a beautiful website with crappy copy or copy that is just not laid out the best way and have a website that is not going to convert the traffic.

So…if it is my job to point these things out to the client, if it is my job to help them with the copy and the SEO, then I need to charge more money.

If it is not my job to help them and walk them through the steps needed to have an outstanding website then I will never truly have a satisfied customer.

Tags: Custom Website Design
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If you want to make money online then you only need two things:

1 – Traffic
2 – And the ability to convert that traffic into buyers

Those are the only two things you need to be successful online.

So…Our Goal Is To Get As Many Visitors to Contact Us as Possible

We do this by focusing our attention to a very small percentage of Google searches that take place each and every day in massive quantities.

Understanding Google Search Traffic

The latest estimates indicate that approximately 350,000,000 people search the web daily. About 60% of those use Google for a total of 210,000,000 individuals; 30% use Yahoo for a total of 105,000,000, 9% use MSN (now Called Bing) for a total of 31,500,000 and the remaining 1% of individuals searching the web use other, smaller and less known search engines.

Google gets more than 210 million daily searches.

In order to get the best traffic from Google we need to understand how people search as well as how online purchases get started; this will allow us to target a very small (but incredibly lucrative) percentage of daily searches.

A) The majority of searches (let’s say 70%) that take place on any of the three major search engines are based on what we will call non-commercial search terms. These people have no intention whatsoever to make a purchase online because the majority of their searches are informational. We will, therefore, not target them.

B) The second largest demographic of online searches (27%) is based on products and/or services. These individuals may make a purchase in the future but they are still at the very beginning stages of the buying process and thus are much more difficult to convert into sales. These searches tend to be very general in scope and the searching individuals, often times do not know what they really want at this point. And, selling products and/or services to those who do not really understand what they want is very difficult.

C) The smallest but most profitable demographic (less than 3% per day) is made up of people who understand what they need or want and are at the end of the buying process.

These individuals often search by using product names, model numbers, and their searches may also contain additional buying words such as free shipping, discount or bonus which help us to convert the sale. Converting consumers who are using these types of search terms is much easier, frequently resulting in conversions as high as 10% – 12%. Hence, the potential to make “job ending” income becomes a reality.

The Consumer Buying Process

Let’s look at Mark from Atlanta Georgia who is searching for a used Ford Mustang for under $5,000.00.

He types car into Google.

He finds himself at a massive car website. After a few minutes of wading through Corvettes, BMW’s, Volkswagens, Sports Cars, Old Cars, New Cars, he finally finds the Ford section.

After browsing through several categories, he succumbs to information overload and heads back to Google.

He types Ford Mustang Atlanta Georgia into Google.

Mark likes these results a lot more. He gathers information and begins moving towards a buying decision.

He heads back to Google again…

He types in Ford Mustang under $5,000.00 into Google.

BINGO!

The websites that Google brings up have exactly what Mark is looking for. There are far fewer results to choose from and they are all comprehensive and relevant to his search.

Mark whips out his credit card and purchases an automobile from a local automobile dealer.

Mark went from mainstream to moderate to long-tail. The site he found with the longtail not only made the money, but had a much easier time getting to the top of the search engine results.

My point, the long tail keywords will allow you to make money quickly as well as help you rank for the competitive keywords.

A website should have three levels, the home page for your most competitive keyword then coming off the home page we should have our medium competitive keywords.

Then under each of those we should have related theme keyword phrases that are extremely specific.

The extremely specific keyword phrases would be the long tail keywords.

This allows us to build a theme based website; each keyword is based on the same theme as the one above it and links back to the category above it.

Now, keeping in mind that all pages start with some type of PR, by building long tail keyword specific pages and linking those pages back to the page above it, we are making that page stronger. At the same time we are making that page stronger, we are also driving qualified leads to our site from the long tail keyword.

A competitive keyword can bring tons of search visitors to our site everyday however, due to the fact that it is not a targeted search visitor, the chances of them buying is less.

Tags: Search Engine Optimization
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Custom Designed WordPress Templates

I

am not going to lie to you; I love WordPress and use it on over 500 websites that I personally own. I’d even venture to say that I’ve done as much as most and more than others on the designing and programming side using WordPress.

Is it the best CMS system out there? No, but it is the easiest to use.

There are better CMS’s out there for both SEO and designing but none of them are as easy to use as WordPress. And let’s face it, WrodPress will do everything we need to do and in most cases a lot more.

As far as SEO goes, WordPress does an extremely good job and 90% of SEO is about backlinks anyway.

Tags: WordPress Templates
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