Design Leap » Glossary/Wiki

What is Flash and is it suitable for your business?

admin — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:43:17 +0000

Flash is software that uses animation to create multimedia elements for websites. Flash on a web page is usually used to establish interactivity with visitors. It could be a button, form, movie, cartoon, or even a game. Take a look at the following examples of different uses of Flash:

Flash focused sites (full Flash sites):
Moodstream (brainstorming tool)
Uniroyal Fun Cup (racing game)
Chipotle (restaurant)

Sites with Flash elements (not full Flash sites):
Atlantic Vegas (only the game selections are done in Flash)
American Academy Casablanca (home page has a Flash photo gallery)
Conference Torquay (home page has 3 small rotating Flash photo galleries)

To use Flash or not?
There are few things to consider when thinking about using Flash on your website: your budget, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), and your industry type.

Consider your web design budget
A standard website can cost you anywhere from $500 to $3000 and that doesn’t include Flash. There are many factors that go into the price of a website, but Flash would be considered an added feature and therefore would cost you hundreds extra. So, when considering including Flash on your website, first take a look at your budget and see if you can afford it.

SEO and Flash
There are a couple of reasons why you would like to have a Flash site for your business, it grabs visitor’s attention and it’s interactive. On the other hand, you might not want to have a full Flash site for your business because they’re made up of graphics and graphics are not search engine optimized (SEO). It is very important to have your website be SEO friendly, but that’s a different topic. Your website can of course have Flash elements like those shown in the examples above.

Is your business in an industry that’s ready for Flash?
The type of industry that your business is in has also a factor of how much Flash on your website you should use (if you decide to use it). For example, if you’re in a Health Care industry your website doesn’t need any Flash, but you may still use Flash elements minimally. The main reason for this is because the visitors that would come to your website would not typically wait for the Flash to load, they just want to get in, find what they’re looking for and leave. But if you’re in the Arts and Entertainment industry, than it would be good for your website to have at least some Flash in it. I would at least suggest for your website to use a Flash photo gallery. When people come to an entertainment type of website, they are more interested to interact with your website and take their time to view things such as slide shows.

So before you consider to have your website designed in Flash, first thing about your budget, your search engine ranking and your industry type.

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Landing Pages: What They Are and Why You Need Them

admin — Tue, 25 May 2010 10:51:34 +0000

If you’ve been considering an online advertising campaign for your small business, you’ve probably come across the term “landing page.” The concept of a landing page is new to many small business owners, so don’t worry if you aren’t sure what it is or how it’s different from the other pages on your website. It’s actually a very simple concept that can really increase the effectiveness of your advertising campaign.

What is a landing page?
A landing page is exactly what it sounds like—the page a potential customer lands on after clicking a link. Technically, any page on your website can be a landing page. However, the most effective landing page is one that was created to match the needs of the person who clicked on the link that leads to it. The goal of a landing page is to capture the visitor’s attention and get them take an action you desire—make a purchase, for instance, or fill out a sign-up form.

Why you need a landing page for your advertising campaign
When you create an advertisement, whether it’s a banner ad or an email to your client list, you craft it with a specific goal and audience in mind. You do this to connect with your customers and encourage them to click on the link to your website. But your interaction with your customers doesn’t end there—you want them to take a certain action once they reach your website. This is where the landing page comes in. Sending people to an ad-specific landing page on your website will provide them with exactly what they came to find, making it more likely that they will make a transaction.

Here are a couple examples to illustrate what a landing page can do for you:

Imagine that you own an online store that sells women’s clothing. To market your website, you create an advertisement that promotes your new swimwear collection for summer. To go along with this advertising campaign, you design a landing page that features the top-selling swimwear items. People who click on the swimwear ad are more likely to stick around if they land on this page and immediately see what they’re looking for than if they’re directed to the homepage of your site, which has just a small link to the swimwear section.

Or maybe your marketing goal is to get people to sign up for your email list. To do this, you offer them a free e-book in exchange for their name and email address. When people click on this offer, they’re sent directly to a landing page that contains the form they need to fill out in order to receive the e-book. This will be much more effective than sending them to your website’s homepage, where they will have to hunt on their own for the link to sign up for the e-book. You’ll get many more people to sign up for your email list if you create a landing page specifically for this purpose.

Essentially, a landing page increases the effectiveness of your advertising campaign by immediately engaging visitors who are attracted by your ad. How many times have you clicked on a link only to find yourself on a webpage that seems completely unrelated? That was an example of a bad landing page, and chances are you hit the back button on your browser within seconds. Keep that from happening with your ads with a well-crafted landing page.

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What is a third-party testimonial

admin — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 00:53:19 +0000

A third-party testimonial is a testimonial about a company’s goods or services that is located on another website other then their own.

Learn Why Authentic Customer Testimonials are Important for Your Small Business and why it’s best to have third-party testimonials instead of just writing regular text testimonials on your website.

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Quick Tip: Keep Your Website’s Main Content “Above the Fold”

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 10:27:45 +0000

In website design the term “above the fold” is referring to content on your website that the user sees first without needing to scroll. Keeping your most important content above the fold of your website, gives you a better chance to get your point across as soon as the user enters your website.

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What is Blogging

admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:51:48 +0000

A lot of websites these days use blogging as a way to draw customers. Blogging means posting a fresh article to your site every day, every week, or at some other interval that makes sense to you. Blogs can be useful to customers who may check out your website regularly to find out new information related to your product, your service or your company. New customers may be led to your site using keyword searches or by following links from other sites that reference your site, or from links you embed in other articles on your website.

The primary purpose of a blog is to provide fresh content for your website to keep your customers coming back. They want to see what new products you are offering, hear what’s new in your company, and see what additional services are available. A blog is also a great way to add fresh content to your site to keep it at the top of the search engines.

But what should you write in the blog? And how can you keep coming up with new ideas for blogging?

There are some definite advantages to blogging and once you get the hang of it you might just get hooked:

1. Writing helps you think. And thinking about your business is something you should be doing every day. You can use blogging as a way to explore new ideas for your website, your product or your business.

2. Blogging invites customer feedback. Create a blog with a comment block where blog readers can post their feedback. This is a great way to find out what your customers think. You can ask them questions directly, and use the responses to begin an email contact list. The best part about this is your feedback is coming directly from current users of your website. You can even take it a step further and start sending email articles directly to your blog fans. Can’t decide whether to branch out in this direction or that direction? Ask for customer feedback directly in your blog. Everyone loves to give their opinion.

3. Blogging is a catalyst for doing research. If you sit down once a week and come up with 7 topics for daily blogs, or sit down once a month and come up with 4 topics for weekly blogs, you will remain on your toes as well have new content to keep your website fresh. You can research the competition and find out what they are blogging about, or research a particular aspect of your business, describe the special features of an existing product or introduce features for a new product and motivate readers to give it a try.

4. Blogging is a great tool for stimulating your own learning. Because you will be on the internet, checking your competition, doing your research and finding interesting things to write about, you will be acquiring new knowledge constantly about your business field. Becoming an expert in your field is an absolute must for out-maneuvering the competition and your website is the perfect place to display your expertise.

To get started blogging, map out a few ideas, determine how many words you want to write in your blog (300 to 500 is plenty to begin, but don’t restrict yourself if you get on a roll). Don’t forget to create a few links in your blog to other similar articles on your website.

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What is a FTP?

admin — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:27:00 +0000

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. FTP is used for downloading and uploading files from the web, such as documents, images and mp3. Basically it’s your computer connecting to a server and getting or placing files on that server. On the back end, it works just like the folder system on your home computer. You can create, name, and delete folders and sub folders.

How can I use a FTP? You will need to download a software that is referred to as a FTP client. There are many FTP clients to chose from, but one that I like to recommend is a free, secure, cross-platform that is an add on to the Firefox browser called FireFTP. See how to install FireFTP plugin on your computer.

To have access to a particular web site’s FTP, you would need to request the login and password from the web site designer.

Why can’t I use my e-mail to send files? You can still use e-mail to send files, but a FTP is a great alternative. With e-mail you can send only a hand full of documents at a time. Many servers wont send e-mails that are too big in file size. Plus, attachments in an e-mail need to be encoded and that increases the file size. With FTP on the other-hand, you’re able to send bigger files and they’re not encoded.

When would I need to use a FTP instead of e-mail? For example, when you’re working with a web designer to build your web site, the designer will ask you to upload your images or any relevant files to them using their FTP. You will then be provided with a login and password to upload your files.

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What is Link-building?

admin — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 22:50:00 +0000

To understand link-building, first you’ll need to know what is link popularity. Link popularity simply refers to the number and quality of links that are pointing to your site. This shows how popular your site is. If done correctly, this has a great impact on your SEO ranking. If for example the sites that are linking to yours are spam sites, than you will get a lower ranking, but if the sites that are linking to yours are positive sites you’ll get a higher ranking.

So link-building is when you establish a connection with other web sites and ask them to include your link on their site. The search engines want your site to link from authoritative sites, or to have your links come from sites that share the same interest as your site.

The most common way of building links is by link exchange. This is when you exchange links with the site that you want your link to appear on. Now, remember that not every site owner will agree to a link exchange, specially if they’re your competition.

Here are some tips on link exchange:
1. Exchange links from web sites that will bring your target audience to your site. Target audience are visitors that would be interested in your products/services.

2. DO NOT request a link exchange just from anybody. For example, if you’re selling shoes don’t request a link exchange from a dentist. This would not benefit your target audience and in fact may lower your ranking with the search engines.

3. Make sure your web site is complete with valuable content for your visitors. Most web site owners will not exchange links with you if there’s nothing of interest to your target audience on your site.

4. Keep your link pages to a maximum of 25 links per page and make sure it’s search engine friendly.

5. When requesting for a link exchange, Always add their link on your page first and them request a for them to place your link on their site.

6. Keep your link title and description short. Try to keep the description to no more than 200 characters.

7. Make it even easier for them to include your link on their site, give them the exact HTML code to cut and paste on their site. You can even create banners/buttons with your link and provide that for a link exchange.

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