Is XHTML or HTML best for me?

To be able to really benefit from using XHTML, you should understand the main differences between one and the other.

Programmers no longer recommend HTML tables for layout by current web standards. The markup language of XHTML can be considered the next generation of HTML. If your site was designed on a basis of HTML using a table layout, then you should starts thinking about a redesign.

Currently, programmers and designers recommend a CSS-based layout for web design. This will make your web site fully compatible with all technologies, current and future.  CSS layouts are search engine friendlier, and this will obviously help your web site have a much better ranking.  CSS layouts will make your web site much easier to redesign in the future,  if needed.
You also need to assure your web site has full compatibility with all the recommended standards. Your web site should be XHMTL compliant; assuring your site will be compatible. It should also be accessible to disabled people according to the web accessibility guidelines.

Summarizing:

To prepare your documents for the future, you should use a Strict doctype, which matters much more than if you choose to use XHTML or HTML.

Last, but not least take a look at how your web site has its graphic design made, if it looks outdated, not trendy and in synch with the current times you should consider having your web site redesigned.

If you need assistance, we are ready to help you. We have the needed experience to redesign your web site and use color to bring your vision to life. Our philosophy of  ’design first’ is still proving success when applied to business.

Lower quality website design doesn´t engage the user and this is one of the most important reasons for the failure of it. Remember that the web design displays your personality or that of your company. If someone believes that your website doesn’t look professional, you and your company won’t be either for them, and it will be very likely that they will head for the competency’s website.

Some basics steps that you should keep in mind:

• Know the target audience for your website.
• Have an organized structure.
• Your website should be user friendly.
• Don’t use heavy animations and images due to the long time to load that makes that people lose interest.
• The colors should be harmonious between them.
• Make sure that the content is understandable and to the point.
• The typography’s size and color should be chosen to read easily.

In summary, to maximize your results, make sure that your web design has the proper structure, typography, images and consistency content.

Need help?

We have the needed experience to identify lower quality web design and apply the best practice of web design principles. At Weboart we use color to bring your vision to life. We believe that sometimes looks matter, and our philosophy of ‘design first’ is still proving success when applied to business. Additionally, we hold ourselves to a “Customer First Policy”; we will not go for mediocrity when we can give you the best! If you need any help, just call us today at 1-800-932-2580.

Banners can do more than just look good. A remarkable study made by iProspect looks into the actions that Internet users take when they are viewing a display ad, and also shows some of the benefit of banner ads: Clicking on banners is only one measure of a display ad’s effectiveness, but not the only one! Just notice the results, and you’ll see!

Interestingly, 31 percent of the users that view a display ad click on it; according to the iPospect’s study. But, what about the rest of the users? Do they take any action?

Absolutely!

27 percent browsers search information on the product, brand or company they have seen on a display ad or banner. Additionally, 21 percent accessed the company’s Web site through its address and as many as 9% looked for more information on social media sites, such as blogs or social networking sites.

Now, you know how it works. So, what to do now?

If you’d like to have your own banner or display ads, keep in mind these tips:

• Ensure that ad banners are unique and capable of catching the attention of your target audience.
• Pay attention to the color use and the correct animation.
• Create the message and the length of the slogan with one-of-a-kind designer’s touch.
• Add banners advertising your site within a related Web site.

At Weboart, we can come up with our creative banner designs that will help you get your message through in whichever format you need. Stand out from the rest now! The team of this Los Angeles Web design company can help you take advantage of these benefits and achieve the results that you always wanted!

As you know, E-commerce is the process used to sell or market your products and services while transferring funds online. You may be asking, what makes a good E-commerce Web site?

It is very likely that an attractive E-commerce Web site with features will catch the attention of users and make your Web site their favorite over every other. Nowadays, the world turn around the internet and almost anything can be done on it. It has made it possible to do business anywhere, and at any time.

When you have an E-commerce Web site, consider these tips:

1. In first place, you should think like your consumers. Keep navigation simple and make your products and services easy to find in your Web site, for instance you can place them in more than only one category for fulfilling their online retail.

2. Use photos of your goods, take into account that a picture is worth a thousand words.

3. Make payment processing easy and secure. Nowadays, those who shop online want to be able to pay you online. You can accept credit card payments, PayPal account, among others. You’re probably worrying about security right now, but that’s why there are https sites, these are secure sites for secure transactions. HTTPS is not a different protocol, but uses encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) connectivity. This ensures reasonable protection provided that the server certificate is verified.

4. Last but not least, once your Web site is built and live, give publicity and market it. You need to promote it to prospects and customers. A good idea is to optimize the content of your Web site.

As a Los Angeles web design company, Weboart can help you build and offer E-commerce Website with its team of professional website designers, who are trained to build all kinds of customized websites. Our web designers can modify existing sites by adding ecommerce features.

On the one hand, you have the quality of the picture and what you can do with it. On the other hand, and even most important, you have to worry about Copyright Laws and how to protect images.

How can your Web Sites be improved by using photographs/images?

In first place, you should also work with high resolution pictures. Bad quality images can damage your Web Sites credibility. So, if you don’t have the proper equipment to make your images look good, then you should consider hiring photographic services or buying photographs online. There are many cool services!

Pictures also communicate what you are trying to say with words. Take advantage of their power, you have many options to do that. For instance, you just can illustrate your Web site, show your products or what you do, or even create your own online photo albums or banners! If you are showing your product, light it well and provide multiple angles.

Furthermore, take the time to think the subject or title of each image and incorporate ALT attributes. Include a descriptive and short title —even more if you have plenty of photo galleries—. By the way, avoid sequences of pictures that have numbers of nicknames as title. It’s also useful to incorporate a brief description of the images!

Now, let’s pay attention to Copyright Laws and how to protect your images. The first thing you should know is that Copyright is automatic. This means that every tangible form of literary, artistic, musical or photo graphical work is instantaneously protected by the Copyright Office for author’s lifetime plus 70 years. In other words, it covers the actual works, not the ideas. Still, registration is recommended for several reasons. Mainly because in case someone else uses your material without permission, you will have a certificate of your authorship. Also, if registration occurs within five years of publication, it is considered prima facie evidence in a court of law.

It is also important to get familiarized with the Fair Use Doctrine. This doctrine allows a limited use of others’ works, but only with critics or commentaries. It is really hard to determine plagiarism in this way. So be aware!

In summary, pictures are a useful resource for both artistic and marketing purposes. It is extremely important for Web Designers to take the time to choose them and also get familiar with the Law. You always have to think about your clients’ comfort and pleasure. Let’s start shooting great photos then!

Sources:

• Taking Great Pictures for Web Sites
• How aware are you of the power of the picture?
• U.S. Copyright Office
• Copyright Office Increases Most Fees

To be able to make your potential and existing customers feel safe, your business website should hold some kind of online payment system and secure credit card processing points. You must have SSL on every payment page which enables encrypted transactions.

You can accept credit card payments, PayPal account, among others. When it comes to security, there are https sites; these are secure sites for secure transactions. HTTPS is not a different protocol, but uses encrypted Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) or Transport Layer Security (TLS) connectivity. This ensures reasonable protection provided that the server certificate is verified.

Following you will find four ways to secure your invoicing process and communications:

• Authenticated and encrypted payment pages.

Make sure security and compliance are achieved; legal liability is not the only possible problem you may have if you don’t.

• Third party secure invoices.

You can always hire services to handle all payment details for you, but they will get their cut of the payment, but then again these services become your client for securing all financial communications. Some examples of these are Weboart, PayPal, Moneybookers, ProPay, PayMate and many others.

• Authenticated and encrypted downloads (if applicable).

Encrypted downloads don’t protect your invoices from interceptions if anyone can come across the page to download it, no matter how strong the encryption is.

• Attachment on encrypted and signed emails.

Encrypted signed emails and attachments are impossible to forge, given that you are using a strong un-cracked algorithm, so both sides will be assured that messages are not forged.

If you need assistance, we are ready to help you. If you need to be able to process credit card cards, click here and if you need a secure certificate, click here.  We have the required experience to make your website safe and secure, bringing your vision to life. Our philosophy of ‘design first’ is still proving success when applied to business. Just call us today at 1-800-932-2580.

Sources:

http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=node/29100

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=1604

As you know, your search engine positioning is affected by the links in your Web site.

In that situation, Google uses an indexing algorithm to decide the relevancy of each page, so back-links to your Web site are a very important indicator of your possible ranking in their search results pages. A higher ranking gives you higher traffic levels and good online reputation. Additionally, Yahoo and MSN use this type of algorithms too.

Without back-links, you won’t be ranked at all, even if a search engine isn’t used, links will bring visitors from other Web sites to yours.

Only use back-links to high quality content that will make your visitor feel rewarded for their time and effort. There are some possibilities where you can include them. For instance you can:

• Use posts in your blog or post as a guest on other people’s blogs or comment on them.
• Comment on posts in forums and message boards, among others.
• Give responses in Facebook or Twitter, or answers on LinkedIn or Yahoo! Answers, among others.
• Email potential customers.

Pay attention to the content you can include in your Web site. Look for posts on blogs and Web sites related to your content and simply ask for a link.

Good quality content will benefit you in many ways:

• Your search ranking will be higher and this will increase the traffic to your Web site.
• Readers will pay attention to your Web site and will feel your company is thinking about the same things they are.
• You will appear as web savvy, giving you a good reputation.
• Other Web site owners will have liberty to link back to your Web site.

The more links you include in your content, the more relevant Google will find your entire Web site and the higher the ranking you shall receive!

Source:

Wrong Question: Why don’t people follow links to my company website?

- Your Web site attempts to describe how wonderful your company is, but not how you can solve your customers’ problems.

- Your Web site doesn’t make your company look professional.

- When going through the Web site quickly, it doesn’t tell visitors what it’s all about.

- Your site collapses if visited without the JavaScript.

- Your Web site is based on Flash design.

- Navigation in your Web site is Flash-based.

- Your site forces visitors to register before granting them access.

- Your site’s TITLE tag is not the name of your company or something related to your Web site.

- You first screen doesn’t hold all the important content.

- Your site uses pop-ups in all the pages.

- Your site’s design exists in another site.

- We never conduct user testing.

What about the navigability of your Web site?

- Your Web site’s navigability meets your needs, never thought about visitors’ needs.

- There’s a pop-up or page in your Web site explaining how it’s navigated.

- Your Web site’s is based on Flash.

- Your Web site uses JavaScript for navigation making it un-usable for those without JavaScript.

- Your Web site has no shortcuts on its main page to where the popular content in located.

- Categories and subcategories in your Web site are not logical.

- Your links aren’t clearly labeled.

If you avoid all these, you will have a decent Web site that will probably make your customers feel interested and good about your business. If you need assistance with some of these points to avoid, we are ready to help you. We have the required experience to design your Web site and bring your vision to life making it a success among your customers. Our philosophy of ‘design first’ is still proving success when applied to business. Just call us today at 1-800-932-2580.

Source:
Does Your Web Site Suck? Checklist

So, do you know if images are working for you and how can you optimize them for SEO purposes?

In this post, we are going to show you some techniques to optimize images on your website for search engines.

Although most of the focus in SEO is on traditional search, the traffic gained through image search is growing. Here there are some tips that you can implement in your Web site:

• Define all your Web site’s images through ‘alt’ tags and ensure effective use of a short description because the images are not simply detected by search engine crawlers.
• Provide unique and high quality images that are related, full of details and clear to your visitors.
• Link images to related articles, blog posts or other content on your Web site. It will help you attract traffic to content on your Web site; this will also enhance the success of your internal links. For instance, on press releases or articles contributed to other websites, providing an image link is a great idea.
• Keywords related to them on your image filenames are a good idea.
• Text around the images should be optimized. Search engines give great value to the text around images so be sure it’s relevant and filled with keywords.
• Don’t fill your pages with images. Although you should not have large pieces of text only either, this will help search engines pick your pages.
• Keep image freshness. It might affect relevancy within search engines. If you aim for high popularity keywords you should try re-uploading images.
• Make sure your images are going through Google Safe Search Filter without being filtered.

SOURCE:

Optimize images for search

Why duplicate content is important to avoid?

In first place, avoiding duplicate content is important because Internet users typically want to find exclusive material when searching, and seeing the same thing over and over again when searching can be pretty annoying. By the way, Google is superior at detecting original content appropriately, which results in no negative effects for the Web site that originated that content.

The two most common stages for this type of issues are:

• Content duplicated in your own Web site, which means that you have the exact same content repeated more than once.
• Content duplicated in a completely different domain. For instance, if there is content exactly like yours appearing in other Web sites.

Although, in most of the cases this isn’t intentional, in some situations the content is duplicated in order to handle search engine rankings or use queries to generate more traffic. In this kind of situation, where there are signs of malice, duplicate content could be viewed as a violation to webmaster guidelines.

There are some interesting tips that Adam Lasnik from Google shared on his post on dealing with duplicate content. Here are some of them:

• Your internal links should always be consistent.
• Be careful when syndicating your content on other Web sites, be sure they include a link to the original article, on every article.
• Make brief summaries to present your articles and then link to the page with the full article.
• Don’t use placeholders because most users are annoyed by empty pages.
• Make sure you understand your content and the way it is displayed on your page, mostly when a blog, or forum is included, it can show the content in various different ways.

In summary, if you have duplicated content, it won’t affect you negatively when it comes to your presence in Google’s index, but it will be filtered out.

Our Los Angeles Web Design team can help you to provide users with unique and relevant content and have more control on what exactly Google is crawling and indexing and which versions are more likely to appear in the index. If you need any help, just call us today at 1-800-932-2580.