• increased traffic
• more calls from prospects
• downloading an e-book
• increased newsletter subscribers
• increased facebook fans (send traffic to Fan page)

• One-time Coupons – Websites like Runa, which triggers immediate coupons to customers that are only valid for that one session. If they leave and come back the next day, the coupon will disappear.
• Simplify searches – 20% of online visitor prefer actually searches rather than searching categories. Even better, while searching, allow for autocompletes, the type you see in Google search.
• Improve your Buy Now and Add to Cart buttons. Make sure they are visible, big, and clear.
• Eliminate distractions from your checkout pages. Clarify what you need customers to do with a clear path to the final goal; purchase

• Add testimonials. Flaunt what is great about your services by showcasing what others have said about it.
• Calls to action. Be sure you tell your visitors what to. Never make them guess. Then repeat throughout the page.
• Don’t hide your phone number. We all hate hunting for the elusive phone number. How can you be trusted if you can’t pick up the phone for me?
• Move your calls to action to a prominent place. Your phone number or whatever you want folks to do, should be front and center. Maybe not literally, but it should be very visible.
• Do you need a two-column or single column layout? With a single layout you can direct the user through a series of questions as they flow down the screen. These are usually called Squeeze pages.
• Headlines. Make them bigger and more prominent so your users can separate content.

What ways do ensure conversions?

It is true that some browsers will try to display them even if the code is not valid. What happens is the browser will make an educated guess about what the web developer tried to do. The problem is, different browsers and browser versions or different software on different platforms will not handle errors the same way.

This can result to the following:

• What you see may not render on another user’s computer.
• slow page loading time and even systems crashes
• Higher maintenance cost because it may take longer to update your website. Using internationally agreed upon codes makes maintaining and expanding your website easier even if it was initially done by someone else.
• Many visually impaired people rely on browsers with speech tools that read pages back to them. These programs cannot interpret pages very well unless they are clearly explained. In other words semantic code aids accessibility.

So even if your site ranks no.1 on Google search for your keywords today, if your page doesn’t load or makes a mangled mess, then what use that it serve? Nothing but big opportunities LOST!

How will I know if my site is properly coded?

There are a number of tools available online to validate your web codes. Among them are W3C Validation service, MarkUp Validator, Link Checker and CSS Validator. But the best way is to simply look at the code and seeing if it refers to colours, fonts or layout instead of describing what the content is.

Check it out: www.makeyousmilephotography.com

Apple Agents

Devices that request content from your website (usually) pass a user agent string. This contains information such as its name, OS, browser version, and rendering engine. Apple’s gadgets pass the following user agents, although you may find subtle variations in the version numbers.

iPhone:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543a Safari/419.3

iPod:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/3A101a Safari/419.3

iPad:

Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; U; CPU OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B367 Safari/531.21.10

Or, just this handy tool, http://detectmobilebrowsers.mobi/. It is a script that will redirect the website for you.

“This PHP function lets you choose how to manage your mobile visitors, they can be redirected to a page built for mobiles or you can use it to decide which markup language and stylesheet to show that user.”

Here we are discussing the various types of content managements systems available to you. There are several others out there, but these four are the more popular ones with a pretty large public support.

WordPress

This CMS type is a very successful & the most popular blogging system. A lot of effort is being put into constantly upgrading it with focus on presentation, usability and functionality. Even my high school nephew would have no problems using WordPress. And you can download it for free! It also has a wide variety of free plugins that can help extend your website.

Its downside is that it is not the best source for an e-commerce platform.

Joomla

Joomla is another popular type of CMS. It has over 4,200 extensions available and some acceptable free templates. You may also download Joomla for free. With this system, you can easily and instantly create simple to moderately-advanced websites even if you don’t have a clue about PHP. Joomla is one of the most user-friendly CMS around.

Its major set-back is that it uses some terms that may be confusing, like “plug-ins”, “modules”, “components”, “categories”, “sections”, etc., which requires some experience to understand. Secondly, Joomla extensions and some of its templates are not free.

Expression Engine

Expression Engine is another CMS that makes the creation of an advanced website attainable. It is a powerful CMS known for its flexibility and for opening limitations that are holding back other CMSs.

One of its set-backs is it requires the user to have a certain knowledge of PHP and can be difficult to design and code. It is free only for personal and non-profit use. If you are a business, it will cost up to $249.

Drupal

Drupal uses a powerful templating system and generally used for very large sites. Any XHTML or CSS template can be easily converted to Drupal. It also has a high flexibility and many high profile companies use Drupal. (e.g.: MTV UK, BBC, the Onion, Nasa, Greenpeace UK, New york observer. )

It’s major flaw is their frequent updates which find programmers finding it difficult to keep up with plug-in development. In addition, there seems to be a lack of a thriving community contributing to plug-ins and themes.

CMS stands for content management system. It is a system used to support the development, management, distribution and publishing of content on your website. But is it CMS suitable for your website?

Like any system, CMS has its pros and cons. Let’s run them down before we come into conclusion if a CMS is for you.

Content Management Systems Pros & Cons

The PROS:

• Simplifies content creation and editing by its easy-to-use authoring environment that works like Word. So no worries if you are not familiar with html or writing codes.
• Can be much less expensive and faster to build if using one of the many templates or themes available (rather than custom designing).
• Allows managing of the structure of the site by simplifying the process. You may even just drag-and-drop to restructure the site without breaking links.
• Allows for multiple users while ensuring that each can only change the section of the site that they’re responsible for. Once content is written, it is sent to a central hub where it is automatically sent for approval and editorial review.
• Ensures consistency across the entire site by featuring publishing engines that allow the page layout and appearance of the site applied automatically during publishing.
• A CMS can also be customized to build template sites, site builder sites or blogs. * Low Cost – some web-based CMSs are free.

And the CONS:

• If Custom Designed can be Higher Cost – to design a customized CMS site will cost a lot more than a static site because it will require a lot more work for the designer.
• Restricted HTML editing. The design can be somewhat restricted after the website is developed.
• It can be difficult to switch web hosts.
• Prone to errors – the fact that it’s open to multi-users, especially if the site contains many files makes it error-prone. It may take the web developer a lot of time to figure out the error and can result to having to get the site offline to fix it.
• Flexibility in design is limited to the templates that CMS sites primarily use.
• The website can tend to look like a CMS website.

So is CMS a good fit for your website?
The answer depends on your requirements like how many times a year do you make updates on your website? How much does your developer charge you for an update? Do you only require regular updates on some parts of your site? Do you have the time and the manpower to sustain your site’s update?

Once you have answered these questions, we will be in a better position to decide whether CMS is suitable for you.

If you need additional recommendations on what system will be most effective for your website, call me on 281-940-7002 or email me.

P.S. If a CMS interests you, look out next week to find out which CMS type is best for you.

Most web pages include resources that change infrequently, such as CSS files, image files, JavaScript files, and so on. These resources take time to download over the network, which increases the time it takes to load a web page. HTTP caching allows these resources to be saved, or cached, by a browser or proxy. Once a resource is cached, a browser or proxy can refer to the locally cached copy instead of having to download it again on subsequent visits to the web page. Thus caching is a double win: you reduce round-trip time by eliminating numerous HTTP requests for the required resources, and you substantially reduce the total payload size of the responses. Besides leading to a dramatic reduction in page load time for subsequent user visits, enabling caching can also significantly reduce the bandwidth and hosting costs for your site.

Basically, the .htaccess file is telling the bots to cache certain files at various times for returning visitors.

ExpiresActive On
ExpiresDefault A0

<FilesMatch “.(flv|ico|pdf|avi|mov|ppt|doc|mp3|wmv|wav)$”>
ExpiresDefault A29030400
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(gif|jpg|jpeg|png|swf)$”>
ExpiresDefault A604800
Header append Cache-Control “public”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(xml|txt|html|js|css)$”>
ExpiresDefault A7200
Header append Cache-Control “proxy-revalidate”
</FilesMatch>

<FilesMatch “.(php|cgi|pl|htm)$”>
ExpiresActive Off
Header set Cache-Control “private, no-cache, no-store, proxy-revalidate, no-transform”
Header set Pragma “no-cache”

</FilesMatch>

“We find that Web sites have three seconds to make an impression,” said Jeff Rosenblum, co-founder and research and strategy director of Questus. “The actual usability is more important than aesthetics, but at the same time aesthetics are critical.”

37% of the respondents noted that navigation can make or break their decision to buy next to 32% who said that checkout process is important. A whopping 68% said price is a factor as well. Another factor was product descriptions and shipping options, 38% and 44% respectively.

So what are we to read from this? Well, design is a very important to a web site’s success. For e-commerce site’s just having your web site on the internet with the best prices is no longer acceptable, a design’s look and feel, navigating to products and service, shipping policies and the checkout process will all determine whether a customer feels comfortable enough to buy from you.

Sometimes it’s not the design but the trust you evoke. Some ugly website scream, “Hey, I am a small business and couldn’t afford a big marketing firm. So I built it myself.” But if you are conveying that you are trustworthy by including phone numbers, addresses, your policies and make sure you site is easy to use, you can be sure that your customers will appreciate it and respond with loyalty.

Google understood this. It can barely call it self a web designed site as it is primarily made up of a logo, search box, and some small text. That’s it. It’s fast, easy, simple.

Lesson learned, don’t assume your website has to be filled with high-end graphics and animation. Just be sure it conveys your business in the best possible light and that your customers can quickly get what they need.

This is an important distinction to remember when building your website. Is your website allowing these savvy shoppers find what they need quickly? Your navigation should be clear and concise with no more than 2 clicks to get to the product or service of their choice.

35% of these adults are also saying that the internet is helping them do their jobs better. If you sell your product or service business to business, are you making it easier for them to contact you? Does your website give them the right resources like some frequently asked questions, product reviews, knowledge-base, job announcements?

But let’s not forget the group of people that don’t use the internet as much. According to the Pew Internet data, there a those , 17% who only use the internet several times a week, say that the internet has helped them do their jobs. Again, make sure that your website reflects a clear navigation and common sense content to ensure your target market knows what to do next when they come to your website.

Internet penetration has reached high levels. Many businesses refuse to acknowledge the need for a website at all. This may be the case for the rare few business segments, but not for the business owner wanting to reach the widest target audience.