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The Benefits Of Incorporating A Blog Into Your E-commerce Web Development

John — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 13:49:58 +0000

Seeing e-commerce websites out there that do not have blogs really puzzles me. One thing most people fail to acknowledge is that fierce competition exists in the online world. So gaining the victory over such competitions is the only key to have a successful business online. You should consider incorporating a blog into your e-commerce web design and development.

Why? This is essential for the following reason:

Blogs do not cost a dime and can be updated easily. An open source blog such as WordPress is totally free.
Blogs can be created in little time, say ten minutes. Filling up a blog with content is as simple as your A to Z. This allows for fresh updates and high search engine rankings for your site.
Most search engines are addicted to blogs. While this might seem easy, it really requires that you update your blog with fresh material.

A blog cannot be passed for an e-commerce site. Updating your e-commerce site’s content will increase its page rank. Nonetheless, blogs provide a great deal of benefits that are a rarity for most e-commerce stores.

The benefits derived from blogging are outlined below:

Blog directories that enjoy high page ranking about and your blog can easily pick a spot among the RSS. E-commerce websites cannot be listed in these directories as they are only meant for blogs.

Blogs also enable you use long chains of keywords for your business. A keyword such as “Bradley 20 X 45 azure pillar tent sleeps 5” will look odd and weird on an e-commerce site. You can however, post contents on a blog containing such a keyword, with a cross link to the e-commerce store. As you blog’s size increases, you will have lots of posted content that contains long chain keywords; and hence, increased traffic.

Finally, since your blog’s content were written when you were relaxed, they would sound more natural. This will kick your blog all the way to the search result list.

Give yourself a brand and get into discuss with your customers. Blogs already have an avenue for this; enabling you to build a relationship with them. Your blog content should contain information on your business, new products and services and other stuff that would capture the interest of your viewers.

Most blogs contain plug-ins that allows people to take polls. If you have a red-hot business issue, polls are good ways to their opinion. You would probably consider blogging in different facets of your online business and this will make you a professional in the area of e-commerce website design and development.

If your business involves the sales of computer, you should give their technical specifications, date of manufacture and perhaps, tips on how best to use the computers. This will push you into the spotlight.

The advantages outlined above can give you an edge in an online competitive world. You should not jump into blogging without first seeking the advice of a corporate web design consulting firm; remember it requires a lot of devoted efforts.

Katt DelaCruz is a contributing writer and intern at [MN]interactive.com. [MN]interactive.com is a web design and creative design studio based out of Miami, Florida USA. If you need assistance with corporate web design consulting or need ecommerce website design & development [MN]interactive.com will exceed your expectations and assure you results.

Creative Web Design

John — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:48:34 +0000

Dare To Think Different!

Creativity has always been the reason behind every invention & innovation that leads mankind to greater lengths of civilization since the dawn of time. Inspired to explore the universe that is within us, even in the modern technological day, captivates a great mind to excel in what he or she creates; which is termed gifted by many. The electronic media has provided an all together different play ground for these avant-garde artists striving to leave a mark with what they create.

In early days of the internet not much visual creativity was required to lure in visitors as it was information driven industry. The web has come a long way since its birth and now it’s at a point where technological excellence and creative brilliance have merged collectively to craft a launching pad for further breakthroughs in the field and challenge the creative aspect of designers. Currently, Web 2.0 allows the designers to use various tools that significantly accelerate the whole user experience. Creative Web Design can never accomplish what is required of it, if they cannot ensure its smooth functionality for the purpose it was built for on the first place which enables the visitor to use it without giving it a second thought.

Competitive global environment & advances in internet technology has set in motion the creativity of designers to attain better heights and prove their value. If you browse through the internet you’ll find various websites creatively at their best in Design & Usability.

Here are some of the websites which serve their purpose and have a unique design:
http://www.pilarberrio.com/
http://loscoloresolvidados.com/
http://margaritaacosta.com/
http://www.mastermysite.com/
http://www.teamfannypack.com/
http://www.google.com/
http://www.shoepassion.de/
http://www.kubikfoto.de/
http://demainjarrete.stpo.fr/
http://www.net4sale.net
http://twitter.com
http://www.sgdoeschwitz.de/

Creativity of someone lets you see in an all together different perspective, which is unique and might even seem obvious once seen.

http://www.solsnet.com is a Toronto based web design house.

Launching your E-Commerce Website

John — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 09:07:26 +0000

Launching your E-Commerce Website

Once you have launched your eCommerce website and begin to get some traffic, you are ready for some online transactions. You wouldn’t want to lose out on an incredible opportunity of selling your products and services on the internet. Your website is the best spot where you can actually make this happen. You can tell your customers what you’re offering, what price tags your service and products have. You can even invite them to buy your products online and this can only happen when you add an e-commerce feature to your website.

Having an e-shopping feature on your website creates incredible business opportunities for your business to grow online It helps you to expand your global clientele and gives your company the much needed global exposure. The best part of having an e-commerce feature is that your products can be bought by your clients just by clicking them over the internet.

Before just jumping into developing an e-commerce website, sit down and have a healthy discussion on how are you going to make the website work. Firstly, you need to make sure that the website is easy to navigate and the e-shopping option retains the interests of the client. During the designing and development, counter check that your website is client friendly. List down all the necessary and additional details of your products that you intend to sell online, you can create a portfolio with the prices of each product given. While pricing, do not forget to add the taxes and shipping charges.

If the shipment of certain products is limited to certain countries state upfront that your products and their shipments are only available to following specified countries. Order processing software added to your website will always come in handy, it helps in calculating all the expenses a client will have to pay for, from the actual price of the product to the delivery/shipment charges and taxes.

An eCommerec site always has a form where customers put in personal details e.g. name, telephone number, address etc. Your e-commerce website must have a foolproof security that ensures a leak proof environment.

Get assistance from the specialists in e-commerce and convert your websites into an online sales hub.

Log on to www.solsnet.com for more info on e-commerce website design and development or email us at sales@solsnet.com!

How to write a killer sales copy for your website

John — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 09:04:38 +0000

The quality of your sales copy is just as important as your product. It wouldn’t matter even if you had the best product/offer in the world if your sales copy can’t persuade the prospects to buy your product(s)

There are several components of your sales copy that you need to pay close attention to:

Your headline: The headline is the most important part of your sales copy. Your headline should capture the attention of the visitors and suck them into the body of your sales copy.

Remember that you have only ten seconds at most to capture the attention of your prospects or they will simply click away. You can easily achieve that by having the greatest benefit of your product in the headline of your sales copy.

You can also include a startling revelation/fact or a warning to capture the attention of your prospects and keep them reading.

Put simply, the headline should be benefit driven, attention grabbing and made to persuade the reader of your sales copy to keep reading.

Bullets: You should use bullets to highlight the benefits of your product(s). You see, most people will not read the sales copy but rather skim through it and bullets enable you to focus their attention on the benefits of your product.

Benefits Vs features: Focus on the benefits of using your product as opposed to the features of your product. For example, the phrase “comfortable mattress” describes a feature but “Wake up relaxed and ready to face the day ahead” goes further to show the benefits of the feature. Don’t assume the prospect already knows.

Bolding and highlighting: Use bolding and highlighting to emphasize important points or phrases. Highlighting in yellow always seems to work best. However, don’t overdo it or you will lose the intended purpose in the first place.

Call to action: You should have a strong call to action throughout your sales copy. For example, you can include such calls to action as “Click here to unlock your potential right now!” or “Click here to discover the secrets now!” You should also create a sense of urgency so that your prospects are motivated to take action right away.

Writing a good sales copy is one thing that you must invest your time to learn and practice if you are to make good money online. Of course it takes some time to perfect your sales copy writing but one thing is also that you can always get better if you are willing to take action and learn progressively.

Kevin Njoroge has been online since 2006 and has learnt what works and what doesn’t in building a successful business online. He has made it his goal to help others achieve financial freedom with their own successful online businesses and live the lives they have always dreamed of.

If you are looking for a change in lifestyle or just want to make extra money online to supplement your income, I’ll do my best to help you achieve it. That’s why I encourage you to visit my website http://www.internetwealthlab.com right now and discover how you too can make money online starting now. My free ebook will show you exactly what steps you need to take to hit the ground running and start to make a nice income online

Custom Web Development and Design Matters…

John — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 07:27:22 +0000

Custom Web Designing Matters…

To be successful on the web you need a custom website design that has something more than others have on offer. A well designed, easy to navigate; user-friendly custom website design will serve as an asset to your company while being a major part of your corporate identity. Your prospective customers will find you on top search engines of the world such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Everyone these days is searching for something new and most web surfers stop by a unique looking website that offers cool features. A creatively designed home page with easy to use navigation will make your custom website design appealing to the target market.

So, pay special attention to the layout and design of your website, so you stand out from the crowd. Do you know why some of the e-commerce websites have booming online sales as compared to others? Well! its simply due to their attractive design. Websites that do not get any visitors need to b erevamped and this time focus on the functionality and appearance apart from the content.

Custom Web Design Challenges:

For a web designer, designing a website has its own challenges. The use of appropriate colors and creating a theme can take days at a time. Building something that will draw you heavy traffic requires special attention. A good web designer ensures that your custom website message is conveyed effectively and the products/services on offer are highlighted properly. A custom web design will allow you to connect to your target market and you will have more queries and consequently your website will start to churn profits. Those who own information websites need to ensure that they offer relevant information, so the website serves its purpose.

As you must be knowing a successful website design has three main features:

User friendliness
Easy navigation &
Fast loading graphics

Not only does the design, but content also play an active role in the success of the website. Website content and web design go hand in hand. You can have one of the best designed websites but what if the content is not good enough to catch the attention? A well designed, elegant and a user friendly website will always be graded at a higher rank in the SERPs, driving more visitors to your website.

If you have skills and resources you can do it yourself. If not, why worry? WWW.SOLSNET.COM brings you the best in web designing, content writing and smart web solutions at a price that you can easily afford.

SolsNet is a Toronto based web solutions company offering smart solutions for complex web problems. Call us for your web design and development.

Picking The Best Free Blogging Site

John — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:07:33 +0000

So you have read my earlier article about choosing the right blogging platform and have decided that not only do you want a hosted platform but you also want it to be free. Well the great news that this is of course possible, the downside is you may still feel a little overwhelmed with the choice.

To make your search a little easier I have rounded up some of the better established blogging sites that are free and identified some of their unique features. Many of the sites will use the WordPress Multi-User platform.

I have tried to include all of the major providers and a round-up of some the better smaller, new and independent sites and a little about what makes them special.

THE MAJOR PLAYERS

Blog.com
Offers free blog hosting with unlimited bandwidth on their free package

Blogger.com
Possibly the easiest site for getting started. Blogger is extremely popular and owned by Google.

Blogr.com
Allows you to blog, host photos & videos, and podcasts.

Bravenet.com
An oldie but a goodie, RSS feeds and much more for the startup webmaster.

Windows Live Spaces
Blogging but readers need to be Live Spaces members too

Xanga.com
Part social network, part blogging, all free.

Yahoo 360
Very easy to use and comes as part of your Yahoo account

15 leading free blogging sites

There are dozens more reputable sites and hundred if not thousands more that I have no opinion on. You can Google for more. These initial sites are the “Major Players” in the marketplace today and you are likely to suffer minimal technical downtime if you use them. However it is the internet and there are never guarantees. Again it is about balance, the balance between what you are prepared to pay for and what you will get in return.
If backups and constant availability are critical you should look at hosting your own application

Longevity is another major factor in choosing a big player, and a justifiable one. The last thing you want is to lose all the content you have spent your time writing, the design you customised being lost in the ether all because your free bloghost has decided that with the new family commitments and the current financial crisis that he will save money and take the service offline.

However is you are prepared to sacrifice a little of the stability, resilience and reliability you can be rewarded with more unique features, flexibility or opportunities to gain exposure and relative fame in new networks that you may not even have been aware existed.

>>THE INDEPENDENTS
In the interests of balance and supporting the little guy here follows a round up of some of my favourite of the smaller and newer players in the marketplace.

ClearBlogs.com
Friends only posts, professional templates, IP-Banning and more.

Netcipia.com
Free blog and wiki for private or public display with 2GB of storage.

ShoutPost.com
A platform for creating blogs with a focus on generating traffic.

SoulCast.com
Want to blog anonymously? This may be for you!

BlogText.org
Here’s an easy-to-use free blog and photo album service that offers many handy features

Noodle5.com
A free service that lets you easily create your own blog by filling out two simple forms. Possibly easier than Blogger to set up!

TheBlogs.net
Been around for a while, seem reliable, again powered by WordPress. Offers full standards compliance.

freetravelblog.com
Preserve & share travel memories with a FREE travel blog post unlimited photos and videos
Chart your trips on travel maps, share your trips on Facebook, Bebo, MySpace, and others

Thoughts.com
100% free online blog community includes unlimited bandwidth, photo, video and podcast sharing, community forums and live news discussions.

I am sure you will find a free platform to suit your needs from the above list and why not leave some feedback if you think I missed someone we should all hear about.

About The Author: Andrew Bonar, TopExpert.com
With over 12 years experience working with and marketing internet technologies, Andrew launched his first website ‘Happenings’ in 1994, when there were less than 100,000 websites online. Andrew’s early interest in the internet lead to becoming co-founder of the UK’s first Independent ISP, Cheapnet/Pobox and by 1999 he had launched one of Europe’s first payment gateways, eBanx.

Choosing the right Blogging platform

John — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:54:10 +0000

So you have decided you want to start a blog and join the many others that are out there and become a blogger in the blogosphere.

One of your first steps will be choosing which blogging platform to use, It is also one of the most important first decisions that you will make as a blogger. The right platform can make blogging a
real pleasure, whilst making the wrong choice of platform can make blogging an absolute chore, leaving you wishing you had never started a blog in the first place and swearing to never go near one again.

This is because the software, program or application that you use to blog with is an integral part of your overall blogging experience. It is therefore well worth the effort spending some time in finding the right platform for your needs. You will be looking to find the right balance of price (we will cover this in some more depth at a later date- there are many free options), usability and flexibility or features.

You will want something with a user-friendly interface and a flexible framework that allows you to make your blog look and feel unique. Finding the right platform need not be difficult as long as you put in some research and planning. With the right forethought you will be well on your way to launching on the perfect blogging platform for your needs.

The first step is prioritizing, ease of use vs flexibility. Generally speaking the more flexible the framework the longer it will take to set-up, configure and manage when considered against more automated wizard like platforms. A good example of the first is WordPress, and a good example of the second is WordPress.

The next choice is hosted platform, or host your own. Well in the first instance if your wanting flexibility then the hosted platforms such as wordpress.org or blogger.com

If you are not very technically minded, new to the internet and technology, web design and blogging you may want to sacrifice some of the extensibility for ease of management. I would certainly recommend this option for newcomers.

However if you are an experienced web developer or accomplished web designer you will probably find the limitations of a service like blogger.com extremely frustrating.

I cannot tell you what the ‘best blogging platform’ is, because every blog has its own unique requirements, every blogger has his or her own set of skills and limitations, and after all blogging is very much about individuality so it follows that there is a wide variety of platforms to suit the needs of a diverse range of users.

This diversity serves the internet community well, as there is bound to be an application that is suited to your technical ability. The flip side is that such varied requirements lead to such a wide variety of platforms potentially making your search a little harder.

When considering other peoples reviews try and be aware of the angle that the reviewer is coming from, and with commercial applications beware of sponsored and paid for reviews. Just because a free hosted application like blogger.com is trashed by an experienced webby does not mean that this simple to use interface wouldn’t be perfect for the needs of a 50 year old semi-retiree writing about his gardening hobby.

So rather than looking for the perfect platform, look for the perfect platform for you. There is no holy grail or perfect platform.

If you have web hosting already then it is very likely your webhost offers a cPanel control panel, or Fantastico. If that is the case you are in luck, because with the click of a button you can install, run and test a whole host of different platforms.

Come back later this week for follow up articles from Andrew Bonar on the topic of starting a blog. Including a more detailed look at using Fantastico and cPanel to create and test blog platforms.