If you have never heard of the growing concern about Net Neutrality then take a moment to educate yourself and watch this little video explaining Net Neutrality and how it could effect you.

Labels: Google, internet, net neutrality, search engines

Start with the basics in using DreamWeaver to create your web site.

Labels: Dreamweaver, tutorial, web design, web maintenance, web site design

Promotional reel for the motion graphics department headed by Jeffrey Metzner at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. This ... all » compilation of experimental portfolio work from the last seven years at SVA was created by the Boyzz Project: Eric Argiro, Chris Linea, Jerry Liu, Charled No and Jean Marco Ruesta.

Labels: animation, motion graphics, svg

Spec commercial for a new cell phone from Apple by award winning filmmaker Christopher DeSantis with design by Gregory DeSantis.

Labels: apple, iPhone, iTalk, Mac

Adam Trickett talks about setting up and running your own web server and creating content for it. This is a beginner level talk. See http://www.hantslug.org.uk/cgi-bin/wiki.pl TechTalks for more details and copies of the presentation that accompanied the talk. This talk was given at the Hampshire Linux User Group (HantsLUG) meeting on 2nd December 2006 at Southampton University, UK.

Labels: domain name, how to design, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

These questions are designed to help you as a designer or business owner to focus on what the needs of the web site project are.

Background:

1. What is the nature of your business?
2. Who is your target audience?


Message:

1. What goals does your company intend to reach with a new web site?
2. What is the primary message you wish to convey to your audience with this site?


Perception:

1. Use adjectives to describe how you want your site to be perceived by the user. (Examples: conservative, progressive, friendly, formal, casual, serious, experts, humorous, service-oriented, professional, etc)
2. How is your company currently perceived? Do you wish to carry through the same kind of message through your web site?
3. What web sites do you find compelling? What do you find the most interesting about these sites?
4. Are there other web sites you've seen that have functionality that you would like to have on your site? Due to differences in server operating systems, not all functionality you see on the web may be available on your site.


Style:

1. Do you have company colors or a color scheme you want us to use?
2. Describe any visual elements or styles that can be utilized from existing marketing materials or collateral.
3. If we are providing graphics, what style would you like them to be in: photography, illustration, cartoon, etc?


Content:

1. Will this site use existing content? If not, will you be creating content in-house or using an outside provider?
2. What is the basic structure of the content, and how is it organized?
3. Will you need to request any sensitive information on your site (social security numbers, credit card numbers)? If so, you will need to acquire a security certificate.


Commerce Sites:

1. How many products do you plan to sell on your web site? Will the products change often?
2. Do your products have any variations? If so, do they apply to all the products? Does each product have different variations? List variations.
3. What is your shipping model (flat rate, by total dollar amount, by piece)?
4. Will you be charging Sales Tax? If so, which state(s) will be charged? What percentage?
5. Are there any special pricing rules we need to know about (Ex: purchase 12 of our product and receive a 10% discount.)?
6. Which credit cards do you accept?
7. Do you need online credit card authorization (Cybercash or ATS)?
8. Do you want to accept checks or purchase orders?
9. Review the commerce options we have and see if one fits your needs best. Our sales representatives will be able to help you with this.


Marketing / Updating:

1. What are your short-term marketing goals (in the next two years)?
2. How will this web site help to meet your goals?
3. Do you have an existing or planned marketing strategy in mind to promote this site? If so, please describe.
4. What do you feel is your number one business problem? (Examples: change image, increase customers, promote company, etc.)
5. What methods of distributing the URL already exist within the company?
6. Do you intend on keeping the site updated? If so, how often? Who is responsible for updating and providing content?
7. What are your budget limitations? Can this project be broken in a phased manner to help you meet your goals?

Labels: domain name, e-commerce, marketing, web design, web hosting, web maintenance, web site design

We all want to be number one in the search engine rankings and it is in your reach with a little hard work. The first step to the top is to realize that search engines love words!

Many designers and novice web masters make this fatal mistake right from the get go and think that they need all the bells and whistles to sell their product or service. And yes, a good design and layout do help in gaining a sale but if nobody can find your website what's the point?

To be honest fancy graphics and the latest and greatest trends in web design don't mean a thing to a search engine bot and optimization is all in the writing and were you place that writing.

To optimize a website, the first thing you should do is examine the HTML meta tags. Specifically the title meta tag, description meta tag, and keywords meta tag. You will notice a lack of graphics and an abundance of words. Those words should be your number one priority and it does require research, lots of research. While your at it take a look at all the words under that fancy header you spent hours designing and you will find more words, but these words are slightly different than the words found in the meta tags. These words are written for both the search engine and human eyes.

When you start to understand that in order to optimize your website, you need to take the time to develop a good set of keywords and keyword phrases that will be sprinkled amongst all that eye candy that represents your website visually.

Those words must be relevant and should clearly state what it is you are selling and where you are selling it. A general marketing rule is as follows:

• A Well Written Product Description


• A Good Explanation of Product Benefits


• The Region you do Business In

What is not needed is a long explanation of what your product is all about, how it came to be and where it is expected to go. Your potential customer is most likely intelligent enough to realize that what your selling is what they need. So for example it really is unnecessary to explain that a pair of jogging shoes was special designed for a jogger. This would be obvious and redundant so keep it short, sweet and clear.

You could purchase the latest and greatest SEO software that will generate your keywords for you but in my experience nothing works better than some old fashioned leg work. The best way to do that is to take a good look at what your top ranking competitors are doing. Examine there keywords and consumer message, it is ok to do that you know because I guarantee they are doing the same thing and they are raking in the dough because of it.

Go to Google and think of the words a paying customer would type into the search bar to find your product or services, remember that most of these searches end up getting narrowed down to local geographic areas and this should be emphasized in your keywords and keyword phrases.

Once you have a good collection of words, use them to your advantage and be consistent and clear when writing a page of copy strategically placing those keywords and phrases into that copy. It is also important that you don't bury that copy you spent hours working on under a bunch of code in your page. A search engine bot will only dig so deep into your pages to find the heart of your website. So keep the words as close to the top of your page as possible and place a couple near the end as well.

Don't try to cheat by stuffing your page with keywords just because you can, and never try to hide them by making your text the same color as your background or with some trick you may have read about in a forum or something. This type of practice has a name called Black hat SEO, and can easily be detected by most of the major search engines. It will end up getting you labeled as a spammer or even worse getting you banned from the index. So keep it clean and it will pay off.

I have had several clients come to me with their sites and ask why they don't rank at all. After changing the pages around by adding some carefully thought out and placed words there sites shot right up in the rankings after just a few short weeks.

Labels: Google, keywords, meta tags, search engine rankings, Yahoo

Check out this cool way of building your files in Adobe Illustrator dynamically!

Labels: Adobe Illustrator, graphic design, how to design, illustration, tutorial

Most of my clients think that a domain name is the same thing as web hosting, and that when they register a domain name they are ready to let the world see their website. However this is not the case and the following explanation will hopefully clarify the difference between web hosting and registering a domain name.

The easiest way to explain web hosting is to think of your web site as a traditional store with shelves displaying products or services, with a cash register and even employees.

Web hosting essentially is like a virtual online building or store front you rent or lease for everyone to stop in and buy something or even inquire about your services. Your domain name is the like the sign you hang on your virtual store front for customers to get an idea of what your business is and how to find you in a sea of competition.

Card One Concepts offers quality web hosting for small or large business needs. You can view all the features our web hosting packages come with by clicking here.

Labels: domain name, web design, web hosting, web site design