A sensible factual guide to ensure your business does NOT fall at the first hurdle.

The look and feel of your website; it’s structural code and quality of your web-server will impact on your website’s performance. In turn this will affect the rate in which you attract visitors and convert prospective customers into buyers. We hope you will find the tips below informative, if you can identify with any of them we strongly advise resolving these issues as soon as possible.

• Ensure you have a uniformed navigation system throughout your website. Different navigation bars leading to different pages will confuse and frustrate your visitors.
• Write web content which keeps your website interesting and relevant to your visitors. Ensure quality grammar and no spelling errors to maximize a professional portrayal of your business.
• Do not use obscure button labels or links, this will confuse your visitors. For example a shopping cart button displaying the word “checkout” rather than “One click payment”.
• Search boxes – always offer your visitors the ability to search your website. There’s nothing worse than forcing a visitor to skim through all your content just to find a single area of interest. As a backup addition to a search facility, always make sure your site navigation allows your visitors to find what they’re looking for quickly.
• Publish content that will help your visitors and do not deliberately withhold relevant information to instead talk about yourself. Give your customers what they want!
• Never overpower your content with large images or senseless videos. This is especially important for your homepage, after all this will likely be the page most visitors view first. It’s important to have quality written content on every page. This will also help the search engine optimisation of your website, for more tips on SEO see our other articles.
• Do not use complex drop-down menus that will make navigation almost impossible. We’re sure you’ve come across websites not behaving correctly towards your mouse actions. You try to click a link and the whole menu disappears! This can instantly lead to visitors leaving your website. Drop-downs are a great intuitive way for speedy navigation but they have to be implemented correctly and maintained.
• Maximize the readability of your website, never use tiny fonts or bad colour combinations.
• Invest in fast reliable hosting to serve your website quickly to your visitors.
• It’s imperative that your chosen web hosting company can handle your traffic. For example, if 100 people hit your website at the same time your web server should not crash and leave your website inaccessible.
• Ensure you design to the latest W3C standards to minimize the errors in your website code.
• Cross-browser compatibility, it’s vital that your website appears and functions the same across all browsers for example: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari and Opera just to name a few. Why is this important? Your website could display perfectly in Internet Explorer which you personally use. However a prospective customer could be using another browser such as Firefox, when they view your website it could appear completely scrambled making your website completely unusable. Wave “bye bye” to that sale!
• Ensure continuity of your website, keep a close eye that everything is functioning as it should. For example, check you do not have any broken links or images missing. A well maintained site will lead to increased sales.
• Your visitors should never be made to download and install plug-ins to view your website.
• Never force pop up boxes on your visitors.
• Keep sign up boxes, animations and auto-start videos to an absolute minimum. This will increase the load time of your website and avoid irritating your prospective customers.
• The framing technique is finally dieing out through the introduction of more contemporary scripting such as Mootools and Jquery. However it is still surprising how many website still use “frames”, ditch these as soon as possible!
• If running an e-commerce business ALWAYS provide a secure gateway to allow your visitors to enter their payment details. Buying an SSL certificate is not expensive when your customer’s credentials are at risk. Providing maximum protection against Internet fraud is a very credible step for your business.

Selecting the right type of web server is considered a crucial decision in online business. There are two types of servers, Virtual Web Hosting and Virtual Private Servers.  These two should not be confused as they are both completely different.

Virtual Hosting aka (shared web hosting) – you buy space for your website on a server. Likewise other users have done exactly the same thing and multiple people can be using the same server at any given time. Fast script deployment, strong resources and an attractive price makes Virtual Hosting the number one choice.  A shared server provides a powerful, reliable, and professionally managed server which can be easily maintained without the knowledge of advanced technical skills. An ideal solution for an individual, small businesses or even new webmasters. We have been working with HostGator for many years and have watched them grow to one of the top web hosting companies in the world. We highly recommend their services. Click here for further details.

The disadvantage of Virtual Hosting is the server is shared with other users, all user accounts are controlled by the service provider not you. There’s little control given to the users themselves, this acts as a fail-safe to protect against alterations of configuration settings by unscrupulous users. Rest assured though the majority of settings available can easily manage most websites. In development terms this restricted access can delay projects however contacting the server administrator to resolve issues is a concrete alternative.

Virtual Private Servers are single servers that are partitioned at the root into multiple dedicated servers. These servers allow complete control to users and house their own security advantages of a dedicated server at very low cost. Owners can access the virtual root, Telnet, web configuration files, and benefit from full CGI-BIN access. A Virtual Private Server is an excellent solution for small to medium size businesses who have complex online activities. These servers are usually used by third party hosting companies to sell off space to their private clients.

There is however one disadvantage with Virtual Private Servers. Programming knowledge and server administration skills are vital in order to control and configure the settings.

If you plan to have just one or a small collection of websites we would recommend Virtual Hosting Servers. A Virtual Host costs around $9 to $20 per month for an account.

If you require multiple space for very large websites then a Virtual Private Server will serve you best. These servers can cost between $20-$200 per month. The price differential is down to the specification of the server. For example a server with a speedy CPU, higher RAM and larger bandwidth limits will cost you more for better performance. You can host 50+ websites on a Virtual Private Server, instead of having multiple Virtual Hosting accounts which will be more expensive. Click here to see full pricing schedule.

Be aware that selecting a poor quality Virtual Host can lead to downtime of your website, corners should not be cut here. We will be covering this topic in more detail later this week.

Should you require any further information please feel free to contact us. Traverse Designs are able to provide large discounts on all types of hosting.

These would spice up the animal world!

HumanDecent

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HumanDecent

“Google”, this phenomenal Search Engine is the driving force behind the world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Yahoo is a great contributor but in recent years the power of Google has overshadowed competitors by a large margin. The phrase “Google it” is becoming a household term for researching a particular subject on the web. Using this enormously successful branding Google has created some excellent tools to ensure that Search Engine Optimization experts have a starting point to base their own theories.

Consider the External Keywords Tool. This tool is very handy when you are launching your website and want to research the competition for a particular keyword. Once you type in the keyword or a website url, the external keyword tool throws up a list of similar and most searched keywords. You can start your optimization efforts and base your strategies on the list you derive from this very tool.

Pay Per Click advertising is becoming increasingly popular by online marketing companies. This is a great way for webmasters to ensure that they have their website links placed on the millions of relevant websites. Pay Per Click (PPC) as the name says, is a tool for which webmasters choose to pay Google only when their website link is clicked. This tool shouldn’t be taken likely, the range of options and filters available can be mind boggling to anyone trying to set up their first PPC campaign. If you adopt the wrong settings or approach to your campaign your advertising budget could be severely damaged.

A client came to us 2 months ago requesting help with her online advertising. Sarah had spent over £500.00 per month over a period of 4 months on PPC advertising with Google and had experienced absolutely no return. These stories are very common and unfortunately has given PPC advertising a tarnished reputation. As much as the user interface seems very friendly to the end user; such tools give the impression that any Tom, Dick or Harry can become a marketing guru within the space of an hour. We strongly advise anybody considering PPC advertising to talk with specialists in this area to tailor a successful campaign.

Traverse Designs have implemented many successful PPC campaigns for our clients. All of whom have benefited from fresh targeted traffic to their website which has increased sales by up to 40%. AdSense and AdWords are the two offerings from Google that allow businesses to publish and place advertisements, both these tools are well worth checking out.

Google AdManager is a relatively new tool to help manage your adverts however we believe this area of the Google franchise still needs some work. We’ve found better results can be had with another innovative company called OpenX. Not sure if you have heard about this one? They offer a hosted version of their ad manager and an enterprise version. Advertisers have a vast array options which help tailor bespoke advertisement campaigns. We’re sure it won’t be long until Google follows suit though!

Would you like to devise an increased sales SEO strategy for your business?
Come and talk to us.

Macro photography / close-up photography.
Here’s a stunning collection from those talented beings on Flickr!

Using a lens specifically designed for close work and with a long barrel for close focusing, called a macro lens. Some manufacturers call it a micro, which might actually be scientifically more accurate, but can be confusing, since it goes against the established convention. A macro lens might be optimized to provide its best performance at a magnification of 1:1. Some macro lenses, such as the Canon MP-E 65 mm f/2.8, can achieve higher magnification – up to 5:1 macro, enabling photography of the structure of small insect eyes, snowflakes, and other minuscule but detailed objects. However, “standard” (1:1) macro lenses are more common. There are different categories of macro lenses, depending on the focal length:

* 50–60mm range typically used for product photography and small objects
* 90–105mm range the standard focal range used for insects, flowers, small objects
* 150–200mm range gives more working distance —  used for insects and other small animals
* a few zooms provide a macro option, but they generally do not allow a 1:1 magnification
— Courtesy of Wikipedia

Cricket by Martin Heigan

Human Eye Pupil by q8phantom

Macro Crown by Daniel Ygo

A stormtrooper tries Macro photography by Kevin Poulton

Yummy! by Conifer

El espíritu del macro by Luis @ngel

UH OH………….looks like trouble. macro monday! by Barbeez Garten

Last day in Paris by Dan Orbit

giant by F.Prestes

Perfect by Mookio

SEO (search engine optimisation), is not all about link submissions, articles, press releases and social media. The structural development of your website plays a vital role in your ranking success. This article is based on web consultancy which we completed for one of the leading Rolex retailers in the USA. Today we would like to briefly outline some really basic website optimisation tips.

Our client’s internal link structure would not of complimented their search engine campaign. Creating search engine friendly URLs will help the search spiders to place the site favorably ahead of competition.

The original link structure:
http://www.xyz.com /pages/rolexwarrenty.asp?id=5

The use of SEF (search engine friendly) URLs can turn a dirty link as shown above to something like: www.xyz.com /rolex-warrenty

What are the benefits? Easier to remember and visually pleasing to your visitors. The search engines love this structure! We highly recommend investing in this technique known as URL rewriting.

Onpage optimization is another great technique when developing a website. Ensure that the right keywords are peppered on your homepage and link pages. Interlinking the keywords with relevant content in other pages extensively helps rankings.

WARNING! Be careful here, over quoting your keywords in your content can lead to a drop in search engine rankings. Google, especially penalizes websites who spam their keywords in their site content. In the same breathe, not including a specified keyword enough in your content will negate any benefits. Unsure how to optimise your content? Contact us.

Spiders have a way of reading web pages, the current trend is to read the website code from left to right row by row. Keep this in mind when developing your site. The earlier a keyword is picked up the better it is for your site.

The URL and keywords are very important aspects for your SEO objective. The URL name should be close to your business niche. For example a company selling building materials would benefit hugely from having a domain name www.buildingmaterials.com as opposed to johndoematerials.com.

Meta tags are used to communicate between the website and the search engines. Title, description and keyword tags are mandatory for each page of your website. The expertise in writing these tags to maximize their effectiveness in relation to your content can be mind-boggling for many website owners. If you need advice concerning any aspect of your current website optimisation or are interested in climbing the search engine rankings contact us to have the best chance of knocking your competition off their pedestals.

This article is aimed at web entrepreneurs who already have a basic understanding of code structure, XHTML, CSS and basic Javascript.

The development of JavaScript programs can be a challenge in the absence of third party framework. Now that challenge is over! Mootools is a modular, object oriented JavaScript library. It is a lightweight tool that can work across browsers and released under the open source license. The framework has a range of inbuilt APIs and plugins which allows MooTools to be used for developing web applications to create easy integration with your website. As rule of thumb try not to mix Mootools and jQuery (What is jQuery?), although the compatibility is being improved this can lead to conflicts in your scripting which will inevitably cause problems for your website visitors.

Some of the most popular modules are demonstrated below:

Elements | Effects | Drag and drop sortables | Accordion (our personal favourite)

MooTools is slowly but surely becoming a necessity for web developers who face the challenge of developing rich websites within strict deadlines. A recent update of the framework houses a new “CSS selector engine” which supports XML documents and every selector you can think of. A host of popular organisations are using MooTools include Netvibes, Bing, CNet, W3C and the list keeps on growing!

Are you a web developer? Then you will not need much time to familiarize yourself with this exceptional open source tool. The selection of classes, functions and forms are available through the Mootools downloads section. If you are unsure of which files to download to achieve your aims, we recommend using the MooTools demo available here.

Are you a website owner with an inquisitive mind? Spotted some Mootools driven functionality which you’d like to include on your website? Not sure how? Traverse Designs can handle this for you, come and chat with us!

For your next web application take MooTools by the horns to enrich your website, you won’t be disappointed!

Many web companies enforce monthly maintenance for your website. As standard, maintenance fees should not be a mandatory requirement. Our team have helped many people recover their websites from companies charging exorbitant maintenance each month; it comes as no surprise that website owners are still agreeing to these contract terms.  The worst case scenario we’ve dealt with was a client tied into a contract for website maintenance for £500.00 per month to keep their website afloat. Of course this meant they were paying £6000 per year on maintenance! The company in question would do the odd update to the website which would take no more than 1-2 hours per month… insane!

So what exactly is website maintenance?

Many companies define their website maintenance service differently, as far as Traverse Designs are concerned website maintenance should be an “on demand” service and includes but is NOT limited to the following tasks:

• A wide variety of content updates.
• Image alterations.
• New Pages.
• Adding links.
• Major and minor interface alterations.
• Scripting alterations.
• Software security updates.
• Payment integration.
• Phone / Instant messaging tutorials
• Etc

We work our website maintenance on fixed hourly rates. Bulk hours can be purchased at discounted rates, see our maintenance section for further information on our packages.

Traverse Designs houses clocking software which records every second we spend on your requests. A time log can be requested at anytime and we regularly inform you of the hours left on your package. You will find our maintenance rates very reasonable compared with our competition. As with our custom web design service, you are assigned your own project manager who will deal with your requests on a one to one basis. This ensures the continuity of the work undertaken.

Unsure how much time you require for a particular task?
No problem! Contact us for a free estimate.

The “Write Less, Do More” javascript library.

This article is aimed at web entrepreneurs who already have a basic understanding of code structure, XHTML & CSS. For those who like to explore and learn new programming methods with a bit of a funky twist then jQuery is the answer for rapid web development.

jQuery a concise JavaScript library which enables developers to enhance HTML documents with event handling and animation effects; this boosts the visual appeal of any website. jQuery aids in slick navigation menus and a host of other functions in a fraction of the time it would take to code from scratch. Time is a critical factor in online business, jQuery tools help smart entrepreneurs move quickly ahead of the competition. The toolbox comes complete with ready-made APIs and plugins, jQuery is a favorite tool for developers working for Google, digg, Technorati, NBC and many more.

Example 1 | Example 2 | Example 3

As you can see from the examples above, there are many different effects which can enhance the usability of your website. Not sure how to implement a jQuery plugin within your website?
Contact our team, we’d be happy to adhere to your coding requests.

jQuery works across all the popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, FireFox, Safari, Opera and Google Chrome. jQuery is CSS 1-3 compliant and has a host of inbuilt utilities which can be implemented within new or existing sites. Coupled with it’s cross browser compatibility jQuery developers have adopted support for other open source libraries such as Prototype, MooTools and YUI, making the possibilities endless for the creative developer.

Should you experience any problems with your development the jQuery team have a well defined FAQ section, chats and mailing lists which can help. If that does not solve your problem, Traverse Designs have a vast amount of experience with jQuery, feel free to contact us should you require commercial support for your project.

What’s the difference between standard web design and custom web design?

Price – Was the most obvious difference to website owners until recently.  However contemporary custom web design does not need to be expensive.

“CUSTOM” or “BESPOKE” design usually means that the resulting website will be unique to you and your business. As opposed to standard website packages where companies sell “pre-made templates”. Templates are website layouts which have been sold to multiple clients; as you can imagine many websites will look exactly the same. This would be like another site with a different name looking exactly like eBay. If you are dedicated to powering your brand and business on the web we strongly advise seeking a custom web design service.

It would be mis-leading of us to advise you that every cheap custom web design package from other companies are great deals. Weighing up the quality of your website designer is a great integrity indication. Read our “how to avoid web design scams” article to learn how to measure up your designer to ensure their work benefits your business.

Traverse Designs only commits to:

• Custom web design.
• We never deal in pre-made templates which many firms use as a “side earner”.
• Our top priority is your satisfaction, our team will always aim to exceeding your expectations. Don’t just take our word for it, read what our clients have to say.
• We conduct all projects on a personal level.
• You will be assigned your very own project manager who will maintain the cohesion of your project.
• Our custom web design service includes hand coded designs for every website to ensure the best possible quality.
• Professional testing and launching of your website.
• Complementary training (if required) coupled with superior support and advice as and when you need it!

View some of our custom web design projects here.