When Is the Right Time to Redesign?

If you run a website, chances are you often wonder whether it is the right time to do a total redesign of the layout of your website. Here are some points to consider:

Are you thinking of a redesign just for the sake of it? If you answered yes to that question, it is not yet the right time to do a redesign. Remember, a design serves a specific purpose. If you are not sure whether to do an overhaul of your site, keep in mind that your current design might have a specific purpose that you might not know about. You will lose that function if you do a redesign.

On the other hand, if your website has had the same website design since 1990, perhaps it is high time to do a redesign. The last thing you would ever want to happen to your site is when visitors leave your site without taking a look at your content just because the design is old fashioned. If this is your case, here are some points to ponder before doing a redesign.

Redesigning your website is like performing plastic surgery on it. Your website loses its current identity (for the better or worse) and your regular visitors might not recognise your new design at first glance. You risk losing them just because they thought they landed on the wrong page. Hence, it is very important that you retain a characteristic feature from your old layout. Perhaps it is the logo of your site; perhaps it is the same text style for the title for your site.

To play it safe, put a poll on your site to let your visitors do the talking. If they think it is necessary for the website to have a fresh look, give it to them!

Good Design Practices

Your website is where your business resides -- it's like the headquarter of an offline company. Hence, it is important to practise good design principles to make sure your site reaches out to the maximum number of visitors and sells to as many people as possible.

Make sure you have clear directions on the navigation of your website. The navigation menu should be uncluttered and concise so that visitors know how to navigate around your website without confusion.

Reduce the number of images on your website. They make your site load very slowly and more often than not they are very unnecessary. If you think any image is essential on your site, make sure you optimize them using image editing programs so that they have a minimum file size.

Keep your text paragraphs at a reasonable length. If a paragraph is too long, you should split it into seperate paragraphs so that the text blocks will not be too big. This is important because a block of text that is too large will deter visitors from reading your content.

Make sure your website complies to web standards at www.w3.org and make sure they are cross-browser compatible. If your website looks great in Internet Explorer but breaks horribly in Firefox and Opera, you will lose out on a lot of prospective visitors.

Avoid using scripting languages on your site unless it is absolutely necessary. Use scripting languages to handle or manipulate data, not to create visual effects on your website. Heavy scripts will slow down the loading time of your site and even crash some browsers. Also, scripts are not supported across all browsers, so some visitors might miss important information because of that.

Use CSS to style your page content because they save alot of work by styling all elements on your website in one go.

Here's Why Paying For Your Traffic Is A Smart Move

There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good in the internet. The troubling thing is, there are maybe a tenfold or even a hundredfold of stories contradictory to theirs. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is internet based but only a handful shall succeed.

Is this through luck? That is even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the eagerness to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.

The Very Basic

Like Neo, traffic is “The One”. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldn’t have anyone to sell your products to. In the internet world traffic is the walk in customer. The more traffic you have the more people would be able to sell your products to.

But like any business that’s in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that goes in will buy, but the greater of number that do come in to browse your merchandise, the greater number of people that will buy your products. It is a simple and known fact.

But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.

Many of these success stories get their traffic from paying others. Yes that’s right; you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people that knows that your site exists; the more people would of course go to your site, that’s common sense.

While there are many ways that can get you advertising for free, this do not generate the same high volume as those methods that are getting paid. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo.

The Value of Searches

The search and will be the easiest and fastest medium in finding what a person needs in the internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks that they are the most common sites that people go to. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.

Search engines provide information to the millions of users that they have each day. They provide links to many sites that a user may be looking for. If your sites link pop up in the high ranks of the search results page, you get a great chance that they will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks.

When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. This may sound like not such a good idea, but the payoffs would tell a different story. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will never go with an empty sales day.

Paying for your Traffic

Usually, you will be charged with the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. For some search engines, you will be charged with the number of times your ad shows up when a certain keyword or keyword phrase is searched. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword for the right moment.

All the money you spend in paying for your traffic will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.

The Olympic in Beijing Motto itself is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger"

Image via Wikipedia The Chinese really are trying hard. With four months to go until the curtain goes up on the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing, the final preparations are put in place to win over the world.

With the Olympic torch relay hitting the London leg today, the talk back home is more on impending demonstrations against China's human rights record. The fact that there was talk that Fu Ying, the Chinese Ambassdor, may boycott the event, which is supposed to embrace the Beijing games' motto of 'One World, One Dream', shows that the threat against a peaceful games without incident is a very real one.

The Olympic Motto itself is "Swifter, Higher, Stronger", the games are primarily a showcase and celebration of the world's best in sport, but at a time where China's growing economically day by day, and the country's involvement in world issues in Darfur

The Bird Nest
The Olympic Stadium in Beijing, where the athletics and football will be held.

and most recently the crisis in Tibet, the opportunity for protesters to get their voices heard on a world stage is likely to be taken up.
But the Chinese people themselves are embracing the true embodiment of the games. They are so excited that their country will host the games; this country is on a mission to deliver the best Olympic Games the world has ever seen.

The stadia and facilities are state of the art, the main Olympic stadium, nicknamed 'The Bird Nest' is without doubt the best stadium I have ever sen (though you can't get that close to it yet.)
Sure, the rest of the area is still a building site and a bit of a mess, but you just know the Chinese will get that sorted.

One thing any Westerner will know if they've ever visited China is that the Chinese are fascinated by our faces, they have no problem with staring at you, laughing, and taking photos without permission ... and that's mostly in Beijing's city centre as well.
If the world is going to be made to feel welcome, this will have to stop. We will have to get used to the habit of spitting in the streets though, and toddlers with all in one suits on that have holes where their bottoms are so they can just crouch and go to the toilet in the street!

China is an astonishing country from what I've seen of it already, it's so diverse and every place is different. Sitting on a train from Xi'an to Shanghai writing this, looking out the window at the beautiful farmland, I have no doubt China will deliver the world a great games, though it will be a very different games from recent times.

Yes, this probably is the ideal opportunity to sound a voice, but peacefully, without disruption, and the Chinese will then let their enthusiasm and passion for their Olympic dream carry them through to deliver a spectacle that for one reason of another, will be remembered for decades.

Publicize Your Podcast

Podcast Promotion

Podcasting is a great new medium, but creating a podcast is only half of the work. Promoting a podcast is equally critical to it's success.

1. Educate the Public.
It is important to remember that podcasting is a relatively new technology and not everyone understands or knows what podcasting is. It is particularly important to educate users if your audience is not technical. Not only is it important to explain what a podcast is, but it is equally important to explain how your podcast will help listeners. Instruction on how users can listen to podcasts should also be included...

Understanding Podcasting - http://www.podcasting-tools.com/podcasting-articles.htm


2. Graphic
Add a graphic to your website to let website visitors know that a podcast is available for your content. Colorful graphics have become the signature to alert listeners that podcasts and RSS feeds are available. The podcast flags were initially bright orange rectangles but as the popularity has grown, webmasters have bent the rules a bit.

A free online RSS graphic tool is available that allows users to quickly customize buttons by selecting the text and the color scheme of the button enabling webmasters to coordinate their podcast flag to match their website color scheme. Graphics experience is not required. Simply select alternative colors and insert text to personalize the feed graphics.

Online Graphics Tool - http://www.feedforall.com/public/rss-graphic-tool.htm or choose ready made graphics fom: http://www.feedforall.com/podcasting-graphics.htm .

3. Descriptive Content
Be sure the podcast RSS feed contains enough information related to the contents of the podcasts to grab the interest of listeners. The description should be keyword rich. A link to the audio file should be included in the description field. The audio file link is a great way for listeners to sample a podcast.


4. Press Release
Send a press release about the podcast. In addition to distributing the press release to editors, be sure to submit the release to free online press release directories.

Submit Press Release - http://www.softwaremarketingresource.com/pressreleases.html (scroll to submit release)


5. Podcast Directories
Submit podcasts to the podcast directories. Podcast directories contain podcasts that cover a wide variety of topics. Inclusion in the podcast search engines and directories will tap a whole new audience.

Submit to Podcasting Directories - http://www.podcasting-tools.com/submit-podcasts.htm


6. Consistent Theme / Interesting Content
The last thing you want to do is to turn off listeners who have subscribed. Provide consistently formatted and consistently themed audio files. Interesting content that is consistently presented will gradually increase your listening base.

7. Create a Community
Encourage feedback and dialogue with listeners. Listen to the feedback of listeners and test their suggestions. Remember the podcast is for them not you.


Podcast promotion should be approached with the same tactics as website promotion. Identifying and informing your audience will increase communication and dialogue.