Font and color choices in a website say certain things about the owner of the site. Though colors and symbols may have different meanings in other cultures, this only reaffirms the notion that design choices do affect the perception of the user, which in turn affects the message attempting to be conveyed.

Here is an infographic that delves into the meanings of fonts and colors in the context of web design.

Designing a website is not a child’s play. Its not something that you randomly throw on a particular place that has some graphics and some other information such as the name and the contact information. This kind of practice arises when there is a lack of understanding to harness the Internet as the valuable source of business. The market being flooded with web designing and development services, you need to be well equipped with just the right questions and their right answers.

Getting a website designed with a sophistication, content and the graphics being the major attention-grabber and the Search Engine Optimisation practices, thus producing apt results is what you need. In this article, the various levels of developing a website and what questions to ask of perspective design agencies have been covered to make the process easier for you. The methodologies, which are applied before and after the project is complete and the positive sides of consulting with proven SEO specialists to be able to lead to a successful site implementation that would result in a better ROI have also been covered in this article.

— The Right Domain:

Essentials of Web Designing, Development, And SEO

Keep your domain name short and the one which is easier to remember. Keeping it short rather than having  long domain name with all the keywords possible, makes it more accurate, spares the common spelling disaster, easy to remember and saves the printing cost.

Try and think of a different domain name. It should not match to your competitors because the chances are high that the visitor makes a spelling mistake and ultimately lands up to a web page that shares almost the same domain name and ranks high. And do remember to implement a 301 permanent redirect so that you are not penalised by the search engines for having duplicate content with the several domain names pointing towards one site.

— Potential Web Hosting Providers:

Essentials of Web Designing, Development, And SEO

Do they allow large e-mail campaigns? Availability of maximum output and site accessibility, large campaigns and spamming from their servers, type of server backup process, static I.P. Addresses at a reasonable price and many others such questions are mandatory while you opt for a web hosting company.

Can you imagine thousands of people living under the same roof? No… ?

Then, you won’t feel good or even would not want yourself to be landed in a situation where thousands of sites hosted in a shared environment. Once the I.P. address is flagged as spam then, all the websites sitting behind that one I.P. address are blocked.

Choosing a good web host provider becomes your utmost priority as many hosting providers especially, the ones on a larger scale, have restrictions based on polices for the masses ran by a service centre with limited or no access to the actual server your site sits on. This limits the owner or webmaster of the site to be able to run certain applications.

— The Design Says It All:

Essentials of Web Designing, Development, And SEO

Choosing a web designer well equipped with the expertise over a professional design software program such as Adobe Photoshop. The design and the look of your website says it all, and as it has been already said, “A book is well Judged by its cover”, it for this you just cannot afford to deal with an inexperienced website designer using Microsoft FrontPage or Dreamweaver. The overall process is important and needs a discussion between the S.E.O. strategist with both the owner of the project and designer of the site, before someone hits the board.

The designer’s portfolio, his/her familiarity with the latest trends, the number of programs used for designing, delivery time, use of custom design or a template that is modified… and many other such valid questions form the key while choosing a designer.

A qualified designer is well aware of the hows and whys, whats and tricks to design a productive and an eye-candy site for your targetted audience and which, still keeps within the Search Engine Guidelines and Standards.

— Now comes the Development Stage:

Essentials of Web Designing, Development, And SEO

Search Engine Optimisation expert is the key to the developmental stage. The various platforms on which your website needs to be developed and the strategies to be able to meet your goals set forth the beginning of the project, is the sole purpose of an SEO expert.

The another key to the developmental stage is the Content Management System, which prove to be light and user-friendly. With an appropriate training from your service provider, you can edit all the changes you want on your site yourself. No need to get a 3rd party software and spend additional money.

Cross browser compatiblity, warranty period, use of <div> because tables are no longer in use, type of CMS they offer, future expansion growth, dynamic and XML sitemap and other such useful parameters you ought to keep in mind while you choose a platform for your website.

— SEO is not an overnight fix:

Essentials of Web Designing, Development, And SEO

Imagine you have a great looking website, functions as it should, and has a strong foundation of Basic S.E.O. applied to it during the development process doesn’t mean that you are going to get noticed in a day.

Once you are done with everything, it’s time for the engines to come in and to evaluate and recognise your business and most importantly, value and trust your site.

— Its not that you have spent more than enough and your site ranks high. Now, here comes the job of an SEO to plan out strategies to bring in value to your page. Newsletters, press releases, blog articles, banner advertising, and respective linking are some of such methods. Research, trial and error is what a  successful  SEO implementation takes to see any type of ROI for your project.

When selecting a Website Development Company, asking the right questions is just as important as getting the right answers. And these fundamentals or in other words, essentials become very important to a successful web designing, development and SEO practices.

Via: inspirationfeed.com

For years, advertisers have run their search engine marketing (SEM) and search engine optimization (SEO) programs separately. The SEM team would focus on bidding, campaign analytics and the complex science of managing millions of keyword buys to drive maximum conversion. The SEO team lived in a world of internal and external linking, and optimizing pages to maximize reach and relevance in organic search engine results.

But today, more marketers are realizing SEM and SEO are not separate disciplines. Instead, they are two sides of the same coin — complementary programs that, when managed correctly, can benefit each other to increase conversion rates and share of voice. Insights gained when buying pay per click (PPC) keyword ads can positively impact SEO creative initiatives, while natural search queries and clickpath data can, and should, influence keyword bidding.

But how do you more closely integrate the “bid kids” with the “white hats”? How can SEM and SEO teams work together to improve results on their respective programs, increase return on search marketing investment and drive a lasting lift in conversion across the board?

Here are three practical steps every marketer can take to begin this integration.

1. Identify Overlap

The first step in combining SEO and SEM programs is to identify where the programs overlap, where they don’t and where they should. Paid search advertising programs cannot be successful without top-ranking natural search results and vice versa, so you need to use your search management platform or web analytics tools to identify which keywords are performing well on both sides of the table, and see which ones are “lone wolves” driving only PPC or organic search traffic.

When SEO and SEM teams are operating independently, there are often high-volume keyword terms that drive traffic from only one of the two search channels, either paid search or natural search. When you find these terms, you can better optimize them. For example, if you have a term for which traffic is only driven through paid search clicks, there is opportunity to focus SEO efforts on obtaining organic ranking on these terms. Conversely, if your organization is generating revenue from organic search terms that don’t match any of the keywords in your paid search program, there is probably some incremental revenue you can capture with paid keyword expansion.

It would be impossible to compare organic and paid search coverage on each of the millions of search terms that are driving traffic to your site with even the best analytics tools. As with all analysis on large data sets, it is important to take a management-by-exception approach. Start by identifying the high-volume and top-converting search queries in each channel. Once you have filtered to find the most impactful search queries, the next step is to evaluate how they perform.

2. Measure the Paid Click Percentage

Measuring the click-share of each channel is a better way to find coverage holes and overlap than trying to compare the number of impressions, clicks and conversions that each channel is driving. Depending on the type of tracking system you use, there are a variety of ways to get this metric. To keep it generic: Match raw query search terms across paid and organic results, sum the total clicks, then calculate the paid clicks as a percentage of that total.

This single metric, called “Paid Click Percentage,” makes it easy for advertisers to quickly identify holes in either paid or organic search coverage. For example, you can look at paid click percentages greater than 75% to quickly identify key revenue-driving terms for your paid search program that are receiving fewer clicks from organic search results. Because searchers are more inclined to click on organic results instead of ads, you know that a term with zero organic clicks must not be resulting in first-page organic results.

Sorting these terms by paid search revenue impact will give the organic search team a ranked list of queries (and landing pages) to optimize against, allowing them to more efficiently prioritize SEO projects.

After you address this, you can use the same report to identify keywords that should be added or refined in your paid search campaigns.

3. Refine, Review, Repeat

When paid and organic search channels work together, marketers get maximum revenue from both programs. Identifying holes in paid and organic search campaigns using the method described above should help improve overall performance, but remember: It is not a one-time project.

Websites and advertising programs are continually changing. This analysis should be done on a regular basis. If your organization is large enough to have disparate paid and organic search teams, set up a regular meeting between both teams to ensure your SEM and SEO programs are friends, not distant relations.

Image courtesy of Flickr, alternativemeans

Article via: mashable.com/2011/06/27/seo-sem-tips

A global internet body has voted to allow the creation of new website domain suffixes, the biggest change for the online world in years.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (Icann) plans to dramatically increase the number of domain endings from the current 22.

Internet address names will end with almost any word and be in any language.

Icann will begin taking applications next year, with corporations and cities expected to be among the first.

"Icann has opened the internet's addressing system to the limitless possibilities of the human imagination," said Rod Beckstrom, president and chief executive officer for Icann.

"No one can predict where this historic decision will take us."

There will be several hundred new generic top-level domain names (gTLDs), which could include such addresses as .google, .coke, or even .BBC.

There are currently 22 gTLDs, as well as about 250 country-level domain names such as .uk or .de.

Costly process

It will cost $185,000 (£114,000) to apply for the suffixes, and companies would need to show they have a legitimate claim to the name they are buying.

Analysts say it is a price that global giants might be willing to pay - in order to maximise their internet presence.

The money will be used to cover costs incurred by Icann in developing the new gTLDs and employing experts to scrutinise the many thousands of expected applications.

A portion will be set-aside to deal with potential legal actions, raised by parties who fail to get the domains they want.

The vote completes a six-year negotiation process and is the biggest change to the system since .com was first introduced 26 years ago.

Icann said it was beginning a global communications programme to raise awareness of the new domain names.

Applications will start on 12 January.

High standards

Companies and organisations seeking one of the new gTLDs will have to meet high technical standards, according to Bruce Tonkin, chief strategy officer at Melbourne IT, a domain registry service.

"You need IT robustness and you need intellectual property protections beyond what is available in the dot com space.

"You have to have 24/7 abuse team. You have to have mechanisms where a trademark holder has first right to get their name," he said.

The higher standards, said Mr Tonkin, meant the application process would be extremely rigorous.

"Using a real estate analogy, it would be roughly the equivalent of getting approval to build a sky scraper.

"There's roughly 50 questions, roughly 2-3 pages per question. Icann will then use experts in each field to evaluate them.

"The concern that some people have is that the standards of these buildings will be so high, that they will never get built. It will be too expensive," he said.

Existing Generic TLDs

• .com : companies, now broader
• .edu : educational institutions
• .gov : government institutions
• .int : international organisations, e.g. Interpol
• .mil : military organisations
• .net : networking technologies, now broader
• .org : non-profit organisations
• .arpa : first ever domain, now technical use
• .aero : air travel industry
• .biz : business alternative to .com
• .coop : co-operatives
• .info : information, but open for general use
• .museum : museums
• .name : personal names - johnsmith.name
• .pro : professionals, e.g. doctors
• .asia: Asian websites
• .cat : Catalan language
• .jobs : employment websites
• .mobi : mobile phones
• .post : postal services
• .tel : telecoms
• .travel : travel
• 
  

Source: BBC, Icann

GREEK VERSION - ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗ ΕΚΔΟΣΗ

Το παγκόσμιο συμβούλιο που διαχειρίζεται τις καταλήξεις των sites αποφάσισε να αυξήσει δραματικά τον αριθμό των καταλήξεων domains από τα 22 παγκόσμιας εμβελείας που είναι τώρα

Οι  νέες καταλήξεις θα μπορούν σχεδόν να είναι κάθε λέξη σε κάθε γλώσσα που υπάρχει στην γη σήμερα

Ο Icann θα αρχίσει να διανέμει την εφαρμογή που θα δημιουργήσει καταρχήν σε μεγάλες εταιρείες και διάφορες μεγάλες πόλεις ανά τον κόσμο

Ο Icann ανοίγει τις διευθύνσεις internet στις απεριόριστες δυνατότητες και μόνο του ανθρώπινου μυαλού όπως δήλωσε ο Rob Beckstom πρόεδρος και διευθύνων σύμβουλος του Icann

Κανένας δεν μπόρεσε να προβλέψει αυτή την ιστορική απόφαση που πήραμε.

Τα νέα domain θα μπορούν να τελειώνουν για παράδειγμα όπως .google .kok η ακόμα και .bbc η .freestuff

Αυτό βέβαια θα μπορεί να έχει ένα κόστος περίπου 200.000 δολάρια και οι εταιρείες που θα υποβάλουν αξιώσεις δημιουργίας νέας κατάληξης θα πρέπει να έχουν νόμιμη αξίωση για την νέα κατάληξη που στην ουσία αγοράζουν.

Πηγή: bno.gr

Web design trends keep on changing with every passing year or within a period of few months. There had been significant changes last year whose impact can be seen more clearly in this year.

Popularity in the mobile device space has immensely increased in the sense that Smartphones and tablets like the iPad have made the interaction between users better and have facilitated easier accessibility to contents. Moreover, now people can take more and more advantage of the latest and the optimized features.

And this is possible because of web standards like HTML5, web fonts and CSS3, but What about the small businesses? It actually becomes difficult for them to stick to the latest designing trends because of factors like cost of the redesigns and the need for reaching a wide range of users.

Here, let’s discuss certain new technological designing trends which can prove useful for small businesses.

1. Goodbye Flash

Continuous debates in the past show that people are moving away from Flash. But that does not mean it serves no useful purpose. It still continues to give interactive designs and a few Rich Interactive Applications. However, for those small business owners, not showing any type of experience, trading Flash for HTML5, JavaScript and CSS3 would sound more sensible. Why? Actually the problem is that Flash does not work on most of the mobile devices and if they do, all the elements are not supported reliably.

Suppose, you visit a website from your mobile and are not being able to access it completely, like; unable to access the contact information, list of products and services or location information for the reason that navigation or core content was built in Flash. Will you like this? Obviously no!

The old circa-2005 Flash template is no more a very good option, and for good results, I would advise you to switch on to a modern system soon this year.

2. Web Fonts

Web font has been one of the important factors in web designing. It is not at all easy to customize the font .Because of technical restrictions; vibrant fonts used on the web have been limited to a small subset of styles. As a result, most designers used either the small selection of web-safe fonts or workarounds such as: text images or Flash in order to replace texts.

But there is a different scenario today regarding this. Today, you can use web fonts for your site without breaking your head too much into it. And the credit for this goes to services like TypeKit, Fonts.com Web Fonts and Google Web Fonts which allow you to use fonts at lower costs.

You can follow the latest trends in fonts like Web Open Font Format, JS lettering, taking mobile support or choosing Web Font while customizing Web App. If you wish to know more about these latest trends, you can get the information here: trends in web fonts.

3. Compatible and optimized sites

It’s time to make your sites fully compatible on different browsers as well as different devices and fully optimized, as, every website today wishes to make their site friendly to small screen. These are few tools that help you optimize your website for mobile devices:

• MoFuse and MoFuse Premium
• Mippin
• mobiSiteGalore

To know more about them, you can read optimize your website for mobile devices.

4. HTML5 and CSS3

Very true that there still exist corporate networks and users using some very old browsers. But one must know that the latest versions of the major web browsers — Internet Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome Safari and Opera—they all support CSS3 and HTML5 features and elements strongly. Moreover, any latest Smartphone you will come across will support advanced CSS3, JavaScript and HTML5 features. Therefore, it’s quite beneficial for you if you start experimenting with HTML5 or CSS3 elements.

So, with such more upcoming new trends in the web designing field, you cannot lag behind; keep yourself updated with these trends and try implementing them as folks in the industry start adopting them.

Author: skyje.com

Ο Firefox βρίσκεται αυτή τη στιγμή στο 38,11%, με τον ΙΕ να τερματίζει δεύτερος με 37.52%

Για πρώτη φορά, ο Firefox κόβει πρώτος το νήμα, εκτοπίζοντας τον Internet Explorer από το θρόνο των browsers, σύμφωνα το StatCounter.

Το μερίδιο του Firefox στην ευρωπαϊκή αγορά βρίσκεται αυτή τη στιγμή στο 38,11%, με τον ΙΕ να τερματίζει δεύτερος με 37.52%.

Όλοι μας σκεφτόμαστε τους καλύτερους δυνατούς τρόπους για να κερδίσουμε σε χρόνο και χρήμα από τις πολυδάπανες και πολλές φορές χρονοβόρες αγορές.

Παρόλο που εάν πραγματοποιήσουμε τις αγορές μας μέσω διαδικτύου από τον υπολογιστή μας ή το κινητό μας τηλέφωνο γλιτώνουμε πολύ χρόνο και περπάτημα, η περίοδος των Χριστουγέννων αποτελεί την καλύτερη ευκαιρία για τους διαδικτυακούς εισβολείς να επωφεληθούν από αδαείς χρήστες και να κερδίσουν χρήματα σε βάρος τους.

Κανένας τέτοιου είδους φόβος δεν θα πρέπει να μας αφήσει μακριά από το διαδίκτυο και τις ευκολίες που παρέχει. Ακλουθώντας κάποια βασικά βήματα μπορούμε να πραγματοποιήσουμε τις διαδικτυακές μας αγορές με ασφάλεια:

•    Έλεγχος του URL

Εάν ακολουθείτε οποιοδήποτε link που έχετε δεχθεί μέσω e-mail και σας οδηγεί σε κάποιο προϊόν για αγορά, θα πρέπει να ελέγξετε εάν το URL στη γραμμή διευθύνσεων ταιριάζει με το URL στο κάτω μέρος του browser. Εάν υπάρχει ασυμφωνία τότε οι πιθανότητες να βρίσκεστε σε ιστοσελίδα phising είναι αυξημένες.

•    Χρήση ασφαλούς HTTP

Πριν προχωρήσετε στη συμπλήρωση φόρμας αγοράς με προσωπικά σας στοιχεία, θα πρέπει να ελέγχεται τη γραμμή διευθύνσεων στον browser που χρησιμοποιείτε και να βεβαιωθείτε ότι το URL αρχίζει με HTTPS (και όχι με HTTP). Με αυτόν τον τρόπο θα διαπιστώσετε εάν και κατά πόσο βρίσκεστε σε ασφαλή ιστοσελίδα και να κρίνετε εσείς πλέον εάν θα πρέπει να πραγματοποιήσετε την αγορά.

•    Χρήση πιστωτικής κάρτας

Κάτι που δεν γνωρίζουν οι περισσότεροι χρήστες είναι ότι δεν είναι προτιμότερο να χρησιμοποιούμε χρεωστικές κάρτες για τις διαδικτυακές μας αγορές. Σε περίπτωση παραβίασης η χρεωστική κάρτα ενδέχεται να εμφανίσει στοιχεία του τραπεζικού λογαριασμού με τον οποίο συνδέεται. Είναι προτιμότερο επομένως να χρησιμοποιούμε την πιστωτική μας κάρτα σε ασφαλείς ιστοσελίδες.
•    Στοιχεία λογαριασμών

Θα πρέπει σε κάθε λογαριασμό που ανοίγετε για να πραγματοποιήσετε τις διαδικτυακές σας αγορές να χρησιμοποιείτε διαφορετικό κωδικό πρόσβασης και διαφορετική ερώτηση ασφάλειας. Χρησιμοποιώντας τα ίδια στοιχεία υπάρχει αρκετά μεγάλο ενδεχόμενο εάν κάποιος αποκτήσει πρόσβαση έστω και σε έναν από τους λογαριασμούς σας, να αποκτήσει πρόσβαση και στους υπόλοιπους.

•    Έλεγχος λογαριασμών

Σε κάθε περίπτωση θα πρέπει να ελέγχετε την κίνηση τόσο των πιστωτικών καρτών σας όσο και των τραπεζικών σας λογαριασμών ανά τακτά χρονικά διαστήματα για να είστε διασφαλισμένοι.

•    Καλέστε ειδικούς

Όταν έχετε αμφιβολία για οποιαδήποτε ύποπτη κίνηση της πιστωτικής σας κάρτας ή αγορά για την οποία δεν είστε σίγουρος ότι πραγματοποιήσατε, καλέστε την τράπεζά σας ή την υπηρεσία υποστήριξης της ιστοσελίδας από την οποία εμφανίζει ότι πραγματοποιήθηκε αγορά.

Το να είμαστε προσεκτικοί σε οποιαδήποτε κίνηση πραγματοποιούμε στο διαδίκτυο, αποτελεί την πρώτη και σημαντικότερη γραμμή άμυνας και τη βάση στη διαδικτυακή ασφάλεια.

Πηγή: www.trust-it.gr

Ή τουλάχιστον, αυτό προτείνει η Pantone

Κάθε χρόνο τέτοια εποχή, την τελευταία δεκαετία, η γνωστή εταιρεία χρώματος Pantone «προβλέπει»(ή κατά κάποιους προτείνει) ποιο θα είναι το χρώμα που θα κυριαρχήσει μέσα από τη χρήση του κατά το νέο έτος.
Έτσι, από το τυρκουάζ που ήταν πέρσι, ή το κίτρινο της μιμόζας πρόπερσι, φέτος περνάμε στο κόκκινο-ροζ του αγιοκλήματος (honeysuckle), ή αν προτιμάτε το PANTONE 18-2120.

Το τυρκουάζ του προηγούμενου έτους, «λειτουργούσε ως απόδραση για πολλούς» διαβάζουμε στη σχετική ανακοίνωση της Pantone. Αυτή όμως, είναι μια τάση που θα αναστραφεί στο προσεχές έτος. Το αγιόκλημα «ταιριάζει σε αυτούς που επιλέγουν να αντιμετωπίζουν τα καθημερινά προβλήματα με ζωντάνια και ενεργητικότητα».
«Το αγιόκλημα είναι ένα σαγηνευτικό, τονωτικό χρώμα που διεγείρει την αδρεναλίνη. Είναι μια τέλεια απάντηση στην κατήφεια της εποχής», εξήγησε η διευθύντρια της Pantone, Leatrice Eiseman στην ετήσια δήλωσή της.

Αυτός είναι ο κύριος λόγος που φέτος, σύμφωνα με τους ειδικούς της εταιρείας, θα βλέπουμε το κόκκινο του αγιοκλήματος, όλο και περισσότερο σε εφαρμογές που ξεκινούν από τη γραφιστική και τη μόδα και φτάνουν μέχρι τις προσόψεις νέων κτιρίων…

Πηγή: Design+

Δείτε πώς η Solve Media αντικαθιστά το παραδοσιακό CAPTCHA με διαφημίσεις, για τη δημιουργία εσόδων και τη βελτίωση της εμπειρίας των χρηστών.