Immix

Things To Avoid When Choose Web Hosting

admin — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

We have to adhere to certain rules and regulations when we are in any type of business. Similarly, in case of web hosting, we have to follow few things strictly and avoid few others for our benefit.

Any beginner in this field should seek guidance from current web masters in this regard. With their vast experience in this sector they can surely point out the most common things that are to be avoided when choosing a web hosting services. We are discussing few of them for you.

1. False claims – Many web hosting providers claim to have 99.9 uptime but in reality it is not so. You need to cross check their claims instead of taking them on their face value.

2. Avoid cheap or free web hosting service – Though we can’t say that every cheap hosting is worse, but majority of them are worthless. They offer such services free due to huge volume of customers. They use the website of their customers to advertise on them. Such services lack latest servers and come with very low bandwidth. Their customer service is also awful.

3. Limited scope of expansion – You should keep in mind that your online venture will expand one day to touch great height. At that point of time you may need extra resources like bandwidth, memory, disk space, etc and you should avoid any web hosting service that has limited scope to expand to provide you all this in future.

4. No testimonials or references- You should avoid web hosting service that has not posted any testimonials or references from their satisfied customers.

Web Hosting What You Should Look For

admin — Sun, 22 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

When selecting a web hosting company, you want to first take into consideration what your site will be doing for you. If it is primarily a personal web site, you can get by with using one of the free web hosting sites. These offer templates, and other features to make it easy to get your site up and running. A good place to start this process is,
http://www.weebly.com. Here on Weebly you will find a popular web hosting and creation site that makes it easy to get started. All you need to get up and running is right there. Many teachers use this to host their classroom web sites.
If you are planning a site for your business and need to get more traffic to it, you will want a host that offers some SEO service. SEO is search engine optimization, and this is the key to getting your information found on the web. When a potential client enters the type of business you have in a web search, you want yours to be one of the top sites to come up. This should be a main goal of any business web site. You want a good design and strong visibility through SEO with a strong web hosting company.

Tips On Finding Great Web Hosting

admin — Sun, 08 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Everyone needs tips on finding great web hosting; I know I needed them at first. Bouncing back from host to host, I found that some offered the minimum, while others offered an unfriendly web building system. Others tried to milk every feature, while others offered bonuses. Some didn’t even allow SSL certs and even recommended misleading people with fake security label pictures; watch those people.

Web hosting companies are numerous but they don’t always act the same or offer all of the same conveniences. However, with that said, it is not unusual to find a cheap web host. A five page site can run around five bucks a month, not including domain fees. Ten bucks a month can get you between ten to one hundred extra pages and a boost of the default two to five gigabyte bandwidth.

If you have to choose a good starting web host company, consider something like Host Gator, http://secure.hostgator.com/forward.php?campaignwebhosting&pageshared.shtml&gclidCOiUrq2fu6cCFRlPgwoda2oXAQ

Generic web hosts offer small options, however some like Host Gator offer unlimited space for the same amount as other brand names. A good host gives more for the same amount, but a better one is one where tech service is trained to understand their product.

Pinning down pop-ups: are they worth it?

admin — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 12:00:22 +0000

A common trap for companies taking their business online is to create pop-up ads on their website. After all, if you don’t take advantage of as many internet features as possible, you’re wasting your money, right? Wrong. Pop-ups now have worse press than ever due to their association with spyware, adware, and other intrusive software.These programs manifest themselves as “rogue pop-ups” with no connection to the product or service your business is offering. Although some newspaper sites like The Washington Post and The New York Times use pop-ups to improve functionality for their site users, many people have programs to block pop-ups of any kind. Some rogue pop-ups are also highly inappropriate. Poor security or coding on your website can allow this kind of content in regardless of your intentions, and if a user stumbles across these on your site, they may never return. Consider it from the user’s point of view: if you go to a site looking for a specific piece of information, do you want to have your route cluttered by extraneous or even offensive information?Google, a role-model for many online businesses, absolutely refuses to allow pop-ups on their site. Apart from being “annoying,” as they mention, Google also does not waste time on ineffective practices. The easy availability of pop-up blockers (along with firewalls and anti-virus software) means that many users won’t even see any pop-up ads you may include on your site.If you insist on using pop-ups, we suggest either using them solely for instructional purposes (for example, providing more information about a product or opening a link in a new page) or clearly putting your company’s name in the title bar of the advertisement. Also, consider whether the benefits of including them on your page outweigh the risks.

Marketing your online presence

admin — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 12:00:56 +0000

Search for “online business marketing” and you’ll be overwhelmed with millions of pages offering “the best ways to promote your business online.” Inevitably, some of those lists will conflict or present slightly different takes on the same technique. There’s a simple reason for this: there’s no science to marketing your business online, but there are techniques, and they start down at the design phase.Before spending money on attracting people to your site, you want to make sure that your site will be able to hold them once they get there. If you don’t have experience creating professional web sites, we recommend looking into a design company who will create and maintain your site for you. They should have plenty of experience in what works online, but your priority should be a site that’s simple and fun to navigate. That doesn’t mean overwhelming users with pop-ups or animationsin fact, most users prefer simpler templates that allow them to easily find what they want. If your site can do this, they’ll probably tell their friends.Blogging is a fickle but helpful way to attract users by presenting the “human and personal side of your business,” according to William Beutler, who works for New Media Strategies as a senior online analyst. You can use this venue to educate readers about your industry. The better informed they are, the more they should be able to see why your business is the only choicethat is, if you’re doing it right. Look at other businesses’ blogs for inspiration.Search engine optimization is the new buzzword for online marketing, and rightly so. The higher your page appears in search results, the better chance you have of attracting new users searching in your industry. Again, you can hire companies to work on this aspect for youSEO should be a full-time concern for serious online businesses, as the ins and outs of keyword recognition and linking strategies are always changing.Finally, stay in touch with your users. Offer a mailing list on your site and send out professional, informative, and short newsletters with information about current events in your business and industry. Don’t overdo it, and definitely don’t give away contact info for your customers, but use this opportunity to deepen the bond between your business and your consumers.

Don’t make these mistakesjust learn from them

www.immix.net — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 12:00:41 +0000

Obviously, there’s no accounting for personal taste when it comes to anything with a system of aesthetics. However, just as you can judge a band’s talent regardless of the genre, you can also tell when a site has some thought behind it, whether you’re interested in the product or not. Unfortunately, the reverse is also trueif your site is poorly designed, it will show. These are some of the most common pitfalls to avoid.

Bland colors: While a hideously loud color scheme is also a bad idea, it can be just as harmful to have dull colors that fade into the background. These sites look unprofessional, since they’re similar to what anyone could create after just a few hours of tinkering.
Fancy or tiny fonts: Changing the font style on your page seems like an easy way to make your site distinctive, but there’s a reason most pages stick to Arial or something similar. Fonts that are too hard to read (whether due to style or size) will quickly exhaust any goodwill a new user is extending to your site, and thus this simple mistake can cost you a new customer.
Misusing images: Images can be either a booster or a drain on your site. The website MrBottles.com (the Antique Bottle Collectors Resource) has many problems, but the poorly-designed images are one of the most heinous. Even stock photos don’t have to be cheesyyou can find many great ones on iStockPhoto.
Navigation issues: Links on your page should always be clear, easy to read, and should let the user know when they’ve clicked on them. That’s why you should never have links in the body that don’t change color. It’s also imperative to always have a toolbar or menu that allows easy access back to the main page if the user ever gets lost.
Slowing down browsing: This can happen for a couple of reasons, whether it’s opening new windows when you click on a link or sending the user to a PDF document without warning (which requires Acrobat Reader to open and freezes everything). Bottom line: don’t do it.

A model of success: web site design templates

www.immix.net — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 12:00:26 +0000

If you’ve ever used a blogging site like WordPress, you may be familiar with the idea of “themes”different “skins” you can put on the basic blog appearance that add images, links, and more. However, if you’re designing a website for your business, you don’t have to go through a blogging site. There are plenty of website “templates” to choose from that will drastically decrease the time and money you spend on creating your website.Simply enter “website templates” into your search engine of choice and you’ll find sites with plenty of user-submitted templates in their archives. FreeWebsiteTemplates.com, FreeSiteTemplates.com, and OSWD.org (Open Source Web Design) are some examples. Some templates will be free, while others (single-use copyrighted templates, for example) will be for sale. How do you know which ones to use? It can depend on both your level of skill with web design, as well as what you want to get out of your site. Make sure before any money changes hands that you’ll be able to work with what you’re ordering.The reason templates are so popular is because you can see what your site will look like before taking it live. Editing the templates is simple and only requires a program like Microsoft’s Expression Web or Adobe’s DreamWeaver. Some companies specialize in creating templates for purchase, such as Entheos, and some templates are only compatible with certain editors, such as FrontPageCentral’s Expression templates. Templates also come in both copyrighted and non-copyrighted varietiesyour business will likely want to spring for a copyrighted version.When browsing templates online, always look for easy editing and compatibility with HTML editors, along with the ability to be easily downloaded to any browser. You don’t want to bar any users from seeing your site the way it’s meant to be seen. If you need to get your website up and running quickly and with little investment, web templates are a worthy suggestion.

Testing the waters with A/B split testing

admin — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 20:37:58 +0000

The world of web design and search engine optimization can be a cruel and unforgiving place, but there are also times when it extends a helping hand to you. A/B split testing is one of those times. This handy technique lets you examine the effects that a certain change to your site would make on your profits, traffic, or more. While it can be overused, it’s definitely a beneficial avenue to examine when unsure about a particular change.The way A/B split testing works is by sending viewers randomly to one of two (or more) versions of your site. Usually, there is only one major difference between these versions, but you can test more if desired. This can be a color, an image, layout, or more. Tracking software then records what actions users take on both versions, allowing you to compare which is more efficient at getting the results you desire.Google’s Website Optimizer is one of the best known A/B split testing platforms, and Google themselves have been known for indulging in the practiceperhaps overzealously. Designer Douglas Bowman left the company because of practices like, for example, testing 41 shades of blue or a 1-pixel difference in border widths. While such overbearing testing could be draining on your company, more simple tests are generally agreed to be useful. Other companies offering split testing software include Vertster, Omniture, and SiteSpect.You should always be aware of the limitations of A/B split testing, as well. The practice is generally only useful for examining the effect of one change at a timeso have three or four versions if you want, but change the same thing in each one. Also, you need to wait for a large-enough sample size to be able to generalize the results. This size may depend on the number of customers you expect for your service. Overall, though, split testing is a helpful technique for any company interested in the effects of web design or SEO.