Really Bad Beginner Website Design Mistakes

By Debbie Ray

Just what is the difference between a bad site and one that is truly outstanding? You”ll know when you see them. I”m sure you”ve seen examples of several great websites on the internet - and also remember examples of those you”ll never want to revisit. If you want your visitors to come back then you”ve got to do a lot to impress them in an extremely short time. First impressions are really important. You only have about 20 seconds to make that first impression count so you want to do the best that you can.

Many individuals or small business owners often opt to design and build their own websites. Without proper experience or website design background many mistakes are made. If you are a beginner then there are several things you should keep in mind to avoid before designing your website.

Here are several common mistakes which should be avoided when designing your new website.

1.Slow Loading Pages
Problem: Have you ever gone to a website and waited and waited for it to load?

Solution: Optimize your images at a lower resolution to achieve faster loading pages. Keep your page sizes well under 60 KB.

2.Page Layout
Problem: Websites that have the navigation in different places throughout the site. It looks cluttered and unprofessional.

Solution: Be consistent and be organized in your websites layout. Make sure all your web pages look the same and the websites navigation is in the same location on each page.

3.Wild and Crazy Color Schemes
Problem: Have you ever visited a website that has a background with a bright, neon color and can”t read the content because the colors are so loud? What’’s the point?

Solution: Think “easy to read.” Avoid dark backgrounds with light colored fonts. White background with black text is best for the general public.

4.Spelling and Grammar Errors
Problem: Spelling and grammar errors just jump off the page.

Solution: Always spell check.

5.Text on the Page
Problem: Most internet users don”t read web pages - they scan them.

Solution: Make sure your page is easy to read. Break text into manageable pieces, use sub-headings, short paragraphs, highlighted keywords and bullet points.

6.Font Styles and Sizes
Problem: Serif fonts such as Times New Roman are more difficult to read on a computer monitor. Also, text that is too small or way too big are hard to read.

Solution: It’’s a good idea to use non-serif fonts such as Verdana or Arial for web pages that will be read online. Your page will look much better, more professional, and will be much easier for your visitor to read.

7.Not Enough “White Space”
Problem: Too many words on a web page can be overwhelming.

Solution: Make your page easy to read by breaking the text into smaller, more manageable pieces. Also, use sub-headings and bullet points.

8.Cheesy Music that the User Cannot Control
Problem: Bad background music on a site. Next, not being able to shut it off.

Solution: If you think you need to use music on your website for some reason, then make sure you offer your visitors the option to turn it off, or on, quickly and easily.

9.Poor Layout and Design
Problem: Have you ever been to a website that is simply just “too much”? It’’s like they are trying to fill every available pixel of space on the entire page.

Solution: Don”t overdo it when designing your pages. Just because you can add something doesn”t mean you have to. Leave plenty of white space between your text and images.

10.Overly Long Pages
Problem: Ever been to a website with a page that just scrolls down forever?

Solution: Most people will never scan down to the bottom of really long pages. It’’s better to have several short pages vs. a few really long pages.

11.Non-Standard Links
Problem: You go to a website and aren”t sure which words are really links because the link colors have been changed.

Solution: Don”t confuse your users. Keep the link colors as they are.

12.Under Construction signs
Problem: Have you ever been to a website and found a page with no content of any type but a big “Under Construction” sign instead?

Solution: Don”t use “Under Construction” signs on your website.

13.Didn”t Test Your Web Site
Problem: Ever been to a website that just looks like a mess? Maybe you saw text overlapping images, weird alignment, etc.

Solution: Always check to see what your site looks like in multiple browsers and change accordingly before uploading your site to the web.

14.Unclear Navigation
Problem: You don”t enjoy broken links, error pages or too many moving objects - neither do your websites visitors. If navigation is too difficult to follow, visitors won”t return.

Solution: Make sure that your navigation is easy to read, find and to follow. Also, make sure that it is in the same spot on all of your websites pages.

15.Sloppy Web Site Copy
Problem: Have you ever visited a website with missing words, bad grammar, or it just didn”t make sense?

Solution: Always remember, “Content is King” on the internet, so make sure there is plenty of good, focused information for your visitors.

16.Never Updating Your Site
Problem: Ever go to a website that hasn”t been changed at all over the last few times that you”ve visited it?

Solution: You should always update the content on your site frequently.

17.Too Many Clicks
Problem: Have you ever gone to a website, found something you”re interested in checking out, and then had to click, click, click before you found the item you were looking for (if you didn”t give up first)?

Solution: Don”t test the patience of your visitors. Make sure that everything can be found on your site within 3 clicks or less.

18.No Privacy Policy
Problem: No Privacy Policy page is listed on a website.

Solution: Post a Privacy Policy on your website. Make sure that your customers know that you will not share their addresses with anyone.

19.No Company Contact Information
Problem: A company with no address or contact information is not one you necessarily want to give your money to.

Solution: Email addresses or phone numbers are most often seen as contact information on websites, however, having a physical mailing address on your web site adds another key credibility factor.

20. Using Free Web Hosting
Problem: You visit a web page that has a name so long you”ll never remember it because it is from one of those free website hosts.

Solution: If you want to be taken seriously as far as your internet business is concerned, avoid using free web hosting. This all adds to the issue of credibility.

21. Using Free E-mail Addresses
Problem: You visit a website and try to send an email to them, however the email addresses are not associated with the domain name.

Solution: Using a free email address is never appropriate for your website. On your website it is a good idea to always use an email addresses that is associated with your domain name for your business.

22.Advertisements
Problem: You”ve come to a website where the pages are cluttered with a lot of different advertisements.

Solution: A lot of people are using advertisements to earn extra money. That’’s fine, just don”t overdo it.

23.Bad Images
Problem: How many times have you seen a web page with missing graphics files or misshaped images?

Solution: Always optimize your images and use the height and width attributes of the image tag. Additionally, save the files in the right image formats: JPG for Photographs and GIF for artwork.

24.This Website Best Viewed on …
Problem: This is often seen on many beginner websites.

Solution: Simply don”t use this on your website.

25.No Prices
Problem: Websites that don”t have product prices listed clearly.

Solution: If you”re selling a product on your website, ALWAYS include a price with the item description.

Last but not least, here’’s a list of things that you should just avoid, simply because it’’s the right thing to do concerning website design. And here they are:

Frames, Hit counters, Orphan pages, Anything “Cutesy”, Pop ups, Fancy Fonts, Don”t overuse Flash, Avoid Javascript links, Blinking text , Animated GIFs, Missing Meta Tags, Horizontal (sideways) Scrolling, Don”t underline or color normal text, Don”t forget functional links on your footer, Don”t forget about your Marketing Strategies, Don”t forget to include anchor text on your links, Never subscribe a visitor for anything without his consent, Don”t leave the home page title as “Welcome to Mysite”, Avoid using all the “Bells And Whistles” simply because you can, Not Taking Advantage of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on your website

Whether you have created your own website or are working with someone else on creating your website, I hope all these ideas above will help you build a better website that steadily attracts visitors. If you”ve never built a website on your own, I hope the tips above help you design the best site that you can and help you to avoid all these issues in the future. Knowledge is critical.

About The Author

Debbie Ray, owner of http://www.the-website-doctor.com invites you to learn more about website design. Visit anytime to learn more about marketing, SEO, blogging, Adsense, getting traffic and more.

Free Web Design And Hosting Resources For Your Own Web Site

By Nicolaas Theron

Are you looking for a place where you can create and host your own web site for free? You may not be selling something from your web site. You may not even be providing a service in return for money. So why pay for a personal web site? This article looks at free web design and hosting for your web pages.

What is free web site design and hosting all about? It is simply about getting your own domain name, hosting and web site design for free. After all, you only want this web site for your self and not to run a business from it. Free web site hosting is probably not a great idea if you want to provide a service or want to sell a product on it. Then it is better to get a cheap domain name, hosting and web design somewhere else.

You want to get a web site up and running for free. Finding a free service that helps you to do this may be difficult. Nothing in life is completely free. Everybody pays, right? In some way or another. However, here is an option you might consider using. Bravenet offers you free hosting, which is ad supported as well as other paid hosting services. They offer you access to lots of tools. You can join as a free member of Bravenet.

Now, once you have free web hosting, how about free web design. The only free web design you are likely to get is the web design you do yourself. However, if you do some research using a search engine you just might find someone who offers web site design for free.

Generally you will have to register your own domain name and pay for hosting as well. Getting a free web site is not so easy unless you decide to build a blog. Then you can create a free account and a free blog at either Wordpress or Blogger. These two blog services are the most popular choice and are easy to use. Just post your thoughts or information and share it with other bloggers. Really, this is the simplest way to get a free domain name, free hosting as well as access to free web design templates.

Another option you may look at is SocialGo. You can create your own free social networking site. You can customize it as well.

Sometime you will find that when paying for one internet expense you may receive another as a bonus. The same goes for when you decided that you want to get a paid website hosting account. Getting a paid hosting account means that you will be paying a website hosting service a monthly fee for getting hosting with more features and security than you normally could expect from a free hosting service.

To gather up all the loose ends. You may find free web hosting and design for your own personal web site if you do some research using a search engine. Look at the results you get and try one or two of them to see if it works for you. Free services are by nature limited, but if you do not mind paying for your web hosting service, you may as well look to get some graphic design bonus with the purchase.

About The Author

For important information on free web design and hosting please visit http://free-web-design-hosting.com/.

Web Design Elements You Should Avoid Having on Your Site

By Uchenna Ani-Okoye

When web designing, you should create your sites so that your visitors have the greatest ease of use, giving the best impression and most vital of all a welcoming experience. It does not matter if you have what you think is the greatest product in the whole world - if your site is badly done you will not be able to sell even a single copy of it as visitors will be deterred from your site by the terrible design.

When talking about a “good design”, this is not only related to a good graphical look. A professional website design should be able to point out many things, there are multiple things which that may constitute a good site design - accessibility design, interface or layout design, the user experience and obviously the most natural, which is graphic design.

Here, some features have been presented of the worst website designs that can be found. Hopefully, you will be able to compare them up against the website you have own are considering as a type of checklist so if anything on your website fits the criteria, you may consider that it’’s high time to take some serious action!

1) Background music only if you are maintaining a website that promotes a band, a CD or something related to music, I would certainly advise you to stay clear of incorporating looping background music on your website. It may sound pleasant to you to begin with, but think about it! If you run a big website with hundreds of WebPages and every time a visitor goes to another webpage on your website, the background music begins playing again.

If I was your visitor, I would just put my speakers on mute or navigate your website. Also, it just adds to the visitor’’s problem when searching your website - users on dial up connections will need to wait even longer in order to view your website because of all the loading that will be going on.

2) Extra large/small text size as was said earlier, there is more to website design than only graphics — user experience is one a major part of it too! You should be designing the text within your website to be readable and well sized to allow your visitors to read through it without hurting their eyes. No matter how good the information of your site or the sales copy is, if it is hard to read you won”t be selling a single thing!

3) Popup windows Popup windows are so obviously incorporated to show advertisements and in most peoples minds, 90% of popup windows are usually not even worth anybodies attention so they are just closed instinctively every time each one is able to pass through a popup blocker (I have a popup blocker and most people also have one!) and, pops up on a screen. So think about it, if you have an important message to put across and it is put in a popup window that are usually killed by most peoples popup blocker majority of the time they appear on a visitor’’s screen. Because of this your website will automatically lose its purpose immediately!

In conclusion to the article, you are reminded that as a webmaster your main objective is to make sure that your website can do what it’’s meant to do in the best way possible. Don”t let some tiny mistakes prevent your website from functioning at its best!

About The Author

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of http://www.insightempire.com

2 Ways To Generate Traffic From Web 2.0

By Sameep Shah

Web 2.0 traffic methods are similar to traditional methods of generating traffic, but conveyed in a different type of online environment. With so many marketing tools out there, it might be getting complicated to keep track of them all. Fortunately for you, they are all interconnected, and all marketing strategies will lead to at least one, if not more, of the available tools, so you can understand how they work and how they can work together to help your business grow and succeed. Aside from traditional SEO and SEM marketing, link exchanges, article marketing, advertising you can do many things with Web 2.0 to generate business and traffic.

One of the best Web 2.0 traffic methods is blogging. Creating a blog on WordPress, MySpace, FaceBook, De.li.ci.ous, or one of the many other social networking sites will help you reach more customers that you never thought you”d find. However, there are rules to a viral blogging that you need to remember.

First, it’’s not an article. Take off the suit, sit back, and tell people how you feel. Share stories, accept comments, and respond to the comments that you get. Make people feel like they”re part of a conversation, and that will lead them to your business. Speak in a conversational tone not like you”re giving some type of business speech. You need to do something different, something unexpected, to get people’’s attention. They”re tired of the same old ads. Give them a shock, but know that this doesn”t mean to be offensive. Just think outside the box.

Another way to generate traffic with Web 2.0 is to create profiles on these same social networking sites in order to get better business. By creating a profile on sites with real people, you”re giving your business a persona and making it harder for people to ignore. If you reach out to people and play on their emotions, they will flock to your business like nothing else. This doesn”t mean to lie to people or mislead them; simply take a more personal approach than the sterile, boring advertising you used to engage in. In a hip, changing world, you need hip, changing marketing methods and the Web 2.0 traffic methods might just bring you to the silver lining.

All of these tips can help you generate more traffic for your business. There is much more that can be done, but that’’s a story for another day.

About The Author

Please visit http://www.SmallBusinessWebsiteDesigns.net for more information.

How to Create a Bad Website and Frustrate Your Visitors

By Jason OConnor

If you”re a sadistic kind of webmaster or website owner and have a burning desire to royally frustrate and anger your site visitors each and every time they visit your site, these three lists are just for you. If you want to have a terrible website that looks bad, works horribly and breaks fundamental marketing rules, read on.

First let me explain why there are three lists. One way to look at any website is to break it up into three equally important segments; design, technical and marketing. In other words, every site on the Web contains these three components.

They all have a design or look and feel (design), they all have to be on a server and coded properly to be live on the Internet (technical) and they all have ways in which they attract visitors and make sales (marketing).

Let’’s look at the top ten ways in which you can annoy your website visitors and basically fail miserably at the whole website endeavor in each of the three segments. The following is a list, broken up into the three categories, defining exactly what NOT to do.

Top 10 Web Design Mistakes:

1. Never using Web conventions, instead use crazy and wacky formats that no one’’s ever seen and no one can understand

2. Writing trite, predictable, boring or copied content only and never updating your site

3. Creating totally different and unique navigation for every page so that your visitors need to waste time re-learning your navigation every time they go to a new page. Also creating totally different look & feels for every page so that your visitors never know if they”re on the same site or clicked away.

4. Using confusing, obfuscated and mysterious labels for all your links and buttons so that no one ever has any idea where they”re going if they click. The more confusing, the better.

5. Making it impossible to search the site. Offering no search box, no site map and basically no possible way to find anything on your website.

6. Including content that only talks about you. Never mentioning anything about your visitors or how you can help them, just talk about you and your history and all your achievements. Including a big picture of you and your office building right on the home page.

7. Including only poorly-written copy with lots of grammar mistakes, and ubiquitous, curious and horrendous spelling and punctuation mistakes throughout your site.

8. Not including any text. Making every page on your site one big picture. So for instance, on your home page have one giant picture of you and your office building and have no text so search engines can”t see your site at all.

9. Using buttons for your navigation only, or use complicated JavaScript drop down menus that complicate your sites navigation. Either way, if you do this and include no text links, the search engines won”t be able to spider (navigate and record) your website.

10. Making your site as difficult to read as possible. Use teeny, tiny fonts that are hard to read against some funky-colored background. For instance, use blue fonts on a black background.

Top 10 Technical Mistakes:

1.Making your website take forever to load in people’’s browsers. The longer the better.

2. Making it so that your site looks completely different on everybody’’s computer. So for Macs your site looks like one way, and for PCs it looks another way. Or having it look totally different in Internet Explorer, Chrome and Firefox.

3. Making it so that any functionality on the site is confusing to figure out and works improperly and inconsistently every time it’’s used.

4. Including lots of broken links and missing images throughout.

5. Setting it up so that it regularly crashes. For example, if more than three people are visiting the site at the same time, the home page becomes inaccessible.

6. Has no form validation. Allowing visitors to enter any thing under the sun into your website forms. Maybe some smart hacker-types will enter executable code that corrupts or takes over your server.

7. Making all your site visitors have to download and install lots of plug-ins to view your site properly. If they don”t, too bad.

8. Telling people that they have to view your site in a specific browser and browser version only.

9. Making it so that there are tons of pop-ups, moving newsletter sign-up boxes, running videos, animations and Flash movies that take forever to download before you can view the site.

10. Using lots of frames

Top Ten E-Marketing Mistakes:

1. Making your website completely bounce-friendly. In other words, make it ”un-sticky” so that when people arrive on one of your pages, they leave immediately

2. Including no calls to action so that your site never asks your website visitors to do a thing. Making it so that every page is a dead end that leaves your visitors scratching their heads and then clicking away.

3. Does absolutely nothing to build your brand

4. Has no terms or policies page

5. Evoke no emotions. Making your site flat, boring, gray, dull and forgettable.

6. Making sure there is no way for anyone who visits your site to sign up for anything or give you their contact info or email address. Certainly don”t use your site to build any kind of email list.

7. Converting absolutely no one who visits your site into a paying customer. Ever.

8. Including no phone number, email and absolutely no other way to contact you. Hide behind your website.

9. Never using any kind of an analytics program like Google Analytics or Web Trends and never measuring or even looking at your website activity.

10. Making it so that search engine can”t read your site and make it so that people can”t really read your site either.

Follow these three lists perfectly and you”ll be well on your way to having a bad and useless website and frustrating and angering everyone who visits.

About The Author

Jason OConnor owns and operates Oak Web Works, LLC
http://www.oakwebworks.com, http://www.jasonoconnor.com and writes a periodic, free web design and marketing newsletter http://www.thenetgazette.net

5 Important Rules in Website Design

By Uchenna Ani-Okoye

Where a website is concerned, you should pay attention to all tiny details so that it will perform the best it can to its required purpose. Here are some very useful rules that can be observed to make sure your website works well.

1) Do not use splash pages Splash pages are some of the most common pages you will see when you get to a website. They usually have a very good looking picture with words like “enter” or “click here to enter”. Basically, all they are, just good looking entry pages with no real beneficial use. You shouldnt give your visitors a reason to not view your site and click on the “back” button! You should be giving them th full benefits of your site without the splash page.

2) Do not use lots of banner advertising There is a created misconception that the least net savvy visitor have conditioned themselves to not take too much notice of banner adverting so using to many will be a waste of valuable website space. It is better to, provide some useful content and add related affiliate links too the content you have on you site, and make your visitors have the feeling to buy rather than feeling pushed to buy.

3) Have a organised and clear navigation You should be providing an organised and very easy to use navigation menu the type that even a young child would underatand how to use it. keep clear of any complicated Flash based menus or multiple level dropdown menus. If the visitors have no idea of how to navigate you site, they are likley to go.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user iIf visitors are deeply entrenched in browsing your site, you will need to make sure they understand what part of the website they are in at that time. By doing so, they will have the opportunity to search relevant info and navigate to all section of the website without fuss and complication. You should never confuse your visitors as confusion often means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site if your visitor is going to be using you website for a considerble amount of time, reading your information, you should be making sure they are not going to be irritated because of some audio looping or noise on your site. If you really have to add audio, always make sure they have some power over it — so volume or muting controls should really be a must for audio inclusion to your site.

About The Author

Uchenna Ani-Okoye is an internet marketing advisor and co founder of http://www.insightempire.com

Web Design & Development Tips For Beginners

By Sameep Shah

Marketing is going to be very important to your website’’s success, but you need to have good web design as well. After all, you can lead people to your website, but if it is designed poorly, they won”t stay long. You need to appeal to your customers in a format that is functional, appealing, and effective in getting your point across. This will depend a lot on your specific type of business, as well as the customer base you are trying to reach. For example, if you wanted to reach older adults, you would make your site very simple, plain, and easy to read and navigate. On the other hand, if you want to reach teens or young adults, having a fun, hip website will be to your best advantage. Here are some web design tips to help you out.

- Focus on what sells. Know what your options are, and which ones will work best.

- Research similar companies. Finding out what your competitors are doing and how it’’s working for them can help you to eliminate options or figure out what you need to do to get one step ahead of them.

- Hire a professional designer. You might be on a budget, but you don”t want your website to say that. Interview a lot of people to find one that’’s cost-effective and qualified to do the work.

- Bundle services when you can. Hire a design service that can provide other tools, too, such as marketing services and ongoing maintenance. This will often save you money because you”re getting a package deal.

Keeping web design tips in mind will help you to create a better website, which will generate more traffic in the long run. Although it will cost money, any investment you make in the way of making your business or website better will only benefit you in the end.

If you are on a very limited budget, you can use website templates and pre-designed layouts on free servers to get started. This isn”t recommended, because people will be able to tell that it’’s generic and un-original, but it is an option if you”re starting a company with nothing. It’’s far better to allow professional web design specialists do the job, to ensure that you get the business and interest that you need, as well as a website that will stand the test of time.

Web design can cost anywhere between a couple hundred and thousands of dollars, depending on exactly what you want. However, it’’s an investment that will work out in your favor, if handled properly.

About The Author

Please visit http://www.SmallBusinessWebsiteDesigns.net for more information.

The Benefits of Hiring a SEO Web Design Company

By Art Gib

The way your site is built can make or break your website rankings in search engines. That is why it is so important to hire a SEO web design company when building your website.

What is SEO web design?

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) web design is the practice of building search engine friendly websites, by implementing standards-compliant coding practices and semantic structuring to assist search engines in crawling websites and identifying key content easily and efficiently.

Web designers that implement on-site SEO techniques use clean, lightweight code that is user friendly first and foremost, and is built using easy-to-read code for search engines. They will also know what problems to avoid that could prevent search engines from indexing your content.

Problems that can make a website difficult for search engines to crawl can include using HTML frames, iframes, and using Flash to display content. Each of these elements, especially Flash, have important qualities and have to be used properly. For example, content and text contained within Flash cannot be read by search engines, but using it for animations and calls to action can be very effective - just don”t use it to display important text content. The same goes for images - search engines can”t read text contained in graphics (in logos, banners, etc.), so make sure that you use HTML text in its place.
Before picking a web designer, look through their portfolio to make sure that they are using proper SEO techniques. If they use any of those elements excessively, it would be in your best interest to keep shopping around.

Why is it important?

Search engines give websites rankings based on their relevance to keywords within your website, among other things - it is a completely automated process. If your website doesn”t appear in search engines, it may be because it is built in a way that blocks search engines from accessing your content.

Ranking in natural search engine results for relevant keywords is completely free - you can”t buy a good ranking, so it is important to build your site in a way that allow search engines to easily find your content, so that your website will rank well for keywords related to your content. These rankings will provide lots of free, relevant traffic to your site - people who are already searching for what you provide, and are using search engines to find.

The benefits of having a well-designed website with SEO and usability in mind are enormous - not only will you get free traffic (potential customers) from search engines, your website will be extremely user friendly and easy for users to navigate.

About The Author

Art Gib is a freelance writer for New Shoe Media, a SEO web design company. Visit http://www.newshoemedia.com/ for more information about SEO web design.

An Industry Overview Of Mobile Domain Names

By Barry Fenning

.mobi (commonly known as dotMobi) was approved by ICANN as a top-level domain in July 2005. “.mobi domain is managed by mTLD global registry, having the sole purpose of providing internet to mobile devices through Mobile Web. This domain is sponsored by industry giants as follows: Google, Microsoft, Nokia, Samsung, Ericsson, Vodafone, T-Mobile, Telefonica Moviles, Telecom Italia Mobile, Orascom Telecom, GSM Association, Hutchison Whampoa, Syniverse Technologies, and, Visa

Executive of each company has a seat in mTLD’’s Board of Directors.

.mobi domain names were opened for public registration in the latter half of 2006. Before the start of next year, domain sales already crossed the 100k dollars mark which indicated the confidence of developers in this new extension.

Dotmobi domain names also received criticism because of violating the principles of device independence with developers arguing to devise different ways of promoting Mobile Internet through existing domains.

Some developers also pointed out that typing the characters “mobi” on handheld devices required 9-10 keystrokes while the “com” requiring 7 and “wap” requiring only 3 keystrokes. Hence terming this new inventions as an “unfortunate choice”. This was handled by having an inbuilt predictive text entry for the “mobi” domains.

Dotmobi had engaged with the W3CMWI (Mobile Web Initiative) to formulate the efficient practices and protocols for mobile content. These outlined good number of ways to make the Mobile Content fun at the user end and implementing the same.

mTLD had released a testing website (ready.mobi) to check the compatibility of a handheld device with a .mobi domain name or as they say -to analyze mobile readiness of a particular website. This website generated a detailed report of the shortcomings of compatibility of a website with a .mobi ready score of 1 to 5.

There are many free authoring tools which can be used to create mobi compatible site. One of such website builder tool is Site.mobi (by mobiSiteGalore) which offers may tools to develop a .mobi-ready website. mTLD also offers ebooks and free training material about .mobi at the mobiForge website. It also provides a free mobile emulator tool to test and view mobile webpages on a computer.

Now, talking about the advantages of .mobi domains, since all the .mobi sites are optimized for hand-held devices or mobile phones, they provide a guarantee of usage on the move. . This includes hard factors such as device input/output options, device form/size, smaller screens, existence of embedded sensors (light/darkness, location, acceleration, touch, ambient noise), and soft factors such as : context awareness within a short span of attention and expectation of immediate results. In fact, other domains can also apply these optimizations but it is a necessary condition for websites specifically designed for mobile devices.

The Dotmobi invention also suffers from a few disadvantages. First one being, dividing the world wide web in two parts, one being for the general users and other for the mobile users. This has a major drawback of generating redundant data on the world wide web. Also the companies or individuals have to register and maintain two domain names instead of one which further adds to their costs.

About The Author

Barry Fenning is the Marketing Manager of ICANN accredited domain registrar http://www.LCN.com, one of the top UK providers of domain names and web hosting. Please visit http://www.lcn.com/mobi_domain_names for more information on .mobi domains.

Creating a Custom Website

By Ray Subs

With so many websites, for so many businesses, it is important to create one for your business that is as unique and personable as your company. A custom website is a great way to show your customers that you are not a cookie cutter operation. If it is personalized to suit your needs, and engages your customer in what they want, then it is one that will be successful.

Although a custom website used to be extremely expensive and one always suited for a small business, they can now be done at an affordable price, which allows even the smallest of companies to showcase their goods and services in a way that that is a closer representation of what they are really about.

With the internet business being as competitive as it is, and so many companies offering websites, it is not only important to be unique, it is practically a necessity. A custom website gives the company the opportunity to show more than a black and white version of what they do, and what their goals and visions are. It not only provides the difference, it adds more dimension to the business by offering something that their competitor perhaps, may not. A custom website could be the difference in a sale or someone that just looks quickly at the website. It shows that the company is serious about their products and is willing to go the extra step by giving their customers more than a basic version of their company.

As the economy tightens, and the market becomes more and more competitive, it is crucial to not only give the customer what they want, but do so in a way that will bring them back again and again. A custom web site has the ability to do just that.

A custom web site also gives the company a way to add their personal touch to their virtual storefront. With a site that is designed specifically for them, they can not only have a high performance website but they can offer something their competitors cannot, their personality.

Although custom website designers used to be high priced luxury, with so many companies out there, it has become very affordable. The money spent on hiring a website designer for your custom site will be money well spent. If the customer can not only easily navigate the site, and see other goods and services that are available, in a way that is different than anyone else, they will be more likely to not only buy, but to return to you in the future.

About The Author

Ray Subs is a public relations specialist working with 7 Strategy. To check out their website, visit http://www.7strategy.com.