By Linda Bustos

Many small business owners have a hard time seeing the value of a website redesign. They believe “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” And this is understandable. Unless you are eating, breathing and sleeping technology and staying up to date with the moving target of Internet business, you’re not likely to know intuitively if your site needs a redesign.
And as a small business owner, you may be concerned about the up-front costs of a website redesign. But once you understand how a redesign can help you drive traffíc to your site, convert more users and even save monëy, you’ll feel more positive about making the ínvestment in your business.

By Adam McFarland of iPrioritize

When a business owner decides to bring their business to the web, generally the last thing that they think about is search engine optimization. They assume that whomever they hire to do their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the search engines and the traffíc will magically pour in. Unfortunately it takes more than that to drive search engine traffíc to your site, and even more unfortunately most developers don’t program with SEO in mind, nor do they educate the client about the process involved in gaining traffíc from search engines.

By Adriana Iordan (c) 2006

For a successful Search Engine Optimization strategy, take into consideration that search engines look at content and also at the structure of the markup. They emphasize the importance of text content, page titles, keywords rich text, meta descriptions and information architecture. A website where quality of content and code prevails will rank higher in the major search engines.
There are many Search Engine Optimization tactics, but try to find the best combination and don’t sacrifice the usability and performance of your website. Here is some basic information about improving your source code from an SEO perspective:

As Web 2.0 becomes less of just a buzz word and more of a reality, the types of sites webmasters need to publish will increasingly become more important. In other words, mini-sites are slowly dying and cookie-cutter article sites are on the way out as well. Web surfers will become more value-focused and web companies will become larger.

Over the next few years expect larger conglomerates to be buying up profitable websites in their chosen markets. Expect smaller sites to either be bought or driven out of business. My intention is not to scare you but this outcome is inevitable.

By Kim Roach (c) 2006

Every time a visitor comes to your site, they take a particular path. Their eyes move in quick motion, hopping from one hotspot to the next. If you don’t know how your visitors are traveling, your conversion rates will suffer dramatically. Fortunately, there is a company who has performed in-depth testing for you, revealing the common behaviors of people viewing web pages.

The company is known as Eyetrack and they began studying online behavior in 1999. Because of these studies they have been able to help web masters to improve their site designs, headlines, font sizes, navigation, article formats, and even their ads.

By Nigel Wilkinson, MD WNW Design Ltd

When visiting potential clients for our web design services it often strikes me how they fall into two groups.  Those who have a plan of what they want the website to do and those who do not.  Many businesses seem to believe they need a website but with no clear strategy about how a website can benefit them. 

By Titus Hoskins (c) 2006

Three Ways To Index Your Site With Google Sitemaps [Difficult, Hard, And Easy]
Google has recently implemented a program where any webmaster can create a Sitemap of their Site and submit it for indexing by Google. It is a quick and easy way for you to keep your site constantly indexed and updated in Google.

The program is appropriately called Google Sitemaps.

In order for you to best use Sitemaps, you must have an XML generated file on your site that will transmit or send any updates, changes, and data to Google. XML (Extensible Markup Language) is everywhere these days, you have probably seen the orange XML logo on many web sites and its often associated with Blogging because Blogs use XML/RSS feeds to syndicate their content.

Like most web developers, I’ve heard a lot about the importance of valid html recently. I’ve read about how it makes it easier for people with disabilities to access your site, how it’s more stable for browsers, and how it will make your site easier to be indexed by the search engines.

So when I set out to design my most recent site, I made sure that I validated each and every page of the site. But then I got to thinking – while it may make my site easier to index, does that mean that it will improve my search engine rankings? How many of the top sites have valid html?

By Mark Daoust

Ugliness has nevër looked better. I have spent the last few days examining a surprising trend in web design that has made ugly websites look absolutely irresistible. No, it’s not the bolded, 18 point Times New Roman font shouting at me as I access the page that has me excited, nor is it the harsh colors that have actually managed to make my eyes hurt and distort my vision. In fact, it’s not even that logo which is so pixelated from being processed, resized, saved, and edited so many times that it appears to be blurred to protect the identity of the company who owns the website that has me singing the praises of ugly websites. What is it?

By Mark Daoust

In webmaster circles, fessing up to being a FrontPage user is akin to inviting your mother as your date to your senior prom: you just don’t do it. In fact, admitting that you simply use a WYSIWIG editor can often be enough for experienced webmasters to quietly chuckle, look at you with a “someday you’ll learn” look, and give you a nice pat on the back encouraging you to keep learning. ‘Real’ webmasters know three things: 1) Hand coding is the only way to make a website look nice, 2) The more your web programming looks like the screen from “The Matrix”, the better your website will be, and 3) that FrontPage was actually programmed by Beelzebub himself.