Wahms Helper

Archive for the ‘Website Design’ Category

There is a lot of heavy “get rich with this program” promotion going on for what I call “cookie-cutter” affiliate websites. You sign up, pay a fee (often a down stroke and a monthly hosting/service price) and you get a pre-made website. You are told you can just sit back and watch the dollars flow in. Typically the only person that gets rich with this kind of a deal is the person running the website program in the first place. Even re-sellers of the program, if they have their own affiliate offering, seldom make any real money!

The biggest problem with these sites is that everyone’s is pretty much the same and they have not positioning in the important search engines. Here’s what Google says about them:

“Our Webmaster Guidelines advise you to create websites with original content that adds value for users. This is particularly important for sites that participate in affiliate programs.”

Google goes on to offer several important factors that you can apply to create a successful affiliate site. These include:

• Your affiliate content should make up only a small portion of the over all content of your website.
• When choosing your affiliate program, find product(s) that are appropriate for your intended audience. Targeting the product(s) to your site’s content will produce greater value and you will be more likely to rank better in search results.
• Build a community around your website and involve your users. Loyal, returning, readership provides more likelihood of conversion to sales.
• Update content regularly and be sure it is always relevant. Fresh, on-topic information increases website crawling by search engine spiders/bots.

This is all just one more reason why a blog is an excellent addition to an affiliate site as it allows easy addition of current, relevant material.

This website is created using the WordPress website engine. There are two versions of WordPress available for use on your own servers. One is for a stand-alone website (like this one) and the other is for multi-user sites (see MSMOsites)

Andrea Rennick operates a WordPress website which is not only run on WordPress, it is a tutorial site for using WordPress. You can find her site here:

http://wpmututorials.com

She also offers a free e-book titled Installing WPMU, in PDF format, which you can find here:

http://wpmututorials.com/files/2008/12/installing-wpmu.pdf

It’s really worth a look. But if you need a website like this one, bigger, smaller, or with a shopping cart, and you don’t have any idea where to start, contact us and we can help. Or check with the good folks at Our Hutch Web Services.

Google’s Matt Cutts shares key insight into how your website can be better found on the Internet through what he refers to as better visibility.

We have become quite enamored, of late, with the WordPress website engine and the extensive collection of themes (site designs) available for it. This powerful, stand-alone, package offers the framework for establishing a multi-page website that features a built in blog. Various free and commercial theme offerings provide hundreds, perhaps thousands, of page layout choices. You don’t need a great deal of experience to get your own great looking website up and running.

We have now used the WordPress engine for several of our own sites and have installed it for several clients. We have also worked with website developers around the world who are using it. Tim Mooney, from near Sydney, Australia, has made it his standard. Dan Therrell, from Fairhope, Alabama, has used it for a couple of his own sites and is now offering it as one of his main selections. Our own MSMOsites website community offers three different packages built on the WordPress framework.

The more we work with it, and especially on our own projects where we have full creative input, the more we are amazed by its flexibility, capability, function, and resilience. We are thoroughly impressed by the range of plug-ins and add-on features as well. There is even a full-function shopping cart plug-in which turns it into a web store.

The thing to understand is that WordPress is no longer just for blogging. It has become a full-fledged content management system. This means you can use it for almost any website task from personal blogging and information sites to photo galleries, full-function e-commerce web stores, and fully customized multi-purpose website projects. WordPress is, without a doubt, incredibly versatile. It can even be used to create a website without a blog!

Our site (this one) is a multi-page semi-custom content management site built using the WordPress engine as it’s base. There is very little additional HTML and content can be added and changed readily. If you are looking for a new website the WordPress solution is worth considering. It can actually be used without any knowledge of HTML or other coding. If you have been holding back because of cost and/or complexity you need not wait any longer. This is something you can do yourself or hire done at a very affordable price.

There are a lot of articles around about Flash and fancy and Web 2.0 and how the Internet is changing. Well, I hate to break it to you but the Internet has been in a state of constant change since its inception. Features, services, functions, and whole sections have come and gone as new ideas have dominated old ones and new and better ways have been found to do old and familiar things. Does anyone here remember Archie, Veronica, and Gopher? And I don’t mean comic book characters.

But there are some things that have not changed and, probably, will not ever change. They are those principles, the basics, the foundation upon which a good business — any business — is built. Here is a little more than half a dozen that apply to website design:

1. Your website should have pages which load in under five seconds. Longer, especially on the home page, and you will likely lose some visitors.

2. Your website should convey an understanding of its purpose within the first 3 to 4 seconds of viewing it. Get the message across and provide a call to action.

3. There should be traditional navigation links, preferably text based, that are easy to find and easy to follow. Visitors to your site should know where they are and easily find where they want to go.

4. All text should be easy to read in provided in standard fonts. Cartoon fonts and curles are great for titles and should be in graphic form. Information should be delivered in one of the standard universally available fonts. Arial, Times New Roman, and Georgia, are all good choices.

5. Provide content written simply to address your visitors concerns and answers the questions they are likely to have.

6. All forms and especially your checkout (on e-commerce sites) should be obvious, easy to fill out, and necessary. Don’t have a form just to have a form. Have, and state, a purpose.

7. Check your links regularly. You don’t want link rot (dead links) to set in. Especially verify that off-site links still go to active sites and that those sites are still what you expect them to be. Domain ownership changes and people change their minds about what they want their website to be.

Designing a website requires a little organization and planning. Owning a website requires a little work and responsibility. Doing it right will produce far better results.