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When doing business on the Internet, there are many ways in which you can make a website successful. Although the look of your website is important, fancy websites don’t make sales. There is much more to creating a quality website. To make a website successful, you must create a website that will be of interest to your target market and make them want to visit your website over and over again. In addition, your website should lead your visitors to take the action you desire, such as joining your mailing list, or making a purchase.

Selecting a Website’s Niche

The first step toward how to make a website successful, will be to target your website for one specific niche. For example, if you are designing a website about wine, everything within your website should relate to wine.

Selecting a Website’s Keyword Phrase

You must also select the most relevant keyword phrase for each webpage. A keyword phrase is two or more words that best describe your webpage. For example, if your webpage is about ‘making wine,’ your best keyword phrase would be ‘wine making.’ You should use your keyword phrase a few times within your webpage, as this will enable the search engines to determine what the website is about. This is a very important step to make a website successful.

Using HTML Heading Tags

When you begin writing your content, it is very important that you use the HTML H1 heading tag with your main title at the top of your webpage. In addition, use the HTML H2 tags for your sub-titles. This is very important, as some search engines place relevance on the text displayed with heading tags.

As the default text for the H1 heading tag is very large, you may want to use CSS style sheets to display the heading tags in the font style and size you prefer.

Using META Tags Within a Webpage

Another step to help make a website successful is to include META tags between the HEAD tags of your webpage. META tags help the search engines to know what keywords are relevant to the webpage. They are also used to tell the search engines what the webpage is about. Many search engines will display this description within the search results.

Backgrounds and Text

It is always best to display a webpage with a white background and black text, as this will make the text easy to read. Distracting backgrounds will make the text hard to read. A good rule of thumb is to just use common sense and keep your website simple. This alone is a great way to help make a website successful.

Animated Graphics

If you’re using animated graphics, it is important that you use them sparingly. Graphics that continually flash are VERY annoying and may prevent your visitors from returning to your website in the future.

Navigational Links

It is very important to include good navigational links on every page. They should be displayed at the top, bottom, left or right side of your webpage. In addition, your visitors should be able to get to any webpage within your website within four clicks.

Webpage Layout

Always be consistent with your webpage design. This is a very important step to help make a website successful. The layout for your website should be the same on each page. If you make it different, your visitors will become confused. In addition, it will make your website appear to be unprofessional. Your website design should include the same layout, logo, and navigation setup on each page.

Spelling and Grammar

Always make sure you proof read and spell check your webpages for errors. It is also very important that your webpage doesn’t have any broken images or links.

Important Webpages

When you launch your website, it is very important that you include the following webpages:

About – The ‘About’ page is used to tell your visitors about you and/or your company.

Privacy – The ‘Privacy’ page is used to let your visitors know what you do with their personal information, such as their email address.

Terms and Conditions – The ‘Terms and Conditions’ page should be displayed on your website for your protection.

Site Map – A ‘Site Map’ is used to help the search engines index your website more easily.

You can learn more about all of these pages by doing a search through your favorite search engine. They are very important and will help make a website successful.

Website Interactivity

Another way to make a website successful is to make the website interactive. This can be done by including a targeted forum that complements your website, a form in which they can subscribe to an ezine, a feedback form to enable them to give their opinion, or an informative blog in which visitors can comment.

Web Browsers and Screen Resolutions

When you begin designing your webpage, it is HIGHLY recommended that you install the most popular web browsers on your computer. This will enable you to see how your website will display in different browsers. You will find that your website may look great in one browser and terrible in another. It would be wise to design your website to display properly in Firefox and then it should display properly in Internet Explorer, Opera, etc.

It is also important that you view your website through different screen resolutions. You can either open your webpage in your browser and then change your computer’s screen resolution, or there are website’s online that you can visit, such as Any Browser, to test your website.

If you follow these simple guidelines, you can begin to make a website successful in no time.

By Shelley Lowery (c) 2009 / SiteProNews

RT @google: Tweets and updates and search, oh my!

At Google, our goal is to create the most comprehensive, relevant and fast search in the world. In the past few years, an entirely new type of data has emerged — real-time updates like those on Twitter have appeared not only as a way for people to communicate their thoughts and feelings, but also as an interesting source of data about what is happening right now in regard to a particular topic.

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

Posted by Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience

Create a Shopping List • Keep track of the products you want to buy

• Create and share your wish list

• Access your shopping list from any computer

• Annotate products with your own notes

• Sort your shopping list by price, item or date

http://www.google.co.uk/shoppinglist?hl=en_GB

How do we [really] bridge the gap between traditional in store retailing and online retail. 

With online visitor/sales conversions being typically in single percentage figures, surely there are some mechanisms to bring the retailer and customer closer so that the retailer can understand the customers requirements needs, budget and expectations as well as being able to offer recommendations based on that particular moment.

Does social networking, the blog, twitter, facebook etc.. really bridge that gap?

Is it science, technology or back to basics?

Help by taking part in our quick survey. 

Retail sales in Ireland in June have increased for the first time in four months.

The Central Statistics Office revealed that the volume of retail sales, excluding cars, in Ireland was 2% higher in June than in the previous month. The value of sales grew by 0.1%.

Clothing and footwear and department store sales drove the performance, reflecting lower prices on the high street.

While almost all retail sectors reported an annual decrease in sales in June, clothing and footwear notched up a 3.2% monthly increase in sales volumes.

Year-on-year overall retail sales in Ireland dropped 5.5%.

Ulster Bank economist Lynsey Clemenger said the June figures were “an encouraging, if tentative, omen for retail prospects in the third quarter”.

source : Drapers