Archive for Web Design
Lunarpages News – March 2012
Posted by: | CommentsLunarpages at SXSW Trade Show 2012 – Come visit us!
The South by Southwest conference, also known as SXSW, will be held on March 9 through March 18, 2012 in Austin, TX. Every year, SXSW brings thousands of people together to celebrate and support the interactive, music and film festivals. This year we will be attending the SXSW trade show from March 12 until March 15, 2012 and we would love to meet you!
What is Pinterest?
Pinterest is a virtual bulletin board that allows users to share images they find online that are interesting, inspiring or fun to look it. It’s been around for a while now but has just recently caught on intensely. Pinterest is visually driven, which makes it pleasurable and very easy to use. When you share an image they become a “pin” and they can be placed on “Boards” which are customized and defined by the user. Once you “pin” something any follower or Pinterest user can “repin” the same image can “like” the pin or comment on it.
Friend Seeding
“Friend Seeding” is another one of the magic buzz words surrounding social networking for businesses. To quickly summarize, Friend Seeding is finding friends or fans that “Like” or want to “follow” your company, product or service online. There are few better ways of building relationships with your core audience than by attracting them to your brand through social networking. Adding new followers is also a great way to keep your company’s social networking pages active, interesting and dynamic.
CityWorth, heard of it?
There is a new player in the online deal world that Living Social and Groupon have so far dominated. The wildly successful “daily deals” have now been turned into a money making opportunity for everyone when you use CityWorth. Research indicates that the U.S. daily deal market will grow to $6 billion by 2015. Why not take a percentage of that money and put it back in your pocket while supporting your favorite local businesses?
How to find the right Web Designer
Your company’s website is usually all you have when making a first impression with a potential buyer or client online. You literally have just seconds to capture a visitors attention, present benefit oriented messaging and entice them to buy what you’re your selling! Knowing this, it’s very important to have a professional, proven designer build your website. Below is a brief outline to help you find a website designer that is right for you.
The Benefits of Cloud Computing
Ecommerce solutions are evolving. Customer’s expectations are changing as new technology emerges to meet their needs. In this rapidly changing environment, the challenge to find the best solution for a business has never been more difficult. Choose the wrong technology, and a company may be faced with the same decisions a year from now, after spending anywhere from a few thousand dollars to more than $100,000.
Jake Ellenberger Sweepstakes
Have you ever wanted to attend a MMA fight? Now’s your chance. For those of you who don’t know him…meet Jake Ellenberger.
More HTML Formatting Help
Posted by: | CommentsWe have already covered some basic HTML tags you will use when writing your web page code. Here are a few more that you might find come in handy, when designing your own web page.
Image Tags
In HTML, when you want to call upon an image to be displayed on your web page, you need to use the img tag. This tag tells the browser and web server that you are going to put an image here, and then what follows src= is the direct path to the image in question.
Code: <img src=”http://www.yourdomain.com/yourimage.jpg” />
Horizontal Rule Tags
The horizontal rule is for making a nice separator between sections of your web page. It acts as a single solid line that can be placed anywhere on your web page. It looks like this:
Code: <hr />
List Tags
If you want to format a list of topics on a single page, then the list tags will come in handy. You would start a list with the <ul> tag and end it with the </ul> tag. For each item on the list, you will want to wrap it in the <li> and </li> tags.
Code: <ul> <li>item #1</li> <li>item #2</li> </ul>
Ordered List Tags
If you want to format a list of topics on a single page, and have them numbered, the ordered list tags should be used. You would start a list with the <ol> tag and end it with the </ol> tag. For each item on the list, you will want to wrap it in the <li> and </li> tags.
Code: <ol> <li>item #1</li> <li>item #2</li> </ol>
Link Tags
Links are used to help users go from one page to the next page. The basic link is started with the <a href=”"> tag with the page’s path you want to link to inside the quotation marks. Then you type in the text of the link, and close it out with the </a> tag.
Code: <a href=”http://www.somedomain.com/pageiamlinkingto.html”>This Text is a Link</a>
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Basic HTML Formatting Help
Posted by: | CommentsWhen it comes to formatting a web page using HTML code, you can think of it (kind of) in the same way you would look at formatting a document formatted by a word processor. You have your headlines to show you where one section starts and stops. You have your paragraphs to break up blocks of text, and you have line breaks to show where there should be a new line started. Now I am going to show you how to get some of these things done using HTML.
Headline Tags
The main purpose of the headline tags are make the titles stand out on the page, and also tell the browser and visitors where the titles are. You can use <h1></h1> for the main title, then (if needed) <h2></h2> for a secondary title. The bigger the number gets, the smaller or less important the title becomes. Remember to use the headline tags for headings only. It is not a good idea to use them to make text bigger or bolder. Also, search engines look at how your headline tags are used to help index the structure of the content on your web pages.
Code: <h1>This Is My Title</h1>
Paragraph Tags
The paragraph tags are important because they show the start (
) and then end
of where a paragraph should be on your web page. Having a long page with nothing but unformatted text is going to be very hard for the reader to navigate through. You want to break up the web page with the paragraph tags to make the web page your working on more scan-able for the end user.
Code: <p>This will be shown as it’s own paragraph on my web page.</p>
Line Break Tags
What if you don’t want to go to a new paragraph, and instead only want to break of one line and move to the line right under it? That is what the
or
tags are for. You might see either used, however it might be best to start using
to future-proof your web page for browsers in the future (just in case support for
was ever dropped.
Code: I can put this at the end of a line to show where I want it to stop. <br />
Blockquote Tags
When text has been blockquoted, it is often indented a little – in comparison with the other paragraphs around it. So you get white space to the left, and the margins around the text are enlarged a little ‘bit to seperate it from the rest of the text.
Code: <blockquote>This text will be shown as indented on my web page.</blockquote>
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Modify the HTML Body Tag
Posted by: | CommentsThere are several HTML tags that can act as modifiers to how the web page looks visually.
First, let us re-visit the body tags. The body tags are there to tell the browser what part of the document is going to be visible to the end user when viewing the web page. This is marked up in your HTML code by putting a <body> where your web page’s content begins and a </body> tags where it ends.
How to Modify the Body Tag
So, any time you modify the body tags, you will be changing the way the web site is seen. There are several body tag modifiers you can use.
Change the Web Page’s Background Color
You can add bgcolor=”VALUE” (replacing VALUE with the name of the color or the HEX number) to change the background color for a web page.
- Code: <body bgcolor=”white”> (this would make the background all white)
Change the Web Page’s Text Color
You can add text=”VALUE” (replacing VALUE with the name of the color or the HEX number) to change the background color for a web page.
- Code: <body text=”black”> (this would make the text all black)
Change the Web Page’s Link Color
You can add link=”VALUE” (replacing VALUE with the name of the color or the HEX number) to change the color of links on a web page.
- Code: <body link=”blue”> (this would make the links all blue)
Change the Web Page’s Visited Link Color
You can add vlink=”VALUE” (replacing VALUE with the name of the color or the HEX number) to change the color of link that have already been visited on a web page.
- Code: <body vlink=”red”> (this would make the visited links red)
Change the Web Page’s Active Link Color
You can add alink=”VALUE” (replacing VALUE with the name of the color or the HEX number) to change the color of an active link.
- Code: <body alink=”purple”> (this would make the active link purple)
More Helpful Body Tag Tips
You can use more than one of these at a time. If you wanted to, you could use more than one of these body modifiers at a time. you would just need to remember to put a space in between each body modifier. For example:
<body bgcolor="black" color="white">
This is how you would link more than one together, this would tell the browser to make the background of the web page black and the text on the web page white. There is no limit to the number of these modifiers you can use on the body tag, as long as everything is formatted correctly, the web page should come out the way you want it to.
Only add these modifiers to the opening body tag. It is important to note that you only add these modifiers to the opening tag <body> and not the closing tag </body>.
Where can I find the HTML color or HEX values? You can find these many places. One of the best examples, is on w3school.com’s HTML colors page here:
Facebook Fan Page Come join the fun on the Web Hosting Show Facebook Fan Page!© Mitch Keeler 2012 | Check out my firefox help site and my tech blog too!
Top 5 Necessities For a Sales Oriented Website
Posted by: | CommentsIf you have a sales website in which you are trying to sell a product and need to increase traffic as well as product sales, there are certain things that your website should definitely have. A sales website has to reach and grasp the attention of the consumers in order to receive necessary sales. The purpose of a sales website is to receive business. Without traffic, there are no customers and without customers, nothing is being sold and money is not being made. To increase traffic and sales to a sales website, there are just a few necessities that should be added to the website.
1. Introduction
All websites, especially sales websites, should include an introduction. The introduction is a necessity because it describes what the website is about, what types of products are being sold, and how the consumer can go about getting these products. An introduction should be informative with just the right details but should never be too long or too short. You should always stick with shorter sentences that get straight to the point instead of lengthy sentences with too much unnecessary information. The introduction on your sales website is what will interest the consumers in your products so it is important to make it sound good and convincing. Always run the introduction content through a spell checker before you post it on your website. Misspelled words never look good, especially on a sales website. Once you run your introduction through a spell check, you can place it on your website. Make sure that you use catchy phrases and write in a way that will grab the consumers’ attention. You may want to use bold text or even bright colored text for parts of your introduction. Creative introductions are appreciated and easily remembered by the customers, here is the example:
2. Graphics/Images
A good sales page should always have graphics and images available for the consumers. The first reason for having these images is because consumers what to know what they are buying. A sales website is designed to display items that are being sold. This is why it would be pointless to not have graphics and images on a sales website. The consumer wants to know what the product looks like before they decide to spend money on something which is quite understandable. Another reason why it is very important to have images on a website is because it makes the website look more professional with an added personal touch. You should include images of all the products you sell and the products should be taken with a quality camera so that the consumers get the best possible image of the items or product being sold. If you cannot take pictures of the products yourself with a high quality camera, you may want to hire someone else to do it for you. As a last resort, you may be able to find stock photos online of the same exact products you sell. Here is an example:
3. Personal Information
As the creator of your very own sales website, you should include some personal information about yourself. You do not need to provide your personal telephone number or address. However, you should include information about who you are, what you do, and how you first got started with selling the products that you are selling. This adds a personal touch to your website which many consumers will be able to relate to. Consumers enjoy knowing exactly who they are doing business with before they decide to spend money out of their own pockets. You should also leave an e-mail address on your website for which you can be contacted. Consumers appreciate having the creator of a website answer questions and address concerns on a personal level. It shows that you don’t just care about making sales but that you actually care about the consumers and what they have to say or ask you.
4. Frequently Asked Questions
Frequently asked questions are very much needed for a sales website. When creating your website, you should always include a section for frequently asked questions. In this section, you will provide answers to some of the most commonly asked questions about the type of product(s) you are selling. Having a section like this is mostly convenient for the consumers but it can be convenient for you, as the owner of a sales website, as well. It is convenient for the consumers because they will receive answers immediately to questions that they may have without having to send you a message and wait for a response which could end up taking several hours. It is also convenient for you because you can avoid having to answer repeated questions over and over that are often asked since the answers to those questions will be featured in this section instead. Most sales websites offer a frequently asked questions section.
5. Layout
The layout, also known as a template, is an in important aspect of a sales website. Having a professional layout will draw in more consumers. If your sales website is a mess, all over the place, and very unorganized, consumers are not going to want to buy what you are selling. In fact, they will probably be skeptical about paying you for anything. If your layout looks professional and is neatly organized, consumers will more likely buy from your website. You can make your own website layout if you know the basics of HTML and CSS. However, if you have no idea how to create a layout or template, you may want to search online for available layouts that you can buy or receive for free.
Conclusion
As an individual who owns a sales website, it is your responsibility to make sure your website has everything it needs to truly catch the eye of the consumers. These top five features can make a difference between an average sales website and a superior sales website. In fact, after following these steps and making the necessary changes to your sales website, you will probably notice more traffic which will equal more sales on your part.