There are trusted feed programs that are of considerable help for companies that have large websites. Say, for example, if your website has something like 600 pages, using a trusted feed program can help a lot. Some companies allow you to make payments only if there is traffic to your site, as against the paid for inclusion program wherein you have to pay even if you do not get traffic. The pay for performance program proves beneficial if your returns are comparatively lower due to some drawbacks. These programs are called as XML feeds by some, as they use the XML protocol, which has become an integral part of today’s web services and other applications. It is very useful for large websites that want to reach out to a highly targeted traffic. Moreover, the trusted feed is continually re-indexed and appears as generic listing and not as advertisements. It has guaranteed indexing of every web page that is submitted, even the dynamic pages. It is very useful for eCommerce websites that are largely database driven. Some of these tools also provide mechanisms that allow advertisers to remove discontinued products.

There are several advantages of using trusted feed programs. Even if you have dynamic content it can be indexed now. This is because it provides easy refresh cycles that can keep your specified content updated. Up to a certain extent it allows you to have control over what content is indexed. Large sites should certainly use the trusted feeds. Similarly, if these sites have deep content like extensive catalog of product in database, it is useful to get indexed. As it can index the deep content, your large site can also get a competitive ranking.

Generally, these providers also support you in identifying pages included in database powering a search engine search. There cannot be any assurance on placement but using trusted feed could be of great use to make it search engine friendly. When you use trusted feed your listing start appearing in around 72 hours and continues for some more days. Most of these providers allow you to track your trusted feed campaign’s ROI and Return on advertising spend. Similarly, you can even monitor the traffic volumes for each search destination where the trusted feeds are used. You can easily determine the most popular keyphrase searches as well the URLs that have the best performance.

There are a few drawback of this technology also. Though it is useful for database driven website, it does not assure you top rankings, and sponsored ads may be better in such situations. Using trusted feed is a time consuming processes and mainly beneficial for bigger companies. Though smaller companies can use them, the cost involved may prohibit them.

Trusted feed programs remove the wall that blocks the search engine spiders from crawling dynamic and deep content pages. Research well and then select the trusted feed program that seems to be the best solution for you.

Peter Brittain
Perth Digital Agency

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Web site development involves the client who requires a site, a developer who is well versed with the coding and other technical jargon that goes with it, and more often than not a content developer who deals with the artistic layout required for the website. Almost all of those involved are mostly who are capable of working independently when the task is clearly specified. But getting them work to work in a team for a product that is in itself quite dynamic is the key to a good website.

First and foremost the client should chalk out thoroughly all the features he wants to be displayed on the site. The content of focus should be decided well in advance. The website should be able to communicate in a few seconds its purpose and what in general it has to offer.

The client, say from a banking firm may be an expert in the field of investments, shares and stocks, derivatives, etc, while the developer might be a wizard in the realm of designing. When communicating the intricacies of the requirements, the client as well developer should not assume that the other understands their technical talk easily. Both should be patient enough to explain their view points. Both must make themselves accessible to each other as much as possible.

Remember that a client will have the most fancy ideas concerning his website. The developer has to clearly specify the limitations associated with a specific designing tool, and suggest alternative ways to achieve the result. Also, the multiple ways to reduce file size, page load time and appropriate graphics to be added, without compromising much in the quality can be explained. A customer may suggest changes during the process of designing. A developer who is a good communicator can maintain the clients confidence in him by explaining the pros and cons of such changes.. After having designed many websites, the developer’s suggestions must be valued and can be incorporated in the site design.

The client might desperately want a specific graphic, picture or video to appear on the page. The developer must be able to clearly communicate the inevitable changes that may occur while optimising these to load them on the site. It is advisable that personal meetings be held at regular intervals throughout the development process. Ambiguous statements and instructions must be avoided while e-mailing one’s requirements. It is better to continue development only after reaching a mutual point of understanding in case of issues of contest.

The field of web designing is an area of expertise which cannot be measured by any yardstick. There is too much subjectivity and customisation associated with it. This makes the client apprehensive about whether he is receiving quality service for the cost incurred. But the customer will surely appreciate the efforts put in if the designer is a good communicator.

Peter Brittain
Perth Web Design

Choose an interesting topic before building the site itself, so that traffic flow is increased. If your site is already up and running, see to it that the latest happenings in your field of interest is covered on your site.

A simple way to start earning is to reserve space on your page for others to advertise their products. Such advertisers can be found on affiliate networks on the web. Choose sites and products that match or belong to your area of activity. For example, if you are a medium scale automobile servicing company, you could advertise for a range of firms from vehicle manufacturers, spare part producers, and insurance providers to firms buying and selling used cars. There are a variety of payment options that can be negotiated. One method is that you may get paid if a user actually takes the effort of going through the banner and buys a product. Another is that you get paid even if the user only clicks on the banner. Or a still better option is that you are paid a flat rate just for hosting the banner. The first two options are certainly preferable if you have developed a really interesting website. You can attract lucrative deals if you employ time, technology and manpower on making the site an outstanding one. The logic behind is simple – Tiger Woods is paid more to wear a particular sports outfit than any other golfer.

Assuming that you have got a very interesting and informative site running, the next step could be to add a tool which allows visitors to subscribe to the site to receive regular e-mails on the latest updates. This has been a tremendous success with publicly listed corporations. In an effort to keep up with the daily changes and forecasts of company performance, investors subscribe to such auto generated reports and messages that keep them informed of their asset value.

Instead of devoting space on the web page, hyperlinking key words in the content itself to pages that carry advertisements may also be a way of earning. Getting job consultancies to advertise jobs that are related to your niche can attract traffic. Displaying sponsored content on your specific topic is also a way of generating income, although viewers may not fully believe the integrity of the content. Some firms pay the host for carrying out a survey on their behalf. These appear as small boxes on the page which can be easily turned if the viewer does not wish to take part.

Developing reliable and precise news content within a short time span and allowing other sites to access these can be a stable source of revenue. Compiling and archiving articles and press releases, like those related to science and technology, and providing them online when required is a growing trend in e-business.

Peter Brittain
Perth Web Design

A website, unlike regular advertising and communication tools, has an unlimited scope of attracting attention. The choice of the designs and content incorporated depends primarily on the target audience, purpose and requirement. It is not advisable to incorporate animation just because it is attractive, rather it should enhance the already available features and content. A thorough analysis of other methods of inducing interest must be thought of before thinking of animations. One has to decide on the value addition that an animation can give to the site. If it proves to be a distraction and takes away attention from the actual content it may be worth skipping.

Animation includes simple features like moving text, to complex ones like moving caricatures and cartoons. Addition of appropriate animations greatly enhances user interest usability and popularity of a website. A marquee at the top and bottom of a news website, which shows a latest updates available is more user friendly compared to tabs which show their content only after they are clicked. In a maze of information, the user’s attention is directed to the matter of utmost importance in the shortest possible time.

Flash is a common tool used for developing animation graphics for websites. Compared to a site displaying plain text, the presence of animated graphics is more appealing. Some websites have a animation display as soon as a user enters the site. The user is prompted to either wait for it to complete or skip the show entirely. Such displays present the purpose and focus of activity right at the beginning. Moving caricatures and text phrases linked to other independent web pages is a wonderful way of structuring huge volumes of information while at the same time greatly reducing the load time of the home page.

Animation gives a sense of live interaction and instant response to the user. Generally they are of two types, frame and sprite animation. Frame animation consists of that done within a specified area like a rectangle. Here a series of fixed frames are made to run at a fast pace, creating an illusion of a picture in motion. The limitation of this method is that the entire frame is visible, is independent of other parts of the site and is not interactive.

In the sprite form, there is no restrictive frame as such and the picture moves all across the site page. The use of such animations is more common on websites for online games. The various images are linked to program scripts that pre-written. As the user clinks on to the images the appropriate programs run and show the respective animated effect. This leads to other graphic images that prompt the user to choose movements out of a range of options.

Initially animation was considered as the pure use of images or photographs manipulated using tools to create motion. In the fast developing digital world, the development in video effects has lead to linkups between video and graphic animations. This explains how for example the caricature of a political figure is used along with video clips to deliver a strong message compared to plain text. Thus the right use of animations will be an added attraction rather being the sole one.

Peter Brittain
Perth Web Design

Of course, just like any other project, the most important part of web development is its initial planning stage. The reason for that is because you will need to decide some things up front, so that your website design can reflect these decisions. Hence, it is important for you to decide the overall purpose and the general theme of your website, before starting on its development.

In the planning stage, you will need to identify:
1. the general purpose of the web site
2. the overall theme of the website
3. The elements of the website and whether it will use Web 2.0 elements
4. The design team that will work on the website
5. The types of software and tools that will be used for the designing of the website
6. The research that will need to be completed, in order to accumulate the necessary content
7. The editor who will edit and critique your website

So, as you can see, the planning stage will be pretty much the grand layout of your website, as well as the identification of the people who will be present in its design. It will essentially help jump start the web development process, as it will identify the proceeding stages of web development.

Once the planning stage is completed, then the design stage will start. Here the relevant content will be woven to your website with the help of graphical and animation features to make it more interesting to your visitors. At this stage, it is essential to use rich, original and informative content on your website for maximum benefit. By this way, you can be sure that there will be important information for people at your website. The need for original content must be stressed over and over again, as it can be the threshold between success and failure for your website.

Of course, using a Content Management System will help to organize this content and make it dynamic and ever changing. This way, you can be assured that the content will evolve and thus this will allow your page ranking to increase as well. Of course, you will need to use Flash graphics and other graphical tools to allow for interest for your site.

However, the most important thing to remember is the fact that web development is not a static process and it is an ongoing, dynamic process. As long as your website is up and running, you will need to develop it constantly and make any appropriate changes so that your website can remain competitive on the world of the Internet.

Peter Brittain
Web Design Services

Similarly, the file size of the documents required to enhance page utility like various image files, multimedia elements and even the scripts, is also a factor. Typically the image files, as well as video or audio files that you add to the page are responsible for increasing the page size. These take longer to load on slower Internet connections and thus are a drawback in page performance. You can use CSS sprint techniques to load all images at the same time. If you define dimensions for images on their container elements, it can help ensure rendering of the page correctly, thereby ensuring that there is no jumping around, when images are loading. You can also use PHP script, when you want to collate several scripts or CSS style sheets into a single file. It is easy to use and can cache the collated file till you make many changes to any included file. This helps your files to be automatically packed and cached and included file also gets updated, when you change them. This helps in maintenance, as well as improvement in page performance.

If you include large dependencies at the end of the document, it is better, as the rest of the page will at least get shown first before browser loads them. Even the JavaScript should not be put in the header, as it lowers the speed. If you are using any third party content from their server, then it is better, if you can use RSS feeds locally instead. You need not deal with their DNS server delays nor have to be affected by its down times.

There are different techniques that you may use to enhance page performance. This is a very basic idea of some of the techniques available. You can select those that match your requirements.

Peter Brittain
Perth Web Design

Advanced video effects are more helpful where the small intricacies and uniqueness in operation of products are to be displayed. For example, using a video clip that shows the steps involved in the functioning of an instrument along with audio which explains each step in detail. Here the importance of the video and audio has to be analyzed so as to avoid the one lesser important playing a spoilsport. The attention of the viewer should be focused on the more important media. The use of non-linear video editing software allows editing of video content for adopting desired clips, deleting and replacing unwanted audio tracks, and incorporating animations. Many use these softwares to load video clips onto personal websites, showing unbelievable scenes and stunts that other wise are impossible. Such software are also misused by some to malign stars of the media and politics.

Consider a page where a presenter is talking animatedly while the product is shown along side or as a background. The video clip is tweaked to give an effect of rhythm and displays the product from different angles. Care should be taken that the clip slows down or comes to a standstill when the audio track describes vital information about the product.

Out of many effects one well noticed is the use of chroma key effect. This is well utilized to where multiple video clips can make the site appear to jazzy. For example, this may be used for a website for a travel and tour firm. A central character appears to describe all the exotic places to which the firm has service routes and all appear as a background one after the other. The character appears to be present at all locations while actually he is not. The effect is created using a technique where image from a frame is incorporated into another. Here the person is filmed with colors like green and blue are utilized as backgrounds. The images are then altered replacing the background with similar ones from a totally different image, giving a superimposing effect. Such effects are widely used in the entertaining industry as well.

There are quite a number of softwares available for advanced video editing for use in website designing. One of the most common is the use of Adobe Flash Player. Many of the sites like YouTube and Google Video with a large volume of video use this software. Flash is helpful in embedding video files with the HTML format and thus is user friendly. The disadvantage being that the user must have flash player installed.

Peter Brittain
Web Design Services

The process involves using higher resolution pictures and working on them to reduce the size and colour variations to obtain a picture suitable for your web page. Using image edit programs that help in resizing the photograph, the desired picture is finalized, including the height and width. Unnecessary colors are eliminated to reduce the file size. A process known as dithering is used to minimize formation of bands of colour that may appear, albeit with a loss in image sharpness. The process involves juxtaposing pixels of different colours to form an illusion of totally different colour.

The image is then stored in the Graphic Interchange Format (GIF) or Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPEG) format. A GIF file is smaller in size and can be used with about 256 colours, while the JPEG file is considerably heavier and can be used with millions of colours. When a GIF while is compressed there is no loss of data, although colour quality is affected. A compressed JPEG file retains colour variety but loses picture clarity. The lesser the colours involved the clumsy the file becomes.

Computer monitors display images at 72 dpi and hence displaying large images as a single file is time consuming. Therefore it is these pictures are divided into smaller parts represented by a smaller file, which will loaded at a much faster pace.

Photographs and images can be edited using softwares such as Picasa, Photoshop, Windows Picture, etc. The need for using the image as a full blown one, comparatively smaller or a thumbnail has to be identified. The right balance between the number of colours involved, clarity of image and the height and width will give right image with an optimum file size. Edit the height and width so as to reduce them to 300 to 200 pixels, suitable for web viewing. You can further reduce it if it is to be used as a thumbnail. Crop the image to remove all unwanted and outlier information. Reduce colour variety and depth to minimize file size, except where it is absolutely necessary to keep it as it is. Restrict the maximum image size to below 50 kilobytes.

Another method is to create images in a size smaller than actually required and is displayed on the web page. Then, using the HTML IMAGE Tag, changes in height and width are implemented, to show the image at the size you want them to appear.

Peter Brittain
Perth Digital Agency

This can be a very hard equation to balance and in some cases most websites go either one way or the other. However, there are certain elements of web design that you can incorporate in to your website and these elements will make it interesting and functional at the same time. These elements are interactive elements to make your website interactive and thus more useful to your visitors.

When it comes to how to make your website interactive; there are quite a lot of ways to accomplish this. Even before the advent of Web 2.0 elements, you were able to put a guestbook even a decade ago, so that your visitors could leave you a feedback to help you steer your web development. However, now with the presence of the Web 2.0 tools; you have quite a powerful arsenal at your disposal.

Now, with the Web 2.0 tools you can make your website interactive by installing blogs, discussion forums, online chatting, and topic polls along with opt in boxes which have interactive auto reply techniques. Using these tools and techniques, you can actually make your website come alive and you can make it functional and responsive 24 hours a day and 365 days a year.

Your visitors can easily share their opinions about your website, your company and your products through its blogs and discussion forums or they can even chat online using these tools. You can put polls to measure the popularity as well as the cons of your products or you can enroll people to your newsletters with various opt in boxes. You can create feedback posts and special forms for two way communication with your website.

Using these will allow your website to become interactive and thus your visitors can feel included in the process. Thus your users will feel more at ease with your website and with your products and thus this will earn you more exposure and sympathy on the Internet which you can then translate into profits.

Furthermore, having interactive components can help you to steer your web development to accommodate the needs of your potential customers in a better way. So, as you can see, having an interactive website works both ways and thus both you and your visitors can get positive feedback from using these features.

However, you shouldn’t over do it and you should use a professional to help you develop these features for best results.

Peter Brittain
Perth Digital Agency

The development of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) as a tool for web site development has gathered momentum over the years. The use of CSS for styling and Extensible Markup Language (XML) for content development is widely in use today. This helps in changing the styles of a page without worrying about the content getting in the way. CSS helps style changes without the use of HTML table layouts and storing specific styles in a appropriate files, and applying those wherever necessary. This also helps in quicker changes in layout. The smaller individual files created help in saving bandwidth at the host end.

Alhough there are many advantages associated with using HTML, there was no markup for styling developed earlier. Hence the separation of content and styles was not appreciated. Untill the advent of CSS developers included the markups for styles within HTML.
CSS is useful in having control over the layout and push the content to appear ahead in the source sequence. In addition, it makes it easier for a search engine to pickup keywords in the content. CSS enables the development of a variety style sheets, which allow for changes in background colour, font type and size, etc.
The characteristics of every page are styled in a cached CSS file, which in turn is cached in the browser. This replaces need for enormous codes within HTML.

The separation of content and presentation enables simpler, well-organised content and makes site building and maintenance easier. Since the style sheets are sourced from fewer files, changes in layout can be implemented in all pages with minimum effort. Due to such a separation web developers an content writers can work simultaneously in the development of page, has increased the pace of work flow and improved the quality. By utilizing User Style Sheets, viewers can change the presentations as per their choice. Also, the decreased file sizes have resulted in faster downloads.

This method of development also improves accessibility by using non-conventional devices like mobile phones and hand held computers. Structuring of content using XML has improved readability by search engines and resulted in higher traffic volumes. While HTML was useful for improving the appearance of web pages, XML improves the structuring of content much beyond mere appearance.

Apart from the above benefits, the separation of content and style has enabled specialised attention to be paid to each and development of expertise for both. The de-linking of both, in terms of the coding involved, has thrown up more possible combinations of content and style that were not available earlier.

Peter Brittain
Perth Digital Agency