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Web Design - Even Error Pages Can Bring You Customers

I was talking recently to a friend of mine who is a bit of a web guru. Now I thought that I knew quite a bit about web design and usage, but maybe I'm not as smart as I thought.

We were talking about error pages and he told me something that I had never heard before. “Of course you can customize your error pages”.

I was amazed. He nearly fell off his chair laughing at me when I said that I always thought those 404 error pages came from some central internet point beyond my reach and that they all looked exactly the same.

When he had calmed down a little, he patiently explained that an there are scores of error codes covering many different situations. They are all three digits, such as 500 – Server Error, 408 – Request Timeout and of course the familiar 404 – Not found, which most of us see fairly regularly.

He went on to say that 404 errors are sometimes caused by users incorrectly typing in a page name, but quite often it can be just a communication glitch between one end and the other and if you hit refresh, you’ll usually get right back on track.

Despite what I thought, the content of error pages does not come from some omnipotent global hub, some kind of web-central, but are in fact pages held on the server of your web host. When an error condition is picked up, the host simply serves up the error page.

Now that means that you can replace their standard error pages with something of your own and simply tell the host to serve that instead. All of which got me to thinking.

What if instead of infuriating my users with a bland standard page of techno-babble, I gave them something to make them smile and help them get back on track. My friend explained that we simply needed to create two files and upload them to my site.

The first one is the replacement error page itself. I decided we should give it the same look and feel as the rest of my site, so we added the banner at the top and some of the navigation links. Then I entered a cheery message saying “Oops, sorry – something’s gone wrong. It happens sometimes, but don’t worry, it’s not serious. Click here and we’ll have you back on track in no time” Then at the bottom is a simple link to take people back to my homepage.

If you have a particularly complex site with thousands of pages, then you might want to lead people to a sitemap first or give them some category links so they could start to figure out at least which section they want to get to.

The second file is one called .htaccess. This is a little text file, which contains a few lines of code telling your web-host which errors to pick up and which page to show in which event. Simple. Well simple for my friend anyway, but he assures me that anyone halfway competent can do it. In fact he says that your web-host will probably have full instructions on their help pages.

So what’s the point of doing this? Well firstly we’re all impatient with the web and as soon as anything goes wrong we want to jump off somewhere else. You don’t want to lose your potential customers that way, so this is a chance to hang on to them, just when they’re about to disappear.

Secondly, as any good web marketer knows, any chance that you have to make a positive impression is worth grabbing. We spend hours agonizing over the wording of our autoresponder e-mails in order to ensure that we build a solid relationship with our prospects, so why can’t we also get a little bit of our friendly personality across on an error page too.

So take a closer look at your error pages and learn to make them lovable.

By Andrew Grant
If you would like to read more great articles on self improvement and making money online, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to my free newsletter, which you'll find at : http://www.money-and-mind.com

Download Free Link Popularity Check Software

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13 Ways To Destroy Your Website

With all the talk of how to make a great website and ways to keep visitors, it is important to also understand the other side of designing an Internet business.

Every day, thousands of websites are finding unique ways to turn away visitors and potential customers. Although many webmasters know about the obvious “turn-offs”, there are many little details that “tick-off” visitors and make them leave.

In fact, I have found that there are 13 “small” items that can make or break a website. To avoid having your visitors “click-away” from your site make sure that you include the following things:

1) A Professional Appearance: Most websites don’t need flash effects or dazzling visuals. But, your Internet business should be perceived as legitimate site, built by someone who cares about the content and appearance. In other words, the colors and graphics should blend well with one another. In addition, all web-copy should be dynamic and devoid of grammar or spelling mistakes. Finally, any images on the page should enhance the experience for your visitors without distracting them.

2) Proper Navigation: The pages on your website should be easily connected. To do this, every section should connect to the main page, with a clear and concise menu. Don’t make your visitors spend a lot of time looking for different sections. Help them by ensuring that the navigation of your site remains constant throughout all pages.

3) An Obvious Theme: Your index page should immediately let the visitor know what you are selling or promoting. Usually the best way to do this is by briefly describing the purpose of your website and include product photos that can help people understand your purpose.

4) A Logo: One of the best ways to “brand” your site and remain unique is to have a logo for your Internet business. By having a logo, your website is more likely to make an “impression” with your visitors and develop a following. Any logo used needs to be consistent with the theme and color scheme of your site.

5) FAQs: There will be times when your visitors have a question that is not covered by the standard descriptions or sales pages. To help them out, it is important to have a section that is devoted to answering common questions. By creating a FAQ page, your prospects can easily find the answers to their questions and will be more likely to order from your site.

6) What’s New Section: With repeat visitors, there will be times when you want to update them with current news or promotions. The best way to do this is to create a “What’s New” section. That way, you can inform old visitors, while making sure that they know about all current marketing campaigns.

7) Contact Information: Eventually, your website visitor will have a question for you. Because of this, it is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer questions and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person behind the website.

8) Feedback Forms: The best websites always change, catering to the needs of the visitor. In order to find out what your customers need, it is important to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by creating a feedback form on the site, which includes questions that will help improve the overall quality of the Internet business.

9) Privacy Policy: With the problem of spam, many people are afraid to give out personal information such as their email address and credit card numbers. To help alleviate this fear, you need to include a “Privacy Policy” section. Basically this page will let them know how all information is used and if they will be contacted in the future. It is better to upfront about your practices than to be accused of mishandling information.

10) Email List: Top websites work on developing an email list of prospects that can be contacted in the future. This should go without saying, but your email list subscription area should have a prominent position on your web page. In addition, include a quick blurb about any incentive that you offer to visitors for joining the list.

11) About Us: Most website visitors appreciate knowing that a business is run by an actual human being. To help personalize your website, you need to include a little information about both you and your online business.

12) Sales Page: Even with the best product descriptions, it is important to create a dedicated page that describes how your products are superior to your competitors. This section should be a summary of all your key features written in a dynamic tone. Basically, you want your visitors to read this page and immediately buy from you. An example of a sales page, can be seen from my own site: http://mizambar.com/whyevileye.html .

13) Refund/Return Policy On the other side, there will be times when a customer is not happy. To help alleviate any fears that they might have about purchasing online, there needs to be a section where potential customers can read your rules on accepting returns and refunds. Carefully list how and if you accept refunds. If you do not, then be upfront about it.

Because there are over a million websites on the Internet, it is now vital that you give your visitors what they need. Unfortunately, they will never tell you what is necessary. But, by including these 13 items in the design of your website, you can assured that you will have a distinct advantage over your competitor’s Internet business.

About the Author
Scott J. Patterson designed and promoted his own online store with NO computer experience. To find out how he did it, be sure to check out a FREE copy of his ebook: http://www. buildingastore.com/free-ebook.html?13L.

7 Web Site Design Mistakes That Will Lose You Clients

In today's world, a web site is virtually mandatory for any successful business. But there are web sites that will win you customers, and there are web sites that will lose you customers.

Good design has a lot to do with which category your web site will fall into. But what is it that makes good or bad web site design? In my personal opinion, a good web site is one that's simple, informative and gives me a reason to come back frequently. That's what you should get from a good web designer/writer team. Bad sites, on the other hand, are complicated to use, slow loading, confusing or just plain annoying.

Here's a list of my personal top 7 turn-offs as far as web site design is concerned:

1. Slow loading pages
Studies have shown that you have less than ten seconds to grab a visitor's attention. If your web page hasn't finished loading within that (very short) amount of time, you might as well forget about it. The main culprit I've found here are huge, slow-loading graphics, especially when they are embedded in tables. If large images are absolutely vital to presenting your business, compromise by adding thumbnails to the main page and allow the visitor to click on them to access the main image. Nobody minds a longer loading time, as long as it's them who can make that choice.

2. No contact information
As I've already mentioned in my article "Do's and don'ts of web site copy", one of my pet peeves is a web site that has no contact information accessible form the main page. If I can't get in touch with a company quickly and easily, chances are that I'll go to the competition. My advice is to have a whole page dedicated to contact information – address, phone, fax, email, and preferably a map of where you can be found (remember item #1, though – no huge graphics!) And please, don't use a graphic to display that information in a particularly clever way. I like to copy and paste that information directly from the web page to my contact management program. If I can't do that, you'll likely never hear form me – and all other customers who do the same!

3. Difficult to navigate
Don't try to be clever with navigational features. Simple text links or, if you prefer, quick-loading graphics are perfectly good means of allowing a visitor to navigate your site. Anything that requires interactive navigation, like menus that expand into sub-menus, sub-sub-menus and so on, is more an indication of a wrong information architecture than of a true need for complicated navigational features.

4. Non-HTML features
Don't get me started on this one. I've got a firewall on my
computer, and my browser is set to block all those little nasty things that can mess with my PC. As a result I come across many a site that won't display or function properly, because it relies on features like JavaScript, Cookies, Interactive Headers or Java Applets. None of these are necessary to build a good web site, and unless you want your web site to lose you potential customers, you shouldn't use them. Or, if you absolutely have to, make sure that they are not integral parts of the web site!

5. Huge splash page
Another pet peeve of mine. As mentioned earlier, you have less than ten seconds to get your message across. Now guess how many visitors are going to wait longer than that just to watch a fancy animation? 'Nuff said.

6. Pop-up ads
A huge turn-off as far as I'm concerned. As a matter of fact, I've got a pop-up blocker installed on my PC, so if your web site tried to tell me something important via a pop-up window, I'd never even see it. If you feel that you have to use pop-ups, consider going for the less intrusive (and annoying) pop-under windows instead.

7. Sideways scrolling
Not everybody has a monitor with the same screen resolution as you, so make sure that your web site displays on monitors with a lower resolution without forcing your visitor to scroll sideways. It's a singularly annoying thing, and chances are that you'll lose those visitors very quickly. Or, if you have information in a column on the right side of your web site, it may simply never appear on the screen

About the Author
Need online copy that gets results? Frauke Nonnenmacher is a
copywriter who specialises in clear, informative and persuasive
web copy. For more information, please visit her web site at
http://www.creativecats.com

10 Tips on designing a fast loading web site

The Number 1 rule that every web designer should follow is to create a fast loading web site. You might have a great design but very few people are going to see it if it takes a long time to load. While designing a web site always think about how long it will take to load. Try out our tips to build a great looking web site that also loads fast.

Minimize the use of images - The key to a fast loading web site is to minimize the use of images. Images do enhance a page but don't make 80% of your web site only images. Instead break it down as much as possible to simple HTML. Notice the popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Ebay, Amazon etc., they have very few images because the load time is more important. Very often simple designs are the best.

Optimize images for the web - Once you have decided on the images that you need on your site, make sure that it is optimized for the web. They should be in the gif or jpeg format. You can also minimize the size of the image by choosing the number of colors you need, from the color palette. The less the colors you choose, the less the size of the image. You can also use online tools like Gif Wizard to optimize your images or to get a recommendation on how to cut down the size of an image.

Use Tables creatively - You can get some great looking designs by using tables creatively . Tables load very fast because it is just HTML code. Tables can be used in the homepage, menus or anywhere you like.

Cut down the use of animated gifs - Don't use animated gifs unless it is necessary. Animated gifs take a long time to load and can also be very irritating. But since they catch your attention you could use small animated gifs to draw a visitor's attention to a particular section of your site.

Design simple icons - Instead of using big, bulky images use simple and small icons that add a little color and draw the attention of a visitor.

Use background images instead of big images whenever possible - Use background images whenever possible. This is usually a very useful tip for headers and footers. Instead of using an image of width 580 which is a uniform design you can use just a part of that as a background fill. This reduces the size of the web page as the image is small. The code will look like this :

Try out CSS Styles - Have fun with CSS styles to get some cool text effects. Again, a CSS Style is simple HTML code so it loads very fast. You can create cool rollovers using CSS Styles.

Use Flash sparingly - There seems to be a lot of hype about Flash but I recommend that you minimize the use of Flash on a site. Don't make entire sites using Flash. It may look great but it takes hours to load and can really put off visitors. If you do want to use Flash use it within an HTML site and make sure it loads fast.

Design most of your site in HTML - As much as possible try to design your site using HTML. You can create great designs by just using HTML code. Use tables, CSS Styles and simple fonts to design your site. Minimize the use of animated gifs, Flash, bulky images etc.

Keep checking your load time - Last but not least, before you decide on the final design of your web site, check its load time on NetMechanic. This site gives you a free analysis of your web site which is extremely useful.

About the Author
Rachna is the CEO of Entheos, a Web Design firm, with the vision to expand its horizons to encompass new areas of service on the Web. Rachna is a creative Web Designer with capabilities in Flash, Dreamweaver and ASP. She has written over 50 articles and tutorials on Web Designing and Web Promotion.

How to Design a Website for the Search Engines

What is the best way to build a website, in regards to ranking well in the search engines?

Here are some points to consider when building a website:

1. Website Text

Most recently Google is looking for exact keyword phrases in a websites text.

In the past it would look at the text on the index page and put keywords together, even if they were in different paragraphs. Google still does this, but now is putting more relevance on exact keyword phrases, rather than putting keywords together separately.Example: If a website is selling 'checks', it should have exact keyword phrases in the text for all its related services:
'business checks'
'order business checks'
'deluxe checks'
'designer checks'
etc.

* On your main (index) page, the text should be informational and tell your visitors what your site is all about.

* Make sure your text contains your keywords and phrases, but don't make it hard for your visitors to read.....stuffing keywords into the text, just for the sake of higher rankings, will not do you much good for your visitors, if the text doesn't flow well.

* Conventional wisdom calls for around 250 words of text on the index (opening) page, in order to insert our needed keywords. Its not so important how much text. What is important is that you need enough text in order to insert all your important keyword phrases, without the text sounding 'spammy'.

* Search engines (Google especially) love information. This means that the more info you offer your visitors, the better you may rank. If Google sees that you are offering your visitors helpful information, they will reward you for it. If you have .pdf articles or files, create the article in HTML (and .pdf if you like, its fine to use both methods together). This will allow the search engines to read the article and index the information. Many .pdf files are images, which search engines won't index well. Convert it into HTML, and they will.

* Not only does Google like information, but other websites will link to you, if your site offers information that their visitors would be interested in. More links means a higher rank in the search engines.

* Create separate pages with information. Example: If you have a hotel website, create a page about local attractions. If your service is real estate, then have articles on 'How to Obtain a Home Mortgage' or 'Home Inspection Tips'. Not only will Google love you, but so will visitors to your site.

* Don't use promotional language in your text like 'we're the best' or 'the number 1 real estate service in the USA!'......just reading that last sentence makes me ill. Your visitors aren't stupid, don't treat them like they are. Not only will it displease your audience, but it won't help with the search engines either. Do you think a search engine spider cares that you're service is the 'absolute best service ever offered on the planet'? Nope.

* Be sure to use good text on your subpages as well.......the major search engines love text and will see ALL the text on your site, not just the index page. Google is trying to 'figure out' what your site is about. It will look at the whole site to do this. So, if one of your main keyword phrases is 'laser printed business checks', you should have a page devoted just to that.

* The key to good website rankings is to take advantage of the many keywords that relate to the services you offer, not just a few, and create pages for them.

2. Create a separate page for the many types of services you offer

Example: You have a website that sells autographs.On the main page, have links to your major categories of autographs.

One link would be for 'Celebrity Autographs' one for 'Sports Autographs' etc.

Now, a visitor who is interested in sport autographs, will click on this link which will take him to the main page for 'Sports Autographs'. Now, break up the 'sports autographs' page with more links....

'Baseball Autographs'
'Football Autographs'
etc.

Click on the 'Baseball Autographs' link, which will take you to a page about baseball autographs, or even just about baseball in general. Now, have links to each individual player......

'Sandy Koufax Autographs' etc.

This now allows you to use many more keywords to be found with in the search engines. For instance, you can now use keywords associated with baseball: baseball autographs, baseball signatures, baseball memorabilia etc.

Take it a step further with each individual player, who has an entire page devoted to him: 'Sandy Koufax Autographs' etc. Have information about Sandy Koufax on the page, such as batting average, etc.

Now, not only will you be listed higher for 'Sandy Koufax Autographs', but also for just 'Sandy Koufax'. This will allow you to pull in visitors who are interested in Sandy Koufax, who will come to your site for information, and end up purchasing his autograph, even if this wasn't the visitors original intention. You know the old saying.......the more you throw at the wall, the more will stick.

3. The bigger the website the better.... It's simple

The more pages your website has, the more keywords and phrases you can use. The major search engines will index all of your pages (for the most part).

4. What pages won't a search engine 'see'?

It is best to build a website in a language search engines can understand. If you have a site that takes all its information from a database on your server, the search engines likely will not index that information.

Example: You have a website that sells tickets.

Since the tickets you sell are for shows and events that are constantly changing, your webmaster probably will build you a site that is dependent on pulling information from a database. Spiders generally have a harder time 'seeing' information from these types of websites. I recommend that for every 'dynamic' or database driven service on your site, you also create a basic HTML page, that search engines can follow.

For instance, you may have a new comedy show coming to town that you want to sell tickets for. Just like the above example on autographs, you should create different pages and sections on each individual type of show. Have a link for 'Music Tickets', then a link for each type of music and create a separate page for that......like 'Rock and Roll Tickets', 'Country Music Tickets' etc..... all with their own separate page. Now, you have created a way for the search engines to 'see' that your website not only sells tickets, but also what types of tickets, down to the last detail. You will now find yourself listed in the search engines for a multitude of ticket related keywords. If your whole site is database driven, the number of keywords you will be found under will be much less.

5. Other Tips :

* Use keyword internal linking: Search engine spiders 'see' what each link to a page is being labeled.Example: if you have a page that is about 'Sports Autographs', then label all your internal links to that page as 'Sports Autographs', rather then something like 'click here for more autographs'..... in other words, use keywords to label your internal links.

* Have at least your major links listed on the main (index) page. Also, a sitemap is a great tool for the search engines (and visitors) to use, to find all of your pages. Have a link to your sitemap from your index page.

* Make sure you have the location of your shop, office, store etc. on your main page (in HTML text), even if the services you offer are geared to a national audience, it is smart to appeal to your local audience as well. A good way to do this is to have your company name, address, town and state at the very bottom of your page, in an unobtrusive manner. Put it at the bottom of every page on your site.

* Its a good idea to make changes to your site at least occasionally. Since search engine spiders are constantly crawling the web, they will visit your site regularly. Updating your text (even just a little) or creating new pages shows that your site is active.

* Its ok to have external (outbound) links on your site. Again, it shows that your website is offering information. If your website is about 'Colorado Real Estate', then list some Colorado related sites such as: the official Colorado state website, or maybe a site that talks about restaurants in Colorado etc.

* Use 'Call to Action' language on your pages....i.e. 'click here to fill out our response form' or list your 800 number prominently on every page.

* HTML Tips

title= use this command for all your internal links (each link can have its own 'title')

Example: a href="http://www.web-promotion-specialist.com/searchengineoptimization.htm" title="Search Engine Optimization"

alt= use this command to describe what your images or photos are (search engines can't 'see' images, so you can tell the search engines what each image or photo is about)

Example: img src="images/logo.gif" width="131" height="80" alt= "Company Logo"

About the Author
Website Promotion by John Aschoff
http://www.web-promotion-specialist.com/
phone: 605-332-3799
email: jaschoff@web-promotion-specialist.com
Professional web promotion strategy for business. Link building, website text writing and search engine optimization. Articles and information on internet marketing.

How To Build Your First Web Site

Most Internet service providers offer their customers a space to place a basic site on the World Wide Web. With this basic site you will get your very own URL. (Universal Resource Locater) This will be your business address on the web. Now, anyone who knows your URL will know how to contact you on the World Wide Web. Even if they are on the other side of the world!

Many other places exist where you can easily set up a free website.

http://www.geocities.com/

http://www.freewebspace.net/

http://www.tripod.com/

http://www.freeservers.com/

Or surf to http://www.google.com/...
Type Free Web Host into the search box. And then check out the top Free Web Host. Comparing their services.

Here are even more reasons to build a website!
To start a business.

To promote a business.

Advertise where guest can find a Wedding.

Information on an upcoming family reunion.

To put together a class reunion and find classmates.

Publish ideas about life to the world.

Publish works of art and literature to the world.

Build a site to help with a charity or personal project.

You will need to learn a little HTML. Web pages are written in HTML. This is a special language read by computers. Don't panic! HTML(hyper text markup language) is easy to learn.

Here's a few online resources:

DaveSite http://www.davesite.com/

HTML Goodies http://www.htmlgoodies.com/

Webmonkey http://www.webmonkey.com/

Many special editors are available to guide you in composing HTML documents.

Microsoft Front Page http://www.microsoft.com/

Dreamweaver http://www.macromedia.com/

Or download one of the WYSIWYG editors. (What You See Is What You Get!)

With these editors you can easily compose web pages without knowing any HTML at all. Go to the site below and type in WYSIWYG Editors in the search box.

http://www.webattack.com/

Or you might decide to use the editor at one of the free host to compose your first website.

In addition, the web host usually supply website templates. You plug in your important information and build a professional looking website quickly. All sounds to good to be true. But it is!
Many free web host also supply users with WYSIWYG Editors.

Thanks to technological advances and improved software, composing your first professional looking website is a breeze.

About the Author
BB Lee is Editor/Publisher of SmallBizBits
FREE Home Based Business Newsletter.
Subscribe Now and receive a free ebook bonus.

How To Design, Create, Build and Develop a Professional Web Site ?

Some Most useful Tips / Points / Tutorials for Web designing

There are literally millions of Internet users with thousands more coming online each day. Many of which would love to have the ability to create their own web site. Not just any web site, but a professional web site specifically designed to sell.

So you've finally decided to create your own Web Site. After all, your friends and business associates have one and you don't want to be left behind on the Information Super Highway. It's usually a good idea to chart out your Website on paper before touching PC.

If you're designing a mini-site, your website should focus on one particular product. However, content sites are a bit different. If you're developing a content site, your site should focus on a subject on which you have a great deal of knowledge. And, should relate to your products or services. In addition, your images, ezine and content should also relate.

Designing Your Site

When you begin designing your site, your top priority must be your products. If your potential customers can't find your products, you're not going to make any sales. It's that simple. Every part of your website should have one specific purpose -- to lead your potential customers to your products.

For example, if you will be providing your visitors with tutorials, these tutorials should relate to your products or services. They should identify a problem, provide instruction to assist your visitors, and promote your products as the solution.

Your Storefront ( Home Page of Your Website )

The main page of your website is your storefront or Gateway Page. It should load quickly and provide your visitors with a complete overview of everything your website offers.

Instead of trying to cover all of your information into your main page, consider creating sections. These sections can contain highlights of your information with a link to further information. You can divide your page into sections by using tables. These tables can contain colored heading sections for information such as news, articles, products or whatever you'd like.

Keep your main page as small as possible, while at the same time, include your most important elements. You can then use links to additional pages to provide the detailed information.

Load Time

According to two surveys conducted by Forrester Research and Gartner Group, ecommerce sites are losing $1.1 to $1.3 billion in revenue each year due to customer click-away caused by slow loading websites.

The main page of your website should load within 8 seconds or less with a 56K modem.

There are many things that can cause a web page to load slowly including:

Large graphics
Too many graphics
Animated graphics
Too many banners
Special Effects
Large pages
Optimization

You can significantly decrease your site's load time simply by optimizing your graphics. This process will decrease your graphic's file size without sacrificing the graphic's quality.

You can optimize your images right online. Visit GifWorks for further information. http://www.gifworks.com/

Enhancing Your Site

There are a number of ways you can enhance your site without using a lot of graphics. For example, if you can use the same small images such as bullets or arrows, it will give the illusion that you're using a lot of graphics. However, your graphic will only have to load one time. This will enable you to "recycle" your images to keep your page's load time down, while at the same time, enhancing your site's appearance.

In addition, you can enhance your site by using tables with colored backgrounds instead of images.

If an image doesn't enhance your page in some way, you'll be better off to just leave it out.

Tables

If you'd like to set up your web page using tables, try to place your Heading text above your table code. If this isn't possible, make sure you include your most relevant keyword phrase within your top left table cell. This will assist you in ranking higher in the Search Engines.Screen

Resolutions

When designing your site, keep in mind, your visitors will have many different screen resolutions.

The resolution of a monitor refers to the total number of pixels. The higher the resolution, the greater the number of pixels. Higher resolutions present higher quality images.

To accommodate the majority of your visitors, use a standard screen resolution of 800x600 pixels.

Another way to ensure that your web page will look great to all of your visitors is to set it up using tables. Instead of using a fixed width within your table code, use a percentage. This will enable your web page to span a certain percentage of your visitors' screen size. For example, if you set your table width at 90%, your web page will automatically resize and span 90% of your visitors' screen size, no matter what screen resolution they're using.

Colors

Although there are an unlimited number of background and text colors you could use for your web page, a white background with black text will be your best option.

You must be very cautious when selecting your background and text colors, as reading on a computer screen is much more difficult than paper. You must make your web page as easy to read as possible.

You can add color to your pages using tables with colored cells.

Web Browsers

Before you begin the actual design process, I highly recommend that you download and install two web browsers -- Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. These are the two most widely used browsers on the Internet. Why download and install both browsers? So you can view your pages through both browsers, as they are not created equally. Your page might look great when viewed through Internet Explorer, but may not display well when viewed through Navigator.

Internet Explorer

Netscape Navigator

It is very important that you take the time to design your web pages to accommodate both browsers.

In addition, you can also visit AnyBrowser to view how your site will look through different browsers and screen resolutions. http://www.anybrowser.com

Above all else, your product must be your main focus. Your product should be displayed above the fold of your web page. This is the top portion of your web page that is visible when your page is first loaded, without scrolling. This is the most important part of your entire page -- use it wisely.

Take your time and plan your website very carefully. There is much more to web design than meets the eye. Do your homework and learn how to design a website that sells. It will be well worth your time and effort. ....More