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A lot of clients ask why they need their 'already working perfectly well' website validated. Below is a brief guide to try and answer this in a clear and simple way.

Firstly we should explain what is meant by a validated website.

Put simply, validation is the act of writing and designing a website in as 'clean' a way as possible and testing it against industry standards. It makes use of cascading style sheets (CSS) to format the page layout and text and also cleans up any 'loose coding' which could otherwise cause problems.

For a further description we refer to an excerpt from the wc3 website as they are the last word when it comes to validation!

Validation is a process of checking your documents against a formal Standard, such as those published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for HTML and XML-derived Web document types. It serves a similar purpose to spell checking and proofreading for grammar and syntax, but is much more precise and reliable than any of those processes because it is dealing with precisely-specified machine languages, not with nebulously-defined human natural language.

The Benefits of Validating your website.

1. Compatibility

When your website code is not validated you are running the risk of your site displaying unpredictably in different browsers. For example, Internet Explorer is more forgiving and likely to internally fix small amounts of 'loose coding' whereas stricter browsers such as Mozilla Firefox and Safari will display a page as it is coded. Validation makes the code uniform and means you will not have an unprofessional and unpredictable looking website or risk alienating certain users who don't use Internet Explorer!

2. Search Engine Optimisation

A website that is 'clean' is far easier for the search engines (Google, Yahoo etc) to 'read through' and index. The easier they can do this the easier it is for them to find the real meat of your site i.e. the content. The other point to make here is that if your site isn't validated it is possible for search engines to place greater emphasis on the wrong part of your code and your site could therefore be missing out on being found for the most appropriate searches *

3. Accessibility

Validating a site requires the use of many accessibility techniques such as the use of ALT tag on images. Steps such as these make your site more readable for those users who are vision, motor skilled or cognitively impaired. Validation makes the site readable as it allows aids such as screen readers to read through your site correctly. Although validation is not in any way a guarantee that your site is accessible, it is a huge leap towards this and far superior to an unvalidated site.

4. Faster loading

Conventional websites made use of tables and an extensive amount of tags for formatting both the page structure and content. The use of CSS separates the structure from the content and gives the browsers less code to trawl through before they can successfully render the page. Validation also aids the browser in displaying the site faster as there is no 'loose coding' for the browser to get tangled up in or waste time trying to 'fix'.

So where does this leave you?

Firstly you might like to check your current site for validation (see the steps below).

Secondly, decide whether validation is something that you feel you should be concerned with but please bear in mind that you now have a legal obligation to have an accessible website *

Thirdly, enlist the help of a professional SEO company to review your website and carry out necessary alterations. In some cases you may be cheaper having your website completely rebuilt rather than trying to fix the current errors but don't let this put you off. Look upon it as an opportunity to spruce up your existing site and start afresh!

How to validate your website using Validation Tools:

1. Go to the W3C validator website.
2. Type in the URL of your website.
3. Hit the check button.
4. You will be presented with a list of results.

SEO and Web Design

Search Engine Optimization is a method to allow search engines to access your website by honing in on your meta tags. Therefore, you must ensure that your tags are properly worded and placed, i.e., using a specific number of characters for your title, keywords, and description, on every page of your website as this will ultimately increase your traffic flow.

But before all this, you must be aware of that Web Design is an important aspect for SEO. Therefore, you need to design your website in such a way so that it is much more appealing to its visitors than the others out there. After all, Good website designs allure visitors to at least visit through the whole site.

Hence here are some web design tips to make your site look more attractive.

* You must choose carefully, a professional color scheme for your website as it represents your company's image. Stick to two or three complementary colors.

* Try to use images and graphics in your website. This will prove to be highly beneficial for you in case the visitor is not free to read your content but if you can attract them by images then you can convey your important message clearly. This will also help in capturing the visitor's attention and recall your site to visit again and again. But remember, do not over use Flash and other animation tools as this leads to an increase in page's loading time and also looks unprofessional.

* Try to use bullets and numbering to make your content more crisp and lucid. Your visitor might not read every sentence of your content but can read the bulleted points easily.

* You must ensure that your visitors can read the text on the background i.e. if the background is dark always use light color for the writing a text and visa versa.

* You don't need to fill the whole screen with text and graphics instead use the white space effectively, and allow elements to breathe.

* Try to create a simple logo to identity your website. And this very logo explains everything about your business, hence you must take utmost care in not to use more than three colors and not to make it too wide or too tall. Also, have a captivating tag line somewhere with the header, and write an About Us page which describes the uniqueness of your website. These will leave an impression for your visitors to remember your website.

* You must provide a way back to your home page on every single page of your site and give your customer the information they will be looking for and help them find it easily and quickly.

* You must keep your site's navigation consistent. What you do on one page, should be done the same way on the rest of your site's pages. Keep the colors consistent as well.

* You must make sure that your page loads faster. If viewers have to wait for a page to load then they will switch over to somewhere else. It is estimated that if a page doesn't load in 8 seconds you will lose 1/3 of your visitors.

A Few Mistakes to Avoid When Designing Your Web Site

Be aware of these common pitfalls when designing your site:

* The home page does not quickly tell you what the Web site is all about. You should be able to visit the home page of any Web site and figure out what the site is about, what type of products it sells, or what it is advertising within five seconds.

* The poor use of popup windows, splashy advertising, splash pages (pages with neat animations and sound but which you have to watch for five to ten seconds before you are taken to the real Web site), and other Web design features that draw interest away from your Web site, products, and/ or services.

* Poor Web site navigation. This includes broken hyperlinks, hidden navigation, poor wording of navigational links, links that take you to pages with no links, links that take you to the same Web page, and pages with no links back to the home page (always include a link back to the home page so that regardless of where site visitors are, they can find their way back home!).

* Believing that because you have a Web site, you have a marketing campaign or overall marketing and advertising strategy. You need to understand that your Web site is not your marketing strategy. Your Web site is just a part of your overall marketing strategy, depending on your business goals; for example, if you have a successful restaurant but want to advertise and promote your business on the Web. Creating a Web site is great, but if it is not promoted and advertised, no one will ever find it. By passing out business cards with your Web site URL embossed on them, you are using a traditional marketing campaign to promote your Web site. If you offer a downloadable/ printable coupon from your Web site, you are successfully using your Web site as part of your marketing strategy to meet your goal of increased restaurant sales.

* Failure to attain Web site relevance and content updating. There is nothing more dissatisfying to a Web customer than visiting a Web site that is grossly out of date. Incorrect pricing, products no longer available, dated content, and ancient advertising all signify to the Web site visitor that your devotion to your Web site is suffering greatly. Cramming your pages with non-relevant material will detract the visitor from getting the point of your Web site (the five-second rule mentioned earlier).

* Avoid too many text effects. Forget flashing text, reversing text, gymnastics text, or other eye-popping and dizzying effects, which do nothing more than annoy your site visitor. Don't create a "loud" Web site that contain so many blinking, flashing, twirling, and spinning icons, text, or graphics that visitors are overwhelmed by the effects and under-whelmed by the site content.

* Limit the number of graphics on your Web site so that you don't overwhelm your site visitors with "graphics overload." Don't use animated GIF images on your Web site. These were cool ten years ago, but in today's professional environment, they are just another "loud," annoying distraction that site visitors don't want to see.

* Don't use Microsoft's themes (built-in design templates) when creating a Web site with Microsoft FrontPage. While FrontPage is bashed on a regular basis, we stand by the fact that it can be used to design great Web sites.

* Don't incorporate frames into Web site design. The use of frames within a Web site will drive customers away faster than anything!

* DO incorporate the proper Web site design elements to ensure that your Web site is ready to be found by search engines.

Basis of Accessible and Creative Website 2.0 Design Professional

There has been a radical change in the web designing to make accessible website design more appealing, fresh and user friendly.

A set of various tools amalgamate the micro content in a new and useful ways. In Web 1.0, a smaller number of people have been writing for a larger number of readers, but with the passage of time, there has been an utter need to fill in gulf of info in a web page, and that is from where the concept of web 2.0 designs has come. As compared to the earlier web designing concepts the new design Web 2.0 strategy puts content as per how people search.

But why this name: 'web 2.0 design'? Many people describe resurgence in the web economy and new level of technological connection between web sites and services by the term "Web 2.0". In a word, today's website design is simple, bold, and elegant that delivers more with less do. Fewer, well-chosen and carefully selected visual elements to create the desired feel are the keys to direct the users' sights straight to the main points of an affordable website design with it the presence of fewer and comprehensive words shape up the site's look and feel properly. So many crucial attributes jointly make this possible in reality. Following are some of the important facets that make website 2.0 design successful.

Simplicity The main purpose of the web 2.0 design is the simplicity and web 2.0 design is simpler than ever. A focused, clean and simple layout is eye soothing that makes today's large and small business web design separate from the previous versions. Lots of unnecessary information is crammed sometimes that are barely relevant to the purpose of a page and will distract attention from the key content and navigation. And off course what we are seeing is the soft information like the first impression about the quality of the company, the sense of how approachable a service provider is, and whether the product we are seeing is right for you. Therefore, in that case our gaze should not be going elsewhere other than the main info. As a result, accessible website design professional ( www.vnsinfo.com.au ) should try concentrating on removing consciously unnecessary components, without sacrificing effectiveness and looking for alternative solutions that attain the same result more simply. Not just to decorate, but to communicate the relevant information with lines, words, shapes, color must be the search areas for a simple and accessible website design. Central Layout In common, the vast majority of sites these days are positioned centrally within the browser window as compared to the full-screen (liquid) or left-aligned / fixed-size layout done a few years ago. Whatever the nature of the sites: Custom website design, Database website design or Ecommerce website design, the web sites look more simple, bold and honest when it sits straight in front & center. We should be economical to use the pixels to a more fervent look. White space here will route our eye view with clear-cut designing sense. A normal prescription is to place your site centrally unless you are not aesthetically opposed to do so. Fewer columns As compared to website design with 3-column, though not sometimes 4-column, today's web design has seen sites with 2 clean columns, and oftentimes 3 also is the mainstream maximum. With fewer columns, we can end up communicating any info more clearly. One recommended step is to use no more than 3 columns. Separate top sections

There is nothing new about making the top of the screen distinct from the rest of the main content. Sites prepared this way actually carry out a distinct approach to the other sites commonly built. It is a good idea to clear the space at the top by placing logo and navigations boldly. Both the main branding and main navigation should be bold and clear. Put the logo on the top left and place main navigation right after it. By the use of bold, solid block of different color or tone and similar other alternatives the top section is made distinct from the rest of the page.

Simple Navigations The site navigation structure must be clear, identifiable as navigation and it should be easy to interpret to the target audience. Clearly written, large and bold navigational links with specified color, tone and shape apart from the rest of the content is the look out for every web designer. In a way, navigation should be clearly distinguishable from non-navigation. Bold logos The first impression a web site instills is 'who we are?', and that can be achievable by a clear, Strong, bold company logo. Now a day the company logo has been bigger and highlighted, incorporating the brand image, attitude and tone of voice. A good and brief logo that has a visual impact and that is recognizable and distinctive represents your brand's personality and qualities on first viewing. Bigger Text Compared to older-style sites lots of web sites today have big text. Making fonts bigger will make the site usable to the viewers. However, making all the fonts bigger is sometimes destructive to the normal designing approach. Simply use a base font size for your website, and make all other fonts relative to that one (e.g. font-size: 115%). This will make your website still cool looking. Inside a CSS file define your font-relevant settings and as usual: one font per web page is fine. Never use more than 3 different font-sizes.

Bold Text Introductions

Many sites lead with strong all-text headline descriptions. Off course there can be headlines about the services, but sometime graphical representation is worth mentioning, giving much relevance to the look and feel of the site as a whole. When it is required to use the bold text introduction, please use that on a simple background to convey the message.

Strong and Intense Colors Color always plays a vital role to enhance the importance of any specific area. In a creative website design ( www.websites4u.com.au ) also it has a different role when, you have a simple, stripped-out design. Here we can use color that is strong and bright and that draws the eyes to the items you want the visitor to notice. Simply, use them to divide the page into clear sections, and to highlight important elements. So many times we find that our attention drawn away from the real content for the confusing use of intense color outside the main page area. If color is used to attract the eye, the eyes get confused and the site will be chaotic and confusing. Therefore, remember to use color sparingly. Rich surfaces The use of subtle 3D effects, sparingly, enhances the qualitative feel of the design. At the same time, it should be kept in mind that, the effects should not be overdone. Plainly avoid trying to make your entire design 3D-realistic, as that is more work and that will increase the page assets size; sometimes a little work goes a long way.

Gradients In case of the areas that would otherwise be flat color or tone, gradients soften them. Drop-shadows, the inner-glows and spectacular highlights we see on glass- or plastic-style buttons are there to soften any surface. Reflections Reflections sometimes make the site design clean, simple and rich. The illusion of reflection on gradients is of 2 kinds: Highlights on shiny surface and shiny table effect! Some patterns, in this case, are very popular: realistic effects of water droplets, glass beads, shiny plastic buttons etc. Cute icons The use of Icons to say thousand words plays an important role in Web 2.0 design. Today we use fewer, better icons that carry more meaning. In comparison to the past website designs when there was a trend to use icons more, today we use clear text more extensively, and are less ready to litter a page with icons. In lots of the cases, a simple word is more effective. Icons, when used, should be easily identifiable and carry a clear meaning.

7 Tips to Designing Fast Loading Website

There are plenty of useful tips to follow in order to design an effective and high-quality website. But among those recommendations, one that is given high importance and proper attention is to achieve fast loading website. This should be given high importance because most visitors are time savvy and they really don't have to waste their time waiting for the loading of the site. Since time is precious, the loading of a page should not take long. If the designer does not solve this, there's a possibility that the web surfer will just look for other sites that will provide them the same resources but with better and faster loading time. Just check out our secrets that will be helpful to create a well-designed and fast loading website for you to keep your visitor stay longer on your site.

1. Lessen the Use of Images

The best solution to achieve a fast loading website is to design it with minimum images. Using graphics is essential in Web Design that really attracts the overall appearance of the page. They also make it more attractive and colorful. However too much make use of images can slow down its loading time. To prevent this to happen, include only necessary images to make the page simple, neat and professional-looking. Just bear in mind that making the site simple is truly effective to bring out what's best on your site.

2. Abstain Using Bulky Images

As informed earlier, using images may upset the loading time of a page. So if the website really needs to include many pictures, you must avoid using bulky and large images to make its loading faster. You have reduced the size of an image into smaller one for about 15kb (maximum) for you to manage your load speed. On the other hand, if you have to show a large photo for the sake of your visitors, include a small image or thumbnail on your page that has a link to a larger one. In that case, the visitors can have an option whether they are willing to wait to view for a larger image to load.

3. Utilize Tables in Creating Simple Icons

As a substitute of using images as icons on your site, just utilize tables in creating menus. Making tables creatively does not only give your site some great-looking designs but also help you to achieve a faster loading time.

4. Reduce the Work on of Flash

Flash animations do catch the attention of most visitors. However, if you do not manage to utilize them properly, they can give bad impressions on your site such as bogging down visitor's system resources and slowing down the loading of the page. To avoid these negative effects, as much as possible abstain using flash animations because it keeps your visitor waiting for a longer time, however if it's really needed, try out to cut down them.

5. Utilize CSS Styles

Since CSS Style is just a simple HTML code, it loads very fast. So to designed well-designed website that can load faster, work on css styles effectively and creatively. This will catch the attentions of most visitors because of designing its text with some cool effects.

6. Minimize the Utilize of Animated Gifs

Just like images, animated gifs can also slow down the loading of a page. So if it's not really important to include that, just don't use that effect. It's because it can also be irritating for some visitors to see animated gifs. But if this will help in enhancing the design of the site, just be sure to reduce them.

7. Keep Observing the Loading of the page

After you have successfully designed your site, always keep observing of your loading page. Having a regular check up for the loading time of your site, will also help to better improve it, in order for you to keep your visitor stay long on and make them come back again for more updates on your site.

About Internet , Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Concepts to Keep Your Members Coming Back

Web 2.0 may be the most overused, and misunderstood, term of the decade. What it means, in a nutshell is providing a user driven website. Basically many membership marketing websites are Web 2.0, especially social networking sites. The users determine the content in the form of forums, blogs, article posting, reviews and so on. To further enhance the usability of your website and thus the benefit to your members, here are a some ideas to provide a few interactive extras or member benefits.

Training courses are an excellent tool to provide benefit to your members. There are multiple forms for delivering your courses. You could use email - text or html or both, pdf downloads, website content pages, streaming & downloadable videos and audios.

E-mail training courses - Getting your members to sign up for an e-mail training course that takes place over perhaps eight weeks, is a great way of keeping your members engaged with your site over a period of time. You could make this a free course, a paid course or both. Maybe give them a few lessons for free and ask them to pay for the rest of the course once they are into it.

However, to get maximum exposure giving away an entire course or even multiple courses of good quality for Free will really get people coming back to your site. We do this with some of our own membership sites including MembershipMillionaire.com.

Video tutorials - This is a very effective form of training as it is much easier to show your members what you are doing, rather than trying to explain it. It prevents your students becoming frustrated when they can't understand what you are explaining, and reduces misunderstanding.

You could do the videos yourself using software or you could hire experts in video creation if you are not comfortable using software or doing videos. You could do simple power point slideshows and narrate them or you could stand/sit in front of the camera and talk.

With many Internet users on broadband or ADSL nowadays and computer processors getting faster and faster videos are now going mainstream.

Teleclasses - Teleclasses are similar to conference calls and are conducted over the telephone. They are an excellent way for your members to take part in live learning, as well as having personal interaction with you and other members of your site.

There are many services out there that provide teleconference lines for you to use. Some are free and some have paid services, you should decide what is best for your business needs. You could even record your calls, have transcripts made and then sell that as another product in itself. To top that off you could offer reprint or resell rights to those calls and sell licenses.

Product reviews - Reviews posted by other members is a fantastic interactive medium. It could also engage heated discussions! Nothing gets traffic faster than controversy whether good or bad. Let your members speak their mind about products and services they've used. This will not only help other members and visitors out but it will add lots of content to your site that the search engines love. Sites such as Amazon.com, SureFireWealth.com and others do this on a regular basis.

Guest interviews - Guest interviews with a well known personality who is connected with your niche subject will add huge credibility to your site. Promote guest interviews on your website and in your newsletter. This is a quick way to get great content.

You could post the interview on your site as website content. Or you could have the streaming audio or video up and even let your members download the interviews. Let them post reviews and comments to the interviews and you've got even more content.

Forums - Forums are a type of virtual community and provide the opportunity for people with similar interests to talk to each other. Your members will already have a shared interest in your niche subject, so creating active discussion forums won't be too challenging.

Here's a tip, have good forum monitors and admin in place to keep things smooth. Having multiple monitors can help you get your new forum started as well as keep discussions ongoing. You could keep your forums open to everyone. That will be better for search engine traffic but it can also attract spammers and forum hackers. Having a private forum for your members only can keep things more secure and full of like minded individuals.

Competitions - Encourage your members to post on your forum or blog by running a competition. Award a prize each month to someone who has made the best post on your forum, and each individual posting would be an additional entry into the prize draw. Or maybe give a prize to the member who writes the most reviews or posts the most comments each month to your site.

Involving your members in polls and surveys

Member polls - Asking your members to answer a simple question relating to your niche subject is a simple and effective way to get them involved in the site. Have a regular monthly poll and publish the results of the previous month's poll above the question for the current month.

Surveys - Some niche subjects lend themselves well to surveys. If yours does not you could conduct a survey about your membership site itself. This gives your members the chance to express their views and let you know what changes they would like to see.

Getting feedback can also let you know where to take your membership site. By allowing your members to tell you what they want you can just simply give it to them. We've taken surveys ourselves over the years and they can be very insiteful. The poll or survey data you generate can be gold to your customer feedback system for the future of your business.

Newsletters - Newsletters may be used to highlight forum posts, questions that people have asked, blog posts and even case studies, survey results, success stories and more. Get your community involved in the content both online and in your newsletter. They'll be invested in the results. We'll get more in depth about newsletters in another article.

About Internet , Web 2.0

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