When it comes to your website, extra attention should be paid to every minute detail to make sure it performs optimally to serve its purpose. Here are seven important rules of thumb to observe to make sure your website performs well.

1) Do not use splash pages

Splash pages are the first pages you see when you arrive at a website. They normally have a very beautiful image with words like “welcome” or “click here to enter”. In fact, they are just that — pretty vases with no real purpose. Do not let your visitors have a reason to click on the “back” button! Give them the value of your site up front without the splash page.

2) Do not use excessive banner advertisements

Even the least net savvy people have trained themselves to ignore banner advertisements so you will be wasting valuable website real estate. Instead, provide more valueable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content, and let your visitors feel that they want to buy instead of being pushed to buy.

3) Have a simple and clear navigation

You have to provide a simple and very straightforward navigation menu so that even a young child will know how to use it. Stay away from complicated Flash based menus or multi-tiered dropdown menus. If your visitors don’t know how to navigate, they will leave your site.

4) Have a clear indication of where the user is

When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you will want to make sure they know which part of the site they are in at that moment. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site easily. Don’t confuse your visitors because confusion means “abandon ship”!

5) Avoid using audio on your site

If your visitor is going to stay a long time at your site, reading your content, you will want to make sure they’re not annoyed by some audio looping on and on on your website. If you insist on adding audio, make sure they have some control over it — volume or muting controls would work fine.

© 2010, admin. All rights reserved.

Flash-based sites have been a craze since the past few years, and as Macromedia compiles more and more great features into Flash, we can only predict there will be more and more flash sites around the Internet. However, Flash based sites have been disputed to be bloated and unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

The good:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain css code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and effective way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (and hence smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

The bad and the ugly:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Hence, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

The best way to go is to use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, use a mixture of Flash and HTML or use pure text if your site is purely to present simple textual and graphical information.

© 2010, admin. All rights reserved.

Convincing your prospects to purchase from you is a hard job, but have you ever thought that you’re making the process twice as difficult for both parties if your prospects are convinced but don’t know how to buy from you? No matter how good you are at convincing your prospects, they won’t buy if they find the process cumbersome.

First, you will want to check that people can find your order form easily and hassle-free. You can write a clear, concise paragraph to direct your prospects to your order form so that you can minimize the chances of them getting lost. You can also reduce the chances of losing prospects by putting a prominent link to your order page from every other page on your site.

Also, do you offer multiple payment options? Some people may feel comfortable paying via Paypal, some may only want to pay with their credit card and others might want to send a cheque. The more options you offer, the better your chances of covering your prospects’ desired payment method. After all, it wouldn’t make any sense to sell hard to a prospect only to find that they won’t be able to pay you when they want to.

On the other hand, you will want to prove that you are a credible merchant. Is your order form secured using encryption technology? You would want to look into SSL for this. You can also offer a money back guarantee so that people will feel confident about buying from you. How about after sales support? Who do they contact when they have problems after purchasing?

Alternatively, you can add customer testimonials, your contact information, address, and so on to boost your prospects’ confidence. Make them feel safe about buying something from you, a total stranger to them on the other end of the Internet.

As a conclusion, it would be very pitiful if you sold hard and sold well to a prospect and something goes wrong when he or she is ready to pay. Eliminate any chances of that to maximize your profits!

© 2010, admin. All rights reserved.

Content is really important for webmasters. Why? When people surf the web, they are looking for information. They aren’t looking for you specifically, unless you’re well-known. If they visit your site and don’t what they’re looking for, they will leave quickly. And they probably won’t return to your site. Well, they might stumble back onto your site, but not on purpose.

Quality sites provide quality content. Quality content helps you retain visitors. Visitors may spread the word about your site and thus attract new visitors.

Adding new high quality content to your site regularly is also beneficial. With more content, you will have more pages indexed by the search engines. More pages indexed means you will have more opportunities for people to find you via search engines.

So how exactly do you get content for your site?

1. Your unique knowledge

Everybody knows something others don’t. Use your own unique insight and knowledge to provide content. Think of what activities you’ve participated in the past. Think of what you’ve learned through past experiences. Any experiences can help, whether at home, school, work, or anywhere else. Of course, providing your own content regularly can be very difficult.

2. Personal stories

Personal stories are the basis of some sites and blogs. Want to connect with your audience and let them know more about you? Use personal stories. However, if you don’t want to be too personal, make sure you inject your personality into your writing. Personality differentiates you from the rest and can keep visitors coming back.

3. How-to guides

People have problems and like to figure out how to solve them. Had some problem you struggled with for a while? Did you eventually solve it? The way you solved it could be written into a how-to guide. Or write a how-to guide about your expert area. For example, if you’re a technical computer whiz, you could write a how-to guide for fixing computers.

4. Do research

Do some research on the web. Use search engines, search directories, and follow links to find relevant sites. Do some research at your local library. Grab some books about your site’s topic and start digging through them. Find local experts, teachers, and professors and ask them questions about your site’s topic. When you research, note down interesting ideas and you’ll undoubtedly learn more. You’ll have more unique knowledge that you can turn into content. You might even discover something earth-shattering!

5. Subscribe to newsletters

Good newsletters are a great way to keep informed about a particular topic. They can keep you informed of offers that you may be able to provide on your own site. As well, they can keep you on top of what’s happening in your area by providing time-sensitive content.

© 2010, admin. All rights reserved.

Dear Reader,

If you are reading this article, most probably you have faced some communication problem with your offshore team or you are considering to offshore your project work and want to learn effective ways to communicate to the team which is thousands miles away.

Being CEO of outsourcing company (Infotrex Services Pvt. Ltd.), I deal with many clients(based in USA, UK, Italy, Ireland, France etc.) & our team here in India. I will share some of my insights and day-to-day observations, so that you can get benefited.

Lets try to understand the basics of communication and possible ways to make mistakes when communicating with your offshore team in India. There are 3 entities involved in any communication – 1. Sender, 2. Receiver & 3. Channel between Sender-Receiver.

Now, try to understand Sender (its you yourself!!!). Mostly you are born & brought up in western country, having some cultural inclination and English language knowledge. Receiver is mostly the person in India, who knows English, but finds it hard to understand American English accent as well as having different cultural & geographical understanding. Channels of Communication can be phone, email & chat most of the time.

Now, lets try to accept the fact that – when messages(technically communication signals) are sent from sender to receiver through any communication channels, then some sort of noise or distortion will happen and because of that communication will be broken. These kind of communication gaps can become critical for long term success or failure of the project or relationship between you and off the shore team.

So, here are best 7 tips:

1. Start initial communication on Phone It is easy to pick up a phone and start talking with someone who is ready to listen to your ideas or project requirements. If you can find someone from offshore company who can understand your English accent, that’s a very good first start. Nowadays many offshore companies have US phone numbers or Skype ID, so just find it out if any phone communication channel is available to offshore team and start using it first. If any offshore company is not providing phone support, then either they are not capable to understand western English or do not understand the importance of this communication channel. Beware of these kind of companies because in long run, you will find it very problematic to communicate because of time difference & cultural differences.

2. Start Email communication to extend initial Phone Communication If you have passed the first phase of phone communication, then next phase is to have some written text via email. Do not expect that the receiver (offshore team) will remember & understand 100% whatever you have discussed on phone. Nobody is 100% perfect, so accept this fact and try to fill-up the gaps of phone communication by writing email. This 2nd phase will crystallize your thoughts/ideas or project requirements and will provide written evidences for future use.

3. Start Chat Communication to extend Phone & Email Communication
Once you have passed first & second phase, then you should start feeling better if the offshore team is good at communication & understanding your project requirements. Now, you can have some chat communication with CEO or Project manager if still there are communications gaps exist. Chat communication is useful for quick confirmation, clarifications and project updates. Make sure to send all chat communication through email to all concerned people, so that everyone can be in a loop.

4. Have some central Storage of All Communication Once you have started communicating with offshore team through combination of channels (phone, email, chat), then it is very easy to get lost in the pile of digital papers. So, use Google Docs or some central web-enabled storage systems (Box.net, Microsoft One Note etc.) and collaborate with team members of offshore team. You may consider developing your own customized central storage for all communication.

5. Send same message through Phone/Email/Chat You may experience that many times the messages may get lost on other end. For example, many people just leave chat message or only voicemail or only send email and then expect timely response from the offshore team. Offshore team might be busy and the message can get lost (in bulk email or voicemail or chat) which exist in only 1 communication channel. So, make sure to send same message to multiple communication channels, when something is urgent and important. If important & urgent messages are passed more than one time, there are more chances that it will be received or heard on other end.

6. Be ready with emergency communication strategies We all live in the world where anything may happen at any time. Offshore team may face power outage, internet connection outage, social problems, riots, traffic jam, computer virus, network problem etc. So, you need to have some emergency communication strategies with offshore team. You have to accept the facts that – people live in other globe of the earth are also humans and nobody anticipate failure of communication channels in advance. So, be calm and patient when something goes out of control. This tip will help a lot once in a blue moon, but very important for overall success or failure of the project or relationship.

7. Make sure to close the communication loop this is the last and essential point for any communication. In very simple words, sender say something to receiver and then ask for receiver to re-iterate same thing to sender in their own words or own ways. If both messages from sender to receiver & receiver to sender are almost same, then it is considered that the communication loop is closed. For clarity of all communication messages, closing the communication loop is very essential. Sometimes, this seems wastage of time & efforts, but believe me – in long run this last tip will make the big impact.

Use these 7 basic tips for successful communication with your offshore team in India or any offshore team through the world.

© 2010, admin. All rights reserved.