The Low Cost Web site Design Secrets series continues. You’ll always be able to click the link to the entire series below.

Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 18:
Target your audience

Having a target audience should be part of your basic website strategy.

Your site, and the products and services it offers, should be solving a specific problem that is very clear when your visitors arrive. In addiiton, it should be carefully aimed at that specific target audience.

To keep yourself on target, you should constantly be asking yourself these questions:

Do you have a target audience?
What are their wants?
What problem does your product or services solve for them?
Is it very clear that your product or service is for them?
Is is very clear what they should do to get to your product or service within three clicks from any page?

Don’t make your target audience the entire population of the world. It should be a targeted area called a niche market. If you’ve got a product that says “for coaches and trainers”, guess what. You’ll get the attention of coaches and trainers because you will be directly addressing their needs.

Knowing where you’re going is important. But, knowing who you’re going after is even more important!

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 17 :
Search Engines aren’t the only – or always the best – way to promote your site

There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of legitimate techniques you can use to get possible buyers to your site. In fact, for some really specialized areas, it’s best not to rely on search engine traffic alone. There may not be enough prospects looking for you in the search engnes, or the area you want to concentrate on may be too competitive for you to find good keywords without an expert’s help.

Even if that is not your circumstance, you will want to look to areas where other companies do not, to find prospects that are probably neglected by your competitors. In some cases, you will have them all to yourself if you target properly.

Here are just a few ways you can promote your site:

• Article marketing
• Ezine marketing
• Inexpensive ezine advertising
• Host free or inexpensive teleseminars
• Get links from other sites that already have traffic.
• Give free samples or free reports
• Send press releases

You’ll find more suggestions in this article.

Nina
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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 16:
Updates, pay per click and patience are the ingredients for best search engine results.

To have a major advantage in the search engines, you can simply update more often. If you have a static site that doesn’t have many changes to make, instead of changing each page, add a new page each day and get a new link to your site each day. This is enough for most sites. You can update a page with on-going news to do this, or start a blog.

If your area is more competitive, you’ll probably want to lean more towards solutions that include blogging, RSS, or any other technology that allows you to incorporate changes in more than one part of your site at a time. Sometimes you can edge out a competitor in the search engines just by having more than one page updating on the fly more than once a day.

In the meantime, while you’re waiting the 90 – 120 days it normally takes for good search engine results to take hold, you don’t have to wait for traffic. Use the pay per click feature that the major search engines have to help you get more traffic to your web sites. Just be careful to set a definite budget.

The last ingredient for best results in the search engines is to learn to be patient. It takes some time for your site to reach the top of the charts in the search engines, and most site never get there. This doesn’t have to be the fate of your site. Better planning, consulting with a proven expert, and following the general rules of search engine placement can get you great results over the long term.

The most brutal mistake when waiting for search engine traffic is to change the entire site around in the first 90 days, thinking that the search engnes aren’t recognizing your site. You don’t want to resort to that until that time period has passed.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 15 :
More search engine friendly design tips

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Picking up from yesterday, here are some more search engine issues you should take care of during the design phase.

Why during the design of your site? Well, someone is already accessing the HTML code of your site to make your pages appealing to the eye and to the general visitor. They might as well have the additional tweaks in mind that will bring search engine visitors specifically.

In addition to choosing and using keywords wisely, you’ll also want to be sure to get links back to your site. The best links are one-way links from authority sites, but that isn’t always possible. You can also get links from article marketing, directories, a few of the minor and specialty search engines, press releases and link trading.

Be careful with trading links. The volume of links you would need to get to make a difference, versus the fewer number of high quality one-way links, means that for most commercial sites, you should exhaust all possibilities with every other type of linking first.

Another important part of being ranked in the search engines is sticking to one theme. It’s folly to sell chocolate chip cookies and granola bars from the same site if those are your only two specialties. If you have a wider variety that all fits under the umbrella “snack food” then that is what you should target. But as soon as you have more than one theme that isn’t closely related to the first one, you should have more than one site.

In part three of this discussion on search engines and design, we’ll wrap up this mini-set of tips.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 14:
Consider proper targeting and placement of keywords during the design phase

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In this day and age, simply having a page with the right amount of keywords in the right places isn’t necessarily enough to get traffic to your site from search engines, but there are still a few basic things you can include when designing pages that will help.

Choose your keywords very carefully. This is the foundation of your search engine marketing plan. Don’t just shoot for the top keyword. It probably has the most competition and the least amount of sticky traffic. Instead, find out that is a good balance between ease of ranking and flow of visitors.

It’s better to rank number 8 for a low traffic term than on page 100 for a high traffic term.

You want to use a keyword rich title. It’s better if your title starts with your keywords and ends with your company name than vice versa.

Also use your keywords throughout your text copy – the search engines are less likely to rank your site for a term it doesn’t use. However, don’t go overboard. A good rule of thumb is to be sure the page sounds like normal speech when read aloud.

We’ll have more non-keyword related tips in the next installment.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 13:
Remember the basic elements of a readable page

Even though most people skim the web as opposed to reading it, you’ll want to know and use these tips to make your page more readable.

1. Use attractive fonts
2. Use fonts that are easy to read on every browser
3. Keep paragraphs short
4. Use lists, especially bulleted or numbered, when you can
5. Use simple language
6. Use headers throughout the page, not just at the top

There are more items to keep in mind, but those are the basics. Fill out the question form using the link below, if you want to know whether a specific page at your site is readable.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number 12:
Incorporate white space

White space (also referred to as whitespace) is the area of a page that contains no text or graphics, i.e. the space between the objects on the page. It’s not always technically white, of course. If the background of a page is off-white or cream, the portion of the page that is uncovered is still white space.

The essential thing to know is that the proper use of whitespace heightens readability. Good placement of white space throughout a page is actually a part of good design. It also makes the web page easier on the eyes, which has its part in making visitors stay longer.

Be sure to use the RSS links to your right to subscribe before you go – you won’t want to miss the rest of this free design secrets series.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number :
Learn the proper use of contrast.

Wikipedia defines contrast as follows:

In visual perception, contrast is the difference in visual properties that makes an object (or its representation in an image) distinguishable from other objects and the background.

Many mistakes are made in contrast with web design. One thing to look out for is to make sure that in all browsers, your text is about the same difference in shade from the colour of the background.

You’ll want to use text that stands out from the background, bold text occasionally and no more than three fonts, Don’ts include, using a dark coloured font against a dark background, and lack of white space.

You might also think about using contrasting colours – just be sure they dont clash.

We’ll talk next about the use of white space.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number Ten :
Pick Colour Combintations that are Aligned with Your Company Message

If your company is conservative or oriented towards big comporations, it’s not wise to pick colour sets that convey a young, hip, image. You do so much hard work (or pay so much money) to get visitors to show up at your site. You don’t want to then drive them away when they arrive.

Using bright red and bright blue on your Web site is never a good idea, no matter who your target market is. Trying to focus on both bright colours will strain the eye.

A popular colour combination found on Web sites nowadays is a blue-and-white combination or different shades of blue. Blue represents peace, calmness and stability. People trust blue Web sites more. Using blue text will make people retain more information from your site. If you wish to convey royalty and elegance, use a combination of blue, purple, and white. See colour combinations for Web sites for more sample colour sets.

Visitors to your Web site form their first impression about your Web site within the few seconds. The right use of colour can make a visitor feel welcome, relaxed and comfortable – just like an inviting comfortable home. So, use colours effectively to draw your customers in and entice them to buy your product or service. Offline, people buy when they are comfortable and relaxed, and given a choice between merchants that make them nervous, and ones that make them feel at home, they’ll pick the latter, all other things being equal.

The same is true online.

Nina

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Low Cost Web Site Design Secret Number Nine:
Choose Your Colours Wisely

Yesterday we went over what to think about before you choose your colours, in order to make choices that convey the meaning you’d like to put across. Now we’re going to talk about specific colours and what meanings they convey, to help you decide on a colour scheme for your site. In the next part, I’ll tell you where you can see a sample of colours set you may want to use for your site.

Colours and their significance

• Red indicates danger. It stimulates the mind and raises blood pressure. Las Vegas is the city of red neon lights as it makes people gamble and take risks under the red lights. People working in a red environment work faster but they make more mistakes.

• Blue is associated with peace and relaxation. Blues complement cool and pastel colours

• Black is considered a heavy and depressing colour. Use of black as the dominant colour should be carefully considered.

• Brown conveys stability, simplicity, and comfort. It can be considered a drab colour as well.

• Green is easy on the eye; it has a calming effect. It is popular in hospitals

• Gray is a very conservative colour and conveys practicality, reliability and responsibility.

• Pink is considered a feminine colour.

• Purple conveys spirituality, royalty and mystery.

• Orange is a warm colour. Used in small amounts, it can make a site interesting and fun.

• Yellow is an eye-catching and cheerful colour.

• White is the colour of purity and cleanliness.

Keep these underlying colour associations in mind when you choose yours. Next, we’ll discuss specific combinations that go well together for web sites.

Nina

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