Do You Need A Website?

June 5, 2008

Flash Vs. CSS/HTML: Which Will You Choose?

Filed under: CSS, Websites — Tags: , , , — doyouneedawebsite @ 12:01 pm

Macromedia Flash. It’s one of the most controversial products in the Web development world.

In this article we’ll look at the strengths and weaknesses of Flash. We’ll take a close look at what it can do, and what it can’t or shouldn’t do. And, through this process, we’ll compare Flash to its counterparts HTML and CSS.

This article is sure to create debate …and a lot of additional email for me! But I wrote it with the intent of informing novice Flash users about this technology. At the least, this article should allow you to communicate with prospective clients the reasons why a project should or shouldn’t be done in Flash.

A Bold Statement

HTML and CSS will never be able to do what Flash does. With that statement alone some people have launched their mail client, but before you compose that bitter email, allow me to explain this statement.

Let’s take a look at the strengths of Macromedia’s multimedia vector product, Flash. Then we will examine its weaknesses and finish with a comparison of the HTML/CSS tandem.

What does Flash do that HTML and CSS can’t?

Flash’s Strengths

Freedom

Flash provides a degree of freedom of development that’s not found elsewhere. Flash allows the designer to place objects anywhere they like without having to worry about absolute/relative placement, box model problems, inconsistencies across browsers, z-indexes, tables-in-tables-in-tables, sliced up graphics or screen resolutions. In Flash, you simply place the object where you want it on your canvas and move on. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!

Seriously, this advantage is not to be taken lightly. As designers, this is what we’ve been wanting since the beginning of the Web: the ability to design without limitations being placed on us by browsers or programming languages. With Flash, you no longer need to worry about which browsers your page will render correctly in and which will choke on it. Your page renders the same way – correctly — in all browsers.

Greater Interactivity

Flash provides an interactive environment for a more involved multimedia experience. We’re not just talking about rollovers that swap colors or images, which, by the way, are a piece of cake in Flash, where they can even include sound. We’re talking about the bigger deal here.

Flash allows you to incorporate sound into your pages via mp3 and wav files, allowing you to use, for example, speech or background music. You can also directly import digital video into Flash, which allows you to easily demo products or just show off the family. It’s true that Flash is not the only way to include video into a Web page. There are other tools, such as Windows Media Player, Real-Player, and QuickTime. However, the Flash player plug-in penetration is now at around 97%. Compared to Windows Media Player plug-in at 59%, Real-Player plug-in at 56% and QuickTime player plug-in at 41%, Flash is streets ahead.

Ok, so maybe you’re annoyed by music and video in Websites. No problem! Just don’t add it. But at least you have the option to incorporate these elements on, for instance, client sites if you use Flash. HTML/CSS simply don’t offer the option.

Greater Control

Flash’s vector rendering processes give it the ability to adjust the entire display size based on the browser size and, in doing so, keep your images and text clean and unpixelated. This will become more of an advantage as people begin to more frequently surf the Web from sources other than desktop computers, such as PDAs, mobile phones, car displays or wrist-watches.

Improved Integration

Flash allows you to integrate any multimedia file format into your site. For example, bitmap image formats (such as, GIF, JPEG, PNG, PCT, TIF), vector image formats (including FreeHand files, EPS, Illustrator files), and as previously mentioned, sound formats (WAV, AIF, MP3) can all be imported into a Flash movie.

Easier Font Handling

With Flash you have the ability to embed any font you wish and have it display in the client browser regardless of whether they have the font installed on their machine. You no longer have to convert fonts to images in order to maintain the font for display on varying user systems.

Replicate Frames

Flash can replicate the behavior of frames on an HTML Website in that it can maintain in a fixed position certain parts of the Web page, such as the navigation buttons, as other parts of the screen scroll.

Stand-Alone Movies

Flash allows you to play movies as stand-alone presentations called projectors. Projectors are Flash movies that come complete with an embedded player — you don’t even need a Web browser to play these Flash movies! You can burn Flash projectors to CD-ROMs or DVDs.

No Reload

Flash gives you the ability to display data as part of an ever-changing process without having to reload or refresh the page! That’s right — the data can change without even so much as a flicker from the browser.

Ok, so we’ve covered the advantages of this technology. Now, let’s look at the weaknesses of Flash.

Flash’s Weaknesses

Plug-In Required

Flash movies still require a separate plug-in installation in order to run in most browsers. Many companies do not allow their employees to install applications on their computers, which automatically denies some Flash site owners access to a portion of their potential userbase.

Video Woes

Video compression and playback in Flash MX is not of the same quality as some of the players developed exclusively for this purpose, such as QuickTime. For example, Flash video does not take advantage of enhanced video drivers for optimized playback at enlarged sizes.

Search Engine Issues

Typical Web search engines (or spiders) cannot index content within Flash movies. If you create a 100% Flash-based Website, you may want to provide some text or HTML, displayed or hidden, on your Web pages if you want your content to be indexed by search engines. When I say hidden, I mean that the content should be available via a no script tag or other means that is search engine acceptable. This is perhaps the biggest shortcoming of Flash, and yes — it’s a biggie.

Lack of Screen Reader Support

Although the integration of MSAA compatibility into Flash Player 6 is a big step forward, and has been heralded by accessibility experts, many kinds of screen readers do not support MSAA of the Flash Player yet.

Print Problems

If your site is based around delivering text-based information to the viewer, then don’t distract or delay them from getting what they want with unnecessary animations. Printing and selecting text in Flash movies is often not as simple (or familiar) to users as that on HTML sites.

CSS Steps Up

The growing trend on the Web today is to separate design from content. So let’s give thanks to CSS — after all, separating these two elements is what CSS was envisioned to do, and what it now achieves so well. CSS allows you to create the look and format of a Website without affecting your content. You, the developer, benefit, as do search-engine spiders and text readers.

In addition, CSS makes Website maintenance easier. With a single modification to an external CSS file you can effect a change across multiple pages of your site.

CSS has the ability to serve up content in its purest form, which makes this technology well-suited for delivering pure content to search engines and legible text to text-only readers. Combined with the power CSS provides site owners to make modifications across their entire site by changing a single file, it’s easy to see why so many people have fallen in love with this technology.

…but is it all a bed of roses? Not so fast there, CSS!

Flash Forward

Think for a moment of all those things CSS gives you — those benefits that made you fall in love with CSS, including search engine-ready content, text reader accessibility, and the ability to modify the look of your entire Website from a single file…

Guess what? It’s quite conceivable that in the not-too-distant future, Flash will also provide you with these capabilities.

Tim Mayer, Vice President of Web Search at FAST explains, “Search engines were originally built to index and serve HTML documents, but now the Web has become more diverse in content types, knowing how to treat Flash and other types of content has become more important for search engines.”

Mayer notes that, “FAST built its Flash indexing capabilities using the Macromedia’s Flash search engine software developer’s kit (SDK). The SDK was designed to convert a Flash file’s text and links into HTML for indexing.”

However, not all search engine spiders have the ability to crawl or index Flash. As far as I’m able to determine, Google has not included the Flash-SDK setup for indexing the way FAST has. But Google can follow embedded links.

The Macromedia SDK solution is far from perfect and still has a long way to come. However, we can see that search engines are making an effort to embrace Flash and I believe that in the future we’ll see Flash make an effort to embrace search engines.

It’s conceivable that before too long, search engines will see only the content of a site — they won’t care what that site looks like. The content will be separate from the movie and could even be marked up with HTML tags or XML. This provides the designer with the ability to have their site look however they choose and still have search spiders feast on the content. Search engines will be able to do what humans have always struggled with – they’ll have the ability to see past the outward appearance and get to what’s really important.

It’s also worth noting that when this day comes — and all signs point that it will come sooner rather than later — not only will search engines get close to your Flash content, the text readers will also find it more accessible.

Lastly, Flash, like CSS, also allows users to modify a single external text file and in so doing, make changes across an entire site. Because Flash stores all the elements of a movie in a library file, you can easily make sweeping modifications across an entire site or, with Flash’s shared library feature, multiple Websites.
The Future is Bright for Flash

Remember my original statement, ”HTML and CSS will never be able to do what Flash does”? While this is true, it’s quite possible that in the future, Flash will be able to achieve what HTML and CSS do. The short comings of Flash as outlined above may not be present in the near future. It’s conceivable that Flash will be able to separate content from design, and serve up pure content to the search engines and text readers; after all, Macromedia is working on these problems right now.

A day will come when a typical Flash site will be as friendly to search engines as are its HTML/CSS counterparts; it may even surpass HTML and CSS sites in terms of accessibility, for the simple reason that it supports sound and video.

Flash at least has a chance to fix its weaknesses, and in time will likely do so. But HTML and CSS will never be able to do what Flash does!

March 26, 2008

Why your small business needs an intranet!

Filed under: Custom Applications, Websites — Tags: , , , — doyouneedawebsite @ 5:53 am

One thing I like about running a small company is the ability to act quickly. Decisions are not bogged down by layers of management. In fact, most moves are made with the interested parties meeting around a conference table.

But there can come a point when your business outgrows this arrangement. You need constant, reliable and secure communications with others in the company to ensure successful growth. You need an intranet.

An intranet is similar to a Web site, and it uses Internet protocols, but it’s an internal network exclusive to one company. (An “extranet” also is an internal or private Web site, but access privileges are extended to designated customers, partners and/or others.)

Most large corporations use intranets. Information distribution is a huge task when you have 10,000 or more employees. Intranets can help cure that headache.

I hear you, “I don’t have anywhere near 10,000 employees!” But I can give you three major reasons why your small business should invest in one. Here they are:

1. Communication Suffers When Dealing With More Than One Person

Even a very small company has communication issues. Most people find out what’s happening while gossiping around the coffee pot. Stories change as they spread, leading to a misinformed and disgruntled staff. If you have telecommuters, off-site workers, employees who travel a lot or a “virtual” company, communication issues become even more challenging.

In order for a company to succeed, all players must understand its goals. Neither long-term nor short-term goals should be confined to upper management meetings. It’s Business 101. Everyone needs to be working toward common goals.

An intranet is the perfect place to post weekly reports, memos and goals. This way, everyone is on the same page.

Toby Ward, president of the intranet consulting firm Prescient Digital Media, notes that even a company with few employees benefits from an intranet. Even if you don’t have people working remotely, your sales staffers or consultants aren’t always in the office.

Building an intranet can enhance communication through message boards, instant messaging and moderated chats. How?

Let’s take a typical business scenario. The sales staff of five has to come up with a presentation to the president on increasing sales in the next fiscal year.

Those five people will enter a conference room, eat pizza, drink coffee and drag it out for hours. The first meeting turns into a three-hour, stream-of-consciousness brainstorming session. The second meeting starts with a review of the best ideas from the first. The participants hash out why they will or will not work. By the third or fourth meeting, the five will come up with some proposals.

Using a discussion board in the days before the meetings can streamline the experience. Ideas can be debated beforehand. Participants come into the sales meeting more focused.

2. Time Is Money

Yes, this is a cliché. But it’s too valid not to use here.

An intranet allows you to post critical information for all employees to see. Even having human resources information posted is valuable. One of my employees said workers in his former office once spent 45 minutes trying to find out if the day after Thanksgiving was a paid holiday. The personnel manager was gone and no one else knew.

Posting of calendars, company policies and company benefits is a great start. They’ll reduce wasted time. But an intranet can be used for more than basic information. The beauty of an intranet is its interactivity.

You can save time (and trees) with interactive forms. Vacation requests, supply orders, changes to benefits and more can be handled quickly and efficiently.

Make sure your intranet follows good design principles. You can’t just throw stuff up there and hope people will find it. Organize your intranet to make it as user-friendly as possible. We’re trying to save time here, not frustrate people.

3. It’s Better Than E-Mail

You may be thinking, “Why doesn’t the personnel person just e-mail the form?” Or, “I communicate well with my employees through meetings and postings on the cork board.”

According to Ward, e-mailing multiple versions of the same document or presentation leads to confusion and sometimes information overload.

Let’s take that same sales group we envisioned earlier. They’ve decided on three major ways they will increase sales. They are now working on a PowerPoint presentation.

Five people collaborating on one PowerPoint file can lead to disastrous results. I can hear the shouting now. “Who has the most revised version?” “Johnson, you gave me the wrong figures. I thought we fixed that.” And so on.

By using an intranet, people can work on a shared file and have a central location for the most recent file.

This will also help save space on your server. It may sound like a tiny thing, but having versions of various files on everybody’s computer takes up valuable space.

How To Get Started

Before you set up an intranet, make sure you understand what you want it to do. Understand how employees will use it. Finally, adhere to good design principles. If it takes five or six clicks to find a vacation request form, it’s too complex.

You’ll also have to decide if you want to build your own solution. A consultant can build an intranet to your specifications. It will have the look and feel and design principles you specify. This route will cost you U.S. $10 to $500 per person per month.

There also are software packages such as Windows SharePoint Services that allow you to customize and design most everything yourself, using someone else’s template. SharePoint runs U.S. $39.95 a month or $399 a year, no matter how many users.

Some packages, such as Instant Intranet Builder, use Microsoft Access as the core database. They incorporate linking mechanisms to create a workable intranet easily. You don’t need a dedicated IT person to set up and maintain it. Depending on the company’s size, the entire package can be had for as little as U.S. $5 per person per month.

Some other software products available include InfoStreet, IntraSmart and Intranet Suite. Pricing varies, depending on the number of users.

There’s Got To Be A Downside, Right?

To get your intranet ready for employee use, you will need someone to develop and maintain the content. The idea is to have continually updated information available. How you delegate those tasks may depend on the size of your company. If you only have 10 people, one person may be sufficient to maintain the information.

If you have a larger company, you’ll probably want to separate content updates among departments. No matter the size, you’ll have to budget maintenance time into an employee’s schedule. Remember, we’re dealing with computers — nothing ever runs as smoothly as we would like.

You’ll also have to invest in time for employee training. You may even have to spend time convincing old stalwarts to use the intranet. Once the system is up and running and everyone understands it, the return on investment will be significant.

How to choose the right website designer for small businesses

Filed under: Marketing, Websites — Tags: , , , — doyouneedawebsite @ 5:48 am

Here are Some Tips for outsourcing your small-business website needs

Following the trend of larger companies, small-business owners are outsourcing a range of services, from HR to finance and accounting to customer services. But the outsourcing process requires some time and investment to find the right vendor, build a working relationship, and allow your employees to adjust.

Yes, small businesses can benefit from outsourcing too. More and more of them are turning over parts of their operations to outside experts, allowing owners to focus on critical needs and growth.

Here’s how to evaluate whether outside experts can perform better, faster or more cost-effectively than your in-house staff. You’ll also find advice about charting a path through the come-hither promises often made by outsourcing services.

First, define your core

Generally, the smart strategy is to hold on to operations or areas that define the core mission of your business. Then, consider outsourcing the other operations that are not as strategic.

If, for instance, your point of difference is customer service, make sure you have enough friendly and attentive full-time employees to make good on that. If, however, you promise rock bottom prices, then relying on an outsourcer, such as a Web-based virtual assistant, an automated phone system or an overseas call center, might make more sense.

Also, think through potentially outdated conventions about on-staff specialists, especially given the reach and effectiveness of today’s desktop technology. Traditionally, small businesses have outsourced payroll and human resources services (see this related article).

But owners can now tap outside facilitators for a much greater range of services. For instance, entrepreneurs with strong sales often assume they need a full-time bookkeeper to oversee the books. But, in fact, you can be running a $5 million company and still not really require a full-time bookkeeper. Such services have little to do with the volume of sales and more to do with the level of accounting activity, such as invoicing, bill paying, payroll and the like. Companies with a full-time bookkeeper can save about $30,000 a year by using outsourced bookkeeping services, say, a half-day a week.

Move slowly and commit incrementally

Outsourcing’s advantages will vary with the services, the kind of business you run and, of course, the quality of your provider. It’s worth your while to move slowly and commit little by little. Don’t sign two-year contracts before testing performance and the relationship.

To get a feel for the process and to accustom your staff to the idea, first try outsourcing one stand-alone project, and then move on to hiring professionals for other areas or ongoing needs.

“With project professionals, there are no long-term contracts for unnecessary services and companies,” says Chris Hagler, national director of strategic services for Resources Global Professional, a Costa-Mesa, Calif., concern that provides specialists and contingency experts in finance and accounting, information technology, human resources and legal services. “Project professionals are ‘executers’ as opposed to traditional consultants who do not necessarily roll up their sleeves and get the job done,” he says.

Examples of functions to outsource

The roster of choices for high performing, affordable outsourcing services keeps growing. Here are some examples of functions you might consider outsourcing, to boost your day-to-day operations.

  • Specialist and expert help. Elance Online (elance.com), based in Sunnyvale, Calif., for example, offers a range of services for small business projects. It provides access to thousands of professionals around the world for services such as graphic design and multimedia presentations, engineering, sales and marketing, writing and translation, and more.
  • Public relations services. Most small businesses cannot afford a PR pro full-time and likely don’t need one. Much of the news or publicity that smaller companies seek is generated when a new product launches or to support the chief executive officer’s profile as an expert in the industry, or to call attention to expanded services or new hires and so on. To find a PR company that can work well for you, look for someone who understands your industry and takes on smaller-company clients (see this related article).
  • Virtual assistants. Virtual assistants, or independent entrepreneurs who provide administrative, creative or technical support, are a growing phenomenon. They work on a contractual basis via online or electronic communications, handling functions, such as keeping your schedule or your files or your customer intelligence database up to speed. You can find out more by visiting the nonprofit International Virtual Assistants Association (www.ivaa.org).

Expertizing, based in Newton, Mass., uses virtual assistants for a variety of projects. “We’re a small company that helps people achieve media attention for their businesses, and have outsourced a lot of work to several virtual assistants,” says CEO Fern Reiss. “It completely changed the way we operate. We meet ‘live’ once a month for a long catch-up, and in between correspond via email and occasionally by phone. We have increased productivity by about 30% to 40%, and have finally gotten many of our back-burner projects out the door.”

Outsource brokers. When you outsource services or projects, you still need reliable managers to track progress and monitor results. Increasingly, there are third-party services that will manager your outsourcers for you. These brokers, exchanges and networks can recruit, interview and manage the services you need. For instance, ComputerRepair.com based in Boca Raton, Fla., runs a Web site that lets businesses across the country quickly find inexpensive PC support services. The company claims cost savings of 50% for IT service procurement.

E-commerce solutions. An online service such as Microsoft’s Commerce Manager can quickly turn your business Web site into an online store. Your e-commerce platform includes an online catalog, online shopping-cart software, 24/7 access for customer orders, secure transactions for credit card purchases and payments, plus continuous tech support — all for about $25 a month.

E-mail marketing. Similarly, Microsoft List Builder can produce customized permission-based e-mail marketing campaigns for you, whether your goal is to find new customers or retain existing ones. For about $30 a month, you can use HTML templates to produce professional-quality e-mail newsletters or offers and announcements. You can rely on List Builder to send targeted and personalized messages to distinct customer segments. List Builder also tracks results for you in real time, so you’ll know, instantly, what works and what needs re-jiggering.

Outsourcing dos and don’ts

Try fixing whatever’s not working on your own first. You may have internal resources that can work better than you think.

Carefully evaluate what really can be outsourced. Generally, projects that require team interaction or brainstorming don’t work too well. Self-contained tasks or projects are more suited to outsourcing.

Consider management costs. Sometimes services look good on paper but you end up eating the savings in training and oversight costs.

Be prepared for challenges. It takes a while to build the relationship and synchronize the timing.

Don’t walk in blind. Start with some paid consulting, if need be, so you can ask the right questions in choosing a vendor and keep knowledgeable tabs on performance.

If you outsource significant hunks of your operations, consider having a staff employee(s) to act as a liaison. You want to outsource functions but not accountability.

Watch out for hidden costs. These may include paying layoff-related expenses, overtime costs for remaining employees who may now have more work to do, and telecommunications costs for remote workers.

Know the outsourcing ABCs

Before you ramp up your outsourcing services, learn these outsourcing ABCs from Kevin Gregson, chief executive officer of Sherwood Solutions, a business advisory firm.

Alignment: Is outsourcing the right move for your business?Business case: Have you taken all costs into consideration?Culture: Can you bridge the cultural difference between your company and the outsourcer?Delivery: How will you define success?

It might take a bit of time to get right, but the benefits of outsourcing can be enormous. Check out your operation to see how it can work for you.

March 12, 2008

Print Your Way - Minus the Fluff

Filed under: CSS — Tags: , , , — doyouneedawebsite @ 5:36 pm

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Currently, you’ll need a few specific tools to make these techniques work, although we may eventually be able to do this with other user agents:

1. Get yourself a copy of Mozilla Firefox if you don’t have one already.
2. Install Chris Pederick’s Web Developer’s Toolbar if you haven’t already.

How does this work?

These techniques rely on a few things, not the least of which is the assumption that any site that has substantial content employs some type of predictable templating system that uses the same display techniques for all articles across the site (or site section). Once you find out where the content is located in the markup, you can isolate it and format it to look exactly the way you want.

These techniques are really quite simple in principle:

1. Expose the grid of the website.
2. Isolate the element (usually a div or table cell) that contains the content you are after.
3. Use CSS to format the page with appropriate font sizes, widths, and margins.
4. Use CSS to selectively show and hide the other parts of the page as you see fit.
5. Save the CSS for later to create an instant custom printable view.

The most difficult part is figuring out which CSS selectors you’ll need to isolate the content that you want — and that is only difficult if the site uses a template structure that is convoluted. In this case, we’ll start with a nice simple example: Boxes and Arrows.
Take an x-ray of the site

The web developer’s toolbar allows you to easily take an X-Ray of the site, exposing its skeleton structure. Outline the site’s grid with “Outline Block Level Elements” or “Outline Table Cells.” Once you’ve done that, you’ll want to use “View ID and Class Details” from the Miscellaneous menu. Now your web page will look something like this.
Isolating your target

Now that we can see where our target is, we need to isolate it with CSS. With Boxes and Arrows, we are lucky — all the main content appears in the appropriately titled “contentBox.” With other sites, you may not be so lucky.

Once you have identified the target, give it a different background colour or change its border properties so that it is easily recognizable from everything else on the page. Set the container and all its descendants to be visible, then move to the top of the editing area and hide everything else:

* {
visibility: hidden;
}

#contentBox * {
visibility: visible;
}

Format to your taste

At this point, you have a good shell. For printing purposes, it is a good idea to include a width on your main container. (I use 6.5″ as a default, but you can choose something appropriate for your printer and margins.)

You can now format the text, changing fonts, colors, and sizes as you wish. For Boxes and Arrows, the simple addition of width and some font restyling was enough:

#contentBox * {
visibility: visible;
width: 6.25in;
}

p {
font-family: “Bitstream Vera Serif”;
font-size: 10pt;
line-height: 14pt;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
font-family: “Bitstream Vera Sans”;
}

Weed as necessary

Now you can hide other components on the screen that you don’t want to print. For Boxes and Arrows, we added the following rules to hide a few other elements to save space.

.figright, #readMore, #metainfo, #recent,
.twocol, .clear, .row, .hr {
display: none;
}

* img {
height: 0;
width: 0;
position: absolute;
}

Setting a height and width of “0” for images and absolutely positioning them removes them from the document flow. If we had simply hide the images, large gaps might appear within the page because they still take up space within the flow of the document. Obviously we don’t want to do this on every B & A article since some images are critical to understanding the articles themselves.
Save for later

Once you are happy with the way things look, save your user stylesheet. Make sure that you save your CSS often — when you return from Print Preview the editing area is gone, and you’ll need to reload to continue with modifications. Use “Load” to import your CSS file into the editing area.

Now that you have saved your CSS, you can pull it up anytime you want for that site. Here is our saved stylesheet for Boxes and Arrows:

* {
visibility: hidden;
}

#contentBox * {
visibility: visible;
width: 6.25in;
}

#contentBox {
margin-bottom: -9in;
}

p {
font-family: “Bitstream Vera Serif”;
font-size: 10pt;
line-height: 14pt;
}

h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6 {
font-family: “Bitstream Vera Sans”;
}

.figright, #readMore, #metainfo, #recent,
.twocol, .clear, .row, .hr {
display: none;
}

* img {
height: 0;
width: 0;
position: absolute;
}

Other tips and tricks

Create some Space: it may be difficult to distinguish between one div or table and another. Create a rule in the editing area to place margins around the various containers, dependent on the site’s layout technique:

table {
margin: 10px;
}

or

div {
margin: 10px;
}

Targeting elements: If you have trouble identifying any target on the page, you may want to use yet another great feature of the Web Developer’s Toolbar: the “View Style Information” from the Information menu. When you select this option, your cursor turns into a crosshair. Hover over the elements in your page and the status bar tells you where in the DOM tree the element is located. This is especially useful for elements nested deeply within the page.

Difficult targets: Table cells without labels are sometimes tough to isolate. Here is one of the more complicated sets of rules we’ve had to create so far. This displays the second table cell in the first row of the third table on the page by showing the second and third table cells, and then hiding the third with the next rule. It’s complicated, but it works:

html body table+table+table tr td+td {
visibility: visible;
width: 6.5in;
}

html body table+table+table tr td+td+td {
visibility: hidden;
}

Compatibility: The editing CSS feature of Chris’s great tool doesn’t work in Mozilla at this point because its sidebar implementation is different than Firefox. If you prefer to use Mozilla, you could use Firefox to edit and save the CSS and then use “Add User Style Sheet” from the Miscellaneous menu to apply the styles you saved.

March 10, 2008

Why Do You Need A Website?

Filed under: Marketing, Websites — Tags: , , , , , , , , , — doyouneedawebsite @ 1:51 pm

Since I have been working on web development and Marketing for so long I sometimes assume that everyone understands the impact of the World Wide Web. Over the last decade, I have watched the World Wide Web become the most dynamic communication medium ever known. The Web has revolutionized the way we work, play and communicate. It is the method of choice to shop and research products for 180 million people, and that is just in the United States! If you are not on the web, then people are just not interested in your business. You have probably heard other “Web People” say this before, but not explain it. Here are the 9 most important reasons why a Web site is critical to a small business or start-up.

REASON #1: A Web site increases your credibility

For a small to medium sized business, a web site is a great way of building consumer confidence and looking bigger than you really are. Much like your business cards, stationary and other promotional material, your Web site has a significant impact on how you and your business are perceived. Web sites that are easy to use, well designed and have well written compelling content have a positive effect on visitor impressions, and your credibility as a business.

REASON #2: A Web site increases your visibility.

A recent study showed that there are now roughly 180 million people with access to the World Wide Web in the US alone. Some of these people will be looking for what you have to offer. They may be located down the street or half way across the country. With a Web site, you open your business up to a completely new world of possibilities. The best part is that unlike your company’s office that may be open from 8 to 5 Monday through Friday, you Web site is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, in any time zone, making your business accessible to anyone, anywhere.

REASON #3: A Web site can help you build trust with existing and potential customers.

Trust is a big, big factor in business. People are more likely to buy from you if they trust you. With a Web site, you can easily communicate your goals, testimonials, vision, company history or just about anything else you feel will build trust with your visitors. Take a look around the Internet or just think about the online businesses you trust. Trust is a major selling point. It not only can help drive sales, but it creates a first-class and, most importantly, lasting relationship with customers.

REASON #4: A Web site can increase your local business.

On the Internet, you can succeed as a local business. According to the New York Times, a recent survey of 5,500 online shoppers found that 25 percent of their searches were for merchants located near their homes or workplaces. While you have the potential to be seen by millions of people all over the world, one of the biggest untapped opportunities on the Internet is local markets. Why you ask? It is because they want to find the information in as few clicks as possible. If you were in Chicago, IL and needed to have your carpet cleaned, you wouldn’t look up “Carpet Cleaners”; you would look up “Carpet Cleaners Chicago IL 60006”?.

REASON #5: A Web site makes it easy for you to receive referrals

If you are spending time building good rapport with your customers, you will get referrals. In addition, let’s face it everyone loves referrals. Referrals are great because they have already been pre-sold on how great your company is by someone they trust. Having a web site will make it easier to encourage your customers to make referrals. With a brochure, your customer has to have a copy handy to give to an interested prospect. A web site is accessible anywhere, anytime.

REASON #6: A Web site is a cost effective sales tool

Why build a site if you do not use it to promote your products and services? Web sites offer one of the lowest cost sales channels available, and a great way to supplement your offline business. You need to let people know they have a choice, and explain why YOU are that choice. Millions of people are using the web to make major decisions when they need products and services. Combining a well designed, easy to navigate site with effective gripping content will compel people to buy. They cannot buy from you if you are not even there!

REASON #7: A Web site enhances offline advertising efforts

Like most business, you probably spend money on offline advertising such as business cards, stationary, brochures and flyers. Adding your Web site address to current marketing material can increase the effectiveness of your advertising ten-fold. A Web address gives people the ability to take action on your offer or product, and can be a reminder of whom you are and why they need your product or service. It also advertises your Web site to new customers without having to wait for a salesperson to call or visit them.

REASON #8: A Web site can enhance customer relations

It is surprising how many people do not understand the importance of deepening their relationships with their online and offline customers. There are always people who are interested in your product or service but may not be ready to buy at that time. The answer is to contact them regularly. A recent study showed that, on average, people need to hear about your product or service 7 times before they will act on the offer. By staying in contact with your customer via email or newsletter, you keep them coming back to your site so that you are on their mind when they are ready to buy.

REASON #9: A Web site is a great prospecting tool

In addition to acting as a sales and marketing tool you web site is also a good way to gather and track prospect information. If some one comes to your Web site once, there is no guarantee they will come back. You need to be able to capture who they are by using forms and surveys on your Web site. Rather than going out and getting leads, let them come to you. Follow-up with special offers, newsletters and special tips to build a pool of leads to whom you can sell.

So there you have it, the 9 reasons why you really need to be thinking about a Web site for your company. In today’s business environment, it is truly a critical tool to have in your marketing arsenal.

Thanks,

Amish
www.atp-i.com
atp@atp-i.com

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