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What Every Web Designer Needs To Know About Site Performance

amm — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:11:15 +0000

Since Google’s recent announcement that web page load times are now a ranking factor web designers and developers have been required to pay additional attention to site performance considerations. Here are just a handful of considerations that today’s responsible web developers need to keep in mind.

Most of todays web pages are made up of a collection of components including CSS files, javascript, images and often movies. Minimising the number of elements and therefore the number of HTTP requests necessary to render a page is crucial for fast page load times.

Around 80% of the end user’s response time is consumed in waiting for all of the page elements to download. This waiting time is know to cause visitors to leave an ecommerce site and visit a faster loading competitor. Using a content delivery network to serve the static content, including javascript and CSS files, can significantly reduce this time. A content delivery network is basically a collection of servers setup in various geographic locations to efficiently deliver content to users.

As web designs become increasing complex, richer and more engaging to the end user they need an ever increasing number of components in order to render, such as Flash and javascript. On a first visit a number of HTTP requests are made in order to download these elements. If these are cached then there is less to download on a subsequent visit and this can be controlled using the ‘Expires’ header. This is commonly used for images but can be effectively used for all components including Flash and stylesheets.

Compression is another technique that every web developer should be using. GZIP is supported by around 90% of todays browsers and it can reduce the size of many elements by as much as 70%.

There are lots of additional techniques that are both good for search engine optimisation of web pages and will also improve the user experience. For example: stylesheets should be located at the top of pages and scripts at the bottom; both javascript and CSS files should be minified; and javascript and CSS should be in external files; also, reducing the number of DNS lookups and redirects is always a good idea. Good luck.

How To Sell What You Want Online

amm — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:11:14 +0000

A big mistake that internet marketers make is to focus on what they believe will sell rather than what they really want to sell. The fact is, you can sell just about any product online and be successful. The trick is in the marketing, not the product.

Wouldn’t you rather have a business that made you money and that you enjoyed instead of a business that made money but you didn’t enjoy? You have to bear in mind that you will be doing this for a long time. If you go about your internet marketing strategy the right way, you can make just as much money from selling cake decorating books as you can from marketing any other product.

There are plenty of products out there that have made people fortunes in the past. You may be tempted to try to copy their success and join a successful affiliate program. Don’t forget, though, that thousands of others are doing exactly the same thing. That means you’re going to be up against stiff competition in order to carve out a niche for yourself.

On the other hand, if you enjoy baking and decorating cakes, you will have much less competition. You can start off by selling other people’s books about cakes, but an even better idea would be to write one yourself. That way you will get all the profits instead of a small commission. You can offer your customers an eBook and also produce a print-on-demand version and sell hard cover or paperback editions. People all around the world will want to buy your how to decorate cake book.

When you set up your website, make it lively and colorful. This will inspire people to try decorating their own cakes. Be sure to make it easy and worthwhile for them to join your email list. Send out weekly cake decorating tips and other advice. In your newsletters, you can include just enough information to be useful, but not so much that they don’t need to buy your book. You want to give them value, but you don’t want to give away your product.

As time goes on, you will find innumerable ways to expand your market. You may even want to start new websites. One might be about wedding cakes or even a full wedding planning service. You can also make an site that reviews artistic cake bakers in major cities and you can get commissions on sales.

If you’re a grease monkey or a sports fan, cake decorating may not be your passion. The idea is to think about what you are good at and passionate about. Then you need to find a way to market your passion.

How To Sell Your Blog And Not Get Taken.

amm — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 17:11:13 +0000

Career bloggers will tell you that it is not an easy way to make a buck. Being a good blogger takes passion, creativity, and time. Even famous writers such as Tom Clancy probably do not write every day. Bloggers must. If you have decent traffic, you may already be making money off of your blog; maybe not. At any rate, if you do wish to make money online, you can sell, or “flip” your blog, and still have some creative input into it – and let someone else (who is probably better at it) worry about all the tasks that you DON’T like, so that you concentrate on writing.

Blogs can often be sold for in the ballpark of 1-2 years of residual income. In other words, you can earn income from your blog during this time without actually blogging – or throwing your years of hard work down the drain. Normally, the new blog investor is not necessarily interested in changing your core concept – although due to different interpretations variations on your theme]. However, the heart of your blog will {likely|normally|usually|almost always} remain intact. But what happens if you miss blogging? Well, investors will often let you contribute (while sharing the increased revenues!) In fact, they are usually hoping that you WILL stay, simply because they don’t want to take a risk on new writers, buy articles, or least of all, write it themselves.

And think about this: don’t you get tired of the non-creative tasks, like marketing?. Instead of endlessly trying to find ways to advertise without breaking the bank, it may behoove you to look for an investor who is willing to negotiate monetarily and take over these ”business-ey” tasks.

To make the most income, it may be in your best interest to prepare your blog for resale . Investors often scout for blogs that are made up of long posts with many keywords, and still have a clearly-defined focus. If your blog caters to a popular niche, even better. Knowledge of what types of social networking and advertising works best with your blog can ramp up the sales price – as well as any product-driven monetizing. If you are currently bringing in income from selling ebooks, sales negotiation is clearly in your court.

If you want to make a sale, like yesterday, don’t fret about the remodeling. There are hordes of buyers in the game willing to look at a fixer-upper if the price is right. Most importantly, do your research. Look into the current market value for blogs similar to yours. Be quick to respond to potential investors and make your self highly available via email or social networking. Ask questions and give lots of statistics. Explain to your potential investor what you wanted to do with your blog in the past but didn’t have time to do – ideas to improve growth will help them to decide on their next move.

In conclusion, one of the easiest methods in the long run to cash out your blog is to let an investor(who has the know-how and expertise) take over any tasks you’d rather not waste your time on – such as promoting, recruiting advertisers, and design.