If you have an idea of sharing your thoughts and interested in interacting with others on
the Internet, then blogging is the right choice to implicate effectively. The blog is a unique
website that displays entries or post in the chronological order. Moreover the web developers
use blogs as online diaries, soap boxes and internet scrapbooks. Perhaps there are many free
blogging service that can be developed by any individual. Hence it is important to remain active
and enhance the number of users into your site. However there are around nine factors to be
considered when you design your blog theme. Now let us gaze the factors in the following:

1. Complexity of the Re-design

If you are interested in changing the entire theme of your blog or establish your blog to increase
reputation in the web, then it is possible to achieve this concept by way of re-designing with
certain effective elements. Likewise some bloggers will be persuaded with the current look and
they will just concentrate in the deficient areas. While other bloggers will totally strip down the
current look and opt for a new concept.

2. Brand establishment

Ironically it is essential to know whether your blog has already established a branded image
on the web. Make sure to vitalize the areas in order to retain the existing image and also the
bloggers should consider the impact of how change in current design could distress them.

3. Colors

Perhaps the color variation will be preferred according to the need of the theme. Since some
bloggers will go in for a new color scheme with a way to give a fresh appeal to the users and
others will just keep the existing color combo when designing a blog. In order to create massive
appeal on the web, it is essential to take advantage of resources available at Color Schemer
which provides a variety of sample schemes.

4. Readability

Readability is considered to be one of the main factors and this concept involves background
color, typography and spacing lines. Make sure that you provide content in a clear manner
facilitating the customers to get a logical visibility from your blog content.

5. Ease of navigation

Many visitors will not be able to see your front page as they will be redirected to various pages.
They will only find your posts from any social media sites or through any link.

6. Social media integration

Obviously many bloggers will depend on social media as they can optimize their pages on
social sites. This will gradually increase the social media traffic value to your blogs. Hence the
bloggers abound with SEO services in order to reach great height.

7. Feature of best content

The main aim of bloggers is to present popular posts with a way to increase the page views and
followers. They should also support the web by implicating useful facts and information relating to the needs of their users.

8. Subscription options

At the same point to increase the number of subscribers, it is evident to support your links to
RSS feed or to get email subscription in a suitable place. This point has to be carried out before
laying out the design.

9. Full posts or Excerpts

Moreover you have to decide the content to be posted in the front page should be full posts or
excerpts. But most blogs use custom excerpts to enhance the look of the home page.

Typically altering the theme of the blogs has become very common for the bloggers and they
change from one theme to another in order to customize a new innovative concept. The bloggers
can also optimize the theme by paying someone to accomplish the task and they should be more
involved in the process so as to get the best result from the other person. Apart from this it is
important to decide a theme which your audience is passionate about to read.

About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. She recently read an article on bloggers at Energy Authority that attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on portagames blog.

ab split testing

Source: http://opensource.washingtontimes.com/blog/2011/jan/25/4-lessons-learned-about-multivariate-testing/

You’ve already launched your website, where the design process involved poring through books and consulting with professional designers. But there are obviously some things that still aren’t working at this point, because your sales are coming short of expectations.

At this point, you’ve got to stop and think about your next step. Don’t immediately assume that what you need is more traffic; what’s equally important is figuring out a way to increase the conversions from your current traffic. This time around, you might be better off asking for the opinions of the people who matter the most when it comes to your site and your business: your site visitors.

You could do surveys, but the odds that a good number of people will respond are slim. Describing how a website would look better in words and collating data from such surveys would undoubtedly require more effort than necessary, and the results are mediocre at best.

What is Multivariate Testing?

This is where multivariate testing comes in. It’s a technique where you ask your users which version of your website they prefer quite indirectly, because you’re basing your results on the response that your website will elicit from them. It’s one of the test methods that webmasters can use in behavioral targeting to offer personalization to their site visitors as well.

Multivariate tests are like several A/B tests that have been combined into one. A number of elements are tested out in combinations for each test run, so webmasters can come up with an optimized design in a shorter period of time.

Where Can Multivariate Testing Be Used?

You can run a multivariate test on all sorts of online content and pages. Here’s a quick list to show the diversity of applications for this method: landing pages, search results, sign-up forms, navigational menus, category pages, promotions tests, product pages, and multi-stage checkout pages.

Aside from websites, multivariate testing can also be used for email campaigns and newsletters.

Advantages of Multivariate Testing

As mentioned earlier, multivariate tests can be used for website and email marketing content. By optimizing the content that is being used for these campaigns, conversions can be increased, whether it’s in the form of clicks or sales. Aside from that, two other benefits that multivariate testing offers is an accelerated learning curve and breakthrough thinking.

Multivariate Testing

Source: http://www.websiteoptimization.com/secrets/metrics/10-4-website-optimizer-diagram.html

How is Multivariate Testing Done?

Multivariate tests involve four basic steps: assessment, design, testing, interpretation and implementation.

Site assessment. Before anything else, the content to be optimized must be assessed critically. In this stage, major design flaws are spotted and weeded out. This is a crucial step of the process because this is where elements that are to be changed are noted.

Test design. Once a list of elements to test out has been generated, it’s time to design the multivariate test. This involves grouping together elements that can be tested out together in batches. Alternative designs and variations of the elements are then created. It is recommended that the original and alternative versions to be tested vary to a noticeable extent.

Testing. During the testing period, different versions of the website will be served randomly and simultaneously to site visitors. The test will be run for a certain period of time, where relevant data regarding the response of the users will be recorded.

Interpretation and implementation. Once the test has been completed, the results are then processed. This is the stage where the data is collated and the website version that was able to get the best results is implemented. Further multivariate tests should then be conducted to continue optimizing the website or marketing emails.

Look at the Market

Obviously, you need to look at the market you’ll be targeting. If you’re going to be getting your jobs from a place like Elance, your rates will probably need to be at the lower end of the going rate for the overall freelance web design market, simply because Elance tends to draw a lot of potential clients on a budget. It’s a good place to begin looking, though.

You can also talk with other freelance web designers. Get involved in online communities of freelancers like you, and see what your competition is charging. Talk to not only freelancers who are at your level of experience and development, but also freelancers who have been in the game for years and who have tons of experience. You won’t be able to set rates as high as theirs, most likely, but you can use their rates as a goal to move towards.

Set the Bar High

As a freelancer, you should always, always be making more than the guy doing what you’re doing in a cubicle down the road. In fact, you have to make more than him per project or per hour to break even with his take-home pay. See, that guy gets health benefits, and probably retirement benefits, plus a paid-for office to work in, company supplied software and office supplies, and other perks. While you get the flexible hours and say-so over your life that comes with freelancing, you have to cover your costs for all this stuff you’re now providing on your own!

Besides this reasoning, you’ll need to set the bar high because higher rates actually tend to attract better clients. If you set your rates too low, potential clients will assume you’re inexperienced, so you’ll only attract those clients who are on a budget or who aren’t looking for stellar work. Often times, these low-budget clients are the most frustrating to work for, as well! Setting your rates closer to the market average, at the very least, will draw better clients who are willing to pay what your work is really worth.

Calculate Your Actual Expenses (Including the Extras!)

While you’re setting your rates, you need to decide what will actually be livable for you. Check out the freelance rates calculator at Freelanceswitch.com to get some idea of what your life is costing you and what you need to make to break even or save some money. With this calculator, you can input your business and personal expenses as well as figure out the billable hours you can work each year to figure out what you need to average per hour. The dollar amount may be a little higher than you were expecting, but it’s what you’ll need to make to have a decent living as a freelance designer!

Set a Rate You’re Comfortable With

Ultimately, setting your rates as a designer is a personal thing, and you should set a rate you feel comfortable with. You need to be able to pay the bills, or you may as well go work in a big company. But, you also don’t want to feel like you’re constantly apologizing to clients because you’re charging them way too much. Here are a few things to consider when it comes to setting your rates:

• In an article about setting freelance writing rates, which could just as easily apply to setting freelance web design rates, Lynn Wasnak notes that it’s fine to include a “hassle factor.” If a client is flaky about paying on time, is constantly asking for revisions, or is just plain annoying to work with, you can add more to your rates to make up for it. You really should do this if you’ll end up putting more time into a project because the client needs tons of revisions!
• If you work quickly, setting a per-project rate can help you remain competitive in the market and make a high hourly rate. If a $500 project takes you 20 hours, you’re making about $25 an hour, which isn’t bad, but which is on the low end of what you should be shooting for. It that same project only takes you 10 hours, though, you’ll make $50 an hour. For the same project price, two different freelancers could make completely different hourly rates.
• Be sure your hourly rate goes up with your experience. If you’re just starting out, you’ll need to set a somewhat lower hourly rate simply because you don’t have a lot of experience. But don’t forget to raise your rate as you gain more experience. If you’ve been working with the same client for several months or even years and haven’t changed your rates, it’s probably time to renegotiate!
• Eventually, you’ll be able to weed out jobs you don’t want. Once you get your freelance web design business going, you’ll be able to use an increase in your hourly rate as well as your intuition about potential clients to weed out jobs you don’t want to take. Sometimes lower-paying per-project jobs from clients that are easy to work with are actually a better per-hour rate than higher per-project jobs from clients who are a pain!

Invest In Your Business

With freelance web design, it’s absolutely essential that you have your own website. Other freelancers can get away with a profile on a freelancing site and some good samples, but as a web designer, you’ve got to use your site as the prime example of your work. The problem, of course, is that it costs money to set up and maintain a personal business website.

If you don’t have the cash in hand to make this happen, don’t start out by playing poor, pitiful freelancer with rock-bottom rates.  Daniela Baker from CreditDonkey says, a credit card can help manage cash flow so you can pay for your website expenses.  That way, you can put up a fabulous looking business website that will attract new clients. You can find good credit card deals online, and you may even be able to get a low or no interest card that you won’t pay tons of fees on for your business.

If you start out your freelancing career by setting your rates as low as you can go just to break in, you’ll find that it’s very difficult to increase them. If, on the other hand, you bust into the market with confidence, a great website, and competitive-but-not-too-low rates, you’ll start building up a client base in no time.

Best web design software works with an editor known as ‘what you see is what you get’ generally termed as WYSIWYG. Let’s look at some of the best web design software which can help you in creating wonderful websites.

Adobe Dreamweaver: This design software is counted in the array of best software for web design projects. Web designers all across the world simply love to depend on this particular software and embark with excellent website designs. The most liking, about Adobe dreamweaver, is that you can also develop dynamic websites at ease.

Microsoft expression web: The design software, Frontpage from Microsoft, is popular for web designing project. Also we came to use its update version ‘Expression web’. This is known to be an effective tool for the web editors, who love creativity and try to come out with cool web designs.

The expression web is taken to be the best software for web design work, since it provides the web designer with number of interesting and good features which help them to create fabulous designs.

The positive of this software is; its ability to split the screen and in helping the designers to see code as they design their websites. This feature is considered to be a vital thing for any professional web designer or coder in his or her web design projects.

XSitePro: This software is considered among the newbie; however it is seen gaining popularity in the web designers for their website designing projects. The web designers who often use the software like dreamweaver or frontpage may not find it incomplete and at times may require some additional features which are present in Xsitepro software. Hence Xsitepro has a number of new features as compared to its counterparts. However, the only problem you face is while working with a dynamic websites created with the help of dreamweaver or frontpage. It is difficult to incorporate some of the features of Xsitepro on dynamic website projects created with the help of other design software. The WYSIWYG editor works perfectly with Xsitepro thus helping you to embark with better aesthetics and cool designs.

When you consider any website design project, it becomes important to come out with some best designs for your clients. Hence it should be a priority to select the right ones, as selecting any unusable design software can lead you with some disaster, which as a web designer, you cannot afford in your career. The above three web design softwares are considered as the beat available software for website designing projects.

About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on luxury and technology. She recently read an article on hybrid cars that attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Lotus evora.

For now, allow me to mention here the ten signs of web designing which will give you a better designing idea. These will not only be helpful to the designers but also to people looking forward to have a website. So finally if you really want to embark with competent web design, just make sure that you avoid the following mistakes as a designer:

1)      Your website lacks personality

To be frank enough, the user visit any website search some specific product or piece of information, hence your site needs to fulfill all his thrust about the product he is searching for. If your site does not possess any purpose and sense of self, the user will surely be switching over to the next choice available over search engine.

Make sure that you design your website especially home page as impressive as it is your calling card. The content and design has to be with a clear purpose with irrelevant or even repetitive kind of content. Hence such website will lack the calls to action for sales or for more in depth site exploration.

2)      The failure to build credibility

The most important aspect of any website is to build it’s credibility amongst users. If at all you fail to put the trust and confidence in your users and readers you are going to hamper the success of your website. So better you keep the content and information discovered on your pages should be trustworthy for the content.

If you see grammatical errors and wrong spelling in your content you are likely to lose credibility. This gives lack of visual cleanliness and your website appears to be outdated. So with such impression you will always fail to build credibility among visitors.

3)   Text not readable

No user sticks to a website where the he gets a strain over his eyes while reading. That means, if you are lacking in terms of contrast color between your font type and your website background, get it done rightly. This can certainly cause a huge legibility problem. The small text used in the website too can create problems for the visitors especially the old people.

Using large chunks of text can be discouraging to the visitors coming to your website. Improper use of styles in fonts like bold, underline, italic and upper case too can be disastrous for the web designers.

4)      Confusing website navigation

The worst thing about any website design is developing website which has shoddy, poor or confusing navigation. So you better take care of some major designing issues which move around links that are not easily identifiable. The links which are descriptive in their title and unable to function actually irritates a lot to the users. The navigation which is confusing and distracting will bring no result for you. So do take care of this aspect as well.

5)      The distracting design elements

Incorporating a number of special features can be distracting for your users. The inexperienced or overambitious designers have the idea of putting a number of special features as they consider them as impressive.

However, such features can create a serious eyesore and distract the visitors from the important content. So avoid this feature as well for successful web design.

6)      The auto-play media

You can distract the users coming to your website with auto play media. If your user is of serious nature and needs only information, in this case you might irritate him. So, no need to play any music when people just want to read the content over your website.

Moreover, you might argue that there is nothing wrong in putting these media elements since they can be creative opening to a web page, however, it is all about the way you present it over your website. It should be the choice of the visitors coming to your website whether to listen to the music or go through the flash presentation. So if you put across some automatic tidal wave of media it will simply increase the annoyance level of the visitors.

7)      Your website is too demanding and takes too long to settle down things

If at all your web design features starts testing the patience of your users, do make sure that you cannot gain the success you which you are looking for your site.

So if the user have to struggle to find information or have to wait long for your site to load on their browser, make sure you have something wrong in your website. Your site takes long to load due to the presence of too many large size images which also gives a messy and unprofessional appearance to your homepage.

8)      Missing out important information

One of the biggest sign of wrong design, is missing out the important information like the contact details. So if the customer is looking forward to speak to anyone regarding some product or services the website is catering, he/she has no body to clear his doubts and apprehensions.

If the ecommerce website is unable to put all the important and required information about the products they are selling like price, features and other key elements then they are going to fail at the end of the day.

9)      Too many efforts to look different

Being a straightforward person might help you in your personal life, but with a site along with such content could be the worst thong for you.

Though it’s important to be a different in the plethora of websites, but this can be done with competent content, good pictures, easy and simple navigation and some stunning graphics. Trying too many things together to look different can mess your website design, which is generally a bad idea to try. So avoid.

10)   Your website is not search engines friendly

Finally, if your website cannot be found by the search engines you will find hardly any user coming to your website. Just putting up good content and rich design will not suffice if you are unable to make your website search engine friendly.

The inexperienced designers can miss out this important feature of web design or consider SEO keywords which are not result oriented. At the same time if you use these keywords at too many places at the very same page, it will give unprofessional look. So, in this case the call is all yours, what you can do to manage both the things, i.e. content and SEO.

If you want to be a successful and competent kind of web designer, you should always try to avoid the above discussed habits of web design. Many of these signs or habits may appear too trivial, but ignoring them can be fatal to your website, so make sure you avoid them while creating a web design for any kind of website.

About the author: Claudia is a blogger by profession. She loves writing on technology and luxury. Beside this she is fond of gadgets. Recently an article on dyson air multiplier attracted her attention. These days she is busy in writing an article on Mac Apps.  

A Good Squeeze Page

High converting squeeze pages should have all the following things: the headline, pre-headline, benefit points, call-to-action, content you give away for free, and graphics. Plus, all that things should be attractive as possible.

1. The headline. This is the first sentence visitors see. Therefore be careful in determining your headline.
2. The pre-headline. This usually contains the main benefit of the product, and or a question regarding to the benefit.
3. The benefit points. This also grabs people attention. Sometime people just go straight to the benefits list. Put 3 – 6 benefit the best benefit points of the product.
4. The call-to-action. It should be an eye-catching graphic. Usually contains strong call-to-action word, arrow graphic, and the box with beautiful design.
5. The content you give away for free. This is the product you give away for free. Whatever it, ebook, video, tool or software.
6. Graphics or design. This is an overall look of the squeeze page, from top to bottom of the page. And this is what Power Squeeze Pages offers to you: super hot, sexy and beautiful squeeze page templates.

Template Features

Professional squeeze page. Your squeeze page comes packed with the elite graphics and attention, grabbing text that will stop and cold traffic in visitor tracks and get them signing up and taking action. The graphics placed in HTML ready for you to edit how you want so you can start using them straight away.

Integrated Aweber opt-in code. The templates have been formatted and aligned so that your opt-in form will sit perfectly in the template. All you have to do is edit the code in HTML view with your list name and redirect URL and you’re all set.

PSDs. With this squeeze page you’ll also receive the un-flattened PSD text layers so you can resize, colorize, add or remove any text you want. You’ll even receive the un-flattened binder cover text-layer PSDs so you can name it how you want. With everything laid out for you and positioned correctly, personalizing your squeeze pages is a piece of cake.

Special Bonus

Even better, Aaron the creator of Power Squeeze Pages is offering great graphic bonuses, including: 1000+ animated graphics as well as no-animated graphics, about thousands of beautiful graphics to spruce up your sales pages and existing website.

Well, there were about 11 design templates + PSDs files that you will get, plus the great bonuses.

Have you ever tried designing minisite template yourself? Myself, I take about 1-3 hours to design each minisite. If you don’t want to take a time for having high quality minisite templates, or if you want to get some inspirations for your minisite designs, this free minisites package is the right choice for you.

Each template has different color, image and different niche as well, makes this package a good choice to get inspired or use them for your niche sites.

This is the preview of all the templates:

Hot Minisite Templates (click image to enlarge)

This is the large preview of one of them:

Click here to download all the hot minisite templates for free!