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Archive for March, 2010

How to Create Simply Stunning XSitePro Templates Yourself

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

The mechanics of building templates for XSitePro are determined by the architecture of the software itself. The standard Xsitepro template includes a header panel, left and right panel, a footer panel and the main panel. So no matter what path you take you need to end up with graphical elements that align with the main panels.

The only method that allows for the precision fit of these graphical elements is to slice an existing graphic into discrete panel components and then reassemble them inside Xsitepro. No matter what you do, that part remains constant.

So the problem then becomes, not so much how to do it, but how to make the initial graphic. If you are not a Photoshop expert then you have very limited options, and even if you are a Photoshop expert, do you want to be spending all of our time designing templates or building internet marketing sites?

I recommend studying the full step by step guide showing how this is done from scratch, but here is the essential point. Use a tool that generates beautiful custom website templates and then slice those images into Xsitepro panels.

Not only does the tool create beautiful, contemporary templates, but it helps you design the templates by providing design suggestions in a fully interactive Office 2007 like interface. It’s slick, powerful and so easy to use that it can make even the worst graphical designer look great. Trust me, I know!

I start with a basic design template and then proceed to customize every feature imaginable; backgrounds, colors, header graphics, footer graphics, gradients, rounded boxes, sheets, fonts, widths, height, layouts – absolutely everything. I can start with any of the dozens of base templates and have a beautifully designed template ready in less than an hour. I can save the design and create variations of it for various reasons – seasonal, events, holidays etc. The ability to customize your templates is boundless.

For those that have trouble with color coordination it provides color themes that you can apply to the whole design giving it that professional designer quality that all of us recognize, but few of us can do properly.

I call this the “What You Want Is What You Get” approach to design.

The end result is a top quality, professional looking, and beautiful, completely custom website template.

Then it’s simply a matter of slicing the final design into Xsitepro ready images and creating an Xsitepro template. Again, the complete step by step guide is documented completely and clearly at http://xsitepro.rapidwebdevelopment.ca.

Mark Hogan
Xsitepro Design Expert
http://xsitepro.rapidwebdevelopment.ca

Ottawa Web Marketing
Rapid Web Development

Convert PSD to XHTML and PSD to CSS is More Than Just the Design Purpose

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

With every need to design a webpage, the instant perception would be to look for someone who is adept with webpage graphic designs. Most think that this is their only purpose in improving any site. But the truth behind it is that they can even offer more.

The web design can also help a lot in the optimization in the search engines for the benefit of the web owners. This is one way for the website to gain benefits by having your site indexed by the search engines for more effective marketing. This then would need the owner to convert psd to xhtml.

With this procedure to convert psd to xhtml will allow the website to have a more structured language that will make the search more convenient and make it more visible in the world of Internet. This is the primary reason why many invest on converting the psd to css of the entire layout of the site.

It brings good news that the number of providers offering this service is constantly growing. Since they are true experts in the field, these people would be capable of helping you conduct tests for the site to have the best programming service with the least possible problems that would occur as it gets introduced in the net.

First thing that they would do is to take a closer look if the psd file has been affected by the conversion. For if not, then this means the design was unharmed as well. So once it goes through conversion, you can be assured that the design will stay safe.

Second thing they would do is to check on the organization of the tags. This will ensure the quality of the visibility of the website remaining intact.

And lastly, these experts will make sure that the entire site is compatible with the rest of the types of web browsers. Remember that today, there are lots of different browsers made available in the Internet today. And if the website will fail to work, then the owner might lose profit.

With all of these, it is just true that converting psd to css and xhtml is more than just serving for design. It also assures people of the quality which would help them earn lots from.

Coding is a hard thing to master, even if you are familiar with computers. Sometimes, it’s best to let professionals convert psd to xhtml for your website. It’s also best to let them convert psd to css so that everything looks nice for web browsers.

Secrets to Making Effective Sales Copy

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Sales copy for a business website requires certain elements for it to be its very best. Most visitors to a site just skim through the items, looking for something interesting. This means, of course, good copy has to be interesting enough to catch the attention of a skimmer. Not only that, it must continue to be interesting, so the reader will read every word, and hopefully buy something at the end. Try these tips to make more successful sales copy for a website:

Draw in the Readers
1. Find the best keywords to describe the product or service featured on the web page. Try to consider keywords that potential buyers would use to find the product. There are tools available to find the words most searched for on the internet.

2. Use a powerful headline to capture the attention of a reader, while giving a clear impression of benefits of whatever is being sold on the site. This is crucial. If the headline is not interesting enough to pull readers, they will never read anything else.

3. Hold the attention of the readers with an opening paragraph that speaks directly to whatever need the product serves. Set up the writing so readers can see that the product serves that need better than any other solution.

4. Sales web copy should have a personal touch. It should not be formal and business-like, but written in a familiar style to engage the reader. Use the second person to personalize the writing, referring to readers with words like “you” and “yours.”

5. Use sub-headers all throughout the web sales copy to break up the text into smaller and more readable bits. This makes it look better and gives the opportunity to add more headlines that will continue to draw the readers in. This is ideal for scanners who tend not to read every word.

6. Testimonials are a good way to show the effectiveness of a product and give it credibility. If someone else used the product successfully, it makes a reader more secure in considering a purchase.

Convert a Reader into a Customer

1. The copy should end with a plea for the reader to take action of some sort. Make sure the offer is clearly explained in the text, so the reader is sent to an order page, or to a page with further information. The process should be clear, broken into easy steps that anyone can follow. All links should easily identified as links.

2. The purchases should include some sort of freebie. Customers who feel as if they are getting a little more for their money will be more likely to be repeat customers.

3. Make it seem as if time were of the essence. All the best offers should have a time limit. An expiration date will motivate a reader to act before time runs out.

4. Offer a way for customers to get their money back if they are not satisfied. This can be a thirty, sixty, or ninety-day guarantee.

5. Display contact information in a place that is easy to find. A customer will feel more secure if a means to contact the sellers is available. It also gives the company more credibility.

Joe Praveen Sequeira is an award winning, best-selling author, speaker, educator and professional Internet Marketing Consultant focused on helping businesses of all sizes, increase their online sales, boost web site traffic and strengthen their overall brand through established online marketing strategies. He has overseen hundreds of Internet marketing campaigns for fortune 500 companies and is the Founder & CEO of The eMarketing Pro, a thriving Internet marketing and eBusiness consulting firm.

Sixteen Steps to an Effective Sales Copy

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

Flashing banners and elaborate graphics are not necessary to attract a potential customer to a website. In fact, those might even drive some away. It is the sales copy that convinces a reader to buy something. Following are sixteen ways to enhance a sales page and make it much more likely to generate conversions.

1. Research keywords. There are a number of tools on the internet that will help you find keywords related to your product. Plant these words in the site’s sales page, including any meta tags, so that web surfers will be more likely to find them via search engine.

2. Create a slogan. A catchy slogan that emphasizes the good things a product can do for a customer will go a long way toward capturing attention and making the product that much easier to remember.

3. Draw in the customers with a headline. The headline should show what the product can do for the customer. Leave the details for the rest of the copy.

4. Make an appeal to emotion. There is something lost in sales copy, as opposed to face-to-face sales, since there is no personal interaction. Make up for that by appealing to the emotion of the reader – they should feel the product is necessary for someone in their situation.

5. Make it personal. Since the copywriter cannot incorporate the name of every reader into the copy, do the next best thing. Refer directly to the reader by using such words as “you” instead of “we” or “our.”

6. Avoid using all capital letters. Instead, use bold letters or different colors to emphasize.

7. Write a captivating introduction. This is the part that fills in bits of what the headline missed and sets up the rest of the copy. It should still be slim on details, but leave enough so that a reader will want to go on to read the rest.

8. Use sub-headlines. These will support the introduction, perhaps illuminating on each point brought up in the first paragraph.

9. Use testimonials. Solicit comments from satisfied customers and post them on the site. These can be especially effective, because it is a customer, and not the company, extolling on the benefits of the product.

10. Use graphics.The purpose of graphics is to support the written word. Some products are helped by the use of before and after photographs, for instance.

11. Make ordering easy. There should be several ways for a customer to order your product. The order button should just be at the top of the page. Make it easily accessible at a number of points. Try to include a number of methods of payment to attract the greatest number of customers.

12. Give them something for free. Add some bonuses with their purchase.

13. Make it urgent. Most visitors who leave a site thinking to buy later never actually do so. Make the offer for a limited time or only offer a limited amount. Be truthful about these deals – someone will always find out otherwise.

14. Provide a guarantee.

15. Leave adequate contact information. Visitors who are unclear on any aspect of the product should be able to get answers directly from you.

16. Check for errors in grammar, spelling, and formatting!

Joe Praveen Sequeira is an award winning, best-selling author, speaker, educator and professional Internet Marketing Consultant focused on helping businesses of all sizes, increase their online sales, boost web site traffic and strengthen their overall brand through established online marketing strategies. He has overseen hundreds of Internet marketing campaigns for fortune 500 companies and is the Founder & CEO of The eMarketing Pro, a thriving Internet marketing and eBusiness consulting firm.

Converting Traffic Into Dollars – Part 2

Wednesday, March 31st, 2010

It’s extremely important that your website visitors have confidence and trust in your company and its products and services. If your customers have no trust in you, they will not spend money and buy your products and services. When you’re conducting business on the internet there is no face to face contact with your customer in which to build a foundation of trust so you have to build your credibility through other methods.

  1. You must make sure that your web pages are professional – The pages have to look perfect. If they look like a child built them, you won’t be taken seriously. Forego the use of blinking text and other things like that. Funny animation and flashy banners have no place on a serious website. You want to make sure that all links work properly as well or it simply gives off the impression that you don’t care enough to even make sure your site works. You’re better off not to make use of pages that are automatically generated. Software programs out there that create pages for specific keywords do not work anymore like they used to, and it’s a waste of hard-earned money to buy them. It will simply give off the appearance that you are trying to spam the search engine and may get your site permanently banned. These pages also actually turn off most web visitors because while the page perhaps looks attractive to the software program that generated them, surfers usually hate them because they typically appear ugly. Many times the pages simply contain a bunch of buzz words and regardless of any positioning you may initially get from them because they will quickly be closed out by the surfer because it wasn’t what they were looking for. You can’t hope to generate any sales this way.
  2. Don’t forget to tell your website visitors who you are. – You absolute must let them know that there is someone real behind the webpage you are looking at. Include some contact information and make it easy for them to find it. Don’t forget that there are a lot of scammers on the internet today that make it even more difficult for the internet marketer than it once was to begin with. People have become very wary and they need to know if there is a problem it will be taken care of quickly and efficiently. Simply put, if this information is not there for them to find they will not buy from you. Make sure to use real testimonials on your site. Give people some references that they can actually contact if they wish to do so and your type of business warrants it. eCommerce sites can make things easier by providing a way for people to comment on products that they have purchased.
  3. Clearly Display Your Refund Policy – A clear and concise refund policy can prevent a lot of confusion and prevent an otherwise nasty encounter as long as it is posted where everyone can clearly see it. Thing is, unless people are trying to take advantage of a situation, then sometimes it’s perhaps best to refund money even if you are right and the customer is wrong. It’s a difficult thing but can be much more valuable in the long run than a few dollars.
  4. Free Trials – One way you can prevent any confusion with someone buying something that they may have thought was something else is by offering a free trial. This works well with membership sites and software products and it gives them a chance to see if it is something they really want.

Our website teaches things like this and much more. If you would like to learn more about online and affiliate marketing please stop by.

John Derossett is a writer and online marketer and has been marketing online in various industry’s for more than 10 years. He and his wife own and Operate AllStar Marketing Association, Unique Website Content and several other similar websites.