Thursday, April 2, 2009
The Importance of a Professional Website for a Home Business
Simply put, it's not an option. A professional and effective website is a must for any business. Most especially a home-based business. The Internet has become the communications medium of choice for most people, when it comes to conducting business and researching companies to do business with. It allows any business to conduct business anywhere in the world, free of geographical limitations. Home businesses, already at somewhat of a disadvantage compared to the big guys, can benefit immensely from a well-designed and well-executed website.
The first thing that home business owners should know is that despite the variety of easy-to-use web-designing tools and software that are out there, they should not attempt to do it on their own. Unless of course, the business owner has a strong creative and graphic design background that can be applied to their website. Otherwise, business owners should seek the help of a qualified professional designer. It will save and make them money over the long run, without a doubt.
here are a few good reasons for this:
1. Most web-design software, like Microsoft FrontPage, use bland, generic templates and stock graphics to compose the website. Nothing kills the effectiveness of a website more than its looking just like hundreds of other sites on the web.
2. Most web-design software utilize jazzy applets, javascript, and Flash media to "liven up" the user's site. These elements can be overused, to a fault. The result is usually a site that's overloaded with flashy animations, graphics, and sound that do little more than annoy or turn off the visitor. Multimedia applications need to be utilized effectively on websites with balance and restraint. Furthermore, these "jazzy" elements need to have a real purpose. One that's beyond just trying to jazz up the site and woo the visitor. Only a good experienced designer can achieve that kind of balance.
3. Most amateur-designed, "DIY" (Do-it-yourself) websites look just that, amateurish. Horrifically unprofessional. Nobody likes to visit a poorly designed and/or ineffective website. The most important thing about your home business to prospective customers is your image and professional demeanor. Having an amateurish website is a sure way to blow that professionalism right out of the water with one glance of your site.
4. Most websites designed by home business owners turn out to be little more than "brochureware". These brochureware sites are usually ineffective because their mission and purpose have not been well-conceived. To have an electronic version of your company brochure is not enough to make your website effective. It has to accomplish specific tasks such as: generate leads; process sales; provide in-depth product information; and any other task that is applicable to your home business.
5. Developing a website, particularly when not experienced, takes a lot of time. A professional designer can work far faster and efficiently than the business owner at the project. It's better to find a quality designer to develop your site and apply your time to your business. Remember, your time is money.
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posted by aerthling @ 5:49 PM,
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Friday, October 3, 2008
Economic Stimulus Package
Well, it's been a couple of days since I announced the new (temporary) pricing, and I'm thinking, with the flurry of activity from aerthlings.org clients, that maybe I should have waited!
In all seriousness, there has been somewhat of a flurry, with nearly all of the aerthlings-supported web sites adding this or changing that.
First on the list would have to be EcoAdventure International, who recently revamped their accessible safari tours to include a slew of new countries at unbeatable rates. View the new and improved site here.Not in need of accessible adventure? Then make sure to visit the main EAI web site for affordable adventure vacation packages, and if hunting and fishing is your game, then be sure to click over to EAIoutdoors.com for that big game hunt you've always dreamed of!
Other updated web sites include the City of Columbus (be sure to visit the Fire Department's new section, which is up and about 90% completed, but looking good!), GoFromFatToFit.com which has undergone a name change as well as some cosmetic updating (just go there and check it out to see for yourself), not to mention the deal of the century on membership which includes access to the all-new Insider's Club member's area.
That's not even close to everything that's been going on, but the rest will have to wait until next time!
Labels: blogging, Food and/or Drink, wandering, webbing
posted by aerthling @ 8:32 PM,
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Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Achievable Solutions to Money on the Internet
Working from home is one of the best ways to grow a passive income because virtually any one can do it. However, no one can earn money on the internet without traffic.
Offline businesses rely on location. Online however, the rules change slightly; you are both everywhere and nowhere. Because of this, location takes a backseat to traffic.
It is this aspect that makes earning money on the internet so appealing. You have the potential to reach millions of customers. The challenge for most new work at home business operators is that you don't have the capital of a large corporation to do it. The advantage of earning money online is you do not need it. A small online business owner can attract hundreds of visitors without spending thousands of dollars on advertising.
Getting free traffic online should be a mission for new work at home fanatics.
read more | digg story
posted by aerthling @ 5:29 PM,
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Friday, February 29, 2008
Don't Disable Right Click!
After working hard on a design, image or article you may want to protect it by using a JavaScript that disables right-click while optionally warning a visitor that the content is copyrighted.
It might sound ok, but this isn't generally a good idea. Why not?
It's annoying!
You don't realise just how much you use right-click until you can't use it! There are a lot of useful features in the short menu that it opens up. While most are also available in the main browser menu, it's often much quicker to use the right-click menu -- this is usually the closest menu you have available.
It's pointless!
If you think disabling right-click will protect your source code or images, think again! Anyone who's determined to copy your content or code will do so regardless of his or her ability to bring up a browser context menu. If they want your source code then it's as simple as selecting 'view source' from the main menu. Article text can be highlighted and copied, images and media presentations can be retrieved from the cache, and streaming media can be recorded.
Disabling right-click will only make people more determined to learn exactly what it is you're hiding. And this could end up being counter-productive, as your images and source code attract unwanted attention. Not only that, but you can only disable right-click on browsers that have JavaScript enabled: a visitor only has to turn off JavaScript in their browser's options to be able to ignore the script altogether!
It's disabling!
Mouse gestures that enable quicker navigation are starting to become a feature of browsers: Opera has them, Mozilla has just added support, and it's only a matter of time before Internet Explorer adopts them. Disabling right-click on pages viewed in these browsers also disables the ability to use mouse gestures, so you won't be popular with those that use them frequently!
Even when you don't make use of mouse gestures, their absence can still seriously affect your ability to browse the Internet. I tend to open any links from a page I like in a new window from the right-click menu, so that I can read and compare both pages and return without having to use the back button. While you can open a link in a new window by holding down shift while clicking on it, many find it easier to use the option from the right-click menu. Disable right-click and you'll alienate these users pretty quickly.
It's unprofessional!
Ask yourself this: would you buy something from a site that reminds you its images are protected by copyright every time you go to use right-click (even when your pointer is nowhere near an image)? I thought not! Disabling right click suggests a lack of professionalism to users.
It's insulting!
Most of your visitors will come to your site looking to buy something, or to find information. Only a small percentage of your visitors will land at your site with the intention to steal from it. By trying to protect yourself from the minority, you effectively insult the majority, who will use the right-click menu for legitimate reasons. Do you really expect your visitors to trust you when you offer them "helpful reminders" that imply you can't trust them?
Granted, some people will want to view your source code -- but don't assume that everyone who looks at it will want to use it on their site! Savvy visitors that are aware of deceptive techniques used by some unscrupulous site owners may just want to check that a link is going to take them where they think it will take them. Does that make them a thief?
Solutions for Content Protection
There are other, less controversial alternative solutions available to the problem protecting your images or source code...
read more | digg story
Labels: copyright, teching, webbing
posted by aerthling @ 8:38 AM,
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Social Network Usage Around the World
This just goes to show how big this kind of thing is becoming - blogs and other social networks are quickly becoming the standard on the internet - don't get left behind!
This morning I came across a fascinating article from a French web site at lemonade.fr that had a wonderful illustration of global social network usage trends. While I can't read French at all, the map speaks for itself . . .Note the great breakouts of regional usage by social networking sites
read more | digg story
Labels: blogging, marketing, wandering, webbing
posted by aerthling @ 3:56 PM,
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Monday, February 25, 2008
Easy Update Home Page
A front page that is easy to update is getting to be more and more popular these days. As a business, your needs can change from day to day, client needs are always changing, and you are constantly changing to meet those changes head on, so you need a web site that can accommodate those changes as well. That's a lot of change.
The problem? There are a few of them, aren't there?
The first being that is time consuming to have to rely on someone else to make the changes - between deciding on the change, communicating your ideas and actually getting it done (not to mention revised!), the lag time can kill you!
Sure, there are "deals" out there advertising do-it-yourself updates - even entire sites - but they require the installation of costly software into your already overloaded computer, not to mention the hosting plan to support it, usually around $30 a month.
Say it with me: Uhg.
The good news for aerthlings.org customers, is we can set you up with an updatable home page for a one time fee as opposed to chaining you to a monthly payment over and above your regular hosting space, and there are no cumbersome software installations to slow down your computer.
And you know what? It doesn't even have to be the front page. It can be the back page, whatever you want.
It's easy to use - if you can type and click, you can upload content, all you have to do is sign in on line and get going. With the use of a WYSIWYG editor, the content design is a snap, and the only cost is a measly 2 hrs of labor.Compare that to twenty extra dollars a month and the savings really add up!
(Click here for a live sample of our Easy Update Home Page)
Labels: webbing
posted by aerthling @ 10:00 AM,
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding
Sometimes being a web-developer is just damn hard. Particularly coding is often responsible for slowing down our workflow, reducing the quality of our work and sleepless nights with pizza and coffee laying around the laptop. Reason: with a number of incompatibility issues and quite creative rendering engines it sometimes takes too much time to find a workaround for some problem without addressing browsers with quirky hacks. And that's where ready-to-use solutions developed by other designers come in handy.
One year ago was published the post with 53 CSS-Techniques You Couldn't Live Without where we provided references to the most useful CSS-techniques which are often used in almost every project. Over the last year we've been observing what's happening with the CSS-based web-development, and we collected most useful CSS-techniques we've stumbled upon - for us and for our readers.
read more | digg story
posted by aerthling @ 8:46 AM,
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Thursday, February 14, 2008
Is Selling A CD Found In The Trash Copyright Infringement?
Various courts have held that by putting something in the trash, you are relinquishing your ownership of those goods. However, apparently that might not apply to music. William Patry has the story on an unfortunate decision by our court system, suggesting that if you find a CD in the trash and sell it you may be charged with copyright infringement...
read more | digg story
posted by aerthling @ 3:45 PM,
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Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Domain Name Theft Incidents Continue to Increase
Domain name theft presents a distinct problem from cybersquatting. Cybersquatting is the registration or use of your trademarks and service marks by third-party registrants of infringing domains. Domain name theft occurs when you lose control of your domain registration and domain registrant status.Domain theft typically occurs as a result of a company's failure to lock down or control the registrant log in information at the registrar level. Domain names are stolen in a variety of ways but typically occur when an employee, partner or web developer take control of the registrant log in information. Each is discussed briefly below...
read more | digg story
posted by aerthling @ 3:41 PM,
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This is How We Catch You Downloading
All over Europe thousands of people are being threatened with court action for allegedly sharing games like Dream Pinball 3D on P2P networks. Now, documents obtained by TorrentFreak show details of the anti-piracy company's techniques for identifying alleged file-sharers on the internet...
read more | digg story
Labels: webbing
posted by aerthling @ 2:25 PM,
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Saturday, February 9, 2008
Free and Inexpensive Web Hosting? Stronzata!
The claim that some companies make of dirt cheap and even free hosting is at best extremely misleading, at worst false advertising, and almost always a load of "stronzata" (loosely translated, "stronzata" means, er, bologna...).
First of all, they register the domain name while retaining rights to it (some own the name outright, while others "share" the rights with you, which creates a real hassle if you want to switch).
Second, the space is too limited to really make a professional site, and although it is possible, it does get labor intensive, which means either you're gonna pay your web guy the big bucks, or you're going to invest a ton of your own precious time in it. If, as they say, time is money, then either way you're going to have to fork out.
Besides all that, most scripting options are not supported, e-commerce is either not supported or the alternative offered is an all but useless shopping cart that the "free" host provides, not to mention limited, if any, email capabilities, and very limited (again, if any) statistics. Many of these companies also run advertising on your site, shopping cart, email or all of the above (see above).
So I would offer up this time-tested advice: consider the cost - you may just get what you pay for!
Capisce?
Labels: webbing
posted by aerthling @ 10:20 AM,
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Microsoft Helps Nab $900M Piracy Ring
Microsoft is telling the tale of a major software piracy investigation that weaved through 22 countries, hoping would-be pirates will think twice if they know how far the company will go to protect its computer code worth billions in revenue each quarter.
read more | digg story
posted by aerthling @ 9:58 AM,
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Thursday, February 7, 2008
Free The Pirate Bay, Wear Yellow for Sharing
In a few months from now the trial of The Pirate Bay four will start. The "Free The Pirate Bay" group on Facebook has proclaimed Friday February 8th to be "wear yellow for sharing day", so everyone can show their support for the Pirate Bay team, and filesharing in general.
read more | digg story
posted by aerthling @ 5:09 PM,
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Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Chicanery! Domain Name Scams
I recently opened an email from my web hosting company that read something akin to this:
We have recently noticed an increase in the number of our customers who have been unable to purchase domain names shortly after checking their availability through certain domain name lookup tools on the web. It has come to our attention that one or more Domain Name Registrars may be reserving domains immediately after a search is performed on their websites and then requiring you to purchase the domain name directly through them.
Assuming that this was some kind of ploy to get me to use their search tool, which is frankly quite lame, I went on my merry way never realizing that I would become yet another statistic in the annals of web chicanery!
Shortly thereafter, I used a handy search tool over at a web site/company we'll call "Netwerk Solutions"(to protect the not-so-innocent!).
After using their handy dandy search tool, I found out that the name I wanted was indeed available, so I promptly browsed on over to my control panel to secure this available name, just to find out that it was in reality not available! Back to NS. Available. Back to control panel. Unavailable! What a mystery!
Well, a simple "who is" search cleared everything up - our friends at Netwerk Solutions had reserved the very name I searched for, using their rather handy search tool, and on the very day that I searched for it! What a coincidence!
I don't know if it was all of my ranting at my company and the guilty party (and my computer screen - screen wipes, anyone?), but a week later the name had been released,and I was able to grab it, but not after quite a bit of fretting. Thankfully this happened with a very understanding and graceful client, so I wasn't in any trouble.
This time.
Labels: webbing
posted by aerthling @ 2:58 PM,
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Thursday, January 31, 2008
Workin' Your Links
RE: Web Mail
I don't know how many people want to do this but in case you want to, or didn't know how, or hadn't bothered to figure it out yet, I'll tell you how to add a link to a specific text - meaning only a description will show, rather than a lengthy, confusing web address that spreads across the screen and on to the wall behind you!
There are two options provided in the SmarterMail email system that most of you are familiar with, and I believe that most web mail is similar to this, so here goes....
Option One would be using the SmarterMail Hyperlink Manager.
Adding a link with the SmarterMail 
may be the way to go for the desired effect. Once clicked, the Hyperlink Manager will open. Simply fill in the URL you would like to send people to, then the text you would like to be visible (ie, "Click Here" or "Funky Chicken") and you're good to go. The other fields can be skipped.
Alternatively,or Option two, is for you to edit the code (HTML).
If you go into the HTML section of your letters marked <> next to the pencil icon at the bottom left of your "compose" window, then you can use this code for the blog links, and the whole address will not show up, just a smaller, neater version, say, just Click Here", or whatever you choose:
<a href="">Click Here</a>
Notice the empty quotes - in between the quotes is where you will put the actual link address with http:// all the way to the .asp (or whatever your file ends with - jpg, htm, or, heaven forbid, php). In between the > and </a>, where you see Click Here above, is where the visible, clickable text of your choice will be seen. It can say Funky Chicken and it won't affect the link address whatsoever. It may affect your credibility a little, though....
Hope this has been helpful.
posted by aerthling @ 1:13 PM,
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Wednesday, January 9, 2008
What is it that a Blog is?
Just what is a "blog", anyway?
Well, I'll try to answer the above question with a general overview of "blogging" and its place in the big scheme of things (A.K.A. the World Wide Web).
As far as I could ascertain, blogging, in it's most primitive form, began sometime in the late 90's. More recently, "Blogs" have been so proliferating the Internet as to almost crowd out the standard "web page" altogether (with some pages, this would not be a bad thing). But seriously, it is beginning to seem like every other website is a "blog", or at least includes a one. But, you may ask, "What is it that a blog is?"
define:Blog
Type the above into your Google bar and a whole spattering of results will fill your screen. But for simplicities sake, we'll use the very basic definition. What is a "blog"? Easy. It's an online journal, sort of a diary, and the name comes from "web log", only shortened. Wikipedia.org, a popular online encyclopedic information site, defines a blog as thus:
A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.
Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.
Suffice it to say, the majority of blogs are updated anywhere from several times a day to once or twice a week, depending on the blogger, although you will find that some blogs stagnate rather quickly). A blog will sometimes concentrate on a specific topic, but often a single blog will contain a wide array of subject matter. Content is as varied as the person or persons filling it in. Browse the "blogosphere" even discreetly and you will find business blogs, motherhood blogs, dating blogs, homeschooling blogs, technical blogs, religious blogs....I think you get the point. If you can think it, there is probably a blog about it. But blogs take the form of more than just the standard journal entry, including blogs made up entirely of photos or videos.
Sizing 'em Up
Just for fun, let's compare the blog phenomena with your standard, everyday website (whatever that is, right?). Both formats will update their content periodically, although it is to be expected within a blog, whereas a normal website can be static without raising any eyebrows. Blogs and websites both share some more or less necessary attributes such as a header at the top, sidebar(s), and a footer at the bottom, and so they can appear similar in these regards. But the distinguishing marks are most likely to be the subject matter and how this subject matter is conferred. Your standard website, for example will be mostly an informative affair - just the facts, ma'am - whereas your blog site generally will offer a more conversational approach. The blogger may give you all the same facts, but with a more casual approach and a personal touch, and the comments form, which is part and parcel in blogging, allows you to become a part of the conversation. Blogging has allowed the blossoming of a whole social network in a way that standard websites could never have accomplished.
To Blog or Not To Blog
Great. But I still can't see any reason to start one myself. Or can I? Actually, you may well benefit from having a blog. Bloggers blog for a variety of reason. There are some who use blogs as a way to keep their family and friends up to date in their affairs, sort of an extended, online version of the Christmas newsletter your aunt sends out every year. Other bloggers are looking for an outlet to share their creativity, interests, and opinions, or to spout off their political beliefs - as I mentioned earlier, you name it, they blog it. Blogs can be used for all of that and more. In fact, it is fast becoming the trend to use blogs for self-packaging and marketing purposes, in an effort to bolster a source of income, if not become a source of income in and of itself. And this is one way you stand to benefit immensely from having a blog.
And there you have it....
Check out the blogging tag for more info.
Labels: blogging, marketing, webbing
posted by aerthling @ 7:25 PM,
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