If you have a website and more than one domain name for that website, there are some important issues that need managed. If you don’t, it can mess up your search engine ranking.

How will it mess me up - why should I be concerned about this?

If you have lots of domain names pointing to the same site, the Google PR can end up being shared around each of them, so none of them rank very well. You want the PR to go to one domain name.
Google ranks local websites higher for local searches. One of the ways it knows you are a local website is if you have a local domain name, like .co.uk But that domain name has to be correctly associated to the website.

There are three scenarios to consider:

1. You already own a generic domain name like .com or .net (called a TLD) and you buy a new county code domain name like .co.uk or .ie (called a ccTLD) to get better rankings in your target geographic market.
2. You already own a ccTLD, but you want a more prestigious .com domain name to add to your stable.
3. You buy up various other domain names, which you like, or are similar to your main one, and you want them to point to your website.

How to manage the scenarios:

Scenario 1

What is required here is to park the ccTLD on the TLD and get a link using the ccTLD to an appropriate page on the TLD

Scenario 2

What is required here is to 301 redirect the TLD to the ccTLD

Scenario 3

What is required here is an IP funnel. This is a “feeder site” with a 301 redirect to the main site, with all the other domain names parked on the feeder site.
So if you own a website with more than one domain name its really important to manage the domains. following the guidelines above.

Its important to keep your website content up to date. You need to edit it, add to it and constantly review it. Why should you do this?

1. New clients will notice if dates on the site are old, or if there is irrelevant information. Fresh content rightly gives the impression that your are a live, active opertion.
2. Existing customers won’t revisit your site if the content never changes.  
3. One important fact is that Google rates sites higher if they change regularly. If you are interested in improving your sites performance is search engines, you need fresh content.

  Continue Reading »

This post is all about taking online payments from customers.

This is an area which can cause a lot of confusion, so I hope to simply things a bit.

There are two different starting points:

1. You currently can process credit card transactions - you have a “merchant account” and a PDQ machine.
2. You havent got a “merchant account” (and cant, or dont want to endure the delay of getting one)

Continue Reading »

What font to use, what size should it be, and how to lay it out (typography).

Lets start with font.

Fonts

Font (or “typeface”) is the style of a letter, for example Arial or Times New Roman. Fonts are generally divided into serif and sans-serif. A serif is the small “flare” at the end of strokes on letters. For example on the ends of the horizontal bar of the first letter T below, which is in Times New Roman. Compare it with second letter T which is in Arial.

T(with serif) T (sans serif)

Two issues connected with fonts are legibility and style.

Style

Sans serif fonts have a more modern and informal feel. Serif fonts are more conservative and classical. For example if you are a solicitor, a sans serif font may give the correct feel for your website, but if you sell software, it probably wouldn’t.
Beyond that it comes down to taste. In experiments», Times has come out least poular and Verdana most

Legibility and reading speed

Experiments» have been done on the legibility and reading speed (not the same thing) of different fonts at different sizes. The most commonly used fonts tend to be equally legible at the 10-, 12-, and 14-point size.
Tahoma 10 point was perceived as the most legible (surprising more legible than the same font at larger sizes!)

Layout (typography)

Entire books are devoted to this subject but this is intended to be a guide for people who are specifying what they want in a website, so this is an overview.
The temptation is to try and get as much information as possible in a document or web page, and fill all the space with words. The thought on the part of the author usually goes along the lines of “the more they know about my product, the more likely they are to buy it”. Yes, but that information has be presented in layers of increasing complexity - not all at once.

The biggest mistake is too many words!

White space is good!

Dont worry if you see gaps!

If you want to read more about typography, here’s a great starting point»

Blue

Only joking. But most web sites are blue.  But how do I choose?

A usual starting point is the colour scheme thats used in your logo, but lets say you have no constraints. Well there are some simple rules to follow.

• Keep it simple - 2 or 3 colours. 1 colour can work well too more»
• Usually most websites are trying to convey some textual message. So the text has to be easy to read. Get what I mean?
• Research (Scharff, et al. (1996) usability»), shows that, surprise, surprise, dark text on a light background is the best colour scheme for text areas, and best of all is black on white.
• Think of the marketing message you are trying to get across. Conservative and professional?, or funky and innovative - that should influence your choice.
• Beyond that, youre into colour science. Heres a brief lesson:
  
  Issac Newton came up with the idea of the colour wheel. Its wheel of colors (really?). Red yellow and blue and the gradations between. 
  • Analagous colour schemes use 3 colours from beside each other on the wheel
  • Complementary schemes use opposite colours
  • Split complementary uses 2 adjacent and one opposite
  • Triadic uses three equally spaced colours
  • Tetradic uses 4 colours, 2 adjacent and 2 opposite If you have half an hour read this wikipedia on colour theory»
    

  • Stuck for ideas?
    I think this is brilliant - just type a word and get a scheme more»
    or
    simply download a scheme you like from colorschemer»

Well theres a good question!

If you look in the yellow pages and make a few phone calls, or google “web design” you will be swamped with options and prices. How to choose?

Where to start and what sort of company to approach.

• You want a professional web designer or comany, not someone doing it in their spare time. This is common sense, for more reasons than I’ll bother to list here, but despite that, many small businesses trust their web design to a “bedroom designer” thats been recommended to them. Recommended usually because its a friend trying to earn a bit on the side. Just dont do it. Enough said.
• What constitutes a professional designer or company?
• full time.
• portfolio of clients.
• their own website.
• a range of skills encompassing design, development and internet marketing.
• business and management expertise.
• sufficient resources - make your own mind up on this. Solstice Business Systems,  hasn’t got a team of in-house developers. Its run by one person who, has a network of associate developers and partnerships with offshore development companies. This keeps overheads down and provides flexibility, but you might be reassured if you can see a room ful of guys behind PCs. You pay your money and make your choice!
• An office in the High St. Make your own mind up on this. Solstice Business Systems doesnt - it keeps overheads down, and the savings are reflected in our prices.
• What its not, is, someone who can simply use Dreamweaver!But I would say all that, wouldn’t I! 

Price
I’ve got prices ranging from £100 to £2000 for a 5 page site!! Somebody’s pulling my leg!
Well maybe, maybe not. You have to be sure you arent comparing apples with pears. Broadly speaking, if youre dealing with a professional company you will get what you pay for, although some companies have lower overheads (see above) Here’s a check list:

• Number of pages?
• Will you see (and approve) a design in jpg format before the site is designed?
• Is the design genuinely original or is a template? You can buy template solutions for a few dollars.
• How many design concepts will be produced?
• Is there one design for all the pages, or a different design for the inner oand outer pages?
• What is the policy on design changes?
• Is logo design included?
• What technology is used?
• it should at least be built CSS/XHTML using table-less layout techniques.
• It may or may not be built to various standards for the code itself and for accessibility.
• does it have a content management system?
• does it include any functionality? (like a contact us form)

Dont just take my word for it, here’s the views of another web design company

One of the first things to do when starting a web based business is to choose a domain name. Easy you’d think. Lets just put on the kettle and think up somethin’ groovy! Well lets just wlak though it, look at a typical scenario and then give some guidelines.

Ok,  we make unspillable jugs. What about woopsadaisy.com? That sounds good. Lets check it. (if you want to, try it on www.electricnames.co.uk)

Bah. Its gone. Dammit that was a good idea, easy to remember and catchy.  Ok, more coffee and think again. Hang on - it was such a good idea, what about woops-a-daisy.com. YESS! its available. Hang on….hyphens are they OK?…and what if people get me mixed up with woopsadaisy. yeah thats a bad idea.

Back to the drawing board. Ok..lets think…hmmmm. Dammit that was good idea…..oh oh I’m stuck now. Hangon…lets try that domain name wizard thing I saw at electric names. Ok - I could have nospilljugs.com. Thats not bad!

But woahh..I could also have nospilljugs.co.uk , right lets get that. hmmmm…maybe get .biz as well. But where do I stop, theres tons of extensions! And what about search engines - is it OK to have lots of domain names??

hey this is becoming a bit of a headache and my coffees gone cold.  I better ask somebody what they think. Lets leave it till tomorrow.

Right what you need are some sensible guidlines (this is Mr domain name expert speaking now!)

First thing is to separate the issues.

1. What the registering bodies allow.
2. What is a good marketing decsion.
3. Issues with search engines.

 What’s allowed

• domain names arent case sensitive
• must be at least two characters long and no more than 63 characters maximum, excluding the top level domain (TLD, for example, .com)
• The characters can include any combination of letters, numbers or hyphens

 What’s a good marketing decision (these are my opinions, you could argue with some if you want!)

• something thats easy to remember (short, no funny spellings)
• something where the .com version is available, especially if its a live site using the .com version.
• dont use zero’s in it. Too easily confused with the letter “o”
• if you do decide on a name with an odd spelling, like fones4u.com, consider registering other spelling variants like “phonesforyou”, otherwise word of mouth referral is difficult.
• Hypenated names are a toss up. I think they can be useful if the two words end and start with the same letter, but sometimes people have trouble knowing what a hyphen key is on their keyboard! Safe bet is to register both versions.
• it doesnt have to be your company name, it could be descriptive of what you do.
• directories are a big thing on the net, and usually they are organised alpha-numerically. zztop.com isnt a good idea.

Search engines

• try and include keywords in the domain name (does what it says on the tin approach)
• search engines penalise dupicate content. So if you have a website selling beans, and you register hundreeds of domain names with beans in the title all pointed to the same site you will get knocked back. But I need to register several versions of my domain name for the reasons above..help!
  The technique to get round this involves setting up “301 redirects” on the secondary domain names. If you want to know more click here .
• Regionalisation. This is a big issue, and related to marketing (above)
  .com names are intended for international businesses. If you operate in a region, like the UK, you will get better SE performance by having a .co.uk domain name as your primary domain name and the server which hosts the website should be in the UK. A strategy often adopted for international marketing is to have a .com site, and also regional sites. But beware, the regional sites shouldnt be copies of each other, they need unique content, or you may be penalised.

Other intersting things you maybe didnt know about domain names

• You dont own a domain name, you rent its use from the registrar
• Registration doesnt give you the right to use it. You might have managed in the early days of the web to register ww.cocacola.com, but try convincing their lawyers that you had a right to use it!
• If an agent registers the domain name for you, make sure they use your correct name and address
• Domain names can expire if you dont renew then annually, your registrar should do this for you automatically

Should I register a domain name myself and get the cheapest deal I can, or should I have someone do it for me?

• If you just want to stake a claim to a nice name, and youve got 10 minutes to shop around, yes, theres not much reason to not do it yourself and save a few pounds.
• If you have a website with several domain names, and you dont want to get involved in the management, administration, renewal and configuration, then it makes sense to pay  a few pounds extra for all that work. Well I would say that though, seeing as thats what I do for you!

Registration of a domain name is a 10 minute job anyone could do. Management of your domain names and their interaction with your email services, and your website is more complicated.

Some useful tools for finding domain names can be found at Best Tool For The Job