Though it’s an easy way to publish your information, the question to be asked is are web templates a good value? When you deal with the low initial price, and look forward for long term profitability, web templates are not a good idea.

Here are three reasons why:

The look: The worst part about web templates is that they look nothing but like web templates. Though most of the visitors don’t really know it is a web template, some are online frequently and they recognize the difference of quality.

Upgrading Issues: Templates are created in a minimum amount of coding.  Due to this reason you can’t have many features and functionality in your web pages, which usually you would get from a good web designing company.  This might cause you to miss out on many pages and ideas that could have made more money to your company.

Hard To Optimize For Search Engines: Web templates are hard to be optimized. That leaves your company website hard to find in Google, Yahoo and Bing to your customers. It might not be a problem to you if you use your template as your home page. But will it be worth it to put your website where your buyers can’t find it?

Though Web Templates are low price and less work to be done, it is still a false economy.  It might get more inexpensive day by day, but just ask for yourself, will it be the best for your company?

If you need your website to be designed by experienced web designers, contact us at extreme web designers sri lanka 0094 11 5050939

There are 7 primary strategies which will improve ranks of a website in search engines. The first strategy which the company needs to fulfill is in relation is to allocate approximately 30% of their total budget for SEO. The budget which is allocated for SEO should cover both ongoing expenses and on site costs. The company will have to pay for the optimisation online and they will also have to research the best keywords to use.

The next strategy which a company needs look at the locating the best developer who is aware of what needs to be done in relation to SEO and ecommerce. Its probably best to go for a company who has a good reputation and also strong experience related to ecommerce sites. Its also a good idea to locate a company who has the ability provide a range of services as this will save you time.

Its very important for the company to select the best ecommerce platform because this will enable the company to make use of the open sources. The best open source platforms include Joomla and OSCommerce. There are a number of benefits of using sites like these and the benefits include low site development costs, greater level of portability, vast amount of add ons and plugs in and also a wide community support base.

It is also a good idea to make use of the custom built platforms, as these are able to provide some of the best flexibility and customisation options, which are currently available. These customisation options will enable you to be separated from your competitors. The downside of these platforms is the high cost for development and also some search engine optimisation companies will find it difficult to work with this system.

Another strategy that is very useful is to look for a good service provider who works within the SEO world. Part of the planning for SEO is to select a SEO company who has a strong name and also experience within this sector. Its very important that the SEO company has the ability to work with the selected platform which you wish to use. The selected company should also feel comfortable using long tail SEO and content generation.

Another very useful strategy is to have the ability to recognise the competitors. In order to be successful you must have the ability to recognise the competitors of the business. When you starting out at first its more important to look at the local competitors. The search engine optimisation provider that you chose should have the ability to create the list of local competitors for the company. It is very important to remember that SEO companies are not magicians and the amount of money that you have available will greatly influence your performance within the world of SEO.

The final strategy that you should look at carefully is the content of the website. In the case of search engine optimisation the content on the website is very important.

Extreme web designers Sri Lanka specializes in e-commerce SEO and conversion optimization. For more information on e-commerce SEO services, visit www.extremewebdesigners.com or call us at +94773927028 for more information.

This quote becomes very contradictory in its own way when it comes to the web design world. New trends hold a lot of importance when it comes to making new structures, layouts, designs and even for a single graphic to a website.

Technology changes every day with each click of the mouse. Every day at every single click a brand new trend or new technology emerges which changes web design trends. It undergoes a continuous and a very fast speed.

The web world of designs is going more humane, aesthetic, and functional in appeal. As the web industry is fickle, more and more designs trends are on their full pace. Sole web presence doesn’t really work. Incorporation of interactive and attractive designs in a website was, is and will always remain important and thus won’t hamper the new emerging trends.

The best way to communicate any idea in the world of web design is a good and a subtle straight-forward design. And it acts as an icing on the cake, when a website is launched with a creative and unique layouts. It does not stop at having a great content, the entire layout and how it has been structured, decides its readability and influence on the reader.

More and more effort is being put to take inspiration from the print world, which is accompanied by headlines, quotations, multi-column text, highlighted quotations, and indented text, supporting imagery, side notes and footnotes.

Print material ought to have a high impact on the readers keeping in mind that it should not dominate the informative part that is, the content of the website. We have tried and made an attempt to incorporate all the latest trends in web designs in the year 2010 with from especially print sources in this gleaming world of creativity.

Nature and Size of Font:
— Serif and Sans-serif: These fonts have proved themselves very apt for body texts because they are more visible and easier to read even while browsing at high resolutions.
— Big bold headings: These ought to grab readers’ attention as they are distinctly visible.
— Scrolling limit: As the web page is not bound by the constraint of a particular dimension as it happens in print. Nevertheless, a web designer has an option of the horizontal scroll bar, which is actually quite a big ‘No’ if we look it from the visitor’s point of view.
As it has already been mentioned in the starting that the new trend is inspired from the print world, and therefore, a strong grid system provides an organized structure to the web page where the designer can actually fit in the content removing all the inessentials.

JavaScript:
With the advent of the higher resolutions, and the ability to show any JavaScript, it has become much easier to avail the white space that is actually critical to the reader because it ensures proximity and a space to rest.

Info-graphics and multi-column Layouts:

• Info-graphics: As the name suggests, have always remained a help in delivering the complex relationships and rations and even statistics in a more simple and effective way.
• Multi-Column Layouts: As the world of information is increasing, and Internet is becoming the hub to put in the vast resource of knowledge, multi-column layouts are becoming more and more popular.

Go for CSS3
Gone are those days when we could only animate with GIF image files and then, flash. Today, we are loaded with Flash, Silverlight, GIF, JavaScript, and even CSS3 and now, CSS4, and CSS5 as well. Rounded corners, borders, backgrounds, text and box shadows are some of the advantages, which can be made use of— usable on the old browsers as well as on the new technologies with enhanced features. The basic advantages that you tend to grab hold of CSS3 are—

• Rounded Corners: With the use of CSS3, it saves the effort of the user of generating rounded corners by directly creating them in the browser. The rounded corners, which were once stimulated with CSS, JavaScript hacks and image files, became much more efficient without taking the pain to download additional files.
• Adding shadows is now possible: CSS3 offers some of the most creative effects to create shadows, be it— drop shadows to the inner shadows, embossed and imprinted effects, with no effect on the loading time.
• Mobile-friendly versions: With the use of mobiles and the rapid growth of mobile web, companies prefer to go for user-friendly mobile versions of their websites and spend heavily.

Other Techniques:

• Add Crisp Illustrations: With the new trends, it’s time to learn creating those smooth, clean, crisp illustrations that are marked distinctive and professionally illustrated designs.
• Micro-Textures: With the introduction of ‘micro-textures’, we are able to create subtle, barely noticeable textures in the background.

The use of watercolors and handwritten and script fonts ensures a subtle, distinct, calming, and well-crafted and planned way to communicate your ideas.

Social media — it is working as an explosive in the sudden growth of sharing and communicating your ideas, creativity and connecting you to the millions of people out there. Facebook, Twitter, Blogspot, and many other social networking sites are the new ever-growing trends in the field of web designs. And being the need of the hour, designers are looking forward to the but, innovating techniques of creating a connection with the visitors through these social hubs.

“Even some of the greatest technology-led revolutions, or allegedly technology-led, really were only made possible because of trends already present” By Scott Cook

But of course, these trends have been, in one way or the other, inspired by the current trends and we, purely feel that web designing industry is subjected to changes at almost each and every hour. Contact us at extreme web design sri lanka if you need your web site to be modified, redesigned or build a new website. contact us  at  +94115050939.

What is HTML5?

HTML5 is HTML’s latest major revision,which has a whole load of new cool features and exciting attributes.

For most of the HTML coders the understanding of these new cool features might be overwhelming and at first it might look unnecessary, but when you dig in deeper into a new and exciting list of features will open up, not for just HTML web developers and web designers but for web users as well..!

Below is a publication by Focus.com which is a infographic designed for the uninitiated to get a better understanding of HTML5 and to be a quick reference for web developers, you can view the infographic below (click the image for the source and to view it full-size).

[Source]

“Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you. With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index,” explains Google.

Because Google indexes are updated in real time, you will find new information much faster, may be in even a few seconds once it is posted..! Matt Cutts says that you’ll sometimes find web pages that weren’t indexed when you started typing your query. This is really incredible, even though it’s still very difficult to rank recent web pages.

If you want to find most recent web pages, click on “Past 24 Hours” or “Past Week” in Google Search right side menu (the screenshot shows Google’s old interface). You can even sort the results by date.

1. Fast Loading web site designs – this is the most important #1 tip which every website should have. You might design a web site that looks fabulous but only a very few visitors are going to see it if it takes a long time to load..!! your web designs should be properly optimized for the web and should not take more than 10 – 15 seconds to load completely. Remember that even though you might have a great design but only a very few people are going to see it if it takes long to load.
2. Clear Navigation – once a visitor has come to your web site you need them to click and go inside to view more pages and convert a goal. To do this you need to have a very clear and easy navigation. Make sure that all your important links are at very visible/prominent places. Most effective is the top right of the screen, this is where a visitor first looks at. Make use of menus on the right and left side of your design. Try to link many pages as possible. Let your important information be accessible from all parts of your website navigation. You may never know what a visitor may be interested in. try to use the footer area for important links.
3. All Resolutions – there are many computers using different kinds of resolutions. They range from 800 x 600 to 1440 x 900 and go even higher. Your target is to design your web site for all these resolutions much as possible. The best way to do this is to design your site in terms of percentage instead of pixels.
4. Browser Compatibility – make sure that your website is browser compatible. Your website should look the same in browsers like Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari & Google Chrome since they are widely used. Do not stop testing your design just because it looks great on Firefox. Usually IE gives problems and needs a few bug fixes specially when you are doing advanced HTML websites. But these problems are usually fixed easily once found.
5. Readable and professional looking fonts – we do not have to ask you, how many times you might have clicked out of a website because it used fonts like Comic Sans and the colour was bright green or pink..! just by looking at the font you know that the site is not professional. Do not use fonts like comic sans and any other similar fancy fonts which might not be available on most computers. If the font you chose is not available on the visitors computer then the website will use the default font of that computer which will look much worse and terrible. So try to use common and professional web standard fonts when designing your websites. The most popular fonts are Arial, Verdana & Calibri.
6. Minimize the use of images – Simple designs are the most effective for web. Keep your web site neat and simple. Do not clutter the pages with bulky images which might slow down the loading time. Visitors are more interested in content rather than design.
7. Use of white space – try not to clutter your design with too many images, big fonts and backgrounds. Keep it simple and minimize the use of images and keep a lot of white space which will make it more readable. White space will give your website a sense of spaciousness and overall tidiness.
8. Check for broken links – you should always cross check for broken links before updating your website to the web server. In Dreamweaver you can do a link check for broken links by right clicking any file in the site files window and clicking on check links for entire site. If you do not have this feature you need to upload your site and validate it with W3C Link Checker.

We hope these few web design tips were useful for you, if you want to design a professional website please feel free to contact us at extreme web design sri lanka. Tel 0094 112 5050939

Why Yahoo appeals to the 50+ demographic:

• Yahoo is a old fashioned portal which is a gateway to all kind of different content on the internet.
• As a home page it has a good set up in advance for its users and do not require or push for customization.
• People who are over 50 years were “leading edge” internet users about 10 – 15 years ago set up a yahoo email account when Yahoo was THE dominant search engine at that time and they still use that same account today.
• In a research carried out by  Cowan & Co, revealed that 57% of respondents were visiting Yahoo home page because they go there to check their Yahoo mail. Yahoo’s engagement with users remains high; 64% of respondents go to Yahoo.com at least once per week. In addition, Yahoo Mail is still growing (although Gmail has a much greater share of new personal email accounts).
• People over 60 are more often using the Internet for community and entertainment they aren’t using the web to “search” for data and information to support their career.

Google: a dominant “search” engine and online toolbox

• Google is the dominant search engine which is taking over the market share with over 67.3% in December 2009 across all demographics.
• Google gives its primary focus on “search” finding the information and data people look for, most often for research, work or career development.
• Google has loads of customizable tools such as iGoogle, Google Docs, Gmail, Google Reader, Google Maps etc.
• In the same research by Cowan & Co cited above, they found that “79% of 22- to 25-year-olds use Google as their primary search engine, compared to 63% of total respondents. Google usage is skewed toward younger demographics, high-income households, users with college and graduate degrees, and mobile Internet users.”

Bing: uncertain waters yet strong possibilities for the 50+ demographic

• According to the Cowan & Co study, Bing was chosen as a primary search engine by just 1% of 18- to 25-year-olds and 4% of 26- to 34-year-olds. Bing’s highest penetration rate is in the 55-and-over demographic at 10%.
• About 40% of respondents are not aware of the Bing brand. They are simply finding the tool because it is the default search engine in Internet Explorer which as of December 2009 is still the browser of choice (or default) of 50% of Internet surfers. Older users are much more likely to stick with the default browser than to seek out alternative software.
• Even after the huge media-blitz by Microsoft to promote Bing (spending perhaps as much as $100 million), its market share dropped in December 2009 to 9.9% from a high of 10.7% the previous month.

The question is, even if Yahoo and Bing have a smaller piece of the pie, if their user base matches your customer base, you’ll want to make sure you have a presence in their text and image indexes, directories, and perhaps even paid search. There are specific tactics you will need to take to accomplish this. Extreme web search engine consultants Sri Lanka are ready to offer you the guidance and coaching you need – just get in touch!

How do you get a sitemap? Its Simple. You can either code it yourself (protocol here), or use a XML Sitemap generator. There are tons of free generators and tons of software out there to buy. I personally use xml-sitemaps.com for my projects. I have them crawl my sites, save the document made, and then edit it using a text editor.

What is the benefit? Well, it gives a concise look at your website. It’s how you inform the search engine spiders what you consider important. Is your privacy policy that important? Probably not as much as your main product page.

Now you’ve made one, what to do now?

1. Put it in your main directory. Ex. http://www.mysite.com/sitemap.xml
2. Edit your Robots.txt to include it for all engines. Add a line in there like the one below
   Sitemap: http://www.example.com/sitemap.xml
3. Tell the engines about it directly.
   1.    Learn more about Webmaster Central Here.
   2.    Yahoo SiteExplorer
   3.    MSN/Live

Probably the single best resource to learn about sitemaps is Sitemaps.org. Their FAQs and Sitemap Protocol say just about everything you might need.

If you want professionals to get sitemaps configured and do some search engine optimization for your website conctact us at +94115050939 (Sri Lanka)

To be Search Engine friendly means that everything should be discoverable by search engines on your website. So in essence your SEO actually starts with the web design. This is one of the major mistakes most of the businesses make. They usually first seek a designer who may not be good in SEO knowledge and a much less expert. SEO friendly web Designs are essential which makes the foundation for a long term competitiveness of the website.

Having explained all of this we now know that interactive websites gets better results because of the visual stimulation of video, onsite tours, etc. so how can you make this work? Knowing that most of the search engines likes text and it is essential to be found the answer is to do both in a very precise balanced approach so that search engine spiders can be provided with what they are looking for while providing human beings the correct elements and content to get a positive response or conclusion.

First the fundamentals of Search engine optimization must be adhered to:

1. Search-Engine Friendly Pages – HTML; no Full Flash.
2. Unique Page Titles for every page – must be targeted on the most important keywords (requires keyword research).
3. Unique Meta Descriptions
4. Installation of Search Engine Friendly CMS (Content Management System) to form the basis for consistently adding and indexing new content.  We like WordPress and Joomla depending on the needs of the website.  Sometimes we use a combination within one domain to take advantage of unique advantages each has.
5. E-Commerce – critical selection of SEO Friendly E-Commerce software; this means SEO-friendly shopping cart structure that includes database functionality for unique product names, unique descriptions; all of which easily read by the search engines by conforming to search engine guidelines.  We have great success with OsCommerce and Virtue mart and  have used it to “save” certain E-Commerce websites from themselves due to obviously SEO unfriendly E-Commerce software.
6. Blog – Content Management System Selection for easy indexation by the search engines; any such system must be text-readable, include ample room for Titles, Descriptions, Tags, Social Media compatibility, RSS functionality, commenting-friendly.
7. Dynamic Site Map – automatically submits new site-map to Google every time new content is added to the site.

You should be aware that there is much more to SEO. These elements alone will not take you to the first page. However making your foundation strong keeps you in the game and makes you competitive towards success.

With solid SEO fundamentals in place, you now need to pay attention to web page interaction through optimal user interactivity.  After all, getting great ranks isn’t enough … you need visitors to convert.  There are countless methods and tools available to increase and optimize user engagement, interaction, and entertainment and ultimately reach both a logical and emotional conclusion towards taking the act of conversion.

Some of the SEO friendly tools that can be integrated into producing websites are:

1. Video Introduction – to grab and hold attention in those first few critical seconds.
2. Sliders – Moving slides of images and / or text that quickly deliver the value proposition to the visitor.
3. Engaging questionnaires or polls
4. Featured Articles and Press Releases
5. Animations
6. Special Offers
7. Knowledge base
8. Newsletter Sign-up

Marrying interactive web design with SEO is ultimately essential towards both driving traffic and driving conversions.  You can’t do one without the other and expect to be successful.

Looking for better conversions?  Better Traffic?  Contact us and let’s talk about it.  It’s a free initial consultation.

Why is it important that Google can deal with synonyms?
Google targets to show the finest results for your search. To achieve this it’s very important that Google’s algorithms can understand the search keywords which you may use in the search query. One important factor of recognizing the words is to understand synonyms.

These are words which can have the same meaning, Example: “home” and “house”. People who are searching for “home improvement” might also be interested in websites which contains the keyword “house improvement”
But the issue is that some words can have many meanings. For example, “case” could mean “box” , “container” or it can mean “instance” , “occurrence” or example.

Google’s measurements show that synonyms affect 70 percent of user searches across the more than 100 languages Google supports.

What has changed?

According to the posting in Google’s official blog, Google has improved the way that they detect synonyms. For example, the algorithm can now find 20 possible meanings of the search term “GM”. GM can mean General Motors, George Mason in [gm university], gamemaster in [gm screen star wars], Gangadhar Meher in [gm college], general manager in [nba gm] and even gunners mate in [navy gm], etc.

Google also made a change to how the synonyms are displayed. The searched words and the synonyms are now displayed in bold in the search results. Web pages that contain only synonyms of the searched word can also be displayed in the search results.

Do you have to change your web pages?
If you have optimized your website as explained by our search engine optimization consultants and as explained then you don’t have to change anything. Here’s a reminder:

1. Think out of the box.
Don’t just use the technical terms that you use in your company. Think about the words that other people would use to describe your product. For example, don’t just use “rhinoplasty” but also “nose job” and “nose surgery”.
Our search engine consultants will help you to find the best keywords for your website.

2. Optimize different pages of your website for different keywords.
The more pages you optimize, the better. It is much better if one web page is highly relevant to one keyphrase than somewhat relevant to many keyphrases.

Don’t stuff a single page with keywords. The keywords should fit naturally in your web page content. Our consultants will help to find out where on your web pages you should use your keywords.

Different people use different words to find the same things. Use different ways to talk about your website topic and optimize as many pages as possible of your website.