So why does this make the store owner lose money?

1. You have a very small window of time to impress a new visitor before you lose their attention span and they leave your site. With slow loading images, most people (including me) will get tired of waiting and will leave your site. When people leave your site, they’re obviously not placing an order. If your images are not properly optimized for use on the web, even though they may load OK for you, there is a large portion of people out there who are still on dial-up or some other less speedy computer or internet connection. And with attention spans getting smaller and smaller these days, you need to take advantage of every second when someone new visits your site to get them to want to buy from you.

2. Larger, not optimized images take up more disk space. Excessive use of disk space can cause you to require a higher plan from your web host, costing you more money. Not only that, when you upload the images to your site or you make backups of your site (which, ahem, you should be doing regularly) it takes longer since there is so much more data.

3. Bandwidth is one of those things that clients come to me and don’t quite understand what it is. Bandwidth, in terms of web hosting accounts, is the total amount of data that is transferred to and from your account in one month. So if you have 10GB of bandwidth, then your site can transfer up to 10GB worth of data in one calendar month before reaching the limit and getting that infamous “you have exceeded your bandwidth usage” message.

“But I don’t even know how to transfer data to and from my site. Why do I use bandwidth?” Every time a visitor views your site for the first time, the images and info on the page of your site they’re viewing are actually downloaded to their computer. So, if you have a 2MB image on your homepage, that 2MB image has to be downloaded to each and every visitor’s computer when they visit your site. That adds up! (2MB is HUGE for a website image, by the way.)

You may have also heard of “cache”, specifically when I may have said “you need to clear your browser cache”. What this is, is your computer saving you time by accessing the images from your computer when you re-visit a site that you’ve already been to before. So instead of downloading the image again, it just references the one on your computer. This saves a little bandwidth and time, but this is what causes the problem of you not seeing a change on your site that you just made without clicking Refresh – it’s still accessing the old version on your computer. But, I digress. So bandwidth usage should be kept down, because using more can require you go up to the next hosting plan, costing you more money.

Ok, I get it. I need to fix my photos, but what size/resolution/etc. do I need and how do I fix them?

Here are some key points:

- “High resolution” is NEVER needed for use online and does NOT make your photos look better. High resolution is used for print media, not online media. 72 dpi is what your monitor displays at, and so that’s all that your photos need to be. Anything beyond that is just making the file larger and take up extra space/bandwidth/time. Just today I saw a whole site filled with images that were 300 dpi. I have not once, EVER, used a photo on my site that was higher than 72 dpi and you won’t ever see my images or images I use on client sites look poor quality (unless they were supplied by the client that way).

- Never resize your images through your cart, blog or site builder system admin, if at all possible. If you upload a large image to your homepage via your cart’s page editor and then click and drag it to resize it, making it appear smaller this way does NOT reduce the file size, the dpi or the time it takes to download and should NOT be done. Not only that, but it makes the image pixelated and ugly and many times, out of proportion. Images should be resized to the exact size needed for use on your site and never resized once you upload them. This is why it is ultimately the best to have separate thumbnail and large images. Shopping carts will often resize large images for you to make thumbnail images, but those thumbnail images will never appear as crisp and clear as the large images since they are being forcefully resized by the cart and not done in a proper manner in photo editing software.

- It depends on what shopping cart, blog or other system you use, as well as what your website design is like, but you should not really ever need photos larger than 800 pixels tall or wide. More than that and people who use small monitors won’t even see the whole image on their screen without scrolling and larger photos = larger file size = losing money.

- Whatever image editing program you use, there are two things you would need to keep an eye on: resolution (dpi) and image size (in pixels). You can have a really small thumbnail image be high resolution. You can have a large image be low resolution. The key is to have the photos be 72 dpi (which is considered “low resolution” but is what is used online) and no larger than 800 pixels for the large images of your site. In some carts, like AlohaShop, the large product image will not be scaled down for you like the thumbnail images are, so you may need the image to be no larger than about 600 pixels wide so it doesn’t mess up your website design.

Some extra tips for advanced users:

Any time you resize your photos down, they will get softer looking. You’re squeezing the data in your image down and it sort of mushes things together on a very small scale and so the images won’t be as crisp and clear. If you use Photoshop, here’s what you can do and what I do. Whenever I resize an image down, I use the Sharpen tool (or sometimes the Unsharp Mask tool) to sharpen the images and get them back to their crisp selves or look even better. The key is not to do it too much. 99% of the time I Filter > Sharpen, and then click Edit and “Fade Sharpen” to tone it down a little until the photo looks good.

If you use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, the one thing that will directly affect the visual quality of your photos is what “Quality” you save them at. These two programs, and possibly others I am not sure, will prompt you during the save process to specify what you want the jpg file quality to be. 12 is the highest and is NOT necessary for use online. I save mine at 8 or 9 and that’s the max you would need. Lower than 6 or 7 will affect the quality.

And if you need help optimizing photos, we are here. However hopefully this will help you so you can save money and know how to to it right on your own.

For more information on this limited edition template, click here.

Sweet Dots Organic:

Sweet Dots Pastel:

Sweet Dots Bold:

Why use an email marketing service?
A big reason is so your newsletters actually reach your subscribers rather than landing in a spam folder. Sending newsletters from your email program is a big no-no especially if you have a large list of subscribers. Not only does it put a strain on the server, beyond what you should be doing, but it often lands your email in the recipients’ spambox. Email marketing services have servers and procedures set up specifically to avoid this.

In addition to being optimized for email marketing, services like MailChimp also provide valuable information about your email marketing campaign such as how many people actually opened your messages and clicked the link to your site. Wouldn’t that be great to know? Another important feature is the emails are formatted to include information that will help servers receiving your messages deem it as safe and not spam. Did you know you should include your full business contact info (including your address) in every newsletter? Having this info in the email increases the chance it will not be marked as spam.

Also, an important thing to learn is how to write your newsletter so it doesn’t get marked as spam for content. You should avoid words like “click here!” or using tons of exclamation marks, all caps, bright red or green text, or newsletters containing only one big image. For more information on how spam filters work, read MailChimp’s How Spam Filters Think article.

And as expected, we do provide the service of customizing your MailChimp newsletter template and adding MailChimp signup form to your site if you can’t or don’t want to do it yourself.

We’ve also decided to take that next step with our business and hire someone either part or full time, to work with myself and my husband here in an office near our home. First we are looking for the right person and then we hope to make a move to an office space and hire additional people as needed. We have been at capacity for a little while now and even though we work with some great WAHMs who do various services for our clients, we do need to take that leap so we can keep up with what our current clients need and to be able to help new clients as well. We’ll update on this as things progress, stay tuned…  Meanwhile, if you’re a web/graphic designer looking for work outside of your home in the Temecula/Murriea area have a passion for boutique design style, shoot us an email!

Both pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. Marketing and SEO are different, yet very, very similar. SEO are considered as the main factors in enhancing the traffic of one’s website. The concepts of good SEO are hardly a secret. The people who least understands issues with URL structure and SEO are the very people who create them: web developers, programmers, and software developers.

Many long-time SEO’s are now looking at the big picture and working with usability analysts. Some SEO are scam artists. I find it interesting that so many newcomers are given the wrong impression that there is one almighty answer to doing well in search engines. SEO are specialized techniques used to optimize your web site, to be search engine friendly and increase your chances of placing well in searches. But SEO can also be the most profitable methods of driving leads because any leads you receive from SEO are free leads.

There are a large number of companies that adopt a fast and unethical approach to SEO known as Black Hat SEO. They employ unethical techniques that are against search engine policies. The best results from SEO are rarely achieved overnight. Black hat SEO are the techniques used to fool the search engines in order to bring in more traffic to websites. Website owners who unknowingly utilize black hat techniques of SEO are more vulnerable to changes in search engine algorithms and faced being banned.

Most hardcover books on the subject of SEO are best viewed as a vehicle to help the beginner understand the process of search engine optimization. This is because the principles behind SEO are not easy. They are very informative and most webmasters are involved in SEO and using it. White hat and black hat SEO are two opposing views of how to do search engine optimization. In a nutshell, SEO are methods that aim to improve the position or rank of a website in the listings produced by search engines. The benefits of SEO are almost unlimited.

Watch out for SEO Tools and software that is outdated and totally useless. Always research before you buy any SEO software because the search engine algorithms are constantly changing thereby improving their search technologies to provide the most relevant results for their users. SEO tools for Google, MSN and Yahoo are numerous. SEO tools for press release optimization were also launched by PRWeb at the end of June called SEO Wizard. Search engine optimization is not easy, but with the right SEO tools, your website promotion task just got a lot easier. Blogs are one of the best SEO tools around and some like WordPress are free. Google Sitemaps are a powerful SEO tools which you can get free by visiting my website.

MSN has launched a suite of SEO tools to go with their Pay Per Click product AdCenter. There are many SEO tools available on the internet, some are better then others, and some are not. Header tags, proper Keyword density, proper text formatting fonts, start text key-phrase as whole phrases, alt image tag text, links pointing to your site and each page and your domain name itself are some things to pay attention too. Many specialized SEO tools can help you determine the popularity and the competitiveness of your possible keywords and can help improve your search engine ranking particularly in Google.

Writing fresh content for SEO plays a large role in keeping visitors on a web site. Let’s talk unique web page content and SEO content strategy. Finding a good SEO content writer is easier than you think. Just run a Google search or checkout elance.com. What is good SEO Content? It is unique, quality information that your visitors can use and is helpful to them. RSS feeds are an invaluable tool in the SEO content toolbox. If you scrape SEO content and end up scraping a couple spam pages, you may get noticed even more because someone is investigating the other spam pages.

The primary factor that will determine whether your SEO content is “good enough” is the content provided by competing websites. You need unique content that nobody has in order for it to pass duplicate content filters. That’s why it is important to get your content articles indexed before you submit them to the search engines. I think nowadays though search engine algorithms can trace back the content and see who published it first, so at least make sure you publish it to your website or blog before submitting it to article directories.

To strengthen the theme of your web site, you need keyword rich SEO content. SEO content writing tips content writer’s main aim is to create a new written piece which is original, simple, informative and also to the point. Write specific targeted SEO content for the independent pages. Unique SEO content remains king. Showing your visitors you can really write unique, compelling content, your traffic will grow very fast. Earlier it was just content writing but now it is widely known as SEO content writing. However there are some strict rules enforced on SEO content. Once you have visitors, your SEO content should be converting them into customers. With effective SEO content on your website, half of your search engine rank optimization work is done.

Ethical search engine optimization is a must or you will get banned. It’s not if, it’s when. Search engine optimization was and still is fascinating to me. Search Engine Optimization is a crucial part in a websites success. The objective of Search Engine Optimization is to achieve high natural search engine placement for relevant keywords or keyword phrases. Hiring an ethical search engine optimization company to rank well in the natural results is essential to long term success.

Your white hat Search engine optimization campaign will provide you with a long term increase in targeted traffic and qualified visitors to your Web Site. Visit my site often and add it to your favorites as I update you with the latest news and rumors in the search engine optimization industry everyday. The effects of bad search engine optimization are devastating and very depressing. Each website is unique in its own way and hence your (SEO) plans differ from website to website.

My site has some tips on how to perform search engine optimization on your website. I have a free, comprehensive guide to the practice of search engine optimization for those unfamiliar with the subject if you send me an email. There’s a lot of hype out there about search engine optimization services. Some are good and some are bad. Read through Google’s terms of service as they have some information on their site about it.

Too often, visual design and SEO are perceived as a mutual sacrifice. Pay-per-click and SEO are targeted to get your website placed as close to the top of search engine results as possible. Pay-per-click cost money, but the clicks from SEO cost you nothing. SEO are considered as the main factors in enhancing the traffic of one’s website. Both, PPC and SEO are important. The truth is, the most rewarding part of SEO are often the slowest to reward. PR and SEO are based mostly on editorial credibility and relevance, not a direct payment for exposure.

SEO are specialized techniques used to optimize your web site, to be Search engine friendly and increase your chances of placing well in searches. There are a large number of companies that adopt a fast and unethical approach to SEO known as Black Hat SEO. The main components of on-page SEO are optimization of the title tag, the headline tag, the body text and the Meta tags. Companies interested in SEO are occasionally not very happy with how their website looks. Programmers with an understanding of SEO are in high demand. As a matter of fact, sites with excellent Search Engine Optimization are making giant leaps in rankings and getting a major boost in free traffic with Google’s new update.

Great web usability and SEO are wasted if folks who visit your web can’t tell that you are worthy of their trust. Those who specialize in SEO are in the unique position of understanding the web in a way that no traditional marketing agency can hope to. White hat and black hat SEO are two opposing views of how to do search engine optimization so if you use one, choose with great care. The second most important aspect for high SEO is the headers. Use H1, H2, H3, H4 headers.

Many of the techniques that can be used for SEO are banned by the various search engines. The benefits of SEO are almost unlimited. Bad techniques of SEO are a strict ‘NO’ – Like same color text as the background and Doorway pages can get your website banned. The five forces of SEO are relevant Keywords, unique Content, clean Code, relevant Links and proper use of Technology. Designing for users and designing for SEO are not mutually exclusive goals. There will be compromise. White hat SEO are techniques that follow precisely the rules and guidelines provided by search engines stand a better chance of receiving traffic and higher rankings than black hat techniques.

For this reason it is important to try to stay updated as far as new SEO are concerned. The off-page elements of website promotion and SEO are just as important. The majority of issues with SEO is very basic and just takes time to be picked up on search engines. Web design and SEO are two very different disciplines, but a certain degree of collaboration is required. It’s easy to see why effective SEO are now very much in demand. Black hat SEO is techniques used to trick or manipulate search engines for higher rankings.

If done properly, the results of your SEO efforts are very impressive. Those who practice what some refer to as “ethical” and “correct” SEO are called White Hat SEO’s. The most important for SEO is to follow the rules and you won’t have anything to worry about.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Patricia_Tuley

When you aren’t seeing any orders coming in or when you are starting to bite your nails due to the current economy, it’s a normal reaction to start looking at things that can be cut in the budget like marketing. Marketing should be the LAST thing on your list to cut out. If you make that choice to cut out marketing you are taking a huge risk of crashing faster than you thought you already were!

Marketing your business and attracting new customers should be an ongoing process, not something you do one month and then forget about for three or four at a time. You will never see a sale at that rate! Below are a list of low cost to free advertising options so you can succeed online.

1. Join the Social Networking Sites:

This is a must. If you haven’t gotten around to joining social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter. Now is the time when you should sign up for an account to market your products or services. Social Networking or Bookmarking Sites are great ways to generate traffic and to start a buzz about your business. They are free to use and get tons of traffic each month.

2. Be prepared for Peak Seasons

You must be prepared for peak seasons. The holiday shopping season is already here!!! Do you have your holiday items on your site? Do you have your holiday newsletters and sales lined up. If not, don’t start running around, pulling out every strand of your hair off your head. Simply sit down and write out your plans for this holiday shopping frenzy. What new products or services are you going to offer. Are they holiday themed products or are they gifts for people or pets even? Have a service that you offer to other businesses? Create a holiday package just for your customers. Offer a discount or an incentive. Research seasonal keywords that people are already using for the type of products or services you have to offer.

3. Unique items or services:

Make sure that you have unique items or services offered on your site. Take a look at your competitors site and see what they are offering and what they aren’t offering. Try to find products being offered by manufacturers in your niche that your competitors do not have yet. Don’t forget about the “Small Business Owners”! Small business manufacturers have the most unique products and are looking for retailers to help distribute their products. Contact them to see if you can get a sole contact with them to sell their products online. If you do land a contract, make sure to state it in your products description. You can use words like “Exclusive” “Only Available” or Available Online Only. If your product is online available online then a buyer who is interested will be more inclined to make a purchase.

4. Get on top of your SEO:

If you haven’t done so yet, make sure to put SEO on your calender before the month is over. You really don’t want to be left out in the cold or finding yourself closing shop the first of the year due to no sales. Take some time to research your keywords in your niche. If you don’t take the time to properly optimize your site, just remember this big tip: YOUR COMPETITION WILL!

5. Reward referrals

As you may know, some businesses thrive from referrals. I have found that one of the best ways to get referrals is by having others help you find customers for you. You can do this by offering a rewards program or a referral program. You can either give out free merchandise, give a discount off of their future purchases, or offer a percentage of your sales. It all depends on your the type of business you have and what you can give away. Now be realistic. Don’t offer a 50% cash incentive if you can not afford to pay the incentive. If you send out a newsletter, include a section in your newsletter where your customers can tell a friend or you can set up a form on your site that will allow your customers to enter in the names of their friends. When you get a new customer from the referral, make sure to send the person a personalized thank you note along with their reward.

6. Send out a newsletter:

Have a sign up form on your site and give a discount for those who sign up. Make sure the discount is automatic. You can do this by doing a custom thank you page and include the coupon code in the thank you message. It’s important to keep your customers up to date on sales, contest, and new products. Keep your newsletter simple and straight to the point. Your newsletter can be themed based where you send out information that is geared toward one specific type of product or service. Make sure to get permission from everyone you send out a newsletter too and make sure to give them an option to unsubscribe from your newsletter. You don’t want to take the risk of getting to many spam marks or you will not be able to send out newsletters because your email address will be marked as a SPAM address.

7. Sponsor a Giveaway or Do a Giveaway:

Sponsoring a contest or doing one yourself is an excellent way to advertise your site. This is also a great way to collect email addresses, mailing addresses and any other information you would like to use to in the future. I have done plenty of contest advertising for clients and they ended up with over new leads over a period of a month. You can also participate in blog contest events. There are tons of blogs out here that offer Blog Hopping events. Make a note of all of the events and make sure you include your site or blog in the hopping event. You can gain a lot of exposure to your contest and website.

8. Start a Blog

I should have posted this tip before the giveaway tip?! If you don’t have a blog make sure to add that to your To Do List. A blog is another great way to bring traffic to your sites. More and more searchers are looking to see if a website has a blog when they visit sites. A blog is a good way for them to get to know more about the company they want to purchase a product or service from. You can keep your customers informed about any sales, new products or upcoming events you are having. Be as natural as possible with your post. Don’t sound like a robot when you are promoting your advertising. Make your post as friendly and as engaging as possible.

9. Join Groups and Forums

Join groups and forums that are related to the type of products you have to offer. Many forums will allow you to post your url in your signature. Be very cautious when using this as a method of advertising. Forum members do not like when a business gets on a forum and starts to post links to their site with no other communication. This is known as SPAM and most hate it, so stay away from it. If you join any forums or groups on Yahoo, Google or MSN. Make sure you are there to learn or contribute. Respond to questions that you are familiar with, especially those that pertain to your niche. Become an authority figure on the topic and people will start to respect you and even look for your comments.

10. Team up with like minded businesses or people:

Find people online and offline who are within the same niche as you or who have a passion for the type of products or services you have to offer. If you sell pet products, team up with pet lovers or groomers. If you sell baby products, team up with new mothers, play groups or day cares in your area. If you are in the website designing niche, team up with hosting companies, SEO’ers, or other website designers. You can offer discounts to anyone you team up with for your products or services. Establish life long relationships and watch your business grow!

If you have read through these 10 tips and are thinking that all of them sound great but you just don’t have the time right now. Times are hard right now for a lot of people and they just aren’t shopping the way they were a year ago. Although money might be tight right now for a lot of consumers the need for making money is continuous. Try setting aside two to three hours each week to start focusing on advertising your business. When you actually take the time to market your business, and start to see a change in new orders, then believe me, you will be glad you did! Look into a reputable website traffic service company if you aren’t comfortable with optimizing your site or just don’t have the time to do so.

I do apologize to those of you who have had to wait longer or wonder what is going on, it was never my intention to neglect any project but sometimes it’s all you can do just to get yourself and the kids dressed when taking care of a sick family member. My husband is one the one who takes care of our three kids during the day while I work on this business and without him, it’s been virtually impossible to manage the workload that I currently have.

I SO appreciate all the support I’ve received as well as the prayers, positive thoughts and understanding. Thank you!

ooak website template

We have just added two new business templates, Blue Business and Green Business. These are both great for e-commerce or informational websites. All links and photos can be swapped out for what you need.