Have you ever tried noticing the black and white double dimensional small square boxes which are printed on different products like pamphlets, books and brochures? These are known as QR codes or quick response codes that are gaining recognition day by day especially in USA.They are considered to be one of the most convenient marketing and web site designing tools because one can lead customers to any website at the click of a mouse. Anyone who possesses a smart phone can immediately download the application used for reading QR codes. However you apply it to your business, there are certain things one must take care of.

It is very often noticed that there are some QR codes that people like and they scan it. Eventually the QR code will lead us to a site which is illegible and large to fit in our mobiles. Before selecting the right kind of QR codes it is necessary that one ensures that the site which he will be led to is compatible in the mobile. 

How does one actually find out whether he is choosing the right kind of QR code for himself? Let us find out how we can opt for the right kind of  QR code generator and how it can affect your business and give you a great experience.

1. Know where to place the code

Before placing the code it is necessary that you find the right place. Also make sure that the QR content will be compatible in the phone so that visitors can open it in a flick. Also try placing the codes in areas which will always be backed up by 3G connections so that it can be opened anytime. For e.g. it will be a foolish idea to place a QR code in a place where there is no network like the subway. Place them in places where you feel people will see them like T shirts and brochures, books, business magazines and pamphlets, social networking sites and other advertising products. If the QR code is placed in a great location, opening a QR code will be a great experience for the prospective visitors.

1. Placing them online

It is always necessary that you record all your contact information like email address, phone number in the QR codes so that the visitor is directly guided to the details if the QR code is scanned. Visitors require convenience and they feel that direct information without any hassle is a great QR code experience. One can also add these QR codes in their webpage so that people can scan this information in their phones if they like it.

Also in order to ensure a great QR experience one should always keep in mind certain points.

1. Make the user believe that he is visiting an exclusive site

Try convincing the user that he is getting directed to a site which he has never been to and he will find new information in the site. Try posting something which will entertain him. See that the site has loads of information about what the customer actually wants.

1. Place the codes in areas which has network coverage

Place the QR codes in areas which have good coverage and 3G connection

1. See that the page the QR code is guiding customers to is user friendly and easy for lay men.

It is often seen that some sites are not user friendly and customer are confused where to see. Try designing the page in a way that users do not find the page complex.

1. Place the codes in places where it is eco friendly

People enjoy scanning QR codes. Let’s make their experience of scanning QR codes fun by posting the codes in places where they will feel comfortable and free of stress.

Following the above principles will definitely ensure a great QR code experience for old as well as prospective customers.

Success and failure of a website depends on many factors and one of the prime elements is none other than the design. You might have developed an excellent content which is easy and grabbing but if your website does not have that impressive look, all your effort goes in vain. Therefore, at the time of designing a website, the designer should think from the perspective of a visitor. The design should be user centric and navigate the visitor throughout the site at ease. A website is a representation of a company in the virtual world and as a designer you have to ingrain all the attributes to make it more responsive. For instance, the logo of your company must be present in the website as it establishes brand consciousness.

With the technological development, accessibility of internet is no longer restricted to laptops or personal computers because the mobile phones offer similar facilities. So, the term ‘responsive design’ has a wider meaning that relates to the appearance of the sites without any error from every cell phone. No matter what device accesses it, the design should stay intact and complete. If the artistic appeal faces hindrance when viewed from a tablet or an iPhone, the site losses traffic as well as rank in the search engine. Designing an effective website require principles and ideas. The designers have to focus on prime requirements of the website.

One of the objectives of a website is to promote the goods and services of the company to a wide range of users overcoming natural boundaries. A designer has to think from the mind of the users. They usually scan through each pages and click on links that meet their necessities. If you think adding flash can enhance the look of the website, you are right. But you must also remember, the more you add flash the heavier is you site, which means your website will take greater time to load. Now this is a matter you should be worried about. Testing the patience of the visitors is a challenge because there are always chances of losing traffic due to excess loading time. A number of sites even ask users to fill up various forms which can be painful at times. This helps the company to make a database from the collected information but they are equally losing a large chunk of visitors who are not ready to fill up the forms. Hence, keeping the site simple and easy to explore are essential attributes for responsive web design.

Logo design is yet another tool to generate instant response with its ability to enlarge awareness. It should be meaningful, catchy and simple and must relate to the company. The logo has to be in the company website helping the visitors to recognize the brand immediately. The designers can even use the colors used in the logo to décor the entire website, but avoid stuffing. Even if you are not incorporating logo colors, use color schemes which are lighter, yet bright and blend it intelligently.

Design has the capability to speak and it can help the viewer to judge and understand the important and required parts in a website. It can guide users from one page to another through easy navigation. Visual effects along with buttons of various sizes make it easier to understand if the particular page has sub pages. In the digital world, if your website does not have an impressive design, the response you get is nil.

Each and every day more and more websites evolve offering similar goods and services. If you want to stay afloat in the competitive business ground, your design should be different because first impression definitely counts in the world of digital marketing.

Author Bio: 

Ms. CJ has been writing articles on logo design for years. Readers can gather latest information regarding methods and techniques to make their websites more responsive in nature.

I am going to show you an example of how to do this using our slogan Smarter Designs. I would like both texts to be large enough to grab the attention of the visitor as soon as they visit the webpage.

However, I would like more emphasis to be placed on the word Designs as the visitor will most likely visit the page to get a website designed.

Smarter Designs.

Without further a due here is the code you have been waiting for:

The HTML code:

<p><span class=”smalltext”>Smarter</span> <span class=”largetext”>Designs</span></p>

The CSS Code:

.smalltext{ font-size: 40px;}

.largetext{font-size: 48px; color: orange;}

Adding a bit of color to the larger text is also a very good strategic move as you are highlighting the word that you hope will grab the attention of the visitor and keep them engaged in your webpage.

You can see a demo of the word Smarter Designs on our web design page.

In this article we will show you how to make the run command appear and stay on your start menu even if you restart your computer.

1- The first step is to select the start menu and right click on some of the empty space on your start menu and select properties.

2- Under start menu select customize to open a new window

3- After you select customize scroll down and look for the run command checkbox. You will need to tick this checkbox and then click OK. Once you click OK click Apply followed by OK.

4- Finally is you select your start menu again you should be able to see the run command.

There you go, 3 easy steps to display the run command on your start menu!

1. Navigate to the Twitter website. Sign in to your account.

2. Look at the top right on your homescreen. You will see a human icon with options. Select ‘Settings’ and wait for the page to load quickly.

3. Scroll down until you find the bit about Tweet Location. Tick Add a location to my Tweets. Click save after you scroll down some more.

4. Confirm your password. A password prompt will appear. Enter your password to turn on tweet location.

5. Navigate back to the homepage and write a new tweet. Select the location icon and enter your location. Your tweet will be posted with your location.

We will assume your company uses active directory to store different user group accounts. We will also assume that active directory is already setup and you have just purchased a new computer.

The process of adding the computer to the domain is very simple and contains two simple stages.

Stage one: Log in to the new computer and change the computer name

(You will need to login using the local administrator account as the machine cannot yet be accessed through the network)

1- Right click on my computer and select properties

2- Scroll down to where it says computer name, domain, and workgroup settings then select change settings.

3- Look for the text that says to rename this computer select change. Go ahead and select the change button.

4- Enter the name of the computer you desire. In this case we have named it Computer1-IT department. It is always a good idea to be consistent to avoid confusion.

(For example if you have two different departments known as IT and HR, and each of these departments contain 10 computers. Label the computers in both departments from 1-10 with stickers. By following the steps above keep the computer names consistent for all departments and user group.

It is very good practice to name the computers in the IT department as Computer1-ITdepartment and the computers in the HR department as Computer1-HRdepartment etc.)

5- Select the domain radio box instead of work group and enter the name of your domain. If you are not the administrator and do not know what your domain is then it will be a good idea to contact whoever has set up the domain for you.

Stage two: Login to Active Directory and add the computer name

1- Login to active directory using remote login.

2- Add the computer name into the correct user groups (e.g. IT department or HR department etc).
(E.G. add computer1-ITdepartment to the ITdepartment user group in Active Directory.)

Your computer should now be connected to the network domain at your work station and can be accessed by your staff members.

These steps are similar if you are using a Windows XP or Vista machine. The only difference you will encounter is the user interface of the Windows machine you are using.

Amazing new features for the FPL website 2012/2013

The game launched on time this year without encountering any errors such as failed logins and server crashes.

The most impressive feature of the new site is the new status page that appears once you login.

The site displays interesting statistics such as who is the most captained player for the week and how many transfers were made, as well as a list of injured or banned players and much more.

All these statistics can help you improve your performance during the year and is provided automatically, therefore you die hard fantasy football players do not have to spend much time looking for it.

In game features of the website

Fantasy premier league website has finally decided to provide us with Social Media interaction. We can now tweet our gameweek scores on Twitter and update our Facebook status with our gameweek points.

This along with the ability to post your team on Facebook for your friends to rate it for the coming gameweek increases the overall dynamics and interactivity of the Fantasy premier league website.

The progress bar was also introduced and is a quick way to view your points for the last two gameweeks, prepare your team for the current gameweek, and view the upcoming fixtures for the next gameweek.

My final assessment for the fantasy premier league website is that it is a significant improvement from the previous years in dynamics, interactivity, cleanliness and most importantly usability.

A web designer ought to think about a variety of online offering standards while designing an eCommerce website. In this article we will attempt to check out some of the major design angles that you should have in an eCommerce website.

A large portion of you are probably as of now inquiring why eCommerce website design is contrasting from any other website design. They all require to be attractive, generally well organised and utilize the right colors that fits the website spirit etc. Your intuitions are exceptional. Yet a close look at some good performing eCommerce websites will uncover the conceptual differences that are typical in a good performing eCommerce website.

An eCommerce website needs to follow certain selling principles:

Give the user a pleasant experience during his online shopping.
Make certain you provide sufficient information on who owns the website and why they should be trusted.
The website must be easy to use. If it isn’t, the visitor will go to your competitor.

Those principles have been around since the inception of ecommerce web design. We all know those basics from our day to day experiences in the mall, shopping center and every other market place that is waiting for us to open up our wallets.

The big challenge for a web designer is how to translate those conventional marketing techniques to the virtual world of the internet. I’m sure you’ve all noticed that in most supermarkets the bread stand is placed at the far end of the building, yet you can smell the fresh bread at the entrance (sometimes they even use a special air duct to carry the smells). That has been done deliberately. Marketers use our sense of smell to draw us through the store where we are exposed to all sorts of tempting goodies as we go to get our loaf of bread.

How do you draw an imaginarily path in a web page? A path designed to lead the visitor to do what you want him to do…make an online purchase. Unlike the supermarket our website has no smell. In a website the distance from one point to the other is pretty much the same, so the exit is always right there. In a website you can try to order the “shelf” in the way you think will best expose the visitor to many of your products, but there is always a chance that he will find a short cut to another page that can also be the way off your site.

As can be see, although putting your products on the web is much easier then renting space and opening a supermarket. However, selling your products on the web can be difficult.

A good eCommerce website design will lead the visitor to the right page in one click or two at the most. Sometime web designers will use techniques that would never be considered for non-eCommerce websites. Everyone has seen at least one sales letter website. On these web pages the only link is to the order form. Sales letters are not the most typical eCommerce website because they usually sell only one product. That allows the web designer the ability to exaggerate the one click principle and make it an advantage. All the facts about the product have been presented to the user is a smart way while every few lines he has the option to click on the order form. If he is not yet convinced he will have the option to continue to read more facts and testimonials about the products. Believe it or not, those sales letter websites are actually selling.

“What about online shops?” Online shops have to deal with more then one product. Of course, the greater number of products increases the complexity of the website. Sophisticated eCommerce websites use a variety of personalization technologies in an effort to determine the best selection of products to offer to the visitor. Personalization technologies are a major part of advanced eCommerce websites. However this topic is beyond the scope of this article. The cleverness of an eCommerce website’s personalization technology has a major influence on its design. The first to use such technology was Amazon.com who decided to push their client’s books to a visitor based on that visitor’s past orders combined with the statistics they had collected on all visitors used to predict what someone looking at a specific book might also be interested in reading. Today the goal is to try to predict what to offer the user on his first visit as well.

An eCommerce web design is also about the layout. One important aspect is where the user’s eyes look first when accessing a web page. Lots of research has been done on this topic. Most research showed that the middle left side area will attract the most attention followed by the center of the page. By using these techniques web designers try to draw the “walking path” for the visitor’s eye, much like what was done at the supermarket. An experienced eCommerce web designer will know how to create designs to meets those demands.

If you are about to open an eCommerce website or you are already own one, make sure you understand the web design principles for online selling. Consider consulting with an experienced website designer preferably someone who has experience with eCommerce websites.

Author: Warren Baker

Getting creative with CSS3

As a website designer we have to look into the capabilities of CSS3 and need to make the most of it. The essential methodology of CSS3 in WEB DESIGNING is to make the web page user friendly disposing loads of intricacies from it.

The amazing changes that CSS3 have bought to the market such as faster web page loading and faster web designing are quite amazing.

Using CSS3 to your Advantage

Advantages of CSS3 for you:

1. Better search engine results:

With CSS3, you can keep your HTML code much cleaner which in turn helps search engine crawler in getting the real content from your site very easily. You can also put any content anywhere in your web page and no longer each individual page have to be simplified to replicate the new style. By using this website design technique you will make much greater consistency throughout the site easily.

2. Lightweight coding:

In the field of website development, no one likes to wait for anything to come. This condition also applies in loading of web pages. When a website page takes a lot of time to load, generally users leave that page. By using CSS3, web pages can be made lighter which will allow the site to load faster. As table layout format is not used in CSS3, the sites acquire less memory and load faster.

3. Accessibility and usability:

In website designing you have to make it understandable that the content of the site must be validated in all formats of the browsers. A web designer has better control over a website by using CSS3. CSS3 allows for more compatible style elements, including font size and line heights through which web pages can be used more easily by people with disabilities. Website developers can craft specific CSS files especially for printing, or mobile devices, as well as the customary computer screen and in doing so making websites fully multimedia applications.

4. Isolation and Differentiation:

With the introduction of the CSS3 format, website designers have a lot to offer in development of a web page. CSS3 allows changes and modifications to be made in individual modules. CSS3 format helps users in separating presentation from structures. In this technique, style sheets defined presentational characteristics whereas the document structures were defined in separate heading. This eases the maintenance of the web page in efficient and comfortable manner.

When you start styling your content with CSS3 modules, you will probably never want to go back to using the old tags for styling.

You must use CSS3 to determine its full potential. Flexibility is the most useful features of using Cascading Style Sheets. One of the important things you require to gaze at before using this technique is what browsers the greater part of your users uses to visit your website. The reason behind this question is that it sometimes may be very difficult to make your CSS sprites friendly with many of the browsers depending on the techniques you use.

It was basically developed as a search engine friendly platform and the updated current release is 1.7.0.2. To implement it properly, first the most recent version should be employed followed by the enabling of Server URL rewrites, which is found under System-Configuration-Web-Search Engines Optimization.

The following are the Magento SEO tips that can guide to better optimize Magento websites.

WWW vs. non-WWW version: WWW is known as the secure version and non-WWW is the unsecure version.

Below the secure or unsecure options you can locate the base URL and position the preferred domain. This function will permit you to choose among WWW and non-WWW versions.

Now, you can set the favored thing without altering the redirect from WWW to non-WWW or either way. After which you can produce a 310 redirect through .htaccess with mode_rewrite.

This action will also check Magneto from accumulating the SID query to your URLs. Always confirm that the Base URL matches the redirect. Put in the index.php to the root when you are editing the .htaccess file. Just about line 119 use the following code:

Use the following code if your Magento install is not found in the root, conversely in the sub-directory http://www.mydomain.com/magento/:

Header Settings: The default title of the Magento install is “Magento Commerce” always. Are you looking for augmenting quality traffic to your Magento platform? Then you need to remember the following steps:

* It is advisable to keep your keywords next to your page title as Search engines lay emphasis on the early words or the words that are nearer to the page title. This will increase the chances of more likely clicks by people who search for result pages.

* Initially you should eliminate the default title “Magento Commerce”. To get rid of the default title, go to Configuration => Design => HTML Head.

* Choose a comprehensive & pertinent title for your site. This particular title will be employed by many non-content pages without any custom title. Few such pages are “Contact Us” page, “Popular Search Terms” and more.

* You also have an option of using “Title Suffix” to include the name of your store to all the page titles, products and categories. It is advisable to keep the Prefix empty for the above stated reasons.

* Following which you should keep “Default Description” and “Default Keywords” empty. For all applications ensure that “INDEX, FOLLOW” is set up and for other non-production environment set “Default Robots” to “NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” to avoid indexing of the site.

* This is the right time to add new canonical tag for optimizing your web-store pages. For developing your Magento SEO, you can fix the Canonical URL’s for Magento Module to adjoin them to your head.

* It is also desirable to take away the empty Meta’s from your code by installing Yoast MetaRobots Module. At times Magento converts non-set Meta robots into a Meta tag in the following style: . This might end up in certain strange behavior in the search engines.

CMS Pages: CMS (Content Management System) is an exceptional management tool for your business and it lets you to make content alterations. CMS pages are fixed pages such as About Us page, Home Page and Customer Service pages that give information about your web store and these pages are generally managed through the backend panel. These pages are complete pages that are accessible through their own URL address.

Category optimization: Magento grants you the power to add the name of categories to path for product URL’s. As Magento do not support this functionality well, it forms duplicate content issues and it is a good thought to disable this function. For implementing this, go to System => Configuration => Catalog => Search Engine Optimization and set up “Use categories path for product URL’s to “no”.

This is the right time to set the particulars for each category. Go to Catalog => Manage Categories. The most imperative fields are:

Meta Description: Place an eye-catching description here. Remember that your visitors will see the explanation in the result listings of the search engines.

Page Title: It is good to keep this empty for using the category name including parents’ categories. At the time of customizing it, the title will look exactly like your input, without the presence of the parent category..

URL Key: Strive to keep a small but keyword rich URL. It is good to eliminate stop words like “the”, “and”, “for” etc. Make a note that you can put this only for all store views and for a multi-language store, you are required to keep it language independent.

For each and every store view you can denote the Name, Page Title, Description, and Meta data. This is a special feature for multi-language stores.

Products optimization: Products pages optimization is similar to Categories. You can put the Meta Information for each “Store View” and the “Default Values”. Also notice that the “Meta Title”, will overwrite the whole page title including categories except title prefix/suffix, and not only the name of the product. Generally, the images will be renamed to the product title, alt tags and titles by default. You can change the alt tags and titles for each and every product image. This can be done for every specific store view also.

Magento Template Optimization:

Optimized Blank Template: The default Magento coats like “Modern Theme”,”Default Theme”, and “Blue Skin” do not perform well in the use of headings. From the view of SEO there is a lot of scope for development. A Blank Magento SEO Theme, depending on the core Magento Blank Theme is developed for your ease.

Headings: The default logo is an h1, and this should only appear on the front page, apart from this page, all other pages should be no more than an h3. The significant factor is to obtain the title of the content in an h1 tag. For example a category page should have the category name and for a product page it should have the product name. Next to this you should clean up the excess usage of headings.

It is recommended to eliminate the usage of header in the side columns. You can also make the text pertinent to the store (ie. include keywords). There is no basis for adding “static” and keyword less titles with an h4. For example it is good to alter all the h4 tags in div class=”head” to strong tags. This is the best time for content optimization. Place the category name in an h1 and the product names in an h3 at the category pages and set the product name in an h1 on the On product pages.

Clean up your code: In general the CSS and JavaScript pages doesn’t contribute anything beneficial to Magento SEO for which the JavaScript and CSS pages located in your template files are to be shifted to external CSS files and JavaScript. This aids in keeping your templates clean and it ensures that your users can acquire those files on the first load and ease the search engines from downloading the same every time.

Aim for speed: Speed is the most noteworthy factor that directly contributes to visitor’s traffic. The two notable things that can be done to enhance your Magento install’s speed are:

Facilitate caching. Go to System=> Cache Management and enable the caching features.

You can significantly increase Magento’s speed by using PHPopcode cache and MySQL.

These Magento Search Engine Optimization tips will help in optimizing your Magento website.