Pensacola Website Design Blog

Well some of them are anyways.  I recently had a potential client brag to me about how many “visitors” he had visiting his site.

At the time of this writing, his “visitors” had reached a whopping 30,863!  Wow!  Awesome right?

Well it would be if that number was accurate, but alas, that figure is WAY off.

Look folks, hit counters are useless, pointless, and unnecessary.   Don’t bother.  The only thing they show you is how many times your page has been loaded.

“What do you mean dude?”  Let me show you by example:

I created a copy of my homepage and installed a hit counter here: Copy of Home Page with Hit Counter

Go there and refresh / reload the page (F5 for my fellow shortcut keyboard junkies out there).

The number goes up each time you refresh the page!   Basically, as one single user, you could theoretically refresh the page 100 times and the counter would appear as though 100 people have visited your site!

Now I hear some of you say “well that will make my site appear popular, thus giving my site credibility”.    To you I say “dude, there are about 100 other things that will increase the success of your website, hit counters make the site look tacky, and can distract your potential customers/clients from your website’s overall objective (i.e. clicking the checkout button, of filling out an important form)”.

Now I’m NOT saying that numbers are not important.  However, how many times your page is viewed (refreshed or reloaded) is much less important than statistics such as where people are coming from, what search terms they are using to arrive at your site, how many UNIQUE visitors are going to your site, and even what page they are leaving on!

Look into installing practical statistic keeping software.  I have been using statcounter.com and I LOVE it.  It’s free.  Not only does it impress the hell out of my clients, but the information is actually USEFUL when it comes to tweaking the sites pages so that the website makes more money!

google analytics is probably the most popular utility although I have not used it much.  I recently installed both on a website so that I can compare the accuracy of the numbers, but I will save my comparison analysis for another blog!

As of 2010, the best size to design a website would be 975px wide.  As far as height, I would put your most important content no lower than 530px which is “above the fold”, or the portion that can be viewed without scrolling down.

Here is why:

To date, the most popular screen resolution is 1024px wide by 768px tall.  Keep in mind that this information may be out of date in as little as 1 or 2 years.

As you have probably already noticed, when you open a browser window, you immediately lose a sizable amount of height due to the title bar, the menu, navigation buttons, tabs, and, often times extra toolbars such as google’s or yahoo’s search bar.  In my former career as a computer repair technician, it was VERY common to see one or 2 extra toolbars in addition to the default functions located at the top of popular browsers.  The most common anti virus programs like to install their own toolbars at the top of Internet Explorer, and have all too many times seen yahoo’s toolbar being “piggy-backed” on top of several software applications.  Then, of course on the right side you almost always have a scroll bar which also removes some width from your common 1024×768 screen resolution

While visiting family, I found that the computer they used appeared to be a perfect representation of what I thought would be your average novice to medium tech savvy person’s computer.  I noticed that almost every website I visited was just a little bit too wide!  As most web designers know, having a horizontal scroll bar is a big no-no!  I created this website to measure screen resolution of a web browser so that I could see how much “screen real-estate” their browser contained.  I was VERY surprised to find how little space there was!

Using the link above, the red box in the upper left corner shows you where a web page would “start”.  When I opened it in Mozilla Firefox, I noticed that it immediately moves a web page about 5 pixels down and 5 pixels to the left.

I checked on my laptop, which is currently set at 1440px by 900px resolution and I have about 1400px by only 725px using my browser!  And this is with a minimum of toolbars and functions opened!  

Anywho, I hope this is of use to someone else besides myself. 

I was emailing a potential client today on the subject of keywords for search results. This is just one branch of what is called SEO (Search Engine Optimization). 

One thing that I thought I should mention to everyone out there, is that keyword SEO is mainly for sites that contain products or services that a substantial number of consumers are already searching for on google.  Put simply: if your website offers a product or service that is relatively new and/or very few people know about, people will not be searching for it on google!  If this is the case, you need to either explore other options (going viral on facebook or youtube and/or blogging), OR optimize your site for something similar. 

For example, I have a local client that offers an less expensive alternative to marble sinks. Let’s say the product is called “Widget Sinks” and his site is “widgetsinks.com”.  We did a quick keyword analysis and found that hardly anyone was searching on google for “Widget Sinks”, and that there were several thousand people a day searching for “Pensacola Marble Sinks”.    Since nobody knows about his product, we have to develop his site around the key phrase “Pensacola Marble Sinks”, so that those searching for the real, more expensive marble sinks will stumble upon his site!

I hope this helps someone!

Many people today are using Twitter for personal use, business, or both. When you first sign up for Twitter you are given the standard baby-blue background that is generic and many people use. This boring look is common, but there is something you can do about it, if you haven’t already figured it out.

In the Twitter settings inside your account you can select from a variety of pre-defined backgrounds. This will help spruce up your Twitter page. You can also upload your own design to give it a unique look or match it to your existing business colors and logo. This will help with branding.

The way you do this is really simple. First login to your Twitter account. Next click on “settings” at the top right corner of the page. Once you are on the settings page then click on “design”. From the design page you’ll be able to select a new “theme” for your page.

There are several different designs for you to choose from. If you don’t like the ones provided, you can upload your own. To do this, scroll to the bottom of the “design” page right below the themes. Click on “change background image”. From there you can upload a picture from your computer.

Here’s an example of a custom background that Fritz did for my SEO Company and I uploaded directly to my Twitter page : FloridaSEOPro

Also right next to the “change background image” link is a link that says “change colors”. This is where you can choose different colors to your current theme or new theme selected. The colors you can change on your Twitter page are the color of the background, color of links, text, sidebar, and sidebar border. Of course if you upload your own custom background, then not all these colors can be modified.

Well, there you have it. The simple way to create or enhance your custom Twitter page. If you would like to have your own unique Twitter background designed for your business or just for personal use, please contact us. We can create a nice design or background image that you can use for your Twitter page.

Scott
Website Design in Pensacola

I had a fun website design issue with HTML and CSS today. Well it really wasn’t the HTML at all, it was the CSS. I recently changed the menu on my Florida SEO site, to a horizontal drop-down menu using CSS. Well I though everything was fine & dandy until Fritz noticed a problem.

You see I only checked my site using Firefox 3.5, I made a rookie mistake of not checking it in Internet Explorer (IE) which is very important to do. Sometimes us people in the tech world forget that around 80% of normal people still use Explorer and not Firefox! That’s why Fritz is the design expert and I stick with SEO mostly.

In Internet Explorer 7, my horizontal drop-down menu that looked so good in Firefox, was vertical! In Explorer 8 it was horizontal but the longer titled list items links were running into an extra line and creating an extra box which made it look bad. After doing a couple of small revisions to the CSS stylesheet the problems were fixed and the menu once again looked good, except this time it looks good in the past and recent versions of both Firefox and Explorer!

Because older version of IE and Firefox only accept display:inline-block only on elements with a natural display:inline, this was causing the issues. All I had to do to edit the stylesheet was the following:

ul.nav,
 .nav ul{
left:0;
top:23;}

added to
 ul.nav>li{
float:left;
margin-right:4px;}

Of course, your code will vary depending on several factors..and this is not the whole code on the stylesheet items, just what I had to add to them. CSS and stylesheets are great for website design, but there is a little learning curve. However, once you learn it and apply it to your website, it is great. However i think I’ll stick to my seo duties and let Fritz handle the design more!

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

While Christmas is supposed to be about giving and sharing time with family, business take full advantage of the holiday season to create promotional offers. I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with that, as a matter of fact if you are in business you may as well use this time as an opportunity to increase sales through some kind of Christmas special or sale.

I fully support the true meaning of Christmas and how things use to be before our commercial industry took it over. I don’t see any harm in businesses using the holiday season to promote their products and services as long as individuals we still remember what the season is about.

As a matter of fact, let me take this opportunity to present our Christmas Season special! Right now we are offering 15% Off any website service that we provide from now until January 15th, 2010. Okay, didn’t you see that one coming a mile away? Offers like this are all over the place and why not use the discount or savings if you were already looking for the service anyway?

Just make sure to mention to us that you read this blog article and the savings when purchasing from us and we’ll be glad to honor the discount. We wish everybody a very happy holiday season. We’ll still be posting blogs between now and Christmas, but the holiday spirit is out in full effect today and this topic seemed appropriate.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

If you are trying to design your own website there are several different software programs that you can use to build a site from scratch. You don’t even have to know HTML (hyper text markup language) to build your own site, but the software will write the HTML code for you. While learning HTML is not a requirement to use these software programs, learning it will be highly beneficial to understanding how your website works and how to edit it easier in the future.

One of the oldest HTML programs out there was made by Microsoft and is called ‘Front Page’. They discontinued their software in late 2006, but several people have old versions that they still use to this day. Front Page 98 and Front Page 2003 were very popular programs that were used to build websites. When Microsoft discontinued Front Page they announced the then future release of ‘Office Sharepoint Designer 2007′ and ‘Expression Web’. One downside to Front Page and many other HTML software programs is their tendency to add extra, unneeded code which creates larger than normal file sizes.

Dreamweaver is another very popular design tool used to build very nice websites. Dreamweaver is very powerful software that helps create CSS stylesheets and Java Script to aid in the design process. While you don’t need to understand exactly how CSS, Java, and HTML work to use this program, again it does help to have a basic understanding. There are several free tutorials online to introduce yourself to these website, computer languages used to design websites.

Dreamweaver and other similar programs can cost a couple hundred dollars or more. If you are in need of free web design software, then just do a Google search (or your favorite search engine) for “Free HTML editor” or “Free HTML software”. You will find several good free options, although you may have limited capability or have a branded logo stuck on your web pages that you don’t want. One good free website design software that I’ve used before is called “Page Breeze”. I find the code produced by Page Breeze is a lot cleaner than Front Page and others.

These types of software programs are also known as ‘WYSIWYG’ (what you see is what you get). Basically if you can use Microsoft Word, then you can use a WYSIWYG program to build your own website. However there is a learning curve and not everything will go perfect. You may experience complications with your design, but that is all part of the learning process.

At Teknek we do the coding for most our websites from scratch using Notepad. This is the cleanest way to design browser friendly sites that load quick without bogging down your computer with unnecessarily large file sizes. If you are just doing a simple site for yourself and family, then one of these programs may be a good way to go. When hiring a designer to build a website, find out how they do their coding. If they depend heavily on and HTML editor or software program, you may want to ask if they ‘clean up the code’. If not, then you may not want to hire them. It is best to have your website design done by someone who can either write the code from scratch or not be too dependent on programs.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

There IS an addon called webmail that will do the trick but I wanted to set it up without.  After an hour of trying, (including searching all over the internet), I have found the solution of how to set up hotmail on thunderbird.  Enjoy:

Account name:  youremailaddess@hotmail.com

Your name: whatever you want
email address: (duh!)
server name: pop3.live.com
port: 995
username: also the email address
Security settings -
  SSL  and make sure “use secure connection” is unchecked

At the bottom left of thunderbird’s account settings add a new outgoing server, the settings of which are below:

description: something easily recognizable
server name: smtp.live.com
port: 25

security and authentication:
username and password unchecked

use secure connection:
TLS, if available

Make sure you go back to the hotmail account you set up and change your outgoing server to the outgoing account.

When I first attempted to set it up I was getting the following message: “sending of password did not succeed. mail server pop3.live.com responded authentication failed”.  I’m not sure what I had wrong so I deleted the account and started over.     This is mainly for ME to find later being that I had so much trouble finding the solution on the internet.  I hope someone else finds this useful!  Let me know if I’m missing anything.

Pop3 hotmail settings for thunderbird on Windows Live Help website

Fritz
http://teknekwebservices.com/

So, we finally took a break for web design yesterday to celebrate Thanksgiving. Instead of doing the traditional turkey day feast at home or a family member’s house, we went to a place called “Harbor Docks” in Destin, Florida. The Habitat For Humanity did an excellent job of providing great food for everyone and did not charge a set fee, just accepted donations.

I think this was a great idea for multiple reasons. First of all it helped raise money for a good cause. Secondly we had no mess to clean up, that’s a big change from the normal Thanksgiving routine! Even though this sort of breaks away from tradition, sometimes it is time for a change.

We have several things to be thankful for in our lives and yesterday was a great day to reflect on that. Of course, we should constantly give thanks for our blessings, not just one day a year. Most of us in this country are blessed with so many things that we take for granted. Even those with lower incomes have much more than some people in other countries.

We at Teknek hope that everyone has a great holiday weekend. We are work-a-holics here and it is hard to even take a break from website design for one day, but that is because it is our passion. When you are passionate about something, it shows in your work. When you work for yourself or run a business you pretty much never get a day off. However, we are very thankful for everything that we have been blessed with.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design

So today I messed around with trying to find a site to evaluate the true value of a website. I found several different tools to help calculate this value. What I found is that these tools are nice in theory, but there are just too many factors that are not being taken into consideration on each tool that I tried. This makes for a very bad or inaccurate estimate on the value of the site.

Other than the tools, I found a couple of formulas that seem to beat out each tool that I tried. The basic info that I found to be the most helpful and correct in determining value was to take an average of the last three years profit and multiply that number by 3. So for example, let’s say your average profit for the past three years was $31,000 per year. Your business or website’s potential value is $93,000. A potential investor could make their money back in about 3 years, or most likely sooner if the business is improved and ‘tweaked’ to perfection.

Another few sources use the average profit multiplied by 2.5, or even up to ten times (10X) the gross profit! Check out this site for a few examples: Entrepreneurs-Journey. This site contains a very good article, as well as several good points about before, during, and after the sale of your website. It talks about additional things to consider such as web hosting, training the new owners, the financial transaction ( I recommend Escrow.com), and other information about the website sale.

Evaluating the value of a website that actually makes profit is similar to evaluating the price of a brick and mortar business. Cash flow and profit are the most important things. Nobody wants to buy a business in debt or without positive cash-flow. People want to buy a business that works. Of course, who would want to buy a job?

I found myself determining the value of one of my websites today for a potential buyer and in the process discovered a few things. One of those things is that I found that I am more emotionally attached to that website than I ever realized. While the money is enticing, it is hard to put a monetary value on the blood, sweat, and tears put into something. But sometimes you have to know when to let go and the time seems right for me on this particular site that I’m talking about. Sorry for being so cryptic here, I just want to keep the identity of the site I’m referring to hush-hush for now.

Those so-called website evaluation tools that I found are mainly based on Alexa rank and back-links, but take into consideration sales from products or ebooks, or anything like ad revenue from Google Adsense. This flaw provides for huge discrepancies in either under-valuing or over-valuing websites. But, they can be fun tools to mess with.

If you are trying to discover the true value of a website, you need to crunch the numbers yourself and you need to cold hard facts to do so. Even that formula is slightly flawed, especially when using the prior two years numbers when the economy has gone down so much. I expect the sales for next few years to climb back up and beyond they were back in 2006 & 2007. If you need help determining the value of a website, feel free to contact us.

Scott
Pensacola Website Design