Why to think? Thinking about UI design is the result of your user analysis. Your website is primarily created for your users. Examining their immediate needs, expectations, goals, experience, skills, tastes and their preferences will help you attain your goals easily.  Imagine how happy will you be if you find something that fulfills your expectations and matches your taste? In much similar way by thinking of an effectual UI design, you help your users to accomplish their goals without much efforts and constraints which in turn contributes to your business progress.

Stay consistent: Consistency is highly significant as it makes your website reliable and influences the trust quotient of your users. By being consistent with a uniform UI design throughout your website helps you to fix your standard and gives you a unique identity. Certain UI items that demand evenness and regularity are design, layout and the language you use. This enhances your users’ efficiency, their understanding about your website and their knowledge on how things work better.  Inconsistent information and ideas have the tendency to irritate your users and can leave them frustrated. Follow the same trend and pattern and let all your web pages speak the same language, which can make your users comfortable and make them feel at ease.

Simplicity: The term ‘simplicity’ might sound simple but the most challenging thing is to make things simple. Always remember that doing things just for the sake of doing it can never last long. Convey the right message to the users by using simple and elegant UI design instead of employing extra fittings like images, animations or video clips just for the sake of adding spice to your site. Focus on getting your job done with straightforward and simple things and bear in mind that your users do not visit your website for watching pictures or looking at all the colorful things in the world, instead they invest their invaluable time in accomplishing their specified task through your website.

Navigation:  Navigation is a wonderful function that guides you to your search destination. It must be really easy and hassle-free. Your UI design should be easy for the users to navigate from one to the other. For this special reason navigation is often tabbed with similar looking buttons as the users expect it be the same.

Tolerance: ‘To err is human’ is a popular saying and there can be no human being without making mistakes. Understand that your users are prone to make mistakes and your UI design should be tolerant with your users’ errors. It should be lenient and flexible and should be designed in such a way that the users can undo their erroneous actions and retrieve it without much complexity. Only an interactive UI design can guide your user and make them feel special.

Reuse: Reuse indicates that your UI design should be available for reusing its behavior, external and internal components in a coherent way with a real purpose and not just for the sake of illogical consistency. This act gradually reduces the necessity for the users to reassess or revise any particular component of the interface.

This post must have substantiated the reasons to rethink about your website’s User Interface design.

Find your goals: Be sure about the purpose of your blog. Are you going to do it for a hobby or does it have some professional purposes? Some platforms are suitable for people who want to do blogging as a hobby, while others would allow them to pursue it professionally. If you want to generate revenue with it, don’t go for services like WordPress.com (hosted). They allow some of their bigger blogs to run advertising and affiliate programs, but not smaller blogs.

Estimate your budget: While starting a blog, you may need to pay for the domain name, hosting, theme and the blogging platform itself. Some services like Blogger.com and WordPress.com offer all of these for free. Others like WordPress.org offer the platform for free, but you need to pay for the other things.

Experience in blogging: This is one of the crucial factors to consider while choosing a blogging platform. If you don’t have any experience in creating a blog or website, then you may need a user-friendly platform. You can manage with it, if you are willing to put in a little time and effort. If not, you can always hire someone to help you in this area. When it comes to blogging, there is a wonderful communal knowledge out there with dedicated forums helping people get the most out of their chosen platforms.

Find out about others: While choosing a platform it might be worth finding out what others are into. Although your blog will be your own, it is always a good idea to do some research in this area to know what others are using. Ask them whether the platform they use is hard to maneuver around or easy to use. Blogging platforms come and go over the years, so try to find the one that has a long-term history.

Active support: There are hundreds of blogging platforms available, but only the top dozen are actively supported by the company and third party developers. If it doesn’t have a good support site, chances are for you to end up struggling with mysterious bugs. You should also verify whether the platform allows you to leave easily, as the last thing you want to blog upon is a locked platform.

The whole blogging movement is as diverse as the different platforms available and there is no such thing as the best blogging platform. It is actually a matter of what you are looking for and how you intend to accomplish it. You need to know your priorities to find the platform that meets those requirements.

Designing a website is an art by itself. So all you web designers out there – novices, amateurs, experts and aspirants – take a quick look at these common designing faux pas….

Lack of SEO – The main purpose of creating a website is to reach out to your target audience. But all painstaking efforts will go in vain if it cannot be tracked by the internet search engines. Search engine visibility is the most important criteria that determines web traffic. Search engines identify a website by the titles given to their web pages. So it is essential to give each page of your site a short and apt title to make it search engine friendly.

Complicated navigation system – A site which doesn’t have a simple and well constructed navigation system will turn visitors away.

A visitor on his first visit to your site should be able to understand the structure of the site and know where to find the information he is looking for and should be able to get there with as few clicks as possible. A site map and an effective search tool serve as navigation aids.

Haphazard layout - Web contents when not organized properly hinder the usability of a website by making visitors feel uncomfortable. The design template of all the pages in the site should be consistent, have a suitable colour scheme that enhances readability and keep the focus of visitors on the content by reducing distractions.

Links should be easily identifiable and a clicked link should change colour so that visitors aren’t caught in a loop of scanning pages which have already been viewed. The link text should be brief and provide clarity to the visitors on what they can expect the web page to contain.
The homepage which gives visitors the first impression of the site should be clutter free, present the essence of your site and should be easily accessible from all other pages of the site with a link.

Improper presentation of information – Content that isn’t crisp and relevant will fail to grab the attention of the visitor. When a visitor scans the content of a website for the first time, he should be able to figure out what a site is all about. The content should be presented in a manner that facilitates readability and not as large blocks of boring text. It is important to use short paragraphs, include sub headings and highlight keywords. Be certain that the links and content don’t have spelling or grammatical errors.

Tawdry fonts – A website with its content in snazzy fonts in garish colours, will appear unprofessional. Extra large fonts which appear to be screaming for attention are an eyesore, while extra small fonts which look like ants resting on a web page, force people to squint to read the content. Creative fonts can be used for headlines or captions consisting of only a few words but for the rest of the content choose a subtle font of reasonable size that enhances visibility.

Excessive use of images – Strewing a website with images will create a negative impression of your site among visitors. Images should be used only to illustrate the content or to supplement the text. The loading time of a web page can be slowed down drastically, if images are not optimized for the web.

Going overboard with graphics – The allure of creative visual and sound effects begin to wear thin on the visitors’ patience much too soon. Page elements that are always on the move such as marquees, blinking text and animation effects have an overpowering effect. Moreover, most animation templates take time to load thereby delaying the access to information. Keep their use minimal if not entirely unavoidable.

Irking pop-ups – Pop-ups are plain annoying. The last thing visitors want when viewing their content is a jack-in-the-box that springs out of nowhere, obscuring a portion of the page. Through most browsers are now equipped with pop-up blockers, it still isn’t possible to restrict them completely. As most visitors want to have nothing to do with pop-ups, it would be apt to avoid their usage.

Stale content – Once visitors have amassed the information they need from your site, they won’t be back unless you provide them with fresh content. To increase website traffic, keep your site regularly updated. Keep the content dated so that visitors know when information has been added or modified. Remember to archive the outdated content.

Misleading the visitor – When a visitor reaches your website, he definitely wouldn’t entertain being blinded by banner and text ads, clicking through a maze of links and sifting through a trash load of irrelevant content only to realize that he has been walking around in circles.

Don’t trick your visitor into clicking on ads or doing things he isn’t interested in, as this only affects your credibility. Get to the point and guide the visitor straight to what he is looking for, without wasting his time.

Displeasing visitors with a blast of music -Visitors are likely to get startled by music which loads on its own. If an audio file needs to be played, the visitor must be given the control of playing and stopping it as per his requirements.

Thumbnails too small to serve their purpose – When the image gallery has a lot of images, thumbnails serve the purpose of giving the viewer an idea of what the main image looks like. Remember to avoid making them too small. Keep in mind that the average visitor may not have the time to browse through the entire gallery and would like to be helped by appropriately sized thumbnails in choosing the content he would like to take a better look at.

Opening new browser windows – When a link is clicked, the web page should open in the same browser window and not a new one. Each time a new browser window opens up, it disables the use of the ‘back’ button thereby alienating the visitor from the site.

Inconvenient scroll bars – Making visitors scroll down indefinitely to go through the content is surely going to turn them away. Horizontal scroll bars which make visitors keep clicking to the left and right, back and forth, are bound to leave visitors irate. The most valuable material should be placed on the top of the page so that it is noticed by all visitors.

Unnecessary registration – Most visitors get exasperated when they have to submit their email addresses and other details before being permitted to access information. A visitor should always be asked for his consent before subscribing to free newsletters, promotional offers and updates.

Incompatibility with browsers – A poorly coded site won’t be compatible with all browsers and will make the site look mediocre. Check to see if it works perfectly in different browsers. Also check the site on a regular basis for missing pages and broken links.

Building Backlinks the Right Way

you’ll want to build a network of links from other websites to yours. These links are called backlinks. There are several methods in doing so and you may have heard it all – write articles, post comments on blogs, participate in forums, submit to website directories. These are all great ideas. But the most prominent way to build links is to get them onto pages that Google actually values.

A valuable web page to have a backlink on may be related to yours, have a high PageRank, or it may be around for a while. But this criteria is not always the case. Build links for your website the way that people would actually link to your website. For instance, if Google finds a pattern in your backlinks where all the links on 30 websites read “My Page,” there may be a good chance Google will penalize your site. What are the chances that 30 random website owners will link to your website in the exact same way? However, if you design websites, it would be natural that your link would be found on unrelated websites.

The bottom line is that Google checks for natural patterns and they are the best in the world at what they do.

Create a Facebook Fanpage

Talk to people interested in what your website is about, what your website is not about, and what their interests are. This means: comment, comment, comment. After you establish a good relationship with your fellow Facebook users, you can invite them to your fan page. The most powerful form of marketing is word of mouth. So be that word of mouth. Don’t be a pain in their necks and send off invites every chance you get.

Create a Twitter Account

Like Facebook, Twitter swarms with millions of users. Mention other users and retweet them – not for the sake of retweeting, but if it relates to your website. If you don’t know what retweet is, you should take a look at twitter. Put your website at the top of your twitter account so that people have easy access to it.

Spending Time

You don’t want to waste your life trying to push something that is not going that far. If people don’t like what you have, you can’t force them. However, even the good stuff takes a while to circulate on the internet. Be patient, dedicate a good 30 minutes to an hour a day building links, updating your Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Please request your free website by email. All websites include the following:

• 5 Custom Pages (including contact page)
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Nothing Matters by Santiago PerezGrovas

Close your eyes and imagine yourself on the highest mountain, the deepest cave, the fastest speed boat, or the greenest forest. The possibilities are endless if you let your mind take you there. The human mind is capable of taking itself out of human body, and the rest of the world doesn’t exist, or in most cases, nothing matters.

The beauty of the out of body experience you can receive from romance is phenomenal. It hits you so fast, you forget who you are and where you’re from. Santiago PerezGrovas, from Mexico City, Mexico captures two in love at an empty park. The focus is set on them, distance defines the blur – they stare intently and contently at one another, peacefully thinking, Nothing Matters.

Santiago travels around the world to capture the architectural aspects of a city to its lifestyle and people just having a great time. We hope to continually see Santiago’s work in the future for inspiration and a friendly reminder that life is good.

To configure your website in Webmaster Tools, you’ll need access to update the meta tags in the index.html file. This will verify your account with Google and prove that you are responsible for your submitted website.

Becoming Recognized for the First Time

The first step to becoming recognized is to write an XML sitemap that lists your important web pages. You can submit your sitemap to Google and wait for them to access your website. Google may find your website with or without a sitemap, but it’s always better to create one and submit it.

Google may take a while to index your website. Just be patient and give their system some time. It may take months.

Configuring Your Website Settings with Google

You can choose between the www version of your website or the non-www version. It is recommended to choose the version your actual website configured to. For instance, when you type in www.yourdomain.com does it change to yourdomain.com? If both work separately, then you can be penalized for duplicate content. You can use an .htaccess file to rewrite your URLs properly.

You can also set up what type of audience you are targeting – local or global, the language, and the location.

Checking for Backlinks

If you search Google for “site:yourdomain.com”, you may find links to your website. These are called backlinks. However, if you don’t find any it either means you don’t have any or Google is not showing them. Webmaster Tools will show more backlinks than searching Google for them, so there is an inconsistency.

In the end, Google doesn’t reveal exactly how many backlinks they know about or which listed backlinks are valuable. It’s probably better not to focus on them so much as far as Webmaster Tools.

Checking for Search Crawling Errors

Google may come across problems crawling your website. Sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it and you just have to wait for Google to update it’s database. For example, if you remove a web page from your website it will return a 404 error (file not found). Again, give Google time to take off missing web page from their database.

Other times, your website may have errors that you should attend to. You may have a web page link in your sitemap that doesn’t exist or that is blocked by a robots.txt file.

If you want to request a URL to be removed, only request URLs that are confidential information that you do not want indexed. If you’re trying to take care of duplicate content or just don’t want Google to index a particular page, add a nofollow meta tag in the web page head and wait for Google to take care of the rest.

For more information about Google Webmaster Tools, you can use the Google Webmaster Tools Start Guide or take a look at the Webmaster Tools blog.

Google's Secret Is Hidden Behind Matt Cutts Poker Face

If we assume that he wants to let us know what Google’s algorithm is all about, he would definitely have to do so in a sneaky way. Google would have his head for it. He has already explained the importance of header tags, titles, PageRank, forum and blog participation, and valuable content on your website and other websites that link to yours. Maybe the answer isn’t what he is saying; perhaps he sends us subliminal messages and we have to crack the code.

But what really gets to a lot of SEOs is his one famous line, “Don’t worry about it too much.” What does that even mean? Is there no secret to Google’s algorithm? Does the Google bot go in, look for H1 tags, titles and bold letters, and return to Google with nothing so that real people can decide the importance of your website? Does that mean to care about the technical specifics so you feel productive? Or does it just mean that all the SEO techniques he’s teaching us are the least important to the algorithm?

And what’s with the laggy updates to the Google database so they don’t reveal their secret? If you know your website has 500 backlinks, why does searching “site:yourdomain.com” only reveal two? And if Webmasters Tools is meant to show more backlinks, why does it include backlinks that don’t matter? What is the point of showing backlinks that don’t matter and not even all of them?

We can be sure of one thing: what ever he does within the dark lair of Google underground headquarters, he is a professional.

We Want to Know Exactly How Google’s Algorithm Works, or Do We?

Imagine what would happen to the culture of Search Engine Optimization if everyone knew exactly how to be number one on Google. Let’s start with the obvious: Only one website could be number one. What would determine if the website should be on top for the keyword phrase typed in?

A website may receive millions of visitors only because they are attracted to clicking on the link to it, and realize it’s not what they wanted to see. Maybe the content of the page, titles, and header tags of a website are concentrated on specific keywords, not too much and not too little. Maybe Google Analytics on your website and your Google Account sends information about how you are optimizing your website. Perhaps it’s a mixture of everything that makes humans attracted to websites.

Google’s secret is hidden for a reason: to gather information about as many websites as possible and return with the best-related, honest and sincere results for every possible search query. Mostly, Google’s algorithm is kept secret for non-rigged results. People will eventually realize that cheating the Google bot is not going to work. And if it works now, Google will catch up with them later and eliminate all their spam. It’s just easier and more valuable to write original content for people and not for the bot.

SEO techniques has become political, debates about pointless details stir up throughout forums and blogs, and nothing but unresolved theories and guessing games about what makes a valuable website cause bad habits, low quality content and spam. Why they picked Matt Cutts as the head will probably always be unknown. But it’s safe to say he probably gets paid higher than a professional poker player.

What ever he’s doing, it’s working. It’s working for Google, SEO and the development of search technology.

Does it add completely new phenomenal attributes to the internet itself? No. Google’s ability to guess what you want to search was already there. They just decided to “push” the enter button every time you type a new letter. And for those who find this new feature annoying, you should play with it a bit. It may help familiarize yourself with how to search efficiently. If you don’t want to learn anything new, don’t fret. There is always turning the feature off:

You can turn Off and On Google Instant

Techcrunch features an article by Erick Schonfeld, Google Instant Is Less About Speed Than It Is About Volume. While Erick includes great insight on the performance and benefits of the tool itself, he also makes a bold statement, “[SEOs] will need to optimize for particular letter combinations, not just entire keywords.”

First off, Google does not automatically search for each . It searches for the most relevant suggestion it makes for what you typed in. For example, it will show you results for “carnavia” if you type in “carnavi”. But it won’t show you “carnavi” results, because Google’s algorithm figures that search phrase is not as significant as what you may type in.

Will Google Instant End the Need for SEO?

Let’s not underestimate Google’s ability to keep their promise like they always have. They have stated that SEO will not die, at least not within the next 5 years. It’s been one year since they made that promise. Google Instant is not going to affect SEO as much as it affects the fanatic SEOs who think they need to optimize their pages for every letter of search queries.

One major issue can be that Google can’t really track what people are trying to search for. Following people search trends may be altered as well because Google is directly interfering by giving live suggestions to searchers.

In the end, we don’t know Google’s algorithm. Saying that SEO will be altered can only be an assumption unless Google reveals the secret to how they are the most powerful search tool on the planet. For now, we just have to put our faith that Google is doing what it does best for the internet search world.

Visualize Yourself Reaching the Top

If you can imagine that you are at the top, you’ll play the winner role. You’ll think like a winner and act as a winner. Crank up some inspirational yoga music. Exercise for ten minutes every day to increase your endorphin levels (these suckers are within your body and cause a chemical reaction of happiness).

Continually see yourself exactly where you want to be. Breath in the air as you would living your dream. Doesn’t it smell better? Meditate and enjoy the journey that success takes you on. And when you get all worked up and stressed out, relax because you’ll get there soon enough.

Don’t Focus on Figuring out What’s Wrong; Focus on Doing What’s Right

In life, we make mistakes. We are all humans. Even the most successful entrepreneurs make mistakes. The key is that they learn from them and move on. The faster you are able to put your flaws behind you and persistently move forward, the faster you’ll be on your way toward success.

Place all your most embarrassing moments, the thoughts that say you can’t do it, and the lack-of-confidence thinking habits into the trash. You don’t need them. In fact, you need make them go away. You have plenty of space to make mistakes. What you don’t have time for is dwelling on them.

Put forth all your time to doing what you need to do. Tell new people about your products or services, reprint your business cards, design a new flyer, redesign your website, create a special promotion, put yourself in the local newspaper – you get the idea.

Perhaps, you are making mistakes that cause the problem. If that’s the case, hire a professional consultant to guide you on what you have to do. Take his words to heart and again, drive past the negativity and onward to your final destination: Success Land.

Set Your Expectations High and Believe in Yourself

Don’t let anyone tell you something is impossible. Sure, life has it’s limits but so as long as you don’t go beyond those, you’re OK. In short, you cannot fly, you cannot transform into any creature of your choice, and you cannot move things with your mind. But you most certainly can buy a plane ticket, you can put on a cool-looking creature custom, and you most certainly can get up and move around what you want.

If earning a successful life were easy, everyone would be where they want to be. Unfortunately and fortunately it doesn’t work that way. You have to rise above the mediocrity of the world, push past the negative and crippling thoughts that can tear you down, and work extremely hard every day without giving up. Are you up for the challenge? How bad do you want to be successful?

What ever you want to happen can happen. Expect a lot from yourself – not because that’s the only way to be successful – but because you are truly capable of achieving anything you set your mind to. With the right mindset and attitude, the cliche will take you a long way.