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Getting started: Domain names and site-hosting services

When you decide to go online with your business, there are two things you need to acquire before you start the actual work of making the web site:

  1. a unique domain name
  2. web site hosting services

A domain name is the address, or URL, of your web site; the part that comes after “www.” Most commercial sites end in the regular “.com”, but a dot-org or a dot-net might be more appropriate for organizations or non-profit associations. There are many other endings (or “top-level domains”, also called TLDs) to choose from, such as dot-info, dot-us, dot-biz, etc.

Tuesday ~ June 06, 2008 by thomas Posted in Getting Started | No Comments

First impressions count in web sites, too

The first impression your business makes on a web site is important. This probably comes as no surprise to you, because it sounds like common sense. But some Canadian researchers have quantified the theory in a study published in January 2006.

Web sites judged in a blink
TORONTO, Ontario (Reuters) — Internet users can give Web sites a thumbs up or thumbs down in less than the blink of an eye, according to a study by Canadian researchers.

In just a brief one-twentieth of a second — less than half the time it takes to blink — people make aesthetic judgments that influence the rest of their experience with an Internet site.

The study was published in the latest issue of the Behaviour and Information Technology journal. The author said the findings had powerful implications for the field of Web site design.

“It really is just a physiological response,” Gitte Lindgaard told Reuters on Tuesday. “So Web designers have to make sure they’re not offending users visually.

“If the first impression is negative, you’ll probably drive people off.”

In the study, researchers discovered that people could rate the visual appeal of sites after seeing them for just one-twentieth of a second. These judgments were not random, the researchers found — sites that were flashed up twice were given similar ratings both times.

They also matched the responses given by subjects who were shown the sites for longer.

But the results did not show how to win a positive reaction from users, said Lindgaard, a psychology professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. “When we looked at the Web sites that we tested, there is really nothing there that tells us what leads to dislike or to like.”

And while further research may offer more clues, she said the vagaries of personal taste would always be a limiting factor.

“If design were reducible to a set of principles, wouldn’t we find an awful lot of similar houses, gardens, cars, rooms?” said Lindgaard. “You’d have no variety.”

Tuesday ~ June 06, 2008 by thomas Posted in Getting Started | No Comments

Email addresses

If you’re using an email address for your business that you got from your internet service provider (ISP), or an email address from one of the many free email services, such as Hotmail or Yahoo!, then your potential customers may not be getting the best impression of your business. Wouldn’t it be better if they wrote for information to an email address like info@woodswebdesign.com?

When I set up your web site, I can also set up email accounts for each member of your staff, or you can have an address like sales@wwwyourbusiness.com that anyone in your sales force might answer.

Send me an email, I’ll be glad to help you figure out what’s best for you.

Tuesday ~ June 06, 2008 by thomas Posted in Getting Started | No Comments