Thursday, December 22, 2011


HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) is perhaps the most popular languages in the world that is used to script the documents of any application of website so that it can be viewed in any browser. And HTML Tags or HTML Elements are used to create these documents. To write HTML Tags in proper manner, it is very important to present the content on any website in such a manner that it can be searched easily on different search engines. The scenario becomes more difficult when you got to know that some of the HTML Tags are not supported by all the browsers and then you have to make correction in the markup language codes to make it compatible with most of the browsers.
<!--...--> l <!doctype> l <a> l <abbr> l <acronym> l
<address> l <applet> l <area> l <b> l <base> l
<basefont> l are some of the HTML Tags. 
All these codes are divided into various categories. Title Tags, Header Tags and ALT Text are some of the most important HTML Tags which are used for Search Engine Optimization.

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Monday, December 19, 2011

If you are looking for a reliable and robust web development platform, Drupal is the one for you. This open source CMS web design solution has become very popular with developers around the world. Drupal development is being applied to a variety of websites ranging from social networks to ecommerce websites. Drupal is powered by PHP which helps you achieve structurally strong websites. The clean coding technique attracts search engine crawlers and helps your website attain higher rankings in the search engine results pages or the SERP. It is hardly surprising that some of the most popular websites in the world run on Drupal.

Drupal developers have created a niche for themselves in the market offering customized solutions to businesses taking their needs into account. Apart from development they also promote your website using the social media and other online marketing techniques. With the launch of each new version this platform offers more to the customers easing the process of developing and managing a website.  A lot of web developers around the world have switched to Drupal from the traditional ways of developing a website. In other words Drupal has become the face of effective and affordable web development service.
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Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Three Popular PHP based Open Source CMS and their Features

PHP is the most widely used technical assistance for the purpose of developing dynamic web pages. It is a general purpose server side scripting language which offers robust web development and the PHP based codes can be easily inserted into the HTML documents to help you obtain a highly animated and extremely web compatible website.

Over the time, the PHP technology has been smartly exploited to reveal some of the most promising and highly advantageous web application development platforms which are made available to the users for free. These platforms are also known as open source content management systems and provide easy options for users to develop a web application. Content management system, as the name suggests, aims to manage all the content of the website. And the content includes every display material of your website – be it the written content, the images, videos and etc.

The reason why these CMSs are called open source is because their source code is available for free and they can be freely downloaded from the Internet. Along with letting you effectively manage your website, they provide your web application with highly resourceful functionalities and features. The three most popular and widely used open source CMS are discussed below:

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Thursday, December 8, 2011

Website Development: An Ultimate Tool for Marketing

The concept of marketing a business has turned turtle in the last decade. Prior to that having a website was considered to be a luxury among businesses. But a website has become the ultimate marketing tool today. It can go a long way in boosting the sales and revenue of your business directly or indirectly. No wonder from large MNCs to small startups, everyone looks for a good business web design solution. Web development has become a multi-billion dollar industry due to the flexibility and the marketability of a website.

However having a mere website wouldn’t give you the mileage you need.  Hundreds of businesses would compete against you on the search engines. The solution – custom web development where a website is developed taking your needs into consideration and offering a business web design solution to meet those needs. The website should be designed uniquely to attract customers. The last piece in the puzzle is hiring the services of a good web design company.

This is however easier said than done as thousands of such companies have opened shop in the last few years. So while hiring the services of a web design company you need to be careful and choosy. Make sure that they offer custom website development solution before you seal the deal with them. Take a look at their portfolio and see the kind of projects they have done in the past to judge their expertise.  Having said all that let us see why a website is considered to be the ultimate marketing tool.

  • Cost Effective – Marketing a business using a website is cost effective. In fact once a website is up and running you can promote your business without incurring any cost. It gives you the opportunity of taking of your large competitors. No other form of marketing would allow you this luxury. The only thing that you need to ensure is that your business web design is attractive for the visitors.

  • Conversion Rate - If you have a website, then your customers are only ever a few clicks away from completing a purchase. In others media customers need to make a phone call, or go to a shop to make a purchase of product whereas a business website increases your conversion rate significantly. It ensures you a higher return on investment compared to others.

  • Wider Reach – No other medium offers you the reach that a good business web design does. You can cater to a global audience sitting in any part of the world.  In today’s world where globalization has become the synonym of business it gives you ample opportunity to know the marketing potential of your business in other parts of the world. 

  • Interactive – A website is a highly interactive marketing tool. It allows you to connect with your audience and get real time feedback from them. This could be aggressively used during new product launches, offering support to your customers or knowing their feedback on your business. This feedback mechanism can help you better your business and offer better quality products and services of the customers. 

  • Shelf Life – How many hours does a TV campaign last? How long can a print ad market your business? Online media has an infinite shelf life and once an promotional content be it in the form of a blog, image or an multi-media element is posted online it remains active for a much longer period compared to any other medium. It is a 24x7 medium which adds to the convenience of the users.
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Thursday, December 1, 2011

Set Different Fonts for Your Website Using CSS

Website development bears good results if it is done carefully keeping all the essential points in mind. CSS is a great and advanced language that helps in designing light web pages. When it comes to a visually appealing and user friendly website, there are many factors that decide how attractive and user friendly a website would be. Fonts also play an important role in enhancing the look of a site. Therefore, it is imperative to select right fonts for your site. CSS is a great language using which you can set different fonts for your website.
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Thursday, November 24, 2011

10 Best Methods Used for Optimizing HTML Sitemaps

The importance of site maps for a website can not be ignored. A sitemap helps both the visitors as well as the search engine crawlers to navigate a website in an efficient manner and to find the most important content of a site without putting in any efforts. Therefore, it is crucial to focus on sitemaps. Although every site may have a sitemap these days. However, most of the sites do not have a well optimized sitemap. Be it a small website with fifteen or twenty pages, or a large ecommerce website with hundreds of pages, it is not really surprising to find many such sites without optimized sitemaps. Read further to find out 10 best methods for optimizing your HTML sitemaps.
 
1. The sitemap should be located at the root of site's hierarchy:
This is very important. You should locate the sitemap at the root of the hierarchy in order to make the optimum use of it.

2. Create multiple theme based sitemaps: By doing this, you can promote content themes, and communicate your site in an effective manner. Themed sitemaps not only help users to navigate to the content, but they also let search engines know what your site is about. This is possible only from  a reputed web design company.

3. The number of links on your sitemap should be between 100-150: If you have a large website, then you should create multiple theme based sitemaps. Search engines consider the number of links on the site mp. In fact, according to Google's guidelines, if a website has more than 100 links then the sitemap should be broken into separate pages.

4. Keywords should be descriptive and relevant, with rich anchor text: Having rich anchor text and relevant keywords is a must while creating a sitemap. This is because it is likely that your sitemap inherits PageRank from the homepage. Therefore, it should be an authoritative page. By including keyword rich anchor text you can improve the inbound link quality score for the page being linked to. This is one of the key factors considered by search engines in their ranking algorithms. Therefore, you should include keywords in the text that features on your sitemap.

5. Keep updating your site map: It is important to keep the sitemap updated. Keep checking for broken links and replace them without any delay.

6. The sitemap should be organized in a logical manner: It implies that the themed content should be organized in such a manner that it makes it easy for users to navigate through the site. By directing users through a logical navigation map, you can ensure that users will engage with the most important content of your site.

7. Ensure that your homepage has a link to your sitemap: It would be better if you place the link to sitemap near the top of your homepage. You are certainly not going to gain anything by placing the sitemap at any other location and making it difficult for users to find it.

8. Do not use hidden texts or hidden links: Avoid the use of hidden text and hidden links at any cost. It will get you penalized from search engines. Also, do not use a very small font. In case you want multiple pages for your sitemap, then you should plan your sitemap strategy meticulously.

9. Set the frequency and priority of crawling activity:  Setting the priority and frequency of crawling activity will ensure that search engines crawl the page regularly. This will ensure that whenever you update your sitemap, search engines will crawl and index the content.

10. Make use of video sitemaps: You can also use video sitemaps to let search engines know about your video content.

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Monday, March 7, 2011

10 Must-haves for All Small Business Websites

The world wide web has, over recent years, experienced a vast influx in the number of websites. The remarkable increase in the number of websites can be attributed to the advance in technology and advantages offered by websites to businesses. Not all websites can be termed as standard sites. Some of them quite poorly designed. When it comes to small-business websites, they generally lack a professional touch and quality content. Discussed below are the 10 must-haves for all small business websites.

business website

1.About us page: When a visitor lands on your website, the very first thing he looks out for is what products and services you offer. An about us page is a must which should explain clearly about your services.

2.Simple web address: There is no point in making things complicated unnecessarily. A domain name is nothing less than a brand. It should be simple enough so that a user can easily type it in the web browser.

3.Easy navigation process: This is very important. A website should have an easily navigable design. The important pages and sitemaps should be placed at appropriate places. It is always better to use dropdowns in the navigation menu. This way users can easily see the content under every heading from virtually any page.

4.Contact information: This is also equally important. Some times lack in communication may result in you losing a potential customer. By providing the contact information you make it easier for visitors to contact you. It is important to place the contact information at the right place. Do not make your visitors work hard in finding your contact information. Most of them are in a hurry and may leave your site in frustration. The best place to put your contact information is at the top left or top right corner of the home page. Try to provide contact information in every page.

5.Client testimonials: Always provide your customers' testimonials. This increases the confidence of visitors in your website. It also helps them to know about the kind of products and services you offer.

6.Call to action: It is important to tell the visitors what you want them to do. If you want them to call you for a free sample, provide special buttons with highlighted text which enables them to do so.

7.SEO knowledge: It is extremely important to have the basic knowledge about search engine optimization. It can help you to make your site accessible by search engines. The site should be coded correctly and correct keywords should be used throughout the text.

8.Quality and relevant content: Content counts a lot. Relevant and fresh content helps to boost the traffic volume and increases the SEO as well.

9.Secure hosting platform: You must have a secure web hosting to protect your online information form being hijacked.

10.User friendly design: Most importantly, you site should have a simple and user friendly web design to keep the visitors hooked to it.

PixelCrayons is the professional web design company proving all types of web design solution to its client all over the globe .PixelCrayons expertise’s and offers best ecommerce website development & designing services, PSD to HTML services and opensource CMS solutions at affordable prices.

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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Online Branding Promotion Ideas

Online branding is all about to increase business popularity. To make your business successful it is important to promote it in a right manner. Having a good business web design is of no use if you do not promote it well. This is because without any promotion the visitors will not come to know about your website. If you promote your website in a right way, it will ensure that your website get the targeted traffic. Discussed below are some of the branding and promotion ideas.

Define Logo and Brand
Logo is the top most factor for any organization. Designing a logo doesn't mean that it should be attractive. It needs to be professional and well functioning. Starting from color to font everything effects the promotion of your business. You can research online to get an idea about the sample logo for your company. Test the logo with different elements and ensure that it works with your business. Unmatched logo can break your business popularity.

Place your Brand on Website
Having website is important for foundation of your brand. Its not like to design a logo and place on the header of the web pages. It is a hard deal to make it effective. It includes things like choice of color, layouts and information publishing. Choice of color must be similar throughout the website. If visitor move from one page to another, he must experience the consistency on the colors. Website must be connected to its internal links and pages. You can also take help from professional web designers for designing your website. Keep update your information on regular basis. Use easy language that visitors can understand without having any problem. Your brand will develop more as its look, feel, language and layouts designed from heart.

Spread your Brand on Web
Out of your website try to interact with other internet services. Internet world will help you to grow your brand. Visibility makes brand work properly. Not spreading your brand online, can hide your brand from the outer world. Use social networking and SMO sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Orkut etc. for promoting your brand. There is also search engine power to promote your brand. Most of the people use search engines to find what they are looking for.

Articles
Write articles on your brand and publish them on articles sites. There are numbers of article publishing site where you can post your articles. Always give your link in the last of the article you are posting. You can post your articles on the following sites.
  • Squidoo
  • Hub pages
  • Scribd
  • Buzzle
  • EzineArticles

Publish Email Newsletter
Create informative newsletter to send your clients. In newsletter include consistent content in order to convey proper message to the customers. It is just like sharing latest news and technologies relevant to your business.

Following all these promoting technique you can promote your brand in a reliable manner.

PixelCrayons is a Web Design Company. PixelCrayons provides affordable web design and custom website development solutions, ecommerce website development services and more.
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Monday, February 14, 2011

Simple Steps to Create Signs and Banner

A web banner is a form of advertising on the web. It is intent to attract traffic towards the website. Web banners are displayed when page reference get loaded into web browser. They work in the same way as traditional advertisements are intended to work. You can also employ technology and your own experience to create banners. Below are some simple steps for designing attractive and effective banners:

Use Space Effectively: You need to check out the volume of the space between the variety of designs and style elements. Pay attention on the usage of space to balance your graphics. Do not aim to fill every inch of space. Make aim to use space properly and don't try to crowd your information on the banner. Your aim must be to make signs and banners attractive so, that it can generate quick response.

Content Weight-age: The biggest problem people facing is amount of content on banner. You must provide only necessary information required by the customers. Heavy content on banners destroy their effectiveness. Drop the content which doesn't convey proper message. Pay attention to include little content with effective meaning.

Shape and Size: Shape is the most important factor in getting response. It may enhance or take away from main point. Shape and size matters a lot in banner and signs case. If you are not getting any idea about how to shape up your banner, you must consider experts or professionals for advice. They can help you get the perfectly shaped banners.

Color: Color of the banner is also very important factor. Effectiveness of any banner also reflects from its color. Choose color wisely so, that it could match with other elements of the banner, it contains. Color which doesn't matched with other element of the banner would result in poor response. So, be careful in case of color selection. Always select the colors realistically. You can take ideas from internet.

Idea from other designs: If you are going to design banner yourself, you must have some graphic design or web design skills. You should check out the other banners already available over internet just to take an idea. Notice what you like in others banner and try to incorporate into your design but in different manner.

Visual Alignment: Most of the times people do not pay attention to visual alignment but it is very important to consider. Although it is very small and easy but paying proper attention to vision of the banner will make it more effective. Ignoring the overall balance of your banner can result in drawing criticism from the visitors.

Going through all the above mentioned steps you could easily estimate that you really don't need to hire a professional and experts for designing your banner. You can also design your own banner by following above mentioned steps. If you still think, it is difficult to design a banner you can hire any expert graphic designer or a business web design company to create a professional looking banner for your business.

PixelCrayons is a Web Design Company. PixelCrayons provides affordable web design and custom website development solutions, ecommerce website development services and more.
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Friday, February 11, 2011

Web Designing Tips to Boost Search Engine Optimisation

When it comes to web designing, most of the people focus only on making it as attractive as possible. Consequently they end up making it too much cluttered with too many images stuffed in. This is the wrong approach. Web design should be attractive yet simple. It should have a clutter free look and user friendly features. A well designed website not only generates more traffic but also fares well in search engine ranking. Search engine optimisation is indispensable for the success of any online business. A good web design is the first step towards attaining good search engine results.


While planning for the web design, it is necessary to focus on the appropriate structure and content. It helps in achieving high search engine rankings. It is the website content which ultimately decides what rank your website will ultimately achieve on search engines. A good business web design company help you to achieve this perfect web design for your website. With the help of a good web designing service, you can get a good web design which ensures good search engine optimisation. Discussed below are some of the tips to boost your SEO.

1.First of all, when it comes to the structure, you should always use the layered navigation structure. This really helps in improving the search engine optimisation of your website. It assists the search engine robots to crawl easily to your website.

2.It is important to use the layered content structure in your web design. Use headings and subheadings for dictating as to what topics are being covered in your content.

3.The main menu items should be contained in the footer sitemaps. You can ask your web designing company to incorporate them in your web design.

4.Make use of breadcrumbs which show the visitors their position on your website along with quick links to the other pages of your site. This helps in building up the internal links in your website. It improves your search engine rankings too.

5.Try to make every page of your site unique. Google evaluates the relevancy of every page based on the type of content they contain. There should be different content on every page and it should not be copied from other sites.

6.There should not be a repetitive word in the website layout. Make the content fresh and new on every page. Repetitive content can dilute the value of the important and informative content of your site.

7.Create a separate web page for each keyword or keyword phrase. This is one of the best ways to rank a website for a particular keyword phrase. A dedicated page for each product or service will also ensure a good user experience as they will land directly on this page from the search engine results, making it much easier for them to buy online.

By adhering to the above mentioned tips you can easily improve the search engine optimisation of your corporate website design. Just make sure that you hire a good and reputed custom web development company.

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Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Important Elements of a Web Design Contract

Whenever a project is started with an aim to achieve dynamic dreams and work, contract is a very important part like an ingredient of success. Whether it is from a small or big company, contract is always the keystone of every web design project. Contract is an element that deals with the functioning, plan and documents of a company. A trusted contract is what every company owner seeks to run and progress his business in a good flow. An effective web design contract is like a regulation that carves and defines the core features of the company project and stimulates for producing more clear views and working aspects.


web design


When one decides to build an online business contract, there are few important elements which one should learn and understand to be free from obstacles and interruptions regarding about the list of regulation and its procedures on the basis of contract.

AUTHORIZATION – The authorization statement made should be declared that the client is contracting with you to perform tasks on his processes. In this, the work of hosting service, data creation and management, and optimization for search engines may be accessed by you.

AGREEMENT – The time, procedures and limitations produced by you for the project should be adhered and abided by the client with an understanding. There should be an agreement between you and your client relating on the processing of project work.

CONFIDENTIALITY – Here, the exchanges of business information and valuable secrets of work should be kept secure and not open to other external personnel. This should be of great concern for a contract purpose.

SPECIFICATION OF PROJECT CONCERN – It is a proposal document that contains all the details of project functioning in making the client understand with clarity. Service provider should give a clear description about each domain of website functioning and applications to the client. For instance, Details about CMS web development, coding, design, etc.

CONTENT – Whether the content will be produced by you or hire a professional content writer, the text, video and images involved in your content will all be of concern in making a contract and fixing it in price agreement.

PROJECT ASSIGNMENT- You should be cleared with the assignment being made for your project, and whether you need external resources supply from the subcontractor or not should be properly studied and inform the client to avoid any obstacle.

WEB HOSTING – Whether your website will be hosted by you or by other hosting services should be made obvious to the client.

REGISTRATION OF DOMAIN NAME – The owning of the domain and the state of ownership right should be made clear and precise to the client.

By knowing all these elements you can precede with the process of making contract with the client without facing any complication and problem. This will furthermore build a good relationship between you and your client in making your project a success.

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Thursday, January 27, 2011

Factors Deciding the Web Designing Cost

Web designing is a crucial and deciding aspect of a web development project. The success rate of a website depends on the web design to a large extent. Therefore, it is imperative to have a visually appealing and user friendly web design. There is no dearth of web designers. You just need to search online and you will find a number of them offering different web designing services. As a website comprises of many components, and different designers charge different prices, there is no single factor deciding the price of the web design. However, there are some basic aspects which can help you determine an approximate figure of the web designing cost.

Scope of the project: The cost of a web designing project varies depending on various factors like business requirements, customer preferences, design expectations, level of strategic input and type of functionality. If there are any further enhancements and add on features, they will also affect the custom web development cost. You also need to consider domain names, server maintenance, and content management system.

Type of design: The complexity or the simplicity of the web design plays a big role in deciding the cost of the web design. A website having number of pages, multiple layout, content, media etc. will definitely require a bigger budget. If modules like gallery, blog or ecommerce website development/designing is required, it will further increase the cost.

Skills and experience: If you hire a good reputed company with a huge experience, you will definitely have to shell out more money. But they guarantee you the timely delivery of the project. They also ensure that the web design is created keeping all specific requirements in mind. You can hire a freelance designer if you have a limited budget.

Constant Maintenance: More often than not, people do not care to look beyond the web design. They think once the design is done, nothing more needs to be done. On the contrary, you need to constantly maintain the web design to ensure that your website keeps functioning properly. Hiring a good company may cost a little extra, but they provide all the maintenance, technical support, and content management system.

Online Marketing: This is of paramount importance. There is no point developing a website if you can’t make the visitors find it. For this a proper marketing strategy is required. This will ensure that your website gets a good volume of relevant traffic. This will require some more investment and you need to plan accordingly.

Premium services: These are the services you really can not afford to do without. If you want your corporate website design to be pixel perfect, you need to invest more for custom coding and premium designers. Services like flexible content entry, 24/7 technical support, bigger web server space, faster connections, better patched severs and full domain name management will surely cost you more, but will also guarantee that your website will work better in the long term.

These are some of the factors which can help you estimate the cost of your web design.

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