Stats by Browser and SE Referrals

The latest podcast episode entitled Web Design Visitors Analysis provided a review of stats by browser and Search Engine (SE) referrals. Visitor traffic to my website for custom cms web design reveals interesting data on user browser and search engine referrals. Tracking details of short term traffic may help web developers in making strategic decisions for future custom cms web design techniques. Consider the following visitor stats:

Comparison of Visitor Traffic and Web Design by Browser

55.4% IE6,7,8
30.2% FireFox
08.4% Safari
03.2% Chrome
00.4% Opera

Internet Explorer, or Microsoft IE, continues to dominate collectively while IE7 represents 33.8% in the IE total. Compared to my traffic stats in December 2008, Safari grew slightly, Chrome remained about the same, and Opera lost market share. If nothing else, this data supports cross browser compatibility testing of your website design to make sure it displays well for all visitors.

Web Design and Comparison of Search Engine Referrals

85.5% Google
10.1% Yahoo
04.4% Bing

Google sends more than 85% of the total search referral traffic to my website, so I periodically track my position for "custom cms web design" on page one. After paid ads, my site has remained at number 1 on Google page one for that phrase for more than two years. You may want to Google the phrase custom cms web design, and see if I've been bumped or listen to this podcast episode to learn more about stats by browser and SE referrals.



TAGS: advice browsers cms cms web design web design

DIY Do-it-Yourself Web Design System

The most popular DIY Do-it-Yourself web design system for managing websites is called a cms, or content management system. It allows the owner to take over and add unlimited new pages to their site without learning advanced technical skills. For example, you write content in plain text and enter info in a few boxes from an admin area and it publishes that text in xhtml with zero code errors. Easily upload photos to insert in the page, too. Google rewards sites that add original quality content often, so imagine having a site with 450-500 pages without paying for changes each time.

My specialty is custom cms web design. Go to Google search and type in that phrase: custom cms web design. Next, look at the search results (after the paid ads) and my site should be listed #1 worldwide (maybe #1 and #2) for companies who offer custom cms web design. Besides the initial design, technical setup, and launch, my clients get a 50 page pdf ebook showing how I made page one, so they can use the same seo search engine optimization principles and strategy to dominate their niche.

View or download the 50 page DIY CMS Web Design and SEO Ebook for an overview of cms plus advice on writing content optimized for search engines. The ebook includes links to free online tools and software plus advice for best practices in search engine optimization.

Most small business owners get started with a small website as a good "starter" site, yet converting that to the cms will allow them to take over to easily add, edit, or delete content. Other designers who offer seo services will charge as much as $5000 to $20,000 just for the search engine optimization advice contained in that ebook download.

I give that seo advice away at no charge to my clients as part of a custom cms web design project. My current published rate for adding pages to an older static web design is $250 per page, so 20 pages would be $5000. Imagine a do-it-yourself website and having a 100 page site. Instead of $25,000 at $250 a clip for each new page, the custom cms design and technical setup plus converting existing pages into the system is yours for a one-time fee as little as $2500.

Compare older static web design services and the latest custom cms web design price list, and then contact me with questions or to learn more about custom cms web design and search engine optimization.



TAGS: advice cms content management system seo search engine optimization web design

Follow Back Strategy on Twitter

The choice to follow back "a select group or all" should depend on your reason for being on Twitter. I prefer a network of people in web design or graphics to learn trends for my core business, plus meet interesting or entertaining people. I'm on Twitter to learn and contribute as I interact on a professional level plus more informally on a personal level to keep it real.

I'm not selling, so I'm not building a list or feeding the ego by acquiring a large following for the sake of numbers.

I don't follow back 100%. If a follower tweets to provide value and interact on a personal level (even if not directly to me), that's ok. Others who don't reveal a real name, company, or organization, never @ or RT, only tweet hard sell and self promotion, or offend my sense of morality won't be followed.

While the real character of someone you follow on Twitter can be disguised behind false information like age, gender, job title, photo, and more, I tend to follow those who I would be just as likely to entertain or interact with in a real world situation and assume their online personna is accurate.

I have talked by phone or Skype with a handful of followers, and actually met the very first person who followed me when they visited Florida recently. Their real information was easy to confirm, and the nature of their tweets was mature and professional. Still, we met over breakfast in a public setting as opposed to a truly private meeting. Otherwise, I urge caution for anyone considering a one on one tweetup.

Want to learn more about my tweets or those I follow? View my web design related Twitter account @JimDegerstrom for a preview.



TAGS: advice followers following Twitter

Vacation Rental Custom CMS Web Design

Final tweaking and launch of an Orlando vacation rental cms web design took place within the last month for anOrlandoVacationVilla.com. This custom cms web design is a content management system in xhtml with css and features a flash photo slide show on the home page, virtual tours, contact reservation forms, plus a visitor comments guestbook, and more.

The custom cms web design website photo gallery created entirely in css includes searchable text for seo search engine optimization benefits compared to flash. Mousing over thumbnails presents an enlarged view with text captions that can be indexed by search engines.

The advantage of a custom cms web design is the owner may add, edit, or delete content without any knowledge of xhtml by simply creating plain text files, entering content in the admin backend, and selecting publish to update content. A cms, or content management system, is the easy way for a website owner to update a web design optimized for seo without paying each time for changes.



TAGS: content management system cms design launch design seo web design

Website for Hispanic Small Businesses

Hispanic small business owners represent nearly half my clients for custom web design. I'm pleased to announce a valuable resource by Juan Silvera including his Hispanic Small Business Blog at HispanicSMB.com. El Blog de Juan has been online since 2006 providing valuable insight for Latino small businesses.

Some of my clients contact me for a quality custom website that is designed with bilingual content. Once the English version is launched, site owners have the option of translating all pages for visitors who prefer reading content in Spanish.

In addition to announcing the HispanicSMB site, a link has been added to the Small Business Resource Center blogroll for the benefit of my clients interested in learning more about business trends for US Hispanic businesses. Visit their main site for more content including a Latino small business forum, how-to videos, directory, and library for Latino small business owners.



TAGS: advice blog Hispanic small business small business advice web design

Time Sensitive Marketing Offer Mistake

Besides offering custom web design services, I create custom matching graphic artwork for print, as well. Over the weekend an incoming email with a time sensitive marketing offer for a "printing special" was poorly handled, and the mistake is a good reminder of how automated email messges can affect credibility.

In an email received dated 14 February at 7:53pm a weekend printing promotion that began at 5:00pm on 12 February was announced with an expiration at midnight on the 14th. Where was the email for two days before arriving 50 hours after the start time? Obviously the automated mailing broadcast date and time were improperly set.

Learn from the mistakes of others. For a business that depends on automated email campaigns be certain that time sensitive marketing offers are sent early enough for recipients to react. Besides annoying the prospect, your reputation and credibility as a professional source for your product or service could be at stake.



TAGS: advice advertising email campaign email marketing promotion

Tableless XHTML Web Design Tips

You decide your site design in xhtml code will be tableless. The term tables in a database and tables in xhtml are different. One refers to content and the other presentation, or how that content is displayed on the actual web page. Data belongs in columns and rows, so tables are an exception to the concept of a tableless xhtml web design.

If you have a dynamic site that uses tables in a database, that is different than tables for layout. Don't be confused by the difference. A MySQL database happens to use tables to store data hidden on the server and extracted as needed. That is content. Think of those as storage bins for data necessary to drive the engine if your site uses a cms system. That use of the word "tables" is entirely different from the xhtml method of table layout using a matrix of rows and columns to present content.

The use of tables for layout in xhtml does not refer to the content. That is presentation. If your site will be tableless yet is a cms web design, that means the system extracts data from the database table where it is stored, and it is automatically assembled into the xhtml document which is what search engines and visitors see. For my custom cms web designs there will not be any tables code in the xhtml unless it is required for presentation. That conversion of data from a cms database to a tableless page means pages will not be presented with the outdated technique of bloated code using a table matrix of columns and rows.

Would a design in xhtml that I create ever use tables for layout? Not for the entire page, but perhaps sometimes for a portion of page content, yet rarely, and only when actually displaying some type of chart. For example, if a page needed a matrix displaying prices by quantity presented in rows and columns, in that case using a table for layout for just that section of the page would be appropriate. The mistake designers make is trying to precisely control the layout of a page by putting everything in "boxes", or table cells, in columns and rows.



TAGS: advice cms tables web design xhtml