The percentage of Americans going online has edged to over 61% today, up from 59% at the end of last year.

Satisfaction levels have also risen during the last nine months. Lynn Franco, Director of the Consumer Research Center for The Conference Board, a research and marketing company says that "More than 31% of consumers who engage in online financial transactions trust that their personal information will be safe, compared with 27% almost a year ago."

Among the findings, today's online shoppers are spending more. Nearly 31% of online consumers spent more than $250 in the third quarter, up from about 28% in the fourth quarter of last year. "The rise in average spending per individual, coupled with the increase in traffic as the holiday season approaches, should help boost online sales in the coming months," says Franco.

MAKING MONEY WITH WEBSITES
The Internet continues to grow at a very rapid pace and has now surpassed a half-billion online users. In fact, the Internet is growing so rapidly that the architecture of the Internet is being compelled to reshape itself with a new IP structure and new Top Level and multilingual domains. The internet is still on the rise as the biggest marketing and sales medium. Most business owners (some reluctantly) now realize that a web site can help them survive and thrive in today's business world. Business owners are still skeptical about having a web site for several reasons. The biggest question that most of them ask is: Will I make money if I have a web site or will I waste company funds?

The answer to this question depends on how well the web site is developed. Easily, one of the biggest mistakes webmasters make when first starting out is in the design of the site. This is understandable, considering that in the brick and mortar world, a business's success is often dependent on its appearance. The more money put into the look and design of a business, the better it often does.

However, this doesn't completely transfer over into the world of the Web. There is a huge difference between creating an aesthetically pleasing website and creating one that will be functional and have the best possibility for success.

Today's Webmaster must know more than just the popular off-the-shelf programs like Microsoft Front Page, Macromedia's Dreamweaver or Flash. These web design programs do not make the web site interactive. While Frontpage, Dreamweaver and Flash are the most widely used web design software packages in use today, they do nothing for the field of real interactive web development.

Too often, beginners design their site as if to be a work of art - making sure it has lots of graphics, fancy javascript, flash, etc. While all of these things can create a beautiful site, they may be some of the biggest hindrances to a business's success.

On the net, two key things for a webmaster to keep in mind when designing a site are: the visitor and the search engines. If a visitor has to wait too long for a page to download, or a search engine can't properly index a site, no matter how beautiful and informative the site is, it will not generate the business required to survive much less excel.

PAGE SIZE AND CLICKS
While broadband access is gaining ground, more than half of all internet users still use dial up connections. This means that the majority of a site's visitors will be downloading the pages at about 3-4 kilobytes per second.

It is estimated that if a page doesn't load within 8-10 seconds you will lose 1/3 of your visitors. So, don’t make your page any more than 30 kilobytes total.

Remember, visitors are there to see what you have to offer them and get the information they are seeking. A huge graphic may only delay their search.

Another big rule is to keep the amount of clicks required to get to quality information down to a bare minimum. The more clicks required for information, the greater the chance your visitor will give up and go somewhere else.

SEARCH ENGINES
An extremely important consideration for your intro page is the affect on search engines. Because search engines can only index text, a huge graphic or flash intro doesn't give the engines anything to index. As a result, the homepage, which is often the highest ranking page on a site, has almost no chance of ranking well at all. Depending on how the links from the graphic or flash to internal pages are coded, the engines may not be able to follow the links to the rest of the pages on the site which means your site will not get spidered properly.

Make sure you give the visitor some actual text to read and the engines something to index. Your visitor retention will go up, and so will your search engine traffic.

HYPERLINKS
Hyperlinks are your bread and butter when dealing with the search engines. They are the way in which search engines find all of the pages on your site and index them. If a search engine can't follow a hyperlink, it won't be able to index the destination page, meaning parts of your site may become invisible to the engines.

For the latest training on search engine strategies go to: www.jupiterevents.com/sew/fall02

BODY TEXT
Remember, search engines can only index text. If your most important words are in graphic format, you have taken away the thing that the engines need most to properly index and rank your site.

Engines also want to see continuity in the structure of a page. When a webmaster uses lots of tables, frames, and other design elements, it breaks up the flow of the text on the page, which can cause a negative effect on your rankings.

When you do use tables, don’t break up a paragraph or sentence into separate cells in a table, this destroys the flow of the text and causes the words to be seen as unrelated fragments instead of part of the same continuous sentence/paragraph.

By understanding how the engines work, what they look for, what they can and can't do, you will vastly increase your chances of successfully achieving the rankings needed to make your business a success. In order for a web site to be properly developed, the webmaster must know advanced technologies such as CGI, ASP, PHP, and Java. These technologies require time and effort to learn and there is no easy software to implement them at this time. They are excellent in helping a company use its web site to its fullest potential. This technology helps to build an online community rather than a one-shot sales tool.

BENEFITS OF THE LATEST WEB DESIGN TECHNOLOGIES
Over 90% of the professional looking web sites on the internet are ineffective and developed incorrectly for business purposes. Most of those web sites were developed with FrontPage and Dreamweaver or Flash.

Customer interaction is one big advantage the new web programming languages of ASP and PHP have over Front Page, HTML and Dreamweaver. They are excellent for numerous interactive web site services including but not limited to the following: -Issuing online customers user accounts with passwords -Managing online databases through ASCII text files or SQL -Online Inventory tracking for satellite offices -Employee and Human Resource management -Online Games including interactive trivia quizzes -Email and mailing list management -Custom web applications

Business owners can now have the best and most interactive web sites by hiring a web developer who specializes in this type of web programming. One such company is Hot Web Ideas from the New York metro area. (www.hotwebideas.com). Hot Web Ideas has developed over 3,500 web pages in over 135 web sites nationwide. It has created over 25 different web applications for its customers including web page creation programs, virtual stock exchange, quiz creation programs, polls, shopping carts, online invoicing and many more interactive programs all without the use of software like FrontPage and Flash. And, they can set up the site so that the business owner can easily make changes to it.

SUCCEEDING IN WEB DESIGN MARKETING
Hot Web Ideas also serves other web design companies who do not build real online applications or databases. For its web design clients, Hot Web Ideas has built the Virtual Stock-Exchange.

Virtual Stock Exchange for Musicians www.songwriterstreet.com/smar
Traffic has increased tenfold on the Songwriter Street web site with a virtual stock exchange, as people come back to check their stock prices. Bands get increased exposure to the entire web community.

Musicians register as corporations and investors. “Investors” receive a million dollars in play money to invest in any band they want. Share prices fluctuate as the stock gets purchased and sold. An online stock ticker updates the prices and emails them to the members every day. This excellent web application gives the administrator rights to suspend accounts for online insider trading and can set the economy factor to match the conditions of the real world stock market. The program keeps a report of all outstanding stock investors have, and controls how much they can invest. This program was developed by Hot Web Ideas, who has sold the license for this product to 7 web design companies. You can make money with this program, too.
Create Your Free Web Page at http://www.songwriterstreet.com

Let’s face it. People love receiving free things over the internet and free web pages are one of them. Songwriter Street allows musicians to create their own web pages for free giving them more exposure to record company executives who browse their web pages.

Interactive technology can make or break a web site in terms of profitability. Review the recent online marketing studies pertinent to your business. Online marketing research is the key to finding what web site visitors are looking for.

BANNER ADS
Banner ads now account for nearly 60 percent of advertising done online, and remain one of the best ways to market online. Key elements of an effective banner are quality of design, provocative, eye-catching, unique or unusual presentation, a simple and brief message, a call to action; and a design that's targeted with the right message to the right audience.

Generally, the larger the banner, the higher the click-through rate. But an effectively designed smaller banner with a clever message, arresting graphics and call to action can compensate for its smaller size. Some banner designers like Doug McDonald of babblebot.com suggest that smaller banners are more effective overall. “Make the banners small and fast-loading," says McDonald. "Statistics show higher click-throughs on smaller, faster banners, rather than larger ones with fancy rich media. It's critical to grab the eye as the page loads."

Location is also a factor that can enhance a banner's effectiveness. Research the sites you're thinking about using: their design, demographics, visitor statistics -- and which pages they visit -- are numbers that can really help you make placement decisions.

One of the most sensible determinants of banner ad location is the editorial environment. An ad message or call to action close to related content on the page can significantly lead to greater click-through. A banner ad seriously out of context or not at all related to the content on the page could be regarded as annoying and have a negative impact.

MEASUREMENT
Once you've decided on which Web sites to place your banner ads, ask if they offer a software program that measures effectiveness and allows you to track banner views and click-through rates (CTRs). Banner views are the number of times a banner is viewed; the CTR is the percentage of people that click-through to your Web page. A CTR of 5 percent indicates that, out of 1,000 views, 50 people have clicked on the ad.

You can get daily, weekly and monthly CTRs. Most sites now offer these reports; otherwise, you'll want to invest in your own measurement software. Use the CTRs to decide whether your banner design and message is working or if improvements are in order and also to determine whether the Web site is delivering enough click-throughs to justify the cost.

As you get more involved in using banner ads to promote your business, you'll want to look into software programs that measure Conversion Rate, the number of sales resulting from click-throughs, to really measure the value of sites you're advertising on. You can search online for companies that offer conversion rate tracking software programs for a more detailed discussion.

BANNER EXCHANGES
One way to get exposure on a large number of sites in an economical way is through banner exchanges, which are now plentiful on the Web. Banner exchanges allow you to display your banner on a rotating basis on other Web sites, in exchange for posting that Web site's rotating banner on your site.

A typical formula is that for every two banners you display on your site, the banner exchange will display one of your banners on someone else's site. You usually don't receive monetary compensation, but you get exposure on the Internet based on the number of total banner views you contribute to the exchange. Check out the search engines for banner exchanges. You can find them at AdResource.com in the Banner Exchange section.

If your goal is maximum exposure for minimum investment in design, time and cost, these exchanges can work for you because they're volume-based, especially if you have a product or service for the general market. If you’re looking for customers of a more targeted, B2B nature, banner exchanges can still work for you, but it will require a little more research to find Web sites more appropriate for the demographic profile of your market.

PARTNERING WITH A PRO
If you plan on going into the web design field, you can partner up with a web development company who knows how to develop these online web applications. For more information call Hot Web Ideas at (877) 331-3616.