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Internet Marketing News – Free Web Design Tutorials

An online site is now an important promotion and sales campaign for most businesses, which is why web design tutorials are so important. In some cases, the web page is the entire business. People that have enough money to acquire the assistance of a specialist web developer can do this and have that hired help work out the nitty-gritty while they simply provide a check list of their needs. Those who do not have the funds to employ an expert can easily check online for lessons on how to make a web page. There are numerous sources on the internet which provide step by step instructions from the fundamentals up to the more advanced smart how-to’s. Listed below are just some of the websites offering free courses on web design:

webdesign.org – This great site can also be known as the Web Design Library. It offers an ever-growing supply of resources on almost everything related to web design. You can find sections on the basics of web design, along with the more advanced components which you can use to generate a more professional-looking website. There are courses on Photoshop, Flash, HTML, 3D Graphics and CSS, etc. It also provides information about development and site repairs and maintenance. You can also get reviews on essential products in addition to interviews with assorted headliners in the area of web design.

freewebdesigntutorials.com – This web site delivers, as the name implies, free of charge web design courses. It classified its offerings into two sections: CSS and JavaScript. JavaScript includes browser scripting and programming while CSS is all about visual coding technology. The site is quite clean and clutter free, which is good and helpful to the totally non-tech-savvy. The JavaScript lessons are up while the CSS section remains to be a work in progress.

designyourownweb.com – This website is recommended for you if you are a visual learner. You will find free web design video lessons on how to make a website, and also on how to use Nvu, a free website design editor, as well as Gimp, a cost-free graphics design manager. The training videos do consist of huge file sizes and call for a high speed broadband connection, but people employing a dial-up connection may use the step by step guidelines also available.

There are several other great web sites providing free courses, such as webdesignfromscratch.com and 2createawebsite.com. Since lessons can be obtained for free, the total newbie just has to choose one that best suits their learning style or perhaps the one who works toward creating the web site he or she has in mind. Additional lessons can be found as the starter grows in knowledge and in skill level.

Customer Marketing Creates Income Opportunities

There are many income opportunities to be mined with your existing customer base. This source can easily be overlooked in your pursuit of new profits, new customers and new income opportunities. Put yourself in the role of a customer. If you bought a product or service from a particular person and he answered patiently your every question, would you buy from him again in the future? Definitely. When a customer has given you his money, that’s not the end of the affair because by keeping in touch with him and developing a flourishing relationship with him, you will have a lifetime source of income opportunities. Imagine if 100, 1000 or even 10000 customers are waiting to grab your newest products or services even before they are released! Hence, it’s vital to build a customer base because not only does it save a lot of time and effort, it also increases your income opportunities.

Stubbie Holders: Get More Customers And Generate More Sales

Promotional stubbie holders gained popularity in the world of marketing. Many businesses have started to realize the different benefits they can acquire in using these products to promote their business. Before, these holders are only seen in pubs and bars because people use this as a way of prolonging the coldness of various drinks such as beers, wines and sodas. But it is commonly used nowadays for promotional purposes and it has served well its ability to market a business effectively. In a competitive market, it is important to choose efficient and attractive promotional items that will allow you to find new and potential customers fast. By letting these items promote your business, you will be able to expand your marketing reach and will allow you to build your brand. Stubbie holders can be advantageous in a way that it can help your business achieve its goal of obtaining more customers. And with more customers, you will be able to generate more sales.

Virtual Shopping Carts & E-commerce

A requirement for efficiently running your e-commerce online store are virtual shopping carts. These are electronic order forms that serve as the first step in the fulfillment process. Their purposes are to securely:

Enable your customer to browse and select items, and then later decide which ones they want to purchase.
Display a summary of items that your customer has selected.
Provide links to information for your customer to consider before confirming the purchase, such as the return policy or the description page for each product.
Allow your customer to change the quantities ordered or remove items before checking out.
Enable your customer to navigate to the checkout process or to return to the store to choose more items.

This shopping cart software allows you to accept orders for multiple products from your website(s). It automatically calculates and totals your customer’s order, including tax and shipping charges. Some shopping carts are even integrated with the fulfillment capabilities of UPS or the U.S. Postal Service to make the order acceptance and shipping process much smoother.

There are several services that offer secure online shopping cart technology. PayPal, for instance, offers a free shopping cart program to its merchant members. At checkout, shoppers indicate that they want to make their purchases through their PayPal accounts, and the process rolls out automatically.

Other application service provider (ASP) companies also keep your shopping cart on a third-party site, where it is secure and regularly updated. Securenetshop.com provides this type of service for a monthly or annual fee. Popular software packages that can be purchased include Miva Merchant and QuickStore.

Email Marketing

If done correctly, email marketing can deepen customer relationships and add a personal touch to the sales process. Carried out improperly, an e-mail campaign can turn a customer off to your business forever.

E-mail newsletters for customers who “opt in” (request or otherwise sign up for them) are a terrific marketing tool for online businesses. Rather than being a hard-hitting price-and-product flyer, an online newsletter ideally provides useful information and/or news relating to your lines of business.

A popular outdoor and camping-gear store, for example, sends its customers a newsletter with information on camping trips and outdoor activities. As an incentive for opting in on the company’s website, the store offers new subscribers a coupon for 10 percent off their next order.

In fact, e-mail newsletters commonly are used to promote special offers or discounts to their subscribers. They are an inexpensive way to place your brand and products in front of a highly receptive customer base that already has demonstrated interest by signing up for your newsletter.

And because it’s in digital form, its free and unlimited. Giving you a huge advantage over your paper pushing competitors.

Attract New Customers Online

With hundreds or thousands of competitors, how can a business attract new customers online and get its product upfront in online search engines? Gaining a listing in the first page or two of a search engine’s results is often considered the “Holy Grail” of e-commerce.

So, how do you get to the front of search results? There are two approaches to ensuring that links to your company’s website appear high on a search engine page: “natural search” and “paid search.”

To rank highly in natural search, the content on your company’s website should include the keywords a consumer might type to search for what you offer. These keywords should also be included in the links to your website from other websites.

For example, if you own an online jewelry store, you may want your company’s website to show up when a consumer searches for the words “diamond earrings.”

There are various strategies to improving your company’s rank in natural search. Most are legitimate, but there are some vendors that don’t comply with the rules and regulations that the search engines have in place to ensure honest marketing.

If you decide to work with a third-party to implement a natural-search strategy, be sure to check references, look at other companies they’ve worked with, and make sure they are forthright about their policies on working within search engine service agreements.

For paid searches, companies get to the top of search listings the old fashioned way–they buy their way there! Search companies, for example, allows businesses to suggest keywords that relate to their products and services, to create a description and even to choose a geographic area that they want to reach.

The company’s listing appears high in the results of search engines like Yahoo! and MSN, and the merchant is charged a fee each time a visitor clicks on the listing to get more information.

The most popular search engine, Google, has a cost-per-click pricing plan based on keywords called Adwords. Here, business listings (called Sponsored Links) with short descriptions appear next to the list of related search results, attracting attention and clicks.

Business owners should explore a variety of search engines to see which kind of program works best for their products or services.