Web Development Blog

Reaching large groups of potential customers has never been easy. However, the ability to speak directly to customers makes the process well worth it. Once upon a time a company’s only choice was to send mass mailings of pamphlets or newsletters to thousands of addresses, at a substantial cost. Now, however, almost everyone has access to an email account (or several). The purpose of email, of course, is to allow you to reach anyone anywhere virtually instantly, without having to worry about paper, envelopes, or postage. Modern email clients can even interpret HTML code, allowing you to style emails in any way you want. Surely this marks the end of all of your mass mailing troubles, right? Unfortunately, mass mailings are still fraught with challenges and limitations.

When sending a mass mailing, you must somehow organize the contact information for all of your recipients. Keeping a list of email addresses is much easier now than saving thousands of mailing addresses used to be. The easiest way to store email addresses is to simply enter them into a text file, putting each address on its own line. Modern mail merge software should be able to interpret that text file and get each address from it. Sending thousands of emails at once is also a challenge, but companies can purchase several programs which make it easier to send HTML newsletters. One handy program is called World Merge. Another option is Auto Mailer. Both of these programs automate the mail merge process, and work with HTML source code to send an HTML newsletter to a list of up to thousands of addresses. Both programs (and many others that are available) are less than $100 for a full version. You can also download and use trial versions to make sure the process works for what you need. Once you automate the sending process, you can then design and build your newsletter.

An HTML newsletter is essentially the same thing as any HTML web page. Creating an HTML newsletter is not complicated, but the many restrictions and limitations of email clients make it difficult. The latest version of Microsoft Outlook, for example, does not support CSS-created background images, so be sure to avoid those in your layout. In fact, many CSS design elements are not fully supported by various clients, so you should be careful choosing which ones to use. Most email clients lack support for floating elements, which is the primary CSS style used as an alternate to table-based layouts in websites, so table-based layouts are the way to go in a newsletter. You must also keep all code within the “body” tags of the layout. When viewing a newsletter in an email with Yahoo! or Gmail, the “head” sections are stripped from the code. Any “style” or “script” tags within the “head” section will not be executed.

Click here to see what CSS elements modern email clients can support.

As a special note, remember to thoroughly test your newsletter before you send it to your customers. An HTML newsletter might be a good way to get repeat business, but a malfunctioning HTML newsletter is an even better way to lose it. Set up a separate list of email addresses that you have control of to see how the newsletter looks before you send it to your official list. This way you can make sure it all looks right (try to test it in as many clients as possible). You can always create free email accounts in Yahoo! or Gmail to have more places to test the email.

Put simply, what should you do to design a newsletter? First, the layout should only be about 600 pixels wide (considerably narrow compared to modern web design standards), to fit inside email clients. Second, don’t put anything inside the “head” tag of your HTML. Third, you will have to use table-based layouts, even though modern web trends shy away from tables as much as possible. Fourth, do not use background images anywhere in your newsletter, as Outlook 2007 will not display them properly. Fifth, avoid javascript, flash, or other dynamic add-ons entirely, as they most likely not work at all. Finally, thoroughly test your email before you send it, to make sure it looks the way it was meant to.

Follow this advice and in no time you will be sending professional quality HTML newsletters to your potential customers.

If you have been receiving our newsletter you know that every month we have been listing a handful of terms that you might hear or read but may not know exactly what they mean. Just doing our little part in helping clear up some of the confusion and mystery surrounding web design and website marketing. Well I am going to do a little recap and list a few more to round off the New Year.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
This is the act of altering a web site so that it does well in the organic, crawler-based listings of search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN. In the past, has also been used as a term for any type of search engine marketing activity, though now the term search engine marketing itself has taken over for this.

CPC (Cost Per Click)
The amount search engines charge advertisers for every click that sends a searcher to the advertiser€™s web site. For an advertiser, CPC is the total cost for each click-through received when its ad is clicked on.

PR (Page Rank)
Google technology developed at Stanford University for placing importance on pages and web sites. At one point, PageRank (PR) was a major factor in rankings. Today it is one of hundreds of factors in the algorithm that determines a page€™s rankings.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
RSS is a family of web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a “feed,” “web feed,” or “channel,” contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that’s easier than checking them manually.

Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity)
To put it simply Wi-Fi is a local area network (LAN) that communicates via radio waves. A more detailed explanation is, it is the set of standards for wireless local area networks based on the specifications known as 802.11. It was originally developed for use by wireless devices and local networks. It is now used for Internet access as well. If you access the Internet wirelessly from your computer or personal digital assistant, chances are you are using some sort of Wi-Fi.

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Here are a few more new terms that will hopefully jump start you into the New Year knowing just a little bit more than you did before:

HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
The document format used on the Web. Web pages are built with HTML tags (codes) embedded in the text. HTML defines the page layout, fonts and graphic elements as well as the hypertext links to other documents on the Web.

ASP (Active Server Page)
A Web server technology from Microsoft that allows for the creation of dynamic, interactive sessions with the user. An ASP is a Web page that contains HTML and embedded programming code written in VBScript or Jscript.

IDK
I Don’t Know (keep brushing up on your vocabulary and you won’t need to use this one.)

JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group)
An ISO/ITU standard for compressing still images. Pronounced “jay-peg,” the JPEG format is very popular due to its variable compression range. JPEGs are not suitable for graphs, charts and explanatory illustrations because the text appears fuzzy, especially at low resolutions.

ROI (Return On Investment)
A performance measure used to evaluate the efficiency of an investment or to compare the efficiency of a number of different investments. To calculate ROI, the benefit (return) of an investment is divided by the cost of the investment; the result is expressed as a percentage or a ratio.

There are a lot of people who are afraid to hire a professional web designer to do their website because they think it is going to cost them an arm and a leg.  Or that it requires a great deal of technical knowledge.  Well take a deep breath and relax because there are reputable web design companies that charge reasonable fees and stand behind their work.  You won’t have to know how to do one ounce of programming to get this done.

First you must decide what exactly you want your website to look like.  Do you want a bare bones approach with minimum amount of information or (more…)

Keeping it simple and avoiding useless and confusing features are the best ways to improve your website.  Here are  some easy ways  to improve your website and get your customers and visitors to keep coming back.

1. Are the important areas of information above the fold?  ‘Above the fold’ is an old newspaper term where the editor would make sure the eye catching headlines (more…)

So here you are ready to get yourself a professional web design presence.  You have considered doing it yourself or having that ever talented brother-in-law do it for you.  Now you are reconsidering after researching the subject because you realize you are out of your element, you are a business man after all not a web designer.  There are a few criteria you will need to follow to help you find a good web design company.

First off you need to decide how you want your site to look.  Do you want only essential information or do you want your whole store online?  Are you trying to establish a closer relationship with current customers or are you looking for new ones?  Once you have determined your initial requirements you need to write them down and use them as a basis for evaluating a website design company. (more…)

We have launched our new website design forum. Please go visit the site register and give us some feed back.

We have the following forum sections:

• Introductions
• Tiger Lounge
• Website Review
• Graphic Design
• Programming Help
• Google and Other Search Engines
• Other Marketing

We will be adding more sections and/or removing and tweaking sections to fit our members as we grow. We plan on being a very large, friendly & helpful community as time goes by… so tell your friends from other communities to stop by as well.