This post continues the roundup "Designing Effective Websites - 80 Articles of Summer 2011" and presents articles retweeted this autumn. Autumn 2011 was very rich in great web design articles and inspiration collections.

There are a lot of interesting information on web design principles, usability and user experience, content writing, designing e-commerce websites and effective call-to-action, and many other questions. This time there is a great deal of articles on development for mobile devices, responsive web design, as well as on redesign techniques, cross-cultural websites, and HTML semantics.

The main sections of the roundup are as follows:

• Web Design Principles and Basics
• Website Layout
• Psychology, Web Design and Manipulation
• Colors in Web Design
• Usability and User Experience
• Cross Cultural Web Design
• Redesign
• HTML5 and Semantics
• Content and Copywriting
• Copyright
• Typography
• Navigation and Menus
• Landing Page and Conversion Rate
• Call to Action
• Forms
• Footers and Headers
• Tips and Recommendations
• E-Commerce Websites
• Mobile Websites
• Accessibility
• Cross-browser Compatibility
• Website Technical Aspects
• Trends
• Inpiration and Creativity

Most of the articles contain lists of useful additional resources. Don’t forget to check them out too. Hope you’ll enjoy this roundup.

Social media marketing has exploded, and for good reason – there are more than 600 million people (and counting) using social networks and the number grows every day. People just love to be connected. At this point, if you run a business then you can guarantee a portion of your customers (regardless of age, gender and economic status) are gathering on sites like Facebook, Twitter and Linked In. If you’re not involved in social media marketing, and you’re not taking the time to engage your target audience, then who is? You’re missing out on countless opportunities to grab more market share through social media marketing. What are you doing to improve your social media marketing? Have you explored the many options that are available to promote your business to potential customers. Several key sources to use to help promote your business are: WordPress- Search Engines love WordPress blogs, try to write something once a week about your business and this will help you to gain exposure. Create A Linked In Profile- Linked In is a Network that allows you to create groups and meet people that you can develop relationships with that can lead to business. It allows people to look at your profile and become familiar with you and your business. Empire Avenue-It creates a fun way of introducing your business using the premise of Social Media Stock Market as the basis of the network. Twitter-Great way to promote your business, and become viral. Face Book- You can create Fan Pages, thus drawing awareness to your business. These are free ways to market your business and for all the Social Media outlets that you are aware of their are hundreds that you may not be aware. I love Social Media and it provides me with customers on a regular basis. Intergrate the Social Media Networks that you are actively using on your website, email signature, brochures and much more. I have many customers that have relied on word of mouth for many years to grow their business. Word of mouth has worked so well because that is a direct referral that is coming from someone that a person trusts or has a relationship with. Using Social Media is taking the "Old School" word of mouth and putting it on steriods. Making it truly "Viral", and in the world of Social Media "Viral" is spreading the word rapidly through your network and the network of your associates. Therefore expanding your sphere of influence from hundreds to even thousands of people. Would you like to take advatage of the "New Word of Mouth Marketing"? Your competitors are using Social Media to advertise, do you want to compete? Or even dominate? I have included a link to my Google Profile that highlightes the Social Media sites that I use and actively get business from. Open your mind and becomea part of the Social Media Culture that is taking businesses to the next level. https://profiles.google.com/mlmmillionairediva If you are interested in getting help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media marketing,Online PR, Multi Media Messaging,Custom Designed Websites, E-Commerce, Content Development, Blog Writing, and much more go to www.whoistarawilliams.com and get your free consultation with Tara Williams. Why Vayu Media? 97% of all of our customers rank on the 1st page of Google 98% customer loyalty rate We are a market share leader We are a Google Partner A- rating with the Better Business Bureau Check out our 100% guarantee-http://www.vayumedia.com/guaranteed-search-engine-optimization.php Tara Williams Senior Advertising Executive Vayu Media Global (Atlanta SEO) www.vayumedia.com twilliams@vayumedia.com 678-278-8309

Ecommerce website defines a product or service’s visibility to the global audience that will contribute to the expansion of business and pave way for sustained profits. However, to gain a head start and consistently score above the competitors by delivering consumer’s aspirations and hold their attention would require strategically thought out ecommerce website development. This underscores the paramount need of incorporating ecommerce web design into a flourishing e-business plan through a set of time tested and proven web designing tips. A few tips to get one started, as being deployed by prominent ecommerce web design company is being discussed here. Be Creative The very first impression that will motivate a prospective consumer to go for your products is the general layout of the landing page along with a balanced suffusion of relevant elements through the webpage. Excessive smearing of gaudy colors and shabby imposition of tastelessly showy themes will distract the prospect and may undermine the motto of ecommerce web design. The ambience should be constructively creative and sober that will evoke positive response from each visitor. Using services of professional ecommerce web design company Creativity is something that cannot be acquired through applying oneself hard. The inborn talent to judge the appropriateness of colors, themes and elemental positioning is inherent. Companies offering ecommerce website development have a resourceful pool of such talent and as such it is prudent to hire their services to get wide visibility and services that cater to the moods of leads and existing fashion. Navigability well-disposed for users The prospects visiting the site should come across a favorable well laid out webpage with spruced up navigation keys housed strategically in a well designed architecture. The ecommerce website development team should consider having the keys neatly placed that will generate an interest among the prospects to further explore the site for detailed product information. A distractive setup with an overdose of content is detrimental to the long term health of ecommerce site. Analyzing the search patterns of customers The sustainability of an ecommerce website is dependent on purchases made by customers and their return visits looking for newer introductions. As such, it is paramount to conduct a critical study of consumer temperament and their site browsing eccentricities. This behavioral study will come handy for realigning certain elements of the webpage, modifying the existing layout for user convenience, introducing better services and newer products and ensuring sustained profit. These ecommerce web design alterations should be a regular feature. Catering to customer’s requirements The volatile nature of customers and wide array of competitors ready to vie for consumer attention makes it mandatory to keep the customers pleased with ace service. The ecommerce web design company should integrate secure and convenient payment modes to allay monetary anticipations of users. The products ordered should be delivered on schedule and all queries should be promptly answered. A team of well trained representatives should interact with customers to resolve their problems at the earliest. Fast response mechanism The abundance of flash files and designer codes may prove to be soothing to eyes, but they may take considerable time to load which may eat away the user’s patient. Flash files should be kept less bulky that may start displaying contents within ten seconds or less. This will keep the consumer glued to site and inspire trust in him owing to quick response to his necessities. The above tips are paramount for an efficacious ecommerce web development that will help in making significant strides in the online venture while ensuring consistent flow of consolidated profits with a huge base of contented customers.

Ecommerce website development has been one of the most difficult tasks to accomplish. However, selling some products online could be one of the major challenges ahead for most businesses on the online platform. Once the selling process begins and the products or services are visible online, the main aim should be to bring in more and more traffic to the site and eventually turn the traffic into potential sales or customers. Nonetheless, the turning of prospects into customers is a very difficult task to achieve when compared to driving a lot of traffic to the site. Traffic is generated as a product is launched and with the help of SEO or search engine optimization techniques and other marketing strategies, but the main challenges lies in converting them into sales.
Online shopping is changing drastically these days. There are many retailers launching their websites and trying to promote new and interesting products while making an attempt to boost sales. These websites have some engaging and very attractive features too for generating interest in the core product, accessories and other related things. But there is no use of such an amazing website if proper conversion rate cannot be achieved. Ecommerce website development is the key to website traffic and also contributed to conversion and helps in making sales. Eventually it is the sales that matters. There are many strategies that can be employed for improving conversion rate. Designing is a good website is just one of the fundamental steps to begin with. Ecommerce development helps in creating an interesting and attractive site. It might be easily navigable and quite interesting to handle as well. Easy accessibility and approach are the two most important things to look for in proper ecommerce development website. Simplicity is another important concern; the entire website should be simple and easy to use, with enhanced presentation of products and proper privacy features. Transparency is also a must have feature of these websites.
The best way to approach is to entice targeted traffic. Instead of going for the whole crowd focus only on targeted mass so that the process becomes simpler. Every product has a target audience, and the ecommerce website development should focus on that.
Offering multiple options for payment also makes things convenient for online shoppers. They can add products to their ecommerce shopping cart without any hesitation due to the payment mode.
If an ecommerce website has a strong customer base and has earned their confidence too, it is important to protect them, credibility and trust keeps loyal customers intact.

When it comes to conducting a business online, the e-commerce solutions are the best way to boost your website with latest features and strengthen it to yield good results. ecommerce web design offers humungous opportunities to trigger the success and growth of a business. This has resulted in a big surge for the demand of e-commerce web development services. Magento is a popular e-commerce solution known for its flexibility and a number of features.

In order to get the best e-commerce website development, it is important to ensure that you hire a good Magento development service. There are certain things that need to be taken care of while looking for a Magento development service. These are listed below

1.Outsourcing: The benefits of outsourcing are well known. It is relatively cheaper than other ways. However, there are certain pitfalls as well. Some of these are- time difference, no face to face conversation etc. However, it can be good for companies operating on a limited budget as outsourcing is cheaper and can help to reduce your expenses.

2.Technical skills: This is an important factor. The technical skills count a lot and lack of it will result in you getting a below standard solution. It is important to find out the efficiency and skills of the service provider. In order to find out if they are good enough, you can go through the case studies of their recent projects and see what integrations level they have implemented, how they are using Magento API for the automation purposes, what custom Magento development modules they have created, etc.

3.Quality: You need to ensure that the service provider offers quality Magento development. To find out their level of efficiency and skills, you should check their portfolio. It speaks volumes about a designers skills and worth. You can also call their customers to know more about the service provider.

4.Price: You will find a free quote request form on almost every website. After going through the portfolio you will have a clear understanding whether the price they offer is right or too much.

5.Contract: Make sure that you sign the contract with the service provider you hire.

6.NDA policy: Another thing worth considering is whether you want to keep your project closed for everyone, except the developers and you. Though, usually this agreement can be enclosed with the preliminary contract.

It need not be told how important it is to have a dynamic e-commerce website to make an online business a success. In today's hyper competitive world, it is highly imperative to have the best website in order to attract more visitors. Ecommerce website development plays an important role in establishing an online business. It has become one of the most popular and reliable methods. Realizing this more and more business owners are hiring ecommerce web design company to avail all the benefits offered by it.

With the help of an e-commerce website, you can sell your products and services 24*7 to customers across the world. This is the biggest advantage. With a physical store, the scope and timing of selling the products is limited. But with an online store, you can sell them anytime. This provides a wonderful opportunity to attract customers from different countries as well. This certainly augurs well for your business. It helps to generate more traffic and consequently more sales. More sales mean good ROI for the business.

An e-commerce website has the capability to handle different products category wise. It has a very user friendly interface. This makes it easier for visitors to navigate through the site. Now if the visitors can navigate the site smoothly, they are likely to go ahead and make purchases. An ecommerce web design has a number of useful features that help in increasing the ROI of your business. Some of these features are user friendly design, easy navigation, customized design to suit the requirements, online shopping module, multiple payment option, on page check-out and secured and cross browser compatibility.

With an e-commerce website, the success is guaranteed. You will experience it within a few days. It leads to an increase in traffic volume and sales generation. A business is set to grow with more visitors. It also increases the brand name of a business. The more visitors a site has, the more popular it becomes. It also improves the search engine ranking of a website. All these factors ultimately help in improving the ROI.

There is no doubt that an e-commerce based site is the best way to develop a successful business online. However, it depends on the quality of ecommerce design. Always hire a reputed and credible ecommerce web development company to ensure the best results. It will guarantee that you get a quality web design within a stipulated time period.

Use of ecommerce for online store development has become very common these days. There are number of ecommerce solutions out there in the market to set-up impressive and powerful online shops. Amid all ecommerce platforms, Magento and ZenCart are the two most commonly used ecommerce shopping cart software. But, genuinely it is very hard to elect which one is better for online store development. One of the best solutions to get out from this tough situation is simply to know the features of both the ecommerce software.

About Magento
Magento is the prominent open source ecommerce shopping cart application designed to manage, customize, set-up and run an online store. It provides maximum degree of scalability, flexibility and control as well. The coding of magento ecommerce is based on most recent PHP5 object oriented coding standards, so that you can have an easy platform to work with. Magento is feature-rich ecommerce platform leverage the power of its broad feature list that helps in developing a completely scalable online shop.

Benefits of Magento ecommerce development

1)Marketing promotions and tools
2)Multi-store functionality
3)Site management
4)Flexible Coupon
5)Analytics and Reporting feature
6)Great template system
7)International Support
8)Catalog Management
9)Allow to create, edit and manage orders in admin
10)Multiple payment options supported
11)Easy integration of additional layouts and Add-ons
12)Feature-rich Customer Accounts
13)Built-in Product Image Zoom Capability
14)Search engine friendly (SEF) URL structure and SEO tools
15)Efficient one-page checkout process
16)M-Commerce with mobile-optimized versions and
17)Support multiple languages

About ZenCart
A free, user-friendly PHP written Zen Cart is an open source ecommerce solution. With Zen Cart ecommerce software you can easily establish a user-friendly online store backed by multiple ad banner controller, shipping and payment options, customer modes, XHTML1.0 compliant template system, robust newsletter manager, support multiple languages and currencies and many more.

Benefits of Zen Cart

1)Easy installation
2)Available on GNU General Public License (GPL)
3)More secure
4)Easy to use
5)Understandable template and PHP structure
6)Highly customizable
7)Intuitive interface
8)Unlimited category depth
9)Unlimited extra pages
10)Discount coupons
11)Quantity discounts
12)Featured products

Both Magento and Zen Cart help you in setting up a powerful ecommerce store with minimum amount of effort. However, in the market of ecommerce web development, Magento played a role of real challenger for ZenCart software. So, for choosing the best between both ecommerce platforms, we have compared Magento with Zen Cart on different parameters. As they both are open source but their requirements are somewhat different such as Magento requires MySQL4.1.20+, CURL, PHP5.2 and Zen Cart requires PHP 4.0+, MySQL4.1.14+. They both are easy to install but ZenCart is easy to use as compared to Magento. With Zen Cart you need Add-ons for Google Sitemap, Meta Tags and also for One Page Checkout but these functionalities are inbuilt in Magento software.

Above mentioned points help you in making a decision that which ecommerce platform is the better option for developing an online store. The final decision totally depends on your requirements and the kind of website you are looking for.

If you want to sell products or services over internet, then ecommerce website development is the best option. For this you need to hire the best web internet hosting and ecommerce web design company, which could direct you the route to success. Below are seven crucial points, which help you in making your ecommerce website more successful:

1)Setup Wizard (Full Wizard driven setup)

Initially, for setting up an ecommerce web design you need to select the best hosted ecommerce wizard. This wizard provides you with proper setup facility for an ecommerce store. From starting till the completion of a complete operational ecommerce store, the ecommerce wizard is very helpful in managing all the operations of the store.

2)Focus on Website Usability

While designing an ecommerce website your main focus should be on the products and services you offer. So, that the layout of your site could be organized properly, which helps in attracting visitors’ attention. Moreover, the website layout you offer should not contain too many options as it can confuse the visitors, and ultimately they switch to your competitor site.

3)Variety of customized templates

Need of customized templates arises because a single template is not applicable to all the items and companies. For customizable templates, designs and styles, you need to request your ecommerce hosted company that they provide these extensive arrays of items in the ecommerce site.

4)Easy Payment Gateways

There are many payment gateways available so that every client of yours can easily do the payment according to the options available to them. The mostly used medium for getting and making payments is PayPal. However, only PayPal medium is not the adequate payment option, that’s why for maintaining the link between the site and the clients there is a need to adopt certain other gateways too.

5)Potential to advertise and market the product (Marketing and advertising Capabilities)

To promote your ecommerce website you need advertising as well as marketing. So, apply some effective methods of advertising and marketing to promote your business products and services.

6)Shipping

Shipping is one of the essential components for your ecommerce design. The hosted ecommerce wizard which you opt must contain automated shipping calculation for your ecommerce site.

7)Catalog for Export/Import information (Characteristics of Import/Export in Catalog)

Almost every ecommerce storefront allows to produce a catalog but there are few storefronts, which permit both export and import information. So, choose ecommerce web design services, which provide all the required solutions.