Here’s the good news – there’s a gigantic community of freelancers eagerly waiting to share their expert touch on your next overdue project. Whether you need help with programming that widget for your new blog or perhaps expert proofreading and editing of your latest manuscript, help is literally just a quick bid away. You can begin outsourcing today in just a few quick and easy steps.

1. Find the Freelancing Hot Spots

There are scores of websites out there playing matchmaker between project buyers and project workers. We’ll focus on the best and skip the rest. Two sites in particular are worth your attention.

Elance, perhaps the best known outsourcing website, supports a huge variety of service categories – everything from coding to graphic design. That said, the writing category is probably one of the strongest aspects of Elance.

Rent A Coder is another popular marketplace for freelancers and project outsourcers to connect. This service has a vigorous and healthy user community, but tends to be geared towards more technical services like software and web coding.

Project buyers can register and post projects at either of these sites for free. Registration does include a few basic verification steps to make sure you’ll take any projects you hire out seriously.

2. List Your Project

The outsourcing process is in many ways comparable to eBay. First, you post a bid request in the appropriate category. This request includes an exact description of the work you want to have completed and a deadline for the project’s completion.

Ideally, your project description will be as detailed as possible to give potential freelancers the absolute best understanding of the project’s scope. The more accurate you are with your listing description, the more accurate the bids you receive will be. Detail at the beginning saves time and avoids any misunderstanding later on in the process.

3. Receive and Review the Bids

Not long after you’ve submitted your project, you’ll begin to receive bids from a variety of freelancers or coders who are willing to complete your work. Many times, but not always, the very first bids you’ll receive are generic one-size-fits-all mass bid submissions. Just cast these aside.

Read each bid carefully and chances are, the perfect service provider for your project will jump right off the screen at you. The five star quality bidders will prove right away that they fully understand all aspects of your requirements. If a bidder doesn’t even take the time to offer you a personalized and project-specific bid, what are the chances of receiving quality work in the end? It’s also a good idea to request samples of the bidder’s previous work and check any feedback from previous projects they’ve worked on.

4. Choose Your Freelancer

Once you’ve identified the bidder you’d like to work with on your project, simply nail out the precise details via the outsourcing sites’ integrated private message boards. This way, you’ll be protected through the site in case any questions arise or any mediation is ever necessary. As soon as you’re confident about the terms, just click to accept the bid.

Of course, if you’re not quite sure you’ve received any bids you’d really like to accept, that’s okay too. Next time you might try listing in a related category with even more details to gather additional qualified bids.

5. Review, Accept, and Pay

As soon as the service provider has completed the project, they’ll submit the work to you along with an invoice or payment request. Just take a few moments to review and make sure it was indeed completed to the agreed upon specs.

When you are ready to pay, simply follow the steps outlined by the online marketplace you’re using. Your credit card or PayPal payment will go directly to the marketplace, which will in turn credit the provider’s account.

It’s just that easy! Welcome to the world of outsourcing – the affordable and practical new way of getting things done.

What is web usability?

Web usability has multiple meanings depending to whom you are talking. Some people think it is just making a site work, at any cost. Yet others feel that usability is closely tied into accessibility, and I also feel that this the best practice. If you have a usable site, then the chances are really good that it is accessible. Why? In the backbone of the coding, chances are that the site will be using valid XHTML and CSS. This in and of itself helps to create a site that is usable.

Let’s take a look at a definition by Usability.gov:

Usability measures the quality of a user’s experience when interacting with a product or system—whether a Web site, a software application, mobile technology, or any user-operated device.

In general, usability refers to how well users can learn and use a product to achieve their goals and how satisfied they are with that process. Usability, as defined by Joseph Dumas and Janice (Ginny) Redish, means that people who use the product can do so quickly and easily to accomplish their tasks. Usability may also consider such factors as cost-effectiveness and usefulness. 

What defines a usable site?

Now that we have a basic definition of usability, let’s take a look at some considerations that will make your site more usable. There are multiple ways to make a site usable and a lot of them depend on factors of what type of site you have (blog, ecommerce, etc.), your audience (casual web surfer or expert), and what your site is conveying (its purpose).

Use clear and consistent Navigation

One of the problems that I have encountered and I’m sure that you have too, is not knowing where the navigation system is going to take you to. And once you get someplace in the site, where exactly are you? One of the best ideas is to have a clear and consistent navigation system that stands out on the page. The reason is you want to make sure that your visitors know where the navigation system is for your site, whether it be in the upper part of the site and horizontal, or running down either side. 

Another aspect of clear and concise navigation is the use of breadcrumbs, or another method of letting users see where they are, and what pages they have taken to get there. You’ve seen them on sites before, and they resemble something like this:

Home » About » Thanks for finding me!

This allows for users that have maybe followed a link to the final page to backtrack easily without having to “go home” and start over again. Statistics have shown that most users scan pages for the content they are looking for within 15 seconds, and if they don’t find it, the go back to the previous page, or leave your site. Not good if you want to sell a service or product.

Sitemaps are another good method of ensuring an easy method of users to quickly find what they are looking for. One big plus of sitemaps is if they are correctly written, it helps with Search Engine Optimization as the spiders from Google and other sites can quickly follow those links to the main content of each page and article. Not to bad for killing two birds with one page, eh?

Make it easy to read

This one gets real tricky, but since you have an accessible site already up and running, it should be pretty easy. You want to make sure that your text is easy to read and resizable. Several factors affect both of these issues:

• Don’t use pixels to define font size as they are not able to be resized.
• Underline only links and use italics and bold for emphasis.
• Ensure there is enough contrast between the background and the text.
• Use plenty of whitespace throughout the site.
• Use proper markup, such as headings, paragraphs and lists to make it easier to define the content.
• Space out your content – don’t write a 15 page paragraph, and adjust line height as necessary.

Remember that the purpose of your site is to convey information and if that information is hard to read or search, you have lost your audience. I’m sure that each of you have been to a site that the text was too small, or crammed together and hard to read. Or to another site where you couldn’t tell if an image was a link or just an image. Some of the best sites are simple and concise with their presentation of their product or services. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the main Google page, or Amazon.com. Their sites are pretty simple and help you look for what you are after.

Keep Searching

One of the biggest usable tips is to have a site search feature for your site. If the user has an idea of what they want to find, but aren’t sure where to find it on your site, then they will leave. The site search is invaluable for your business or personal site, especially if it has more than just a few pages. The site search takes the guess work out of how you have your site organized and where you might have put that valuable piece of information that the user is looking to find. This allows the user to come to your home page, type in a few keywords, and have the relevant results returned to them in a timely and efficient manner.

Don’t make me Scroll!

One of my biggest pet peeves is to have to scroll the page I am viewing left and right to read the content. I’m not talking so much about extra side bars for advertisements or additional information as I am the main content of a page. What I am talking about is the main content of the page. This also relates to making the content readable in simple format. Limit how wide your content is on your page and don’t make it go all the way across the screen. Trust me, your viewers eyes will appreciate this.

Watch your colors

Color is an important visual aspect to any good web design, but it can easily be abused. We all love looking at nicely designed sites, but the colors that are chosen for any site have to be done so carefully. One of the factors we have to consider is that you want certain things to stand out without being confusing. For example, you want consistency in the colors of your headings so that the users know they are going into another section of the content. Your links should look like links, and that should be consistent throughout the site. Don’t underline anything that is not a link to add emphasis, use bold or italics to do this. 

Another usability and accessibility factor dealing with colors is that some users could have color deficits, such as color blindness or difficulty distinguishing slight hue and tint variations of a certain color. You want strong contrast with your colors, especially with the background color of your areas.

Testing, testing…

The final usability factor deals with the testing of your site. Often times sites are put together for Internet Explorer, which is not the optimum testing platform. IE 7 is now catching up with Web Standards, so it isn’t too bad of a browser to test and design for. However, designing a site to look right is best if designed in Firefox, Opera or Safari browsers as their rendering of sites is often times most correct. Testing of your site in multiple browsers will ensure that the most users can see and use your site as you intend it to be used and seen.

Validation of your site is a good idea also. It will help you catch errors that can lead to problems with the code, usability and accessibility for your users. You can start with the validation process for your site by using the W3C Validation Service and the best part is that it is free! If you are using Cascading Style Sheets for your site (you are making an accessible site, aren’t you?), then you can use the CSS Validation Service from the W3C also.

It’s a wrap

I hope you have enjoyed reading some of the tips and ideas on creating an accessible and usable site. This article only scratches the surface however on these topics. If you want to learn more about these topics, please contact me or check out some of these links as a good start.

• High Rankings Web Site Usability Tips
• Mike Cherim’s Green Beast Blog
• Usability.gov
• Usability Makes Business Sense – article
• Jakob Nielson on Usability – useit.com

So, what exactly is Web Accessibility?

If you Google search “Web Accessibility” you will receive 217 million results in the search. That is a lot of information to look through to try to find the true meaning of accessible web design. You can pick through the results and find technical sites that relate to the W3C web standards, sites that offer guidance to web developers and site creators and even more results that attempt to make sense of what the true meaning of accessible web design really is.

Let’s take a look at an excerpt of the Wikipedia definition of “Web accessibility“:

Web accessibility refers to the practice of making websites usable by people of all abilities and disabilities. When sites are correctly designed, developed and edited, all users can have equal access to information and functionality.

In other words, a site has to be correctly designed (usable) and developed (coded) so that all users, irregardless of ability or viewing medium, can have access to the information you are conveying and the functionality of the site. The key words here are information and functionality for all users.

Why Information is Important…

As a business owner that either has, or is looking to create a web site, your main goal is to relay information about your products or services in order to create, maintain and grow your business. You want to provide information about who you are and what you do in order to reach the most people with the least amount of effort, and cost possible. As an individual that is surfing the internet, you want to be able to quickly and easily locate the information that is important to you. Why waste the time thinking you have finally found those instructions on how to get rid of that blue screen of death, only to find that you are on a site that sells caskets?

Imagine this

If you own a traditional business store front, imagine turning away every fifth person that comes to the door to do business with you. There is no particular reason for turning them away, you don’t know them and can’t tell anything about the individual. Or, picture turning off all of your lights and painting your windows black, and then expecting your customers to find exactly what they came to your business to buy. What if you were to cram your whole warehouse of items into a small storefront that didn’t allow room for anyone to shop or move around? These scenarios aren’t going to be a positive experience for your customers. This is the type of experience that disabled users face everyday while online.

A person with a disability doesn’t have to have a severe disability in order to have problems surfing online. It could be an individual that has a vision problem and needs to make their font size larger than the default size. Can this be easily accomplished on your site? What about a person that has a developmental delay? Can they easily understand the information and content on your site, or are they confused by the terminology and extensive content that is overwhelming them? Users of your site that have dexterity issues, such as arthritis, might have a tough time using a mouse or the keyboard extensively to navigate your site. Another consideration is that a lot of internet users still are on dial-up connections. And let’s not forget about the new internet users that have their PDA or mobile device. This is a rapidly growing area that requires accessible web design and careful thought into your sites design.

About your business site

I won’t bore you with the details about how to create an accessible site, with examples of coding valid XHTML and CSS, but the basics come down to being able to still read the content (information) of any site just like it was a book. If all of the pictures, styles, colors and decorations on any site were to be turned off, would the content of the site still make sense? Would you be able to follow along with the stories and articles, or easily find your products that you came to buy? Is the navigation easy to follow and once you are on the page you are looking for, do you still know where you are? There are a few more reasons to have an accessible site.

• Reduced Bandwidth cost due to using web standards to separate content from presentation
• Ease of maintenance and scalability
• Improved Search Engine rankings
• Support for multiple browsers and devices
• Reduced legal liability

There are many other reasons for web accessibility. These are but a few of them. It all boils down to the original definition that we covered in the beginning of this article.

You want to be able to make your information available to the most users possible.

In my next article, I will discuss some of the functionality and usability issues that are encountered and how to ensure your site is easily navigated by all users. If you would like to learn more about accessible web design, feel free to contact me via my sites contact form.

Here are a few good resources also for you to check out:

• Developing a Web Accessibility Business Case for your Organization – W3C
• Web Content Accessible Guidelines
• W3C Site Validator – Validate your site here
• Introduction to Accessible Site Design – Sitepoint.com article
• Google.com

Elliott works out of Burlington, Kentucky and has a passion for developing sites using modern web standards. He brings a unique perspective on web development to Solo Signal and will no doubt provide us with some great information. Make sure to take a few minutes to find out more about Elliott and welcome him in the comments!

Acronyms are a tradition in the tech world. To the untrained eye, they can be confusing and intimidating. To help clear some of the letter-fog, we’ve listed 72 common web site development acronyms with their definitions. Bookmark this page if you are getting ready to start a web site project – you are sure to have some of these letters flung your way.

Markup and Styling

1. CSS: Cascading Style Sheets — CSS is a stylesheet language used to define how a web page written HTML or XHTML should be presented and displayed in a web browser.
2. DHTML: Dynamic HyperText Markup Language — DHTML is the term used when HTML, JavaScript and CSS are used to create animated or interactive web sites.
3. HTML: HyperText Markup Language — HTML is a tag-based markup language used to create web pages. Every site on the internet uses HTML in some form.
4. WML: Wireless Markup Language — WML is an XML-based markup language for content accessed through a wireless mobile device. Similar to HTML.
5. XHTML: Extensible HyperText Markup Language — XHTML is a special type of HTML that conforms to the strict rules of XML. This allows for cleaner code and code that can be understood by a wider array of software.
6. XML: Extensible Markup Language — XML is a general purpose markup language for describing data in a structured manner.

Business Logic Programming

1. ASP (Microsoft): Active Server Pages — ASP is a server-side scripting language used to add business logic and database interactivity to dynamic websites.
2. CGI: Common Gateway Interface — CGI is a protocol that allows server applications to interact with client web browsers.
3. JSP: JavaServer Pages — JSP is a server-side scripting language used to add business logic and database interactivity to dynamic websites.
4. PHP: PHP Hypertext Preprocessor/Personal Home Page — PHP is a server-side scripting language used to add business logic and database interactivity to dynamic websites.
5. RoR: Ruby on Rails — RoR is a web application framework based on the Ruby scripting language. It has been used by several popular Web 2.0 web sites.
6. SSI: Server Side Includes — SSI is a server-side scripting language used primarily to include the contents of one file in another.

Web Services

1. ASP: Application Service Provider — An ASP is any business that provides online, Internet-delivered applications to customers.
2. AWS: Amazon Web Services — AWS are a collection of remote application services offered by Amazon.com.
3. RSS: Really Simple Syndication — RSS is an XML specification for publishing frequently updated web content to subscribers. RSS is the secret sauce behind blogging.
4. S3: Amazon Simple Storage Service — Amazon S3 is a storage solution that offers unlimited data stored for a small fee through a simple web service interface.
5. YUI: Yahoo! User Interface — The YUI library is an open-source JavaScript library for building rich interactive web applications.

Databases

1. CRUD: Create, Read, Update and Delete — CRUD are the four basic functions of any persistent storage system, most commonly a database system.
2. DBMS: Database Management System — A DB is a structured collection of data organized to allow for easy retrieval by computer programs using SQL.
3. SQL: Structured Query Language — SQL is a special programming language used to retrieve data from and modify relational database systems.

Servers and Hosting

1. CRON: Command Run ON — CRON is a scheduling program on most Unix system. It is used to schedule time-sensitive activities for software programs to perform.
2. IIS: Internet Information Services — IIS is a set of internet-based services for servers running Microsoft Windows.
3. VPS: Virtual Private Server — A VPS is a partition of a physical server that has the ability to run a separate operating system and reboot itself independently of other VPSs on the same physical server.

Protocols

1. FTP: File Transfer Protocol — FTP is a commonly used protocol for transferring files from one computer to another over a network.
2. HTTP: HyperText Transfer Protocol — HTTP is a communications protocol used for transferring data available on the Web.
3. HTTPS: Secure HypterText Transfer Protocol — HTTPS is a variation of HTTP used to specify that the data being transferred is/should be encrypted and secure.
4. SSH: Secure Shell — SSH is a network protocol that allows data to be exchanged over a secure channel between two computers.
5. SSL: Secure Sockets Layer — SSL is a cryptographic protocol used for encrypting sensitive data while being sent through the Internet.
6. WAP: Wireless Application Protocol — WAP is an international standard for accessing Internet content on a wireless mobile device.

Standards and Accessibility

1. 508: Section 508 — Section 508 is an amendment to the Rehabilitation act of 1973 that requires federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. It is commonly used as a standard for accessible web sites.
2. W3C: World Wide Web Consortium — The W3C is the international standards organization for the Web.
3. WAI: Web Accessibility Initiative — The WAI is an initiative enacted by the W3C for improving the accessibility of web pages for people using software other than web browsers (e.g. screen readers).
4. WCAG: Web Content Accessibility Guidelines — WCAG is a series of web accessibility guidelines published by the WAI.

Client-Side Scripting

1. AJAX: Asynchronous JavaScript And XML — AJAX is a web programming technique that uses JavaScript to transparently interact with a web server, eliminating the need to reload a web page to see changes.
2. DOM: Document Object Model — DOM is a standard object model for representing HTML and XML formats as objects.
3. JS/ECMAScript: JavaScript — JavaScript is a scripting language used for client-side (web browser) web development.

Development

1. CRAP: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity — CRAP is a design methodology applied to the design and layout of web pages.
2. CVS: Concurrent Versions System — CVS is a version control system that allows several developers to collaboratively work on a single set of code.
3. GUI: Graphical User Interface — A GUI is a computer interface that allows users to interact with the computer through graphical icons and windows, typically with the aid of a mouse.
4. SVN: Subversion — SVN is a version control system that allows several developers to collaboratively work on a single set of code.
5. WYSIWYG: What You See Is What You Get — WYSIWYG is used to describe web development applications in which the authoring environment closely resembles the final output of the program.

Graphics and Images

1. CMYK: Cyan Magenta Yellow Key — RGB is a subtractive color model used by computers to display various colors by subtracting different levels of cyan, magenta, and yellow.
2. FLA: Flash Authoring File — FLA files are the primary authoring output files of Adobe Flash
3. GIF: Graphics Interchange Format — GIF is a popular graphics format most commonly used for graphics in web sites.
4. JPEG: Joint Photographic Experts Group — JPEG is an image compression codec commonly used to encode pictures for the Web.
5. PNG: Portable Network Graphics — PNG is an image format that was developed to replace the aging GIF image format for web sites.
6. PSD: PhotoShop Document — PSD files are the primary authoring output files of Adobe Photoshop.
7. RGB: Red Green Blue — RGB is an additive color model used by computers to display various colors by combining different levels of red, green, or blue.
8. SVG: Scalable Vector Graphics — SVG is an XML markup language used to describe two dimensional vector graphics.
9. SWF: Small Web Format/ShockWave Flash — SWF is a proprietary vector graphics format used to create animations on web sites.

E-commerce

1. AVS: Address Verification System — AVS is a method of verifying the identity of a person using a credit card to make a purchase online.
2. CSC/CVV: Card Security Code/Card Verification Value — CSC is a security feature available on most major credit cards that is used to prevent credit card fraud.
3. MID: Merchant ID — A MID is a unique identifier assigned to companies selling goods and used for billing purposes.
4. FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions — FAQ lists are a common support mechanism on many web sites that provides answers to questions that are commonly asked of the company.

Search Engine Optimization

1. CPC: Cost Per Click — CPC is the amount an advertiser pays every time a user clicks on one of their advertisements in a PPC campaign.
2. CPM: Cost Per 1000 Impressions — CPM is the amount an advertiser pays for every 1000 (or, roman numeral “M”) users who view their advertisement on a web page.
3. CTR: Click Through Rate/Ratio — CTR is a measure of the amount of users who click an advertisement as compared to the number of users who see the advertisement.
4. PPC: Pay Per Click — PPC is an advertising model used on the Web in which advertisers only pay when a user actually click their advertisement.
5. PR: PageRank — PageRank is an algorithm used to measure the value of a particular document relative to other documents in the same set. Commonly used by search engines to rank web site popularity.
6. SEO: Search Engine Optimization — SEO is the process of tweaking web sites so that they are more likely to be indexed higher in search engine results.
7. SERP: Search Engine Results Page — SERP is the listing of web pages returned by a search engine in response to a user search

Security

1. XSS: Cross-Site Scripting — XSS is a common web page security vulnerability where an attacker rigs a site they do not own to run malicious code.
2. CSRF: Cross-Site Request Forgery — CSRF is a common web page security vulnerability where an attacker poses as an authenticated user to execute actions.

Addressing

1. CNAME: Canonical Name — A CNAME is an alias of one hostname to another.
2. DNS: Domain Name System — DNS servers as the phone book of the Internet. It translates human-readable hostnames such as solosignal.com into numeric IP addresses used by networking equipment.
3. DTD: Document Type Definition — DTD is a document used to describe and specify the structure and organization of an XML document.
4. ICANN: Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers — ICANN is a non-profit organization formed to oversee the management of domain names and IP addresses.
5. IP: Internet Protocol — IP is a protocol for transferring data across a packet-switched network.
6. SLD: Second-Level Domain — SLD is a domain directly below the TLD. For example. In “solosignal.com”, “solosignal” is the SLD and “.com” is the TLD.
7. TLD: Top-Level Domain — TLD is the last part of any Internet domain name. For example: .com, .net, and .org are all TLDs.
8. URL: Uniform Resource Locator — URLs are the addresses used to request files through the Web.
9. WWW: World Wide Web — The WWW is the network of interlinked hypertext documents available through the Internet.

1. There’s No Place Like Home — The Home Link

Not since The Wizard of Oz and the ruby slippers has teleporting back home been such a useful talent. The ability to jump back to the front page of a website is something that every web surfer appreciates. The Home link is something that has been around since the early days of the Web and it is still just as useful today. It is an unwritten rule that the main logo on your website should always be linked back to the main page of your site. Additionally, placing a home link on every page of your website is essential; here’s why:

• The Hansel and Gretel effect
  Visitors like having a way to backtrack their surfing. Breadcrumb navigation is the best way to provide this, but the Home link is the easiest and most effective alternative.
• Search Engine Optimization
  Here is an SEO tip: Use the title of your site as the anchor text for your home link (instead of the word “Home”). This will help search engine crawlers associate the title of your site with the URL.
• Coming in the Side Door
  With the widespread use of search engines , it is likely that visitors are entering your site on pages other than the front page. A well placed Home link provides these visitors with a way to the front of your site.

2. Let Me Show You What It’s All About! — The About Page

Jackson 5 knew what it was all about, and so should your visitors. There is nothing worse than leaving a visitor on their own to figure out what a company does. Don’t be shy, take pride in your website and what you provide. Create a page and title it “About” or “About Us”. Use this page to explain what you do, what this website is for, and who you are. Be upfront about it and your visitors will appreciate your respect for their time. Here are some tips for a good “About” page:

• Explain Every Aspect
  Tell your visitors about your company, your people, your philosophies and your website. Don’t use this area to try to sell your products or services, save that for other areas of the site. The About page is about the company and people behind the products.
• Get Personal
  Use the About page to give a brief biography of all the key players in the company. To add credibility and a personal touch, include pictures of all the key people so that visitors can associate faces with names.
• Branch Out to the Front Page
  It is also a good idea to include a very short (about one or two sentences) description of your company on the front page. This can usually be accomplished in the form of a tagline or a unique selling proposition. One of the best examples I’ve seen is on Amy Bass’s blog, My Debt Free Goal. Right under the title she tells everyone what the site is about:

  My goal to pay off $72,900 of debt in two years through a lot of hard work and sacrifice. I want to show others that it is possible, you can be debt free if you set your mind to it.

3. 3-2-1 Contact — The Contact Page

My wife used to watch 3-2-1 Contact as a kid. Why you would care, I have no idea. The Contact page on a website is a no-brainer. Unless you don’t want to talk to potential clients, there needs to be a page dedicated to communicating with you and your company. Most sites have a Contact page, but rarely do I find a site that puts enough information on it, especially business websites. Here are the essentials for a company’s Contact page:

• Email Address
  Put the email address of a specific person on your contact page. This gives visitors the comfort of knowing that they can contact a human being directly. Be careful, though, when posting an email address online; make sure you run it through an encoder so that it is not harvested by spambots.
• Contact Form
  A contact form is nice because it lets people submit a more formal request for information. Bonus if you provide visitors with a selection of departments to which to route their request.
• Physical Address
  A lot of Contact pages neglect this. Make sure you list your physical mailing address and all applicable telephone numbers. You never know who might want to send you something via snail mail. Additionally, this helps current customers find out where to send cash and checks — and nobody wants to miss out on that!

4. You Gotta Get Yourself Connected — The Subscribe Page

Stereo MCs knew what they were talking about. Web surfers want to connect to the sites they like and be instantly updated when new content is available. Sites that do not provide an RSS feed or a means of subscribing via email are in danger of being viewed as stale and out-dated. Giving visitors the ability to subscribe to your site guarantees return visits. Create a page that lists all of the ways that a visitor can subscribe to your site:

• Blog
  You’re not blogging yet? Better get to it, this probably deserves an article in itself.
• Newsletter
  A newsletter is a great way to keep visitors up to date on new products, services and promotions. This also plays into the theory of Permission Marketing, suggested by Seth Godin. When users subscribe to your newsletter or blog they are giving you permission to send more information. This is as quality of a lead as you can find.
• Calendar of Events
  If your company holds public events, give your visitors a way to be updated when these events are near. Not only will this get people to come back to your website, but it will also increase the attendance at your events.

5. Tree Fiddy — The Pricing Page

At least the Lochness Monster gave his prices right up front. Nothing upsets me more than a web site that makes me do work to find out prices and rates. “Fill out this three page form to get a quote.” This is like a giant sign that says, “We don’t want your business, go away.” I understand that some companies will have pricing models that vary based on the customer and the type of work to be done, but that shouldn’t discourage you from at least giving your visitors a rough estimation. This can also serve as a filtering mechanism in the event that someone is looking to spend way less than you are charging. Here are some strategies for listing your prices:

• Tangible Products
  List the prices straight up. This is easy and smart to do.
• Time-based Services
  List your rates and possibly give some examples of the average time it takes to finish common projects.
• Custom Pricing
  Provide case studies of some projects you have completed in the past and list how much the client was charged (make sure to get permission from the client first). This will give potential clients samples of what they can expect to pay for a similar project.

Adding these five elements to your web site will ensure that visitors have everything they need to make an informed decision about your company. This means more visits to your site and increased sales — so get to work!

Just as bad as your visitors being left in the dark, search engines will also have a difficult time with ambiguous links such as these. Anchor text is the text used in a hyperlink and is used by search engines to associate keywords with the link. Take this link for example: “The Web Stack Explained“. In this link the anchor text is “The Web Stack Explained”.

Using non-descriptive anchor text in links on your web pages is bad for several reasons:

1. Visitors will have a difficult time determining the purpose of the link. They will not know whether or not the link is of value to them or not. In these situations users don’t bother clicking, and that’s bad news for you.
2. Search engines will associate these non-descriptive, irrelevant words as keywords for the link. This means that when people search for keywords you are hoping to capture, they will not see your link.
3. There is no cross-site SEO benefit. If you are linking to a friend’s website, or if they are linking to you, there will be no SEO benefit, again because the keywords associated with the link/site are irrelevant.

Let’s use an example to illustrate this point. Imagine you own a health club and that you have a unique group fitness class that integrates racquetball into the workout. After creating a page on your website that describes the class and highlights its features, you add a link to your blog that looks something like this:

“Click here to get more information on our newest group fitness class“

When search engine bots crawl your blog page, they will examine all of the links and add them to the search engine index. The bot assumes that the anchor text should be used as the keywords for those links. In our example, the bot will use the words “Click” and “here” as the keywords for your racquetball fitness class page. Whoops, that’s not good…

For better search engine optimization and usability, let’s rearrange our example:

“Looking for a fun way to get fit and learn a new sport? Check out our new Racquetball Fitness Class!“

What we’ve done here is linked to our Racquetball Fitness Class twice: once with the anchor text “get fit and learn a new sport” and once with the anchor text “Racquetball Fitness Class”. Our friendly search engine bots will now associate these important keywords with the page: “fit”, “learn”, “sport”, “Racquetball”, “Fitness”, and “Class”. When a person searches for any combination of these terms, you will drastically increase the probability of your page showing high in the results! In addition, this helps our users to understand exactly where they are going when they click the link.

A computer program that is responsible for accepting HTTP requests from clients, which are known as Web browsers, and serving them HTTP responses along with optional data contents, which usually are Web pages such as HTML documents and linked objects (images, etc.).

Now, let’s break this down piece by piece:

• A computer program
  A webserver is a computer program, just the same as WinZip and Solitaire. Webservers can be downloaded and installed just like anything else you place on your computer. They are responsible for serving requests for websites, hence the term: web – server. Webserver software is usually run differently than the programs you are familiar with. Since your server can’t predict when someone wants to view your web page, the webserver software must be constantly listening for requests. As a result, the webserver software is started up and then left to quietly run in the background indefinitely. When a request is received, the webserver processes the request, fetches the pages and files that were requested, and sends them all back to the person doing the requesting.
• HTTP Requests
  HTTP stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol – but you don’t care. And quite frankly you don’t need to care. Just think of HTTP as the ether that lets computers talk to each other over the Web. Requests are messages sent by users to your webserver. Whenever someone types a URL in their web browser, they are making a request to the webserver associated with that URL. The webserver catches this request and then acts accordingly.
• Clients, or Web Browsers
  If “server” refers to webservers, then “client” refers to web browsers. Web browsers are the software programs used to surf the web. Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox are the two most popular these days. Web browsers are translators: they translate human requests for web sites into requests that webserver software can process. When the webserver processes the request and sends back the appropriate information, the user’s web browser displays it in all its glory.
• HTTP Responses
  HTTP responses are what webservers send back to web browsers after a request is made. These responses typically contain the web pages, images and files that were requested by the user.
• Web pages
  The final pieces of the puzzle. Web pages are the files stored on the server that users request. These are typically text files full of HTML and other markup. Your web browser is designed to translate these files into the correctly formatted web pages that you view.

There are several brands of webserver software available, but the two most popular are Apache HTTP Server and Microsoft Internet Information Services server. Although the primary responsibility of the webserver software is to fetch and return the appropriate website files, there is another function: running other software required by the files themselves. This other software is typically a script engine, and we will talk about that in our next Web Stack Series installment!

As a visitor to a web page, you only see the final output of a series of tasks that must be completed to generate that page. I refer to the components that are responsible for executing these tasks as the Web Stack. The web stack contains approximately 8 levels, each essential for storing, generating and delivering any standard web page to the end user. Over the next two weeks we will go into detail on each of these pieces of the stack and explain how they relate to the overall web development process.

At the end of this series you will have an understanding of all the back-end processes involved in delivering web content to your users. I will also provide a graphic that visually represents the stack and shows exactly how all the pieces link to each other. This knowledge will be invaluable for you as you take on the task of architecting your own website (whether your build it yourself or outsource the work).

The Web Stack

1. Physical Server and Infrastructure
2. Webserver Software
3. Database Management System
4. Business Logic Programming
5. HTML and Markup
6. Cascading Style Sheets
7. Graphic Design
8. Client-side Scripting

The web offers countless opportunities for anyone who is willing to learn how to use it properly. Too often, however, many non-technical people are easily overwhelmed by the amount of information involved in this task. Solo Signal helps people overcome these issues by breaking down the web development process into easily consumed articles. We hope to provide business-minded individuals with the information, tools and understanding needed to successfully leverage the Web for their benefit.