This is where stock photos come in handy.

Whether free or paid, there are a whole lot of websites out there offering up photos for you to take and use as needed. Some are worth visiting, and some are definitely worth passing up on. Rather than wasting hours in front of your computer trying to figure out which site is worth your time and which isn’t, we’ll tell you which photo sites are worth your while.

Stock.xchng

If you are looking for a website with high image quality, top image selection and good customer service, then  is the stock photo site for you. The one thing that has been a negative factor to the site is that many complain about the website design, but that’s besides the point. They have excellent photos and a whole lot of them.

The selection to some may be a bit lacking in some categories, but it is varied. This along with the poor site lay out may confuse a lot of users, but if you have the time to focus and navigate through the site, then you shouldn’t have any problem finding what you want.

Stockvault

Stockvault.net has been around since 2004 and is one of the top free stock photos sites on the web. With over 26,000 free images at your disposal, you will be hard pressed to not find the one that is right for your website or blog. There are a number of different categories to choose from (such as 3D renders, animals, graphics and natural objects) and the site is fairly well laid out so it’s easy to search.

MorgueFile

Don’t be so turned off by the name. Morguefile may not have the same selection as Flickr (a website which you can very easily get lost on), but it still has a huge database offering a number of great images that you can use for your blog or website. You can search the images easily by size, date, rating, category, keyword, color, users or geotag. Being able to filter by the color is particularly nice, as you can easily find something that will look nice with your blog and match the topic that you have written about.

It’s easy to download, the images do not require attribution, and it’s easy to use. How can you go wrong?

Everystockphoto

Everystockphoto isn’t so much an actual site for stock photos as it is a search engine to help you locate the photos you need, and on what site. This site will also allow users to rate and “tag” photos.

The interface is user friendly, there are a wealth of photos that you can find through here which are located on numerous different stock photo sites (several of which you would have never heard of) and they have great customer service too if you ever need it. Membership is totally free as well, and development is now underway in looking at adding more feature and increasing its indexing capabilities. Within a few years, this website is going to be the “be all, end all” for searching for stock photos on the web.

iStockphoto.com

iStockphoto.com is definitely the most popular stock photo website that is out there today. Why? Because it has literally everything that you need for your blog or your website. You can use a ton of free photos to completely change your entire site and give it a facelift if you wanted to. There are the royalty free stock photos, but you can also find audios, videos, flash animation, and a whole lot more to add to your website.
Even if you did choose the “paid” route for iStockphoto, it would most likely be worth your money. The rates are incredibly affordable (thanks to its popularity) so you would be only paying very little more for a higher quality image or video.

Shutterstock.com

Shutterstock.com is one of the paid stock photo websites out there, but with a claim like being the world’s largest subscription-based photo agency, what do you have to lose?

This website does have an amazing collection of images that vary in numerous forms, patterns and styles, meaning that no matter what you are looking for there’s a good chance you will find it here. There’s also a good chance that what you find will be so unique that it will capture the attention of those who visit your website or blog.

There are a number of different subscription plans that you can choose from and you can choose which is right for you.

Gettyimages.com

Though Gettyimages.com is a newer website compared to most stock photo websites, what really makes it attractive is just how easy it is to use. Not only that, but it also has a number of really great and unique images that are from a number of different fields: from technology to travel, from biotech to business. There are also some more high quality video clips that can easily be added to any website or blog. They have a lot of royalty free videos as well, and the music store has a lot of great tunes that are easy to incorporate into your own site.

Freedigitalphotos.net

Freedigitalphotos.net is another royalty free website that has a whole lot of different photos available for you to peruse and to use. There are thousands of these images on the site as well as illustrations available, but do be aware that they are all in different resolutions.

But hey, when it’s free, can you really complain? This is a good site for those who aren’t too picky about the resolution of their images, and who have a lot of time on their hands to go through at least a few images before they settle on the right one for their site.

Dreamstime

Dreamstime is of the cream of the crop site for premium stock photos. It’s also what we use. It has both free photos and paid ones. We buy in bulks, hundreds of stock photos a time because there’s a significant quantity discount. Specifically, Dreamstime has a monthly subscription service that’s quite a bit cheaper than say iStockPhoto.

Or we should say, “are” alternatives. There are a lot of great web site design services out there for those with little to no experience with design, and they won’t cost you an arm and a leg (or possibly not cost you a single dime!). Listed below are some of our favorite web site design services that you need to check if you are interested in making your own website.

1.WordPress

There’s so many thing about WordPress that make it deserve top spot on our list. You know it’s gotta be good when both amateur and professional web builders and bloggers are using it, first of all. Second of all, it comes with a ton of templates for you to choose from, and if you don’t like their templates, you can get them elsewhere.

What’s even more impressive is that this service is absolutely free, and it’s incredibly uncomplicated. Literally anyone can open up a free account and create a professional looking website within a very, very short span of time. If you are looking to create a blog, then WordPress gives you every tool that you need to build and promote it. It gives referral stats without you having to add any sort of third party app, and it’s not flooded with ads. Definitely check this service out, whether you have no idea what you’re doing when it comes to web design, or if you are a total pro.

2. NVU

NVU isn’t as easy to use as WordPress, but it’s still a great free website creator and editor. The one thing that one can really appreciate from a beginner’s standpoint is that NVU doesn’t require you to memorize tons and tons of code. What else makes it unique is that it is one o the very few free WYSIWYG HTML editors out there. You can use it what your Mac, with Windows and with Unix, and it has a site manager with FTP.

TIP: WYSIWYG interface is an acronym that is used to describe a type of application that will display the content you enter in code exactly as it will appear when it is complete. So while you’re entering code and putting stuff together with WYSIWYG, you know just what your website is going to look like once it is published and goes live.

Now for the bad points. It doesn’t have a CSS validator (though it does have a built-in CSS editor) and you aren’t able to edit images or connect to an external graphics editor. This can be a real headache for anyone who doesn’t have a clue how to make websites. You may have to spend some time trying to clean up some coding, which at first is incredibly frustrating if you have no idea what you’re doing. But on the plus side, cleaning up the code will force you to learn a little bit about it and help you create a better website.

TIP: Another web design service, Kompozer, is derived straight from NVU. How it looks, feels and works is incredibly similar to NVU, so if you aren’t happy with NVU, you won’t fall in love with Kompozer, either.

3. WebEasy Professional 8

Though this web site design software isn’t free, you still don’t have to put out a ton of cash to get it. Whether you have never created a website in your life, or you have a lot of experience with web design, what really makes this product popular is the easy-to-use WYSIWYG –user interface.

Another great benefit is the tutorials that are provided. While a lot of web site design programs will advertise free tutorials, most of them are so boring or headache inducing that new web builders just give up. These ones are actually worth your while and will keep you engaged.

There is one thing that we don’t like about this software: the multimedia effect. We would like to see more options than playing and recording audio, but for new web site designers, this probably isn’t even a slight concern.

4. Intuit

This is another program that you will have to pay for on a monthly basis, but it’s definitely worth it for the new web designer. Intuit gets points on having an interface that is both user-friendly and intuitive. It also comes loaded with templates, so there is definitely something for everybody with this software.

We can see Intuit really being beneficial for any company that wants to sell things. If you have products or service that you want to advertise, you can count on Intuit to basically come up with the HTML code for you so you come out with a fully customized website which includes professional royalty-free photos.

But what we really loved was the drag and drop functionality and the step by step instructions. This makes it so easy to quickly create a very clean and professional website that can display your merchandise, advertise your services, or even act as a contact form. Their monthly fee also provides hosting and storage for your site, something that could easily cost more per month and not even offer web site design and building tools.

So what didn’t we like? The fact that there was no spell checker. Any website with spelling errors looks extremely unprofessional, so you may want to dig up your Microsoft Word program and run anything you type through there before you publish it to your site. There also isn’t the ability to have the program automatically name your pages, which can be a bit of a nuisance but to most isn’t a deal breaker.

These tags can also be helpful if you are using a content management system like WordPress or Joomla. Knowing about them is essential to using them. On these content management systems the tags are implemented in a slightly different way, so make sure you reference your user’s guide to find out how to take advantage of them.

H1, H2, H3

Most search engines will look to your header tags to see what your content is about. They pick this information up in a number of different spots, but the heading tags get a lot of the attention. If you put your key phrases in these tags, then the sites will know that your content has a lot to do with these key phrases.

For instance, if you are writing a blog about blueberry pies, but your entire site is about baking in general, you may want to mix and match your header tags in that article to get the best effect. The following examples are great for your headers.

H1 Should read:

Baking Blueberry Pies the Easy Way.

H2 Should Read:

Can Blueberry Pies be this easy?

And H3 should read:

Baking Blueberry Pies Will Make Everyone Happy.

This will ensure that the search engine knows that this page is about blue berry pies while also giving you the opportunity to tell it that it’s about baking. Since the search engines find every site to be about baking, they will be more likely to learn what the whole site is about.

Img Tags

These tags are very important. It’s required for you to put a picture into your posts. Having images in your posts are a secret way to get extra SEO points.

Make sure that with each IMG tag you also use the ALT attribute. This tells the search engine, in plain text, what the picture represents. Having lots of pictures about your topic can help to put you higher in the search engine ranks.

Anchor Tags

The anchor tag is probably the most important on this list. It will enable you to link to other content on your site as well as others. Make sure that you regularly link to your own content in order to tell the search engines what your site is about.

Make sure that you don’t ever have more than 100 links on a given page. Search engines don’t like this and your site may get flagged. But if you include at least one link on every page, that will help a lot.

Integrating the anchor tags into your posts on a regular basis is easy. You should always stay on topic, though, because the search engines will learn what your site is about based on what you link to just as much as what links to you. A good place to find high quality content that won’t compete with your site is through Wikipedia.

Meta Tags

Using meta tags is a great way to make sure that the search engines know what your site is about. There are two tags that you should know about: Meta Description and Meta Keywords. Each of these are used independently to tell the search engines what your site is about.

The description is what will show up to a user who finds your content on the Internet. This will help them make a decision as to whether or not to click to your site or to a competitors, so bring out your best writers game. The search engines also learn what your site is about.

The keywords tag will help the search engines know when to return your site versus another. This alone won’t do much, but when combined with the other search engine optimization tips, it will help. But remember, it’s not a magic bullet!

P, DIV, SPAN

The final three tags rounding out our tutorial are absolutely important if you are going to properly organize the content on your site. Remember that the search engines don’t care what your site looks like as long as nothing is hidden from view. By structuring your content with these tags, you will be able to make sure that the search engine gets the right idea about your site.

The P tag will indicate that you have started a new paragraph. This is far better than working without it, as then all of the content jumbles together. The search engine can still figure out what your site is about, but you will not be able to intelligently style your pages without it.

The DIV tag helps to identify “dividers” on your page. Putting all of the sidebar links in such a tag will enable you to style them using style sheets without filling your page with useless styling content. It’s one of the most important tags for anyone looking to make their site look good without annoying the search engines.

The SPAN tag is like a combination of the P tag and the DIV tag, and allows you to style a span of text. Doing this is useful if you want to bring attention to a string of characters in your content, but you don’t want to confuse the search engines. You may also want to be able to provide different types of designs for different users.

Regardless of your skills using HTML, all of these tags will come in handy. If you understand what each one is used for and how to best employ it, then it can easily be useful for you. Now that you know, you can prepare better content for the search engines.

If this is your first blog, you have probably never done many of the things that will be required of you to run an effective site. But you are going to have to learn quickly, unless you have a ton of cash to hire a real expert that is going to be able to take care of all of it for you. And don’t think that you can get by with a cheap VA from India.

You would need a real professional to set all of this stuff up for you. And it would cost thousands of dollars a month to do it. The best way for you to get it all done is to learn how to do it on your own from the ground up.

Not only will this allow you to save a bunch of money in the early phases of the game. But it will also ensure that you know exactly what needs to be done. This means that when it comes time to evaluate the skills of someone else, you will know what you are doing.

Without further ado, here are the five most common web design mistakes novice bloggers make.

No picture of author

If you want to instill trust in your readership, it’s important to have an author’s bio or an about page. But make sure to include a photograph. People like other people, and without that image there you aren’t going to form the kind of relationship you would like.

If you aren’t sure that you really need to have a picture of yourself, you should still put a picture of a person on your bio page. It doesn’t have to be you, and you don’t even have to say that it’s you. But putting it there will enable the reader to see what you look like when you are speaking to them.

If you can visualize a person then it forms a stronger bond in your mind. This effect, when applied to your readers, will help to ensure that they are more likely to form a familiarity with you that ensures they come back again and again to read your content.

Using images where text would work

Many novice designers will put images where text would suffice. This is a big problem, because the search engines can’t read the text that is in your images. Even if they could, the amount of bandwidth required to load an image instead of text means that your page load time will be slower than it needs to.

All of these things result in penalties from the search engines. Furthermore, most bloggers forget to use an ALT tag on their images. So if you do need to put an image on a page, make sure you use an alt tag to tell the search engine what it is a picture of.

No attention to usability standards

While you might not really be concerned about whether or not a blind or deaf user visits your web page, you have to remember that the search engines are both blind and deaf. They can’t see your images or layout and they certainly can’t hear your music or audio files.

Make sure that the page is fully compliant with current usability standards. This can be a daunting task and even professionals can struggle to get it right. It doesn’t have to be 100% perfect, as long as you have put forth an honest effort.

Improving your usability by just a few percentage points will provide a huge boost in your websites ability to get ranked highly in the search engines.

Testing in only one browser

This mistake should have probably been listed first. Most newbies make the mistake of only testing their design in one browser. This often means that you aren’t sure what your site looks like to others who aren’t using the same browser as you.

While this is more of a carryover from the old days, you should still worry about it. Most of the modern browsers render things consistently. But it’s essential that you verify this.
What would happen if your web page rendered properly in safari, but in Internet Explorer, the text was loading off of the screen? Or what if Internet Explorer looked perfect, but every other browser rendered things in a way that made it unattractive and unusable?

You absolutely must verify that your site looks great in many different browsers before you pass it off to the world.

Linking inconsistently

This is a tip that even most experienced bloggers need to learn. If you are worried about the search engines learning about your site, you have to always link consistently. The search engines see a site that begins with www. differently than one that doesn’t.

Consider whether or not you are going to refer to your site with or without the sub-domain. If you decide that you don’t want to constantly list the www. then you should be sure to do so from the very beginning. Each time you link to your site, you gain a “point” in the eyes of the search engine.

Making sure that you consistently earn points for the same site is important. It’s kind of like having two credit cards that both gain points. If you use the American Express sometimes, and the Visa the other times, you are going to have a lot of points, overall. But you won’t get full credit for either of them when it comes time for your reward.

Paying special attention to these tips will help to guarantee that you are getting the most you can from your site.

There are also thousands of free themes floating around out there on the web, but sometimes these freebies just do not quite cut it. But how do you sort through and find the best possible themes for your business? In this article we will break it down to five premium WordPress vendors that you should seriously consider.

StudioPress

First out of the gate is StudioPress. Many bloggers are huge fans of StudioPress because of what is known as the Genesis theme framework, which all of their themes are built. Each theme is known as a child theme of Genesis.

Genesis is popular for many reasons. First, it is built with search engine optimization in mind, and it makes it easy for the search engines to find all of your content, something that not all other themes do. Obviously, this is of vital importance if you want to get visitors to you blog from Google and the other search engines. It is also designed to automatically update, a nice feature if you have ever had to go in and manually update a theme on an existing site.

There is also a wide array of different designs built on the Genesis framework – 38 at the time of this writing. You can probably find one that suits your particular blog and that looks great.

At the time of this article, buying a child theme cost $79.95, and buying all of the themes plus future themes cost $299.95. Either of these packages comes with unlimited updates for any of the themes that you buy.

Elegant Themes

Elegant Themes has a wide variety of WordPress templates put together by Nick Roach, a popular theme designer. All of the themes at Elegant Themes have a certain feel to them since Roach put them all together. However, despite the fact that they have similar elements, they are all quit e unique.

At the time of this article, Nick has a total of 66 themes designed on his site. Each theme comes with a customized back end in WordPress that helps the user to set up all the features of the theme without needing to know how to customize a theme and without knowing any code.

Elegant Themes also has a thriving community built around it, as you can see on the forums. Users can quickly and easily get their questions answered by Nick or by one of the many moderators on the forums that are willing to help out for free. I have personally used the forums to get assistance and have found them to be responsive and helpful.

Another attractive component of Elegant Themes is the price. At the time this article was written, you could get access to all of the 66 themes on the site for $39 per year. That is less than $1 per theme and is an excellent deal.

Woo Themes

Woo Themes has become increasingly popular over the years due to just the sheer numbers of premium themes that they offer on their site plus their awesome support.

They currently have over 120 themes for sale on the site at the time of this article, and they have designed many of them for specific uses. For example, they have a number of templates that were built with news sites in mind that have room for multiple stories and multimedia elements on the front page of the site.

Similar to Elegant Themes, they also have a customized back end that makes setting up the WordPress theme very simple without a significant amount of technical knowhow. They are also known for their superior support and for their active support forums, where users can get quick and straightforward answers to their questions.

Pricing for Woo Themes at the time of this writing is $70 per template, or they have a monthly subscription program that allows you access to all of their templates for $125 up front plus $15 monthly after that. They’re more expensive than Elegant Themes, but have a lot more selection as well.

Templatic

Templatic has a selection of over 65 WordPress themes for you to choose from at the time of this article, and they release two or more new ones every month, meaning you will have access to new fresh templates on a regular basis.

Their themes are designed with very specific niches in mind. For example, they have a theme built just for musicians. They also have themes built with events lawyers, and even article directories in mind. These are great for sites that fit any of these very specific niches, as you would be ready to roll without much addition or customization to the site.

At the time of this writing, each individual WordPress theme on Templatic is available for $65, or for $299 plus $15 per month, you can get access to all of their themes plus all the future themes. A little pricier than some of the other options, but a good choice if you find one that fits your exact niche.

Theme Forest

Theme Forest is more of a marketplace for WordPress themes, and it has over 4,000 templates to choose from. If you cannot find something on Theme Forest that suits your needs, it might not exist!

Since these themes are done by all different designers, you can find an extremely wide range of looks and feels on the site. Themes are organized by different types of templates – business, portfolio, etc., and they can also be sorted by popularity, giving you an idea of what people seem to be going for these days.

At the time of this writing. themes start at $1 and go up from there. Designers can decide how much they want to charge for a theme.

If you take a close look at these five premium WordPress themes vendors, I bet you can find one, if not several, themes that you will love!

Check out Freelancing Sites

A great place to start your search for a graphic designer to do your web design is freelancing sites. There are literally hundreds if not thousands of people out there who earn a full time living by working from home and getting freelance graphic design jobs on the web. Sites such as Elance or Freelancer.com are probably a good start. If you do not find who you are looking for on one of those two sites, there are plenty of others as well.

The good thing about these sites is that they offer a public reputation score for the freelancer. You can be fairly assured that the person you are hiring will do good work based on their reputation on the site. In addition, you can usually see examples of their work on these sites as well.

Ask Around

What websites do you really like and want to emulate? Check the site to see if there is credit given to the graphic designer or web design firm. You can often find this in the footer down near the bottom of the page.

If you cannot find who did the work, shoot the site owner an email and ask them who did it. They will probably be more than happy to give you the information if they are happy with the design themselves.

Ask For References

Once you have a few graphic designers who you are interested in hiring, ask them for a couple of references. This could be sample sites they have done that you can review, or actual clients who you could call or email and chat with about the designer.

Looking at a few samples will probably really help you to know if you are aesthetically compatible. In addition, talking to past or current clients will help you determine their professionalism.

Discuss Specifics

Once who have narrowed it down to the one graphic designer that you do want to hire, make sure you are very specific in what you need. Too many times, graphic design work goes bad simply because the designer and the client are not on the same page on the results.

Be specific about colors, graphics, sizes, columns, everything. Make it as definable and straightforward as you can so that you can rest assured that you and the graphic designer are working toward the same goals.

Have A Timeline

Have a schedule for the person you hire to design your blog. This is not so that you can hold it over their head if things go a bit awry along the way. This is simply to make sure that, again, you and the web designer are on the same page. With a solid schedule, they can understand exactly what your expectations are, and there will not be any guesswork involved for them or for you.

Be realistic about this schedule, of course. Think in terms of how long it will really take to do the work, as you can bet that there will be some revisions along the way, as revisions are just a natural part of the process. Also, discuss with the designer what they think a realistic amount of time for completion would be.

Communicate Expectations Well

We have already discussed this in part above, but just to reiterate – you must communicate overall and specific expectations well for your web designer. Again, not because you want to hold it over them later, but just to ensure that you both truly understand what the desired outcome of this project really is.

This might work best in writing, or it may be better to chat in person or over the phone. In any case, make sure you get these expectations in writing in order to have proof in case there are any problems later. Give Them Examples

You probably have a few designs or websites out there that you are a fan of and want to emulate on some level. Make sure that you give these examples to your designer. This information can be crucial for them to get the job done right, as it gives them a visual to work off of when doing your design.

Of course, you want to be careful not to steal or copy someone else’s design, but having a few examples for the web designer to look at can at least give them a much more detailed idea of what you what that sometimes simply words cannot express.

Ask About Revisions

Make sure that you and your web designer are clear about the number and the time limits of revisions on the work done. Are they going to be ok with doing 6 revisions over next 3 months? As long as you have that information set in stone up front, there should not be any hard feelings about it later.

Sign a Contract

Finally, put everything discussed in writing, and each of you sign it, whether on paper or electronically through the contracts on a freelancing site. This will protect both parties in case anything goes wrong along the way, and keep everything clear.

If you will follow these simple tips, you can expect an enjoyable experience with your web designer!

Keep It Simple

Have you ever gotten overly frustrated when trying to find something on a website? Your customers will feel the same way if the setup of your site is not simple. Make sure that the web design includes a very simple navigation through the site, with simple, easy to use menus that are easy to find.

If you can, include the menus to get to different pages on your site either at the top of your site or in a column down the side. Make them easy to see, and name them clearly as well in order to, again, keep it simple! You do not want users to have a hard time finding the pages they want to visit on your site.

The lack of clear menus can keep your users from sticking around on your site and can cause them to just give up and leave before they make a decision.

Keep it Up To Date

If you site looks like it was designed 15 years ago, this is a turnoff to potential customers and clients. It says to them that you do not take the time to stay on top of the latest trends and knowledge out there and is a signal, even if it is not true, that you do not care to keep things updated for your customers.

Have a designer review your site once a year to keep it looking fresh and up to date. Make sure the web design is in line with other similar successful sites out there that have stayed up to date. It does not need to be futuristic; it just has to be in the present!

Mobile Is King

Many, many more people are using the web on their mobile devices – including cell phones and tablets – to access the information they need these days. Is your web design easily viewable on a mobile device? If not, you are probably losing potential customers and sales to competitors who do have sites that are optimized for mobile devices.

There are really two ways to optimize a site for mobile web design. First, you can make sure that the design you have on the site now is easy to view on a mobile and on a computer. To do this, the site has to be small and have very little media on it asa general rule.

The second, and probably more effective, way to have a mobile optimized site is to add a mobile version of your site to your web design. There are some ways to do this yourself, but you are probably better off having an expert come in and set this up for you.

Once you have a mobile site, make sure that it has all the information that your customers need. They should still be able to have the full site experience, at least as much as is possible, as you want to be able to make sales, contacts, etc, just as you would on your regular site. You can bet that mobile web design is going to become more and more important as the mobile web continues to grow.

Load Time

How long does it take for your site to load? A blink of an eye is like an eternity online. If your site loads slowly, you are losing customers, because they have already hit the “back” button before they even see your offers.

In order to make sure that you site loads quickly, you need to make sure that you do not have too much information on your pages. Too many pictures, videos, etc., will cause your site too load too slowly. If you can take a few pieces of media off the site, or even make them smaller, your site can load much more quickly.

Your web hosting can also make a difference in the load time. If you do not have a good web server, your site may load slower, and if you use all your bandwidth, your site may not load at all.

To fix this, talk to your web host or to your webmaster to make sure that you have enough bandwidth and storage to handle the size of your site and the traffic you are getting. Making a few tweaks here can go a long way.

Bounce Rate

The biggest thing that all of these factors affect is known as the “bounce rate” of your site. The bounce rate indicates how many people will come to your site, see the first page they land on, and then leave, usually without spending hardly any time on the site.

The lower the bounce rate, the better, and a lower bounce rate probably equals more sales. Also, in general, the more time a visitor spends on your site and the more pages they visit, the more likely they are to either buy what you are selling or contact your business. This is a solid indication that they are interested in your business.

To monitor this, you can install Google analytics on your site. It will give you an exact percentage of how many people bounce from your site along with how many pages they visit. If you install this now, then make some changes, you will be able to monitor whether the design changes you are making are being effective.

Of course, the other factor to watch to see if your changes are effective is your sales! If you will make these tweaks to your site, you will most likely see more sales just because of these few changes to your web design!

Don’t worry about monetizing your blog right away.  Blogging is about an ongoing dialogue with your readers. Because of this, you want to make sure that your website is both engaging and welcoming to new readers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Make it Welcoming

There are many ways to make sure that your blog is welcoming to people when they first come onto the site. First of all, you want to talk to them in a conversational tone. You don’t want everything to seem very technical or overly academic so that people don’t feel welcome.

Remember that you don’t know if the person coming to your site is brand-new to the topic or very experienced, so you need to make sure that your content and layout is welcoming to them no matter what level of experience or knowledge they have about the subject matter.

Is it Easy to Read?

The first thing you need to make sure of is that your theme and layout are designed in such a way as to make people feel at home. For instance, it has been proven that having a light background with dark text is much more readable for people than having a dark background with light text.

You don’t want people to have to squint to read your site, so make sure to look at it from an objective standpoint after you build it. If it is too difficult for people to read because the text is too small or the coloring is not right, take the time to make sure that all of that is resolved before launching your blog for the first time.

Occasionally you might also see weird characters on your WordPress site. Don’t panic. It’s easily fixable and just requires that you pay attention to details.

Have A Nice Website Header

Another way that you can make your blog more welcoming is by having a nice header designed for the top of the site. Show your personality here and make the blog more individualized. Remember that you’re trying to build a relationship, and part of that is branding yourself as an expert on the topic that your blog is about.

By creating a header, you can brand yourself in such a way as to make people believe that you are the expert in your particular topic. You wanted to look professional, yet engaging. Headers can be outsourced for less than $25, so invest in branding yourself.

This goes back to creating a logo that’s representative of your brand, of who you are.

What Would Seth Godin Do Plugin

There is also a free WordPress plugin called “What would Seth Godin do”. You can search for this plug-in in your WordPress dashboard. Simply put, it creates a text box at the top of your screen with prewritten information to welcome the visitor. You can set it up to say whatever you want, and you can even program it to give a special message to new visitors and a different message to returning visitors. You might invite the person to join your mailing list, subscribe to your RSS feed or just tell them that your glad they have visited your site.

Allow Comments

One way to make it more engaging to readers is to allow comments. When people read your blog posts, you don’t want them to simply read it and move on with their day. You want to engage them by making the content entertaining, informative and maybe even a bit controversial.

That’s not to say that you should go out of your way to irritate your readers or try to create controversy. But you don’t want to blog about boring or mediocre topics where you have no original slant. Let’s face it: if you don’t have anything original to say then maybe you shouldn’t have a blog on the topic.

By allowing comments, even moderated ones, this will not only help your readers to interact with you more effectively but it will also give the search engines more content to help you rank. You can set up the comments so that you have to approve them before they’re posted which will give you the right to delete any comments which are inappropriate or simple spam.

Blog commenting is very popular right now, so closing your comments completely really doesn’t help you to achieve a loyal following. Not only should you allow comments, but you should respond to the comments professionally so that people know that there is a person behind the blog. This helps to develop trust and loyalty between you and your readers.

You should check out the DISQUS plugin.  It allows real-time commenting, notification of response, full integration with media services such as Youtube, Flickr, and compatibility with mobile websites for commenting while on the go.

Do Your Research

Another way to be more welcoming and engaging to every reader is by doing your research. You want to make sure that not only do you provide a unique perspective on what you’re discussing, but you also have the most up-to-date information about your niche. If news stories have been released relating to the topic, you want to include that information so that you’re also informing your readers. If you could become their “go to” person for the topic, you can develop quite a huge list of readers.

You may also want to entertain the idea of setting up a mailing list so that people can subscribe to your monthly newsletter and updates. Again, this is another way for you to stay in direct contact with those people who are following what you have to say on your blog.

Have Easy Layouts

As far as the layout, you want to make certain that it’s easy for people to navigate and find information that they want to read. Have a search box so that people can go back and look for particular keywords to find more information on blog posts you may have written in the past. You may also want to have a list of your pages and categories in the sidebar so that people can refer back to topics that interest them. You could also have a list of your most recent blog posts so that people can see what you’ve been writing about lately.

Finally remember to test how your blog looks in different browsers and see our review on WordPress themes.

Be sure to read about our favorite web hosting provider and find out how to start a blog in 10 easy steps!

Ask yourself this question: do you publish information to your blog for yourself (just so you can say something) or so that other people can get value from What you have to say, what you’ve discovered, etc?

Do you discriminate against half (or more) of your website visitors?

So you build a great looking blog (or website), start publishing some great content, and you even make sure the website looks good.

But here’s the catch: it looks good to YOU, with your web browser (Firefox 3.0 or Internet Explorer 8.0), running on your operating system (i.e. Vista).

Here’s a fun fact: different people end up using different web browsers. For example, our Ask Dan & Jennifer love and sex online magazine and advice column gets 52% visitors using Internet Explorer, 33% visitors using Firefox, 9% using Safari, and so on.

And those break down further by browser release verions (ex. IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox 2, Firefox 3, and so on).

How can you know what web browsers your visitors are using?

Well you do use web analytics, right? That just means a (often free) web software that keeps track of who visitors your website so know how many visitors you have every day, where they’re coming from, what articles/pages they like, and so on.

And the good analytics services will give you a detailed breakdown of what web browsers (and operating systems) your visitors are using. Our absolutely favorite web analytics tool is Google Analytics: in our opinion the bar none best analytics tool out there. Plus, here’s a bonus: it’s free.

Not all web browsers are created equal

OK, so people use different browsers… so what? Well, the problem is that each of those browsers shows your website a little differently.

But no big deal right? Wrong. Just a few little differences can result in your site lookign completely messed up to half your visitors. Worst yet, it looks fine to you, so how can you even know?

How you can quickly and easily see how your website looks in the most popular web browsers

So what’s the solution? Do you just call up your friends who you know run the different web browsers and see if they’ll keep testing your website every time you make a change? No way!

Do you install all the browser versions on your own computer at home? Nope, you can’t run them all… and seriously, who has time to mess with that!

Here’s the smart and easy way: you use an online service that actually shows you what your website looks like in all the major browsers.

The original solution: online screenshot and web validation services

There have been services online offering this functionality for some years now. Here’s a list of them. With most of these services, you just type in the web address, and it shows you a screen capture of how your website and how it looks in 20 different browser editions.

The down side with many of these services is that they’re very slow: it can take an hour to get your screenshots. and if you’re going to make tweaks or fixes, that just won’t work.

Today’s better solution: Adobe BrowserLab

Yesterday I was looking for a better solution… and found our favorite one ever, which happens to be from Adobe (we love their software anyway, so that was an added bonus). It’s called Adobe BrowserLab. And according to Adobe, “BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand.”

Here’s why BrowserLab is the best tool for this that we’ve seen: it brings up your website in the top web browsers immediately: so in under 5 minutes you can just know what your website looks like to the vast majority of your visitors! And that frankly is a must for any web designer – or anyone really who has a website that gets more than a few thousand visitors a month. Also check out this recent PC World article on BrowserLab.

As an added bonus, Adobe BrowserLab is currently offered free by Adobe… but I suspect web designers would also pay for this service if they had to.

The downside of BrowserLab is that it (as of now) only shows you what your website looks in the top 5 or so browsers. But honestly unless you have a dedicated web design team that’s doing this for you, that meeds the goal of today’s test: making sure your website isn’t “broken” for half your visitors.

And with Adobe BrowserLab that’s become a very easy thing to do. If you know of other great tools for doing this, be sure to let us know in the comments what they are and why you like them!