Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-media-middle-east.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-media-middle-east.jpg" alt="Social Media Usage in Middle East - Statistics and Trends" width="580" /></a><br /> <strong>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a></strong>

3.7% of the total worldwide internet users are from the Middle East

40.2 % of the total Middle East population has Internet access

88% of the Middle East’s online population uses social networking sites daily

Estimated number of Middle East Social Media users

Most Commonly Used Languages

 Social Media User Demographics In The Middle East

Social Media Users By Age Distribution In The Middle East

 The Most Popular Topics For Social Media Users In The Middle East

The Most Popular Social Networking Sites In The Middle East

One in four Arab Facebook users come from Egypt, while Saudi Arabia and the UAE make up 80% of users in the Gulf region.

LinkedIn outperforms Twitter across many Middle Eastern countries – most significantly, in the UAE where the business-focused network reaches more than 12% of the population (compared to around 3% for Twitter).

Percentage Of Social Media User Penetration In Middle East Countries By Social Network

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Consumers are relying more and more on the efficient internet search engines to yield results for their needs and any company not taking full advantage of this round the clock, worldwide, cost effective means to advertising and marketing are certainly losing out on the extended reach and increased number of potential customers. There are numerous developing trends in this flourishing business industry and with Dubai and Abu Dhabi being at the head of the economic world; it is not all that surprising that they are keeping up with the trends that are applicable throughout the world.

Looking at some of these techniques and trends gives one an appreciation for the amount of work and skill that goes into this website development and design. The first of these new emerging trends is that of Letterpress, which is the pressing of letters so that they look like they have been cut out. It is seldom used but definitely a current website design trend for 2009. Another interesting trend is to use larger letters and fonts to make certain aspects of a website stand out – this is (not surprisingly) known as Huge Typography. PNG transparency is another trend used to highlight and enhance but this is done with semi transparent designs in the background of important information. Modal boxes or light boxes are also becoming more widely used and are basically just newer more design orientated versions of pop-up’s. Font replacement has also taken its place amongst the new trends taking the standard fonts and making them more appealing and in line with overall appearance of websites. The magazine look is also a popular current trend making websites look and feel more like magazine articles. Basically, in general, the trends are all moving away from old standard designs and towards more visual websites that are interesting to look at and appealing for visitors. A lot of focus is going into making salient aspects of websites stand out and making sure that the website authors catch their audience’s attention as quickly as possible. Web design Dubai is no different and with an increasingwebsite design industry Dubai is constantly keeping up with the ever changing environment.

With the fast paced culture of web design and the continuously changing trends, it is highly important that web design firms the world over are keeping up with new and improved ways to catch and keep browsers attentions. The firms of Dubai are looking towards the trends of the rest of the world to make sure they are always as current as possible in an age where the internet dominates.

The post Growing Website Designing and Development Trends in Abu Dhabi and Dubai appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

A successful logo can’t be just creative or clever. Because a logo ends up being an important guest at many occasions, it absolutely must perform and behave well no matter what.
It is a tricky balancing act, but one that you can achieve. All you have to do is consider what makes a logo effective. Make sure your design follows these guidelines.

1. It Is Simple
The “too busy” logo is a roadblock to communication, so don’t crowd it with stuff: green, flag, fairway, golfer, peninsula, borders, circles, curving type. It’s easy to get carried away, but you’ll create a stronger image with fewer pieces.

2. It Is Bold
Fine lines make lovely illustrations but poor logos because 1) they’re difficult to see, and 2) a fine line will often break up or even disappear when reproduced.

3. It Works Well in All Sizes
This one is often overlooked by designers who make presentations on large format paper: The logo that looks great at billboard size must also work on a business card.

4. It Is Appropriate for the Business
This seems like common sense, but in the throes of artistic rapture, common sense often goes out the window. Make sure the whimsical crop-duster that was so much fun to draw is suitable for the client, in this case, a regional commuter airline.

5. It Is Distinctive
Don’t settle for the ordinary (let other companies be ordinary). Your company is unique—that is, it has a distinctive culture and market presence; capture this intelligently and thoughtfully.

Circles Are Strong Design Elements
A circle is a familiar focal point which the eye can interpret with little effort. Its soft edges are more often pleasing than those of angular squares and triangles. Cousin to the circle is the ellipse.

Avoid Trendy Typefaces
Unless you’re in the fashion business, the type you choose for your corporate identity should still be suitable years from now. Laser printer standards—Times, Palatino, Helvetica—are always appropriate; in general, low-key is best.

Avoid Extremely Tall or Wide Logos
Odd shapes are hard to fit into common spaces—business cards, advertisements, and so forth—and as a rule they aren’t as pleasing, either. A good proportion for a logo is roughly 3 units by 2 units tall, about the ratio of a TV screen (a 1-to-1 ratio also works quite well).

Design Logo and Name as a Unit
If the company name will be part of the design—especially popular on signage—look for ways to integrate the two.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 11:46 am and is filed under Corporate identity, Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post What Makes a Good Logo? appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

To attract more clients. Some clients look for a well-defined company, and “look and feel” may be one of their criteria in making a purchasing decision. Others are “wowed” by professional-looking materials, and your logo may impress them into buying.

To increase your credibility. A logo makes you look experienced and professional, and can go a long way towards making your business appear credible. And, if you’d like to be known as an expert in your field, this type of credibility is the first thing you have to establish.

To be more memorable. Forty percent of people better remember what they see than what they hear or read. So having graphics associated with your business and having consistent graphics on your business materials make you more likely to come to the forefront of potential clients’ minds when they have a need for your goods or services.

To stand out in your field. A well-designed logo and an identity system can put you far above the competition, especially if they are paired with a strong marketing program.

To look “bigger.” Home-printed business cards with perforated edges or cards printed with standard designs available through Microsoft software or online business card vendors scream “small-time vendor” to your potential clients—and that is how they will want to compensate you.

To improve your chance of getting venture capital or selling a business. If you present a well-rounded business package, including marketing materials and graphics, your business will look more complete.

To brand yourself. Especially if you are a consultant, you need a logo in order to build an image and a brand that is bigger than your individual identity. If you’re running a larger business, the logo will begin to create a “brand” or “face” for your business, and to personalize the larger business entity.

To give clients a sense of stability. You may not have been in business “since 1908,” but if you have invested in an identity, you are much less likely to fold in the eyes of your customers. It goes a long way toward building that all-important “trust.”

To explain your company name. If your company name contains a little-known word or an acronym, the logo can give visual clues to its meaning.

To endear your company name to your clients. A difficult-to-pronounce or hard-to-remember company name may make it challenging for your clients to hire you. When potential clients have the need for your services, they might not recall who you are. But if you reinforce the name with interesting, compelling graphics, they are more likely to remember you, pick up the phone, and hire you.

To describe an unusual line of business. If your business is nontraditional or in a hard-to-explain industry, a logo can help to explain exactly what it is that you do by offering a visual reference.

To show what practices differentiate you from your competition. A well-designed logo can have many subtle meanings and can begin to tell the story of how you do business, including the special practices that make you stand apart from the competition.

To comply with expectations. In some industries, a logo is just expected. In the creative services industry especially, having a logo is an industry standard.

To show your commitment and for the sense of personal pride it will add to your practice. In other words, do it for yourself. A logo will increase your confidence, and that will show through in all of your business interactions and practices.

These benefits will boost your business and your confidence, so start thinking about developing a logo and identity as soon as possible. (by Erin Ferree, sourced by GO-Gulf.com – corporate identity Dubai based company, web development from Abu Dhabi)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 11:47 am and is filed under Corporate identity, Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post 15 Reasons Small Businesses Need a Brand Identity System appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 11:51 am and is filed under Corporate identity, Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post What is a “logo”? appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

You don’t need to be a big company to set and enforce your corporate identity package. You just need to care about your corporate image and respect the time and effort (and $$) that you invested to develop your unique look in the first place.
The following guide was assembled to help you identify what needs to be addressed while developing and maintaining your corporate identity package.

As you start to read over this guide, you will probably start thinking that anyone who puts something together with this much detail and precision surely must have some control issues. You’re right. Anyone who spends the time and effort assembling a complete corporate identity package is genuinely concerned about maintaining their clean, professional-looking corporate image. You have control over your corporate image — whether you choose to take on the challenge of maintaining it is entirely up to you.

The standard corporate identity package should cover the following items:

LOGO & LOGOTYPE

Colour(s)

It is crucial to define what your logo/logotype will look like when appearing in full colour, spot colour, greyscale, and black-and-white. The last two are extremely important if you are considering having any work printed on newsprint (relatively low resolution, can tend to look grainy if you’re not careful).
These are usually defined by Pantone colour (PMS), RGB, and CMYK colour systems. Different systems have different applications and uses, so it is crucial that you define your colours in all of these colour systems.
Relative Placement
This is important, especially for anyone who has a logo and logotype. Do you want the logo to always be immediately to the left of the company name? To the right? Centred above it? Can the logo appear alone? What about your slogan – is it always there?
You’ll want to decide if you want your logo to appear as a printed watermark, and if so, where, how, what exact colours, and what exact size.

PAPER

Physical Characteristics

You need to define several things about the papers you use: the company name, the name of the paper, the weight(s) you use, and the exact colour name.
Don’t laugh here, but make sure you specify that the watermark of the paper is to appear right-side-up and facing front. Of course, this isn’t a concern when using pre-printed papers.
The Right Paper for the Job
Speckled or lightly patterned papers are extremely popular, and they do look good. They stand out in a sea of white- and cream-colored sheets and business cards. However, they are not designed to be faxed. If you choose a really nice corporate paper for your communications needs, make sure you have chosen a different paper that can be used for circulating internal or informal information, and faxes. Conveniently, many ‘designer’ papers also have a plain version available.
Be sure to clearly differentiate between occasions calling for the best look possible and those where a less formal presentation is appropriate. You wouldn’t circulate an important corporate memo on 3-ring binder paper, nor would you put the memo about cleaning the coffee pot on your $2 per sheet textured heavyweight 4-colour printed letterhead.
; Most papers come in a variety of weights, so you can go with a thinner paper for most correspondence, and use a thicker version for the really important stuff, like contracts and proposals.
You must set down, in writing, exactly which paper will be used when. Never assume that someone knows what to do when — it just doesn’t happen.
Envelopes
You need to figure out what size(s) of envelope you will be using. Will you be using standard #10 envelopes? Will you want a window? Most papers have matching envelopes in the smaller sizes; some have a window option, most don’t.
If you need to use larger-sized envelopes, you must specify the colour, size, appearance, and orientation of each envelope type.
Regardless of the envelope size, you must decide if you are going to use return-address labels or pre-printed envelopes. You must also determine how the envelopes will be addressed: printed white or clear labels? Typed on directly? Hand-written?
Business Cards
It is important to keep your business cards looking professional, and extremely important to have all current cards resemble each other. If you change your corporate look, replace all of your employees’ cards at the same time.
You must decide if all cards, from the CEO on down, will have the same design, or whether the sales department’s cards will be a bit different than those of management (but, even if they are, they should resemble each other). You have to maintain a certain amount of corporate identity on each card, or you risk losing the connection between person and business. Consult with your designer, and trust what he or she suggests.

BASIC COMMUNICATIONS

Choose Your Corporate Font

Choose one, and stick with it. Define it by design house, full name, and (if possible) original source of that font. From then on, all corporate communications shall use it, and nothing else.
Be precise: ‘Times’ is not ‘Times Roman’ is not ‘Times New Roman’.
If you need to use typewriters or line printers, choose which font(s) will be used on each, and do not change it.
Choose a size for body text, a size for headlines, and perhaps two sizes in between. Maintain these decisions, and your communications will be more consistent, easier to read, and, believe it or not, easier to proof-read.

You should determine how the basic paragraph text should look. Will your paragraphs’ first line be indented (if so, by how much)? How much space should be between lines in a paragraph? How much space between paragraphs? Be aware that what is appropriate for a press release might not be appropriate for your year-end investors’ report. Again, it is suggested that you consult with your designer on this topic.
Set Your Margins
If you use pre-printed letterhead, it was designed to look best when the text on the page has a certain amount of white space around it. Heed your designer’s advice, and stick to the margins that were designed to be there.
For regular communications, use common sense. Leave enough white space around the edges to allow someone to hold the page and not block the text.
Cramming more information on any given page just makes you look cheap or rushed or plain not able to plan effectively. It reflects badly on your business. Make sure that everyone who is responsible for corporate communications understands this. If you are ever tempted to ‘just squeeze it in’, get a professional to edit down the text. If your ideas are important enough to be written down and communicated, give them the respect (and space) they deserve.

YOUR CORPORATE IDENTITY PACKAGE

Availability

In your office: Each and every person involved in corporate communciations should have their own copy of your corporate policy. At the minimum, there should be one copy per workstation.
Your graphic artist or designer should have a current version of your corporate identity package at all times.
You should create a smaller version of your package, designed especially for people designing advertisements for you. They don’t need to know about your letterhead margins or paper, but they do need to know everything about your logo.
It is always a good idea to have printed samples of ‘acceptable use’ as part of the basic policy kit.
Implementation Suggestions
Set up software templates for your basic communications.
Use common sense: don’t put unwanted fonts where people might be tempted to use them.
Collect and destroy old or out-of-date paper and business cards.
Communicate with your employees. If something new is to be implemented, let them know, or, even better, ask for their input.

Enforcement

Well, frankly, how you deal with your employees is up to you. If there’s a problem, discuss how important a consistent corporate identity is to your business.
Do not ever accept less-than-satisfactory printing. If the color is off, demand to have it redone correctly. And keep doing it until it is right.
Make sure that you check your proofs carefully – it’s no longer the printer’s (or designer’s) fault if you sign off on something that is incorrect.[By Barbara Anne Richardson]

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 14th, 2009 at 12:04 pm and is filed under Corporate identity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Spacing Issues
Nothing looks as bad as a crowded logo. We’ve seen them, usually at the bottom of an ad, perhaps in a list of sponsors for a given event. Your logo is a physical representation of your business, and it needs room to breathe!
You need to set down rules about how close text can be to your logo — can there be text beside it (eg. the date of a letter appearing on your corporate letterhead) or does it have to go below, and if so, how much space between them?
We know that this one is particularly difficult to enforce, but it is well worth the effort.
Size Matters!
Let’s face it, how great will your complex logo look if it reproduced only 1/4? tall? You need to set minimum limits to the size of your logo and logotype, if you want to maintain its legibility.
Electronic versions also need to be regulated, or you may end up with your logo only 10 pixels tall. The easiest way to ensure that your corporate identity isn’t messed with is to develop electronic versions of your logo/logotype and authorize the use of those versions – ONLY.
As part of how your logotype and logo appear together, you must determine what size logo appears with what size logotype, and ensure that those decisions are adhered to rigorously.

The post Your Corporate Identity Package appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

People underestimate the value and importance of having a business logo design customized especially for their company. Especially in online business where there are numerous companies offering the same or similar products or services, your logo is what will remind people of who you are and what your business has to offer. For you to stand apart from your competitors and isolate yourself from the masses of businesses in the internet community, you need to identify yourself. And there is no better way to do that than with a logo.

Dubai logo design company, GO-Gulf.com pride themselves in offering these services and more. Realizing the full potential behind compiling and designing a full graphics package, inclusive of business logo design for the companies they serve, they are accentuating the importance of having a recognizable brand for your company. In this day and age, everything is about brands. The brands you wear the brands you drive, the brands you buy and the brands that you favour above all. Your logo is just another brand that allows people to pinpoint and place your name and the capabilities of your company, making you an individual.

Imagine you are looking for a great place to eat and can’t think of anywhere to go. You come across the banner of a great restaurant that you recognize plastered across the front of the building. Your experiences with this restaurant were memorable and you recall these experiences through your recognition of the identifying logo on the outside. Chances are, you will eat here again. It’s the same with your online business. You offer exceptional services, and people will make a mental note to makes use of them again. Maybe they won’t remember the name of your company, but they will remember the visual of the logo. With so much data being transferred to our brains every day, an image is so much easier to remember as the visual aspect alerts you to its presence and is pleasing to the eye.

Investing in the services of a reputable logo design company is the first step towards identifying your brand and finding the perfect business logo design to convey your message to the online world of business. Dubai logo design company, GO-Gulf.com are an excellent, reliable source for logo design, from establishing what your brand is, what the message you want to communicate is, up to delivering the final end product. If you want your online business to be noticed and remembered, then finding your ideal business logo design is a necessary step towards that, and will be a step that pays for itself in the long run.

The post The Importance of Logo Design in Websites appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

The reason these fonts are so popular is because they are simple and easy to read on computer screens with low resolution. As a result, most of the time fonts that are unique, wild, and distinctive are not used on web pages so as not to distract the reader from what is trying to be said and communicated through the font on the page. Since the website uses content to get the point across, it is prudent to use fonts that are easy to read. If you make it difficult for a visitor to read the content, they will more likely leave than put forth the effort. Consider the following points as well when developing your fonts for your website.

- Big Fonts

This is your web page and likely your livelihood, not a term paper or research project that has a defined style. Because of this, you can use big fonts, bold them, make them stick out and attract the reader. You can drive your point home with larger fonts and they also will be significantly easier for your visitor to read. The object of your website is to present information that is easily seen, read, and found by visitors. So, go ahead and increase the font size even in regular text that is not in a heading or title. Many of your visitors will thank you because they will not have to put on their glasses or strain to read the text. Sometimes bigger is better.

- Sans Serif

If you have no idea about fonts, how they translate to your web page, or how they will affect your visitors and ultimately sales, then you should definitely stick with a san serif font. The reason for this is that these fonts are the most legible and provide the best readability for visitors in a low resolution atmosphere. Don’t take risks with your fonts, go generic and use a sans serif font. Your visitors will thank you for it and your sales will not suffer from it.

- Simple is Safe

Again, don’t let yourself get carried away with your fonts and designs. Instead, keep the thought in mind that simple is safe. If you want to be bold and brazen in your website design then don’t take that route with your fonts. Keep it simple, basic, and easy to read, and you will benefit significantly more than if you try to mix it up.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:15 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post Top Ten Fonts for Website Design appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

» Ash Web Studio

» Macaroon Design

» The Startup Business School

» The Alternative Energy Store

» Forecast Advisor

» iconbuffet.com

» Really Wild Flowers

» Save Longstone Edge

» linkedin.com

» mozilla.org

» plaxo.com

Prolotize

Common features

The great sites above share the following design features:

• Simple layout
• Centered orientation
• Design the content, not the page
• 3D effects, used sparingly
• Soft, neutral background colours
• Strong colour, used sparingly
• Cute icons, used sparingly
• Plenty of whitespace
• Nice big text

Let’s look at these features one by one.

Simple layout

It feels like we’re seeing more simple 1- and 2-column designs than in previous years.

The overall feel you get is that designers generally agree that simple pages work better.

These pages read in a straightforward way from top to bottom, and you don’t find your eye skipping around trying to work out what to look at. It’s a much calmer and more solid browsing experience than in times gone by.

Centered orientation

The other thing you notice about all the hot picks above is that they’re all laid out around a central axis.

Whereas a couple of years ago, you’d find a lot of liquid layouts and left-aligned fixed-width layouts, today content goes in the centre of the screen. 

Left-oriented layouts are much less common than they used to be.

Also, liquid (full-width) layouts are less popular.

The wisdom has always been that we should try to get as much information “above the fold” (i.e. visible on the screen without scrolling). Liquid layouts achieves this.

However, today we seem to be more comfortable with scrolling, and we’re willing to put up with scrolling for the benefits of increased white space and line height.

Design the content, not the page

Good modern web designs put less energy into designing the page background – the canvas and permanent page features – and rather focus on designing the content itself.

This reflects the principle of drawing the viewer’s attention to the content. (Also echoes Phil Brisk’s article “Dont’ decorate, communicate!”)

We see the effects in:

• Freer, less boxed-in page layouts
• Softer, simpler, receding page “furniture”
• Strong colour and 3D effects used to draw attention to the content itself, including the main branding
• The focus is on making the site’s subject look good, rather than making the web designer look good (which is better for the designer in the long-term!)

To take away…

What designers should learn from this trend is that it’s not enough to design a blank page, to be stuffed with content later, content is our problem. As designers, we’re communicators (not decorators) and site content carries the majority of our message.

Why center-align?

I like center-aligning, and have been tending to use it on my designs for a while.

When the content sits in the centre of the screen, it feels up-front and confident.

It also gives a sense of simplicity and balance, which reflects the move towards clean, more Zen, design.

The most common centered designs are either fixed-width (i.e. master width in pixels or percent) or sometimeszoom-width (i.e. master width in ems, e.g. Forecast Advisor). The benefit of restricting the width of the content (particularly with zoom-width, which resizes as the font size changes) is that the line-length is prevented from getting too long on larger screens. (Very long lines of text are less efficient.)

However it’s also possible to have a liquid layout with a center-orientation, as the Alternative Energy Store siteshows.

On this site, just centering the logo brings the friendly, forward-facing feel of the centered site, while getting a lot of content visible on the screen.

3D effects, used sparingly

Every single one of the hotties uses gradients subtly, either to give bars a slight roundedness, to create a soft feeling of space in the background, or to make an icon stand out with embossing and subtle drop-shadows.

Reflections & fades are very prevalent. Drop-shadows are still used, but with care.

Trademark round flashes are everywhere.

Soft, neutral background colours

All the hotties have a plain background, the most popular being white and greyscale fades. These give a cool, neutral, soft base against which you can flash strong colour to draw the eye.

Strong colour, used sparingly

A soft, stylish background is the perfect base for adding eye-catching features. Strong colours and tonal constrast are great for drawing the eye to the more important elements on the page.

Iomega uses more strong colour than the others, with its intense dark red promotion area. However this doesn’t drown the rest of the page, because the colour is consistent and simple in shape.

Cute icons, used sparingly

There’s a theme here: Don’t use too many attractive elements on the same page view (i.e. that appeals to the eye and draws the user’s attention).

As with strong colour and 3D effects, appealing icons and buttons can add that bit of polish to help give a page a high-quality feel. But used too much, they’ll have the counter effect, cluttering the page and confusing the user.

Plenty of whitespace

Today’s web designs are so fresh, they feel like they’ve taken a deep breath.

Sometimes I imagine taking a page design that’s too crowded and sticking it on a balloon, then blowing air in until everything on the page pulls apart to leave healthy gaps.

Your eye needs space (guttering in typo language) round stuff to help you clearly and cleanly identify things.

In general, the more white space the better. It’s very rare that I look at a page and think: “Gosh, they really need to cram that page up a bit!”

Of course, “white” space doesn’t have to be white. But it does have to be space!

It’s great to see so many designs using good-sized margins to space elements apart, and extra line-height to aid on-screen reading.

Look at all this lovely refreshing white space!

Nice big text

I’m not saying that all the text on your web site should be supersize. In fact, in some scenarios, small text is fine (we tend to take in more when text is a bit smaller).

What these good designs show is:

Make the most important text on the page bigger than normal text

Like the other design techniques we’ve seen, it works when used in moderation. If all your text is big, then none of your text is big. Use bigger text to help your visitors see quickly what the page is about, what’s most important, and figure out where they want to look next to find what they want. … Stephen Coles

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post Current web design / style appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

* 1 History
* 2 Web site design
o 2.1 Multidisciplinary requirements
* 3 Issues
o 3.1 Lack of collaboration in design
o 3.2 Liquid versus fixed layouts
o 3.3 Flash
o 3.4 CSS versus tables
o 3.5 How it Looks vs. How it Works
* 4 Accessible Web design
* 5 Website Planning
o 5.1 Purpose
o 5.2 Audience
o 5.3 Content
o 5.4 Compatibility and restrictions
o 5.5 Planning documentation
* 6 See also
* 7 External links

History

Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, published a website in August 1991.[1] Berners-Lee was the first to combine Internet communication (which had been carrying email and the Usenet for decades) with hypertext (which had also been around for decades, but limited to browsing information stored on a single computer, such as interactive CD-ROM design).

Websites are written in a markup language called HTML, and early versions of HTML were very basic, only giving websites basic structure (headings and paragraphs), and the ability to link using hypertext. This was new and different to existing forms of communication – users could easily navigate to other pages by following hyperlinks from page to page.

As the Web and web design progressed, the markup language used to make it became more complex and flexible, giving the ability to add objects like images and tables to a page. Features like tables, which were originally intended to be used to display tabular information, were soon subverted for use as invisible layout devices. With the advent of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), table-based layout is increasingly regarded as outdated. Database integration technologies such as server-side scripting and design standards like CSS further changed and enhanced the way the Web is made.

The introduction of Macromedia Flash (now Adobe Flash) into an already interactivity-ready scene has further changed the face of the Web, giving new power to designers and media creators, and offering new interactivity features to users, often at the expense of usability for persons with disabilities, search engine visibility and browser functions available to HTML.

Web site design

A Web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a website is defined as the arrangement and creation of Web pages that in turn make up a website. A Web page consists of information for which the Web site is developed. A website might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page.

There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For typical commercial Web sites, the basic aspects of design are:

• The content: The substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.
• The usability: The site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.
• The appearance: The graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.
• The visibility: The site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media.

A Web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a website is known as the Home page or Index. Some websites use what is commonly called a Splash Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language/region selection, or disclaimer. Each web page within a Web site is an HTML file which has its own URL. After each Web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention spans and more demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash Pages, particularly where commercial websites are concerned.

Once a Web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published, the Web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the website receives. This may include submitting the Web site to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other Web sites, creating affiliations with similar Web sites, etc.

Multidisciplinary requirements

Web site design crosses multiple disciplines of information systems, information technology and communication design. The website is an information system whose components are sometimes classified as front-end and back-end. The observable content (e.g page layout, user interface, graphics, text, audio) is known as the front-end. The back-end comprises the organization and efficiency of the source code, invisible scripted functions, and the server-side components that process the output from the front-end. Depending on the size of a Web development project, it may be carried out by a multi-skilled individual (sometimes called a web master), or a project manager may oversee collaborative design between group members with specialized skills.

Issues

As in most collaborative designs, there are conflicts between differing goals and methods of web site designs. These are a few of the ongoing ones.

Lack of collaboration in design

In the early stages of the web, there wasn’t as much collaboration between web designs and larger advertising campaigns, customer transactions, social networking, intranets and extranets as there is now. Web pages were mainly static online brochures disconnected from the larger projects.

Many web pages are still disconnected from larger projects. Special design considerations are necessary for use within these larger projects. These design considerations are often overlooked, especially in cases where there is a lack of leadership, understanding or concern for the larger project to facilitate collaboration. This often results in unhealthy competition or compromise between departments, and less than optimal use of web pages.

Liquid versus fixed layouts

On the web the designer has no control over several factors, including the size of the browser window, the web browser used, the input devices used (mouse, touch screen, voice command, text, cell phone number pad, etc.) and the size and characteristics of available fonts.

Some designers choose to control the appearance of the elements on the screen by using specific width designations. This control may be achieved through the use of a HTML table-based design, or through the use of CSS. Whenever the text, images, and layout of a design do not change as the browser changes, this is referred to as a fixed width design. Proponents of fixed width design prefer the control over the look and feel of the site and the precision placement of objects on the page. Other designers choose a liquid design. A liquid design is one, like Wikipedia, where the design moves to flow content into the whole screen, or a portion of the screen, no matter what the size of the browser window. Proponents of liquid design prefer to use all the screen space available. Liquid design can be achieved through the use of CSS, by avoiding styling the page altogether, or by using HTML tables set to a percentage of the page. Both liquid and fixed design developers must make decisions about how the design should degrade on higher and lower screen resolutions. Sometimes the pragmatic choice is made to flow the design between a minimum and a maximum width. This allows the designer to avoid coding for the browser choices making up the long tail, while still using all available screen space.

Similar to liquid layout is the optional fit to window feature with Adobe Flash content. This is a fixed layout that optimally scales the content of the page without changing the arrangement or text wrapping when the browser is resized.

Flash

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary, robust graphics animation/application development program used to create and deliver dynamic content, media (such as sound and video), and interactive applications over the web via the browser.

Flash is not a standard produced by a vendor-neutral standards organization like most of the core protocols and formats on the Internet. Flash is much more restrictive than the open HTML format, though, requiring a proprietary plugin to be seen, and it does not integrate with most web browser UI features like the “Back” button unless a hyperlink is programmed to link a new html page from the Flash file, in which case the animation of the previous page would reset. However, those restrictions may be irrelevant depending on the goals of the web site design.

According to NPD study, 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed [2], with 45%-56%[3] (depending on region) having the latest version. Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.

Many graphic artists use Flash because it gives them exact control over every part of the design, and anything can be animated and generally “jazzed up”. Some application designers enjoy Flash because it lets them create applications that don’t have to be refreshed or go to a new web page every time an action occurs. Flash can use embedded fonts instead of the standard fonts installed on most computers. There are many sites which forego HTML entirely for Flash. Other sites may use Flash content combined with HTML as conservatively as gifs or jpegs would be used, but with smaller vector file sizes and the option of faster loading animations. Flash may also be used to protect content from unauthorized duplication or searching.

Flash detractors claim that Flash websites tend to be poorly designed, and often use confusing and non-standard user-interfaces. Up until recently, search engines have been unable to index Flash objects, which has prevented sites from having their contents easily found. This is because many search engine crawlers rely on text to index websites. It is possible to specify alternate content to be displayed for browsers that do not support Flash. Using alternate content also helps search engines to understand the page, and can result in much better visibility for the page. However, the vast majority of Flash websites are not disability accessible (for screen readers, for example) or Section 508 compliant. An additional issue is that sites which commonly use alternate content for search engines to their human visitors are usually judged to be spamming search engines and are automatically banned.

The most recent incarnation of Flash’s scripting language (called “ActionScript”, which is an ECMA language similar to JavaScript) incorporates long-awaited usability features, such as respecting the browser’s font size and allowing blind users to use screen readers. Actionscript 2.0 is an Object-Oriented language, allowing the use of CSS, XML, and the design of class-based web applications.

CSS versus tables

For more details on this topic, see Tableless web design.

Back when Netscape Navigator 4 dominated the browser market, the popular solution available for designers to lay out a Web page was by using tables. Often even simple designs for a page would require dozens of tables nested in each other. Many web templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use this technique today. Navigator 4 didn’t support CSS to a useful degree, so it simply wasn’t used.

After the browser wars were over, and Internet Explorer dominated the market, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what’s going on in a web page. Today, all modern Web browsers now support CSS with different degrees of limitations.

However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts, developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today, though, designing with reasonable adherence to standards involves little more than applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.

These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design.

How it Looks vs. How it Works

Since so many web developers have a graphic arts background, some may pay more attention to how a page looks, without considering how visitors are going to find the page via a search engine. Some may rely more on advertising than search engines to attract visitors to the site. On the other side of the issue, search engine optimization consultants (SEOs) obsess about how well a web site works technically and textually: how much traffic it generates via search engines, and how many sales it makes, assuming looks don’t contribute to the sales. As a result, the designers and SEOs often end up in disputes where the designer wants more ‘pretty’ graphics, and the SEO wants lots of ‘ugly’ keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text links. One could argue that this is a false dichotomy due to the possibility that a web design may integrate the two disciplines for a collaborative and synergistic solution. Because some graphics serve communication purposes in addition to aesthetics, how well a site works may depend on the graphic designer’s visual communication ideas as well as the SEO considerations.

Another problem when using lots of graphics on a page is that download times can be greatly lengthened, often irritating the user. This has become less of a problem as the internet has evolved with high-speed internet and the use of vector graphics. This is an engineering challenge to increase bandwidth in addition to an artistic challenge to minimize graphics and graphic file sizes. This is an on-going challenge as increased bandwidth invites increased amounts of content.

Accessible Web design

Main article: Web accessibility

Accessible Web design is the art of creating webpages that are accessible to everyone, using any device. It is especially important so that people with disabilities – whether due to accident, disease or old age – can access the information in Web pages and be able to navigate through the website.

To be accessible, web pages and sites must conform to certain accessibility principles. These can be grouped into the following main areas:

• use semantic markup that provides a meaningful structure to the document (i.e. web page)
• Semantic markup also refers to semantically organizing the web page structure and publishing web services description accordingly so that they can be recognised by other web services on different web pages. Standards for semantic web are set by IEEE
• use a valid markup language that conforms to a published DTD or Schema
• provide text equivalents for any non-text components (e.g. images, multimedia)
• use hyperlinks that make sense when read out of context. (e.g. avoid “Click Here.”)
• don’t use frames
• use CSS rather than HTML Tables for layout.
• author the page so that when the source code is read line-by-line by user agents (such as a screen readers) it remains intelligible. (Using tables for design will often result in information that is not.)

However, W3C permits an exception where tables for layout either make sense when linearized or an alternate version (perhaps linearized) is made available.

Website Planning

Before creating and uploading a website, it is important to take the time to plan exactly what is needed in the website. Thoroughly considering the audience or target market, as well as defining the purpose and deciding what content will be developed are extremely important.

Purpose

It is essential to define the purpose of the website as one of the first steps in the planning process. A purpose statement should show focus based on what the website will accomplish and what the users will get from it. A clearly defined purpose will help the rest of the planning process as the audience is identified and the content of the site is developed. Setting short and long term goals for the website will help make the purpose clear and plan for the future when expansion, modification, and improvement will take place. Also, goal-setting practices and measurable objectives should be identified to track the progress of the site and determine success.

Audience

Defining the audience is a key step in the website planning process. The audience is the group of people who are expected to visit your website – the market being targeted. These people will be viewing the website for a specific reason and it is important to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit the site. A clearly defined purpose or goal of the site as well as an understanding of what visitors want to do/feel when they come to your site will help to identify the target audience. Upon considering who is most likely to need/use the content, a list of characteristics common to the users such as:

• Audience Characteristics
• Information Preferences
• Computer Specifications
• Web Experience

Taking into account the characteristics of the audience will allow an effective website to be created that will deliver the desired content to the target audience.

Content

Content evaluation and organization requires that the purpose of the website be clearly defined. Collecting a list of the necessary content then organizing it according to the audience’s needs is a key step in website planning. In the process of gathering the content being offered, any items that do not support the defined purpose or accomplish target audience objectives should be removed. It is a good idea to test the content and purpose on a focus group and compare the offerings to the audience needs. The next step is to organize the basic information structure by categorizing the content and organizing it according to user needs. Each category should be named with a concise and descriptive title that will become a link on the website. Planning for the site’s content ensures that the wants/needs of the target audience and the purpose of the site will be fulfilled.

Compatibility and restrictions

Because of the market share of modern browsers (depending on your target market), the compatibility of your website with the viewers is restricted. For instance, a website that is designed for the majority of websurfers will be limited to the use of valid XHTML 1.0 Strict or older, Cascading Style Sheets Level 1, and 1024×768 display resolution. This is because Internet Explorer is not fully W3C standards compliant with the modularity of XHTML 1.1 and the majority of CSS beyond 1. A target market of more alternative browser (e.g. Firefox and Opera) users allow for more W3C compliance and thus a greater range of options for a web designer.

Another restriction on webpage design is the use of different Image file formats. The majority of users can support GIF, JPEG, and PNG (with restrictions). Again Internet Explorer is the major restriction here, not fully supporting PNG’s advanced transparency features, resulting in the GIF format still being the most widely used graphic file format for transparent images.

Many website incompatibilities go unnoticed by the designer and unreported by the users. The only way to be certain a website will work on a particular platform is to test it on that platform.

Planning documentation

Documentation is used to visually plan the site while taking into account the purpose, audience and content, to design the site structure, content and interactions that are most suitable for the website. Documentation may be considered a prototype for the website – a model which allows the website layout to be reviewed, resulting in suggested changes, improvements and/or enhancements. This review process increases the likelihood of success of the website.

First, the content is categorized and the information structure is formulated. The information structure is used to develop a document or visual diagram called a site map. This creates a visual of how the web pages will be interconnected, which helps in deciding what content will be placed on what pages. There are three main ways of diagramming the website structure:

• Linear Website Diagrams will allow the users to move in a predetermined sequence;
• Hierarchical structures (of Tree Design Website Diagrams) provide more than one path for users to take to their destination;
• Branch Design Website Diagrams allow for many interconnections between web pages such as hyperlinks within sentences.

In addition to planning the structure, the layout and interface of individual pages may be planned using a storyboard. In the process of storyboarding, a record is made of the description, purpose and title of each page in the site, and they are linked together according to the most effective and logical diagram type. Depending on the number of pages required for the website, documentation methods may include using pieces of paper and drawing lines to connect them, or creating the storyboard using computer software.

Some or all of the individual pages may be designed in greater detail as a website wireframe, a mock up model or comprehensive layout of what the page will actually look like. This is often done in a graphic program, or layout design program. The wireframe has no working functionality, only planning.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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1. Only worry about the top 4 – The most important search engines are Google, Yahoo, MSN, and AOL. Don’t be fooled by automated programs that submit your site to thousands of search engines, because 94% of all web searches are performed on these top four search sites. So you might as well concentrate your time and money on these four and not even worry about the rest.
2. Target your search terms – The easiest and the most important goal is to get your site listed when someone searches on the name of your company. This will help existing customers or people who have been referred by others to find your site. Of course it is also nice if people find you when they are searching for a product or service that you offer. This is harder, and how hard depends on how many other sites also want to appear when someone is searching for that product or service. Generally the less general the search term, the better your chances of getting listed. For example, if you target the term “house painting”, you will be competing with a lot of other sites in the country, including large sites with a much better chance of appearing high in the results. If you target the term “house painting bakersville” you will have a better chance of appearing high in the results – and of finding potential customers in your town of Bakersville.
3. Optimize your content – Once you have chosen a few search terms that you want to target (generally called key words), make sure that the content (text) on your site includes these terms. The first 100 words or so on a page are the most important, so make sure your key words are included there.
4. Format your content – Search engine indexes focus on the content in certain areas of your site. One of these is the first 100 words on a page, as mentioned above. Another is the Heading 1 section of the page, indicated by being included between the bracketsANDin the HTML code. Most HTML Editors and web page building software allows you to highlight some text and designate it as Heading 1. Make sure you do this for the first bit of text on the page, ideally a headline of some sort, and make sure it includes your most important key words (like your company name). Other areas where you can add your key words are in the Alt tags for images – the text that appears as a tool tip when you hover over an image.
5. Add title and meta tags – The HTML title tag and meta tags are used by the search engines to generate their index – including the text that appears in your listing in the results. The title tag appears in the header bar of the site visitor’s browser, and the meta tags are invisible bits of HTML code that don’t appear when someone is looking at your site. There are a number of meta tags available, but the most important of these is the Description tag (the Keyword tag is generally not used by search engine indexes any longer). The Title tag should be up to 60 characters long, and the meta Description tag up to 250 characters. Make sure these include your key words!
6. Focus on your home page – It is possible to get pages other than your home page listed in the search engine results, but unless you have a big site with pages that cover significantly different types of content, it is probably best to focus your energy on your home page. The number of links to a page make a big difference in the ranking of your site (see next topic), so it is usually most expedient to concentrate on getting links to your home page.
7. Get links to your site – The search engine indexes, especially Google’s, place a lot of emphasis on the number of links pointing to your web site from other web sites to determine your site’s “popularity” – and popularity plays a large part in how high they will rank you. So do whatever you can to get links to your site from other sites, and the more popular these other sites are, the more they help you. Good places to get these links are directories such as those on the web sites of your chamber of commerce, trade association, or community web sites. You can also pay to have your link included in sites such as yellow pages directories.
8. Submit your site – Once you’ve optimized your site’s content for your key words, it is time to submit your site to the search engine indexes. The most important is Google, which is free and can be found at http://www.google.com/addurl.html. Another good choice is Inktomi, which you can add for $39 per year at http://www.positiontech.com/inktomi/index.htm. And lastly, if you can afford it, the Yahoo directory is a good investment for $299 per year at http://add.yahoo.com/fast/add?+Business.
9. Avoid the link spammers – There are a lot of “search engine optimization” companies that will offer to improve your search engine rankings for a fee. Some of these use “link farms” or “link spamming” to generate a lot of links to your site from pages full of links or from “doorway pages” that redirect to your site. The goal is to improve the popularity of your site with all of these other links. This is a risky proposition for two reasons – one is that they are frowned upon by the search engines and they have been known to ban sites that use them from their indexes, and the other is that a lot of the companies that do this for you are “fly by night” operations with less than reputable business practices. So use caution when considering such an investment.
10. Consider getting assistance – And lastly, a little message from our sponsor. If you need a web site and want to optimize it and submit it to the search engines, consider using a service that will do it for you. The whole process is fairly complex and can be rather daunting, so it may be worth the investment to have someone else do it. Our sponsor, Decisive Web Sites, offers a web site building and hosting service designed for small businesses that costs only $9.95 per month, and they offer a Site Submit service where they will complete all of the steps above for you for only $95.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, SEO / SEM. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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Type: Payment Processor

Founded in 1998, PayPal (owned by eBay) is the world largest consumer payment service.

Overview

• Over 64 million account members worldwide
• Available in 45 countries around the world
• Used extensively by buyers and sellers on eBay
• Fast set-up and low free structure
• Inbuilt fraud prevention system
• Suitable for online businesses and traditional offline businesses

Description

PayPal enables any individual or business to securely and quickly send and receive payments online.

Overall, they are a great low-cost payment processor for small businesses and offer a wide range of features.

One major advantage of using PayPal is that you don’t need an Internet merchant account. PayPal allows you to transfer your settled funds into any regular bank or credit card account.

Opening your account takes around 10 minutes and their user interface is simple and easy-to-use. PayPal allows you to send and receive funds in the following currencies:

• Australian Dollars
• US Dollars
• Canadian Dollars
• Pounds Sterling
• Euros
• Yen

Recommended For

If you’re new to eCommerce and you’re unsure as to how many sales you’ll be getting each day, getting a PayPal account is a good way to ‘test the waters’ without making a big financial commitment.

For fees and signup information, visit PayPal at:

www.PayPal.com - United States
www.PayPal.com.au - Australia

WorldPay

Type: Merchant Account Provider and Payment Gateway

Overview

• Owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland, the 5th largest banking group in the world
• Used by thousands of merchants worldwide
• Inbuilt fraud prevention measures
• Allows merchants to accept payments over the Internet, by phone, fax and mail
• Recommended for businesses that need to sell in multiple currencies.

Description

WorldPay is a merchant account provider and payment gateway service rolled into one.

Accounts take as little as 7-10 days to set-up and they accept over 90% of companies that apply for merchant account facilities.

In addition to regular payment processing, WorldPay allows merchants to accept installment payments and recurring subscription payments.

This is a great feature for businesses that have to re-bill their customers on a regular basis (e.g. gyms, membership based websites, etc)

Recommended For

We recommend WorldPay for merchants that are targeting an international audience and need to accept multiple currencies.

For example, if you have a site based in Australia that sells to customers in the UK, US and Japan, you can offer your products in British Pounds, US Dollars and Japanese Yen.

This helps to increase your sales conversion rate as most people feel more comfortable paying in their local currency and not worrying about the conversion rate.

For fees and signup information, visit WorldPay at:
www.worldpay.com

eWAY

Type: Payment Gateway

Overview

• Australian-based payment gateway established in 1998
• Requires an Internet Merchant Account from a bank
• Inbuilt fraud screening
• Recommended for businesses with a high volume of transactions.

Description

eWAY is an Australian-based payment gateway established in 1998 and is an eCommerce partner with the following banks:

• St George Bank
• ANZ Bank
• Commonwealth Bank of Australia
• National Australia Bank
• WestPac Banking Corporation
• Bank of SA
• BankWest

To use eWAY you must first apply for an Internet merchant account with one of the banks listed above. Once your application is approved by the bank, you can open an eWay account and start accepting credit card payments.

Recommended For

We recommend eWay for businesses who need to maintain a high volume/low cost structure. eWay is popular with retail-based operations and charges in Australian currency only.

For fees and signup information, visit eWay at:
www.eway.com.au

Payment Processing Fees

While third party payment processors like PayPal have a simple fee structure, a Merchant Accounts/Payment Gateway combination is a little more complicated.

Here’s a breakdown of each the fees and what they mean:

1. Merchant Account Fees

Application/Set-up fee: Banking institutions will charge a fee to apply for a merchant account, regardless of whether your application is successful or not.

Once your application has been approved, there may be other fees associated with establishing the account so check before applying.

Monthly Account Fee: A monthly fee charged by the bank to keep your account open.

Discount/Charge Rate: The percentage fee you pay to the credit card company (Visa, MasterCard, etc) for each transaction. For example, if you sell a product for $100 and your charge rate is 2.5%, you’ll pay them $2.50.

Statement Fee: A monthly fee a bank will charge for issuing your account statement, which outlines your transactions. Some banks may allow you to avoid statement fees by receiving your statements in an electronic format rather than in print.

Chargeback Fee: The fee which is charged in the event a customer disputes a transaction on their statement (e.g. fraud, not happy with purchase, etc).
2. Payment Gateway Fees

Application/Set-up Fee: A flat fee charged to set-up your payment gateway account.

Monthly/Yearly Fee: A flat monthly or yearly fee charged by your payment gateway provider to gain access to their service.

Transaction Fee: A flat fee charged by your payment gateway to process each transaction (e.g. 50 cents per transaction).

What is a ‘Chargeback’?

A chargeback occurs when the owner of a credit card successfully disputes that they are not responsible for a charge appearing on their statement.

A chargeback can occur if:

• A credit card is stolen and used fraudulently
• Goods or services are not delivered within the specified time frame
• Goods are received damaged
• The purchase was not authorized by the credit card holder

In general, a chargeback usually goes in favour of the consumer, so prevention is definitely the best cure.

The best way to avoid charge backs is to:

1. Make sure all the details of your products and services on your website are accurate and clearly explained.
2. Cover all aspects of your purchase policies in the ‘Terms and Conditions’ page of your website.
3. Ship goods and services on time and contact your customer if there is going to be any delay.
4. Screen for fraudulent orders and monitor for suspicious purchasing behaviour.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio,Services, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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An affiliate is an individual or company that promotes products and services for a merchant, in return for a commission.

eCommerce

eCommerce can be generally defined as:

• The buying and selling of goods and services over the Internet
• The transfer of funds through the Internet

Checkout ProcessRefers to the process a customer must go through to purchase a product or service from your website.

Conversion Rate

Conversion rate refers to the percentage of visitors who take a desired action. From an eCommerce perspective, this means the number of browsers to your site who convert into buyers.

Internet Merchant Account

An Internet merchant account is an account created by a bank or financial institution to receive online credit card payments.

Manual/Offline Transaction

A transaction which is processed offline after an order has been received. For example, a merchant may receive an order via telephone, mail order or email and process the transaction with an EFTPOS terminal.

Payment Gateway

A payment gateway charges your customers credit cards via the web and sends the funds to your merchant account.

Payment Processor 3rd Party

Third party processing services are basically a payment gateway and merchant account rolled into one.

The difference is a payment processor does not require you to have an Internet merchant account and can settle funds to a regular bank account.

Privacy Policy

A Privacy Policy is a disclaimer placed on a website informing users about how the website collects and stores a user’s personal information.

Real Time Transaction

A ‘real time’ transaction is one which is processed immediately (as opposed to a manual transaction which is processed offline after an order has been received).

Shopping Cart Software

A shopping cart is a system which enables you to sell your products and services on the web.

SSL Encryption / Secure Server

SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is a system for securing and transferring private information via the Internet.

SSL works by encrypting your data and transferring it over a secure connection. 128 bit is the industry standard and refers to the level of protection a website offers.

Terms & Conditions

Terms and Conditions on your website specify:

• How visitors can use your website: For example you may state that the user agrees not to copy any materials on the site.If your website is only suitable for adults you may state that users have to be 18 and over to use the site.
• Purchase Policies: You should clearly state any purchase policies including warranty, shipping, refunds and returns.

Anything else of significance, including waiver of warranties, limited liability, indemnification, grounds for termination of service, etc.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:10 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio,Services, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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Back in the dinosaur ages of the Internet (1994), there was no such thing as real time credit card transactions. In those days, you had to make your purchase over the telephone or via email and your order would be processed offline.

Thankfully times have changed.

Instead of sending cheques via the post, customers can now make instant payments and businesses can receive their money almost immediately.

However, even through the technology has rapidly progressed, the fundamental rules of eCommerce remain the same.

To generate sales on your website you still need to do two things:

1. Drive quality traffic to your website
2. Have a sales system in place to convert browsers into buyers

Without these two components, the process of collecting the money (eCommerce) is irrelevant.

And that’s why many eCommerce sites fail – they jump the gun by worrying about all the ‘bells and whistles’ before developing a plan to generate traffic to their site.

Clearly, the most successful eCommerce sites are not the ones that just come up with a great ‘idea’ but the ones that build their businesses around a pre-existing demand in the marketplace.

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With growing tendencies towards a shared global business environment and an ever increasing reliance on the internet there is no doubt that having your company as available as possible to the greatest amount of consumers is becoming the primary aim of many companies, and website designing Jeddah firms are aiding in this process. It is becoming more and more apparent that businesses are making use of these firms expertise to help them boost their reach and customer base. With the economy progressively on the rise, these businesses are ambitious to stay at the forefront of technology to continue is this exciting and profitable atmosphere and web design Jeddah is making this possible.

Due to this growing reliance on expert skills in web development Jeddah, it is becoming a more lucrative industry with many firms offering Jeddah web design services are being more in demand.But merely having a website is not enough in this technological day and age, and web designing Jeddah professionals have to find different ways to keep businesses current with international trends. The appearance of a website is no longer the only aspect of web design facing website development Jeddah practitioners. How fast and efficient the website is also plays a vital role in how consumers respond to it which also impacts on the reach the business has. Furthermore, user friendliness and the ability to be easily locatable in relevant searches also plays a major role in how much traffic a site will get.

Throughout the world this reliance on the internet is becoming the consumer’s best and most dependable way to locate relevant companies and businesses. The efficiency is giving browsers the freedom to quickly and easily locate what they need and web development and design businesses all over the world are reacting to this new trend.Without website design firms in general and website development Jeddah businesses in particular, this high technology age would bypass a number of companies who would definitely loose out to more adaptable competitors.

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Being the third largest emirate in the United Arab Emirates, Sharjah Emirate is home to its largest city and seat of government Sharjah city. This flourishing economy accounts for forty seven percent of the industrial gross domestic product of the UAE and is most certainly part of the movement forwards in terms of economic growth. There can be no doubt to the importance of website designing in Sharjah, as, with any thriving hub of business activity, the businesses of this region are having to rely more and more on the internet. With consumers looking towards search engines for their answers, web design Sharjah firms are as much in demand as those in the rest of the world with businesses needing their services if they want to stay ahead. The importance of web design firms is made greater by the ever changing environment of the internet and the fast paced nature of our technological age. Having a website is no longer the only criteria for a company wanting to continue changing with the times. Companies also have to consider the speed, reliability, and functionality of their websites in order to be as easily accessible to audiences as possible. Web development Sharjah firms have to continually adapt and change with the times in order to keep in line with the current trends of the rest of the world. Without this ability to grow and transform, firms would not be able to provide the necessary web services to their numerous clients. Most of the current trends involve a move away from standard designs with a high tendency towards highlighting information in new and exciting ways. Large and new fonts are being used all the time in order to draw attention, and a semi-transparent design behind salient points draws attention. Ultimately, we are finding that capturing audience’s interest has become a driving factor for Sharjah website design companies wanting to continue in their industry.

With the ever changing nature of business, and a technological era that brings change and transformation more quickly than is comfortable, the need for website design and website design firms is ever apparent. Many companies are not able to adapt fast enough in these uncertain times, and it is only through the use of experts that are up to date with current trends that a business can function and adjust accordingly. Website design Sharjah is a necessary industry in a thriving economy offering essential services to companies that would otherwise not be able to keep up.

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/ecommerce-middle-east.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/ecommerce-middle-east.jpg" alt="E-commerce in the Middle East - Statistics and Trends" width="580" /></a><br /> <strong>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a></strong>

Online Shoppers by Age and Gender

52-53% of shoppers who are older than 26shop online

Almost half the consumers in the Middle East (47%) own a payment card
70 to 80% of online purchases of physical goods in the Middle East are paid through Cash-On-Delivery, while 30% is paid online

Most commonly used payment methods in the Middle East

66% of consumers use the internet to research products and services

33% of internet users in the Gulf regularly use the internet to purchase or research products

Among all GCC countries, around 43% of internet users reported making an online purchase at least once a month

Most Popular Online Shopping Categories

Major Reasons Why People Shop Online

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/cyber-crime.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/cyber-crime.jpg" alt="Cyber Crime Statistics and Trends" width="580" /></a><br /> <strong>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a></strong>

Yearly Cyber Crime Victim Count Estimate

More than 600,000 FaceBook accounts are compromised every day.

15% of social network users have reported that their profiles have been hacked by pretenders.

1 in 10 social network users said they’d fallen victim to a scam or fake link on social network platforms.

Common Types Of Cyber Attacks

Botnets have been using as many as 120,000 infected “zombie” computers to send out spam each day.

% Of Cybercrime Victims By Gender

59% of ex-employees admitted to stealing company data when leaving previous jobs.

Data Breach Statistics By Industry

*is the use of computers and computer networks to promote political ends, chiefly free speech, human rights, and information ethics

 Statistics Of Bank Fund Fraud Cases Loss And Recovery

• 22% were able to hold on to funds
• 10% were able to recover fraudulently transferred funds
• 68% were declared unrecoverable
• 37% caused loss to banks due to reimbursements
• 60% caused loss to businesses

 Causes For 85% Of Direct Financial Costs Of Cyber-Attacks In The U.S

 Russia and the U.S. are the largest contributors when it comes to malware attacks making up 39.4% and 19.7% of hosted malware, respectively.

US Navy sees 110,000 cyber-attacks every hour, or more than 30 every single second

Top 15 Countries Where Cyber Attacks Originate (February 2013)

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/global-mobile.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/global-mobile.jpg" alt="Global Mobile Advertising - Statistics and Trends" width="580" /></a></p> <p>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a>

Global Mobile Ad Spending (2012-2016)

Mobile advertising accounted for 18 percent of paid search budgets in 2012

22.7 percent of consumers used a mobile device to visit a retailer’s site in December 2012, up from 14.6 percent in 2011.

Mobile Ad Spending by Region (2012-2016)

M-commerce sales will account for 15% of total ecommerce sales in 2013

Mobile Ad Spending By Category

Market Share of Net Mobile Ad Revenues by Company

Highest CTR for Mobile Ads was in between 6 Pm and Midnight

Target Demographics of Mobile Ad Campaign

By Age

By Gender

 Mobile Ad Spending by Platform

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-gaming.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-gaming.jpg" alt="Social Gaming Industry – Statistics & Trends" width="580" /></a></p> <p>Infographic by- <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a>

Distribution of Social Gamers by Gender

Average age of gamer: Social Network Games Vs Console Games – Female 40 Years Vs Male 37 Years

Social Gamers by Age Group

Social games are centered on shared user experience with in the social media application framework (such as FaceBook) in which they are played.

Worldwide Social Gaming Market (2011-2014)

By 2014, 50% of social networking users and 34% of total internet users will play social games.

Monetization of the Social Gaming Industry

 The average engagement rate of Social Gaming Ads is 20%, as compared to 0.50% of FaceBook-brand pages

Stats Of Virtual Items Purchased: 1-5% Of Social Gaming Population

The US social gaming market will reach $5 billion by 2015

Top 10 Social Gaming Developers Based on Monthly Active Users (MAU)

 Social and mobile gaming video Ads have the highest completion rate in the online Ad industry, i.e., 91%.

Top 10 Social Games By Number Of MAUs

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-media-advertising.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/social-media-advertising.jpg" alt="Social Media Advertising - Spending Statistics and Trends" width="580" /></a><br /> Infographic by- <a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a>

Estimated Global Social Network Ad Revenues (2012-2014)

Global Social Network Ad Spending Shareby Region (2012-2014)

64% of advertisers expect to increase their social mediaadvertising budget in 2013

Average breakdown of Social Media Advertising budget

Social media Ad spend to hit 19.5% of total marketing budget by 2017

Percentage Of Online Advertising Budget Dedicated To Social Media Advertising

Primary Objectives of Social Media Advertisers

Top 10 Social Media Advertisers Of 2012 By Number Of Impressions

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/ceo-social-media.jpg"><img src="http://www.go-gulf.com/ceo-social-media.jpg" alt="CEOs on Social Media Statistics" width="580" /></a><br /> Infographic by-<a href="http://www.go-gulf.com/">GO-Gulf.com</a>

The Most Popular Social Media Channels Amongst Among CEOs

Major Benefits Of CEO Participation In Social Media

How important is it for CEOs to engage on Social Media?

CEOs who participate on social media can build better connections.

82% of consumers are more likely to trust a company whose CEO and leadership team engage on social media.

77% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO and leadership team engage on social media

78% of professionals would prefer to work for a company whose leadership in active on social media.

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/social-media-team.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/social-media-team.jpg” alt=”How Organizations Structure Social Media Teams” width=”580″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Web Design Company </a>

Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com

Data Source – http://www.ragan.com/Main/StructuringaSocialMediaTeam.aspx

How Many Organizations Have An Exclusive Social Media Team?

How Many People Work On Social Media?

Companies Planning To Hire More People To Manage Social Media Activities Next Year

25% Of Companies Use Interns To Help With Some Aspect Of Social Media

Qualities Most Sought-After In Social Media People

Preferred Level of Experience

Preferred Education Degree

Only 5% of Companies Are Highly Satisfied With Their Social Media Campaigns

Which Departments Are Involved In Social Media Efforts?

How Does The Company Measure Its Social Media Campaign?

How Often Do Companies Post On Social Media?

Major Roadblocks In Social Media Campaign Measurement

What Are The Major Goals Of Social Media Campaigns?

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Any web development firm in Abu Dhabi will tell you the same thing:

Get your website designed and developed

Have SEO implemented into it to allow search engines to find your business

Link to other sites and get them to link to you, and improve your overall rankings

Watch the popularity of your business grow

A professional and informative website constructed by a website development firm from Dubai will pay for itself many times over. Whatever money you invest to a web development Dubai official will be well spent and worth every cent. Your revenue will reflect this as it increases with the constant web exposure.

Think of your website as the front man or the receptionist for your company. It is the first impression that anyone will get of what you have to offer and where your level of service lies. This is something that can be showcased to the entire world! By having an experienced web development firm from Dubai handle your initiation into the online world, you will be distributing your business information to everyone who owns a PC and has internet access. Not just via national portals, but internationally!

It is also very evident that in today’s society, no one makes use of conventional means of research when looking for service providers or businesses. In fact, conventional means are now all centred on the internet. If you consider that the internet is a massive and all encompassing Yellow Pages Guide, that covers the entire world and every business in it, then you would be making a huge mistake by not advertising in it. Consult a few web development Abu Dhabiprofessionals, and they will give you the same instructions: In order to make it in the business world today, the only way to enhance your business, increase sales and make the most leads possible is to implement a fully functional and informative SEO based website.

Resources Box: Karel founded in 2004, his company GO-Gulf.com has grown from a web portals development company into an international online web applications design and development company that does business everywhere in the region and works with people from different parts of the world.http://www.go-gulf.com, since its inception, continues to be guided by the core values exhibited by its founder.

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Due to the ever changing nature of the internet, and new developments in technology coming on a seemingly daily basis, there are constantly new trends in this flourishing business industry. Web development Doha has to keep up with these trends in order to keep their clients current in a rapidly progressing world. By having a look at some of the current techniques being used in Web development in Doha to make sure websites are able to compete allows one to appreciate the level of skill and expertise involved.

Letterpress is the process by which letters are pressed so that they look like they have been cut out. Huge Typography utilizes larger fonts in order to make certain aspects of a website stand out. PNG transparency is similarly meant to highlight more important information by using semi transparent designs in the background. Font replacement is also becoming more popular, with old, standard fonts being replaced my more interesting fonts. Ultimately, website design and development across the globe, and Website design Doha in specific is moving away from the outdated designs and towards more interesting and appealing websites that are interactive and interesting for viewers. There is a lot of focus on highlighting significant points and catching audience attention. Doha Web designfirms are no different with firms wanting to keep their clients as up to date with modern trends as possible.

With a booming economy and an ever increasing business sector, Web development Doha has become an essential service and it is little wonder that the firms of Doha are constantly adapting in order to keep current with the latest trends of the rest of the world.

The post Growing Web Design and Development Trends in Doha Qatar appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Bahrain Website Design firms are even more important with the constant changing environment of the internet. New trends and techniques are being used on a daily basis and companies are no longer satisfied with merely having a website out there. Websites are having to become more interactive, more user friendly, and above all more easily locatable in a world where every search yields thousands of possible websites. Website designing Bahrain is really nothing without SEO Bahrain and Logo Design Bahrain all of which are necessary in keeping the companies of this region up to date and on a competitive level Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process by which a company increases the amount of traffic it gets by appearing as early as possible in any search engine results. Website development Bahrain firms have realized the importance on this in keeping the businesses of the country up to date with modern trends. SEO, a recognizable logo, and a fully functioning easy to use website are how companies are trying to stamp their identities on an ever expending business world. Without Website design Bahrain firms, it would be very difficult for the companies of this region to compete in this environment.

It is clear that companies can no longer flourish in this culture of sensory overload if they cannot adapt and change with the rest of the world. Website design Bahrain and Website development in Bahrain are bringing the up and coming businesses of region in line with modern trends and making sure that this growing economy continues to grow steadily. There can be little doubt that Web designing Bahrain firms have filled an essential role within this economy.

The post Web design, development, SEO business in Bahrain appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

With growing propensity towards a communal international business environment and an ever increasing dependence on the internet there is no uncertainty that having your company as accessible as possible to the maximum amount of customers is becoming the principal endeavor of many companies, and web design Riyadh firms are assisting in this process for Saudi Arabia’s capital and largest city. It is becoming increasingly evident that businesses are making use of these firms’ capabilities to facilitate boosting their reach and customer base. Within this growing and flourishing economy, businesses are determined to stay at ahead of competitors and Web designing Riyadh is making this possible for many companies in this prosperous city.

Saudi Arabia has recently gained a promise from the G20 that it will be among the 10 rising economies to have more money for the banks that loan to them and a greater say in those banks. Despite having suffered with the global depression in recent years, Saudi Arabia’s earlier years of economic strength have ensured that they have a lot of say in the world market. This level of influence definitely attests to the fact that business in Saudi Arabia is doing well and nowhere more so than in the capital Riyadh. Sustaining these flourishing businesses is only possible through up to date business practices such as Web development Riyadh and Website designing Riyadh. Due to this increasing dependence on specialist expertise in Website development Riyadh, it is becoming a profitable industry with many firms offering website development in Riyadh becoming increasingly in demand. But simply having a website is no longer sufficient in this modern age of technology and Riyadh website design practitioners have to constantly find new ways to keep businesses as current as possible. Appearance, efficiency, speed, and user friendliness all play major roles in the success of a website and the amount of traffic a site will get.

Creative website development businesses throughout the world are continuously coming up with exciting ways for companies to keep up with the ever changing arena of the technological world. It is only through the successful adaptation of companies in these changing times that they can be successful. Web development in Riyadh is allowing the businesses of that city this ability through the expertise and knowledge they possess. Web design Riyadh firms have placed themselves in a position of great significance in a successful economy and are clearly a necessary commodity to any company in this region.

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Nowhere is this increasing trend to the internet more pertinent than to the wealthy economy of the UAE and Abu Dhabi in particular. With a GDP of $68 000 per capita, this flourishing economy has given Abu Dhabi the privilege of being amongst the world’s wealthiest countries and leaves no doubt to the importance of keeping with the changing times and being able to adapt to the new business world. Website design Abu Dhabi has become a significant industry in this growing and changing climate and it comes as no surprise that businesses are more and more reliant on web design companies. Website development in Abu Dhabi has become a lucrative business with new companies starting up continuously and the need growing every day. The need for these companies in this technologically advanced world is further increased by the fact that having a good website is no longer the only criteria. Appearance is just one aspect of a functioning website that works for your company and web designing in Abu Dhabi has taken on a whole new level of skill with practitioners having to maintain speed, user friendliness, functionality, and appearance of the website as a whole to maximize on browser activity. Furthermore, with a trend away from Internet Explore and towards Mozilla Firefox, these firms also have to make sure that websites function and look the same in both platforms to optimize their activity and reach.

With an increasing trend towards global data sharing and a global business environment there is no doubt that having your company as accessible as possible to the largest amount of people is becoming the foremost goal of many companies, and website designing Abu Dhabi firms are making this possible for one of the leading economies in the world. There is no doubt that more and more business are making use of these firms skills, and no surprise then that businesses are looking for web design companies that can help them boost their reach. With the economy steadily on the incline, these businesses are hungry to stay at the forefront of technology to continue is this exciting and lucrative environment and Abu Dhabi web design is making this possible.

The post Abu Dhabi Businesses Looking for Web Design Companies appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Nowhere is this increasing trend to the internet more pertinent than to the wealthy economy of the UAE and Abu Dhabi in particular. With a GDP of $68 000 per capita, this flourishing economy has given Abu Dhabi the privilege of being amongst the world’s wealthiest countries and leaves no doubt to the importance of keeping with the changing times and being able to adapt to the new business world. Website design Abu Dhabi has become a significant industry in this growing and changing climate and it comes as no surprise that businesses are more and more reliant on web design companies. Website development in Abu Dhabi has become a lucrative business with new companies starting up continuously and the need growing every day. The need for these companies in this technologically advanced world is further increased by the fact that having a good website is no longer the only criteria. Appearance is just one aspect of a functioning website that works for your company and web designing in Abu Dhabi has taken on a whole new level of skill with practitioners having to maintain speed, user friendliness, functionality, and appearance of the website as a whole to maximize on browser activity. Furthermore, with a trend away from Internet Explore and towards Mozilla Firefox, these firms also have to make sure that websites function and look the same in both platforms to optimize their activity and reach.

With an increasing trend towards global data sharing and a global business environment there is no doubt that having your company as accessible as possible to the largest amount of people is becoming the foremost goal of many companies, and website designing Abu Dhabi firms are making this possible for one of the leading economies in the world. There is no doubt that more and more business are making use of these firms skills, and no surprise then that businesses are looking for web design companies that can help them boost their reach. With the economy steadily on the incline, these businesses are hungry to stay at the forefront of technology to continue is this exciting and lucrative environment and Abu Dhabi web design is making this possible.

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First of all, a good web design agency should have a large array of previous work that they have done. They should also make it clear on their web site. Going to their site, you should see a huge list of web sites – real, commercial web sites that are currently in use. You can quickly click on all of these and browse through the work that the agency has done in the past. Not only should there be a lot of different sites, but each one should be unique. This shows that the agency has the ability to make diverse sites that truly reflect the company that they represent, rather than just cookie-cutter sites.

The diversity of the web sites reflects another positive quality of your designer, and that is the fact that they really communicate well with their clients. They get hired by a business, and they make every possible effort to find out exactly what the business stands for, and what they wish to accomplish with their web site. This becomes obvious when you see the final product. If possible, you should find feedback of the particular agency, and see if their previous clients mention anything about their cooperativeness, or their ability to work with the company to create a better site.

All of these qualities point to the overall ability of a web design agency to create a web site that satisfies the customers desires, as well as sell whatever product or service the company is offering. So if you are starting a web design agency, do everything you can to strive towards these ideals. And if you are looking for a web design agency to make a web site for your company, be sure to consider all of these factors when considering each prospect.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio,Services, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post Finding The Best Of The Web Design Agencies appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Search engine optimization on the other hand refers to search engine positioning and placement, a concept whereby you improve your site’s design and content to achieve higher rankings in search engines. Do not confuse search engine submission with search engine optimization.

Free submissions doesn’t guarantee inclusion

You’re going to learn how to submit your Web pages to the search engines. Where possible, I will discuss free search engine submissions. Most search engines offer a “paid inclusion” service which guarantees inclusion of your Web pages, for a fee.

However, I haven’t covered the paid inclusion topic in this course, so as not to confuse those of you completely new to search engine optimization. You´ll find more information on paid-inclusion submission programs in my Search Engine Optimization Strategies ebook.

Please note that submitting your web site via free submission forms in search engines and web directories doesn’t guarantee inclusion into an index. You may have to resubmit again and again get all of your Web pages indexed.

What are web directories?

Web directories are human edited lists of web sites organized into categories of topics and subtopics. web directory submissions are an essential part of the search engine marketing and optimization process.

I highly recommend that you spend a bit of time selecting appropriate categories and composing your web directory titles and descriptions, as they will ultimately determine the success of your listings in the directories, and can also contribute a major part to the success of your listings in the search engines as well.

Each web directory have its own set of editorial and submission policies. So study the policies carefully before making any submissions. I recommend you submit your web sites to the top web directories, before submitting them to the search engines.

The reasons are because:

It helps search engines to find and index your web site, as they often crawl the top web directories
some search engines place a great deal of importance on links to web sites from top web directories. This will help you search engine rankings.

There’s only one recommended method of submitting your web site to the top web directories; by hand.

Search engine submission software claim to submit to web directories. But in reality you spend as much time entering your web site’s information into the software, as you would do if you submitted directly via the web directory submission form. So bypass the software and submit directly to the web directories.

What are search engines?

Search engines are defined as a set of programs that includes:

* a spider (crawler, bot or robot) that crawls the Internet retrieving Web documents, then follows links to retrieve other Web documents
* a program that creates an index from the documents retrieved by the spider
* a program that receives search requests, compares it to the entries in the index, and delivers the most relevant results to the user.

Search engines are the starting point for most people when they’re looking for something on the Internet. As such, it’s essential that your Web pages are indexed by the search engines. Otherwise, your Web pages simply won´t appear in the search engine search results.

Search engine submissions – also known as search engine registration – are important for getting your site indexed by search engines, but not as important as it used to be.

The reason is because more and more search engines, such as Google, do not rely on web site owners to submit their site for indexing. Instead they rely on finding sites via links from other web sites already in its index.

Having said that, it’s still a good idea to submit your web site to the search engines.

There are 3 ways to submit your web site to the top search engines; submit manually, use submission software, or use an online submission service.

Manual search engine submission

The process of ‘manual search engine submission’ means personally visiting each search engine and registering your Web pages.

Some search engines have a policy of only accepted a limited number of Web pages each day, so you would have to return each day to submit additional pages.

Most search engine spiders only crawl a limited number of pages in a site. So if you have a large site you should register every important page of your site, which may require many visits.

Search engine submission software
The alternative to the manual search engine submission process is to use search engine submission software or online services that simulate manual submissions. There is a very important distinction between the two, as most search engines have banned automated search engine submissions.

If a program or service does not simulate a manual submission, your submission will likely be ignored or rejected.
Search engine submission services

Online search engine submission services are similar to their software counterpart except they are hosted online rather than on your computer. Just like search engine submission software, online search engine submission services should also simulate manual submissions.

Many online search engine submission services are very basic in design. They claim to submit your site to thousands of search engines. That is just marketing hype, so please ignore such claims.

The fact of the matter is there aren’t that many search engines on the Internet. Of the thousands of search engines these online submission services claim to submit to, the vast majority are either small directories or link pages, with little or no traffic.

Most online submission services do not take into account that some search engines will only accept a maximum number of Web pages from one site per day. As such, people submit too many pages which either get ignored, or rejected by the search engines.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, SEO / SEM, Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post Search Engine Submission appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

From its humble beginnings as a web portals development company, GO-Gulf.com has developed into an international online web applications design and development company in just 7 years. Today GO-Gulf.com manages over 300 projects in 20 countries.

Sites Where We’re Featured

Some of these sites have also mentioned GO-Gulf.com as an authority when it comes to web application design and development and understanding of global corporate statistics.

• Social Times.com, BusinessInsider.com, webpronews.com and Ragan’s PR Daily: These sites published GO-Gulf.com’s infographic, “How Fortune 500 Companies Use Social Media”. Read more here:
  http://socialtimes.com/the-fortune-500-on-social-media-infographic_b94289
  http://articles.businessinsider.com/2012-04-17/strategy/31353541_1_social-media-twitter-surprising-statistics
  http://www.redmondpie.com/prepare-to-be-amazed-at-what-happens-every-60-seconds-in-the-tech-world-infographic
  http://www.webpronews.com/big-business-on-social-media-infographic-2012-03

• BGR.com, TechWave.com, Engadget.com, Ritholtz.com, GlobalPost.com: These sites featured GO-Gulf.com’s “60 Seconds – Things That Happen Every Sixty Seconds Part 2 [Infographic]”. Read the details on:
  http://www.bgr.com/2011/12/23/every-60-seconds-apple-sells-925-iphones-2-million-people-watch-online-porn-more
  http://techwave.jp/archives/51720703.html
  http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2011/12/60-seconds-things-that-happen-every-sixty-secondshttp://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/macro/chart-web-60-seconds-google-facebook-twitter-apple
  http://de.engadget.com/2011/12/24/alle-60-sekunden-in-2011-1820-terabyte-daten-werden-erzeugt-go

• MediaBistro: This site recently published GO-Gulf.com’s infographic on “Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest: The Users Of Social Media”, along with a summary that highlights GO-Gulf.com’s research.Read more at:
  http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-users_b22556

• BusinessFinancialPost.com: This site recently posted an article highlighting the importance of social media. The article mentioned GO-Gulf.com.com’s recent infographic on Social Media and Fortune 500 companies as an authoritative source of information on this subject.Read more at:
  http://business.financialpost.com/2012/05/01/tweak-your-portfolio-with-tweets

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GO-Gulf.com Feels Honored To Be Featured On Awwards.Com

We at GO-Gulf.com feel that yes, it is a huge achievement for us to be featured in the exclusive Awwwards list of top 5 web agencies. We feel that all credit goes to our international quality of service, ethics, transparency, simplicity and ability to build and sustain long-term relationships with clients worldwide. We feel that these are the qualities that set us apart from the rest, the qualities that give GO-Gulf.com its unique identity and reputation.

We are proud to be identified and classified at a peer level with respectable agencies such as JWT Dubai, Prototype Interactive, Flip Media, 2Pure and BlueBeetle. The Awwwards list only considers the very best of providers, and we are honored to be considered as one of the best.

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Karel Zeman, a Czech Republic citizen founded GO-Gulf.com in 2005 and there’s been no looking back since then. Today, GO-Gulf.com employs people from various parts of the world, and does business in every corner of the globe. Our philosophy is to pay intense attention to the client’s needs, and only then design a solution. Our clients appreciate our detail-oriented approach, our internationally accepted web standards; our 24 hours guaranteed response time and attention to detail.

What We Bring To Our Clients

Our main goal is to help our clients to enjoy and deploy a simple, attractive, usable, search engine friendly website. To this end, we work intensely with your team and gather all the information we need. We then create various design layouts and work with you till you are comfortable with what your site will look like. That’s not all; we can also develop unique web applications for you based on your niche business requirements. Plus, we go out of our way to promote your business with excellently designed campaigns. The best part of our offering is the fact that all our services come to you with a fair,clearly defined pricing policy to maintain long term relationships with our clients.

The post GO-Gulf.com from Dubai Enters the Awwwards List of Top 5 Web Agencies in the United Arab Emirates appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Infographic by – GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/social-networking-users.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/social-networking-users.jpg” alt=”User Activity Comparison Of Popular Social Networking Sites” width=”580″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Web Design Company </a>

Number of Users on Popular Social Networking Sites

Unique Monthly Visits on Top Social Networking Websites

Male-Female Ratio

Time Spend by Average Social networking user per month

Age Demographics of Social Networking Users

Estimated User Worth of popular Social networking sites

The post User Activity Comparison Of Popular Social Networking Sites [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

It is easy to track online advertising campaign performance

Companies can easily create customized advertising campaigns for specific audience groups

It is easy to make changes to online campaigns than to traditional advertising campaigns

Our infographic “Global Online Advertising Spending Statistics” covers the latest online advertising trends, internet Ad spending (by regions), global online Ad spending and growth (per year), online advertising market share and lots more

Infographic by – GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/online-advertising.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/online-advertising.jpg” alt=”Global Online Advertising Spending Statistics” width=”580″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Web Design Company </a>

Global Online Ad Spending Statistics

Global Online Ad Spending By Region

US Online Ad Spending Figures

US Online vs US Print vs US TV Ad Spending

Online Advertising Market Share

Where Advertising agencies are planning to spend their Money

US Social Media Ad Spending Trends

Ad Formats Percentage

Ad Revenues by Industry Category

Revenues by Pricing Model

Countries spending the most in Online Advertising (In Billions)

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Our infographic, ‘Fortune 500 Social Media Statistics’ covers the latest social media presence data of Fortune 500 companies.

Data Source - The 2011 Fortune 500 and Social Media Adoption by Center for Marketing Research at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.

Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/fortune.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/fortune.jpg” alt=”Fortune 500 Social Media Statistics” width=”580″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Web Design</a>Company

Did you Know

Only 23% of Fortune 500 Companies (114 out of 500) have a public-facing corporate blog.

Fortune 500 (Based on revenue) vs INC 500 (Fastest Growing companies) with corporate blogs

Number of Blogs by Industry Type (partial list)

Corporate Blogs based on Fortune 500 Rankings ( For example, 35% of top 100 Companies had blogs in 2011)

62% of Fortune 500 companies have active corporate Twitter accounts (tweets observed within the past 30 days)

Number of Twitter Accounts by Industry Type (partial list)

Number of Twitter Accounts by Fortune 500 Rankings

Fortune 500 companies with highest Twitter Followers

58% of Fortune 500 companies have corporate Facebook Pages

Facebook Pages By Industry Type (partial list)

Fortune 500 companies with highest Facebook Fans

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Our Infographic ” How People Spend their Time Online” will help you in finding answers to all such questions.

Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Dubai Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/online-time.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/online-time.jpg” alt=”How People Spend Their Time Online” width=”580″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Dubai Web Design Company</a>

Did you Know

Global Online Population of 2,095,006,005 equals 30% of World’s Population.

Global Time Spent Online Per Month is 35,000,000,000 hours (35 Billion) which is equivalent to 3,995,444 years

US Internet user on average spends 32 hours on internet per month. This is double than the time spent by Global Internet user i.e. 16 hours per month.

Asia has the highest online population of 922,329,554 online users whereas North America has the highest online penetration rate of 78.90%

China has the highest number of Internet users 456,238,464 i.e 34.30% of its total population

Social networking is the most time consuming activity for an Internet user. A normal Internet user spends around 22% of its time on social networking sites, 21% on searches, 20% on reading content, 19% on emails and communication, 13% on multimedia sites and 5% on online shopping

92% of Internet users have used Internet for sending e-mails and for using search engines. 83% for getting more information related to health or hobbies. 82% for searching directions. 81% for getting weather information.78% for information on new products. 76% for reading news. 72% for entertainment and 71% for online shopping.

Google is the most visited web property online. Whereas, Facebook is the biggest time. A normal Facebook users spends around 7 hours, 45 minutes and 49 seconds per month on Facebook.

Some more Interesting Facts

More than 56% of Social Networking Users have used Social Networking Sites for spying on their partners.

Brazilians have the highest online friends averaging 481 friends per user, whereas Japanese have the least average of only 29 friends.

Chinese users spend the maximum time of more than 5 hours a week,in shopping online.

More than 1 Billion Search Queries per day on Google.

4 Billion views per day on Video Sharing Website YouTube. (Social Networking site)

Video content of more than 60 hours gets uploaded every minute onto YouTube.

More than 250 Million Tweets per day.

More than 800 Million updates on Facebook per day.

Location best services and Time Shifted TV will be the most popular trends of future with growth rate of 27% followed by Internet Banking growing at 19% per year.

The post How People Spend Their Time Online [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Estimated Number of Social Networking users are more than 940 million

7 out of 10 Internet Users are active on atleast one Social Network.

Social networking has become an effective medium for advertising and marketing. 9 out of 10 Marketers use Social networking to promote their business

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/socialmedia.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/socialmedia.jpg” alt=”Social Networking – Facts and Usage Statistics” width=”600″ /></a><br />Infographic by- <a href=”http://cn.go-globe.com/cn/web-design-shanghai.php” > Shanghai Web Designers</a>

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Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/smartphone.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/smartphone.jpg” alt=”Smartphone Users Statistics and Facts” width=”532″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Web Design Company</a>

Did you Know

Out of the 5 billion mobile phone users in the world, 1.08 billion are smartphone users

More than 91.4 million smartphones users are from the U.S

Smartphone platform Android has the highed market share of 46.9%

89% of smartphone users use their smart phones throughout the day

92% of smartphone users use their smarphone to send text messages to other phones. Whereas, 84% of users use their smartphones for browsing the internet

The age group of 25-34 has the highest smartphone penetration rate of 62%

50% of Android Smartphones and 43% of Apple iPhone users are younger than 34 Years.

53% of smartphone users are male and 47% are female

Android Smartphone owners consume the highest amount of data at 582 Mbs a month, while iPhone owners on consume 492 Mbs of data a month on average

Apple iPhone users download the maximum applications per month, which is 48

Downloading applications is the most popular data usage acitivity for smartphone users

Singapore has the highest smartphone penetration rate in world, which is 54%

The post Smartphone Users Around the World – Statistics and Facts [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Infographic by – GO-Gulf.com Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/60scs_v2.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/60scs_v2.jpg” alt=”60 Seconds – Things That Happen Every Sixty Seconds” width=”700″ /></a><br />Infographic by- GO-Gulf.com <a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/” > Web Design Company</a>

Did you know that these things happen within 60 seconds?

710 computers are sold worldwide and 555 of these computers are sold with Intel processors

1,820 TB of data is created; that’s enough data to fill up 2.6 million CDs

232 computers around the world get infected by malware

450 Windows 7 Cds are sold worldwide

925 iPhone 4s and 85 iPads are sold worldwide

11 Xbox 360 consoles are sold worldwide

18 Amazon’s Kindle Fire are sold worldwide

38 tons E-waste is generated worldwide

4,000 USB devices are sold worldwide

2,500 ink cartridges are sold worldwide

2,100 checkins happen on location-based social networking website foursquare

$75,000 is added to Google’s revenue

2 Million Internet users watch Porn Online

1.1 million conversations take place via instant messengers

103 Blackberries are sold worldwide

1,100 acres of land farmed in Farmville application

PayPal processes transactions worth $219,000; out of these, $10,000 is transacted via PayPal mobile

Around 950 purchases are done on eBay, out of which 180 purchases are done using eBay Mobile

12 websites get hacked and 416 attempts are made to compromise various Facebook accounts

1,400 movie discs are rented from America’s movie and game destination Redbox with more than 34,400 kiosks nationwide.

The post 60 Seconds – Things That Happen Every Sixty Seconds Part 2 [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Infographic by- Beijing Web Designers

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/piracy.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/piracy.jpg” alt=”Online Piracy in Numbers – Facts and Statistics” width=”600″ /></a><br />Infographic by- <a href=”http://www.go-globe.com/web-design-beijing.php” > Beijing Web Designers</a>

Below are some facts-

70% of Online Users Find Nothing Wrong in Online Piracy

67% of Digital piracy sites are hosted in North America and Western Europe

22% of all global Internet bandwidth is used for Online Piracy

98.8% of Data transferred using P2P networks is copyrighted

91.5% of filed available for download on Cyberlockers sites (Rapidshare, Megaupload,etc) are copyrighted material

Only 1 out of 10,000 pcs of the most popular content on the OpenBitTorrent tracker is non-copyrighted

Websites hosting pirated content receive more than 146 Million visitors per day.

$12.5 billion in economic losses each year due to Piracy in the music industry

71,060 jobs lost in the United States every year due to Online Piracy

$2.7 billion in workers’ earnings are lost each year due to Online Piracy

95% of music downloaded online is illegal

An average iPod contains pirated music of $800

42% of Softwares running in World are illegally downloaded

$59 billion of Softwares were illegally downloaded in 2010

More than 75% of computers have at least 1 downloaded illegal application

Two-Thirds of Torrents available online are illegal

Pornography is the most pirated item on web with 35.8% followed by Movies with 35.2%

Hollywood Movie “Avatar” is the most pirated movie of 2010 and was downloaded more than 17,000,000 times

China has the Highest online piracy rate of 91% in world followed by Columbia with 90% and Russia with 80% online piracy rate.

Source Links -

http://torrentfreak.com/piracy-socially-acceptable-110228/

http://www.podcastingnews.com/content/2008/06/average-teens-ipod-has-800-of-pirated-music/

http://www.yalelawtech.org/p2p-law-piracy/envisional-estimates-infringing-use/

http://www.riaa.com/faq.php

http://portal.bsa.org/globalpiracy2010/downloads/study_pdf/2010_BSA_Piracy_Study-Standard.pdf

The post Online Piracy in Numbers – Facts and Statistics [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Infographic by- Beijing Web Designers

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/broadband.jpg”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/broadband.jpg” alt=”Broadband Users In The World – Facts and Statistics” width=”600″ /></a><br />Infographic by- <a href=”http://www.go-globe.com/web-design-beijing.php” > Beijing Web Designers</a>

Below are some facts-

South Korea was the first country to complete the conversion from dial-up to broadband in 2005

South Korea has the Fastest Broadband connection in the world with the average broadband download speed is 14.4 megabits per second Whereas United states has the average broadband download speed is 5.4 megabits per second

World’s Fastest Broadband residential connection is in Karlstad, Sweden. SigbrittL�thberg’s home has been supplied with a blistering 40 Gigabits per second connection, that can be used to either watch 1,500 HDTV channels simultaneously or even download a whole 24gb DVD in two seconds !!!

US state Delaware has the fastest broadband connection in US with average broadband speed of 7.2Mbps

Japanese City Tokai is the fastest city in world with average connection speed of 13.2 Mbps

Total number of global subscribers to superfast fibre optic is expected to “more than double” from 69.6 million in 2011 to 142 million by 2016.
More than 25% of Homes in world would be having triple-play (3P) bundle of broadband by 2016 as compared to 96 million recorded at the end 2010.

Wireless broadband subscriptions is growing at 10% per year as compared to fixed line broadband ISP market that would be growing by just 6%

According to Cisco, global internet data traffic will quadruple by 2015 – 965.5 ExaBytes per year ( as compared to 242.4 ExaBytes in 2010).

Global Mobile Broadband internet data traffic will increase 26 times from 2010 to 2015, reaching 6.3 Exabytes per month (75 Exabyte’s annually).

The post Broadband Users In The World – Facts and Statistics [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Please Check - Things That Happen Every Sixty Seconds Part 2

Infographic by- Shanghai Web Designers

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/2012/12/05/60-seconds-things-that-happen-on-internet-every-sixty-seconds-infographic/”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/60seconds.jpg” alt=”60 Seconds – Things That Happen On Internet Every Sixty Seconds” width=”700″ /></a><br />Infographic by- <a href=”http://www.go-globe.com/web-design-shanghai.php” > Shanghai Web Designers</a>

Did You Know That – In 60 SECONDS

Search engine Google serves more that 694,445 queries

6,600+ pictures are uploaded on Flickr

600 videos are uploaded on YouTube videos, amounting to 25+ hours of content

695,000 status updates, 79,364 wall posts and 510,040 comments are published on Social Networking site Facebook

70 New domains are registered

168,000,000+ emails are sent

320 new accounts and 98,000 tweets are generated on Social Networking site Twitter

iPhone applications are downloaded more than13,000 times

20,000 new posts are published on Micro-blogging platform tumbler

Popular web browser FireFox is downloaded more than 1700 times

Popular blogging platform WordPress is downloaded more than 50 times

WordPress Plugins aredownloaded more than 125 times

100 accounts are created on professional networking site LinkedIn

40 new Questions are asked on YahooAnswers.com

100+ questions are asked on Answers.com

1 new article is published on Associated Content, the world’s largest source of community-created content

1 new definition is added on UrbanDictionary.com

1,200+ new ads are created on Craigslist

370,000+ minutes of voice calls done by Skype users

13,000+ hours of music streaming is done by personalized Internet radio provider Pandora

1,600+ reads are made on Scribd, the largest social reading publishing company

The post 60 Seconds – Things That Happen On Internet Every Sixty Seconds [Infographic] appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

The biggest Search Engine Google is serving more than 1 Billion queries everyday. According to the Web Visible and Nielsen Report, More than 74% of online users use search engines before making a purchase and the percentage of online users using search engines is increasing every day.

So if your website is not search engine friendly and is not appearing in search engine results for your business keywords they you are leaving lot of traffic and potential business on the table.

Below are the few facts and numbers that highlight the importance of Search Engine Optimization

Infographic by- GO-Globe.com Guangzhou Web Design Company

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<a href=”http://www.go-gulf.com/blog/2012/12/05/why-you-should-not-ignore-seo-infographic/”><img src=”http://www.go-gulf.com/wp-content/themes/go-gulf/blog/info-seo.jpg” alt=”Why You Should Not Ignore SEO” width=”685″ /></a><br />Infographic by- <a href=”http://cn.go-globe.com/” mce_href=”http://cn.go-globe.com/”> ??????</a> Guangzhou Web Design Company

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Before contacting a web design and development company, decide on the limits of your budget and have some idea of what you want. Don`t forget your web site is an investment, servers as your introduction, selling tool and image recognition.

Ask yourself:

Do you want a corporate brochure, an information site, a magazine site, or an online store?

Do you want database access, to store product details, which can be searched and displayed online?

Do you want an animated web site with moving graphics and user interaction?

Do you have all the information that a designer would need?

Although your first impact of the company will usually be their own website, make sure you look deeper into their portfolio. Every designer is capable of producing one great website – but can they produce twenty great websites in succession?

Is their portfolio of work sympathetic to my business?

Do I like their style of design?

Do all their websites look the same?

Who Is?

No that`s not an incomplete statement it`s the name of a directory that you should familiarize yourself with. Using the WHOIS database you can search and find out information about an existing domain name such as the owner, how long it`s been registered and other useful information. The WHOIS database will provide you with the contact information of the person or organization that registered the domain name you are inquiring about, you can check here.

If you have any doubts about the size of the company, largely speaking, the size of the company provides you with no indication to the quality or work they can produce; or the services they can provide.

There are a lot of freelance web designers who can produce far superior work to large companies, but there are also freelance web designers who charge much more than large companies. Don’t let your preconceptions about the size of companies get in the way of the facts.

How much will they charge me for website design?

Website design companies can have very different ways of charging. Some may charge high set-up costs and low recurring fees. Some will pull in customers with a low set-up cost and then charge high recurring fees and then it is not easy pull back.

Bear in mind that most professional web design companies work on a bespoke basis – and will therefore not be able to publish specific prices. They will however, be able to provide you with a approximate figure based on a technical and/or design brief. They should also be able to provide you with an indication of what their hourly/daily rate is.

When you contact a designer or web developer the important questions to ask are:

1. Is the company a full time design company? Some ‘hobbyist’ designers build webs as a second or weekend job.
2. Can you contact them during working hours? Again this will show if the design company is full time or part time.
3. Do they have their own web domain? Any self respecting designer will have their own web domain if not you should ask why not.
4. Do they charge for an initial consultation? Some companies will try to charge a fee just to discuss your requirements, others will try to do business over the phone, whilst others will offer a free initial consultation and build further consultations into the price of the contract.
5. What is the main revenue for the company? Some companies offer web sites in addition to their main business. A number of graphic designers and printers have branched out into the web design business. There is nothing wrong with this but ensure that they understand the technical issues.
6. Can they build what you want? Do they have the right resources and technology? Do they offer web hosting and diagnostics for your requirements? How they plan to assist you in promoting your website?
7. What kind of support do they offer when things go wrong or need changing? Do they charge for support?
8. What are the addresses of their reference sites? You must see some published work. Starting with the design company’s own web site, and some of their clients.
9. Do they have clients willing to talk to you? Is their service of a standard that their clients will recommend them? If they are good and competent designers then they should have clients who are prepared to discuss their experiences.
10. Can you visit them at their offices? If you are entrusting an important part of your company strategy to a stranger you need to build a relationship. You are more likely to get a good web site if the designer understands your business, products or services. (by GO-Gulf.com – website design from Dubai, Abu Dhabi)This entry was posted on Thursday, February 26th, 2009 at 1:04 pm and is filed under Home, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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1. First consider the top two – The top two search engine advertising services are run by Google and Overture. Google’s advertising program is called AdWords, and the ads appear in colored boxes to the top and to the right of the search results on their search engine and as sponsored links on the AOL search engine. Overture does not offer its own search engine, but provides ads to other search engines, the most important being Yahoo and MSN. Between the two services you will get coverage on over 90% of the searches conducted on the Internet.
2. Then consider the rest – There are a host of other search engine advertising services available. Most of them have a much more limited reach than Google or Overture, but the ads are usually far less expensive since they are not as popular. These services include companies such as Business.com, FindWhat, LookSmart, Enhance, Kanoodle, Search123, ePilot, and Lycos InSite. If you find success with Google and Overture, it may be worth experimenting with some of these others as well.
3. About Google – Google’s AdWords program uses what is essentially a bidding approach to buying ads for certain key words that people may search for. You do not have to actually bid specific amounts for specific search terms, however. Instead you set a maximum price that you are willing to pay for a click-through on your ad for a search that contains your key words. The frequency and position in which Google presents your ad is based on what other advertisers are willing to pay and the available inventory for the key word. This maximum bid approach combined with the ability to set a daily budget allow you to easily manage the amount you spend without having to invest a lot of time in managing your campaigns, which is an advantage over Overture. Google’s approach to bidding on general key words rather than specific search terms generally makes them less labor-intensive than an Overture campaign as well.
4. About Overture – Overture uses a bidding approach to buying sponsored links for specific search terms, and you set the maximum price you are willing to pay for a click-through. You have the ability to see what the other bids are for the search term, so you know exactly what position your ad will appear in. They also provide the ability to bid on searches that contain key words rather than on specific search terms, but it is far less convenient and effective than Google’s approach. So in general Overture requires more work to manage your campaign, but in some cases this can be a good thing, and their broad distribution makes them a favorite for all serious search engine marketers.
5. Prepare your list of key words – The first step in getting started with search engine advertising is to prepare a list of key words that relate to the content on your web site. The idea is to choose words that people are likely to search on when looking for the product, service, or information that is offered on your web site. If you have a home painting business for example, such a list might include key words such as “home painting”, “house painting”, “residential painting”, “paint house”, “painting company”, etc. If your business targets a specific geographical area, be sure to include the name of the towns and areas you serve, for example “house painting atlanta”, “home painting atlanta”, etc. This prevents your ad from showing up when someone searches on “house painting new york”, since paying for a click-through on that term won’t do you any good. Both Google and Overture, as well as the smaller services, have key word suggestion tools that help you come up with other words related to ones that you can think of.
6. Prepare your ad content – Obviously the content of your ad will have a huge impact on whether a searcher is likely to click on it to go to your site. It is important to give this careful consideration, and whenever possible include the key words you are bidding on in the headline and/or description of your ad. The lengths of the headline and description varies for each service, so you will need to develop content for each service you are using. Overture and Google each offer helpful advice on developing your ad content, so you should read this before you get started.
7. Measure your campaign performance – It is important to track the success of your campaigns so you know what kind of return you are getting on your investment. Google and Overture both provide statistics on the number of impressions (how many times your ad is shown) and number of click-throughs for your ads. It is a good idea to analyze these occasionally to measure the effectiveness of the various key words you are bidding on so that you can improve or remove the poorly performing ones. You can also use tracking URL’s so that you can analyze it with your own web log analysis software if you have it.
8. Use conversion tools – Both Google and Overture offer conversion measurement tools that you can use to take your analysis a step beyond simple click-throughs. These tools generate HTML code for you to paste on pages on your web site that only users who complete a desired process will see (such as buying something, signing up for something, etc.). This allows you to measure how many people actually “convert” into a customer or lead, which is ultimately more important than how many simply view your site.
9. Experiment with content matching – Both Google and Overture allow you to show your ads on web sites that offer content related to your key words. This provides additional distribution for your ad beyond the search engine results pages where their standard services appears. You may find the performance for these ads is less than that for ads appearing in front of people who are actively searching, but it still may be a profitable way to attract visitors to your site, so it is probably worth experimenting with if your search campaigns are successful.
10. Stay on top of it – Successful search engine advertising requires an investment in time to keep your campaigns performing well. You need to monitor your results and adjust your campaigns accordingly. And especially with Overture, you will need to constantly adjust your bid amounts since your position is always changing based on the activity of other advertisers.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, SEO / SEM, Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post 10 Tips on Search Engine Marketing for Your Small Business Website appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

1. Keep your pages clean and crisp – Do not clutter your pages with too much text or too many graphic elements. A page with too much information or too many distracting elements will at best confuse, and at worst put off, your site visitors. If you have a lot of information to convey, organize your site into more pages containing logically discreet chunks of information. If it takes longer than a few minutes to read everything on a page, there’s probably too much information on it.
2. Don’t hesitate to imitate – Look around at some other web sites to find things that you like about them – for example color schemes, site structure, copy style, page layout. Usually the good sites paid a graphic designer a lot of money to make them look good, so why not borrow a couple of ideas? (Disclaimer: Use the general ideas, do not copy another site outright, as this would not be legal or ethical.)
3. One or two fonts only – Do not go crazy with a lot of different fonts (text styles). Usually one font for your headlines and another for your text should suffice. Using too many fonts is a sure fire way to make your site look amateurish.
4. Use subtle colors and use them sparingly – For a business web site stay away from fire engine red and lime green. More subtle, earth tone or pastel colors lend a more professional appearance. If you have a color scheme already for your logo, this is the logical place to start. Again, look around at other web sites to find colors that you like and emulate them.
5. Consider site structure carefully – It’s worth spending some time on designing your site structure – i.e. the hierarchy of pages flowing down from the home page. As already mentioned, organize your content into logically discreet sections and put each one on a page. Emulate the common structures found on other sites so it will be familiar to your site visitors. Drawing a site diagram on a piece of paper is a good way to organize your thoughts.
6. Consider site navigation even more carefully – No matter how well your site structure is designed, it’s useless if a visitor can’t find the information they need or gets lost in a remote corner of your site and can’t get back. Organize the navigation system (menu bars and links) so that a new visitor can logically and intuitively navigate to the information they need from the home page – and then back again. Some tips: Have a link to the home page on every page; if you have a lot of pages, use a horizontal menu bar for your main pages at the top in your site header, and a vertical menu bar on the left side for sub-menus.
7. Have a few paragraphs of copy on your home page – Give the high-level overview of your products and services in a few paragraphs on the home page so visitors will quickly know if they’ve found what they’re looking for. Then make it clear where they should go next for more information (e.g. “Click the Products button for more details.”). Well written copy on the home page that contains key words describing your products and services will also help your site get indexed by the search engines and improve your ranking in the results – which will bring more traffic.
8. Put meta tags on your pages – Speaking of search engines, another key to getting better placement in search results is to put meta tags on your pages. Meta tags are invisible text in the HTML code of your web pages that search engines use to index your site. The most important meta tags are the title and description.
9. Avoid Flash and sound – Although a graphic designer would love to be paid to build it, avoid using a multimedia introduction commonly built using a product called Flash. They generally annoy more than impress, especially if your site visitor is using a slow dial-up Internet connection and has to wait what seems like eons for it download before it plays. Also avoid using Flash or sound in the content of your site – for the same reasons.
10. If you’re going to do it yourself, use the right tool – And lastly, a little message from our sponsor. If you are going to build your own web site, use a tool that makes it easy to accomplish and hard to mess up. Look for one that uses a “wizard” approach to get the basics of your site constructed and that offers a selection of design templates to choose from. Then you’ll want a simple point-and-click approach that allows you to modify your site using intuitive commands and plug-and-play modules. This will allow you to build a site with a professional appearance without having to use a graphic designer or learn HTML. And our sponsor, Decisive Web Sites, offers exactly this kind of approach.

The post 10 Tips on How to Design and Build Your Own Small Business Website appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

In a Live Chat environment where Live Chat Agents are constantly monitoring your website, with enough training they know your online consumers’ behavior like the back of their hands. From which geographical location are they coming in, which languages do they speak, which products/services are they most interested in, which price tags are affordable for them and which cultural or social constraints affect them. In technical terms, Live Chat Agents can see the IP Addresses of online consumers to get their location, see the keywords they searched for to get to your website to find the product/service they are looking for and much more. Agents can tell which pages consumers are getting stuck on, what makes them abandon a shopping cart and which products could consumers not find easily on the website. By chatting with them – Live Chat Agents get to know the other side of the picture as intimately as possible. These agents can draw online consumer profiles for your company and help in data gathering of your consumer, knowing exactly on a personal basis what each online consumer wants.

This extensive knowledge of your online consumer’s behavior will lead to targeted advertising, for small segments of online consumers with specialized advertising messages – even done on a one-on-one basis with a personal touch every time a Live Chat takes place between an agent and an online consumer. This knowledge base might change the way you display your products, the way you write content for your website and most of all, the way your advertise.

Reference:
www.liveadmins.com

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Company, Faqs, Portfolio, SEO / SEM, Services. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post Got a business website? Targeted Advertising through Live Chat. appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.

Many webmasters while developing their websites really don t care about user interaction which starts hurting them in long run. They a more about their office structure, working staff, latest technology but keep the customer`s problem in secondary place.

Since visitors see website as a whole rather than reading every word and when they don t find what hey need in seconds then that offends they must and they don t mind to turn off the website as fast as possible.

While, a good website does not confuses a visitors, its gives them what they want as quickly as possible. A good websites always gives straight forwards statements than are customer centered, it gives the support it claims, they give priority to potential; problems and they try to start user interaction with the website. A good design and error free writing does not makes a good website a good website need to have all that things which can attract repeating visitors and can keep them engaged in itself. (by DigBack, (by Johnny Flash, sourced by GO-Gulf.com – web developers and SEO Dubai based company)

This entry was posted on Friday, February 27th, 2009 at 11:45 am and is filed under Home, Web application, Web design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

The post Difference between a good website and a bad website appeared first on Web Design Dubai - Dubai Web Design and Web Application Development Company.