This is a guest article by Ben Johnson of Logoinn and he shares his tips on building a better business website that earns you dollars while you sleep.

First of all, what do you think a perfect business website is? Well, to me, if your business website takes your financial worries away, then it’s a perfect business website. This way you don’t have to work for anyone, you don’t have to worry about attending office everyday and you don’t have to worry about being punctual either. A perfect business website helps you earn bread and butter and gives you complete peace of mind.

Having said that, now we need to discuss that which vital elements ought to be incorporated in your business website to make it perfect.

It Must Be Appealing As Well As Relevant:

This is a misconception that you just create a website and it will start making you money. It’s a completely false notion. You have got to make your website attractive if you seriously want to win the trust of your market. Secondly, ensure that your website design is relevant to your business model.

It’s the quality of your web design that tells your market that your products will be of high quality as well. If your design is of low quality, you won’t be able to win the trust of your market. So, ensure that you make it attractive as well as relevant.

You Must Provide User-Friendly Navigation:

How much time would you spend on a site where you will see hundreds of confusing links all over the page? Well, you won’t spend more than a few seconds. The same thing will happen to you if you don’t create user-friendly navigation. Your website visitors or potential buyers won’t spend any time on your website and will most likely leave in less than 10 seconds.

Ensure that Your Copy is Benefit-Oriented:

What converts your visitors into customers is your copy. Your copy must highlight  all the benefits clearly and concisely. It should tell your market why you should be trusted. It should entice your market to prefer you. So, you will need to take some time to write a compelling copy or hire a professional copywriter to do the job for you.

Choose a Readable Font Size and Style:

A lot of websites don’t care about their font-size. They make it really small. Small font-size is not easily readable. If you visit a website and find it difficult to read, then you will leave immediately. Your visitors will do the same thing if you don’t select a readable font size and style. Also, try avoiding grey font. Black is the best in terms of readability.

Strategically Organize the Content and Graphics:

Don’t make your website look like an unorganized place by having text and graphics everywhere. Organize everything in a nice and professional manner. Ensure that your website doesn’t look messy at all. Once you create the site, look at it and determine if it gives you a refreshing feeling or not. If it doesn’t, then you need to analyze your site and end the flaws.

So, these are some powerful tips that will empower you to create a perfect business website…for your business!

If you have any tips, please do share.

5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. The 21 Worst Things To Have On Your Blog or Website
2. Creating Top Quality Blog Reader Relationships
3. How To Build A Community Of Readers Who Want To Do Business With You

Is a Design Competition worth the risk?

This is a guest article by Ben Johnson of Logoinn. You can participate by taking a look at our guest blogging guidelines

A lot of small businesses have now turned to crowdsourcing and logo design competition websites to create their business identity at an extremely low-cost.

There might be a few reasons behind it.

1) They can’t afford more than a few dollars.

2) They want dozens of designers to create dozens of designs for them, so they can easily choose one.

3) They don’t know the importance of a logo design.

When small businesses go to logo design competition sites to create their business identity, it becomes obvious that they don’t know how powerful this little piece of design is and how it can make their business look professional and attractive. However, if designed incorrectly, the same design will ruin your business image completely and you may not be able to undo the damage it will cause.

Simply put…Your logo design gives your business a face. If it looks professional, then your business will look professional, otherwise it will destroy your business image completely.

So, here are a few questions you should ask yourself before you start crowdsourcing:

How will You Determine that the Design is Original and Unique?

When you start a competition, dozens, if not hundreds, of designers will participate in it. How will you know that the designs are original? How will you determine that none of the designers actually gave you plagiarized work? There is no way you can judge that. Thus, you may end up promoting your business with a plagiarized logo. You won’t be able to create a unique identity for your unique business.

How will You Determine that the Designer has Not Created a Fake Profile?

If you like a few designs and feel interested in learning more about the designers who created them, then how will you know that their profiles are authentic? I mean, how will you judge that they didn’t copy other people’s designs in their profile? There is no way to judge that either.

Here is an Example of Cadbury:

Cadbury doesn’t need any introduction. It’s a successful company and they have the budget to hire the most creative designers. However, they still started a competition and offered a hefty amount to the winner (it was not a logo, but a design for wrapper). Designers from around the world submitted their designs and finally there was one winner. However, later it was found that the design was plagiarized. So, Cadbury gave the prize to the runner-up.

If a well-known company can face such a thing, then imagine how horrible it will be for a small business that will promote their products with a plagiarized design. Imagine the redesigning cost they will have to bear and then again get their new logo imprinted on new accessories like mugs, pens, business cards, etc. They will also have to discard the promotional items with the plagiarized logo imprinted on them. Just imagine the cost, burden and humiliation.

Plus, all small businesses may not have enough funds available to start all over again.

Is it worth taking the risk? You can very well answer this question now.

Can You Create Your Brand Identity by Starting a Logo Design Competition? is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Don’t Ruin Your Smashing Web Design with Poor Navigation
2. The Importance of Cohesive Branding
3. Points to Consider Before Starting to Publish on a Blog

Are you ruining your web design with poor navigation?

Veronica Davis is a freelance writer for businesses online. She writes for and helps businesses ranging from New York web design firms to real estate sites. Navigation is an important element of any web design. Veronica shows us the importance of good navigation in your web design.  Join in the awesome guest blogging club and take a look at our guest blogging guidelines.

How many times have you landed on a site, and you couldn’t find exactly what you were looking for and hit the back button? Whether it was a famous New York web design company or your brother’s best friend that did the design, they messed up by not making navigation a priority. They lost you as a reader, potential client or possible customer. While it may not be the most exciting aspect of web design, it is very much an important one. Any web design that doesn’t make use of easy and effective navigation will only cost you money in the long run.

Yes, there are countless ways that you can set up the navigation on your new site. While you certainly want to customize the navigation to your site’s design, you gotta realize that most sites do have a navigation structure that’s pretty similar. You don’t want to be too different. You don’t want your visitors to land on your page and not be able to figure out how to get to what they’re looking for. The gorgeous design isn’t going to be enough to keep them on your site if they can’t figure out your navigation structure quickly. No matter what kind of navigation your final web design will include, try to make sure that any destination on your site is within three clicks for your readers. This is the traditional “3 Click Rule”
While a poorly designed navigation structure will quickly turn visitors away, a good one will keep them on your site longer. That means more readers, more subscribers, more sales or more leads…whichever it is that you’re after.

Clearly, that’s a Link

Links should look like links. They shouldn’t look like the rest of the text on the page. They shouldn’t be hidden or hard to find. Of course, there will be sometimes when links that don’t look like links are effective and it fits in with your site’s design. If you’re going to do something like this, you need to make it very clear to any visitor.  Exactly where the links are and how to get around your site.

Consistency

Keep the navigation structure the same throughout your site. Never think that each page or each section should get its own web design and structure. It will only confuse your visitors, quickly sending them elsewhere to find the information that they were looking for.

Quick Links

There are many ways today to make the navigation on your site attractive, whether it’s with CSS, JQuery or something else. But there are a few links that should always be prominent and easy to find without having to use drop-downs, slide-outs or other fancy navigation. A good web design will always make it easy for the user to go the last page they were on and to get to the index or home page. Usually, you want to include a “back” button on each page and link your logo to the main page on your site.

Don’t Ruin Your Smashing Web Design with Poor Navigation is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Can You Create Your Brand Identity by Starting a Logo Design Competition?
2. 7 Smashing Techniques to Pull Guest Authors to your Blog
3. 5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website

Branding your website is an essential to build credibility and trust. Once you establish a brand, people start recognizing your website with it. Branding requires a name and logo that describes your brand (website). Selena narayanasamy from esvienne.com explains the importance of cohesive branding for your website. You too can join in by following our guest blogging guidelines.

Company recognition is an important benefit of any branding effort. Not only should your company branding efforts help your business to be easily identified, but also improve and maintain your reputation among current, old, and prospective customers. Unfortunately, many companies are not consistent with their branding efforts, especially throughout the internet and social media networking.  Are you cohesively branding?

Name and Logo

Effective social media and other online branding starts with a solid foundation – your business name and logo. Your business identity – who you are and what you do – should be summed up in your business name and logo. This is a core message you deliver to potential customers that helps them choose your service or product over the competition.

Simplicity is the Key

Creating a name and logo that is easily used across the board of social networks and other websites doesn’t have to be challenging. Remember, you want a logo that is easily recognizable. Your logo may be simply an icon of your business name. FedEx is a good example. Having a simple yet recognizable name and logo is essential for your online branding efforts.

Be Consistent in Using Your Name and Logo

Branding on social networks and other websites should be consistent. This is where many businesses fail in their branding efforts.

For a good guide to consistent branding, take Starbucks Coffee, for example.

Starbucks Logo

Starbucks Facebook Page

Starbucks Twitter Avatar

Do you notice that the name is included in the logo, and the logo is prominently and clearly used as the identifier for the business?  There is no need to add superfluous mission statements or catchphrases here. The name speaks for itself – it tells what the company sells, and by reputation alone it is recognized as a quality identity.

Notice, also, how the Starbucks logo is simple enough to be used on a business or gift card:

Starbucks Gift Card

How to Manage Changes in Branding

If you decide to update or change your name and logo completely, be sure you devise a campaign to make it clear to everyone. FedEx is another good example. When FedEx bought the famous Kinko’s brand of office services, it incorporated and combined names to create FedEx Kinko’s. Now, however, FedEx has changed the name to FedEx Office, eliminating “Kinko’s” altogether. Their new logo is now seen everywhere, including on social site like Facebook. Their message is “FedEx Kinko’s is now FedEx Office.”

Use FedEx as a good template when re-branding. Be sure to follow these tips as well:

• Send a Press Release – Be sure your re-branding effort makes the news. Write and submit a press release to help get the word out.

• Coordinate Looks – If you are re-branding, be sure it’s for a good reason, such as incorporating more simplicity into a single look.

• Make Social Announcements – Also be sure to announce your change not just once, but multiple times on your social media accounts and blogs. Make it clear to everyone how your new logo now represents your business.

When you are consistent in your branding, you are consistently putting your company’s best face forward online.

The Importance of Cohesive Branding is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Can You Create Your Brand Identity by Starting a Logo Design Competition?
2. How to Create a Social Media Ready Blog
3. How to Connect With Your Social Media Followers and Fans

Worst things that can annoy readers

This is a guest post by Chavah Kinloch, a WAHM (Work at Home Mom) of four young children – She’s an artist. You can regularly find Chavah at her blog, Creating My Reality, and you can find her here on Twitter. Be part of this community and check out our guest blogging guidelines

1. Flash – Can we say 1990′s? No one likes sitting there while it loads and then having to click past an intro just to arrive to some more flashing photos.
2. Music – Please, please, get rid of it or make it optional to start. People will either click away as soon as they hear the music or go insane as they try to find the window that’s making that crazy noise.
3. More ad’s than content – If your ad’s are taking centre stage, you will get no credibility.
4. Pop up’s – I can handle pop up ‘join my mailing list’ ads but anything other than that means I will never again return to your site. In saying that though, let me at least read what you’ve written so I can choose whether you’re worth following or not.
5. Really Bad english – A little bit of error can be tolerated but if it is glaringly obvious that you’ve never had to speak english to communicate for the sake of survival, you should probably be looking to outsource your writing or write in your native language and use something like Google Translator.
6. Loooong Blog Posts – If it’s going to take forever to say it, break it up. Create a series.
7. Broken links – Check, check and triple check! Or install this if you use WordPress.
8. Making people register to comment – You’re likely to lose many commentors if you choose to go this route.
9. Spam – Take precautions with your blog to ensure as little spam as possible gets through.
10. Bad content – Reading a post about something we’ve read a hundred times before isn’t interesting.
11. Writing like a professor – No one wants a lecture!
12. Lack of images – Try to include a photo in each of your posts.
13. Caps lock – I can’t believe I still come across this. Caps in text is the equivalent to yelling, SO USE IT WITH CAUTION.
14. wRiTiNg LiK dIs – Wow. Just wow. Really? Need I say more?
15. Writing about how perfect your child is – I see this a lot as well. It’s great to be proud of your child, I’m not suggesting that you shouldn’t be but make sure you don’t overdose your readers with how wonderful little Jamima is at everything. I mean goodness… I have four. I know the deal.
16. Your site is ugly – There are some extremely bad tasting blog and website designs out there! Search for a talented designer. I use Swish Development.
17. I click on a link I thought was part of your site and suddenly I’m somewhere completely different – A reader should only leave your blog if they choose to.
18. The design of you site changes on each page – Only use one template for your all over design.
19. Slow loading pages – Keep images small and minimise posts on your homepage.
20. I can’t read the first post on your blog without clicking through – This is a big pet peeve of mine. I want to be able to read at least one post by landing on your blog’s homepage.
21. There’s no search function for your site – Sometimes people come back for a specific post. If you don’t have a search tool they have to scroll through pages and pages of posts. This isn’t likely to happen so instead you lose the reader and a possible link back.

The 21 Worst Things To Have On Your Blog or Website is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Blog Homepage: Excerpt vs. Full Size Post
2. 5 Tips for Creating a Perfect Business Website
3. How to create a Facebook Page for your Blog/Website

Building a Drupal site can be a bit of a daunting task for beginner web designers, but there are a few strategies that can make the process a whole lot easier and less frustrating. If you take your time with it, you’ll find that Drupal can be a pretty flexible CMS. Here are five Drupal secrets that’ll help you get the most out of your Drupal site.

1. Don’t Use Drupal User Pages as Actual User Pages

As mentioned, Drupal can be a great, flexible CMS that allows for efficient site building. However, this doesn’t mean that all of its built-in features are the best ones to use, the prime example being its rather cumbersome and ineffective “User Pages”. Drupal’s user pages are not nodes, and thus don’t allow for the different features that nodes would normally allow for. You can’t allow for user comments on Drupal user pages, for example, and you can’t use CCK on them either. Fortunately, you don’t have to use Drupal user pages as your site’s user pages. Instead you can simply use an actual node, and employ the Drupal user pages for keeping account information.

2. Take Advantage of Blocks

Drupal Blocks allow you to add a ton of neat sidebar features to current or multiple pages. These Blocks can contain things like similar links, “people who liked this also liked this” links, subscribe links, most bookmarked lists, etc. You can try adding such sidebar features as nodes, but you’ll run into trouble when you want to move the piece of text elsewhere on the site, like with a block you use for your Drupal site search.

3. Use the Theme Feature

Drupal’s theme function is a huge advantage and should definitely be used, especially if you’re just starting out learning the Drupal system. Themes allow you to run any function from a core or module file. By putting a theme in front of it, the function is over-ridden in your template file. This means that you are able to modify very easily the way a table or user name, or even a comment appears on your site.

4. Most of the Work Can be Done with Page.tpl

Most of a Drupal site (roughly about 80 to 90% of it) is page.tpl. Because the page.tpl alone is what’s going to determine most of your visitors’ first impression of your site, it’s important to focus your design attentions on it. The trick here is to simply treat the page.tpl as you would any other site. Start with a Photoshop layout that fits your vision for the site, then export different elements from the Photoshop layout over to the CSS and page.tpl.

5. You Can Override Core CSS Files

Drupal allows you to actually override core CSS files if you need to. If you would like your tabs to have a customized theme, or a theme other than the default Drupal one, you can insert your own style CSS that cancels out the system’s CSS, without having to delete the CSS file from the core system.

It’s also good to remember, as you start exploring the various features of Drupal, that it helps to also learn to follow the flow of Drupal. It’s a fairly comprehensive and intuitive management system once you get the hang of it.

Top 5 Drupal Secrets is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. 10 Best Drupal Blogging Clients

Apart from being a blogger and social media enthusiast, I am a design lover. I have always been inspired and amazed by the designs i see available online. And personally i like T-shirt designs the most, the ones which are expressive or crazy, have something cool to say and are appealing to the eyes. These T-shirts can be an asset to your wardrobe and i try to grab them until my wallet is empty.

Crazy Dog T-shirts have an amazing set of T-shirts, full of unique and beautiful designs.
They have a huge collection of T-shirts, some of them will make you burst out with laughter and others will remind of the golden era.
My favourite ones are the Game Over T-shirt (When you are married, the Game is Over!!) and the Find X T-Shirt (This one was very funny . That’s how we used to study LOL )


Apart from these funny, the 80s T-shirts are really good and remind me of my childhood days, the time where there was no worry and spent all my time having fun and doing nothing else.
The T-shirts have prints that have cartoons i used to watch at that time like ghostbusters and mickey mouse and also the video games i used to play like Mario (I think this almost everyone’s favorite). Now i can buy these and remember those good old days!!

The T-shirts are also divided into various categories such as vintage, Novelty, funny,80s, graphic T-shirts and many more, to make your navigation simpler. I lost all my time seeing all the Tees and the list was never ending .

Another good feature of this website that you can order custom T-shirts, so if you have a tweetup or a conference , you can print T-shirts custom made for your meet up.

The best thing about Crazy Dog T-shirts is that they prices are quite competitive and you can get a great deal from them. Their T-shirts starts from a very economical price of 6$.

Go check out Crazy Dog T-shirts and and tell me which T-shirt you liked the most.

*This is a sponsored review. if you are interested in one , visit our Advertising Page

Crazy Dog T-shirts – Cool and funny T-Shirt Designs is a post from: Blog Godown

Related posts:

1. Wibiya – Cool Widget for Blogs
2. Replace Date with a cool new calendar type layout in blogger