Using images on your website

Images add interest, colour and life to your website. the question is, where do you find suitable images to use? If you search images on Google you will find plenty, but you may run into problems if you use them on your website without permission. Flicker is a good place to start and some members actually want their images used, but you still have to ask and you always have to link back. You can scan books and use those images. This is slightly less risky but you should always mention the source. You can also use your own photos. This is an obvious choice, but make sure that the images are worthy of showing to the world. It will make your website look unprofessional to have poor quality images showing. If you sell products or you are constantly updating your site adding fresh content, like you are supposed to, then buying a good camera and learning how to use it is a worthwhile investment. Another great source of images is iStockphoto. You can create an account and buy credits using Paypal or your Credit Card. Images for the internet only cost 1 credit each. The photos on istock are always good quality and you can search for just about anything and get good results. You can even search for stuff like buttons and icons.
You will need an image editor to resize, crop or add copy to your images. Photoshop is the best around but you can use an open source (free) image editor such as the gimp.

Have Fun!

Loewen Media Webdesign Galway

More about choosing a domain name

In another Webdesign Galway Blog about choosing a domain name I mentioned that it is good to have the key words of your business in your domain name. This is for web crawlers who bring up websites with those key words when people search for them.

For example you might sell windows. You want to pick a domain name with windows as a key word, but windows.com and in fact windows anythingelse.com is taken so you might have to have something long winded and with slashes so that you have your key words. Something like best-windows-buy.com or something. It's easy to use something like this as a hyperlink on the computer because most of the time we cut and paste hyperlinks. Now imagine telling somebody that you have a website called www dot best slash windows slash buy dot com. It's long winded and not very memorable. The solution for this is to buy a second domain name and make that an alias. What this will mean is that on printed material and vocal advertising like word of mouth and the radio, you will have a shorter and more catchy name that doesn't even have to have key words in it. It could be www.seethroughme.com that's more memorable, easier to say and it looks better in print.
So the fun part is coming up with the two names (you can book as many relating domains as you want-the more the better, you can always sell them if you don't need them).
When going for the "webcrawler friendly domain name" you are choosing based on key words.
When going for the "people friendly domain name" you are choosing based on sound, memorability,appearance of the word(s).
When you have both domains hosted you can make the "people friendly domain name" the alias and the "webcrawler friendly domain name" the main site. Ask your webmaster to do this for you.

Here's an awesome website...

http://www.specialguest.tv/
This is one website that will keep you entertained.
Truly Inspiring.









http://www.bignothing.fr/

There's nothing and then there's the big nothing. Check this out....it's nothing really.

Loewen Media Webdesign Galway

Lowen Media

Is a static website good enough?

In today's world NO! It is believed that just having an online presence is enough. Having a static website means that you can direct your leads there so that they can check out what's on offer. It means that if someone types in your business name you will come up on a search engine. But these days that is not enough. While these are valid reasons to have a website they are not the ones that are going to make you new leads and bring you new business.
Lets take for example a person who is in the business of selling furniture. They have an online catalog/website that was launched two years ago and hasn't been updated since. The chances of their website coming up in a search engine when someone is searching for Furniture in their local area will be slim to none.
So that's why they need a website that is not static. A website that is dynamic and changes daily is the website that will come up on the first page of search engines provided that close attention has been paid to Meta descriptions and Keywords.
It is possible to change your website from a static to a dynamic site easily, if you like the look of your existing website but would like the power to be able to update yourself every day then Loewen Media Webdesign Galway offers this service for a very reasonable fee.

Choosing a domain name for your site

The domain name for your site: Choose one that has what you do or sell in the title. Make sure it is easy to remember and to spell. Don't make it too long. For example lets say you make dresses. You could have dressmaker.com or if that wasn't available you could have dressmakeryourname.com. They say that hyphenated names do well on the internet. If you live in Ireland and you have a business name registered you might want to book a .ie domain as well. You have to fill out forms to do this one and it's more expensive. The reason people do it at all is that searchengines knows by your ip address where you live in the world and will bring up local websites first. So if you have dressmaker.com and dressmaker.ie the dressmaker.ie will come up first when local people search. The .ie isn't so important if your service or product is used from anywhere in the world. If you have a local service or business then I would recommend booking a .ie address.
Also there is more of a chance that the name you are looking for is available on a .ie domain even if it the .com is already taken. That's because only someone living and owning a business in Ireland can set up a .ie domain. Whatever way you look at it you will have to pay something for booking a domain name.
Hosting is different and if you want your site to be live on the net you will have to buy hosting space. http://www.loewenmedia.com provide cheap reliable hosting. You pay for that yearly. You will need to know if you need a SSL certificate. If you are selling something on line and taking credit card details you will need SSL and a payment gateway. Paypal doen't require an SSL certificate but customers have to leave your site and go to Paypal to complete their purchase. However for start up we recommend Paypal, at least until you are selling enough to justify the expense of setting up an SSL and a payment gatway. Realex supply a very good payment gateway. You will also need an ecommerce merchant account to operate through Realex.

Start up business package

For anybody starting their own business venture this package kills 4 birds with one stone.

Sean and I found from speaking to people who are just starting out in business for themselves and setting up a website that they often feel overwhelmed. They are skilled at what they do but the haven't a clue where to start with the domain registration and the business name registration and all that side of things. So we decided to put together a package especially for anybody setting up their new businesses.

For an only €250.00 we will set up a business registration with CRO, domain name registration and web hosting, and a basic website . The basic website includes a professional looking home page with your logo and current and easily updated information, an about us page and a contact us page. You can choose the colors and typeface and have two images on each page. We offer lots of additional business services at low low prices, such as: Logo design, brochure design, packaging development, business card design, business blogs, web marketing advice and services, web support and technical services and much more.

While I am here I just want to say a few words about something I have noticed. That is that while people who set up businesses are often multi-talented they can still get very stressed when it comes to IT. They make a lot of expensive mistakes. It is also becoming apparent to me that people who are in business and who aren't IT literate or who seem unwilling to learn are becoming increasingly difficult to work with because they tend to draw a blank when it comes to understanding the basics of email and the internet. One of our aims is to remove the fear that creates these blocks and open up that world for people. Take them by the hand as it were and give them them some really practical help with blogging for example and then once they start to see some results their fears are replaced by excitement.

Call Ruth Monday to Friday on 091 585778 or 087 9789621 to find out more.