How Long Does It Take Your Site To Load on Dial Up?

Your site is getting traffic, but conversion rates are horrible. Everything seems to be working, so what’s wrong? Your site may simply be to slow.

Load Times – Are You Driving A Ferrari or Moped?

Give some thought to the sites you have visited of the past few weeks. Were you willing to wait 20 seconds for a site to load or did you hit the back button? Why would visitors to your site behave any differently? They won’t.

Webmasters, designers and site owners universally access the web through high-speed connections. Because of this, it is easy to forget roughly 40 percent of surfers use dial-up connections. While your site may appear to load quickly on your high-speed connection, have you tried loading it on a 56k connection? The results can be shocking.

Sites that appear to load quickly on a high-speed connection can take forever on 56k. It is not unheard of to find a “fast site” actually takes 30, 50 or 80 seconds to load on a 56k. Sometimes, the load time is so slow the browser will actually “time out” and fail to show anything. If your site has this problem, 40 percent of the hits are worthless. Worse, those frustrated surfers are unlikely to try to access your site in the future even if you fix the speed problems.

How fast should a page load on a 56k connection? As fast as possible, but no slower then 25 seconds. If you can get 56k load times below 10 seconds, you can turn a negative into a competitive advantage. Surfers come back to fast sites.

Determining Load Times

The best way to determine the load time for your site is to actually use a 56k connection. While this solution isn’t particularly technical, it will let you see exactly what your prospects are seeing when they visit the site. You will be able to see what loads quickly and what appears slowly. This should let you isolate particular elements in need of optimizing.

Server statistics can also provide you with evidence of slow load times. Are users spending a lot of time on entry pages, but not visiting internal pages? Either you have poor content or a loading problem.

Finally, you can also use diagnostic programs to test load times. Typically, the programs will kick out estimated load times for dial-up, DSL and T1 connections. Make sure you test your home page and internal pages. Diagnostic programs are excellent tools, but don’t get lazy. Make sure you physically watch your site load on a dial-up connection. The experience will prove invaluable to improving your site and conversion rates.

Improving Performance

The steps needed to improve the performance of your site often depend on the nature of the site. A database driven site will have different issue than a graphic intense site. There are, however, universal factors that can be checked:

1. Graphics: Typically, browsers have to make a connection for each image on a page. The more you have, the longer the load time. Limiting the number and size of graphics can help.

2. Tables: If you use tables, try to break them up into smaller modules. Large tables can negatively impact load times.

3. Multimedia: If it flashes, explodes, spins or blinks, consider ditching it. Yes, it looks great, but is it worth 40% of your audience?

4. Size: Scrutinize the size of your pages. The bigger the page, the slower the load times. It shouldn’t be a problem if the page is comprised of text, but large pages with lots of code will load slowly.

Cheer up if you have a speed problem! Yes, you’ve lost a lot of business, but now you can fix it. Most of your competitors will never figure it out. That puts you ahead of the game.

Finely Made Kids Toys at Excellent Prices

Kids toys make superb children’s gifts for all occasion. If you are someone building your own family and already have greatly imaginative children, you will surely agree that the right toys will keep them entertained and pleased for longer. However, finding the perfect toys may not be easy to come by. Mass produced models are becoming more widely distributed, and while the top quality ones are better choices, they may be sold with a huge price tag.

At Toys Active, be amazed at the toys that they offer, for children of all ages. Toys that are made from remarkable materials and processed in a careful manner last longer and will endure the wear and tear of prolonged use. You will find toys that are slightly used but still in fine condition, and you will also be able to buy brand new ones at affordable prices.

Undeniably, many toys are distributed presently, all at different materials, types, and prices. However, children are prone to easily break their toys and if you purchase those that are of cheap quality, then your kids toys will be dumped inside garbage bins sooner than you expect. With poor quality toys, you will end up spending more of your hard earned cash on products that are not worth your attention.

Toys Active has a wide selection of educational toys, building toys, and classic toys that children of all generations have learned to love. Toys do not merely amuse children they also have the ability to enhance their creativity and develop their cognitive abilities as well.

With durable and painstakingly manufactured toys, your children will certainly be able to enjoy them for long. Even better, these toys may be handed down to younger kids, once your own children have already outgrown them. Buy your kids toys and see the look of priceless delight on your children’s faces.

How To Post Your First Ebay Auction in Five Simple Steps.

Ebay is the internet&s largest marketplace, and it’s an excellent place for buyers to find what they want at bargain prices, and for sellers to find buyers. If you haven&t posted an auction on ebay before, It’s fairly simple to post your first auction on eBay. Just do the following five steps.

Step 1: Open an eBay seller’s account.

Obviously, this is the first thing you need to do . If you’ve bought things on eBay, then you already have an account – just log in with it and click ‘Sell’ in the toolbar at the top of the page, then click ‘Create a seller’s account’. If you’ve never used eBay before, then you’ll need to open an account first using the ‘register’ link underneath the toolbar, and then click ‘Sell’ and ‘Create a seller’s account’. The eBay site will then guide you through the process. For security, this may involve giving card details and bank information.

Step 2: Decide what to sell.

For your first little experiment with eBay, it doesn’t really matter what you sell. Take a look around the room you’re in – I’m sure there’s something in there that you’re not all that attached to and could put in the post. Small books and CDs are ideal first items. Once you get more used to how things work, try to indentify which market is right for you.

You need to consider two things in your market choice. The first is market size, which indicates how much demand exists for the products you’re considering to sell. Second, your personal intterest in what you sell. You must balance between those two factors to be successful.

Another thing I noticed on Ebay is what I call the Uniqeness Factor. What I mean by that is how unique are your offerings. If people see a lot of people selling the same item. They will tend to buy the cheapest, and that starts price wars between sellers. A smart seller chooses a smaller, more profitable niche to conquer. When you differentiate your offerings your profits and chances of making a sale will be higher. That’s why starting with your own things at home will be unique enough and wouldn’t cost you much for your first auction.

Step 3: List your item on Ebay.

Click ‘Sell’, and you’re on your way to listing your item.

Before you go ahead and list your item, look at some other existing sellers and learn from them. Notice how they layout their auction page, what keywords they use. Also note their starting prices and determine some of the startegies they use to attract bidders.

Next, choose a category – it’s best to just type in what the item is and let eBay choose for you. Next, write a title and description. Include key words you think people will search for in the title box, and all the information you have about the item in the description box.

Make sure you build an attractive and inforamtive auction page. Use pictures and headlines to highlight the benefits of your product. Answer as much questions a buyer might have as you can. Clearly state your refund, shipping and payment policies and contact information.

Now set a starting price. $0.01 is the best starting price, as it draws people in to bid who otherwise wouldn’t, and items will almost never finish at such a low price. The next thing to set is the duration of the auction: 3, 5, 7 or 10 days. This is up to you: longer sales will usually get more bids, but will also seem to drag on forever. If you’ve taken a picture, add it now – items with pictures always sell for more. Finally, tick the payment methods you will accept (just PayPal is best for now), and where you will post to (limit yourself to your own country to begin with). Submit and you’re done!

Step 4: Wait for it to sell.

This is just a matter of sitting back and letting eBay do its thing – buyers will find your item and leave bids on it. Some bidders might email you with questions about the item, and you should do your best to answer these questions as quickly as you can.

Remember that if your item doesn’t sell then you can list it again for free.

Step 5: Collect payment and post it.

eBay will sent your buyer emails guiding them through the process of sending you payment for the item. Make sure you have the money before you send anything.

Once you’ve got the payment, all you need to do is pack the item for posting (make sure to use some bubble wrap), take the buyer’s address from the confirmation email eBay sent you, and write it on the parcel. Put some stamps on, post it, and you’re done!

I hope you will enjoy selling your first item on Ebay.

Ecommerce Websites – Howto Take Your Business Online

In the technological world full of changes from time to time, everything seems to undergo a transformation. For being a part of the web world, it is vital to keep pace with the varying trends and advancements. Information is required at every point and needs to be available at a click.

Gone are the days of dependence. With independence ushering in the workspace, it is necessary to have full control of the website too. Set the business free with an ecommerce website fully customized to the business needs and update whatever is required and desired as and when it happens.

For promoting the online sale of any product, it is essential to have a fully functional ecommerce website. An e-commerce website would provide the platform to sell and take payments online. It thus provides an opportunity to operate and grow any business online using internet.

Business organizations have now started establishing their own websites which enable them to come into direct contact with the customers easily. They can keep an established association with their clientele and prompt the sales of the product or service in a healthier manner. Any customer can visit or find his way to a website easily and in less time by just one click. A customized website will act as a bridge between the customers and the organization&s objectives.

To reap the benefits of these features, it is must to have a perfect ecommerce design and content. Let us have an idea of what is required. Ecommerce web site is the concluding goal which leads the customers to buy products from the right place. Hence, the website design should be artistic and should not take the customer away from the central purpose of purchasing. All that needs to be done is to take care and devote appropriate time in applying these tips. Following are the points that should be considered while having a custom e-commerce website: Domain nameS & Hosting The domain name is the actual website address and it should have hosting where the website is placed so that it becomes easily accessible to the customers. A well structured Buy path. The website should have a structured and definite path to persuade the customer to buy the product. Different web pages should be showcased along with the path direction. This content will make the website easily accessible for the customers.

Important product button The product button must be displayed on the home page. This will help target customer to buy products through the product page. The payment option should be displayed. It should help the customers to make payment for the product through their debit or credit card which makes their shopping easy.

Product information The product must be displayed properly with correct information about the customized website. The information must be enough to influence the thinking, choice and decision of the target audience in less amount of time. Product categories can be displayed along with its features and picture of the product. Business image defines the success of any image. A custom-made website provides an edge and the tool to refine and define the business and its key strengths amidst the target audience. It helps a business become exclusive and develop flexibility. The user friendliness and competitiveness offered by such a website calls for its need. For the diversity and a more refined personalized website, services of an expert can definitely make a difference. Custom e-commerce service providers ensure that a business reaches its peak through uniquely developed sophisticated website catering to specific client requirements.

What Cyber-Price for a National Identity?

This is a case of &let the seller beware& …

The tiny Polynesian island nation of Niue is beginning to think it’s been had.

Frankly, it’s clear they didn’t do their homework before they did their deal.

Ironically, it seems the buyer hadn&t really done his, either.

Anyone who has been inundated by advertisements for &global domains& can easily understand that it’s a burgeoning business. The specter of purchasing a domain at a much better price than the more common &dot com& or &dot net& or &dot org& is most attractive to most aspiring entrepeneurs on limited budgets. This niche&s market leader is most likely Global Domains International (GDI), which has no doubt put Western Samoa on the mental map of many a cybernaut. The key element in that deal is that the Western Samoan government granted the rights to GDI in return for a royalty for every domain sold.

Niue&s name is derived from the local language&s phrase for, “Look, a coconut!” It seems they should have used theirs more thoroughly before signing a domain deal with Bill Semich in 1998.

An American businessman whose former station was editor for a computer magazine, Semich recognized the potential value in the marketability of unique domains. Apparently finding the &nu& extension an attractive letter combination, he signed a contract with the Niue government that gave him the exclusive rights to it.

It wasn&t a one-way deal. Semich guaranteed free wireless access for all 2000 of Niue&s citizenS & He delivered, completing the installation of an island-wide network of translator towers in 2003. The country&s leaders surely felt they had provided their citizenry with a service for the new century which would favorably ensconce their place in island history.

Semich, meanwhile, intended to hawk his bargain domains to Americans. He had no idea that his ideal customers were in Sweden, where &nu& is the local word for &now.&

Obviously,&now& is a hot marketing action term in any language, so Semich was pleasantly surprised to find the Swedes flocking to his cyber-property. As a translated example of why this works for them, &drive.now& (which would be &köra.nu&) is a very compelling sales slogan which becomes an ideal URL for a Swedish driving school. To date, Semich has had 110,000 sales of &dot nu& domains at $30 a year, which has considerably swollen the coffers of his &.NU Domain Ltd& to the extent that its website&s home page default language is now — or nu — in Swedish.

In fact, Semich has cleverly taken advantage of this windfall to become the first domain provider to incorporate a complete Unicode character set into its scripts, allowing users whose alphabets have unique characters — in Swedish, that would be the letters &Ã¥,& &ä& and &ö& — to remain true to their language instead of settling for Anglicized versions, which often destroy their original meaning. His company has already announced the rollout of this service in Sweden. Given that Unicode enables linguistic propriety to Japanese, Cyrillic, Spanish, French, German, Arabic and any other script with unique characters, Semich has truly become a pioneer in his craft.

All this commercial success has wrought concerns in Niue. Not only is the disparity in financial benefit an issue, but the island&s strongly Christian residents are upset that &dot nu& has become a popular extension for pornographic sites. Semich disavows any responsibility for this segment of his clientele, but the fact remains that they are there.

The issue became such a political hot potato that &neo-colonialism& was a trendy charge in Niue&s recent elections. Semich seems shrewd enough to realize that he&s got the high ground in any bargaining that must be done to assuage his Pacific partners, so a reasonable solution will surely be attained.

This scenario underscores the all-encompassing scope of cyberspatial commerce and the depth of considerations that both buyer and seller must assess before entering into far-reaching agreements. Not even the world’s tiniest nation — and that&s remote little blip-in-the-Pacific Niue — is immune from the effects.

The moral of the story, then, is to count your cyber-coconuts before they&re cracked open. They may be worth more than you think.

SSL Certificates Offer Website Security

What is Secure Socket Layer (SSL)? Basically, it is the standard security technology used to encrypt online data. SSL offers encrypted communication between the web server (server-side) and the customer&s web browser (client-side) when transmitting personal information such as credit card number, name and address. The SSL protocol uses Certificate Authority (CA) to issue &digital certificates& to the authenticated company.

The whole SSL process involves authenticating the server&s identity, the website&s identity and once the authentication is verified, the message will be sent in the form of encrypted information to the one who asked for a certificate. Usually, a browser requests a SSL certificate and in turn the web server supplies its public key with the requested certificate. Then, the browser has to verify whether the certificate issued is valid (certified by the authorized parties) and also should verify whether the SSL certificate issued comes from the particular website for which the request has been made.

An SSL certificate contains important details of the owner like his e-mail address, validity period, Distinguished Name along with the Common Name and also the certificate identification of the person who issues this information. The Certification Authority (CA) maintains an extensive list in which we can find names of the signed certificates and also more information about the revoked SSL certificates. Additionally, SSL increases the accountability and visibility of the company and creates goodwill and positive image among the customers. The certification maintains the integrity of the data passed to and fro between the browsers and web server (this is private and confidential). Thus, it’s a good tool to meet the security, privacy, safety standards required to protect sensitive and personal data.

SSL is especially important when we give our credit card, personal information to e-commerce websites. SSL certification cannot easily be accessed by hackers because the certificates have the proper key to encrypt the data. Therefore, the security of the certificate is taken care off in all aspects so one can really rely on the Certificate Authority (CA).

The internet has undoubtedly created new opportunities for e-commerce. However, that development is also attracting an ever-increasing number of cyber criminals. A fraudulent web site made to look very alike to a legitimate website may try to entice innocent customers into revealing personal information unknowingly. The only solution to this problem is to take advantage of the Secure Sockets Layer technology and implement it on your website. On the bottom line, every website that deals with sensitive information like credit card numbers or any other critical person information should have proper SSL certifications in place to protect them and their customers.