For most of your visitors, your website will be their first point of contact with you or your business. As a result, it is important that your website makes a good first impression.

One way to make this good first impression is to have a well designed professional looking website. And regardless of whether or not you’ve hired someone to do do the job, it is important to verify that it does not look amateur.

Below we have listed a few things that your website should avoid.

1. Lots of Colors

There are a lot of beautiful colors out there. However, that does not mean that you should put them all on your website.

For a professional-looking website, colors should be kept to a minimum.

2. Centered Text

Centering might work well for certain headlines, images, or captions. However, you should avoid centering the bulk of your textual content. According to published research, users prefer to read from left to right. As a result, centering your text makes it more difficult for users to digest your content

3. Font Woes

There are many ways to convey amateurism by improperly using font. Here is what not to do:

* Use many different font faces

* Incorporate text of all sizes, as well as several variants or bold, italic, and underlined text

* Use multiple fonts colors

4. Excessive Use of Exclamation Points

There are better ways to convey excitement than by overusing punctuation. Remember, your website is not an infomercial.

5. Animation

Sometimes people include animated graphics to add excitement to a web page. Unfortunately, this conveys something very different. Sure, you might find your bouncing logo quite eye-catching, but you don’t want to distract users from your content or come across — once again — as an infomercial.

6. Too Much Content

While you might have a lot of things to say about your services or your company, it does not all need to be put on your website. Instead, try to find a concise way of summarizing your content and effectively describing what you can offer.

Additionally, if you have a lot of content which you feel should be included in your website, consider breaking it up into small pages, instead of cramming it all into one long slow-loading page.

In order for your website to be successful, it will have to inspire trust and confidence. As a result, you should keep these tips in mind when evaluating your website.

via Does Your Website Look Like An Amateur Built It? – Web Development Blog.

Visit Gregg at: http://www.3wdesign.com/

I realize that when you participate in social media venues such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, you put yourself out there. And sometimes become the taget of the Blow Hard, Know-It-All, Jackass for no reason other than percieved misconception or plain ignorance.

Today I was publicy but lightly rebuffed by @baldheretic for having the words “Social Media Marketer” in my Twitter bio. His tweet: If your twitter bio says “Social Media Marketer” and you follow me you are likely to get denied and blocked like @greggluhring just did.”

I had just followed the chickenshit man because he was touted (maybe by himself) as a “Social Media Expert.” I did not ask him anything that would allow him to deny me anything. And the fact that he blocked me just showed me and the world that he was able to dish it out but was not willing to take it. By blocking me he effectively keeps me from replying to his twisted way of thinking. Usually you block someone if they are bothering you or if there’s a creepy situation like: they have no followers and are only following one person: You. I’ve blocked several people like that.

So what is the difference between a marketer and and expert? I call myself a marketer because I use the skills I’ve gained to help my clients in their marketing efforts mostly on the web. The things I’ve learned this year alone in Social Media would make most peoples’ heads spin. That’s why they hire me to do what I do. Because I understand and I have the aptitude in my skillset. I suppose you could call me an expert but I’m not so bold.

The man that calls himself an expert is an expert only in broad generalizations and blind classifications. Instead of Expert, I would call him a Social Media Dick. He kind of looks like one.

Aren’t blogs fun?

GL

Twitter Traffic Machine Website

If you are a Twitter addict and reading this, then you certainly found the best automated Twitter program ever released.

There are now dozens of applications for Twitter, with more coming down the pike every day. From simple posting applications to automatic content generators, the scope is enormous, so how do you choose the one that can help you to be most effective? Well that is what this review will try and explain, the answer to automating twitter and what the benefits are of using the Twitter Traffic Machine System.

Now it doesn’t matter if you have the latest product or the greatest website if it does not make you the kind of money that it should. This can only happen through traffic to your website, and With Twitter Traffic Machine it easily solves the problem of bringing in unique visitors to your websites.

Whether you already have an existing online business, or just starting one, you can use this software to easily generate many more sales and leads. Traffic equals sales, and when you use Twitter Traffic Machine the whole process becomes automated.

Bill Crosby is the inventor of Twitter Traffic Machine and he swears by his product and so do many other undeniable Twitter addicts”. If this machine didn’t work why would some many of the top Tweeters and Gurus of the internet be using this system. The answer is simple, because it works!

Check out the link below to see if there are any bonuses or discounts offered on the Twitter Traffic Machine right now.

Visit Site: Twitter Traffic Machine Website

Written By: Paul Conor

via Website Review | Is It a Scam Info | Rip Off or Not Exposed: Twitter Traffic Machine Review – Automated Twitter Traffic.

This is not Barbara

Barack Obama has been spotted in Door County, Wisconsin. That’s thanks to Artist/Cartoonist Barbara Luhring and her new products at MyBarackObamaPaperDoll.com.

Luhring, of Sister Bay, in Door County, Wisconsin and her sister Beth Anderson have been busy lately dealing with the brainstorming, creation and fullfillment by US Mail of the MyBarackObamaPaperDoll starter kits.

More to come…

Gregg

Door County Superhighways

This, my first real post here, is an experiment to see how many days it will take to show up in a “Door County, Wisconsin” Google Alert.

Because my company, 3W Design Group, is based in Door County, we have quite a few Door County clients.

For the past year we have been nagging on our clients to get with it and start blogging. There is no way faster to get your business in the Google pages than to blog. (verb) There have been points in the last 8 or 9 months where we will post in the morning and show up in a Google alert that same day. More recently we’ve been seeing a 2 to 3 day lag. This is still not close to bad. If you happen to keep up on things like this as we do, you’ll recall that it wasn’t more that 2 years ago that it would take a Door County business from 3 to 9 months before showing up in even a terrible ranking position of 100 or more.

On a different note, every web site owner in Door County wants to show up in Google when someone types in “Door County.” So (I’m guessing here) let’s say there are 500 business web sites in the county. There are 480 of those sites (sorry) that will not make it to the first page, or top 20. That presents quite a dilemma, hey? You need to email my wife and partner Barb. She’s got solutions for you.

So anyway, check back soon. Hopefully I’ll be reporting my results on this test early tomorrow. By the way, I didn’t do anything in this post or to my blog that you can’t do or I can’t help you do. No big tricks here. This has to be simple so we all can get our piece of the Google Door County pie!

Gregg