How to Create Good Web Design

There are many different types of web design, from those built using website templates and ‘build your own’ site building applications to complex content managed and e-commerce web designs such as those used by big brand names like Amazon, eBay and Tesco. Some companies, even some big name companies, have unprofessional looking and badly designed websites. Some have amazing looking websites but because of their high graphical content and minimal text content can take an age to load, are not user friendly and do not provide what the visitor wants.

Good Website Design

Though many aspects of website design differ from site to site, many things remain the same throughout the majority of websites on the internet. Most notably is the navigation or menu. The way in which a website’s menu works and looks is very important, as ultimately, visitors to a website are looking for certain criteria that will make them either stay and interact or leave. This ability for a website to keep visitors interested is sometimes referred to as stickiness. Visitors want an attractive visually exciting experience, but perhaps more importantly, they want ‘ease of use’. Website usability is a key factor for websites that want their visitors to stick around, make an enquiry and ultimately complete a transaction and order a product or service.

Easy to Use Web Design

Internet users tend to prefer easy to use websites, because they do not want to have to learn how to use a website every time they find a new one. They should be able to use a website after only a few seconds of looking around a homepage, any more and they will leave and browse elsewhere. The need for fast user interaction is vital and therefore having a fast loading website is also important for a website to succeed. Even with faster internet connections such as broadband, internet users don’t want to wait around.

Just imagine, if you go to a shop on the high street and are totally ignored by shop assistants at the counter for 5 minutes, even after you have made it clear you want help. There is a correlation here to how an internet user may feel, when they arrive at a website that has been poorly designed, is difficult to use, unfriendly and slow to load. Making sure that a website has been well thought out and designed with the user in mind, displays a company’s unique selling points within easily recognizable eye catching calls for action and has a clear, easy to use menu is key to its success.

Flash Web Design

With recent web design advancements, such as the introduction of Flash animation and high definition video content, impressive websites have been produced to take advantage of much higher levels of visual effects and interaction. However with this ‘high end’ web design, comes a price, more often than not, web designs which rely heavily upon Flash content are often ridiculously slow to load. They often have a progress bar, which slowly goes across the web browser to signify when the website will finish loading.

Diving Into the Deep Web

The term Deep Web (also called the Invisible Web and the Dark Web) refers to the hidden web content not indexed by standard search engines. Some estimates are that the Deep Web is 500 times larger than the surface Web (the visible Web). Think of the surface web as the surface of the ocean-miles and miles of surface out there, as far as the eye can see. But when you cast a net, it goes below the surface and captures things unseen to the eye.

Why is the Deep Web invisible? Because its hard-to-find web sites and search engines:

May have inadequate links to their content

Require users to register

Have spotty indexes to their content.
For more information on the Deep Web, check out the following sites:

deepwebresearch.info: monitors Invisible Web research resources and sites on the Internet

brightplanet.com: collects known, unknown, and hidden content from formerly inaccessible web sources

completeplanet.com: a directory of over 70,000 searchable databases, organized by content and subject categories.
The following are examples of Invisible Web people search databases:

411×411.com: Directory assistance and people search databases.

123people.com: Comprehensive search engine that also pulls from Deep Web sources as well. It also offers international searches.

pipl.com: Another comprehensive search engine that pulls from Deep Web sources. You can search by phone number, email address, even business names.

cvgadget.com: This has a simple interface-just plug in a name. The results are categorized by various Google search engine utilities (news, images, documents, etc.). Other categories are listed by various social networking sites, blogs, business networking sites, and so forth.
How can you dive into the Deep Web? Simple. Add the words “search” or “database” (without the quotes) to your queries to bring those hidden databases and directories to the surface.

Why Web Services?

Overview
Component-based programming has become more popular than ever. Hardly an application is built today that does not involve leveraging components in some form, usually from different vendors. As applications have grown more sophisticated, the need to leverage components distributed on remote machines has also grown.

An example of a component-based application is an end-to-end e-commerce solution. An e-commerce application residing on a Web farm needs to submit orders to a back-end Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application. In many cases, the ERP application resides on different hardware and might run on a different operating system.

The Microsoft Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), a distributed object infrastructure that allows an application to invoke Component Object Model (COM) components installed on another server, has been ported to a number of non-Windows platforms. But DCOM has never gained wide acceptance on these platforms, so it is rarely used to facilitate communication between Windows and non-Windows computers. ERP software vendors often create components for the Windows platform that communicate with the back-end system via a proprietary protocol.

Some services leveraged by an e-commerce application might not reside within the datacenter at all. For example, if the e-commerce application accepts credit card payment for goods purchased by the customer, it must elicit the services of the merchant bank to process the customer’s credit card information. But for all practical purposes, DCOM and related technologies such as CORBA and Java RMI are limited to applications and components installed within the corporate datacenter. Two primary reasons for this are that by default these technologies leverage proprietary protocols and these protocols are inherently connection oriented.

Clients communicating with the server over the Internet face numerous potential barriers to communicating with the server. Security-conscious network administrators around the world have implemented corporate routers and firewalls to disallow practically every type of communication over the Internet. It often takes an act of God to get a network administrator to open ports beyond the bare minimum.

If you’re lucky enough to get a network administrator to open up the appropriate ports to support your service, chances are your clients will not be as fortunate. As a result, proprietary protocols such those used by DCOM, CORBA, and Java RMI are not practical for Internet scenarios.

The other problem, as I said, with these technologies is that they are inherently connection oriented and therefore cannot handle network interruptions gracefully. Because the Internet is not under your direct control, you cannot make any assumptions about the quality or reliability of the connection. If a network interruption occurs, the next call the client makes to the server might fail.

Web Designing Company – Hiring A Web Designer Verses Graphic Designer

Today, the web designing company has come up as a great source of relief for all those business owners who find it hard to carry out the efficient promotion of their products and services. The Web Designing Services offered by different software firms have been of immense help to such business owners.

A web designing company hires both the web designers as well as the graphic designers. The web designers hired by a web designing company are well aware about all kinds of programming techniques which are essential in order to highlight a website in the best possible manner. These web designers offer efficient Web Designing Services which include features that are well capable of adding an extra tint of elegance and functionality to a website.

The graphic designers on the other hand are not entirely aware about all the programming techniques that are required in order to provide a new outlook to a website. The basic working of a graphic designer includes illustration (digital or fine art illustrations including painting), magazine layout and book layout, textile design (carpets, materials and upholstery), print design and advertisement design (concepts for advertising campaigns and silkscreen printing for clothing), video effects and editing (shooting and editing of corporate video and commercial video as well as special effects and animation). A graphic designer is not that much capable of designing the codes that are required for web designing.

The task of a web designer is absolutely different from that of a graphic designer. A web designer is involved in creating web pages for the internet. A web designer designs the graphical display of content and images which are further displayed on the internet in the form of web pages. A web designer uses different applications such as HTML, CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, PHP, Photoshop, and images such as JPG. The work of a web designer is more inclined towards the technical side. In contrast to the work of a web designer, the work of a graphic designer is extremely concise. A graphic designer may be unable to offer a shape to every thought of yours.

The Web Designing Services offered by different software firms include the working of both the web designers as well as the graphic designers. There are some firms which rely on hiring just the web designers for all the major programming activities. This is because the web designers not only possess the technical skills but are also aware about all the tricks that need to be implemented in order to enhance the ranking of a particular website.

A web designer is more efficient in nurturing your thoughts into reality. He/she can actually provide a better shape to your ideas than a graphic designer. I, personally believe that if you wish to create an excellent website for the promotion of your firm, then you can always trust the web designers. If your business is an online one, then the Web Designing Services offered by a perfect web designing company can help you achieve immense amount of popularity worldwide.

Is Monitoring the Dark Web the Best Way to Slow Down Cybercrime?

Cybercrime starts and ends with stolen information.

According to ITProPortal, the cybercrime economy could be bigger than Apple, Google and Facebook combined. The industry has matured into an organized market that is probably more profitable than the drug trade.

Criminals use innovative and state-of-the-art tools to steal information from large and small organizations and then either use it themselves or, most common, sell it to other criminals through the Dark Web.

Small and mid-sized businesses have become the target of cybercrime and data breaches because they don’t have the interest, time or money to set up defenses to protect against an attack. Many have thousands of accounts that hold Personal Identifying Information, PII, or intelligent property that may include patents, research and unpublished electronic assets. Other small businesses work directly with larger organizations and can serve as a portal of entry much like the HVAC company was in the Target data breach.

Some of the brightest minds have developed creative ways to prevent valuable and private information from being stolen. These information security programs are, for the most part, defensive in nature. They basically put up a wall of protection to keep malware out and the information inside safe and secure.

Sophisticated hackers discover and use the organization’s weakest links to set up an attack

Unfortunately, even the best defensive programs have holes in their protection. Here are the challenges every organization faces according to a Verizon Data Breach Investigation Report in 2013:

76 percent of network intrusions explore weak or stolen credentials
73 percent of online banking users reuse their passwords for non-financial websites
80 percent of breaches that involved hackers used stolen credentials
Symantec in 2014 estimated that 45 percent of all attacks is detected by traditional anti-virus meaning that 55 percent of attacks go undetected. The result is anti-virus software and defensive protection programs can’t keep up. The bad guys could already be inside the organization’s walls.

Small and mid-sized businesses can suffer greatly from a data breach. Sixty percent go out of business within a year of a data breach according to the National Cyber Security Alliance 2013.

What can an organization do to protect itself from a data breach?

For many years I have advocated the implementation of “Best Practices” to protect personal identifying information within the business. There are basic practices every business should implement to meet the requirements of federal, state and industry rules and regulations. I’m sad to say very few small and mid-sized businesses meet these standards.

The second step is something new that most businesses and their techs haven’t heard of or implemented into their protection programs. It involves monitoring the Dark Web.

The Dark Web holds the secret to slowing down cybercrime

Cybercriminals openly trade stolen information on the Dark Web. It holds a wealth of information that could negatively impact a businesses’ current and prospective clients. This is where criminals go to buy-sell-trade stolen data. It is easy for fraudsters to access stolen information they need to infiltrate business and conduct nefarious affairs. A single data breach could put an organization out of business.

Tips for Writing Impressive Web Content

It’s a common mistake.

Even experienced web writers make it.

When writing your web copy, who do you think of?

Do you picture a potential customer reading your text? And do you think about what makes him – or her – click?

That’s what most web writers do.

They treat their web visitors like human beings who like to read.

They treat their web visitors just like readers of printed text.

But that’s wrong. Completely wrong. Because web copy is totally different than print copy.

Web copy is scanned. Or glanced at. Not read.

Want to write better web content?

Your web visitors are hunting for information or products. They make quick decisions without thinking.

So how can you persuade web visitors to take action if they don’t read your text?

Let me explain…

Below follow 9 tips to write persuasive copy for the web.

Ready?

1. Treat your web visitors like wild animals
Your website visitors behave like wild animals (source: Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox).

They’re hunting for information or a product to buy – just like a hungry panther hunts for his next meal.

When a panther sniffs a scent trail he quickly decides: will the scent trail lead to a good meal? And will it be an easy catch?

Your web visitors consider the same two things: Does your website offer what they’re looking for? And can they find it easily?

A hungry panther doesn’t like wasting time to catch a meal. And your web visitors don’t want to browse around your website for several long minutes to find the product they’re after. They want to find it quickly.

Just like the panther makes a fast decision whether to follow a scent trail or not, your web visitor decides quickly whether your site is useful or not. So if your site looks complicated with a lot of options to choose from, they click away to check out another website.

Web visitors quickly glance at your web page before guessing whether they’re in the right place or not. They don’t need to know for sure. They just want to make a quick decision.

If your web visitors only glance at your website, how do you get your message across?

2. Put your most important information first
Writing for the web is completely different from writing an essay or a paper.

An essay might go like this: First, explain what you’re going to discuss. Then, present an overview of the literature. Next, discuss; and finally draw your conclusion. The most important point you make is in the conclusion – at the end of your essay!

On web pages you have to do the opposite: your most important points always come first.

An example: you’re looking for a new red three-seater sofa. When you arrive at a website you want to see it sells sofas. And secondly, you want a search box so you know you can quickly find out what the red three-seater sofas are like.

The Ultimate eCommerce Web Designers Trick

Either you’ll be able to go with freelance web designers or can hire total service web designers to get your internet presence, also called website. The very first reason to have your website is your engagement with the internet. There are lots of web designers out there. So when you’re looking to locate a fantastic web designer, the very first thing you’ve got to check is designing services that are quality oriented. Most reputable web designers know not to pick an internet host simply because they’re definitely the most popular or since they supply the cheapest web hosting.

The site designer may get the job done freely or even as a member of a company which is particularly into designing proficient stores. For instance, if you want non-profit website then non-profit website designers are the ideal choice for you. Moreover, flash designs might also be incorporated within the site to make it even more alluring to the clients. Designing an eCommerce website is an extremely professional undertaking. In case the website design of your site cannot pull and convert visitors, then it means your site needs improvement.

Being an owner of a company, you should select an eCommerce web designer that could comprehend the tasks of designing an eCommerce shop. A great designer is going to know that design and SEO go hand-in-hand. They are being snatched by agencies and large projects. They are creative people that need to think out of the box. A superb web designer ought to be in a position to comprehend the emerging trends in the market, the expected changes in web design, current and future trends as well as the most recent web development tools.

Your website design provider should use the ability of Social Media Marketing. Any expert web design company would help the consumers in many respects. An excellent web design company will have great search engine optimisation skills to publicize your website. It’s always preferable to opt for a great web design company that comprises of dedicated and seasoned employees.

So as to create a web site or an internet presence, one wants to employ a website design company. Also, make certain that the website design company ought to have a group of experienced web designers, developers, programmers and testers etc so that you are able to secure all kinds of services under one roof. A seasoned web design company is going to have a good portfolio of internet sites that they’ve created for different customers. New web design businesses are springing up all of the moment, but don’t be tricked by shiny sites loudly proclaiming their amazing services.

The Advantages of eCommerce Web Designers

The Web lets us market our services and products any place in the Earth, but to be able to actually earn a sale, we have to set a relationship that generates a sufficient amount of trust, confidence, loyalty and passion. Environmentally-friendly web hosting is getting more and more popular for business web sites appearing to implement an eco-policy. To rival a number of the biggest bands on the planet, websites have allowed bands the capacity to grow massive online fan bases through pay per view. The site ought to be downloaded as fast as possible. For example, the site of a company making and selling luxury goods needs to seem luxurious also.

What Is the Dark Web? How Many Parts Are on Dark Web?

A dark world of the Internet is the dark part of online which ordinary people do not know anything about; today we are going to tell about the dark web. We are talking about the dark web which is a part of the internet where we never go. Today you will know what the dark web is and how does it work and what happens here.

What is the dark web?

It is also called Dark net, it is a part of the World Wide Web of the Internet, but it is not a small part, 96% of the Internet is Dark Web but still not everyone knows about it and one reason behind it is also that we cannot reach there directly through the browser. All the websites and contents of the dark web are encrypted, i.e. hidden and cannot be accessed by search engines like Google.

There are three parts of World Wide Web (WWW):
1. Surface web
2. Deep web
3. Dark web

Now let’s understand these three in some detail.

What is Surface web?

Generally, the part of the Internet that we and you use in everyday life is called the Surface Web. All the websites that we access through search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo, all fall in this part. You will be surprised to know that only 4% of the entire internet is surface web. That is, we use only 4% of the Internet.

Such web pages that anyone can access publicly are in this region of the same Internet. To open these sites no special software or configuration is required nor is any permission required. We can easily access it from browsers like Google Chrome, Firefox, Opera.

What is deep web?

Web pages on the internet which are not indexed by search engines, i.e. they are out of reach of the search engine and we have to log in to access it. These pages cannot be viewed without permission.

Just like you cannot read emails without logging into your Gmail account, without creating an account you cannot see your friend’s profile page on Facebook. All these web pages are within the deep web itself. You can see their content, but for that you must have an ID and password.

What is dark web?

We cannot access it from a simple browser. Nor can we reach there through Google; we cannot reach this area through any common search engine. The IPs of websites in the dark web is encrypted through the encryption tool, that is why they are not seen by the search engines.

A special type of browser called Tor browser is used to access these hidden sites. These sites can be accessed only by people who know about it. It is the favorite place of criminals and hackers where all kinds of illegal transactions, drugs smuggling, pornography, arms sale, human trafficking, and selling stolen credit card details are committed.

The Evolution of Word Wide Web

Introduction

World Wide Web (WWW) is the system of interlinked hypertext documents containing text, images, audio, videos, animation and more. User can view and navigate through these documents using hyperlinks or navigation elements which have references to another document or to the section of the same document. In a broader sense “The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge.”

History of World Wide Web

WWW was first proposed in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau while working at the CERN, the European Council for Nuclear Research. Both of them came out with their individual proposal for Hypertext systems and later on they united and offered joint proposal. The term “Word Wide Web” was first introduced in that joint proposal. The history of every invention has lot of pre-history. Similarly the World Wide Web has also lot of pre-historical gradual development of hypertext system and internet protocols which made the WWW possible. The gradual development started in the early 1945, with the development of Memex, a device based on microfilms for storing huge amount of documents and facilitating organizing those documents. Later in 1968 “Hypertext” was introduced, which made linking and organization of documents fairly easy. In 1972 DARPA (Defense Advance Research Project Agency), started project that connect all research centers to facilitate data exchange which later adopted for military information exchange. In 1979 SGML (Standard Generalized Markup Language) was invented to enable sharing of documents for large government project by separating content from the presentation and thereby enabling same document to be rendered in different ways. In 1989 Tim Berners-lee came out with Networked Hypertext system form CERN Laboratory. In 1990, joint proposal for hyper text system was presented and the term “World Wide Web” first introduced. In 1992 first portable browser was released by CERN, and that had picked up industry interest in internet development. Today web is so much popularized and has grown to be so invaded in to our lives; it becomes almost impossible to imagine the World without web.

Web Evolution – What and How?

Each technology has certain distinguished characteristics and features. Similarly web has certain features such as data, services, mess-up, APIs, social platform and more. These features are continuously and progressively evolving in distinct stages with qualitative improvements over the existing. Web evolution is categorized and hyped with some fancy marketing terms like “Web 1.0”, “Web 2.0”, “Social Web”, “Web 3.0”, “Pragmatic Semantic Web”, “Pragmatic Web” and many more.

Yihong Ding, PHD candidate at Brigham Young University, in his article on “Evolution of Web” explained the development of Web by analogically comparing it with the human growth. Yihong Ding stated “The relationship between web pages and their webmasters is similar to the relationship between children and their parents. As well as parents raise their children, webmasters maintain and update their web pages. Human children have their normal stages of development, such as the newborn stage, pre-school stage, elementary-school stage, teenage stage, and so on. Analogically, web has its generations, such as Web 1.0, Web 2.0, and so on.”

Along with technological advancement web design also changed over the period of time. Initial design was simple hypertext read only system which allowed users to read the information. User was just a viewer of what is presented on the web. Gradually images and tables added with evolution of HTML and web browsers, which allowed making better design. Development of photo-editing tools, web authoring tools and content management tools enabled designer to begin creating visually appealing website design layouts. In the next phase of development, web design changed with the change in usability and the focus is diverted on the users rather than the content of the website. User interaction and social touch is applied to the web design. Now user is not just a viewer. User can drive the web with feedback, information sharing, rating and personalization. Gradually we got the mature blend of function, form, content and interaction, called Read/Write Web. Continuing this evolution, meaning is added to the information presented on the web so that online virtual representatives of human can able to read and interprets the presented information. This kind of web where user agent imitating human behavior, can read and understand the information using artificial intelligence is called semantic web.