dental articles from 2 Dental.com

Submitted by roryridleyduff

Introduction

Life is an endless process of probing and searching for satisfying relationships for the purpose of economic and social gain. We constantly try to seduce each other for different reasons. Beyond seduction to satisfy our sexual desires, there are employers seducing employees (and vice versa), salespeople seducing customers, consultants seducing clients, advertisers seducing consumers, writers seducing readers, musicians seducing listeners, and academics, scientists, religious leaders and politicians presenting seductive versions of “the truth”.

In marriage, families and committed partnerships, we display our emotions more freely than at work. Learning to cope with them often leads to the most durable and meaningful relationships in our lives. Yet, at work, an “inappropriate” display of emotion can land a person in deep trouble, even result in their sacking or trigger widespread upheaval in the office. It has made me question whether our attitude to emotions is actually helping business or hurting it.

My own interest is the way emotion and intimacy drives the way we govern each other and to organise ourselves into social groups. By looking at conversations, it is possible to discover that productive relationships, generally, are far more equitable than we realise. Only when one party wants to punish the other do relationships change dramatically. When hostility is triggered, one party cuts off or alters the way they communicate. Sometimes they start shaping situations so they can hurt those who they think have hurt them. When this happens, we discover how power is organised, because one party is usually able to punish “the other” more completely and effectively than the other way around.

The desire to punish is rooted in emotional hurt. In our closest relationships we learn many things: how to let others win as a way of developing their confidence; how to win sometimes so that others learn to deal with the emotions aroused by losing. Learning to establish a balance between winning and losing, and teaching others how to cope with winning and losing, is an experience that is quite different from the “win, win, win” mentality that now pervades our society.

Winning is over-rated. Management researchers have long noted the cycle of rapid business success followed by rapid business failure. The same might be asserted about military ’success’ in places like Vietnam and Iraq. Quick success breeds overconfidence and arrogance. Moreover, when winning and the pursuit of ideological supremacy becomes more important than supporting the development of human life, we start to undermine the very people who contribute to our own survival. Sometimes we mindlessly hurt without pause to consider the long-term consequences, then compound the problems by getting angry when others react to our own insensitivity. Forgiveness is a quality much needed, but rarely found, in governmental thinking, despite the competitive advantage to be gained through its adoption (Clutterbuck & Megginson, 2005).

The Growing Interest in Emotions At Work

Interest in emotion was fuelled by the runaway success of Daniel Goleman’s book Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1995) . As is the case with many popular psychology books, Goleman tends to view emotion as a product of genetic inheritance and upbringing. Branches of academia, such as cognitive (Aronson, 2003) and evolutionary psychology (Buss, 1994), also accept this presumption to understand personality’.

In the social sciences (including business studies) the seminal works on emotion take a different view. In Fineman’s writings (2000), for example, emotion is seen as a outcome of group life, something that is triggered by changes in our social status and relationships that create ‘cognitive dissonance’ (Festinger, 1957). This theme has been picked up by some psychiatrists, such as William Glasser in Choice Theory. Glasser (1998) views emotional disturbances as ‘normal in the circumstances’ when a person’s relationship aspirations are seriously disrupted by real world events. By viewing emotion as ‘normal’, his patients are taught to control their choices and accept those made by others as outside their control (if they seriously wish to maintain rather than destroy their relationships).

This focus on relationship aspirations is key in management research into emotion. When people are asked to talk about emotions at work, they do not (unless prompted by researchers or managers) talk about “job satisfaction” or a desire for “self-fulfilment”. Instead they talk about their relationships with work colleagues, family and friends. What matters, therefore, is the situation in the here and now, not what happened 10 or 20 years ago. The past may influence the way a person understands and deals with the present, but the problem to be solved, the feelings that are being experienced, are in the present situation and not simply a product of personality.

Arlene Hochschild (1998) has documented another feature of emotional life at work - the way we are encouraged to adopt emotions when we interact with work colleagues, managers, clients, customers and suppliers. Her concepts link back to Daniel Goleman but have a different slant. What Goleman calls “emotional intelligence” Hochschild regards as “emotional labour”. Unlike Goleman, who argues that emotional intelligence is beneficial to us as human beings, Hochschild brings out another aspect. Constantly pretending or withholding emotions undermines our sense of self, affects our physical health and undermines our capacity to act morally.

My own contribution has been to demonstrate scientifically how company governance practices, and the development of social structures at work, are partly rooted in the way we handle intimacy and emotionality (Ridley-Duff, 2005). Whether in business or politics, in love triangles or large families, we are drawn to those who trigger positive emotions in us, and we consider them more desirable and trustworthy. The way people handle this is an important dimension of leadership but it is rarely discussed as a management topic.

Another couple who confront the issue of intimacy are Andrew and Nada Kakabadse (Kakabadse and Kakabadse, 2004). They found that intimacy at work is a common experience, and the benefits are astonishingly enduring, often lasting a life-time. In their conclusions, the Kakabadses talk of a need for people at work, particularly managers, to develop greater sensitivity so that they can handle intimacy and emotionality more effectively. This recommendation was underpinned by a survey finding that only 11% of people at work think relationship issues are handled well, and that only 2% believe that policy-based approaches to sexual conflict make a positive contribution.

Current Issues

The recent legislative attempts to bring about improvements in behaviour by making employers responsible for equality have the potential - in my eyes - to make matters worse. Does it make sense to make managers legally responsible for preventing the accidental upset of people at work? A person who accidentally upsets another can now be sacked if it can be shown that the effect of their behaviour was intimidating (even if unintended). Managers can be found guilty of failing to prevent a hostile environment if they do not remove a person who accidentally causes another distress. A person’s motive may be to show care for another person or to debate discrimination issues affecting their own workplace, or just a straightforward positive response to the other’s obvious interest. The result of legislative change is that we are developing a culture that frustrates the pursuit of equality by outlawing the emotionality of intimacy and debate. In effect, we are knowingly or unknowingly making democracy illegal.

At the same time, our world is increasingly driven by intolerance. In both US and UK politics, we see world leaders ordering troops into Iraq justified, not on the basis of credible evidence of a threat to any nation, but to assuage the fears and suspicions of our leaders. Riots erupt the world over after publication of a blasphemous cartoon just as “democracy” is established in Iraq (Williams and Born, 2006). In the UK, members of religious minorities fear prosecution for incitement to terrorism (BBC, 2004) for publicly debating how to respond to their own government bombing family members in other countries, even when a majority of citizens oppose the war (Walker, 2007). We see Labour Party stewards ejecting an pensioner-age party member for holding a political leader to account at a “democratic” conference and then using anti-terror laws to prevent his further participation (BBC, 2005). At work, the result of “tightening up” sexual discrimination legislation is that people can be demoted or sacked for trying to debate issues of sex discrimination, including something as trivial as choosing not to wear a tie (Channel Five, 2005).

Emotions, our own and others, have had a raw deal in the credibility stakes in both personal and professional worlds for around 200 years. Science itself is beginning to establish how emotions underpin our intelligence. We have an innate ability to be sensitive, and this sensitivity allows us to discovers ways of thinking that help us to survive. While the current wave of intolerance is rooted in a global fear about our collective survival, the fear is rational even if the reactions to it are not.

As a social scientist, I do not believe anyone can be completely objective. Even maths - often cited as the purest of sciences - is a symbolic language. It is an invention by human beings to represent the world as mathematicians see it. The bias lies not in its inability to precisely depict what is observed (it does this rather well) but in the purposes behind particular observations and the way we report them. The best way forward, therefore, is not just to count and measure occurences of emotion. Instead, we need to interpret the causes, meanings and impacts and learn to make measured responses in the best traditions of a society that claims to assert itself as a democracy.

It is timely to consider how we will benefit by being sensitive to our own and others’ emotions as well as their words. This is a time to develop our capacity for tolerance. Secondly, I argue that during conflict, the priority is to understand the source of emotion - both in ourselves and others rather than stamp it out through authoritarian behaviour, discipline, punishment and exclusion. If we fail to embrace the challenge of understanding our feelings, we adopt alternative behaviours that increase anger and violence. The result, as with every intolerant society in history, is the growth of tyranny and the death of democracy.

Based on Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2007) Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy: Alternative Perspectives on Organisation Behaviour, Bracknell: Men’s Hour Books, Introduction (pp. vi-xi).

References

Aronson, E. (2003) The Social Animal, Ninth Edition , New York: Worth Publishers.

BBC (2004), “Muslim fear amid terror arrests”, BBC News, 9th August 2004, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3549050.stm

BBC (2005), “Blair apology to hecklers”, BBC News, 3rd October 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/talking_point/4292918.stm

Buss, D. (1994) The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating, New York: Basic Books.

Clutterbuck, D., Megginson, D (2005) Making coaching work: Creating a coaching culture, London, CIPD.

Channel Five (2005) “What are Men For?”, Don’t Get Me Started, 23 rd August 2005. Scripted and presented by Michael Buerk.

Festinger, L. (1957) A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Fineman, S (ed) (2000) Emotion in Organizations, 2nd edn, Sage Publications.

Glasser, W. (1998) Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom, Harper Perennial.

Goleman, D. (1996) Emotional Intelligence, London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Hochschild, A. R. (1998) “Sociology of emotion as a way of seeing” in G. Bendelow and S. J. Williams (eds) Emotions in Social Life, London: Routelege.

Kakabadse, A., Kakabadse, N. (2004) Intimacy: International Survey of the Sex Lives of People at Work, Palgrave.

Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2005) Communitarian Perspectives on Corporate Governance, Sheffield Hallam University.

Ridley-Duff, R. J. (2007) Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy: Alternative Perspectives on Organisation Behaviour, Bracknell: Men’s Hour Books.

Walker, P. (2007) “60% think Iraq war is wrong, poll shows”, Guardian.co.uk, 20th March 2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/20/iraq.iraq

Williams, B. & Born, M. (2006), “Islam cartoon sparks worldwide protests”, Daily Mail, 3rd February 2006, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=375997

About the Author
Dr Rory Ridley-Duff is Senior Lecturer in Human Resource Management and Organisation Behaviour at Sheffield Hallam University. After winning a Hallam PhD Studentship, he undertook research into the impact of gender on corporate governance practices. His second book, Emotion, Seduction and Intimacy publishes his most important findings in a readable, accessible writing style. His next book is Understanding Social Enterprise: Theory and Practice for Sage Publications.

Submitted by robert23

Two physicians, Friedman and Roseman, have written extensively about personality, cardiovascular disease, and stress. These researchers have described two stress-related personality types-type A and type B. Most people are neither type exclusively but fall somewhere between the two.

Type A personality is characterized by an urgent sense of time, impatience, competitiveness, aggressiveness, insecurity over status, and inability to relax. People with type A behavior characteristics are likely to be highly stressed. Type B people have a more unhurried approach to their lives. The type B personality does not become as upset at losing or not attaining a goal. Type B people also tend to set more realistic goals. Researchers disagree on whether there is a possible relationship between the stress­prone type A personality and cardiovascular disease.

In general, researchers believe that being a type A personality is not a problem if there is no underlying hostility. However, regardless of whether type A individuals are more susceptible to heart disease, they will experience more negative effects, such as tiredness and frustration, from short-term stress.

“Stress survivors” people who have been found to handle stress successfully or have successful coping abilities-have several common characteristics. Psychologist Suzanne Kobasa 12 has isolated these attributes and characterized the type of person who exhibits them. A hardy personality tends to remain healthy even under extreme stress. Characteristics of a hardy personality or hardiness are challenge, commitment, and control Challenge is the ability to see change for what it is-that is, not only inevitable but an opportunity for growth and development of unique individual abilities. Commitment is delineated by a strong sense of inner purpose. It is necessary to want to succeed for success to be achieved. Commitment is the ability to become really involved while maintaining the discernment to know when dedication and desire are harmful. Control is exhibited by the recognition that people have power over their lives and attitudes. People who have a sense of control act in situations rather than react to them.

Coping With and Managing Stress

Stress profoundly affects people’s lives. Every one lives with stress-whether a student, business person, parent, or athlete. Stress is frequently viewed as an enemy. This is a misconception. Stress is often neither positive nor negative. How people deal with or react to what they perceive as stress is what determines its effect on their lives. As has been stated, “It is often said that stress is one of the most destructive elements in people’s daily lives, but that is only a half truth. The way we react to stress appears to be more important than the stress itself. The effects of stress can be either positive or negative. Positively used, stress can be a motivator for an improved quality of life. Viewed negatively, it can be destructive.

Selecting a Stress-Reducing Technique

No single stress-reduction technique automatically reduces stress for everyone. People are comfortable with and enjoy different activities, and this is what determines long-term use. When dealing with your stress, awareness that a stress response is occurring is necessary first. People are frequently un­aware that the reason they are always tired or irritable or have body aches is because they are experiencing stress’s negative effects. Second, everyone has to find the stress-reduction techniques that work best for them. This usually requires more than one approach, depending on the individual and the type of stress response each individual experiences. Any technique that helps create a sense of relaxation, provides personal time, and allows you to gain control can lead to a happier, healthier, more enjoyable life.

Third, the best form of stress management is the prevention of negative effects before they become unmanageable. Well thought out, prudent lifestyle decisions based on knowledge of health behaviors and understanding of your own needs and expectations may be the best contribution you can make to your own stress-management plan.

About the Author
The authors site you will find information about healthy vitamins has lots of tips about anxiety

by: Murtuza Abbas

Are you interested in driving killer targeted website traffic?

Are you confused as to what to do to get traffic rushing and swimming all over your site?

Your site is finally ready, now all you need to do is drive crazy traffic rushing into your site to make all the sales and money you have ever dreamed of.

If you want to drive tons of visitors to your site interested in purchasing your products and services, make sure you apply these 4 steps every single day in your internet marketing plan.

These 4 steps gets me around 1000 visitors to my site every single month absolutely FREE.

Step 1 - Email Marketing.

Step 2 - Social Networking.

Step 3 - Forum Marketing.

Step 4 - Article Marketing.

The purpose of this article is to show you the exact steps that I am personally using to market my website and drive killer targeted website traffic.

Lets get down into dirty internet marketing tactics…

Step 1 - Email Marketing.

If you want to build relationship with your potential clients this is one of the best tactics to use.

Send quality content and offers to your list on regular basis and make sure you help them.

If you win their hearts they will respect you as an expert in your niche and will purchase your products and services.

Next step will show you how to use social networking and web 2.0 sites to promote your website.

Step 2 - Social Networking.

Social networking sites like MySpace, Friendsters, Facebook, etc can help to drive crazy traffic to your website.

The process involves creating quality attractive profiles so that you can attract more people into your network.

More people into your network, more people you will have to advertise your products and services.

Next step will show you how to use forums to boost up your website traffic and drive instant visitors all day long.

Step 3 - Forum Marketing.

Signup with forums in your niche. Then post answers to questions out there.

This will help you to build your credibility and people will respect you as an expert in your niche.

Secondly you will be allowed to place an ad below your post, so more traffic will start rushing to your site.

Next step will show you one of the most powerful website traffic generation tactic, article marketing.

Step 4 - Article Marketing.

Write articles and submit them to article directories.

This will boost up your website incoming links and raise your sites search engine ranking. Thus more traffic rushing into your site.

About The Author
Murtuza Abbas has helped hundreds of newbies ‘One-On-One’ to start their internet home business.

Do you want to learn how I do it? Watch this ‘FREE Report’ and Discover How I Created a Killer Cash-Pulling-Machine that Attracts 23,883 Visitors and Earns $6665.49 on Autopilot from just 20 Days of Lazy Work & How You can Do it too with My One-On-One Help & Support…

==> http://www.CashPullingMachine.com/free-report.html

Sometimes the simplest data is the best. Marketing is not complex if you know the basics – that’s true with anything by the way. Here are some tools that are brilliantly simple and with them you really won’t have to sweat the small stuff.

The more that your prospective patients see your name in front of them, the more likely they are to call your number (and not someone else’s) when they need the services you offer.

Many marketing efforts go unrewarded, not because they were off target, but simply because they weren’t given enough of an opportunity to work. Showing your TV commercial one time, running an ad in the newspaper once, or doing one mailing of postcards may not be enough to grab and keep your target audience’s attention.

Get your name out there, do it on a regular basis and people will remember you when they need to make an appointment for a dental cleaning or more extensive dental work. Actually, this particular datum cannot be stressed enough – and failure to adhere to it is the #1 reason new businesses fail.

You should also know that taking the time to really see which advertising pieces will generate the response you want, will pay off. Don’t just totally give up when a response is low – persistence is vital. Testing and tweaking your advertising can create a marketing campaign that hits the mark every time.

Measure your Return On Investment (ROI) in terms of actual MONEY not response rate. An advertising vehicle is working when the MONEY that it brings in has more value than the MONEY and time that is spent on the marketing.

Don’t fall into the trap of becoming discouraged by a small number of new callers responding to a large number of pieces. If you spend several hundred dollars to be in the view of a few thousand possible patients, it may only take a few of them responding for you to make enough of a profit for this type of marketing to be valuable. Three patients that need bridge work can more than pay for a successful marketing campaign. The usefulness of any vehicle can only be determined after the amount of income generated by the promotion has been calculated. If you spend 1/5 of what you generate or generate 5 times what you spend, your campaign was successful.

It is much easier to “sell” a prospect once you get them to call or come in to your practice. In “2-Step Marketing”, step 1 is to get them interested; step 2 is having them speak to a representative of your practice to get all the details – and get “closed” by that representative, most likely to make an appointment or to buy a product that you offer.

The design of your advertising piece must be eye catching and informative, but don’t try to close them on the entire dental treatment by explaining all of the details in one piece of advertising. The details of a business transaction often take many more words to explain than the main concept of what is being sold. For example, if your company offers great prices for your services, there is no need to list the prices for every dental service that you can deliver. Simply give examples of two or three different services and state somewhere in the advertisement that other discounts are available for your other services. This will prompt them to call to get the rest of the details once you have gotten their interest.

By no means have I given you all the basics here, but by learning and implementing these 3 marketing fundamentals, you are already on your way to marketing success!

Joy Gendusa founded PostcardMania in 1998; by 2005 the company did over $12 million in sales, employed over 100 people and made Inc. Magazine’s prestigious Inc 500 List as the one of the 500 fastest growing companies in the nation. Dentistry is one of the top three industries they create marketing campaigns for. For a free dental industry report visit www.PostcardMania.com/DentalPostcards

by William defoe

Does Your Site Looks Like It Was Designed in 1995

Some signs of an outdated web site include: chunky, slow-loading graphics, old-style “framed” coding, where the site is divided up into panes that load separately, little animated cartoon clip-art throughout the site, and text created as images instead of in HTML. Having any of these on your site could reflect poorly on your business, making you look ‘behind the times’. It can also make you look like you don’t care enough about your business or about technological advances to keep abreast of them. Keeping your company’s website looking modern will improve its credibility.

The Information on Your Site Isn’t User-Friendly

If you cringe when you read your site text, or if you regularly get questíons on your site text from visitors, re-structuring your copy or rewriting it can help to fix these problems. If you’ve been adding to your site over time and the navigation has become unwieldy or confusing, restructuring your navigation could be another pressing reason to redesign your site. You want visitors to be able to easily find their way around your site and to be able to access all the information you have within a few clicks. Laying out your site to make that possible can make your visitor’s experience on your site a lot easier.

You Apologize for the Site When Referencing It or Handing Out Your Business Cards

Your site should be a source of pride. It should provide your clients and prospects an easy way to get a lot of information about your business. And, if you have to apologize for out-of-date information, broken images, poor design, difficult navigation or anything else on your site, it makes you look unprepared and unprofessional. Make sure your site is in top shape and looks impressive, so your clients believe your business is in good shape too.

You’re Not Getting Good Results in the Search Engines

Poor rankings in the Search Engines can be a result of not optimizing your site well. Poor search engine ranking can also be a result of bad design choices or coding on your site. Make sure that your site isn’t designed using frames and that the text is coded in HTML. Flash sites are also more difficult to optimize for Search Engines.

It’s Not Bringing in inquiries and Helping You to Make Sales

If your site was designed long ago, then there’s a good chance that it was designed as “brochureware”. This means that the site was designed just to act as an online brochure. This was very common a few years ago, when websites were new. But recently businesses have realized that a website can do a lot more than just impersonate your brochure - it can help you close sales, bring in new prospects and make your business easier to run. To bring in more inquiries and make more sales include the following when you redesign your site:

Calls to action to encourage your visitors to take specific actions - like purchasing something, contacting you, or signing up for a newsletter.

Forms, scripts, or programs to make your business easier - like contact forms, project estimating tools, and an autoresponder email series that can help you keep in touch with your clients and prospects. Including a shopping cart or Paypal buttons on your site can also help you to make more sales without any additional work.

Downloadable information packets, articles, questionnaires and white papers can answer a prospect’s questíons about your products or services and help them to move closer to buying. And, if you require the prospect to enter their email address or other contact information, it can help you to grow your prospect líst as well. These are just a few of the functions that your site can perform for your business. To get ideas for other ways that your site can help you improve your business, visit http;//www.makaistudio.com. Your Site is Costing You a Fortune to Update

If you’re racking up huge bills because of changes and still have a lot to go, it might be time to consider a whole site redesign. Make a líst of everything that you want to do on your site and consult a web designer about redesigning your site with those changes in mind. Often, if you have extensive changes to make to your site, it can be less expensive to just start over.

If your site is designed in Flash or coded in such a way that you can’t maintain it yourself, redesigning and re-coding your site could allow you to do so. Having the ability to make changes and update your own text will let you make revisions quickly, at no expense. And you can play with your site and make revisions to see what will work best for your business and clients.

If your site has any of the problems mentioned here, it’s time to redesign. The steps needed to update and revise will differ depending on the problems and issues that your site has - you may not have to start from scratch. But, do make sure that you address all of the problems that your site has so that you won’t have to redesign again any time soon!

http://www.makaistudio.com
About the Author

William Defoe has been working with many IT department, web consulting firms and SEO Firms for many years

by: Brad Stone

Trying to select a hosting package is much like purchasing a new car—there are many different types and ways to go, but in the end it really boils down to how you are going to get where you want to be and the features you’ll need to get there. You certainly would not buy a Honda Civic to make an off-road journey across the Mohave Desert. Nor would it make sense to buy a Hummer to just drive around town.

So in considering the type of hosting package and company to host your website, you should first assess where you want your website to go and what you’ll need to get there.

But first, let’s understand what web hosting is exactly, and the many different features that need to be considered.

The Internet is a vast network of interconnected computer servers which house or host various pages of information, called websites. Hosting a website means to store and maintain a computer folder of various web pages. Hosting companies offer this service by providing computer hardware and software services. These services vary as much as cars do.

Some very important hosting features that should be a must for your hosting package, much like the importance of having a car with a motor and wheels, are the following:

* Security – Protection from Internet hackers.
* Space – Ability to grow my site without size constraints.
* Speed – How fast my website will load onto visitors computers.
* Up Time – Dependability of the hosting servers from crashing.
* Back Up – Protection from loss of data from my website.
* Support – 24 hours support to handle problems.
* Administrative Tools – For making changes to your site.
* Email – The number and size of email accounts.
* Hosting Company – History and track record for support.
* Search Engine Submissions – Submitting to the major search engines.

Now, let’s consider where you want your website to go and what you’ll need to get there. Some questions to ask:

* Do I want my customers to be able to look up information on my website? If so, you’ll need a database driven website with a hosting company that supports it.
* Do I want movement on my website? If so, you’ll need a web design company that can program flash for your site, as well as the ability to host the flash program.
* What type and how much email traffic will I anticipate? This helps to determine the size and amount of storage you’ll need for your hosted website.
* How many web pages will I need? This also helps to determine the size of space needed for your hosting package.
* Will I want to make ongoing custom changes to my website? If so, you’ll need a hosting company that supports ongoing custom design changes.
* Will my website have a lot of images and movement? If so, you’ll need additional space for larger web files for these functions.
* Do I want Internet Traffic to my Website? In order to receive traffic to your website, your hosting company needs to offer this service, or you’ll need to hire a third party for this service.
* Will I need Internet marketing help and consultation? In this fast-changing Internet world, it is important to have professional help and consultation.

The Better Business Bureau offers this advice:

“Choosing a Web Hosting Service for your Business Web Site. Is your business web site down again? Does it seem to have more downtime than uptime? You may want to consider changing your web hosting service. One of the most important decisions you will make for your business web site is selecting which web hosting service will display your web pages to the Internet. Choosing the right Internet Service Provider (ISP) to host your business’s web site may feel like finding the right day-care center for your kids these days: Are they reliable? Will they be there next month? Do they know what they are doing? What services do they provide?”

Basically, it is important to find the right hosting company that will partner with you for all your hosting, design and consultation needs. The cheapest hosting is typically not the best route to go. It’s cheap because it is a bare bones package, with little, if any support. That is a sure way to online business failure.

About The Author
Brad Stone is CEO of Heritage Web Solutions, a USA Based Company, specializing in Designing and Hosting Affordable Websites for Small and Medium Size Businesses. With a staff of over 160 employees, Heritage Web Solutions has grown to a multi-million-dollar company in just 4 years, achieving a Top 1% National Ranking as reported by WebHosting.Info. For more information, call 866-754-1474, or visit www.heritagewebdesign.com.

View their website at: http://www.heritagewebdesign.com

by: Sydney Johnston

Most of my students are Internet novices and ask many apprehensive questions about how to design a website. They worry about their ability to design an attractive site and are anxiously seeking the quickest and best alternative.

After years on the Net, I believe you need to learn how to design your sites yourself, and here’s why…

The Internet is made up of two elements:

1. Text
2. Pictures

Yes, audio and video technologies are growing fast. But if you hope to sell on the Net, it’s critical to appeal to your audience, those folks who are willing to pull out their credit cards and buy your products. A huge percentage of these are still on dialup and certainly aren’t very sophisticated and fancy techniques will isolate you from many of them.

So what are your choices if you want to build a website?

1. Buy a template:

This can work sometimes. I’ve bought them myself and they do look great. But there are some real problems with templates:

* They can be expensive - especially if you want multiple websites. Good templates aren’t cheap. The few I’ve bought are in the $60-$70 range.

* If you don’t know what you’re doing, you can waste your money on templates that won’t work for you. For instance, you will often see templates with icons, pictures, company logos, “Buy Now” buttons and more. Yes, they look great. But when you download the images they are not editable because if they are in jpg or gif format, you can’t make changes. The most common ‘editable’ images are in ‘psd’ format. If you own image editing software, like Photoshop (which usually sells for about $600), you can make the changes you wish. But iff you don’t own this kind of software then forget it - your images can’t be changed.

* Editing templates isn’t easy. You might unwittingly purchase a template that allows 8′ of space - and your copy needs 10″ of space. Now what? Cheaper templates require the purchaser to “slice” them. This is tedious and time consuming and requires editing knowledge that most people don’t have. Higher quality templates allow the owner to edit them without slicing, but they are more expensive.

* Even if you can edit your new template, do you really think that you should allow a designer to dictate the placement of your sales copy? Beautiful design does not equal sales. Just because something looks good doesn’t mean it’s a good sales site. Many novices are impressed with the good looks of a template, but Madison Avenue beauty doesn’t equal profits on the Net. Earning money comes from effective direct response marketing which means testing the elements on your sales page and changing them until you have a winner. If your design is forced on you you are limited in the changes you can make.

2. Pay a website designer to build a site for you:

* Hiring a professional can be expensive. I currently have a goal of building two websites each week for a year. Let’s assume I pay someone $500 to build a website (which is quite a reasonable amount for a well done site - it often costs much more.) That means I will be paying $1,000/week, every week, for a year. My money is better spent on marketing than design.

* Every time you want to make a change on your site, you must wait on a designer to make the changes. This is expensive and can be time consuming if the designer is busy with multiple clients.

* Just like a purchased template, most web designers are focused on looks and appearance, rather than functionality or sales. All the best marketers acknowledge that plainer sites are more lucrative because the focus is on the copy, the words, rather than fancy graphics or beautiful colors. Take a look at the top money-making sites on the net. They rarely are flashy or dramatically impressive.

* Relying on a web designer creates dependency. Generally the motivation of entrepreneurs is freedom so waiting for another person to make even the smallest changes to your site isn’t taking you in the direction you want to go.

3. Buy site-making software:

Every program I have seen involves a learning curve. One popular site builder, for example, has a 500 page manual, is expensive and a lot of the learning doesn’t transfer to other site systems. I looked at another one recently with a 300 page manual. The time that you spend learning these methodologies could be spent learning an HTML editor that will make you fully capable of building your own sites, whenever you choose, for almost zero cost.

Spend the time and learn do it yourself websites. I personally spent two weeks in ‘Dreamweaver Hell’ several years ago. All reviews indicated that Dreamweaver is the best HTML editor, so I bought a book and determined to learn the software on my own. The first book wasn’t long enough so I returned it for a second - and longer - book, which eventually was exchanged for an almost-1200 page manual. There were moments of frustration, tears, triumph, cursing and the thrill of success, and I emerged able to put together websites whenever I chose.

Saying “I want to be an Internet marketer” and not learning how to build websites for yourself is like wanting to be a dentist - and refusing to learn about teeth; like being a star athlete - and refusing to practice your sport. So what if your first sites won’t win a design award? You’ll get better. And you will be independent. Isn’t that the entire point of working on the Internet?

About The Author

Starting an eBay business is easier with mentoring from an eBay expert. Learn from our offers an 11 Day Course that teaches how to sell on ebay: http://auction-genius-course.com/11days.shtml

by: Elizabeth McGee

Optimal website design is the art of logical navigation. It will offer consistency while providing useful, quality information that is attractive to the eye and easy to understand. A well designed site will lead your viewers to the starting point and direct them through your site without confusing them.

While there are many ways to design a website there are a few design principles that will help you create a site that is user friendly and attractive.

1. Use lots of white space.
Don’t feel that because you have a whole screen you need to fill it up with ’stuff’. Your page should follow a clean outline. Include your site name at the very top. Below that, list the subject of your page followed by information on your topic. Leave adequate space between each section.

Don’t cram a lot of pictures and ads on your site. If you have an ad, keep it off to the side or subtly intersperse it between your text. The idea is not to overwhelm your reader with a lot of advertisements.

It’s best to keep your text on a white background. If you do choose a colored background be careful that your text doesn’t blend into the background making it difficult to read.

2. Don’t use animation and flashing objects.
As advertisers we feel the need to get our viewers attention. This is important but we need to do it gracefully. Flashing objects and scrolling images distract your visitors and take away from the content. If your product is better demonstrated with animation, music or some other multi-media, allow your viewer to select the option. Don’t force it on them.

3. Include an ‘about’ link.
Allow your viewers to find out about who you are and what you are about. Include a biography and some background on why you are in the business you’re in or why you created your website. By helping them to get to know you, they will find it easier to develop a trust. If they can like you and trust you, they will feel a lot better about doing business with you.

Always include your business address, phone number and email address. This also lets viewers know that you welcome contact and are serious about your business.

4. Include a ‘Privacy’ Link
Reassure your visitors that you follow privacy guidelines by including a ‘Privacy’ page. This is particularly important if you are collecting names and email addresses. Visitors want to know that you will not sell or give away their information.

In these days of rampant spam, your privacy policy needs to be prominently displayed. Many viewers and business partners won’t do business with you unless you have it.

5. Always keep your links in blue.
Internet surfers have long been accustomed to seeing links in blue. It’s simply an expectation that viewers have. There’s certainly no law that says your links need to be blue, but people prefer consistency, therefore it’s good practice to keep your links consistent and recognizable. If it’s not, you may lose out on clicks.

6. Keep navigation consistent
The navigation scheme you create on your index page should be done the same way throughout your site. Don’t force your viewers to relearn each page of your site. Keep your navigation bars, colors and fonts consistent for each page.

7. Use Understandable buttons and links.
Title your links appropriately. Don’t use cute or misleading names. For example, if you have a link to ‘cameras’ don’t label the link ‘hotshots’, label it ‘Cameras’. Your viewers don’t want to waste time figuring out what things are. Be clear with your text or you could risk losing your visitor.

8. Focus on the ‘YOU’, not the ‘ME’.
Make it obviously clear to your readers that you are in business for them. Encourage feedback, provide useful information and keep advertisements to a minimum. Your objective should be focused on what you can do for your reader? Convince them that your main interest is how you can deliver what it is they’re looking for?

9. Make sure your page loads fast.
If viewers have to wait for a page to load they will click elsewhere. If a page doesn’t load in 8 seconds you could lose 1/3 of your visitors. Here’s a great free tool to help you check your website’s load time:

http://www.1-hit.com/all-in-one/tool.loading-time-checker.htm

10. Use a site map.
A site map will give visitors a “guide” on viewing your site, especially with larger sites. it’s a road map for your visitors to follow. Sitemaps are also popular with search engines and are often recommended to help ensure indexing.

About The Author

Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and support industry. She has moved her expertise to the world wide web helping businesses find trusted Marketing Tools, enhance customer service, build confidence and increase sales. Visit Elizabeth’s site at: http://www.pro-marketing-online.com

by: Tim Knox

Q: Should I build and maintain my business Web site myself or pay someone else to do the work for me? — Wesley L.

A: When you say, pay someone else to do the work for you, Wesley, I am going to assume that you are talking about hiring a professional Web site designer to do the work and not your next-door neighbor’s teenage son. If my assumption is correct, then read on. If not, go ahead and surf on over to Dilbert.com. You will get no good out of the advice I’m about to give, so you might as well consult Dilbert for your hot business tips.

Should you build and maintain your business Web site yourself or pay someone to do it for you? Let me answer your question with a couple of my own. Number one: is building and maintaining Web sites the key focus of your business? Number two: could your time be better spent doing more important things like, oh I don’t know, say running your business? If your answers were no and yes, respectively, then you have no business building and maintain a Web site.

Remember this: every minute you spend on tasks that are not related to the key focus of your business is time spent to the detriment of your business. In other words, every minute you spend focusing on tasks that do not contribute to the growth of your business and thereby increase your bottom line is time wasted.

If you want to be a web designer, be a web designer. However, if the key focus of your business is building widgets, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that your time would be better spent building widgets, not Web sites.

Case in point: I once had a very wealthy dentist ask if I could teach him how to maintain his Web site so he wouldn’t have to pay me to do it. Now my teeth had helped put this guy’s kids through college, but that didn’t seem to matter. At that moment he was more concerned about having to pay for changes to his Web site than my personal oral hygiene. Sure, I said, I’ll be glad to teach you how to update your Web site, just as soon as you teach me how to clean my own teeth so I don’t have to pay you to do it. He got the point. And he charged me enough for the cleaning to keep his site updated for months. Smart man.

Many business owners think they can’t afford a professionally designed Web site and that simply is not true. While the old adage, “you get what you pay for” is never more true than when applied to Web site design, having a professional web designer do the work for you is money well spent. A well-designed Web site can bring you a many-fold return on your investment. You can’t say that about too many other collaterals. While it is best to leave Web site design and maintenance to the experts, it is up to you (or someone considered a subject matter expert within our company) to provide the designer with the content (text and photographs) that best conveys your company’s message to your customers. A Web site, no matter how well designed, is meaningless if it lacks the content required to interest customers in the products you sell or services you provide.

Here’s are a few questions that, once answered, will help ensure that your Web site’s message is as appealing as its design. Go over these points with the designer before the design process begins as the answers will help determine the direction your Web site’s design should take.

What Is The Purpose Of Your Web Site? Most business Web sites have two purposes: (1) to educate the consumer and, (2) to sell them products or services. If you sell shoes, for example, the purpose of your Web site is to educate potential customers on the quality and durability of your shoes and as a result, to sell them shoes. If you paint houses the purpose of your Web site is to educate home owners on why your services are superior to other painters and sell them on hiring you to paint their house. By defining the purpose of your Web site you will give the designer the information required to create a Web site that best conveys that purpose to your target audience.

Who Is My Target Audience? Your target audience consists of those folks you want to attract to your Web site: potential and current customers, future and current employees, possible investors, etc. Anyone who might be interested in your company and its products or services is a member of your target audience. Correctly identifying your target audience is vital since your Web site should be designed specifically to appeal to your target audience.

Put yourself in their shoes (or in front of their computers). Imagine your Web site through their eyes. If you were visiting a Web site such as yours what would you expect to find and what would you be disappointed not to find? Identify your target audience, then have your Web site designed to fulfill their needs and surpass their xpectations.

What Content Should My Web Site Feature? Your Web site content should be driven by the nature of your business. If you’re a real estate agent, your site should feature photographs of homes you have for sale and information on buying and selling a home. If you own an auto body shop, your site might feature before and after photographs of cars that you have repaired. Remember to determine the purpose of your site, then develop the content to serve that purpose.

What’s My Competition Doing? The last question you should ask is one of the most important: What is your competition doing on the Web? Do a Google search for similar businesses and click around their Web sites. How are their Web sites designed? What message are they trying to convey? Are they doing a good job of conveying that message and as a result, selling products? What do you like about their Web sites? What don’t you like? Make note of the things you like and the things you hate, then share your findings with your site designer.

Remember, you’re not stealing trade secrets here.

You’re just borrowing ideas.

Here’s to your success.

Tim Knox

About The Author

Tim serves as the president and CEO of three successful technology companies and is the founder of DropshipWholesale.net, an online organization dedicated to the success of online and eBay entrepreneurs. Related Links: http://www.prosperityandprofits.com http://www.smallbusinessqa.com http://www.dropshipwholesale.net

by: Angela Nielsen

Do you operate a website, send out electronic newsletters or e-mail campaigns? Have you ever experimented with the different fonts (typefaces) available? If you have, you probably discovered there are numerous fonts available on your computer – in some cases 100-200 or more. How then do you decide which font to use?

This article will give you a brief overview of choosing fonts for the internet, so that the next electronic piece of information you send achieves the desired effect.

Where the Font Do We Start?

First, even though there are thousands of fonts available to us, each computer usually only has a hundred or so installed for use. Different operating systems, and various other files or programs you obtain can install various fonts on your computer and add to that number. Those fonts are usually compatible across programs, meaning you will be able to use all of your system fonts in any program. Let’s say your computer came pre-installed with 150 fonts. Then you bought a common software program that added 50 more fonts to your computer. You now have 200 fonts you will be able to use in any program that is designed to allow font selection.

Isn’t that great? You instantly have more fonts to choose from. If you’re working in print materials or graphics, then you actually do have the freedom to choose whatever fonts you want. However, if you are not printing the final version but instead delivering your material via the internet, whether it be on a website, by email, or any other type of electronic media, you don’t actually have as much freedom as you may think. There are several factors to take into consideration that could influence your choice, including perception, usability and availability.

Perception.

The typeface that you select needs to accurately reflect the mood of your message. Do you want the tone conveyed to your reader to be formal or informal, friendly or serious, professional or playful? If the message is of a professional and formal nature, then your font should accurately portray that. But if the message is to a group of friends inviting them to a party, you can have a little fun and take a more informal approach with your fonts. Always consider the audience for which the piece is intended, and then choose a font that achieves the perception you desire.

Usability.

After you have established the intended audience for your message, make sure they can actually read it! Many fonts are hard to read simply because they are so small in size (like 8 point or 10 point). Cursive and italic fonts can be hard on the eyes and are strongly discouraged for the purposes of main bodies of text. Italics should only be used for emphasis or as graphical elements. You also don’t want your font too large, as this can make it difficult for the eyes to scan across a large body of text. There are many fonts available intended specifically for headings and logo text that would be inappropriate for the main body of a message. To maximize usability, make sure to choose a font that is legible and easy on the eyes.

Availability.

This is the most easily overlooked aspect of font selection and can result in completely unexpected results. To insure the recipient sees the same message style you created, the fonts you use must be available on their computer. When you create a website for example, the HTML code will “call” the font that is supposed to be displayed. This tells your browser program what font it should display on that particular page. Even though you may have 200 fonts installed on your computer and you see your fonts fine and dandy, that doesn’t mean that the person on the other end viewing your website has the exact same fonts as you. In a case where he doesn’t, his browser will substitute a different font of its own choosing, which could completely change their perception of your intended message. At the very least, they may think you were sloppy in putting your material together. Email programs, and electronic newsletters, all work the same way. So bottom line, you need to use fonts that you are positive your entire web audience will have available on their computer. We call these “Web-Safe” fonts.

With thousands of fonts out there, you’re probably thinking, “No big deal, there are still plenty of choices”. Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but there are only 9. Yes, you read that correctly, there are only NINE web-safe fonts that you can be assured are on every single computer out there! Those fonts are Arial, Arial Black, Courier New, Comic Sans, Georgia, Impact, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet, and Verdana. Let’s take a couple of minutes to understand the differences in these fonts.

There are two basic types of fonts; serif or sans serif. Serif by definition has a fine line finishing off the main strokes of a letter, or letters may end with a rounded tip. And “sans” is a French term meaning “without”, so in the case of sans serif it would be without those fine lines. The most common serif font is Times New Roman and the most common sans serif font is Arial, both of which are web-safe fonts. Of the nine web-safe fonts there are only 3 serif fonts; Courier New, Georgia and Times New Roman. Serif fonts in very small text sizes can be hard to read, therefore caution should be used when selecting those for small print.

Arial (properly pronounced “are-ree-al”)

Arial was introduced as the default typeface for Windows 3.1 when it was released by Microsoft in the early 1990s. It is not difficult to read unless used in very small sizes, and it is the most popular sans serif font today. It is however quite plain, and people tend to get bored of Arial because they see it every where. But, since it’s so widely available, easy to read, and the default for Microsoft products, it is a great font to use for main content areas of your marketing materials, newsletters, websites, etc.

Arial Black

Arial Black is one of many versions of Arial, released with Internet Explorer 3. It is a bolder font than Arial and is great for headings and short sections of text that require emphasis.

Courier New

Courier New, a serif font, was primarily a font used in old typewriters. Not normally used as main bodies of text, it is still used to display code in documents or when the writer wants the old-fashioned typewriter look in their document.

Comic Sans

Comic Sans started shipping with Windows 95 as a preinstalled font. Designed to look like comic book lettering, the font was created for informal copy. Regarded today as unprofessional, this sans serif font is not recommended for materials of a professional nature. Comic Sans became a more popular font when it started being used as the text inside the tags on Beanie Babies!

Georgia

Georgia, a serif font, was created for Microsoft in 1993 to provide a clean font for use on the web that would display well even in small sizes. Georgia font letters are taller than most other web-safe fonts, making them easier to read when used in smaller sizes. Georgia is a great alternative when you’re tired of traditional Times New Roman, but still want a serif font.

Impact

Impact is a very bold sans serif font. By it’s name, it was designed to impact the reader, and is therefore recommended only for headings, small blocks of text, areas on the page that you want to grab the readers eye. Because of it’s thick block style, Impact looks best when there is plenty of space around it otherwise it looks cluttered.

Tahoma

Tahoma, a very close cousin of Verdana, was designed in 1999 for Microsoft. It is so similar to Verdana that many don’t see the difference in the fonts. Mainly, Tahoma keeps its lettering tighter so that text does not spread out as far as Verdana does. Tahoma is a great font option for those needing a sans serif font but who are getting bored of Arial.

Times New Roman

Times New Roman is the most widely used serif font, developed in 1931 for use by The Times newspaper in London. It has remained a very popular font for setting type in books, magazines, newspapers, etc. The U.S. State Department has been using Times New Roman 14 point on all diplomatic documents since 1994, replacing their old font of choice Courier New 12 point.

Trebuchet (properly pronounced “treb-u-shet”

Trebuchet was designed in 1996 for Microsoft and is a popular sans serif font for those bored with the plain appearance of Arial. Having a definite style all it’s own, Trebuchet is easy to read for large or small type and works well for main bodies of text. Due to its unique styling though, it can be seen as a feminine font and if your audience is all men they may not relate well to that font.

Verdana

Verdana, designed for Microsoft in 1996 is probably the most easy to read web-safe sans serif font available. With its taller lettering, and more evenly spaced letters it can be easily read in larger sizes as well as small sizes. It does extend the width of text on a page, so it’s great for filling design that have a lot of space with a small amount of copy.

What Font do YOU Want?

Now that you understand the differences between the 9 web-safe fonts, which one will you choose for your internet communications? If you’re looking for a serif font, then Georgia is our recommendation. It is the clearest serif font on the web, since it was designed for just that purpose. If you are looking for a sans serif font, Verdana is the clearest on screen font for readability and is our number one recommendation, with good old Arial pulling up a close second.

About The Author

Angela Nielsen is President of NIC Media Group, an award-winning web development company located in southern California. To find out more about Angela NIelsen or NIC Media Group visit http://www.nicmedia.com. Copyright 2006 by Angela Nielsen. Professional editing provided by http://www.sharpediting.com.