cultureblog

Clients often ask how to customize the little logo for their website that appears in their web browser tabs, title bars and bookmark lists. This little icon is called a “favicon” and is 16 pixels by 16 pixels. Here are some familiar examples.

Some people try and create the actual 16 x 16 graphic by hand using Photoshop, but editing at that small level of detail can be difficult and you often end up with a blurry and pixelated square.

Here’s a quick and easy shortcut to creating your own custom favicon for your website or blog. Find any square graphic that you want to use as your favicon. Ideally, this graphic is a larger, detailed graphic, around 200 pixels by 200 pixels, such as our Durrani “D” graphic that we use for our logo mark, pictured here to the right. Any image you want to use is fine and can be a .jpg, .gif or .png file type.

Then just go to http://www.html-kit.com/favicon/, browse to your graphic and click the button to generate your favicon. You can even optionally animate your graphic. The generated favicon file will be a compressed ZIP file that you can download to your computer and extract.

Transfer (FTP) the favicon.ico file that you downloaded, to the root folder of your website (the main public directory). A web browser automatically looks for the favicon.ico file when it loads your website and if found, will use it instead of the Internet Explorer or Firefox default icon. Now when someone visits or bookmarks your website, your new graphic will show up as the custom icon and will give your site a unique branding to stand out from the rest.

We used the “D” graphic above to create our site favicon. Here’s what the final image now looks like in a web browser:

One quick note – web browsers typically store or “cache” these files in a temporary folder on your computer each time you visit a website, so in order to get your new favicon file to show up, you might have to close and reopen your browser and/or clear out your browser temporary internet files. You can also try pressing the CTRL key and F5 key at the same time to force the page to load from scratch and refresh the all content and images.

That’s all there is to it. So go make your website bookmark and browser tab stand out from the rest with your new custom favicon.

A LinkedIn member posted a question in the "Answers" section, which read:

What is the average cost of developing a commercial website? (without hosting and domain name cost)

I have heard it can range from $1500 – $30,000.
What have you experienced?

As a website design agency, we are faced with this question daily. I took a few minutes to reply at the LinkedIn site and have reposted my answer here below. I think it’s an important question and something every business should consider.

Reply via Linkedin.

The secret question you are asking is, "What’s the best deal I can get, if I’m going to build a website for my business?". Don’t get me wrong, it’s a legitimate question. As the previous response stated, it depends on what you’re asking for. The range of complexity in web design is huge. Ask yourself, what do you want your website to do? What is the intended action I want a visitor to take when they visit my website? You don’t need a large-scale commercial website built using Flash if you are really just trying to sell a simple product… unless you are Sony, it’s wasted money.
If you were going to build a new house, would your first question to the builder be "What is the average cost of building a new house for my family?" We probably wouldn’t think of asking a simple question like that without first considering what your purpose for building the house is. How many rooms, is it for a family, what is the growth expected, will you need more rooms in a couple years (before you intend on building a new house) etc. Websites require no less planning then this. Sure, lots of 16 year old kids are running around building websites these days and you could get a great deal. But they are building websites… not businesses. Will your website convert on the goal you have set? I would sit down with someone who will help you think through your plan for your commercial website, not just what software you should use and how much it will cost. You could spend a ton of money and still not get the website you need, or you could spend a moderate amount and get your perfect online business. You get what you pay for these days. Not all websites are created equal. I’ve built many websites for $1500, as long as it fits the client’s needs.
Just remember, you are building a business, not a website. A website should fit snugly into your overall business objectives.
As they used to say in the days of dirt roads and horse drawn wagons… "choose your rut carefully… you’re going to be in it for the next 30 miles."

If you’re a member of LinkedIn, you can connect to me at: www.linkedin.com/in/durranijoe

1. “Penny Wise, Pound Foolish”

Now more than ever its easy to make a cheap web site. The high school kid that can build your web site and the desperate designer looking for lunch money don’t have the business skills or monetary incentive to show you how to enhance your business.

2. “I have a web site; the Internet doesn’t work for my business”

 89% of the business world is online now but only 5% net returns from their web efforts. Drop your preconceived notions and find out how the 5% gain success online.

3. “My brother, the computer expert will build my site for cheap”

Approximately 5% of the company?s online report that their sites are successful, creating upwards of 8-15% of their revenues via the web. Experience counts more than ever in business, if your brother has built 50+ business sites and will do the work cheap hire him. If he is smart and plans to figure it out as he goes, he will cost you missed opportunities and you are risking your relationship with your brother.

4. “My web address is www.MyName-anothercompany.com”

Image is very critical especially online. Your own personal domain name says a lot about how you conduct business. Disposable emails are great for personal use and co-branded web sites can be nice supplements to your online business, but companies that go beyond these channels have far greater success online and have a much better vehicle to interact with a richer online demographic.

5. “I can get my web site hosted for $10 per month”

Its true, you can get a web site hosted for very little money. However, there is a big difference between hosting or storing your web files versus managing your web site for success. Not all hosting is the same and not all web sites are the same.

6. “I have a professional computer, print, or advertising background and will build our company web site.”

On the surface it would seem logical to let a computer expert, print expert or marketing guru handle your online needs. As a rule of thumb, if you go this route, at least choose a company that has developed a minimum of 50 plus web sites. Any honest expert from another industry that has made this many sites will be able to demonstrate how some golden rules from one craft do not work completely opposite in the web world.

7. “People have to touch and feel my product; the web won’t help me”

Ask yourself a simple ? If your product or service is so unique and consumers can find out more about it on their own terms before going through your sales cycle, do they benefit? This is one of the primary drivers of the Internet, if you adapt, not abandon, but adapt your old world way of doing business to the new economy, you will take your business to new heights!

8. “I’ve been in business long enough to know making a site costs nothing”

You don’t want a web site, you want a team of people who will help your business using technology. If you understand that a lot of people know how to play golf and a lot of those who play think they are great but only a few play well enough to make a living, its even more true online. Don’t trust your business to pretenders. Begin your research by adding up the primary ongoing costs for your business, utilities, payroll, sales and advertising, insurance, bookkeeping etc. Ask yourself what it would cost to open another one of your locations? Consider the same investment devotion you would to opening another physical location. With that perspective in mind, your investment for a fair web presence and marketing plan will still be a fraction of the cost of opening another location. A good rule for web investment should at a minimum be similar to the cost for a � page ad in the yellow pages in a major city. Reputable design companies will command professional fees usually because they have a more complete set of skills to help your business.

9. “I predicted the dot com fallout, now its gone and I’m still here”

Most people only read the headlines and feel they can sort out what is valuable online and what is not. Congratulations if your business is thriving but if you are looking at how the web can help enhance your business, you should understand the web is vastly different than it was a few years or even one year ago. The architecture of the Internet is just now showing its real promise with more concrete tools and proven ways to help your business grow and run more efficiently. Success stories abound online if you know where to look.

10. “I don’t trust young kids out of college who think technology has all the answers.”

This is very true, technology and textbooks alone coupled with inexperience won?t help your business and is why if you find a company that has young, talented, professionally trained technologists who are teamed with experienced business owners you may have found the winning team. Many companies get fooled by hiring designers who figured out how to make a web site and have some design skill; again lots of people play at a sport, but few play it well enough to do it full time as a profession.

If these tips seem sensible to you as a business owner its because our team blends formal educations with new and old world business experience and we know how to help companies tap into the web to augment sales and reduce costs.

If you want a web solution, people will brag about, talk to the Durrani Creative team.

I have a great looking website, I have a product to sell, I have a shopping cart, I have a merchant account that accepts Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, I have an account with UPS? BUT, I HAVE NO SALES!.

Sound familiar?

Our staff of experts at Durrani, have been building successful e-commerce sites for over 4 years. We not only understand that you have to make it easy for customers to find the product they want but you also have to give every customer a piece of mind when they go to checkout. The Creative staff knows exactly what customers want from their sites when they decide they are going to submit there private credit card information and mailing address to some website that they have visited only once.

This is why we have outlined the top 12 things everyone needs to know before offering products for sale online:

1. Visibility – Just because you are the only one selling solar powered flashlights don’t think that customers can find you. You must strengthen your site for Search Engines using the proper SEO, or search engine optimization.

2. Navigation – Make it very easy for anyone to find their way around your store. They can get to the product they want, the contact page, the policies page and checkout with ease.

3. Security – In some states it’s the law that you offer protection to your customers against identity theft. Today, the number one thing customers look for is an icon of a lock in the lower left corner of the browser window or an “s” in the URL before offering sensitive credit card information.

4. Contact Inform
ation – A good rule of thumb is always have the customer support phone number visible on every page. If not then make sure the “Contact Us” navigational button is very easy to find.

5. Check Out / View Cart – Whenever someone is shopping and wants to verify what they have placed in their cart have it very easy to find. Typically, both “View Cart” & “Check Out” will be somewhere near the top of the sites navigational menu.

6. Products in 3 clicks or less – Make it easy to get to what they want by minimizing the amount of clicks it takes to get what they want. 9 times out of 10 customers know what they want when they walk into your store and they want to get it and get out so help them through the process by eliminating useless clicks.

7. Shipping Details – Have a menu selection on your site that is dedicated to the shipping details. Your shipping policy will let someone know if they are going to buy from you. It is important to customers to know that your using a reputable parcel carrier, can overnight it if needed, and it is insured.

8. Customer Service – Not that this isn’t the number one priority but when it come to customer service you cannot offer more support than you do when online. Use logos of companies you use to assist with customers support such as: Verisign, Geotrust, Better Business Bureau, Hacker Safe, etc.

9. Return Policy – Whether you allow for returns or not, it is important to state your policy. Customers convert to sales if they know they can return an item if it wasn’t what they wanted.

10. Have a good looking site – Don’t appear like you’re a trunk slammer. Offer a well groomed site that is styled to your business name or product you sell. You get more credibility with your customers when it appears as though you take pride with your online presence.

11. Today & Tomorrow – When building your online store be sure to build it on a platform that can grow with your customers demands. If you allow your customers to see the same home page or same products then they will not come back. They will think you have lost interest in your store thus losing interest in your customers.

12. Product Details – If you carry a product that needs some explaining, then give a product detail. Don’t get too wordy but done leave out the important things like “batteries not included”. Let your customer know the benefits of your product if you want to move it off your shelf.

If you want to be successful with your online store then don’t cut corners. Don’t think just because you have an online store and not a regular “brick & mortar” that you eliminated your expenses. You still have to market your site and pay for online utilities. So, go ahead and build your online store with Durrani that specializes in optimizing your site to increase sales!

This is an example of Google Video and YouTube embedded on a page.

Here we are displaying a commercial of which we can have a host of options on configuring the player, making it suitable and specific to your site and needs.

First off, is Google Video, a great player with a nicer layout, as compared to YouTube.

Next is the YouTube Video Player, the pro to YouTube is that there is a large audience great for marketability