Thursday, April 27, 2006

Real Estate Leads for Real Estate Agents

Apr 27, 2006 - Linknet Real Estate News - What could you do with a steady stream of Real Estate prospects?

If you are a Real Estate Agent, or provide a Real Estate service you probably pay dearly for fresh leads. Now Real-Estate-Webs.com offers an affordable lead generating system designed especially for Real Estate Agents just like you.

Lead Producer is a customized website just for you. This site is affiliated with Real-Estate-Webs.com and does not take the place of your current site. You can keep your current site just as it is, or add components of Lead Producer to it as well.

Features of Lead Producer Websites:

Lead Producer websites are designed to give you leads. This is a two step process. First, the package contains traffic-building devices aimed at generating targeted traffic -- the kind of prospects looking for real estate services in your area. Second, they contain unique reports, and response generating devices to encourage web visitors to respond.

- Free reports, free home evaluation, MLS integration, and much more. All reports and features are designed to get responses from site visitors. See a Demo.

- Integrated Autoresponders - as many as 10. The system automatically responds to inquiries and creates a database of all your prospects.

- Integrated Monthly Newsletter - we provide fresh content every month. System automatically emails your prospects announcements and updates.

- Integrated Real Estate Articles, Resources and Tools (e.g., Mortgage calculators)

- All pages are optimized to score well with the major Search Engines

For more information go to Lead Producer Websites for Real Estate.

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Avoid These Ten Design Mistakes

Apr 25, 2006 - Linknet Internet News

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Ten Design Mistakes to Avoid, by Will Hanke, Lighthouse Technologies

Avoid these mistakes and your site will be steps ahead of your competition.

1. Not planning your site
Before you even have a website, you must have an idea, a focus. Why do you want a website? What are your plans and goals for the site? Sit down and draw out a map of possible pages and ideas for your site. Include your site's purpose --whether it is to sell more product or make the public more aware of your issue -- whatever it may be. Build your site from it's strong foundation (your goals) and you'll have a better, more solid site.

2. Failing to put contact information in a plainly seen location.
This could be disastrous. If a customer doesn't see this information, they can't contact you. You should consider a 'Contact Us' button or link from your Home page. Even better, make a link to your email address in your header or footer, somewhere that will show up on every page. Even if no one ever contacts you this way, just the presence of this information comforts edgy customers.

3. Broken Links
Do you enjoy clicking on a search result only to get a Page Not Found Error? No one likes them. Check your site statistics at least once a month (if not more) to make sure you don't have bad or broken links.

4. Outdated Information
A sure turn-off to a potential customer is the presence of old information. If it's July and your website is announcing the 'new' products available in February, your site just lost major credibility. Make sure your information is up-to-date. Consider adding a 'Whats New' button or a Business Blog.

5. Too Many Font Styles and Colors
This is a huge pet-peeve of my company. I've had people ask me to review their website and the first thing I notice is 4 different fonts. It looks bad, unorganized and unappealing. Different colors may attract the eye for a short time, but constant flashing or otherwise bright fonts (and graphics!) become annoying. Beware, this is a sure-fire way to scare people away from your site!

6. Orphan Pages
Every website has a heirarchy, a sort of tree that branches out from the Home Page. While most of your visitors visit you through your home page, there are times when a page further down interests someone, and they may copy that link and send it to a friend. This is where you need to pay attention. That friend may like what you have to offer, but they can't find out how to contact you, or how to get back to your Home Page. That's an orphan page. Every page on your site should, at a minimum, have a link back to your Home page. I would suggest adding a contact link at minimum.

7. Frames
Frames at one time were the talk of the industry. They were the original Content Management System (CMS) for your site. Nowadays they are few and far between. If you are designing a site, don't use frames. Newer technologies such as server-side includes are much more common and accepted. Your pages look fresher and those silly bars don't get in the way.

8. Disabling the BACK button and excessive Pop-Ups
Have you been to a website and decided that it wasn't the information you were looking for? When you clicked the BACK button, did you suddenly get a barrage of windows (or, pop-ups) to your dismay? These things rarely actually work, and worse off, the reason you hit the BACK button is because you DIDN'T want any more information from that site. Don't break the BACK button. There are other ways to get your user's attention.

9. Slow loading pages
While personal and hobby sites may normally be slow, there should be no reason for your business or other professional website to be slow loading. Today's Internet surfer won't wait long for information from your site - there are too many others with the same thing! Make sure your pages load quickly. If the server is slow, consider a different host. If your webpages are full of applets or large graphics, consider a page/site redesign.

10. Using Leading-Edge Technology
While the Internet is all about new and fancy stuff, don't be the first to do it. While it may 'look cool' to you, you ultimately need to decide if it actually enhances your user's experience. Do the flashy cartoons make your customer more apt to buy from you? Probably not. How many of your customers have to install a Plug-In just to see your page right? Do they have to upgrade their browser to contact you? Not good. Wait until the technology is either more of a standard or gone - you'll save face with potential and future customers.

About the Author - Will Hanke is a self-proclaimed geek who owns and operates Lighthouse Technologies, a web development and hosting company based in Arnold Missouri. For questions or comments, email him at will@techlh.com. And buy yourself a good virus program so he doesn't have to fight your emails with anti-virus spray.

Article Source - Web-Design-101.info - Hundreds of web design articles.

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Mobile Wallet Not Popular in North America

Apr 20, 2006 - Linknet Tech News - by Rick Hendershot

Consumers Not Excited about Mobile Wallet Concept

According to a recent study by In-Stat, U.S. consumers are lukewarm to the idea of using cell phones as mobile wallets. This is an idea that was being pushed in the 90s as "M-Commerce" -- using cell phones as mobile payment devices. But the current manifestation of the idea sees mobile wallets carrying electronic versions of other things usually found in wallets -- membership cards, loyalty cards, and other forms of identification.

Advocates of the mobile wallet concept include credit card companies, hardware vendors, credit card terminal companies, and traditional wireless companies like Nokia and Cingular. Industry representatives project there may be as many as 25 million wireless subscribers in North America by 2011.

But the survey of consumers found that only about 33% of those surveyed were interested in the idea. 72% of respondents were concerned with the additional fees that would be attached to this service. A smaller, but still very significant, number of respondents were concerned about the potential loss of privacy and security.

Mobile Wallet Idea Big in Japan

The mobile wallet concept was given a large push in 2005 when a number of major Japanese credit card and mobile phone companies formed the Mobile Wallet Alliance. The incentive for such a service is greater in Japan than in the U.S. and Canada because fewer Japanese consumers rely on credit card transactions. The mobile wallet is seen as a replacement for cash -- especially for "micro payments".

Japanese credit card companies and mobile phone companies both see this as a future growth area because it will increase cell phone usage as well as reliance on the credit card infrastructure.

Things are a bit different in North America because use of credit cards is already widespread. So converting customers to cell phone payments does not have the same appeal for North American credit card companies -- they already have the business.

However, other non-credit card payment processors such as PayPal actually do have a vested interest in seeing the mobile wallet payment system move ahead. Paypal, which has developed a massive online presence have an obvious interest in moving into more traditional payment processing areas. They see mobile payments as a way of offering an alternative to consumers and taking business directly away from credit card processing companies -- just as they have done online.

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Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Get Wholesale Computer Parts

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If you think brand name computers are too expensive, try looking for wholesale computer parts. In many cases you can put your own computer together using top quality parts available from computer parts wholesalers.