By Robert Lockard

Submit Solution has four new Squidoo lenses, all focusing on different aspects of the Internet-marketing company’s services. Web pages on Squidoo are called lenses, I suppose because they give you a view into someone’s mind, life or company.

I’ll give a brief description of all of the new lenses below. Be sure to check them out and rate each of them, if you like.

One lens focuses just on Submit Solution’s Internet-marketing blogs. As you can tell, each of these blogs has a different focus: search engine optimization, paid search, social media and Web design. You can find it here: Submit Solution – 4 Internet Marketing Blogs.

Another lens gives you more information about Submit Solution’s services, including Web design, SEO, PPC and website content. You’ll find it here: Submit Solution – The Best Internet Marketing Services.

Submit Solution’s website launch is spotlighted on another lens. It includes the news release announcing the updated website’s release in September 2009 and the company’s new features and services. You can find that news release on Submit Solution’s website under “Press.” It’s entitled, “Submit Solution Launches New Web Site with Web and Logo-Design Services.” The lens can be found here: Submit Solution Online-Marketing Website Launch.

The final new Submit Solution Squidoo lens is short and sweet. It includes some of the newest blog entries from the site’s four ecommerce blogs, as well as Submit Solution’s contact information. If you want to get a hold of a Submit Solution representative, that’s a good place to go. Check it out here: Submit Solution: The one-stop hub for internet marketing.

Don’t forget about our four other Squidoo lenses for Submit Solution, eHarbor, Inc., Magellan Commerce and Real Estate Promoter that we built back in March. I talked about them in the eHarbor Blog back when we created them. Learn more about them in my blog entry, “eHarbor, Inc. launches Squidoo pages.” We recently updated these lenses with additional information about our companies’ history and high-tech services.

You can find them at the following links:

Submit Solution - Search Engine Optimization Tools

eHarbor, Inc. - eCommerce and SEO Experts

Magellan Commerce - Website Design & SEO

Real Estate Promoter - Website Design & Marketing

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Submit Solution’s four new Squidoo lenses.” The Submit Solution logo is the copyright of Submit Solution.

By Robert Lockard

Imagine trying to beat Microsoft at its own game. Microsoft, the giant of software and Web browsers, seemed all but unstoppable in its dominance of the Internet with its Internet Explorer browser five years ago. However, a small browser, which was originally called Phoenix, debuted on November 9, 2004 and started giving Explorer a run for its money.

We now know this Web browser as Firefox. And it recently turned five years old. Happy birthday, Firefox!

I read about Firefox’s anniversary in the Webware article, “After 5 years, Firefox faces new challenges.” I talked a little about Firefox in my Submit Solution blog entry, “Google Chrome is the best Web browser.” I mentioned that it’s my favorite browser, even if it’s not exactly as fast as Chrome.

Many factors led up to the swift success of the Firefox browser. Microsoft got a little lazy on creating new features for Explorer. Plus, viruses were specifically designed to target Explorer, giving Internet users a strong incentive to try something new. Right on cue, Firefox arrived with its innovative tabbed interface, customizability and popup ad blocker. It was an instant hit, receiving 10 million downloads in the first month alone.

Firefox 2.0 was an even bigger success, gaining support from Web designers who started to comply with the new browser’s design standards. Google also lent a hand by embedding its search engine into the Firefox browser and giving Firefox a portion of the advertising revenue it received from searches through Firefox.

Google has now entered the fray with its own browser, Chrome. Who knows if it will be able to enjoy the same success as Firefox, but it’s a healthy thing to have competition, as Microsoft has certainly learned by now. Firefox is still going strong, though. It estimated about 160 million people downloaded the Firefox 3.0 version and more than 300 million have downloaded its current 3.5 version so far. For a five-year-old, Firefox is looking exceptionally strong.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution Web Design Blog for great discussions on topics like this.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Happy birthday, Firefox.” The photo of the Firefox birthday cake is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Christopher Blizzard.

By the way, try saying the title of this blog entry three times fast. I’m no good at quickly repeating f sounds.

By Britnee Nguyen

If you’ve owned your website for quite awhile now, you may be wondering if you should get it redesigned. Well, this would depend on a number of factors, but most likely you should get a redesigned website. For example, if you’ve had the same website design since the 90s then you’ll definitely want to get it changed. So much creative innovation on the internet has occurred since then and continues to grow every day. You’ll want to update your website to follow the design trends and keep it functional to this day and age.

Most people are smart and have realized this and have regularly updated their website’s design. You might have just had it redesigned last year; does this mean you should do it again now? Here are some internet marketing questions you’ll want to think about if you’re contemplating a web design.

What should NOT be the purpose of the redesign? If you’re redesigning it just for the sake of it, that’s not the right reason. You don’t want to constantly be changing the overall look of it because then your customers won’t be able to connect certain look or design and attribute it to your business. If they’re always seeing a new design every time they go to your website, they’ll have no idea what your actual brand looks like. Be sure you have a purpose in mind when redesigning. You don’t want your website to be like one of those girls who shows up with a different haircut, style and color every week. That kind of habit doesn’t do well for your business branding.

What should be your purpose? The purpose of your web design should be for reasons such as your website is old-fashioned, you are changing the brand of your company, or you are targeting a different market or audience. When designing a website, you’ll want the feeling of it to connect with your target customer. If you’re targeting teenagers, then you’ll want the design of it to look hip and trendy. If you’re targeting mothers, you’ll want it to connect to the feminine, emotion, and motherly instincts. So if your current website doesn’t match your target customer, then you’ll need a redesign.

Remember, these questions when you’re asking yourself when you should redesign your website. It’s important to keep in mind that when you redesign, you run the risk of losing your branding and identity work that you’ve done with it so far. But if your website is old-fashioned and not reaching your target audience, then it might be more beneficial to change your identity anyways.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

For many people who are just starting an online business, blog, or other type of website, they use Do-It-Yourself web design in order to save money.  While this often works for blogs, which often come with free themes, e-commerce sites are far more complex and require an intimate knowledge of computer languages.

However, if you need to be your own web designer, this post is aimed at helping you proofread your website or blog to make it the as easy-to-use and successful as possible.

DIY web design and proofreading is a lot like self-editing your own writing: it’s hard to see the mistakes when you are so invested in the work!  Therefore, I suggest that you enlist the help of a friend, coworker, family member, the stranger sitting at the library computer next to you… anyone will do.

1)  Do a quick look-around: Ask your help-mate to look around your home page.  See if they can easily navigate through your pages, categories, archives, etc.  Ask them to find the “Contact Us” page, or to sign up for your email newsletter.  This will help you understand if your site layout and navigation is successful!

2)  Check the text: Ask your helper to read some of the main text content on your home page: is it easy to read?  Are the fonts and colors easy to see?  Are there any spelling errors that jump out at you?  This will tell you whether or not your content will translate to your visitors or if you should make some changes.

3)  What annoys them most? Nobody likes an annoying site design, like pop-up ads, flashing banners, etc.  Ask your helper what part of your website they would change if they could.  This will help you avoid a high “bounce rate” of visitors leaving your site.

These steps are designed to help you proofread your own web design.  Of course, there are thousands upon thousands of companies who provide services like this, but if you use DIY-web design, you will probably use DIY-proofreading as well.  Good luck!

By Robert Lockard

That’s right. Google Chrome is the best Web browser by far, according to a study by Jacob Gube, the founder and chief editor of Six Revisions. Chrome v. 3 beat Firefox v. 3.5, Safari v. 4, Opera v.10 and Microsoft Explorer v. 8. Take a look at the results below.

You should definitely check out the whole chart by clicking on this link to the blog entry, “Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers.” Fascinating stuff. I’ll discuss some of the highlights and their impact on ecommerce and Internet marketing.

I’m a Firefox user, myself, so some of this study’s results came as a surprise to me. I’m not sure if they will change my mind about which browser I use right now, but it’s definitely helped me think more about why I prefer one over the others. Here are some of the highlights of the study’s findings:

JavaScript Speed

Chrome won this competition with an average download time of JavaScripts in just 542.3 milliseconds. Safari was No. 2 with 863.9 milliseconds and Firefox was No. 3 with 1,230.6 milliseconds. Explorer was last with a comparatively long download time of 6,305.5 milliseconds.

JavaScripts are important because they are heavily used on websites like Digg, as well as in Gmail. It’s no surprise Google is the leader in this category because it definitely wants people to be able to quickly use its own applications.

Page Load Time

This study measured how long it takes each Web browser to download Yahoo’s main page. The trouble with these results is that they might be affected by how many other people were using the site at the time the study was conducted. Bearing that in mind, it’s interesting to see how close all of the Web browsers are to each other.

Firefox was the fastest with a download time of 1.34 seconds. The slowest time was 1.61 seconds and it was shared by Explorer and Safari. The difference between those two times is so small that it hardly matters which browser you use to download a website like Yahoo.

Browser Cache Performance

The same is true for both Page Load Times and Browser Cache Performance. Browsers often save a cached version of a Web page you have already visited so it can quickly bring it up again when you return to it. The download times of a cached page ranged from 0.72 seconds to 0.89 seconds, which statisticians would say is probably not a “significant” difference. Chrome had the fastest speed, while Safari had the slowest.

Other categories in the study had a wider variety of results, but I thought these ones were the most interesting.

This is all fascinating information, but what does it all mean? Why are fast download times important? If online users have to wait several seconds for one of your Web pages to download, they might just give up after a while and decide your site isn’t worth the wait.

We want our ecommerce websites to be fast enough for people, no matter which browser they use. But we should definitely focus on the most popular ones. That’s the subject of a whole other blog entry, though.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog for great discussions on topics like this.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Which Web browser is the best?” The graph of the results of this study is the copyright of Jacob Gube and Six Revisions.

By Britnee Nguyen

You might have found a talented designer who can create a stellar-looking website for you. This is a plus when it comes to the actual design of your website, but do they know how to design it so it can be easily optimized with SEO and found by search engines? Web design needs to be made with SEO in mind.

Maybe you’re wondering on how web design affects SEO. Well, it does in several ways. One example is that a web designer may create some good-looking graphics and puts them on your website. When you scroll your mouse over the graphic, usually a little pop-up type box shows with the file name or some other text. This is called the alt text.

It’s important that this text has your target SEO keywords inserted. So if you have a picture of a dog and your website is about an animal shelter in Utah. You don’t want to put your text as just “dog” or a random file number like “495803”. If you’re targeting the keyword “Utah animal shelter”, then put that exact wording as your text of your picture. This gets you moved up higher in the search results, especially in Google Images. Every picture that I have specifically written a alt text for with a keyword, I’ve always found it on the first page of Google Images within just a few days.

It’s these kinds of things that make web design important for SEO. Web design also needs to take into account of using words instead of images. A lot of websites are built as one image instead of a web layout with the content as a separate entity that’s entered in. This typically results in a pretty website, but the search engines can’t read it. If you have each page as one image inserted that had the text pre-inserted, then there really is no “text” for the search engines.

Make sure web designers keep the design and content separate so the search engines can read it and index you. Web design is a very important aspect in succeeding with an on-line business or identity. SEO is just as important also. Web design and SEO go hand-in-hand when creating the best on-line experience for your business and its customers. Be sure that your web design is functional so SEO experts at Submit Solution can optimize it to the most advantageous level.

By Robert Lockard

Few people are as intriguing and visionary as Nikola Tesla. If this American immigrant had been as beloved and accepted as Thomas Edison, we would have had 2009 technology back in 1909. Unfortunately, this revolutionary genius was given short shrift by many and his image has become obscured by history.

If you’re like me, you first heard about him in 2006’s “The Prestige,” an excellent movie, by the way. I’ve been thinking a lot about him recently, and I want to share my thoughts on this great man and what he might have accomplished if the world had been ready.

Look at all of the inventions he created. He is the reason we have readily available electricity. Edison, his biggest competitor, wanted to use direct current to power the country, but that way was incredibly inefficient and it could only send power one mile away from a power plant. Tesla’s idea was to generate power through alternating current (does AC sound familiar?). We still use this form of energy transference to power our entire infrastructure in the United States and other parts of the world.

Without Tesla, we wouldn’t have car engines, long-distance radio, radar, fluorescent lights, energy-efficient light bulbs (which Tesla created more than a hundred years ago, but was not allowed to manufacture until a few years ago because of patent issues on the socket) and many other useful inventions.

If Nikola Tesla had created the Internet, I’m sure it would be many times better than what we have come up with. First of all, he would have come up with a much better means to transfer information online than comparatively inefficient phone lines, coaxial cables, fiber optics or copper wires. He probably would have started with a wireless system and made it faster than we’re used to. Then he would invent something truly amazing to replace that, just like he always did.

HTML would have been replaced with a much less complex but more elegant way of designing websites. There would be no need for search engines. Whatever form they would have taken under Tesla’s hand, websites would contain the ability to seek the right viewers rather than viewers having to search for the right sites.

This is a fascinating bit of fanciful thinking. Thanks for indulging my fantasy. I might return to this topic again sometime here on the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog.

This is a complete version of the post on the eHarbor Blog: “If Nikola Tesla created the Internet.” The photo of the Tesla Coil is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of maveric2003.

By Alyssa Udall (@udallyss)

In web design, especially for blogs, the header is extremely important!  This is the place where your readers will look first, the place where your logo is displayed, where your site navigation and other information can be.  One should not underestimate the power of a well-designed header to increase reader awareness and visitor loyalty.

This is especially relevant for blogs, whose primary goal should be to generate subscribers and loyal readers.  For e-commerce and other websites, the header is still important, but will most likely cater to a different feeling or need than a blog header.

Here are some things to think about when designing your blog’s header section:

1)  What’s the point of your blog? What do you usually write about in your blog?  Are you focusing on creativity, technical skills, or professionalism?  Your header should reflect your niche and should inspire your readers accordingly.  For example, if your blog is about something creative, your header should also be creative, and should inspire your readers, for lack of a better word, to create something!  Likewise, if your blog is about something technical, your blog header should reflect a crisp, clean and modern design to show this to your readers.

2) What is your blog about? Now that your header’s style reflects the type of mood you want to create around your blog, you need to think of a creative and effective way to communicate what your blog is about.  This can be done with a smart, memorable slogan displayed in the header, or creative graphics.  Either way, your header should show your readers immediately what your blog is about, and should do so in a way that will be memorable!

3) What do your readers need to know? Now that your readers are inspired by your header and know what your blog is about, what else do you need to convey to them through the header?  Use the rest of your header space wisely in order to display the most necessary information about your blog.  For example, you should consider site navigation, categories, pages, search bar, social media icons, etc.  What option would best suit your blog?  What would contribute to the ease of use and ingenuity of your blog?

Once your header is redesigned according to these simple guidelines, you will see the difference it makes with how your readers become more involved in your blog.  Remember, the header is the first place your readers will look… make sure you give them a good first impression!

The good example of blog header web design in this post are from Vectips and Web Designer Wall.

By Robert Lockard

Talk about a captive audience. The government of Finland says it’s a human right to have access to the Internet, so companies must provide Internet with a speed of at least 1 megabit per second. Doesn’t that seem a little strange? You can read about this in the CNN article, “Fast Internet access becomes a legal right in Finland.”

Apparently, it’s not an unalienable right to own a car or a house, but somehow it is an incredibly important right for every person to be connected to the Internet. To me, that just seems like faulty logic. In reality, we can all work hard to gain access to new tools, like cars, cell phones or the Internet, to make our lives easier, but there is no guarantee we’ll get those things without effort.

Ninety-five percent of Finland’s 5.2 million citizens are already connected to the Internet. This law makes little difference to the vast majority of the population. However, officials say they are trying to not only bring Internet access to rural areas, but also increase the speed for everyone to at least 100 megabits per second by 2015.

I’m all for creative solutions to problems, but this seems like overkill. Websites are certainly getting more complex and social-media sites like YouTube and Twitter require fast connections to constantly download new information in real time. But the invisible hand of competition can certainly balance supply and demand and lead to better services than a government mandate can.

What if it’s unprofitable for Internet providers to build connections to the 5 percent of Finland not currently covered? Maybe the government would have to subsidize those companies if they were in trouble of going bankrupt. That can create a vicious cycle of companies depending on government funds to stay afloat.

If you ask me, this whole thing is silly. I don’t have the right to a fast Internet connection. I have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, according to the Declaration of Independence. I also have many other rights enumerated in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. But luxuries or necessities like the Internet or food, respectively, are not among them.

Keep coming back to the Submit Solution Website Design Services Blog for great discussions on topics like this.

This is a complete version of the eHarbor Blog post: “Is Internet access a human right?” The photo of the dangling cat is from Flickr, and it is the copyright of Al Abut.

By Britnee Nguyen

Most designers and artists in general are creative. This is a plus when it comes to original creations, but can sometimes be a downfall if they are working for a client and only think about creativity and not other things. Especially in the field of web design, when you’re creating a website for a client, be sure to keep their needs in mind. They don’t just want a nice-to-look-at website, but one that functions well and can make them a profit.

When creating a website, be sure to include tools that can be made available to the client if they want to make any changes themselves. This includes content management tools or e-mail marketing tools. Make these available to the client so they have the freedom to change things to their liking without always having to go to you. It’s basically just to make things easier and operational for the client.

Designing a website can be a fun, creative process, but if you’re doing this for a business owner, they want it to be profitable as well. So keep in mind that how you design it will be search engine friendly for free website submission and user friendly for potential customers who visit the site. Remember that people don’t just go to websites to look at them, but to use them too. Talk with your client to see what they specifically want to achieve with their website and go from there.

If you’re not sure if something should be placed in a certain area or if your design fits the client’s needs, have someone you know do a run through of it. Ask someone who has never seen your created website before and ask them to do certain tasks like “find the purchase button” and ask what their eye is drawn to first. This will help you evaluate if your placement and design is meeting the needs of a client.

In your business transactions when web designing for clients, always keep in mind that creative design goes hand-in-hand with web presence. You need both for the website to succeed. Make sure to keep the client aware of your process in designing the website and do everything you can to make it not only pretty, but successful and profitable.