We are in the new world of internet-based economy and most of the businesses are only run in the online web world. There are thousands of clamors for hosting of your business website. Now its hardly matter whether your hire your host from your own country or from overseas. First of all you need to consider that whether your business need overseas or local hosting service. If you will save money by outsourcing your hosting overseas and it will meet your requirements than it is the best choice for your website in perspective of hosting. You can also get some potential advantages by hosting your site overseas. There are number of companies which are providing good Web Hosting Package for overseas hosting

Major Benefits of Overseas Web Hosting

Low Cost Hosting :
The first advantage of overseas hosting is price difference. You can easily find that hosting cost offered by companies located abroad is less as compared to local hosting. While buying such Web Hosting Package you must make sure that it can provide you services as per your requirements. Sometimes such low cost schemes are just for more sales. So you must be very careful while buying such low priced hosting services because higher cost hosting can provide more options.

Customer Support Service :

The quality of customer care service from your hosting provider does not depend on its location. Various overseas companies are very good in providing customer support service. But it is very import to factor because you must look at the time zones if you will go with overseas hosting. Some overseas companies offer 24/7 customer service.

Legal Advantages :

Hosting your site overseas can provide some legal benefits. When you have your web presence and corporate structure in another country then you come under that nation’s laws. This will give you some tax benefits. Before hosting your site you should consult with an attorney about such tax profit that you may receive.

So you can get Affordable Web Site Hosting overseas with much more benefits as compared to local hosting.

In this age of advanced technology, multimedia usage is quiet regular among all websites. It is a perfect marketing tool to pass on your message to the right audience for your business. For any business to progress, a clear presentation and communication of business ideology is very essential. Multimedia solutions help enhance this online communication through streaming audio and video presentations.

Every business nowadays needs a great online presence if it wants to enhance its business. Multimedia solutions are being aggressively applied for adding that X factor to a website. A professional Web Design Company can make your website content seen, heard and understood by a wider audience through the use of diverse multimedia elements like music, interactive audio-visual presentations, animation, and a lot more. Plain text is usually unable to explain the point or the idea you want to put across to your audience and this imperfection is easily triumphed over by dynamic solutions that multimedia provides. A professional Web Design Company through the use of dynamic multimedia solutions can help make any person easily understand your message, while providing an extra edge to your business by making you stand out of crowd in the marketplace.

Most Business owners prefer to hire a professional Web Design Company which is specialized in providing multimedia services than hiring a multimedia professional on regular basis. It saves time, money and energy with the benefits of the best quality of work. Multimedia can convert static images into interactive ones and can give a complete face-lift to your business’s online presence. Sound & video effects with good music & video quality can help present you business in a more attractive way to the online world. These attractive visual & aural effects make visitors feel an instant connection with the website and make them stay longer.

For any business nowadays, the right kind of online exposure is very important to present its services & products, and if done in an interesting manner can help grab the client’s interest. Hence in the overall development of your business presence online, multimedia has a very essential role.

Felixlabs is a leading Web Design Company offering services like multimedia designs, web designing, logo design and other multimedia solutions at affordable prices.

The fear of Word “Virus” is so powerful that it can catch any one’s attention. In the same way these days Viral Marketing is a hot topic in the field of Internet Marketing. Every company is trying to use its best and new marketing ideas to reach their target audience. If people are not aware of your product or your online website then you are unable to make it big and your business is just get finished before its start. Viral Marketing or Viral Advertising is an approach used to make people familiar with one’s product or company. It is a marketing phenomenon which encourage people to pass along a marketing message. Viral marketing is depend upon how large number of people receive the marketing message and how fast they forward it to more and more number of persons.

To promote any company and its product certain type of media is used, like funny videos, interesting flash games or any appealing story,which may pass to various persons with company brand or logo or any other descriptive content. The campaign of viral marketing should be very effective and need to be consistent with self expression. It must include entertainment, utility and most important uniqueness. This viral marketing technique is very cost-effective and the least expensive method to advertise your business products. If you are running a small scale business on web then you can get this service within your advertising budget. It is world’s first word-of-mouth form of marketing. Now days this form of marketing is achieving new heights with better communications and due to more interaction between people in various internet communities.

Now get back to the main topic i.e how this marketing technique boast up your business. Viral marketing give its best results if it is used at right time with right product. Successful viral marketing contains following characteristics:

1. Easy usability of product is very important. It leaves positive impression on your customers and they refer the product to other persons. Here customer is doing the marketing.
2. Simple product is easy to explain and easy to share.
3. Commitment level should be very low because they can attain in a less amount of time. Long commitment do not work in this fast paced life.
4. Eye catching factor is main ingredient of viral marketing campaign. People only talk about those products which made a good impression on their minds.

Many big and small companies already tried their luck with viral marketing and got success. Now its your turn. You better know your products and customers. So start thinking for some great viral marketing tactics and turn your customers into loyal fans.

Felixlabs is a leading Web Design Company which can provide you viral Marketing services and push your business ahead.

What we know about SEO in 2009

Dear Bloggers,

This post comes just after we restored the blog functionality but not the whole blog as all the previous articles are missing. For those who are not aware of why we have an empty blog, well due to some reason an upgrade failure killed our blog and the database got corrupt and here we are with an empty blog. Our programmers and webmasters are working to restore the functionality of the blog to what it was before. So we took this opportunity to give our blog a fresh look. We are working on a custom theme for the blog keeping the present theme as a base.

In this article we will discuss what we know about SEO in whole with half of 2009 already behind us. We all know that SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization but do we all know that it is not just a simple process of integrating meta tags and key phrases to a website but a complex and lengthy process of optimizing so that search engines are able to find the website. As the process goes along, a website increases its rankings and popularity in search engines and the higher these parameters the more likelihood that the right person will visit your website. The procedure includes integration of key phrases, meta tags, directory submission, article submission etc so that a website can attain higher rankings in search engines and get something that Google defines as Page rank. The higher the page rank the higher the ranking in search engines and higher the traffic. The process also includes on page and off page optimization. On page optimization includes the integration of vital keywords, titles and meta tags that are integrated onto the HTML code of the website whereas off page optimization includes submission of the website URL to online directories, article submission, social media networking, bookmarking etc.

So we know all this, but what is new in SEO in the year 2009. As per SEOMoz there are 14 practices that should be given importance to while considering SEO. Here is what they recommend:

Title Tag Format
The Usefulness of H1 Tags
The Usefulness of Nofollow
The Usefulness of the Canonical Tag
The Use of Alt text with Images
The Use of the Meta Keywords tag
The Use of Parameter Driven URLs
The Usefulness of Footer Links
The Use of Javascript and Flash on Websites
Blocking pages from Search Engines
Google Search Wiki’s Affect on Rankings
The Affect of Negative Links from “Bad Link Neighborhoods”
The Importance of Traffic on Rankings

The complete article can be found here

One more thing that really made us happy was the fact that from the starting of 2009 Google has started indexing Flash based websites as well. Some interesting facts about this can be found here.

After searching the internet and going through various articles I did come to a conclusion that SEO is evolving and although everything might sound the same but SEO is being enhanced and is becoming more complex in its nature. Hence if you are looking to get a website developed always keep SEO in mind even if you are not going to optimize your website. A good website will always be SEO ready once completed (even if you have to spend an extra $200 ) as it will be made with SEO friendly practices so finding the right web design/development company and setting the budgets are an essential.Make a SEO strategy with your develpment company, ask a lot of questions so that they can explain what they plan to do for your website and define your targets so that you get what exactly you are looking for.

Eventually what is the use of a website if it cannot be found…..keep this is in mind when going in for website development. Your website is your online business card and you need to bring it to your potential clients by making sure that it is found by the right people when they look for what you can provide them.

Please feel free to post your comments and let us know what you think…

happy reading

Admin

Any on line business that wants to realize double digit growth year on year need to focus on improving the rankings of their web site in search engine results; To achieve high ranking the best way is SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is the most popularly used term in on line marketing and is a necessary feature of all search marketing campaigns. When talking about SEO one term that immediately comes to the mind is ‘content’. Content is the most important element of SEO and is required to be used in an intelligent manner for realizing top search engine rankings.

For a starter creating quality,relevant content for web sites is a daunting task that requires lot of hard work and serious planning. In order to survive and make profits on line businesses need to garner immediate and widespread attention; This is possible only by offering value added content to potential prospects. You have to structure your content in such a way that it enables you to learn more about your prospects buying habits and needs. So, content is a useful tool that creates an optimum platform for you and helps in designing products and services that are in tune with your prospective clients.

One effective strategy of promoting your business on line is to create an appropriate white paper of your company. In order to create credibility with your prospects you have to offer them specially crafted white papers that are educational and help make the right decisions. White paper is also a marketing communication tool that reveals the benefits of a particular technology or product. A properly created white paper aptly promotes the company’s solutions and/or products.

For downloading white papers individuals are required to first visit the company’s web site, provide contact information, and answer a few questions about their needs and preferences. So, companies get valuable information of customers buying behavior and preferences. It enables them to create appropriate,quality products or services for customers.

Content is indeed a king of SEO that help companies promote their products effectively and enable them in generating demand for their products and services.

Hello Everyone,

This is the first post of the year with the launch of our very own Project Management System – FelixCentral. With the increasing numbers of our clients we needed a solution to centralize all communication with all our clients. Moreover we also required something that would allow our clients to directly communicate with our development team to provide their requirements, feedbacks and opinions in a much more effective manner so that our clients could get more control of the way their projects are shaped during the development phase. We always wanted to make our clients go through the whole process with ease and the launch of FelixCentral is one more step closer to make the whole process more interactive. FelixCentral has all the features that an advanced project management system should have. Here is a brief overview of what it has to offer:

Centralized Communication channel

The utmost important feature for our clients is communication. With FelixCentral, our clients can be in touch with their respective project managers and assigned teams. All communication is visible to all members of the project, so no matter how many people are involved all comments, updates and feedbacks are in a centralized place so that there are no confusions and all instructions are clear to the whole team. This not only saves time but also helps in organizing the projects. This means there are less revisions and overall cost reductions of the project.

Ease of Access : FelixCentral eliminates the use of writing emails to different people or using multiple forms of communication. The client now gets a personal login to his project with all the details in one place. No need to login to email or private message boards on various bidding sites to check messages, post comments or to upload files. Once a message is posted on the discussion thread it is visible to all members of the project. The client can send a reminder to all the members of the project in one go and all the members will receive an email with the notification.

Personal project manager : Every time we get a new project, it will be uploaded to FelixCentral. The client is assigned under his own project and gets a dedicated ID and password. This means that the project information can never be compromised or mixed up with any other project. A dedicated discussion thread then starts as communication begins. The client can create milestones, keep time records, upload files and even raise tickets all in one place. In all not only the client but we also get a personal project manager where we manage all our projects.

Interface for Mobile Devices

While you’re on the GoMobile interface offers low bandwidth interface optimized for smaller screen resolutions. This way you can check the progress of your projects while you are out of the office or on a trip. Works with Modern PhonesMobile interface works with modern phones without any additional software required. All you need is a phone with a browser that supports XHTML. We recommend iPhone, BlackBerry, Symbian S60 or any phone that can run mobile Opera.

We can go on and on with the benefits that FelixCentral has to offer to us and our clients. Like they say “an image explains more than a 1000 words”. We hope that our clients will appreciate this new addition to our website and that FelixCentral will help us gain more client satisfaction.

Hello once again,

I agree that I am a very lousy and lazy writer. My boss is all hyped up to fire me due to the (in)consistency with which I write (add, copy, steal…..) new blogs and add them to our official blog. I was given this responsibility and was told that we need to have at least one article a week at the minimum. How many actually I wrote you are more aware.

So as I was searching the internet to look up a topic on what to write and opened Google I saw a small line of text under the search box saying “New! Download Chrome (BETA)- the new browser from Google”…. I stopped for a second, my first thoughts lingered to the previous articles discussing Google developing a new OS and I thought maybe this is their first step to getting together a new OS. And there I was thinking of the words “Oh Lord….what is they gonna do…”. I mean let’s look at this simply: There are a few OS’s in the market. Microsoft has been doing this for a long time but have they been able to get “Windows” to work the way it should? And man they charge for their copy of each license….then we can check the open source market and let’s put all of them under Linux: the best OS in the world blah blah blah….I can’t make head or tails there with all the commands and stuff…I can’t even open my computer in the graphical version (I confess I am a lamer)…had a chance to put my hands on the Apple Mac Book…beautiful…but again even they have not perfected everything. So I hope you understand what was my mindset when I thought of Google developing an OS….boys my best wishes are with you…if you have too much money give me some instead wasting it on the new OS….just kidding but if you consider that eventually and decide I will be only happy and of course grateful .

But we are going to talk of the new browser here and not of OS’s and all that advanced high tech stuff. So I clicked on that link and downloaded the exe file and installed it to my laptop. The browser installs without any problems and on the first launch asked me if I wanted to import my stuff from Mozilla (not from IE), I clicked on yes in the anticipation that I might get addicted to it and might want to stick to Chrome and will need all my bookmarks and saved passwords etc. And there we go and the Google search page came up on first load.

Interface: The user interface is very simple. I loved the navigation….there is nothing except the basics…the back button, the reload button and the favorites button after which we have the search bar, a control tab and the settings icon. The open pages are displayed as tabs and that is all. I loved it at first site and then pressed the alt key…….the outcome was….nothing….once twice…nothing. I was expecting the file/ edit menus as usual there but nothing came up. So what I can presume from here is that either they went in for a primitive browser with minimal functionality or they made this one for the dummies…no offense. It is still a beta version so that might be the reason. But overall I liked the minimal interface because I do not see any toolbars that clutter the space up there and the browser gives ample space to view the internet page.

Settings Panel: As there was nothing else to click on I opened the settings panel. Again I was intimated by the minimalism and the basic functionality that has been placed there. There are three tabs: Basics, Minor Tweaks and Under The Hood. Here is a brief overview of what is included:

1. Basics: As commonly in all browsers the first page gives you the option to customize your home page, set default page and browser. It also has the option to open several pages in one go when the browser is opened.

2. Minor Tweaks: Very basic tweaks included with default download folder, password saving options and changing fonts and languages and that’s all.

3. Under the Hood: This section has some advanced options like choosing proxy, SSL, certificate management and cookie settings. The pop up blocker options are also present so is a new thing by the name of Google Gears. The button says change Google Gear options which is only a list of sites which have been permitted to use Gear.

Well that was as far as the functionality provided at the first glance. Now let’s put this thing into action and see what it is capable of. My personal opinion is that websites do open up faster than in Mozilla. The auto complete function in the address bar is just cool especially when you have used the browser for some time. It is more like the auto text feature in cell phones and is really helpful. The most accessed bookmarks are shown in the browser body when you first open it and so are the sites that you visit often. Much like in the new version of Opera where you can set the speed dial here it is done automatically which again is a very useful thing as per my opinion.

So overall that is it to the new browser from Google. It is a really nice and simple to work with and will find a lot of followers especially with the newbie’s who will like the simplicity. As for the advanced users I cannot say what they will specially like but what I liked is the amount of viewable space is good and that gives me a very nice look at the website without having to close toolbars or pressing any keys.

I hope you will like this article and will welcome your comments and feedback.

Hope to write back soon if I don’t get fired or transferred…

In an article on Sitepoint Industry Forum I read that Business Week had compiled as to what is being referred as the Ten Commandments of Web Design. The people who contributed to the article were well known authors and speakers.

Here they are:

“1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash.

2. Thou shalt not hide content.

3. Thou shalt not clutter.

4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections.

5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 Company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels.

6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of typography.

7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences.

8. Thou shalt be social.

9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies.

10. Thou shalt make content king. “

After reading this article I went into deep thought pondering to what the world has come to. At the beginning of times there were these ten commandments (I am not a well informed historian and my skills at being a historian went down the drain when I was in the 6th grade when my teacher caught me snoring) which control the life of most believing Christians in the world (this is for reference sakes only and no offence is intended) and here come another Ten Commandments to control the life of us….the small but growing breed of Web Developers (web designers) of today. After being jerked out of my pondering by my colleagues who thought I was asleep again at my desk I started to think about the righteousness of the Ten Commandments specified for web design and soon enough I had enough thoughts to contradict the above said. So here I go…I sit up straight, clench my fists hard so that my sleepy fingers wake up and with a deep breath I begin:

1. Thou shalt not abuse Flash: Yes sir….flash can definitely be abused only in the hands of a person who does not know what to do with it or if the person has no creativity. How else can flash be abused? Of what I think is HTML can be abused too (ever seen how HTML code is messed up by designers who just take up the code from 10 different websites and try to make it work?) and so can CSS. AJAX was developed abused and has more issues than creating a site in pure Flash. How else can you abuse Flash, I do not really understand. Maybe by using Flash in places where it is not required like the footer of the website…..hehehehe…amusing idea…well that’s the end of my pervertness in abusing Flash. But if you use Flash in the correct manner you can not only get a beautiful website but also a very impactful website. The closest example is our website www.felixlabs.com.

2. Thou shalt not hide content: Hide content??? I wonder who would want to do that except for a spy selling secrets on his website…or do you mean pop-ups or those small forms popping up on a website covering up all the content.. Well let’s see this from another point of view. How many people have websites just for the sake of it and not for earning money? If you can put in an advertisement that will generate some income to your website, would you say no? Pop-ups are not necessarily bad and sometimes are a convenient way to have a visitor stay back on your website. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that pop-ups shouldn’t be avoided, or that they aren’t annoying, or that there aren’t usability issues with them. What I’m saying is that it’s not always black and white. Usability is a science with fundamental principles, but it’s not the only influencing factor in the design of a for-profit web site. There are other factors, such as the bottom line — and as long as your site exists to turn a profit, this wrestling match between ideal and profitable will continue to exist. In fact from a accessibility point of view they are far less evil than those JavaScript or Flash based floatovers that cover everything and give no clue on how to close them.

3. Thou shalt not clutter: What are we talking about here?? Too much text or too many boxes or advertisements and less of empty/white space. Any more or less knowledgeable or experienced designer will have the common sense to balance the design and the content on the page. I have thought over this for quite some time and cannot argue much over this point as it does have meaning to it. But it has been put as a rule to be followed religiously ( that’s why they called it the Ten Commandments and not the Ten Not To Do’s of web design) and Commandments should not be ambiguous. Right???!!!

4. Thou shalt not overuse glassy reflections: Hmmmm…..why wouldn’t I?? How to give a website the “WOW” effect……ok…there’s nothing much to say here again….overdose of anything and everything is bad…..

5. Thou shalt not name your Web 2.0 company with an unnecessary surplus or dearth of vowels: Now now…..i thought we were talking about design and design related Commandments…and they are (the widely acclaimed writers and speakers) telling us how to chose the domain name…well well….seems out of place…every business has its own clientage, own products etc and if someone decides to name his company buyabuck.com what’s wrong with that if he is selling bucks. Let’s stick to the topic here…principles of design, colors, textures, different kind of abuses etc and leave the name and domain things to the owners of their respective businesses.

6. Thou shalt worship at the altar of Typography: Please…gods of the web world…please save us from thy whims….we live in a world where not all are equipped with the tools to view thy whims on their screens. Most of them don’t even have decent internet connections to wait until the page downloads not talking about the free availability of fonts and other hurdles and of course the patience. But we are optimistic that one day we all will have a at least 10Mb optical fiber connections and expertise to use the tools and view the altar of typography in all its glory. Until then the truth is “Typography on the web SUCKS” and until we have good tools to overcome these hurdles the truth remains unchanged.

7. Thou shalt create immersive experiences: Wonder what it means?? I am talking about the “immersive experience”. Because what the author describes certainly puzzles me. He has given us Youtube.com as an example and defines ‘immersive experiences” as the ones that “can capture and hold users attention”. Please correct if I am wrong: YouTube has a cluttered design, heavily flash reliant (almost nearing the first Commandment of abuse) and contains 4 vowels (if I am correct there are 7 vowels in English language) in its name. Question: Why do people keep coming back to it? Due to its content or due to its design?

8. Thou shalt be social: Ok I will be…..when I start a social networking site. This point was included in the paragraph starting with “Web 2.0 is everywhere” and “MySpace started it all” common guys….you want to tell us that if the website has the functionality where users are able to interact with each other then, your website will do great otherwise….. Your website may depend on various things for its success on the web and this definitely isn’t one of the requirements only if your website is not a social networking website. So give us a break people…..Jeremy Keith does not allow comments on his blog, would you consider him not to be successful?? I do really wonder sometimes how people come up with such ideas and make millions…maybe I should also join their community and start making some dough…..common sense is not a major necessity.

9. Thou shalt embrace proven technologies: Proven technologies…….yes we do embrace proven technologies like xHTML, CSS, Flex and everything else that has been a industry trend but quote:

“Wikipedia, YouTube, Face book, and their cohorts have become a part of daily life. Sites that can incorporate these elements into their design will connect with users in a meaningful way…”

????!!! What? Since when has Face book become a proven technology and that you are required to integrate it into your website and what elements….where is he coming from? Are they implementing that we do only social websites or if follow the latter then to use the same designs as of the said websites (Copyrights and piracy rulezzzz or are they advertizing the above said). My thought…the author woke up in the morning after a wild night and made this up just when he was asked his opinion….seriously I don’t think that the author did any deep thinking on this part and that is neither researched upon nor refined sufficiently to be a Commandment.

10. Thou shalt make content king: Yes we understand the importance of content not only to the clients but also to search engines like Google which rank your website as per the content…..but again what has this got to do with design?? Most of our clients see their designs finalized with dummy text and they leave the content for the last….and what if we were: Sir we cannot start with the design as long as we do not have the content for your website. I can definitely imagine the clients reaction and the face that he will make when he hears that. Why in god’s name we need design in the first place when we could have just displayed the content and save us so much trouble. No flash, no pop-ups, no designs…we would all have been much much richer than we are just by saving thousands of dollars on those software’s that we have spent.

Way to go….

To end this, all I have to say is that not all is that bad as it looks. I would have done more research on this before putting out the Ten Commandments….they certainly have a place but not as set of orthodox rules on stone but as full research material for PhD’s on white board’s. Some of them are even with a promising future but fail due to incomplete research and ill advice. It’s hardly a set of rules that have been refined enough to warrant printing out and posting in your cubicle, let alone etching in stone.

This has been a tiring one….. I thought this would be a quick one but took me over 3 hours of rigorous thought and typing to get through with this. I hope you like what you read….please leave your comments and feedback as they are really important to us. Please feel free to suggest topics that you would like to read. And of course please subscribe to our RSS Feeds to receive updates on the articles.