Here is another great article by Kabir Bedi, our guest author.

Kabir Bedi is the senior web consultant at LeXolution IT Services, a premier website development company that provides its clients with a range of web designing services along with internet promotion services. He has over 10 years of experience in catering to international clients.

5 Design Delusions That Can Take Toll On Your Website!

Plug-Ins Make Life Easier

Sure they do! But when your website totally relies on a plug-in, there is too much at stake. When you create a website entirely dependent on closed third party plug-ins, it can actually lead to serious backfire. Often people don’t have these plug-ins installed on their browsers and when they try to view your website, they would be only be irritated by the windows’ constant plea for installation. And more often than not, they just choose to leave instead of succumbing.

So try to stick to cross-browser, standards-compliant code and tools for your website that don’t require any additional work or installations from your visitors.

Reduce the Image File Size As Much As Can Be

It is always advisable to limit the file sizes on your website so as to enhance its usability and make web pages load faster. However, web designers often stretch this a bit to far and reduce image sizes so much that they appear ugly and jagged on the front end. While this may definitely reduce the weight of the website, the crappy look of images only serve to paint an unprofessional picture on the other end.

The decreasing number of dial-up internet users has pushed up the acceptable image sizes. So you don’t have to make things as small as can be lest it takes toll on the design appearance and reduce the apparent quality of your website. After you are done, make sure you preview your processed images on multiple monitors and negate any scope of distortion.

More Content = More Goodies

Content definitely is the king on the web. But that doesn’t mean you overload your website with information. Often designers, in a bid to serve more info to their audiences, tend to include too much content on a web page that it ends up creating a feeling of clutter and ruining the visual readability of the page.

They key is not to fill in disparate information on a single area of your web page. Even though there may be times when you need lots of content, make sure you pay attention to the organization. Place your content in a consistent and attractive manner so that visitors get all that they need to know without seeing a mess.

Variety is Nice!

It sure doesn’t hurt to provide your users with a variety of options but when it comes to design, its better to maintain a little consistency. It shouldn’t be the case, when visitors hop from one page to another, they shouldn’t feel they have landed on completely different terrain.

Users are more comfortable when they become familiar with the look and functioning of a website within a few seconds. If you present them with something drastically different every few pages, they would only be confused and have a less efficient experience. So practice consistency!

Ads Make Great Business Sense

While ads are a great source of revenue, often times they serve to detract visitors from your message and erodes on your professionalism. Littering web pages with ads can seriously bring down its aesthetic feel. Moreover, web users have come to ignore ads altogether so there is a huge question mark on their real effectiveness.

So, make sure you consider carefully before you place ads on your website!

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We had previously announced our intentions to start another domaining contest here at eBusinessDomains.com in early June. We decided to delay the launch, as we wanted to go live with eBD.me first.

eBD.me is now live, but we are still working tirelessly on quite a few other projects. As matter of fact, we are still implementing the new back office and domain marketplace technology for eBusinessDomains.com. We are also working on some other exciting domain development projects.

So, although our site has had its cosmetic change, we are still installing the machinery behind the scenes. This is one of the reasons why we have not yet done a press release for the website re-design, or even started any massive promotions.

We are also testing quite a few new concepts and marketing strategies. We are aiming to cross over big time into the end-user market.

We want to run domain contests that enhance our brand and help us to reach our objectives and goals.

We will launch the domaining contest fairly soon, as soon as the conditions are right and a few other projects are ready.

We are still selling domains and please continue to submit your domains. We will also aim to start our regular auctions fairly soon.

By the way, are you following us on Twitter? Come on, what are you waiting for? Follow us here.
http://twitter.com/ebusinessnames

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A new day has truly begun in the domain industry. For years, domainers failed to see any potential for domain names beyond domain parking. With the current economic downturn inevitably came a reduction in domain parking revenues, to say the least.

For most domainers, it was more like a monetization Armageddon. Parking revenues fell so sharply from glory, it’s like the domain parking world stood still.

I made very good income from domain parking. I still make good money from domain parking. I don’t list domains for sale that do exceptionally well with domain parking. As a matter of fact, I don’t market domains for sale based on parking revenues, but more on their keywords, generic characteristics, branding potential etc.

The ease with which domainers made money with domain parking acted like a magnet in drawing people to the domain industry. The force of this magnet was so strong that all that people could see, speak and hear was “domain parking, domain parking, domain parking, blah, blah, blah”.

No one was treating domains like branding tools or looking at domains in terms of their ebusiness potential.

Well, with the abundance of parking revenues, and the ease with which one could easily register a domain name and set up a parking page, why would anyone want to even think about lifting a finger?

My approach to domain name was never about parking revenues in the first instance. It was all about building a portfolio of ebusiness domains. I monetized my domain portfolio well through domain parking, and as is the case with so many other domainers, this resulted in a lack of urgency to develop brands.

Now, the tides have changed, and one has to look at profits rather than just a mere domain collection. With domains, either you brand them, sell them, monetize them or you drop them.

I was very careful from the outset to focus on domains with development potential. As I said, I did not acquire domains based on any traffic stats, but rather based solely on their ebusiness potential. So I think I got lucky with domain parking so to speak.

The domain industry is getting more and more focused on domain development. This has resulted in very fierce competition between web development companies that target the portfolio domainers.

At last, the vision that I had is slowly taking shape. I was preparing for this day for a very long time. As a matter of fact, I was getting ready from day one.

This is where people stop focusing on stats and gimmicks, and of course crappy domains, and start think business, or better yet, ebusiness. There is a big difference between the two in case you have not realised.

This recession, as terrible as it is for so many people and believe me, it is really horrible at the moment for a lot of people, it has created the right environment for success.

Did you know that some people use horse manure as fertiliser? Imagine something as disgusting as animals’ waste being used to boost the growth of vegetables.

Well this economic recession is like that horse manure. It is causing a lot people to think seriously about their future, re-energise their entrepreneurial spirit and start new ventures. This has resulted in a lot more people turning to the Internet to start an ebusiness.

With less focus on domain stats and more talk about domain quality, my domain portfolio is now a lot more valuable.

With a fierce competition now going on in web development land, it is the perfect time to get that fancy design for your website at reasonable prices.

With more people seeking to start ebusinesses, now is the perfect time to buy, sell and invest in domain names.

This is the moment I have been waiting for. I have been preparing for rain for years, and it looks like a storm is coming!

Domain parking has spoilt the whole domain industry. Get everything for nothing. Just register a domain name, change the name servers and bingo! You have a great looking site (parking page/template).

You sit back, and at then end of the month you have a checks rolling in. Who would live a different life if they didn’t have to?

Well parking is dying a very painful death. When I did in-depth research into domain parking I established in my mind that this was a system only to use while you can. The lack of transparency left the doors wide open for abuse by ALL parties, top to bottom. Period.

However parking had its very fruitful days, and some made a fortune. Myself included. Can’t complain.
Now the tides have changed. How do we switch to domain development? It will be hard. Domainers are not accustomed to thinking out of the box when it comes to domain name monetization. The hardest work some of us had ever done in our domaining careers was to change a few name servers or quote a few stats or browse a few lengthy expiring lists.

Although it would have helped with our domaining strategies, we didn’t have need for business plans and marketing campaigns and sales funnels and target markets and blah, blah, blah.

Now there are simply 2 ways to go about development. Go all out with one or two major brands or develop a series of mini brands.

The first option is risky, not because it involves more work, or takes more time, but it is the kind of thing that you will have to swear allegiance to. You would have to gain a “failure is not an option” attitude.

With the latter, you can try this today, get bored and try something else tomorrow. You can’t have that kind of attitude with a domain like the Toys.com or Camera.com. You have to be serious about business. Not about domains, but about business.

Minisite development is for domainers. Brand development is for business-minded entrepreneurs.
People who think mini sites are mostly domainers who still haven’t graduated from the domaining world. These are the people who think, well if I build a website and it does not monetize well, I will simply sell the domain name.

A businessperson thinks of a building a brand that he could sell one day for anything between 15 and 800 million dollars.

However, let me be clear here. You can make a lot of money with minisites. I heard an Internet marketing expert saying one day that you don’t need a fancy website to make money. You would be surprised to see that the ugliest-looking websites are the ones making the real money. It is all about the sales pitch and the marketing.

So, if you know what you are doing, get the sales pitch and marketing right, and sell products and services in the right niche, you could make boat loads of cash.

Think about it. Almost every ebook you have ever bought was purchased from a minisite. Most of them really are just one very long web page.

If you build minisites hoping to profit from Google Adsense in substitution for domain parking then you will not make money.

You will need to think and build ebusinesses! Sell products and services. What are you good at? How could you roll it up into a minisite and sell it like hot bread? Think, think, think!

A new day has begun in American politics. The world watched as the first black man was sworn in as the President of the United States of America.

President Barack Obama taking office for many, is like seeing a dream come true (Dr Martin Luther King). It was just simply historic.

This is a day for every man, woman and child to realise that anything and everything is possible. This is a time for people to have renewed dreams and ambitions.

As a domainer, it is time to start having a more realistic outlook on domaining. I have been blogging about domaining for a few months now and have shared my thoughts in a very frank and nonsensical way.

In this industry, it would appear that if you’re not one who feasts on oversize lobsters at domain conferences then your opinion is useless. However, I have seen so many lobster eaters change tunes so many times after they have robustly objected or differed in their opinions to my blog posts.

Some inevitably had to admit that domain development is not a bed of roses, and that mini sites do not necessarily automatically bring in the millions.

Some had to embrace that branding is the way forward for any ebusiness success. And well, some now realise that the current domaining game has to change if it is to survive.

Going forward, I think domainers will realise that they will just have to evolve into internet marketers if they want to survive. As more and more domainers realise that development is hard work and that often, mini sites are nothing more than a mere waste of time and money, we will see domainers focusing on becoming niche experts than mere holders of large domain portfolios.

With domain parking revenues on the decline, and development requiring great planning, skills, time and money, people will find it necessary to focus on one or two niches and using their domaining experience to command leadership in their market sectors with the use of top quality niche-domains.

As you renew your dreams in the spur of this historic day, simply do not fail to be realistic.