1.

The Clipart Logo - Most clipart images are widely distributed. Anyone who is familiar with the software providing the clipart will very likely recognize your ‘borrowed’ logo. This is a poor way to build credibility for your business.

2.

The Special Effects Logo - Strip away all of the special effects to get at the heart of your design. Special filters such as glows, drop shadows, and bevels are great for creating graphics and manipulating photos, but they can be very distracting when applied to a logo. A great logo should be able to stand its ground in black and white, without any effects.
3.

You may like to consider drafting your concepts on paper first. You should think more about what is being presented before you decide how it is presented. When you are pleased with a one-color concept then go to the computer and recreate it digitally. At this point you may or may not like to add a subtle effect to enhance your logo for web use. Eliminate any effect that does not add value to your design.
4.

The Banner Logo - A logo is not a web banner advertisement. You are doing yourself more harm than good by forcing your logo into a banner shape, especially if the content is crammed to fit the entire rectangle. Our eyes are trained to avoid these shapes, not read them.
5.

The Integrated Logo - Professional logo designers occasionally integrate graphic elements directly into the text to create one unified logo. This process is difficult and risky. Executed poorly, your logo can easily look ‘tacky’ and illegible. (i.e. using the letter ‘O’ in the company name to create a globe, eye, magnifying glass, etc.) If you are new to graphic design, stick to a top centered or left graphic layout.
6.

The Text-Only Logo - A text-only logo severely restricts the ability to express your company’s uniqueness and memorability. Larger, more established businesses can pull off text-only logos with exorbitant marketing budgets. One test of logo’s effectiveness (marketing budget’s aside) is to alter the letters and see if your logo is still recognizable. If not then you need to seriously consider a visual element. If you just can’t resist a text-only logo, consider a strong, unique typeface - preferably custom made.
7.

The Monogram - Monograms (company initials) are very difficult to use effectively. It will take a long time to build credibility with a monogram logo. Similarly, logos consisting of several overlapping letters generally do not work well. They may be fun to construct, but the end result says very little about your company and your products/services.
8.

7) The Complex Logo - Detailed illustrations, photos, and complex layouts make poor logos. Each additional detail is an extra detail that your (potential) customer has to remember. A simple, unique logo with solid shades and minimal lines will have greater impact and memorability.

About the Author:
Craig Fraser is a Logo Specialist and Creative Director for Flame Media Design, Flamedesign.ca

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/seven-logos-to-avoid.2375.html

And it still is today. With the media changing everyday photography has changed along with it and as a result is still a valuable resource for web business.

1. Photos enhance the look of a website.

2. Communicate so much more than words, they communicate emotions.

3. Photos can be customized for borders and backgrounds.

4. Photos have more impact than clip art. (They tend to give a more professional look.)

5. Stock photography is a big business and affordable stock is out there.

As a web business you’re most likely a small business and have a limited budget and that’s where stock photography can be great resource for you. You can spend as little as $10.00 or as much as $200.00 plus on one image. (Consider that if you hired a professional commercial photographer to shoot a few rolls of film to your specifications it would cost you thousands and thousands of dollars.)

Things to remember when shopping for stock photography:

1. Know what you want, start with a generic idea and get specific as you shop (Remember you probably will not find the exact image that you have in your head, be open to good photos that you find along the way.)

2. Shop around, try the larger agencies try the independents too. (Larger agencies offer more to chose from independent photographers offer more personalized service.)

3. Know what you’re going to use it for, stock photography belongs to the photographer who created it, or the agency, so know what you need it for there can and will be limitations of use.

4. Know what format you need, you only need 72 dpi for the web, be careful that you don’t pay for a higher quality when you don’t need it. (300 dpi for printing purposes)

5. Know your terms for the industry, Make sure that you know what the difference is between royalty free and rights managed, and any other terms the business may use. If something is not clear on their site contact them and ask for clarification.

So remember you can add a little more impact and emotion to your site by making use of the stock photography out there today.

About the Author:
Click to Visit Author’s Website Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography. She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/why-stock-photography-is-a-great-resource-for-web-business.2284.html

While 30 seconds is statistically tolerable, practically every users (especially 56K or slower modem users) don’t have that much patience online and will just click off your website if it does NOT load within 20 seconds or less!

If you’re using a lot of HEFTY web images and flash files on your website (especially on the homepage), you could be in a very disadvantageous and dangerous position! You might risk losing potential customers with slower connection and quite frankly, wouldn’t that spoil the buying mood of your visitors?

A lot of people are still surfing the internet for information using a simple modem. Unless you’re running a website that focuses a lot on graphics like game review websites or if graphics are an important part of your product, avoid using huge graphics.

If you really have to use HUGE and HEAVY graphics, try SLICING them into smaller images or converting them in an optimized format.

Here are two popular formats that’s widely used on the net to display images:

GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) is highly suitable for images with less than 256 colors - usually for flat graphics that is simple like your company logo, navigation buttons, etc.

JPEG (Joint Photographic Expert Group) is the best format for images with photographic elements - graphics like scenery, a car, a person face, etc.

If you optimize your graphics accordingly, you could actually cut down your loading time to as high as 50-70 percent! If your previous loading time is 30 seconds, you could actually end up with only 15 seconds! Isn’t that great for your visitors?

Of course, there’s a trade-off between quality and size when you optimize your web graphics. The smaller the size, the lower the quality and vice versa. The key to web graphics optimization is to get the best quality with a reasonable file size.

How about TEXT? Is one of your pages using too much text and the loading time is somehow impossible to complete within 20 seconds? What do you do? Separate them into smaller web pages? Well, how about using tables?

That’s right, try designing your website in tables! Put each chunk of text into a different table (not table within table), it’s easier to manage this way and your web page will load so much FASTER!

Your website will be displayed progressively from the first table to the last one remaining thus giving your visitors something to look at while waiting for your website to load up completely.

Here’s a sample of the code:

< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">

This will allow your web page to load and display progressively (firstly from table 1, then table 2, then table 3 and lastly table 4), giving your visitors something to read WITHOUT having to WAIT for the entire web page to load up completely!

Note: Do NOT use nested tables (table within table) though because it will not have the same effect and will definitely load slower because the browser needs to completely load the main table before loading the any tables within it. Nested tables are HARD to manage too!

That’s all for this article, have fun optimizing your website loading speed!

About the Author:
Get fresh, weekly, up-to-date Internet Marketing Power Tips and Exclusive eBooks that will give you an unfair edge over your competitors here: eBookok.com

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/optimizing-your-web-site-to-load-faster.2279.html

Here are some basic graphic design/web design principles that you can use on your site:

1. Background, be careful what color you use for the background of your site. Yes I know that you’re trying to get noticed, but really they’ve already decided to look at your page so why does it have to be orange? Seriously though, consider how long you want people to be on your site, half an hour, one hour, more? Whatever the time chose your background color and then sit in front of your computer and stare at it, for awhile. Is the color easy to look at? Difficult? Does it make your eyes water? Does it make you calm? If you can look at the color for about fifteen minutes without a problem you’re okay.

2. Text, related to the above be careful what text color you use. Follow the rules above for determining a text color. It should be easy to read, and look at.

3. Font, no more that three fonts on the entire website. I mean that! A big mistake that I see a lot of times is the use of more than three different fonts, it get’s hard to read no matter how neat you think it looks.

4. Font size, no more that three font sizes either. Now I don’t mean three font sizes for each of the three fonts you’ve chosen. I mean no more than three fonts with a total of three sizes throughout the entire site, and if you can get by with less even better. It will simplify your site.

5. Scrolling, this is a big one literally. I’ve been on too many sites where I had to scroll down so far that my computer beeped at me. This is really important on your main page. Keep it very sparse, generally any information that someone has to scroll more than one full page down for will not be read.

This is only a start of course but it’s a start and it is on these issues that I see so many problems. Always remember that simplicity is best.

About the Author:
Click to Visit Author’s Website Kelly Paal is a Freelance Nature and Landscape Photographer, exhibiting nationally and internationally. Recently she started her own business Kelly Paal Photography. She has an educational background in photography, business, and commercial art. She enjoys applying graphic design and photography principles to her web design.

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/elements-of-graphic-design-for-your-website.2278.html

Your home page should be informative, and should call your visitor on action. Home page is the place where the visitor decides what he will do, click on some of your links, or leave the site. If you have a discount, or if you offer some free service in attempt to make a contact with potential customers, make sure to provide link to that service on your home page.

If you decide to implement flash intro on your first page, make sure to give the user possibility to skip the flash intro. The link “skip intro” should be outside of the flash, because you will force the visitor to wait until the Flash movie is loaded.

Navigation structure

Place the navigation on the place where the people are used too look for it. Don’t experiment with the navigation! I can’t stress enough this. Keep the navigation system same on ALL pages. Visitors are not ready to learn your site navigation system. Consistency is the most important thing here. You should focus your effort on building consistent rhythm across all pages of your site.

Font size

Your font size should be enough big so your text can be read without effort. There are many people who will not bother to read very small letters. Don’t loose your visitors because of font size. Optimal size seems to be 12-13 points. Visitors should be able to read your text easy, without any effort. Broke big chunks of texts in paragraphs and make them easy to follow.

Line Length

The length of a line of type should be comfortable to read. The optimal line length for printed materials seems to be about 10 to 12 words, or 60 to 70 characters. Somewhat shorter lines of about 40 to 50 characters may be more appropriate for larger displays. If the line is too long the reader must search for the beginning of it; if it is too short it will break up words or phrases awkwardly.

Creating emphasis

Creating emphasis is an important and integral part of designing and typesetting. Handled with taste and good judgment it can help direct and inform the reader. When these qualities are lacking, or someone feels that every word is important and must be emphasized in some way then your web page starts to look like a battlefield and becomes difficult to read!

Graphics

It’s well known that one picture worth more than million words. This rule applies on Internet too. Do your best to show clear, attractive photo of your product. If you offer a service, find a photo which will best describe him. However, be careful about file size. Don’t compress your photo to that level to not be clear, but also don’t leave the photo on full quality. That will make file size too big, and will increase download time.

Gif vs. JPEG

Less experienced web designers many times use wrong format to store their picture. Here are few guidelines which will help mistakes to be avoided. If your photo has small number of colors (less then 64) GIF will be better choice. Make sure however to reduce the palette size too. That is, if your image have10-15 colors only, reduce your palette on 16 or 32 colors.
Also, if your image contains text, GIF format should be your choice. JPEG use loosy compression method and will cause text and edges to become blurry.

If you are saving a photograph - save it as JPEG

JPEG images can contain over 32 million different colours. That is much more than the human eye can see.

If you want to incorporate large text into a photographic image, JPEG may be a good format to use. While the edges may still get blurred, danger of it becoming unreadable is slim. If you think your image is more important than the text, go ahead and use the JPEG format.

Speed

Do your best to reduce the download time. We live in a busy world and people are not will to wait long time. Try to reduce size of your graphics as much as possible without to destroy the image. Image must look good, but size (in KB) should be as small as possible.

Test before publishing

Do your homework, and do it well. Your visitors will not bother to send you an E-Mail that some of your links does not work or that some of your images does not appear. Even if someone do so, it is quite embarrassing. Perform spell and grammar checking. Remember that in many cases visitor will build his opinion about you or your company on base on your web site. When published, site should not contain any “under construction” or “coming soon” messages.

About the Author:
Click to Visit Author’s Website Zoran Makrevski is President and CEO of SEO.Goto.gr, one of the first SEO companies in Greece.

Zoran has over 10 years of experience in Web Design & Development and programming. Since 1998 has focused on E-Commerce and attempts to bring more traffic to the customer sites bring him in the SEO industry, and he is running his own company today.

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/basic-web-design-principles.2271.html

Thumbshots are screen shot previews of web sites which allow your web site visitors to preview a link before clicking on it.

Who Uses Thumbshots?

Thumbshots can be used by any web site which links to another website in order to enhance the surfer experience. For example, if you operate a directory, you can add a Thumbshot beside each listing.

Thumbshots can also be used by software developers who write scripts and software applications which generate template driven web site management and creation solutions. This really has nothing to do with the software application itself, but because the Thumbshot code can be inserted into the master HTML template, it can be a good selling point for the developer.

To see an example of how Thumbshots can be used, visit http://www.thumbshots.org/portfolio.pxf. The web page is an A-Z type of directory which displays Thumbshot listings of sites that use Thumbshots.

How to Display Thumbshots

To display Thumbshots at your web site, you will first need to register for Free at http://www.thumbshots.org/freethumbshots.pxf, then add the following line of code inside an image tag:

img src=”http://open.thumbshots.org/image.pxf?url=[ADD URL HERE]” width=”120″ height=”90″

This method will allow you to display Thumbshots easily without ever creating any of the images or ever uploading them to your server. All images are served by thumbshots.org.

The license agreement at thumbshots.org states that if you use their thumbshots, you should do the right thing and give credit back to their site. Details here: http://www.thumbshots.org/attribution.pxf

Thumbshots Limitations

Thumbshots served by thumbshots.org will only display previews of web sites that are listed in the http://www.dmoz.org directory. This might cause your visitors to perceive incorrectly that a site without a preview image is less important than a site with a preview.

For example, I view traffic exchange sites as less important than content sites. Yet, my single page traffic exchange project gets listed at DMOZ while my content site riddled with articles does not.

It is possible to display thumbshots by using an alexa.com code, but according to their terms of use I think that it would not be a good idea.

More info about the Alexa code plus links to another Thumbshot service at this blog: http://blog.outer-court.com/archive/2004_06_03_index.html. Scroll down to the heading “Alexa Thumbnails”.

About the Author:
Click to Visit Author’s Website The author, Ed Zivkovic is a self taught webmaster. His website contains articles with all sorts of tips for work at home webmasters. Here is the site: Ezau.com

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/display-web-page-thumbshots-without-hosting-images.2267.html

Designing Effectively

Now that you know what web design and related terms mean, lets get down to the real thing: Designing Effectively How to balance artistic design with practicality and functionality.
Use of graphics and content

Unless your website is all about graphics, how to make them, edit them or just a bunch of links to graphics websites, I suggest you use graphics sparingly, especially the flashing, twirling kind. They not only detract readers from the content, but they also take ages to load. You do not want your readers to leave your website because your graphically attractive page does not seem to load fast enough. Then again, too much text is boring. So mix and match the graphics and text on your page, having enough white space so that the page is not plain annoying.

Layout and design

While designing, keep in mind that poor layout and design will make your pages unreadable and difficult to keep your visitors on your website for long. Some of the things that make a poor design and layout:

* Text that is too small to read

* Color combinations of text and background that make the text hard to read

* Large graphic files that take forever to load

* Multiple things that blink

* Unclear navigation; over complex navigation

* Paragraphs of type in all caps, bold, and italic all at once

* Graphics that don’t fit on the screen (assuming a screen of 640x460 pixels)

* Animations that never stop

* Complicated frames, too many frames, unnecessary scroll bars in frames

* Cluttered, not enough alignment of elements

Some of the things that make a webpage stand out from the crowd:

* Stay away from bad design features listed above.

* Background does not interrupt the text

* Navigation buttons and bars are easy to understand and use

Go

* od use of graphic elements (photos, subheads, pull quotes) to break up large areas of text

* A large site has an index or site map

* Link colors coordinate with page color

* Every graphic link has a matching text link

* Animated graphics turn off by themselves

* Pages download quickly

* All pages have the immediate visual impact within 640 x 460 pixels

Planning

Most of the time, all it takes to design your website effectively is a little planning. When designing a website, it needs to be clean, uncluttered, attractive and easy for users to read and find what they need. Begin with a webdesign plan:

what colors do you want to use?

Are these colors complimentary?

What items - text, images, data - do you want to put in your pages?

What layout do you want? Look at other websites and then decide.

Follow the above steps to get a website that speaks for itself and your business. You can always contact me for suggestions and webdesign projects.

About the Author:
Tasneem Rangoonwala is the Web Development Co-ordinator at D.zigns Enterprise Solutions. D.zigns offers quality ERP and Web Development Services.

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/effective-web-design.2297.html

For palette-based formats like GIF and PNG, file size is directly related to the size of the color palette, or the number of colors in the image. As the number of colors in an image crosses a power of two, the file size jumps. A 33-color image must use a six-bit palette, while a 32-color image can use a 5-bit palette. Smaller palettes mean smaller codes (representing pixel patterns), which makes for smaller files. So minimizing the number of colors in index-color images like GIFs and PNGs will minimize file size.

The compression schemes used in GIFs (LZW) and PNGs (Deflate) are dictionary-based encoding algorithms. Dictionary based compression algorithms substitute shorter codes for longer patterns of strings within the data stream. Pixel patterns (substrings) in the data stream found in the dictionary are replaced with a single code. If a substring is not found in the dictionary, a new code is created and added to the dictionary. Compression is achieved when smaller codes are substituted for longer patterns of data.

The code size is based on the number of bits per pixel, and depends on the maximum length code within your dictionary. Thus the smaller your bit-depth, the smaller the codes representing your pixel pattern strings, and the smaller the file.

Choosing the right format for your images is the first step in optimizing web graphics. At lower bit-depths, banding can appear in smooth-toned images. Try quantizing your image to different palettes to minimize banding.

PNG Compression

PNG uses the deflate compression algorithm which is a newer, more efficient cousin of LZW. Deflate is designed to be free of patent problems. Deflate is a combination of the LZ77 algorithm found in zip programs like WinZIP and gzip, and Huffman coding. Deflate typically compresses files 20 to 30 percent smaller than LZW, which is the difference you’ll find between gzip and compress. PNGs use a similar substitution technique, but are generally 5 to 25 percent smaller than GIFs, although there are exceptions. In addition to horizontal “scan-line” pattern substitution PNGs sometimes substitute for vertical patterns. PNG can also truncate color palettes. In general, the smaller the color palette, the smaller the overal file size.
Conclusion

To minimize the file size of palette-based image formats like GIF and PNG, minimize their bit-depth, or number of colors. Each time you pass a power of two, file size jumps higher. By minimizing the number of colors, and maximizing the flat-color areas you will create smaller, more efficient images destined for the Web.

Further Reading:

LZW Data Compression
http://www.dogma.net/markn/articles/lzw/lzw.htm
Mark Nelson breaks down the LZW compression algorithm for Dr. Dobb’s Journal of October 1989.

Multimedia: Use Lossy Compression for Smaller GIFs and PNGs http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/lossy/
Lossy compression lets you squeeze more bytes out of your GIFs and PNGs. Lossy compression increases identical pixel patterns to improve compression in indexed-color images.

Multimedia: Use Weighted Optimization
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/tweak/weighted/
Weighted optimization or regional compression applies different degrees of compression to different areas of your image. By varying the quality within images you can improve file size.

Optimizing Web Graphics
http://www.websiteoptimization.com/speed/12/
Chapter summary from Speed Up Your Site, shows how to correct, optimize, and compress images for minimum file size and maximum quality.

PNG Home Site
http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/
Greg Roelofs site devoted to all things PNG.

About the Author:
Click to Visit Author’s Website Article by Andy King, author of the popular new book titled “Speed Up Your Site – Web Site Optimization”. Visit Andy King’s web site to learn the best Web Site Optimization practices for higher traffic and speed guaranteed. Article by Andy King, author of the popular new book titled “Speed Up Your Site – Web Site Optimization”. Visit Andy King’s web site to learn the best Web Site Optimization practices for higher traffic and speed guaranteed. Websiteoptimization.com

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/web-site-optimization-how-to-speed-up-your-web-site-by-minimizing-images.2294.html

In certain cases, each of those issues could be important considerations. But generally speaking, those aren’t the kind of questions to worry about.

There are plenty of details, however, that do deserve much attention. For example:

Is it crystal clear to visitors what they are supposed to do on your site? It’s critical to ensure that you’ve provided straight-forward directions to visitors as to what they should do on your site. Also, make sure your calls to action are properly emphasized (visually) and properly placed. In other words, don’t let them be overshadowed.

Have you answered all the objections visitors might raise? Visitors will have questions and hesitations at various points throughout the process of making a decision to buy. Are you answering those concerns at the points where they are likely to come up? It doesn’t count to just have the information on the site somewhere; it needs to be in the right place at the right time.

Have you emphasized the benefits of your services, not just the features?

Is your site organization clear and straightforward, and is it oriented around visitors’ needs and priorities? This is one question site owners continually fail to consider. The details of how you choose to organize the pages and information on your site will be very significant to your visitors’ experiences. Consider things from a visitor’s point of view, and organize around your visitors’ priorities–not your internal company structure. The same goes for individual page layouts, not just the site organization as a whole.

Do the graphics on your site visually emphasize the most important items on each page? Take a long hard look at your pages and figure out which elements really stand out. Are you visually drawing attention to the important stuff?

Does your site draw along a path to an end goal? Every website should be a process geared toward getting visitors to take certain actions. It’s your responsibility as a site owner to figure out the details of how that process should work and which steps happen where. Have you specifically designed your site so that everything–including all the small details–leads to your end goal?

Do you prod visitors along at appropriate points to motivate them to take the next step? Have you provided compelling calls to action at the points where visitors need to do something?

Have you made sure your copy is simple and engaging all the way through? This is an area where you should focus on details relentlessly. Make every word count.

Have you considered everything from a visitor’s point of view, not just a site owner’s point of view?

If you want to create an effective website, get intimately acquainted with your visitors’ mindset. Learn to identify with your visitors’ feelings all the way through from the very beginning of the process to the very end. Understand their specific needs, their concerns, and the benefits that speak to their hearts. Learn to tell when they have enough information and when they need more. Anticipate the points at which questions and objections are going to be raised–and understand which questions and objections are going to occur when.

After you’ve done that, analyze the details of your site. The answers you’ve determined for the above questions will affect the fine points of your graphic design, of your page layouts, and of your overall site organization. Purposely evaluate why each element of the page is placed the way it is and identify what purpose every item serves.

It’s not enough to just launch a website. You have to make the details count!

About the Author:
Click to Visit Author’s Website Does your site have the essential ingredients that make customers buy? Jamie Kiley can help you find out exactly how your site needs to be improved. Sign up for a site review today at Kianta.com.

Get a quick, free web design tip every two weeks–sign up for Jamie’s newsletter: Kianta.com Newsletter.

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/the-details-rule-in-web-design.2293.html

* try to be below 20kb

* less number of images

* specify height and width of images

* Html with out erros

WYSIWYG editors load up your html code. so try using text editor part of your html editors instead of visual editor

# Images Only home page:

Say goodbye to images only home pages. Home pages with flash only introductions or only graphics don’t attain good ranking in search engines.

1. Content:

Put content that related to your products or a list of your products with some text under them. Don’t forget to sprinkle some keywords in that text.
2. Links to your Products:

Make it Easy for your visitor to reach your product pages. Afterall your purpose of setting up a web site is to do few sales. Right? On each page you can use same navigational menu. So your visitor can reach any page on your web site with two clicks.
3. Headings and subheadings:

Highlight your product benefits or services. Put your content as short paragraphs. Beleive it or not, if the matter is like short paragraphs anybody can read whole page instead of a half page singe paragraph.
4. Promotions and sales:

If you are offering any promotional methods on your products like free upgrades for limited time or reduction of price to half for limited time etc, state them bold on your home page. This may make your visitor click on your link and check out your product.
5. Links to Outside domain:

As a rule of thumb, don’t put links to other domains from your homepage, unless those are also yours. If you are participating in link exchanges then create seperate folder for link exchanges like yourdomain.com/linkpartners/index.html
6. Pop-ups on Your home page:

Personally I never liked them before and even I don’t advice to put pop ups on your web sites. If you do a search on Overture, there are more searches for the term pop-up blockers. So you decide yourself.

These are first 4 terms- (148790 - pop up blocker,65195 - blocker free pop up,53141 - pop up stopper, 47157 - pop up blockers)

If you still love pop ups go for floatingbox that keep a small box that floads at the cornet of your home page.

More here: http://www.webmasters-central.com/t/floatingads.shtml
7. Home page ranking:

Try to stick on to one url in link exchanges or ezine articles. When you do pageranking in Google, all these urls give different pageranking-
* yourdomain.com/
* yourdomain.com.index.html
* www.yourdomain.com/
* www.yourdomain.com/index.html

8. Look little professional:

Little professionalism on your home page keeps your visitor few more seconds. And that few more seconds counts a lot to increase of your newsletter sign ups and sales. Little logo, your web site motto, same font, display of your products are only few to say.

About the Author:
Radhika Venkata Radhika Venkata Subscribe to ‘iNet Marketing Ezine’ which is completely focused on Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights! Webmasters-central.com Subscribe FREE Ecourse :: 30 days Solid work out to increase your online profits! eBooks-world.com Ecourse.

Source:http://webdesign.templatemonster.com/web/web-design-basics/design-principles/ten-tips-for-your-web-site-home-page.2291.html