Speed Reading is a technique widely used by the offline
business community. Large companies pay thousands of dollars each year to have their employees trained in Speed Reading techniques.
Why would large companies invest so much money in Speed
Reading training for their employees? Productivity of course.
You see, learning Speed Reading techniques allows you to
double or triple your reading speed. That means you
accomplish more in less time.
Business owners know that they and their employees will be more productive so they don't mind spending the money since ultimately the increased productivity will lead to greater profits.
For some reason the online community has failed to embrace this technique. But if any business owner ever needs to
learn Speed Reading, the online business owner does.
With the constant flow of emails, ezines, and articles
along with the web copy that online business owners must read each day just to keep up, Speed Reading is a necessary skill in order to be productive/
If mastered, Speed Reading techniques can essentially
increase the productivity of the online business owner.
Increased productivity simply means spending less time
managing and more time promoting. The increase in time
spent promoting leads to greater profits.
Have you been spending more time managing your business
rather than promoting your business? If so, now is the time to make the change. Start spending 80% of your time promoting your business and watch your profits soar.
Speed Reading is a valuable business tool. Master it.
Then use it to your advantage!
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Want to learn Speed Reading techniques? Leigh can help.
Click here to find out how:
hyperTracker.com/go/educationaids/SRAR04/
Subscribe to Leigh's Lifelong Learning newsletter at
Lifelong_Learning-subscribe@topica.com.
Horizontal lines are nice to use on your Web page as a way to divide it into different sections because they take almost no time to load. This is pretty easy to do, and you can make them any size you want.
Play around with the tag variables to see how you can customize these lines. You can size them by relative screen percentage, or directly with pixels. You can also change the appearance of the line itself with width and alignment.
Review the following examples:
<hr width="80%">
<hr size="5" width="300">
<hr align="right" width="100" color="darkblue"> (color IE only)
Second Article
Use 404 pages to your advantage
"Not found
The requested URL /file.html was not found on this server.
Apache/1.3.14 Server at www.yourdomain.com Port 80"
Does that look familiar? If you've ever accidentally tried to access a page that doesn't exist, possibly by following an
outdated link or by misspelling the name of the page, you've probably seen something like the above appear on your screen. You might have attempted to correct the error by checking the URL for mistakes, but it is even more likely that you just clicked "Back" and returned where you came from, never visiting the site again.
For a surfer, encountering a "404 page" is a nuisance. For a webmaster, they can be far more problematic, causing a reduction in traffic which in turn means losing a part of the precious advertising revenues or sales the site's life depends on. You can minimize the amount of 404 errors by periodically checking your pages for broken links, but it is impossible to get completely rid of them. So, what can you do?
The solution - Custom 404 pages
The best way to avoid losing visitors to 404's is to replace the
standard and unfriendly error message with a custom page.
Fortunately the task is relatively simple and can be performed
by anyone who owns a site that has its own domain name.
As different server softwares handle things in their own ways, there is no single method of creating a custom error page that
works with every system. The following instructions can be applied by those who have sites hosted under Apache, which is a very widely used program. If you don't know what software your host is running, contact them and ask.
To start the process, use an FTP program such as CuteFTP to connect to your server. Search for a file named ".htaccess". Should you find it, download the file to your home computer for editing. If the file is not there, don't worry, you'll just have to create it yourself.
Grab a normal text editor and open the file, or if you don't have it, open up a blank file. Type the following into the first
line of the file:
ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/404page.html
After you're done, save the file as plain text and make sure that it is named ".htaccess", without quotes of course. The hard
part is now over, all that is left is to create the custom 404 page (404page.html) that loads when a 404 error occurs.
What should my 404 page look like?
Of course, you can put anything you want into it, but if your purpose is to encourage your visitors to click further into your
site instead of leaving, the page should obey some basic principles.
1. Don't give users a reason to panic. Including a large heading that screams "ERROR" is likely to make the visitor feel that
he/she has done something wrong or that your site is not working properly. A better approach is to first greet them with a warm welcome and then explain that the URL they were looking for could not be found, but should they browse around your site, they will surely find the information they need.
2. Make the page to look and feel similar to the rest of the pages on your site. Include your site's menu on the 404 page to
give visitors a fast and easy way to continue exploring instead of clicking away. A well-designed 404 page with plenty of links is far more attractive than one that has just black text on a white background and a link to your homepage.
3. If you have the skills, consider adding a search feature on the page that allows people to search your site for matches. Often your navigation menu will provide a clue on how the user might reach the information he/she would like to see, but if it doesn't there is a great risk of losing the visit. Placing a search utility on the page increases the likelihood of the user finding the desired page and thus remaining on your site.
After both the .htaccess file and the HTML page are ready, FTP to your server, upload the pages and enjoy your new custom 404 error page!
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Lauri Harpf runs the A Promotion Guide website, where he offers free information about search engines, directories and other promotion methods. His site can be found at www.apromotionguide.com/
Web Sm@rts is a publication of Paradigm Web Design. All
rights reserved. ©2003
t seems that some of you were offended by the announcement message I sent out last week where I once again begged you to read Web Sm@rts.
y last word on this is that I will continue to beg people to read Web Sm@rts when the occasion warrants it, even at the risk of offending some of you. If my comments don't apply to you; ignore them. It's nothing personal.
