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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Why Businesses Still Opt for BPO Solutions
Many businesses nowadays acquire the services of a BPO offshore outsourcing firm because it offers numerous advantages that cannot be found with a local service provider. Although it may prove disadvantageous for the local economy, hiring offshore services come at a much cheaper cost because of the currency difference. Business owners receive the same quality in the services they choose and the outsourcing companies provide a fast response to their clients. Other business owners do not approve hiring the service of offshore firms but because practicality is more of a concern, they learn to think otherwise.
The concept of offshore outsourcing is that a firm provides the staff that can in turn provide the solution the business is looking for. The services that offshore companies offer range from web development and design, medical transcription, to search engine optimization. These are some of the solutions that are in-demand today because the Internet holds many online businesses that require these services. Entrepreneurs that work for a company also highly recommend these solutions because they create a great impact on the sales that a business acquires.
Thinking back as to why other businesses do not approve of BPO offshore outsourcing methods, they are knowledgeable of the fact that local employment may be paralyzed if they continue to support foreign companies. By consistently patronizing outsourced services, it will eventually lead to local businesses shutting down because there is a lack of interested customers in their market. The local growth and development of the country will fall as local agents are not given the chance to gain new skills or become as competitive as offshore staffs. Any company that is patronizing outsourced services will eventually fall along with the country where it is established.
Even though that is the cold truth, there are still many businesses that strongly agree that offshore outsourcing solutions are practical. That is because these businesses will be able to give back to their community in return for the cheap services they acquire. These businesses are able to fund charities or help smaller businesses grow by offering products and services at a lower cost than usual. They are able to hire highly skilled staff because they have more funds in their account to do so and thus provide great service to their customers.
When looking for the right BPO solution, it is important to note what kind of services your business requires. If there is a problem with how your website is made and designed then a web development package is right for you. Having trouble with web traffic? Hire the services of an SEO specialist to boost page ranking and optimize your website for easy search engine recognition.
There are many advantages to have an offshore outsourcing solutions provider. They provide affordable packages because they know that small businesses will be their primary customers because they are looking to grow. They provide the same quality of output or even more which is a very advantageous solution for any type of business.
The concept of offshore outsourcing is that a firm provides the staff that can in turn provide the solution the business is looking for. The services that offshore companies offer range from web development and design, medical transcription, to search engine optimization. These are some of the solutions that are in-demand today because the Internet holds many online businesses that require these services. Entrepreneurs that work for a company also highly recommend these solutions because they create a great impact on the sales that a business acquires.
Thinking back as to why other businesses do not approve of BPO offshore outsourcing methods, they are knowledgeable of the fact that local employment may be paralyzed if they continue to support foreign companies. By consistently patronizing outsourced services, it will eventually lead to local businesses shutting down because there is a lack of interested customers in their market. The local growth and development of the country will fall as local agents are not given the chance to gain new skills or become as competitive as offshore staffs. Any company that is patronizing outsourced services will eventually fall along with the country where it is established.
Even though that is the cold truth, there are still many businesses that strongly agree that offshore outsourcing solutions are practical. That is because these businesses will be able to give back to their community in return for the cheap services they acquire. These businesses are able to fund charities or help smaller businesses grow by offering products and services at a lower cost than usual. They are able to hire highly skilled staff because they have more funds in their account to do so and thus provide great service to their customers.
When looking for the right BPO solution, it is important to note what kind of services your business requires. If there is a problem with how your website is made and designed then a web development package is right for you. Having trouble with web traffic? Hire the services of an SEO specialist to boost page ranking and optimize your website for easy search engine recognition.
There are many advantages to have an offshore outsourcing solutions provider. They provide affordable packages because they know that small businesses will be their primary customers because they are looking to grow. They provide the same quality of output or even more which is a very advantageous solution for any type of business.
The Best Advertising Tool
Established industries are spending hundreds of thousands if not millions in advertising alone just to retain product and or service awareness to consumers. Television and print advertising firms are doubling their efforts to make the best deals to potential clients to invest in them, promising them good leverage and wide audience share. True, such type of advertising is indeed effective yet its cost isn't exactly friendly. How so? As mentioned earlier, a large amount of funding is needed to advertise on television and print - an impossible investment for small and medium enterprise especially when it's relatively new on the business arena.
Marketing a brand truly has its challenges. Operational costs usually get in the way of advertising costs yet they have to complement each other. While television and print advertising may be effective, it does however have an obvious disadvantage - both has limitations. If it is not limited in time, it's limited in space. However, finding the right kind of marketing tool to ensure product and or service awareness is not so hard though. If you've found the ease of using the internet to communicate with your friends and families from halfway across the world, or better yet, to research about people, places and or things you've heard or wondered about, then you've been looking at the solution. Yes, surprisingly, not everyone's sold out about making use of the internet for their business when that's where the best leverage and the widest audience share swarm. So, how to advertise on the internet? Start by securing a website. With a website, the territory is yours alone. More like your own advertising network. Don't know how to build a website or looking for an affordable web solutions?
International outsourcing web design and international web hosting industries are the best to tap if you're looking into globally competitive web solutions. These are outsource web solution companies like China web hosting or China web design for example, that supports and understand the need of an alternative that is an effective marketing and or advertising tool to help a business thrive. Since these international outsourcing web design and international web hosting companies offers reasonably priced services, they're rapidly gaining popularity aside from their widely lauded efficiency on their output. An outsource web solution company will help you from scratch if need be.
Why spend hundreds of thousands and or millions when you can spend no way near that and yet you can reach global audience just by having a website? The best advertising tool is right at the tip of your fingertips. You can interact with your clients if you like or simply update your website with new photos, videos or articles about your products and or services with ease. No matter the size of the business, a website can be a very helpful tool to achieve that needed awareness. No worries about time and space limits, no big unnecessary advertising funding. With a website as your advertising tool, the sky is your only limit.
Marketing a brand truly has its challenges. Operational costs usually get in the way of advertising costs yet they have to complement each other. While television and print advertising may be effective, it does however have an obvious disadvantage - both has limitations. If it is not limited in time, it's limited in space. However, finding the right kind of marketing tool to ensure product and or service awareness is not so hard though. If you've found the ease of using the internet to communicate with your friends and families from halfway across the world, or better yet, to research about people, places and or things you've heard or wondered about, then you've been looking at the solution. Yes, surprisingly, not everyone's sold out about making use of the internet for their business when that's where the best leverage and the widest audience share swarm. So, how to advertise on the internet? Start by securing a website. With a website, the territory is yours alone. More like your own advertising network. Don't know how to build a website or looking for an affordable web solutions?
International outsourcing web design and international web hosting industries are the best to tap if you're looking into globally competitive web solutions. These are outsource web solution companies like China web hosting or China web design for example, that supports and understand the need of an alternative that is an effective marketing and or advertising tool to help a business thrive. Since these international outsourcing web design and international web hosting companies offers reasonably priced services, they're rapidly gaining popularity aside from their widely lauded efficiency on their output. An outsource web solution company will help you from scratch if need be.
Why spend hundreds of thousands and or millions when you can spend no way near that and yet you can reach global audience just by having a website? The best advertising tool is right at the tip of your fingertips. You can interact with your clients if you like or simply update your website with new photos, videos or articles about your products and or services with ease. No matter the size of the business, a website can be a very helpful tool to achieve that needed awareness. No worries about time and space limits, no big unnecessary advertising funding. With a website as your advertising tool, the sky is your only limit.
Monday, May 10, 2010
10 Promising CSS Framework That Worth A Look
Most of web designers should heard about “CSS Framework”, and I believe some of you had tried them before.
Just like other programming and scripting language, CSS do have some repeat code that can be packed together to ease our daily job.
When use properly, CSS Framework may cut down your development time. On the other hand, it may cause extra works and time if you choose the wrong framework for your project.
There are a lot of open source CSS Framework, and you can easily reach them by using Google. Today, I am going to show you 10 promising CSS Framework that worth a look.
1.
Blueprint: A CSS Framework
blueprint
Blueprint includes a CSS reset that eliminates the discrepancies across different browsers. There are a lot of external tools and templates to aid your web development with Blueprint.
2.
960 Grid System
960-system
Another excellent CSS Framework that worth a look. The download includes templates for Fireworks, Photoshops, Inkscape and etc. so that you can start designing your web template immediately. The PSD file that comes with guides ready save designers a lot of time.
3.
Tripoli Framework
Tripoli had been tested and supports virtually all available browsers, including IE5! It comes with some base files, and some plugins such as “Layout”, “Visual”, “Type”, and “Negative”.
4.
YAML – Yet Another Multicolumn Layout
YAML is another bulletproof CSS Framework that has a very good documentation. You can easily get started by downloading the PDF documentation and the sample project from the official site. There are some tools that will help you on your development too. For example, the YAML Builder can visually create YAML-based CSS layouts.
5.
YUI Grid CSS
YUI Grids CSS support fluid-width layouts as well as fixed-width layouts. This is the advantage of YUI Grids CSS over the other CSS Frameworks. To get started with YUI Grids CSS, you can download the cheat sheet and YUI Grids Builder from the official site.
6.
BlueTrip
bluetrip
BlueTrip is a full featured and beautiful framework that combines advantages from different CSS Framework. The official site has a complete documentation and demos.
7.
Content With Style
content-with-style
This is a fixed width layout and the zip files contains a few layouts such as vertical navigation with 1 content column, vertical navigation with 2 content columns, and etc.
8.
Elastic CSS Framework
elastic
Elastic provides a declarative language to define the layout structure and behavior. This is a young framework, and the best site to demo the usage of Elastic is the official site itself.
9.
Molio CSS/HTML Templates
Mollio was launched since IE7 exposed a few rendering problems. It is a starting point for website layout and very suitable for beginners that start learning CSS Frameworks.
10.
SenCSS
sencss
SenCSS doesn’t include a layout system, but it does provide other things such as baseline, fonts, paddings, margins and more. It comes with a commented version and a minified version which suitable for production use.
Some other CSS Framework that you may consider too
1. WYMstyle
2. CSS-boilerplate
3. Typogridphy
4. CleverCSS
5. Logicss
Conclusion
Choosing a right CSS Framework is the most important step. I used both Blueprint and 960 framework regularly and now i start to combine the advantages of both framework and try to come out with a framework that suit me. So how about you, my dearest readers?
Just like other programming and scripting language, CSS do have some repeat code that can be packed together to ease our daily job.
When use properly, CSS Framework may cut down your development time. On the other hand, it may cause extra works and time if you choose the wrong framework for your project.
There are a lot of open source CSS Framework, and you can easily reach them by using Google. Today, I am going to show you 10 promising CSS Framework that worth a look.
1.
Blueprint: A CSS Framework
blueprint
Blueprint includes a CSS reset that eliminates the discrepancies across different browsers. There are a lot of external tools and templates to aid your web development with Blueprint.
2.
960 Grid System
960-system
Another excellent CSS Framework that worth a look. The download includes templates for Fireworks, Photoshops, Inkscape and etc. so that you can start designing your web template immediately. The PSD file that comes with guides ready save designers a lot of time.
3.
Tripoli Framework
Tripoli had been tested and supports virtually all available browsers, including IE5! It comes with some base files, and some plugins such as “Layout”, “Visual”, “Type”, and “Negative”.
4.
YAML – Yet Another Multicolumn Layout
YAML is another bulletproof CSS Framework that has a very good documentation. You can easily get started by downloading the PDF documentation and the sample project from the official site. There are some tools that will help you on your development too. For example, the YAML Builder can visually create YAML-based CSS layouts.
5.
YUI Grid CSS
YUI Grids CSS support fluid-width layouts as well as fixed-width layouts. This is the advantage of YUI Grids CSS over the other CSS Frameworks. To get started with YUI Grids CSS, you can download the cheat sheet and YUI Grids Builder from the official site.
6.
BlueTrip
bluetrip
BlueTrip is a full featured and beautiful framework that combines advantages from different CSS Framework. The official site has a complete documentation and demos.
7.
Content With Style
content-with-style
This is a fixed width layout and the zip files contains a few layouts such as vertical navigation with 1 content column, vertical navigation with 2 content columns, and etc.
8.
Elastic CSS Framework
elastic
Elastic provides a declarative language to define the layout structure and behavior. This is a young framework, and the best site to demo the usage of Elastic is the official site itself.
9.
Molio CSS/HTML Templates
Mollio was launched since IE7 exposed a few rendering problems. It is a starting point for website layout and very suitable for beginners that start learning CSS Frameworks.
10.
SenCSS
sencss
SenCSS doesn’t include a layout system, but it does provide other things such as baseline, fonts, paddings, margins and more. It comes with a commented version and a minified version which suitable for production use.
Some other CSS Framework that you may consider too
1. WYMstyle
2. CSS-boilerplate
3. Typogridphy
4. CleverCSS
5. Logicss
Conclusion
Choosing a right CSS Framework is the most important step. I used both Blueprint and 960 framework regularly and now i start to combine the advantages of both framework and try to come out with a framework that suit me. So how about you, my dearest readers?
A CSS Framework
In my Modular CSS article I documented the possibility of breaking down stylesheets into components that could be reused across projects. All well and good. The next logical step is to extend this to become a CSS framework, allowing rapid development of sites with pre-written and tested components. All that's really required to produce this is a set of naming conventions and a flexible base template...
Who is this for?
If you've been creating sites with CSS for a while you may be getting frustrated with having to recreate and retest basic layouts on a regular basis. In this article I'm trying to illustrate a simple way of skipping the tedious startup on your average project, letting you get to the interesting stuff as quickly and efficiently as possible. I've not attempted to explain the layouts included here so it may not be suitable if you're a CSS beginner. Sorry about that... Feel free to dissect them yourself if you're interested; I've kept them as simple as possible.
How many layouts are there?
Well, loads but the majority of them fall into rough groups. Any framework must account for the most common layouts, otherwise it'll never get used.
* Vertical navigation with one content column
* Vertical navigation with two columns of content
* Horizontal navigation with one content column
* Horizontal navigation with 2 columns of content
* Horizontal navigation with local navigation and one column of content
* Horizontal navigation with local navigation and 2 columns of content
These 6 cover most of the blogs out there and most of the corporate sites as well. How can we structure a document so that it'll be useful in all 6 of these scenarios?
What are the common elements?
Malarkey had a shot at pinning down websites' common elements and giving them names a while back but I want something a little more general so that the building blocks can be retasked without slipping their labelling.
So... what are the common building blocks in the above 6 layouts?
* Header
* Footer
* Main content
* Sub content
* Main nav
* Local nav
These elements are used mix and match across most sites you visit so these are the constituent elements that any framework will have to cater for. No designs will use all of them but most will use header, footer, main content and main nav with optional sub content and sub nav.
The ideal structure
For me the most important single aspect of accessibility is the source code order: if it makes sense you're well on your way to building an accessible site.
You can't spent much time on the accessibility mailing lists or forums without someone being told that they should structure their HTML so that the content preceeds the navigation. This stops screenreader users from having to sit through the site's navigation every time they travel to a new page. You can get around this with skip links but that's an extra link to follow...
So, in an ideal world, how would we structure our websites?
1. Header
2. Main content
3. Sub content
4. Local nav
5. Main nav
6. Footer
This source order follows the exact structure people are expected to want: once they have read/listened to the content of your page they are most likely to want to navigate within the current section or to related pages. After they have worked their way through those they'll probably want another section of your site so the main navigation follows.
The page structure
This page structure above looks something like this when turned into (X)HTML:
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
The magic of CSS
We're going to need some farily advanced CSS tricks to turn this source order into useful layouts. They all have to be flexible, to account for text resizing, which with the footer rules out absolute positioning...
The eureka moment for me was when Dunstan published his absolutely positioned menu technique as part of his Mozilla Europe work. Suddenly it became possible, using an incredibly sneaky trick, to pull the nav bar from the bottom of the source and use it horizontally in the header and still allow for text resizing. Now that's genius.
Then you've got the negative margin tricks for moving floats around. I first came across these when Ryan Brill posted about them on Mezzoblue... Dead handy.
If we're going to use floated layouts we're going to need some way of clearing the contents. I could put clearing divs into each of my elements but there is the black magic clearfix method by Tony Aslett that will do this for me, keeping the source clean.
A few other things that might come in handy:
* Body ids to switch styles
* Display: inline to cure IE's double float bug
See where I'm going with this?
We have a single, flexible source document that will take a variety of content and a load of CSS techniques to manipulate them... To make this framework useful I have to be able to get my single source document to display as any of the common layouts listed above. Once that's done I'll be able to drop any content into the HTML framework, plug in the appropriate layout stylesheet for the design, tweak it and the job will be done. No more rewriting XHTML and CSS for every project; every time I start I will begin work with a solid foundation that I can tweak to fit the specifics of the job. Startup time will be next to nothing.
Back to our five main layouts
Okay, so the source code is fixed. What we want is to be able to plug in tried and tested layout stylesheets for reuse on future projects. I'm going to stick with fixed width layouts for this because they're simpler but using negative margins we could get these fluid with a bit of extra work.
* Vertical navigation with one content column
* Vertical navigation with two columns of content
* Horizontal navigation with one content column
* Horizontal navigation with 2 columns of content
* Horizontal navigation with local navigation and one column of content
* Horizontal navigation with local navigation and 2 columns of content
Achieved: Level 2!
That's it - all the common layouts done with pluggable stylesheets and ready to go. They're set up in a kind of Zen Allotment for you to have a flick through...
If you want to have a play with these yourself, all the source files are packaged up in quick-grow zip file.
30/11/2007 UPDATE: I've uploaded a slightly updated version of the framework. Very little has changed but a few people have voiced concerns over the lack of a formal license. Taking advice from Paul Jones (thanks!) I've added the new BSD terms, which are about as open as they come. I'm happy for people to use the framework for whatever they want. If you do, please drop me a line - I'd love to see what you come up with!
Friday, March 5, 2010
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Link-Building Policy for Bing
It’s easy for everyone to get caught up in obsessing about how to optimise your site & build links for Google, when trying to market through search. That’s certainly a wise thing to do, considering Google totally dominates the search market. But, there are still other search engines that some people are using, so it is wise to make sure your site is performing to the best of its ability in those too!
Obviously the other two engines are Yahoo and Bing and whilst Yahoo is seemingly declining fast, Bing is actually gaining a market share. Furthermore, if the deal between Microsoft and Yahoo goes through, Bing search will be talking over Yahoo anyway. With the muscle of Microsoft behind Bing, you can be sure the search engine won’t be prepared to play second fiddle to Google for long!
However, unlike Google, we don’t hear much about what Bing wants out of a site for decent rankings, but Rick DeJarnette of Bing Webmaster Center has shared some dos and don’ts of link-building for Bing. Not surprisingly, a lot of his advice for complying with Bing’s policies, does not differ too much from the advice that Google would give you. It is however, still always nice to hear what they think, just to clear up any possible confusion.
Like Google, Bing places great emphasis on quality links to determine its rankings. “Just don’t make the mistake of believing it will result in instant gratification. Successful link building efforts require a long-term commitment, not an overnight or turnkey solution,” says DeJarnette. “You need to continually invest in link building efforts with creativity and time.”
What You Should Do!
DeJarnette shared some tips for getting more quality links. The following are Bing’s tips for effective link building (paraphrased):
1. Develop your site as a business brand and brand it consistently
2. Find relevant industry experts, product reviewers, bloggers, and media folk, and make sure they’re aware of your site/content
3. Publish concise, informative press releases online
4. Publish expert articles to online article directories
5. Participate in relevant conversations on blogs/forums, referring back to your site’s content when applicable
6. Use social networks to connect to industry influencers (make sure you have links to your site in your profiles)
7. Create an email newsletter with notifications of new content
8. Launch a blog/forum on your site
9. Participate in relevant industry associations and especially in their online forums
10. Strive to become a trusted expert voice for your industry, while promoting your site
What You Should Not Do!
DeJarnette shared a list of things that you should avoid in your link building efforts, if it is a good Bing ranking that you are after. Here is what Bing says will get your site reviewed more closely by staff:
1. The number of inbound links suddenly increases by orders of magnitude in a short period of time
2. Many inbound links coming from irrelevant blog comments and/or from unrelated sites
3. Using hidden links in your pages
4. Receiving inbound links from paid link farms, link exchanges, or known “bad neighborhoods” on the Web
5. Linking out to known web spam sites
“When probable manipulation is detected, a spam rank factor is applied to a site, depending upon the type and severity of the infraction,” says DeJarnette. “If the spam rating is high, a site can be penalised with a lowered rank. If the violations are egregious, a site can be temporarily or even permanently purged from the index.”
Most of the stuff DeJarnette shared is nothing any experienced search marketer is not already aware of, but it can be quite helpful when a search engine itself lays out what to do and not to do, to help webmasters get better rankings.
"Link-Building Policy for Bing"
- http://www.freshwebz.co.uk/blog/ (view on Google Sidewiki)
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