These days, it is not uncommon to walk through your office and see a few people quickly minimize Facebook windows that they were surreptitiously viewing during work hours, or to get onto a train and see commuters updating their statuses from their smart phones or iPads. With the ever-growing popularity of Facebook has come the rise in requests for web developers to create Facebook applications (or apps), but what does this actually mean?

For one thing, web development for Facebook apps is very different to web development for general websites or even for mobile devices. There is a whole new language that developers must learn (known as Facebook Markup Language), as well as learning how to use the various platform components that are required for the app to work:

* The ‘Graph API’ is the foundation of the Facebook platform – it enables developers to read and write data into Facebook itself.
* The authentication component is designed to let the apps interact smoothly with the Graph API and to protect users.
* The social plugins (such as the ‘Like’ button) create shortcuts for developers to make their apps more social.
* The iframe component allows developers to create applications that run separately to Facebook, but are able to accessed through a user’s Facebook profile.
* The mobile platform is important for developers to understand if they want their apps to be compatible with Facebook for mobile devices.

If you are looking for a web development company to create a Facebook app for your business or personal use, remember that not all companies are going to be able to do this. A web development company that is able to create a Facebook app for you should:

* have at least a basic understanding of marketing principles. A developer may be able to create an app, but can they effectively promote it for you too?
* have some form of experience in creating Facebook apps. Find out how long they have been in the web development business AND how long they have been creating apps; ask for examples of past work if possible.
* have a good history of success with past apps going viral. In the online world, viral generally equals money.

It is important to keep in mind that web development for Facebook apps is very different to development for other more common applications. As a developer, there is added bounty of components that you will need to learn on top of all your other skills, and it is a task that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

When you start looking for a website builder you will undoubtedly notice that there are two main types of website builder software, online and offline. There are some big differences between these two types of site builders. It is important to understand the differences between them so that you can make an informed decision about which one to use for your site.

The biggest and most obvious difference between the two is that one is an online internet application and the other is a website builder software that you download onto your computer. The obvious benefit to the internet application is that it does not take up space on your computer. However, there are many other things to consider with this simple fact. For example, the fact that it is an internet application means that you will likely have better technical support should you encounter any problems while using the website builder software.

Another big difference between the two is that typically an online internet application will come with a hosting package or hosting options. Website builder software that you download to your computer will typically not come with hosting. This is important, because some site builders are not compatible with some hosting services. This means that if you use the downloadable software you have to hunt for a host that will be compatible with the site builder in order to upload your site and make it live when it is complete.

One of the less obvious differences is that an internet application is more likely to be up to date than website builder software that you download. In fact, it is typical that the software you download will be somewhat out of date unless you pay a fortune for a brand new program. The more up to date software is, the less likely it will be that you will encounter problems. It also means that there are probably going to be more, better, and up to the minute updated features available for your site with the internet application that are simply not available with the downloadable software program.

Finally, there is a difference in cost. You have to pay for web hosting anyway, and for most site builders online your site builder and hosting package will not be any more expensive than hosting alone. However, if you build a site using a website builder software you download, you have to purchase the software outright before you can start building your site. Then you have to pay for hosting on top of that initial cost. This means that you are likely to spend more money on offline software than online internet applications.

There are a lot of site builders out there, both on the net and ones that you download. For most people, the easiest site builder is the most desirable. You are looking for a site builder because you have little or no knowledge of HTML or scripting that is necessary to build a site from scratch. However, you may be wondering what makes an easy website builder. Knowing this information will help you choose the site builder that is right for you.

First, an easy website builder has a point and click or click and drag interface. This means that you should be able to simply point your mouse at the options you want for your site and click to make it a reality. For content there should be an easy content management system that allows you to simply click inside a text box area on the layout and paste your content or write content right into the interface. All options, such as color themes and graphics, should all be included on this point and click interface.

Another thing that makes an easy website builder is the ability to do your own layouts in an easy manner that still match the template for your site. In other words, there should be a layout that is open with your template so that you can insert a custom page. This custom page should also be customizable using the point and click interface. You should be able to simply point to a text box or graphics insert button and click on the page where you want it to go. From there you can insert your graphics and content the same way you would on any other layout page within the site builder.

Finally, an easy website builder is going to make it simple for you to add features and apps to your site. It should be a simple task to set up your shopping cart. It should also be a simple thing to add YouTube videos, embed documents, and set up a contact form. Widgets should be easy to add, whether they are within the site builder or outside of it. This may require the builder to have an easily accessible WYSWYG editor so that you can copy and paste code into the site easily and without difficulty. This will enable you to add apps and widgets from other sites into your site builder, making them work seamlessly with your website.

Overall, you will want to make sure that the easy website builder you choose will be as simple to use as possible. This will allow you to have fun making your website and save you a lot of effort and headaches. In addition, having an easy website builder for your site will ensure that you do not make any mistakes in building the site, so that the site is easily navigated by your visitors.

Sometimes you have to walk away. You can fire your web development company if you’re not getting the results you deserve. Nothing is holding you back from making a better decision about a new web development company if your current one ignores, lies and cheats you out of a considerable about of time and money. The headaches are not worth it, so consider these examples to see if it’s time to fire your current provider.

You can’t call the business directly.

Evaluate your current web development company’s communications to see if you’re working with the right company. You should be able to speak with a human being instead of an answer machine, but a face-to-face discussion about your project is ideal. Depending on the depth of your project, your correspondence should include project reports, data profiles and confirmations for project milestones. If you cannot remember the last time you discussed your project, it’s time to let the firm go.

Your project’s ETA changes every week.

One red flag to address is the consistent excuses from the web development company. First, they’re never available to discuss your project then you receive a random email informing you the project is pushed back. After reading through the email, you realize the firm never called to request additional information or ask you for an opinion on the “new ideas” they want to implement on your site. The next email you receive from the firm is that you will have to pay extra for the additional work because they are working over the estimated completion date.

Here’s a better solution:

Send the company a deadline for completion. If they cannot provide a detailed explanation of the delays, you should request a refund for their lack of professionalism. Review the company’s Terms of Service, Guarantee and make sure they offer a refund if the company cannot provide the right services. Point this information out to your account manager and demand a refund. Find a company that’s willing to finish your work in a reasonable time and/or report the firm to the Better Business Bureau.

Your business needs to work with professionals interested in helping you reach your goals. If you’re always on the edge or upset about your company’s excuses, move forward. Reputable web development firms believe in allowing customers to have choices. You’re also given opportunities to work directly with an account manager that’s happy to fulfill your orders.

Not sure how to break up with your current firm? Call them directly with a definite deadline. If they cannot finish the order, cut your losses and leave the company alone. Just take baby steps in finding a new one that does a better job.

There are a number of misconceptions about the web development process. Many people think that a great design is all that is needed. However, these individuals do not understand that the design is just the beginning. The most common misconceptions are related to the time it takes to launch the site after the web design quote is accepted by the customer. The web development process requires planning in order to be successful. For some sites a simple design might be best, while another web site might require a complicated shopping cart.

Determining the needs of the business is just the beginning of the planning process. A systematic web development procedure ensures that important aspects of the website are properly constructed. For instance, great navigation is often overlooked in a website, but poor navigation can kill a site. If customers have a hard time moving around through the web pages, they will just leave. The design should get customers interested in learning more about the business, product or service, and natural navigation will help them explore to find the details. Navigation is a problem for initial visits; however, bad content is the quickest way to keep customers from coming back to your site. The goal of website development should be more than getting customers to visit your website. You want them to find your site and then stay on the website learning about your business. The goal should always be to keep them on the site as long as possible and give them a reason to come back.

So what is the content of a website? It includes everything from the applications embedded in the site to the FAQ page. The content might include photographs of past work or new products. It can also include descriptions of services or articles that teach visitors about how to use a product or service. These little bits of information keep the visitor interested in the site. Without excellent content even the best website will fail. In addition to the elements mentioned earlier, there are also applications that are included within web development. These applications are often determined by what the site’s purpose will be. For instance, is your site just for potential customers, or will you use the site as an added convenience for existing clients? You may want your site to offer the ability to look up account information, pay bills, or order new products. All of these services require different applications that would be incorporated into the website.

Obviously, web development would include coming up with a great web design, but it also requires the creation of smart navigation, interesting content and useful applications that will ensure the sites success. The misconception most people have about web development is the complex nature that is involved in creating a superior website. A website requires thorough planning to be done correctly.

Have you considered discussing your landing pages with your PPC management firm lately? While you may think that simply writing an informative page with a compelling offer is enough to bring in the sales, there is much more to consider. If you don’t take the time to create targeted pages that will attract potential customers and offer a product or service that will fill a need in their life, you will be unable to increase your conversions and earn a healthy profit from your PPC management. Here’s some help.

What is a Landing Page?

This is generally a separate page used to generate interest and lead potential clients to the next phase of the sales process. While landing pages used to be extremely lengthy, filled with bold and red lettering, highlighted words and numerous testimonials, that approach has faded away. That’s sort of the “used car salesman” approach to landing pages. Today, your landing page should be clean, not too lengthy, properly SEO’d and include the following:

Tips for Developing Great Sales Pages

* Keywords – Your landing pages will need to appeal to both Google (to be included in search results) as well as your potential clients. This is often a fine line to walk. Your keyword phrases should appear naturally throughout the page and read without sounding forced. The keywords will connect you to your PPC campaign correctly and help you to gain ground with Google, while also allowing searchers to find your website.

* Clear Benefits- if your sales pages don’t provide your customers with specific and needed information, they are most likely going to search elsewhere. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Ask yourself what they would like to know, and give them that information. What are the benefits? What will they miss out on if they don’t choose your product or service over another? Your landing page is your opportunity to shine.

* Satisfaction Guaranteed-Do you promise your customer fast, reliable shipping? Do you offer no-hassle returns? Remember, your landing page should offer so many benefits that the positive far outweighs any potential negative. Leave no reason for your potential customer to search for another, similar business. You should be the final stop. Fast shipping? Yes. Money back guarantee? Yes. Quality product? Yes.

* A Compelling Headline- Your landing page’s headline is the first thing that draws your potential client in. If the headline doesn’t capture their attention, they may exit out of your page without even reading past the first couple of sentences. If you want to keep your customer’s on your landing page and eventually lead them to the purchase area, you need to start with a great headline. The best headlines provide solutions to problems. “Tired of sleepless nights? Here is your answer.” The headline should always be positive, giving your customer hope that you can help them with your product or service.

* Call to Action- Make sure your landing pages have a call to action. This may be as simple as encouraging the customer to click a link to find out more information or a ‘buy it now’ link to encourage them to finalize the purchase.

If you are concerned about whether your landing pages are working well to increase your conversions and attract customers, consult your PPC management company. You may need to increase the number of landing pages you have to support your keywords, modify your headlines, and improve the quality of information you’re providing your customers in order to increase the conversions you see with your PPC management.

PPC management firms have long accepted the fact that conversion tracking is a needed part of PPC management. This simple process has the ability to make management a lot easier in many ways. If it is broken though, or you suspect that is it, your PPC management can go a little bit haywire. For this reason, it is important to take steps to test conversion tracking periodically to see if it is broken, so you can ensure your ads are working and help you make money.

Testing For Broken Conversion Tracking

Broken conversion tracking can be detrimental to your PPC marketing plan, because, without it, you can not judge the effectiveness of your website. If you think your conversion tracking might be broken, consider the following three tips.

o Tracking Indicator Icon Check- If you are working with AdWords and have opted-in for the tracking indicator option, determining whether your conversion tracking is broken should be relatively easy. After set up, you should be able to go to your final conversion page and see whether a box for ‘Google Site Stats’ is on display. If it isn’t, the conversion code you are using is either not placed on the page at all or it is placed incorrectly. Once you have determined that the tracking indicator icon is not where it should be, either you, or your PPC management company, can work to fix it.

o View Page Source Code- If your tracking indicator is present, but you are still having trouble with your conversion tracking, you or your PPC management firm can take a look at the ‘view page source code.’ This can be done from a menu of option on your conversion confirmation page. The code should be located at the bottom of the page code, right before the lasttag. If the conversion code is present, but higher on the page of code, it can simply be moved to the correct position. If the code is not present at all, it can be replaced on the page. To ensure this is done correctly, you will want to have your PPC management firm place the code so you don’t accidentally place it on the wrong page.

* Conversion Test Run- After your conversion code is placed on the right page and you have determined that the indicator icon is present, you can choose to run a conversion test. In order to test the effectiveness of your PPC management campaign, the company you are working with will most likely run this test every time you set up a new account so they can catch any new issue. This involves choosing a keyword, clicking on your ad, submitting a conversion (completing a purchase), and waiting for your interface to present you with conversion numbers. If you can see the conversion in the interface with your searched keyword, your problem is fixed.

PPC management success depends greatly on conversion tracking. Without conversion tracking, you can not judge the effectiveness of your site. If you think your conversion tracking might be broken, consider taking these three steps to fix any problem that might have occurred.

Web programming is an increasingly large branch of programming. It deals with creating websites. But it’s far more than just simple HTML code. From server-side languages such as PHP, to layout languages like CSS, to large all-in-one web frameworks such as Django, web programming has a great deal of subfields.

One important, although less used today, set of programs used to build websites is the LAMP stack. This stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP, the four main tools used to create the website. Linux is the operating system that everything else runs on, Apache is the web server that gives HTML pages to the web browser, PHP is the programming language that generates the HTML, and MySQL is the database server that stores information about the website. The LAMP stack is still very important because web frameworks, such as WordPress, are often based off of it. However, for most web sites, it’s too low level, and using a framework makes things easier and quicker.

There are many different frameworks, which is a mixed blessing. Because of the variety of frameworks, it has become very easy to create a website that you want. For example, to create a blog, all you have to do is download WordPress onto a web server and begin writing posts. A forum site is as simple as using phpBB. A wiki just needs MediaWiki in order to function. The drawback of this, however, is that there’s a lot to learn in order to be an effective web programmer. Different frameworks often have very little in common, so in order to stay current with your knowledge, you need to be constantly learning, even more so than for application programming.

This is, however, less of a problem with lower-level languages, such as the aforementioned LAMP stack and basic web page languages such as HTML and CSS. However, building a site this way can be very tricky. The web has very few universal standards, and all of the major web browsers have slight quirks and incompatibilities that need to be worked around in order to make a website look the same everywhere. Web frameworks generally handle this automatically, but when writing raw code you have to do this yourself.

Another drawback of web programming is that it doesn’t translate well to any other platform. Web programming is oriented around web pages, not general APIs that application programming is based on. Other fields, such as mobile programming, have very little in common with the web.

All in all, web programming is a great opportunity but it can also be a challenge. While learning to build a specific website can be done quickly, becoming an expert requires a large amount of learning.