Having to know HTML has been for many years the one thing that has prevented people from building their own website. There was an unspoken belief that ordinary, i.e. non-technical, people would need to consult experts if they wanted an internet presence.

Modern software marketers claim that anyone with a computer and internet connection, can easily build websites without the need to learn HTML.

In this article we discuss if this is really true or not.

With some new web software programs, the emphasis has moved away from "coding" to more of a step-by-step user friendly approach. Simply typing your website information onto pages just as you would using a word processor can result in pages being generated automatically into web pages. Many programs use WYSIWYG technology. This stands for "what you see is what you get".

Most modern editors format the entire HTML in the background. If you can use Microsoft Word then you can use these programs the same way. Just type.

So Is The HTML correct?

Some purists would argue that WYSIWYG programs make messy or bloated HTML code and the web pages may not be fully compliant to international standards. Some web pages may display slightly differently in different browsers.

In the end, having a website live on the web is better than not having it up there. The making of a website even if HTML is unknown. Even though the HTML code may not be "perfect" the resultant web pages are still normal looking to the user.

When looking for designs, you can easily import your own graphics and designs into most modern website building programs. There are many templates (or skins) you can buy or download for free.

The booming market of first time marketers has created a whole industry of easy to use website programs and the vendors have shown a great understanding of the needs of novice website builders by producing comprehensive manuals and tutorials that lay out each step.

The tutorials are so user-friendly, with a common sense approach, that even beginners should be able to complete a simple website in just an hour. With a domain name registered and a hosting company enlisted, their first website can be 'live' in minutes.

In addition to the tutorial, beginners will find a wealth of information on related forums of web software providers. The training and supporting forum has a broad knowledge spread. There is always someone to answer a novice's questions, either the creator or a team member or a fellow user via the forums.

Not all easy web software programs are only for the new. Upon further inspection there are powerful website design package that are also ideal for intermediate and experienced internet marketers.

Many come feature packed with tools for site map creation, search engine optimization and some have an Affiliate Wizard for affiliate marketers.

Investing in other solutions will not be required. Modern web builders stretch even for the advanced marketer.

So the results are in - and they look pretty good for the first time web builder.

Ten years ago you could include a hit counter on your website and announce proudly that your site was doing "very well" as soon as the number reached 100,000. The current process is not nearly as simple or straightforward. The internet works in complicated ways that have evolved to solve a number of small problems. Consequently, concrete statistics are often difficult to obtain. If you believe the number of online visitors is a reliable indicator to gauge the popularity of your site or the potential sales of your product, you should consider the following:

1. Hit - Every time a user requests a file on your site (a page, not a picture or link to another site) it counts as a hit.

2. File - When a file or page is actually sent to the user, it counts as a file. Files normally outnumber hits, but neither is very useful in measuring traffic. Any IP can request all of the files on your page several times in one hour without any actual involvement from the user.

3. Impressions - This is a concept that has existed in advertising for many decades. For example, a 2-page magazine advertisement counts as one "showing of a creative concept". This equates to one impression every time a reader sees it. If your web page contains five small banners, you could have 10,000 page views, but 50,000 impressions.

4. Page Views - Almost everyone believe this is the most important traffic statistic. This term simply refers to the number of times any particular page has been viewed. This metric can be useful. However, values can often be over-inflated and should always be considered in conjunction with unique visits.

5. Visits & Unique Visits - A visit is simply logged every time a remote IP requests one of your pages for the first time in a timeout period. A unique visit is usually defined as "one visit per IP per day", regardless of timeouts.

The above are all very important metrics, but understanding them properly is key. The best way to decide how your site's traffic is performing is by creating a formula. If you know what you are doing, you can develop your own formula. However, there are plenty of effective formulas currently available. A basic idea of how to evaluate your traffic involves reviewing monthly averages, unique visits and page views. This will give you an idea regarding how many individuals visit your site, how many pages they view, and how long they remain.

A basic formula from MarketingExperiments.com would be:

C = 4M + 3V + 2(I-F) - 2A

This formula shows that conversions are a product of motivation (M), value (V) and then the friction (F) elements minus the incentives (I). This will help you determine how many customers are likely to purchase your product. However, you need all the values first! You can purchase online analytic tools or download them for an upfront or monthly fee. All of them can return useful data to a webmaster.

If you are not an expert webmaster, or you do not understand many of the technical intricacies of web traffic, you should download Google Analytics. This is one of Google's new free products, and all you require is a GMail account and a web site. The program provides easy to read analytic data in a web-based form for your website. This can make it easy to determine which metrics would be most useful for analyzing your online traffic.

Michael Ehlert
RevUpYourWebBusiness.com

Millions of websites being launched year after year can only signify two important things. One, the importance of being on the net, regardless of whether yours is a small business website, a home page, an ecommerce or even a portal, and two, easy availability of variety of free templates which make website building a child's play.

In this article, let us try to explore whether templates, free or paid, offer suitability and ease of working and why they are taking the newbie web owners and builders as well as professionals by storm.

Website templates are pre made web designs into which you can start filling in your information straight after downloading. Easily, this eliminates the cumbersome task of having to design an appealing layout and more than that, it does not want you to have any knowledge of HTML at all.

At this point in time, you might be tempted to ask, if this is all, how good it is over HTML editors which don't require a template to be downloaded for every time you are building a website? True, they don't require you to possess knowledge of HTML but they still rest the task of creating an appealing layout upon you, juggling with color schemes, and placement of different sections on your page etc which are really not your job. It is precisely here that the website templates fill the void- import web templates into your favorite HTML editor and get-set-go with site building.

Conventional method of web designing is out of date as it takes a lot of manual labor a web entrepreneur can hardly afford to waste. When web presence matters to you for reasons beyond passion, you would never want to waste time and efforts on designing your own templates or even purchase them in bulk.

Free templates are in no way inferior to paid templates but you have to be choosey about your source. They do not limit your aspirations; instead you can have a variety of them such as free CSS templates, PSD templates, besides the plain HTML types. The very reason these templates are a matter of big business today is their aesthetics, functionality, easy of use and of course, the huge demand.

Free templates also make business sense considering the number of websites the ordinary people launch every month. To get your business off by launching hundreds of websites you know what makes sense and what not. Choose your templates without compromising on your needs and let the cost be condoned by the world.