How multimedia can improve website usability, has been a subject of debate for internet marketers for quite some time.
Normally when we speak about graphics being used on the Internet, we are primarily speaking about multimedia.
As the name implies, multimedia combines graphics, sound, text, and animation to convey an idea or instruct the reader on a topic.
The content of the web site normally determines what multimedia features will be used.
Generally, multimedia supports the content of a web site, and aids in specific instruction to the viewer.
Multimedia can improve website usability when used in a positive way.
Recent research shows that animated images can assist with the transfer of learning, however, it can also become a barrier to learning, and recall when overused.
Here are some guidelines as to how multimedia can improve website usability
- Don’t overuse multimedia in your web pages.
- Overuse of graphics can cause excessively long download times. This causes impatient viewers like myself to scurry from the web page.
- Be judicious in your use of multimedia on your web pages.
- Using graphics with text-redundant data assists in the learning process.
Using multimedia graphics with content that is not redundant, neither helps or hinders the learning process.
- Be consistent with your use of multimedia graphic designs on your web pages.
Haphazard graphic designs turn off readers, cause confusion, com across as non professional, and generally are not a good idea.
If you mark up your web pages so that text is downloaded before the graphics, users will know beforehand if the information they were looking for is available.
The fact that they will save time waiting for the graphics to load, if they don’t need the information, will certainly not go unappreciated.
- Make your multimedia pages load from top to bottom.
This is especially important with photo or video web sites.
This allows the web page to completely load, as the reader begins scrolling down form the top of the page.
When incorporating content with graphics, keep the content first so your multimedia graphics have time to load below.
The NEED for SPEED affects all of us! Web pages should download super fast, in order to keep readers on your website.
Some ways to achieve this are shown here.
- Keep your image resolution low.
- Keep the size of your graphics to a minimum.
- Combine images to minimize the number of server connections. The more connections, the slower the download.
- Keep animations to a minimum
- Keep the colors used in your images to a minimum
Multimedia can improve website usability when used judiciously, and also when keeping the above suggestions in mind.
Here are some ways to make money on eBay without losing it!
We all know that selling your items on eBay, is a great way to make some money on the side.
If done properly, you can even make a good living for yourself, however, there are some tricks to the trade you need to know before you lose money on eBay.
EBay sellers are required to pay fees for listing their items on their website.
Generally, two separate fees are charged. One for listing your item; called an insertion fee and a final sale fee, which is charged to you, after your item has been successfully sold.
The last fee, or final sale fee, is normally a percentage of the final value of what your item sold for.
It is only charged when your item is actually sold on eBay’s site.
If you want to make money on eBay, and become a successful eBay seller, you need to take the time to fully understand these fees.
For instance, many are not aware that if your item is not sold the first go around, you are still required to pay the insertion fee.
Although it may not seem like a lot, if you have a substantial number of items listed; like coin dealers or antique vendors do, and your listed items don’t sell; you could wind up on the short end of the stick.
You also need to know, that the these fees are applicable when you re list your items for auction.
If you want to make money on eBay, you must also pay attention to all the additional fees that eBay charges their clients.
Photographs and good product descriptions, greatly increase your chances of making a sale on eBay.
You may not know that eBay allows only the first picture of your item to be posted for free.
Any additional digital pictures will cost you. They can be purchased for a small fee, however that small fee over time quickly adds up, and also reduces your bottom line.
Many eBay sellers limit the number of descriptive pictures they insert in their auctions for this reason.
Although this appears to be sound reasoning, it can cause your listing not to sell.
Fortunately there are free sites like Auctiva, or PhotoBucket that allow you to add additional photo descriptions to your eBay auctions.
Both sites require registering, and are currently free to use.
Most authors prefer copyrighting their works, however, what do you know about public domain?
A number of authors, for whatever reason, don’t mind sharing their works of literature, and freely disseminate their products.
These writers have waived all rights to their works, and have made them available for the general public to use, as public domain, in any manner they want.
Since public domain articles are not owned by anybody; they can be used, or abused, by anyone.
Do you know about public domain articles being used as a stimulant of sorts, for webmasters having creativity problems?
Well, you should. It’s a commonly used method of stimulating one’s creative writing juices.
Public domain articles are commonly used by many webmasters, to aid them in writing their website content.
You can edit public domain articles to suit your own style of writing, and rewrite them any way you please, to make them suitable for your website.
Since the ideas are already on the Internet, it’s just a simple matter of finding an article that coincides with the subject of your website, and editing it to meet your purpose.
Do you know about public domain articles being used to generate an e-zine, or newsletters?
Many webmasters use articles found in the public domain, as a base to quickly provide content for an e-zine article, or for targeted mini sites using AdSense.
Using public domain is probably the easiest way to create articles for any purpose.
You don’t have to search the internet, or the library, for hours on end to research information to write your article about, and you don’t need to worry about being sued for plagiarism.
Public domain articles are FREE to copy for your use, however, it’s still best to rewrite these articles for the search engine robots. You should always try to avoid duplicate content.
If you want to generate a high ranking website, all you need to do is modify public domain articles to make them keyword rich, and load up your site with content.
Now if you’re asked; “What do you know about public domain?”, you can’t plead the fifth.
