High Quality Web Design is Important

There once was a time on the Internet when web design wasn’t very important. Maybe a decade ago or so, the main thing you had to do was just have a website. That factor alone would give you a strong advantage in the marketplace, and you’d have a leg up on your competition who didn’t yet make the move to the online realm. However, those times have long since passed. Now merely having a website isn’t enough. You need to make use of high quality web design to help your business stand out, attract new customers and ultimately be successful on the Internet.

One factor playing into this is that the Internet has expanded greatly over the years. Now nearly every business has a website or multiple online presences, and millions of individuals do as well. That means that there is a huge supply of competition, and it also means that the bar has been raised in terms of what quality web design actually is. Today, if you have an unattractive website or one that doesn’t operate easily you are going to scare away all of your visitors and you’ll lose out on all of that extra money.

Your web design needs to be setup in such a way that the most important information is easily found, and all of the pages can be quickly navigated between. Put yourself in the shoes of a visitor who comes to your site. What are they really seeking out, and how can you provide that for them? It’s about meeting their needs by implementing specific solutions.

Web design will help you take any website visitor and draw that person into the path you want them to take. If you’re trying to sell a product, it should be simple and intuitive to continue to make an order. If you want people to send you an email for a quote, getting to that online form has to be as easy as possible. Whatever your goals are, you need to use your web design to bring people to that.

Of course, being attractive and visually pleasing is important in and of itself. A site that has contrasting colors or a poor layout or scheme isn’t going to draw much attention or interest. More often than not people will see a bad looking website and they will just click immediately on the back button. That’s because the site sends off vibes that it is unprofessional, it doesn’t care or perhaps it doesn’t know any better.

None of that is any good to try to establish your brand and your image, or to find new customers and prospects. Therefore an aesthetically pleasing website is extremely important. It will add value to your image and it will make you seem professional and trustworthy.

As you can see, high quality web design plays a huge role in your online success. A poorly designed website will send your visitors running off as they have difficulty finding what they are looking for, as they don’t appreciate the quality or appearance of your website and as you fail to successfully convert them in the ways that you’d like to. Therefore, take all steps necessary to ensure that your website has a unique, top notch web design.

Adapted from a Sept.’10 article found in Reblog

ATTORNEY ADVICE Re. Credit Card Theft

This is Not A Joke!! Even If you dislike attorneys --- You will love them for these tips.

Read this and make a copy for your files in case you need to refer to it someday. Maybe we should all take some of his advice! A corporate attorney sent the following out to the employees in his company:

1. Do not sign the back of your credit cards . Instead, put ' PHOTO ID REQUIRED .'

2. When you are writing checks to pay on your credit card accounts, DO NOT put the complete account number on the 'For' line. Instead, just put the last four numbers . The credit card company knows the rest of the number, and anyone who might be handling your check as it passes through all the check processing channels won't have access to it.

3. Put your work phone # on your checks instead of your home phone. If you have a PO Box use that instead of your home address. If you do not have a PO Box, use your work address. Never have your SS# printed on your checks. (DUH!) You can add it if it is necessary. But if you have It printed, anyone can get it.

4. Place the contents of your wallet on a photocopy machine . Do both sides of each license, credit card, etc. You will know what you had in your wallet and all of the account numbers and phone numbers to call and cancel... Keep the photocopy in a safe place. I also carry a photocopy of my passport when I travel either here or abroad. We've all heard horror stories about fraud that's committed on us in stealing a Name, address, Social Security number, credit cards..

Unfortunately, I, an attorney, have first hand knowledge because my wallet was stolen last month. Within a week, the thieves ordered an expensive monthly cell phone package, applied for a VISA credit card, had a credit line approved to buy a Dell computer, received a PIN number from DMV to change my driving record information online, and more. But here's some critical information to limit the damage in case this happens to you or someone you know.

5. We have been told we should cancel our credit cards immediately. But the key is having the toll free numbers and your card numbers handy so you know whom to call. Keep those where you can find them.

6. File a police report immediately in the jurisdiction where your credit cards, etc., were stolen. This proves to credit providers you were diligent, and this is a first step toward an investigation
(if there ever is one).

But here's what is perhaps most important of all (I never even thought to do this.)

7. Call the 3 national credit reporting organizations immediately to place a fraud alert on your name and also call the Social Security fraud line number. I had never heard of doing that until advised by a bank that called to tell me an application for credit was made over the Internet in my name.

The alert means any company that checks your credit knows your information was stolen, and they have to contact you by phone to authorize new credit. By the time I was advised to do this, almost two weeks after the theft, all the damage had been done. There are records of all the credit checks initiated by the thieves' purchases, none of which I knew about before placing the alert. Since then, no additional damage has been done, and the thieves threw my wallet away this weekend (someone turned it in). It seems to have stopped them dead in their tracks.

Now, here are the numbers you always need to contact about your wallet, if it has been stolen:

1.) Equifax: 1-800-525-6285 1-800-525-6285

2.) Experian (formerly TRW): 1-888-397-3742 1-888-397-3742

3.) Trans Union: 1-800-680 7289 1-800-680 7289

4.) Social Security Administration (fraud line): 1-800-269-0271 1-800-269-0271

We pass along jokes on the Internet; we pass along just about everything.

If you are willing to pass this information along, it could really help someone that you care about.

PREVENT IDENTITY THEFT

Tips to protect yourself from ID thieves.

Fight Back -- 8 Simple Ways
Karen Lodrick's website, fightingbacknow.com, offers these tips to protect yourself from ID thieves: 01. Opt out of unsolicited credit card offers by calling 888-567-8688 (supported by the consumer credit reporting industry). 02. Get spyware protection for your computer, such as Ad-Aware (free at lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware). 03. Don't return warranty cards for purchased items. Save your receipt -- that's all you need to make a claim. 04. Have all your mail sent to a post office box rather than to your home address. 05. Never open e-mail from people you don't know. 06. Use different passwords for your online accounts. 07. Mix numbers and letters, upper and lowercase, in passwords. 08. Shred all documents, especially from credit card companies, before discarding.

More Ways to Protect Yourself
Here are 10 additional tips from fightingbacknow.com that will help you protect your identity online and in mail:
1. Monitor your credit report regularly. You can request one free report a year, and you can also sign up with the three major credit bureaus to be alerted of any unusual activity.
2. Stop giving out your Social Security number. Only a few places have the authority to ask for your Social Security number—your employer, the Department of Motor Vehicles, welfare services, the IRS, and institutions that deal with your taxes, like your bank or a brokerage house.
3. Make sure you’re getting all of your bills each month. If one goes missing, contact the company right away. Have a lot of bills? Keep a list of them so you don’t lose track.
4. Review your credit card statements diligently. 5. Make sure each purchase is yours and if not, notify the company immediately.
5. Check your bank statement each month. This is time consuming, but worth it! Bank policy is that you only have one month to put in a claim of fraud if you want the bank to recover your money.
6. Strip your computer before donating it. Make sure all of your information is removed from your personal computer before donating it by wiping the hard drive or taking it out and destroying them.
7. Get a second (or third) e-mail-account.8. Establish a separate e-mail account and use it specifically and exclusively for online purchases. That should make your private accounts less vulnerable.
8.. Consider a different browser. The most popular browser is Internet Explorer, which is pre-installed on most personal computers. Most viruses and spyware programs target this browser as a result, so try using alternative browsers such as Firefox or Opera, which can be downloaded free of charge.
9. Just say no. Sign up for the Do Not Call list (donotcall.gov); stop pre-approved credit card and insurance offers from reaching you by mail or phone (optoutprescreen.com).
10. Box junk mail. Use the Direct Marketing Association to help you stop receiving mailings (https://www.dmachoice.org/MPS/).

Source: Readers Digest 8/10

10 Characteristics To Look For When Choosing A Web Designer

Hiring a web designer is a crucial decision and there are a number of factors that should be considered while choosing a web designer for your website design projects. Here are 10 characteristics to look for when choosing someone to design your website.

Experience

Find out how long their website developer has been in business and what type of projects they have worked on. There are many models for websites, and often someone whose past experience with a similar client type will be an advantage to you. Past experiences with similar business types should lead to quicker discovery because that website designer knows what options there are and what questions to ask.
Also, make sure that your developer is working with modern technologies and best industry practices, no matter if they know your business model or not. Modern practices lead to better search engine results and good usability across multiple browser types and operating systems.

Development Skillset

Ask your website developer about their skill set and attention to best and industry standards. Ask if they are using most modern HTML coding, high quality CSS for best cross browser compatibility, smart basic search engine optimization practices, and a site that is foundational in that you can add more pages or content down the line. You may want to ask how far their technical strengths are in custom programming, ecommerce, content management system development, or other skills if you know you may need them.

Website Portfolio

A website company's work will most often speak for itself. Decide if you like their website design portfolio. A design portfolio will show you what styles a website company can deliver and what type of features to expect in their page designs. When you look at a website design portfolio, you can form questions about those designs that may lead to a better design for you. If you see something you really like, you can point out what you like about it, what you want, and what you do not want.

Client References

Ask for your website designer's client references. Who better to talk to than current and past clients? One should not feel strange about asking for this. A website is often not a small investment and one should be sure he or she knows what the website developer's customers are saying.

Strategy

A website project requires proper preparation, attention to detail, collaboration, and more. Organization becomes as important as any of these items. You will want a website designer who can effectively communicate with you and your personnel, from project start to project completion. If you need a hand holder, hire a hand holder. If you want someone who will come in for planning meetings once a week as part of the project, hire someone who can commit to that.

A website developer needs to have organizational tools in place to keep the project on time and can get all involved to meet deadlines in order to meet time goals. Ask your website developer how a project process will go and see that you can agree to meeting times and other requirements for good outcome.

Availability

If you know when you need your website to go live, make sure your website developer will be able to make him or herself available to meet your deadline. If they have many projects at once, make sure they will make your project as important and will meet your time requirements.

Flexibility

On the other hand, if you require a designer who can be more flexible and accommodate you when you can make time, see that this can be done. If you know you want many designs or may change your mind in the middle of the project as to what direction you want to go, make sure you developer knows this and can work with you.

Developers may require more or less money depending on the flexibility you need. If you need the flexibility, however, the change in price may be an easier decision that if you did not.
Location

Website designers have the luxury and flexibility to work wherever they have a computer with their website design software tools and utilities. A website client must determine what type of communication is required, especially when considering websites will need updates. Your website designer will probably be someone you will work with for quite a while if all goes well.

If your business is in Los Angeles, California for example, and you require someone to visit your office once a month, you should probably hire a website designer who lives in Los Angeles or nearby.

Education

Many website designers teach themselves or take specific courses in school to be able to do what they can do. A degree is not a requirement, as nothing speaks for itself like a good website design portfolio, but a degree in a related field does add credibility. Degrees in Marketing, Graphic Design, Business (with emphasis in e-business), Communication, Programming, Sociology, and Psychology are additional assets.

Personality

Make sure you feel comfortable with the website designer you choose because you will most likely work with this person for a long time. Websites need updates and website trends change. You will want a website developer who will communicate with you about all of the things you can or should be doing with your website. Again, do you like the people you are about to hire?

Source: based on work by David Ephraim from a Los Angeles Web Design.

Remembering 9-11

This, the 9th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, offers a time to remember, to reflect about this unforgettable moment in history, and to reconsider the effect that September 11 has had on our country and the world.

Are You Using One of these Passwords?

Identity theft is on the rise and it's no wonder. Security firm, Imperva, says that even though theft of personal information and hacking are more technologically advanced than ever, computer users are not. Internet security studies by Unix in 1990 and studies by Imperva in 2009 show that users have the same, simple, and easily hacked passwords as they did 20 years ago.

Understanding How Passwords are Stolen
Passwords are usually stolen one of two ways. First, you may have a real person trying to hack your accounts. If this is the case, they will start with the most common, and worst, passwords.
If the person knows you, they'll start with obvious information like your birth date, anniversary dates, names of your kids, or street address. If the person doesn't know you, most likely, they've skimmed this information off your social networking sites.
The second and probably most dangerous way thieves steal your passwords is through automation. Bots troll sites and automatically use the most common passwords first. The 20 worst passwords listed below are the most easily cracked passwords.

20 Worst Passwords
In 2010, RockYou.com had a security breach that leaked 32 million passwords. Imperva used this opportunity to analyze the passwords and came up with the 20 most common and worst passwords possible.
Password -- Number of Users with Password
1. 123456 -- 290,731
2. 12345 -- 79,078
3. 123456789 -- 76,790
4. Password -- 61,958
5. iloveyou -- 51,622
6. princess -- 35,231
7. rockyou, facebook, or twitter -- 22,588
8. 1234567 -- 21,756
9. 12345678 -- 20,533
10. abc123 -- 17,542 11. Nicole -- 17,168
12. Daniel -- 16,409
13. babygirl -- 16,094
14. monkey -- 15,294
15. Jessica -- 15,162
16. Lovely -- 14,950
17. Michael -- 14,898
18. Ashley -- 14,329
19. 654321 -- 13,984
20. Qwerty -- 13,856

Tips for Creating Safe Passwords
To keep your identity safe, follow these tips for creating safe passwords:
Do's:Keep your passwords random
Mix up numbers, letters, and capitalization
Change your passwords several times each year
Use a different password for every site
Make a password from a sentence - ex: I love my dog and 4 kids = ilmda4k
Don'ts:Don't use letter or number sequences - ex: 123abc
Don't use the same password on all of your sites
Don't use actual words for passwords
Don't use the name of the service in your password ex: Twitter123

Let's Learn from Our Mistakes
You have a choice. You can keep using the same passwords, make thieves happy, and risk identity theft. Or, you can learn from past mistakes others have made, follow these tips, and create safe passwords. Avoiding identity theft isn't that difficult. Follow safe practices online, install anti-virus software, keep security patches updated, and be aware of the latest identity theft information by visiting this site.

Source: scambusters.org #394

Seven Deadly Sins of Social Networking Security

To users of LinkedIn, Facebook, Myspace, Twitter or all of the above: Are you guilty of one of these security oversights? Some of you are using all of the above, and using them hard, even IT security practitioners who know better. While it's impossible to escape every social networking threat out there, there are steps one can take to significantly reduce the risks. CSO, a provider of news, analysis and research on a broad range of security and risk management topics (CSOonline.com) recently* checked in with dozens of IT security professionals (ironically, using more than one social networking platform to do so) to pinpoint seven typical security mistakes people make; and how to avoid them.

1. Over-sharing company activities
This is a sin of pride, when someone gets excited about something their company is working on and simply must tell everyone about it. Maybe you work for a drug company that is on the verge of developing the cure for cancer. Maybe the company is developing a new car that runs on curbside trash -- in other words, something everyone will want.

By sharing too much about you or your employer's intellectual property, you threaten to put it out of business by tipping off a competitor who could then find a way to duplicate the effort or find a way to spoil what they can't have by hiring a hacker to penetrate the network or by sneaking a spy into the building. To reign in the urge to share too much, it might be useful to repeat this saying, which has started to appear in the public domain: "Loose Tweets Sink Fleets."

2. Mixing personal with professional
This sin is closely related to the first, but extends beyond the mere disclosure of proprietary data. This is the case where someone uses a social network for both business and pleasure, most commonly on Facebook, where one's friends include business associates, family members and friends.
The problem is that the language and images one shares with friends and family may be entirely inappropriate on the professional side. A prospective employer may choose to skip to the next candidate after seeing pictures of you drunk or showing off a little too much leg at someone's birthday party. In sharing such things, you also stand a good chance of making the company you represent look bad. You have to understand what the objective of your presence on any given social network is. If it is for work, keep it for work only. If it is for personal/fun use, keep it for personal use only.

3. Engaging in Tweet (or Facebook/LinkedIn/Myspace) rage
For the person who has just been laid off or had their professional integrity called into question online, the urge to fire back with a stream of vitriol can be irresistible. Call this a sin of wrath.

Be mindful of what you say; any and all parties are listening, including your boss, spouse or future employer. Posting any content when angry is about as dangerous as sending flaming emails, if not more so. Think twice about clicking 'submit' because the world may be looking at your angry, immature rant for years.

4. Believing he/she who dies with the most connections wins
For some social networkers, it's all about accumulating as many connections as possible. Folks on LinkedIn are notorious for doing this, especially those in such LinkedIn groups as TopLinked and LION. This may seem harmless enough or, at the worst, just annoying. But when the name of the game is quantity over quality, it's easy to link or "friend" a scam artist, terrorist or identity thief.

Always verify the person who wants to get in contact with you. If you do not know the person, why are they trying to connect with you? Check if the profile of the other person is secured. If you can't retrieve a list of that person's connections, you have to ask yourself if you really want to go down that road. It is far better and safer to have 50 relevant contacts than 500 unknowns.

5. Password sloth
Another common sin is one of laziness, in this case picking passwords for your social networks that you're least likely to forget. In many cases, that means using the same password for LinkedIn and Facebook that you're using for your online bank account or work machine. If someone with malicious intent figures out the password for one social network, that person can now go and access everything else.

Using the same password on several sites is like trusting the weakest link in a chain to carry the same weight. Every site has vulnerabilities, plan for them to be exploited.

6. Trigger finger (clicking everything, especially on Facebook)
Facebook in particular is notorious as a place where inboxes are stuffed with everything from drink requests to cause requests. For some social networkers, clicking on such requests is as natural as breathing. Unfortunately, the bad guys know this and will send you links that appear to be from legitimate friends. Open the link and you're inviting a piece of malware to infect your machine. You should not click any link unless you're ready to deal with drive-by downloads and zero-day attacks.

7. Endangering yourself and others
All of the above tie into the seventh and perhaps most serious sin, which is that reckless social networking can literally put someone's life in danger. It could be a relative or co-worker. Or it could be yourself. Security experts advise extreme caution when posting birthday information, too much detail on your spouse and children, etc. Otherwise, they could become the target of an identity thief or even a kidnapper.

At the CSO Executive Seminar on Data Loss Prevention in Chicago, last month, Motorola CSO Bill Boni expressed his reservations about using Twitter, calling it a great way to get one's self kidnapped. "Don't be a twit," Boni said to those who might feel the need to divulge every detail about their location and what they're doing.

* adapted from an article by Bill Brenner, Senior Editor, CSO June 30, 2009