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I have been developing a new ecommerce website using Magento Commerce and it is nearing completion so for those of you who can't wait until the launch date here is it: www.languages-direct.com. There are a few issues resolve such as the home page and banner collateral but it is almost there.

Thanks to the release of Google Insights search engine marketing and website advertising is now more focused than ever. If you use PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising for your business then you will understand the benefit of targeting specific countries and regions within your advertising campaigns. Not only can you increase conversion rates and lead generation but you can save money and achieve greater ROI (return on investment) by fine-tuning your search marketing campaigns.

For all of those developers out there using Magento 1.0 the upgrade to 1.1.3 is fraught with theme issues but the performance gain is more than worth the effort.

This article attempts to show the importance of writing a design brief and how the design brief will allow both parties - the client and the designer - to move forward in harmony whilst simultaneously protecting the core interests of your business.

What is a design brief?

A design brief is a written document developed by the client and the designer. A design brief is usually developed from meetings, phone calls and emails between both parties and may take time to get right.

This tutorial will show you how to achieve a well structured HTML page using H tags. If you are a Firefox user then I recommend installing the web developer add-on/extension. After you have successfully installed the extension, navigation to Tools > Web Developer > Information > View Document Outline. This will allow you to view the architecture of your H tags.

Getting your website to load fast is essential for e-commerce and should be seen as a priorty for any website, be it a blog, forum or social network.

Yahoo! have compiled a very helpful guide for speeding up your website. Firefox users should install the YSlow extension for firebug. This handy tool analyises the speed of your webpage and gives you a grade from A to F based on your page's performance.

During testing of JQuery visual image effects on the home page of this website I noticed that images were loading after JQuery function calls had been made. This wasn't a problem on my PC with a speedy broadband connection but on friends computer the interface didn't look right.

Over the weekend I was struggling to find a way to test if all content had been loaded into the browser before making a function call. Well I found the answer:

$(window).load(function() { callFunction(); });

This little snippet waits until all external content has loaded before making the function call. So if you need all static files - images, javascript, flash, etc - to be fully loaded before firing an event then use the above snippet.

To all those people who have helped me test this website - thank you.

The site is now reaching the final stages of development and should be fully 'live' in the next couple of week.

This site has been built using the Drupal CMS and features a grid based design utilising cross-browser CSS and javascript in the form of JQuery.

Stay tuned for the final release.