What are we really after?

Posted on May 29, 2007 by Jonathan to SEO

There has been an increasingly more popular question around here lately:
“How can I rank higher on google?”

Or another one:
“I want results from my online presence, not just some slick looking webpage.”

But to tell you the truth, all of this has got me thinking:
“What are we really after?”

You have to ask yourself what is the purpose of my website and go from there. If you need to drive traffic to your site through pay pay-per-click campaigns and convert interest into sales, you should stay away from flash and go with CSS. Tableless CSS is the best way to have your content show up on google. It is the best way to get traffic.

On the other hand if you have a different story to tell and don’t need massive traffic directed to your site – maybe flash is for you. An animated flash experience will definitely leave more of an impression than a static page. Movement and sound combined with well chosen words and color can create an emotional response. When is the last time you saw a static motionless commercial?

What we are recommending lately is a push towards more of hybrid between the two. A classic well structured CSS site that can be ranked well by search engines and then we spice it up with some tech flash elements. This way all needs are met and the customer can have the best of both worlds. It will require compromises on both sides to get the best result but those compromises can be fine tuned taking into consideration the actual goal of the site. A high traffic sales site would have very little flash while a videographers portfolio site might be all flash with just enough css to get him noticed.

Making money off your website

Posted on May 18, 2007 by Michelle to General

While most people’s direction in creating what I consider a commercial website as opposed to a personal blog, is in fact to make money. Most people do not know how to achieve this, or even how to begin to achieve this. In my personal dealings with trying to make money off of the net, besides actually selling services or merchandise, is in fact adding ads to your website.

While there are a plethora of different avenues to take to sell adspace from your website, there are a few different things to consider. Do you want to get paid per click, or per impression? Do you want to have a company supply you with quote unquote relative ads? do you want the ability to determine the two above scenarios on your own?

Well lets begin by saying that you want to be able to do it all. I have found that the best solution I have come across is a product called Open Ads. Open ads is a free PHP based solution that you can download right to your hosting provider. While the installation is fairly simple. There is also an addition called GeoTargeting that will help you deliver your ads more relevant by assigning ads to countries, regions, zipcodes, area codes and much more. By having more relative ads your advertisers will thank you and your revenue should increase.

Ok, now that we have found the solution to render and administer the ads, you still need to find advertisers. While you can run around and try to get advertisers on your own, a simpler way of getting ads is to sign up to one of the countless advertiser suppliers out there. I have personally used a couple, and I must say that they are all similar but different. Here is a list of some ad providers:

Yahoo Publisher
Google AdSense
Burst Media
Value Click
Tribal Fusion
Commission Junction

There are so many more out there, but for this post, lets just deal with those.

So now you have done a little research, and have determined that you would like to run some ads and that you would like to get paid per impression; and if its ideal per click as well, but you would like to get paid initially per impression.

Well, I would suggest either Yahoo, Google, Tribal Fusion or Value Click. While they are all good companies, in my personal experience, some ( I won’t name any names – but you can tell by the list who I am talking about) most companies do pay well and pay on time without too much of a hassle.

The other website “Commission Junction“, is a pay per click product. Meaning that you will only get paid when a user clicks on the ad and actually purchases something from that appropriate ad.

Can it all be that simple? No, of course not. It’s basically a catch 22 if you ask me. While most of the ad serving companies ask you to fill out a form to join, most of them also ask for your website numbers. Meaning your unique hits, page views, hits and whatever other relative information they would like to see. So if your site is new and your are not meeting these companies minimum requirements, then its frustrating. In that case you need to find a way to get those numbers up and try again. if you happen to meet those minimum requirements then you are basically good to go. All you need to do is add these ads to your website and now you have ads on your site as well as some money coming in.

If anyone has any other website money making techniques, then definitely drop a comment, I would love to read it.

Above The Fold

Posted on May 17, 2007 by Damien to General

Many buzz words fly around the web these days and one of the most recent ones I’ve come across is above/below the fold. So, what’s that supposed to mean?

The fold of a website is the point at which the users browser cuts off the bottom of the page. Anything below the lower bar is considered to be “below the fold”. Adversely anything above is obviously “above the fold”.

Why is this important? When designing a site the focus should first and foremost be the message of the site. Yeah, logos, color schemes and graphics are all very important as well but even a beautiful site with a mixed or lost message isn’t worth it’s salt. The message has to be clear and understandable and to help make sure of this keep a few things in mind.

1. What the user sees upon arriving to the site (without any initial interaction) is all above the fold.
2. There’s a chance the user may not even scroll down so hiding information below the fold is a waste of time and space.
3. Banner ads and secondary messages should remain at or below the fold allowing the primary message it’s due prominence.
4. Bring your message up and give it prominence.

Page fold sizes do vary because of varying monitor and screen resolution sizes. The best thing to do is to design for the overall average screen size. Currently the average is 1024×768. This doesn’t mean however that we have a full height of 768px to use above the fold. On average you’re looking at about 600px in overall height above the fold. Below that the user must scroll to view content.

Past, Present, Future… Creating for the Web

Posted on May 15, 2007 by Jonathan to Technology Trends

Recently I found this great article, and it is definitely worth reading. It is a special web interview with eight panelists. 4 top designers and 4 top developers.

Here is a sample from the article and you can skip to the actual article if your interested here:
Past, Present, Future… Creating for the Web

Flash technology is popular. Adobe confirmed it with buying Macromedia. We see web studios, Group94 and HiReS!, dedicating a big percentage of projects in Flash. Are Flash sites just a trend and overall useless? Or do you consider there is room for Flash as there is with CSS, and yes, there are well-constructed sites with usability?

Eric Jordan:
Flash sites are in no way a trend. Humans are sensory organisms. We need interaction, we need emotional response, we need things to move us. Flash is just the beginning of all this. Flash is the best way to provoke an emotional response, because it involves more of the human senses than just a static image or text can provide. I can promise you that you will have a stronger emotional reaction to a product advertisement with sound and motion than you will to a static one. At this point in time, there is definitely room for Flash AND CSS AND properly constructed websites that take usability into account.

As with all progression, it is going to take time for this technology to develop, and for people to feel comfortable with it. I think, as we move forward, people will grow and learn the technology faster and faster, and hopefully 300 years in the future we will have moved past assuming that our audience is not smart enough to use a certain function, or find a certain button, or understand how an interface works. This is when the gloves truly come off, and I see humans doing some amazing things with technology. But for the meantime I think we must settle with our own ineptitude.

Jakob Nielsen:
I am sad to say that I continue to see relatively little good use of Flash. This is particularly annoying to me because I did a project to study people using Flash to derive the guidelines for good Flash usability. So I know that it’s possible to build good user interfaces in Flash. There is definitely room for Flash for applications that are highly interactive or where animation inherently communicates something better. The problem is just that very few sites use Flash for these purposes. Most Flash is still just flashy stuff that annoys users instead of helping them.

Lynda Weinman:
No Flash sites are not just a trend, and Adobe is putting a huge effort into insuring a solid future. A lot of the limitations of Flash are being resolved, and the medium is becoming just as flexible, usable and accessible as HTML or CSS. Flash can be misused and abused in the hands of the unskilled, but with skills Flash can provide a much more rich and usable experience. Not all sites are appropriate for Flash, but many sites wouldn’t work without it. It’s another tool – one to pull out when you wish to develop a rich experience.

Matt Mullenweg:
I think Flash works best when it is used only when absolutely needed for
a particularly rich interaction, rather than just for the sake of being
flashy. Some good examples that come to mind are Sphere, Measure
Map, and YouTube for tasteful and useful Flash.

Nick Finck:
First, I don’t think Adobe bought Macromedia for Flash alone, that’s a misunderstanding of the complexity of that purchase. I wouldn’t say any work is useless. I think there is room for any technology so long as the user needs, business needs, and technical needs are clearly understood. Flash tends to lean towards the business needs with little regard for the technology (ever tried to load a Flash site on a Nokia 6683?) or the user (ever try to navigate a flash application via a screen reader blindfolded?) at times.

Todd Purgason:
This is an absurd question really we are doing major interactive applications in Flash and video based solutions that are only possible with Flash. CSS is great for some things and frankly sucks for other things. The same can be said for Flash but to call it a trend is really funny as Flash has been around longer than CSS. Trust me I started hand coding in 1995 and worked with the design and coding side as HTML developed as well as Flash.

Sodaplay:
Flash can be a great tool where it is compatible with the requirements of a brief; we’ve used it before and are sure to use it again.

WeWorkForThem:
You have to look at the audience. HiReS does sites that are for entertainment, so if they function in that area (and they do!), they have served their purpose. Flash can work in areas such as that. Using Flash for a content driven site would give me a headache trying to solve how it would work, but it is possible. I am sure if you had the right people on the job they could do a wonderful execution. It’s all how you use the tool and Flash seems to be more than a tool sometimes. I personally do not like Flash sites most of the time if I am trying to use it for informational purposes. It normally is slower and hard to grab info from.

Alexa: A Lackluster Example Application

Posted on May 11, 2007 by Taylor to Technology Trends

Do you personally know anyone who has the Alexa Toolbar installed on their machine? No? Well me neither. Many people claim that the Alexa ranking is a bona fide representation of how their websites are doing online as compared to the plethora of other websites out there, but I am here to disprove that myth.

According to Alexa themselves, their traffic ranking are determined by the users that actually have and use the Alexa Toolbar. Here is their words exactly:

“Alexa computes traffic rankings by analyzing the Web usage of millions of Alexa Toolbar users. The information is sorted, sifted, anonymized, counted, and computed, until, finally, we get the traffic rankings shown in the Alexa service. The process is relatively complex, but if you have a need to know, please read on.”

So where does the traffic of other users going to your website get measured? Well…no where I think. I have personally seen this in action. A website that has doubled or even tripled their uniques, hits and page views was hit with a decrease in the “Alexa Ranking”. Well maybe the users that actually use that website do not have the Alexa Toolbar installed.

Granted that Alexa could be an ok gauge to see where you would rank among the other websites of the world, but they are not the end all be all. I think this would be the same basis for things like the Google Page Ranking system as well; which get their information by their own proprietary algorithms and such.

So where could you get such information that is considerably more accurate?

If you are looking for your own website statistics, then I would suggest some of the following:

Google Analytics
Web CEO
Awstats

Tags: alexa