Turning Your Weakest Link Into a Winner!

Jul 212009
 

I love the month ago today posts because it gives me a chance to really dig into the analytics of my site. A month ago I wrote this post, How To Fix Your Site. It’s about targeting your site weak spots by simply comparing it to Google’s Analytic Benchmarking option.

Taking my own advice, I found that this site was below average in total page views compared to other sites similar to mine. So for the past thirty days my primary goal has been to look for the little things that I could do to the site to increase page views. The end results? I managed to get 25% more in page views compared to last month, a .5% decrease in bounce, and a 12% increase average time on site. Continue reading »

Numbers Looking Good a Month Later

Jul 072009
 

About a month ago, I took a good look at my site, compared it to others, and went crazy with the delete button. I also brought a couple items back to life. Here is what I did a month ago that has made: my page views increase by 27%, pages per visit increase by 12%, my bounce rate decrease by 1%, and an increase in my average time on site per session by 56%!

Usually it’s better to make small measurable changes to a site, but enough was enough. My site needed a bigger change. It needed a change at least for me. Continue reading »

Action on Your Home Page Final

Mar 232009
 

A simple post, Action on Your Home Page, turned into a three part post about getting action out of your home page. This is part three, and I will be using A Service Master Company site again, American Home Shield, as the third example.

Layout is Old

The first two examples, Terminix and TruGreen, were great example on how to build a successful home page. They quickly catch your attention, create interest, desire, and action. When I took a look at A Service Masters Company’s third site, American Home Shield, I knew it was it was a little more dated than the others. Besides looking at the copyright in the footer, here is what tipped me off.

What’s Wrong

Looking at the home page, I didn’t see the winning layout I had seen in the previous sites. It looked nice, it had a large action item, but there was nothing compelling about it at all.

ahs1

The main content was just some basic information about getting a home warranty, boring. Next box, action, already? Third bit of content, here is our phone number, call of for service…NOT. Well, maybe if I was a customer already. Fourth major content, explanation and reasoning for a home warranty. Simply put, the home page didn’t sell. There was no attention grabbers, interest, and at that point, action.

Clear Purpose

The other failing point of the home page here is the fact that it didn’t have a clear purpose. Is the page designed to get prospects to fill in the quote information, or is it to help current customers by offering customer service information? The purpose has not been clearly defined, and it will fail to convert (whatever the primary goal is) like its sister sites. They did have a few pages that were a little more goal oriented though, and I am wondering if they were what lead to the new designs with the other sites, see Home Warranty Inspection for an example.

Having A Plan

Having a plan is often the hardest part of web design. There is so much we can do, so much we want to do, and thanks to the internet, so much we can do. Stopping to think about what exactly a page is for can be the hardest part. Hopefully your site has a plan, it’s pages are well planned, and that you have understood what I have been talking about over the past three posts.

Bid For Position

Oct 132008
 

lbsriptInterested in another way to earn some extra money from your website without plastering it with ads? Does your site have a links page or directory? If it does, here is a great way to turn those pages into cash machines. Create a directory that gives priority to sites based on their bids.

You could create a bidding directory yourself, but there is an easier way. Download this free directory script. The software is called Link Bid, and is written in PHP so it should be compatiable for most of you. To get it for free, you do have to register, but it’s just a simple email/username registration. The confirmation link takes you to the software support forum where you can download, and find all the support you need.

To see a sample of the LBS software in action you can find a directory of web hosting services on their site that have bid for positions. The software has different templates that you may use, will be free to upgrade, and supports multiple payment gateways. The administration panel gives you a variety of methods to handle the directory and the submissions. The layout is template based so it fairly easy to modify, and is CMS powered. As a bidding customer, the submission form is easy to use, it’s even easier to up your bid, and it is easy to figure out the whole bidding process.

Free is a good way to go, and if you have installed in scripts on your site before this should be an easy one for you. My advice to start it off. Place some sites in their already so it looks like you are already getting bids. It might take some time to get things moving based on the facts people like to buy listings on pages with Google PR.

Facebook, Not Afraid of the Ads

Oct 122008
 

Like many of us, our friends are joining Facebook. I was one of them, and have been slowly adding friends to my list. Honestly though, I am already sick of it.

It’s Not That I Hate

It’s not that I hate Facebook’s layout. No layout is perfect, though I could spend a week writing blog posts about why I hate theirs. It’s not that that they scour all of my information to target their ads at me more. It’s not that it’s an aggressive tell your friend marketer, and it’s not that they charge for virtual gifts. What a rip that is. What I am beginning to hate is that I am seeing design for greed, not design for use.

Greed

facebookWhat really bugs me is what I saw today. A link to “More Ads” underneath an ad. Enough is enough, and how greedy can you be? What possible value could this offer to a visitor, and what kind of visitor would actually click on it? Are they going for accidentals? Maybe if they sold it as “Additional Resources Based on our Research of You”. It would be kind of true. I just try to imagine this as if my local newspaper were trying to get away with this crap. I can hear the sales rep now, “For an additional $4.95 a month we can also set you up to have a telemarketer call you on a daily basis. ” Any takers? I doubt it, and the ones that do I am sure only do so out of accident.

Think I’m already done using Facebook. I’ll give it a few more weeks.

Testing Your Layout

Sep 222008
 

backgroundcolorI was aksed to checkout this MySpace Layouts site, and right away I guessed the author used Internet Explorer to make sure it looked right. Why? Because IE nicely corrects some of the formatting errors we webmasters make. Looking at the screen shot I made here, you can see Firefox and Google’s new Chrome are not so nice.

Format Error

Blipsy is a MySpace Layout site. You MySpacers will probably like it most for its scroller sign that looks like a LED scrolling sign. The formatting mistake they made, was that they left the Blipsy Bits section in the dark. They had black text over a dark blue background. It seems tedious, but every time I make a change to a site I do two things. I check I didn’t mess up the format somehow, and I check that the markup validates. The XHTML link you see in the footer in my site, is actually for me, and not so much for the visitor. I constantly check for errors, and it’s the easiest way.

How To Test Your Layout

To check my layout, I use Browsershots. With Browsershots you can check what your site looks like with different browsers, and different versions of the browsers. It’s easy to use, and it’s free, so no excuses!

Thinkature Workspace

Sep 132008
 

Probably the best thing about having an online career is that you can work anywhere in the world. A big set back to it though is that long distance travel may be required to do a face to face. Thinkature is just the site that could help eliminate one of those reasons to require face time. It’s their online workspace.

Thinkature is a Whiteboard

thinkature When working with some of my far away clients site layouts, I often use a method which I simple call the print and fax method. I create a the layout on a private host, send them the link, they print it out, and fax back the changes they would like to see. It works, and it works especially well for the not so tech savy business owners that I often deal with.

Thinkature eliminates the need for that method by creating an online whiteboard that is extremely easy to use. I can create a custom layout initially on Thinkature’s site, and then the client and I can either work together on the layout at a schedule time, or work independently on the layout, changing things as we think of it.

When working together on a project is when the real power kicks in. Besides having a cool whiteboard for us to use as an interface, it supports it with two forms of communications, text chat and voice. Move components while you talk, now here is a nice application. Another cool thing about this service is that you can control who has access. You can do private invite only, or you can make it open to the public. Here is the public workspace for my site: Best Web Image Workspace. Feel free to try it out, I have made this one open to the public.

Cool Way To Work

All I can say about Thinkature is two thumbs up! It’s a very cool way to work with clients, and even just for yourself. Here is a little quote from their site on what you can use it for.

“You can use it to plan your next major product or your next great party. Or you could lay out a new organization chart or the floor plan for your next apartment. You might also gather information about your competitors or your next vacation destination.”

Use it for pretty much anything. I’m just wondering where their ads are. It’s free, free, free!

Parallel Designs

Sep 112008
 

sanantonioDepending on your budget for building a site, an extremely worthwhile venture is to create an alternate layout, or parallel design. The benefits are almost endless, and features on the site quickly expose the good and the bad.

Parallel Design in Action

I recently wrote a post about a Dallas Real Estate website in how it made good use of its home page. Well the same company has another site, San Antonio Real Estate, that is parallel in design, but has clearly made different choices in regards to some of its layout. Most of the same features are there, but they have either selected to remove them or are testing the other with the design. Typically, creating a parallel design would be done before a site goes public, but obviously you could get a great deal more feedback doing it live.

The Benefits

Creating a, or a few alternate site designs can produce some fantastic benefits. When analyzing each layout, and then comparing to another, the good and the bad are quickly recognized. You then have the ability to include those good ideas from say, Site A, and then incorporate them into Site B. Very quickly you now have not one improved design, but two improved designs. After a few rounds of this, the designs should almost merge with only the best ideas shining through. Keep in mind that this isn’t just limited to the simple layout of the site, but all aspects of the site. Things like how a form is handled, or how search results are displayed, everything.

The main advantage of this is the overwhelming time it could save you. Using just one design, time and slow little tests are the only way to improve your site performance. Testing parallel designs will quickly kick out the junk, and bubble sort the best to the top giving you the best web design. It’s usability testing at an almost primal level, and it’s a great way to start your site.

No Budget

If you don’t have a budget to build a multiple designs, or you build your sites yourself it’s not the end of the world. This is where that time you spent doing your market analysis kicks in. When investigating your competitors, don’t just look at their sites, use them. Try their order forms, sign up for the mailing lists, and  take notes on how they run their websites. Follow the money, and follow what ideas you like best. This is what your target market is most likely used to, assuming they have used one of your competitors sites already.

When to Use Tables

Sep 022008
 

Contrary to popular belief among many new webmasters, the use of tables in web design is still completely acceptable. The only real problem with using tables, is that many do not know when or how to use them. Most of us know that we use tables to show data, as if in a an excel file, but where the argument often comes in is when tables are used in our layout.

tablelayout 150x150

Using Tables to Show Layout

Using tables to format layout is where many have an issue of, and are not really sure when it is OK to use. Tables in layout should be used when the content needs to be in a linear format, such as a series of paragraphs. This management training site had a great example. If you look at their code, you will noticed that there is no structural markup. Markup is not required when using tables to show the sites layout.

Using a table in design your sites overall template is a poor idea at best, and should be avoided. Though it may seem easier at first, this may make things harder for the user. A simple example would be the use of the tab key. Many use the tab key to scroll through content. When tabbing through content on a table designed site, it will bounce a visitor all over the place (top to bottom per column), and not simply move the visitor down like it would if DIV tags had been used.

Using Tables to Show Data

Using tables to show data would be the primary reason to use them. Common mistakes to make within these types of tables are the improper identification of the headers within the table, and the simple lack of markup. Here are some basic tips to create a professional table to show data.

  • <table> – When first starting the table make sure to include a brief summary. An example is <table summary=”Summary of my table”>
  • <caption> – This is the caption you would like to include with the table
  • <tr> – Simply identify a new row
  • <th> – This is to identify the column with its header title. An example is <th scope=”row, rowgroup, col, or colgroup”>Header Title</th>. Only pick one of the items in the scope section.
  • <td> – This is where the data goes.

A basic example:

<table border=”1″ summary=”An example table”>
<caption>This is my caption example</caption>
<tr>
<th>Column 1</th><th>Column 2</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>data</td><td>data</td>
</tr>
</table>

This is my caption example
Column 1 Column 2
data data

So basically, it’s OK to use tables, just not for a sites template or overall design. Leave this for the DIV tag.

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