Are you using Gravatar? I know some of the regulars to BWI are not. What is Gravatar? I’ve included a video at the bottom of this post to help explain.
A gravatar is a globally recognized avatar. Confused yet? It’s the picture of yourself when you comment on this blog. Don’t see a picture of yourself? That is because you don’t have a gravatar. Continue reading »
Here is just a little Saturday night fun. It’s a quick reminder that websites can be a lot of fun, and that we don’t always have to be geared on making money or being perfect with them.
I introduce… Continue reading »
Have video? If you are one of those lucky ones that has received tons of traffic because your video went viral, may I say…Lucky You! Using a video to market your site or service can be a great way to get tons traffic. The problem is, it’s hard to do. It’s also where a Video Search Engine Optimization service like the one offered by USO Networks can be a great way to go. Continue reading »
Last week I wrote an article about adding video to your website, Giving Life to Your Site. If done the right way, it can really compliment a site. If done the wrong way, it’s like turning off the visitors computer. I know many are still against finding sites with videos on them, and many webmasters will simply refuse adding them to a home page for usability reasons. So how do you get the power of a video without compromising your site? It’s simple really, you link to it.
In the process of reviewing the real estate site Breckenridge Real Estate, I found a very tiny link. It was too tiny really, but that link brought the visitor to a YouTube video they made, Breckenridge Real Estate Video. The video is a basic review of the website, and services offered. Watching it I saw that it was too broad to be put directly on the home page, and in no way would it help it. If this was my site I would definitely bring more emphasis to the link because this brings me to the second value of linking to it, YouTube.
So if you checked out the video on YouTube you may have noticed a side effect of hosting it there, and linking to it. The video was uploaded Feb. 3rd, yesterday. It has already had nearly 2,000 viewers, and over fifty comments about the service of the real estate company. Most of them positive. That’s huge for a couple of reasons. First, I believe the real estate gets less than 2,000 viewers in a month. That means that video would never get the exposure that it got on YouTube as if they decided to host it them self. Second, having 2,000 people download a video from your server in one day can be a let down if your server is not prepared. It could also get very costly.
After seeing those numbers I am sure the owner is very impressed with the YouTube experience. They do several territories like, Silverthorne Co Real Estate and Copper Mountain Real Estate, so I would expect to see videos for each and every one of them. Good job on adding video to your website…using the other way.
After my last post, Giving Life to Your Site, I thought this weeks poll would be appropriate. I know many users have said in the past they do not like video introductions, but webmasters are beginning to say that video introductions work great. I believe this may be the case of what we say does not equal what we do or react.
Here is the poll: Do video introductions on a home page bother you?
[polldaddy poll="1341056"]
There used to be a time when I would say I hate this kind of stuff, but it’s what the web is turning into. Sites with real actors delivering the sites primary message. Walking and talking actors are coming alive on websites everywhere these days, and their impact can be substantial if viewed by the target audience. Low download speeds are also becoming a thing of the past so something like a video shouldn’t be as big of a deal anymore.
Silver Cross is one of those sites with a video actor. When loading the site they have a very unobtrusive video pop up in the left sidebar talking about their main product, stair lifts. She quickly introduces the product, reviews benefits, and covers some principal customer concerns before making a purchase.
The advantage of having the video is that it gives a defined message, and it will be delivered regardless of what the visitor reads on the site, assuming they actually listen. The actor also very quickly mentions some of the companies history, giving the visitor and even greater sense that they are on the right site, and that it can be trusted. In this case, a twenty second video has given a visitor five minutes worth of digging around a site the conventional way. Another big plus? She is still heard when I visit another tab in my browser. Talk about keeping a visitors attention.
The pitfalls is that it can scare some visitors away, but I believe that most of those bouncing visitors are most likely not the target audience to begin with. You need to be careful, and make sure that it is easy for a visitor to turn off, or make silent in a second. In this case, both are easy to do. Another thing I would avoid with this is making it site wide. I would stick it only on a landing page, or home page. Finding this video on the sites wheelchair lifts page might not seem as relative since she is mostly speaking about stair lifts.
Adding video to your site? I say go for it, just make sure you take the time to do it right. The Silver Cross video offers an excellent example of a well thought out message.
Recently I got one of those cool little Flip Video Cameras. It works great, it’s easy to use, and plugs right into your computer by USB. I used to use a Belkin converter that plugged into my old video camera. That worked great for years until I switched computers, and found myself with no driver to support it. Belkin didn’t even have it on their site anymore. I guess it was time for me to update the hardware anyhow.
So after using the Flip Camera for a while I decided to do one last check to see if I could find the driver for my old converter, and there it was on this drivers site. I found it a little surprising that they had it, and Belkin didn’t. Doing a little more digging on the Belkin site I did manage to find it. I’m not sure if it was something they newly added, or if I just couldn’t find it the first time. I’m thinking the later. It’s cool because I can still continue to use that convert now, like when I want to record something from T.V..
DriverSoftware.com made it totally easy to find any driver you need, and the drivers are actually hosted on their site. None of that crap link to another site stuff. It also helped me out for my camera because it found my Canon drivers were out of date. If you visit any of their categories, make sure you go down to the bottom. I am not sure why this is not on the home page, but they have a cool little driver scanner where it can find the outdated stuff. I found it initially on the HP drivers page, but it’s on any of them. Try that out to see what your PC is lacking.
Simple and easy to use site. It’s well categorized, by either type or brand, and additionally has an alphabetical index. Check it out!
You have probably heard that marketing virally is a good idea, and that using video is a great way to do it. After seeing some YouTube stats today I think you can almost prove this with the numbers alone.
In March of 2008 there was about 70,000,000 videos on YouTube. Using an older stat I found, but I am sure it is higher now, 100,000,000 videos are watched a day. Your video is going to get seen, and it won’t be difficult to get it seen often. I even have a few silly family videos on YouTube, and they get hits with me just telling my Mom about them.
Think of it this way. According to Google, over 25% of all its queries are from YouTube. In fact, YouTube actually beet Yahoo in search queries. As a webmaster we fight to get our sites to rank best for our favorite keyword, and we do this competing against one trillion plus sites. Don’t you think it would be a little easier to compete against 70,000,000? 70,000,000 is still a huge number, but it’s less than one tenth of a percent of the pages indexed by Google. The odds are certainly more in your favor. Another number to recognize is 200,000. The 200,000 is the number of YouTube publishers. That means those 200,000 people are the ones capturing those 100,000,000 daily views. Now that is a stat that just astonished me. Ready to start making videos?
Because yesterdays post was about fast forms, I decided to stick with the theme in two ways, real estate, and fast. That is about the only similarity though. This one is about flash, its alternative, and how on this Austin Real Estate site, has some flash that runs too fast. I actually wrote a post about them a while back as well, and that time I was referring to their header flash object.
First, you need to know what flash object I am talking about on their site. It’s the second one with the animated map. The animation runs way to fast, and it actaully took me a couple of runs to read the content. What was its message? Basically, that it was the secret real estate site that other realators didn’t want you to know about. It was selling itself.
My initial reaction was that there has to be a better way to sell yourself. Simple text does get the message across, and you could get rid of the flash all together. I think the author’s objective with this flash though, is to caputre the visitors attention with animation. I think here is an excellent opportunity to take on video, and just get rid of the flash.
I think replacing their fast flash file with a video would be a great improvement. Their current flash, though fast, doesn’t convey a very large message. It also doesn’t get you to do anything. Using videos to sell products online has become a very popular method these days.
Benefits of Video
Creating a digital video is also, now, pretty easy, and embedding into a website is a snap. In fact, the whole process is easier than building a flash file.
Had enough flash? Looking around their site to see if they had any more flash, I was happy to find none. I was certain I would find it on their blog, Austin Real Estate blog, but it was clean. No more flash bashing from me today. I do actually like it, it just depends on its use.
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