If “Pants on the Ground” remixes and burning banana suits aren’t your thing, don’t fret, there’s a whole new reason to use YouTube: movie rentals.

The Google-owned video site debuted online movie rentals today on a very limited basis, allowing users to rent five different flicks from the Sundance Film Festival using their Google Checkout accounts. The company says “a small collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, will be made available in the weeks ahead.”

Last year, it was reported that YouTube was in talks with movie studios to offer rentals of major motion pictures, creating what would be dubbed an instant Netflix killer. This is far from that, but represents what could become a massively important part of YouTube’s future. Don’t forget — the site is also continuing to push ahead with HD and making its content big screen-friendly.

Slowly, but surely, we expect YouTube to continue in this direction, and other moves like introducing live sports and streaming full-length films offer just a hint of what’s to come from the video site over the next few years. For more on that, see: YouTube Is the Top Social Media Innovation of the Decade.

Tags: trending, video, youtube

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Now it appears that Bill Gates joined Twitter with calculated intentions. After passing 100,000 followers in eight hours (now he has nearly 250,000 fans), the Microsoft visionary used his now-popular account to announce a new web project: The Gates Notes.

The new website offers a collection of Gates-related information with blog-like sections documenting everything from his travels to what he’s reading and thinking about. There’s even a “Curious Classroom” section serving to house Gates’s responses to students, and an “Infrequently Asked Questions” page to address reader questions.

So what’s the point of the site? On your first visit, you’re greeted with a letter from Gates explaining that he regularly takes notes about his work with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. He’s decided to share those notes online “in the hope of getting more people thinking and learning about the issues I think are interesting and important.”

At launch, the site is already packed with notes, and we’re impressed and overwhelmed by the collection of content. Now that Gates has captured the attention of more than 200,000 Twitter users, we expect to see him use the platform to share fresh content with his followers and quickly gain an audience for this new online project.

Tags: bill gates, celebrities, social media, the gates notes

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The move was generally well received. This was reflected in the comments from WebProNews readers on our past coverage. For example, a commenter going by the handle Stupidscript said, "It’s definitely a good time to start wrapping your head around the notion of ‘providing context’, because the web is heading into its "semantic" period … where each link will be more or less valuable based on its relationships with and context to information found behind other links."

Google’s use of breadcrumbs in search results is the focus of a recently submitted question to the Google Webmaster Central team. The question was, "Google is showing breadcrumb URLs in SERPs now. Does the kind of delimiter matter? Is there any best practice? What character to use is best? > or | or / or???" Google’s Matt Cutts responded:

Matt says you should have a set of delimited links on your site that accurately reflect your site’s hierarchy. He also notes, however, that it is still in the "early days" for breadcrumbs.

"Think about the situation with sitelinks," he says. "Whenever we started out with sitelinks, it took a while before…for example, we added the ability in Google Webmaster Tools where you could remove a sitelink that you didn’t like or that you thought was bad. So we started out, and we did a lot of experiments, and we’ve changed the way that sitelinks look several times. And we have different types of sitelinks (within a page, and the standard ones you’re familiar with). So we’ve iterated over time."

In this same way, he says, Google is in the early stage with breadcrumbs and he has seen different experiments with them. For example, there have been prototypes where the breadcrumbs were in the rich snippet gray line, above the regular snippet. "Having it in the URL is kind of nice, but it could still change over time," he says.

He says the best advice he can give is to make sure you have a set of delimited links that accurately reflect your site’s hierarchy, and that will give you the best chance of getting breadcrumbs to show up in Google, but Google will continue to work on ways to improve breadcrumbs. He says any new announcements about it will likely be made on the Google Webmaster blog.

While Matt doesn’t exactly lean toward one way or another with regards to which character to use as asked about in the submitted question, all of the examples I have seen highlighted show the ">" used. That includes examples from Google’s original announcement on the inclusion of breadcrumbs. Based on that, if I were going to choose one, I’d go with that.

There are three types of breadcrumbs (as described here): path, location, and attribute. Path breadcrumbs show the path that the user has taken to arrive at a page, while location breadcrumbs show where the page is located in the website hierarchy. Attribute breadcrumbs give information that categorizes the current page. Obviously, location breadcrumbs would be the ones Google is using (although with personalized search becoming more of a factor, who knows in the future?).

Have you seen an increase in clickthrough from breadcrumbs in Google resutls? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Google Rolls Out Breadcrumb Display in SERPs

> Google Makes it Easier to Tell Where Results Originate From

> Get More Links in Your Actual Google Results

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"First off, if you go to the Bing Maps AJAX site and have Silverlight installed chances are you will be redirected to the Bing Maps Silverlight site (note this change only affects users in the US)," explains Microsoft’s Chris Pendleton. "We’re rolling this out with a small percentage of users increasing up to 100% of all users in a few weeks. If you don"t have Silverlight installed you can hit the AJAX site and will be prompted to install Silverlight (which you can opt out of, but WHY would you??). Well, to make the AJAX site a bit smoother we’ve introduced some new transitions in the tile loading process for panning and zooming. So you can have your Silverlight and AJAX too. If you don’t want to stay on the Silverlight site, you can opt out and return to the AJAX site (aka Bing Maps Classic) via the link on the Silverlight site."

Microsoft has also launched two new Bing Maps Applicaton Gallery apps. These are "Destination Maps" and "Local Events". The former shows vector-based route geometries on new map background, and the latter lets users find things to do in their own towns.

From the sound of it, Bing Maps users should expect much more in the way of apps. "These apps are only the beginning," says Pendleton. "You see it coming? A massive wave is upon you. Get ready."

More detailed information on the two newly launched apps can be found here and here respectively. On another Bing-related note, Microsoft has started improving its autosuggest feature. Time will tell if it proves to be an improvement over Google’s much criticized Google Suggest.

Related Articles:

> Bing Launches New Maps with Apps

> Microsoft Changes Bing User Privacy Methods

> Bing Makes Out Well In Search Spend Report

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What can you use the application for?


Ibizlog.com is a site that allows users to easily establish a simple online presence for their business. The site features a site creation wizard for setting up the site, and the resulting site is hosted as a subdomain of the Ibizlog.com site. The service provides creation of websites in 5 languages – English, Spanish, French, Italian and Portuguese. The wizard takes the users through a 4 step process. The first step asks the user to enter all of their business information. The second step asks the user for the type of goods or services they sell, and selects a default template for that kind of goods or services. The third steps allows users to select the overall look and feel of the site, with a number of different predefined image and color schemes. The final step asks the user to confirm the details entered, and then the site is created.
Once the web site has been created, users have a control panel for adding items and customizing the site. Tabs on the Control Panel include My Purchases (where the user can enter purchase orders), My Sales, My Site (where the user can customize the site), My Items (where items or services for sale are listed), Promote (allows the user to enter email addresses to send invitations to visit the site) and Premium, which allows the user to purchase premium features.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Las Vegas, Nevada-based Ibizlog.com was founded in September 2008 by Sol Apps and Services, LLC. Jose Bretti is CEO of the company.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Ibizlog.com comes from many sites, including Homestead and SnapPages. Both of these site offer a similar service to Ibizlog, and offer more overall features. However, Ibizlog.com is easier to set up if the user’s business does not contain a large number of goods or services. In short, Homestead and SnapPages are more powerful, Ibizlog is simpler. Ibizlog is more expensive than either of the other two sites.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The site is easy to use and navigation is intuitive. The tools provided by the site make it very easy to create and maintain a simple website. The websites created by the site are not professional in their look and feel. A lot of advertising is displayed on the user’s website if they have a free account.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to Ibizlog.com is free and is required to use the site. The registration process asks for full name, email address, password, sex, country and language. Validation of the email address is required. A free account is limited to 18 articles and 1 image per article. In addition, advertising is displayed on free account websites.

What does it cost to use the application?


There are 3 paid membership plans offered to the Ibizlog.com site, including Bronze, Silver and Gold. A Bronze account allows for up to 60 items with 3 images per item, and offers a shopping cart which uses a messaging system. A Silver account features up to 75 articles with 3 images per article, and includes a shopping cart with a payment system. The Gold account offers up to 125 articles with 4 images per article and includes the ability for the user to upload their own website design. Costs for the Bronze, Silver and Gold plans are $42.04, $52.73 and $85.50 respectively for three months. Discounts are available if the user pays for more than 3 months in one payment.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Ibizlog.com site is recommended to anyone who wishes to establish a simple online business presence. The site creation wizard is very easy to use, and the results are quite professional. The plans are somewhat limited, given the price, but the emphasis is on simplicity – a complete website can be set up in very little time using the tools provided by the Ibizlog.com site.

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What can you use the application for?


Conferous.com is an online conference calling solution for small, medium and large businesses. Users can create conference rooms and manage conference calls from an easy to use online interface. Participants do not need to remember conference ids, pin or access codes – just a toll-free number and extension. Users can hold up to 5 conferences simultaneously with up to 15 participants. In order to create a new conference call, the user can use a new or existing room. When a new room is created, it is assigned a toll-free number and extension. To initiate a conference call, all participants dial the toll-free number and enter the extension. This connects all of the parties in a conference call. The site automatically records all conference calls and saves the recording for future reference.

The site is very easy to use. Once logged in, users can view their existing rooms or create a new room from their home page. The home page also contains a listing of all recordings of past calls, which are listed beneath the room name. Clicking on the link to a recording downloads a .wav file which can be played in the user’s preferred audio player application. Users pay a monthly fee plus a per minute cost for each conference call.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Conferous.com was launched by David K. Pham in December 2009. The site use the Twilio.com telephone to website API interface.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Conferous.com comes from sites such as Freeconference.com and Nocostconference.com. Freeconference.com offers both free and paid plans for conferencing. They offer more features than Conferous, but the free service does not include permanently assigned numbers. Nocostconference.com provides both free and paid plans as well, but free plans do not include a toll-free number. Conferous.com is by far the simplest and easiest to use service.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. Navigation of the site is intuitive, and the site is very easy to use. Creating and managing conference rooms is a straightforward process, as is initiating conference calls. The service functioned flawlessly during testing. There is no advertising displayed on the Conferous.com site.

How does the registration process work?


Signup for a paid plan to the Conferous.com site is required to use the service. No free trial is offered. The signup process asks for first and last name, email address, username, password and business name. The site accepts credit cards as payment for plans, and asks for first and last name of the cardholder, card number, expiration date and billing zip code.

What does it cost to use the application?


There are two paid plans available – Basic and Premium. The Basic plan allows for 1 toll-free number, up to 3 conference rooms and 3 participants per conference. The Basic plan costs $9.95 per month plus 7 cents per minute. The Premium plan allows for 1 toll-free number, up to 5 conference rooms and up to 15 participants per conference. The Premium plan costs $14.95 per month and 6 cents per minute.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Conferous.com site is recommended to anyone who needs a simple conference calling solution. The pricing is very reasonable, and the service is scalable from small to large businesses. The service is very easy to use, and the automatic recording of calls provides a valuable transcript of business discussions.

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The free iPhone app allows users to input all of their books for the semester and compare prices among several sellers. It’s basically a pocket version of the Bigwords.com Web site, which had its origins in 1998 as a textbook retailer.

“We rode the roller coaster of the tech boom,” said CEO Jeff Sherwood. “We almost went public and then went bankrupt instead.” Mr. Sherwood, a programmer, went to the bankruptcy auction, purchased the domain name and started running the company as a textbook-comparison site in 2001.

On the app, users can search by title, author or ISBN number and can also include options such as e-books and book rentals in their search. Book quality, shipping time and other variables can be set as well. Once a student has put all the books into a “backpack,” the app calculates the best places to buy the books. It accounts for shipping and promotional discounts — even those that are triggered only when the purchase reaches a certain level, like $50 or $100. With other price comparisons, Mr. Sherwood said, “you look at one book at a time. With Bigwords, you put all of your books in the bag at once,” allowing for discounts you wouldn’t otherwise see. Mr. Sherwood says the site offers savings of 35% to 45% on average, compared with purchases made at regular online discount textbook stores.

Users can either purchase their books from a variety of sellers, or they can buy from the store with the best overall price. Bigwords receives a percentage fee whenever a book is sold through its app or Web site.

The app has a three-star rating in the app store. Several reviewers there said they appreciated being able to bring the app with them to their student bookstore, so they could compare prices on the spot.

Since late November, the app also has included a buyback feature, which allows students to find the highest purchase price as they try to sell their used textbooks. The company also plans a feature that lets users set the price they want to pay for a book and then alerts them when that price is available.

As for what’s next, Mr. Sherwood says: “I’ve received a ton of emails asking when we’re going to have an Android app.” He said the company hopes to release one in the fall.

Previously on App Watch

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The social-networking and microblogging site Twitter reported a brief outage early Wednesday. Twitter said the service was “experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales,” or fail error messages.

On its Web site, Twitter said that its “on-call team is working on a fix.”

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Leading the pack was Snapfish with a healthy 27%. Snapfish is entering its tenth year as an online photo printing service and offers some of the lowest prices in the industry. Following Snapfish was Costco’s online printing service, lagging behind Snapfish but still with a respectable 17%. Close behind Costco was Shutterfly with 16% and then Mpix (14%)—a site geared more towards professional photographers. In last place was AdoramaPix with 8% of the vote. AdoramaPix sported the largest selection of paper and options but didn’t have the bargain basement prices that certainly helped other sites gain an edge.

Have a favorite service that wasn’t listed? Let’s hear about it in the comments. If you have an idea for a future Hive Five send us an email at tips at lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line.

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What can you use the application for?


Konkuri.com is an online browser-based tournament management software application. The application allows tournament managers to manage their tournaments and publish them on the web. The site supports all types of sports and games, and allows the creation of single round-robin, double round-robin, single elimination and groups/playoff type tournaments. Tournament managers can either manually pair up competitors or have the site make a random schedule that can be edited as desired. Managing results and standings is easy – the manager simply enters the scores and the site updates the standings. The Konkuri.com site supports various types of scores, including best of N sets, two-legged ties and best of N matches.
The majority of sports and games is supported, with presets already defined for each sport. The application also supports game site and date scheduling. Each tournament has its own web address, which is a subdirectory of the main Konkuri.com site. Tournament managers have a Dashboard, where they can control tournament settings, add posts to the tournament blog, and see recent activity. Tournament managers and players have a Results page where the current standings can be seen, a Teams page which gives a description of each of the teams, and an Info page which gives the tournament name, its web address, venues, periods, contacts, description and rules.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Bologna, Italy-based Konkuri.com was launched in September 2009. Matteo La Rosa is CEO of the site, Andrea Lelli is CCO and Federico Panciroli is CTO.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Konkuri.com comes from sites such as Manageyourtournament.com and SportsPilot.com. SportsPilot.com is a hosted solution that specializes in the management of sporting events. SportsPilot does not support the large variety of games supported by Konkuri. Manageyourtournament.com only supports 7 types of sports and does not have the wealth of features provided by Konkuri.com.

How does the application look and feel to use?


The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The tools provided for creating and managing tournaments work quite well, and the presentation of the results and info pages is professional. Navigation of the site is very intuitive. Advertising is displayed on the site, but it is relatively unobtrusive.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to the Konkuri.com site is free and is required to permanently save a tournament. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address, password, gender and date of birth. Validation of the email address is required to activate the account.

What does it cost to use the application?


There is no premium membership offered to the Konkuri.com site.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Konkuri.com site is recommended to anyone who needs to manage a tournament and post it online. The site takes most of the detail work out of managing a tournament. The site supports a large variety of sports and games, as well as scoring systems, and the tools provided for tournament creation and management work well. An added advantage is the dedicated web address assigned to each tournament.

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There’s really not much to say about the site beyond that. You can search for books by ISBN, title, author, or keywords, and it returns search results into categories sorted by lowest overall prices, used book prices, new book prices, and rental prices.

In short, it makes it very easy to find the most inexpensive option for your book buying.

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Background

I contacted Chuck, the founder of Letterhead Font and asked him if I could feature the designs from his website and he graciously accepted.

Here is what Chuck had to say about Letterhead Fonts.

Letterhead Fonts began in October 1999 with 4 fonts.

As a sign painter who had come from a hand-lettering background, I couldn’t find the fonts I wanted – so I made them myself. Others also appreciated these styles and the website grew.

I’ve always preferred the older letters from the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, so that is what I focused on most. Other artists joined me later. Today, Letterhead Fonts has 18 regular contributors (including myself) and over 300 fonts (I have removed several over the years). All of these artists are professionals in the sign and graphics industries, which gives them a unique perspective
and insight as to the balance of the letters.

The purpose of Letterhead Fonts remains the same as it was 10 years ago– to make unique, high quality fonts that serve a purpose. If it isn’t something that we would use ourselves or if it already exists, we won’t do it.

Letterhead Fonts only offers Postscript OpenType fonts. We stopped offering the horrible format of TrueType in 2007. Postscript is the only format that ensures the letters look exactly the way the original artist drew them. TrueType on the other hand, adds new points to the letters– thereby changing the shape of the letters. It’s like painting a masterpiece and then having someone Xerox it 50 times. Very frustrating.

Because we make all of our own fonts and sell them directly from our site, we can provide good customer service to our users. If anyone has a problem, we can fix the issue right away for them (or help them install the fonts or provide other technical assistance). We have our own server and a very advanced account system that keeps track of the customer’s purchases. When we release a new version of a particular font, it is automatically updated in everyone’s account so they can download it again.

Though this method of being both the creators and exclusive distributors is more work, I prefer this way of doing business over selling through a third party. Besides, who wants to give away 30-50% of their sales to someone else?

Showcase of Letterhead Font Designs

Here are just some of the designs that were created from Letterhead Fonts.

Please do not copy or post these images anywhere. Special permission was granted by Letterhead Fonts to Design Informer to use these designs.

To see more of the Letterhead Font designs, please make sure you visit their gallery.

Well, thanks for viewing the Letterhead Font showcase. Do you like this vintage style typography? By the way, which one of the designs did you really like and why? Please let me know in the comments below.

One last thing, please bump and stumble this article so the rest of the design community can see these amazing designs. Thank you so much.

Related posts:

1. Incredible Black and White Typography
2. Ask the Expert – Typography Talk with Brian Hoff

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The C word?

You’re going to say ‘content is king‘, aren’t you? It’s true, we should be aware that if we push out poor content; we’ll reap what we sow, however The ‘C word’ for today is a different C, ‘context’.

Context could be almost anything though, surely?

I’m pleased you brought that up. Yes, most things can provide context – a photograph on it’s own can be quite subjective. If you see it on a website, the name and branding of the site itself might provide some context by defining the niche the site caters for, as would a number of other indicators you might not realise.

So why is this relevant to what I’m doing?

Another fine point! What I’m proposing is that we group together a number of things we already do and consider a few others we perhaps don’t and introduce ‘context’ as an early part of our workflow. Therefore before we even get to wire-framing & design work, we run our proposed site through the context stage.

I see this as something different to personas, which is a way of defining your audience. If we look at the different ways people might access your site, it could lead us into different ways of thinking about our site’s structure and design.

Not sure I know what you mean

For example, what if before we even get to the design phase we bring in accessibility?What about  the language we use? Are we targeting a worldwide audience or a specific country or locality?

Other examples that we could group under the ‘context’ discovery phase include:

• Audience – Who is the content for? What expectations could there be?
• Accessibility – How can we ensure everything we make is easily usable for everyone?
• Design & Layout – What do the branding, colour palette and typography say? How does this work with the content?
• Language, Localisation & Internationalisation – Is there anything about the target market that needs to be addressed?
• Meta Data – How can we use the information about our content? Who created it, where and when for example – how much of this is relevant?
• Categorisation & Tagging – Clear groupings and description of content through tagging gives visitors a clear idea of what the site is about. This can also help SEO.

Maybe there are more things we can consider at this early stage:

• Location – Does where the site visitor is based have any bearing on the content?
• Presence – If the user is available to interact via chat or if they’re present in a specific location, should they see or do anything different with the site?
• Devices – How should the device used to access you site change the experience?
• Social – If your visitors are a part of a social network, or a group you run within one, should this provide them with any different levels of interaction?
• Source – What about the location or author of the content?
• Meta Data – What meta data could help enhance the content we publish?

By holding your content up to these contexts, maybe it would enable us to look at what we’re creating and it’s purpose and open us up to new possibilities?

Example 1: Flickr

Considering contexts embedded within a photo’s meta data allows us to enhance the users experience. For example we could view a map of where the image was taken, view photos taken in the same place or nearby as well as find out the date of the photo and device used.

Example 2: The Guardian

This heading from a recent article shows a caption describing the content of the image. In fact the whole article uses meta data to frame their perspective on the piece; when was it published, on which of their sites it appeared, which reporters were involved and where were they based?  The reporters are also linked, which is a great use of meta data as navigation.

So what’s changed?

We’ve had the rise in social media tools and different ways of consuming and re-purposing content from sites. For an increasing number of sites, content or functionality is used or consumed away from the site itself, some like Dopplr actually intending not to be a destination site in itself at it’s conception.

Your articles, videos or photos can be read or viewed through an RSS reader, maybe shown on another site through an API or posted within a social network site. The community built around your site could easily be accessing your content away from the source.

Design

As our content is used and consumed away from our own sites, could design be redundant? Good design doesn’t just give us a nice looking template; good design works with and supports our content – it’s integral to the experience.

If anything, part of looking at context shows us that design will become more diverse as we attempt to use our branding or identity through different modes of access. Our website when viewed on a desktop machine compared to a mobile device doesn’t need to look identical but it can be a designed experience and allow us to provide something identifiable.

Expose yourself!

Increasingly, sites are opening themselves up; offering their data or functionality through a variety of APIs, which may filter through to smaller sites too. Most sites have some business logic or data that is really valuable. In many cases this could be more valuable shared with the community or be an asset as a subscription service.

Exposing our content and functionality allows what we produce to be used in many more ways. If you don’t use RSS yet, look at what your site or your business has and find something of value you can offer. Is there a way you can offer some of your data through common formats like XML or JSON and encourage people to use this in their own sites?

Strip away your design, layout & typography. How does your content work without any of this? Does it read well through assistive technologies like screen-readers? Does your RSS feed copy read well? The value of copy on the web is becoming clearer – this after all is the core of most sites!

Workflow

So perhaps looking at context as a stage of our workflow could open up new possibilities. For example if you’re creating local news and event style content, should people from outside the area be shown anything different to those that are within your intended readership? Does the method through which someone accesses the site affect their experience? Should someone in the vicinity of the business associated with the site see anything different to any body else?

Why does this matter?

As our content is increasingly available through so many different methods, consider what some of these contexts might mean in the future. How might your site or content work through mobile devices or ‘Augmented Reality’, where location and presence are primary?

Your site is no longer a collection of files on a server somewhere, designed for the desktop experience. It’s so much more and the way people consume our content is likely to keep changing, maybe thinking about context can help us to embrace this?

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There are really two things to consider;  web site design and how customers are going to find the web site through mobile search.

How do you design for the mobile platform? The good news is that in most cases, you don’t need a separate site, you just need a cascading style sheet (CSS) attached to your website that feeds up specific instructions to a mobile browser. For the most part, mobile browsers are a lot like the web used to be; mainly text and links. Granted, as the iPhone, Google/Android Phones and other more advanced devices come along, the browsing features also advance. Most smart phones like the iPhone view the web as it should be without anything stripped out. But, since everyone doesn’t own a smart phone just yet, it’s worth focusing on the what the mass mobile market has, basic handheld web browsers.

When designing your CSS for handheld web browsers, here are a few things to consider:

1. You have very limited screen real estate. About 2×3 inches or so.
2. All fonts should be in their most basic format. Forget about color and typography.
3. All images should be striped out, unless they are absolutely necessary.
4. Remove all advertising as you already have limited screen space.
5. If you don’t need it, hide it. Remove any Google Friend Connect, Facebook Fan Box or other third party services. Focus on your content.
6. Remove all background colors. Basic black text on a white background is good.
7. Create basic forms, if you choose to keep them. My advice would be to remove them and just showcase the phone number. They are on their cell phone after all.
8. Remove Flash, Java and any plug-in content unless absolutely necessary.
9. All in all, simplify.

If you run a WordPress blog, you can use a WPtouch iPhone Theme plug-in to automatically create a small-screen friendly version of your blog.

If you want to view your site as if you were on a mobile browser, here are a few choices:

• Web Developer extension for Firefox. It allows you to overwrite the web style sheet with the handheld one if a site has one. If not, it’ll just show the site without any CSS styles.
• iPhone simulator called iPhoney. It looks cool, but since the iPhone really doesn’t render a striped down version of a site, it’s more of a toy.
• Opera Mini browser. There is an online version and it’s free. Simply put in a URL and it’ll render a website as if it was on a mobile phone.

From my testing, the Opera Mini browser was a great experience. It has a small screen, shows handheld versions of style sheets and all in all, it does a great job at giving you what a real phone will show. Here is my before having a handheld CSS and after experiences on the Opera Mini browser.

So where does SEO fall into all of this? Is there a separate ranking algorithm for mobile devices? No, not from what I can see.  While smart phone users can type or speak their search queries, the sort order rankings are fairly consistent between a search on a phone and a search on a computer.

Here’s an example with Google search on an iPhone and at Google.com.

The best way to ensure you are found on mobile devices is to make sure your site is in all the local search directories with full and accurate profiles. Places like Google Local and Yahoo local probably receive more traffic from users who want to find business in a certain area. When I’ve used my phone to search the web, I was searching for specific businesses to visit.  Social networking through mobile is also popular and through links, can drive web site traffic. A combination of search and social is the direction where I see the bulk of mobile traffic going.

Mobile search is an area of the Internet that is finally heating up which is supported by predictions made by eMarketer. Some marketers are putting a lot of stock into mobile marketing as cell phones and smart phones become more widespread and offer more capabilities. However, site owners are not always taking those platforms into account. To ensure your site is mobile ready, get listed in local directories and add a handheld CSS file to your site. These two easy items are a great start for optimizing your site for handheld web browsers.

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There are many elements that go into the creation of a website. A website is the best medium to communicate with users from all over the world. It is therefore essential, it should be designed in such a way that users should be attracted and be engaged on the site. This is when a website can reach its users effectively.

Designers have often wondered about the secret ingredient to make a website appealing. The combination of design and functionality is something every designer wishes to implement in a site. Many successful websites have one main secret ingredient, not every designer is aware about. That element is website interactivity.

What is Web Interactivity?

A simple example can illustrate this point. Picture this: 2 shopping stores are right next to each other. However, one attracts more customers than the other although both have the same goods. This is only because of one reason. The one shop that attracts more customers uses the concept of interaction with people. This is in terms of consumer suggestions, attractive offers, contests and displays. The whole scenario draws people as the overall environment makes a customer feel more comfortable.

In terms of web design, the concept can work in the same manner. The trick lies in a subtle use of web interactions to attract users and cause them to engage on a page.

Here, we can take another example. A radio button or hyperlinks are elements of a web interface. Contrast these with a 3Dimensional Cube or a 3Dimensional Flip Book, both being examples of interactivity. They are complete experiences of doing stuff that engages users with web pages whilst the user is going through the information displayed on the website. This is what makes these examples stand out. The use of interactivities woven very creatively with website content makes them successful in capturing user-attention.

How does one achieve website interactivity?

There are many elements that can be focused upon to achieve web interactivity that attracts users. The main subject of the website should be taken into consideration. This can give a clue as to the kind of interaction to be used. For example, a product website will have various categories on display. The range should be presented in an interactive manner rather than plain rows of products. A 3Dimensional Flip Book can be used to its advantage to showcase a range of products with the relevant information. A user gets engaged whilst flipping through the book.

The creation of these website interactivities requires time to be spent on technical details. However, in the recent times, designers can create these interactivities within minutes without any programming with rapid interactivity software that is available in the market.

Examples of great interactivity websites

Infinit Colours
This example shows the creative use of design and content. The design of the website is such that it engages users from the first moment itself. A user can change the background of the website. Besides, the menu is simple and hangs freely at the bottom area. It can even be dropped down if required. The color and layout used is clutter free. The text is neat without seeming too overpowering yet giving the message to be conveyed. The company is an advertising based company that conveys to users about the abundance of creativity.

Starbucks Coffee at Home
This brand sure does know how to impress its users with loads of creativity that is used generously on its site! A user can simply know the kind of coffee taste he/she is more suited to by taking a simple Find my Perfect Coffee quiz. It makes browsing the site fun and interactive. A user can view the different types of coffee available by moving the cursor over the coffee packets as shown in the image.

Square Circle
This creative agency does know how to connect with its users. Prospective clients are bound to be impressed with the way the site engages the users; one needs to pan through the page and zoom in to view details.

Roth Aniko
This artist manages to display the portfolio in an interactive manner. In this website, users can find a good balance of color, layout along with the interesting presentation of information that engages users.

Harry Potter
Harry Potter lovers will surely love this interactive site which has used interesting elements for display. The picture gallery is used in an interesting way with the pictures revolving around the main figure as shown in the image.

Cathy Beck Communication
The home page of this website involves little interaction. But as a user clicks on the tabs, the layout unfolds into an interesting layout with a zoom panel in the corner; a user can zoom in and out and is engaged on the site!

Magnivate Interactive Boutique Agency
This creative agency has used a unique approach on their site. The site has a cartoon character which takes a user through the various segments in a very interactive way.

Data Fisher
The company information is presented through an interactive 3Dimensional book. This book has a very creative mix of visuals and company information, the combination of which makes the content very readable!

Mercedes A-to-S
This site is one of the perfect examples of a creative and intelligent use of interactivities. The various features of the Mercedes car are explained through a very intelligent use of Flash. The quality of leather can actually be ‘felt’ once the cursor is clicked and dragged over the surface as shown in the image.

Nokia 3110 Evolve
This Nokia website has a very interesting and engaging interaction, where in a user can move the cursor over the mobile phones and the entire angle of the phone changes.

In the same website, a click on the phone enlarges it, as shown in the image. The phone can be viewed in a 3Dimensional way which definitely appears more interesting as compared to a display of images.

Aparte Graphique
The website has a great combination of interactivity. There is a cartoon character along with an engaging way of presentation of information.

Monoface
This creative agency knows how to display its creativity rather than talk about it! The main image can be played around with, by changing the facial features to try many funny combinations!

Unfortunate Events movie
This popular movie needs no introduction as it is full of creative effects. The website is created on the same lines; users can move the cursor over the elements to know details. These are shown in a very creative fashion keeping in mind the concept of the movie.

Website interactivity thus forms to be a very important ingredient for web design. Has this idea made you have a second glance at your website? I would love to hear your response about website interactivity.

Let us share our experiences right here, keep the comments rolling in!

About Author: Poonam works as Product Manager at Harbinger Group and looks after Raptivity Web Expert. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and is an active blogger.

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The Fan Video site itself takes professional music videos and inserts your profile picture prominently. The site also features sharing capabilities to post the videos to MySpace, Facebook or Twitter. Additionally, you can create videos for your friends using their profile pictures, and you can choose these friends from your MySpace or Facebook friend lists (depending on which account you used to sign in).

Not a super-useful application (more fun than sheep throwing, I guess), but is this a harbinger of things to come for MySpace? Are they ready to concede the social networking arena to Facebook?

Side note here: although Facebook has eclipsed MySpace in terms of traffic, MySpace still edges out Facebook in ad revenue. So the race isn’t already lost. May be close, though.

via

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BusinessWire asks member companies to submit press releases as they normally do via the site’s online order interface, and to follow up with their local newsrooms. Other organizations are given the following phone number to call for further details: 888.381.9473

BusinessWire has consolidated all of its Haiti Earthquake-related press releases into one spot, so the information is easily accessible. That can be found here.

This is just one example of many showing how the web is contributing directly to relief efforts for victims of the disaster. There are a lot of companies and organizations offering varying services, and Business Wire’s own offering provides for a good way to spread the news as well as get a look at different ways one can help.

Participating companies so far include Dollar General, Kohl’s, Walgreens, Discover, GE, Sprint, Comcast, T-Mobile, Target, and many more.

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What can you use the application for?


Vois.com is a social media outsourcing site. The site is designed to bring together buyers and service providers in a social networking environment. Buyers post projects on the site and sellers place bids on the projects. The buyer then chooses the bidder based on their feedback, profile, sample work and cost of the bid. Payment for services is handled between the buyer and the seller, or they can use the escrow service provided by the site to place the money in escrow until the project is satisfactorily completed. The site uses a credit system as payment to the site. Credits are required to place a bid or post a project. Each new member is alloted 625 credits, and more credits are earned by both buyer and seller for each successfully completed project.
The site relies heavily on feedback to function, as this is the incentive for buyers and sellers to deal honestly and fairly with one another. Both buyer and seller provide feedback, in the form of a rating as well as a description, at the successful completion of a project. Projects are posted by buyers into categories. Sellers can then browse projects via category or search via keyword. The site has social networking features such as friends, groups, networks, messaging and comments. Users have a My Dashboard page, where they can view a summary of all of the social networking items, plus view projects they have posted or bid on.

What is the history and popularity of the application?


Boca Raton, FL-based Vois.com was founded in November 2006.

What are the differences to other applications?


Competition to Vois.com comes from sites such as Rentacoder.com and Elance.com. Both of these sites are well-established, but do not offer the social networking features offered by Vois.com. They both have a much larger userbase of buyers and sellers than Vois.com. Both sites place the same heavy emphasis on feedback as Vois.com does.

How does the application look and feel to use?


Pages are very clean and uncluttered. The site is quite responsive, and page loads happen quickly. The social networking features of the site work well and the tools provided for posting and bidding on projects function well also. There is no advertising displayed on the site.

How does the registration process work?


Registration to the Vois.com site is free and is required to use the site. The registration process asks for first and last name, email address, country, password, date of birth and state or province and zip code. Validation of the email address is required.

What does it cost to use the application?


A free account is granted 625 credits – if these are used up more can be purchased. Users can also spend credits on bold listings or featured placement of their bids or projects. The basic cost to post a project is 100 credits. The basic cost to bid on a project is 5 credits. More credits can be purchased at the following rates: $15 for $375, $30 for 825, $60 for 1,800 and $90 for 3375.

Who would you recommend the application to?


The Vois.com site is recommended to anyone who has a service to offer or needs to purchase the services of others. The site brings a social networking aspect to the outsourcing and freelancing world, and does a good job of providing both buyers and sellers with the tools they need to complete successful projects.

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Websites were still at an early stage in the 90s. Designs were simplistic and websites were not really interactive. Information tended to be positioned in a small space in the centre – with lots of empty space all around. This was because people’s screens were smaller than today and in addition to that, people were not used to scrolling up and down the page. However, considering that websites were still relatively new in the 90s, any company that had developed a site – even if it was a single page was forward thinking and ahead of the game. Here we take a look at a selection (with thanks to WayBackMachine).

The American Broadcasting Company site (Oct 1996).

The Apple site (Apr 1997).

The Bank of Scotland site (Jan 1998).

The Google site (Dec 1998).

The BBC site (Dec 1996).

The Guardian site (Feb 1997).

The ITV site (Jun 1998).

The Yahoo site (Jan 1997).

Disclaimer: We are not attempting to take any credit for the above work – we have had nothing to do with any of the designs shown. If you have any questions regarding this please contact us.

Related posts:

1. Time Machine / Record Cover Designs
2. Time Machine / Fashion Mags from the 50s & 60s
3. Time Machine / Perfume Ads from the 90s

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It is a great honor for me to present you the new project that I was working on called Refilmagem. A site about movies that was planned to add in a same place all the information about movies premiers, upcoming and showtimes from our home town, Porto Alegre. The project is from our partner at Zee and his girlfriend, Eduardo and Gisele (yeap, GisMullr!), and bellow I will show you how was the whole process of this project.

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When Eduardo spoke to me about this project and asked me to create the layout for the site, I loved the idea – not because I love movies, because I only go to the movies, watch some films and that is it – but I loved the concept, the approach of showing this kind of content in a simple and direct way, without all of that ‘over information’ and ‘over colors’ from other movies sites.

The idea of Refilmagem came from a great frustration and difficulty of finding in a single site all the information about the premiers, showtimes, box office of the weekends and also the film review, poster and subtitled trailer. Gisele/Eduardo

To begin the work, he sent me some sites’ references that apply interesting concepts, as typography usage, content disposal, simple presentation, etc, so I could understand what he was looking for. Here are some of the references:

Emptees

Strange Beautiful

Volumedia

Robbie Manson

Development before the Design

The site was developed in Drupal, we love this CMS, and Eduardo is having lots of fun with the diversity of its modules. By the way he is being very successful with it. He had already started everything when I came along, and this process was pretty cool since we started the layout with the idea of the structure already defined.

Refilmagem is basically a mashup where almost 90% of the service is automatic utilizing many types of API’s and technologies like yahoo pipes, yql, json and jquery. Besides that the site counts with an editor/admin to give a special/personal touch to assure the that the service will run smoothly. Eduardo Sasso

Drupal with very basic CSS.

After that we started some mockups using pen and paper to see what we could do to maintain that same structure, or if we were going to test something different, how we would present the content, the header we were going to use and so on.

First wireframes ‘hand made’.

And of course, having a defined wireframe we went through a lot of layout tests until we got to the final design.

Different design tests

Fabio also participated in this final part of process to help with the layout, and his help was very important in this step of the work. When we found the model we all liked, we started to improve its design working on Fireworks and CSS at the same time. In some moments it’s faster to test straight at the CSS before, because we can gain time and we can have a notion about how it will the the behavior at the browser.

Adjusting the Design

basic CSS already with some definitions of colors and spaces.

Started to work with header elements, shades and gradients.

used lots of CSS3 at the shades and Round Corners

Header detail, it gave us a lot of work to refine and organize the content.

Some ‘last minute’ details.

And as Eduardo is a huge fan of Rocky, he also joined the project!

Right now this project (showtimes, movies, etc) is available for our home town – Porto Alegre, but soon it will be available for other cities in Brazil and maybe some cities around the world. We are already working on it. If you are not from Porto Alegre but you want to take a look at the project and browse around the site, go to refilmagem.com.br.

Final Design

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For this Sites of the Week we have selected some great sites such as the IInsight and Symphony. Also we’re featuring a nice flash site called Aksident, and much, much more! As usual we would love to hear from you, keep sending your suggestions to us and we will be more than happy to feature your site.

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You can send me your suggestions via Twitter twitter.com/FabianoMe or twitter.com/abduzeedo, and include #abdz_sites in the message.

DESIGN / CSS

Symphony – symphony-cms.com

From the inside out, Symphony is rooted in the very same principles that you adhere to in your own work. Openness. Standards compliance. Flexibility. Symphony doesn’t just help you get the job done, it helps you get the job done right.

Codare – codare.com.br

Codare is a company that has the distinction of developing communication solutions online, in a creative and objective, always seeking the growth of our customers through actions that put them in a conscious way in the virtual world. (via Google Translate)

APP / WEB APP

Ketchup – useketchup.com

Ketchup is for meetings.

VigLink – viglink.com

VigLink monetizes the ordinary hyperlink by offering an “install and forget” code snippet that automatically secures revenue from the sites you already link without any visible changes to your site.

COMMUNITY / PORTAL

DesignersMusic – designersmusic.com

Great design needs great music, and DesignersMusic is all about helping you find new inspration. Find out what other designers are listening to, sort music by job types and share that awesome band no one else has heard of. Stop reading and get started!

IInsight – iinsight.net

IINSIGHT network is an open social collaborative internet magazine that delivers carefully curated content on culture, music, arts, fashion & lifestyle. It was created for individuals with sophisticated tastes who appreciate quality entertainment out of the box.

FLASH SITE

kimm – kimm.no

Kimm Saatvedt is a Norwegian photographer based in Oslo. He does commercial work as well as ‘art’.

Aksident – aksident.be

Aksident, bedrijfstheater, een creatief huis dat wordt bewoond door een multidisciplinair team van acteurs, muzikanten en decorbouwers.

BLOG / PORTFOLIO

Daily Payne – dailypayne.com

Howdy the names Aaron, and this is my attempt at taking a photo a day and posting it here for everyone to see starting january 1st 2010. I know, I know it’s not original.

Notorious Design – notoriousdesign.co.uk

My name is Victoria (Tor) Burrows, and I am an aspiring video/3D artist. I graduated from the University of Worcester in 2008 with a First-Class degree in Digital Media, and am currently looking to develop my career in the film or gaming industry.

TEMPLATES

MyStream – woothemes.com

MyStream is a flexible and extremely customizable personal blog theme with massive social media & lifestreaming influences. Change the background to your visual identity, move the many available widgets around and VOILA: you have YourStream.

Clickloud – themeforest.net

Clickloud is a web 2.0 business software template. It’s mainly directed towards the companies that either produce or administrate web 2.0 software content (cloud software companies) but it may be used for a variety of other things: company portfolio, personal blog theme etc.

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A/B testing is the process, usually aided by tools like Google Website Optimizer, by which you are able to test different elements of your page such as graphics and text to see which generates the best results.

For example you might wish to work out which banner for your latest special offer generates the most clicks to the detail page. The results will help you make an informed decision not only about that campaign but future ones as well.

Sharing results

ABtests.com is a site that allows you to upload and share your A/B testing results. It’s not often this information is exposed as it could lead to an obvious competitive advantage. It’s definitely worth looking through the results as you will be instantly able to implement many of the ideas on your own sites.

Currently there are sections covering tests for:

• email newsletter sign-up pages
• home pages
• landing pages
• launch reminder pages
• pricing pages
• product pages
• sign-up pages

If you are into testing then you should check it out.

Site URL: http://www.abtests.com

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A design is only as good as the functional usability of it. Think of it like a pretty lady or handsome guy with no brain or personality. You can only handle it for so long because they don’t offer much, which eventually leaves you bored or uninterested.

Just like the scenario above, regardless of how amazing your design looks, without any functional usage, readers will only stay for so long. Even worse they probably won’t return, which is what any website does not want. There is no getting around content as the number one factor to gain returning visitors, but there are some design and functional aspects that can be implemented into your web design to push more users to visit your site again. We will look at some of these popular practices below.

Displaying Follower Count

The Internet is just like high school: everybody wants to be part of the crowd. If you have a lot of followers via social networks and/or subscribers, then why not share it with the world. By displaying the count, visitors will be more likely to subscribe themselves because they see so many other people are doing the same. I recommend not sharing your follower count until they are at least plus 500; however, the number can vary through different niches.

You can see a great example of this here, at Inspired Magazine. Above the fold, visitors can easily see that there are over 35,000 combined followers and would be enticed to become part of the crowd.

Another example of this can also be seen at Smashing Magazine. In fact, they even designate a much bigger spot than most sites by taking up nearly ¼ of the space above the fold.

Subscription Box

Another method to increase the rate of returning visitors is to build an email list. This is usually done through a subscription box placed somewhere on the sidebar. Obviously the higher up, the more likely it is to be seen.

As seen on The Wild Investor, the subscription box is placed in the sidebar above the fold. More importantly it is styled in a different color box that stands out from the rest of the site.

More often than not, sometimes you just need to put the offer directly in front of the users face. John Chow does this through a pop-up box that is displayed to first time visitors and briefly describes what the subscriber will get and a concise form to sign up.

Subscribe to Comments

Getting readers to post comments is great, but usually visitors will leave comments and then never return. You can see where this could make it hard to build any sort of dialogue. A good method to try and fight this problem is to give your readers an option to subscribe to comments, either through RSS feed or email notification. This will not only bring them back to your site, but could also build your comments as dialogue will continue to grow.

Problogger simple adds a check box at the bottom of his comments box to subscribe using ‘Subcribe to Comments’ WordPress plugin.

Six Revisions attacks this problem by using a text link that directs you to the comments RSS feed.

Display Popular Articles

Whether your visitors come from search engines or referred from another site, odds of them subscribing or returning to your website will be based off more than one article or piece of your content. So help facilitate this process by sharing your most popular content.

Noupe does this by displaying a thumbnail and comment count of the 12 most popular articles. Not only does this show what type of articles is published on this site, but also when you see multiple articles with 100+ comments, odds of returning just jumped a whole lot more.

While a design should be pleasing to the eye, it should also be functional. What good does an amazing looking house mean if it doesn’t have a kitchen? Ultimately your design should facilitate growth, which could be hard to do without returning users. Hopefully the above examples and practices will inspire you to make some adjustments to your current or future web design.

With nearly a decade of experience in web design and owner of his own web development company, Amey Shivapurkar shares the latest webmastering trends, tools, and practices over at Webtolerant.

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As web designers, we never know what field our next client is gonna to come from, so we always have to be prepared to work in their niche, even if it is outside our proverbial design box, and therefore outside our comfort zone. Though research comes naturally with most design work, already having a base to go from never hurts.

This base, could also mean the difference between getting the job, or getting passed over. So it beneficial to familiarize yourself with the common elements that normally make various niche sites stand out from the others in their genre. In this post, we will be looking at the elements of great band websites. So if your next client needs you to build a site for this field, here are some must-haves for your design.

Also, you will notice scattered throughout the post are a few ‘Greatest Hits’, or in other words, some of the best band sites out on the webs.

Band Photo & Member Info

The first, is the most obvious, and one of the most important elements to include. The picture of the band with band member information. Remember most of their fans not only want to know more about the music, but they also want to know more about the individuals that make up the group. So remember to make this a priority, not only because of its necessity to the site and the fans, but also because of the way it can feed the design.

With band websites you want to make sure that the design of the site matches the personality and attitude of the band without going overboard with flash. The time you invest to build the site and put everything together could all be for not if the design doesn’t embody the essence and feel of the band. Keep it simple so as to not detract from the band, make it useable so they can get all the info they need, and make it relevant to not break from the tone of the band.

Greatest Hits – Fallout Boy

Fallout Boy’s website does a great job of both showcasing the talent and allowing the band to connect with their fans. I love their Q&A section for allowing fans to ask questions, it’s a great personalization technique. Their tour info page could use some work to make it a bit clearer, but it’s not much of a deterrent. Joining and signing in may do that, but I wouldn’t recommend making fans join your site just to get your touring info.

Showcase The Music

Now given that the band’s art is their music, you want to make sure that it is highlighted on the site with an appropriately styled presentation befitting their work. So be sure to have a great looking playlist for the users. Remember not everyone visiting the site has necessarily heard the band’s music before, they could have been sent there by friends. Having a well designed playlist can draw new listeners and help to gain new fans, so pay attention to this element.

And being that past is prologue, you want to be sure that you are not only focusing on the band’s current music, but also featuring and pointing visitors to their full discography. Without listing their past body of work, you are in effect minimalizing the band’s previous efforts. And while it is not necessary to have their entire discography on the front page, you are going to want to make sure that the navigation to it is clearly marked and easy to find.

Quick tip: Don’t have the music start automatically, let the visitors decide whether they want to listen or not. Generally it is not a good idea to take over a user’s sound.

Greatest Hits – Kings of Leon

The Kings of Leon’s site is another great example of a band site done right. Their Discography allows logged in fans to rate and review the albums. This is not only a fantastic way to show confidence in the music, but also to demonstrate how much the band values their fan’s input. Their events page lets you know that there aren’t any upcoming events so you don’t have to wonder if the page is working, and removing any guesswork is a must.

Merchandise

Another main element that fans of the band are going to be looking for when coming to the band’s website is merchandise. Not every band will want sell merchandise on their site or even have any to offer, but if your clients choose to have a shop you need to make sure to use a dependable shopping cart system to set them up. Also the presentation of the merchandise is key, so pay attention to the styling you use. You want to compliment it, do not distract from it.

Once the shop is in place, you may think that your job there is done, and it very well could be, if that is how you want to play it. However this is an opportunity to go above and beyond and help steer your client in the direction of some reliable and safe outlets to provide great customer service. By helping them find a service to assist them in this arena, you are demonstrating your passion for customer service, and helping your reputation. Pointing them in the direction of services like Zendesk, and getting them a customer service base to work with helps guarantee they will not be calling you to handle these needs.

Greatest Hits – U2

If you are designing for a big name band, then you have a lot to live to up to, but in the case of U2’s site you can see another way it has been done with style. The site has a great tour page where you can actually find links to purchase tickets to upcoming shows. The depth of the Discography is also engaging, containing backgrounds on each album as well as lyrics to each song.

Calendar of Events

Another classic must have element when designing a band site, is a calendar of events. This is another area of the site that the fans are certainly going to be searching for, so you do not want to make them have to look far. You need to be sure that the fanbase knows where and when they can catch the band performing, and you as the designer need to include this section and make it really pop. You want this to be more than just a stagnant event list, you want it to draw as much attention as the rest of the site.

This can be a tricky element to effectively include, especially if the client has to be in charge of updating it regularly with information. The client may not have much experience with site maintenance, and that can often tie your hands as to how to work in an element like this. This could also offer an opportunity for you to get a recurring maintenance contract with the client to handle these updates to insure that they are done without breaking the design.

Greatest Hits – Arctic Monkeys

Arctic Monkeys are another great band with an equally awesome website. Just like U2’s site, AM’s gigs page also allows visitors and fans to purchase tickets for upcoming shows. This is one of the few band sites I came across that actually had a way to contact the band. They also have a really in depth discography allowing users to comment on their music. And most of their songs have lyrics posted on the site.

Newsletter

Beyond just a calendar to help the band’s fans keep up with what is going on with the group, the inclusion of an online newsletter than can be posted to the site is another great way to get this done. This element offers a bit more of a personal reach into the band, making more of a connection with the fans. So steering the client in this direction not only furthers the scope of the site, but the effectiveness as well.

Newsletters offer you yet another opportunity to flex your design muscles and wow your clients and site visitors alike, but again, this may not be an area that the client wants to go in. Though if you can explain the benefits effectively to them, you might soon find yourself designing the layout of a band newsletter.

Greatest Hits – Band of Horses

The Band of Horses website is an awesomely creative, extremely original and well designed site with fluid navigation that really adds to the overall feel of the band. The band incorporates a newsletter and blog into their site, along with a performance schedule to fully connect with their audience and keep them informed. Which does demonstrate a desire that your clients may share, to have all these various avenues to reach out on their site.

Contact Information

Now this next element is not necessarily specific to a band site, but the customization and styling of the contact information is still key for those looking to get into contact with the group. You also want to make sure that the information is easy to locate and access so that opportunities do not easily slip passed your cient.

Also, given that you are setting up a website for a band, the amount of contact information may be limited so the group does not get overwhelmed with fanatical followers bombarding them with fanmail spam. So it may be a better idea to set up a contact form on the site rather than simply giving out the various phone numbers or e-mail addresses. Once again, you will want to be sure that this is a form that you can customize to fit the tone and feel of the rest of the site.

Greatest Hits – Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan has been a musical icon for generations, and his transition to the digital world via his site is just as stellar as the man himself. Encompassing so much more than just what we have discussed here, Dylan’s site has some extra features that go above and beyond to highlight the fans. Like a community page that pulls in fan blogs that discuss the music and the man behind the myth.

That is a Wrap

That covers things from this end. What are your thoughts on the matter of band sites? What makes them shine? What elements would you include on your list of must-haves? And what band sites do you think are doing things right?

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To save you the hassle of running out to the store in mid-dinner prep for a missing ingredient, tell Cooking by Numbers what you already have in the fridge and cupboards. It scans its database, then churns out a recipe using stuff you already have in the kitchen. For random recipes that don’t require a specific set of ingredients, click “I Feel Lucky” instead.

Most of the recipes are standard fare—roasts, stews, and so on—along with a few more unique ideas like Apple, Orange, and Cheese Salad. Our favorite was Bacon Surprise: it’s nothing but a rasher of bacon—that’s the surprise.

Cooking by Numbers is based in the UK so measurements are given in metric form, but there’s a handy conversion chart if you need a primer on how many ounces are in a gram. The site also has a section that demonstrates how to master common cooking skills like separating an egg or dicing a pepper.

Cooking by Numbers won’t help you plan your next 12-course dinner party, and most of the meals are hardly gourmet, but it’s a great resource for pulling a quick meal together without an extra trip out to the market. What kinds of meals have you made on the fly with ordinary stuff from the pantry that turned out to be surprisingly fantastic? Share them in the comments.

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This is one of the useful web applications designed by Boost New Media to make usability testing simple. The applications let you “look over the shoulder” of people in your target audience while they use your website. You get to watch and listen to customers as they browse your site, and discover where they get confused and frustrated.

I hope designers, developers and programmers will like this list, but you can also use them and will love them whether you are an office worker, a manager, a supervisor, a student, a home user, etc. Most of them are not very well-known, but they are really amazing in respect to their features. This is the list of Five Useful Apps To Make Usability Testing Simple at Work. Just take a look at them and share your thought’s here.

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FiveSecondTest

Five second tests help you easily identify the most prominent elements of your user interfaces. While you need to purchase tokens to unlock some premium test features, you can create and run as many tests as you like for free. Creating a new test only takes a few seconds, registration is optional and we provide multiple ways of viewing and organising your results. Five second tests get you feedback on your designs fast, so they’re ideal for running as part of your design workflow. People use five second test to locate calls to action, optimize landing pages, and run A/B tests. You can use them for whatever you like.

Usabilla

Get feedback on any wireframe, mockup or webpage in a blink, clear visualizations to analyze your feedback, available in 15 languages.

IntuitionHQ

IntuitionHQ is a web application designed by Boost New Media to make usability testing simple. It reports back test results with heat-maps and click numbers so you can easily see how your users respond to your site based on tasks you set. IntuitionHQ gives you the data to design a quality experience for your users and, because it’s quick and easy to use, you’ll get high participation rates.

UserTesting

UserTesting.com lets you “look over the shoulder” of people in your target audience while they use your website. You get to watch and listen to customers as they browse your site, and discover where they get confused and frustrated.

Clixpy

Clixpy is a web usability testing tool. It’s very easy to install, just by pasting a few lines of JavaScript code in your site’s HTML. When users browse your website Clixpy traces everything they do and then plays it for you, giving you the opportunity to extract any information you may need.

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The game is called Carrot Sticks. Its an online game site that will allow your kids to practice by themselves or compete with other kids.  At the beginning of the game, they will also be allowed to customize their own avatar.  They will need to solve math problems step by step and increase their scores for them to reach the next level.  There is no sign up required too.

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Want to help the people of Haiti who lost homes, friends and family members in the 7.0-magnitude earthquake yesterday? Well, there are several places online where you can easily and quickly donate without even leaving your desk.

Be careful, though. Some callous people have set up fake charities soliciting donations that won’t really help anyone. The U.S. Better Business Bureau runs a site where U.S. donors can verify that a nonprofit is legit before donating.

Donate on the Web

You have a lot of options on the web; here’s our list of trusted organizations. All of them will accept credit card donations through online forms.

The American Jewish World Service has set up the Haiti Earthquake Relief Fund to respond to the crisis by supporting a network of organizations it works with.

AmeriCares has pledged $5 million to Haitian quake relief, and is soliciting donations to a general emergency disaster relief fund to help it accomplish that.

CARE is sending relief workers into the city of Port-au-Prince and needs funds to support its efforts. Suggested donations range from $50 to $1,000, but you can name your own amount if you prefer.

Catholic Relief Services has an office in Haiti, and luckily it’s still standing even though one of its neighbors collapsed. The organization is accepting donations of any amount.

Direct Relief International has committed up to $1 million in aid through two on-the-ground partners, and is sending containers of medical material aid.

Oxfam has 200 people on the ground to deal with the crisis, and began its efforts by trying to get clean water to victims of the quake. One of its staffers recorded a podcast describing the situation. You can donate on the American or UK site, depending on where you’re located.

Yele Haiti is sponsored by prominent Haitian-born musician Wyclef Jean. You can donate through its website or via text message as described in the next segment.

UPDATE: Google Support Disaster Relief is a website Google has updated to respond to the crisis. Google has promised $1 million in support, but the site is also an easy place to donate money to either UNICEF or CARE. It also provides hospital addresses and links to sources for news on the situation.

Donate With a Text Message

Musician Wyclef Jean has used Twitter to rally web users to contribute to his grassroots Yele Haiti earthquake fund. He’s urged his followers to text “Yele” to the number 501501. If you send the text, the organization will receive $5. The amount will be added to your next cell phone bill. Consider retweeting Wyclef’s updates and get some of your Twitter followers to donate, too.

There’s another texting option spreading through Twitter. You can text “HAITI” to 90999 to donate $10 via the Red Cross. Thanks to ABC News for pointing these out.

UPDATE: Reader Suggestions

Our readers have also suggested Doctors Without Borders, UNICEF and SOPUDEP for our readers in Canada, Ben Stiller’s stillerstrong.org, the United Nations World Food Program, an orphanage near the site called OASIS, the orphanage-supporting organization Hearts With Haiti, Partner’s in Health, Latter Day Saints Philanthropies, Nazarene Compassionate Ministries, AMURT, Missionaries of the Poor, World Vision, Convoy of Hope, Compassion International, Episcopal Development & Relief, the Lambi Fund of Haiti, and Food for the Poor. We’re unable to investigate and verify all of these organizations, but feel free to look into them for yourself if you’re looking for other options.

Do you have any other ideas about how to help the people of Haiti? Let us and your fellow readers know in the comments.

[img credit: @CarelPedre and @MarvinAdy]

Tags: charity, donate, Earthquake, haiti, oxfam, relief, trending, wyclef jean

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Pingdom recently compared a number of social sites in terms of monthly page views per visitor.  Facebook blew away the competition, scoring almost twice as high as the next-closest site, Hi5.  It ranked ahead of MySpace by a margin of about 2.5 times, and proved almost ten times as engaging as Twitter.

Of course, a post on the Royal Pingdom blog did highlight one potential problem with the rankings, stating, "These numbers are bound to be a bit unfair to Twitter.  Many of its users rely heavily on applications to access the site and don’t necessarily spend much time on the site itself."

Still, Facebook’s win seems pretty undeniable, and the margin of its lead is even more impressive if you consider the size of its user base (350 million people, according to an official blog post published early this morning).

Pingdom observed, "This is bound to be extremely good news for Facebook’s income from advertising."

Related Articles:

> Facebook, McAfee Partner

> Facebook Becomes Sponsor Of Apache Software Foundation

> Respond To Facebook Comments From Your Email

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Editors note: Learn more about measuring the success of your site at Future of Web Apps Miami – February 22nd – 24th 2010. Buy your ticket now.

Ryan pointed out a nice little feature of Google Webmaster Tools recently and I thought it worth sharing.

Hidden away under the labs tab is a feature called “Fetch as Googlebot”. With “Fetch as Googlebot” you are able to see exactly how a page appears to Google when it’s crawled. Here’s the results for carsonified.com/blog. Click the image below to see it full size.

Why is this useful?

• It allows you to troubleshoot a page’s poor performance in search results. For example it will identify content that can’t be crawled by Google.
• It can help identify if your site has been hacked with malicious and undesired content
• It identifies he HTTP response returned by your server
• It highlights the HTML code as seen by Google. Useful if you use a lot of generated content in the page.

Other useful tools

As well as “Fetch as Googlebot” Webmaster Tools has a number of useful options including:

• Sitemap submission
• Facility to edit your sitelinks (links that appear beneath the pages search result in Google)
• Help with reindexing your site if you move it to a new domain
• Top search queries, keywords and subscriber stats
• Help with robots.txt files
• Crawler stats

You can find more out about Webmaster Tools on the Google web site.

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This is an era of products galore. Each product and producer is trying to outdo the other. Marketing costs are turning out to be more than production costs as marketing has an ability to take products and services to a new high, or bite the dust. Without marketing, a product is as good as non-existing. At the same time, clients and consumers do not have enough time to go around looking for everything that is offered. Clients want it all on their fingertips. Keeping this in mind, internet or online marketing has quickly come to the rescue. It bridges the gap between your service or product and client or consumer.

Having your own website has become an important marketing tool. Almost all products and services have their own presence on the internet in the form of a website. However, there are numerous websites trying to affect the decisions of clients. So, website marketing has become an important and integral part of every business’s marketing strategy. Let’s understand the five most important steps to website marketing.

Understand client requirements

Understanding what your clients are looking for is the key to effective website marketing. Amidst a plethora of websites on the same subject, a client will most likely stick to the sites that are focused on her unique requirements and give her exactly what she’s looking for; e.g. if a client is looking for a website on alternative medicine; the website must focus solely on the various alternative medicines and not generalize on all types.

Get the right design and content

The rightly designed website will catch and hold more eyeballs. Your design should not only have right aesthetic appeal but also facilitate easy navigation. To many flashes, to bright colors running at the same time, plus disturbing pop-ups are sure fire turn offs. Clusters of information placed on the homepage may dumbfound the visitor. At the same time, too little info will dampen her. Your site should strike the right balance of information and placement.

Once you’re done with the designing part of your website, comes another important part, content. Your content should always be current, crisp and clear. It should convey exact information without being verbose. It should be logical, smooth, and flowing. The language should be set keeping the client in mind. The quality of your content should reflect a professional attitude.

Make it user friendly

Once on your website, the client should get important information like variety of products, possibly with their images, price ranges and product availability. Your website should facilitate ordering products online with great ease. It should also give requisite information like contact numbers of the home office or representatives, firm’s location, previous track record and after the sale service.

As customer choices and preferences are always distinct and all of them cannot be addressed on the site; provide for direct contact with your customer service department in order to answer their queries. In case of an email, a prompt reply must be assured.

Blow your trumpet

Once you are done with your website, it is high time to get on the rooftop and tell people that you’ve arrived! What’s the use of a wonderfully designed, beautiful looking site that few know about or catches hardly any eyeballs? Avail other mediums of advertising viz. seminars, articles, television, newspapers,ect… to widen your client base and reach every possible client. Get press releases distributed. A good advertising campaign is essential to attract initial traffic to your site.

Utilize the internet to its fullest. Begin blogging about your site and products/services. Forward links to as many other websites as possible. Get links on social networking websites. In simple terms, talk, talk and talk more about your site.

Action backup

The types of services and products that you offer on your website must be put into action by an efficient team. Your client must feel she is getting a good value for her money, and also her time spent. This will assist to establish a reputation for your business and create your brand image. Website marketing will only be effective if and when your promises are fulfilled in reality.

And yes! Do not rest on your laurels. Continue updating your website with any new developments and also, continue to support it with on going action.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Top 5 Steps to Website Marketing

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Who Needs a Professional Article Writer?

At the basic level, everyone seriously looking to make an impact on web audiences needs a dedicated article writer. Hobby writing for web content is fine for personal projects, but it doesn’t drum up a great deal of interest in the long term. It has been demonstrated again and again, the most successful websites are those that regularly produce the content their audience wants, the more frequently the better. So the need for an article writer should actually be taken as a given. The more pressing question then becomes, “Who should that writer be?”

Who Indeed?

In some cases, the answer is obvious – you. You know your material, you’re able to write confidently, and you’ve got inspiration in buckets. In this case, good, the problem is solved. Go and write that content, and perhaps pass it by a talented associate now and again for review.

However, this obviously isn’t always the case. Some site owners are good promoters and businessmen, but lack the highly developed writing skill necessary to really dig into a piece and make it shine for the audiences even once, much less week after week or day upon day. Or perhaps the owner feels comfortable writing some articles, but wants another point of view in specialized or technical pieces. In this case, the owner needs to acquire a professional writer to provide these services. The trick here lies in recognizing your strengths and limitations, and identifying exactly what the needs of your site are.

The Writer You Need

As with any hiring process, selecting a good writer requires understanding the business in question. Each site has its own unique needs, and should seek to acquire writers who meet those needs. It certainly is true that many people can write effectively on many topics, but the impact will be greatest when the writer is chosen for abilities directly relating to the job at hand.

For example, a site focusing on producing highly technical how-to manuals for home chemistry will demand a very different writer than a site focusing on topical, biting political satire. Each demands a professional who cannot only write well, but understands the topic itself and can write believably. Someone with no experience in politics will quickly be identified in the latter case, and in the former someone who flunked basic chemistry won’t be able to write more than superficial material at their best.

Obviously, the writer also must be good at writing itself – they must be able to construct effective sentences, use proper syntax, and command the language in a manner that keeps readers both interested and informed. Most importantly, they need to be able to write specifically at the level of the typical audience for the site. Masters’ degree level academic writing can be marvelous and compelling in peer reviewed journals, but would be entirely out of place on the aforementioned satirical archive.

How to Find Them

The key to getting the best writer for a website is research. Once you understand your needs as far as the writer goes, it’s time to begin looking for them. Fortunately, there are a number of ways to do so despite the overwhelming anonymity and size of the web.

First, consider your own colleagues and acquaintances. Frequently we have many associates in our field of specialty, and many of them harbor hidden talents. Consult with your co-workers and others that you know, to see if they can meet the needs at hand.

Another source of information on professional writers is the plethora of freelance writing websites. There are dozens of sites employing short-term writers on a variety of projects with skill levels ranging from high school and college level writing to highly technical productions involving text and multimedia elements. Frequently, these sites employ a ratings and review system, allowing you to look into their reputation and perhaps their prior work history.

Additionally, there is always the interview. This need not be a physical sit-down session – it can consist of posting an advertisement seeking a talented writer along with a requirement that they submit writing samples (either previously published pieces or unique work based on the site’s requirements). This will frequently result in a deluge of applicants, so owners are advised to be prepared to so some heavy reading in this case.

For good content on your website, the key is to identify the exact needs of your site, find the exact style and skill of writer you need, and then to strive to meet that need unfailingly. Have an open mind and be willing to adapt to new, good ideas, but stick with the goal and vision for your site and find the best person to fill the position you’ve created.

About The Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is a Copywriter and co-founder of Brandsplat. Brandcasting uses informative content and state-of-the-art internet distribution and optimization to build links and drive the right kind of traffic to your website. Go to http://www.Brandsplat.com/ or visit our blog at: http://www.brandsplatblog.com/

Read more articles written by: Enzo F. Cesario

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Article Writer – Do You Need One?

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Raskin likens the idea to how Firefox (and other browsers) currently handle phishing attack warnings, using visual icons and simple language.

For the active social web user, keeping track of which bits of your data are public and which are private on different sites is a chore. Some websites share your photos, status updates, your list of friends, who you’re following and other data on the open web by default. Some share nothing. The rest are somewhere in the middle.

Part of the problem is the privacy policies themselves. They are complex, mind-numbingly long legal documents. We routinely ignore them, breezing past them by clicking “I agree.” Dangerous behavior, indeed.

Raskin and his supporters have borrowed some ideas from the way Creative Commons licensing works, and the way licensing options are denoted on content sites. Originally, the idea was to create a Creative Commons model for privacy policies — that is, a common, readable, reusable set of policies much like the Creative Commons licenses for content — but that plan was abandoned because policies differ too much from site to site. There’s no easy boilerplate for privacy like there is for content publishing.

But the icon concept remains: A website creates a privacy policy and chooses from a limited set of standard icons that reflect the written policy. Is your profile public by default? Your photos, or status messages? Each setting has its own icon, and the group of settings are indicated by a short stack of icons. The icon set is then detected by the browser and displayed to the user. If there are no icons chosen, the browser offers a warning along the lines of its phishing warning, something like: Be careful, this site might be giving away or selling your data.

Raskin is very clear that, so far, this is a work in progress. There are, as of yet, no icons designed, and the details of how they would be implemented remain vague. Nor has Mozilla made any official announcement that it would support such a system.

However, recent events have proven there’s clearly a need for a standardized, front-and-center privacy notification system. In December, Facebook began a shift towards looser default privacy settings that encourage users to share more of their data. Just last week, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an interview with TechCrunch’s Mike Arrington, noted that people’s notions of privacy on the social web evolve often, and that social web sites will have to continually update their own privacy policies to reflect those changes. As a result, Facebook’s new defaults will offer less privacy. Zuckerberg’s words set off a fierce debate on the topic, with Marshall Kirkpatrick of ReadWriteWeb presenting the clearest counterargument that changing social mores should not lead to looser default privacy settings on the social web.

We’ve often said the browser is the most logical place to display identity and privacy information to the user. As people surf from site to site, they should be able to see, at a glance, what level of privacy they’re currently working with. Raskin’s model sounds like a pretty good plan, though implementing it might be a bit more difficult.

One obvious problem: What’s to stop a site from using icons that are totally different than what the written policy actually says? Raskin and crew want the icons to supersede the written policy so, in that scenario, the written policy is trumped by the icons and the user retains their rights. Whether or not an icon can legally trump a written document is something Raskin doesn’t directly address, and, as one commenter points out, the situation gets much more complex when you start considering international legal systems.

If you’ve got ideas or would like to participate in the discussion, head over to Raskin’s blog or sign up for the upcoming privacy workshop hosted at Mozilla on Jan. 27 (see Aza’s post for full details).

See Also:

• Mark Zuckerberg on Privacy and the Future of Facebook News Feeds
• Google Wants Global Privacy Rules
• Protect Your Privacy: Stop Cache Tracking in Firefox

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Unlock the power of your site’s links and earn extra money from your site automatically, transparently and honestly.

• Install VigLink for free with one easy copy/paste.
• Create links in your blog, articles, or webpages as normal.
• When a visitor clicks on a link, we follow along.
• If a purchase is made, you earn a commission.

Get paid by the links on your site.

VigLink monetizes the ordinary hyperlink by offering an “install and forget” code snippet that automatically secures revenue from the sites you already link without any visible changes to your site.

Over 7,500 sites including Amazon.com, eBay, and many others, already pay for traffic on a commission basis totaling approximately $1.5 billion in commissions. Unfortunately, participating in these programs is labor-intensive and error-prone. VigLink research shows that less than half of all qualifying links are properly enrolled.

VigLink turns this problem on its head. Install just a few lines of JavaScript on your page, and VigLink makes invisible modifications. Whenever a user clicks away from your site, the destination URL is subtly altered to credit you for any resulting sales. VigLink automatically aggregates the resulting commissions so you get paid.

http://www.viglink.com/

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Facebook posted a message on its site announcing that it had added a new feature that enables users to reply to comments directly through email without having to log into the site.

And unless you have altered your settings so that they stop incoming email notifications, you are likely to receive an email whenever someone tags you with a picture, video, posts comments on your status or sends you Wall posts.

Usually when you receive an email notification via your Facebook page, the email has a link that you have to click on and follow to log into your Facebook where you can respond.

But “Today, we’re launching the ability for you to participate in these conversations by replying directly to these email notifications. When you receive an email notification about comments, you can just click “Reply” and start typing a comment at the top of the email. Then hit “Send” from your email and your reply will automatically be added as a comment on Facebook without you having to even log in,” the message on company’s site said.

In its effort to streamline its service, Facebook keeps improving the site by adding new features and applications that should make it easier for users to communicate.

So for many users whose companies have blocked Facebook and for students who can’t log into the site during classes, the new addition sounds like a bounty except when you try it and it doesn’t work as I have just seen.

Responding to why the new feature didn’t work when I tested it, a Facebook spokesperson said in an email that the company is rolling out the feature over the next couple of weeks.

“It is currently only live for a small percentage of users,” the spokesperson said. “If you don’t see it yet, please be patient and check back again in the next few days.”

Readers, have you seen the new “Reply” feature in your Facebook notification links so far?

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Has Twitter’s growth really stopped, as we postulated yesterday? Not so fast says Twitter CEO Evan Williams. In a tweet this evening, Williams says that “Across all metrics that matter, yesterday was Twitter’s highest-usage day ever (and today will be bigger).”

While he doesn’t say what those metrics are, one can assume he’s talking about tweet volume – certainly the greatest measure of how active Twitter’s userbase is, as well as crucial to creating value in the site’s search partnerships with Google and Microsoft.

So why then are services like Compete and Quantcast showing Twitter in a state of perpetual flatline? The theory that seemed to get the most support yesterday was that users are simply accessing the site in ways other than Twitter.com – on mobile handsets and on third-party desktop clients.

Still, it’s possible that Twitter isn’t adding new users at the same clip it was in the first half of 2009, but rather, those that have clung to the service are using it more actively than ever before. That also makes sense given that Twitter becomes considerably more interesting as you follow more people and more people follow you.

Nonetheless, perhaps the demise of Twitter has been greatly exaggerated.

Tags: twitter

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"Now that Friend Connect is integrated with these popular open source CMS platforms, site owners can make registration easier for users and offer them a set of social features — all without writing a single line of code," says Globant’s Mauro Gonzalez on Google’s Social Web Blog. "Even site owners without programming experience can add these plugins."

The Google Friend Connect integrations with Drupal and Joomla include features like: 

- Interest Polls
- AdSense
- Newsletter Subscriptions
- Featured Content
- Gadgets (like Members, Comments, Recommendations, Activities, Reviews and the Social Bar)

"When a user joins a Friend Connect site, an account is created and automatically associated with his or her external account of choice (Google, Yahoo, or Twitter, for example)," explains Gonzalez. "The social gadgets can be placed anywhere in the site using the standard Drupal and Joomla administration interfaces. Site owners can moderate reviews and comments, create new polls to collect information about community members, and then advertise on the site using that information. The newsletter feature allows site owners to create and manage their newsletters using Friend Connect’s interface, and site members can subscribe and unsubscribe as desired using the newsletter gadget."

There are demos of both the Drupal and Joomla Google Friend Connect integrations set up here and here respectively. Some are hoping Google will continue to provide integrations for other content management systems, and it is probably not too much of a stretch to assume they will do so in the future.

Related Articles:

> Twitter Users a Click Away From Google Friend Connect

> Google Aims to Put the "Friend" in Friend Connect

> Google Connects Friends on WordPress Blogs

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I was recently going through a discovery process with a Fortune 500 executive who was guiding his company’s Web site redesign, and I inquired directly about the search aspects of the project. His response: “Search is not relevant to this process.” Contrary to what he was saying, search was in fact critical to the overall process; he was just clearly unaware of his company’s campaign history and investment in the search channel. In light of this response, seemingly old and worn advice is worth another spin or two around the block, especially if it will help convey the natural search value of a legacy Web presence.

In enterprise marketing, it is not a question of whether your company’s site is going to be redesigned or not, it is simply a question of when. Most companies do some kind of major redesign or tweak every two years, and if they haven’t just relaunched, they are planning for the next one. So the “when” is most often “now,” no matter where you are in the process. The important thing to remember here is that search should be a key consideration at every stage of the process, whether it is selecting a provider, setting requirements, producing comps, coding or site deployment.

So how do you fit natural search into the process? Here are a few ideas to start:

Use site language and messaging that is consistent with the user’s perception of your product or service.
For the most part, search engines are still very literal, and truly effective semantic intelligence still lies far ahead. Position content and language that reflects the way users search, in order to rank for those terms. The path to understanding this language is through linguistic and keyword research, and also by studying and knowing your target. Language and keywords impact and guide information architecture and content strategies, among other aspects.

Read your log files (and/or review analytics reports).
If you want to know what you stand to lose in a site redesign, take a look at what you are currently gaining in terms of traffic, visibility, revenue, and conversions. Are there any particular Holy Grail terms like “travel,” “shopping,” or “banking” that may be giving you a lot of traffic? See a section of a site that is referring a ton of long-tail terms? You will likely find some areas that are worth preserving.

Ensure that RIAs are both crawlable and indexable by search engines.
Rich Internet technologies that are implemented without search engines in mind can instantly render a once-thriving natural search program into total obscurity. Flash and Ajax are key tools in the design and development toolbox, but considerations must be made for search upfront.

Avoid the creation of URL canonicalization issues.
When you change phone numbers, the phone company will leave a recorded message telling the new number to the person who called your old number. This is the effect a 301 permanent redirect has on a search engine — it applies the old URL and backlinks to the new URL; the search engine is happy, and your site is happy. A canonicalization problem occurs when 302 redirects are pointed to permanently moved pages. I have seen instances where clients have gone through four or five redesigns using 302s, and a string of six-to-eight redirects points to a single page, each with its own set of inbound links. This basically makes it difficult for engines to determine the “real URL” to show in results and apply backlinks to. How do you fix it? See the next point.

Set up a redirection plan.
In just about every redesign project, at least some content is removed, and URLs go away. Help the engines and your users by using a 301 redirect to point them to the most similar page on your site, or the site map, home page, or custom 404 page. Spend the time to map out which URLs are going away, and where they should be pointed. And don’t sit on the plan —do it on the day or evening that a site is pushed out of production.

Don’t remove content that supports coveted rankings without assessing risks first.
One mistake I see frequently is when content is removed from a site, with no replacement content to support the valuable rankings and visibility it has previously created. Before axing existing site content, determine how difficult it would be to re-attain the ranking, the ranking’s importance in terms of traffic and revenue, or if it is your CEO’s favorite pet ranking. Then create a plan for bridging new content, or leaving it alone.

Include search as both a business and technical requirement before planning has even started.
If search is not a consideration and priority early on, then it will be 10 times harder and more expensive to try to re-engineer at the end of or after the project.

Ensure that there is a voice for search within the Web site team structure.
Having a search specialist as part of the Web design team (and implementing their recommendations) will do a lot to ensure a healthy transition in the redesign and relaunch process, in addition to the potential for growth. The list above is useless without some subjective strategy behind it. Get experienced search optimization help that is fit to your company’s unique situation, needs and goals, and make it an integral part of the redesign process.

These are just a few considerations to get you started. Feel free to add your own thoughts and considerations for redesign at the Search Insider blog.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Designing Web Sites For Search Visibility

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Hey Everyone, I’ve got some new eye candy for you to browse. Neil Duerden, a world famous Illustrator and digital artist always sends me an email when he updates his site, so I thought I’d pass along the news. There are over 70 new images on his site. Head on over and check it out, there’s lots of great stuff to look at. Below are just a few examples from the updated works.

a

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Originally posted at Rafe’s Radar

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I was just wondering, does a longer URL registration period have a positive effect on a site’s search engine ranking?

Thanks,

Louisa
————————————–

Hi Louisa

Google has confirmed in the past that both domain age and ownership history may impact the way a site is handled by the algorithm, albeit slightly. But what you’re asking is whether registering a domain for a longer period of time makes a difference to the site’s ranking?

I haven’t researched this for other search engines, but I recall that a couple of people have asked this question in the Google Webmaster forum in the past.

Google staff member John Mu responded that the length of a domain’s registration period does NOT impact how Google ranks the site. As he states, many registrars don’t publish expiration details and so if Google can’t adequately determine when a site expires, they can’t compare it to other sites so they don’t include that as a ranking factor. Besides which, a registration period for a domain doesn’t reveal much about a site.

The content on the domain is much more important from a search engine perspective than how many years it has been registered for.

Kalena

————————————–

Got a Reader Rescue question of your own? Send it to kjordan [ at ] sitepronews [ dot ] com and you might see it featured here.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Reader Rescue : Does a longer domain registration period affect ranking?

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We’ve implemented our new site design! With that in mind, bear with us for a bit until the new design is bug-free. I think everything is working and looking as it should (thanks to spending my entire weekend in front of the nerdbox), but if you catch anything drop me a line in the comments. Thanks!

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Previously on Fubiz

• Alyssa Monks
• Joon Brandt Reel 2009
• Augmented Reality Architecture

Go to Source

Google wants to fill its index with quality, error free websites that are beneficial and targeted to their searchers. Enter Google’s Webmaster Central Tools ….. http://google.com/webmasters . If you’ve never heard of it, it’s Google’s way of helping you with your website’s indexing. Not too long ago, it went through a redesign and upgrade process which made it more useful and easier to use than ever.

First thing you’ll need to sign in with is a Google account. Google requires an account to be able to use all of their free services, including Blogger and Analytics, so if youdon’t have one, now’s the time to register.

If you have multiple websites to list, that’s no problem. Up to 500 sites can be added all under one roof. You will need to perform what Google calls “site verification” for each site submitted. This proves to Google that you are the owner of the site before they release detailed information to you. At one time it was a lengthy process of cutting and pasting code into the head section of your index page or uploading a separate HTML file. Now they’ve streamlined the process and it’s all done with one click of an email.

If you use Blogger.com, “Webmaster Tools” can be enabled from within the Blogger dashboard under tools/resources. Once your sites have been submitted, you’ll have access to a whole suite of useful tools. The website is broken up into three main sections.

1. Site Configuration (Information about your site)
2. Your Site on the Web (Google data re: your site)
3. Diagnostics (Any problems Google had while indexing your site)

If your website has never received a decent ranking with Google, these numerous reports will help you in tracking down the problem. It’s truly an “eye opener” to see your site through the eyes of a search engine.

On the “Crawl Errors Page”, any errors Google encountered while crawling your site are revealed. The url’s not listed, and the types of problems such as restricted by robots txt, url’s that timed out, and unreachable url’s will be uncovered. If numerous pages of your site are not indexed, Sitemaps can also be submitted to help Google find and crawl all of the pages of your site.

If your website is not showing up in Google’s index, or you think it’s being penalized for some reason, you can contact Google from within the “tools interface” with a “reconsideration” request. This will ask Google to take another look at your site. Before submitting, make sure you’ve cleaned up any errors, and that you’re not in violation of any of Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Here’s a small sample of some other tasks that can be performed.

• Keyword Research: The keywords page lists the most important words Google found when indexing your site. So you know what keyword/phrases your site is ranking for.
• Who’s linking to your website.
• Page rank for individual pages can be reviewed.
• Change of address feature, which is useful when moving domains to let Google know.
• Data can be downloaded in spreadsheet format in order to be analyzed and tracked.
• Any RSS feeds can also be submitted as sitemaps.
• Parameter Handling- Allows you to tell Google which url’s you want them to ignore.
• Emails from Google’s Webmaster Tools can be forwarded to any email address you specify.

Contrary to popular belief, Google wants you to succeed online which is why they give you the tools needed to fix any problems, and make your site a search engine’s indexing dream. That’s not just good business for Google, it’s good for your website too.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Improve Your Website with Google’s Webmaster Central Tools

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