Archive for May, 2007

This list of 43 web design mistakes to avoid is very good.. a strong recommended read.

Of the rules, I disagree somewhat with these - so let me ruffle it a bit.

27. Do not use FrontPage…
>> Okay.. I don’t use it for site development anymore, but for some customers it’s a perfect way to make sure they can update their own sites, especially if they’re used to Microsoft Tools. But now, with Apache support for Frontpage Extensions cancelled, there are plenty of good reasons to look elsewhere. If you plan to avoid Frontpage, make sure your clients can update their sites easily using another tool, such as a nice Content Management System that is search engine friendly. I think that Frontpage has been an important part of managing websites for many people, and in the hands of a good developer it produces usable code. The problem comes when people paste in Microsoft Office documents. Then things get awful.

34. Do not use animated GIFs:
>> if Animated GIFs are properly optimized, and palette-reduced, they can be highly effective and efficient way to introduce simple animation and emphasis into graphic elements on a page without the overhead of Flash. Clearly these are meant for limited-pallette solid-color graphics or text - but I wouldn’t list this as a rule. Trouble is that most people do not properly optimize a GIF file. There are some really good programs for this, including some inexpensive shareware. I use Imageready from Adobe for this purpose. If you’ve made the move to Adobe Photoshop CS3, you’ll probably like this post about Imageready Features.

40. Avoid long pages:
>> Have to disagree with this one as a “rule.” The research from work I’ve been involved in shows that for some products and services, long-form pages can convert better than short form. Clearly this doesn’t apply to all pages, and the content itself has to be good enough to warrant continued reading. So perhaps the rule should say “Avoid long boring pages.” Sometimes, having a long-form page is the perfect way to lead the customer forward on their information quest. But the style and writing are everything.

We’ve been able to post Flickr slideshows for a while, but Picasa is just now giving us the slide show love. Getting your slide show posted is pretty easy. Just get a Picasa album ready with the photos you want inside, and then look for the “Embed Slideshow” link. Once you click on it, you’ll get a pop-up that presents you with some cut/paste HTML you should grab into the clipboard.  You can adjust the sizes of the slide show, and have it show the captions you’ve entered in Picasa.

 

 

 

You can embed Picasa slideshows into Wordpress easily by pasting the code into sidebar widgets  which is a super simple installation into Wordpress 2.1x (and is then found under the “Presentation” tab. or the new widgetized Wordpress 2.2 where these functions are built right in. Once the Picassa code is pasted in, save the new sidebar and voila! Slideshows galore!

It’s well known that the closer your keyword, ads, and landing pages are related in the mind of the searcher, the more likely they are to convert. So it’s important that you design your advertising “funnel” to retain the confidence of the searcher from first click through ordering. I thought I’d show you a few tricks that have proven themselves over the years, starting with the most basic - the Google Keyword Insertion method, then talking about Dynamic Landing pages, and ultimately specialized product linkages from ads.

With Google Adwords (and other PPC engines,) it is possible to construct Ads inside of AdGroups so that the search terms are dynamically inserted into ads. Done wisely your ads can achieve 2-3x the click through rates of static ads (or more) and reap the higher levels of quality scores that come with it. In my methodology, each adgroup will have a set of ads associated with it (that you are testing,) and all of those ads will have a dynamic headline (explained below.)

Remember, the structure of a Google Ad Campaign is:

Campaign -> Adgroup -> Ad <- keywords

Figuring the Adgroup Divisions out is the hard part - where should you divide your groups? What is a theme? This will be specific to your own campaign. Some marketers call this things like “Peel and Stick” but I’ve always just called it finding the sweet spots!

For example: Let’s say you sell auto parts and have divided out your tire gauges into an adgroup. You’ve done your keyword research and got them all set up as exact match phrases (in Google, those are the ones with the []’s around them.)

exact match keywords:
[car tire gauge]
[automotive tire gauge]
[tire gauges for cars]
….many more (typically 80-100)

So now you write the ad… but instead of a normal headline you add a syntax like this

{KeyWord: default keyphrase} - capitalize every word of headline
{Keyword: default keyphrase} - capitalize only the first word
{keyword: default keyphrase} - lower case throughout

So here’s our ad:

{KeyWord: Quality Tire Gauges} <— “Quality Tire Gauges” is our default text.
30-120 PSI - Brass Fittings
Made in USA - Will Last Years
Tire-Gauge-Site.com

If it can, Google will substitute the searched keyword here in place of “Quality Tire Gauges” (our default if none of the keyphrases) with one of the exact match keyphrases. As you can probably guess, it’s best if you have just about every derivative of keyword covered in your keyword list (a tool such as keyword elite can be a big helper here) and that you make sure you never go over 25 characters (the current limit for the headline of an Adwords ad.) So, if a user searches for “car tire gauges” on Google, this sponsored link will appear

Car Tire Gauges <–
30-120 PSI - Brass Fittings
Made in USA - Will Last Years
Tire-Gauge-Site.com

So instead of a generic phrase that is “close” to the phrase the customer searched for, you now hit it perfectly every time. Google will now “bold” the text on the ad every time for you, and you’ll have a much better chance of obtaining and selling to those customers

You can also use phrase or broad matches, but keep in mind that your default text will show more often since broad and phrase maches often end up having more than 25 characters pretty often, plus, you lose control over the headline, and sometimes they can be pretty funny.

Watch for Part two: Altering your landing page on the fly - slightly more advanced!

Well there’s a new book coming out that I had a part in and as soon as I get my copy, I’ll report on it… and probably write about it in Business Lexington, too. I applaud David Meerman Scott’s clever method to get lots of smart bloggers and their page rank to post links to his blog. Like I’m doing now. Nice. He has shown some awareness of the new rules of PR in the way he got the blog buzz going. I was thrilled to be listed with some of the writers and bloggers I already admire, such as Seth Godin, Robert Scoble, Guy Kawasaki, and Lee Odden. So thanks David, watch this space. I’ll be checking the book out soon.  I’m also checking out some of the other bloggers that you mentioned in your book post, and may post links to some of those, too!
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“Geek Squad picks unlikely place for PC-hospital” reads the headline today discussing the ultra-efficient PC repair facility opened in Hillview KY last year. Huh? Unlikely? Why? Let’s see…short distance away from the huge UPS air hub, an exceptional pool of high tech workers, #9 in the country for headquarters, top 20 places to raise a family, great restaurants, parks,  pretty countryside, terrific remote support technology. Hmmm. I’m not getting the ‘unlikely’ part yet.Â

Ah… perhaps it’s because many can’t type the word “Kentucky” and technology without spouting off some sort of negative stereotype. Even though there are plenty of examples of great things happening. CNN should know better. At least the other news sites and papers did a proper job.

I’m definitely not a Geek Squad Fan based on my experiences, but I’m not typical. The guys at the facility have an average salary of $44k, which isn’t too bad for that area doing bench work… it maps to about $70k in the Valley or NorthEast.  If my laptop LCD goes south, I’ll be glad to let them change that out.

Cooped up in the middle of the country. That’s what I’ve been.

I’m psyched to be going out to the Search Marketing Expo in Seattle. It’s nuts that I’ve not been to any search marketing conference before. There are good reasons… cost, cost, and…cost.  There’s only me to foot the bill, and living in the middle of the country doesn’t help, believe me! I had planned to attend SES Chicago last year but a big scheduling conflict killed that idea.Â

But when I heard about SMX, I was going to do whatever it took to go - I may have been the first to sign up…. It is my first chance to meet some of the people I’ve known through online work…from blogs, emails, books, etc.. and it’s sounding low-key all around with a smaller attendee count.

If you’re heading out I hope to see you there.  Drop me a comment or email.

My attitude about blogrolls is changing.?

I try to refer to lots of other folks in my posts and provide lots of follow-friendly traffic to people web-wide.? I will continue to do it.? But soul searching is going on.? I’ve cleared out my blogroll.? ? So if your link was removed, you might look around and see if there was any returned links from posts or your blogroll in the past six months.? Then again, many of those I removed won’t care.?

I recently had the change to make a suggestion to a multi-billion dollar media company for an advisor on social media/search trends in a conference with their CEO and a few other key executives in the room.? The person I almost mentioned had recently IM’d? me that I had been “giving them lame pitches” for a blogroll? link.? ? I had said to them that they gave my blog “no love” when I had repeatedly scooped them on news insights.? Not one mention was given to the write-ups I did, even as they nearly copied my work.? I withheld the recommendation because that kind of elitism gets under my skin… ah… they would have blown me off anyhow.? …I’m just a yokel from Kentucky - gotta remember that!

Anyhow…New attention going to:

Seth Godin will be heading to the top, as he continually impresses me.? ? He’s been on my blog since day one.
Guy Kawasaki lots of smart stuff.
Search Engine Land will be there because I respect some of the writers.
Shoemoney is there because he’s authentic.
Marketing Pilgrim? has become consistantly good.
Darren Rowse has done a nice job over at Problogger? so he’s going on the roll.? I’ve become a regular.
I’ve been really enjoying the posts from Stuntdubl, especially? when he does lists. :-)

Note:? I use RSS Bandit and Gooogle Reader for reading blogs.? I have around 400ish in the OPML now, sorted pretty well around best, average, and “on probation.”

Those who are in the blogroll that had a reciprocal link - you are still in there.? THANK YOU for that.

Posted by Scott Clark @ 9:46 pm | Make a Comment  

11 Reasons Schools Should Use Google Calendar Next Year

Filed under: Ideas

May
12
2007

Busy parents and busier school officials spend inordinate amounts of time publishing confusing frequently incorrect school-oriented schedule information for kids. School events, sports, after-school activities, parent-teacher meetings, and community-school activities make for one full events calendar. Statistics show that parents utilize the Internet, email, and mobile technologies to help juggle school and life. Even parents who do not use the Internet much are frequent users of mobile technologies such as SMS, according to recent reports.

But most schools insist on using labor-intensive and ineffective techniques to communicate information to parents. When this information changes, the amount of work required to inform the affected parties is often too high to even bother, and so many are affected. Google Calendar launched a while ago with what I considered then to be major holes in its feature set. At least one of those major holes was recently patched - the ability to do SMS notifications on multiple calendars. In addition, the calendar sharing and printing functions were drastically improved, pushing it into a new level of usefulness for schools and churches.

11 reasons schools should use Google Calendar in 2008

1. The calendars can be shared or hidden to parents and students of the class for privacy reasons, and the system is very secure.

2. Multiple calendars can be viewed on one page (e.g. 6th grade general, and 6th grade band)

3. Notifications of events can be sent out by calendar automatically, even for repeated events, via RSS, SMS (phone text) or email.

4. Schools can turn off advertisements for the kids.

5. Any calendar can be displayed on the school website, and different calendars can be shown on sections of the site. RSS means that the information can be posted a huge number of ways.

6. Parent/Teacher conference or other invitations can be sent, and responded to, online. Comments can be entered on events and replies.

7. Students can each have their own Google calendar, and can super-impose their class calendars with it. Families can create calendars too, so the student has a big-picture view of their lives.

8. Snow-Day notifications, Amber-Alerts, and other emergency notices can be sent out quickly through SMS, email, and the school’s website using an immediate calendar event.

9. It’s super easy to print out multiple formats of calendars, depending on your style. Formats are adjustable before you print them.

10. Homework assignments can include links to web resources and school website pages inside the event description.

11. If all schools in a district use it, then parents, administrators, athletics directors and others can use the ’show/hide’ calendar function to do an infinite level of coordination activity VISUALLY. Parents can look at when their 3rd grader and 6th grader have school events that overlap in a bad way. We can share the calendar with our child care provider (college students use computers ;-) and also provide event commentary to her about her schedule for the next week.

If schools sign up for the Google Apps Education Edition, then the kids can opt out of Advertisements, too. You’ll have to be sure you meet their terms, but most schools will no problem.

I would just like to see schools begin to use centralized information management to help the parent and student body better coordinate.

For a fun “black belt” course on Google Calendar, check out the lifehacker post by Gina Trapani, and for a few more tips there’s some good stuff at the StopDesign blog, including some Macintosh commentary.\

Check also this Educators’ Excellent Guide to “G-Day” - or integrating Google Apps into Education

Posted by Scott Clark @ 2:53 pm | Comments (2)  

This utility saves me hours a week (multi-pc-mouse)

Filed under: Hardware, Usability and Human Interface

May
10
2007

This is not a paid post. If you have multiple monitors side by side that are hooked to multiple computers, you can save by grabbing a few licenses for Desktop Rover, a program by Neslo Software. It lets you set up a “grid” of computers that all share the same keyboard and mouse, without the hassles of a KVM switch. Workflow stays seamless all day.

Not only that, but they answer your emails if you have problems, and provide really good answers.

No Vista support yet, but it’s coming.

Representation of my setup (note… this is three computers, one keyboard and one mouse)

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Posted by Scott Clark @ 3:09 pm | Make a Comment  

Incredible Lineup at Personal Democracy Conference

Filed under: Events

May
9
2007

This should be good.Â

 Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt will keynote the Personal Democracy Forum (www.personaldemocracy.com) in a conversation about the flattening of politics with New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. Currently in its fourth year, the Personal Democracy Forum is the preeminent conference examining how Internet technology and trends are reinventing politics.Â

Friday, May 18^th, 2006, 8:00 a.m.—6:00 p.m.(Registration begins at 7:30 a.m.)For details, please visit www.personaldemocracy.com/conference .Conference registration waived for media \

   * John Aravosis, AmericaBlog.com
   * Peter Daou, Hillary Clinton ‘08
   * Becki Donatelli, John McCain ‘08
   * Esther Dyson, EDventure.org
   * Mindy Finn, Mitt Romney ‘08
   * Thomas Friedman, New York Times
   * Seth Godin, Author
   * Chris Kelly, Facebook
   * Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post
   * Lawrence Lessig, Author
   * Kim Malone, Google AdSense
   * Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo
   * Craig Newmark, Craigslist
   * Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google
   * Joe Trippi, John Edwards ‘08

Posted by Scott Clark @ 3:04 pm | Make a Comment  

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