This is a must-read for anyone that’s ever 1) worked from home or 2) worked in an office:

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Marketing. Very effective. Very different.

“What is the difference? How can we know which is going to be most effective for our company or product?”

Simple question. Very complex answer. We’ll try to make it short and sweet.

Search Engine Optimization -
What it is and how it works:

Here’s a typical client conversation. It sheds some light on what SEO is and what it is not:

Client: “When I type [this series of words] in to Google, our Website does not come up on the first page of the free/organic search results (not including any keyword advertisements we may be running). Our competition does. Why?”

Eight Eleven: “Your competition has thousands, or tens of thousands of links on other Websites, that link back to their Website. These links are embedded on other Websites within targeted keywords (key search terms) and link back to your competitor’s Website, to their homepage and also to other specific keyword rich content pages where the actual name of the Web page, on the server, contains the targeted keyword, the H1 tag on the page contains the keyword, the page title contains the keyword and the content written on the page, also contains the keyword.”

Client: “So, it sounds like links coming in to our Website, which include targeted key search terms are critical. And also having our Website optimized to be using those key search terms, is also essential.”

Eight Eleven: “Yes, absolutely.”

Client: “What if I can get a thousand Websites to link to me and then put links out to those thousand Websites, on my Website. So, we’re all linking back and forth to one another. Will this work?”

Eight Eleven: “Not anymore. This is called reciprocal link placement. Just recently, Google’s algorithm (which determines a Websites pagerank and organic search results), started ignoring how many reciprocal links a Website has. Essentially, reciprocal links cancel one another out.”

Client: “OK. So, how did our competition get thousands of other Websites to link to their Website? How did they get all of those links to include key search terms? How did they get all of the pages on their Website to have the page name, H1 tags, page title and content to all use those key search terms?”

Eight Eleven: “This is Search Engine Optimization. Your competition has spent hundreds or thousands of hours working to create links in to their Website, optimize content and tags on their Website and compete, on a daily basis (ongoing) for their organic rank (position) in Google. They most likely outsourced this effort to a company that does SEO work – and does it very well.”

Client: “This sounds like a lot of work.”

Eight Eleven: “It certainly is a lot of work. This is why SEO generally requires a healthy budget. It takes a lot of people a lot of time to build all of these links and to optimize a Website for all of the key search terms. It’s also an ongoing effort – one that requires daily maintenance.”

Client: “What about social media? If we use Twitter and Facebook to generate thousands of links in to our Website (using these key search terms, of course) and can get others to repost our Facebook messages and retweet our Twitter messages, thousands of times, will this boost our SEO? If we write an article and this article is picked up and republished by hundreds of blogs and other Websites, and within the article, we use key search terms, which all link back to our Website, will this boost our SEO?”

Eight Eleven: “Yes! Social media is a great way to generate links to your Website. Of course, in order to be effective with social media, you’re going to need a large audience of “followers” and “evangelists” that will redistribute your content on your behalf. Generating this loyal following is one of the most difficult and time consuming efforts involved in social media. Once you have a loyal following of evangelists, if 1) you post (to Facebook, a blog or Twitter) one small article (which contains a couple embedded links to your Websites) and 2) your content is timely and relevant to your audience, then 3) your follows may repost this a hundred times – creating a hundred new links in to your Website. This is SEO gold!”

Client: “What happens if we do SEO and get our Website on the first page of Google, then stop the SEO campaign. Will our Website stay on the first page of Google? If yes, for how long?”

Eight Eleven: “Yes, you will stay on the first page of Google. However, for how long – this cannot be predicted. It depends heavily on what your competition is doing. If you are competing for placement on the first page of Google, using highly sought after and competitive key search terms, and are competing against other Websites that are continually optimizing for those key search terms on a daily basis, you may stay on the first page of Google for a month, for a week, or even for a day. Within a couple days, you could drop off of the first page. It depends on how persistent your competition is – and how effective their SEO programs are.”

Client: “It sounds like, if we want to stay on the first page of Google, we need to continue our SEO programs on a monthly basis.”

Eight Eleven: “Yes, this is correct. We cannot guarantee that we can keep you on the first page of Google unless we continue our SEO efforts on a weekly/daily basis.”

Client: “Will paying for keyword advertising or Web advertising have any effect on SEO? Will having various keyword advertising campaigns running in Google and having hundreds of other Websites running ads that link back to my Website, improve my organic pagerank and placement on the first page in Google?”

Eight Eleven: “No – these efforts will have no influence whatsoever. Google does not count advertising as a link in it’s organic pagerank algorithms.”

Client: “Let’s say we start an SEO campaign today. How soon will we be on the first page of Google?”

Eight Eleven: “This typically takes 60-90 days, and depending on the competitive nature of the key search terms, can even take up to 120 days of daily SEO efforts.”

Client: “That seems like a long time. What if I want to be on the first page of Google today?”

Eight Eleven: “This is search engine marketing (SEM), also known as pay per click marketing or keyword advertising. Google’s service is called Adwords. Yahoo! and Bing have their own advertising platforms. We can bid against other Websites and essentially pay to be a “featured sponsor” or “advertiser link” on top of Google. Depending on the competitive nature of some key search terms, pay per click rates for highly sought after keyword strings may run anywhere from $1.00 per click, up to $25.00 per click and higher. In a Wall Street Journal article, CPC (cost per click) rates for the search term “DUI Attorney Phoenix” was noted as running $65.00 PER CLICK! Google does not charge you to set up  a campaign. They also do not charge you to display an ad. The only charge you when someone clicks on your ad to come to your Website.”

Client: “So, should we be doing SEO, SEM or some combination of both?”

Eight Eleven: “This really depends on how valuable a “click” is to you – and how well you can convert a click in to a sales lead or active customer. It should be noted – organic search engine results (achieved through SEO) tend to receive 8x more click throughs than paid search engine marketing (pay per click: PPC) campaigns. Often, it is not possible for a company to pay for SEO to optimize their Website for all required key search terms. As such, our most common recommendation is one of a blended effort: SEO for key search terms that can be obtained cost effectively and SEM for key search terms that would require a budget with an ROI that doesn’t quite add up.”

*^*^

Search Engine Optimization. Search Engine Marketing. Web advertising. How can we know which is going to be most effective for our company or product?

The answer comes down to a few variables:

1. What is your average cost of customer acquisition?
2. What is the lifetime value of your average customer?
3. How does the value and profitability of this customer change over time?
4. What is your customer retention rate?

Of course, the answers to these questions are different for each and every client. Therefore, it is impossible to provide a blanket response. The best strategy is usually a blend between all efforts. At Eight Eleven, we consult with our clients to explore each opportunity, assign opportunity cost and make recommendations for the best blend of online marketing campaigns.

Ever wonder how to have two separate Google Analytics accounts track the same primary domain? With a little tweaking, the code works!

Here we see how to have two GA accounts both set as the primary account on one domain. Both accounts are pulling analytics data as if they were the primary. We had to do a little custom tweaking to GA’s Asynchronous Tracking code.

Google provided a little help:

http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncUsageGuide.html

The resulting code:

<script type=”text/javascript”>

var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(
['_setAccount', 'UA-1966692-10'],
['_trackPageview'],
['b._setAccount', 'UA-16375401-1'],
['b._trackPageview']
);

(function() {
var ga = document.createElement(’script’); ga.type = ‘text/javascript’; ga.async = true;
ga.src = (’https:’ == document.location.protocol ? ‘https://ssl’ : ‘http://www’) + ‘.google-analytics.com/ga.js’;
var s = document.getElementsByTagName(’script’)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();

</script>

Many clients have been asking about using Google Translator on their Websites. There are pros and cons. We are happy to share our thoughts with you:

Pros:

• Google’s service is free.
• Easy to implement.
• Relatively easy to customize.

Cons:

• Google cannot translate content inside of a Flash animation or within an image file – such as a navigation tab, an advertisement graphic, an image used with a piece of jquery or Ajax functionality or an embedded photo caption (which means, only HTML text content on the page can be translated – you’re not getting a true/full localization of content).
• Google cannot redesign a page’s elements to compensate for the extra space, or reduced space, caused by shifting text (number of characters increasing or decreasing) – this can sometimes cause a page’s layout to be compromised.
• Google does not understand context – it only understands words, often causing a thought or concept to be misconstrued during translation.
• By default, Google will attempt to translate all words on the page – this means that if you have your brand name written in HTML text on the page, it will translate your brand name from English in to the target language. For this reason, an exception list must be created – this being a list of words and phrases that we want Google to ignore during it’s translation process. This list needs to be custom coded in to Google’s functionality. The list should include brand names, product names, trademarked phrases, specific marketing language that only works when constructed properly, key words and phrases that are proprietary to your brand, etc.

This tutorial assumes that you’ve already installed and configured this plugin, and are ready to move to the next step: creating the actual events posts. Here we go!

Step 1: Click Post > Add New.

Step 2: Enter a title & and content. Then check “Events”.

Step 3: Scroll down the page to the “Custom Fields” section. From the select box, choose “event_date”.

Step 4: Enter in the date of the event using the format YYYY-MM-DD (include the dashes).

Step 5: Scroll back up and click Publish

After the event’s date passes, it will automatically be removed from the list, but will still exist as a post within WordPress.

Today, I had a question come up and all parties involved were having trouble answering: What does it mean when a page in Google Analytics is noted as having an average page view time of 0.00 seconds? I posted this question to colleagues at Philly Startup Leaders and thanks to Jake Stein of RJ Metrics, an answer came through in a matter of seconds!

Question:

I’m sure many of you are using Google Analytics for your Websites, or Websites that you build. We use it for most all Website we build. Great tool. Here’s a question we’ve been asked and are having trouble answering. We’ve contacted “the experts” on this, and even they are unsure.

On an ecommerce site, we have a page that gets personalized to the user. This page creates a unique URL (sort of like a PURL, but without any human readable personalization). Google Analytics tracks each and every one of these personalized pages, as if it were a unique page. This is precisely what we wanted Google to go. On some of these personalized pages, Google is showing Average Time on Page = 0.00 seconds, with others varying anywhere from 30 seconds to a few minutes.

We asked the experts, does Average Time on Page = 0.00 seconds mean that the user has abandoned the page (closed the window, navigated to another site, whatever) BEFORE the page had finished loading? That is, if they were waiting for their personalized page to appear and got tired of waiting and closed the window, would Google record this as 0.00 seconds on page?

Their response was, “No, not necessarily. It could (potentially) mean that the user spent some time on that page poking around, then abandoned it later.”

And so my questions is, does anyone really know for sure?… If Google records 0.00 seconds on a page, does that mean the user abandoned the page before it fully loaded?… or could it mean that they spent time on that page (some indeterminate amount) and then abandoned the site?

Answer:

Zero seconds can also mean that they spent a bunch of time on that one page, but there was no second page visit.  GA needs at least 2 visits to calculate time on site, so they can do a date diff of the timestamps.  See more detail here: http://www.onlinemarketingperformance.com/analytics-time_on_site-bounce/

Thanks again to Jake for this helpful tip!

Best email thread I’ve seen in ages:

We just launched your Website. Why can’t you see it yet? The answer: Domain propagation.

Domain propagation is the process of your registrar handing off the changes of your domain to root DNS servers, ISPs acquire records from the root servers, ISPs to other ISPs and so on until you see the changes reflect on your computer with your internet service provider. Some service providers update their records more often than others and receive changes faster. As a result of this, often you will not be able to get to your website by its’ domain name, while a friend can. Once the changes propagate to your ISP, your new Website will be available to you (and other users of your ISP).

Reposting technical description of domain propagation from: http://www.ultrawebsitehosting.com/glossary/what-is-domain-propagation.php

1. Avoiding the Spam Filters
The majority of large Internet service providers now use rigorous spam protection mechanisms to trap unsolicited email before it gets into their customers inboxes. Spam filters generally “rank” each email by a number of different criteria, and, if that email rates above a certain level (such as 10 spam points), then it is flagged as spam and deleted.

To make sure your emails don’t get flagged as spam — and deleted before they even get to your subscribers — avoid using words such as ‘Free’, ‘$$$’, ‘Save’, ‘Discount’, etc in both the subject line and the content of your email.

2. Maximizing Click-Thru Rates
Both web pages and emails can contain a lot of text and graphics, and this sometimes makes it harder to get your subscribers to perform a certain task, such as clicking on a link to see your special offers.

Numerous research papers tell us that the majority of Internet users respond better to a plain, bold, blue text link — such as this — as opposed to a banner or button. So, if you’re going to include links in your emails, make sure they are bold, blue and underlined. This will mean that more subscribers click through, meaning more conversions/sales for you.

3. The Power of Personalization
If you were standing in a crowded mall, which of these would get your attention: “HEY, YOU!” or “HEY JOHN” (assuming your name is John). The power of personalization can and should be used in your emails. In-fact, by simply starting your email with “Hi [subscriber_name]” instead of the boring “Hi there”, you can increase both your reading and click-thru rates by up to 650%. Why? Put simply, it’s because your subscribers feel like they already have a relationship with you as you’ve addressed them by their first name.

4. One-Click Unsubscription
If you want to grow your mailing list, then there are 2 things that you absolutely must have: a double opt-in process, and a quick way to unsubscribe. In some countries, it’s actually mandatory by law that every email has an unsubscribe link in it. The unsubscribe link should take the recipient directly to a page where they are then removed — courteously — from your mailing list.

5. Signup Confirmation
Don’t get accused of spamming — always, and I mean always use a double opt-in confirmation process. Double opt-in means that after your visitor initially enters their email address to subscribe to your list, you should then send them a “confirmation” email. This email should contain a special link back to your email-marketing program, which will then verify that this visitor did indeed sign up to your mailing list.

6. Tuesday / Wednesday = Increased Response
Studies conducted by online research analysts have shown that the best days to perform a mail-out to your list are Tuesday and Wednesday, as this is when people are more receptive to communication. This means that they are more likely to read your content and click on links, meaning more sales.

On Mondays, everyone is still recovering from a hectic weekend. On Thursday and Friday, people are already too busy looking forward to the weekend. We’ve actually experimented with this, and received the best results by sending out emails at around 2-3pm (American Pacific Time) on a Wednesday.

7. Repeat Email Communication
An auto responder is an email that is scheduled to be sent at a certain time interval after someone subscribes to your mailing list. Auto responders are a great way to automatically follow up with your subscribers or provide them with more information on your products/services.

For example, if you provide a free newsletter, you could setup 3 auto responders for new subscribers: the first is sent 1 hour after they subscribe. It contains a thank you message and a link to get 10% off your newly released eBook.

The second is sent 24 hours after they subscribe, telling them about your community message boards, and the third is sent 72 hours after they subscribe, in which you can offer them a special deal on becoming a paid member of your site.

Auto responders help your subscribers build trust in both your company and your brand, and this can help make it easier when trying to close sales in the future.

8. Consistency is the Key
If you’re running a newsletter or frequent email publication, make sure you keep the look and feel consistent from issue to issue. By keeping the look and feel consistent, you help to maintain and strengthen your brand and your image to your subscribers, which again will make it easier to close sales when you need to.

Create a template for your newsletter and whenever you need to create a new issue, use that template as the basis for each issue.

9. On Time, Every Time
When sending a regular email to your subscribers, always make sure that it’s sent on the same day, at the same time. For example, every Wednesday at 3pm. Your subscribers will come to “expect” your email to arrive in their inbox on the same day at the same time every week, meaning that they want to read your content and are generally more receptive to any special offers or promotions you may include.

10. The Half-a-Second Subject Line
When your email arrives in your subscriber’s inbox, you generally have about half a second to catch their attention with the subject line of your email. After this, they will either delete your email or ignore it. In your subject line, try and specify a benefit that the subscriber can expect by reading your email. For example, instead of using ‘OurSite Newsletter Issue #1′, use ‘OurSite Newsletter: 10 Tips for Financial Freedom’.

11. The Free Bonus Hook-In
Free is overused these days, especially on the Internet. However, if you’re looking to grow your subscriber list, then create or source a product of value to your visitors (such as an eBook or discount coupon) and offer it to them for free when they signup for your newsletter.

To make sure they don’t simply type any email address into your subscription form, setup an auto responder to send them the free bonus 1 hour after they subscribe to your newsletter.

12. The Preview Pane
Popular email clients such as MS Outlook show a preview of an email when it’s selected in your inbox. Always have some interesting content at the very top of your email, as this is the part that will show in the preview window of your subscribers email program. If it’s interesting enough, then your subscriber will open your email and continue on reading.

13. Link-Click Testing
When creating marketing emails, try using different text for both content and links. Also try re-positioning images such as logos and buttons. After sending about 3 different emails, compare the click-thru stats and see which one worked best. Now, when you need to send marketing emails in the future, you know that you will be sending the right mix of content and images that will attract the most click-thrus, and ultimately the most sales.

14. Email-Based Learning
Add value to your website, build trust in your visitors, establish your credibility and collect more subscriptions to your mailing list by setting up an email-based learning course. To do this, simply create a series of auto responders (for example, 5) containing unique content. Then, schedule the first one to be sent after 24 hours, the second after 48 hours, etc.

15. Always Sign on the Dotted Line
Always include a signature at the bottom of your emails, as it’s one of the easiest ways to attract more traffic to your website. This signature should include your personal details, your company details, and an unsubscribe link. You can use your signature to link back to your website, and even to other products. Here’s a sample signature:

Regards,
John Doe.
President – Company XYZ.
Visit our website at http://www.companyxyz.com
Unsubscribe from this newsletter at http://www.companyxyz.com/unsubscribe…

This article is a repost from: http://www.interspire.com/content/articles/2/1/15-Email%252dMarketing-Best-Practices

I don’t see what the big deal is here. Anyone could have created this type of functionality. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has already created a FireFox plugin that does just this. Perhaps not.

You have to have the sidewiki downloaded, installed and plugged in for this to work. So, unless users opt to use it, they won’t see anything.

Honestly, I think this is great. For companies that have sub-par products and services, poor customer service or just overall deliver a bad brand experience to their consumers – I think the consumer has every right to speak up. Before, they could do so on Twitter. Now they can do the same thing in-line with the brand.

What this does is forces the brand to step up its game, provide better products and/or services and provide better customer service. If a company is failing in these areas, perhaps this will serve the brand right. I say, down go the brands with a poor experience – let’s get them out of the way to make more room in the market for successful brands.

Interestingly, if you #bestbuy or @bestbuy on Twitter with some feedback, there is a good chance you’ll get a response from a Best Buy customer service representative. Very cool.

Business is going social. We need to all jump on board.

There are some good points raised here around defamatory remarks (hurting a brand) and dilution and unfair competition (confusing a consumer with suggestions of affiliation, partnership, sponsorship, endorsement, etc.), however, these are not new concerns. The same goes on social networks where users opt-in. Facebook Website users can easily opt-in and become “friends” or “fans of” Brand X. At this point, they could just as easily leave remarks on the pages of Brand X that read, “While Brand X is OK, I prefer Brand Y or Brand Z.” It is up to the brand to maintain their relationship with the consumer.

Now, this does raise the question of choice. A brand may choose to have a Twitter account and follow its customers. A brand may choose to have a Facebook page and allow its customers to become “Friends” or “Fans.” However, with the Google Sidewiki, brands do not have this choice. This, however, does not change the fact that Twitter and Facebook are open platforms that allow consumers to discuss things openly, publicly. If a brand is concerned that social Web users’ voices may be detrimental, chances are, the brand will have to start monitoring the Web. It will likely be too cumbersome for government to regulate free speech on the Web.

Aaron McLean

Executive VP

These are just classic:

Google to Ignore Keyword META During Content Indexing and Ranking

It is official from Google: Keywords are out.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/09/google-does-not-use-keywords-meta-tag.html

I’ve been on a two-year odyssey helping to clean up my father’s house. He’s lived alone now for two years and it was time to remove the umpteen boxes out of the basement and reclaim the closets. He and my mother were both hoarders. I found Valentines that were given to my mother from her students in 1954. They moved into the house in 1963.

On my latest trip home, I found an old timetable for the Metro line from 1984. If you happen to need any timetables, I know where you can get them dating all the way back to 1916. Seriously. What struck me was on the front of the timetable, was a message about how “green” Metro was.

The recent upturn in being environmentally conscious is itself, recycled. My friend’s mother for years cleaned out plastic butter containers and was called frugal and thrifty long before they became virtues rather than character flaws. I remember tying up the newspapers in the mid-1970s to put out for the recycling truck to pick up and stomping on aluminum cans in the late-1980s in order to fit more cans in the bin.

As a designer, I have noticed that each time there is renewed interest in the environmental movement, the first industry hit is printing. All that paper for catalogs and magazines and direct mail is such a waste. We must go digital and only send out emails and have a Website. And as much as I recycle (I even started the recycling program at work and own several grocery totes to minimize the plastic bags I use), I see a disconnect in the notion that print be an environmental hazard when it was made out of a natural substance.

Paper can be made from cotton, bark and most recently I discovered a paper made out of stone. Electronic gadgets (computers, phones, laptops, etc.) are made of a polymer substance derived from oil. In “Titan”, a biography about John D. Rockefeller, Sr., a point is made that from oil, we not only can make petroleum jelly, gasoline, and other fuel, but plastics that can form CDs, computer covers and even car parts. All of these eco-unfriendly items take a toll on the environment and the global population. In the remote regions of China, families spend their days extracting the copper from the wires and other circuitry from discarded televisions and computers. As their area has become a high-tech dumping ground, the local water supply is contaminated.

Many reputable paper manufacturers actually plant more trees than will be harvested for their factories. Instead of traditional inks, soy inks have been developed and improved over the years. Digital printing has vastly improved to the point where you can now print-on-demand. Marketing efforts can be acutely focused allowing you to segment your collateral to the intended audience and print in smaller quantities. If you want to hone in on soccer moms, print the brochure using images that relate to them. For the single man on the go, poof – change the image, but not the copy.

For one of our international clients, I found printers in each of their global locations to cut down on the emissions that would result from shipping all of the collateral from the United States. It just made better sense to spread out the print work to five printers rather than flood one and have skyrocketing shipping costs. While I am not sure the exact magnitude, I know that reduced our carbon footprint and provided work around the globe as well.

With paper, you have a tangible item to hold and read and connect with. In the goal to reduce emissions and carbon footprints and anything else that can be done to reduce global warming, we cannot devalue one industry in favor of another. With 1-1 printing, you can customize your print to the individual recipient. Once they are engaged, you add in the electronic conversation to keep a connection with them, provided your information is relevant and intriguing to them.

What is most important in marketing is to use the best vehicle for the best return possible. My 14 year-old niece hasn’t used email in over two years. My 83 year-old Aunt emails me weekly. Generalized demographics are not going to get your message across. Cross-marketing efforts will.

Don’t hesitate to include printing in your marketing efforts. The impact of something to hold and refer to is something that a computer screen can never match. We can print on paper and we can convert it into a planter and continue the green cycle and save our planet.

Susan DeAngelus
Art Director

With this simple phrase, there is nothing more frustrating to a creative person. Before the work starts, there are meetings and conversations about project goals and visions. If the project is a rebranding, what wasn’t working for the client and their logo? Was it done so many years ago that it needs to be fresher? Has the company changed direction and needs a logo that showcases their growth?

For a creative person, we take the answers and begin to construct either a logo or a brochure based off of that discussion. It is our duty in our profession to stay ahead of trends and not only learn about composition and layout, but history and concepts as well. Personally, I avoid being a “trendy” designer, as trends come and go and no one should have a logo or trademark that is definitive of any one decade. Many times the appropriate solution is conceptual and requires that “Ah ha” moment of the viewer. Other times, the best solution is quick and straight to the point.

After days or weeks of creative work, tweaking and adjusting, working and massaging the copy to have the most impact for the reader about the company or product, there is the next meeting to reveal the creative work. Most of the time, it goes well and all are happy and the project proceeds to the next phase.

But once in a while there is that innocent phrase that is uttered – “I don’t like it”.

It’s a quick phrase and is clear for the person saying. For the creative, there is confusion as to what exactly don’t you like. The font? The color? The positioning? The images used? There are so many factors in play that we need to have explained more definitively in order to get right to the heart of the matter.

That phrase can lead to increased costs on the project due to the creative team needing to pinpoint the “problem” if they do not receive the constructive criticism that is required. Constructive criticism is not meant to offend anyone. It puts the focus solely on the work and what needs to be fixed or modified in order to bring out the intent or concept of the piece better. In some instances, I’ve found that a simple change of color is all that is needed to change the opinion of the client. One client in particular just didn’t like the color green.

We in the creative field are trained to remove our egos from projects and always keep the client’s needs and goals at the forefront. Tell us exactly what is not appealing to you and don’t worry about offending us. It would be offensive to us to put out creative that you don’t like. We just ask for the details.

Susan DeAngelus Art Director

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

Great article with links to apps that will help you keep your Mac running full speed ahead:

http://usingmac.com/2009/7/8/mac-free-system-tools

Helpful Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing Links (SEO & SEM)

A number of clients have requested additional information on SEO and SEM in the past. Instead of piecing these together one at a time, I thought, probably best to aggregate for our readers and clients:

SEO:

http://www.clickz.com/3624560

http://searchengineland.com/best-seo-practices-during-a-website-redesign-14947

http://searchenginewatch.com/3624568

http://reviews.cnet.com/seo/9602-12576_7-0.html?messageID=2509815&kw=seo

http://www.compassdesigns.net/joomla-blog/14-modern-seo-best-practices-for-2009.html

SEM:

http://www.clickz.com/3302321

http://www.webmarketcentral.com/SEM_Best_Practices.htm

http://www.aimclearblog.com/2009/03/26/8-best-practices-for-serious-marketing-plans/

http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/best-color-tools-for-web-designers/

A repost:

Why business plans don’t deliver

This Week from WSJ.com/Entrepreneur Beyond products, in service of the bottom line In search of innovation Why business plans don’t deliver A winning strategy for the exhibitions game The sweet smell of success

WSJ.com/Entrepreneur Related Links Running a Business Practical advice whether you are starting or winding down your business. More >> Building Awareness Find out what other entrepreneurs are doing to grow their businesses. More >> Franchising Get the scoop on the pluses and minuses of owning a franchise. More >> Financing Learn how to finance your business. More >> Businesses for Sale Search the Internet’s largest database of businesses for sale. More >>

By John W. Mullins
This article is reprinted by permission from

An economic downturn is a great time to start a business.

It sounds paradoxical, but think about it. Costs are lower, and more talent is available, thanks to layoffs. Prospective clients are more likely to try a new supplier who can help them cut costs or increase their competitiveness. Established players, too, are focused on cutting costs instead of increasing market share.

All of this helps clear the way for the next venture with the better mousetrap-but only if the entrepreneur can write a clear and convincing business plan. Anything less is heading straight for the bin. Because, let’s face it, the intended recipients of such business plans-investors and lenders, family and friends, anyone with capital to invest in the project-are all much more wary of risk now in these turbulent times.

Truth be told, most business plans fail to make much impression on potential investors. Most aren’t even read in full. Their shortcomings tend to be obvious even in a two-page executive summary, largely because they are written before enough real work has been done to create a solid foundation.

I set out to understand why most business plans don’t deliver. Drawing on the hundreds of plans and pitches that I’ve seen over many years of working with entrepreneurs and early-stage ventures, I searched for common patterns in plans that gained no traction. The result? Five oh-so-common varieties of plans that go quickly into the trash without further consideration.

To help budding entrepreneurs avoid these traps, I also identified the three key elements that go into a successful business plan: a logical statement of a problem and its solution; a battery of cold, hard evidence; and candor about the risks, gaps and other assumptions that might be proved wrong.

In what follows, I will expose the deal-killers found in the five most commonly rejected types of business plans, and share tips for creating plans that should get you invited back for a second meeting and, if all goes well, raise some capital and attract some initial customers.

HERE I AM, NEVER MIND THE PROBLEM

In this kind of plan, the writer is smitten with the elegance of his or her technology. The plan begins not with the identification of a customer problem to resolve, but with a detailed explanation of how the technology works, why it is cutting-edge or state-of-the-art, and how it is better, faster and cheaper than current solutions.

Such a plan is typically readable only by those already in-the-know in its particular technical realm. Even worse, seasoned investors know that the better technology does not always win. Remember Betamax?

Me-First plan sends a clear signal that the writer’s priorities are misplaced. What matters more than great technology or a great idea is the problem or pain that the new solution or technology resolves.

There is a better way. A good business plan starts with a clearly defined problem-something that’s really troubling or compelling-supported by evidence from marketing research, testimonials, letters of intent, or whatever, that the pain is real.

If you can convince your readers that this problem is real, they’ll be hooked, at least for a while, as they read on to see whether you’ve found a solution that can resolve the pain. If the pain isn’t real, stop writing. There’s no need for a solution.

Next, identify exactly which customer group has that pain, even if the initial target market is a small one. Investors know that, if a sustainable beachhead can be established in an initial target market, success in a niche market can serve as a platform for taking the solution to other market segments as the business grows.

Consider Nike Inc., the leading maker of athletic footwear. Founders Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman, a distance runner and a track coach, respectively, addressed the quite literal pain of distance runners’ sprained ankles, shin splints and other injuries caused by the miles and miles of training on rough country paths in running shoes that just weren’t up to the task.

The new waffle soles of latex rubber that Nike came up with addressed runners’ pains head-on. The first shoes targeted elite distance runners, hardly a large market. But once distance runners started winning Olympic medals wearing Nike shoes, other runners-and sports-followed.

A COKE FOR EVERY KID IN CHINA

This gambit rests its case on a plethora of secondary data to show how large and fast-growing a market is. The plan then makes a heroic leap and assumes that the new venture will grab X percent of that market-it could be 1%, 10%, 30% or whatever. “Surely,” the plan argues, “with the large number of customers in our market, we’ll easily get enough. We only need a small fraction to have a very nice business.”

Plans like this reveal that the writer isn’t sure what the initial target market is. It’s much easier to win a large share of a carefully targeted but narrow market-think Nike again-than it is to win a small share of a very large market.

Further, penetrating a new market requires customers who are aware of the new product, and distribution systems that allow them to buy it. Coke-for-Every-Kid plans gloss over these details. They ignore the difficult work-not to mention the expense-of crafting a strategy to gain market awareness, persuade customers, and set up distribution.

This kind of plan also often signals that the writer is reluctant to get out from behind his or her Internet connection and actually talk to prospective customers. Talking to customers is harder work, but brings all kinds of benefits and insights, not only to the business plan, but also to the business itself. Such conversations can reveal what customers really want-and help tailor the offering to meet those needs.

You can probably find secondary data that support such things as the size of your market and trends that suggest your market will or won’t grow. All such evidence should be cited, with its source, to show that the data are reliable and credible, and that you are, too. But that’s just the start. You’ll need primary data, too, from interviews you carry out or a survey you conduct, to demonstrate the likelihood that customers will buy what you have to offer.

Conduct some experiments, even a market test. The more hypotheses you can test before writing your business plan, the more convincing you’ll be. One caveat, though: If you wait for all of the evidence before you get started-analysis paralysis-the opportunity may well be lost, as someone else may beat you to market.

Every assertion in your plan should be backed up by evidence. If it’s not, take it out, or stop writing while you gather the evidence you need.

JUST LOOK AT OUR (PAPER) PROFITS

Of our five fundamentally flawed business plans, this one is perhaps the most difficult to spot.

The archetype is the failed Internet business Pets.com, which offered pet supplies via the Internet. Simply put, the economics of delivering large, heavy bags of dog food one at a time could not compete with the economics of putting pallet-loads of the same bags of dog food on supermarket or discount-store shelves and letting the customers do the delivery.

Such business plans often contain detailed spreadsheets showing why the numbers would work. That’s why these kinds of plans are difficult to spot-the numbers look like they work. As one entrepreneur told me, “With a couple of beers and an Excel spreadsheet, you can make a lot of money in no time,” or so it will seem. While consumers certainly liked the idea of having Fido’s dog food delivered, they were not prepared to pay a price that would enable the economics to work.

Savvy investors not only tear apart the spreadsheets but ask fundamental questions. Does the revenue model depend on making a large number of small transactions (think Amazon.com) or a small number of large ones (automobile manufacturing)? Do its profit margins depend on high gross margins to cover high product-development costs (think Microsoft), or lower margins to cover slimmer operating costs (Costco)? Is a large investment in development or other fixed assets required (a manufacturing facility, for example)? Is the working capital cycle favorable or unfavorable (do you expect to be paid in advance), or will you have to carry inventory and receivables that can tie up scarce cash (manufacturing and distribution businesses)? Some combinations of these factors are clearly attractive. Others are obviously flawed from the start.

OUR TEAM WALKS ON WATER

Investors won’t be snowed by top-tier diplomas or past employment with a leading company. Investors care first about the main challenges of the industry in question, and whether the proposed team has hands-on experience tackling those challenges.

Every industry has critical success factors-typically two or three-that, when addressed effectively, are likely to bring success even if less-important challenges aren’t handled well. Location, for instance, is a critical success factor in much of retailing.

A business plan that identifies its critical success factors and shows how the team’s expertise and experience are suited to addressing them is much more likely to attract capital-or at least a second look.

Here’s where candor helps, as well.

Surprisingly, plans that point out the lack of a key skill or capability in the management team can fare quite well, by acknowledging the missing link and encouraging the prospective investor to fill that slot with a qualified person whom he or she favors.

Plans that succeed in attracting capital often include one or more members of a team who have failed in a prior venture. When that failure is accompanied by lessons learned, it’s often viewed, as one investor told me, as “an education on someone else’s nickel.”

EVERYTHING IS WONDERFUL

The most common type of business plan, and the one that goes most quickly into the trash, is the one in which the writer can’t find anything but good things to say about the opportunity and plans to pursue it.

Investors know that in the real world most opportunities, even good ones, have some weaknesses. Typically, it’s not yet clear in an early-stage business whether the customers will buy, or buy at the price that’s been proposed. Most industries are not filled with infinite possibilities, either, especially given the overcapacity in today’s global economy.

Experienced entrepreneurs know better than to assert that everything is wonderful about their opportunity. They know there are potential pitfalls in their market or industry.

The facts are that most opportunities are highly uncertain. Most new ventures will fail. Of the few that do succeed-winning capital, customers and positive cash flow-it’s usually not because of the original plan, “Plan A,” about which the business plan is written, but because of an as-yet-unknown “Plan B.”

Candor, again, is key. There probably will be some questions implicit in your business plan that have not been answered. Will your solution actually work? Will customers buy it? How much will they pay? How will competitors react to your entry? Does your entrepreneurial team have what it takes-the experience and expertise-to deliver on the critical success factors that apply in your industry?

Rather than attempt to paper over the rough spots and uncertainty, identify them yourself and deal with them candidly in your plan. A solid dose of candor will go a long way, compared with describing risks and then stating why they won’t occur.

Dr. John W. Mullins is an associate professor of management practice at London Business School and holds the David and Elaine Potter Foundation term chair in marketing and entrepreneurship. He can be reached at reports@wsj.com.

Great update from Google. Link is here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/06/improved-flash-indexing.html

Improved Flash indexing

Monday, June 30, 2008 at 9:31 PM

Written by Ron Adler, Janis Stipins, and Maile Ohye

We’ve received numerous requests to improve our indexing of Adobe Flash files. Today, Ron Adler and Janis Stipins—software engineers on our indexing team—will provide us with more in-depth information about our recent announcement that we’ve greatly improved our ability to index Flash.

Q: Which Flash files can Google better index now?
We’ve improved our ability to index textual content in SWF files of all kinds. This includes Flash “gadgets” such as buttons or menus, self-contained Flash websites, and everything in between.

Q: What content can Google better index from these Flash files?
All of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file. If your website contains Flash, the textual content in your Flash files can be used when Google generates a snippet for your website. Also, the words that appear in your Flash files can be used to match query terms in Google searches.

In addition to finding and indexing the textual content in Flash files, we’re also discovering URLs that appear in Flash files, and feeding them into our crawling pipeline—just like we do with URLs that appear in non-Flash webpages. For example, if your Flash application contains links to pages inside your website, Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.

Q: What about non-textual content, such as images?
At present, we are only discovering and indexing textual content in Flash files. If your Flash files only include images, we will not recognize or index any text that may appear in those images. Similarly, we do not generate any anchor text for Flash buttons which target some URL, but which have no associated text.

Also note that we do not index FLV files, such as the videos that play on YouTube, because these files contain no text elements.

Q: How does Google “see” the contents of a Flash file?
We’ve developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons, entering input, and so on. Our algorithm remembers all of the text that it encounters along the way, and that content is then available to be indexed. We can’t tell you all of the proprietary details, but we can tell you that the algorithm’s effectiveness was improved by utilizing Adobe’s new Searchable SWF library.

Q: What do I need to do to get Google to index the text in my Flash files?
Basically, you don’t need to do anything. The improvements that we have made do not require any special action on the part of web designers or webmasters. If you have Flash content on your website, we will automatically begin to index it, up to the limits of our current technical ability (see next question).

That said, you should be aware that Google is now able to see the text that appears to visitors of your website. If you prefer Google to ignore your less informative content, such as a “copyright” or “loading” message, consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to us.

Q: What are the current technical limitations of Google’s ability to index Flash?
There are three main limitations at present, and we are already working on resolving them:

1. Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.
3. While we are able to index Flash in almost all of the languages found on the web, currently there are difficulties with Flash content written in bidirectional languages. Until this is fixed, we will be unable to index Hebrew language or Arabic language content from Flash files.

We’re already making progress on these issues, so stay tuned!

Update: Everyone, thanks for your great questions and feedback. Our focus is to improve search quality for all users, and with better Flash indexing we create more meaningful search results. Listed below, we’ve also answered some of the most prevalent questions. Thanks

By Lee Munroe, April 7th, 2009

Your website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

Favicon

A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your website. Some browsers pick up the favicon if you save it in your root directory as favicon.ico, but to be sure it’s picked up all the time, include the following in your head.

1. <link rel=“icon” type=“image/x-icon” href=“/favicon.ico” />

<link rel="icon" type="image/x-icon" href="/favicon.ico" />

And if you have an iPhone favicon:

1. <link rel=“apple-touch-icon” href=“/favicon.png” />

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/favicon.png" />

Titles And Meta Data

Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.

1. <title>10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS | How-To | Smashing Magazine</title>

<title>10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS | How-To | Smashing Magazine</title>

Meta description and keyword tags aren’t as important for SEO (at least for the major search engines anyway), but it’s still a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.

<meta name="description" content="By Paul Boag Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look" />

Cross-Browser Checks

Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

• Cross-Browser Checks: Services and Test Suites
• 7 fresh and simple ways to test cross-browser compatibility

Proofread

Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

• Writing for the web

Links

Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention.

Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. Don’t underline text that isn’t a link because it will confuse users. And what happens to visited links?

• W3C Link Checker

Functionality Check

Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use your website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

• Silverback – guerrilla usability testing

Graceful Degradation

Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox. Test your forms to make sure they still perform server-side validation checks, and test any cool AJAX stuff you have going on.

Validation

You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors. Common gotchas include no “alt” tags, no closing tags and using “&” instead of “&” for ampersands.

• 10 reasons your code won’t validate (and how to fix it)
• W3C validator

RSS Link

If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.

Put this code between your <head> tags.

1. <link rel=“alternate” type=“application/rss+xml” title=“Site or RSS title” href=“link-to-feed” />

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Site or RSS title" href="link-to-feed" />

Analytics

Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1. Google Analytics is a free favorite among website owners. Others to consider are Clicky, Kissmetrics (still in closed beta yet), Mint and StatCounter.

Sitemap

Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you. After creating the file, upload it to your root directory so that its location is www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you use WordPress, install the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, which automatically updates the sitemap when you write new posts. Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

Defensive Design

The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist. Get your users back on track by providing a useful 404 page that directs them to the home page or suggests other pages they may be interested in.

Another defensive design technique is checking your forms for validation. Try submitting unusual information in your form fields (e.g. lots of characters, letters in number fields, etc.) and make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it.

• 404 error pages reloaded

Optimize

You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too. Reducing HTTP requests, using CSS sprites wherever possible, optimizing images for the Web, compressing JavaScript and CSS files and so on can all help load your pages more quickly and use less server resources.

Besides, depending on the publishing engine that you are using, you may need to consider taking more specific measures – for instance, if you are using WordPress, you may need to consider useful caching techniques to speed up the performance.

• Best practices for speeding up your website
• Web page analyzer

Back Up

If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install Wordpress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet

If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet. Also, certain CSS elements, such as floats, don’t come out well when printed.

To point to a special CSS style sheet that computers automatically use when users print a page, simply include the following code between your <head> tags.

1. <link rel=“stylesheet” type=“text/css” href=“print.css” media=“print” />

<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="print.css" media="print" />

• Printing The Web: Solutions and Techniques
• A List Apart: Going to print

Download the Ultimate Website Launch Checklist!

Just recently Dan Zambonini has published a very detailed checklist that covers both the pre-launch and the post-launch phase of the web site life cycle. Among other things his Ultimate Website Launch Checklist contains checks related to content and style, standards and validation, search engine visibility, functional testing, security/risk, performance and marketing.

The pdf-version is available as well. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released.

You may also want to consider the Quick Usability Check List by David Leggett that highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts. Not all of these items will apply to every website, these are just suggested things to look for in your own site design.

Need help setting up your print files for special folds and binds? This Website may be able to help: http://www.foldfactory.com/index.php

http://www.colorcombos.com/

Reposting from AdWeek:

http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/news/agency/e3i1ccc5c91366de3d98584c2e0b94ac31b

New Study Reveals What a Client Wants in an Agency

A thorough understanding of the marketplace leads the wish list

Dec 15, 2008

-By Andrew McMains

NEW YORK Clients said “having an understanding of their marketplace” was the most important criteria for selecting an agency, according to a new survey that probes how clients view agencies from consultancy Reardon Smith Whittaker.

Grasping the company’s strategic direction as well as the creative work presented were tied for the second-most important factors cited in the report titled, “A Client’s View of Agency Performance.” This was followed by “offering something fresh and new.”

This year the Cincinnati-based company polled 184 client marketing and brand executives from the likes of AT&T, Dunkin’ Brands, Merck, MetLife and Revlon via an online questionnaire that was distributed in November.

“Simply popping out the monthly newsletter or the fun, quirky e-mail blast isn’t going to work anymore,” said Mark Schneider, managing director at Reardon Smith Whittaker. “Given the challenges clients are facing in light of the economy, they need agencies that can get up to speed quickly, add smart value-added thinking and are a trustworthy lot.”

As in past years, Reardon Smith Whittaker, a consultancy that coaches agencies on new business development, focused on why clients seek new agencies, what they look for and how satisfied they are with the results.

The top-ranked reasons the respondents cited for launching reviews were unhappiness with their agency’s thinking (46 percent), followed by dissatisfaction with creative work (40 percent) and not being proactive enough (38 percent).

The execs had mixed feelings about agency searches. They find the process to be time-consuming (42 percent) and 28 percent agree that “you’re told so many things that you’re not sure what to believe,” yet 37 percent said reviews were “exciting” and 22 percent “look forward to it.”

As for the tactics they’re most interested in, the respondents pointed to online marketing (69 percent), buzz marketing (58 percent), experiential efforts (53 percent), search engine marketing (52 percent) and mobile marketing (25 percent).

If anyone out there has experienced trouble with playing Flash movies in PowerPoint, you are not alone. The tool provided by Microsoft, while allowing you to embed Flash movies into PowerPoint, does not play the movies properly. Fortunately, this problem has been fixed by a third party add-in called FlashBack, a .ppa PowerPoint add-in that allows you to play Flash movies properly in PowerPoint.

First, to download the FlashBack.ppa add-in, visit:

http://skp.mvps.org/flashback.htm

Once you have the FlashBack.ppa file in hand, the instructions attached to this entry will walk you through a step-by-step for installing the add-in. Enjoy using Flash in PowerPoint!

Install FlashBack to Play Flash in PowerPoint (Click to Download Instructions)

*Of Note: These installation instructions are written for Windows 2000 / Windows XP for use with PowerPoint 2000 or PowerPoint 2003.

Reposting:

Path // www.yourhtmlsource.com > Forms > CLEARING DEFAULT TEXT

Clearing Default Text

by Ross Shannon

Many web designers like to add some default text to form inputs like text boxes, to signify what the user should type into the box. When the user clicks the input, this default is removed so they can begin typing. This can be a nice usability improvement when used correctly. Below you’ll find a nice, clean way to approach it, that requires minimal work on your part to get it working.

Page Navigation:
[ The HTML | The JavaScript · Explaining the JavaScript ]

This page was last updated on 2007-02-26

The HTML

On this page we’re going to work through an example of a single text box that comes with some default text. When the user clicks on the box, the default text is wiped away so that they can begin typing. If they click away from the box, without typing anything in, we will add the default text back so that they don’t forget what was meant to be typed. Check it out below:

Creating this text box is easy, we simply add the default text through the input’s value attribute, like so:

Enter a date: <input type="text" name="date" value="yy-mm-dd">

This default — known as a “representative value” — suggests that in this case our form is expecting a date in the format “yy-mm-dd” (two numbers for the year, two for the month, and two for the day; for example “05-11-22”). This is very useful for users, since they will all have different preferences for how to enter dates. Coding all of these possibilities into your form-processing code can be a nightmare, so this way you can guide your users to enter the date in the preferred format, and save yourself the trouble.

The JavaScript

The magic part in all of this is accomplished through a sprinkle of JavaScript. You should have some knowledge of event handlers and working with forms to understand what happens next. This script is going to be made » unobtrusive, meaning you can add the JavaScript file to any page and it will just work without having to make big changes to the HTML of the page.

The setup of our JavaScript is as so:

1. When the page loads, we will save the value of the input as a property of the element, so we can use it later.
2. When the user clicks (or otherwise focuses) on the element, we check if the current value is the same as this saved default text. If it is, we clear the input. Otherwise we leave it as it is.
3. When the user clicks away from the element, we check if they’ve filled anything into the text box. If they have, we do nothing. If they’ve left it blank, we’ll fill back in the default text.

This nicely breaks down into three JavaScript functions. First of all, we’re going to need my util-functions.js file, which provides a slew of general-use functions. (Internet Explorer users, open the .js files with Notepad.) Import that file and this new clear-default-text.js file and you’re good to go. Save those two files among your other website files, and add this to the <head> of any pages you need it in:

<script type="text/javascript" src="util-functions.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="clear-default-text.js"></script>

Finally, and very importantly, for any text inputs that you want this to work on, you need to give them a special class, like this:

<input type="text" name="date" value="yy-mm-dd" class="cleardefault">

Our script checks for the existance of this class in order to work its magic. Those who want to understand how the code works can read on for the full explanation…

Explaining the JavaScript

So, our first function runs when the page loads, and finds all the input elements on the page. If the input has the type “text” (i.e. it’s a one-line text input), and it has the class “cleardefault,” we add event handlers for the focus and blur events.

addEvent(window, 'load', init, false);

function init() {
    var formInputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');
    for (var i = 0; i < formInputs.length; i++) {
        var theInput = formInputs[i];

        if (theInput.type == 'text' && theInput.className.match(/bcleardefaultb/)) {
            /* Add event handlers */
            addEvent(theInput, 'focus', clearDefaultText, false);
            addEvent(theInput, 'blur', replaceDefaultText, false);

Then we save the input’s current value into a new property that we’re creating, called defaultText. This makes use of JavaScript’s handy ability to add arbitrary properties to any element. We simply make up a new one so we can store this information as part of the element.

            /* Save the current value */
            if (theInput.value != '') {
                theInput.defaultText = theInput.value;
            }
        }
    }
}

So, now our inputs are set up, we need the function that run when the focus and blur events occur. They’re pretty simple. First, in both, we have to find the target element that actually fired the event. Once we have this, we check to see if the user has interacted with this input before, and react accordingly.

function clearDefaultText(e) {
    var target = window.event ? window.event.srcElement : e ? e.target : null;
    if (!target) return;

    if (target.value == target.defaultText) {
        target.value = '';
    }
}

function replaceDefaultText(e) {
    var target = window.event ? window.event.srcElement : e ? e.target : null;
    if (!target) return;

    if (target.value == '' && target.defaultText) {
        target.value = target.defaultText;
    }
}

And that’s all there is to it. This script can be dropped into any page, and as long as the inputs on the page have been given the right class, it’ll work. Enjoy.

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Republication of AdvertisingAge Video:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid1370868150/bctid1709839007

The following presentation, presented by FunctionFox, provides insight into the sales process for marketing / Web / advertising agencies:

http://www.functionfox.com/events/Proposals-Contracts-Getting-To-Yes/

The presenter’s perspective on the sales cycle and pitching process is quite unique and worth hearing.

Chart: Eyetracking Images Show Impact of ‘Banner Blindness’

Source: Marketing Sherpa

Here’s a handy tool to remap the keys on your Mac keyboard. This is particularly helpful for those of us who use Adobe products and need to make use of keys that Mac has assigned to system functions.

>> http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/12106

While CSS drop down menus are not yet perfectly supported across all browsers, there are some advances that are making our lives a bit easier and bringing the future of CSS menu systems closer to today:

>> http://pixelspread.com/blog/289/css-drop-down-menu

>> http://www.cssplay.co.uk/menus/final_drop.html

Recommended resource for keeping your Mac up to speed:

Tiger
>> http://members.cox.net/18james/anacron-tiger.html

Leopard
>> http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/26808

Great resource for finding big brand logos:

>> http://www.brandsoftheworld.com/search/

For those of us who create ad box, skyscraper and leaderboard ads, or who build Websites that will dictate what standard online advertisements sizes should be, the following link to the Interactive Advertising Bureau should be quite helpful:

http://www.iab.net/iab_products_and_industry_services/1421/1443/1452

Rectangles and Pop-Ups

300 x 250 IMU – (Medium Rectangle)
View IMU

250 x 250 IMU – (Square Pop-Up) View IMU

240 x 400 IMU – (Vertical Rectangle)
View IMU

336 x 280 IMU – (Large Rectangle)
View IMU

180 x 150 IMU – (Rectangle)
View IMU

*NEW* 300 x 100 IMU – (3:1 Rectangle)
View IMU

*NEW* 720 x 300 IMU – (Pop-Under) View IMU

Banners and Buttons

468 x 60 IMU – (Full Banner)
View IMU

234 x 60 IMU – (Half Banner)
View IMU

88 x 31 IMU – (Micro Bar)
View IMU

120 x 90 IMU – (Button 1)
View IMU

120 x 60 IMU – (Button 2)
View IMU

120 x 240 IMU – (Vertical Banner)
View IMU

125 x 125 IMU – (Square Button)
View IMU

728 x 90 IMU – (Leaderboard)
View IMU

Skyscrapers

160 x 600 IMU – (Wide Skyscraper)
View IMU

120 x 600 IMU – (Skyscraper)
View IMU

300 x 600 IMU – (Half Page Ad)
View IMU

I was reading an article in the April edition of Marketing News titled, “Just Say No. Demarketing teaches good marketers how to turn an unprofitable customer away,” when I realized that while the article makes a few good points on target marketing and additionally, demarketing to specific segments, it did not provide any insights for those of us who not only market traditionally, but through emerging Web channels as well.

So, while we understand the importance of target marketing and while this article makes good points on demarketing, how does this apply to the Web?

At first, you may think, “I have already targeted my SEO and Keyword campaigns to the audiences we have designated as potential customers.” And, this may very well be true. However, the question I would ask is this: Have you effectively demarketed certain key terms, phrases or paid ads?

Let’s take a for example:

Your company sells enterprise productivity software to F1000+ sized companies and organizations and has found a niche in a few smaller vertical markets in medium-sized businesses. The software you sell is quite sophisticated and is meant for organizations who will deploy the solution across a user base of hundreds to thousands. Your software is not really meant for smaller companies who may only utilize 10% or less of what the total solution has to offer, with a user base of less than fifty. While your solution may work for the smaller organization, it is more than they need and more than they can afford.

What does this teach us about demarketing?

Let’s say for example, in one of your keyword campaigns, you are paying for clicks on the following key terms: productivity software, business productivity, enterprise productivity, enterprise productivity software.

Now, while active Internet searchers from large organizations may type in”productivity software,” chances are, plenty more Internet searchers from small and medium sized organizations, who are simply not the right match for your software solution, may see your ad and click through, effectively eating up your budgets for searchers who will never turn into a sale.

By showing the searchers only key terms: enterprise productivity and enterprise productivity software; you’re effectively demarketing to those who you know will not turn into a sale.

Also, when you show searchers your company’s ad, you have another opportunity to “turn off” searchers that are unlikely to become customers.

For example, instead of showing the following ad:

Our Company Provides Productivity Software to Streamline Your Business Processes

Use the following ad:

Our Company Provides Enterprise Level Productivity Software to Leading Businesses

Granted, you may miss a couple potential customers, but you will cut wasted marketing dollars with a simple and effective demarketing methodology. These marketing dollars can be reallocated to campaigns that are more closely targeted.

This methodology can be applied to just about any SEO or Search Marketing campaign. To effectively demarket on the Web, consider which ads and key terms may attract an audience that is not right for your company and either remove or change the terms to “turn off” searchers who are identified as unlikely customers.

—–

Aaron McLean

Creative Director/Executive Vice President

For those of us who run targeted online and offline marketing campaigns, or SEO campaigns, which utilize a “landing page” on our Website, there may be cause for hiding these pages and their content from search engines, such as:

1. Special offers are provided to visitors who land on the page
2. Content is prepared for a specific target audience with sensitive content
3. B2B messages are online that should not be communicated to consumers
4. Outside visitors may contaminate marketing or SEO campaign results

An easy, fast and inexpensive method for hiding Web pages from search engines is as follows:

1. Create the new page with your CMS or manually as per your standard operating procedures
2. Do not link up the page in your navigation anywhere – essentially – allow it to “float” on your server
3. Do not add the page to your sitemap, whether an XML Google-friendly sitemap or an embedded HTML sitemap
4. Create what’s called a Robots Exclusion Protocol file and block the page directly
   • Information on how to do this is available: http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

That’s that. Your pages will now be hidden from search engines.

If you’re using redirects on your Website to take traffic from one location immediately to another, it is important that the redirects be set up correctly so that the search engines don’t end up skipping over your content and ranking your site poorly.

To check your redirects, use this tool:

Redirect Checker

Ken Thomson, CEO at Biz911, publishes a new book titled The Battle Scarred Guide to Small Business Debt Relief and Recovery.

Click here to find the book on Amazon.com

Recently, Eight Eleven brought in a new client, Biz911, which was struggling to manage and get results from multiple Web, design and print vendors. It came to Eight Eleven looking for a single-source partner who would be able to handle all of its needs. Not long after the new relationship initiated, the company had a new logo, identity package, marketing materials and Website design that – finally – positioned its brand properly and achieved its vision.

Eight Eleven’s client contact, Biz911 CEO, Ken Thomson, had this to say: “My wife noticed that I’ve been less stressed out as of late. She calls it the ‘Aaron effect,’” referring to the client’s Agency contact, Creative Director, Aaron McLean.

Increasing dosage of Eight Eleven decreases stress. It’s market tested and proven!

Today, marketing budgets are being stretched out as thin as possible. Both agencies and clients are looking for new ways to achieve the same results, at a lower cost. Fortunately, a host of new online stock photography Websites are now offering royalty free stock images at much lower costs than the resources of yester-year. 10 years ago, if you had to purchase a series of 10 royalty free stock photos (one at a time) in high resolution, you were looking at costs around $500/image, meaning $5,000 of your budget was going to photography. These days, the same quality high resolution images can be found through the following Websites at $10-15/image, bringing your previous $5,000 expense down to $100-150. Now we can find other creative ways to stretch our budgets thin.

Low Cost Stock Photo Websites

• Dreamstime
• Fotolia
• iStockPhoto
• LuckyOliver
• Shutterstock
• Morgue File
• Stock.xchng
• Stockxpert

Credit for list compilation: Vance Bell

During the week of November 12, 2007, Eight Eleven launched a self-promotional targeted marketing campaign with the first phase of “Baby” posters. Mailers were hand-stuffed with extra special care by the Eight Eleven team, including President & CEO, Glenda Laudisio, Creative Director, Aaron McLean, Marketing & Business Development Director, Patrick Sweeney and the rest of the hard-workin’ gang!

Good tips and tricks on keeping your Mac running OS X up to speed. We’ve all experienced the lag from time to time…

This article courtesy of Macworld and is attached below.

Prevent Mac Disasters

eWeek, in a September 17, 2007 periodical, published an article outlining the top mistakes made during the Website design and development process.

After reviewing this article, Eight Eleven wanted to share our thoughts, as our Web design and development process incorporates processes that account for and effectively avoid making all of the mistakes outlined by eWeek.

Eight Eleven incorporates the following processes that speak directly to the article.

CLICK HERE to download the article.

• Usability planning and content organization, which optimize a users experience with a site and streamlines their interactivity, taking them to their desired content or end result, faster and easier.
• Intuitive navigation and graphical linking creation, which helps users find what their looking for faster and easier.
• Image optimization for faster page load times and a cleaner, more user-friendly interface.
• Standard HTML and CSS development languages to ensure optimal cross-browser/cross-platform functionality.
• Flash animations to compel, attract and persuade audiences.
• Optimizing page text to get the message across faster, with less words.
• Adhering to ADA compliance color guidelines and utilizing clean, professional color palettes, which will be readable and attractive to all audiences and users.
• Resolution friendly page layouts, which remain consistent in the display of content across varying resolutions.
• Clean, professional content generation, which is aligned with the professionalism our clients’ clients and customers expect.

CLICK HERE to download the article.

Mozilla’s Firefox browser is gaining popularity with internet users. Usage percent is up to 34.5%, a 9% increase over this time last year.

Browser statistics provided by W3Schools.com.

Loyal Mac users,

There is a common error when reinstalling any CS3 product on a Mac that involves being prompted for a Toolkit that doesn’t appear to be on purchased software CDs. To solve this, download the following file. When prompted for the abject Toolkit, open the DMG file below, then click OK to the Toolkit prompt. You should be well on your back to blissful Macland from there.

>> http://download.macromedia.com/pub/developer/bridge/sdk/AdobeExtendScriptToolkit2.0.1All.dmg

Annoyed with Adobe,
Drew

Senior Web Designer

Eight Eleven Inc.

A new domain lookup resources is available at:

http://instantdomainsearch.com/

This tool allows you to look up .com, .net and .org domains instantaneously, as queries are typed into the engine.

The resource is very useful for:

• Corporate and product naming
• Online promotion and campaign planning

Enjoy!

From Biz911, an Eight Eleven client that specializes in dealing with debt management for small to medium sized businesses, some sound advise for dealing with pesky debt collectors:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=er29OZb–fo