Latest Articles
The Graphic Re-design Process. Little to No Budget? No Problem.
June 28, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
In life, as in web sites, first impressions can make or break sales, long or short term business relationships, and more. What does your web site say about your business? If you’ve been wanting to update your site but don’t really have deep pockets, you’ll find the following post helpful for graphically re-designing or just sprucing up your web even if you have little to no budget to work with.
First, like my last post, and for better or worst, most site owners or designers have fallen in love with their web site. Some times you may need a few comparisons in order to understand if your web site even needs a graphical update. Check out Web Pages That Suck and especially it’s “daily sucker” page. While the WPTS site uses Google AdWords in an obnoxious perhaps even “sucky” way itself, the “daily sucker” section has links to anonymously nominated “sucky” web pages that were nominated for their design, user interface, or other shortcomings. When you visit some of these sites, does your own site seem similar?
Find a Pro or Amateur Artist.
There are many, many pro and amateur web designers that would be happy to assist you and work within a budget.
There are plenty of places where you can place a free or low cost advertisement for a designer such as Guru.com and of course you’ve probably heard of Monster right?. You can always post to the online version of your local news paper but it may be casting your net too wide. Why not go where the more internet savvy hang out? Try checking the jobs, gigs, or services areas of Craigslist. You can also find artists via art associations such as AIGA. If you want to give a talented amateur their big break, consider some of the “hidden” talent markets. Post your needs on the job boards and art departments of your local community colleges and universities. You can also peruse the art and contact amateur and pro graphic designers via Deviantart. Deviantart has been around for years and I would argue that it is the “myspace” for graphic designers.
A Few Tools You Might Try…
If you have a bit of time and talent, you may want to create and add graphics on your own. Even if you find that you do not have the talent required to make great graphics or designs for your site, don’t write off trying. Often times creating at least a mock up of what you are shooting for can be extremely helpful to a designer. Your plans may be modest or even too grand, but a good web designer / graphic artist can often work to hone your ideas to a more manageable form.
No cost:
Paint.Net
Fauxto
Gimp
ImageMagick
Low cost:
Paint Shop Pro
LView
High Cost/Pro Tools:
From Adobe: Photo Shop, Fireworks
From Corel: CorelDRAW, Painter
Download a Tutorial.
While the ease of use and learning curve will differ with each of these programs, there are many free tutorials that can guide you through creating some some amazing special effects for graphics. If you can’t find a tutorial for your specific graphics program, understand that many programs utilize different names for the same software features. As you begin to understand more about your selected software program you can then go through and follow many of the tutorials for other programs in order to create roughly the same results.
A few tutorial sites that I’ve found useful:
Web Design Library
CBT Cafe
SitePoint
PhotoShop Tips & Tricks
Add Some Interesting Photos and Graphics.
Some time’s you have to go cheap with your graphics. If you don’t have the talent for creating graphics through a free or inexpensive program, you may turn to buying clip art or using a program to modify clip art. Years ago, I was buying clip art CDs in order to quickly create graphics for web sites. Most of the inexpensive clip art CDs that I’ve found today, still include those same clip art files from years ago. Do you really want your site to look like it was made 10 years ago or like something newer? Forget outdated clip art CDs!
Consider using the “find” option at Creative Commons to find art, photos, or other items that you can use on your site. The licensing terms will vary but often a quick email to the license holder will clear up any questions that you might have about usage. And quite often, the CC photo authors will let you use their photos for free, as long as you reference them on your about page, copy right/privacy page, or similar.
On the other hand there are tons of online image banks that can be used. These image banks are much like the clip art CDs of years past except there are always new photos and graphics being added to the mix and you can preview the art before plunking $30-$200 into a CD collection where you might only use 1 graphic. There are sites with large selections like the well known Gettyimages, but for the license price you might also check out smaller competitors like iStockphoto. If you think stock photos can’t help or look too generic, think a bit more creatively about what can be done with them. Although Kathy Sierra pretty much froze her web blog a few months ago, I’m still inspired by many of the posts on her “Creating Passionate Users” blog. With just a little bit of creativity, a post can be spiced up by a great graphic in a very positive way.
Now Go Make Something Beautiful… Need a Little More Inspiration First?
At this point you’ve probably picked up a few resources that you can use. Whether you are a do-it-yourselfer or you are hiring some one to help, it is great to have some inspiration and a game plan. Like many, I find that looking at what others are doing can really help. Often you can can pick out the things that you like/don’t like from other sites and work some of those ideas. Into your own design plan.
If you are looking mainly for color schemes, check out Geoff Peters’ “Instant Color Schemes“. His tool pulls photos in from a Yahoo image search in order to create a common color palette. Some times it works really well, at other times, the results are odd. But as Yahoo’s image search is constantly changing, it is always a bit different from the last time you had used the same search. Also check out one of my all time favorites Design Meltdown. DM brings together examples of various web site designs, then slices and dices common site features into categories. You can gain some inspiration from ideas like “clean” design, “orange” sites, and others. DM also runs The Daily Slurp where users submit their own suggestions for great site design. When your site starts shining after a re-design, you may want to submit it.
Before I close, understand that visually good design does not necessarily mean a well optimized or search engine friendly design. The reverse is also true, a well optimized site does not necessarily mean a visually good looking site. However a good mix of engine friendly and visually appealing techniques can be quite beneficial. There are also arguments for and against a well designed web site or an ugly design that I haven’t mentioned, and I encourage you to explore those issues. And while I encourage you to review what others sites do and form your own game plan based on bits and pieces that you find and like, I don’t recommend that you clone some one else’s web site. Large companies may be able to get away with it, but you may or may not be able to, why take the chance? In a nut shell, whether your budget is large or small, there are lots of inexpensive ways to make your site look more professional and graphically appealing with out breaking the bank.
Defining Web Analytics and How It Relates To The Bottom Line
By Webposition SEO Team
By Curtis Friedl
Website developers and those who manage website content need to understand the multitude of information that can be gathered through the Web Analytics process. A good web analytics tool can help you to understand the numbers that affect the bottom line.
- How are visitors finding my site?
- When they get there, what do they do?
- Are they taking the desired action that I want them to take?
- At what points are they falling off from the intended process?
- What geographical regions are these visitors located in?
- What is the most popular content on my site?
- Do certain visitor segments respond differently to campaigns or to my site than others?
- Which of my online marketing campaigns are the most effective at drawing visitors to the site and converting them into customers?
- Are customers that are coming to my site for support finding their answers?
- How effective am I at reaching and engaging target demographics in my audience?
The first target of understanding those who visit your site is where are they coming from, a search engine, an associated website, etc. Which one of the marketing channels that you employ are most effective, and what is the returned derived from that ad spend. Is the ROI sufficient, should I increase the ad spend, or should I evaluate other channels?
Once I have captured the visitor, did they leave right away, or did they browse through my site. What was the path that they took, was it the one that was envisioned to lead to the proper conversion which was desired, or did the potential client abandon?
Geographically where are the visitors from? Were they from my targeted market, or have you uncovered a new avenue to direct sales efforts towards. If you are advertising to a diverse market, does one segment behave differently then another one? Did one of your campaigns lead to a better conversion rate from a targeted audience, and was that conversions with in the demographic that I expected it to come from, and did it meet our target benchmarks from that demographic.
All of this and more can be answered by looking at the audience that is reviewing the content on your site. A review of those who traffic your site, and an analyses of the path and locations that your visitor viewed, can lead you to make decisions on how to design a site, how to construct the landing/offer pages for a targeted audience. These site usability studies do more then aid in future site designs, they permit a deeper understanding of your target audience. In addition these efforts will lead to a much greater understanding of your visitors.
These analytic results can also lead you to a better understand of how to target the advertising toward your client audience. Are ads on the search engines more effective then banners on associated websites/portals, or is the old fashion targeted mailing the best avenue to cover, and meet your audience. In simple means analysis of your visitors, and content that they review can lead to:
- Optimize marketing campaigns
- Improved content, and search engine marketing efforts
- Increase website conversions
- More profitable sales activity
- Determination of the ROI of specific pages
- Greater targeted and more cost effective business processes
The bottom line is understanding your client will make it more easy to sell to them. The best way short of standing at the door asking them to fill out a survey is to review the how, where, when and why from your website analytics provider. Attempting to discern why the visitor selected one path over another will help you to understand how to better layout your sites design, or text content to encourage the desired conversion. Additional reviewing the eatery and exit points for your visitor will uncover potential strengths, and weaknesses in your sites design. Continuous reviewing of analytic information, and implementation of the solutions developed from this research will lead to a healthier bottom line.
The Secret To Getting More Links For Boring Sites: The Importance of the Secondary Audience
June 19, 2007 By Webposition SEO Team
By Scott Goodyear
You have a web site. You are looking for better rankings in the search engines, but your site is pretty boring. Perhaps not boring by your own standards, maybe not boring even by the standards of your target audience, but what about the secondary audience for your site? Can you hope to obtain links, essentially search engine recommendations, from some one outside of your core audience?
Many first time web masters will say, “But I’m not trying to get links from sites outside of my customers.” I ask why not? For many “boring” sites, they have little chance of being linked to by their core, primary audience.
Let’s say that you were selling large vending machines. The vending machines that you sell are the type that you’d pop a few quarters into in order to buy a can of Coke or Pepsi. Outside the grocery store, in a break room, you would see these machines dispensing small bags of chips, candy, gum, etc. Pretty straight forward right? Not too technical nor too exciting. Your target audience would be grocery stores, convenience stores, businesses small and large, and many others. Although not many people search on “vending machine sales” or similar keyword phrases, when they do search, you want to show up. You may have all of the content on your site that describes your vending machines to the smallest detail, like how many 12 packs of soda you can load into the machine at once, but why would your latest client link to you? Sure you had the best price, lowest cost shipping, etc. but their company does not link to the company that they buy donuts from on Fridays, nor will they link to you. And if they did, would a link from XYZ Business Machines and Copiers really help you to improve your rankings for vending machines when most search engines see vending machine keywords often found with pages and sites about drinks, snacks, and so on? Links are an integral part of a high ranking. So, who WILL link to your site?
Remember Brainstorming and Creating a Mental Map?
There may be a secondary audience that you need to consider in your plan to gain more links and improve your rankings. In order to create some content that might appeal to the secondary audience, you’ll have to explore a few directions that you might take to interest them. Remember brainstorming ideas for a report in school? Remember creating an outline or mental map? There is not a wrong or right way to brainstorm but it is essential that you do it. It can help you to pull out some ideas that normally might not hit you right away. Here is a quick example of some ideas related to the phrase “vending machines”:
Pulling Ideas Out of The Mental Map
The picture above shows just a few trains of thought that I had with the phrase “vending machines”. I could go on and on and the mental map might never be completed. Lets pull a few ideas out of this exploration of ideas.
- Vending machines dispense snack food, juices, sport and soft drinks. There are various recipes that call for candy or soda as an ingredient. Create an area for recipes on you site. Seed the area with a few recipes that you find or create (get permission if needed), allow users to submit their own recipes, go to various food related web forums and ask for user submitted recipes. Buy a cook book or two each month, follow some recipes online, and place a review of the resulting dish on your site with a few pictures. Better yet, hire some one to “blog” their discoveries on your site. There are bound to be some “foodies” that would be more than happy to get paid to do this for you.
- The food industry has history.
Some companies like Coke, Hershey, and others are proud of their history and have mini-museums in some states, company stores, and factory tours. Provide a guide or review to getting to or around the towns where these attractions take place. When people go online to plan their vacations and find your resource, they may link to your guide. - Products in vending machines often have promotional packaging.
Odds are good that some of the products that are sold from vending machines have “promotional” cans, bags, additional “standees” that are normally meant for grocery stores or mini-markets, or other materials that candy memorabilia collectors, blogs, and others might find interesting. There are collectors out there, fans of various promotions, etc. and many like to browse web sites about their hobby and link to related sites and product pictures.
These are just a couple of ideas that I was able to quickly come up with, but maybe you see where I’m going with this?You want your site to rank on phrases like “coke vending machines“? Search engines not only need to see optimized pages on your site that talk about the phrase in order to give it a high ranking, they also need to see that other web pages from other sites also link to your pages about the same subject.
Think about who WOULD come back to your site over and over. Think about visitors who might not be your direct competitors but who do have related web sites. Encourage them to book mark your site and make the extra effort to link to your site by providing content that is appealing to them and you improve your chances of being found by your primary audience as well, an audience that may not really care about recipes that include ingredients from vending machines, and who will probably not link to you or write reviews about your site or products.