When I was a young and inexperienced web designer, I was once asked what made a great web design. I blithely responded with something like "lots of cool graphics and moving objects!" I cringe when I remember this particularly dreadful moment in my life. My real concern, however, is with aspiring web designers today. I am an avid participant in online discussion forums and hear and deal with this issue plenty.
[2002-10-23] Case In Point: Designing A Site That Demands High Traffic
Marnie Pehrson may not be well known for driving traffic to Web sites, but she should be! Her ability to get literally hundreds of thousands of page views a month is simple astounding! (NOTE: I said "page views," not "hits." BIG difference!) I had to ask her to reveal her secrets so that we all could learn how to create a Web site that simply demands high traffic.
[2002-10-23] Resubmission Tactics: Follow Up
In a recent issue Marv Dealy, of Throckmorten Enterprises asked about the wisdom of repeatedly resubmitting your site to the search engines. We received conflicting responses from two top SEO specialists. Here's a response from Dan Thies, which offers some surprising advice, and tips the scales towards NOT resubmitting your site. In fact, Dan advises that you don't submit your site at all!
[2002-10-22] 7 Free Statistics Trackers for Your Website
As some of you probably now know, WebTrends Live no longer offer the free Personal Edition of their statistics tracker.
[2002-10-11] Mirror Your Site - Avoid Internal Link Errors
Unless your web site has only one page, with no graphics, you'll have internal links. That's links to other parts of your site, or to pictures that you've included on your page.
[2002-10-11] Leave Those Links Blue!
Don't mess with those links! When you're designing your site, you should leave your text links in their natural state--blue and underlined.
[2002-10-04] 5 Essential Questions You Should Ask Before Selecting Your Next Web Host
1. "Where do you see your online business 1 year from now?"
[2002-10-04] Sins of The Internet: Pagejacking
One of the most frustrating events you can experience as a webmaster or writer is finding your work has been copied without your permission. I'm sure that just about every writer and every webmaster has been horrified to find his own work somewhere else under a different person's name. The thankfully few times it has happened to me I felt a mixture of blind fury and complete hate. Sometimes thieves don't stop there. They don't steal a web page or two and claim it as their own (this is merely a copyright violation and a completely unethical thing to do). No, what they do is steal a web page and claim it is YOURS, but with modifications. In other words, they create a web page which is exactly like yours, with some changes to do something undesirable.
[2002-10-03] Formatting your Email Newsletters
Pop-quiz hotshot! You've got to send an HTML email to a list of clients and have it display correctly across a spectrum of email clients which include Outlook, web-based, frame-based. It has to be Netscape compatible, Eudora-friendly, Lotus Notes accessible... What do you do? So, you want to send HTML email to your clients, prospects or newsletter subscribers. Marketing has descended from upon high and declared it, the small business client wants it, and an executive in management has read something about it. Well, why not? The clickthrough rates are noticeably higher on HTML email. Analytics show that customers are less likely to unsubscribe from HTML email than their text counterparts. In my last TemplateKit email newsletter (50,000+ recipients, http://www.templatekit.com/email/TK20.htm) I had 12 unsubscribes, 9 of which were text recipients. Customers simply respond with more click-throughs, more sales, more inquiries for information, but only if your message is in a form that the recipient can easily view and display correctly.
