If your website looks, feels, or sounds like an ad, you are losing sales.

I read a great book recently, Web Copy that Sells, and she had a great formula for providing information in a way that will 1) get read and 2) make sales.

"Your website should provide the solid information that your prospect is looking for, and should have an editorial feel to it. Above all, it should be free of hype. Why? Because people usually go online to find information. Few people log on saying, "I can't wait to see ads, and I can't wait to buy stuff!" No, that usually doesn't happen.

People go online to find information . That's why they call it the information superhighway. Even if they are shopping for something - say a DVD player or a hair restoration product-they are generally seeking information, not advertising about those products."

We've said it before and I'm sure we'll say it again, but good content is what will bring more people into your site and ultimately make the sale over any other gimmick or marketing ploy. Just follow the three steps above:

1. Provide solid information that they are looking for
2. Give it with an editorial feel
3. Avoid all the hype

(Warning this is way off topic).

The Tales of Beedle the Bard is now available for pre order from Amazon.

Well, the elusive Tales of Beedle the Bard (not Beetle the Bard as many pronounce it) are now available for preorder. Originally the book had only 7 copies made. One that was auctioned off and ultimately purchased by Amazon for 3.98 million. Well now us that don't have a 4 mill in pocket change have an opportunity to purchase a copy.

There are two versions: a Standard and a Collectors edition.

The Standard Version features all five fairy tales from the original The Tales of Beedle the Bard, a new introduction by J.K. Rowling, illustrations reproduced from the original handcrafted book, and commentary on each of the tales by Professor Albus Dumbledore. 

The Collector's Edition includes a reproduction of J.K. Rowling's handwritten introduction, as well as 10 additional illustrations not found in the Standard Edition. Opening the cover of the case reveals a velvet bag embroidered with J.K. Rowling's signature, in which sits the piece de resistance: your very own copy of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, complete with metal skull, corners, and clasp; replica gemstones; and emerald ribbon.

At a recent SMX Conference, Matt Cutts (head of Google Web Spam) gave great examples of Black Hat and White Hat tactics as either high risk or low risk. Here are some blackhat/whitehat tactics and their relative risk factors:

Trust and credibility is a limited commodity on the Internet and is much easier to lose than gain. Higher risk items can quickly lose your credibility and cause your site to be banned from the search engines. With more and more SEOs working inhouse on their own company website, higher risk tactics are just not an option.

Nielson/Net Ratings has released new search engine statistics for May 2008. Google has increased its market share over the Nov 2007 search engine results we posted last year. Google pulled ahead a little farther from 57.7 to 59.3 for a 1.6% increase in market share. Google captured just over 4.7 billion searches in May alone. There were over 7.8 billion searches performed in May.

Search Engine	Share of Searches
Google	59.3%
Yahoo	16.9%
MSN	13.3%
AOL	4.1%

Google seems to keep edging ahead in the search engine race, but it looks like msn's move to "Live" has been beneficial as they gained a little as well.

Recently AH Digital FX Studios was featured in River City Weekly's article about businesses in Idaho that have succeeded on the web. (Full Article (535 K pdf) )

Kevin Keefe remembers answering the phone in Idaho Falls late one night, and on the other end was a voice with a unique accent. “Hi, I’m calling from Liverpool, and I want to buy a ski hat.” That’s just one of the stories he has to tell after retailing his custommade ski hats since 2001 on the Internet from his Web site www.getaKLU.com.

Keefe’s business, KLU Mountain Outerwear, is just one of many locally owned businesses that have taken advantage of the Internet. Some are custom-designed, some are variations of a ready-made site, but all bring customers easy access to their information and products.

Keefe and his wife sew the hats after customers place their orders online with their own head measurements and choices of colors and patterns. It only takes about a day to sew it up before they ship them out to all parts of the world.

“We don’t do any advertising,” said Keefe. “It’s all about search engines. The person who figures out how to get number one in search engines makes a million bucks.” Keefe for several years had a Web site that simply told about their products but didn’t have a way to order. He did a redesign of his site in 2001, then started taking credit cards as a form of payment and put in metatags so that his site was the first one found if someone searched for the key words “ski hats.”

“Our business went up five-fold,” he said. Last year was their best year ever, grossing about $12,000 in sales. In December he took two weeks off of his day job at the site; KLU mountain outerwear took 176 orders that month and each Monday shipped out about 32 orders.

“That’s our busy season. We don’t take vacations or visit family in the winter. By about March it slows down, and we have summers off, which is what we want,” Keefe said. “I thought about adding a summer line, but I’d rather go rock climbing and kayaking.”

Kent Frecker never really advertised his custom saddle-making business in its 18-year span. But when Frecker Saddlery went online (www.freckersaddlery. com), he doubled his business and hired two more employees.

“We did it for convenience,” Frecker said. “Our goal wasn’t to expand any; it’s easier to refer people to that Web site than keep making copies of pictures or try to make a catalog. Then we got bombarded with phone calls and more people wanting saddles. Now and then we’d put extra saddles on the Web site, and they would sell. Then those customers would come back and have orders lined up. It kind of surprised us. Now we get phone calls from all across the country.”

The Web site is essentially Frecker’s store, which allows added flexibility. “We don’t have a storefront per se. The shop is here at my house and we don’t keep business hours. If I want to go for a horse ride today I can close the shop, let the answering machine answer the phone or let the emails come in. It gives us a lot of freedom,” he said.

Convenience was the main reason for Melissa and Jim Barnard of Rigby to put Landmark Development and Silver Creek Construction online (www. landmarkdevelopment.org and www.silvercreekconstruction. com). It’s easy to list lots for sale and house plan descriptions online.

“It’s convenient for customers. They go to the site at their leisure and don’t feel sales pressure. It’s technology that everybody uses. It’s a way to find us and for the Web site the more information the better,” Melissa said. “We have protective covenants listed and any plots or house amenities. If I had to send out a mass mailing it would be very expensive, and I’d probably miss my market. Online it’s specific. They’re the customer you want because they’re looking.”

Adam Hayes started his Web design business in 2002. He does everything from the initial concept, design and branding to the coding, back-end administration and search engine optimization.

With several local and national clients, including Keefe, Frecker and Barnard, he has a few tips for those thinking of starting out on the Web.

He has helped individuals develop a small side business and helped large companies get noticed online.

“The most important thing that anyone can do when starting a Web-based business is understand their customer. You’ve got seven seconds when they find your site for them to decide this is where they want to be. Otherwise they’ll click ‘back’ and never come back to your site. You have to know what they want so they can say ‘yes, I finally found where I want to be,’” Hayes said. Hayes’ clients come mostly from referrals. He was recommended to Keefe by his father-in-law and was recommended to Barnard by a satisfied client. You can find his site at www.ahfx.net.

Well after owning my Dell 3100cn for a very very very long time, I've finally found out how to get rid of streaks that were running down the middle of the page on color prints.

Well today, I found an answer that immediately fixed the problem within about 2 minutes. I found a great article that shows that the culprit is bad design of the imaging drum inside the 3100cn. Here are the instructions on how to fix it: (This will void your warranty with Dell so DON'T DO THIS IF YOU DON'T WANT YOUR WARRANTY VOIDED. WE ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT OCCURS FROM THESE STEPS:)

Well I am now very happy that my Dell 3100cn prints without any streaks. A little background will help you figure out why I'm so happy.

I got a Dell 3100cn printer a couple of years ago. I had a friend that had one and I loved the way it printed and everything about it, so I decided to get one of my own. After setting it up, I printed a few sheets and all of the color prints had streaks or lines that ran down the middle of the page at extremely regular intervals on every print. I called Dell and they shipped me a new printer drum. It didn't fix the problem. They had me ship the printer back and they sent me a used printer. (I was upset because I figured I'd get a new printer... but that is a different story.) This one wouldn't even fire up. It kept giving an error about temperature. They sent out a tech and he replaced some controller. It didn't fix the problem with the error message. So I sent that printer back to Dell.

Finally they sent me another printer that streaked again. I was fed up by then and found that if I printed enough pages the printer would "warm up" and the streaks would go away. So any time we wanted to print anything in color, we'd just print about 150 black and white pages of whatever and then print our color pages.

Adobe is ending its Stock Photography Service.

I received the following email from Adobe just the other day:

As of April 1, 2008, the Adobe(R) Stock Photos royalty-free image
service will be discontinued. We made this decision in order to focus our efforts in other areas, and we want to share this news with you and let you know how it affects you.

Over the next few months we will be making changes to Adobe Stock
Photos. On March 4, 2008, search functionality will be disabled. You will be able to purchase images through our service until March
31, 2008.

To finalize your transactions with us, please follow these steps:
1. Complete your image searches by March 4, 2008.
2. Make final image purchases by March 31, 2008.
3. If necessary, re-download past purchases and print your
purchase history by March 31, 2008.
4. When you're ready, uninstall Adobe Stock Photos from Adobe(R)
Bridge in your Creative Suite(R) applications.

For a long time I really wondered why Adobe would offer a stock photography service. It just seemed like a big hassle for them to get information from the big stock photography sites, organize it, etc. I really doubt that they were making very much off of each purchase. Now it looks like I was correct because they are shutting down the service.

So from now on you'll have to go search for your images the good ol' fashioned way. At least this way everyone that uses the Adobe suite won't be presented exactly the same images any more.

Nielson/Net Ratings has released new search engine statistics for Nov 2007. Google has really increased market share over the Feb 2006 search engine results we posted last year. Google jumped from 48.5 to 57.7 for a 9.2% increase in market share. Google captured just over 4.2 billion searches in Nov alone. There were over 7.1 billion searches performed in November.

Search Engine	Share of Searches
Google	57.7%
Yahoo	17.9%
MSN	12.0%
AOL	4.5%

With that many searches happening in a month, I hope you understand the importance of good Search Engine Optimization.

2007 Website Statistics from multiple websites show that the top three website browsers are still IE 6, IE 7, and Firefox.

Here are some browser statistics for 2007.

It looks like more and more people are installing IE 7 although more people are still using IE 6. Firefox is still a bit hit in the tech sector as seen from Site 2. Overall it looks like Firefox lost a little ground to the IE 7 movement compared to last years browser statistics .

Fresh content will bring spiders (and people) back to your site more often.

How often you update your website is extremely critical to your success on the web. First and foremost, search engines loves fresh content. Let's take two sites that cover the same topic. Site A who updates their site every month and Site B who hasn't updated their site since they created it. The search engines only have "so much time" to index sites.

If the spider comes back and finds that information has changed, it will normally decrease the time between now and its next indexing (to see if there were even more updates that have happened between crawlings.) If the content hasn't changed it might increase the time between its last crawl and its next crawl (assuming that if it wasn't updated lately it probably won't be updated next time either). Regularly updated content will bring spiders back more often which leads to faster indexing.

Now, what if both sites decide to run Christmas specials and both update their sites. Which Christmas special will be seen sooner and thus have a better chance of being effective?

Besides being great for search engines, fresh content is great for real life humans. People love getting the latest information about everything. Updated content also builds trust in the information you provide. If you haven't updated, people might think that you have gone out of business, or don't care about keeping your customers updated, or don't carry the latest product that the competition has on their site.

Another benefit of new, fresh content is that it builds authority into your site. As you add new pages about your products, services, or frequently asked questions, you further strengthen your authority of that subject. You show that you really know your stuff. More people will be willing to link to you because you have the answers that they are searching for. It also creates extra miniwebs or natural doorways into your website which will help your clients find you from even more keywords.

With the popularity of blogs and other mechanisms for publishing content quickly on the web, the importance of updating your site has increased exponentially.

Writing great, compelling headlines is one of the most important skills of a copywriter.

On average, 8 out of 10 people will read headline copy, but only 2 out of 10 will read the rest. This is the secret to the power of the headline, and why it so highly determines the effectiveness of the entire piece.

While many of us want to create headlines that grab people's attention, most do not know how to write great headlines. After reading a couple of articles from A List Apart and CopyBlogger , we've gathered some simple, "premade" headlines for your use. We gave you a number of "ready to use" headline keywords , but here are some sample phrases and concepts that will get your creative juices flowing:

• Who Else Wants ...
• The Secret of ...
• Here is a Method that is helping ... to ...
• Little Known Ways to ...
• Get Rid of ... Once and for All
• Here's a Quick Way to ...
• Now You Can Have ...
• What Everybody Should Know about ...
• Give Me ... and I'll Give You ...
• Do You Recognize the ... Early Warning Signs of ...

Once you are past the need for "premade" headings, use some of these concepts to get people to read more than just your headline.

• Reveal Facts
• Use a Quote
• Give a Direct Command
• Focus on Your Unique Selling Position
• Announce Something New
• Be Controversial
• Break Expectations

Credibility is difficult to build and extremely easy to lose. These 10 steps will help you maintain your credibility.

Stanford released the following 10 points for increasing credibility after a 3-year, 4,500 person study .

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site. - The web makes it extremely easy to link to other sites that back up your material. No need to create a 3 page bibliography. Simply link to the material inline. Those that want additional information will be able to review your information and see that you have done your homework on the subject.
2. Show that there's a real organization behind your site. - Web sites make it easy for smaller companies to look just as big (or bigger) than larger organizations. While this can be both good and bad for either group, showing that your company has more of a presence than a P.O box will help increase your credibility.
3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide. - Besides stating your "qualifications", it is always better to show off your expertise by writing articles that clearly shows your understanding and your authority on the subject.
4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site. If you provide a simple bio of the people in the organization, you can highlight your expertise and show that your people can be trusted. Testimonials are a great way to help build credibility.
5. Make it easy to contact you. - This is one of the three essential purposes of a website . Show your contact info on every single page.
6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose). - Your website should look like your business. Templates will never do that for your business. Make sure that your design is built around your customers and can communicate directly with their needs.
   
7. Make your site easy to use -- and useful. - Make sure you use good navigation and make it simple for people to "progress" through your website to the information they are searching for.
   
8. Update your site's content often (at least show it's been reviewed recently). - Whether you are using a CMS or have a company blog, make sure that you are providing up-to-date, pertinent, information that will answer your customers current questions. Your industry isn't stagnant. Your website shouldn't be either.
9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers). - Your customers didn't come to your site to see advertisements. They came looking for specific information. Make sure people can clearly tell what are ads and what aren't.
   
10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem. - No one loses credibility faster than those that have broken links, bad grammar, or pages that don't display correctly. Take a second to review your site.
    

These are simple concepts. However, making them a part of your everyday operations is more difficult, but the benefit will be well worth the effort.

Three simple and quick ways to increase your conversion rates.

I recently read a nice little list of ways to increase conversions . While this list is nothing compared to reading "Call to Action ", this is a nice concise list. I'm only going to share a few that I felt are most important.

• Remove Website Clutter - Every page should have a distinct, clear, call to action. Anything that draws people's attention away from the call to action should be removed. This includes poorly worded copy, distracting ads, and images that don't add value to the page.
• Resolve Concerns at the Points of Action - Pair your Points of Action (POA) with appropriate statements that address your customer's concerns. These could include testimonials from previous customers, reviews from experts, reliability indicators (such as associations and memberships), and statements about your privacy policy.
• Remove Checkout Roadblocks - Make it as simple as possible to checkout. Why do you think that Amazon has their own "One Click Ordering ". People are extreme impulse buyers. The checkout stand of your local grocery store is proof of this. Don't make people jump through hoops to purchase.
  

While these are fairly simple concepts to understand, implementation is a different story. Don't become overwhelmed. Just make one change a week. Compare your conversion rates week to week to make sure that you are moving in the right direction. Increasing your conversion rates is one of the simplest ways to get more money out of your existing web viewers.

Here are some essential traits that all web developers should have. 

I recently read an article at seomoz that discussed the traits that most good web developers have (although I've modified the order a bit to fit my tastes).

1. Are as accurate as possible. As we mentioned before, good programmers can see and understand the "whole picture ".  If you don't understand the project, the required inputs and outputs, and deliverables, you will not succeed.
   
2. Think ahead. Nearly every single website created will at some point in the future be modified, updated, and more than likely grown. If you do not plan for future changes you have planned to fail (or at least planned to spend a lot more on the project than you should have.) You must have thought about, if not understood, the direction the site will go and the possible roadblocks you might encounter if you design the site for the current specifications and not the "next set" of specs.
3. Have improved their skill set lately. The technology sector is an area where if you don't keep studying, you will be left behind. Just think of all the programming languages that have come and gone in the past 10 years. You must stay informed of where the industry is going, what the latest and greatest is, and what is now obsolete and ineffective.
4. Build for 20 instead of 1. If you program like you were going to use this same code on the next 20 sites you design, your code will be much better than if you build for 1 and adapt for 20. This will make it easier on yourself and the guy that has to maintain your code. However, don't get caught in the trap of building a Ferrari for a doorstop. Keep your code succinct but versatile enough to scale easily.  
   
5. Always look for ways they could have made their last project better. After every project you should determine what worked and what you could have done better to make the project easier to maintain, easier to scale, and easier to update. This will help you create even better code down the road.

Microformats are quickly becoming a THE way to share information between different applications. 2007 should be named the year of the microformats.

As more and more people try to share similar data between extremely diverse applications, they are quickly realizing the importance of having standards for exchanging information. The Web 2.0 craze has driven a number of microformats, or miniature standards, for a number of types of information.

• hCard - People and Organizations
• hCalendar - Calendars and Events
• hReview - Opinions, Ratings, and Reviews
• rel-tag - Tags, Keywords, and Categories

Mostly, microformats are a way of adding semantics to programming. If you are a blog reader and have seen "Tags" or "Categories" for specific posts, you have probably seen microformats in action.

Now while there are still many people trying to decide if microformats are going to really take off (we already know how poorly people have followed so-called "standards" on the web), there are a number of people that truly believe these mini standards will help increase the efficiency of transferring information between applications .

Much in the same way that operating systems currently associate particular file types with specific applications, future Web browsers are likely going to associate semantically marked up data you encounter on the Web with specific applications, either on your system or online. This means the contact information you see on a Web site will be associated with your favorite contacts application, events will be associated with your favorite calendar application, locations will be associated with your favorite mapping application, phone numbers will be associated with your favorite VOIP application, etc.

The faster that people can embrace these types of standards the sooner the web will truly become and interactive source of information. It will also help relieve some of the stress of programmers that have to deal with trying to get all of the different proprietary data structures to talk to one another. (Just go try to get Outlook Express, Outlook, and Thunderbird to talk nice and you'll know what I'm talking about.)

For more information about specific microformat structures, visit microformats.org.

Well we just installed Feisty Fawn on one of the laptops here in the office. Everything seems to be running smoothly. I'm going to be posting some basic "reminders" for myself for the next time I do an install, so these might help someone, or they might not.

1. Make sure you get the latest aptitude (apt-get) stuff...
1. sudo aptitude update
2. sudo aptitude upgrade
2. Add a script to startup
1. Write the script in the /etc/init.d/ directory
2. update-rc.d filename defaults
3. chmod +x filename
3. Turn on the wireless led for an Acer CL56 (might put this in a startup script
   
1. sudo modprobe acerhk
2. echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled
4. Install Alien
1. sudo aptitude install alien
5. Install Automatix

That should at least cover the basic install stuff. Please do NOT ask any Ubuntu related questions in the comments section. They will not be posted. If you have questions, go to the Ubuntu forum.

Easy way to get accurate backlink counts from Google and Yahoo.

If you are a regular Google user and website owner, you know that the link: modifier doesn't give accurate results for the number of backlinks pointing at a site. In the good old days we'd go to alltheweb.com and do a search with link:www.ahfx.net to get an approximation of the number of backlinks because they didn't dummy down the number of backlinks like Google does. However, now we've got better tools. To get a more accurate backlink count you have a couple of options.

1. Sign up for a Google account and go the the webmaster tools. You will first need to verify you own the account. Then you can access a number of important items like web crawl errors, statistics, and links. Just use the link tab to see a much more detailed view of backlinks.
2. You can use Yahoo's Site Explorer. Yahoo's site explorer is a great little tool to figure out just who is linking to someone without going through the hoops of signing up with Google and verifying you own a domain.

The ability to solve increasingly difficult problems through simple means is a trait that all web developers should cultivate. 

I absolutely love creative people, those that have an ability to think outside the box. Those who can take an extremely difficult problem and solve it with a very simple answer.

I saw this image and had to post it, because it portrays this idea perfectly.

Now I'm not advocating the destruction of United States currency. I am advocating the use of common sense. I have a friend, Jared, that is absolutely amazing when it comes to common sense. I worked with him for a while when I lived in Korea.

There were countless times where I would come up with what seemed to be an extremely difficult problem, but every time he would say, "Well why don't we do [simple answer to terribly difficult question] then." I would just look at him and think to myself, wow... that would work. (just like drilling a hole through the penny).

Unfortunately there isn't a school for common sense. You either have it or you don't. The same can be said of good programmers. Good programmers can see and understand the "whole picture". You can't be told how to "understand" a project, you just have to have cultivate the ability to take a complex problem and break it down into its simple components. Working with and studying the methods of people that have this ability to "understand" can help you learn little by little how to do what they do instinctively. Study other people's code. See what they do well and what you would change to make it better. Always keep learning. 

So the next time you come across a problem that leaves you scratching your head, see if there is a simple answer that you simply overlooked. 

10 things all business owners should know before they have a website built.

I loved the article "10 things businesses should know before building a website" over at 456 Berea Street . Here are their top 10 with my comments added:

1. Understand what you want. Too many businesses really don't know what they want from their website . Have you researched who your online customers are? Do you know what keywords they search for? Do you know what sites they visit? Do you know why they are looking for your site? If you don't, they you don't know what you want. You want happy customers. That's what you want (and hopefully more income as a result).
2. It costs more and takes longer than you think. I can't count the number of times I've been asked how long a website takes, but every time they are shocked at the average development time. However, nearly every time we have "wait time" with a website, it has been caused by the clients' inaction (not sending in copy, not sending pictures, not signing off on part of the project, etc.) You can eliminate most of the wait time by having content, pictures, etc. ready for your developer to dump into the design.
3. A web site has several pieces; don't cut corners. You should keep in mind the following aspects: Design - Does it look and act like my client expects?, Content - Does the site provide the information my clients are looking for?, SEO - Will clients be able to find my site once we make it live?, Future Additions - Have I adequately planned ahead so that I don't have to waste time interfacing the new features with existing ones.
4. Balance glitz and guts. A good website mainly provides the information that people are looking for and does it in a pleasing way, but content wins out every time .
   
5. If you build it, they won't necessarily come. If you don't have a unique value proposition you will not get any sales except from nice old Grandma Elna who bought something just to be nice. Something about your business must attract the more savvy online customers of today.
6. Avoid bit decay; the site needs maintenance. Technology is ever changing and hopefully your business is keeping up. You need a plan to update, maintain, and improve your website on a monthly, if not weekly basis. Ask yourself, "How is my target audience changing, and how can I quickly adapt to their needs?"
7. Treat the web team as professionals. You and the designer both have specific roles you must fill for your website to succeed.
8. Most people in the web industry are clueless. Just because your daughter's friend's brother built a website when he was in 4th grade, that does not qualify him as a web designer. Just because your daughter's friend's brother is a graphic designer, that does not qualify him as a web designer. Just because your daughter's friend's brother owns a pirated version of Frontpage, that does not qualify him as a web designer.
9. You get what you pay for. I think we covered your daughter's friend's brother well enough above.
   
10. Don't start your project by buying a CMS. A content management system is not the way to start. Ask your web designer, they probably have a better and more customized answer for your needs.