Website Design Blog

Google has removed one of its domain–google.cn and replaced it with google.com.hk.  For many website design companies in China, it is a great lose to them as google SEO and other related business are their main business. Further more, many web design companies, especially in Shenzhen, rely on customers coming from google search engine, which is a huge resource if foreign customers seek for Chinese webdesign or SEO company.

Though google would still remain its Adwords and Adsense business, we cannot foresee how long it would still provide services. After google changes its servers to Hongkong, Mainland may probably block google from providing service to China if google stops filtering the required contents. From google’s action, we can easily find out that it still don’t want to give up the fast developing market in China, even though it only provides 1% to 2% profit in Google’s overall income. ‘It is a Strategic loss to google, and it is a great loss for Chinese users and Chinese website design comanies as well’ a proffesional web designer in Mulan design said so.

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Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010 in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc. Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as “IE6,” is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.

Aten Design Group Inc. announced IE6′s funeral on Monday with a site, IE6funeral.com, that offered a short obituary and an invitation to a wake.

“Internet Explorer Six, resident of the interwebs for over 8 years, died the morning of March 1, 2010, in Mountain View, California, as a result of a workplace injury sustained at the headquarters of Google, Inc.,” the obit read. “Internet Explorer Six, known to friends and family as ‘IE6,’ is survived by son Internet Explorer Seven, and grand-daughter Internet Explorer Eight.”

The Google and March 1 references come from the search giant’s recent announcement that it would drop IE6 from the list of supported browsers for its Google Docs online applications and its Google Sites hosting services starting on Monday, March 1. Yesterday, Google’s popular video site YouTube named March 13 as the end-of-support date for IE6.

“We thought it would be funny to do an IE6 funeral,” said Justin Toupin, Aten Design’s founder and creative director, in an interview. “It’s a humorous spin on a browser that a lot of us have loved to hate for a long time. We’re just saying that it’s a fun way to celebrate companies like Google saying that they’re no longer going to support IE6.”

But Toupin admitted that the reaction to the funeral announcement has taken him by surprise. Aten Design regularly hosts small in-office parties for the Denver Web design and development community, but those typically draw 30 or 40 people. So far, Aten has received more than 700 RSVPs to its March 4 event via its site.

“Now we have to figure out what to do about the actual party,” Toupin said. “We have a pretty small office. This kind of blew up on us.”

Aten’s clients include several major nonprofit organizations, including the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation and Habitat for Humanity.

Toupin said he had nothing personal against IE6 but acknowledged that, like many other Web designers, he wouldn’t be sorry to see it go. “It does involve, toward the end of a project especially, considerable work adjusting things like CSS and JavaScript to make sure they work,” he said. Aten now evaluates IE6 support for its projects on a case-by-case basis, Toupin said.

More than anything, he added, the decision by Google and others to stop supporting the nearly nine-year-old browser marks an important step in the Web’s evolution. “But it’s also a great excuse to get together,” he said.

“In lieu of attending, please send flowers,” Toupin said in a blog entry posted yesterday.

Microsoft’s browser has weathered a “kill IE6″ campaign since February 2009, when Facebook prompted IE6 users to upgrade. That movement accelerated last summer when Digg announced that it would curtail IE6 support, and an “IE6 Must Die” Twitter petition collected thousands of names. Microsoft has endorsed the anti-IE6 efforts, going so far as to say that “Friends don’t let friends use IE6,” although it has refrained from forcing users or companies to upgrade to IE7 or IE8, arguing that the old browser is still required by some enterprises.

According to Web metrics firm NetApplications.com, IE6 accounted for 20% of all browsers in use last month, while IE7 and IE8 held down about 15% and 25% shares, respectively. Much of the measured IE6 usage, however, apparently originates in China, where the application represents 50% of the browsers in use. In the U.S., IE6′s share is less than 10%.

Microsoft did not respond to a request for comment on the funeral, or answer questions, including one about whether it would be sending a representative to the wake.

 This is great news for web designers who used to spend hours on fixing problems and compatibility of this out-of-date browser. A milestone, we can definitely say that, which is a huge step we’ve taken in web development.

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So you are thinking of starting up an eCommerce store to sell your products or services online, or you might have an existing online store and you want to drive more traffic to your site.

Today’s brand of internet consumer is much pickier, and it now takes much more effort, much more knowledge, and much more patience to be an online merchant.

There are things that can be done, but they take work. So here are 10 tips to assist you in optimising your online store.

1. Your Store Title
Make sure you have a great descriptive title. Your title is more than just the name of your store. You title is the bolded section that appears in search engines. Having a name that includes keywords that are important for “getting found online” is vital.

2. Add Meta Description
Meta Keywords and descriptions are how search engines find you. The Meta Description is what you see as the description underneath the title to your store that you see when you get the results listing from an online search. Using them correctly, can have you move to the head of the pack. Use them incorrectly, and you’ll find yourself falling behind. A rule of thumb is to use keywords and descriptions that ACCURATELY describe your store. If you sell Blue Widgets, don’t stick in White Widgets as a keyword if you do not have White Widgets. Also getting your link clicked on is often due to a great Meta description that makes it compelling for the user

3. Google Analytics
Once you have your Store Title and your Meta Description, you’ll definitely want to make sure that your keywords are working. This is where Google Analytics comes in. You’ll want to know what work is paying off! Using Google Analytics will tell you what keywords are working for you.

4. Create Additional Pages
Your store does not have to be all products for sale. Make sure you personalize and make it a good experience for the buyer. Are you an expert? Can you impart knowledge? Do you have a brick and mortar store? Create “information” pages (and by the way, think of your keywords) that convey additional items of interest.

5. Write a good description for your products and services
If you are setting up a new store make sure you are using the right keywords that people would be using in a search engine to find your products and services or if you have a an existing online store revisit your descriptions and make sure they have the right keywords (which is keywords that are driving traffic).

6.Submit your site to Search Engine Directories.

Three major directory sites are

• DMOZ directory
• Yahoo Directory
• ZoomInfo directory

Note: search engine directory sites are useful in asssiting serach engines to find you and list your website.

7. Create New Content That Establishes Your Company as a “Thought Leader” in its industry

Create new content on your website , on your blog. If you’re launching a new site, or new content, write an introduction and submit it to social bookmarking sites like Digg, Reddit, Delicious.

8. Conduct an Online Survey.

This is an excellent way to generate publicity and this helps you to better understand your clients by getting feedback and positions you as a company that is engaged and communicating with its customers. The statistics you gather can be used to adjust your stores strategy and add new services or products or even remove services or products that are no longer working.

9. Create a Technorati account and “claim” your blog.
Technorati is the “Bible” of blogs and it is used as a reference point and rating benchmark against other blogs worldwide. It is also used by over 5 million visitors a month to find information and share it with others. It helps get your new and existing content out in cyberspace and improves your sites Google Rank and traffic

10. Start Using Social Media

Social media has certainly moved from niche to mainstream and the ability to engage in 2 way conversations with your clients via your website and social media. The top 5 Social Media sites you should seriously consider are

• Facebook
• Twitter
• YouTube
• LinkedIn
• Blogs

Note: Social Media is becoming increasingly important as people pass on information and share links that builds up inbound links to your site and assists in search engines optimising your site for being found. Google ranks the quantity and quality of the inbound links to your site.

Remember driving traffic to your website is something you’ll probably want to review regularly as optimising your online store is not a destination it is a journey.

So what are you doing currently to drive traffic to your site and what is working for you? Would like to hear your comments.

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Twitter is one of the “new media channels” that is challenging how we communicate, with whom we communicate and perhaps most fundamentally how we (Marketers) influence people.

The torrent of data that Twitter produces, especially as your Twitter follower count grows, challenges your ability to manage the noise.

So managing and monitoring that stream becomes a real challenge.

Twitter’s simple concept and interface (API) has provided third party software developers the opportunity to develop a whole range of tools to add deeper and broader functionality to Twitter. These “apps” for monitoring, improving efficiency for managing mutiple Twitter accounts, updating to other Social Media Platforms as well as measuring Twitter can assist, but the tools to do this are mutiplying and evolving rapidly.

So what are some useful and interesting apps that have emerged, both new and some not so new.

1. Management & Monitoring Twitter: Tweetdeck

TweetDeck is your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and more.

With TweetDeck anyone can tweet efficiently and view much more information readily in a easily to read format.

You can customise your Twitter experience with

* Columns
* Groups
* Saved searches
* Automatic updates

This helps you stay updated with the people and topics that are important to you. You can see what people are saying about you and join the conversation by tweeting, sharing photos, videos or links directly from TweetDeck. You can also connect with your Facebook and MySpace friends directly from TweetDeck by updating your status, posting photos or videos, commenting, liking and group your friends to make it easier to follow only those you really want to see what your friends are doing by creating columns for each of your groups of friends.

Key Features Of TweetDeck

1. Update Twitter, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn

2. Manage Conversations with @replies and direct messages

3. See what’s hot locally and also Globally with Twitscoop

4. Follow Topics in Real Time with saved searches

5. Manage Multiple Twitter Accounts

6. Add create and manage Twitter lists

It is one of the most widely used applications for Twitter, I use it every day and I certainly find it to be a tool that helps me manage the “Twitter Torrent” efficientlyand effectively.

2. Tracking and Analysis of Twitter: Bit.ly

The real challenge with Twitter is the 140 character limit due to its original design objective to send messages to phones to keep within the 140 character limit of an SMS message.

Twitter allowed you to send a text message as well as a link, the isue was that a lot of links were taking up the 140 characters and more, so reducing the URL length makes sharing easier as you can reduce long links (URL’s) to help keep your Twitter headline and message and link under 140 characters

Bit.ly essentially allows you to to do three things

* Shorten links
* Share content including images, video and music
* Track links (URLs).

But what I really like about Bit.ly that is really nice, is that it allows you to track how many people are clicking on the shortened link with a set of metrics that displays it in a visual format as well as textually.

You can monitor

* Complete real-time traffic of your tweets
* Referrer data (such as which application people are viewing it from)
* Location (Country)
* Metadata.

Note: Tracking stats are only available after users shorten their long links with bit.ly.(Social oomph also allows you integrate with Bit.ly so that scheduled tweets can me measured with Bit.ly)

You can even see see from what country users are clicking on your link (The USA typically averages 55% of the total of my tweets), a minute by minute graphic displays how many people a minute are clicking on your link after you have shortened it and tweeted it.

Note: If you use Twitter for announcing and promoting your blog posts then it’s a great tool to monitor how many clicks have occurred with the intial tweet (usually the tweet’s initial impact occurs in the first 5 minutes) and occasionally I rewrite the headline to improve the click rate. (By re-writing a headline I have improved my click through rate by sometimes up to 300%)

3. Measuring Influence: Klout

I wrote an article recently on “How Do You Measure Twitter Influence: Is It Worth Measuring?” and posted an online survey “What Makes A Brand or Person Influential on Twitter?”

at that stage I hadn’t come across Klout, which attempts to gauge influence on Twitter. To get your score, you just enter your Twitter username and within secondst provides some insightful and interesting measurements.

The Klout Score, a proxy for “influence” measures a bunch of metrics, specifically applicable to Twitter, that are grouped into four groups : Reach, Demand, Engagement and Velocity.

For example here are some definitions from Klout

# Engagement

* How diverse is the group that @ messages you?
* Are you broadcasting or participating in conversation?

# Velocity

* How likely are you to be retweeted?
* Do a lot of people retweet you or is it always the same few followers?

# Reach

* Are your tweets interesting and informative enough to build an audience?
* How far has your content been spread across Twitter?
* Are people adding you to lists and are those lists being followed?

One metric which I believe is quite useful is “Message Amplification” which can be measured using Total Retweets and then converting that into another metric ” Retweets Per Thousand Followers”, it’s a measure of efficiency and value provided and people voting with their clicks, all rolled into one.

Another metric is “Follower Retweet %” (”Do a lot of people retweet you, or is it always the same few followers?”) because I want to appeal to more people than my mom, dad, and best friend!

4. Managing and Updating Multiple Social Media accounts: Ping.fm

In a recent post “30 Predictions Of The Future For Twitter” , one of the predictions was “We will laugh later when we look back at the time when we had to to go to each platform to update” . This application heads towards that objective with the ability of updating a wide variety of social media platforms to communicate and engage as efficiently as possible. (Tweetdeck is also competing in this space) but Ping.fm at this stage provides a much wider variety, though TweetDeck does update some of the major ones like LinkedIn and Facebook.

Some of the “41 plus” social media channels you can update from the Ping.fm platform.

5. Automation: Social Oomph

If you want to send out your information and content while you are away from your computer or while you sleep then Social Oomph (previously known as Tweetlater) is a very useful tool. This is especially useful if you want your tweets to be heard in the USA timezone if you are on the other side of the world (like Australia)..the number of tweet readers from the USA is about 56% of my Tweets and I think that is a fairly accurate perecntage but it is dropping as the rest of the world starts tweeting ( It was about 66% a few months ago). It also allows you to shorten your links through integration with Bit.ly. One drawback is that you can’t Direct message or @mentions.

6. Graphical Tools: Mentionmap

I was reviewing my Google reader and this blog post by Fast Company reviewing a new application for Twitter Mentionmap caught my eye.

“People seem all to happy to declare Twitter the future of the Internet. But it has one glaring flaw: The interface, which collapses all those tweets into one overwhelming stream of words.

Mentionmap is one attempt to solve that problem. The tool allows you to visualize your Twitter network in real-time, showing which people are interacting the most, and thus alerting you to topics and conversations generating heat among the people you’re interested in hearing from.

The tool crunches all the people and hashtags being mentioned the most in your network. When one person mentions another, a line connects them; when multiple users are engaging in a cross-conversation, the results appear as a cluster. Hovering over the lines brings up detailed information about the subject. The thicker the line, the more frequent the number of cross mentions.

Mentionmap is the first tool we’ve seen that so elegantly tackles the Twitter interface problem”.

After reading the review I had to go to the site and see how it worked. Now this is quite a cool tool, as it shows networks on Twitter as a visualisation that is dynamic and it is worth checking out

This article was inspired by a blog post by Avinash Kaushik “Social Media Analytics: Twitter” and he has a new book out titled Web Analytics 2.0 that is worth reading, which covers social media measurement.

It is important to realize there are no short cuts. Be willing to work hard. Be willing to put in the sweat equity. Be willing to try many tools and metrics and strategies to find the three that work for you.

What Twitter tools do you use?

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If you want to be successful it is worth taking a look at what some of the leaders in your industry and market segment are doing, so today I will take a look at a company that maintains thirteen seperate corporate blogs. Now I am not suggesting that your company should have thirteen blogs, but we should consider why they do that. Is it because

1. They have the resources and they just “can” to be bigger and better than the competition
2. It will make the company look real and transparent
3. It will position them as a “thought leader”
4. They realize that interesting and unique content including video will attract attention
5. It will help the Website’s SEO

These are all valid answers but the essence lies some where else.

I have a more than sneaking suspicion that they (Zappos) have 13 different persona’s (market sectors) that buy their products so they have a blog for each type of customer.

Zappos, the online retailer has an eCommerce store that sells a wide range of shoes and fashion items.

Zappos is wise to expand on each of their market segments through the use of multiple blogs. A comment from Molly Gaines, sums it up.

“There’s a drastic difference between a fashionista eyeing a pair of Kate Spade pumps and a 15 year old skateboarder searching for a pair of new kicks to match his board’. Multiple blogs succeed in bridging this gap, enabling Zappos to hone in on each individual brand beneath their massive umbrella. More importantly, it encourages reader participation and engagement and offers a richer experience”.

So developing content on your blogs that answers the concerns and addresses the issues and provides resources for each market segment will make your website and blog more relevant to your buyers and want to come back time and time again.

So here is a snapshot of the thirteen Zappos blogs which may provide some inspiration for you to take on board and utilise for for your corporate blogs.

Blog One: Zappos Blog

This seems to aggregate the other blog posts into one location. I did a quick count and there were ten posts for one day (feeling a little blog challenged are we?)

Blog Two: Couture, also known as the “The business of designing, making, and selling highly fashionable, usually custom-made clothing for women”

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Which is more important, driving traffic to your website or encouraging as many people as possible to see your content? Believe it or not, they are not one and the same.

Too often, we as website owners live and die by web analytics applications. We fret about bounce rates, unique visitors and dwell time. However, when we focus so heavily on the performance of our website, we miss a fundamental point: we should aim to expose users to our content, not our website. The website is a tool to showcase our content, but it is not the only tool that does this.

Organizations with truly successful websites understand this principle. Take, for example, the following: Amazon’s primary objective is to sell stuff. YouTube aims to use video content to carry advertisements. Twitter facilitates “tweeting.” (Who knows what its business model is!).

In each case, the content matters, not the website. That is why each company provides numerous ways to access its content beyond the website. From Amazon’s affiliate scheme to YouTube’s embed feature, these companies can reach audiences that may never visit their websites.

Twitter is probably the best example of all. How often do you actually read or post tweets via the Twitter website? If you are like me, the answer is very rarely.

The majority of users do not read tweets via the Twitter website.

The lesson here is obvious: as website owners, we need a broader Web strategy to release our content from the shackles of our websites. How do we do this? Below are 10 opportunities that you can integrate into your online strategy.

While the points mentioned below will refine your strategy to deliver content to more people, they can not serve their purpose without an appropriate environment. In the age of social media and the rise of interactive web-applications such as Facebook, Twitter etc. building a community around your website is the most important way to drive traffic and keep the users coming back.

Using forums, polls, comments and engaging users in the global conversations via external services turns out to be a silver bullet for gaining more exposure and winning more loyal visitors. Once you are building a community around your site, it’s time to think about more refined strategy that will help you to put your content in front of more people – and this is where the tips below will come in handy.

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