Archive for December, 2009
Round Up of Low Cost Usability Tools
Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by Smiley Cat: Christian Watson's Web Design Blog.
It’s a good time for companies looking to do usability testing cheaply. The range of quality web-based usability-related tools is steadily increasing — to the extent that it’s getting hard to know what to pick.
Fortunately, for anyone wanting to learn more about what services would best meet their needs, User Effect has put together a great guide to low cost usability tools. Well worth checking out.
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Lawn Care Marketing and Google 101
Posted on 29. Dec, 2009 by Dave.
Last time I spoke to you about the importance of having a website for your lawn care business and also the importance having good and useful content, that is relevant to your niche, and useful to your visitors. We’ll talk more about that in a moment but now I would like to introduce you to a new video segment on the website called Lawn Care Marketing… Each week this new feature will feature a video screen cast with hands on tips to help you get more lawn care customers to your website.
In our first screen cast right here (Lawn Care Marketing On Page SEO Starting With the Title tag ) I go over a number of basic guidelines and best practices that will help you get more lawn customers by making your website more search engine and user friendly.
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Inspirational Apple iPhone Artwork
Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by Tony.
About a month ago, I created a post titled: Inspirational Artwork: Hugo Boss Fragrance. This post featured the famous Hugo Boss fragrance bottle infused with some great artwork. In today’s article we are featuring the ever popular Apple iPhone and the great artwork associated with the marketing behind it. Hopefully one of these creations [...]
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Happy Holidays from Designrfix!
Posted on 24. Dec, 2009 by Tony.
So the holidays are finally here. Time to take a break from the everyday hustle and bustle and spend valuable time with friends and family. We at Designrfix.com would like to wish all of our readers, followers, supporters and sponsors best wishes and health. Be safe and enjoy the holidays.
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Helping webmasters from user to user
Posted on 24. Dec, 2009 by John Mueller.
You have to have some kind of super-powers to keep up with all of the issues posted in our Webmaster Help Forum—that’s why we call our Top Contributors the “Bionic Posters.” They’re able to leap through tall questions in a single bound, providing hel…
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Beautifully Designed Holiday Wallpapers
Posted on 23. Dec, 2009 by Tony.
With the holidays quickly approaching, most of us we are scrambling to decorate our homes and finding that perfect gift for our loved ones. Why not get into the Christmas spirit by decorating your desktops with these beautiful free wallpapers? Don’t forget to share these holiday wallpapers with your friends. Happy Holidays and enjoy!
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Creative Ways to Increase Web Site Traffic
Posted on 22. Dec, 2009 by AQ.
Creative Ways to Increase Web Site Traffic
Any webmaster or website owner can tell it isn’t easy to increase web site traffic. For one, the competition is intense; your website is merely just one of the hundreds, probably even thousands, in the exact same field. How can you compete with that? Many resource materials have delved on this topic, but very few offer innovative advice. All of them say the same thing: write good content, create good website design, exchange links, advertise, improve search engine rank. But these methods to increase web site traffic are hardly new; every webmaster or website owner knows these by now, so it is expected they will use the same tactics. To increase web site traffic, you need creative and innovative marketing methods.
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Free Gift Idea for the Usability Geek
Posted on 22. Dec, 2009 by Smiley Cat: Christian Watson's Web Design Blog.
Optimal Workshop is offering to send free, “Jacob Nielsen approved” usability buttons to anywhere in the world.
What better way to enhance the geek cred of that usability specialist in your life? I especially like the “What Would Jacob Do?” button.
Get yours by filling out this order form before they run out.
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Handling legitimate cross-domain content duplication
Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by John Mueller.
Webmaster level: IntermediateWe’ve recently discussed several ways of handling duplicate content on a single website; today we’ll look at ways of handling similar duplication across different websites, across different domains. For some sites, there ar…
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How to Use Google Maps with WordPress Blogs: 5 Plugins to Get You Started
Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by Barbara Holbrook.
It wasn’t long ago that Mapquest was the only quality mapping tool online. Then, the rise of Google Maps, possibly the best and most sophisticated mapping tool available online.
Google Maps inspired regular people to become cartographers — mapping our lives, mashing up old maps in new ways, and creating a new way to share our world. [...]
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Google Personalized Search: Part 2: How to Influence Google Personalized Search Results
Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Gravity.
In this post, we share some ways a business might try to influence personalized search result – but use caution: tricking your customers is never a good idea!
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Make Your Landscaping Website Thrive – How?
Posted on 14. Dec, 2009 by Dave.
By now, hopefully, most landscaping business owners know that its important for their business to have a real website, they know, or at the very least, they have a pretty good idea, of just how many people use the Internet in search for landscapers and local businesses in general. And I like to think that for the most part you’re probably already online, or your actively working towards getting that website.
Right?
However, for many the whole idea of doing a website, I suppose one could say, seems a bit simplistic – to think that all you need to do is build it and they will come, is really not the case – if you really want your new landscaping website to thrive, your going to have to try a little harder than that.
Maybe you’ve heard it said before, if you’ve read The 5 Pillars of Creating a Successful Website, you’ve read me talk about the importance of having good content, fresh content, regularly updated content etc, etc, etc…
And I frequently tell my clients that and the most popular response that I get is “But that sound like a lot of work…”, then there’s that small awkward pause, where I just want say, “You know what hard work is?”, instead I say, “Yes, it does require some effort”, and that’s true, that does equal work – “But!”
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Want Your Facebook Status Updates Indexed in Google? We Didn’t Think So.
Posted on 13. Dec, 2009 by Gradiva Couzin.
Any minute now Someday, Facebook status posts will begin to display within Google search results. Here are three simple steps to take control over your Facebook privacy settings.
The default privacy settings on Facebook leave much of your information waving in the breeze. Things like photos and status posts might be public without your [...]
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Google Personalized Search: Part 1: Personalized Search Will Affect Your Business
Posted on 11. Dec, 2009 by Gravity.
Personalized Search is a bigger deal than you think! In this post, learn how it will affect your business.
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SLV Rent web site
Posted on 11. Dec, 2009 by veerle@duoh.com.
Time for a bit of design background of this recent project we just launched. SLV Rent is a company specialized in sound, light, and vision. Duoh! also designed the logo, business cards, invoices, and advertisements for them. This project seemed the perfect fit to try something we didn’t to use before.
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What is The Single Most Important Online Marketing Tool You Absolutely Need to Have for Your Website?
Posted on 09. Dec, 2009 by Dave.
There is no doubt, being able to follow up with your prospects & customers is the single most important marketing tool you absolutely need to have in order to continue to grow and sustain your business.
To do that, and be affective at it, you need some sort of tool that allows you to organize and easily email your leads – where’s once text-based emails where consider the norm, and perhaps to this day you are still doing your marketing with basic text emails, there’s now a wealth of rich media, technology and functionality to consider.
One solution, which is what I use and recommend all my clients to use, is the help of something like CakeMail or add2it or PHPList, these tools really make it easy to send and manage your HTML messages. Phplist in particular is great because it has a built in WYSIWYG HTML editor that allows you to create and view your HTML message even before you send it out, plus it’s free! Other services such as CakeMail and the like, offer free newsletter templates you can edit.
Besides that, in our continuous commitment to help you achieve the highest return on your website Foamers offers custom newsletter template design, at just $179 a pop, in a number of different custom styles, such as…
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Can Tiger Woods Help Market Your Business – A Conversation
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by AQ.
Last week I made a post about the possibility of using this whole Tiger Woods story to help you market your business. And as I expected, because it’s a pretty controversial topic, I received numerous responses and comments from both sides of the isle about the idea.
More on Can Tiger Woods Help Market Your Business – A Conversation
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You Can’t Afford To Miss This!
Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Dave.
I was poking around today using CitySearch.com and Yelp.com, they’re both online directories that have detailed listings of gardeners, landscapers, and contractors in every major city in America. But as I am doing these searches, I’m seeing so many listings without a website link.
This is so ridiculous it’s mind boggling, why don’t they have a website? Your guess is as good as mine – there just so many important reasons to have your own website, yet, over 40% of small businesses do not. That figure is even scarier considering 82% of consumers turn to the search engines when finding a local business, compound that with the number of users accessing the web through handheld devices, the number of BlackBerry users alone is over 25 million – can you really afford to miss this?
One reason might be that you’re just confused about how to create an affective and affordable website for your small business, or perhaps you searching, but cant seem to find a designer who understands that their job is not just to create a website, but to help you make money. (That’s where We come in!)
Right now pick any template and the template is yours ABSOLUTELY FREE, PLUS another 20% off on our template customization services, all you have to do to get the discount and the FREE template, is order the customizations now!
You just ran out of excuses not to put up that website you been meaning to get around to doing. # Click here to view all Landscaping Website Templates
Should you wish to acquire more information about our template customization services simply get in touch and tell us what you think.
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Your site’s performance in Webmaster Tools
Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by John Mueller.
Webmaster level: IntermediateLet’s take a quick look at the individual sections in the Google Webmaster Tools’ Site Performance feature:Performance overviewThe performance overview shows a graph of the aggregated speed numbers for the website, based on…
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The 5 Pillars of Creating a Successful Website
Posted on 04. Dec, 2009 by Dave.
1 – Stop Procrastinating
Many people simply spend too much time trying to make decisions about their website. While it is important to weigh your options carefully and make informed decisions, too much time spent wastefully trying to make a decision can cause a significant delay for a project.
So, what are you waiting for?
2 – Should I go Custom or choose a template?
Custom design evangelists often claim that the use of website templates only ensures that you have a design that looks just like someone else’s website. Primarily because website templates may be resold, they argue, web templates are not unique and may give your company an unprofessional, unpolished appearance, and that you should always opt for a custom site.
The truth, however, is that a good quality website template, in tandem with professional and affordable template customization, can provide you with a unique and high quality design at just a fraction of the cost of hiring someone else to do a custom design starting from scratch.
In fact, whether they tell you or not, just as a wise contractor makes good use of a blueprint to guide the construction of a building to its successful completion, every web designer also uses a template or basis as his or her guide in creating a unique and well-organized web site.
So right away, two clear advantages are time and money. Typically speaking it can take many days for a good designer to create a preliminary mockup of such quality.
Also, consider the time necessary to piece the original design into slices and the actual rendering of the design onto HTML and resources spent validating that code on all major browsers. The cost of which will most certainly be passed onto you, the client.
3 – Make some crucial decisions
Previously, most developers worked by a rule that you had about eight seconds to get the users attention once they accessed your site.
Today, the new rule is now four seconds.
Remember always: Have an undiluted clear-cut call to action. Don’t let them get distracted! On the other hand, pages that have only one goal outperform the rest simply because of the fact that having two goals requires communicating two messages.
This is a really big deal, and something you should definitely take into consideration, especially if you’re seriously considering launching an online business.
Nevertheless, don’t just try to sale them something, without offering something that’s of value to them, but at the same time you have to find a valance – too many pages on the Web give great information, and then tail off, you have to have a clear call to action, and a basic system to move them through your pages and don’t use too many unnecessary graphics.
If it’s true that a picture speaks a thousand words, then it would be wise to assume that too many pictures can overlap a conversation, similarly, if you’re turned off by endless popups, grating audio and graphics that look like they’ve been lifted from the Vegas strip, then you shouldn’t expect your Web site visitors to react any differently…
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