The Web Smart Blog

The Web Smart Blog exists to extend the information provided in our monthly Web Smart Newsletters. Web information changes so quickly that a monthly publication can't cover enough ground. Also, additional information to past topics can't wait for future publication so we add related newsletter information here. subscribe

Thanks for the Feedback and the Links!

April 2, 2008 at 2:39 pm by Eric

Thanks to some of the folks who linked to the past two month's video newsletters on SEO. Andy Beal added the videos to his "Pilgrim's Picks" and Debra Mastaler, (the link expert) gave us a couple links from her blog. SEO expert Aaron Wall gave some great feedback, correcting my approach to using the meta description area. He has a video on his site providing more depth on using descriptions more strategically. Thanks everyone for your responses, links and feedback! (Added 4/3/08) And late thanks to Bill Seaver at Micro Explosion Media for the post and links!

Tags: seo search
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Google Analytics Adds Benchmarking

March 21, 2008 at 10:59 am by Eric

When it comes to interpreting website analytics the most important frame of reference is the past performance of your own site. Seeing overall improvement and growth over time is the main thing to look for. Figuring out where there may be problems or opportunities is the main goal. But often I wonder how my stats compare to other sites like mine. Unfortunately, my competitors aren't likely to welcome me into their analytics reports to compare. But recently Google has offered an option in their Analytics package to anonymously share your traffic data in order to provide aggregate comparison benchmark reports. Once you opt in you'll get a new "Benchmark (Beta)" option under the "Visitors" tab. This page allows you to pick an industry that most closely matches your own and creates benchmark comparison reports for some key metrics. Here's our comparison to other website design and development sites. The reports include overall visits, bounce rates, pageviews, average time on site, pages/visit, and new visits. I'm pleased with our comparison especially in overall visits. Because we produce a lot of content, not all directly related to our web development services, I'm not surprised by the higher bounce rates. And these high bounce rates also effects the Pages/Visit report. This new feature should prove very helpful in measuring website performance. Thanks again Google!

Tags: google analytics
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GM to put $1.5 Billion Online

March 21, 2008 at 10:42 am by Eric

That's half their current advertising budget! According to a Media Buyer Planner article "GM Changes Game, Puts $1.5 Billion Online GM will shift 1.5 Billion, that's Billion with a capital "B" of their annual marketing budget toward digital marketing. And as Bill Seaver reported in a post on this subject "As goes GM, so goes the country." Mitch Joel also reported in his Six Pixels Of Separation blog post "When GM Shifts 1.5 Billion From Traditional Advertising To Digital Marketing..." that GM knows this is not good news for traditional marketers. All the more reason for advertising agencies to catch up quick on digital media and Internet marketing.

Tags: agencies advertising advertising20 onlineadvertising
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Case in Point: Creative Flash Preloaders

March 13, 2008 at 1:51 pm by Eric

[Note: to be read with a tone of bitter irony] In my post How to Know if You're a Super Bowl Web Designer I railed against the absurdity of splash pages and Flash preloaders. Flash websites are extremely creative and visually compelling. The creativity exudes, overflows, and even spills over into the preloaders. Smashing Magazine put together a wonderful gallery of Flash preloaders for all us designers to gawk at. As long as designers are putting in all the effort to create amazing dynamic Flash sites they might as well stun us with brilliant preloaders too. Their clients paid them a ton of money to build them so we might as well enjoy. It's a good thing they spent all this effort, boy if they failed to capture my attention with such clever and entertaining preloaders I may not have ever stopped by their website in the first place. And while I hate waiting for a website to load (aren't all websites supposed to be fast loading, or is that just a suggestion for boring websites?) I'm glad they at least were considerate enough to keep me entertained while I wait. Please designers, will you ever realize that your client's website is not about entertainment but about their content? Just give me the information as fast and easy as possible, then go design a movie poster or something to placate your pent up creative urges.

Tags: design agencies advertising advertising20 flash
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Forrester Takes Aim at the Dis-Connected Agency

February 20, 2008 at 9:30 am by Eric

Last week Forrester Research released "The Connected Agency" report by Mary Beth Kemp and Peter Kim. In it they discuss how advertising agencies need to evolve from pushing messages to facilitating connections, from push to pull interactions, and from campaigns to conversations. When I read this kind of report I always keep in mind the kind of agency (and the kind of client) that these changes effect the most. In this regard, I found the report a bit overstated in how they characterize the traditional marketing agency. The report tended to overstate the importance social media trends and used easy targets like consumers' dislike for interruptive advertising to make its case. To be fair, report co-author Mary Beth Kemp did admit that they were directing their declarations and predictions to the top "A" list consumer brand agencies. The drama of the report plays best against these front lines, consumer-oriented brand agencies. But, the typical B2B client or mid-sized advertising agency isn't impacted nearly as much as the large consumer brand agency. Most mid-sized B2B companies barely register in social media "conversations." A few weeks ago, I sat through a demo of Radian6, a very impressive social media monitoring system. My main question for the rep giving me the demo was how the average mid-sized B2B client would benefit from the tool. We ran a few sample reports to see how much attention some our clients were getting. They got very few hits in blog posts, comments, and other social media conversations. The disruption and changes effecting national and global brands with regard to consumer conversation, engagement, and social media activity is very dramatic. The Forrester report does a fantastic job of quantifying these changes and forecasting their impact on the future model for the connected advertising agency. However, the practical realities of low attention volume for the typical mid-sized B2B in the social media universe decreases the urgency for social media engagement. But wait, that does not mean mid-sized agencies and clients can afford to fall asleep here! There is still crucial impact for all companies, even when they rarely get pinged in the blogosphere. Harry Beckwith points out in my favorite marketing book, Selling the Invisible, "More people every day have experienced extraordinary service. Many have seen Disney World; they know how clean, friendly, and creative service can be. They have seen world-class service, and now every service has to accept it." Even small local services who aren't Disney World still get evaluated on a scale that has Disney World on the "best" end of the scale. If I'm a small coffee shop, I still have to compete against Starbucks whether I like it or not. So while the typical mid-sized technology company, whose brand is hardly known outside their specialized industry, and who rarely get blogged about, are still going to be evaluated against a social media backdrop. Mid-sized B2B branding efforts will be seen and judged by the same people who, as general consumers, are being changed by the forces of social media. As social media, conversational engagement, peer-review, open commenting, sharing, collaboration, and all other other dynamics of social media change how consumers relate to brands, all companies will be judged, in some measure, by their responsiveness to these changes. One practical area of change for the typical mid-sized agency with their typical mid-sized B2B client is in their marketing vocabulary. Social media is having the effect of forcing consumer brands to get more real. Hyperbolic advertising slogans, and outrageous and unsubstantiated claims are failing on deaf ears. Marketing language has to change its tone or else risk seeming out of touch and embarrassing themselves. "Marketing speak" has to give way to human conversation. What brands claim about themselves using fairy tale language must come down to earth with real, open and honest talk. As brands are forced to be more real, because they are facing the rapidly changing marketing landscape, the change in tone, and language in marketing as a whole must change. And as consumers adapt to these changes, come to expect them, and even demand them, these same adjustments will be expected of all the marketing they receive. Even small companies will be judged on the basis larger brands are feeling now. After all, we're all consumers, and the service we receive at Starbucks carries over to Open Eye Cafe (Mark's favorite coffee shop). And the same branding language we begin to expect from Dove and Doritos we'll expect from Dover Rugs, and Dominion Technologies. So while the criticism leveled at the traditional advertising agency in the Forrester report may need some context and though it is not as dramatic a report when applied to most mid-sized agencies, it none-the-less underscores some important changes in the dynamics of all marketing that all agencies should stand up and take notice of. Update: Peter Kim just posted an update of all the reactions to the Forrester report--he highlights many of the comments from post.

Tags: blogging web20 agencies copywriting advertising advertising20 socialmedia
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How to Know if You're a Super Bowl Web Designer

February 1, 2008 at 4:20 pm by Eric

Good Web Design is Boring This weekend is the super bowl of advertising. This week the ad magazines and blogs are all about which super bowl ads will come out on top. I'll be watching and enjoying the Pats on their way to a historic 19-0--and enjoying the ads. The super bowl ads represent the best of the best in traditional advertising. The best creatives from the best agencies will present their best work. All eyes will be on these spots. And next week all the ad rags will be discuss which ads came away with the Lombardy trophy of advertising. For a super bowl ad to be successful it has to be extremely funny or exceptionally poignant. Master ad craftsmen will demonstrate all their creativity, vision, humor, and skill. They'll make us laugh, or cry. They'll pull out all the stops to surprise us, impress us, and hold our attention. They're ads will be different, unusual, and memorable. A super bowl ad is the dream of every creative in the ad biz--but not many will ever get such an opportunity. Yet, every aspiring art director and copywriter hopes that one day, they too will produce a super bowl ad. In the mean time, they have other opportunities to do creative, impactful work. After all, there are millions of television, print, outdoor and interactive ads to be concepted, and while they won't all run during the super bowl, they still have to do the same work. In fact, super bowl ads have it easy. Most people want to see the super bowl ads. No so the average prime time television ad. They have to be even more creative to capture the attention of people who'd rather skip them. Art directors and copywriters live the high competition ad game every day. They bring their impressive creative vision, innovation, and ability to surprise to everything they do. That's why they tend to be crappy web designers. If you apply a super bowl oriented ad mind to the web, you get Flash-based, creative, visually-compelling, unique, original, dysfunctional, un-navigable, shallow, and convoluted websites. Here's a litmus test to see if you're a super bowl designer that builds dysfunctional websites--have you ever spent time designing a really cool "loading" graphic for a Flash website? If you have, you're a dysfunctional super bowl web designer. The Web is Not Like the Super Bowl Websites are fundamentally different than advertisements. Traditional ads must gain attention before any other message, or call to action can take place. They need super bowl advertisers to get this attention, and advertising agencies do this brilliantly. But nobody's attention needs to be arrested by a website. Nobody sees websites during their television shows. Nobody flips past a website when they read a magazine. Nobody drives by a website on the side of the road. They visit websites. They type a URL, perform a search, or click a link. The attention is already there. The only thing a website needs to do is not lose it. That's where a super bowl mentality actually hurts more than it helps. Once I arrive at a website my expectation is to quickly digest my options and find the content I'm interested in. If the website gets the way, with a fancy splash page for example, it hurts more than it helps. When I visit a website it has my attention, now must deliver what I'm after as quickly as possible. Everyone web designer agrees that the most important web design qualities are intuitiveness, easy navigation, and speed. But let's think about the consequences of following these principles. Intuitive: To be intuitive means that people understand it without having to think about it. Something's intuitive when it's the same as what they've seen many times. Intuitive is obvious; it needs no explanation. Ideally, things that are intuitive are not even noticed. Easy to navigate: To be easy means to be familiar, typical, common, simple and follow conventions. Fast: Fast requires restraint in the use of graphics, simple layouts, and defaulting to text whenever possible. Look at the kinds of words that define an intuitive, easy, fast website; understandable, same, obvious, un-noticed, familiar, typical, common, simple, conventional, restraint. Now ask yourself if a super bowl creative is motivated to design a common, obvious, simple, familiar website? Never! Such words are anathema to art directors. They require the exact opposite of art director impulses. Let's consider these design impulses when it comes to a website navigation bar. A navigation bar should be normal, usual, common, familiar, fast, intuitive, and simple. It should be in a normal position, use common labels and perform in an expected manner. Boring. Let's let our super bowl designer at it. His nav bar will be different, creative, unusual, interesting, and surprising. Time to whip out Flash and build a nav bar no one has ever seen before. His will use icons and images instead of words. It will move the screen around, bringing areas in and out of focus. It will use symbols and metaphors. Oh, and there will be surprises--dynamic roll overs that entertain and on-click animations that impress. Of course to load all this functionality will take some time, so it will need a loading status bar--better come up with a creative idea for that too! These creative impulses do not serve the website. Let's face it, nav bars should be boring. The more boring the better. So boring that users don't even think about the nav bar, they just use it. Web design is not really boring, I'm just making a point. It's actually a fascinating, interesting and challenging profession. But it is definitely not an opportunity for show boating. Great web designers show restraint. They serve the website and the visitor, not their creative impulses. Knowing when to be creative and when to be boring is the temperament common to the best web designers. Websites are not made for the super bowl, and super bowl designers need to check their unrestrained creativity at the door when they design for the web. Clients need to to show restraint, too. Everyone loves to have the ad that won over the super bowl viewers and received critical acclaim. But websites are for customers and clients, not award shows. While the super bowl is exciting; the web should be much more boring.

Tags: design advertising advertising20 webdesign
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Information R/evolution - Video by Michael Wesch

December 3, 2007 at 3:43 pm by Eric

Michael Wesch, who produced the viral Web 2.0 video "The Machine is Us/ing Us" has posted a part two called Information R/evolution. He really has a knack for concretely demonstrating the dramatic way technology is changing how we interact with information. He contrasts the old ways of categorization with the new ways of search, blogging, tagging, RSS and global collaboration. By the way, the social annotation tool he's using in the video is Diigo--one of my favorite tools for tagging and bookmarking.

Tags: video tagging socialmedia web20 collaboration
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Advertising Age Clips

November 20, 2007 at 1:20 pm by Eric

As I flip through my print copy of Advertising Age I sometimes find articles that I missed in my RSS feed. On occasion I'll tear out the most helpful articles. Here's brief review of the articles that merited a tear out. Integrity in marketing is not optional - July 30, 2007 My first tear out is my favorite. It's from Lynn Upshaw's July 30, 2007 article "Integrity in Marketing is Not Optional." One of the things I love about how the Internet impacts marketing is that it forces a much higher degree of accountability and truthfulness. Lynn points out that the most challenging factor of new media is not just the technologies, but the increase of "informed skepticism" that they must adjust to. We consumers have so many more choices these days, and we have lots more access to information about the products and services we choose. This means that we less impressed with what companies claim about themselves and more interested in what is said about them. If the differential between what is claimed and what is real is too great, marketing backfires. This increases the requirement for integrity in marketing. And when integrity is embraced (or forced) it does have the end result of improving the end product (or forcing inferior products out of business). Lynn lists six questions designed to help us determine if a marketing program is operating with integrity. 1. "Do you essentially consider your customers to be sources of revenue or equitable partners...?" 2. "Are you selling products or services that you can guarantee in the same way that you would give your personal word to a close friend? 3. Are you focused on building your share of credibility? 4. "Are your marketing communications technically legal but inherently misleading? 5. "Are you shooting your brand in the foot by relentlessly invading your customers privacy? 6. Have you established a metrics system that tracks and evaluates whether your company is perceived as marketing with integrity? Until the Internet enabled consumers to shout out at will, companies had a high degree of control in their branding and marketing. Like it or not, loss of control is being imposed, but if it's embraced it can seriously improve the results for everyone. Agencies will have to steer marketers toward the big ideal - October 8, 2007 John Bloom's article "Agencies will have to steer marketers toward the big ideal" ups the ante pointing out that the informed consumer not only forces greater integrity onto marketers, but that the tendencies toward greed and injustice in big business are also called to account. Commerce is a wonderful thing, but without restraint it can become polluted when the inordinate demands for profitability and stock price overshadow ethics and fair play. But the trends toward social consciuosness and the accountability resulting from such broad attention to injustices can not only improve business practices but also reward those that make extra efforts to do the right thing. The biggest risk marketers can take is not taking one - October 22, 2007 Mike Moran makes an excellent point in "The biggest risk marketers can take is not taking one." When marketers are so oriented toward mass media channels, that become accustomed to large budgets and long time lines for their campaigns. And because big budgets and long time frames are costly initiatives everyone wants to be sure that they are fired off in the right direction. Lot's of research and testing make complex campaigns even more complex. Unfortunately, this orientation can inhibit the marketers willingness to experiment, even play, with new media, new opportunities, new channels, that are not necessarily tied to big budgets and long time lines. A Google AdWord campaign, for example, can be set up in the morning, executed for a day, analyzed, adjusted, or even turned off at the end of the same day. Because new medial campaigns can be so much slimmer, it doesn't require as much deep thinking. Some opportunities can be tested on the fly. Marketers should just jump in and run a few simple campaigns. What's stopping you? Have agencies been so slow to innovate that they now just frustrate marketers? - November 5, 2007 Noelle Weaver had a sobering column in the Small Agency Diary section. She documented client comments about their opinions of their agencies. "Agencies slow down the process." "I want new ideas not old ones in new mediums." "Why should I add another layer of costs? Agencies these days are only good at shuffling paper and creating process. I want new thinking, ideas and content." If this is what clients are thinking, then Mike Moran is right - the biggest risk marketers can make is not taking one. The Beckwith 40: My last clipping isn't from Advertising Age, it's from Harry Beckwidth's email newsletter "Invisible Ink." I wanted to link to the website version but it hasn't been updated yet. Harry Beckwith is one of my favorite authors and his book Selling the Invisible is one of my favorite books. This is a sampling from his list of the top 40 things to remember about how people decide. Your biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's indifference. Your second-biggest competitor is not a competitor; it's your prospect's distrust. Your biggest obstacle is whatever stereotype your prospect has formed about you and your industry. Prospects don't try to make the best choice. They try to make the most comfortable choice. At heart, every prospect is risk-averse, and risks are always more vivid than rewards. Don't create something that everyone likes; create something that many people love. The more similar two things appear, the more important their tiny differences. Accentuate the trivial. You must improve constantly, because people's expectations rise constantly. The best companies don't make the fewest mistakes; they make the best corrections. Despite all the warnings, all people judge books by their covers. When in doubt -- which is almost always -- people choose what feels familiar. No intelligent person should be influenced by advertising, but every intelligent person is. Simplify everything: your name, your message, your design. Strip away everything until only the essence remains. If it takes 50 words to make your pitch, I will buy from the person who can do it in 20. Communicate one important message and people will think three good things about you; communicate three messages and they will think nothing. If you prove it, you don't have to say it. If you don't prove it, saying it is a waste of everyone's time. There is no such thing as "best." Never criticize your competitors. The fastest way to improve your communications is to cut them in half. The ultimate test of a communication: Does it make people stop what they are doing?

Tags: marketing advertising internetmarketing
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Catching up: Internet TV, Advertising 2.0, and Link Building

October 1, 2007 at 3:32 pm by Eric

Got back into the office today after a trip to St. Louis where I spoke at one of our client's conferences about local search. Had to blast through over 350 posts to catch up and found a bunch of items worth sharing. Rather than blogging them up separately I'm just going to list them off in one post, here goes... Internet TV Joost finally comes out of beta and offers access to the general public. They're boasting 15,000 TV shows and 250+ channels out of the gate. In other Joost news Steve O'Hear at the Last100 blog posts on Joost's CEO's statement that they will have a set top box available within 18 months. Advertising 2.0 Abbey Klaassen writes about the future of home pages in a Web 2.0 world for Advertising Age. In "Do Home Pages Have a Place in Web 2.0's Future?" I've written a lot about how being too focused on a site's homepage, while important, misses the point that many visits to a website start from a sub page and never even see the home page. But Abbey goes on to point out that with the growth of conversational media a brand may be engaged in places that don't even hit the website at all. Garrick Schmitt, VP-user experience at Avenue A/Razorfish is quoted saying "Marketers need to stop thinking so much about their site and more about what's happening outside their site, such as widgets, viral and search." In a similar vain Spike Jones from Brains on Fire critiques Citi's resistance of engaging in social media. Spike comments, "This is the continuing illusion of control that a lot of CMOs are still clinging to. They can’t come to terms that they are NOT in control. At all. The brand doesn’t belong to Citi. And I have no doubt that it's terrifying for a huge financial company to open the kimono and actually admit that you have some faults..." Finally, in a relevant post concerning link building Debra Mastaler lists a bunch of resources to begin in a link building effort.

Tags: video television advertising20 web20 localsearch internettv
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SEW: Whither the Yellow Pages Industry?

September 25, 2007 at 3:41 pm by Eric

Whither the Yellow Pages Industry? - another post on the decline of Yellow Page usage and how the industry is trying to adjust to it by Search Engine Watch today.

Tags: google yellowpages advertising20 yahoo internetmarketing disruption localsearch
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Yellow Pages Decline

September 24, 2007 at 8:29 am by Eric

Search Engine Land: Chris Silver Smith digs into the decline of Yellow Page usage as the popularity of Google Maps and Yahoo! Local grow, in his post "Google Trends: Yellow Pages Will Be Toast In Four Years. Chris runs a bunch of reports in Google trends to try and predict the likely time frame in which Yellow Pages will fall completely into obscurity. This month's Web Smart newsletter "Local Search Revisited" discusses the steps small local businesses should take in view of the declining value of their Yellow Page advertising.

Tags: google yellowpages advertising20 yahoo internetmarketing disruption localsearch
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Google Presentations/Yahoo buys Zimbra

September 18, 2007 at 10:12 am by Eric

Yesterday a few big things happened in the world of web based applications. First, Google released its awaited Presentation application to add a PowerPoint alternative to their suite of online office tools. Also, in our newsletter Workin' Web 2.0 we mentioned Zimbra as one of the companies offering web applications. Well Yahoo! just bought them--it looks like they'll be getting into the online office application game as well. Lee LeFever at Common Craft has been cranking out the paper based educational videos and has a new one about Google Docs (below). As always we does a great job communicating the basic concepts of online web apps, especially Google Docs.

Tags: web20 googledocs webapplication ajax
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More Website Applications: Ajax13

September 11, 2007 at 10:20 am by Eric

Following up on this month's Web Smart newsletter Workin Web 2.0 another comapny called Ajax13 is now offering website versions of standard office applications. I haven't kicked the tires very hard, but I did play around with their Sketch app. It's a super-lightweight vector drawing program (like Adobe Illustrator). Ajax13 also boasts a web based operating system that acts like a virtual desktop. It's like having a desktop inside your browser from which you can access all your Ajax13 apps and documents. For a deeper review see the post at Read/Write Web - ajaxWindows Web OS Officially Launches.

Tags: web20 webapplication ajax
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The TV Network's Internet Offerings

September 11, 2007 at 9:53 am by Eric

Blog resource: Last100 - TV Network's Internet Offerings Compared Daniel Langendorf has posted a helpful review and comparison of how the big US television networks are offering their shows online. ABC, CBS, NBS, and Fox (among other networks) all allow access to their most popular shows for free (ad supported) on the web. We wrote about Internet television last month in our Web Smart newsletter Internet TV has Arrived: Coming Soon and this post adds some detail to the current state of Internet television.

Tags: video internettv television
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Social Bookmarking video by The Common Craft Show

August 7, 2007 at 10:57 am by Eric

Lee LeFever at the Common Craft Show did it again with an excellent short video that explains the use and benefits of social bookmarking. Lee has created a paper and whiteboard approach to explaining these tools and concepts and it's very effective. For more information about social bookmarking and del.icio.us see our Web Smart newsletters Wikis and Swickis and Blogs, Part 2, and Social Media - Madness?

Tags: video commoncraftshow socialmedia delicious web20 collaboration socialbookmarking
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Copywriting on the Web from A List Apart

July 31, 2007 at 4:05 pm by Eric

Two excellent articles on A List Apart about copywriting on the web. These articles are helpful related resources to our two newsletters, Word's Make the Web Work and Unleashing the Power of Words. Bronwyn Jones' article Better Writing Through Design highlights the irony of designers investing tons of energy designing every last detail of a site's structure and interface, but then leave the whole reason all that is important--to serve the content itself--to be filled in at the end. Bronwyn encourages every website owner to work with a copywriter from the get go, but if that's not possible he offers great suggestions for doing the heavy lifting of copywriting yourself. He has suggests avoiding hyped-up marketing language and finding a voice that fits the site and speaks to the audience. Amber Simmons wrote a great article called Reviving Anorexic Web Writing. Amber rightly argues that the common belief that nobody reads long web copy is a fallacy. The problem isn't long web copy, it's bad, anorexic web copy. She urges us to write well, to invest time in our language. She also makes a great point of paying more attention to image ALT tags.

Tags: design process copywriting
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Another Online Video Editor Site

July 31, 2007 at 3:20 pm by Eric

In our newsletter Using Video on the Web we demo'ed several video uploading sites including Jump Cut which offers video editing features. Just learned of a similar web app for video editing via Josh Catone at Read/Write Web. JayCut seems to have a nice solution as well (haven't used it though, refer to Josh's review at Read/Write for details.

Tags: video onlinevideo
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More Info on OpenAds

July 9, 2007 at 11:58 am by Eric

Sean Ammirati over at Read/WriteWeb posted some new information about OpenAds, an opensource ad network I mentioned in our newsletter Online Advertising Redux. They have new leadership, a new release, and new reporting features. Check out Sean's post Openads 2.3 Beta Launched, But Google Threat Lurks.

Tags: advertising20 onlineadvertising openads adnetwork
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A Few Online Advertising Links

June 29, 2007 at 8:05 pm by Eric

I've been busy with the website video this month so blogging’s been light. I've tagged a few sites relating to online advertising to blog about when I got the chance. One was an article at Fast Company covering the FOOA conference (Future of Interactive Advertising). The panel discussed the shift of ad spending drifting away from television and moving toward the Internet. Another interesting site is Openads.org. It's the Linux of Google Ad Words. The open source nature of the platform removes the cost of the ad network and ad delivery provider thus maximizing revenues for the publisher and decreasing costs for the advertiser. Definitely keep an eye on this site. Scott Karp's Publishing 2.0 blog had a great post called Ad Platforms vs. Ad Networks: Who Controls The Advertiser Relationship? It covers the differences between Ad Networks and Ad Platforms and the current roles that Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft are playing in this area.

Tags: search advertising20 onlineadvertising
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Shooting the Website Analysis Video

June 29, 2007 at 7:46 pm by Eric

I spent the past two weeks producing our latest newsletter as a video. I was an interesting process. Everything from buying a cheap lighting kit to figuring out how to handle audio was all new. The other videos we produced last summer were done by a good friend of mine, Nathan Scoggins, out in LA. He put together a highly qualified crew and it was amazing to watch them work. I used Camtasia again, which I've used for our video documentation. It's very light weight and easy to use. I've blogged about it before. I'm pleased with the outcome but I think I might upgrade to Adobe Persuasion next time. There wasn’t as much control as I would like over audio, and there aren't any tools for adjusting the brightness, contrast, or color of the video files themselves. The entire process took ten days. Two days to write the script, a day to buy equipment. two days to set up and test sound video and lighting, one day to shoot, two days to edit, one day to process all the final video files and one last day to put up on the site. I think I can do future videos in five to six days if I keep them a little shorter. This video was much longer than my typical newsletter because we intend for it to be used by clients as a training resource in interpreting their site's traffic reports. It was pretty fun. I learned quite a bit and I've gotten good feedback so far. A couple unexpected events included numerous flies buzzing into my shinny head whenever the lighting was on and taking almost an hour to get the final sequence done--I just couldn't get through it without messing up. All in all though I think it will be a helpful resource and it was fun to do so I hope to do more in the future. I also saw a similar video project go online the day before we launched ours. It's by Beth Kanter called Web Analytics Demystified: A Primer for Nonprofits. I think it makes a nice complementary resource.

Tags: analytics traffic
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Website Analysis Software Options

June 27, 2007 at 12:37 pm by Eric

We've been using Urchin 5 for our website traffic reports for quite a while. This is the default traffic system for the sites on our server. I've also begun using Google Analytics. Google bought Urchin right after they came out with Urchin 6 and recently they've updated the system with lot's of new features. Check out our first Web Smart video newsletter for a review of Urchin and Google Analytics features. There are other options out thereof two main types--systems that are installed and create reports from a server's raw log files, and web based services that use embedded code to create reports. Urchin is an example of the former and Google Analytics of the later. Other website traffic analysis software solutions include Web Trends, ClickTracks, Coremetrics, WebSideStory, and Fireclick. I also recently came across a website called crazyegg that creates visual click points and heat maps based on click position. I haven't tried this out yet, but it looks pretty cool. For links to more thorough lists of analytics providers (there are well over a hundred) see Jeremiah Owyang's blog post "Which Web Analytics Programs is right for your Web Strategy?" at his Website Strategy blog.

Tags: analytics traffic
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Search Engine Land: Developing Web Literacy

June 7, 2007 at 11:40 am by Eric

Search Engine Land posted an article called 11 Steps to Developing a Web Literacy by Bill Slawski. This is an excellent post for those just getting started on the web. It can serve as a primer for small local businesses that have subsisted with Yellow Page ads as their primary channel for marketing. Bill makes some good points about how local search, local online directories and local review sites like Yelp are making it more and more important for smaller local business to have a web presence. But when going from no web experience to getting started with online marketing requires a lot of catch up learning. Bill's post is a great place to start.

Tags: blogging advertising20 rss localsearch
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How Not to Display Your Artwork on the Web

June 6, 2007 at 10:00 am by Eric

Charlie Parker over at the Lines and Colors blog (an excellent illustration blog) posted an excellent critique of designer websites. Among his observations are the use of pop ups, resizing browser windows, over reaching conceptual layouts, search engine problems and many more. This is an excellent post to go along with our Web Smart newsletter Advertising Agency and Artist Websites. I've been marketing again lately, sending emails and letters and making follow-up calls to advertising agencies and design firms. Part of my process, of course, is to review these agencies sites before sending my stuff. As a result I am daily reminded of these horrible tendencies in designer's websites. Agency sites frequently hijack my browser maximizing the screen and make me download massive Flash splash pages. Please, for the love of Pete, if you are a designer or agency guilty of these practices--STOP. Read this post, read our newsletter, and if you need ideas of what you should be doing with your website (if not impressing the world with your powerful interactive and creative concepts) request our article (use our contact form) written for David Baker's Persuading about how advertising agencies should be using their websites or download the How Magazine article (5.1MB) we contributed to on the same topic. read more...

Tags: design process
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RSS in Plain English - Video by The Common Craft Show

May 7, 2007 at 8:44 pm by Eric

Just StumbledUpon a great video presentation about how RSS works. Lee Lefever of Common Craft put together a smart simple video that walks through the basics and shows you how to get started. Intelligent, informative, entertaining--I like it. RSS in Plain English

Tags: advertising20 rss