I know, I’ve deviated from the type of articles this site is supposed to be about. But, rest assured there are several in the pipe that will show you how to write web copy, make more money with your site, some SEO jems and more. Honestly, I have a real job too and have been [...]
Plan your website BEFORE you build it. Before you tweak a template or a line of code, draw up a clear set of goals.
Business does not drive the web, people do. Most businesses miss this, and in part, what I believe, contributed to the Dot.com implosion. Companies saw the web only as a new marketing opportunity to sell more widgets.
People seem to go to greater lengths to keep from losing something they have than they would to acquire something they don’t. The old adage “Fear of loss is greater than the desire for gain” is very true when writing web copy designed to sell.
I’ve been told I’m a little sarcastic in my articles – that’s not sarcasm, but confidence. Ok, sarcasm too. So, to keep things light I’m ordering some new office posters. We’ve all seen those things – the rowboats visually presenting a “teamwork” metaphor and other silly things to “motivate” the 8-5 corporate soldiers.
Nikola Tesla gave us AC power transmission, the coil transformer, wireless communication and hundreds of other inventions. Tesla was not only an inventor and electrical engineer but was also a great visual thinker. He could “see” an entire system in his head and often didn’t test his ideas in a lab. If he tested them [...]
The web is as necessary to business today as the telephone was a decade ago, yet so many businesses use it as nothing more than a digital business card. Ok, your expensive “corporate hello” may be great – if it were still 1998.
Most businesses love “best practices” and manuals. These written standards are orderly, rational and logical. They have been tested and proven. They’re great because they give a team the sense that everyone is “on board”. In the end – they are “justifiers”, a book to blame when a goal isn’t realized, a safety net for [...]
Ever notice that websites’ most relevant information is often times a click or two away from the home page? There’s a contact page, an about page, services or product page, etc. After all these supporting sub-pages are written, businesses seem to be scratching their heads.
Businesses, institutions and governments all use the same tools and broadcast media – the buildings, logos, websites, brochures, press releases and speeches – all to convey their “image”, their “brand”. Individually and collectively the difficulty begins when we cross the line of believability – when that image we have for these businesses and individuals are [...]
Try it – ask a business “why do you want a brochure?” and they will just stare at you like you just said something you weren’t supposed to bring up. A brochure is a given – a standard procedure, a marketing cliché. This is why so many websites are failures – they are no more [...]
The 80’s are long gone – but look around and notice all the downtown buildings all topped with huge neon lit logos – electrified egos of the top floor executives inside them. I live in Denver and the evenings here are dowsed with a glowing blue – residents greet visitors with “welcome to downtown Qwest” [...]
It amazes me how often people search for themselves by name on the Internet. Are these people paranoid? Scared? Guilty? Server logs and tracking scripts give such insight to the psychology of web surfers- from what they search for, what interests them, where they work to their actual internet usage – it’s all so fascinating.
With so many people using the Internet today from shopping to banking, research to just killing time at their hourly 8-5 cubicle job in that big glass building you G.E.D. types have, we are all inundated with new website designs and layouts. Just as the term “banner blindness” was coined because web page elements that [...]
I just have to say how satisfying it is to mislead a competitor’s seo or webmaster by throwing out misinformation on forums you know they use as a resource. Hey, maybe in 6 months we’ll be competitors again. Hint: Using Front Page on your site places a generator tag in your source, and flags your [...]
