Recently I wrote about a company who designed their website solely for users of Internet Explorer. Most research shows that on a typical day 20% to 25% of all web visits occur with another browser (Firefox, Chrome, or Safari for example). And not allowing your site to be viewable in other browsers, is just like it not allowing a customer in your store because of the type of car they drive. Interesting research is being shown, that more and more users have multiple browsers installed on their … [Read more...]
posted on September 16, 2009 by
Would you send away 1 in 5 customers?
What would you do if you found out one of your best sales people was randomly turning away 1 out of every 5 people? People who might have bought from you, but the salesperson turned them away because of their own prejudices. Recently I was on a conference call with a client, and one of the services he was using. We were trying to work through some issues and during the discussion one of the issues that came up was that the services site was designed to run in Internet Explorer only. I … [Read more...]
posted on September 2, 2009 by
New finished project
This summer I've been working on several projects with two of them being very large. Well I just finished the first large project, Our Wedding Circle. Built using an existing framework, so it should be easier to maintain, there is also large sections of custom code and several key updates. The updates, allow for, as all websites should: easier administration to add/update/and disable users, faster searching for users than before, more optimized database structure, and improved … [Read more...]
posted on June 8, 2009 by
ARC Loans and Opportunities
The government will be starting back the ARC loans (more info) which will given struggling businesses up to $35,000 to borrow interest free. ARC loans are supposed to help the small businesses which are stuggling due to the economy and thus the fact that there are fewer customers, and the customers are buying less. ARC loans are to help bridge that gap in income, and help you remain solvent while looking for new opportunities. Many businesses are turning to the Internet to find new … [Read more...]
posted on May 17, 2009 by
Valid HTML Helps Search Engine Rankings – NOT!
Image via Wikipedia There are lots of interesting theories out there about how one can get there site to rank better in search engines. Unfortunately much of this advice, while it would make since, is wrong. One example is that correct, valid HTML code is important for search engines to read your website, and thus for you rank highly. This makes sense for several reasons: bad code may not be read by a search engine as it doesn't know what it sees, search engines want to promote … [Read more...]
posted on May 11, 2009 by
Optimize Your Site For More Sales
Previously, I've talked about optimizing your website to improve how fast it loads. This not only improves the perception of your site, but also how likely it is for people to stay and make a purchase, or request more information. Optimizing your site for sales isn't as easy as optimizing your site for speed. When we want to increase speed we know many ways to improve the performance. We can modify files to be smaller, have files load in a different order, move the server to a faster … [Read more...]
posted on May 1, 2009 by
How Fast Is Your Website?
Image by zerok via Flickr Yahoo recently updated one of their tools for grading and optimizing websites. It's called YSlow, and it checks your site for several different decisions and tools which you (or your web designer) may have implemented. YSlow is an add on to the Firebug tool which is a Firefox extension - so at this point, you can't run it in any other browser, however both Firefox and Firebug are free tools so there is no cost to you other than time. YSlow is nice because it … [Read more...]
posted on April 23, 2009 by
Optimize Your Website For Speed
Image by tirebiterz via Flickr How do you increase the speed and response of your web site? Good question. We've talked about it some in the past, but the people at Inside CRM have provided a list of 50 items. While this can help with the loading of your site, it also takes someone who knows how to implement these changes. One other thing to check on is how will this affect the other aspects of your web site? For example: Will modifying your web site affect how users use your … [Read more...]
posted on April 12, 2009 by
How fast do changes take affect online?
Image via Wikipedia People often want to know how fast to changes occur on-line. They may be used to traditional print advertisign, such as newspaper and magazine, in which changes to an ad might take weeks or months to be seen. Even worse, consider wanting to change some text in your phone book ad. If you see an error (imagine a wrong phone number), or want to make a change the week your book comes out, it will take a twelve long months to update your ad. On-line, things can occur … [Read more...]
posted on March 25, 2009 by
Saving Money with SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a way for your company to get new visitors by using search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live Search. Some people will say that they don't like to spend money on SEO, because who knows how much money they are spending, and can they get any return on their investment (ROI) for their optimization. Some people even wonder if SEO works at all, saying it is nothing more than 21st century snake oil. Well I've never thought so. When I set up an SEO campaign, … [Read more...]