Entries for category 'Trends'

Still not sold on facebook, twitter, linkedin, and similar web applications? The most common reason I hear from people as to why they won't try social networking is the loss of their privacy. Well, if that's all that's keeping you from connecting with friends, colleagues, and potential customers, I'm here to share some simple things you can do to participate and maintain whatever level of anonymity you choose!

Read on for ideas for guidelines you can set for yourself, and settings relevant to several of the more popular sites to keep your personal information private.

Love it or hate it, it looks like Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 is stubbornly clinging to browser market share. According to recent stats published by StatOwl.com, IE6 still clings to a 3rd place share, or 18.23% of all web users. This month, Firefox 3 took over the 2nd place position with 18.58%, and IE7 remains firmly atop the chart with 43.51%. The case for continued IE6 compatability becomes even more interesting when looking at the usage trends for corporate entities: In this case, IE6 leads the pack with over 41% , followed by IE7 at around 39%.

Want to know why the continued survival of IE6 is such a big deal? Read on to learn how not all browsers are created equal, and why IE6 looks to be sticking around for a bit longer.

Several weeks ago I posted an article about joining Twitter. If you haven't yet, give it a try! It takes just a few minutes, and can be adapted for a variety of different business purposes. Still not convinced? New Marketing Labs President Chris Brogan has written about 50 ways you can use Twitter as part of your business.

Check out the complete article here!

The old cliche Keep It Simple Stupid applies to website design as well.  Though it's certainly my job to design whatever will make the client happiest, I always do my best to explore options and explain to clients how visitors might get lost on their site based on the overwhelming amount of information they feel is needed on one page or another.  Recently, one client had me build in widgets on the home page summarizing and linking to nearly every part of their site over the course of several revisions instead of keeping the home page simple and building a flow through the site to ensure critical information was highlighted on the appropriate page.

I touched on some of this briefly in a previous article, but I'd like to take some to review why it's so important to keep things simple for your site visitors.  Read on after the break to learn some of the benefits to bringing focus and simplicity to your site.

The sitemap page is a critical addition for SEO and allowing search engines to crawl your site. Over the last year or so, sitemaps have been evolving. Once the standard stand-alone page that simply linked to every page, designers have found clever ways of integrating a sitemap into the framework as a usable site tool. Learn more about this new trend after the break.

Since the Internet went mainstream a little over 10 years ago, having a website has been an important part of a business marketing plan. You operate a website to communicate your message to the rest of the world, to encourage purchases, or maybe even to sell products online. Your site exists for visitors to visit, read everything they want to know, and then become a customer.  It’s that simple, right?

Not exactly. A website must go beyond one-way communication, meet definable customer needs, and achieve company goals. Most websites are too wordy, asking viewers to read the site like a book instead of finding ways to use the site as an interactive branch of the business. Text-heavy sites are built with the incorrect assumption that visitors will patiently click one page after another and read every word, eventually finding what it is they are looking for. These sites fall short of quickly directing visitors to critical information, and fail to encourage an actionable goal out of their visitors. Read past the break to learn how your site can avoid the same fate.

Social networking has quickly become an integral part of everyday life. The use of social networking is not simply restricted to today's youth, but spans all ages. It was revolutionary when e-mail became mainstream many years ago. The idea that you could send a message and the recipient could read that message within seconds was groundbreaking. Social networking sites are the evolution of that: communication and community building using the power of the internet.  Read on to discover more about this ongoing trend.

This year at PubCon Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, Inc. gave a talk in which he discussed the future of SEO and how it will be impacted by Google's behavior and intent based search algorithms in relationship to rankings. According to Bruce, this will become the most significant facotor affecting universal search come 2009. WebProNews did an interview with Bruce Clay after the presentation which is definately worth watching!