Shiny New Toys

Well, I'm getting closer to shutting down this form of my blog as yesterday I installed WordPress to my site and transferred the content from this blog to that. From now on all new content will be posted there. Go to http://www.gemsolv.com/wordpress for my latest posts including what happens when your SEO runs afoul of Google ...

Blogger has been a great tool for getting started with blogging but it lacks the powerful features of a WordPress or TypePad which is why I switched. I chose WordPress because it is well regarded, open source and free. Plus it has a great community of users built up around it who offer support and guidance for the product. You can't beat that combo.

Thanks for reading and see you in my new digs...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Phishing with the FTC

Worried your mom, girlfriend, hubby or grand dad is going to run afoul of those nefarious phishers? The friendly folks at the FTC have your back, dude. Check this out. Finally, government that works! Click the friendly phish below...

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Color Me Cool - Good Color is the Fabric of Good Design

Alright, look down. What color are your socks? Brown? Okay. What color are your pants? Blue? Errrr ... okay, no worries--here's the tool for you, an easy-to-use and free on-line color matching application from the makers of Color Schemer Studio. You simply pick a core color from its palette and it provides you a complete range of complementary colors along with their RGB and HEX numbers.

So while you may be uncoordinated, color-wise, there's no reason your website or email need to be jarringly or even drably clad. Good color can make a poor design interesting and a great design, extraordinary.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Good Design Just Makes Sense

Somebody commented to me the other day on how cool the Apple iPod's navigations system is. His comment caught me by surprise because I hadn't really thought about whether it was cool or not. It just made sense.

Like all good design there is a heavy dose of intuitiveness built in. I don't need to read the manual, go to a class or call tech support to figure out how it works. Rather it's, "Just a sec ...", and I get it.

Your web site and email communications should strive for this, "Don't Make Me Think", approach to design embodied by the iPod and its ilk. The best design eliminates the guesswork from the process.

Good design on a website means that you know almost immediately...

• what it's about, it's purpose, and whether you belong there - good design doesn't waste your time
• where you can go to get your needs met.
• what decisions to make and why you should make them
• how to do business with the site and
• who and how to contact a real person if your questions aren't answered or you need the kind of information only a real, live person can provide (SIDEBAR: Amazing, isn't it, how may sites don't have any sort of contact information. I mean, I know you're a big company and all but can't you at least put us in touch with your central company switchboard?).

So consider, or reconsider, your site's design. Does it just make sense? And don't take your word for it. After all, you know how it works. You already know where to go and what decisions you'd like your viewers to make. Your opinion doesn't count. If you can afford formal testing, do it. If you can't, organize everyone you know to review and provide feedback on your website or other digital communication. Give them tasks: find something, buy something, subscribe to something, etc.

Remember, your visitors are always only one-click away from good-bye.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Here's Looking at You, Kid. Eye-tracking Research and Your Website's Layout

No, this is not the path I took to my car after yesterday's Super Bowl party!

What it actually represents is a fairly simplistic model of the most common eye-movement pattern of a group of browsers viewing a web page. This research was compiled by the Eyetrack III team and released by The Poynter Institute, the Estlow Center for Journalism & New Media, and Eyetools.

As the above diagram indicates, the Eyetrack III team found a common pattern: "...The eyes most often fixated first in the upper left of the page, then hovered in that area before going left to right. Only after perusing the top portion of the page for some time did their eyes explore further down the page..."

How can you use this information to develop or redevelop your web site? Here's a diagram that the Eyetrack folks derived from their preliminary analysis of the data...

The research team suggests that you match the location of the content on your site's pages to this map and rearrange it as necessary to place the most critical content in the higher priority zones. For more details ... much more ... on this fascinating study. Click through to the source listing below.

Source: The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower the Water: Lowering Prices isn't the Only Way to Boost Your Site's Sales

eMarketer Daily reports that while price is still the main factor in driving site commerce, good site design is good for business too.

The article identifies several Critical Factors that influence your shopper's purchase decision...

Prices :: 68%
Shipping options :: 44%
Product descriptions :: 38%
Site Navigation :: 37%
Checkout process :: 32%

So before slashing your prices, consider whether your site design, navigation and content are encouraging buyers to buy as well as they could. Read the article, Good Design, Better Sales for the whole story.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Website Content: The Winner and Still Champion

No surprise here but content rules on the web according to Joel Walsh writing on webmasterbrain.com. Last June, Joel did a survey of "Google's top five pages for the five most searched-on keywords".

What he found was that the writing quality of the content on these pages was significantly and consistently better than the content on pages that didn't make the grade (or rank, as it were). Common factors of these sites' content include (with my advice for your site's content):

• Frequent updating
  Advice: Don't let the grass grow under your content. Keep it fresh.
  
  
• Good spelling and grammar
  Advice: Use your word processors spelling and grammar checker first. Then read it yourself and have others, particularly those with superior grammatical and spelling skills, check it also. Even if you have a professional writer create your content; double check their work. Nothing kills credibility for me like crappy writing and poor spelling.
  
  
• Write Concise Paragraphs and Shorter Sentences
  Advice: Keep it brief. Remember, people scan more than they read on the web.
  
  
• Use Lists
  Advice: Nothing says, "scan me" like a nice list. Don't neglect bolding, italics and the effective use of headings and keyterm rich links (both internal and external) to play up relevant points and increase scannability.
  
  
• Contextual relevance
  Advice: If you're writing about a blog, for example, talk about bloggers and blogging and blogs. Reference the blogosphere. Don't overd0 it. Keep your content readable and relevant but don't neglect using variations on a theme.
  

Source: Google's advice for your website: Content

So just like in real estate where the mantra is: location, location, location. The mantra on the web remains: content, content, content. Not only will you improve your rankings in the search engines but you'll create a better experience for the visitors that those engines bring.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Wiki Whaa...? or Quicky! What's a Wiki?

The pace of change on the net continues unabated. Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water along comes a new term to baffle you. Wiki Wiki - means quick in Hawaiian and a Wiki describes a blog-like web authoring technology whose principal use has been to allow collaboration between small (think a corporate project team) to large (think Wikipedia) groups of users.

Urban Dictionary (a cool, community-created slang dictionary slash wiki itself) defines a wiki as...

A collaborative Web site comprised of the perpetual collective work of many authors. Similar to a blog in structure and logic, a wiki allows anyone to edit, delete or modify content that has been placed on the Web site using a browser interface, including the work of previous authors. In contrast, a blog, typically authored by an individual, does not allow visitors to change the original posted material, only add comments to the original content. The term wiki refers to either the Web site or the software used to create the site. The first wiki was created by Ward Cunnigham in 1995...

One of the beauties of a wiki in a corporate environment is the ability to control document creep - you know - what happens when you email a document to more than one person, looking for revisions. The danger of getting out of synch is a factor of the number of documents sent times the size of the team. By using a wiki space as the central document repository you can avoid this problem.

If you want to see firsthand what a wiki is, i.e., build your own, check out pb wiki (pb for peanut butter cuz they think creating a wiki should be as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.).

pb wiki allows you to build and host your own free wiki much like blogger.com allows you to build and host your own free blog. Pretty simple stuff. Check out my wiki while you're over there. This took me about 15 minutes to build. It's nothing fancy, just a learning exercise at this point.

Thanks for reading...

tom.gray@gemsolv.com
GeMSolv.com

Tired of Typing Emails on that Itty, Bitty PDA Keyboard? Try Using a Virtual Keyboard Instead...

Saw something cool the other day at a conference I was attending. The keynote speaker demonstrated his Virtual Laser Keyboard. While I'd seen pics of this device, I'd never actually seen one in action. Pretty slick. It uses a laser to project a standard keyboard interface onto a flat surface like a hotel desktop or airplane tray table along with an invisible infrared plane of light that actually detects the keys and characters you're typing. An explanation is here.

It works with a wide variety of PDA's, Smart Phones, Blackberrys, PCs and laptop computers. The speaker who demonstrated his used it as an input device for his Blackberry to create and send emails. It's a heckuva lot faster and more accurate than trying to type with your thumbs on the miniscule keyboards that come with these devices. At $200 it's not cheap but it's not outrageously expensive either considering the convenience and time savings a 'VLK' could provide.