Congratulations! You’ve just sold somebody your product online! Now you’ve got marketing gold: Their email address, other contact info, purchase history, and other dirt on ’em. Time to add them to your bulk mailing list and start sending promotions their way, right? Not necessarily. Let’s say you want to give your new customer recommendations on…
People are automatically drawn to interesting or beautiful photos, videos, and music. While most text looks largely the same and takes time to digest, multimedia brings instant recognition and appeal to one’s senses. Multimedia is essential to some websites such as those of music artists and film studios, but many others can also benefit. It…
Are you looking for a good way to explain a technical process or visual concept to your visitors? Need a way to show your client how to set up a Web service, do a graphic design technique, or understand a complex diagram? Use a screencast! It’s a video recording of everything you see and do…
What’s the difference between a great website and an awful one? Is it too subjective to say? Can you even compare sites as divergent as Google, Facebook, and Basecamp? While there can be some room for opinion, there are definitely some nearly universal principles which separate the virtual wheat from the chaff. The worst Web…
Do you know the difference between a great domain name and a mediocre one? What do you do if your company name is taken? How about if you want to have a more general appeal than just your brand?
We’ve all seen them: You ask a client business or service provider to send you an email with information you need. Your mailbox gives you the “new message” notification, and it’s from JoeFromBlueWidgets@thatbigISP.com. They don’t have a website, or haven’t gotten around to buying an email plan to go with it. No big deal, right?…
Here are the elements I’d recommend to be a Web designer (as opposed to a Web programmer): -Learn the *design* aspect. There’s much more to making websites than throwing code together. Check out The Non-Designer’s Design Book or The Non-Designer’s Web Book for information on layout, typography, colors, and much more. -Get a decent grounding…
I just responded to a Twitter post asking about transferring your domain, and thought you’d benefit from the answer. Here goes: @RealtorMichelle: Halp! If I move my wordpress blog to my own domain do I still get their easy tools to write and the stats and “backstage” stuff? #wp WordPress is a bit of a…
Blue Widgets, Inc was ready to begin their big push into the Web. They had secured bluewidgetsinc.com and built a decent site; now they were ready to get into other online services. They got the username bluewidgetsinc for Flickr, but it was taken on another site and they had to settle for widgetblue1. Then Bob…
As I said yesterday, interactivity is the way to gain fans on the Internet, not beating them over the head with advertising. Here’s how one small business accomplished that. Blossom Chevrolet Tetris Promotion Social media marketing firm SocialUps created a Facebook promotion for Blossom Chevrolet where people are invited to get a high score on…