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It's now easier and prettier to make a website
The 12 Mar. 2010 at 11:41doombyComments (0)Add a comment
I'm sure our millions of avid readers would have noticed my absence last week, and have probably been suffering in agony ever since. Sorry for that. But there was a very, very good reason, and as I am now back, you can all breathe a collective sigh of relief (and take down that Facebook vigil). For those of you who've dropped by your favorite free website builder in the last few days, you'll probably already have figured out why – for those who haven't, you soon will.
In any case, you'll probably all agree that after four months it was time for doomby to get a little dressed-up (inspired, no doubt, by this image from a few weeks back, to aim for bigger and better things) - both to encourage you to strive for webmastering excellence, and to create a website that rocks. So kudos to Pascal and Florian for some really fantastic work on getting the site up and looking great (I knew they had pretty genes in there somewhere ...).Get online or get left behind: small businesses missing the point of e-commerce?
The 26 Feb. 2010 at 14:55Comments (0)Add a commentOver the last couple of days, I've been surfing around trying to get an idea of exactly h
ow small businesses (those with 1 to 20 employees) have embraced e-commerce. I wound up spending a lot of that time focusing on Canada – partly to honor the Olympic spirit, and partly because their results just ranked better in Google. Though I wasn't that surprised by what I read, its implications for small businesses are truly startling.
To give you an idea why, let's go back a few years to 2007 – that being the latest year for which I have a full set of figures at hand. First, the facts: although some 85% of Canadian small businesses had access to the internet, only 36% deemed it necessary to make a business website of their own. Worse still: 45% made online purchases, yet a mere 6% fully embraced reciprocal e-commerce by building an online store1.2 foolproof ways to make your online store a success
The 19 Feb. 2010 at 13:10doombyComments (0)Add a comment
Partly inspired by the lasting image of last week's illustration (I swear that'll be engraved in my memory forever), and partly because my internet connection is going haywire, I thought I'd write a little about getting the most out of your online store. Specifically, how to ensure your e-commerce website attracts customers willing to stick around long enough to buy something. If you're making a business website, and your goal is to use it to sell stuff, then the last thing you want is for people to do a WIWO (walk-in, walk-out – and yes, I made that up) within the first few seconds of their arrival.
First impressions last, and getting your visitors to hand over their plastic means you really need to make sure you know how to make a website that inspires confidence – it's not enough just to have great stuff to sell.The sure-fire, attention-grabbing strategy to make a website successful
The 12 Feb. 2010 at 12:40doombyComments (0)Add a comment
No, a catchy title isn't the one I had in mind, but that was a pretty good one for starters, right? On the other hand, the picture on the right has a lot more in common with today's post than may first meet the eye ...
I've been doing a lot of surfing over the last week, going back to get a fresh perspective on some familiar things. Bossman (the elder) has been doing something similar, though his reflective retro trip has involved listening to such classic 80s musical greats as "Ghostbusters" and "Final Countdown" (not that I'm complaining – it makes me feel way younger than I have been of late).
One of the things I noticed during this week of “revisiting old things in a new way” was just how websites were marketed, and how I responded to that. So rather than talk about how to make a website this week, I thought I'd step back and talk about how to make a successful website, and what SEO has to do with making it a success.Keyword density and search engine optimization
The 04 Feb. 2010 at 12:07doombyComments (2)Add a comment
No, this is not a discussion about lexically challenged motor-heads, but rather the follow-up to last week's fireside chat about SEO keyword choices. Now that you've got your key search terms figured out, you really should take some time to figure out how you're going to use them in your writing.
Remember, keyword choice is just as important for those looking to make a website for personal reasons as it is for business websites (unless you want to make a secret website, and hey, each to their own).
You'll often come across the term 'keyword density' when researching writing for the web. As the name (hopefully) suggests, it describes the relative frequency of your keywords as they appear in your content. And like salt, sugar, butter, sex … whatever, too much of a good thing is bad for you. But too little leaves an 'emptiness' (as in, no visitors).