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Entries Categorised as 'Link Roundup'

Mixed Bag of Links

June 8th, 2010 · No Comments · Link Roundup

Every now and then I have a slew of webpages open that sit between that precarious point of closure and being bookmarked and likely never looked at again.  They remain open because I feel like there is something to say about them, and am likely to write a post or two, but as yet haven’t pulled myself into a mindset to do so.

Anyhow, to that end I have decided to collect todays current batch together and throw them into their own raggle taggle set of links in my favourite blog category ‘link roundup’:

To kick things off is Mike Rowehl on his This is Mobility blog with a post entitled Why Mobile Developer Programs Aren’t Working.  In it, as the title suggests he looks at a variety of reasons why individual mobile developer programs online are not very effective, from their function as a form of marketing to developer lifecycles.  There are many fair points and worthwhile eleemnts to learn in developing your own ideas for such a program.

Moving on, we have the ever popular Sazbean, making points about Pricing Based on Customer Expectations.  This post talks about ideas for coming up with reasonable pricing for your products or services and who to divine that tricky path to sales nirvana.  Choosing your price point is never easy and sometimes, as is ever clear in the world of art, you just have to make it up as you go along, but for those with a need for more tried and tested methods, Sarah Worsham comes up with some great points.

On the topic of price and money we have a great post by Michael Grey on When to Pay Top Dollar for Copy in which the talks about the value of good copy.  I can only really scratch at the surface of Michael’s post but he really takes a long and hard look of what is up with the web, the real costs of content and how to produce value from content.

From a slightly different angle, but still on the same topic of price, money and value of things.  The Tech Crunch article on startup funding, and the spectre of VC capital as the shackle and chains to your fledgling company – Startups: Poverty is Underrated. Be Glad That You’re Not Rich.  In the course of the article, Vivek Wadhwa looks at the impositions of VC capital and how it affects start up companies.

Moving on from money and off into the world of development (nice little segway there!) I liked Contentini post entitled Web App Strategy – Why Market Research is Important and Doing It For Free.  The article, written by Dan Zambonini, looks at the renaissance of strategic thinking – seems a bid idiotic it ever went away! – and looks at ways in which you can best justify your development time for an untested website or service.  Using similar techniques for SEO, he helps you find ways to triage development ideas and time.

In a completely different direction, is an interview on The Daily Beast with all-round genius Charles Saatchi.  The post provides some interesting thoughts and ideas and definitely has some laugh out loud moments =)  Need I say more?

Last but not least, and not so much a blog post as a service, is CSS Kill Switch which “lets you non- destructively black out a difficult client’s website with the click of a button.”  The idea is a clever one, but really got me thinking about whether or not this is the best way to deal with errant clients.  it’s always tricky when you are delivering subjective services to a client and not a finite resource, but still.  I suppose it provides an option for anyone not willing to cut their losses and run.

So there you have it!

Digital Curation, Web Design, Self-Publishing and Fun!

April 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Link Roundup, SEO, Web Design

Dope Data is the blog for Erin Scime covering content strategy ideas and her portfolio.  It’s an excellent body of work and example of how great ideas can win through.  This notion is backed up by an excellent article from Erin on A List Apart entitled Content Strategist as Digital Curator.

On the topic of digital curation and museums, the Collections Trust blog has a post entitled Getting Started: Building a Digital Agency.  It’s the first part in a series that guides museums, and anyone else who cares to listen, through the process of setting up a digital department.  What to do and what not to do.

Keith Burtis has a great post, Exploring Character vs Human Face as the Representative of a Digital Brand on keithburtis.com, a good and totally relevant take on social media and the representation of you or your business online.  With some many business large and small going online with social media these days it is important to get the mix right when reaching out to your audience.

On another tangent, and on the topic of web design, this is Give PNG a Chance on the phpied site. In the excellent article by Stoyan Stefanov that talks about the pitfalls of using PNG, what works and what doesn’t, and how best to integrate it when using it on your website.  Definitely something that more designers and creative directors should be fully aware of in the process of how their design is going to end up being cut up and used on the front-end of a website.

For those interested in the actual construction of site and the usability and experience architecture behind them, the following is a top down review of the art of User Interaction Design: Complete Beginers Guide to Interaction Design.  The article is on UXBooth, an awesome site which covers many great related topics, and more recently reviewed a plethora of UX Testing apps, Information Gathering – A Roundup of UX Apps. An article definitely worth reading too.

Back on my favourite topic of museums and design, Nina K Simon, the lady of Museum 2.0 fame and much more, has written an incredible series of blog posts detailing the story of self-publishing her latest book, The Participatory Museum.  The series is entitled The Participatory Process and is split into 4 parts – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

On to my next favourite topic of search engine optimisation, and back to what I repeatedly bang on about in terms of effectiveness, here is a useful guide to 10 free tools for small businesses in the battle of SEO on the Small Business Computing website.  They provide the tools, but as an end user you need to know how to stretch beyond this, so reading more around the topic is also a good thing, with plenty of good articles on this very site (apologies for the self-promotion).

Anyhow, time to hang up my boots for another post.  I hope you enjoyed it, and happy reading!

Design, Marketing & The Web – Roundup

March 31st, 2010 · No Comments · Link Roundup, Web Design

Here are some interesting links that I have come across in the past week and definitely worth a read or keeping up-to-date with:

First up on the link roll is CX Partners‘ blog post on the Myth of the Page Fold.  It an interesting look at the theory of the page fold and why, in their opinion it doesn’t matter.  They base this opinion and user testing and also take you through some thoughts on what inhibits page readers from actually scrolling.

Second up is a great SEO-related blog by Malcolm Coles.  I hesitate to call him a guru, but his blog clearly and very honestly covers the search engine optimisation niche, and providing opinion, reviews and interesting related info.

In the same vain, Planet Anarky by George Rosier, also provides useful insight into the world of web design and the process therein to get the job done.  He frequently reviews sites, and details a range of information on the likes of effective display advertising.

The Web Usability Blog is another great resource for, as you guessed, Web Usability.  Articles and topics that they cover includes SEO aspects and making the most use out of meta descriptions, titles and other elements in your web pages, but also talk about usability, and building web pages, debunking theories and cementing others.

Whilst on usability, back on my favourite topic of the iPhone and mis-guided app dev for it, Marked Lines has a great post of masses of iPhone-friendly websites.  I say iPhone because they are clearly optimised for that screen size, but they still provide good lead on some great ideas for mobile friendly websites as a whole.  The article entitled 45 Web Design Inspirations for the iPhone is at least worth a look in.

Almost perfectly slotting in after is the piece on quality, an interview with Tim Armstrong, AOL’s CEO, on Contagious Magazine and entitled Quality Emphasis Late (And Integral).  For those of us who do care about needs based output, rather than simply pushing a project out the door based on tight deadlines, then its worth a read.  Quality should always trump everything else!

Following on is Seb Chan’s ridiculously expansive blog post on how he and the rest of the Powerhouse Museum tech team launched the web presence for their successful Building the 80s exhibition, the post is entitled: Building the 80s – a multichannel longitudinal exhibition web presence.

On an interesting and more light-hearted note is OK Trends, the official blog of OK Cupid, the free dating web site.  They take a wry look at peoples use of the site, as well as trending.  Blog posts such as The 4 Big Myths of the Profile Picture and The Democrats are Doomed or How A Big Tent Can Be Too Big make for interesting and useful consumption.

And to finish up this dandy round of mixed up bed-fellows, Swiss Miss, a lady out of Brooklyn NYC who does an amazing job of collecting posts on a plethora of incredible topics and items.  I love the blog and found so much good material on it, both to learn from and to make my own commentary on.  Forthcoming soon will be one on the post, Why You Can’t Work at Work.  As an aside, congrats to her on blogging and giving birth, at almost the same time!

10 Useful Links on Social Media, Optimisation & More …

November 22nd, 2009 · No Comments · Link Roundup, SEO

Proving that just about anything can be optimized and tracked is Landing Page Testing: How to Test and What to Test over at the PPC Hero blog.  Blogger Joe provides tips on landing pages and conversion rates.  Making sure that you are optimised to the hilt.

The Web Analytics blog also provides useful tips on tracking 404 error pages as a landing page & starting point and how to best track and optimise them in the article: Web Analytics for 404 Errors.

Wingify is a great optimisation blog and they cover bounce rate issues and how to fix them in the post Why your bounce rate is high and how to fix it – top 6 reasons why visitors immediately exit your website. In the article they talk about issues of content and of design and how you can best manage people’s intentions and expectations when they reach your blog.

To this end, John Cow, whose wonderful tagline is ‘Milking the internet since 2007′ has an interesting article on 7 Steps for Successful Split Testing – Kinda Science-y Stuff showing you how to easily and effectively run through A/B testing to better optimise your design and get the best results from it and your website overall.

Amber Riviere on the other hand, over at Daily Web Worker, provides tips on customer service online from that eternally loved profession, the car salesman.  Proving that everything on the web isn’t virgin territory, she drives home the fact (pardon the pun) that there is plenty of guidance to be had and tips to be learned from others professions and paths well trodden with her article: 16 Lessons in Customer Service from a Car Salesman.

As an addendum to Amber’s piece, Sarah Worsham’s piece Social Media Basics – 10 Things Every Business Should Do on her Sazbean blog is also a great how to on the Dos and the Don’t of Social Media, which just about every Tom, Dick and Harry seems to be getting into these days, and doesn’t know their left foot from their right.

Whilst for those businesses thinking about hiring a social media professional, they might want to follow some of the advice Amber Naslund in her posting Hiring for Social Media: The Ugly Side on her Altitude blog.  In it she covers the Don’t of hiring someone and the points to focus on.

Still on topic, with social media, Community Organizer 2.0 has an interesting blog post entitled: The Case of the 4,000 Twitter Followers Who Don’t Care in which they discuss issues of marketing on Twitter and why levels of engagement are more important than mere numbers. 2000 followers doesn’t quite mean 2000 pageviews on any tweeted link!

On the flip side of the social media equation, The Working Life of the Museum of London blog has an interesting article on Strategic Social Media for the Cultural Sector.  In it they talk about how to handle the audience, as well as employees, and the various unique issues surrounding ownership of content.  They also discuss the relationships between the various social media services and a museum’s own website.

For those amongst us still trying to build up web site traffic for your company or blog, Search Engine Land has an interesting article on 11 Effective, Efficient Ways To Use Limited Time To Build Links in which they discuss aspects of time management versus link building, and they come up with ways in which you can produce back links for your site more effectively.

Finally, if you are wondering about the future, Teco Systems has a blog post talking about their predictions for 2010, aptly entitled 2010 Predictions.