I keep spelling Lily as Lilly. Probably because of my last name, but I think that I got all of those fixed.
I think Old Timer & Lily is a very nice functional site.
Susan had a store on safeshopper.com and they sent a notice that they were closing. She needed a secure shopping cart quickly that she could maintain herself. OS Commerce is a good solution.
She runs a blog called loloschild and she knew about maintaining one, so having another one for her business is a good idea.
I think it’s a very comfortable site that visitors might like to hang around in. They have a good loyal customer base already, as evidenced by the fact that she started getting orders as soon as the site was up. If she keeps adding new content, which is pretty easy when you have a blog, there will be many new customers as well.
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I was reading a post called “When is Usability More Important than SEO?” by Stoney deGeyter.
Before I even started to read I said to myself it always is. I have written before What Good Are 1,000,000 Visitors If They Don’t Like Your Content?
If you are making a business website you want the search engines to be your friends, but there’s hardly any chance that a search engine is ever going to buy something from you. You do want to make as easy as possible for search engines to find and read your content, but always remember your human visitors are your number one priority.
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I got a birthday email from one of my neighborhood restaurants, Minutellos for a free bottle of wine. They have a rewards program.
I got the same email last year, but it came a month later.
I still had the wine and mentioned it was a little late. Not much, just a word and this year they fixed it.
I’m impressed!
I think many people send out email newsletters, but if you are going to personalize them and send special ones for events like birthdays or something else, it’s always pays to go the extra mile and try your best to get it right.
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I have a page on my site with some of my favorite new sites that are showing up on the web. These are not my sites, but they are the kinds of things that I like in a website. There are different reasons that I picked these sites, they all look good and are clear and easy to use. The graphics are good, but not overpowering. Sometimes I just like a picture or the name. Some of them are not in English and I still know what they are about.
The newest one is called Max and Lou’s. You can see that this site is about food. Very good looking and appetizing food. The product pictures are very well done.
The menu is very cool, but is still done with plain text and CSS effects.
I would like to see more text for SEO, but this site looks great.
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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Passage is a video game by Jason Rohrer which allows players to experience an entire simulated lifetime, from the thrill of marriage (optional) to the infirmities of old age (inevitable), in five minutes.
It’s free and available for Windows, Mac and Linux.
I have had people ask me what’s the best way to buy keywords? This is especially true for new sites that are not ranked very well for any keywords.
Since I’ve never actually done it myself I usually go over the Google step-by-step instructions with them. I also tell them that believe that if you are going to spend money to attract visitors to your site you need to track the visitors and know how much that you are spending to get a sale and how much you are making from that sale (ROI). That can be a full time job in itself.
I just found a post by Frank Watson called “Google AdWords 101″ on the Search Engine Watch to recommend. It’s a very good primer.
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One of my new customers recently apoligized for mentioning several small details that she wanted to change on her new site.
When I work for someone I don’t mind “fuss”.
In the end it’s your site and it should be just what you want, no matter how small.
None of the changes would have effected the way her site would interact with the visitors so I made them right away, but what if they had?
My first job is as a designer or promoter is tell you honestly what I think of what you want. To give you a good of an assessment of what you want as opposed to what I want. To let you know how the changes may work and how your visitors may use or view them.
I think that I can usually make a good enough argument to convince you if we differ too much.
In the end though, my job though is to do what my customer wants and you should have the courage to stick with your convictions if you believe that you are right. If you are not sure maybe you should listen to the arguments again, but make up your own mind.
Remember it’s your site and your name on the page. You need to make sure that you are comfortable with it.
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I have written before about how you may find some unexpected things from Google Alerts.
I now advise all of my customers to sign up for Google alerts. One of the things that comes with social media and all of the mass communication these days is that one person can make a dent in your business. Maybe a very big dent.
I believe that’s it advisable for you to have alerts for your name, your business name and any key products you sell. The thinking is that you must respond in some way to bad publicity and can’t respond to bad publicity unless you know about it.
I have not found a faster way of finding out about what’s being said about me on the web than through this great tool.
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Here’s something just for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)
Magic Eye® images. Here are some cool hidden 3D images. Magic Eye Comic Strip has been featured in newspapers around the world every week for over ten years!
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I wrote yesterday about having a blog or newsletter. Then yesterday I discovered something else that I really like about having this blog. It’s the search feature. I can use it to send a targeted list of my work to people with a single link.
For example, I have quite a few cities on my Craigslist feed reader. When I an replying to some of these ads that are looking for a specific ability, I go to my blog first. On every page I have a search box where I can do a quick search for what I’ve written that would apply to what they are advertising for.
In this case they were looking for an email campaign so I typed in “email” and came up with this nice page of my articles to send the potential customer to. It’s a great page where the visitor can see the titles of many of my blog posts on the very subject that they are looking to hire someone for.
I wrote this post last night and I’m thinking that this is a pretty good tool and another reason to have a WordPress blog. Then today I see Google’s Matt Cutts writes about pretty much the same thing. He talks about categories (and a feed) and I wrote about search, but it must be true, great minds do think alike.
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