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======================================================== The Promotion World Informer Issue #70 May 24, 1999 ISSN 1488-1675 Edited by Joshua Reimer - http://www.promotionworld.com ======================================================== This issue of the Informer is sponsored by: ---------------------------------------------- ATTENTION: ALL PUBLISHERS! Want to increase your circulation? Having a hard time selling advertising space on a consistent basis? Want to advertise your newsletter in 50+ other newsletters - FREE! Ready to make some serious MONEY? Join the Boost Program. Over 50 members at this time! Join us! Full Details by e-mail: <b-program@ezine-publishing.com> Or: <http://www.ezine-publishing.com/newsnet/boost.htm> ---------------------------------------------- Now with over 6171 subscribers! Advertising Information --> http://www.promotionworld.com/sponsor.html ================================================================ Contents Of This Issue: - Editor's Notes - Cool Quotes - Friendly Advice from the Editor - Sponsor Message - SIG Files - Bookmarkable Bookmarks - The Discussion Board - Website Usability - A Small Request - Misc. Information ======================== Editor's Notes ====================== Hi everyone! I have finally updated The Informer's online archives section. You can view it at <http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/archives.html>. I have also added a powerful search feature, helping you to find "that article" that you seem to remember reading several months ago. Things have been picking up a bit around the message boards recently. Stop by and join in on some of the discussions! Make sure to receive your free website review, as well. <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/> The Informer is sent only to those who have expressly requested it. If you no longer wish to receive it, simply follow the simple unsubscribe instructions at the end of this newsletter. ============================ Cool Quotes ======================== What should you do when you see an endangered animal that is eating an endangered plant? - George Carlin Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value. - Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre. There's a lot we should be able to learn from history. And yet history proves that we never do. In fact, the main lesson of history is that we never learn the lessons of history. This makes us look so stupid that few people care to read it. They'd rather not be reminded. Any good history book is mainly just a long list of mistakes, complete with names and dates. It's very embarrassing. - A. Whitney Brown, "The Big Picture" Download all the past Cool Quotes by sending any email to <mailto:quotes@promotionworld.com&> Enjoy! ================= Friendly Advice from the Editor ================ Getting Links By Having Good Content by Joshua Reimer My statistics tell me that Promotion receives 61.45% of it's traffic from the search engines. Guess what the second largest source is? Links from other sites, at 36.45%. Why is it, then, that you rarely find people talking about how to improve linking relationships? Search engine advice abounds... but finding links seems to be a topic that people don't like to talk about as much! My statistics also tell me that those 36.45% of visitors came from 2025 different sites. That's a mind boggling number. Admittedly, not all of those purposefully linked to mine (banner exchanges and other similar programs throw it off a bit). However, the large majority of those sites specifically linked to Promotion World. How have I managed to get that many sites to link to mine? That's the question I am going to answer over the next few articles. Hopefully it will give you some ideas for building up the number of links pointing towards your site. The most important thing you can do in encouraging other webmasters to link to your site is to have quality, helpful content. I dislike overused terms, but the phrase, "Content is King" certainly applies here. How does having good content make people want to link to your site? You would be amazed at the number of people who find Promotion World's content so helpful, they really want to add a link back to my site as a thank you! You can help encourage this activity. You can include a little footnote on your pages, saying something like, "Have you found this page helpful? We would appreciate a link back from your site", or something to that effect. You should also include a link to your "Linking Information" page, where you make it easy for your visitors to link to you. If you don't make it easy, no one will want to do it. People are often generous in giving links to those who have helped them, but don't ask them to go to far. What do you include on your linking page? You should include a number of different graphics of various sizes, as well as text link suggestions that your visitors can use to recommend your site with. Make it even easier for them by including the exact code they can cut and past into their site. I recommend you include all the major sizes of graphics- 468x60 is a must, and you will get a lot of people who only want to display 88x31 buttons. There are a number of other standard graphics sizes you may want to consider. CASI has set some voluntary guidelines, and they seem to be generally accepted around the internet. <http://www.casie.com/GUIDEL/bannr.html> Want an example of a linking information page? You can view Promotion World's linking information file at <http://www.promotionworld.com/directory/linktous.html>. Hey, it doesn't hurt to ask: If you have found this article helpful, how about giving Promotion World a link in return? Coming up next week: How to use contests to increase the number of links to your site. Joshua Editor/webmaster/ad sales guy/everything else at Promotion World. <http://www.promotionworld.com> ======================= Sponsor Message ======================= DRAMATICALLY INCREASE YOUR WEB SITE TRAFFIC: ************************************************* First-time Make Me Your Home Page software users will see your home page the next time they open their Web browser. MMYHP software increases traffic to your Web site by allowing your visitors to change the home page setting of their browsers at the click of a button, to point to your Web site instead of to the default setting. This generates a dramatic increase in unique visitors to your site, providing tremendous value to sites that generate revenue from advertising . CNBC reported that, amazingly, one half of web users do not know how to perform this basic function manually. Increase Your Return Web Traffic at http://www.makemeyourhomepage.com ========================== SIG Files ========================== Give Your Site a Facelift by Jennifer Johnson So, you've had your site for a while and you're ready to give it a "facelift". What should you do first? Design new graphics? Change the color scheme? Those are both good ideas, but I think you should consider doing a couple of other things first. Namely, you should see if you can find ways to eliminate anything that might be confusing to your visitors and you should check to see if there are any ways to speed your download time. While it might be more fun to tinker with colors, graphics, animation, and cool, new page elements, it could be better for your bottom line if you do what I've suggested. In GVU's 10th WWW User Survey (an overview of the findings is not yet available), it appears that those two factors - confusing site and slow download time - seem to drive the most visitors away from sites that provide "product/service information". <http://www.gvu.gatech.edu/user_surveys> The question then becomes, "how do redesign my site to make it download faster and make it less confusing"? If you have a normal, run-of-the-mill page, doing the former (speeding up d/l time) might just be easier than you think. Slow download time can usually be chalked up to graphics or page elements, such as applets. The first thing you can do is eliminate any superfluous graphics or elements. You don't have to pare it down to plain text, but take a critical look at your page and see if everything on it is really necessary and cut what isn't. When you've trimmed the excess, you'll need to optimize the graphics that remain. This simply means you need to reduce the file size to speed download time. This can be accomplished in a variety of ways. Software programs exist that are designed specifically for optimizing graphics. You might be able to do it to some extent yourself with your image-editing program. The easiest way I've found to do it, though, is to use NetMechanic's GifBot <http://www.netmechanic.com>; it's simple, free, and works great. Back to the applets. Once again I would remind you to take a hard look at the applets you've included. Remember, it doesn't matter how "cool" the page is if there's no one around to see it when it's finished downloading. Applets are fine as long as they don't cause excessive download time. The second portion of your facelift is endeavoring to rid your page of anything visitors might find confusing. This would also include adding things that would simplify the site and, in general, make it easier for the visitor to find what he's looking for. A few things to consider are: adding a site map and/or a "you are here"-type navigation system, clearly differentiating between LINKs and VLINKs, making contact information visible or accessible from every page on the site, linking every page to home, displaying products clearly, using consistent navigation throughout, and making the order process as simple as possible. As a site owner, there are probably tons of things you could be doing to your site, but few will be of such benefit as speeding the download time and making the site less confusing for the visitor. PromotingYourSite.com <http://www.promotingyoursite.com> Free info on how to effectively design and promote your site. Join the "Rate My Site Newsletter" (delivered 3-5 times/week) by sending any email to: ratemysite-subscribe@listbot.com and find out how to submit *your* site for other webmasters to review. Contact Jennifer directly at: jennifer@promotingyoursite.com. ==================== Bookmarkable Bookmarks ===================== Free Web Site Promotion Resources An good listing of links to useful marketing related websites around the 'Net <http://kresch.com/promote/promote.htm> BruceClay.com Offers a fair bit of search engine advice and information for free, and also offers paid services. <http://www.bruceclay.com/> The Link Trade A yet to be launched site that is collecting sites for their open to the public database of sites that are willing to trade links. <http://www.thelinktrade.com/> ===================== The Discussion Board ====================== This week's quote from the discussion board: "I recently finished a project where I had to create a Checkers game in Java. This week, I decided to try to convert it into an applet and post it on the Web. The original code wasn't made to run as an applet, so converting it is a pain. See, the program itself uses data from 5 separate class files to run, and all the applets I've seen on the Web only use data from one. Will I have to combine all of the information into one class file before this will work? I hope not, that would take up a lot of time. Anyone have a quick solution to this? David Handlos Crosslinkz: Free promotion, email, and awards! http://www.crosslinkz.com/ " Read and comment on the full discussion online at: <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/messages/16/399.html> Get in on our discussions! At least stop by to see what you are missing out on. <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/> ====================== Website Usability ====================== Super Easy Usability Testing by John S. Rhodes I'm going to make this the absolute easiest introduction to usability testing you could possibly find anywhere. If you find a simpler introduction, email me, and I'll make this one even easier. Here are your two steps: 1. Identify your users. Who are your clients? Who buys your products? Who uses your Web site? 2. Watch your users use your Web site, products, and services. Take notes and listen. That's it! If you have done these two things, then you are way ahead of many other people. Most companies really don't know their users. Sure, they have accounts, they know the purchasing agents very well, and they read the general sales reports. But, too many companies simply do not know their true customers. (And, if they do know them, they are not open enough with them.) The users of your Web site are the key. You must know them better than you know yourself. Track them down; target them. Then, help them solve their problems. When you know your end users you can design your company to fit what they want. When you know your users you can solve their problems. When you know your users, you can test them and improve your company. It is amazing how much data you can collect just from watching your clients. For example, as Jared Spool pointed out at <http://www.webword.com/interviews/spool.html>, this is simply the best way to understand how your customers use your Web site. Web site usability is a matter of knowing how to improve your site based on what your clients need. You want to solve their problems. If you watch them use your site and if you take notes, and if you listen to them, they will tell you what to do next. They will hand you a blueprint -- the next design is driven by gathering user data. If you look again at my two step usability testing process, you'll see that I'm not recommending any high technology. You don't need high-powered technology or tools to do testing. In fact, low fidelity tools are often better for you in terms of costs, and development time. Mock ups on paper are a snap. Show your clients the mock ups and start collecting the data -- on your low-tech notepad. You don't need to understand t-tests, ANOVAs, cluster analyses, or linear regression to analyze data either. You'll have so much simple and easy data that you'll be plenty busy. The first, basic problems you find can easily improve the usability of your Web site by 50-500%. Those kinds of differences don't need to be detected by hard core statistics. Indeed, if you need to use such techniques, then you are looking at the wrong users or the wrong core business areas. To summarize: Identify your users, and record their activities. Watch them use your Web site. Talk to them about the work that they do. Know their tasks and their day-to-day business needs. When you think you are done, that is exactly the time to go back and test again. You can deploy when you have completed the first round of testing, but be sure to iterate. Again, and again. And again. Your testing is never done: Your users change, their problems change, the technology changes. Is there more to usability and usability testing? You bet! If you think that you only need to do this kind of testing, you are wrong. The usability engineering process is actually quite robust. Even the most intelligent and respected authorities have trouble keeping up with the various usability developments. Technology alone drives many of these changes. Also, new and improved techniques are developed continually. Let my introduction be just that, an introduction. Once you get your feet wet, however, you'll see how much more there is to learn. =========================================================== John S. Rhodes -- mailto:john@WebWord.com Human Factors Engineer and Usability Professional Internet Usability and Web Site Development: http://www.WebWord.com/ ========================= A Small Request ======================= If you enjoy reading this newsletter each week, why not tell a friend about it? Even better, why don't you recommend The Informer on a discussion list? The more subscribers there are, the more time I am able to justify spending on creating valuable free content for you all! Just tell everyone to subscribe by sending a message to <mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> with SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of their message. ======================== Misc. Information ====================== To comment on the issues covered in this week's newsletter, use the appropriate forum on our Discussion Boards. <http://www.promotionworld.com/discus/> Browse the archives at <http://www.promotionworld.com/informer/archives.html> If you are looking for some good advertising deals, you might like to consider Promotion World and the Informer as places to advertise. <http://www.promotionworld.com/sponsor.html> To subscribe put SUBSCRIBE in the BODY of an email to <mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> To unsubscribe put REMOVE in the BODY of an email to <mailto:informer@oaknetpub.com> I appreciate all your mail with your comments and suggestions! <mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com> Newsletter Credits: Joshua Reimer, Editor <mailto:webmaster@promotionworld.com> <http://www.promotionworld.com> Jennifer Johnson, Feature Writer <mailto:jenny@promotingyoursite.com> <http://www.PromotingYourSite.com> John S. Rhodes, Usability Specialist <mailto:john@WebWord.com> <http://www.WebWord.com/> Hayden Mitchell, Search Engine Specialist <mailto:hayden@webthemes.com> <http://www.webthemes.com> David Handlos, What Not To Do Specialist <mailto:webmaster@crosslinkz.com> <http://www.crosslinkz.com> And now for the mandatory legal stuff: This newsletter is copyright 1997, 1998, 1999 Joshua Reimer. No part may be reproduced in any way without prior permission. The only exception being you may freely forward this newsletter to your friends and associates *only if* it is in its unmodified entirety.
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