VISIBLE RANKING — ONLINE MARKETING

Possible reasons why your website search ranking changes over time or even overnight.

Search engine algorithm

Times change, people change and so does search engine algorithm. If algorithm sounds like a big word to you, as it does to me, then consider it as a giant set of complex [mathematic] formula that search engines like Google, Yahoo! or Bing develop to decide which websites are more relevant to what people search, thus will be displayed at the top, compared to all the sites indexed in their database.  Read more...

Create web graphics with Photoshop – The Fundamentals
Part 3 – Essential Tools

This is the third and probably the last post for the series of posts about Creating web graphics with Photoshop. Part 1 again deals with different image types supported by web browsers; part 2 focuses on saving images for the web; and this part, part 3, is about Photoshop essential tools: the Layer palette, the History palette, Crop tool, Text tool, Eyedropper tool, and Image Adjustments menu.

Why those tools but not the others?

These are the tools I use most frequently to create web graphics and update images on websites. Plus, their usage is the one I often got asked about by others.  Read more...

How to create a cross-browser drop-down menu with Dreamweaver in minutes

This is going to be short and the main purpose is to let you know Dreamweaver CS4 has a built-in functionality letting you create a good CSS-based drop-down menu in minutes. I’m not sure at what version Dreamweaver started to have this built-in drop-down generator. Perhaps it was from CS3.

The drop-down is CSS/text-based, very easy to customize and maintain and works well with different browsers even when you have a big Flash or image banner right underneath.  Read more...

Wonder why people use Dreamweaver to create and maintain web pages. Here are some cases when Dreamweaver has a complete advantage over text editors

Dreamweaver is considered by many one of the best HTML editors, if not THE BEST HTML editor currently available. It’s more than just another WYSIWYG [What you see is what you get] software where you can design/develop web page without having to know HTML. I will have multiple posts about Dreamweaver and how to use it to create websites and HTML emails for marketing professionals. This post is going to be about how using Dreamweaver saved me and probably you lots of time and efforts compared to using a text editor.  Read more...

Details about absolute urls and relative urls – what are they, how and when to use them.
Also referred to as absolute paths and relative paths in this article

In another post about Create HTML Email with Outlook, I briefly mentioned that images used in HTML emails need to be on a live server, and the paths to those images must be absolute. Apparently, some still have problem with their images not showing in the HTML email due to broken/invalid paths. Here are some more explanation.  Read more...

Create web graphics with Photoshop – The Fundamentals
Part 2 – Save image for the web / Optimize image for the web

Already know about different image types supported by web browsers, below are some simple steps to save your images for the web with Photoshop.

To save image for the web or to optimize it for the web, you just need to open your image in Photoshop, then go to menu File > Save for Web or File > Save for Web & Devices with CS4, or you can use the combination of keys Ctrl Alt Shift S. No matter what versions of Photoshop you’re using, a dialog box will appear to let you change your image settings and your image size. That’s basically it.  Read more...

Create web graphics with Photoshop – The Fundamentals
Part 1 – GIF, JPG, or PNG

Photoshop is a very deep software, you can play and learn with it for hours, days or even years and probably still discover something new and interesting about it. This post or series of posts aims to provide you with fundamental but easy skills to understand as well as to create better imagery for the web in a matter of minutes.

Part 1 is about image types supported by web browsers: GIF, JPG, or PNG. If you know about this already, then check out Part 2 Photoshop – Save image for the web or Part 3 Photoshop – Essential tools.  Read more...

All Flash website — what you want may not always good for your business.

As a member in the marketing team, you may be responsible for either designing or coordinating the design process of the new website. You may want a complete Flash-based website because many of your clients have Flash websites, and you really like the interactive, animated site navigation, and the visual effects including the page transitions on each and every page. Well, that’s what you like, but is it good for your online marketing and for your business as a whole?  Read more...

Sorry to hear that your viewers stay on your website so long!

The story

A marketing/web coordinator has just finished his first web traffic analysis and report, and he is very pleased with the company website performance / web metrics in the last few months. The best item of all he thinks is the “Average time on site” item — telling him how long on average his viewers stay on the site. It’s about 5 minutes, so people must find his company website interesting and stay long to find more information.  Read more...

With this post and some other posts about web usability and web metrics I take a different approach. Instead of going straight to the point and talking about web metrics and web usability, I chose a lengthier but more unexpected route — telling story for a change. Hopefully, you find it useful and interesting to read.

Sorry to hear that your website has tons of traffic!

The story

A web designer guaranteed his client “I’ll optimize your website so that in the next couple of months you’ll get tons of traffic to your online store!” A couple of months later, the client came back to see her designer and requested “Could you… somehow de-optimize the site so that it gets less traffic?” “Huh????”  Read more...