Your website should be doing two very important things:

• Provide an easy way for people to find more information out about you. This supports email marketing, in person networking, and any kind of word of mouth that you provoke. At the very least, your website should do a great job at doing this. It should be easy to find the right information, the site should showcase your strengths, and there needs to be a path forward for people wanting to take action. Just getting this right is hard enough without help.
• The other thing a successful site should be doing is concentrating on the actions that bring in revenue. Helping people find out about what you have to offer is great and, at this point, basically due diligence for all businesses. Identifying what it is that you want to do and where your revenue needs to come from is a critical step to having a site that pays for itself and more.

OK, here’s the straight dope, ready? I think the fundamental issue with many, many websites out there is that few people have identified what activities contribute the most to their bottom line. Who buys what you have to sell? Who emails you about your product? Who perks up when you talk about what you do? Who do you really want to work with?

Here are a few things to think about:

• Do you know who your buyers are? Do you have an idea in your head about who buys your product or hires you? This is critical. If you don’t know who it is you need to talk to then your message will be weak and your efforts unfocused.
• If you do have an idea, even a vague one, of who these people are and how they find what you have, are your events targeted towards them? Are you emailing them? Do they have blogs? Do you read them and comment on them? Can you find them on Twitter? Are you following them? Can you recognize one out of a crowd?
• You have a national audience because of your website… that’s great but that means your competition is also 100 times larger. If, however, your product or service has more of a local appeal, think about paring down the focus of your site, email marketing, and otherwise. The more focused your efforts can be, the more success you’ll have.

So, what can we do for your site? At this point, nothing. There is not much that can be done with a website until we really know WHO you’re talking to and WHAT you need to say to get their attention.

What can we do for your predicament? So, so many things!

Here’s a few steps to move this process forward. Each of these steps could take 10 – 20 hours apiece if you’re serious about really making a change to your business.

1. Figure out, through your previous buyers and anyone who has expressed interest, who your audience is. Talk to everyone you can to get a profile of who buys your products or who needs your service. Do they buy other types of products? What software do they use? Where do they spend their free time? You’re looking for a profile of the type of person you need to seek out.
2. Sit down with what you have (hopefully many pages of notes) and FIND THESE PEOPLE. Look for commonalities and find where they go. Send out an email poll through your email service and find what they’re reading, what websites they are on, what events they go to, what kind of food they like, where they drink coffee. Know these people in and out so you can speak directly to them. If you know what they do, where they go, and how they interact, you’re in a MUCH better position to find them and talk directly to them (literally and otherwise).
3. Now, take a long hard look at this profile you’ve built and figure out what you’re doing right and where you’re going astray. Does your website appeal to your potential buyers? Ask them directly. Are you holding events they would be interested in? Have you found the site that they all frequent?

Sound a bit like stalking? Well, if you’re concentrating on one person then, yes, I imagine this feels a little creepy. But the goal here is to discover a profile of a person, the theoretical client. If you’re not right where your clients are, where are you? Where are your competitors?

I know this is more “brain storm” than “step-by-step” guide to success but I’m much more of a fan of finding your own path. I also find it hard to believe that one persons path to success will work for everyone else. Without a true desire to succeed and the ability to just get out there and try a few things, you’re not going to get anywhere.

Sit down with a laptop and a pad of paper and FIND YOUR AUDIENCE!

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While I haven’t eliminated repitition from my professional life entirely, I’m aware of something very different at work. Creating websites from scratch can be tedious but it has taught me something critical about…

Iteration

This word has two pertinent dictionary.com definitions:

the act of repeating

Iteration can mean doing the same thing over and over again. When I use this word, however, I’m thinking more about the second definition:

a problem-solving or computational method in which a succession of approximations, each building on the one preceding, is used to achieve a desired degree of accuracy

In layman’s terms, when you iterate or use an iterative process, you’re doing the best you can with the information you have, checking how successful you were, and using that information to take another, more educated stab at it. Since I’m a self-taught designer and developer, iteration has been a critical part of my professional growth. I’ve developed a very iterative mindset.

An iterative mindset is based on three things: observation, analysis, and persistence. In other words, iteration comes more from desire and hard work than any kind of innate ability.

Observation

To successfully employ iteration, you need to be observant. What you’re looking for are problems, specifically recurring ones. These can range from minor annoyances right up to massive failures. You’re also looking for benefits. This could be something that saves you 10 seconds a day or something that saves you $100 a day.

The best way to be observant (and to benefit from what you see) is to record. I record things in a simple text editor and write them up later to post on my blog. I also record very minor things in a lined notebook that I carry around with me. A lot of what I type or write down does not get used, explicitly. By recording it, however, I made a mental underline, one that can occur to me later if I’m confronting the same problem.

This is begging for a real-life example.

Let’s say your having a conversation with someone. If this person is someone you want to please (your significant other, a potential client, a potential date), you probably want to be tuned into them and observant of how they react. If you talk poorly about our current president (a potentially risky topic with any of the people referenced above), you’ll want to judge their reaction to see if you shold do that again. Now, extend that to everything and everyone around you. You want to have pleasant, recurring interactions with all that surrounds you and the first step towards that is being observant.

Analysis

I find this word particularly unfriendly at times because it implies a lot of work. Analysis, here, just means being observant in way that finds connections between what you’re observing.

There are people that have “an analytic mind” and seem to find connections between pieces of information that seemed so unlikely. I have certainly heard my fair share of stories regarding people who found incredible connections between things but there are other forces at work:

1. Practice - the more you think abstractly and look for connections, the better you become at doing so (you are, in fact, being iterative while you practice this)
2. Intention - to connect seemingly disconected elements, you have to let go and make this your intention. Analysis is self fulfilling: if you’re certain there are no connections or you are unable to find them, that will become true.
3. Patience - I think this is the true talent of what might appear to be a gifted analyst. In theory, if you had enough time to draw a proverbial line between all possibilities you would find the connection (or be certain there was no connection).

Using the previous example of a conversation, now consider taking the next step beyond your observation and try understand what you’re seeing. The easiest thing you can assume about someone reacting poorly to speaking poorly about the current president is that they are a democrat. As likely as this could be, there might be other factors at work here.

• They could be a strong republican and patriot discouraged by those who don’t support the powers that be.
• They could be apolitical and assume that you’re being racist.
• They could be just generally uninterested in politics and bored of hearing about it.

Your analysis consists of coming up with many possible solutions and, using your observations, making a guess at the right one.

Persistence

Here’s where the actual work comes in. To be iterative, you need to repeat the process using your new information honed by your analysis. You must be willing to face the same problems with new information and risk potential (repeat) failure.

Persistence is direct reflection of how much you want to succeed. It has less to do with innate ability or the size of the reward. I’ve seen people tenaciously playing a video game for months on end towards a goal that few people understand. I’ve also seen people lose seemingly important things in their life through inaction. People will cause a scene over a few pennies but will drop out of high school for no discernable reason. Hence, persistence is a mindset.

Sticking with the observation and analysis necessary to make better decisions about previously faced problems is not always easy but if you see each attempt as an experiment and part of a larger process instead of individual failed events, you’ll be better prepared to face the next iteration.

My conversation example needs a bit of modification to work here. We’re going to assume the person you’re talking to does not have any inclination to give up and walk away. With that in mind, you’re now free to iterate towards a better experience with them. If your goal is to find a healthy middle ground, maybe you try a topic that isn’t so inflammatory. Maybe you ask them questions. Maybe you compliment them on a particular attribute. However you do it, you’re experimenting towards your goal, watching and learning along the way.

Bonus: How I’m iterative

This topic came to me as I was combing through my obsessive-appearing series of folders holding various re-useable website templates, code snippets, and documents. Each time I create a new website, I add something new to this library. Maybe it’s a link saved on Delicious, maybe it’s a better site header, maybe it’s a new module I can use in Wordpress – could be anything. What I’m always looking to do (in order of importance).

1. Create a better product each time
2. Minimize repetition
3. Save time on the next go-around

I do that through iteration: observing things that cost me time, money, and patience; figuring out how I can cut down on these things as much as possible; and never giving up on improving what I do.

What say you? Do you explicitly or implicitly use iteration? How?

“We Are What We Repeatedly Do. Excellence, Therefore, is Not an Act, But a Habit.” – Aristotle

No related posts.

Tweet in question:

Holy crap, I hope not! There goes an income source…

You can gauge (if you couldn’t predict) my first reaction: um, no.

What I’m meaning to say in so few characters is that “having a company website” is like saying “having a steady job,” it doesn’t say anything specific. One company website could be a static, 8 page online brochure built poorly in 2002 and not kept up-to-date (but left online for due diligence). Another company website could be a Wordpress-based blog site with a Twitter feed, a Flickr feed, a Facebook group widget, and loaded with videos from Youtube. These are both company websites.

But @pevachon is touching on a very important subject for a company that wants to build a new site or rebuild an existing one: what does having a website really mean and what’s the best way to go about it? Whether you have information posted on Squidoo or a Posterous blog or a LinkedIn profile, you have a place for people to find you. Do you need your own blog? Do you need to control exactly how everything looks? Are you OK with your content and information being owned by someone else?

@pevachon replies:

@joshcanhelp not sure but why not use all the spaces already available on the web?

Why not, right? There are so many sites and pages and companies begging to hold onto your information, most of the time for free.

As usual, the question comes down to what you want to accomplish. If you’re looking to get the word out about yourself, your cause, or something you’re selling, just having a website isn’t going to cut it. Alternatively, if you’re looking to showcase something or need more control over presentation, starting a Facebook group won’t let you do what you need to.

@pevachon I’d argue that’s like saying why have a business card when you could hand someone a post-it note :)

There’s nothing wrong with your number on a post-it note, right? But doesn’t a custom designed and printed card say so much more?

I think @pevahon and I would both agree: if you think a solid web presence stops at a website, there’s a lot out there you’re going to miss.

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It turns out, the HTML on Drudge report is very poor. It was a table-style layout for no discernible reason, there were capitalized tags and attributes throughout, and it looked like it may have been avoiding CSS altogether. It’s really none of my business how other people put their sites together but it was clear I wouldn’t be drawing any inspiration from the technical construction. So I started from scratch and made this very simple, lightweight, one-file, one-page site template that mimics the layout of Drudge report with a few extra features. See the template now.

Download the Drudge-Style Template

You are totally free to use this template wherever and whenever you like. I kindly ask just to leave the link to my site in the footer.

The Drudge-Style Site Template

This one-page template has the following features:

• A section at the top set aside for a banner image and a story of the day with image
• Three fluid (that means it shrinks with the size of the screen that is viewing it) columns that contain lists of links
• The ability to add headings in the columns to separate sections
• The ability to add paragraphs below the links to give a bit of description, if necessary
• A footer with a line of links that can be added for, say, an email address of another page
• Works in all browsers (including IE6)
• Baked-in SEO!

How to Use This Template

In typical Josh Can Help style, let’s walk through how to get this little guy to do what you want.

I use [[double square brackets]] around the text that needs to be changed in the file so it’s easy to find all the meta (unseen on the page) information. To add new links and change the information, you’ll want to have a bit of experience with HTML but, at the risk of a flood of new web developers taking all my clients, I’ll let you in on a little secret: HTML isn’t that hard. Here’s a real quick way to get familiar.

So, let’s customize this page:

• Unzip the package somewhere on your desktop and open the “index.html” file with a plain text editor. If you’re in Windows, you’ll need to right-click the file and pick Notepad.
• Start scanning for double brackets and fill in the information as needed. Make sure the <title> text has words that tell search engines what you’ve got going on the page. Fill out those meta tags too, just because.
• Unless you’re familiar with CSS, just leave everything between the <style> and </style> tags alone. If you are familiar with CSS, go crazy!
• The <h1> tag, by default, is invisible but still fill it out with a short (few words) description of the page. This combined with the <title> tag helps search engines figure out the main purpose of your page. If you aren’t going to use a banner image, then delete id=”page-name” and your header is now big, bold text.
• Now, your header image. This image is centered on the page and can be any size you want. Just put the filename of the image you’re going to use after src=” and make sure the image is placed in the same directory on your host as this file. Type in a description of the image as well while you’re at it.
• For the story of the day, do the same thing with the image and add your text where indicated in the template. The image will resize to 200 pixels wide automatically. FYI on the image, just delete the whole img tag if you don’t want to use one. You can also change “Story of the day” to something else and use that space for something different.
• Now, you’re ready to plug in your links. Each link is in its own <li> tag to keep them on their own line and to give a little space in between. Just replace the text after href=” with the direct URL (including http://) and replace the next set of brackets with the text you want to appear on the page. You’ll notice that the first link in the left column has a paragraph right after it but before the closing tag. Make sure to follow this syntax to keep the spacing kosher.
• Want to add another link? Just copy and paste one of those <li>…</li> rows wherever you want it to be. Deleting a link is the opposite.
• Add a new separating header with <h3>...</h3> tags wherever you’d like (but, of course, within one of the columns).
• Want to add a separator line? Figure out where it should go and stick an <hr> right there.
• img tags can also be used in columns, just make sure they are in between the <li> and </li> tags. Style wise, it’s probably better to put img tags in between the <li> and the <a> tags.
• Scroll down to the bottom for the footer links. Don’t want any? Just delete them all except mine :).

And that’s it! To make it live, just copy index.html to a public folder on your web host and check it out. If you already have a website going, be careful where you put this so you don’t overwrite the main site file.

Have fun! I’m happy to answer questions in the comments below.

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This post is because you don’t have enough to read. Scratch that… you don’t have enough useful stuff to read. These are must-reads for anyone who has or thinks they should have a website out there and gathering eyeballs.

I’m a firm believer in understanding why things are done. I also believe that anyone can understand anything if it’s important to them to understand it. People love to tell me “I’m not technical so I’m not going to understand it” but that’s a cop out. If you find value in what you’re learning, you’ll learn it.

That being said, having a website without knowing what goes into it is like having a car and not understanding your gas tank or oil changes or tire pressure. You can from here to there but, one of these days, that car is going to break and you’re going to be stuck.

With that in mind, I strongly suggest you understand the basics. These should help. Best way to go about getting through these is to read the parts that pertain to what you’re doing, absorb the parts you get, and look up the parts you don’t.

First, of course, a couple posts by me.

• What is Web Strategy?
• 3 Things Every Business Owner Needs to Understand About Their Website
• Making a Technology Taming Plan

Google’s Starter Guide to SEO

Anyone who knows me knows that I love Google and what it does for people. Their free applications are priceless to me and their geeky nature appeals to me greatly. I also love that they would go out of their way to write a guide like this. For people who know little to nothing about search engines, this is the place to start.

Search engine optimization is often about making small modifications to parts of your website. When viewed individually, these changes might seem like incremental improvements, but when combined with other optimizations, they could have a noticeable impact on your site’s user experience and performance in organic search results.

MailChimp’s Guide to Email marketing

I am consistently impressed with how much free information is produced from MailChimp. I have not used their product once but I’m still their biggest fan. This awesome guide gives you all the information you need to design, build, and send an email campaign the RIGHT way. A must read for ANYONE doing bulk HTML mailing.

First, we’ll cover all the basics, like how HTML emails work (and why it always seems to break when you try to send it yourself). Then, we’ll get into technical stuff, like how to design and code them. Finally, we’ll run through email marketing best practices, such as for list management, deliverability and measuring performance.

Seth Godin’s Guide to Traffic

I am a big Seth Godin fan. His honest, simple delivery of business and internet common sense is unique, refreshing, and insightful. I’ll read his blog as long as he writes it, no doubt about it. This ebook is yet another example of his pure common sense at work. It’s great advice for those that don’t know and a very important remind for those that do. It’s a quick read and an important triad of concepts.

In other words, the best way is the long way. The long way is to create content that is updated, unique and useful. Again and again we see that sites that do all three manage to get more than their fair share of traffic.

Getting Real by 37 Signals

This is a book written by the folks at 37 signals. It takles about how to build a web application but much of it applies broadly to any bootstrapping operation. This book, available to read for free online, gives you a great mental framework to push your ideas forward.

Underdo your competition; Your passion – or lack of – will shine through; The leaner you are, the easier it is to change; Differentiate yourself from bigger companies by being personal and friendly; Explicitly define the one-point vision; Build something you can manage.

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talent.

I have a Hotmail address that includes the word “talent” in it. I’m not going to broadcast the story of how this address came to be simply because the entertainment to embarrassment ratio is far too low. Regardless, every time I give this address out over the phone or in person to someone, it makes me think about the word “talent” before I think about the genesis of the address. I think ‘does this person think I’m full of myself because I have the word “talent” in my address?’ Then, I think ‘do I deserve to have this word in my email address?’

talent.

Talent is a funny thing. Being talented in something is a product of chance, practice, both, and neither [these days, I'm leaning much more towards practice]. By chance, you can be a talented writer. By practice, you can be a talented basketball player. By both, you can be an inspirational painter. By neither, you could have the potential for something within you and never even know. Talent is born and built and wasted and ignored.

talent.

In the past couple of days, I’ve talked to two very talented people. These are people that I have a lot of respect for and whose work I am amazed by. The talent they both display is fascinating to experience though each of them have very different talents that exist at very different cultivation levels.

talent.

One is accomplished in his field and an expert at human interaction. He wrote a book which, if the universe is fair and just, will sell a million copies. He is a family/marriage counselor by trade who happens to be the most insightful person I know when it comes to humans interacting with each other. He can say very, very little while telling you more than anyone has ever told you before. This is what he told me (personally) about talent (this is not a direct quote; I’m paraphrasing):

Use who you know and what you know to do what you need to do. Sometimes we think that we need to do everything and know everything ourselves but that is not how you get done what needs to be done. Leverage your talent to build relationships and use these relationships to reach your goals. When you try to do everything at once, you get bogged down in the details. You need to find the people that can help you the most and use their talent to help you.

What do you think? I think I need to get better at exactly this.

talent.

The other person I talked to is a musician with an international fan base and an album coming out soon. I’m not sure exactly how long he has been making music but I can assume that it’s been at least a decade. Having a conversation with him is a pleasure because he’s both very smart and very knowledgeable and does everything he can to make sure he speaks his mind as clearly as possible. He’s political, musical, socially-conscious, sans both a driver’s license and a cell phone (OMG, can you imagine?? LOL), and a great person to talk to about talent.

We talked about someone he knows who is a talented videographer. Hearing someone like him talk about someone he respected made me want to ask him how he handles others with talent. I asked him, essentially, how he feels when he is around talent that is potentially greater than his own? He had this to say (again, paraphrased):

I just like to be around talent, be the nexus of talent around me. I like to be around people who are more talented than me because I can learn from it. Having talented people around me makes me work harder and do more, not to compete but because I have more resources

Intrigued, I dug a little deeper. He clearly has a talent that he has no choice but to follow. How does it feel to have a talent and a passion you can’t deny?

I’m not sure it’s all that great. I’m stuck doing this whether I want to or not. Trying to be a rock star and making an impact on pop culture is a curse, really. I don’t have anything that’s marketable, I’m basically a starving artist. Either I make an album that works and appeals to people or I fail; those are my two options. I’m always facing failure no matter what I do. There is a stigma to being creative, I don’t really have a marketable skill. If this doesn’t work, then what? If I fail, people can look at me and say ’silly boy, of course you don’t do that, you’ll never get anywhere in music.’

talent.

Talent is a blessing and talent is a curse. Talent ties you up and talent sets you free. Talent pays the bills and talent drains your savings account.

So what is universal about talent? Talent only gets better with practice and focus. Talent makes you popular if you let it. Talent is knowing when to use your talent and when to use someone else’s talent. Talent gets better in the presence of complementary talent. Talent comes to you, it finds you. Talent is finding your own flow, tapping into something that’s bigger than yourself. Talent won’t guarantee your happiness and talent won’t guarantee your income.

Your talent is bigger than you, it’s bigger than what you can create or fix or destroy. Still, the talent that you have inside of you is yours to use or yours to ignore. Not everyone who finds and exploits their talent will end up with what they wanted or thought they deserved out of life. What they will do, always, is inspire and amaze and cause people to think if they let that talent out into the world. Human ability appears limitless in it’s depth, breadth, and scope. Even if you don’t or won’t find it in yourself, talent has the ability to affect you in fascinating ways.

talent.

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I had two major goals with this site:

1. Showcase my design and Wordpress talents better
2. Make it easier for people to find information about me and what I do

With this in mind, I sat down a few months ago and began writing out the plan for the site. I wanted an area to highlight work I’ve done for specific clients and a better representation of what I do. I wanted a simple, clean layout and to ditch the ever-present blog sidebar.

After settling on a structure, I went to work in Photoshop putting together a design. For whatever reason, I always find it tough to design websites for myself. It’s tough to balance what you want to say with how you want it to look. It was my chance to do whatever I wanted but I was still constrained by business sense and usability. I think the combination of being able to say anything and do anything makes the process harder. Design is about constraint, art is about freedom.

After I had settled on a look, it was time to get in and work with the code. Here are a few of the highlights:

• Certain pages have a template that allows them to be appended with a list of posts from a particular category. For example, the page about Josh Can Help is appended with announcements and information about Josh Can Help in general. This is controlled by entering in a category when I write the page.

• On each individual post page (on the left there at the top) there are share links for Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook, my three main social networks. When I create a post, a also create a bit.ly link which I put into a custom field. Then, the Wordpress template takes that short link and adds it to share links for each of the services. The twitter share adds my handle and shortened text from the title of the page. Go ahead, try it out… no plugins! It’s also dynamic so old posts without this information won’t show the links. I debated whether or not I wanted to dynamically generate links from bit.ly but I figured this way I could track all shares from each article using that link in my account. I could also just as easily add in a different short link without much hassle.
• Using information from this article, I made a contact form that validates inputs and can sent the user a copy. It basically receives the information from the form then calls the same page to process that info.

Those are the main features with more to come. On the to-do list:

• Add navigation to the footer to make the site a little easier to navigate
• Figure out a way to ditch the post meta information on the search results page when pages match the results
• Straighten out styles for IE6 (sigh)
• Add more links to my network page
• Plug in the Lightbox code for the website images on my portfolio page
• Add bit.ly links to all my old posts
• Add a few more images to the content pages
• Add h1 tags for the main landing pages to improve SEO

Comments are appreciated!

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Step 1: Assess the situation

Wordpress is notorious for being a big server resource hog but there is little else out there that provides the kind of flexibility and extensibility on such an easy-to-use platform. I’m sure there are debates to be had but I’m a huge fan of Wordpress and that’s not likely to change anytime soon.

In this case, the Wordpress core along with several essential but potentially resource-heavy plugins were causing the server to become unresponsive and, at times, crash for several minutes. This happened during short periods of intense traffic caused by the aforementioned temporary Digg.com front page position (called “the Digg effect”).

I ran a simple website optimization test and found several things that needed to be corrected:

• The site was creating close to 90 HTTP requests. This means that the web page asked for 90 different things across the internet before it would be complete. This is really high.
• The images on the page tested were too large
• The page size, in total, was over a megabyte. For very graphics-heavy sites, this might be normal but there was room to improve here.

Step 2: Plan of attack

The first thing was to address images on the site. Several images needed to be decreased in size (read: lower quality) and the images called by the stylesheet, CSS images, needed to be combined into one file called a sprite.

Since page load speed is made worse by an increasing number of server requests (the HTTP requests I mention above), I wanted to cut that amount in half or more. I would do this by concentrating on items that were loaded from the hosting server. If you load 100 objects from other servers, the page may take a while to load but the host for the page you’re viewing won’t crash. Since the primary goal was to avoid crashes, this would be an important improvement.

What happened?

Though the ideas behind the improvements were simple, there was a lot of trial and error involved. Code written by different people sometimes doesn’t play well together so there was a lot of care taken to make sure that the right syntax appeared in the combined files. The plugins themselves were actually written very well and there was rarely any problem removing the references to certain files. A few observations:

• For one reason or another, combining javascript files is a very finicky procedure. I found that any JS that came after the JQuery block did not work. I also found that minifying the code broke it completely so that didn’t work.
• There’s really some hard decisions to be made when you’re combining all of these files. You’re trading a lot of control for load speed in certain cases. The plugins that were modified can’t be upgraded automatically of the changes will be lost. In the case where there was a dynamically altered style sheet or javascript file, I left it alone. This left one minor JS error on the page because of the order that the scripts are called but nothing on the page is malfunctioning.
• Working with a heavily cached site is very difficult because it is hard to figure out if the changes you made went through. Next time around, I’m going to turn the caching off.

In the end…

With the changes made, we saw an improvement of around 36% (from 320 sec 56K load time to 206). The requests are sitting at 48 total (down from 90) and the site is running noticeably faster.

I made a few recommendations for managing the site going forward.

• The biggest thing you can do, as important as the code I changed, is to make sure your images are as small as possible. If you’re in Photoshop, save your JPGs at a 4 or 5 setting. Also, save non-photo images (logos, cartoons, etc) as GIFs. Give this site a try if you’re not proficient with a graphics program: http://tools.dynamicdrive.com/imageoptimizer/
• On the topic of images… if you have the time, you might want to host some of your images offline (Picasa, Flickr, etc). This might increase load times a little bit but it will keep the load off of your server. Check those sites for bandwidth restrictions, though. It wouldn’t be good to have them take down an image that’s getting you a lot of traffic.
• You’re fine to install new plugins on the site but keep it to a minimum. Many plugins won’t affect your load time at all but some will start adding things to your header which is exactly what I worked to remove. I can, of course, do the same modification to any new plugins as well, though.

Next Steps

We’re getting as close as we can get to making the page as lightweight as possible. There are a few dynamic style sheets and JS files that could be combined if the settings never need to be changed but this might be overkill. I’d like to work out the JS minification issue if possible because we can squish 20KB out of that file.

The next big thing to tackle is the MySQL database. I found a few articles that talked about some settings that can be modified to activate caching and a few other things. I’ll try them on my server before his, though!

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Knowing what pages are the most popular, what keywords people are using to find you, and where people are going paint a picture about your customers, one that you might not be aware of. You probably want people on your product pages and your sign-up sheets, right? How do you know they’re getting there? How do you know they don’t get there and leave? How many leads are you missing?

This post outlines the very basics of Google Analytics and what it can tell you about your website.

Site usage overview (Main > Dashboard)

Visits

Visits are the number of sessions that occur on your website. A visit is, as close as possible, one person who views one or more pages on the site. If the same person comes back, that’s two visits.

More visits to a site equates, basically, to more “traffic” and, potentially, more people in general seeing the site. A visit count increasing means more sessions on the site which could indicate 1) more people returning to the site or 2) more new people on the site. Combining the change in visits with the change in percentage of new visits can give you an idea which of these scenarios is contributing the most. Month to month, you typically want this number to increase.

Pageviews

Pageviews are the number of pages on your site that were viewed. Generally, each link you click takes you to a new page. If, in one month, 1,000 people went to the homepage, clicked on an article, clicked on another article, and then went elsewhere, that month would have 3,000 page views.

Like visits, this is also a number that, generally, should be increasing month-to-month. An increasing pageview count means that more content is being seen across the whole site. Two things could happen to increase the pageviews: more visitors could be coming to the site or visitors could be viewing more pages per visit. Combining the change in pageviews with the change in pages per visit will show which of these scenarios is occurring.

Pages/visit

Dividing total page views by total visits gives the average number of pages that are viewed per visit. Blog-type sites typically have a pages/visit number between 1.5 and 2.

An increasing pages/visit number shows that visitors are clicking on more pages on the site per visit. This is always a beneficial thing but on a content site such as ours, diminishing returns kicks in past 2 pages per visit. Content published, content displayed, and inbound links all contribute to pages/visit.

Bounce rate

The bounce rate is the percentage of people who see one page and leave the site (essentially “bouncing” off of a page). Visitors who bounce have a page/visit number of 1. Bounce rates for blog-type sites are typically around 75%.

A decreasing bounce rate is always a good thing. A decreasing bounce rate means that people found what they wanted and more. Bounce rate is affected by the same things that the pages/visit number is: site design, reader engagement, availability of related content, etc.

Average time on site

This number is the average amount of time that each visit lasts. This figure is tough to report accurately by any analytics programs.

Not a lot of good conclusions can be made from this number by itself. An increasing time, however, could be an indication of reader engagement and attention span. This number can be used in conjunction with bounce rate and pages/visit to get a sense of how involved the readers are and whether this is improving or declining.

% New Visits

This is the percentage of the total visits that came from new visitors. A new visitor is simply someone without our site’s cookie present in their browser. As such, this figure has a fairly high margin of error.

Though potentially inaccurate, this is another number whose trends are useful to watch. An increase in % new visits could be an indication of extended online reach or influence while a decrease could mean improved reader engagement. This percentage should show in increase during periods of strong promotion.

Traffic sources (Main > Traffic Sources)

This is the Google triad of traffic sources: direct traffic (people who type our URL in their browser or use a browser-based bookmark), referring sites (a link to our site from another site), and search engines.

There’s no right or wrong distribution of traffic sources but a healthy strategy will typically keep each piece close to a third. For a long-tail, content-rich site like ours, the search engine piece should definitely be near one-third. Watching a particular source grow or shrink should correlate to promotions, SEO, or other outreach efforts.

Referring sites (Main > Traffic Sources > Referring Sites)

This is the list of domains that sent visits to our site. This list also shows visit quality by way of pages/visit, time on site, and bounce rate.

This list can be used to measure the success of site-specific promotions, look for new sites that we might want to partner with, and figure out which sites are sending the best traffic. There might be a community site that we should be interacting with or a social network that is doing well for us.

Keywords (Main > Traffic Sources > Keywords)

This list shows all keywords that were used to find the site via search engines. Like the referring sites, this list also shows traffic quality metrics.

These keywords can be applied directly to on-site SEO efforts. The keywords with the best quality (low bounce rate, high time on site and pages/visit) should be used in post titles, tags, and categories. These can also be used to determine which content gets published and what direction we give bloggers.

Top pages and posts (Main > Content > Top Content/Content by Title)

There are two lists here: by URL and by page title. Some pages share the same title (default) and some are not set which means that the page name list will have some pages combined together. The URL list is an exact list of the pages (just add “http://sitename.com” before each one to get directly to the page).

These lists give an idea of the most popular content on a particular site. These numbers will differ from on-site view counts (likely smaller on Google Analytics) and are a more accurate representation of actual people seeing the content. Tracking the content that gets the most views and has the best traffic quality (fewer exits and bounces) can show content managers the highest performing pages which can help with choosing the right posts on the site.

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The articles I’ve been reading, particularly lately, do two distinct things for me:

• They show me how often I get it wrong and exactly where I can improve (example: I write too much)
• They show me how often I get it right by just planning, thinking, and iterating (example: the transparency and accessibility of what I write)

It occurred to me recently that the content I write ranges broadly from senseless, boring drivvel to concise and insightful statements. It got me thinking about how I, personally, arrive at either end of this spectrum and the mitigating factors for creating the content that I do.

I write well about things that I care about

I’ve been tasked over the years with writing large documents, press releases, website descriptions, personal statements, and arbitrary essays. The type of writing I’m asked to do has little effect on how well it gets written. What does have an effect is how personally or emotionally I’m tied to the outcome.

When I write about who I am as a person or what I’d like to do with myself or my business, I can easily break into a fairly lucid state of creation. I always find myself writing far more than I need and cutting back when I’m complete. I care deeply about where I’m going, what I’m doing, and who I strive to be. It’s important to me that, when I feel the need to communicate this to someone, I’m able to do so truthfully and comprehensively.

If, on the other hand, I’m asked to write about someone or something that I feel neutral about, I find it hard to pick the right words out of my vocabulary. The writing takes forever and sounds cliche and wordy. I lose the honesty and directness that I work so hard to present. In the end, the outcome is poor and the process is never enjoyable.

It might seem that I’ve painted myself into an autobiographical corner, forever restricted to writing about myself and what I do. Thankfully, this isn’t true. If I’m writing about an idea that is interesting or a cause that is noble or a subject that I’m learning about or something you can do to make a difference in your life, I’m energized the same way. I just have to know that when I read it later I’ll be proud of what I wrote AND why I wrote it.

I write well when I know (or think I know) what I’m talking about

I won’t name any names (mostly because none immediately come to mind) but you can tell that someone is full of it through their writing. I’ve read enough BS articles from people regurgitating information to know when someone gets it and is speaking from their knowledge or doesn’t and is just filling the page.

I’d go on about how lame people are but there’s nothing I can do to change it. A system, just by existing, is begging to be gamed. So, people will continue to copy other peoples’ work, compete with honest sources for search engine rank, and attempt to build a fake following of unsuspecting newbies. I can only assume that those who can do and those who can’t just hack it for as long as they can.

Sigh

To combat this scourge, all I can do is just not fall into that trap. I’m not claiming to be a certified expert about everything that crosses this blog but if I’m giving advice, it’s something I’ve learned from doing. Or, if I’m just working out an idea, that honesty comes through. I’ve tried to write beyond my expertise and a quick re-read always tells me it’s time to back it up and stick with what I know. No one wants to read my base-less conjecture, particularly myself.

I write well when I can write well

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the creative process. I thought Twyla Tharp’s book The Creative Process was a great dissection of a hard-working creative’s life and found Hugh MacLeod’s book Ignore Everybody to be a fairly comprehensive summary of some really potent life lessons. Oh, and Anne Lamott’s book Bird By Bird which really spoke to me. The more I explore the mysteries of creativity the more I understand my own successes and my own miserable, awful failures.

So, let’s say I’m writing about something I care about and I happen to have a lot of experience with it. I have days where I can take this great position and make something really compelling. I also have days where everything I type sounds like I’ve read it thirty times before. Moon phases, rising Mercuries, wind speed, and air density all, I’m convinced, play a part in this silly little game I play with my writing so, I’ve decided I’m totally powerless.

Or am I.

I’ve found that I can write better in the morning (this seems to be common from what I’ve read). I can write better if I’m well-rested (does that even need to be said). I always write better if life is going well. I write better if I’ve been reading more lately. I also write better when I’ve been writing more.

So there are prompts and activities and behaviors that all play a part. Still – STILL – there are good days and there are bad days. For myself, I don’t give up on the bad days and I don’t try to squeeze every last word out of the good days. I’m not writing a novel (yet?) so I’m not burdened with a huge rock to push uphill. I am, however, charged (voluntarily) with keeping a steady stream of good information coming from this site. The pressure never helps things but it does keep the fingers working the keys.

Takeaways?

Online content has become, in so many cases, totally throw away. Armed with keywords and a word minimum, people painfully bang out articles and posts less for the sake of creating and more of the sake of, well, more.

If you want to write good content, you have to care, you have to know something about it, and you have to give it some time. In my mind, there’s no point in writing drivel. There is so much CRAP out there, in fact it’s the majority. Why contribute to that?

Listen, we all have bad days, that’s just how it goes. But don’t let a bad day or two make your site look unimportant. Do your homework, take your time, and put your heart into it.

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10 low-cost, high-value Web 2.0 strategies (saved on Delicious )

Some big tips and some small tips but some excellent concepts to think about. It’s very easy to get very lost in the buzz of social technology, mobile applications, and new techniques. This article lists some of the basics of website ROI and how to use it to your advantage. Also provides a handy PDF!

“Clearly there is something very different happening now. The Web is becoming the dominant platform.” Here’s our list of top 10 Web-oriented tools, technologies, and ideas that promise to deliver the most value at the lowest cost

Three Keys To Non-Profit Success In Social Media (saved on Delicious )

I’m working on a web and social media strategy for an animal shelter in Washington state. It’s pro-bono mostly because I believe deeply in what they’re doing but partly because I have a lot to learn about this space. Jason Falls talks about the main things non-profits need to concentrate on to see success online. When I was reading his article, it all sounded like common sense but it defintiely drove the point home. I come back to this article weekly to reinforce what we’re trying to do. For the record, his advice rings true for businesses if you replace “give” with “buy.”

The three keys to non-profit success, in my opinion, are: 1. Have a compelling story to tell. 2. Make a specific ask or establish a specific goal to reach. 3. Make it astonishingly easy to give.

CSS Sprite Generator (saved on Delicious )

CSS sprites help your page load much faster by only accessing a single image (like the Google one above) instead of many. This only works for non-repeating images called as a background in your CSS file. For more info, see this A List Apart article and this Smashing Magazine post.

Twitter links

What makes a good logo: Good logos always have this certain feeling to them but it’s more than metaphysics at play.

Virl URL shortening: I love bit.ly and all but these guys have a great service and I made their favicon!

Top 9 Services to Transfer Big Files: Email doesn’t typically work for anything over 10MB. Try one of these sites out for big file transfers.

Misunderstanding Markup: XHTML 2/HTML 5 Comic Strip: Very creative strip explaining XHTML2 and HTML5… I feel enlightened!

Carsonified » How to Make Your Web Design Stand out from the Crowd: Great overview of what makes good web design (hint: don’t follow trends!)

Are there any links you’ve found recently that you can’t live without? Anything you’ve learned from above? Let me know… I’m always looking for more bookmarks!

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10 Must Track Google Analytics Goals (saved on Delicious )

I’ve been reading a lot more about web analytics these days and realizing the power it has in optimizing your website. Getting a website up and running is just the first baby-step towards actually being on the web and finding customers and clients. This ties into my concept of web strategy. Just getting out there is a great start but having a website without understanding how it’s working for you is just shooting from the hip. Having a benchmark and collecting data to understand how people are using your site is critical for every business owner.

10 Steps to Advanced Keyword Research (saved on Delicious )

Oh no, more SEO! Yeah, more SEO.

A big part of getting your site visible and getting people to come from search engines is picking a set of keywords that can perform. I’ve written about the basics of keyword research and even gotten a little philosophical about this keyword thing but this link from SEOMoz goes really in-depth. You might start scanning this article and thing “whoa… this is way over my head” but I would urge you to understand what they’re talking about. People treat picking keywords like it’s just a shot in the dark or just something to get out of the way but it’s hugely important. Improving your search engine rank is the same as moving your store front from behind the mall to the boardwalk. More eyes, more ears, and more mouse pointers means more conversions. The better site owners understand their own SEO, the easier it will be for them to exercise their business knowledge on the web.

15 sites web developers and designers should know (saved on Delicious )

Not everybody out there is going to need this but even if you’re not a designer/developer, there are some great tools on here to help you understand the process. First, try ColorCombos to get a sense of what colors work together and give you a few ideas for that redesign. Lipsum is where that crazy latin text comes from on sites that aren’t finished… try sending a big block to your significant other and asking “so what’s your answer?” at the end. What the Font can identidy fonts from images, a great resource if you need to recreate a logo or graphic but aren’t sure what fonts were used. Also, try Test Everything to see how your website is performing.

Twitter links

IE6 must die for the web to move on: The title says it all: Internet Explorer version 6 is really holding the web back. If you’re using Internet Explorer to view this page, go to Help > About and if the version number is anything less than 7, please upgrade.

Everything You Need to Know About Twitter You Learned from Grandma: Great post on how to use Twitter. It’s totally true: plain old-fashioned courtesy and respect go a long way both in person and online. Who knew?!?!

Swapster digital media trading: I’ve been working with the folks at Swapster to help them do a press release and, in the meantime, starting using their service. It’s a really easy way to list books, CDs, DVDs, and video games to trade with others. Try it out!

9 Marketing Tips from a Six-Year Old’s Lemonade Stand: Really well executed and thought-provoking past on how to approach your marketing.

H&FJ Fonts for Financials : I love REALLY technical posts about design, I’m not sure why. This is a nice long article about the types of fonts that should be used in financial documents… how specific can you get? Sexy fonts too…

Data on Social Media Use: I jsut found this interesting… quick 30 second read.

That’s all for know… hope you found these helpful. If you want more information about the stuff here or have a question, post it in the comments or find me on Twitter and I’ll be glad to help!

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The more I use Delicious, the more I like it (and the more I appreciate its sparse, utilitarian design). The other day, however, I “discovered” something pretty incredible.

The Search Function

You see, I was looking for a link in my own bookmarks and, being the efficient web browser that I am, I decided to use the search function. I was looking for a privacy policy generator link so I searched “privacy policy.” right at the top was my link but below it was, basically, the best information out there on privacy policies. Not even just the best, the ones people find the most useful. Whoa.

I assume that most people use Delicious how I do: as a bookmarking platform first (because it’s great) and as a social platform second (because the bookmarking is so good). I’m picky about what I bookmark… not because I’m picky about casting a vote but because I’m always wary of information overload. So, what ends up in Delicious is likely something I will want to use again later, not just a nice tidbit.

This means that Delicious is very powerful but certainly not suited for everything. I still use Google 90% of the time because I’m not entirely sure what I want but, in certain cases, Delicious search is an amazing resource. Here are a few scenarios that work great:

• Learning a new skill: I’m trying to learn JavaScript beyond my very basic comprehension. I could Google “JS tutorials” or comb through some great development blogs… or I could type “learn javascript” into Delicious. I get W3Schools (perfect), several beginners guide, and a few advanced options. A perfect place to start!
• Finding tips or tricks: Various lists and tips and tricks find their way into my Delicious account… but only the best ones. Let’s say I was buying a house and didn’t know where to start. Searching “buy a house” gives me an awesome first-time buyers guide, a great WikiHow article, a piece on negotiation, and several other good links. And this is only the first page!
• Getting information about technical topics: It’s safe to assume a lot of geeks (cough) use this service so if it’s a technical thing you’re looking for, this is probably the best place to start. Try a search on “spyware” or “algorithm” or “windows.” You’ll not only find some excellent resources but you’ll probably come across at least one link that will blow your mind.

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50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills (saved on Delicious )

Smashing Magazine puts out an unbelievable amount of useful and free content. This collection of sites and resources is a great example why I would subscribe to a printed version of this website. A big part of web strategy is representing yourself well across multiple profiles, networks, and sites. The best way to do that it to make sure you have a solid grasp on the English language, particularly as it relates to the internet. The better you can write, the better you look online… period.

We collected over 50 useful and practical tools and resources that will help you to improve your writing skills. You will find copy writing blogs, dictionaries, references, teaching classes, articles, tools as well as related articles from other blogs.

The Most Popular Photoshop Tutorials of all Time (saved on Delicious )

There are an unbelievable about of Photoshop (and Illustrator and web design and…) tutorial sites and posts out there that it’s hard to keep up with them all. Well, I can’t either so I don’t. I realized recently that, unless you have tons of extra time to walk through these and nothing better to do, you should look for a tutorial that helps you with the project you’re working on. How does this relate to web strategy? Part of a cogent presence online is how, visually, it represents you. Pick up a few ideas or try your hand at Photoshop… it can’t hurt.

With hundreds of Photoshop tutorial sites around these days it’s easy to forget some of the classic posts that have shaped and inspired the community for years. These kinds of posts are in a sense timeless, and have inspired countless designers (including myself) to begin writing their own tutorials.

12 Essential Security Tips and Hacks for WordPress (saved on Delicious )

I’m a big, huge, unrelenting, obnoxious fan of Wordpress. The more I learn, the more I love. I’m always looking for ways to improve on what’s there and create a strong, secure, easy-to-use web site for my clients. This article covers both back end changes as well as admin panel changes that can be made in Wordpress to make sure you keep people out of your installation. Beginners should concentrate on 1, 4, 5, and 7. If you feel comfortable with any of the rest, do it.

WordPress being open source means that the chances of malicious attacks being successful are higher because the project’s source code can be easily obtained and studied for vulnerabilities. This article highlights several tips and hacks that you can use to secure and lock down your WordPress site and to fortify it from attacks.

10 Must Track Google Analytics Goals (saved on Delicious )

I’ve been getting deeper and deeper in to website analytics and having a lot of fun playing around with data and trying to come up with coherent and useful conclusions. I was once told “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it” (a Peter Drucker quote). That may not be the best advice for every situation but, for web analytics, it holds true. The more you understand about how people come to your site and interact with what you’re offering, the better you can serve them. If you’re a true beginner with Google Analytics or not sure where to start, check out Smashing’s timely article.

The definition of Google Analytics goals has always been clear to me – a means to measure business objectives, reports and improve on them. Google Analytics has transformed itself over the years from a ‘nice to have’ analytics software to a ‘must have’ analytics software …

Twitter links

Web Do’s and Don’ts: I think this site is great! On one side, you have the “do’s” of modern web design and, on the other, the “don’ts.” People login, add their own, and vote on others. Very simple but some great reminders for people of all skill levels. I’d like to think I’d score pretty well on here…

10 UI Design Patterns You Should Be Paying Attention To: Another Smashing article… if you’re even flirting with the idea of putting together a web application, start here. Also, if interactivity is your bag, check out a few of the examples they show.

21 Fonts That Shouldn’t Be Free But Are: I’m a sucker for free fonts and I know you are too. It used to be that free fonts were a “get what you pay for” kind of deal but, within the last year, some incredible free fonts have exploded out onto the market.

5 Tasks in the Morning: Chris Brogan shows us the five things he does in the morning. My five would be Gmail, Gmail, TweetDeck, Facebook, and a quick trip to Popurls.

101 Ways to Monetize Your Website or Blog: Are you getting traffic and not sure what to do with it? This post is almost 2 years old but gave me a lot of ideas to go with for online monetization. Great place to start if you know a little bit but not sure where to go.

12 Ways to Use LinkedIn Today: Great (and succinct) piece on using LinkedIn to stay connected and do a little personal branding.

Are there any links you’ve found recently that you can’t live without? Anything you’ve learned from above? Let me know… I’m always looking for more bookmarks!

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So I asked the question, if someone was learning Photoshop and wanted to get the most out of their learning time, what should they learn? I left the poll open (hence the lens flare joke) and got a few interesting answers I wanted to share.

I assumed that people would recommend learning the Pen tool and/or advanced path methods but, sure enough, the winner by far was “learn more about what the software is intended for.” Surprise surprise.

If this is interesting, you’ll probably find the whole thread to be useful as well: Most important Photoshop skill to learn and perfect

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Saved on Delicious: Privacy Policy Generator

Documents like terms of use pages and privacy policies can be easily overlooked by groups wishing to get their web site live as quick as possible. It seems like a bunch of legalese and who wants to deal with that? Well, I’ll be honest, it’s usually the last step but I understand the importance of putting these together. Your privacy policy tells website users what information you collect and what you do with that information. For most minor websites, the most you collect and use is an email address and a name. Even if that’s it, you should still be telling people both inside and outside of your organization what you’re doing with this information. This handy little form asks you all the important questions and then generates a document that can be posted on your site. It’s so easy now, no excuses!

Saved on Delicious: Sara’s Sanctuary animal shelter

Sara’s Sanctuary is run by an amazing woman who cares for her animals more than anything. I’ve never seen such dedication to a certain cause in my life. If you look at her site, it’s hurting a bit. It’s hard to navigate, poorly coded, overly-complicated, and not geared towards the most important thing: getting help for the sanctuary. Sara’s is 100% donation run and money is tight. I took on this pro-bono project as a way to flex my web strategy muscle and see what I could do to improve her donation income. Stay tuned for a fresh, new design, a new Wordpress structure, and some great social networking additions. Also, if you’ve got a few dollars to spare, Sara’s could use it!

Saved on Delicious: Facebook for Business SuperGuide

I think I found this through Twitter but it definitely made it to my bookmarks page. This page has about [insert big number here] links to articles, videos, blog posts, and PDFs on the subject of Facebook. I’m a fan of Facebook (no pun intended) for personal interaction and making sure that my friends and family see a little bit of what I do professionally (I love personal referrals). Marketing my business on there, however, has never been a priority for me. I think Facebook is great for some and not terrible useful for others. If you want to figure out which group you’re in, I’d start on this page.

Twitter links

17 Remarkably Professional Looking Free Fonts: I’m a sucker for free fonts and I’m continually impressed by what’s out there. That’s not to say that I won’t buy one when I need it but a lot of the time you can get by with the free stuff.

Create letterpress text using only CSS: This is a very creative use of CSS to get a certain text effect. A little technical for most (meaning people who aren’t using CSS everyday) but unique to be sure.

Transparency (or Lack Thereof) on Kohl’s Facebook Fan Page: A cautionary tale about using Facebook correctly. If you’re going to post on your own page, that’s fine but BE HONEST.

Building Respect for Usability Experience: For the usability geeks out there, another fantastic article from the Nielsen group about teaching other (stubborn) folks about usability.

Wolfram Alpha for Web Designers: Short and sweet article showing a few things Wolfram Alpha, the new, intelligent search engine, can do for web designers. Fairly basic information but nice to have it at your fingertips.

Five outstanding corporate blogs: very well-thought-out analysis of, well, five outstanding blogs. Chris picked some great examples and showed that corporate america DOES have what it takes to compete.

That’s all for now! Your feeedback is, as always, appreciated. So are your own web strategy links so comment away…

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I felt good about it because I felt like I had everyone’s attention. I really wanted to add some value to these folks and introduce them to a few things they had never seen or heard about. I was speaking to college admissions professionals which, for the most part, are expected to be jacks of all trades. Great questions were thrown out there and I was pulled aside a few times before and after by audience members which means I sparked something.

Anyways, the proof is in the pudding:

And the comments:

• This was excellent! Lots of great ideas, very concise information.
• Wow! Lots of great info (and thank you for so many outside sources that we can check out later)! I have a lot to learn.
• Great information, clearly communicated. Josh did a great job.
• Even after [bulk emailing software] webinar a lot of useful information and good resources. Informative but humorous- great job!
• Very useful for thinking about ways to make email marketing fit your needs for different purposes and how to best customize.
• A lot of good ideas.
• Would have been nice to see examples of good emails vs. ones that get spammed, landing pages that work with emails (live).
• This is so great! I’ve got tons of new ideas for our campaigns.
• Good as an overall look at email marketing, but would’ve been nice to be a little more [product] specific.
• Interesting content. Presented well. Could have been enhanced by including examples of the six questions (i.e. Good and bad examples).
• Great presenters, good info.
• Updated/learned good information.

I provided a hand-out that summarized what I covered during the presentation which is basically a summary of my two blog posts. Feel free to download it and spread it around!

Download:
“6 Questions to Ask Before Sending an Email Campaign Piece”

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Google Analytics (GA) and Webmaster Tools (GWT) are used to determine the health and performance of any public website. A small snippet of code is added to the very end of each website page which reports back to GA both quantitative and qualitative data about each site visitor. GWT uses the Google search engine to test and report back errors on the site and sitemap.

Using these tools in conjunction on a regular basis provides very detailed information about the following site attributes:

• How much traffic the site is seeing
• How many errors users are experiencing
• What keywords are driving traffic to the site
• The pages on the site are performing the best/worst
• How many incoming links the site has
• Where website traffic is coming from
• Detailed information about site visitors

Without close monitoring and regular reporting, websites run the risk of losing traffic, accumulating errors, and becoming difficult to search.

Tasks to complete

1. First, the website needs to have GA installed and a sitemap created (if it was not already completed) and submitted to GWT.
2. Both tools will need a couple of weeks to gather data before any useful conclusions can be made.
3. Once GWT has enough information, the fixes will be clear. All critical errors and issues should be corrected immediately before moving on.
4. An incoming link and keyword report can be made using the information in GWT. This is information gleaned from the search engine spiders.
5. Next, GA is used to analyze the overall traffic of the site using visitor, page view, and bounce rate metrics.
6. A top content report can be pulled to show pages that are performing well (seeing a lot of traffic and directing it to other parts of the site), pages that are performing poorly (low traffic or high bounce rate), and how people are reaching these types of pages.
7. A traffic source report can be pulled to understand where visitors are coming from and how they got to the site in the first place. Traffic is divided between three categories: search engines, direct, and referrals.
8. If needed, a visitor report can be created to show a cross-section of the people who are viewing the site. This includes technology, geographic location, and language.

Additional Analysis Tasks

In addition to GA and GWT, other tools should be used to find presentation, browsing, and search engine problems.

• Sites should be scanned and optimized for loading time. This includes script minifying, image optimization, and code bloat.
• Web site code should also be validated across the site. Invalid code can lead to accessibility problems, display issues, and on-screen errors.
• Broken links on the site should be scanned for and corrected on a regular basis.
• Search engine optimization including keyword strategy, keyword placement, and meta information should be examined and reviewed on a quarterly basis.

Lost already? Contact me and we can work together to get your site up and running great!

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While I gained more experience over the last year, I realized my passion really centered around the web but it was more than just laying out sites and coding them. I was enthralled by how people could connect to one another, use simple tools to solve their problems, and create a name for themselves or their business in a way that was never possible before. What motivated me was how anyone could leverage fairly simple technology to reach their goals. I realized that my energy was amplified when I was talking about WEB STRATEGY.

What is Web Strategy?

For all I know, I could be stealing a term from someone else so I apologize if this has been coined in some way before. It’s important to me to know what everyone else thinks about this term as well so your comments are appreciated (but, you know, read this post first).

"Seafaring Cities and Knights of Catan" by P M M on Flickr

In one sentence, web strategy is creating a track-able, improvable, and repeatable plan to achieve a specific goal on the internet. If I could add another sentence I’d also say that this strategic plan would always seek to provide a clear return on investment and would be simple and (relatively) inexpensive to execute.

That sums the term up nicely but there are very important components to creating a plan that works for your specific situation. I’m going to give you my take on the subject and I invite you to help me come up with more components.

Web strategy … is scientific

At my core, I am a scientist. This would explain my chemistry degree but it goes beyond that. Scientists use the scientific method which is a rigid, iterative, step-by-step process:

1. Come up with a theory (hypothesis) based on existing research to explain a particular phenomenon.
2. Design an experiment to test that hypothesis (the important word here is test… not prove); a critical part of this design is data collection
3. Organize, combine, and report this data as completely as possible
4. Parse and deconstruct this data objectively and completely as it relates to you hypothesis
5. Rinse, repeat

In a perfect world (or lab), this method is driven by the desire to DISPROVE your hypothesis. Experiments are designed to find where the hypothesis fails, where the logic is flawed, and where more research needs to be conducted. If, during the course of this process, the evidence supports the hypothesis then you have a solid foundation to move your research forward.

Hopefully you’re seeing how this relates to the web but, if not, let me show you how the scientific method can be used in web strategy.

Building an effective (read: successful) website starts with a goal. Let’s start with a popular goal for people on the web – increase sales leads/inquiries. This goal can be achieved a number of different ways so let’s say we’ve decided one of the ways to increase leads is to create an easy to use contact form. So, we have our hypothesis:

Creating a simple and easy-to use form will increase sales leads.

I think you see where this is going. The experiment, in this case, is to design a simple form using suggestions from people who have done the same. You could try a few different forms and switch them out occasionally, collecting data from each one. The data is the number and quality of sales leads generated from the form and the analysis will speak to whether the form increased the number of inquires, increased the quality of inquiries, or did nothing.

Designing your plan like a scientist keeps you focused on the goal, objective about the results, and ready and willing to start over and try something new.

Web strategy … is focused on returns

I consider my aesthetic sense very pragmatic. I like looking my best as much as possible but you’ll never see me in a pair of shoes that hurt me throughout the day. I’m also a big car nut but I just wouldn’t enjoy driving a car that isn’t comfortable or one that I was filling up twice a week.

Relating this to what I do professionally, I’m always seeking to place function in front of form in all of things I produce – documents, websites, logos, etc. I start my designs in a text file mapping out the information structure and the content organization before I ever open Photoshop. An idea of how I want the site to look appears in my head very early but I don’t make that design come to life until I know what the underlying structure will be.

This all relates back to RETURNS. Spending money on any kind of web technology before you’re clear on how that technology can help you achieve your goals is wasteful and definitely not strategic.

Seeing the returns on your web investment can be difficult or easy, depending on what you’re trying to achieve. If you set out to receive more sales leads and, after a complete redesign, you are getting more leads, that’s great. If you set out to increase brand awareness, it’s a bit more difficult (but not impossible).

But it’s more than just “yay, I did it!” You need to ask yourself a few questions (using the sales lead example from before):

1. Did I increase the number of leads AND the quality or just one component?
2. Do the website leads become sales or are they just vague inquiries?
3. Am I properly set up to react to these leads or am I dropping the ball?

Spending money on a website or spending time marketing your business online is not just due diligence. Have a outcome in mind and be sure that what you’re doing online helps you reach that outcome (unless you’re just screwing around on Twitter because that’s fun sometimes).

Web strategy… makes things better, not worse.

Chores: I hate them. Washing the car, taking out the garbage, cleaning the bathroom… I just feel like I have better things to do with my time. The have-tos in life are a drag, that’s for sure. Why create more of them?

Being truly strategic on the web means that you’re not creating two hours of extra work each day. Being strategic means finding ways to automate repetitive processes and outsourcing (however that’s defined) boring or unappealing tasks. It’s also about finding time in your day by using great, online tools that make your life easier.

But I’m going to take it one step further. Web strategy is about doing new, fun things. It’s about connecting with people in and out of your industry. It’s about expressing yourself in a new way and putting yourself and your ideas out there. It’s about learning new things, sharing your domain knowledge, and getting to know your customers and clients.

The online world is a vibrant, amazing, supportive, strange, and fantastic community. Building your web presence and connecting to that world should be fun and eye-opening. If it isn’t, you’re probably doing something wrong.

Web strategy… is what I do

When I wrote this, I was on a flight back to San Diego from a visit to friends and family in Seattle. I find my trips home very restorative because of the quality time I spend with the people that are so important to me.

This trip back found me in a conversation about the web with almost everyone I saw. People wanted to know why I was on Twitter, how the web could help them promote their business, what that interesting link was that I posted on Facebook, and how my own web strategy was going.

Everyone I talked to was really energized by what I told them about what this limitless online world. One friend made me iterate through each site that I use and why I used it. My dad wanted to understand blogs, LinkedIn, and Twitter better. My mom wanted to know how we could use the web to promote this great idea she had. Another close friend was all ears as I told her about how we could increase the amount of money coming into her non-profit. No one was bored, everyone wanted to know more.

The web is one hell of a place right now and it’s poised to improve without bounds. Sure there are thieves, viruses, hackers, assholes, and problems on the web but what you can achieve and learn there is worth the effort.

If you’re excited as I am about this whole thing and just don’t know where to start, contact me and I’ll get get the gears moving!

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During this conversation, the topic of how to market and promote the site came up. Dad has already joined LinkedIn and, with a little help, gotten his profile up and running. The site that inevitably came up after that was Twitter. I can’t say I was surprised; I saw a few articles in his pile of “things to discuss” so I knew the question was coming: “WTF is Twitter?”

In the end, Twitter is different things for different people but the information below definitely got a sincere “A-HA” out of dad.

Twitter is digital networking

When I first started this whole gig, someone told me “you have to get out there and network.” I’m a very social person but the idea of hob-gobbling with a bunch of people I didn’t know for business purposes made me queasy. Why would I talk to a stranger about a business relationship if I didn’t already know we were a good match? This is the same reason I never did well in the bar scene…

But I digress… Twitter turns this whole networking thing on its head. Making a connection with someone (by following them to see their updates or mentioning them using their name [@joshcanhelp]) is easy and non-committal. Knowing that you want to connect with them is also very easy (read their bio and check out their link). The barrier to connection is very, very low.

That doesn’t mean you can’t go a step further. You can have a short conversation with someone you’ve never met before (or may never have an opportunity to meet). This is powerful and the basis of a few off-line business relationships I’ve made. When making a connection is easy and taking the next step is just as easy, you have a powerful tool to meet relevant people and exchange ideas very efficiently.

Twitter is the best content hot off the presses

Staying on top of your industry is time-consuming to say the least. If you’re in an industry you enjoy, it’s fun too but that doesn’t mean it’s any easier (might even be harder in that case). If only there was a way to gauge content relevancy on the web…

Here’s another way I use Twitter. The people I follow are mostly people in the SEO, web design, development, business, and communication communities. Since every third tweet I see is an article, I’m getting exposed to a LOT of different articles, new pieces, blog posts, and other pages. If I see it with an “RT” in front (retweet… means that someone is reposting someone else’s tweet), that means that it’s been posted at least twice and might be worth a look.

I’ll admit that having a stream of mostly relevant, potentially engaging content is quite a time sink. Still, once you get into the swing of things, you really learn how to scan quickly, gauge your interest, and move along if it doesn’t fit. If I’m in Twitter, I read maybe 10 articles a day (maximum) compared to 50 that I click on.

Twitter is a good time

In the end, nothing you use is a great tool unless you get some kind of enjoyment out of it. Gmail, Remember the Milk, and Dropbox are all things that make my life better and are so simple to use that it’s hard not to use them.

Same goes for Twitter. It’s easy to pick up the lingo, simple to understand the interface, and hard to stay away from for longer than a day. I’ve met many, many interesting people, found paid work, and read some very useful things. The people that I’ve found and follow on Twitter spread positivity, give me feedback when I need it, and really enrich my online life. I haven’t found a BFF on there or anything but I’ve made connections that moved past just replying and retweeting.

This makes it easy for Twitter to be a pretty effective “waste” of time like anything else. I don’t spend more than 15 -30 sporadic minutes on the site in a day and if I find myself going longer I always get the feeling that my “time ROI” is going down (there are only so many interesting people you can find in a day).

If you’re still confused, feel free to contact me or, if you’re just getting started, follow me and tell me you read this post! I’ll follow you back!

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