photo credit: B Rosen "This is you after designing ads for 120 hours straight. Was it worth the 10 bucks a pop?"

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

After you’ve acknowledged what parts of your website have the most potential for advertising revenue and after you’ve decided exactly what types of advertising you’ll be offering, you’ll need to decide on a value for each of those spaces and assign pricing for it.

This is likely to be the most difficult part of getting into online advertising – generating the revenue model. For one, you’ll need to study your metrics, demographics and statistics to find out which pages are the most visited. For example, your homepage will likely be your most visited page, and why not? The home page is the entry point to your website. It’s likely how your visitors find you through search engines or through referrals and it’s also where they go to find out what’s happening throughout your site. Naturally, the more traffic to the page, the higher the value – and with that you can associate a higher price with it.

You’ll also have to keep in mind things like production costs. Will your advertisers be supplying their own content? Remember that not every business has a team of designers ready to provide you with an awesome barrage of advertising. You may need to develop some concepts for your clients and have some back-and-forth with them to ensure their satisfaction.

When factoring in production costs, it’s not uncommon to see many websites budget the first week or month (depending on how the ads are sold) of a sale toward the initial production. Once those initial costs are covered, be it for the design work or perhaps a commission to whomever sold the space – then you can begin to turn a profit. This all goes along with ensuring that your website has a proper business model in place before you start lighting up your site with ads like a Christmas tree and lose your shirt by not covering costs.

Web advertising can also be sold in a slew of different methods. One is by dedicated time slot where the ad is sold by either a number of days, weeks, months, etc. This is the most common and traditional way of selling advertising. Other methods include selling per impression or per click. This works by charging the client for a predetermined number of page views or by charging based on the number of times someone has clicked on the clients’ ad(s). Just as you can begin to get creative with what types of advertising you will be offering, you can be just as creative with how you sell it.

A proper business model is the key to making sure that your website blossoms into a healthy revenue stream. To do it properly, it’s not as simple as filling your white space with ad spots and plastering “Buy Me Now!” tags all over the place like a used car lot. There’s loads of strategic and careful planning to be done to ensure long time stability and viability.

We’ve touched here on the basics of preparing your website for advertising. If you’d like help in studying your website with the goal of helping it pull it’s own weight in revenue, contact Point Click Media.

photo credit: Ian W Scott - "NUMBER THREE! Thou shalt not visit a Star Wars fan page without having to close 47 pop up windows for Viagra. I'm looking at YOU, Geocities!"

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

Now that you’ve established which parts of your website are best suited for advertising, you’ll need to figure out exactly what type of advertising you want on your site.

But I thought advertising was just different sized boxes and graphics…

Web advertising can in fact be as simple as a logo placed on a page, but it can also be so much more. Web advertising can take on many different forms including everything from simple graphics to full video, animations or even contextual advertising.

No matter what method of advertising you choose, keep in mind that there are web standards to follow. For example, there are a set of standard ad sizes that are most commonly used across the web for banners, tiles, skyscrapers and more. These standards include dimensions, file size and length (if your ads are animated). For a complete list of standard web ad sizes, see the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s Ad Unit Guidelines.

Do I have to follow these rules?

These guidelines aren’t written in stone. It’s not like Charleton Heston brought down slabs of stone tablature from Mount Sinai that said “Number Five! Thou shalt not exceed 40 kilobytes on all Skyscraper banners”. You can build all kinds of wacky sizes if you wish, but keep in mind that your advertisers will need to build custom sizes for your website, and it will cost them more, which can be a turn off for many advertisers. The standard works for pretty much everyone, so why deviate? In the end you’ll likely end up investing more in trying to customize your advertising than you would get out of it by sticking to the standard guidelines.

If you’ve decided to go the contextual advertising route and place third party ads on your website to generate revenue rather than enduring the labour of going out and finding and securing advertisers, it’s important to know that each third party program has their own set of rules for what can be displayed on your website. For example, when placing Google ads on your website, there are restrictions to what you can do with them. You can’t place more than 3 on a page. You also can’t label them as anything but sponsored links or advertisers. Google ads work on a Cost-Per-Click basis so their guidelines are strict but very adaptable to any website.

I recommend reading the Google Adsense Program Policies before deciding to apply.

There’s a lot to consider when figuring out what to offer for advertising on your website. In fact, we’ve only really discussed a few traditional methods of generating advertising revenue. It’s often the campaigns that think outside the box that make the biggest impact, so keep your mind open to all sorts of advertising avenues.

In the final segment of this feature we’ll examine the factors you’ll need to consider when deciding on pricing for your spots. If you’d like to discuss what other forms of advertising that could work with your website, contact Point Click Media.

photo credit: carol.am - "Alright, just a little to the left. No! No! Your other left! Perrrfect."

By Matt Cook
Point Click Media

If you’re a blogger, media outlet or any other form of web publisher, you know that one of the most traditional and stable methods of generating revenue is through simple web based advertising. Just like any newspaper, magazine or television show, there is commercial support to keep the product running – and your website is no different.

So where do we start when preparing a website for online advertising?

When putting together the credentials for web advertising there are a few things to consider. The first is to consider your content and where advertising should be placed so that your advertisers can get the biggest bang for their buck. Of course, as much as revenue is important, it’s equally important that the content of your website not be comprised. Remember, it’s content that keeps people returning, not a page full of ads.

Take time and study your website when choosing ad placements and have others use the site as well to get feedback. By doing this you’ll begin to figure out which parts of each page on your website garner the most eyeballs and thus have the most earning power. For example, websites typically charge more for advertising that is placed “above the fold” or “above the scroll” – meaning advertising that is placed high on the page so that a user doesn’t have to scroll down to see it.

Blending advertising in with your content is also an excellent way to combine both content and advertising towards a single revenue goal. Society is growing increasingly immune to the constant bombardment of ad after ad and slogan after slogan. This requires publishers to get a little bit creative. By targeting advertising and incorporating it into your content, you stand a much better chance at having interaction between your users and your advertisers. For example, if your blog or website is about movie reviews, you may want to begin targeting movie theatres or rental stores, etc.

After you’ve identified what portions of your website would be the most appealing to potential advertisers, you’ll need to take the next step and decide what kind of guidelines your advertising will need to follow.

Next week we’ll be looking at choosing ad types and sizes for your website. Is your current website layout not quite ready for advertising? It may be much more ripe than you think. If you’d like some help with the review process, contact Point Click Media.

Accessibility includes many functions and many forms. So how can you tell if your website content is indeed accessible to everyone? There are more than a few tests and methods that one can and should take to ensure that their website is not leaving anyone out in the cold.

1. Drop that mouse, mister…

The very first test is the keyboard test. Not everyone has a mouse or it’s quite possible that they may have trouble using one. Try navigating your website with only your keyboard and see how you make out.

2. The screen reader feeder

A screen reader is a piece of software that reads the contents of a web page and provides speech for those with visibility problems. A screen reader can be a costly piece of technology to acquire just for testing your website, but most have free trials that should suffice.

3. Magnify this!

Try viewing your site using the magnification tool. This tool is available on both Windows and Mac. The magnification tool does exactly what it suggests, allowing the user to zoom in on parts of a page like a magnifying glass.

4. Check your website for validation

If you’ve hired a web development firm to design and/or build your website, then chances are this should have been done for you during the process. If you’d like to check it out for yourself, most browsers have additional plug-ins and add-ons that allow you to check for valid website code. You can also try the W3C’s Markup Validation Service. Invalid code can interfere with the ability of assistive technologies to properly interpret your site.

5. Watch your language

Sort of, but not really...

Not everyone is a Harvard graduate with a 4.0 Grade Point Average. There are a variety of different languages and reading levels among the population so it’s important to take this into consideration. Now, it’s not very realistic to expect your website to have translation for every language on earth, but the main part of this exercise involves identifying your main demographics to make sure they aren’t ignored. If you’re concerned about how your content is written or how it may be interpreted by your visitors, it may be a good idea to hire a copywriter. Often, copywriters are experienced in appealing to different audiences and a good copywriter should have no problem verifying your content or making adjustments for you.

If your website can stand up to the above tests then you should remain confident that your site is quite accessible. Of course, how far you take your usability study is up to you. There are no definitive checklists that outline exactly what you need to do to be labeled “certified accessible”. All one can really do is take the proper precautions to ensure that every user gets the most out of their visit to your website.

If you’d like to chat more about accessibility and how you can improve your website, contact Point Click Media.

What do you think about when you hear the word ‘accessibility’? Is it just another web buzzword that sounds important? Let’s break it down into its two parts – Access and Ability, or to sum it up in a phrase, the ability to access.

The web is great for so many reasons. I mean of course besides the abundance of lolcats and fail blogs.

Yes really. On the web everyone can essentially be treated as equals regardless of location, ethnicity, physical disability or social background. For business purposes you can communicate or sell to a deaf, wheelchair-bound person in Cameroon just as you could to the guy standing at the cash in your physical store right now. The web breaks down so many barriers that otherwise make the world a pretty socially awkward place.

photo credit: dno1967 - kind of like the 1980’s

As the web evolves though, new challenges keep popping up with regard to accessibility. In the early days of the internet, web pages were quite simply text with a few images used sparingly. Accessibility was pretty simple, so long as you could afford the equipment to do so. Now, with the majority of people owning some sort of device that connects to the internet, it has grown into an information hub for our everyday lives, incorporating text, imagery, sound, video and more. But with the addition of these new features comes accessibility problems. The hearing impaired will have difficulty with audio clips. Those with vision problems may have trouble reading smaller text or watching videos. Granted, technologies are constantly being developed to ensure worldwide accessibility to the web, but until worldwide web accessibility becomes a reality, it’s up to each of us as independent website owners to make sure our content is accessible.

Why should I care about such small demographics?

For starters that’s a pretty narrow-minded statement. Accessibility doesn’t lend itself only to the physical features of the people using your website. It extends even to the products we use to visit the web. Are you aware that your Mac reads even the simplest of web pages different than a PC? Suddenly our demographic isn’t so small.

Second, if you have any sort of social conscience at all, you certainly don’t want to discriminate. It’s good business to open your doors to everyone.

Third, it could very well become the law. Just as in most municipalities it is a law to have a wheelchair ramp or some other form of entry to your location for the disabled, such laws could very well make their way to the web. In 2006, retail giant Target was locked in a 2-year court battle over website inaccessibility to the visually impaired. They ultimately ended up settling the case but the precedent exists for more of these cases to pop up in the future. Do you want to take that kind of risk? By planning out your website beforehand  to contain accessible information, you avoid the much more costly solution of jury-rigging a solution down the road.

Next week we’ll examine what to look for on your site to ensure accessibility.

The old adage that there’s no such thing as bad press isn’t entirely accurate in today’s world. Look no further than Apple’s recent antenna problems with the iPhone 4. Just ask Steve Jobs and the Apple shareholders what the cost of bad press is. You thought you were insane for remortgaging your house to buy an iPhone? Just wait until the next version is released and you have to sell your family and both kidneys to help recoup Apple’s losses.

Bad press can cost a lot of money, but we all have to expect negative commentary at some point. Sure, not all bad press is a major event rivaling Apple’s current misfortunes, but we all have to deal with poor reviews, disgruntled customers, and disagreements with your company policies or philosophies.

When someone publishes a bad review or nasty comment about your company, it’s important not to become too defensive and start kicking butt and taking names like you were hunting alien predators in a Schwarzenegger movie.

photo credit: jurvetson - "GET TO THE CHOPPA!"

Sit back and study what the initial reaction is. Often, you’ll find that a person’s negative comments can be discredited by other users, clients, or employees. If you really feel the need to respond, be sure to state your point or opinion and leave it as so. There’s no need to add fuel to a potential fire.

Many websites often have screening processes in place for comments. When a user submits a comment on the website, the item falls into a queue that is reviewed by an administrator or moderator who can then choose to approve the comment for public viewing.

Also, if you believe a user is being downright slanderous towards yourself or your business, there are precedents for legal positions you can take. A New Brunswick newspaper was recently ordered to provide the identity of an anonymous poster who was posting some defamatory content on its website. Other similar cases are popping up all over Canada and the United States.

It’s important to participate in online discussions but there always needs to be some give and take. If the comment has some truth to it, acknowledge the person. Feedback is what helps us improve our products, improve our services and ultimately improve our business. It would be pretty naïve of us as business owners to think that we are untouchable.

For more ideas on handling and deciphering feedback on your website, contact Point Click Media.

Sniff sniff…

There are a multitude of memorable lines that sappy parents usually break out when their kids reach the age when they’re ready to leave the nest. Many of the more common ones include:

“I remember when she was just a baby…”

“Do you think she’ll make it out there?”

“I’ve got the carpenter coming Tuesday to measure for the hot tub…”

Business owners can often share many of these same feelings because in many ways their businesses are also their children, and Point Click Media is no different. Our baby has come a long way since being conceived as a few ideas that over time have seen ups and downs and many lessons learned, but ultimately we’ve seen Point Click grow into a healthy, thriving web development firm. Now it’s time for us as business owners to let our baby strut her stuff and “show the world what you’re made of, sweetheart.”

No, I didn’t actually rip this off from the front of a Hallmark card. It’s pretty much our reasoning for our face-lift at Point Click. We’re 4 years old now and it’s time to lose the training wheels. It’s time to give ourselves a look that accompanies what Point Click Media is all about – a clean, streamlined approach to effective online marketing.

Stay tuned to the website as well folks, as this very blog that you’re reading will be undergoing some major changes to feature the new branding.

We’re extremely excited at the road ahead for Point Click Media. There are always peaks, valleys and countless twists and turns, but you can be sure that Point Click Media is prepped to hit that sucker with the rear view mirror torn off and the pedal to the metal. What better way to hit the road than in a ‘69 Camaro Convertible with a fire-breathing T-Rex behind the wheel and Ozzy Osbourne strapped to the hood.

Your move, world.