Real Web Marketing Blog

New Web Site for RealWebMarketing.net

We are pleased to announce the launch of a newly designed web site for RealWebMarketing.net. The new site features an upgraded design, along with new information on social media marketing, our staff, client testimonials, and much more. We invite you to visit the site.

New Sites and Blogs

Here are some new web sites and blogs we have completed recently. Enjoy!

	NovelloBlog.com This is a brand new blog we created for Acclaimed Jazz Keyboardist/ Composer/ Producer/ Music Educator and Author John Novello.
	Through the Woods Design This is a re-design we just completed of the site for Through the Woods Design, a high-end landscape designer and contracting firm in Los Angeles. We worked with associate Rex Perry of Perry Multimedia on the Flash elements of the site.
	Tax Matters Blog - Aero & Marine Tax Professionals We set up this blog for Aero & Marine Tax Professionals, a company that consults with the purchasers of airplanes and vessels on how to save money on their sales tax.
	My Sister Says We re-designed this web site that sells natural skin care products.
	The Direct Mail News Blog This is a new blog we set up for The Addressers, a large mailhouse and fulfillment house in Los Angeles. This blog is specifically for press releases.

 

Web Design and Eye Trail

by John Eberhard

One of the worst offenses on the senses perpetrated by bad web sites and bad web design today has to do with the complete lack of correct eye trail.

“Eye trail” is defined as how your eye travels across or down a promo piece, advertisement or web page. Proper eye trail means the design was well done so that your eye travels across or down the piece in a logical progression. Proper eye trail allows you to really get the communication.

Bad eye trail is caused by design where the designer in most cases did not even consider the idea that eye trail existed, and so he tried to jam too much stuff into the piece and did not lay it out in any logical order or pattern or sequence. Just for fun, I will link to some of the worst offenders I’ve ever seen a little later in this article.

A logical type of eye trail has evolved for web sites over the years, usually consisting of:

• A masthead at the top which gives the company name, logo, and sometimes contact info.
• A navigation bar that usually goes along the top underneath the masthead, or down along a narrow left-hand column.
• A central area, below the masthead, and either under the navbar if it is along the top, or to the right of the navbar if it is in the left column, which contains the one point of that page. This is one of the things that the worst sites violate, trying to cram a bunch of things into this central area. Each page should have one main topic, not six or ten.
• Often on sites these days, there will be a narrow right sidebar, usually below the masthead, which contains links to special items of interest.
• Footer: There is an area at the bottom which contains the text links and copyright information and sometimes a link to the web designer.

Some more comments on the elements above and how they relate to eye trail:

Masthead: The masthead is usually the entire width of the content of the page. I think these (and your whole page content) should be a minimum of 800 pixels wide today, usually centered in the page. I think 900 or 1,000 is better. The majority of web viewers today have their screen resolution set at 1152 x 864 (49.19% of visitors to my site this year), followed by 1024 x 768 (15.74%), and 1280 x 1024 (11.09%). Those percentages add up to 76.02%. So why are some designers still putting up tiny little sites that are 600 or 700 wide that take up a quarter of the screen? I guess that’s a good idea if you want to make a site with less impact (why would you want that?). But if you want to make a site that has good impact, then “use up some of that real estate” as a former boss of my wife (and trained marketing executive) used to say. But do NOT make the masthead and main content more than 1,000 pixels wide, forcing people to scroll from left to right to read it. And the masthead should be relatively narrow from top to bottom, not more than 150 or 200 pixels tall.

Navigation Bar: I think a good navigation bar should include no more than say 10 items in it. If you have more than that, then arrange the navigation in major categories with drop-down menus, or have sub-menus on pages as you drill down into the site.

Central Area: As I said, I generally think the central area of the site should be mainly about one thing, but I’ve seen as many as three topics tastefully arranged in the central area.

Right Sidebar: This is becoming more of a chic thing to have a right sidebar, with links to special things you wanted to highlight, sell, etc.

Footer: I think a footer should always be included with text links to all the main pages shown in the navigation bar above, with copyright info, etc.

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly

The Good

First I am going to show some sites that I think have good eye trail.

	EmployeeTestingCenter.com I designed these first two. Note the home page is very compact, which is the way the client wanted it, with minimal nav buttons showing, but with drop-down menus giving all the links. The sub-pages include a footer and right-hand sidebar.
	877SmileToday.com This site features a Flash animation on the home page that goes all the way across the width of the content (900 pixels), a right sidebar, and a footer.
	Yahoo.com No I didn’t design this one (I wish), or any of the subsequent sites. But I think they have laid this page out and offered a lot of information and options, but done it in an elegant and logical way that is not hard on the eyes.
	Microsoft.com What a clean page. You get a lot of options in the form of extensive drop-down menus.
	Apple.com Apple always has a very clean looking web site. Right now they’re promoting this tiny iPod Shuffle that is the size of your thumb.
The Ugly OK, here are the stinkers.
	HavenWorks.com This was selected as the #1 worst site of the year for 2008 by www.webpagesthatsuck.com. This is possibly the worst eye trail I have ever seen on a web site.
	FabricLand.co.uk This was selected as the #2 worst site of the year for 2008 by www.webpagesthatsuck.com. Aside from the garish colors and lack of a pleasing color scheme, there is no eye trail. What are you supposed to look at?
	YvettesBridalFormal.com This was selected as the #4 worst site of the year for 2008 by www.webpagesthatsuck.com. Check out those colors! I think the designer thought he was getting paid by the color. Plus, eye trail? Nope. And you have to scroll way to the right to see that picture of an airplane and oriental writing.
	CleanIsHappy.com This was selected as the #5 worst site of the year for 2008 by www.webpagesthatsuck.com. I include this one not because the eye trail is so bad but because it is perhaps the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen presented on a web site. It is promoting a bidet (look it up if you don’t know what that is, I’m not gonna tell ya), and starts out showing naked butts of these various people and then switches to their faces talking and telling you about the Washlet bidet.
	AlternativeTransportServices.co.uk/ This was selected as the #8 worst site of the year for 2008 by www.webpagesthatsuck.com. Once again this is an eye trail stinker.

Summary

The moral is design sites with good eye trail and people will find your site pleasant and will want to spend more time there.

New Blogs We Designed

I want to share links to several new blogs we have designed.

	Through the Woods Design Blog This is a blog we set up for Through the Woods Design, a firm providing landscape design and installation services in Los Angeles.
	Dental Tips and News We set up this blog for 877SmileToday.com, a web site that helps people find a dentist in their neighborhood.
	The Direct Mail Blog This is a new blog we set up for The Addressers, a large mailhouse and fulfillment house in Los Angeles.

New Web Designs

by John Eberhard

I want to share links to several new web site designs I have completed of which I am particularly proud.

	The Employee Testing Center This is a brand new site we designed for the Employee Testing Center, a company that offers online personality and IQ testing for business owners, so they have a better idea of who they are hiring and can more easily find honest, dependable, and trustworthy employees.
	Smile Today This is a brand new site we designed for Smile Today, which helps people find a friendly, caring dentist right in their neighborhood. The company serves Southern California.
	Shea Roofing Inc. This is a new site for Shea Roofing Inc., a Burbank-based company that has been providing roofing services for residential homes around the Los Angeles area for 20 years.
	All Power Services This is a new site for All Power Services, which provides electrical, HVAC (Heating, Venting and Air Conditioning) and refrigeration services for residental, commercial and industrial buildings in the Los Angeles area.

 

Web Authoring Programs

By John Eberhard

In an earlier blog post I advised people not to use Content Management Systems for the overall design of a web site, as these typically place huge limitations on what you can put on a page, where it can go and how big it can be.

I advised people to instead buy one of the popular web authoring programs like Dreamweaver of Adobe GoLive, or Microsoft FrontPage.

A couple colleagues emailed to tell me that Adobe, as of the Creative Suite 3 (CS3) package, no longer sells GoLive, which they sold up until CS2.

Another colleague told me that Microsoft no longer sells FrontPage, and now they sell a program called Expression Web2. I haven’t used it and know virtually nothing about it.

Personally, for web site design, Adobe Dreamweaver, along with Photoshop to make your graphics, is the best ticket I recommend.

Web Design: the Vital, Desirable, and Trivial, Part 2

By John Eberhard 

Last week I discussed some aspects of web design that are vital, desirable and trivial. Sort of a "good, bad and ugly" list. Unfortunately I didn't get to any trivial things before I had a pretty long article. So in case you were wondering where the trivial stuff was, in Part 2 I will tell you some trivial stuff and even some undesirable stuff you should stay away from.

Frames

Frames are a certain technique of putting a web site together where different parts of the sites are separated into frames. Stay away from this in web design, as it prevents search engines from indexing the site. Most designers aren't doing this any more.

Content Management System

More of my clients are asking me about these. A content management system is an online interface where you log in with a username and password, and it allows you to make changes to your site and put up new content, without having to use a web authoring program like Dreamweaver.

My experience so far with content management systems has been poor. The ones I have used or been exposed to had their own proprietary way of designing or modifying a page and took a lot of time to learn. And they placed incredible limitations on what you could do with a page, in terms of where you could put things on a page, how big the pictures could be (mostly tiny) and so on.

I understand that some web site owners would want to be able to add things or change things on their site without depending on a web designer. I think a better way to accomplish this is to have someone at the web site owner’s company learn the simple basics of a web authoring program like Dreamweaver (the market leader), Adobe GoLive or Microsoft FrontPage. I personally think the learning curve would be roughly similar to a content management system and you would then not have the stupid limitations that the content management systems place on you.

Guest Book

Definitely trivial. No one signs guest books anymore and these were a bright idea of designers about 10-12 years ago.

Buy Buttons

If you sell something directly on the site, you definitely HAVE TO have buy buttons in obvious places on every single page of your site. This is a vital thing. You want your visitor to be able, at any time, anywhere on the site, when he decides he wants to buy your product, to do it right then. Make it obvious so he doesn't have to work hard to find it.

If you don't sell a product directly on the site but use the site for lead generation, make the "contact us" button easy to find.

Graphics and Style

Every industry has a certain style that you can observe when you look over the existing web sites in that industry. This includes things like the type of graphics used, the color schemes, the types of backgrounds, the types of navigational buttons used, whether the graphics look 3D or flat, the types of pictures used and how many pictures, and so on.

Software company sites will look quite a bit different from sites for a health care practice, which will look quite different from the site for a rock band.

I don't think one has to copy the other sites that are out there, but I think that you should design a site that is in a similar style to the what's out there. If you're designing a site for a veterinary practice, it should not look like a site for a Gothic rock band, with a black background, etc.

This is not to say that you can't ever stretch the envelope a bit when you design a web site, but the point is that before you begin you should look at other sites and be aware of what that envelope is. And be aware that for a commercial enterprise, you are creating a web site to market and sell your products or services, and that the purpose of marketing and selling those products or services is senior to creativity and originality. That sort of defines the difference between "graphic arts" and "fine arts." The application of graphic arts is toward the commercial purpose of marketing and selling.

Navigation

Obviously a site needs to have a navigational structure, usually along the top or in the left-hand column. Here's a rundown of which navigation buttons you really need.

Home - This is vital, although some designers design the site so the logo in the top left corner links to the home page.

About Us - Desirable, usually is a blurb about the company or its history or tells about the principals.

Services or Products - Depending on whether you sell products or services, one or the other is vital in your nav.

Contact Us - This is vital, and should either be a page giving your address, phone, fax, and email, or a form that people can fill out for more information. But if it's a form, that page should also include your contact info.

Gallery - If your product is especially visual, like if you are an architect, pond designer, pool builder, paving stone installer, or landscaper, you need a gallery section of your site that shows photos of your work. And you will usually find these page are the most heavily viewed on your site.

Web Statistics

Many people don't realize how vital it is to have a web statistics program or service for their web site. If, for example, your site is not getting any leads or sales, the first thing you want to know is how many people are going to the site. It lets you zero in on what to fix.

Some web hosting companies will include a free web statistics program with their service, and frankly most of these are pure crap.

I have used a lot of statistics programs and services over the years. But a couple years ago Google introduced a service called Google Analytics, where you sign up and they give you a piece of code that you put on every page of your site. And it's free. If you have a Google AdWords account you can set it up as part of that account, but you can also set it up if you don't have an AdWords account.

With Google Analytics you can tell how many people are going to your site each week, what pages they are visiting, and where they're entering and leaving the site. One of the most valuable things is that you can know where your visitors are coming from, what sites are referring them to you. In other words, other sites will have links to your site, and Google Analytics will tell you how many people are coming to your site from each. That includes the search engines and other sites which may have links to yours. And for search engines, it shows you what keywords people entered in the search engines to find your site, and how many people ended up coming to the site via each keyword.

These are all pretty standard things that any decent web statistics program will tell you, but the cool thing about Google Analytics is that it's free, and most of the other good programs or services (that you pay for monthly) are not free or even cheap.

Web statistics are vital and I urge you to set up Google Analytics on your site if you don't already have a solution in place.

Web Design: What's Vital, Desirable and Trivial

By John Eberhard

I believe there are a lot of misconceptions today about what are the most important aspects of web design. I will discuss various topics.

Flash

Flash is a program made by Adobe that allows one to create animations, slide shows and so on for the web. Plus, you can also build an entire web site out of Flash.

For most commercial web sites today, Flash is a desirable, not vital aspect of web design. First of all I do not EVER recommend designing an entire web site in Flash. The problem with this is that if you design the entire site in Flash, search engines such as Google cannot index the site. That means your site will not appear when someone searches on that search engine. Since search engines are one of the largest sources of traffic for web sites today, you do not want to eliminate this source of traffic.

However, you can create Flash animations that get incorporated into an HTML page, and that is what I recommend. That way you get the movement and interest, but don't lose search engine traffic.

Identity Capture Devices

By "identity capture devices," I mean where you offer something for free on your site, in exchange for the visitor filling out a form giving you his name and contact information. I consider this a vital part of any web site, but especially web sites promoting high-ticket products and services. Here's why.

You exert effort or expend resources to get people to come to your site. Virtually no one will arrive at a site today unless you drive them there. There are just too many sites and too much competition. So you expend resources, either time or money to get someone there. Then what happens?

Well a certain percentage of people are going to be interested in your product or service and will either call you or fill out a "more information" form on the site. But what about the rest? Once they leave the site, in most cases, that's it. You've lost them. So that means those resources expended to get them there are, for the most part, wasted.

But let's say you have several identity capture devices on the site, such as:

a. A free email newsletter subscription
b. A free report or "white paper" on a topic related to one of your products and services
c. A demo download or free software utility (applies to software sales)

Now, a certain additional percentage of people, who are interested, but not ready to buy just yet, will fill out one of these forms for one of the free offers. So you send them the free report or put them on your email list, and now you have more opportunities to sell them. Or, by sending them material regularly by email, you will build "top of mind awareness" and they will think of you when they reach the point when they're ready to buy.

I consider identity capture to be a vital aspect of a web site, one that many web designers don't even know or think about.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization (SEO) means to select a group of keywords that is appropriate for your business, and then to put those keywords into your site as much as possible. There are a variety of places where these keywords can be placed and there are right and wrong ways to do it, with the wrong ways being ways that the search engines consider "spam."

By optimizing your site for search engines, it will now be able to rank well in the search engine results for the keywords you select.

I consider SEO to be vital for your site, but not as important as the next section on links.

Links to Your Site

Google states that the number of links from other sites linking to your (also called inbound links) is considered by them to be the most important criteria in determining the ranking of a web site for any given keyword. In other words, the more sites there are that have a link to yours, the better your site will rank in their results.

Even better than a simple link to your site is what is called "anchor text." This means a keyword that is linked to your site. For example, let's say your site sells gourmet coffee and the term "gourmet coffee" is one of the keywords you are trying to have your site rank well for. If you can get other web sites to have the words "gourmet coffee" on their site somewhere, with those words linking to you (usually appearing in blue with an underline) then that is anchor text. And that is vital.

Getting links to your site, preferably anchor text, is even more important than doing SEO to your site. It's best to do both, but it would be a mistake, for example, to just do SEO and then not do any link building, especially if the number of links to your site is low (let's say, under 1,000).

Video and Audio

Adding video and audio elements (like an audio clip that plays as soon as someone lands on your home page) is very desirable. It's not vital, but these are excellent elements to add to your site, and make it stand out from competing sites. By the same token, if most of your competition has videos or audio clips on their web sites and you don't, yours will suffer by comparison.

Photos

I consider lots of photos to be absolutely vital in the design of a web site. You might say "duh" to that but I see many sites today designed with a nice shell but very few if any photos. Adding photos that are relevant to your sales text can greatly increase the impact. Also, don't make them tiny (1-3 inches), make them bigger, like 4-6 inches, so they have greater impact.

Music

Music is a good idea to put on your site especially if your site is some of entertainment industry site. But do it with a Flash player that the visitor can find easily to turn off if he wants to. Nothing is more annoying than music on a site that you don't want to hear, and not being able to turn it off. And not everyone's taste in music is the same.

Summary

a. Flash - desirable, but don't make the whole site in Flash
b. Identity capture devices - vital
c. Search engine optimization - vital
d. Links to Your Site - even more vital
e. Video and Audio - desirable
f. Photos - vital
g. Music - desirable, but with a button for visitors to turn it off