Great Tips! Guide

The most important and useful advice we can give you on being successful on the world wide web is to log on, surf around and to read, read and read some more. To be successful on the web you really need to immerse yourself in it and see as much as possible.

It's great to be unique, but there is such a thing as 'too unique'. You want your users' experience to be a comfortable one with familiar site design and navigation. Users will not take the time and trouble to learn your unique 'cool' system of site navigation or to visit a web site that unnecessarily bends or breaks the rules of good web site design.

There is more good advice available on the web than you could shake the proverbial stick at, much less take on board, but we've compiled some of the best for you.

The Top 8 Things to Consider when Choosing a Content Management System, by ruth@spacehoppa.com

If you are a website owner you'll probably be keen to do the job of keeping
your website up-to-date yourself.

We've been producing bespoke content management systems for our clients for
a couple of years now, but the main problem has been that these bespoke
systems often cost more than the original website cost in the first place,
so understandably customers can be reluctant to go for it.

As a solution to this problem, we decided to go into the business of
providing content management facilities as an outsourced service to make it
cheaper for our clients. Whilst developing the service we kept calling the
editable regions of content 'blurbs' as short-hand, so for want of a better
name, we ended up calling the service 'iBlurbs' (http://www.iblurbs.com).

Whilst researching the best way to provide the service, I came up with a
list of what I consider to be the 8 most important factors to consider when
choosing a content management system for your website.

Cost, cost and cost

1. Cost, cost and cost, really ought to be numbers 1, 2 and 3 on this list.
This is what puts most website owners off managing their own website
content. Historically, the problem has been that once you've paid for the
server to install the CMS software onto, paid for the bandwidth, and the
set-up costs, and hired a technical manager to look after the server for
you, you're talking big money. Even off-the-shelf systems require set-up,
bandwidth, server and on-going maintenance costs.

Software or a Service?

2. This leads to the next question, do you want to buy software or a
service? Buying software to install on your server gives you complete
control of the whole system, but may well be too expensive. The alternative
is to buy in a content management service, where the content is hosted by
the service provider. This can be much cheaper, as it requires very little
technical expertise and support, can usually be rented by the month and does
not require any installation, or ownership of a server. This type of content
management is usually accessed via the user's web browser, and often
requires little or no knowledge of HTML.

Will it fit the way I work?

3. The next question to ask is will the content management system fit the
way you work? If you have a large staff, you might need workflow management
facilities such as support for checking-in and -out files. You may need to
buy a system that enables you to go through several stages of approval
before content is published. If, on the other hand, you have a smaller team
and wish to streamline and simplify the process of publishing content,
buying a content management system with too much functionality may be
overkill and prove overly expensive or complex.

Does it use templates?

4. Does using the content management system restrict the look and feel of
your website in any way? Some content management systems provide a
restricted templating system that may differ from your current or proposed
design.

Does it allow me to use images?

5. How does the content management system deal with images? Can you upload
and store your own within the system?

Do I need to know any HTML to be able to use it?

6. Does the content management system require the user to know HTML? Does it
use any proprietary tags? How easy is it to use? You should be able to
thoroughly test the system before being asked to purchase it.

Can I build my website using my favourite software?

7. How easy is it to move your website away from using this content
management system? Do you have to build the site within the system, or can
you build pages outside the system, adding or subtracting pages as and when
you like?

Can I pay monthly? What about set-up fees? Is there a free trial?

8. And finally, back to cost again. What is the payment structure for the
content management system? Can you pay annually or monthly? Is there a big
up-front investment required? What are the on-going costs? Can you buy your
content management separately from your web design and development? Are you
paying for a bespoke system to be written that matches your own specific
requirments?

Adding content management functionality to your website can be an attractive
proposition for many reasons, not least of which is the time saved by not
having to wait for your web design agency, or IT manager, to get round to
making small updates. But it is equally important to make sure that adding
this facility is cost-effective. With iBlurbs (www.iblurbs.com), we are now
confident that it is.

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Article by Ruth Arnold, spacehoppa.com

Find archived newsletters at www.spacehoppa.com
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10 Great Tips for Writing and Sending Press Releases, by ruth@spacehoppa.com

If, like me, you're in the process of launching a new business, a new product, or just want to remind everyone of your existence, you might find this newsletter helpful.

We're currently in the process of launching a new service - iBlurbs (www.iblurbs.com) - so I have been learning everything I can about PR lately. As ever, the internet is a great source of useful information. A couple of excellent articles can be found here:

Internetprguide.com -
(http://www.internetprguide.com/pr_tips/article/0,3029,10193_757701,00.html)

and here,

Care and Feeding -
(http://www.netpress.org/careandfeeding.html).

For this article, however, I'm drawing on some very useful advice kindly given to me by the .Net magazine journalist Gary Marshall.

His advice is primarily about sending press releases by email. I've summarized it below.

Keep it short

1. Keep the press release short, but not too short. A paragraph or three should be all that's needed in the first instance. Give a url at the bottom of your email linking to a press pack online so that they can get more info and photos if necessary.

Avoid Jargon

2. Avoid jargon - any email that starts off "X company blah blah leading edge CRM b2b solution" gets binned *immediately*.

Send it to the right person

3. The best approach is to put yourself in the shoes of the person you send the release to (and it's got to be the right person or, again, it's binned).

Sell your message fast

4. Journalists and editors get hundreds, if not thousands, of emails a day, so you have to sell your message *fast*.

Make it obvious

5. That means a reasonably interesting or relevant title, for example, make it obvious - "Review request" or make it appealing - "Photoshop power for 20 quid!".

Highlight the benefits

6. Think of the benefits of your product or service, what makes it stand out? Why should we care about your service? Will it make our lives more interesting? Cheaper? Whatever... Identify your market carefully. Target your Press Release to the right publications. Think *readers* - what do they care about? Don't over-hype either: if you call something innovative, ground-breaking or exciting it better had be.

Put the most important stuff at the top

7. You've got the right magazine, you've got your named contact, you've got your short but snappy title; from there sell it quickly. Press releases get printed more often than you'd think, but editors chop from the bottom so you need to put the most important stuff at the top of your email.

Make an online Press Pack

8. Short is good - a few paragraphs then an online press pack does the trick. Be prepared to send a hard copy as IT magazines tend to be good with email/web stuff but some editors are old-fashioned. If it's hard copy make it double-spaced, ideally a single page.

Is it news or a feature idea?

9. Who to send your press release to? Gary's advice is News editors are best for quick stuff, e.g. new site launches if they do something amazing and innovative; and feature editors are good if you can tie it in to a feature idea.

Include a picture or photograph in your press pack

10. A final bit of advice about what to include in your online press pack: A bit of background, pricing and contact info, and a picture of some sort. Journalists can do screen grabs so unless you've got some password protected system in place that they can't see, they don't need screen shots.

Nice colour photos of key people are always handy - a photo of a person will almost *always* be used if a story needs illustration. It's much more interesting than a dull web site screen grab.

Photos should be in two formats: hi-res and low-res. A wee thumbnail so we can see what it's like; a good high-quality (300 dpi or better) one for the art bods to download. 1Mb-ish seems to be standard.

Colour is always better than black and white; head-and-shoulders shots are always better than landscape shots where you're a dot on the horizon. Busy backgrounds should be avoided unless they add something to a photo, and light backgrounds are better than dark ones.

Go do it!

So there you go. Get this right and you might get some very valuable publicity for your new venture.

Find archived newsletters at www.spacehoppa.com
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12 Great Web Tips for Sending out a Graphical Email Mailshot, by ruth@spacehoppa.com

Christmas is almost upon us and you may decide that it's high time you sent out an email mailshot to your customers to remind them of your existence.

Sending out a plain text email mailshot is not only a good idea it is also fairly straightforward, but in this newsletter I'm going to walk you through the process of sending out a graphical email to your subscriber list.

A huge 87.65% of the traffic to my web site currently uses the Internet Explorer browsers versions 4 or 5 and, by a leap of logic, a high percentage of them will therefore also use either Outlook or Outlook Express as a mail client. In my opinion it follows that the age of graphically rich html based email is finally upon us.

1. The first step is to build a suitably themed web page yourself or get your web design agency to do it for you.

2. The next step is to upload the web page to your web space and then go to the web page in your Internet Explorer browser and select File - Send - Page by Email. This will open up a new email in Outlook Express and you should then select your customer subscriber list, put it into the BCC: address line and press send. Voila!

(NB. Don't forget to put the recipients' addresses in the BCC: part of the email header in order to preserve your email list recipients' privacy.)

3. Don't forget, also, that those people who can't accept html formatted emails won't be able to see your work of art as all they'll get is a bunch of html code in their email.

4. Want to see a graphical email in action? Here's a link to an email mailshot I've done for an e-commerce web site I've just completed.

5. From within your email, link deeply into your web site in order to draw your customers to products and special deals that they might not otherwise not have found.

6. Add a 'Tell a Friend' button to your email. Let people shout about your brilliant web site. http://www.recommendit.com have a good free script.

7. Always, always give your customers the opportunity to unsubscribe from you mailing list with a suitable link at the bottom of the email.

8. If you don't know how to create a web page you could always download an animated gif from numerous sites on the web (such as www.arttoday.com) and attach it to your email. It should then display in the bottom of your email when the recipient opens it.

10. If you're using Outlook Express you can change fonts, font sizes and font colour (as you can in Word) whilst composing your email. Make sure you select Format - Rich text (html) first.

11. And finally, spell check, sanity check and test your email thoroughly before you send it. My advice is to send it to your mother - does she get it, does she like it, does she know where to click? Mothers are the most terrific bullshit detectors of all time ;-)

Find archived newsletters at www.spacehoppa.com
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I couldn't think of a good name for this selection of tips and tricks, so *useful internet doohickys* will just have to do.

............................................................................
How do I find out who links to my web site?

As part of your marketing drive you may well be interested to find out which web sites link to yours. In order to find this out, try typing your full domain name with the word 'link:' in front of it into the search box at www.google.com.

Bear in mind that this only searches the search engine database at www.google.com. Huge though it is, it is not exhaustive.

............................................................................
How do I choose a domain name when they're practically all gone?

If your domain name isn't available, you've got to think outside the box a little. Sometimes this results in you getting so far outside your box that your ears start to bleed, but do not despair. Here are a few ideas to get you kick started again.

1. Try adding 'the' in front of the domain name, as in: www.theinternet.com. Not bad, eh... probably gone though.

2. Try a little good old fashioned alliteration, as in www.simplysofas.com. It makes it more memorable.

3. Keep it short and sweet, even if your company name isn't. Shorten 'International Business Machines' to www.ibm.com. Much catchier!

5. Try and get the .com version of your domain name even if at the moment you only think you need the .co.uk. Who knows, you may be an international organisation before the year is out... well I can dream can't I ;-)

6. If all else fails, come up with something weird and wonderful - like, say www.spacehoppa.com. It is, after all, the internet and you are allowed to be a bit silly. Silly might be silly, but it is memorable.

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Cutting down on spam

If, like me, you get your fair share of junk mail and would like to know which of the low-down scumbags (sorry, thrusting new-media age start-ups) you've given your email address to recently is selling you down the river, try this tip.

It works like this: I subscribe to letsbuyit.com and give them my email address.

Try addressing an email to yourself now with a plus sign and something after it, say 'myname+noodle@mydomain.com' and see whether your server delivers it to you. Not all servers allow you to do this, but many do.

If you start receiving email you don't want you can set up a rule in your mail reader that blocks all email delivered to that email address. Voila!

Find archived newsletters at www.spacehoppa.com
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12 Hot Tips for Getting Listed in the Search Engines, by ruth@spacehoppa.com

You've just spent ages on your new web site, it looks great and you want to
start attracting traffic as soon as possible, preferably yesterday. Here's a
checklist of some of the most important things to make sure you do before
you submit your web site to the search engines:

Complete the Site

1. Make sure your site is complete and doesn't have any 'under
construction' signs on it. If people arrive at your site when it is in an
obviously unfinished state you may lose those visitors forever. Web sites
evolve and change of course, but you want yours to look competent, proofread
and complete before inviting visitors to it.

Make your first sentence count

2. Try and make sure that the first sentence on your web site sums up the
content or function of the web site. The first 25 words or so of the first
sentence on the front page are what most search engines use to index your
site. Make sure they're relevant.

Give each page a unique title

3. Make sure you give each page of your web site a title. Search engines
often index pages using their title. The page title should describe the
content of the page. Use keywords in your titles, whilst making sure they
still make sense. Try and use different titles on different pages so that
the title always describes the content of the page in question.

Use 'alt' tags

4. Use 'alt' tags on the graphics in your web site. This not only helps
visually impaired visitors, who may use page readers, but will also help
search engines to index the web site.

Use Meta Tags

5. Next, use meta tags. Not all search engines use meta tags to index web
sites, but most do. You will need a meta tag 'description' of the page.
Again use the kind of keywords in the 'description' meta tag of the web site
that you think a visitor might type into a search engine. You will also need
a 'keywords' meta tag. Think of at least 60 words relating to the content of
your web site. Type the words using capitalisation and lower case and
sometimes it pays to include misspellings of your keywords as people often
mistype. Don't repeat any keyword more than 6 or so times if you can help
it. Search engines might penalise you for repeating a word too many times.

Get Search Engine Spiders to Come Back

6. Another good meta tag to use is this:
<META NAME="revisit" CONTENT="15 days">
This tells spiders (search engine indexing robots) to revisit your site
every 15 days. If your site changes less often, set the days to a higher
value.

7. You can also use this tag:
<META NAME="robots" CONTENT="index,follow">
to instruct the spiders to follow all the links in your web site and index
all the pages.

Directories

9. You'll notice that you have to submit your web site to some of the
directories by going to their web site, selecting the right category and
then adding your site. Examples of this are yahoo.com and search.aol.com.
This is because some search engines are constructed by people and resemble
directories rather than search engines. It can be harder to get listed on
these directories and usually takes much longer.

10. Getting listed in directories such as Yahoo can be well worth the
effort, however, as they usually generate a lot of traffic.

Reciprocal Links

11. Some search engines rank sites by the amount of other sites that link
to them, so persuading others to link to your site is very important and is
probably the number one way to drive traffic to your site.

Persevere

12. Once you have begun submitting your site to the search engines my
best advice is just to keep doing it. You must re-submit your site to the
search engines regularly. Perseverance pays off.

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Article by Ruth Arnold, spacehoppa.com

Find archived newsletters at www.spacehoppa.com
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10 Good Reasons to think twice before using Flash animations in your web site, by ruth@spacehoppa.com

Flash animations can be great, but in this newsletter I'm explaining why poorly used Flash can turn good web sites bad.

1. Using Flash to develop a web site usually involves a huge amount of gratuitous animation. Remember that your customer has come to your web site to get at your precious information, or to buy your products. Unless you are advertising your graphic design skills, chances are the user has not come to be entertained with animations.

2. Unlike animated gifs, Flash animations cannot be stopped by pressing the stop button on the browser. Thus users may end up being so distracted by the movement of your animation that they cannot read your content / buy your product. End result, the user leaves dissatisfied.

3. The Back button on the browser toolbar is not available in Flash animations, meaning that the end user loses control over their environment. "BACK is the second-most used navigation feature in Web browsers (after the simple 'click on a link to follow it' action). Thus, breaking the BACK button is no less than a usability catastrophe. " - Jacob Nielsen (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9612.html)

7. The address bar is disabled within a Flash animation. Individual page titles and page names are lost and the ability to move up one folder within a directory structure is lost.

8. Flash eliminates users' html 'visited' and 'unvisited' colours, the single most important navigational clue on the web.

9. Putting an animated 'barrier to entry' to a site is especially annoying if your visitors are to return to your site often. If you want them to keep coming back, give splash pages a miss.

10. The first viewing of a Flash animation can be off-putting, especially if the user had to download a plugin in order to view the site. The second viewing of a flash animation, however, especially one of 50k or over, could well be irritating enough that a user never visits your web site again.

Flash can be a very useful way of demonstrating something that is difficult to describe using words alone. For example, a good use of Flash in a web site would be for a PC manufacturer to assist their users by animating the steps involved in opening the PC case and slotting in more RAM.

Use Flash with a purpose in mind, perhaps as a visual aid. Put a link to it from the correct place in your web site - not necessarily the front page - and allow people to view your animation, but do not force them to view it.

Find archived newsletters at www.spacehoppa.com
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