"Will Be Added Soon..."

Just don't do it. Don't make someone think something's there, then try to open it, and revise their idea of its status. If it's not there, just let it be not there.

This is the backwards way that many people add content to a site:

1. Make the section.
2. Make the content.
3. Add the content to the section.
4. Adjust the section to match the content.
5. Rewrite the content.

Do this instead:

1. Write all the content and get the pictures together, and do it on a page that's hidden from public view.
2. Publish the page and content.
3. Link to the page and content.

If it really needs to be expressed that something is in the works, then it warrants a blog/news post.

Fonts and Stats take Blogger up a notch

I already noted that Google's Web Fonts are now available in Blogger's template designer, but check it out: now we have great web stats too!

And GOOD ones. Pretty easy for Google since they purchased the best (and priciest) web stats app out there back in the early 2000s and then released it for free!

When working on a regular website, these are just another couple of things that waste your time during setup and installation. They should be easy, but they're not.

While trying to set up web fonts, I've ended up with problems like:

1. Having to move the Javascript around in the HTML so it loads properly.
2. The fonts just don't load sometimes or take forever to appear.
3. When you have to copy and paste font names into HTML to get a preview of what your page will look like, it takes a lot more time than just flipping through a menu - I have wasted so much of my clients' money on this!
4. Sometimes it just don't work. And you have to look around in the Javascript, try to sort out whether your web server is screwed etc.

And setting up web stats is even worse:

1. It takes a few days to tell whether or not it's working, and usually those few days are the first few days that the site has been up, and you really need that data.
2. Sometimes it just don't work. And you have to troubleshoot your web server, your page, other scripts, etc.
3. It is not easy to show clients how to use. They're like OMG what do you mean I have to login to Google?????? And it just adds yet another online account for them. They've got their hosting, their domain, and their stats. It's kind of unfair.
4. It's really not that easy to set webstats to ignore you as a user, so that the project team don't get counted as users during testing. You've got to grab your IP, and your client's IP (which means saying "what's your eye pee" to them, and then launching into this big lecture that you really can't bill for), and then they give you the wrong one. Plus you've gotta get IPs for every location that they might surf from - with the new built-in stats, it's just with each computer. So your client can even bring their laptop into a meeting and you go "can I show you?" and then a minute later it's done and you don't have to explain nothin'!

I think Google is trying to help me save people money. Which I really like. I think these two features cut out about 10% of a project's workload.

What I want now is

• A longer (or dropped-down) font menu so I can see more fonts and with larger previews.
• Contact form widget. Every CMS has its weakness but c'mon. At least an e-mail obfusticator built in. That's a thing that makes your e-mail address copy-and-paste-able but encoded in a weird way so that web address collectors don't recognize it.
• More tag cloud options!

Anatomy of a "Web-Assisted Sale"

A sales inquiry can come through a chain of events, starting with a search, a link, or a referral, and doesn't necessarily involve a custom website

Here's how internet traffic can be funneled into a phone call that will actually get you some cash:

So here's a typical web-assisted sale:

1. A "wanna turn into a" buyer is trying to solve a problem of theirs: they need and do not have something that you happen to have for sale (and just to brag, if you're among my clients, you're fortunately their best choice). So that's about whether or not they find you while on the hunt for something that you can get them. If, on the other hand, they're interested in you specifically, curious about what you offer, then a tiny, miniscule amount of work on your part can make you easily findable, which solves their problem, and then yours.
   
2. Whether they're searching for "lawn care in Toronto" or "A&B Landscapers," the search results will vary according to how online you are. The results might include your website, or it may turn up 3rd-party public listings sites, blogs, discussion sites and social referrals from their online friends. If you've been skillful or lucky, then your official page will be at the top of the results, followed by the other sites I mentioned. If "you" are already well-documented, then most of the work towards that goal is already done.
   
3. Your website or profile can help potential patrons decide what they're interested in, the specific enquiries that can help them to make a decision. It can also help them decide specifically which of your people to contact. It can even help them decide on their timing. This is how you can optimize your sales and customer service hours so much, you'll be able to give your front desk people additional responsibilities.
   
4. Your staff can devote their time to answering questions that are specific to each case, and use the internet to present information to the customer.

Bottom-line:

• A continuous and relaxed web strategy should pay for itself
• Increased sales, increased satisfaction and decreased presentation costs should recoup costs associated with an internet presence
• If web work is done incrementally, costs can be recouped continuously and a sensible budget can be maintained

tl;dr (Making pages that you'd read yourself)

Tl;dr means "too long, didn't read."

But it means something else too. It means "you'd expect me to read the page you wrote differently from the way you'd read it yourself, which is insulting."

People approach making websites as if everybody else who uses the internet wants to read as much as they can about as much as they can find. Nobody does. Everybody is like you. You go to a page on the internet thinking:

1. Does it have the text I need?
2. What would the text I'm looking for look like on this page?
3. Within the text I've found, where are the important bits?
4. Have I skimmed it right or did I get mixed up on context and complicated sentences?
5. Can I leave the page now?

If all of those questions don't get answered a very, very short time, whatever a very short time is for the viewer (10sec - 2min maybe), they will return to their google results and, bang, your page, instead of giving them the answers they needed, was just a roadblock in front of them finding what they wanted, making it not only useless, but better off never having been designed.

That's a harsh fate for a webpage!

So keep in mind what else is out there, write your sentences carefully like an essay, and most importantly,

expect itchy back-button fingers.

Some basic search engine optimization notes...

Search Engine Optimization. SEO. Google. Yahoo. Search terms. Keywords. Keyphrases. And most importantly, your website. How does it all come together?

If you know, go check out the Battlestar Galactica season 3 finale. It's totally far-out. Otherwise here's a nice tight little explanation of this very mysterious, bizarre world.

In order for people to find your site in Google or other search engines, the search engine has to match what they enter with content in your site, and with links that go from other people's sites to yours. If somebody enters "cheap computer parts vancouver bc," sites that have other sites linking to them using those words or combinations of words will show up higher in search engine results than sites that don't have those kinds of incoming links. So search engines use websites' links to each-other to judge their value in terms of different keywords and keyphrases. And of course, search engines bring up sites that have text in the pages that corresponds to what's being entered in the search.

So that means that if you're trying to make a site do better with Google, or you're writing content for a site and want to make sure it gets its due recognition and traffic online, it's pretty damn critical to figure out what people are going to type in when they're looking for what you've got.

It's kind of like reverse-engineering the process of sitting down and going "okay, I know what I'm looking for, now what do I type into this search engine to find it?" and you try a few things, and hopefully you find what you're looking for.

Keyword Research is an act of bridge-building. You're making a connection between your site's content and the search terms that people will enter in order to find that kind of content. When I was doing keyword research for Ocean Island, which is the youth hostel I worked at, it was a matter of brainstorming what people would enter to find a hip, interesting and cheap-as-fuck place to stay in Victoria.

There's many ways to go about figuring out what keywords are gonna be looked up, and they're all useful.

1. First off it's good to sit down and just think "what would I enter if I was looking for what I've got?"
2. Then go and ask a couple other people. Now you have a few keywords to start off with.
   
3. Try doing some searches and make note of the words you see repeatedly in the results. They might give you some more ideas.
4. Try the free trial of wordtracker. It can help you make a list of good keywords and phrases.

Now for the thing that makes this all really interesting and complicated: there's competition for keywords.

I'll get into that a bit more in a future article, I've got craploads of layout work to do before I pass out, but basically, you want to pick keywords that aren't already oversaturated on the internet. If you can find "niche-y" keywords that are still popular enough to generate traffic, that's the ticket.

How to find these keywords, and the best ways to use them, are a topic for future reading! But I recommend reading up on it, it's totally fascinating.