Yellowseed Web Design Services

"Splash pages are the pages that the user sees before they actually get to a website; typically, they're flash and offer some kind of introductory animation. The user clicks "Skip Intro" or "Enter Site" and from there is taken to the site." Here is a good article on why splash pages can be a bad thing.

Over the last 10 years, thousands of companies have spent hundreds - of - thousands of hours experimenting with search engine optimization. Thankfully, the results and opinions have been openly shared among Internet marketers and has formed into something close to knowledge. Of course, every time Google or Yahoo changes their code that determines their page-ranks, some of that knowledge becomes obsolete. The core principles, thankfully, do not change...

1. Content should be relevant and informative with clear use of important key words in titles headings and body content.
2. Pages should be easily found, read and understood by search engine spiders so that they can be properly placed in the search engine’s index.
3. The website should be registered with as many directories as possible.
4. Finally, and most importantly, the content should be well regarded by other experts in the field (or industry) and linked to by as many legitimate websites as possible.

These core principles will never change, but there’s still a lot of discussion over how best to implement them for your website. One way to look at the problem is to ask how much time should I spend registering my site with web directories versus how much time I should spend reaching out to bloggers and forum posters. Here’s a great article that breaks down relative time distribution for effective online marketing.

"If visitors to your Web site become annoyed, it is very easy for them to broadcast their irritation: They are already online!

“This is one of the obvious but frequently ignored findings revealed in a recent study of how companies treat their online customers. A study conducted by the Customer Respect Group asked customers about issues of site usability, communication and trust, as delivered online. Outstanding site usability, including access for disabled users, put Intel at the top of the list.”

Read the rest of this article about communication in customer relations from eMarketer.com.

Here's a brief look at some problems with the new Internet Explorer Browers (IE7), spotlighting some areas and features that may pose problems to developers, as well as tools available to help with application development. This is a pretty technical article but it might help you understand some of the problems that your web site might be forced to deal with.

Wikipedia has a great article on customer relationship management (CRM), which is gaining a lot more attention these days. Wireless is everywhere, so why can't we use the Internet to store our company contacts, manage our group scheduling, and handle our customer support? Well, there's no good reason why not, and hundreds of reasons why it makes sense to think about this for your business. This article will get you started on understanding the basics.

Although he can be criticised for not always practicing what he preaches, Jakob Nielsen is still one of the gurus of usability. In this introduction to usability he explains what usability is and why you should care.

Here's a great list that describes some common-sense techniques for increasing visitor traffic to your weblog. A lot of these suggestions apply to websites in general, so even if you haven't yet blogged, it's worth a read.

With new technology called near-field communications, you could use a cell phone to make purchases, or even download a movie trailer from a poster. Check out this article about near-field communications to learn more.

Near-field communications (NFC) combines two established technologies: radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, which are tiny chips with built-in radios, and wireless readers that pick up signals from the radios. Similar technology is used in electronic highway toll systems, such as Fast Lane Pass, in retail stores and their suppliers, and in U.S. passports. And it’s now being introduced into mobile phones, given their ubiquity and ability to have more features crammed inside them.

I appreciate when clients come to me with their ideas, but once I start work, I prefer they not get too involved. But how do I say this without sounding insulting?

When too many people get involved in the creative process, especially modifying and tweaking a design, they usually create something horrendous: originality and cohesion are sacrificed for a bland pastiche of blinking graphics and sloppy markup.

Here’s a great article that describes the inverse relationships in web design between time and number of “designers” involved and quality of the final product.

Are you trying to figure out how to increase your website's profile in your online niche market? Here's some good tips on how to brand your site like a pro.

Recent surveys suggest that companies who place customer relations as their top priority are able to charge up to 9% more for the goods and services they offer and grow twice as fast as the average.

According to the Research Institution of America, poor service brings an even greater penalty:

The average person who has a bad-service experience tells at least nine others about it and 13% of complainants relate their experience to more than 20 other peoples. In comparison, people who receive excellent service only tell three or four others about it

For those of you still using Microsft Word and Excel, you have our sympathies. These programs cost you money; they force you to save your documents to one computer and make copies if you want to share your document you have to make multiple copies. Word and Excel make collaboration on writing and spreadsheets awkward, if not impossible. 

Not so with Google Spreadsheets and Google Writley. These 2 programs are not only free, they are easy to use, easy to share, and accessible from any computer on the web. There has been alot of hype about how the Internet will make personal operating systems, software and PCs irrelevant (at least from the perspective of being the home of “your programs” and data). Well, with the release of these two applications, Google is making that hype a lot closer to real. 

First, here's the clip: Daily Show Take on MySpace. I found this clip through Digg.com (which makes a hat-trick of primo Internet/pop culture references). If you've never heard of myspace.com or online social networking, this is a great introduction.

This article about usability from webpronews.com asks "Given the many excellent reasons to make provisions for disabled users when creating a web site, why do so many professionals in the web design industry ignore this important facet of the online community?"

Here's a blog posting from the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners Lee on what might become the most important political issue to ever face the Internet - Net Neutrality.

There are a lot of reasons to be in favour of web standards - they ensure that your web site is more accessible, easier to manage and, usually, faster to download. But there are many misconceptions about how to apply web standards when creating a web site. Here's a good article about 9 Ways to Misunderstand Web Standards.

Ever wonder how spammers make money? Here's a great 10-step list on how to become a spam king, without ever sending an email.

On the banks of the windswept Columbia River, Google is working on a secret weapon in its quest to dominate the next generation of Internet computing. But it is hard to keep a secret when it is a computing center as big as two football fields, with twin cooling plants protruding four stories into the sky.

Read more about Google’s new Data Center

Google is preparing to launch a system for handling online transactions. The system will compete with EBay's popular PayPal system providing a "free" system for online transactions.

Read more about Google’s Gbuy.

Natural language speech recognition is markedly improving voice-activated self-service. Powered by artificial intelligence, these speech-recognition systems are altering consumer perceptions about phone self-service, as calls for help no longer elicit calls for help. That, in turn, is spurring renewed corporate interest in the concept of phone self-service. In 2004, sales of voice self-service systems topped $1.2 billion.

Click here for the article on how natural language speech recognition is improving cutomer service.