NEWS ITEM

LINKS FOR MORE INFORMATION

Google search now available from the desk-top

6-11-03

Microsoft to buy Google?

3-11-03

Expanded Alliance announced by America Online and Google. This comes as AOL enhances its Search Capabilities.

7-10-03

MSN Agreement With LookSmart to End January 15, 2004.

6-10-03

WEB PROMOTION

Using the word "FREE!" still has great significance in marketing. Make sure that there is a free aspect to your product or service e.g. free consultation, and bring it to your visitors' attention on your home page. Too often, webmasters forget that they are actually offering something for free and it doesn't get promoted.

When promoting your free offering, however, you need to remember that your visitors will be suspicious of spam. Avoid hype and statements typically utilised by spammers such as "the best ever ...", "the ultimate ..." unless you can easily and simply back them up (bearing in mind that your visitors will not be prepared to read reams of additional information).

Other contributions welcome here, with links to your product or service

CUSTOMER RETENTION

In each issue, we will review either a) new ways to keep your customers interested once they've found your website or b) ways you can collect information about your website visitors - information you can use to devise new content for your site to help retain different kinds of visitors.

One great way to encourage your visitors to spend more time on your site, is to include a message board. You can choose from a community type board or (if your hosting company supports user-written scripts), a user installed script.

Some of the reputable community-type boards include CommunityZero, Yahoo!Groups and Yahoo!Groups

For more control over your board (and to avoid the advertising which normally accompanies community-type boards), you may prefer a user-written script.

Here are a few recommendations : Discus, Aborior

Other contributions welcome here, with links to your product or service

In our first 7 issues, we look at the 7 BIG mistakes in web design. We kick start the series with ...

Failing to Design for The Modest User.

One of the worst mistakes that web designers make is a form of over-design where many of their visitors are ignored. They are all different; they use different browsers (even outdated ones), many may have indeqate hardware and may not even have a Flash plug-in.

You, the web designer, may have all manner of new-fangled facilities at your disposal, but it is essential to remember that your visitors may have more modest facilities.

Also, don't forget Apple users. Pages and fonts display differently on Mac systems.

The solution is to test your web pages on as many different browsers and systems as possible. AnyBrowser.com is an excellent resource for increasing your visibility. Alcander will perform a site analysis as a part of its Web Promotion service which will check your site's readiness for the search engines as well as your users. A search engine spider can be considered just to be a special kind of visitor, and just like your human user, will get turned off by errors on any of your pages. Search engine spiders are also sensitive to errors which may not have any visual impact i.e. go un-noticed by human visitors.

Pay special attention to navigation. Make it simple and consistent across your site.

In our next issue, we'll look at Redundant Features of websites.

Other contributions welcome here, with links to your product or service

This fortnight, Alcander have added this newsletter, and the ability to subscribe to it. But you already know that! We have also added the ability for visitors to order a FREE Ranking report. The report will show how you rank compared to your competitors for up to 5 keywords / keyword phrases (with 5 or more of the major search engines). When you order your report, you are given the opportunity to list your main competitors and the keywords, or you can leave it to Alcander to investigate these for you.

We have also modified our site to high-light our free offers (free information, free trials of Webmasters resources and our FREE services, as well as this free newsletter and the free ranking report).

If we ran a web award scheme, we would give out awards to the following web sites. We have placed each "award" in one of 10 categories (Arts & Entertainment, Bizarre, Business, Creativity, Educational, Kids, Science and Technology and Webmasters' Resources). Who knows, one day we may run an official awards website. One way of getting ideas for compelling websites is to look for inspiration from other compelling websites. The categories below are subject to change.

Arts & Entertainment :

www.bipinchandra-photography.co.uk

A site containing images shot around the world by photographer Bipinchandra which reflect his personal and diverse vision.

Kids :

www.zeeks.com
A fun and games site for children with web design tools, a search engine, email & personal calendar

Bizarre :

www.dubyaspeak.com

George W. Bush's hilarious gaffs.

Science and Technology:

micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/index.html

See Earth from 10 million light years away and move gradually closer until you're deep inside a single tree leaf

www.lookingforatlantis.com

Professor Jacques Collina-Girard teams up with Commander Paul-Henri Nargeolet to carry out an expedition to unravel the myth of Atlantis. Find out about their expedition.

Business :

www.trendsetters.com

What will be hot in 2004? Where should you focus business efforts? What rapidly developing opportunities are being shaped by changing demographics or new technologies?

Creativity :

www.creativesuicide.com

Andie Jones and his team are the team at Creative Suicide are the innovative force quietly working behind the scenes of many well known ad campaigns.

Webmasters Resources :

Ultra Gif Optimizer from ExactCom

Compress your Gif images without losing image quality.

Educational :

http://www.solarviews.com

Views of the Solar System by Calvin J. Hamilton

Why restrict your searching to Google? Each fort-night we look at other ways of searching the Internet.

When looking for International news, why not use a search engine that specifically searches NEWS web sites? We rather like http://www.daypop.com/. Use it to Search 59000 News Sites, Weblogs and RSS feeds for Current Events and Breaking News.

Read about terms or definitions before we get around to putting them in our knowledgebase (www.alcander.co.uk/knowbase.php)

Blog : Short for 'weblog'. A weblog is, literally, a 'log' of the web - a site written in the style of a diary, and in which the weblogger' (the author) links to other web pages he or she finds of interest. Using a blog helps you provide fresh, attention-grabbing content anywhere that you have internet access.