I love this, because it captures my feelings about diamonds exactly. Not even getting into the political or economic issues with the diamond industry, this video brutally and perfectly mocks the idiotic-yet-frighteningly-successful marketing strategy of the diamond industry.

I like silver, sapphires and emeralds. Because I think they are pretty. I don’t think my value as a person, a woman, or a potential life mate can or should be equated to a gemstone. I think that’s demeaning - to me.

Permalink | Filed under: Uncategorized | alex | Comments (0)
Tags: debeers, diamonds, diamonds suck, every kiss begins with kay, jareds, kay, ripoff, stupid

I was thinking about websites and what makes them tick. There are ten major aspects of a website, and they’re all pretty interconnected. Like a machine or an organism, the entire thing won’t function well or properly without most or all of these elements. I will discuss each aspect in no particular order - remember, these are all vital to the process.

Content

Content is what makes or breaks a website. You can have the most beautiful, functional website in the world, but without content, you pretty dead in the water. Whether your content is interactive videos and games to keep visitors engaged or informative copy, content is vital. This may seem obvious, but a lot of my clients don’t consider the importance of their content. The fact is that for many businesses, the first interaction a customer has with them is on their website. What you present to your visitor is vitally important, every time. This is vital for advertising, rank and SEO.

Relevance

If the content is irrelevant to the visitor’s needs and purpose in visiting your site, it’s useless - and may actually be damaging. When users type words into a search engine and get results that seemingly relate to that search, they expect the resultant website to fulfill their needs. Whether they’re looking for information, a product or service, if your website fails to give it to them, they’ll be frustrated and your rank will suffer.

Effectiveness

How often do visitors do what we want them to do? If we understand why they’re visiting our site and we’re attempting to meet their needs (relevance), but they can’t achieve that goal because the site is not well organized or functional, we have a big problem. How simple do we make it for the visitor to contact us, purchase goods or click on ads? The user’s goal is important, but we can’t forget our own goals in the process.

Monetary Value

How valuable is the website, in dollars? What revenue does it bring in? Has it surpassed expectations, or failed to meet them? Based on data we get through analytics, we can apply the data to maximize leads and revenue. Remember, leads are money.

Rank

Forgetting buzzwords and industry lingo for a minute, what’s the primary purpose in having a website? Being found by people who will enjoy our site, buy our products, support our advertisers, or become service customers - right? The point of having any website is to be found by other people - people who are relevant to us for some reason. Whether we want them to like us and pay attention to us (Myspace, bloggers, musicians, etc.), buy our products, engage us for services, or enjoy our content and click on the related ads we feature, we want them to find us. In order for them to find us, we need to play ball and build a good website that will gain rank, using analytics.

Analytics

This is such a popular buzz-word, and so many people are already using analytics without realizing it or are intimidated by the charts and graphs (and, oh god, Math), associated with it. Instead of being intimidated by analytics, let’s think of analytics as a catch all term for the data we want in order to form conclusions about our visitors, our website, and the effectiveness of what we do. Analytics report everything from how many people came to the site, how many people completed a transaction and how they got there. Analytics also deals with effectiveness. The data gained from testing which design/copy/structure is more effective is also analytics. Really, really powerful and cool analytics.

Application of Data

This is how we interpret the data gained from analytics. It isn’t always easy, or obvious. Interpretation of data requires some pretty snappy analytical thinking. It is vital to be able to think really out of the box to figure out why people do what they do, and how you can better engage them. But analysts of this kind of data aren’t magical or psychic (okay, maybe a little bit). Using more analytics to gain a bit of qualitative data. This may seem weird, since analytics primarily deals with numbers and pure, chartable data. Qualitative data is still a big part of analytics, and it requires just as much analytical thinking to get some really useful answers - and apply them. Think surveys.

Organization (UI)

This applies to both front-end and back-end interface. Whether you’re using a CMS or hand coding the entire site, you need to be organized. The design must be navigable by visitors. At the same time, you need to be able to modify the site quickly and effectively, without having to undergo a huge task every time you need to make a change, either to the content or the design of the site.

Function

It just has to work. Cross browser, cross platform, it has to work. No buggy scripts, no weird errors, no inexplicably blank pages. W3C validated.

Design

Last, but certainly not least, the design is the look and feel of your site. It conveys a message through color, graphics and composition. All the analytics people just zonked out, but this stuff has a method and a system, too. Understanding the kinds of people who will be using the site will help determine how the site should be designed. How should it appeal to them? What will engage them? Content is only half the battle.

Permalink | Filed under: copywriting/SEO, freelance, graphic design, tips and tricks, web development | alex | Comments (0)

If you’re anything like me, you’re slowly going insane. Okay, maybe I’m already insane, but that isn’t the point. The point is that marketing in all its ugly glory is persistently digging into our minds and driving us nuts. We’re slowly, collectively, getting absolutely sick and disgusted with the whole process and just want to be treated like human beings, not statistics.

I’m Alex Awesome - an entrepreneur and web guru from Philadelphia. I’m also a 18-25 y/o childless SWF in the 30k income bracket. I prefer to be defined a certain way, and I resent being defined by statistics that don’t take into account my personality, tastes, interests or lifestyle. Odds are you’re on the same page.

I recently decided to OPT OUT (oh god! no! why??) from every single newsletter I receive via email. I’ve actively subscribed to newsletters for years and as I’ve grown increasingly disinterested and overwhelmed by the sheer number of emails I get every day asking me to buy things, impersonally telling me how important certain issues are, I’ve just gotten fed up.

Worse, have you ever tried to unsubscribe from newsletters? They try to trick you into not opting out. Then they ask you what’s wrong. What’s wrong is that I’m sick of this faceless marketing entity trying to get me to fulfill some sort of quota. I’m a human being and I want relevant data, not bullshit marketing ploys developed by people who’ve done a great job of convincing the people who employ them that they actually know what they’re talking about.

I got an email from a politician’s mailing list - a congressman I am weirdly fond of and very much like. I’ve filled out petitions, written letters and donated to his campaigns when appropriate (and not detracting from me supporting more important or pressing causes). I got a newsletter email from his campaign asking me to donate because it was the congressman’s birthday.

Uh, what? Really? Do you KNOW how many newsletters I get? I emailed back, politely, saying that as a young internet professional I understand how tempting it is to communicate with everyone about everything. But to please consider the fact that the vast majority of email recipients get emails from lots of places, NOT JUST YOU, and that a birthday fund raiser ranks slightly above “giving the GOP money for being so gosh darn mind boggling,” on the scale of things I am interested in supporting with my HARD EARNED MONEY.

The curt “thanks for your feedback, it means a lot to us.” response caused me to promptly unsubscribe to that mailing. In advertising, there’s something we call “over exposure” - something I emailed this congressman’s campaign people about - in which we exhaust our audience by over exposing them to marketing or advertising. You’re familiar with this if you’ve ever seen a limited-commercial interruption television program in which the sponsor opted to run the same ad over and over again during the hour-long duration of the show. By the end of it, you want to kill the sponsor and whoever had the brilliant idea of running the same ad a bazillion times until the last thing you ever want to do is drive that car or drink that beverage or chew that gum.

In otherwords, this type of marketing/advertising backfires dramatically. It doesn’t convince people to buy a product, it drives them to avoid you at all costs and instills in them a level of hatred for your product previously unknown to humanity.

We desperately need a smarter way of marketing. A smarter way of getting through to the people we want to get through to. And the fact is, people WANT to know about new products, programs, causes and services. We just don’t want to know about it ALL THE TIME while we’re trying to do something else.

I recently found a very cool website that takes all of this into consideration. It’s called YouData and it allows you to decide to view ads. Plus, you get paid for it. Based on your demographic data, advertisers trying to appeal to you can show you ads for a price. It’s way cheaper than buying media, and it’s incredibly targeted, which means it’s win/win for everyone involved. Cool, huh?

UPDATE: Thanks for all the comments so far - I was logged in to approve them, and I found this hilarious ass-hattery:

AdulBandul

Hi there!
My first post at this great blog!
I wanna show u my dayly updated blog: Amateur Topless Teen
Have a nice day!
BB!

P.S. if you don’t want to see this message please write me to no.ads08@gmail.com with subject “NO ADS” and URL of your forum
Thank you for cooperation!

I CAN OPT OUT OF UNSOLICITED SPAM COMMENTS?? Get fucking real. I love this shit.

Permalink | Filed under: rants | alex | Comments (2)
Tags: advertising, insanity, marketing, Newsletters, YouData

95 words

Speed test

Ah, I missed my calling as a data entry person.

Permalink | Filed under: Uncategorized | alex | Comments (0)

I love this video, because it’s a great example of child disagreeing with parent about parenting.

child: can i touch that?

dad: of course. here, you can touch it.

child: no? alright.

dad: you can touch it.

child: i can touch it?

dad: yes, go ahead.

child: no? i can’t? that’s cool - i respect that.

In other news, boyfriend has informed me that our children may well be named Lord and Taylor. Great.

Permalink | Filed under: boyfriend, irreverence | alex | Comments (1)

It took me a while to grow into my love of shoes - limited finances and a tomboyish outlook left me with three pairs of shoes for a long time: walking sandals, walking sneakers, black boots.

Now… I have a shoe rack that takes up a third of my considerably sized closet. I’ve long been a customer of Designer Shoe Warehouse (DSW), which offers designer shoes at a pretty good discount. Their website is great - fancy, offers lots of user interaction and review, and shows each shoe from every possible angle and in HD so that you can really, genuinely fall in love with your purchases. THAT said, I found my long searched for KangaROOS on DSW and was so happy and excited. The only problem? Ugly color selection and none in my size.

Zappos had a wider selection of these shoes in my size and in wonderful colors. So, I placed my order. Automatically, Zappos gives me free shipping, 4-5 business days. That’s fast - especially since I just got a free shipping deal from Victoria’s secret and their “standard” shipping is 14 days, give or take (estimated delivery is October 10th. Thanks VS).

Today I got an email from Zappos:

You got it, Zappos. Thanks for being awesome. You’d better believe I will continue to shop with you in the future. I don’t normally go whole hog for companies after stuff like this (though you have to admit, it IS pretty great), but in light of their weird and wonderful business practices that make them an even better company, I’m inclined to do so. Find out why zappos pays their new employees to quit. And yeah, I know, the superfast shipping surprise is nothing new, and I’m not special. This is the standard for the vast majority of their orders. Which is why I think it’s important to highlight that. You can read about it, and “know” it, but until you buy from them and you get that email, it’s just another company trying to get an edge.

That email, to me, is a solid demonstration of commitment, not corporate speak for what they want to pretend to represent. It means that as one of many, many customers, I am important and I matter to zappos. I believe zappos is not just a remarkable company for going against the grain and holding a higher standard, but because year after year, they grow and make tremendous profits - that means that they’re making a difference, customers are flocking to them, and slowly but surely, they’re going to influence other companies to employ similar practices.

Oh, and if you need shoes…? Check out zappos.

Permalink | Filed under: Uncategorized | alex | Comments (0)
Tags: shoes

Okay, so last week I was all about web dev software and server tricks. Once you have great tools, that makes it a lot easier to do what you want to do. This week, I’m going to be talking about general cool stuff, with a focus on analytics and analytics tools.

First of all, what ARE analytics, and why should you care?
Analytics are nothing new - it’s becoming a buzz word because it’s become increasingly possible to track data online - something that’s very relevant to anyone online with a website who wants to attract visitors/customers/whatever.

You’re already using analytics.
Say what? You heard me. With the new tracking feature, you can see and analyze data about your visitors. It’s likely that you see data and you go, “man, it would be great if I could affect that data,”

The simplest form of analytics data is hit tracking. Hits are the number of visits you receive to a website. More sophisticated tracking methods only count unique hits (by using a cookie) and allow you the option of not tracking yourself (which can radically skew results if left unchecked).

Beyond hit tracking, why should you care about analytics? Because it’s kind of a big deal. Things that are kind of a big deal mean that if you understand them and can use them effectively, you can make money. I’m always about providing you guys with real-life money making opportunities since I know that making comics for a living is a statistical improbability for most of us.

It’s kind of a big deal because, as I said before, it allows people to collect lots of interesting data about visitors. While all of this data is interesting, the value is in how you apply and interpret it. I’m not going to get into that too much, but if you’re interested, definitely explore the subject.

What I am going to get into is Goals. With a capital G.

Analytics and Goals
So, I use google analytics, and I know a few of you also use analytics. A lot of you also don’t know what the frack to do with it now that you have it, but it’s free, and you got it installed, so that’s something.

Two of the coolest functions of google analytics is the ability to set goals and track campaigns. Let’s talk about tracking goals and figuring out what a good goal is.

1. What is a goal?
A goal is a hoped for achievable, trackable result. We call these results conversions, because historically, the goal has been to convert a visitor into a customer. Tracking this conversion is seeing the exact moment in which a visitor purchases something and telling our analytics software to make a note of all the visitors to get to the conversion page - typically a “thanks for buying our crap” page. These pages, while courteous, serve a much more important purpose: they are benchmarks for tracking goals and conversions.

2. We aren’t selling anything, so what’s a good goal?
Good goals for sites on SJ are as follows:
a. voting thank you pages - track how many people vote for your comic. which incentives are most effective, where people abandon the process (leave without fulfilling the goal), etc.
b. Paypal donations. Where are people coming in to donate from? What pages prompt a donation?
c. Hits! Comics are all about popularity - track where people are coming from, why they stay and use web developer tools to find out why they leave - is it your content, your template, your user interface, what?

To set complex goals like these that answer the questions above, you need to use funnels in google analytics. Funnels are powerful tools that track a users trip through specific pages - pages intended to guide them through a specific process towards a conversion. You probably already have pages like these without even realizing it.

Campaigns
What’s a campaign? A campaign is any type of outside advertising you do for your site. This includes link exchanges, advertising your comic on this forum, paid banner ads on any sites, and anywhere other than your comic site where you link to your comic.

Why is this powerful as all holy get out?
You can track exactly where people are coming to your comic from - see what’s most effective, what’s least effective and focus your money/energy on the appropriate form of advertising.

Whew! I think that wraps it up for this week. But wait, if you’re a mac user, check out some free alternatives to popular mac apps:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/free-alternatives-to-popular-commercial-mac-applications/

Permalink | Filed under: Geek Week, tips and tricks, web development | alex | Comments (0)
Tags: campaigns, goals, google analytics, mac apps, web analytics

Apps/Tools/Software I’m crushing on this week:

Smultron
I talked about this elsewhere, but it really is the simplest, most intuitive and easy to dive-into html editor out there. And it’s FREE. I never buy stuff unless it’s overwhelmingly great/useful. I would absolutely pay for this, however, if it cost anything. As is, I will be donating at an appropriate price-point for what I believe this software is worth.

Take everything you love about HTML-Kit. Now imagine what that would be like on a mac platform - simple, elegant, efficient and maybe stripped down of a few features you don’t use/need. That’s Smultron. Forget crush, I’m in love with this app.

Billing Manager
Okay, this is a great resource if you do freelance work or you’re a small business. Again, totally awesome service, yet FREE! They hitch is that they charge for credit card transactions - but you have an option not to offer that service to your clients, which means that unless you do accept credit cards, it won’t cost you a dime. Bonus. And the cc charge is minor, if I’m not mistaken.

What’s cool is how easy and useful this thing is. It exports as pdf. It saves commonly used fields (chosen by you). So many features to save you time and energy. Very nice.

I haven’t extensively used/tested Billing Manager, but I likely will.

Google Applications
Again, great for small (and big) businesses - but there’s one really neat feature bundled in with the free package:

You can tie your server email address to a gmail account built for that email address. Let me rephrase that.

Say you have your own domain, right? And you have an email address at that domain, like you@yourdomain.com. If you’re anything like me, you like the email address, but not the webmail or email software you have to use with it. You CAN forward your email to your gmail account, but that means your server still has to bounce the mail through - meaning you can collect a LOT of spam server side, and it’s just not as efficient.

Solution? Use gmail to reroute your MX records through gmail servers and get your mail through a special account set up there. Decent amount of space, and you don’t have to worry about server side clean up.

Open SPF
For a while I’ve had a problem with spoofing. Namely, users spoofing my server email to send spam/fraudulent emails. If you look into the email, it shows clearly that my server didn’t send the email. But it appears in people’s inboxes as coming from my email address/server. How do I stop this?

Tie your SPF records to your unique IP Address(es) to make it a lot harder for spammers to spoof it. Protect your domain, your business, your reputation and your contacts. Higher end servers do this automatically, but it’s always real friggin’ useful to know how to do it yourself so that you don’t have to pay for it.

Use at your own risk: i haven’t tested out open spf, but from the first glance, it looks like it sets up an spf for you if your server/cpanel isn’t doing it already (or letting you futz with it).

Super useful.

Permalink | Filed under: Geek Week, web development | alex | Comments (4)
Tags: billing manager, free apps, google apps, html editor, mac html editor, mac programs, open spf, secure email, smultron, switch mx servers

Using .htaccess to hide file extensions on your server
For security purposes, as well as upgrades, W3C recommends that you hide your file extensions. Should you ever change your programming language, (e.g. from PHP to Cold Fusion, or whatever), your urls will stay the same, regardless - meaning bookmarks won’t break, search engine page rank won’t be affected, etc.

Intrigued? It’s super easy: new media arts has the exact text you need to add to your .htaccess file to achieve this. To implement it on your site:

1. Go through and remove all extensions from file urls. E.g. in your links, take out .html, .php, .cfm or whatever you’re using. Your links will now just go to http://www.yoursite.com/page instead of http://www.yoursite.com/page.html

2. That’s IT! easy, right?

Remember, the link with the text is specifically written for .php. Just updated it with the specific file extension(s) you’re using.

It’s ALWAYS a good idea to make a backup of files like your .htaccess when you’re making changes. I’ve dabbled and generated more than my fair share of server errors. Save yourself the panic. Make a backup.

Make Grunge Text using CSS
This great tutorial from Janko at Warp Speed tells you how to create great looking grungy text with one image and simple css. There are some mild issues with this (make sure you aren’t floating images or text on the same line as your h1,2 or 3 tags, or they’ll get the grunge effect, too), and to ensure it validates, simply stick a space code between span tags.

WTF is validation and why do I need to do it?
No one’s going to tell you that validating your code isn’t a pain in the ass, or that best practice is easy, cross-browser compliant or fun.

It IS important though. Why? Because although some people are always going to think the W3C is dumb, (for whatever reason), they are the standard in web development, and you are probably not a good enough designer/developer to effectively counter their arguments - which are pretty reasonable, truth be told.

LIKEWISE, the clients and employers you may or may not run into down the road WILL give a shit about W3C. Better to get the painful process out of the way now. And, the good news is that you’re probably already 75% there if your pages are rendering properly. Here are some tips:

Take your site on a test run through the w3 validator

Why? So you can get a feel for some of the most common errors.

DOCTYPE
What is doctype? This little line of gibberish text identifies just what kind of code you’re presenting. This basically tells browsers what’s going on and how to read it so that it displays properly - kind of important, actually, right?

If you’re using CSS and XHTML tags (you probably are), you need to put the following header into the top of your header/files:

You can find more information about doctype here.

But is that all? If you’re using XHTML not quite - for W3 to give you the green light, you need one more thing:

XHTML Language Declaration
What is this f*ckery, you ask? I’ll tell you. The language declaration is necessary for international purposes. Why do you care? Because your site isn’t just available to native speakers of your language. If it’s in English, you need to say so - with your language declaration. Why is this important?

It’s a good idea, generally, but it helps search engines, classification and the like. Don’t frustrate your visitors by giving them a webpage they can’t read. Y’know?

What does a standard text declaration look like?

Okay, smart guy, where does this shit go on my page?
These two lines should go at the very top of your page/header before any other code.

Other common issues:
Improper tags/tag structure
Remember, in XHTML transitional, all your tags need to close. In basic HTML, you could have unclosed tags. Here’s the break down:

Structuring errors:

Lists, headers, and elements like these shouldn’t be wrapped in p tags. If their margins aren’t large enough, adjust those settings in your CSS file - don’t use p tag hacks to fix the problem. Save yourself time in the long run by just having the correct margins set. This makes your page much more consistent, too.

Permalink | Filed under: Geek Week, web development | alex | Comments (0)
Tags: common validation errors, css, doctype, grunge text, hide extensions, htaccess, validation, w3, xhtml declaration

when twitterific chimes, the boyfriend shouts, “TWITTERS!” from wherever he is in the house.

…

We cleaned the whole frigging apartment from top to bottom. I’m talking the basic stuff, but also the OCD stuff, too, like taking out each and every book from our bookcases and wiping down every shelf, and the sides, as well as every edge/surface. And the refrigerator. It’s a few shades whiter. Likewise, I cleaned the lightswitch plates so thoroughly, there is no more paint on them. No more paint!

“Do you know how clean our house is?” the boyfriend asked me.

“No, how clean is it?”

“We are in the top five percent.”

“Really?”

“In the world, we may be in the top one percent. Very few people’s houses are as clean as our house.”

…

“Ah, it’s sad. I can’t tell anyone the real reason I love you.”

“As far as the world knows, it’s because I give you my french fries.”

“That’s a pretty good reason, actually.”

Permalink | Filed under: boyfriend | alex | Comments (0)