Warmest Greetings,
:: Friday, September 20, 2002 ::
Send me your sinking ship
"Web Site Rescue!
Don't abandon the ship yet. Kim's expertise in SEO, UI and Usability is available to you at affordable prices!"
I've been helping web site owners for a few years now with their SEO needs, as well as user interface (overall design and architecture of the site.) To me it's fun and I enjoy freelancing in it, while I work full-time in software development in areas that also need SEO, QA and Usability input. I recently began to look around at what others charge for website reviews and was shocked. As in just incredibly flabbergasted.
Some companies charge $640 PER PAGE. I've seen as low as $100 per page. Each place I found looks for the same things I do, but their reports are glossy, classy outputs with colorful graphics and metrics. I guess if you have money to blow and want to take the time to decipher all the pretty pictures, that's fine. You won't want what I offer then.
I write you back and explain the situation as if we were sitting over coffee in a cafe and shoving bagels in our mouths. I point out all the brilliant stuff you thought of, what was missed, or could be improved and why. I can't draw, so you won't get any graphics scribbled on the napkin. I like metrics but they mean zilch to most people. I don't rate your site. If something is critically wrong, I tell you. It's either not going to work for you, or will. There's no maybe it will work and I give it a score of 3. If it was working, you wouldn't be hiring me.
Some comanies offer some basic usabilty testing as a way to get you in the front door so they can help you with targeted branding and marketing. I like this approach because these companies specialize in the upfront matters that are of extreme importance, such as designing the site from the very start with the user in mind. The money spent with this approach is wise spending. Companies that focus on usability and their users FIRST are less likely to need web site rescue later.
So there it is. I do web site rescue for an entire site for those who want the facts and are willing to pay for my time to give them those facts, only.
If you want the pretty pictures and have a few thousand bucks to spare, go to the other usablity testing sites. Hope you get a good return on that HUGE investment.
Cre8pc Web Site Rescue can be found here.
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 9/20/2002 10:43:58 AM
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:: Wednesday, September 18, 2002 ::
Logo go home
I can't remember a time when I didn't know that companies logos on a website are usually hyperlinked back to the index page. So, this is a surprise!
Seven tricks that Web users don't know
(snip)
"When I first noticed that the majority of users (two-thirds in one study -- see the sidebar) didn't click logo links, I wasn't sure whether they didn't know about them or knew but simply didn't use them. To find out, I started asking users whether they knew that the logo was a link to the home page. (I'm always careful to ask this kind of question at the end of a usability test, otherwise I could change the very behavior I'm trying to observe.) Sure enough, most of the non-clickers confirmed that they didn't know this trick."
Great usability article, but you'll need a magnifying glass to read it.
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 9/18/2002 09:31:37 AM
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:: Tuesday, September 17, 2002 ::
Linkable!
Cayley Vos, from Netpaths, sent me this from her site. It's very helpful and worth bookmarking. Visit Online Glossary
and
if you seek the best resources and most trustworthy recommendations for SEO, usabilty, etc., we've compiled a list in the Resources section of the Cre8asite Forum. You can go directly to these resources by clicking here.
Launched August 29, the Cre8asite Forum now has 88 registered users, is frequented by many top names in the SEO world, and several top names are moderators, including Jill Whalen and Ammon Johns.
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 9/17/2002 07:37:19 AM
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:: Sunday, September 15, 2002 ::
Search Engine Nascar Races
According to Brent Winters' latest reporting, the top engines are pushing their strollers a bit faster to compete with FAST (AlltheWeb)...which apparently accounts for the lightening speed indexing some of us have been witnessing at Google...and possibly the weird stuff going on over in Yahoo! Yahoo Mystery
When FAST announced this summer it exceeded having index 2 billion documents, which blew Google's claims as the "biggest", the top search portal brass clamored to compete.
Winters' mentions that Google "began indexing pages with high link popularity (or more accurately, high "PageRank") in as little as 24 hours. Indexing of other sites is also happening more frequently than before, but can still take up to 3-4 weeks depending upon the site. Google also struck a deal getting AOL and IWon to drop their Inktomi listings in favor of serving Google's results."
This is a huge loss of exposure for Ink. One of the reasons I suggest paying for INK is the AOLSearch exposure (I don't consider IWON a search engine. It's a gimmick/Ads site.)
When Winters claims Google began indexing pages with high PR in as little as 24 hours I have to assume he meant existing sites, since a new site doesn't come flying out the gate with high PR.
Note that Winters mentioned Ink has announced a new feature to improve relevancy and Yahoo! still hasn't announced if it will keep Google results or switch back to Ink or try FAST. Would love to be a fly on that wall!
The WebPositionGold newsletter is always a good read. You don't have to buy the product to receive the free newsletter or join their forum for SEO support - MarketPosition Newsletter
To follow the thread on this click Google IS indexing faster, INK has a new relevancy algo?
:: posted by Kimberly Krause on 9/15/2002 09:42:58 AM
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