Website Design and Promotion

Podcasting for Beginners

Podcasting is clearly here to stay. For anyone who's new to the idea and wants to get started, have a look at Stefan’s Killer Podcasting Tips. Stefan Mischook, from KillerSites.com provides 7 basic tips on how to create an effective podcast:

1. Speak slowly.
2. If you make a mistake, pause and then repeat the sentence.
3. Edit everything later.
4. Speak as if you're speaking to a single person.
5. Use a relaxed, conversational tone.
6. Use a quality microphone.
7. Be concise.

These are all good tips for the podcasting newbie. Having your website visitors able to put a voice to what they see — e.g., your photo or socially responsible products — can increase their interest and trust in you.

Google Giving PayPal a Run for its Money

Looks like Google's take-over of the world is one step closer ;) - now with Google Checkout, you can pay for items through your Google account, much like having a PayPal account.

I haven't tested it out yet, but there are a lot of big name companies already signed on and you can bet, if Google's running this show, it'll be successful. Another online payment method to keep in mind for your socially responsible business...

More here.

Database-driven Websites for Dummies

If you've ever wondered what exactly a database-driven website is, Stefan Mischook of killersites.com offers a podcast, explaining db-driven sites for the layperson. Stefan touches on dynamic vs. static web pages, server-side vs. client side, and a few other topics, while focusing on the benefits of db-driven sites.

For most small socially responsible businesses, with small websites, the cost of having a db-driven website is probably too prohibitive and you'll need to rely on making manual updates to it, but db-driven sites are really the only way to go for medium-large sized organizations.

Is your Ezine Designed so That it Can be Read?

Andy Wibbels points to Marketing Sherpa's post on the results of a research study on how email templates look in different email programs.

The study reports that your HTML emails may be unreadable for up to 60% of your subscribers!

Now that is  a study that you need to pay attention to! Programs that are problematic include Outlook, Hotmail, Yahoo, Mozilla Thunderbird as well as others.

Here is Marketing Sherpa's test for you to try:

Step #1. Turn on one of the preview pane options in Outlook.
Step #2. Turn off (block) images.
Step #3. Pick an HTML email alert or newsletter in your inbox.
Step #4. See what it looks like in preview.
Step #5. Gasp in horror.

The post lists some design elements to consider if you want to make your email templates readable to more people. Andy has already re-designed his template taking into consideration these findings and perhaps you should also consider calling your designer now!

What's Going on With Flash?

In case you hadn't noticed yet, many sites that contain Flash (and certain other media types) content are acting a bit strangely these days. In Internet Explorer, when you put your cursor over the content a surrounding rectangle appears and, to get the controls to work, you need to click it once first. Worse things have happened, but this is quite annoying and doesn't look great.

Without getting technical, this downgrade to IE has been looming for a few years. It's known as the Eolas ruling. Click here if you're interested in reading the details.

So, what can you do to fix this problem? You'll either need your web developer to do some JavaScript coding or, if you're an eager do-it-yourselfer, here's what Microsoft suggests.