Month: March 2011

Categories
Articles

How to make users scroll down your page

Interesting article on How to make users scroll down your page.

The size of the page they demonstrate is impressive – 19 feet tall!

Turns out that it's important to make it clear that the page isn't over at the fold, and they show a few techniques for encouring users to scroll – such as avoiding horizontal elements that might indicate that the page is over, using a background for the sides, and others.

They also point you to tools to see how far your users are actually scrolling down, such as Clicktale.

Categories
Book Review

Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and Conversion – Review

I've just finished reading Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and Conversion – by Ben Hunt. The book covers many ways to improve your traffic – and most importantly – how to improve the conversion rate you get from that traffic.

The book is divided in two parts. The first part is Designing for traffic.

This part of the book is about his ideas on how to get better SEO and relevant traffic – multiplicity, good keyword targeting and appropriate use of the Awareness Ladder.

The Awareness Ladder allows your site to reach deeper markets by covering multiple stages of the same market, starting at Step 0 – where people have a problem but don't yet realize they have a need for the solution you are offering – and step 5 – Convinced of your solution and ready to buy. Pages should go and gradually convert the user till they reach Step 5, and – very important – be targeted to catch users from all steps.

That also cover the multiplicity – your pages should cover each a good keyword, to get good SEO positioning. And what is a good keyword?

A good keyword should have low competition (so that you can get in at a good position), enough visitors, and be targeted to your solution. The book explains various ways to get these keywords, and their suggestion is why I got Market Samurai , which is a great tool for finding useful keywords.

The second part is Designing for conversion.

This part covers how to design, set and optimize your funnels – the path from your landing page to your goals. It also covers the specific design of pages, how to keep a visitor's attention and setting up your calls to action.

The book finishes with a coverage of how to optimize your site with Google Web Optimizer.

Overall, I really liked the book – to the point that after reading it I entered his Pro Design and Marketing course.

There is clearly a lot to be learned from this book. I've started adding simple extra landing pages to my site, with some promising results. I also have much more in the copious notes I took that I plan to apply over time to my sites.

Very much recommended – Convert!: Designing Web Sites to Increase Traffic and Conversion.

Categories
Software Release

STGThumb 3.0 and Picture Merge

Merge Options screen

I've just released version 3.0 of STGThumb.

The features added are related to STG Picture Merge. Picture Merge is an old, simple program from 2002, with a single purpose – merging two picture with an user-selected transparency setting. Recently it has become popular, due to several blog reviews.

Some users do a lot of images at once and asked for an easier way. STGThumb is the perfect way for me to do that and already does most of what was necessary.

What was added was the Merge a Picture setting, and the corresponding options:

New Merge a Picture options on STGThumb 3.0
Merge Options screen

It also includes a new Tools menu, which allows merging a single picture quickly, in the same exact way as the stand-alone program.

I may add extra options if users are interested – please comment below if there is anything you'd like.

Get STGThumb here.

Categories
Articles

Directory Report

A directory report can be very useful in your daily work. Many times you need a record of the files about an account or a customer, the files on specific disks or a MP3 player. A system administrator may need a report to check how a disk is being used – is it full of documents, or are your users storing movies and games?

The classical way of getting a simple directory report is using the command line and using dir > file.txt , or one of many variations.

For more advanced directory reports, you can use STG FolderPrint Plus. You can print or export your reports to many formats, such as text, CSV, PDF or Excel.

You can see whole disks at once, and choose many different file filters, including name, extensions, sizes or dates.

There are specific reports available too, such as the file type report, compact output and CD Covers.

File Type Report

Check it out now – STG FolderPrint Plus.

Categories
Software

Analytics360

Analytics360 Screenshot

Analytics360 Screenshot
Just added a new plugin to my main WordPress Install – Analytics360. It allows getting data from both Google Analytics
and MailChimp (where my mail lists are now).

It gives you Analytics data, complete with graphs, referrers and top content. The graphs show when you list campaigns were sent, so you can easily see their effect. It also has filters so you see distinct graphs, such as Total, CPC, Organic, Referral or e-mail list.

Further on the MailChimp side, it also displays subscriber graphs for any of your e-mail lists.

You can also set GA to show only the blog stats.

If you use both MailChimp and GA, it is pretty neat.

Categories
Articles

60 takeaways from Think Visibility Leeds

I hate to repeat myself, but I just received a new article from Wordtracker with more takeaways from a different conference.

Topics are Link Building, Social Media, Content Promotion, Video, SEO, Conversions, Domains, etc.

Recommended.

Categories
Articles

SES London 2011: 301 takeaways and top tips

Very cool advice on SEO on this article.

I took a TON of notes from it.

Recommended.

Categories
Articles

Print MP3 List

Print MP3 List page
Print MP3 List page

One of the many functions of STG FolderPrint Plus is to print mp3 lists, or export music lists.

It allows you to choose a number of fields, such as title,  artist, album, etc and include them when you print, export or view your file list.

You can also do batch Move/Copy of MP3 List- for example, if you decide that you want your music on a USB Drive in a folder with the Artist Name, then the Album name, you can do it in a few clicks.

You can also rename automatically using the MP3 Tags, which is very useful if your MP3 Player just displays a part of the file name.

One thing that all current books about web design reinforce is that different users should get specific landing pages. That is why the link above is to the new page specific to MP3 and Music. It's still very much a work in progress, but I have to say that I really liked how it looks with a 400 pixel wide screenshot image. The site was originally made (by me, using a purchased template) back in 2003, when the average resolution was 800×600, and 640×480 was still common.

On current resolutions, the screenshots look tiny!

I guess the next step is revising all product pages, and using STGThumb's Lytebox Album to show multiple screenshots using the same space.