Ever thought you had found the website you were looking for only to encounter that you are not quite where you expected to be but have arrived at the site’s introductory page instead. These somewhat annoying introductions are known as Splash Pages.
The introduction won’t let you on the site straight away but will provide you with a ‘helpful’ preview of what you can expect to see when you actually get there! The page will probably contain some ‘clever’ piece of animation that you will either have to wait for whilst it loads or you are given the opportunity to ’skip intro’ and go straight to the site (which is probably what you would have preferred to do in the first place).
Splash pages can be very popular with site owners but in our opinion aren’t necessary and can potentially have a negative effect on your website. Here are some reasons why;
1. Treat it like a shop - If you had a shop would you employ someone to stand in front of it, stop people from going in and give them a talk to explain what was in the shop? No? Then why do the same with your website.
2. Search Engines don’t like Flash - I know that Google has now developed ways to read text within Flash Content but flash animation can still mask your site from search engines. Search spiders are unlikely to be able to see beyond your animation to the content behind it.
3. Ask yourself why? - Why have you added the splash page? Most of the content included in these intros can be incorporated into the home page anyway. It is far better from a search engine perspective to have the landing page of your website containing relevant text alongside flash elements.
4. Hurdles - Why put hurdles in the way of customers trying to get to your product? Surely the correct idea is to remove these obstacles so that customers can reach your site quicker!!
5. Skip Intro - Our own research shows that most visitors click on ’skip intro’ anyway so your introduction probably isn’t even being seen.
It’s always nice to find a fix for a Internet Explorer specific bug although not nice the amount of time it takes to find. This particular one relates to setting the height of a <div> containing a background-image which, not unsurprisingly works fine in FireFox.
It is now possible to have the entire world in the palm of your hand and at the (iPod) touch of a button as Google have today launched Google Earth for iPhone and iPod Touch. The app is free and downloadable from the iTunes App Store. It contains all of the same functionality you would expect from Google Earth including, geo-located wiki articles, photos, 3D terrain modelling and so on.
I have too been watching the US, UK and arguably, the western world economy unravel over the last few months and weeks. And rightly so, there is much concern amongst business owners about the direct impact this will have on the UK ecomony.
One of the questions I get asked on a more and more frequent basis is will Miromedia suffer? Being a marketing based business, Marketing is usually one of the first costs to be slashed.
My considered response is the same for all. In times of need, we all look to cut costs (it’s not a bad practise in good times too). However, do you really want to be slashing at a proven, scalable and direct sales channel that if exploited, can bring a substantial return on investment? Do you want to be reducing a marketing channel that is accurately measurable and can touch a huge and targeted audience for a relatively low cost?
If your looking for effective sales channels to market your products through, then the internet is not only the way forward when times are good, but also when times are bad. Yes, it depends on what business you are in and yes, it does have to be considered as a marketable product or service online. However, I’ll leave you with this thought. If your looking for value for money or price/service comparison, where do you look?
How can looking back help you in the future? A funny question you may think. However, it is important to review your marketing successes. They can be built upon and your website can be a fantastic tool to assist in this area.
Consider looking into your customer base: how did they find you? If you factor in your leads as well, you may find that you have an excellent database to review for successful advertising.
How many of your clients found you through your website? How many have been referrals? What services do your leads enquire about?
These questions can be so helpful in finding out which areas of your business you would like to promote further.
For example, ask this question of your clients: What would you type into a search engine to find the products that you need? This sort of question could give you invaluable information on how to set out your web pages and who you want to appeal to. You may find keywords that you have not considered. You can then set out pages based around these words, which could give you an edge on your competitors.
I find it very interesting that computers seem so slow, when they are now at their most powerful. I’m starting to wonder if processing speed is a myth.
Alternatively, our computers are so busy now; because we’re always asking them to multi-task.
Question, are we asking our computers to do too many things at the same time? Am I stressing my computer out?
I’ve decided not to stress out my computer. So I limit the amount of programs running at one time.
If your computer seems slow, try closing all the windows that you are not using. This could help with the processing speed.
The Cloud is an interesting term that seems to be floating around at the moment.
The idea is that a large majority of the processing that your computer does can be done online. This could free up your computer’s processor to work more economically. A great idea in principal; but it’s very important that private information is kept secure.
I would advise anyone storing data online, to ensure it’s contained in a secure environment. After all, you wouldn’t give your personal information to everyone.
A hot topic at the moment is regional search - especially when talking Google. Research appears to indicate that online searchers are getting more practised at narrowing down search results by tacking on regional based keyword to key phrases, thus gaining more relative results to their locality. For example, searching for a Spa Break, the searcher would type ‘Spa Break Midlands’ rather than Spa Break.
This all seems to make a lot of sense. However, it appears that not that many site stakeholders are taking this seriously, or the few that are appear to be dabbling in repetitive duplicate content - only replacing the regional keywords within a standard body of copy and duplicating the page site-wide. Only time will tell if this is considered good practise or not. Surely, you could argue that each page is being targeted specifically to each region, town, city, and therefore has a specific and bonafide purpose within the site (not duplicate content)?
The Miromedia Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) team are researching this area at the moment, and have had some excellent success with work we have done in this area. However, we have taken the time to be create with each individual page and how we produce the onpage content.
It appears that all at Miromedia have been so busy with customer projects over the last month, we’ve had no time to update our blog. Well watch this space, because we have plenty to say about Online Marketing, SEO, Email Marketing, Web Design and other more general comment - and not just focused within our industry. So, come on Miro guys, pull your blogging fingers out. Maybe we can even get Roland to produce a Hungarian blog!
All good things come in 7s don’t they? The seven wonders of the world, seven pillars of wisdom, the film Se7en, the Caterham 7. But of course like so many things in life where there is light there is also dark… the seven deadly sins.
So, with that in mind here are 7 tips for optimising your CSS. I think that it’s like a lot of things that seem pretty obvious once you’ve read them but until someone points it out and says “why don’t you do that like this”, you don’t think to do it. On a seperate, note this made me laugh. Yes people actually bought an Apple iPhone App priced at $999.99 (max price allowed on the app store) and the developer is now $5600 richer! just a bit annoyed that I didn’t think of it.
