| LED Digest 1868: Buyer Beware |
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================================================== The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Reg. from a Trusted Leader pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam,led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com ............................................... September 14, 2004 Issue #1868 ............................................... .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Moderator Comment> ~ Back in Action --== The Future of SEO ==-- ~ Michael Linehan --== Why the Rank? ==-- ~ Dirk Johnson ~ David Betterton ~ Donald Nelson --== Alternative Browsers ==-- ~ John Barrick ~ Steven Rothberg ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Miva on Macs ==-- ~ Susan Reid-Pfau --== StoreFront 6.0 - Buyer Beware ==-- ~ Julie Linhart ===== CONTINUING ================================= <Moderator Comment> Greetings LEDer, After an amazing adventure on my honeymoon, I'm ready to get back into my normal routine. Well, sort of. It was actually kinda nice to be away from email and work for so long. I felt free and unencumbered -- but I did sort of miss the LED and you of course :-) After our wedding, Sally and I headed to the East coast to visit family for a week. Then we launched out towards Scotland and toured the Highlands for another week or so, before heading down to London and then finally Germany. It was wonderful, but it's also pretty good to be home. Thank you Veronica! Veronica moderates so well. I knew that leaving the LED in her capable hands was a no-brainer. What I had forgotten was her unique ability to develop threads and contribute without ever being heavy handed. Very professional and something to learn from. Thanks again, Veronica :-) I'll try to get back into the swing of things here. Just wresting with all the sp*m and such. We'll stick with the Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday schedule for now. Hope business is good. Adam -------------------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Future of SEO In the debate about the accuracy of David Yancey's predictions [issue 1866], the one thing that is certain is that the Web will change drastically over the next few years. Since Mosaic 1.0, we've gone from no commercial content, to the goldmine where anyone could be found because there was so little, to the age of the free search engines, then the rise of SEO, overlapping with the rise of paid inclusion and ads. So whoever is the most correct in their precise predictions, the Web is probably going to be as unrecognizable in 5 years as it would be now to someone who hasn't logged on since 1995. For myself, I think Mr. Yancey makes many good points. My brief way to say it is that the Web is becoming more and more like any mainstream medium. The mass of people who can barely send an email are not going to learn skillful searching in Google. They're to going want the online equivalent of what they're familiar with. As with any marketing, and as Mr. Yancey wrote, "If you have a website that is intended to generate revenue, you need to consider *all* the sources of potential traffic. All potential sources of leads need to be understood, and then compared in terms of their potential ROI." Flexibility is touted by many as the primary modern business skill, and that is most true of all on the Web. Michael Linehan Marketing Alchemy ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Dirk Johnson Subject: Why the Rank > My client is baffled, and so am I. Why does this site have > number 1 ranking in Google? www.olympus.net/personal/brewster . > If you search for "book designer" as an exact phrase, it's > first out of 15,000. There's very little content overall - The > site has a tiny number of pages, a couple of which have > almost no text. There are hardly any links to the site. - Michael Linehan, LED 1867 This site benefits from it's status as a sub-directory of olympus.net, an ISP that is probably too small to be recognized by the search engines for what it is. It flys under the radar. So, the sub-pages on http://www.olympus.net/ may benefit from the links that point to the host. And the pages for this site are not *that* bad, really. Also, I doubt that the competition (excepting your own client, of course!) for the relevant term "book designer" is really that strong, in terms of both optimized page structure and linking. Best regards, Dirk Johnson, Owner LinkStrategy.com http://www.linkstrategy.com djohnson, roiwebsites.com ------- new post - same topic ------- From: David Betterton Subject: Why rank Michael The page which is at No 1 is this one: http://www.olympus.net/personal/brewster/About.html This page (note the site's Home Page) scores well because it is optimised for the phrase "book designer", and has plenty of focused content. The contents of the site's Home Page is not the issue. Google ranks individual pages on their merits. Hope this is the answer you needed best wishes David Betterton Travel Logic Associates http://www.tlogic.co.uk ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Donald Nelson Subject: why rank In LED 1867 Martin Linehan asks why a rival site ranks number one in Google for the phrase "Book Designer". He mentioned that this page has very little content. I went online and found that it is actually one of the sub-pages of this site [URL already listed above] that enjoys the high ranking. This page is rich in content and uses correct optimization methods (like putting the key phrase in an h1 tag), and most importantly is a good match for anyone looking for a book designer. So, rather than being a mystery, this page is a good example of how search engines are providing relevant results and how properly presented content is rewarded with high rankings. Sincerely, Donald Nelson http://www.a1-optimization.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: John Barrick Subject: Alternative browsers > Why would I design for other browsers first when the > majority are using IE? I thought it made more sense > to design for the majority, and tweak for the minority. - Kathryn Martyn, LED 1867 You share a very popular sentiment. The simple answer, for me, is that there are industry standards for the way HTML and CSS are supposed to be rendered in a browser. This link will have more info ( http://www.w3.org/ ). Most browsers come pretty close to following these standards. The various flavours of IE are not as compliant with these standards. Why use web standards? http://snipurl.com/91rd [dkeithrobinson.com] Each browser that issues updates tries to stay as compliant as they can within their development cycle - I'm being generous here. Some stay closer to the standards than others, but they all generally work their way toward these standards. IE, being the least compliant, requires the most "tweaking" and "hacking" to get code to display as you intend. Therefore, coding first for IE results in code that to some degree, in my experience, is broken in every other browser I view it in. You're creating code that, if it concerns you, is dependent on IE's deficiencies. "The IE Factor" http://www.stopdesign.com/log/2004/01/26/ie_factor.html A quote from the link directly above: "Can you get away with developing in IE? Of course. Is it easier? Generally not. If you don¹t care about the fringe browsers, then you¹ll get away with it." Which brings us around to my original statement, which is advice from me to you. "Never start your web site viewing in IE unless that is the only crowd you are interested in." John Barrick ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Steven Rothberg Subject: Alternative browsers I agree that it makes much more sense to set up your web site so that it works well in IE and then try to tweak it so that it works well in other browsers as well. I don't recall the percentages exactly, but I believe I read recently that about 96 percent use one form or another of IE. While there may be some sites that have a much larger percentage of non-IE browser users and it would therefore make sense for those site owners to be concerned about those non-IE browser users, I am not. Since founding this business in 1991 and going on-line in 1996, I've run a profitable business and attribute it largely to two golden rules: (1) I strive to ensure that all investments have a positive return within six months and (2) I use the 95-5 rule as much as I possibly can. By way of explanation, I want to see a positive return within six months because that helps to ensure that my investments are of a low risk. There is already so much risk in running a job board that I can't control that it doesn't make sense for me to pile on even more risk if I can avoid it. As for the 95-5 rule, I try to spend 100 percent of my time worrying about the 95 percent and zero percent of my time worry about the five percent. Do I lose some traffic to people using browsers that only they, their mothers-in-law and their dogs have heard of? Of course. But isn't that a better alternative than spending hours and hours chasing after an incredibly small number of users who at best are non-conformists and therefore are pretty unlikely to be customers or at worst sincerely believe that they know better than everyone else and therefore are even less likely to be customers? Steven Rothberg The Highest Traffic Job Board for Students & Grads http://www.collegerecruiter.com Steven, collegerecruiter.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Susan Reid-Pfau Subject: Displaying Miva Merchant on Macs I maintain a Web site for http://www.chooseydiapers.com, which uses a Miva Merchant v4.20 (compiled) ecommerce system. Over the past 8 months we've had two complaints from customers who are viewing the Miva pages with a Mac. According to the customers, the light purple navigation bar that is supposed to be near the top shows up in the middle of the page, covering product information. Also, the drop-down menus from the tabs across the top don't line up and a different category is highlighted when the mouse is over another category, making site navigation very difficult. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who has a Mac so I can do some testing (I've even tried our local Kinkos and library). I was able to get help from our local Mac dealer who did screen shots for me... there is definitely a problem. Here's what I've found: Using a Mac (OS/9) with IE v5.0 (2022) I can see the issue: the "tabs" don't appear at all and the navigation bar (which starts with Store Front, Account, etc.) shows up in the middle of the page, overlapping other things on the page. The same result on another mac using IE v5.2.3 (5815.1). Using a newer browser called Safari (v.1.2.3.) the site shows up (almost 100%) fine in Safari. The drop-down boxes are not completely lined up with the category tab boxes and the highlighting on the drop-downs is off when the mouse is pointed at a category, but it looks okay. I did some research and found some items which said that I needed a doctype statement on the Miva pages. (The doctype statement is not automatically included on the Miva pages, and will be difficult to add on the compiled version of Miva, but that's a question for the Miva forum.) I made a "static" page, copying a Miva-generated page and adding the doctype statement. The original page is at: http://snipurl.com/91rj [chooseydiapers.com] I added the doctype statement to the static page at: http://www.chooseydiapers.com/taffetainfantbib.html This doesn't appear to make any difference. I'd appreciate it if anyone out there using a Mac could take a look at these pages and give me some insight on code changes I could make to improve the appearance of the Miva pages on a Mac, especially making the navigation work. Also, if you know of a place (online) where I can simulate viewing these pages on a Mac that would be very helpful. Thank you!! Susan Reid-Pfau sreidpfau, earthlink.net ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Julie Linhart Subject: Storefront 6.0 Well hopefully this won't sound like sour grapes, it is meant as a big warning. I spent a long time trying to find a new shopping cart for my website. Looked at so many. I was using Storefront 5.0. It did the job. It seemed to have a few glitches and it didn't do everything that I had wanted, but it worked - but as my business has grown I was looking for ways to improve the shoppers experience as well as automate certain aspects of my business. When all was said and done, I ended up buying the upgrade to Storefront 5.0 which was Storefront 6.0. Well I'm no genious, but I couldn't figure how to integrate this cart with my current site, so I thought ok hire a programmer. I did and he too had trouble figuring out how to integrate this cart with my current site. Time went by - and I finally contacted Storefront - they told me they could do it but I would need to pay for a website design upgrade as well because their product would not automatically integrate with my site and in order to keep the look consistent throughout my whole site a website design upgrade would be necessary. Now keep in mind that I paid nearly US$700 for the shopping cart upgrade, but then Storefront tells me they could fix me up for another $1300. Well needless to say I was not looking at paying that kind of money as this site is a secondary business to my main internet business, so I thought long and hard about it and talked to another programmer to see if he could somehow tweek Storefront 5.0 to do what I wanted it to do. He felt he could add what i needed for a real minimum price. So now I have asked Storefront for a refund on 6.0 and due to the fact that I am outside of the 30 day policy, they will not refund my money. They expect me to keep an incompatible cart. So I guess I am here with a warning to all. Storefront 6.0 may or may not be a good shopping cart, but one thing that is for sure is that it is not compatible with current sites, especially sites with ASP pages. The other warning is that Storefront may not be a company people should deal with as they really only cared about selling their product, not making sure that long time past customers were happy. I think it unfortunate that a company such as them could not see that the right thing to do in this situation was to offer a refund. I still had their old product that I was going to continue to use, I just didn't want their incompatible new product. Buyer Beware! Thank you, Julie Linhart, CGO - Chief Gifting Officer http://www.giftbasketboutique.com ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2004 Adam Audette. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "The future's already arrived; it's just not evenly distributed yet." - William Gibson |
