| LED Digest 2583: Social Media Gets Dull |
|
|
|
==================================================
The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.WillMaster.com/LED : the LED's Key Sponsor Will Bontrager Builds Powerful Software for your Website http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== Guest Moderator: Published by: Nathan Holley LED Digest nate, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. February 5, 2008 Issue no. 2583 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= <Guest Moderator> ~ Nathan Holley "How useful is it really to vote for a story?" --== Clients Providing Crap Content ==-- ~ Ann Richmond "...walk away from business that you believe is morally wrong." ~ Viggie Bala "Web designers usually compare themselves with Architects..." ~ Brett Atkin "I'm getting to the point where I want/need challenging projects with great clients..." ~ Big Bill "...hiring an SEO is like hiring a pilot to guide your ship into port." ~ William Ernest Waites "Why buy a dog and bark yourself?" --== HTML Validation - Who Cares? ==-- ~ Tom Aman "Did anyone ever consider that their search engine placement could be adversely affected...?" ======== CONTINUING =============================== <Guest Moderator> Wow, things are really cranking here. Guess I lend a little magic to the list. ;) Here's two things I was thinking of yesterday: 1) Adam IM'd me this post by Lee Odden about a YouTube wanna-be viral video. Looks to be using intentionally contraversial content to stir up attention. Base appeal to emotion here, it looks a real stinker of a launch to me. http://www.toprankblog.com/2008/02/you-make-me-sick-viral-video-response 2) There's a great deal of buzz lately about social media becoming tired. Personally, I was tired of it long ago. I still use some social sites for marketing purposes. But I'm not interested in using them for fun, really not into wasting time playing "you're a zombie" of Facebook. Will social media sort of die out, at least a bit, after the hype wears off? How useful is it really to vote for a story? So what, you gave it a vote - whoopee-freakin'-doo. It means nothing. Feel free to disagree :) Yours temporarily, Nathan Holley -------------------- From: Ann Richmond Subject: Professionalism > In business, we must always weigh our moral > and legal obligations as 'professionals' > against our obligations as business owners. > Sometimes, the two are in direct conflict. - Marty R. Milette, LED 2582 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1997/190/ Quick reply to the subject of professionalism. We have learned you have to walk away from business that you believe is morally wrong. I am not talking layouts and color schemes. I am talking really morally against what you believe. The same for legally wrong. It is a much smaller world then we think and you never want to compromise your integrity. You still have to live with the man in the mirror. thanks Ann Richmond www.randrinc.com ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= Latest addition => Spam Resistant PHP Form WebSite's Secret Members area access to a collection of Will Bontrager's handy web tools. http://www.willmaster.com/AreaSecret ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Viggie Bala Subject: Professionalism > The one thing that grated on me just a > little bit was the idea, although no one > explicitly said this, that web designers > always know best when there is a difference > of opinion between the designer and the > site owner. I'm not sure that can be left > unchallenged. - Jim Gatton, LED 2581 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1996/190/ Jim Gatton had an interesting view on web design from client side. Web designers usually compare themselves with Architects, while in business sites, most clients see them as just 'builders'. When these clients expect a functional building that can be an uninspiring rectangle box, the designers imagine and toil to create landmarks (which the client feel would confuse visitors and reject). I don't usually do 'web design' as I tend to be more 'functional' than 'looks' (Web2.0 - I often claim!). But when I do design, clients often surprise even a dull designer like me. On more than one occasion, I did 2 layout designs for client approval and added a third one as an after thought, more as a dumb layout that will make other two look better when viewed together. But on each occasions, the clients (different people) opted for third one. And some even raved at the looks (yikes!). I initially opted not to use them in my portfolio. But after seeing some clients opting for such design I've added them as well. Who knows, some one might be thrilled enough to call me :) 'Good looks' are certainly subjective. What a designer usually consider 'below par', might be 'perfect' for clients. And at least on design, the client is always right. cheers, Viggie Bala Helping websites to work http://www.viggie.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Brett Atkin Subject: Professionalism Jim I can appreciate your situation and I'm sorry you're having a bad experience. I too ask clients to give me examples of sites they like. Sometimes there is a disconnect between the solution they need and the sites they provide as examples. When that is the case, I ask the client additional questions about their choices. If they are looking for an e-commerce solution and they show me sites that aren't e-commerce based, we need to talk about expectations. I don't know the particulars of your situation, but if you gave the designer 4 examples and they didn't think they fit with your objectives, they should have asked for a meeting to discuss the direction and objectives of the site from their side of things and yours before any work was started. Just as an aside, did you review the designer's previous work? Did you like it? How does your designer only know you by your "screen name"? Have you never met the designer or talked over the phone? I'm not defending your particular designer because based on what you told us, what they did was wrong but... If you hire an accountant to do your taxes, do you expect him to do what is correct or just what you want? If you hire a contractor to build you a sunroom, do you expect him to build what you laid out on a napkin or build the sunroom to code? My point is that when you hire someone to do a job such as web design, you should be hiring them for their knowledge and experience as well as their design ability. I've been doing this for 10 years, I read blogs, books and newsletters on the subject daily (not just web design but marketing, promotion, SEO, PPC, etc.). I don't live in a vacuum. I think I have a pretty good handle on things related to the internet. Seriously, if you want a web site that looks a certain way and don't care to utilize the knowledge and experience of the designer, I would hire a student or off-shore the work (although it sounds like you might be doing that already if the designer doesn't know your real name), it will be cheaper and you'll get exactly what you want. What happens after that is entirely up to you. I'm not a great designer, I would consider my "designs" (how pleasing they are to eye) about average, but my designs work for the client. They aren't hiring me for the eye candy, they are hiring me for my experience and knowledge. Within reason, the client is always right. By I feel it is my obligation (up to a point) to use what I've learned in my years of doing my job to provide the best solution(s) possible whether it is at the start of the project or anytime after that. My initial question was what to do when the client starts to do things that you (as their designer/consultant) think aren't in their best interest. From the link you provided Jim, you're in the insurance business. When a client wants a particular package, with a certain deductible and co-pay that you just know isn't right for them based on your experience, do you tell them or sell it to them anyway? The responses I've read here have mirrored the advice I heard at the recent SEED Conference. I'm getting to the point where I want/need challenging projects with great clients (clients that appreciate what I bring to the table) over needing money to pay the bills. And that means either saying no and explaining why or "firing" the client. Thanks for the perspective from the client's point of view. I know my post and I think the comments to my post were about wanting to do what is right for the client, not about imposing our own will on the client. We are hired to do a job and it is frustrating when we aren't allowed to do it. Professionalism goes both ways. When it does, great things can happen. When it doesn't, well, you know what happens... Brett Atkin http://www.BrettAtkin.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Big Bill Subject: Professionalism People should realise that hiring an SEO is like hiring a pilot to guide your ship into port. You don't hire a pilot and then say to them "I don't want to go that way into harbour, I want to go THAT way and it's your job to see that I can". That isn't how it works. If people don't respect what you tell them, you don't have a working relationship, simple as that. BB -------- new post - same topic -------- From: William Ernest Waites Subject: What do you do when? David Ogilvy said it well. "Why buy a dog and bark yourself?" Tell your client not only what would be wrong but also WHY it would be wrong. If you can't support your argument with logic about why it is more beneficial to listen to you, may you are wrong. Ultimately, the person who signs the check gets to make the call. Sincerely, William Ernest Waites Eyewriter "Words that make pictures." (c) ========= Begin Sponsor Message ========= One Way Links to your Site, by the Hundreds? Yes! Get Traffic and Link Popularity to Your Site from Legitimate, General Interest Web Directories. DomainDrivers Makes It Hassle-Free. Details Here: http://www.domaindrivers.com/directory-submissions.html ========== End Sponsor Message ========== -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: HTML validation > Can anyone share a *good* reason why I > should care whether an HTML validator likes > my use of quotes around multi-word > attributes only? - Mark Whitman, LED 2130 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/29/190/ This observation (among others) was recently made: > ... don't think that because you don't see > a need that it is not there. If you have > been schlepping out invalid HTML with no > regard for DOC type or understanding of > what it is... Billing your sites as > professional web development... You are > again guilty of misrepresenting the > capability of your work. - Jon Diamond, LED 2579 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/1994/190/ Interesting because over the last few days I had been considering a post on the importance of having valid HTML and CSS code. I recently updated by site (that, for personal reasons, had not been changed for a very long time) and decided that I would go for 100% valid "HTML 4.01 Strict" and ensure that every page, including those generated via ASP, would validate to standard. After the first few pages, I quickly learned the common things I was doing wrong so, overall, it really didn't take a great deal of extra time to get it right - probably less than 5 minutes per page. (The next phase will be to remove most of the embedded styles and put them in a style sheet so I can easily change the site appearance by just changing that style sheet.) One thing I realized right away is that, using styles, all attributes become multi-word. So one reason to always use quotes is just to be in the habit of using them so it becomes automatic when dealing with any version of HTML source code. An aside: In developing my software for checking links on sites, I am continually amazed at the really awful coding (errors) on some sites and the number of times a critical quotation mark or ending comment tag is missed. The page *appears* to display OK, but actually is not as intended. Aside from that is the more general validation issue. Responses to the original post tended to support the "good enough". "It works OK in the major browsers so why bother being so fussy?" Bear in mind that browsers are designed so that, if they hit something they don't understand or find wrong, they just ignore it and try to render the page as best they can. But are you sure it will it still work OK in the next upgrade of the browser? And are you sure that major browsers are *all* you have to consider? Case in point: I am looking at developing some site analysis tools. Rather that write my own parser again (takes a lot of programming to do this properly and make it robust enough to handle some of the garbage HTML out there), I was checking out a third party component from a long established company to do the parsing. Part of my testing involved picking pages at random from a variety of sites and checking the parsing result. On one site, the parser gave an error in the middle of the page and stopped parsing. The page loads fine (?? maybe, but what would it look like without the error) in both IE and Firefox in spite of an error in the HTML code that a validator would have caught. That made me wonder about the effect of that particular error on things like the search engine spiders - would they deal with the problem like a browser and ignore it and do the best they could or would they just give up at that point like the parser I was testing? Did anyone every consider that their search engine placement could be adversely affected because of an HTML error that a validator would have caught? (The error in the case I ran into was a misplaced ">" that a validator would have caught.) The other thing that surprises me is the number of sites that have errors in their Javascript code. When one is encountered, IE will indicate an error in the status bar at the bottom of the browser window on the lower left. Clicking that icon will open a window identifying the line and character number where the error was found along with an error message about what it considers wrong. At that point I always wonder if I am seeing the page as was intended. Also, why did the Javascript writer not check it out? Aside from all that, it seems to me that it would be a really good marketing point for any design shop to be able to state that all of their code (HTML, XHTML, CSS, ASP or PHP generated, etc.) conforms to the W3C standard and will validate correctly with the W3C validator. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- |
