| LED Digest 2681: The Old Guys Were Right |
|
|
|
==================================================
The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher The Internet Marketing Boutique: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. July 16, 2008 Issue no. 2681 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== White or Dark Backgrounds? ==-- ~ Rob Tillett "...many people find light-coloured text on dark backgrounds much harder to read..." ~ Leon Simmons "...examine the many excellent examples of graphics and typography that currently exist on the web..." ~ Martyn Gay "Changing the colours of a site certainly can have a massive impact on sales." --== Does Google Make You Stupid? ==-- ~ Dr.Mani "...contrary to making us 'stupid', [Google] is actually making us more 'intelligent'..." ~ Barry S Mills "The old guys were wrong and we were right all along..." ~ Michael Linehan "I think that in many horrible ways the old-line are totally right." ~ Andy Entwistle "Something which I would find valuable is a brief masterclass at the end of each post..." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Rob Tillett Subject: Backgrounds > I re-designed 64picks.com site back in > April and it now has a black background. > However, 12% of visitors have complained > that it is a strain on their eyes to go > back to sites that have a white background > (the majority of sites). - David Chapman, LED 2680 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2095/190/ You have a nice-looking site, David, but there is no doubt that many people find light-coloured text on dark backgrounds much harder to read, requiring a lot of concentration and eye-strain. This fact is well known in design circles. Read David Ogilvy (perhaps the greatest advertising guru) in his standard work, "Ogilvy on Advertising", who tested this and found that people did not read light text and dark backgrounds with anywhere near the ease that they read dark text on light backgrounds. In fact it turned (and still turns today) a hefty proportion of them right off. Remember, another site is just a click away. This applies mainly to sites that are designed to drive information and sales, rather than niche sites (like for example, horror movie sites, heavy metal band sites, "arty" sites etc). There is quite a bit of research available on the web on this. A point to bear in mind with regard to website design is that many people still have monitors that are quite harsh in their tone resolution, especially for white. Therefore an off-white tone is best to be used for the background and a shade of dark grey for the text, rather than simple black and white. Check the tones used on many of the highest volume sites and you will see what I mean. Of course it is not wise to select too pale a shade of grey for the text, for the readability diminishes rapidly. Hope this helps Rob Tillett Digital Online Technology http://www.astrologycom.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Leon Simmons Subject: Backgrounds I think that many members would agree that the site would benefit from a complete reconstruction as it does not conform to the accepted standards of web design. Quite apart from the bizarre choice of colours of the text and background, the actual design and layout are sub-standard to say the least. You need to examine the many excellent examples of graphics and typography that currently exist on the web and be influenced by their expertise. Sorry to be so harsh but I write as a former graduate of the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts and a professional Typographic Designer. Leon Simmons -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Martyn Gay Subject: Backgrounds > My question is should I provide a different > version of the site for marketing purposes? - David Chapman If you're suggesting having 2 different versions of the site for different ages then I think this will be impractical. You can "sniff" what browser and operating system a visitor is using and you can lookup their IP address to find where they are located, but you can't "sniff" what age they are. So you'd need to ask them to make a choice. Most people don't want to be bothered with questions like this. They want one site that is easy to use. From experience I've found that the difficulty of viewing sites with a black background can vary between different monitors. Some (usually CRTs) can really blur the text when the background is dark. I found that much of the text on your site was grey, which just didn't give sufficient constrast with the black background - I did find reading it was hard work - you could improve it a lot by just making this grey text white instead. Changing the colours of a site certainly can have a massive impact on sales. Some years ago we had a site selling one of our software products that had a white background with black text - fairly standard for software sites. During a redesign the background colour was changed to pale blue. Sales halved. At first we were unsure which element of the redesign was responsible, or whether it was just a natural random dip in sales. After a week or so we decided to keep the design but change the background to white. Sales resumed to their previous level. The interesting question this posed was whether there were any other simple changes we might make that would have doubled sales again? Martyn Gay ASP Shopping Cart Software www.cactushop.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian Subject: Stupid Google Take this as purely a personal opinion, because it sure is that (and maybe ONLY that!) I see the 'learning' process as being composed of a few distinct steps. The first is acquiring the 'tools'. Learning to read, write and count fall in this category too. And then, more sophisticated skills, use of equipment and aids, as well as developing networks to help along the way. The second is gaining access to relevant information. Books or tapes, school and college, training or apprenticeships come in this group. So does the Internet and the World Wide Web. The third is analyzing the data one acquires and drawing conclusions and lessons from them which one then applies in various ways, in work, career, business or life. The fourth is tweaking and revising this 'knowledge' in the face of experience, keeping the 'winners' and dropping the 'losers' - and in the process, becoming 'wise'. All of these together make up the 'learning' process. Google, and indeed the Web itself, comprises the second category of providing a wider, easier, faster, cheaper and vastly more extensive access to relevant data than has ever been possible earlier. The remaining 3 areas of learning are still individual - if it were not so, everyone with an Internet connection and ability to type www.Google.com into their browser window should be an instant genius! So, Google might have, in a sense, made us more 'lazy' - in that, it is now a more level playing field than before, with access to data being available to bigger masses of people. In the good old days, folks had to make an extra effort, incur a higher expense, to gain this data. That used to be a 'competitive advantage' - not any longer. But I would argue that Google, quite contrary to making us 'stupid', is actually making us more 'intelligent' or 'wise' overall - by taking the pain out of the second phase of the learning process. Now, to become wise, one needs to learn the tools that let you tap into Google power - and then, with that enhanced access to data, your potential to become wiser than the others without such skill is exponentially multiplied. However, you still have to analyze data, draw meaningful answers and turn it into INFORMATION - and then incorporate that derivative into the fabric of your knowledge base, subjecting it to the same old 'tests' of relevance and value. In that sense, Google FORCES us all to pull up our socks - and get MORE INTELLIGENT... not less! Just my 2 cents, as already mentioned :) All success Dr.Mani http://EzineMarketingCenter.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Barry Mills Subject: Stupid Google Great to hear from John Audette on this topic. I follow the thinking John, but I don't think you need to worry too much. If people don't know anything apart from how to find information, I don't think that makes them less intelligent. You could argue it makes them more so. When I was doing math(s) as school I was a bit of a whizz. Work soon knocked that out of me. But back at school, I noticed pretty early that I was hopeless at learning formulae and rules off rote, whereas other kids who weren't as good overall could do it easily. My teacher pointed out to me one day that this was probably because my brain could work out the formulae so quick I didn't need to learn them by heart. And so it is with today's consumer. They don't bother to carry as much knowledge around, because it's always available when they need it. Would anyone own a cheap sports car if there was always a Porsche with a tank full of petrol on every street corner that they could just help themselves to, free of charge? I think not. That's just theory, but there is more than a little evidence to back it up. Exhibit A - look at the conversion rate of web sites with reviews (for hotels, books, gadgets etc) vs those without. The rush to add review sections to the stragglers tells you all you need to know about the trend. Consumers do still do analysis, they do it more than ever, and they DEMAND information to base their decisions on. As we head into tougher economic times, I can only see this increasing. Relax John. The old guys were wrong and we were right all along :) Only problem is, I think we might BE the old guys these days! Barry S Mills Chairman Netstep http://www.netstep.co.uk -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Stupid Google > I'm gonna hate it if the old-line firms > have been right all along. - John Audette Well John, bad news. I think that in many horrible ways the old-line are totally right. People buy all kinds of useless and stupid rubbish all the time - and way too much of it. And they buy based on completely idiotic and illogical marketing messages such as, "BE FREE, with our SUV (just ignore that it cost $50,000 bucks and you'll barely be able to afford the gas)." People go into massive debt to keep up with the neighbours. The neighbours take on the sales hype and act as the acceptability and thought police for the companies, by shunning those who have a car more than two years old. > One of the things that I love about the > Internet is the ability to honor the > intelligence of our audience, to provide as > much drill-down as they want in order to > enable them to make informed decisions. And I think you're right too. There are a lot of people who've gotten really fed up with being treated like brainless sheep - who want to think about what they are buying - who want to compare real features and abilities - who want to buy intelligently. And an explosion in the ability to do that is one of the great things about the Internet. Michael Linehan, Marketing Alchemy www.marketing-alchemy.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Andrew Entwistle Subject: Google, Stupid, Etc. Hello from a long time lurker. I read with interest John Audette's post (#2680) and have to admit, some of his comments about only searching for 'I Need It Now' information sounded awfully familiar. I have been an amateur website developer for some years and have dabbled with a variety of different programmes to create images, content and code. Having grown up a bit over the years and finally come around to the 'no pain-no gain' idea, I've started hand-coding pretty much all of my new sites. It's not that I've also developed a masochistic side to my character, but more in an attempt to better understand how the purist SEO contributor to this post might see the world, as I find a lot of it going straight over my head. Since I started out, I've tried to get my head around HTML, then xHTML, then 'cheated' and used the w3 validator to get my head around the mysterious 'styles' coding. Then tried my hand at CSS and 'cheated' with a random website offering an all-you-can-eat buffet of tools and tricks. I have since started decided to knock all of this on the head and start doing things properly, but again, I find myself looking for the site that best suits my training needs, on any particular day. I read my LED Digest pretty much top to bottom, but I find reading and understanding some of the posts to be a challenge in itself, and often the only thing I can take from it is the 'thought for the day' at the bottom. I don't want to make any attempt to dumb-down the contributions, but there are a lot of us out there. Developing sites for friends, small businesses, local groups and small community clubs who don't have the luxury of taking time off work to visit the latest SEO conferences. We'd like to, and many of us would like to make developing sites into a more full time role but, chances are we'd still feel like we were just playing at it. I do enjoy reading the posts and (when I can follow them) they give a few good insights into what makes some of the best site developers tick. What the latest trends are and what we should be trying to learn next. And most importantly, they give me something else to think about learning, but I really think we could use this forum to help everyone develop 'white hat' SEO skills which everyone can follow. Something which I would find valuable is a brief masterclass at the end of each post which goes into a little bit of detail about a function or a piece of code which can help to better promote a site, or at least make it more user friendly. An explanation of a bit of software, acronym or code mentioned in one of the posts would be a great way of keeping me included in the reference material. For example, does anyone still dump a load of keywords into meta tags, or is there something more effective? Does anyone still belive reciprical links harm your visitor stats? Why can't I get my tables to stay where they're told etc etc... Just a few thoughts, but It'd be a shame if this post became more of an instant messager for a few at the top of their game, while we at the bottom stay struggling along and deciphering each post at a slow bumbling pace. Would be interested to know how others think about this. By the way, my sites not finished, but if you have any suggestions, I'm all ears (be kind !) Andy Entwistle www.tawcdirect.co.uk Register Free As A P/T Developer In Your Area (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "We see many who are struggling against adversity who are happy, and more although abounding in wealth, who are wretched." - Tacitus |
