| LED Digest 2066: Design Control Freaks, plus Audio |
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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 .............................................. January 3, 2006 Issue #2066 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ======= NEW ==================== --== Streaming Audio ==-- ~ Val Waldeck "I would like visitors to listen to my audio files... without downloading them." ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Screen Display Sizing ==-- ~ Jim Gatton "Last week I decided to dust off an old computer..." ~ Brad Waller "You do need to allow the visitor some control." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== The 'Net Habit of Skimming ==-- ~ Peter D'Aprix --== Marketing and Selling with eBay ==-- ~ Rebecca Neilson =========== NEW ================================== From: Val Waldeck Subject: Audio Files I would like to make it possible for visitors to listen to my audio files from my web site, without downloading them. Can someone advise me how to do this? Thank you for the digest, Adam. This is the only newsletter I actually spend time reading .. and I have done for years. I have learned much. Val Waldeck www.valwaldeck.com ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Jim Gatton Subject: Display size I find myself following virtually every discussion thread in the LED because I never know when I might find something of value to me professionally and/or personally and I've discovered lots over the years. I've learned not to give a "what's the big deal shoulder shrug" and move on to other threads without completely reading each one in order. This has been the case with all of the posts on display size. I shoulda known better than to think they were not of any practical value to me. I found the postings interesting but since I "knew" that I universally used percentages instead of pixels (just as Google does) the discussion really didn't apply to me. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! Last week I decided to dust off an old computer I'd been thinking about resurrecting anyway and hook up my 16" (diagonally. I guess it's really a 17"?) monitor to this old computer running an 800 x 600 display resolution. An 800 x 600 seems to be the least common (practical) denominator. Even Google doesn't display without sidescrolling at 640 x 480. Uh, at least on my two computer display combinations. Anyway, somehow just temporarily resetting my nice big LCD monitor to 800 x 600 was not to be trusted enough for this little experiment while following the LED thread. So I fired up the old combination and had "fun" checking out my more popular websites that I know display perfectly well but (coincidentally?) really don't make me much money. Oh, my God, what a mess! The first four out of five sites I checked necessitated scrolling side to side and fonts that seemed fine even on my resized LCD screen SCREAMED out at me on the smaller monitor / old computer. I've been putting in lots of time the last week reworking everything from font size to iframe dimensions and the sites are looking lots better. What a great difference it's made in my sites. Thank you everyone. Naturally I gave away my old 15" monitors last summer to a friend having a yard sale so now I'm in the market for another 15" monitor. I'm sure everything will be okay on the 15" monitor since it's now ok on the 17" but, well, that's where I was last Monday before firing up my old computer / monitor, too. You know where I was. My dreamworld where percentages made everything automatically ok. There are still problems. Compromises. I haven't decided whether to rework the tables on my bread and butter site yet (http://loans-finder.org.uk) because they do fit on an 800 x 600 running full screen, just not on a resized browser window, but you shoulda seen'em before last week! My advice to the other six design challenged readers of the LED is to fire up another monitor / computer combination or two and take a look at what you really have displaying to the public. You may be as shocked as I was (but I hope not) and as happy as I am that I finally took the display discussion to heart and did some investigating of my own sites. Jim Gatton ------- new post - same topic ------- From: Brad Waller Subject: Display size > ... the browser window size is also set so that the > content will fit nicely into a window that does not have > to be resized by the user. OK, I am a control freak > in a medium that offers precious little. - Peter D'Aprix, LED 2064 You are indeed a control freak. I checked out the site and I ran into a huge issue. I have no problems with any of your design choices, except for one. You resize the browser to 800x750. Why do you need that much control? Not only that, but you do this on every page. When I visited the site, the browser window shrank (I have it set to about 1080x1000 for the window, and this leaves 850x750 for the view port after all my sidebars and toolbars) so small that I had to scroll to view the site. So I dragged it back to the size I wanted, clicked on a page to view it and guess what? You shrank my window again! You do need to allow the visitor some control. If they re-size the window, let them keep it. Leave your site set up to the fixed size as it is, but leave the window alone, please! Brad Waller Manage and Sell your own site advertising http://adjungle.com waller, adjungle.com ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Peter D'Aprix Subject: Skimming > If most of us DO indeed skim, then we should really > start writing to cater to that habit, right? Then again - > when real substance and quality information are being > presented, keeping it tight and simple sometimes > just ain't possible... - Mada Tuedate, LED 2063 Actually I think that this thread is a very important one for web designers and should be really fully explored. Having received my first degree in Journalism, long before I received another in Photography, which was decades before I started creating web sites (OK, we have established that I have one foot in the grave already), I worked on a newspaper in Windsor, England, right across the road from one of the country cottages of a certain well known royal family. Both in my studies and practice on the newspaper, it was taken for granted that "skimming" was how people first approached almost any publication. That is why the concept of the pyramid in journalistic writing was established long before I was born. That is to say, to summarize the content and catch the eye with the bold headline. The first sentence expands on it with the first paragraph containing "what", "where" , "when", "how" and "why". If the headline catches the reader and he / she reads the first paragraph, they have a pretty good idea of the story. If they have continued interest, they will read the rest of the article. But nevertheless, the most important information comes first, all other information is prioritized with the least important coming last. This is not only to convey to the reader the most important information up front so if they stop reading part way through they will still have a pretty good idea of the content, but also so that if the editor only has just so much space, he can cut the story to fit the space and it will still make sense. Web sites really are no different. They are at their core an information delivery system. Information should be spoon fed at the beginning. Short sentences that are right to the point. Then links can lead to more content. I get very frustrated with sites that stop with the initial spoon full and leave me hanging, and many do exactly that with the idea, quite correctly, that visitors don't read much on sites. Many designers do this on purpose to prompt the visitor to pick up the phone and call so they can be sold by a sales person. Personally I just get annoyed and find someone else's site to get information from. We all behave a bit differently. But I think when visitors do find something worth their while to pursue, they really want all the information they can find. So they will skim until they do so. Then they will call. If you visit most newspaper's sites, this is exactly what they do. Check out http://iht.com as an example. You may also notice is does not fit well into an 800x600 12" laptop screen. I have found most of my clients don't want to fork over money for a professional copy writer which I think is a mistake. I can write copy, but I am no professional copy writer whose specialty is more than just expressing themselves well in language but concisely communicating facts and ideas in as few words as possible making it as understandable to the widest audience as possible, as quickly as possible, after that audience has been identified and targeted. Like freeway bill boards, you only have a few seconds to catch the interest of your visitor and hold him on your site. Part of that is the visual design, but the purpose of visual design is to direct the visitor's eye where you want it to go - the copy. SEO experts and site promotion professionals can be enormously successful in bringing visitors to a site, but once there, if you want to keep them, there is an art and science to doing so and part of that is catering to skimming. I would welcome any comments and enlargement of this theme. Obviously just how this is carried out depends on the target audience and the product or service on the site. I use this approach on my e-magazine (www.gourmetvoyageurs.com) devoted to doggie friendly high end eating establishments, I hope reasonably successfully. Although I have discovered that visitors do not use it as a magazine, in other words they don't come into the home page and work their way through. Rather, they have done a search for a particular region, town or restaurant and link straight to it. But even so, I try to have a headline and encapsulated first paragraph for each story. Sincerely Peter D'Aprix peter, daprix.com ------- new post - new topic ------- From: Rebecca Neilson Subject: eBay > I'd like to thank David Spahr [issue 2063] for his insights > into using eBay as a website marketing tool. I'm just wondering > if anyone knows of a good resource for learning more... - Tom Anson, LED 2065 Ebay has launched some new tutorials on how to use ebay more successufly and I have learned they have more coming. Another options is to join some of the discussion boards under the ebay community tool bar link. Others selling on ebay share some helpful information and experiences. Many of the discussion groups are regional and actually hold meetings where you can get together and talk face to face and learn how to sell and be more successful on ebay. I just checked my sales for December and they were over $2000 on ebay alone. For a small company like mine that is a nice add on sales. Rebecca Neilson H. L. Supply www.hansons.net ------------------------------------------------------- The LED Digest is sponsored by pair Networks: pair.com for Hosting | pairNIC.com for Domains Copyright 1995-2006 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. "One of the most striking differences between a cat and a lie is that a cat has only nine lives." - Mark Twain |
