| LED Digest 2222: Shoeboxes Full of Domains |
|
|
|
It's a classic! And how 'bout that issue number? A great discussion on
usability, some interesting strategies for old domains, and much more.
==================================================
========== NEW ===================================The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom pair Networks: The LED's Web Host Hosting and Domain Registration 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 ............................................. August 10, 2006 Issue no. 2222 ............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ====== NEW ====================== <Moderator Comment> ~ Milestones ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Best Use of 'Trashed' Domains? ==-- ~ Chris Nielsen "...you are like someone that has a bunch of shoeboxes full of old baseball cards..." ~ Rod Aries "Can I see a list of the domains?" ~ Renee Kennedy "It also depends on how viable the domain names are." --== Membership Perks ==-- ~ Mary Findley "...send a monthly newsletter just to members." --== Usability Factors ==-- ~ Tom Aman "...User Interface design is a specialized field in its own right." ~ Steve Pronger "I've long advocated simple, clean designs with a minimum of distractions." --== Shopping Carts ==-- ~ Reg Charie "Have you looked at any open source solutions?" --== Site Re-design from Scratch ==-- ~ Michael Linehan "...consider what is the best use of your time for the next weeks and months." ==== BILLBOARD =================== --== Marketing with MySpace ==-- ~ Ivan Jimenez --== Site Tracking Tools ==-- ~ Nathan Holley <Moderator Comment> How 'bout that issue number, eh? Pretty cool. It's a milestone, too. Speaking of milestones, our 10th anniversary of the LED Digest happens January 28, 2007. Any ideas for a way to celebrate? Hope it's a good week, Adam PS - I know of several LEDers who are attending SES. Hey, fill us in! I know there are multitudes of updates at different sites online, but none from LEDers (at least that I've found so far...). PPS - Sorry about the size of this issue. It's a good one, though. ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Chris Nielsen Subject: Trashed domains > Is there anything whitehat I can do with these > domains that would benefit from the constant > robot visits or is it best to just let them bite the dust? - Jim White, LED 2221 You have a number of options, and you are like someone that has a bunch of shoeboxes full of old baseball cards, that you have been collecting for many, many years. They could be worth very little, or you could have some real "treasures" there. The first thing would be to talk to someone that can make an educated guess on what they are worth. I feel this is largely speculation, but there are some factors that people have experience with that can help gauge what they may bring on the open market or bidding situation. At the very least you should get the list of domains out to people who many be interested in them and give them a chance to pay you something for them. I am sure there are those that are drooling over the idea of attending a domain "garage sale" and picking through what you have. Heck, I'm interested. Send me a list and I'll post them on a couple of my domain sites for you; after I look them over... You don't mention what kind of content is on the sites, but working on the content could improve what you are seeing. Of course that involves work and / or money. Hosting those domains with a parking service that pays you might be the way to go. Some provide content that can increase traffic and then you split the income with them. Our service provides content for poor or bad domains, but we keep all the income. We only increase traffic and backlinks for the domain owner. We may allow you to sell the site we create for the domain, or buy it outright, which could results in more earnings for you. If you have a real estate lot, you can sell it. If you have a house (or a hotel...) on it, you can get more money for it. There are a number of sites that list domains for sale and of course there is always eBay. And a network of sites is not a bad idea. I am involved with two currently and the thing is that each site in your network must be able to stand on it's own. One of the networks I have needs to have some of the sites upgraded and replaced and I am working on that as I have time. One of the biggest mistakes domain and site owners make is having an inflated sense of what the item is worth. If all you see is your "clever" domain name, or the site that you sweated over for a couple of years, then you won't understand that others don't have the same appreciation for a hyphen-infested domain, or site with the garish colors. Then again, they may be trying to beat you up on the price. :-) Thank you, Chris Nielsen www.domainincubation.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Rod Aries Subject: Trashed domains Can I see a list of the domains? It would be easier to comment then. thanks :) Rod Aries -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Renee Kennedy Subject: Trashed domains Jim, How many domains are you talking about? How old are they? Is there any possibility of building content on them? If they are health related, check out http://www.buyhealthdomains.com - you would be able to list them there for free, plus they have a content builder that automatically creates the content for a parked domain. Or you might place Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing on them and content on the home page of each - there are a lot of free article directories where you could grab content: ezinearticles.com ideamarketers.com goarticles.com e-healtharticles.com It also depends on how viable the domain names are. If they aren't very good - lose them, maybe too much work to try and salvage them. If they seem like they would be good names - try to sell them... Check out: sedo.com trafficz.com Hope that helps, Renee Kennedy -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Mary Findley Subject: Memberships > We are trying to find some "member only perks" > that we can offer our paid membership... - Mark Roberts, LED 2221 Good morning Mark, I belong to a few organizations. All of the organizations charge non-members double what they charge members for dinner. The difference then becomes their "membership" fee. One organization sets defined topics for discussion for each meeting. General based topics are discussed during the first half hour. Only members are allowed to stay for the more "detailed" topics and discussions. If anyone in attendance asks a question that is part of any of the more "detailed" portions of a meeting, it is answered during member-only time. If the questions is asked by a non-member they are referred to check the list of members who can help them during regular business hours. Those members of course charge for their consultations. All attendees are given an outline of the entire evening's agenda so non-members immediately realize they are missing the most valuable part of the meeting. Also send a monthly newsletter just to members. Then send a second newsletter to non-members summarizing the content of the "member" only part of that month's meeting. The one organization I belong to that does this has a tremendous conversion from non-member to paid membership because that portion of the meeting is packed full of invaluable tips and suggestions as is their newsletter. Mary Findley Mary Moppins http://www.goclean.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Usability > This doesn't seem to bother Microsoft. Just have > a look at MSN's home page. - Steve Pronger, LED 2220 This was a comment on my post about Jakob Nielsen's comment on "Non-Standard Links" where it states "Violating common expectations for how links work is a sure way to confuse and delay users, and might prevent them from being able to use your site." Personally, I find many parts of various Microsoft sites a pain to navigate and the MSN sites are among the worst. You cannot tell exactly what is a link for sure (just about everything in blue is) but the worst part is that, after visiting a link and coming back to the home page, there is nothing to indicate which links you have already visited. My ISP is Sympatico (Canadian) and their home page is an MSN site (http://sympatico.msn.ca/) with lots of content. But I usually give up in frustration after visiting 4 or 5 interesting items because I lose track of which items I have already seen. Just because a site represents a big company does not automatically make it user friendly with a good UI. > Mr Nielsen obviously knows a lot about usability, but it seems > to me his concept is taking it to the extreme, at the expense of > any sort of design integrity. Would you really want your > commercial website to look like [Jakob Nielsen's site]? Doesn't have to look like his site - the *real* design challenge is to produce a great looking site that still meets all of the usability criteria. > I think common expectations on how links work > have changed in the last decade. Expectations on how links work have not really changed in the last decade except that surfers are prepared to be frustrated by not being able to easily pick out the links or figure out the navigation or not be able to display the page properly at their prefered display size with their prefered text size. Back to the quote from my original post: Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience states that "users spend most of their time on other websites." If your site is too different, users may not bother sticking around. I also quote comments on links from a totally different site (http://usability.gov): -------------------- "Generally, it is best to use the default text link colors (blue as an unvisited location / link and purple as a visited location / link). Link colors help users understand which parts of a website they have visited. In one study, providing this type of feedback was the only variable found to improve the user's speed of finding information. If a user selects one link, and there are other links to the same target, make sure all links to that target change color." -------------------- Of particular interest is the section "Research-Based Web Design Usability Guidelines" at: http://usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html This gives all kinds of guidelines and, usually, the reasons for them. It also gives useful information I have never seen elsewhere. For example, regarding font sizes, it points out that fonts typically will display 2 or 3 points smaller on a Mac system than the same font on a Windows system. And from the site "Beginner's Guide >> Building a Traffic-Worthy Site" at http://www.seomoz.org/articles/bg5.php : -------------------- "Standards like blue, underlined links, top and side menu bars, logos in the top, left-hand corner may seem like rules that can be bent, but adherence to these elements (with which web users are already familiar) will help to make a site usable." -------------------- Designers should bear in mind that User Interface design is a specialized field in its own right. Most Web site designers, professional or otherwise, are not UI experts and are strongly influenced by other things and their own preferences (myself included). Those with a printed page background tend to try to translate that experience to the Web, sometimes with good success, sometimes not because some things don't work so well on a variable size computer display area. Others like the *neat* things that can be done with Javascript, Flash, etc. and want to include that on their pages. Still others want to make the pages they design really unusual / different / unlike any others. In software development and systems design, many companies will spend thousands and thousands of dollars trying to get the UI right. IBM spent $60,000 on one project and ended up saving $6,000,000. Some get it so right that the UI is almost totally intuitive and you can use the program almost without reading the manual. Others get it so wrong (maybe they didn't spend the dollars on the UI design) that, even with extensive reference to the user manual, the program is almost unusable because it is so hard to figure out how to use many of the features, even for commonly required tasks. Most software falls somewhere in between but, most of the time, the really successful versions on the market are the ones that are easiest to use because they involve the shortest learning curve (best UI). When a user visits your site, particularly for the first time, you need the shortest learning curve possible since you may only have seconds to keep the surfer there. So why would you want to go for the fancy, the different, the really unusual, that takes time to figure out so the learning curve is longer? Staying within the standard (a link is blue and underlined, a visited link is purple and underlined) means no learning curve at all except for understanding the purpose of the site by reading the clear text. The design challenge is to stay within the basic usability criteria and still be fancy / different / unusual. As I stated in my previous post, you can try to justify a variety of design approaches and being different all you like but, ultimately, users do spend most of their time on other websites. If yours is too different, they may well leave in frustration. Worth thinking about. Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com Home of CyberSpyder Link Test -------- new post - same topic --------- From: Steve Pronger Subject: Usability > I'm afraid you're heading in the wrong direction > if you really wish to take issue with the points > Jakob Nielsen made. Each and every one of > them are important to observe if we are truly > interested in usability. - Stephen Mareches, LED 2221 Stephen, I'm not suggesting that web designers should ignore usability issues. I actually agree with many of the points Nielson makes, but not all. I also agree with many of the points you make as well. What I am suggesting is that good design can co-exist with usability, and that websites don't have to be dull to be usable. I've long advocated simple, clean designs with a minimum of distractions. I don't like Flash anymore than you do. I don't believe a web designer's role is to impress other web designers. Heck, a web designer on this list (lovely bloke that he is) once told me that my site looked like it was designed with crayons :-). But I don't mind. His site had a sparkling waterfall on the home page. Impressive, intricate graphic design is not what I'm about. It just detracts from the message which the text is trying to convey. Truth be known, I probably suck at graphic design. > With a good color scheme supported by CSS and > interesting photos, we can develop graphic layouts > that communicate the site's content without going > nuts on the beauties of what a graphic arts program > can do. Agreed. Absolutely. But that's what Nielsen's site lacks - a good colour scheme and interesting photos. It lacks a "look and feel" which is what makes it dull in my view. It doesn't have to be intricate. It shouldn't BE intricate. But a commercial website needs to be more than just "usable". It has to convey professionalism and trust. If it doesn't say to you "we take pride in our website because we take pride in our business" will you want to stay? A commercial website is where business takes place. Just like any bricks and mortar store, it's designed to make you feel comfortable doing that. Sure, your Benz spare parts guy got your business with a simple text based site, but would Microsoft want to convey the same first impression as your Benz parts guy? That was my point in the MSN example. I admire the Amazon model as well, but it still has "design". It's not dull. In fact it's a good example of design + usability. I had a quick look at one of your concept pieces - http://www.sophiasolutions.net/paullawrence/index.htm. I see colour. I see "design". Quite appropriate for a hairdressing business I would have thought. But now transpose the Nielsen "non-design" on to that site. Would it work? > I'm sure this will ruffle a few feathers, > but we work for our audience. True, but we also work for the people who pay us to build websites for them, and they often have pretty firm ideas on how their business is presented to the world. > I don't need colored paper or fancy graphics on my > pages. I'll soon lose the dust jacket and forget about > the graphics that were on the cover, but if the book > was good, I'll remember the content. - David Spahr, LED 2221 Agreed, it's the content which delivered the goods. Again, I'm a content guy. Truly I am. But the dust jacket DID have graphics, didn't it? It was "designed" to get your attention and get you to pick up the book. Would you have noticed it in the bookstore and been tempted to pick it up and delve deeper, if it didn't? > Please don't say "yea but your site is No. 1 of only 190,000 > search results and that is not a big deal" as someone did... That would have been me, because if memory serves you emailed me off-list to voice your indignation. And yes, keyword competition is still a factor in rankings. Take it seriously or otherwise, I'm not here to convince you of anything. But this thread is on design and usability, not SEO. I deliberately posted on it, hoping to spark some good debate (it did) so I could talk about something other than SEO and linking for a change. Steve Pronger http://www.stevepronger.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Reg Charie Subject: Shopping carts > I have been looking at different shopping > cart programs for over a year now. Most are > in the $800-1000 price range... - R. Neilson, LED 2220 Have you looked at any open source solutions? CRELoaded is a favorite of mine and is extremely versatile. It has an active support forum and a large user base. Thank You, Reg Charie www.dotcom-productions.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Michael Linehan Subject: Re-design > ... if I provide my "wish list" could you come up with > some recommendations? I think I will need to buy > a HTML editor... but which one? - Nancy Schettler, LED 2219 Hi Nancy, It looks like you have a pretty healthy business going at this point. Maybe in the early days, you simply had to do it all yourself. But I think the time has come to change that. For the future, the list of tasks you outline is considerable, to say the least. Yes, there are some things that are still best done by you, but with a greater volume of business, it becomes cost-effective to use a specialist for a lot of the implementation. Do you do your own four-colour separations? Your legal matters? Your accounting? I had one example a few years ago where the primary owner / president of a five-store retail business wanted to use me for a bit of consulting and training while he did most of the work himself. The project took six months instead of the two weeks it would have taken me. One can only imagine the lost profit for a six-month period. AND, by his account of the time he spent each day, and valuing his time as the same as mine, it cost him about twenty times as much as he would have needed to pay me. AND, to fix his numerous errors, he ended up paying me about the same fee anyway! (All this gave me a very strong lesson for future contracts.) So I'd like to suggest that you consider what is the best use of your time for the next weeks and months. I think it is likely promoting your business, rather than learning how to do all of that considerable list. If you are like the average business, you already have more than enough to do. In theory, you might spend $x on a web designer and web marketer, but earn twenty times as much. Also, in addition to the simple time versus money efficiency, there is the fact that a good web marketer should be able to do things for you that you will simply not be able to do without maybe a couple of years of study. Michael Linehan Marketing Alchemy ==== BILLBOARD =================================== From: Ivan Jimenez Subject: MySpace Hello All, I read a pretty interesting article in ClickZ News titled, "Google to Syndicate Search and Ads to MySpace" by Zachary Rodgers that would interest anyone who posted regarding MySpace a little while ago. Here is the direct link: http://www.clickz.com/showPage.html?page=clickz_print&id=3623091 Best! Ivan Jimenez http://www.smarterclicks.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Nathan Holley Subject: Site tracking > What would be a good recommendation for > the next level of web site hit tracking tools...? - Beth M. Durkee, LED 2220 Beth, Google Analytics is a must, IMHO. Very useful information, free, and an attractive user inferface. Also, Adam posted some Open Source recommendations for tracking tools in LED 2205: http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/414/55/ Of the tools mentioned, I recommend checking out AWStats and Webalizer. Both give you all "the crucial" tracking information, with not too much fluff. Hope this helps, Nathan Holley
-------------------------------------------------------
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.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Follow your bliss." - Joseph Campbell
|
