5 Type Turn-Offs that Are Exit Only

May 9, 2006 by Liz

I’m Only 1 Reader

Spend enough time as a publisher and when you read for fun, you can’t help seeing publishing things . . . if they’re great I comment on them. Reinforce good behavior is what I learned in teachers’ school. If they’re not good typography, I try to overlook them and keep reading. If I simply cannot, usually I just move on shaking my head. I go back to my own blog to make sure that I’m not doing the same thing.

YET when I see the same type issues happening from one blog to another, I think folks can’t see how the type looks and feels from this side of the computer. So I’ve started taking notes on what it’s like to be the reader. Of course, I’m only one reader, but I AM one reader. I’m one who will come back or I won’t. [Read more…]

Color and Font Codes

May 7, 2006 by Liz

HTML Color and Font Codes

When I first started blogging, I was anxious to do what I could do in print–add emphasis using color or maybe once on a rare occasion change the font for flavor. But I was new to HTML and the rules had me baffled. I recently found this simple tutorial that not only shows how, but also shows which fonts are those that usually work.

Great Find: Color in Your Text from Writing up.com
Type of article: HTML tutorial
Permalink: http://www.writingup.com/htmltutor/color_in_your_text_from_htmltutor
Target Audience: Folks who want to know more about HTML
Content: This tutorial starts out with the basic code for changing the font and the color of your text.

Then the tutorial offers two clicks further. The first click takes you to choosing type fonts. While you are there, you can see how each font looks and check whether it is available on your computer. The second click shows you a basic color chart and color words to allow a chance for experimentation.

This tutorial is great for new bloggers or for seasoned bloggers in a hurry looking for a color change in their typography.

Click this screenshot title to go there.

I’m adding this to the NEW BLOGGER PAGE in the side bar.

–ME “Liz Strauss

Getting Customers to Stop by to See You

May 2, 2006 by Liz

Walking the Trade Show Floor

Yesterday walking the trade show floor, I felt I was in a 3-D blog world. Aisles and aisle of blogs sitting side by side with real people in and around them. They were all in the same market, different niches. Some were not easy to tell apart. I was scanning the signage to get a clue. Oh my! 60% were woefully inadequate. Here’s what I saw.

Company names with not a hint of what they do.
A list of what the company does, but no name to pull it together.
Taglines that said abolutely nothing, i.e. making things happen — good things? bad things? It didn’t say.
Taglines that said the same five buzz words that I found at most every other booth.

It seemed clear to me that the folks who designed these books — 3-D blogs — were thinking of what they thought the customer should know rather than thinking of what the customer might have come to find out. Standing outside each booth that I’m talking about I only had one question. [Read more…]

The “Got Milk?” Man, Chartreuse, & Liz Singing in Harmony

March 29, 2006 by Liz

Where We Live and Breathe

Advertising has a responsibility to act like a thing that is going to be unavoidably in the environment, where we live and breathe. And we have a responsibility to make that work in such a way that it is welcomed and not scorned.

–Jeff Goodby, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, of “Got Milk?” fame as quoted in BusinessWeekonline, Advertising Advice from the “Got Milk” Man

When a guy knows what he’s talking about, almost everything he says is worth quoting. That’s how I felt reading BusinessWeekonline Managing Editor, David Kiley’s interview with Jeff Goodby, the guy behind such famous advertising as the “Got Milk?” slogan. I wished that Mr. Goodby was required reading for every designer that I ever met or would meet. But then all of the good ones already subscribe to what Jeff Goodby was saying.

Mr. Goodby was talking about how the audience gets to pick what’s good.

I suppose it’s crystal clear already that he and I agree completely, but that’s not what this article is about. This article is about a three-way conversation that’s been happening on three different subjects, in three different places, the same thing has been being said.

The “Got Milk?” Man, Chartreuse, and Liz

Jeff Goodby, Chartreuse, BETA, and Liz Strauss. What do we three have in common? A clear vision of how to reach and keep one. On three slightly different notes, we three each say things that sound a lot alike. Heck if we were on a street corner, we’d be doing some great harmony and collecting some serious cash.

Jeff Goodby said

Our job is to come up with more advertising that people actually seek out. It’s the same way with successful design. When you design something right, people don’t just accept it, they seek it out. And then they tell their friends about it or show it off.

Chartreuse said

Look at Overture (now Yahoo Search Marketing).

These are the most profitable advertising business models around, because consumers tell advertisers what theyÃ¢â¬â¢re looking for first, rather than advertisers telling consumers what they should buy and hoping for the best.

I said

Everett knew that being who you are is a bond with the community. It the basis on which all relationships are forged. Being any less and youÃ¢â¬â¢re only a bad facsimile of what you could be. Your personal brand can be the strongest advantage you bring to your business life.

Be brand YOU and youÃ¢â¬â¢re the only one. No one can compete with that.

Three separate takes on the same subject–Henry Ford you had a great idea, but your work is done. Rest in peace. The assembly line has lost its promise, and one-size-fits-all now fits no one.

Analysis–What Are We Saying?

Content is king, but the king reports to the Emperor. The Audience-Emperor knows damn well whether we’re wearing clothes and which designer made them too. We already decide what is relevant content to us and we tell advertisers by the way we use search engines. We already decide what ads work by the products we spend our money on. Jeff Goodby gets that, that’s why he respects us and voices a responsibility to keeping our environment filled with advertising we enjoy. He realizes he is one of us.

Advertising we seek out. There’s a concept–a simple wonder, a basic what if. The advertisers who get it will be the ones who are us, not the ones who think, “They versus us.”

Strategy–To Promote Your Business

None of us are partners in a fabulous San Francisco Advertising firm. Though I’d love to work for Mr. Goodby, I don’t suppose he’ll be offering me a job soon. I’m guessing you’re probably in the same place as I am. So how might we push this analysis into strategy for our brand and our businesses?

Be authentic, practical, and nice. Don’t promote your business on its glorious, high falutin’ intangible values. Do needs-benefits selling. Know me and what I need and show me how you provide it better, with more-invested, gentler service than the other guy ever could.
Make it fun to work with you. No matter what you’re involved in, it should be something that adds to the world of enjoyment. Fun is magnetic and always feels free. It’s hard enough to find these days. Jeff Goodby says it has to be simple and interesting to the consumer in the way the cowabduction spoof he did for Milk Producers was, if you want folks to seek it out. If you offer that kind of creativity to me, you can bet, I’ll not only seek it out, I’ll forgive the occasional slip.
Let me be who I am. Don’t try to change the way I do things. Trust that I know my needs better than you do. Show me how I can do what I already do more easily. That will win my loyalty. That will get me to talk about what a good relationship you have with your customers.
Let me be smarter than you are. and sweeter too. Chartreuse says, “Treat the smart girls like they are pretty and the pretty girls like they are smart.” Believe me, it works for boys too. That is the key to customer relationships and to building customer evangelists. That is the intangible value-added, making the customer the center of all you do.
Know the upside-down nature of the Internet. Understand that it will move out into the real-world environment, not the other way around. Make something so good that folks will seek you out to find it. We find what works well and stick with it. We will keep looking until the one worth sticking with is found.
Offer a product or a service that fills an actual need I have. I put this last on purpose. The changes in the world are happening so fast that needs are opening at an unprecedented rate of explosion. Some will close right back up again by getting filled or expiring. Think through the product or service you offer. Make certain it has staying power, be sure that I am willing and able to pay what it will cost you to make it available. Then add that you include the unique BIG IDEA of your brand so that I will only want YOU to do the work for me.

The power base has slowly shifted to the audience-consumer. A busines without customers is not a business. I have that tatooed where you cannot look.

More MSM Unhappiness

Until now control of the distribution channels and advertising markets, limited what the consumer could access, but with the WWW shopping mall, I can search the world over to find that little store that has the “just right” item I am looking for. I no longer need to settle for one-size fits all.

Chartreuse and I know this. We see it in our friends and ourselves. Smart advertisers, such as Jeff Goodby, are well aware of this too. Those who cannot see it–the telcos, Internet providers and the Mainstream Media–will fight to save the old world way of doing business. They want to keep those advertising dollars that Jeff Goodby sees turning into entertaining Internet websites that advertise as well as delight.

There is significant money involved and significant changes to life styles should Jeff Goodby’s vision of advertising–one that Chartreuse and I also see–become the future. Were I the Mainstream Media, I don’t think I would want to lose control.

Everyday the world gets smaller. At the moment, you and I get larger and more powerful. Some folks don’t like that idea.

Personally, I do.

It would be hard to break out into a chorus of “Blue Moon” under a streetlight in Chicago with Chartreuse and Jeff Goodby, if someone else were around telling us what to do.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Promotion: Checking Out Curb Appeal

February 13, 2006 by Liz

Steve McKee writes the Smart Answers column in Business Week. Last Friday he was talking about how everything a company does comes down to marketing. His column was replete with examples and well made points, but I was particularly taken with this story.

. . . The other night, my wife and I decided to try a new restaurant. But when we turned down its street, we just kept on driving, never even getting out of the car. It was the sign that gave us pause. It was simply a flat, translucent panel with an amateurish, one-color logo slapped on — the kind of sign you would see on a check-cashing operation in a seedy strip mall. The sign was of low quality and in bad taste — imagery not well associated with a fine-dining establishment. With plenty of other good choices we simply didn’t want to take the risk of spoiling our dinner date.

For all I know, the food would have been amazing and the chef an undiscovered gem, but the restaurant never got the chance to prove it because we naturally assumed the experience would be as unprofessional as the sign. As a result, we passed.

Perhaps after a few more quiet weekends the proprietor will realize that marketing is everything and will do something about the sign. Perhaps not. But I’m determined to apply the lesson to my own business and think about marketing in a much broader context. Are you?

–Steve McKee, Business Week, Smart Answers : All Together Now “Marketing Is Everything,” February 10, 2006

Checking Out Curb Appeal

After I read Steve McKee’s story, I started wondering. How many readers are choosing to drive by our blogs–the same way Steve and his wife chose to drive by that restaurant–because they lack curb appeal? We do make assumptions based solely on how a blog looks. Try this test to see how blog curb appeal works for you.

memory, dragons,

fortune.

2. Do the search on Google Blog Search, Technorati, or another blog search engine. Keep your search results window handy in case you need to return to it.

3. Randomly choose 3-5 blogs from the search results.

4. Without reading a word, rank the blogs in the order you predict they might rank based on linkage from other blogs.

5. Then do a link search for each blog on Technorati Advanced Search or another blog search engine to get their actual link stats. ( On Technorati–>[Search>Options>Links to This URL] On Others–>[link: domain.com] )

6. Rank the blogs again based on your findings from the links search.

7. Compare your prediction to reality. Did your prediction come close?

Curb appeal changes how we value things. To say it another way. Perception changes reality.

Granted curb appeal isn’t everything. Curb appeal gets folks in the door. Content keeps them. Even without curb appeal, if you can folks to read quality content, they’ll come back again. Still that doesn’t change the fact that curb appeal makes a HUGE difference in whether a stranger stops to read word one.

Curb Appeal in the Technorati 100

In the Technorati Top 100 Blogs, 10 are My Space Blogs. Who says a template blog can’t have curb appeal? Here are three My Space Blogs from the Technorati Top 100 and their link stats as of today.

Technorati 19 has 16,141 links from 4864 sites.

Technorati 81 has 6673 links from 2214 sites.

Technorati 96 has 5792 links from 2290 sites.

Obviously readers find these blogs have enough curb appeal. Like beauty, curb appeal is in the eye of the beholder. Our blogs need to match what our readers expect to see from a blog like ours. A Disney Blog shouldn’t look like Brooks Brothers or a hiphop blog for that matter. We all have sense what our readers will find confusing or won’t find attractive. Don’t we?

Steve McKee’s story stuck with me because my decision tree always starts with eliminating the negatives. That way I have fewer choices to work from. I might be missing something spectacular, but I don’t have the time to kiss all of the frogs I’ll meet just to find that spectacular something.

So many blogs and so little time. Don’t let me drive right by yours, just because I didn’t see the quality on your sign out front. I’m going out to check my sign one more time right now. How’s your sign looking these days?

–ME “Liz” Strauss

Blog Construction–What’s Your Function?

December 22, 2005 by Guest Author

Guest Writer: James Shewmaker

I’m delighted to present this article on Blog Usability, written at my invitation, by James Shewmaker.

If you’re a regular reader at Successful-Blog, you’ve seen James’ insightful comments throughout our discussion threads. James is a visual branding consultant in Atlanta, GA. His business, which he began in 2001, is Qwerty – “Helping Businesses Become Unforgettable,” and his business blog is Qwerty.us/blog/.

Blog Construction–What”s Your Function?

Design is more than decorating. Design has to do with functionality. The form of whatever is designed needs to serve the purpose or function for which it was made.

Many bloggers are more concerned with article writing than they are with the functionality of their blog. There are a number of design factors which these bloggers overlook. However, readers are affected by how they experience your blog, and the reader’s experience is a result of how well the blog functions. If a car looks great on the outside but its engine has no power and its steering feels like driving a motor home, buyers are going to avoid this car. The same is true of the functionality of your blog.

Here are five suggestions for improving the usability of your blog.

1. For the visitor who does not have your web assets in her browser’s cache, how long does it take for your blog’s main page to load? The visual aesthetic of your blog must be balanced against load design. This balance is determined by the purpose of your blog. If your blog is devoted to visual design such as MocoLoco or CoolHunting, then you will sacrifice speed for visuals, but if your blog is devoted to the discussion of philosophy, you should sacrifice the aesthetic for the reader’s speed of access.

To test the load time of your blog, first erase your browser’s cache. In most browsers this can be done in the preference settings, or you can use a utility such as iClean by Allume to erase your browser’s cache. Next use a LOW speed internet connection. Just because you have broadband does not mean that your readers do. Now using a stopwatch (or a watch which tracks seconds) see how long it takes for your blog to load into the browser.

2. Are your graphics fully optimized and have you chosen filenames and alt tags which will aid your visitors and improve your search relevance?

Optimizing your graphics refers to using a graphics program to reduce the file size (kilobytes) of your graphics to the lowest size possible for the reader to see that which is being shown. Again the size of the file is determined by the purpose of your blog. If the purpose of your blog is not graphical, then a good target size to aim for is approximately 10 kilobytes.

Unless you are a professional photographer, a jpeg in a blog should never have an optimization setting in the 80s or 90s. This refers to the quality of your jpeg. The best quality and largest size jpeg has an optimization setting of 100, while the lowest optimization setting is 0. In most general purpose blogs, an optimization setting somewhere between 50 and 75 should suffice. If you are producing your own images using a digital camera, it is usually advisable to take the best quality picture and then use a graphics program to optimize the quality.

Image file names should use words from your posting separated by underlines where spaces would be.

Alt tags not only provide text for broken links. Alt tags also provide rollover feedback in some browsers. In some browsers. placing your mouse over an image causes a small rectangle to appear which displays the content of the alt tag. This is what is meant by rollover feedback.

Alt tags also are used by some search spiders. Search engines use programs known as spiders to index the content of websites. Different spiders use different criteria for determining web page relevancy. Alt tags are used by some spiders in evaluating the relevancy of a web page.

3. Are you using redundant code instead of using CSS? Redundant code refers to code which contains unneccessary duplication of the code declarations. The longer you blog, the more the updating and archiving of your blog is going to be affected by bloat code. Try to eliminate table coding and font declarations as much as possible. CSS reduces the source code necessary to display your blog to a minimum.

Using HTML to define your blog’s fonts or using tables to create your blog’s layout is the main cause of redundant code. Bloated code is often created by WYSIWIG editors, such as Frontpage, Freeway, and MSWord. If you are importing code from one of these editors into your blog’s editor you are creating bloated code.

Another reason for avoiding redundant code and bloated code is that it can overtax the servers on your webhost. If a webhost’s servers become overtaxed it can either slow down the access to all the blogs on that server or even cause the blog service to crash.

4. Minimalistic design in blog templates is more effective than attempting to dazzle with the exception of visual creatives, such as photographers and graphic designers. That which distracts irritates readers.

Allow me to illustrate this by contrasting the main article page of the Wall Street Journal’s Startup Journal Online with the print article page of the same article. The print article page removes everything which might distract the eye. I am not advocating that you strip your blog’s design to this degreeÃÂ¢Ã¢âÂ¬Ã¢â¬?even the navigation system is eliminated from the print page. Instead I am illustrating the difference between a complex page layout and a minimalistic page layout. The complex layout distracts the eye from the article content. While the minimalistic page layout, makes the text of the article more accessible and important.

5. Always keep in mind that a large percentage of your audience will be reading your content off RSS or Atom readers and syndicatorsÃÂ¢Ã¢âÂ¬Ã¢â¬?design your blog so that the textual content can stand on its own whenever necessary. For example, do not reference something in your blog’s sidebar without providing a link in the article text.

If you would like more suggestions on improving your blog’s functionality, Jakob Nielsen writes excellent articles about Web Usability.

And for a construction connection of another kind. If you are nostalgic about ABCÃÂ¢Ã¢âÂ¬Ã¢âÂ¢s Schoolhouse Rock, here are the words and the site connection to ÃÂ¢Ã¢âÂ¬ÃâConstruction Junction.ÃÂ¢Ã¢âÂ¬?

Thanks, James.
I know I couldn’t have said that better.

James will be back again soon with more.

–ME “Liz” Strauss.