Digett - Fresh Roasted

To Bloat or Not to Bloat

Mark — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:54:06 -0500

It's clear that web pages, on average, are growing in size. So says a recent report on websiteoptimization.com. Larger web pages take longer to load, and the slower the connection, the longer the load time. Some might be quick to point out another report that says broadband penetration among active internet users has grown to almost 90%. Taken alone, this might be construed as a green light for the ongoing growth of page size. The same report, however, also says that broadband reaches about 57% of all U.S. households. One might surmise that the majority of these households fall into lower income brackets. But rural households often have little or no access to a high-speed service, and Texas Hill Country dwellers, for example, know that rural often does not mean lower income.

Consider your intended audience and the possible consequences of a user experience characterized by slow-loading pages before you plunge into a major web marketing investment.

Choosing an Email Campaign Service: E-Campaign Tips Series

Valarie — Thu, 01 May 2008 09:06:00 -0500

We frequently field questions from clients related to email campaigns. What makes a good subject line? How do you get readers to click-through? There's a lot of factors that go into a successful email campaign so we're breaking our tips up into a series of posts to share some of our expertise. If you're looking to learn more about how email campaigns can be effective tools, check out this previous post.

Choosing a Campaign Distributor

Before you can consider content details about your email campaigns or e-newsletters, you must first consider the service through which you'll distribute. There are important elements to consider when choosing an email campaign service.

Cost Effectiveness

Compared to traditional snail mail print campaigns, e-campaigns can save a lot of cash. There's no printing costs and it's a lot cheaper than a stamp per recipient. Still, research your campaign service's billing. Is there a flat fee? How much do they charge per recipient? You should be able to get a clear idea as to how much getting your message out there is going to cost you well ahead of time.

Easy to Manage

You'll spend a lot of time deciding on the content to put in your email, so you probably don't want to spend a lot of time compiling the list of people you're sending it to. A good e-campaign service will provide an automated process for readers to subscribe so you don't end up copy and pasting emails from your address book. To avoid possibly annoying customers that may not want your campaign in their inbox, a good service should be end-user friendly enough that it also makes un-subscribing a breeze.

Measurable

After all the effort of putting together a campaign, you want to be able to judge your success. Paying close attention to the tracking statistics and reports provided by your service post-send out can go a long way towards showing who's eye you're catching, who you're getting clicks from, and who marks you as spam. Statistic reports can let you know what worked and what you need to change to increase the effectiveness of your next campaign. The real-time confirmation of how many people you've reached is a great confidence builder, as well.

Digett has helped clients run successful campaigns using MailBuild and Campaign Monitor, if you want to check those out. And stay on the look out for more e-campaign tips at digett.com/blog.

New Site Launched: SightMind

Valarie — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 13:06:52 -0500

San Francisco-based Internet Protocol Video Surveillance (IPVS) and security experts, SightMind, delivers high-tech, custom solutions for local governments, schools and businesses nation-wide. To deliver an effective web site, Digett knew that our design and production needed to convey SightMind's expertise, record of success, and generate leads from parties interested in franchising opportunities.

Trusted Professionals

Customers and potential franchisees know and value SightMind's expertise because SightMind truly subscribes to their motto of"More Knowledge. More Security."

Via sections describing how IPVS works, its benefits, and their approach towards tailored security systems, SightMind lets all web users know that one of the most important steps in their company processes is learning about the customer's needs. They educate clients about IPVS and work together to empower the customer to make informed decisions regarding their ideal system setup.

SightMind provides multiple educational brochures and white papers through the Resources section and highlights them on the home page to assist their goal of transparency and knowledge sharing.

Record of Success

SightMind's founders have years of experience as entrepreneurs and founders of successful technology, networking and IPVS businesses. The fruits of their leadership and examples of IPVS successes can be highlighted in the Success Stories section, broken down by customer-type to allow the user to find what's applicable to them.

Almost as important as SightMind's service and systems proficiency is the quality of equipment they install. Their Technologies section provides a list of the well-known brands of cameras, cables, software, power supplies and backup systems they use to showcase that SightMind leverages the best.

Attract Franchisees

Recently approved to sell franchises and on the lookout for interested parties, SightMind encourages both customer and potential franchisees to get in touch. A contact form and newsletter sign up form are present on every page to prompt users to take advantage of SightMind's "more knowledge" principle and to generate potential business and franchise leads.

Finally, since SightMind works with high-tech tools, we wanted their site to reflect their savvy, too. Their home page features different pieces of information that rotate on mouse-hover and highlights the logos of the brands of products they install in a rotating gallery to encourage user confidence in SightMind's capabilities. Plus, rotating logos are just cool.

Visit SightMind.com to learn more about their IPVS solutions. Visit Digett.com to learn more about our web marketing approach.

4 Elements of a Dynamic Team Environment

Luke — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 12:50:35 -0500

As with any business that requires a variety of skill sets to support their business model, Digett has its own group of gurus it depends on to produce remarkable results. I’m proud to be a part of what I consider an amazing team. It was a dynamic and powerful group when I came on board, and it grows more capable and fluid every day.

But what elements transform a group of professionals into an authentic team? What “secret ingredient”, if you will, serves as the catalyst to such a transformation? What binding agent fuses a group together to form a tornado of talent and skill? What forces are at work that create a team full of such momentum and energy that it can best be described as a controlled volcano, bursting forth with outstanding excellence and value for our clients?

While I can’t point to any particular component that makes our team dynamic and successful, I have identified a few contributing factors which, when combined with all our unique personalities, create a team environment which frees us up and empowers us to do what we do. Read along, and hopefully you will find a few ideas you might want to try with your team.

Without further ado, I give you (in no particular order):

4 Elements of a Dynamic Team Environment

1. Team Lunch

Once a week we gather the team to eat lunch together. It has served to boost morale and provide a change of pace that we all look forward to every week. Rather than have the menu passed down through corporate, we rotate who picks the dining selection each week. It’s a way for each team member to show their personality and tastes.

Sometimes the results can be quite amusing, as our menu suggestions run the gamut from enormous hamburgers with three slabs of meat, to salad-type sandwiches with guacamole and lettuce as the main ingredient. Ultimately, the team lunch is a chance to relax and hang out - all in a refreshing context which returns us ready to work with renewed vigor.

2. Team Room

Cubicles and offices are designed to separate workspace. That’s fine if your people aren’t working together, but if they are, you may find that the walls inhibit communication.

When a member of the team needs something from me, they lean over and ask me. We all work in a big room together. The personal interaction encourages team mentality and focus, and allows friendships to form in ways that a day full of black-on-white emails just can’t.

Additionally, friends, more so than mere co-workers, keep positive attitudes and pull together through adversity to get things done. Inter-office bickering and other such plagues are symptoms of a team that is too fractured relationally to function together. You’re not a team if you don’t know each other. A team room helps everyone, well, work as a team.

3. Casual Dress Code

This may not work for everyone, but I find that having a more casual dress code breaks down pretensions and encourages creativity. It’s hard to bring the benefits of your individuality and imagination to the table if you feel like you’re a rubber stamp of the person next to you.

4. Complementary (Yet Overlapping) Skill Sets

We’re each experts in our field, but that doesn’t mean we’re omniscient. One of the things I enjoy most about our team is the seemingly unlimited opportunity for growth and learning. Everyone here has something to learn from the rest of the team.

As I am free to ask, say Andrew for example, for guidance whenever I need it, his ability and willingness to help me grow as a team member instills in me a sense of eagerness and responsibility to return the favor when he needs to pick my brain.

As a result, the team is adding value to itself - value that we will all benefit from over and over again in the future.

The snowball effect is powerful, and I believe our success is due in part to this phenomenon. Fostering a sense of mutual mentorship in your group will provide tremendous returns in the building of a dynamic team.

That's all for now. May your team be dynamic and may you all drink deeply from the resultant cup of success!

Kendall County Upgrades Web Site

Valarie — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:43:44 -0500

Kendall County, Texas launched their new web site last week. From the project's inception, we knew we had to deliver a site that was friendly to both the broad audience that would ultimately benefit from it as well as the county staff members who would be updating it.

An Information Resource for the Citizens of Kendall County, Texas

As a government site, the county's website is a repository for everything from courthouse hours to bid postings to advice on how to be prepared in the case of an emergency. That's a lot of content that people need to be able to find quickly and easily.

Solution: We organized the majority of the county's data according to the department or service with which it is associated. By logically naming those sections, we hope to easily direct users to exactly what they're looking for. If looking to contact or learn more about county health inspections, users should navigate to the health inspection department. Simple!

Alternatively, if a user is interested in a county service, such as obtaining a copy of their birth record, they can navigate to "birth certificates" in the Services section. When unsure about what department can assist them, the birth certificate information page will direct them to the related county office. This cross-referencing will likely help reduce confusion among users who may not know which department handles which services.

A Publishing Platform for County Employees

For years, county departments have clamored for the ability to upload their own information to the county's web site. Unfortunately, their legacy web site didn't provide the appropriate user management or content management abilities.

Solution: One of the huge advantages of the county's new website is an intuitive content management system that allows each department to maintain its own page. We took the power to the people and set up user accounts for every department giving them the ability to upload forms, photos or provide links to other resources. User accounts are access controlled as well so a user can't accidentally edit a department page that is not their own.

Wrapped in a clean and simple design, the new Kendall County site provides management flexibility, user-friendly navigation and a powerful resource for citizens and employees to gather and share information. It also provides a framework that can grow and serve citizens of Kendall County for years to come.

Top 5 Avoidable SEO Mistakes

Mark — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:25:10 -0500

Many Digett clients have heard me talk about improving a web page's position on a search engine results page, the practice commonly referred to as Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It doesn't take a genius to understand that the higher a page appears during a Google search, the more likely it is that a user will visit the page. Next to a good web site, in fact, search engine positioning may be the most important factor determining the overall success of your company's online marketing efforts.

But while most people acknowledge the importance of appearing high on the list for certain searches, the vast majority of web sites show little evidence of a meaningful attempt to make this happen. So, in the spirit of righting the wrongs of this world, here's my own list of Top 5 Avoidable SEO Mistakes.

Ineffective Site Construction

There are a number of ways to build a site that performs miserably in search engines. One of the most common -- though less prevalent than in years gone by -- is to build a site entirely in flash. Flash is a wonderful product by Adobe that makes possible, among other things, complex and beautiful animations, video and myriad of other capabilities. But if your web site is built entirely with flash, there is a good chance it will perform miserably in searches. Search engines are not effective at indexing content in flash. And while the effects that can be achieved by a skilled flash developer may be spectacular, they often do not justify the loss of visibility on major search engines. Take a look at this Google search, which shows the total number of pages indexed on the Ducati web site. One. That's it. Only one page on the entire site is even indexed by Google. Contrast that with a similar search for all pages indexed for the Enchanted Springs Ranch web site, in which some 261 pages are returned. Each of those 261 pages are associated with unique keywords and search phrases. How many key words do you think could possibly perform well for the single entry in Google's index for Ducati? For the record, it is possible to build flash sites that are, indeed, indexable. This is not a trivial undertaking, however, and requires a sizable investment. Also for the record, the number of pages indexed is not necessarily an effective criteria for measuring the overall effectiveness of a web site. Hopefully I made the point that a site that reveals only a single indexable page couldn't possibly be represented well in a search engine.

Another poor construction technique is the inappropriate use of HTML frames. This technique has largely disappeared, but occasionally such a site turns up. We won't mention any names.

Finally, from time to time we still see a site's main navigational elements built with javascript, flash, or another search-engine-invisible technique. Good navigation ensures that search engines can crawl and index all of your site's pages. By using unproven methods, you may be nailing the lid on your own web site's coffin.

Lack of Relevant Content

Think about Google's challenge: To match readers with content. If you don't have content relevant to a user's search terms, then it would be unreasonable to expect Google to send such a user to your site. Of utmost importance is effective use of keywords and phrases within your content. The most perplexing issue I see is the misuse of a site's homepage. Many site home pages carry no mention of their company's purpose, capabilities or offerings. The role of the home page is not to go into depth on these topics, but to provide an overview. The omission of good, concise copy on the home page -- including common, general search terms -- is costly. Including good content on interior pages is, of course, also important.

On a related note, it used to be a practice of webmasters to pack a page's content with keywords in any way possible. Today, the role of keyword "density", or the number of times a keyword appears within a page, has diminished considerably. Keyword "stuffing", as it is referred to, will more likely result in penalties.

Ineffective use of HTML Elements

Dovetailing nicely with "content" would be the effective use of HTML elements. Last month I discussed the importance of a page's meta description. But before spending a minute on tweaking meta descriptions, I would first ensure all of the HTML page titles of my site were unique, accurate, and full of keywords that I would expect my audience to be looking for.

Also falling into this category would appropriate use of header tags within the content of the site. The importance of header tags is debated, but if Stephan Spencer embraces it, then I'm putting my money on it. Omit proper header tags at your own risk.

Poor Linking

Like the rest of the topics discussed in this post, this one deserves more room than what it's given here. It can be a little intimidating to try to explain, since the uninitiated may have difficulty wrapping their brain around it. But an understanding of outbound and inbound linking strategies is imperative for maximizing search engine positioning.

Outbound linking is important because it provides leverage for getting others to link to you. More importantly, links should provide users with additional resources, and a site's owner with credibility. Creating unnecessary outbound links wastes readers' time and squanders your own page's link juice.

Inbound links are important because good ones make your page rank higher. Higher page rank generally means better position on a results page. The art of link building is a world unto itself, but good linking resources are not difficult to find.

No Ongoing Effort to Supplement Content

In the past I've made the argument that "new" content is always "better" when it comes to search engines. Two slices of humble pie later, I now know that this isn't always true. However, I still firmly stand behind the notion that for a site to remain effective over the course of time, its content must be augmented. If your older content is still timely, then it may continue to help you out with good search engine positioning. But let's face it, times change, along with your users and theirwants and needs. Addressing this change proactively is part of what good marketing is all about.

New Site Launched: Innove

Valarie — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 17:03:17 -0600

Confidence. Capability. Innové owes their success to these traits. We knew from our first meeting that part of our success would be judged on how well we incorporated these traits into a new web site. The new Innove.com needed to clearly identify the company's purpose, explain their capabilities and processes, and cater to multiple audiences. It also had to generate leads and attract prospective employees.

Identify Innové's Purpose, Capabilities and Processes

The old adage may warn us not to judge a book by its cover, but the truth is we make snap judgments all the time. That's why Innové's home page needed to make clear who they are, what they do, and why they're considered experts. And it had to do it in the blink of an eye.

Solution: Large, clean text is prominently displayed to communicate Innové's purpose. Four large buttons below inform the user in a glance about Innové's industries, solutions and delivery platforms, engaging users to learn more. A calendar of industry events and speaking engagements relays Innové's expertise and credibility within their field.

Target Audience

Innové provides solutions for the defense and intelligence community and banking and retail industries. The web site had to provide value to each of these unique audiences.

Solution: The home page buttons allow a user to quickly locate information about Defense or Payments solutions, and specific services are listed by industry. Home page treatment helps ensure user engagement while reducing the likelihood of visitors from either audience group becoming lost.

Employee Recruitment and Lead Generation

Innové's market strength is a result, in part, of their ability to hire the best of the best. Attracting great employees begets great clients, which attracts more great employees. Oh, and let's make it easy for clients and prospective employees to actually use the site.

Solution: To address recruitment, we invite candidates on almost every page to browse job postings or submit a résumé. For business leads, we feature a contact link at the top and bottom of every page. From the home page, prospects can access the exclusive Innové Compliance Library or sign up for a free security assessment, both of which generate valuable lead data.

We think the new innove.com exudes confidence and capability, indeed. To learn more about Digett's solutions and approach to web marketing, visit our website.

By the way, you can peak at what the old site looked like here.

Web Tip: Getting Manic Over Meta Descriptions

Mark — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:07:45 -0600

Whether you are aware of this or not, many of us see meta descriptions at least a few times every day. We might see hundreds of them, in fact. Every time you Google a phrase (which I do at least ten to twenty times daily), the SERP displays a list of page titles, each followed by a a short description derived from its respective web page's meta description. This description is important for two reasons. First, it ideally provides an accurate summary of the page content and a compelling reason for a user to click a given Google listing. Secondly, the words contained within the description can positively influence the position of a listing in relation to other listings.

SEO 101 - The Incomplete Guide

Want to attract an audience to your web site? Figure out what keywords they're searching on, and weave those keywords into your site's content. Oversimplified, maybe, but this is a key to search engine success.

To greatly simplify the seemingly convoluted world of SEO, let's just say that, in a nutshell, content rules. If you provide meaningful content on particular web page, it is likely that some percentage of your intended audience will find it. The better the content, the better your chances of attracting an audience. By "better", I am generally referring to keyword and key phrase saturation. If my audience is searching on the key phrase "how to climb Everest", for example, then by golly I want to make sure that the important keywords within that phrase -- climb and everest -- appear in my content.

"Content", I confess, is a somewhat slippery term whose definition often eludes clarity. Without a doubt, however, a page's content encompasses, in part, its often-neglected meta description.

Technically speaking, a meta description is the group of words found within the meta description tag. If you were to browse to Digett's web site, and leverage your browser's capability to view the source code for our home page, you would find somewhere within the HTML the following:

<meta name="description" content="Web marketing, publishing and design for the web from a Boerne, Texas based interactive media and marketing firm. Our Services include search engine marketing, search engine optimization, email campaigns, drupal customization and content management." />

Note the phrases appearing within the content attribute, above (the words after "content="). You'll find a concise description of who Digett is and the services we provide. Now do a quick Google search on "Digett", and you will see the very same text appearing with our entry on the SERP. This illustrates how Google uses your page's meta description to provide useful information to Google users.

Toward Better Meta Descriptions

By now it may be evident that your listing on Google is, alone, reason enough to pay close attention to your site's meta descriptions and the words contained therein. Well-written and accurate descriptions help ensure that more folks with a genuine interest in the content on your site actually find it. Poorly written descriptions can turn users away who might have otherwise found your site helpful. Worse, you could lose business.

Adding even more weight to the argument in favor of effective meta descriptions is the fact that Google analyzes the content within the meta description, considering it one of many factors for determining the page's position among other listings returned for a given search. For a search on "how to climb Everest", a page with a description that includes the terms "climb" and "everest" will achieve a higher position on a Google SERP than will, for example, a page whose description omits those words, all other factors equal.

Finally, before you jump in, here is another point to keep in mind: Web sites are usually a collection of many pages, each of which has the potential for effective positioning on a SERP. Ideally, you recognize that each page has a specific goal. That goal will likely dictate the specific audience that might be looking for it, and, in turn, which key words may be important. My article on "How to Climb Mount Everest", for example, may represent a single page among thousands on a web site about extreme sports. Is someone looking to climb Everest going to think to search on "extreme sports"? I think not, and those keywords should not be considered nearly as important to that page as the keywords climb and Everest. Likewise, is someone searching for a local plumber likely to search on "home repair"? Again, I find that unlikely. The bottom line here is this: Treat each page as a unique entity, and you'll be closer to thinking like a search engine thinks.

I'm Sold. Lead Me to the Promised Land.

You've heard enough, and you'd like to make some improvements, right? Maybe you have some specific ideas for good key words you'd like to incorporate into your descriptions. Finally, the moment we've been waiting for! So exactly just how do you implement these changes? Well, this depends on exactly how your site was constructed. Here at Digett, we deploy the lion's share of sites that we design and build on Drupal, an intensely lovable content management system (CMS) that can make things like managing meta descriptions a breeze, even for our clients. Here's a screen shot from an edit page on one of our sites depicting a page's meta description field.

Modifying this page's meta description is done easily by a non-technical user, as is modifying the rest of the content on the site. To get to the page where this field is found, the user would have first logged in, then navigated to a given page, then clicked the "edit" tab which appears for authorized users. The edit page appears, providing access to modify content and other options, including the meta description. Clicking a button saves the changes to the CMS' database.

Whether your site is running on a CMS or not, you may need technical help to modify the meta descriptions on your site. Consult your webmaster if necessary, but don't neglect the meta description without understanding your neglect's potential negative impact.

Wrapping Up

To be sure, the meta description is one of many factors influencing the overall effectiveness of your web site. Its relative importance should make it one of the first places you look to make improvements.

Resources

Want to know more about how to write good meta descriptions? Consult the ultimate source of all things web.

Fight or Flight

AMac — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 10:52:22 -0600

In 1915, Walter Cannon theorized that animals react to threatening situations with a general discharge of the sympathetic nervous system, priming the animal for fighting or fleeing. He coined the term "fight or flight."

I know what that guy was talking about.Clay-colored Sparrow

Take for example a little sparrow, we'll call him Peepers, enjoying a sunflower seed sandwich on a sunny summer day, when all of a sudden I show up with my camera to take his picture. Peepers is only 5" tall and I'm 79" tall, a menacing presence to the little guy for sure. According to Mr.Cannon, this little bird who now perceives me as a threat, will do one of two things. He will fight, knowing his odds of taking me out are slim, or he will flee, which seems like a great idea for Peepers considering he is the only animal that can literally fly away. And I cannot follow.

You see what I'm getting at? Of course you do, say it with me now. How do we combat shutter shyness in birds? How do we paint these wonderful creatures with light if they won't stick around long enough to hold up their end of the deal? I have an answer.

A Phottix Wireless Remote Switch, a Nikon D200 Digital SLR Camera (my apologies to Mr.Cannon) and a tripod is all you need to capture intimate pictures of birds like Peepers.

Orange-crowned Warbler

I recently struck gold on eBay when I found this Phottix Wireless Remote Switch from Hong Kong for just 20 bucks. I challenge anybody out there to find a quality piece of modern day photography equipment for $20. This thing is a steal. It works by attaching a receiver to the camera and holding the remote in your hand. Its really that simple. From a distance of up to 100 meters I can take a picture, no strings or wires attached.

As soon as this magic arrived on my stoop I set up shop in my backyard, which means I set the camera on a tripod and slinked back into the house, remote in hand. Not too long after Peepers showed up to snack, just where I anticipated him to perch. With the press of a button I shot the little bird. I shot him several times in fact and he wasn't the only one. I've shot several birds since Peepers and with some luck in the near future I plan to shoot the high-class cardinal that streaks around my backyard like break lights on a dark rainy night.

Male House Finch

One more note. I found a great website for identifying birds. Whatbird.com allows you to search through thousands of bird species by selecting characteristics of the bird in question such as location, size, shape, color and many others. One of the more interesting questions I came across, it asks, "Does the bird have a fowl mouth?"

Thank you and goodnight.

Black-crested Titmouse

Drupal Views Module Caveat

Luke — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:00:00 -0600

Drupal's powerful Views module is something I use almost everyday. The Views module allows you to present content in many different ways by sorting and filtering content to suit your specific need.

This time I was building a view for news content on a development site, when I stumbled across an interesting filter. I had already filtered by content type. I wanted news content only. I thought I was done, and was about to click 'Save' when I saw it there. The publish filter. "Hm...that sounds vaguely familiar...." I thought to myself as I added it. The caption said "Filter by whether or not the node is published. This is recommended for most Views!"

Suddenly it struck me that I hadn't filtered out unpublished content from this view, and several others as well. I had felt intuitively that Drupal's access control would handle that for me, but the Views module writes its own queries, thus bypassing Drupal's built-in access control. After pondering these things momentarily, I faintly remembered being warned about this in the past by a Drupal Guru I once knew. Somewhere along the way, I had just forgotten about this filter.

This can present a somewhat insidious snag to a new Drupal developer, because you may create many views before you ever have unpublished content surface unexpectedly.

The moral of the story is this: When you create a view, the first thing you should do is add a "Node:Published=Yes" filter. It is very easy to forget this important filter, so making this a habit is a good idea.