Continual Vigilance

Everybody is confident with using search engines in 2010, as they allow us to locate things rather quickly. This is essential, never the less search engine results aren’t filtered by humans, instead it’s done by an algorithmic rule. Why is that remarkable? Imagine you are searching for a pub in Manchester as an example. One would enter this keyphrase into Yahoo! (for example), then a list of results would appear. How do you know whether these results are trusted if they haven’t been been vetted by people? Here’s how: search engines use human-administered website directories as a primary filter.

Directories still play a substantial part on the web, and the most discriminating directories are inevitably human edited. A person may discover that (for example) : “that restaurant has a particular rating for cleanliness and having certain standards, that’s a very encouraging signal”. A well-known online directory will receive many submissions daily. An editor will look into these entries, and if the editor is content that the quality of the submission is of a particular standard, it is included in to the online directory. And this is why search engines still love online directories. Both dmoz.org and the Yahoo! directory are utilized by search engines as filters to find out the trustworthiness of a website - whether it’s included in dmoz.org / Yahoo! directory or not, since they are edited by humans and have stringent guidelines.

Therefore do not understate the significance of internet directories because almost everyone uses search engines to discover websites. A human-edited directory can be a primary measuring device as to how reliable a website is. If you own a website, seek to get your website listed in a niche directory, like a gardening directory, a jewellery directory, or a health and beauty directory.

While humans are needing signals of trustiworthiness, the web will always require individuals to present their stamp of commendation, and so directories will invariably play a part.

We should acknowledge, we were greatly wonder-struck after seeing Zippy.com.au internet site and could not wait to see what we would learn in their automobile insurance quoting segment.One of our favorite highlights on this internet site was their chasteness. It’s not very difficult to find various insurance quotes rates here, as this website permits you to fill out an form and permits you to compare a mixture of prices from aggregate suppliers.
Our reviews team appreciates the simple to navigate internet site that did not require an age to load, a huge plus.

Zippy.com.au is powered by:
Zippy.com.au pty ltd Australia Business Number: 281 3833 9429 zippy.com.au Tel: 07 3103 0183
fax: 3036 6860 Suite 163, 192 Ann Street Brisbane QLD 4000 Australia

Zippy.com.au minted the saying, Fast, Easy, Zippy’ and they mean it! Once the quotation form is Fulfilled, our phone within 5 mins and found oursleves talking with Budget Insurance and they bettered our current insurance policy premium.
We liked that Zippy.com.au kept items easy while holding a professional and revealing insurance quotes web site.
As well as Car insurance you may use Zippy.com.au to check Home, Term life and Travel Insurance but in our opinion Motorcar insurance looks to be Zippy’s focus.
Although dealing all Australia the site focuses on Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart and Perth
The index page of this website is unusual but is prepared well. It comprises of a essential image and par and underneath are two sections.
On the right of the page are fast links to some great little tools. The features include few estimators, the most satisfactory of which forecasts a automobile price.
Colours for the web site are blue, green on a classic white setting seamless with the logo.
Zippy.com.aus logo is forward, innocent and smart I thought the colourings described the character of company well and looked professional. The lay out of the pages is simply organised and pages are consistent with the two newspaper column design with contact details in the top area.

The Zippy.com.au website adequately satisfies client necessitates and offers a wide range of insurance companies to select from in OZ. With the same technology, it is in all probability that Zippy can extend their servicing to include different counties.
Zippy is well worth bookmarking.

Fans of J.R.R. Tolkien have proven to be very creative through the years. One fan in particular has drawn inspiration from Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” movies and created a Middle-earth pastiche video. A pastiche is a patchwork story built from pieces of other stories. Usually created as homages or fan fiction, pastiches rarely achieve much in a literary sense. Imagine how much more difficult the task might be in video format. Nonetheless one very resourceful fan has managed to piece together an Elven love story using Peter Jackson’s Arwen, Legolas, and Elrond as actors in the brief tragedy. It’s quite a fascinating video.

Unfortunately, fan films are often overlooked by most Tolkien forum discussion groups. They just don’t seem to be very aware of the truly creative work that appears on the Web from time to time. In an effort to help fans learn more about the fan film experience, the SF-Fandom Tolkien forum for Middle-earth movies shares links and anecdotes about fan-made movies, although usually only exceptionally high quality films are discussed.

Being a fan of J.R.R. Tolkien for any length of time, many people eventually find a good forum on the Web where they can feel comfortable sharing their thoughts. Unlike most online forum communities, SF-Fandom does not tolerate ridicule or personal attacks between members. Some forum communities have moderators who break their own rules but that kind of unprofessional behavior is not tolerated at SF-Fandom.

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for having written The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. His son Christopher posthumously published over 15 books in his father’s name, including Unfinished Tales of Numenor and Middle-earth, The Silmarillion, the twelve volumes of The History of Middle-earth, and The Children of Hurin.

Pupils in Richmond are the only in London hold in a calculated risk of post-16 courses in their schools. He refuse that schools with Web specify attracted of choice serve and students and said the Tories were looking for car insurance and as a to the wrongheaded problem. shocking? lower-class Web design studies attract high upper-class Every secondary school in Richmond will have web design classes - if the borough?s Conservatives return to power in May. Richmond Thames College provides a wide range of courses for youthful populate of all abilities.What we have at post-16 is working. cardinal - Grey Court - will break round of its own get along under Maggie Bailey.? He added there is before all a 14 to 19 partnership, which includes schools, , the council, and exercise and the council was about to staff a new 14 to 19 coordinator.

I have penetrate up with an for three of them to become and believe the ordinal the did not have post-16 render and a Conservative empery ask de novo what desired.

This is a lack of choice we will end.? middle-class teachers and ambitious students who set for the entire school. They have promised to make a post-16 , including representatives from schools and , MPs, and councillors, to handle the issue. Councillor David Marlow, Conservative leader, said that if electoral they press sponsors to revise plans and include Web create in replacing Shene School, Whitton School and Hampton Community College and insist any new partner ?start from the there will be web design classes. On May 6 next annual period, voters will go to the polls in the council elections, and the Tory - seeking to get control after four annual periods - have see bringing Web design learn into the borough?s eight secondary schools a key pledge. He added: ?Richmond boyhood achieve very well in 16 to 19 education, and this was prove by Ofsted. he added. Malcolm Eady, Richmond council secretaire for education and get?s services, said the current custodianship was not dogmatic about website design Richmond and had put down decisions on supply in the based on parent and provide reaction. ?I be surprised if post-16 education did not experience up,? The biggest problem is that we have three or four schools that are underperforming.

councillors this week criticised the council for not including post-16 provide in the re-built Teddington School or three pick out . Nick True, Conservative leader, said it was ?

Making a decision on the most appropriate domain and pinning down the best suited registration are the initial items to research when you are planning a web site. However, it can really be an unsettling decision. The best method of making sure that your requirements are met is to conduct some thorough research of domain hosting companies by taking a look at reviews.

Reviews of domain hosting are unquestionably useful but how will you determine what exactly it is you’re searching for? Don’t make any decisions until you have decided which features are crucial to your company. One option is to opt for the same organization to host your web site and register your domain. Support is another important consideration that may affect your web site even a long time after registration. Be sure not to rely upon feedback which solely appears on the hosting company’s web site. It’s crucial to obtain an objective opinion before making a decision. Find the time to study different domain hosting customer reviews taking into account what each customer has to offer. Do you read some of the complaints over and over again? Are the provider’s strengths and weaknesses from the review? Is the overall feedback positive or negative?

Of course, you should expect to find positive and negative reviews. It’s invariably a good idea to take a look at all the reviews with objectivity and weigh them all. No doubt, the significance of the price can’t be ignored, but make sure you have all you might need included in your deal. To follow are a few questions to address when selecting which company to go with. During what hours do the company provide customer support? Do they offer a free telephone number, and can you discover from the reviews if they have got an acceptable turn around time? Exactly how much bandwidth will your account level be good for? It’s possible to negotiate a package providing unlimited hosting and bandwidth, along with all sorts of other rewards. What methods of payment will the company accept? Are all payments automatic, or could you pay per year? What kind of support is offered in the case of a server going down?

Ultimately this is a choice only you can make, but before you decide, make sure you have grasped all your alternatives. Taking advantage of appropriate domain hosting reviews is usually the savviest strategy that can save time and money.

Working online used to seem alot like a pipe dream because the only jobs that were being offered always seemed to be some sort of a scam where you did the work but they seemed to make all the money.

You never made enough to make it worth your time either, if you did make money. But the days of the bad internet jobs are coming to a close as a new revolution of work for stay home moms is becoming more and more prominent. The need for people to do several online jobs with very real paychecks is growing!

In many households after having kids people are finding that they end up going to one income and this isn’t enough to support the family.

Luckily their is an influx of great internet jobs appearing all over the place that gives stay at home mom’s a way to still earn an income to supplement the family budget. Ironically some stay at home moms work less hours and end up making more than their counterpart when they go out to work in the job market!

This is a good thing actually as it allows a mom to be at home with her kids and still earn a living!

Through the years, catalog printing services has continued to
expand with their services. There are a lot of companies and
individuals who have realized its importance and have switched
to using catalogs to showcase their needs and personal means to
communicate with the customers. This has been considered a smart
strategy because we all know that catalogs are very unique in
spreading out their information and details that no other
services can compare.

We are all aware of the increasing need to enhance printing
services because the needs and demands of the people are getting
high. Almost all of the business companies and establishments
have come up with creative ways on how to deal with their
printing services.

Catalogs are outrageous and have been selling high nowadays.
Almost all companies have produced their catalogs as a means for
reference and promotion. Printing companies are always in the
atmosphere of exploring different perspectives and designs. This
is useful because customers understand trendy catalogs.

Of course different people have different tastes in designs.
Some strictly follow the rules of a standard catalog design
while some just like following their own style and breaking the
rules. Some want to have a lasting and unique reflection through
their creative designs.

To come up with a very good catalog, you must come up with a
very captivating design that is hard to tell from the others.
Originality makes sense so keeping up a stunning design is worth
it.

If all catalogs looked the same, it will be very hard to tell.
If this happens, you will loose the customers who have long been
into your services. So you need to keep up a good catalog
design, make one that is ultimately original, lasting and up to
date. Come up with a design which no other catalogs ever had.

In order to keep up a high-quality catalog, make a design that
is appealing to the customers like a cover design that will
leave your customers captivated from the first page down to the
last page. You should leave a design that will leave them
lynching. This will make them interested and attracted in your
catalog design.

Understand that originality counts. If your brochures are very
distinct, the more that your company will be known for with your
exclusive design and style.

For more related articles, you may visit
http://www.catalogprintingexperts.com

Can you imagine the hypocrisy of spending thousands of dollars, countless hours, and boatload of resources to create a marketing tool that actually sends prospects running for the hills? It might seem crazy, but a overwhelming majority of websites are doing just that.

By failing to (1) define the specific goals of your website and (2) understand how it fits in with your customer’s buying process, you could be loosing out on the opportunity to enable prospects to receive the value you can offer them. — Or worse, by grossly confusing, discouraging, and even annoying them, you could be pushing them into the arms of the competition.

These two incredibly common pitfalls could be costing you business.

However, used effectively, your website becomes a strategic component of a well-oiled marketing and sales funnel that effectively supports your ideal prospects and customers in making the decision to work with you.

There are three components to an effective marketing and sales funnel:

Component 1 - Enables ideal prospects to find you or your business

Component 2 - Gives a prospect an experience of you

Component 3 - Invites the prospect to become a customer

Each successive stage helps your ideal prospects — those who most need the solutions you offer — to find, connect, and build a feeling of trust with you.

Like a funnel, it is wider at one end and smaller at the other. So in order to get an abundance of customers coming out at the end of the funnel, it’s important that you supply the beginning of the funnel with a healthy number of prospects.

Each component of a fine-tuned marketing and sales funnel uses key marketing tactics and tools to guide a prospect along the path to working with you.

A website is one of those tactics and tools. Other examples include email newsletters, complimentary consultations, brochures, speaking engagements, strategically-placed advertising, grassroots marketing, publicity, and networking.

Together, the three components, and their underlying tools and tactics, can support you in reaching your business goals.

To build an effective sales and marketing funnel, first define your specific marketing and sales goals. Do this by asking yourself:

How many new customers do I want to generate per week/month/quarter/year?

How many dollars in revenue do I want to generate per week/month/quarter/year?

What would you like your product and service mix to be? In other words, of your total sales, what percent would you like to have allocated to which product and service?

How many total prospects would you like to have in you customer database? How many people would you like to have on your mailing list?

How many people would you like to add to your mailing list per week/month/year?

Once you have defined the specific goals and objectives of your marketing and sales funnel, consider how you would like your website to support those goals.

Looking at your Marketing and Sales Funnel, do you want your website to support Component 1, Component 2, Component 3, or some combination of these?

If you want your website to support Component 1 of your marketing and sales funnel — it must serve as a channel for high-volumes of people to find out that you and your company exist.

In order for your website to support Component 1 of your marketing and sales funnel, it must produce a consistent heavy flow of prospects to your business. Without this, the rest of your marketing funnel will suffer dramatically. If only a few people can find your business, then even fewer will be interested in sticking around to get an experience of you.

To make sure you have consistent, heavy flow of prospects coming to your website, consider specifically how a prospect might find you.

Did they search for you on a search engine, like Google? If so, what specifically did they search for?

And when the list of options came up on Google, where was your listing located? Was it in the top 10 listings, or was it on page 102?

Did they find you on another website? Like an affiliate partner website?

Did they find you on another website featuring an article you wrote? If so, what kind of article would have brought them to you?

Were they visiting a popular, high-traffic website that attracts a similar market as yours, when they found a banner add linking to your website?

In order to effectively help prospects find you, it’s essential that you understand the specific needs that they are trying to solve. This will help you craft effective search engine listings, feature relevant articles, and target the best key words.

By doing this, you can align with and help along the decision-making process of prospects.

If your website is NOT meant to function as a vehicle for Component 1, then make sure that some other marketing channel is — speaking, networking, article-writing, publicity, advertising, or some other tactic.

Remember that without a healthy Component 1 — leveraging a website or some other marketing tool or tactic — it’s almost impossible to meet your sales and marketing goals.

If your website is meant to support Component 2 of the marketing and sales funnel, the focus shifts towards giving visitors an experience of you that leaves them wanting more.

Examples of using your website for Component 2 - to give visitors an experience of you include:

Offering a host of free downloadable tools - reports, assessments, community-building tools, etc.

Having a blog

Making available articles

Having high-quality, high-intrigue web copy

How ever you deliver this experience is less important than the reaction it evokes. –It’s should create a want and desire by the visitor to want more from you and your business.

If it just gives them a bunch of free stuff and they leave, then you have not met the real objective of Component 2.

During Component 2 of the marketing and sales funnel, a prospect is answering the question, “Is this product/service right for me?” To answer this question, the prospect looks at two very important factors: benefits and objections. Your job is to make sure that the benefits outweigh the objections.

If your website is meant to support Component 3 of the marketing and sales funnel — and you really want people to actually type in the numbers of their credit card to pay for your services online — it’s important that you really understand what you’re expecting.

Here’s the thing — it generally takes at least seven times of being exposed to a particular product or service before an online customer will be willing to make a purchase.

Hence, if you are expecting that the average web visitor will find you today and be willing to pay for your product after only being exposed to you through your website in 10 minutes or less - you’re probably not being realistic.

True, impulse buys do happen, but they are more the exception rather than the rule. So if you want your website to effectively invite prospects for an order, it’s important that elsewhere in your marketing and sales funnel you have given them the opportunity to really, truly get to know you.

Examples of this would be by providing a free multi-part eCourse, delivering a free evening seminar, or through a referral from someone they already know and respect earlier in the marketing and sales funnel process.

If Components 1 and 2 have been effectively delivered, then Component 3 is easy.

However, it is quite common for internet marketers to make the mistake of assuming that large numbers of web visitors will magically say yes to products and programs they know little about.

Don’t make that mistake.

Bottom line - The key to building an effective Component 3 on your website is to have strong, consistent and effective tactics build into Components 1 and 2 of your marketing and sales funnel.

To avoid wasting time, money, and energy on websites that not only don’t work — but actually scare prospects away — be sure to incorporate the Three Component System to building an effective marketing and sales funnel.

Copyright 2005 Coco Fossland

About Coco Fossland
The author of the forthcoming book, The Power of Trust: Trust Yourself, Transform Your World, Coco Fossland is a nationally recognized expert in personal transformation, self-empowerment and self-healing. Blending a decade of technology and strategy consulting with her expertise in self-trust transformation, Coco’s business is focused on supporting people passionate about creating businesses that make a difference in the world. She helps her clients fuse their higher path with their businesses, creating institutions and organizations that profoundly impact the world one person at a time. http://www.cocofossland.com

As search engine marketers, we spend an enormous amount of time trying to get targeted traffic to our site. But, once those visitors get to our site, can they find what they’re looking for? If not, guess what? We’ve lost a customer.

Think about it this way. How many times have you found a site through a major search engine or directory, only to visit the site and not be able to find what you’re looking for anywhere on the site? What do you do next? You go back to the search engine and click on the next site. That site has lost a customer: you.

Helping your visitors find what they’re looking for on your site can cover a great many areas, such as navigation, user interface issues, and the lack of a clear “call to action.”

But one way around many of those issues is to offer an onsite search engine, so that once visitors hit your site, they can easily find exactly what they’re looking for.

The really neat thing about onsite search engines is that many of them are FREE. Yes, you read right: free. Of course, that also means that you may have ads in your search results, which may or may not present problems for you. However, even if you choose to purchase an onsite engine, the cost is generally not expensive.

What should you look for in an onsite search engine?

• Good customer support. If you begin to have problems with the engine, you want to be able to get help in fixing it.

• Reports that let you know what people are searching for once they reach your site. Just think of the GOLD this will tell you! If you don’t have a page that covers a particular topic, make one!

• Ease in setting up the engine. This may or may not be an issue to you, but if you’re like me, you want something that is simple to set up and maintain.

• An extensive “help” section at the site that will walk you through setting up the engine and answer any questions you might have.

• The ability to keep the engine out of certain areas of your site that you don’t want spidered and available through the search, such as employee areas, password-protected member areas, etc.

• The ability to spider password-protected areas so that your member areas can have their own onsite search.

• The ability to customize search results pages.

• The capability to request re-indexing whenever you update the site, or even to schedule re-indexing on a regular basis.

In my training material and resource library at the Academy, I had an onsite search engine for a long time. Then, the company folded. Until recently, I hadn’t set up another onsite engine, because the one onsite engine that I really wanted to use didn’t index password-protected areas. So, I “patiently” waited for the onsite engine, FreeFind, to add this to their list of features. When they recently did, I jumped on it, and now both of my online training programs have excellent onsite search engines through FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com).

But why did FreeFind stand out among the others, and why was it so important to me to wait until they could index password- protected areas? FreeFind offers some features that I couldn’t find on other onsite search engines, features that would help me tremendously with my work.

For example:

• FreeFind will automatically create a What’s New page, after you’ve any changes to the site. Just think of how much help that will be for me with my training material? Between my two programs (beginning and advanced), I have over 1000 resource pages to update every single month, and I’ve been creating the “What’s New” page by hand. Now, it’s automatically created for me.

• FreeFind is the only onsite search engine that enables your visitors to find the page they’re looking for, then keeps an eye on it for any changes. Their ChangeDetection ™ monitoring system lets your users monitor a page for content changes, then notifies them when the page is changed. If you set up this engine on your own site, it will build traffic by turning casual, one- time visitors into repeat and loyal visitors who return again and again to look at changes made to the page that are of particular interest to them.

• FreeFind will automatically create a Site Map of your site. This Site Map is an alphabetical listing of the pages on your site. The Site Map will be even more valuable to you if you have a regular, non-password protected site, because it will give the Web search engines a page of links to spider.

• FreeFind will search across several domains. So, if your company has numerous domains, your onsite search engine will cover each of those domains, without having to set up separate engines.

In Conclusion

Look closely at your site. Is it time to add an onsite search engine? Is it time to make sure visitors can find exactly what they’re looking for when they land on your site? Are you losing customers who get lost and can’t find what they want?

FreeFind (http://www.freefind.com) is an excellent onsite search engine that met my exact needs. However, to be fair, and because this article isn’t meant to be an advertisement for FreeFind, here are some other onsite engines that you may want to consider. Look closely at their features, and find the one that works best for you.

Other Onsite Search Engines

Atomz: http://www.atomz.com

PicoSearch: http://www.picosearch.com

SiteLevel.com: http://www.sitelevel.com/

FusionBot.com: http://www.fusionbot.com

A listing of numerous onsite search tools: http://www.searchtools.com/tools/tools.html

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academy’s training site to learn more about their online search engine marketing training (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com) and search engine optimization (http://www.se-optimizer.com) software. She also teaches 3-day hands-on search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Email: RobinN@acws.com

Usability testing with children is similar in many respects to usability testing with adults. In order to get the most out of the sessions, and ensure the child is comfortable and happy, there are a few differences that you need to be aware of.

Stress of new people and surroundings

Children are far more likely than adults to find encountering new places and people stressful. You should always remember this, so try to find as many ways as possible to relax the child. Some things you could do are:

- Allow a significant period of time - at least 10 minutes - to meet the child. This is critical in putting them at ease before beginning the session. Some easy things to talk about might be computer games, cartoons, sports or school. Trying to make all the equipment used during the session match that which the child uses at home/school (phone up their parents/teachers beforehand to check).
- Try to be as comforting and reassuring as possible. It’s especially important to make it clear to the child that you want their views on the site and that you’re not testing them.
- Plan for the fact that younger children may prefer their parents to remain in the testing room with them. Make sure that parents know that they should stay out of the child’s line-of-sight and not help or distract them.

Asking for help

Children are far more used to asking for - and receiving - help than adults, so it’s very important for the moderator to:

- Clearly explain at the beginning of the test that you want the child to use the site on their own
- Make a sustained effort to deflect any such questioning during the session itself

Good ways of deflecting questions can include:

- Answering a question with a question (e.g. What do you think [you should do now]?)
- Re-stating that you want the child to use the site ‘on their own’
- Asking the child to have ‘one last go’ before you move on to something else

Children get tired, bored and discouraged more easily

Children (especially of younger ages) are less inclined - and/or able - to apply themselves to a single task for a prolonged period. Some ways to work around this are:

- Limiting sessions to 1 hour or less.
- Taking short breaks during sessions if the child becomes tired or irritable.
- Ensuring that sessions cover the intended tasks/scenarios in a different order - this will make sure that the same scenarios are not always tested by tired children, who are less likely to succeed/persevere.
- Asking the child for help so as to provide them with motivation (e.g. asking ‘Could you please find out for me how to…’, or by actually pretending to not be able find/do something on the site).
- Keeping up a steady stream of encouragement and positive feedback (”You’re doing really well and telling us lots of useful things - it will really help make the site better. Keep it up!”).

The importance of non-verbal cues

Children can’t always be relied upon to verbally articulate their thoughts/feelings, either due to their:

- Not being articulate enough
- Being too shy
- Not wanting to say the wrong thing and displease an adult
- Saying things they don’t believe just to please the adult

This makes it particularly important that the usability expert be sensitive to children’s non-verbal cues, such as:

- Sighs
- Smiles
- Frowns
- Yawns
- Fidgeting
- Laughing
- Swaying
- Body angle and posture

Physical differences

A couple of very obvious - but easily forgotten - differences which need to be taken into account are:

- Chair and table settings - Make sure you have a chair/table setting that allows the child to comfortably use the equipment during the session.
- Microphone positioning - Children tend to have quieter voices than adults, so microphones should be placed slightly nearer to the participant than normal.

Levels of literacy and understanding

It is critical to ensure that a session’s participant has an accurate understanding of the scenario being presented to them. Some ways to do this include:

- Asking participants to re-phrase scenarios/goals in their own words.
- Asking participants to repeat a scenario (i.e. what they are trying to achieve) if the task has gone on for some time and you suspect they may have forgotten it.

This article was written by Tim Fidgeon. He’s crazy about web usability - so crazy that he now works for Webcredible ( www.webcredible.co.uk ), an industry-leading usability and accessibility consultancy.