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Understanding how to MARKET websites:
Useful URL's
World Web stats: http://www.netcraft.com/survey/
Latest web news:
About Webmastering & Search engines: http://www.plus.ro/articles/mistakes.html http://www.searchengineguide.com/aws/2001/topmistakes.html http://builder.cnet.com/webbuilding/pages/Authoring/Metadata/ Some interesting facts: Consumers in Western Europe spent an estimated USD18.9 billion online in 2001 Apr 22 2002: China has the second largest number of home Internet users in the world, reports Reuters. China has around 56.6 million households with access to the Internet, according to a new survey conducted by AC Nielsen. This is equivalent to just 5.5 percent of the Chinese population. The United States has the highest number of home Internet users in the world with166 million people. China?s neighbor, Japan has approximately 51.3 million home Internet users, according to AC Nielsen. The report indicates that most of China?s Internet users rely on narrow-band, dial-up access, with 56.8 percent of survey respondents saying they had modem speeds of 56 kilo bauds per second or lower. Only 14 percent of users in the country have broadband access, and less than 10 percent of respondents have bought anything online. Forrester Research forecasts that 67 percent of European consumers will be online in 2006, equivalent to 200 million users. This marks an increase of 28 percent on the current number of Internet users in Europe, which is estimated to be around 116 million users
CyberAtlas: Marketers spend little on search engines: Aug 23 2001: Most online marketers continue to spend very little on search engine optimization, according to CyberAtlas Research.
Almost 46 percent of the marketers polled said they spend less than 0.5 percent of their annual budgets on search engine optimization. Only 10 percent spend over 25 percent of their budget on making sure their sites performed well on search engines. This is despite the fact that 24 percent of those surveyed said over three-quarters of their traffic came from search engine referrals. About 85 percent of those polled said they monitor their site?s placements on search engines once a month or more often. Almost 65 percent work on search engine optimization monthly, and 13 percent do so weekly. Eighty percent of optimization is carried out in-house, and 13 percent is outsourced. Over 30 percent of those taking part in the survey have used paid keyword programs at Yahoo, GoTo.com, or LookSmart. Apr 10 2001: Information overload on the Internet causes users to feel frustrated and stressed, and can even lead to ?Internet rage?, according to a new study. The study from UK firm WebTop found that 71 percent of British Internet users have suffered from Internet rage at least once. WebTop also found that 36 percent of users in the UK spend more than two hours on the Internet searching for accurate information, and that it only takes 12 minutes before users become frustrated with a fruitless search. Users do, however, appreciate that the Internet enables them to find information faster than was ever previously possible.
Alexa Research: Most popular search terms revealed Feb 15 2001: A two year study by Alexa Research has found that 'sex' is the most popular online search term and that a large number of web users search for specific sites rather than enter their URLs. Hotmail, Yahoo, Ebay, AOL, or derivatives of their names or URL, were all featured in the top ten search terms, while Excite.com, AltaVista, Amazon.com, and MSN all made the top 50. This widespread ignorance of entering URLs into browsers indicates that for a large proportion of users, the Web continues to be a technical challenge. The study found that 0.3289 percent, or about 1 in 300, of all the terms searched for online was 'sex'. Other adult-related keywords in the top twenty included 'porn', 'nude', 'XXX', 'Playboy', and 'erotic stories'. The most popular celebrities searched for were Britney Spears, Pamela Anderson, Backstreet Boys, Jennifer Lopez and Eminem. The survey is based on an analysis of over 42 million search pages viewed by users of the Alexa toolbar at ten leading directories and search engines?altavista.com, aol.com, excite.com, go.com, google.com, goto.com, lycos.com, msn.com, netscape.com, and yahoo.com. Other terms to make the top twenty included 'chat', 'mp3', 'horoscope', 'games', 'map', 'pokemon', 'music', 'travel', 'screensaver', and 'free'.
Top ten design blunders:
1. The ten-ton homepage Always try and keep the home page of your site as light as possible. You may well think that your beautifully rendered 300k animation of your underpants in 3D is wonderful, but most surfers will not share your enthusiasm and be off quicker than you can say, "skid marks".
2. The Colour Explosion Avoid nasty, loud, tiled backgrounds and use a bit of restraint when using colour on the site. Keep it simple and consistent. Your monitor may well be able to render millions of colours, but that's no reason to try and fit them all on one page.
3. Hideous Music I'm sure your rendition of "Anarchy in the UK" sounds great in your bedroom, but bear in mind a lot of people surf at work or at night - and inflicting a cheesy MIDI racket without warning is a sure fire way to naff off visitors. If you're going to put music and/or amusing noises on your site, warn people first and give them a 'music' option set to 'off' by default.
4. Weird navigation Try and keep your sites simple and easy to understand, and work out a consistent navigation style. If you're using graphic links, put up a text only version at the bottom of the page for those surfing the web with their images turned off. Try not to overload pages with hundreds of choices, and always provide links back to the homepage and relevant sections. Avoid using pop up windows for the site's primary navigation as it'll only confuse surfers.
5. The mighty scrolling page It's no fun scrolling down a page that seems to stretch on forever, so if you have large sections of text, try splitting them up into smaller pages. Consider using columnised text in tables, as it's a lot easier to read and liberally scatter 'back to top' hyperlinks on the page.
6. Links to nowhere Another sure-fire way to naff off visitors is to not bother checking your links or code. Give your site an online once-over at the webgarage (http://www.websitegarage.com). For offline checking, there's loads of useful shareware and commercial programs. Take your pick from the listings here: http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/HTML/Validation/Links.html
7. Ancient News If you're going to have a 'news' section on your site, make sure you update it! Nothing sends people packing quicker than a website that is full of out of date information and yesterday's news. If you can't be arsed to spend all that time updating your site, link up to other relevant news sites - but be sure to drop them a line first out of courtesy.
8. Frametastic That complicated six-window frameset may look well 'kewl' on your 17" monitor, but for those using smaller monitors it will look a complete mess. Unless there's an overriding reason for using them, avoid using frames.
9.Pointless gimmicks Another way to add to the unpopularity of your site is to festoon it with useless gizmos, flashing Flash fluff and slow, browser-crashing java. Unless it's doing something vaguely useful, avoid irritating bells and whistles and keep it simple. For a hilarious look of how it shouldn't be done, take a look at http://wackyadvice.com/bud/home.html
10. Hideous design Often neglected, good design will help you get your message across quickly and efficiently. Avoid using microscopic text, corny clip art, pointless animations and flashing 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION!' banners.
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