Day 13: SXSW - More from Angela's Sessions
Traffic Jam: Making Web Sites Popular and Profitable
Speaker June Cohen (newjune@earthlink.net), wrote "The Unusually Useful Web Book"
Keep visitors around longer
- Study your traffic logs to learn what works
- Make choices intuitive. Try user testing with friends, family. "Don't Make Me Think" book.
- Label things clearly. People don't want to click on something they don't understand.
- Improve site search. www.atomz.com and others provide good site searches. Customize results for common searches. (Need search for Crafty Goat.)
Bring them back more often
- One word: email. Accounts for up to 75% of traffic to sites! Start collecting addresses now. Put "enter email" form on front door. Experiement with format, frequency. Mail early in the week and overnight. (Include more info on new website features when sending out monthly Mensokie email.)
- Fill a need. Provide something your users want.
- Update more often... maybe! If you're just updating, but not letting anyone know, it's won't do any good. Can kill yourself making updates, but only matters if people actually care.
- Run promotions
- Become the homepage (hard to do)
Attracting new visitors
- Get referrals from search engine. Important to reach people when they're thinking about you. Focus on specific pages -- not whole site. Copy what high-ranked sites do. Important to list key words as title of page and heading of page (marked as heading), as well as in content. Get other subject-related sites to link to yours. If all else fails,
- Get referrals from (hand-edited) directories. Email sites, perhaps even paying expedite fee. They look to see if site has what it claims to have, and whether it works in major browsers. These referrals give credibility and sometimes help ranking in search engines.
- Get links from other sites. Best way to do so is to ask for them.
- Advertise -- online and offline. Buy keyword-related links like Google's. Best way to advertise is online, because people don't remember it long enough otherwise. Email lists are good.
- Inspire word of mouth. Get users to tell a friend. Emailing friends works. (For OKMensa quizzes, have 'Send a score' email.)
- Lure existing offline customers. Put URL in SIG file.
Improve site speed
- What causes pages to be slow? The page is generated slowly (sites that create dynamic content per user); the page is transferred slowly (too many images, too much content); the page is drawn slowly (coding errors).
- Reduce page size. Don't make text be an image. Determine what features really make an impact.
- Increase bandwidth and server capacity.
- Clean up the HTML. Nested tables bad. Image tag height and width help, since browser can reserve a space for image while loading other things.
- Overhaul backend code
Increasing Traffic
- It's not just a marketing problem! You don't have to have money.
- It's a cross-disciplinary task: Collaborate!
- Put someone in charge
- Set a goal, so you know when you've achieved something.
Advergaming: Engaging Essence of the Brand
Panelists Jane Chen (yayacom), Dave Madden (Wild Tangent), Glenn Thomas (Smashing Ideas).
Game play lasts 5-10 minutes, so the advertiser is rewarded by more than the average 30-second spot, and the customer is rewarded by enjoyment of the game. People spend a lot of times playing games. If you can integrate immersive experiences into the game, allowing product to be contextually featured, your advertising is successful. 60% of people do play games, and online gaming growing constantly.
Games can add a level of education and customer loyalty to already-existing customers (already at your website). And customer are often willing to give up more personal info to play a game. Can be used for customer acquisition too. Fruit Stripes gum gained 10-15% sales in 1 year, only marketing online.
Games are targeted towards customer experience. The advertiser is the one benefitted by a straight ad; the customer can benefit from fun gaming. As opposed to TV ads where the advertiser is breaking into what the customer actually wants to see, with gaming, the advertisers are the ones offering what the customer wants. Reach someone in their mindset and in what they do best.
Targeting groups: 51% of gamers online are women. So it's not just teenage boys. For guys, competition is big, emailing friends to try & beat them. For women, collaboration is good -- how can we get better? Personality tests & ways to improve are also big... especially emailing friends to compare, contrast results. The market selects the game -- xtreme sports for genx, etc. For children, boys like action/adventure. Girls like printing out & sharing. Gender competition (boys vs girls) is also big for children.
Biggest expense of gaming is art. Lots of testing involved with online distribution.
Sweepstakes & giveaways: (www.candystand.com). Cheating & security is a big issue. Make sure it works properly before you put it out; otherwise, you could end up in a situation where you're legally obligated to give away prizes. Games are important for sweepstakes, because it makes sure they get the right message. If you see a Coke giveaway at the grocery store, with a prize of a Jeep, you're not sure whether the Coke or Jeep is being advertised. People are more willing to give correct personal info for a sweepstakes. People are willing to tell friends about game/sweepstakes if it gives them more chances to win. Also beneficial in sweepstakes is the co-sposorship aspect -- prizes may be donated if it's advantageous for the donator, and they may also help advertise the sweepstakes.
Create integrated advertising campaign: the look and feel of the online and offline content should be similar.
Video games making more than movie industry now. Approx 10% of American leisure time spent on games. Possibility of selling co-sponsorship, i.e., Jack Daniels logo on pool game.
Screentime app (Flash) allows creating updateable desktops. Message box notification saying a new game is available.
In Print: From Passion to Publish
Speaker: Kevin Smokler. Topic: How to get into the professional publishing industry.
An agent isn't necessary until almost the very last step. No agent will agree to represent a first-time author on a fiction book until the book is finished. If you want to write a non-fiction book, you need a track record in the area. You need to write elsewhere (national magazines, local magazines, newspapers, web) for a couple of years on that non-fiction topic in order to really be considered.
Start small. Write longer blogs and essays. Consider sending one of these essays to a related publication.
To get published in a magazine, don't send ideas for articles and follow the normal freelance process. Read the magazine. If you find something you like, write the author and tell them you like it and that it's encouraged you to be a subscriber. If you can establish a relationship with that author, then you can eventually write them and mention you're working on a piece about such-and-such. They might be interested and want to see it. Then you've got an author at the magazine reading your material.
Another option is to find out where else authors that you like are being published. They probably have some smaller credentials listed, in which case you can try to submit something to the smaller magazine, which is probably more likely to publish you.
Develop a thick skin. It's like dating -- don't get your hopes up too high in the beginning. Don't get too discouraged when it doesn't work. Keep an editor's name when they reject you. Write back and tell them you'll send them something else soon. Then write an encouraging note when they do a good job editing a different story. They'll have a favorable impression and remember your name the next time you send them something.
Be generous with your time. Volunteer to be a technical editor or do something else free for a zine or another publication. They'll be happy to publish you and will help you out as they move up.
If you've got a blog, and want to use it as a portfolio-builder, try to blog about whatever you want to write about. If it's food, write your blog about food. Writing a daily blog helps you develop your voice and helps your discipline. Might also want to have samples of your work that are available, in case someone's looking for an article to use tomorrow.
Let people know you are a writer. Represent yourself as a writer. Do readings and open-mike nights. Take a note-pad and sign up people for your mailing list. Maybe you only get one person to sign up, but that's the person who will buy your book. (Something to remember for Crafty Goat craft show or other offline sales - need to have a mailing list sign-up sheet.)
Self-promotion! Sell yourself and be confident. Make and use connections and take whatever opportunities are provided.
Online journal to look up: InkBlots
Day 13: SXSW, continuing to be continued
Between the (Style) Sheets: CSS, Browsers, and You
Tantek Çelik (Tasman Development), Eric Meyer (meyerweb.com), Jeffrey Zeldman (zeldman.com)
Tantek is giving tips on cleaning up markup.
Eric is demonstrating how one simple document can be changed multiple ways with stylesheets. He asked how many people know the difference between block-level and inline elements. The majority of people raised their hands. Surprising. He says you don't have to completely separate style and content. Basically, you can have content without style, but you can't have style without content. The style must be related to the content.
Zeldman is showing how he redesigned his site using CSS. Apparently, I still don't understand absolute positioning. He positioned something at 0, 0, yet it is under another element. I'll have to play with that.
Q: On CSS rollovers, there can be a lag as the image loads.
Zeldman: Make the hover image the background, and the non-hover state the image. Good idea.
Freelance Forum: Going Solo
Pableaux Johnson (bayoudog.com), Jennifer Niederst-Robbins (Littlechair Design), Paul Pugh (handwire.com)
More PCs in this one than Macs. And one tablet PC. Interesting.
Paul: Has been freelancing for about a year. He has a partner with overlapping skills, but he does more design while his partner does more technical work.
Jennifer: Decided she was draining her life for someone else's company. She wanted freedom and flexibility. In the past, she didn't have to market herself.
Q: Practical ways to market yourself.
Paul: Align yourself with other firms to handle marketing and sales. Ad agencies, ISPs, etc.
Jennifer: Pick something you do well and market to a specific niche.
Paul: Create a usefulness on the web. Create a reputation from that.
Jennifer: Passive marketing: Do things for yourself that proves what you can do.
Pableaux: Being a freelancer allows you to do many different types of jobs.
Q: If you market yourself as a generalist, how can you convince clients you can do it all?
Paul: If you can't do something, farm out the work to other freelancers.
Q: How do you keep yourself motivated?
From the audience: Be flexible, redirect yourself.
Another audience member: Make connections with people online so you have people to sympathize with.
Pableaux: Freelancing and working for a company have the same amount of problems, they're just different.
Q: How do you make sure you get paid in a timely manner?
Paul: Get money up front. Have some leverage (source files). Usually 30% up front.
From the audience: Business Forms and Legal Forms for Graphic Designers
From the audience: Make contact with people in accounting.
Pableaux: Ask from the beginning what the payment terms are.
Q: How should you present yourself: As a company, or an individual?
Short answer: It depends
Paul: Indicating that you are a firm can get you a slightly better rate, but so can having a reputation.
Pableaux: Business strategies?
Paul: They're not trying to build a big company, they just found what they like to do, and want to keep doing it.
Jennifer: Tries to choose things that are interesting. Be professional, get things done on time.
Q: How do you run your life?
Jennifer: Decides from day to day, based on what she needs to do. She does miss working with a team.
Pableaux: How comfortable are you with or without structure? He maintains a separate space for his work.
Paul: Also maintains a separate space, and keeps a regular schedule, so that work doesn't cut into time with his family.
From the audience: Portfolio is key.
Pableaux: Because of the economy, continue to moonlight, rather than quitting your day job. Keep adding to your reserves. Also, keep a line between what you do for money and what you do for art.
From the audience: Keep the work coming in. If you don't have the time for something, farm it out. Keep up a good network.
Q: Company loyalty is not what it used to be. Why work for a company that is not loyal to you?
Pableaux: Make informed decisions, because the infrastructure can be expensive and complex.
Adding Humor To Your Website
Dave Linabury (davezilla.com)
Techniques for humor:
- Use paragraphs for timing.
- If you're trying to write about something, look up about 10 things about that subject.
- Trivial things are funnier than important things.
- Top 10 lists are usually funnier than "A/B" lists.
- Elevate the mundane.
- Wrong uses for products or safety warnings.
- Making fun of yourself.
Dave talked about being sued by the company that owns Godzilla. There is precedent that, when you buy a trademark, it does not give you rights to similar trademarks. Also, when parodying, you can use the name of something, or the image, but not both at the same time.
He mentions that he will soon switch to a Creative Commons license. Also, RSS greatly increases his hits.
The majority of the rest of his panel was showing humor sites and talking about the techniques they use.
