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Top Tips for Website Design

Web design plays a huge role in how users interact with your website, and here are my 1, 2 & 3 primary points of vital factors your online business should consider...

Goodbye Internet Explorer 6?

The choice to support Internet Explorer 6 should not just come down to the features you can use, or the additional time required for development; your choice should also come down to how your target audience will be viewing your website, and how important your business image is to you.

Visitor To Customer Conversion

As an online vendor, if you're serious about turning new web visitors into regular online customers, publishing a website and keeping your content fresh is only the beginning...

Efficiency = Survive and Thrive

Here's a fact you don't need an economics degree to understand: Businesses that operate more efficiently than the their competitors are better placed to survive and thrive in any economic environment.

The Get Smart school of navigation

If you're looking at your website every day, you already know how to get around it, and may be the worst person to assess the usability from the point of view of the public.

Tags: usability, web design

Abandoned Shopping Carts

Ever wondered what a typical shopping mall in cyberspace may (virtually) look like? The invisible wall between the shopper and the vendor may be too transparent for its own good...

Tags: conversion metrics, return on investment

Should Links Open in New Windows

Many people still believe that the benefit of keeping users at their websites by forcing links to external sites to open in new windows outweigh the potential fustration of users who are becoming more and more sophisticated and demand greater control over their online experience.

Tags: internet trends, usability, web standards

Is Traffic REALLY King?

Corporate website owners are becoming acutely aware of the important role Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) plays in attracting new visitors. There's an old saying: "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink", but on the web that's not entirely true!

Tags: conversion metrics, internet marketing, return on investment

To Blog Or Not To Blog

What does it mean to Blog? Should I become a Blogger? Dare I add a Blog module to my website? What are the literary ramifications? Will I struggle with writer's "Blog"? Would Shakespeare Blog if he were here today?

Tags: internet trends, search engine optimisation, web 2.0

Web Standards on Mars

Internet Explorer follows its own rules when interpreting HTML and CSS and in many cases IE-specific "hacks" are necessary to make a website display correctly in IE - so what happens when Internet Explorer starts following the rules?

Tags: internet trends, usability, web standards

Google Page Rank Explained

The Google Search Engine is fundamentally a popularity contest. The more popular Google rates a web page, the higher it appears in relevant search results. The popularity rating Google assigns to every web page is called the Google Page Rank.

Tags: google, internet trends, search engine optimisation

Labor's Broadband Plan

The Labor government has committed to improving Australian broadband infrastructure. Telstra has refused to enter a proposed partnership. The government intends to award the tender midway through this year. So what exactly can we expect from the new infrastructure, and how is it going to get off the ground?

The Dangers of Web 2.0

There's no doubt that Web 2.0 is a hot buzzword, but what does it really mean? It's a used and abused term which covers community features, social networking and 'rich' media. It's certainly cool stuff but a couple of blogs I've read recently point out some of the "dangers" of Web 2.0.

Tags: internet trends, usability, web 2.0

M-site? dot-mobi? News Limited goes mobile

Yesterday News Limited's digital arm launched a mobile version of their primary news portal, at m.news.com.au -- A couple of months ago they launched the mobile version of CarsGuide at carsguide.mobi. What address should a mobile site (or M-site as is becoming increasingly common parlance) sit on? How should it differ from your primary website? As more companies realise the value (and requirements) of having a mobile presence, these questions and more will start to settle...

Tags: domain name, mobile internet, usability

Is your current website doing more harm than good?

There are many practices I see commonly employed by web designers and developers that I believe are counter-productive and often detrimental to the overall performance of the website.

Tags: web design

Protecting your online integrity

You wouldn't set up shop in the wrong part of town if you wanted to attract the right kind of clients. Support Manager Elise Kendall explains why your online neighbourhood is important too.

Tags: tips and tricks

All systems go!

Our all-new, state of the art website is now live -- and we'd love to know what you think. Launching a brand new corporate website is always a big job; sometimes it can feel like working with Russian dolls -- the further into the process you get, the more work you realise there is to do -- but persistence pays off.

Tags: feedback, mobile internet

Web to SMS - RIP

Web to SMS had its 15 minutes of fame but the next generation of mobile Internet is set to expose SMS's many limitations and banish it to the history books.

Tags: internet trends, mobile internet, sms

Traffic is King, Content is Queen!