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The advertising industry is on the verge of being shattered into a thousand fragments due to the knowledge explosion and the proliferation of new technologies. There are no more grand theories that hold sway over the entire industry. Michael Strangelove
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Christopher Wilkes, under the nom-de-plume (or perhaps that
should be nom-de-guerre) RageBoy, is the producer, editor, features
writer, cook and chief bottlewasher for EGR.
Which stands for Entropy Gradient Reversals...
There are a number of things we like about this site. The first is the quality
and insight of RageBoy's rants about the new medium. We like his style.
His article for msn, Secrets
of Shameless Self-Promotion, is full of commonsensical and effective
tips and tricks as to how to promote your site.
And we found The Power of Stupidity - Part Two by Giancarlo
Livraghi (whose background includes an impressive career in conventional
advertising, and who happens to be one of the founders, and the first chairman,
of ALCEI - Electronic Frontiers Italy) an intriguing philosophical treatise.
But what we liked best of all was the fact that the site breaks all the rules
of conventionally "good" site design and architecture. Mixed fonts
and colors, animation, an endlessly scrolling homepage, screeds of unbroken
text and so on and so forth.
And yet we continued to wade through it.
Why?
Simple. Great content.
We'll be back to this one time and time again. In fact, we've become the
1,718th subscriber...--John Blower
We've always found the link tracking option "link:www.yourcompany.com/") available at several search engines (we tend to favor HotBot and Alta Vista - you may feel differently...)to be particularly useful. We can keep track of who is linking to us, and, more importantly, who is linking to our competitors.
Which is all well and good. But such services require us to keep careful note of the linking sites - which can be problematical.
Here comes LinkInfo from Pinnacle Publishing of Seattle. This is a service which tracks and reports on the statues of links pointing to any given site.
So what's diffrent? Well, in addition to tracking the total number of in-links,
LinkInfo tracks the number of sites that have stopped
linking to the URL in the past week, and the number of
sites that have added links to the URL in the past
week. LinkInfo also tracks links into a any other
sites the user specifies - like a competing Web site,
for instance.
Each week the following reports are provided to
LinkInfo subscribers: executive summary detailing
numerical trends, a full listing of sites linking to
the specified URL, a full listing of sites that have
dropped links to the specified URL, a full listing of
sites that have added links to the specified URL, and a
comparison grid between sites linking to the URL and
linking to the competitor's site. These listings are
complemented by graphs highlighting the in-linking
trends of the URL.
LinkInfo costs $199 a year, although if you hurry, charter subscriptions are available for $149.
If you're serious about pro-actively marketing your site, this service is probably worth checking out (the site has sample reports in graphical format).
Moore Staffing & Computer Training "provides temporary, temporary-to-hire and direct hire placement services and computer training services to people and companies in the Merrimack Valley and in Southern New Hampshire".
What a delightful site!
Bright, colorful, good (small) graphics, easy navigation, this site is a delight to use.
Navigation is via the left-hand sidebar and a box on the right-hand side of the homepage.
Wherein lies the attraction.
The utility of the site lies in its ease of use for potential candidates. There's a listing of all available positions. Candidates can submit their background details through a simple-to-use form, or their resume by eMail (acceptable formats are defined).
The site as a whole is focussed on a distinct geographical area, which lends it strength as a resource for both candidates and employers.
We believe this site is well worth checking out, not only from both sides of the "employment equation", but also as an object lesson in good site design and architecture.
Creating a super site is simple. All you have to do is go to a decent book shop and pick up any of numerous titles which will give you step-by-step instruction on how to do it.
(You don't even need to fire up the car - just point your browser to Amazon, and an even greater choice awaits you.)
What's really difficult, however (and something no book will instruct you in), is how to put together a site which is guaranteed to send visitors to their bookmark file within seconds of hitting your site.
So, as we start a new year, dear readers, here, for easy reference, are a few pointers on how to deter visitors from ever penetrating the really interesting stuff at your site.
Remember, your mission (should you choose to accept it) is to:
Drive Away Users
A good start is to present users with a long registration form before allowing them entry to the site. The form should ask questions like income, number of siblings, pre-existing medical conditions etc. Ideally, users should require a password which will be eMailed to them.
Include some background music in an obscure audio format which requires users to download a plug-in, quit, install, re-boot etc.
Use plenty of proprietary tags, and include lots of "Best Viewed with....." graphics;
The "homepage", when finally reached, should feature a huge graphic in millions of colors. Anything under 100k is inadequate. ALT tags should be omitted, as should "H=" and "W=" tags.
Obfuscation
This is more difficult than it sounds, requiring as it does the use of complex, industry-specific jargon (liberally spiced with words like "awesome" and the prefix "cyber-"), the grammar of which should include an unnecessarily large number of dependent clauses, which are preferably provided by the Research & Development Department in conjunction with the Director of Marketing, all of which tend to upend the existing paradigm , but only within the context of an aggressively post-modernist organization, despite the need to explore and develop an evolutionary (as opposed to revolutionary) business model which takes into account the restrictions of the New Medium.
Don't forget a "Mission Statement", "Our Goals", and "Our Vision". And the obligatory statement from the Chief Executive along with an unflattering image (see above).
Never include any contact information. Unless it's on level 8 of your site.
Look Like an Amateur
Needless Capitalization Is a Good Start, But Don't Forget; the Unnecessary punctuation And. Particularly Not The exclamation Points!!!!!!!!!
Bad spelling is more difficult than it appears, but homonyms usually escape spell-checking. "Its" and "it's" are good ones as are "they're" and "their".
Be reckless! With the degradation of written American, it can actually be quite difficult to come up with prose which is riddled with spelling errors which doesn't look OK to the average user.
Adverbs are fertile ground. "We do it good and quick" is the kind of thing we have in mind. But don't, under any circumstances, use the word "hopefully". Chances are, in attempting improper usage, you will stumble upon the correct usage.
Use frames in profusion, no less than five per page. If frames are beyond you, use tables - the bigger the better!
And remember - never, ever integrate your web efforts with any of your other publicity of promotional material....
Despite our being warned off, we found the site to be useful, informative and easy to use.
We could quibble about the request to send resumes to "careers@isi.com" (it's a bit impersonal), but the instruction not to send one's resume as an attachment is a clue that this company knows what's what.
The Web is about fulfilling users' perceived needs. In the case of ISI, this includes an admirably clear explanation of what the company does, and, on the homepage, an invitation to further one's career with them.
Notice the use of the word "career". ISI isn't looking for people who want a job. They see themselves as being instrumental in furthering one's professional development.
Being based in Sunnyvale, California, ISI is operating in a marketplace rife with a shortage of qualified candidates. To this end, applying for a position with them is made easy.
We understand that most of ISI's recruitment is carried out over the Web. It would be interesting to see how the company responds to an application.
The ingredients of successfully marketing and promoting a Website are probably know to all of us by now.
However, Alan Sarkissian suggests a handy aide-memoire - which he leaves open to amendment, addition or modification:
Take a look at the Archives. We've indexed all the past issues with topic pointers.
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