If you have a business in Ontario, Canada, you may have heard of the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, or AODA.  If you haven’t, now would be a good time to do some research on the terms that are now affecting all businesses in the private sector. Refusal to comply with the Customer Service Standards can result in fines of up to $100,000 per day for the corporation.

This act was created in 2005 with the goal of removing barriers for activities and opportunities for disabled individuals by 2025. The Ontario Government has split AODA compliance into different sets of mandatory standards, all being implemented and enforced by the government in phases. They are:

1. Customer Service Standard

2. Integrated Accessibility Regulation

• Information and Communications
• Employment
• Transportation

3. Built Environment

Almost seven years after introducing the act, it is now time for businesses to take action and make their businesses accessible to all Ontarians. The deadline for businesses in the private sector to be compliant was January 1, 2012. Public sector organizations that provide goods and services to the public had to be compliant by January 1, 2010.

In short, if your organization has at least one employee with a phone on their desk whose role involves interaction with others who do not work for your company, your business must comply. While there are other sections of the AODA addressing elements such as accessibility within your actual office space, the focus of this article is on how these laws affect your website. The Web Content and Accessibility Guideline (or WCAG) outlines the ways in which your website must comply.

Most custom-built websites should be flexible and scalable enough to support the necessary updates to be compliant with AODA. How we all access information is a huge part of our daily lives, especially with the growing internet community. Since this Act aims to provide people with disabilities the same ease of usability as everyone else, it is likely that your website could need some updating in order to be compliant.  Below, I have outlined the WCAG elements that your website must have in order to comply with AODA.

1.1    Text Alternatives
Providing your website’s visitors with text alternatives for non-text content can facilitate the user experience for those with disabilities. Options can include larger print, symbols, simpler language, braille or audio descriptions.

1.2    Time-based Media
Providing alternatives for time-based media ensures that anyone who wants to access all of the information on your site has the means to do so. This can include providing audio-only versions of video content, and text versions of audio content. This allows users with a variety of visual or auditory disabilities to be able to fully access the content of your site in its entirety.

1.3    Adaptable
Depending on the age and quality of your current website, this could be a very easy update. Making your content adaptable enables it to be presented in different ways, such as with a simpler layout, while still providing the same information and structure.

1.4    Distinguishable
The style and design of your website speaks volumes to your target market, attitudes, preferences and competitive advantages. While some fonts and colours could appear more fashionable, having easy-to-read fonts, a good colour contrast between your text and background, and a text size of at least 14 points is part of this component of WCAG. This also involves making your links and controls highly visible when they receive keyboard or mouse focus.

2.1  Keyboard Accessible
Having a website that is entirely keyboard accessible is very useful to individuals with motor skills disabilities. Allowing your users to navigate through your website without using a mouse facilitates the user of your website as users can avoid maneuvering a small mouse point and click on small areas to navigate your website.

2.2  Enough Time
Having content that is set to rotate or change automatically after a certain period of time provides a flashy look for your website, but can be problematic to those with dyslexia or other reading disabilities. Giving users the ability to turn off or adjust the time on this feature, or warn the user that the content will change unless they perform a simple action (I.e., press the Enter key) that extends their time.

2.3  Seizures
Avoiding design or functionality elements that project in any way that is known to cause seizures ensures your visitors will be safe while browsing your site. You can check any flashing elements on your site to make sure that no component flashes more than three times per second, minimizing the size of your flashing areas, and using online tools to ensure that any elements do not exceed either the general flash or red flash threshold.

2.4  Navigable
An intuitively structured website will involve strategic decisions designed to help your users navigate, find content, and determine where they are on your site. Making your links visually distinct, allowing users to navigate to different sections of a web page and limiting the number of links per page are good ways to follow this guideline.

3.1  Readable
Content that is readable and understandable is not just a way of facilitating those with disabilities; it ensures that anyone who visits your site can comprehend your product, service, or message. This relates to making sure your text is distinguishable: avoid chunks of italicized text, avoid similarly coloured background and text, using justifications only when necessary, etc.  Other aspects of this section include using clear and simple language, avoiding foreign or unusual words, and providing sign language versions of basic information on your site, such as how to contact the Webmaster.

3.2  Predictable
Having a consistent style provides a certain amount of cohesion to your site and overall design. This guideline requires that your web pages operate and appear in predictable ways. This includes keeping your navigation in a consistent location and notifying your users if clicking on links will open new windows or direct them away from their current location on the site.

3.3  Input Assistance
A website that requests its users to fill out a form and then rejecting the form without providing any explanation is a very frustrating experience from a usability perspective. This guideline involves helping users avoid and correct mistakes. If a form was rejected because the user did not fill out a mandatory field, for example, provide a notice that an error was identified and explain to the user how to correct this error. Make sure any instructions on your site are provided in a clear and concise way. Also make sure that you have a ‘Help’ link on each page where a user inputs their information.

4.1  Compatible
This last portion of the WCAG involves making sure that your website is highly compatible with various gadgets, including assistive technology gadgets. Making sure the code of your website is up to coding standards, as outlined in the W3C, will ensure that your website’s content can be captured and understood with the use of screen readers and other assistive technology softwares and tools.

These are high-level overviews of the various areas in which your website must comply in order to be accessible for all Ontarians. The WCAG offers much more detailed information on a technical level for implementing these changes, as well as exceptions or alternatives.

Having a website that is compliant with the Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act is not just an option for businesses in Ontario; it is mandatory. Refusal to comply with the Customer Service Standards can result in fines of $50,000 per day for Directors and Officers and fines of up to $100,000 per day for the corporation. This is not just about punitive action, however; with approximately one in seven Ontarians living with a disability, this is about opening your business up to service anyone that falls within your target market. Compiling with these Customer Service Standards reflects positively upon your business, within your community and among your employees.

The purpose of this article to provide some assistance when choosing a website building company and to identify some of the common mistakes people make. With my role in Business Development, I encounter many different prospective clients with a wide variety of requirements. Many of those who wish to engage us as part of their website project lack the background knowledge required to make informed decisions.

1. Requirements gathering.  
Each week and without fail I receive a number of inquiries for website design and SEO projects where the prospect approaches us and has no idea how they want their project to work. It’s usually a high level idea which resides in their head.  It then becomes my job to play detective to try and sleuth around to understand what the prospect is hoping their web project will accomplish.  One of the key challenges with this type of approach is that each website provider the prospect speaks with gathers different pieces of information as they are also playing detective.  One of the net results of this process is that a prospect receives a wide range of pricing because they were simply too vague in what the requirements are. They could then make the mistake of ruling out one vendor based on a higher price point, when that vendor was actually offering them a completely different website project.

Taking the time to document your ideas and how you want to engage your audience(s) will provide much more clarity to all parties.  As you put your ideas together on paper, it starts to become the projects roadmap and it gives each vendor the same information.  At this stage it is more important for the website vendor to understand your business requirements rather than sorting out the technical issues, so lack of a technical background should not be a concern for you at this point.

Fill in this form and ask for the Questionnaire that will help you to define your project.

2. Come up with a budget before you engage.  
Understanding the prospect’s budget is key to helping the website vendor understand any financial constraints the prospect has.  Often times prospects are unwilling to provide a budget range as they fear the vendor will bid up to that figure.

Another common response by prospects is to tell the vendor the prices other vendors have provided.  This only tells us what other vendors may charge but provides no indication of what the client can afford.

Providing the vendor with clear requirements and a valid budget range this will eliminate any wasted cycles on both sides.  It allows the vendor to determine if the project is a good fit, and to prioritize the requirements if the project can be broken up to the must have functional items and the prospects wish list which could be added at a later date.

3. Understanding value & ROI.
For many companies starting out or existing companies looking to gain market share, often times they focus solely on the financial expense of building the website or investing in internet marketing, without focusing on engaging their market and the expected ROI.
Let’s look at some examples to highlight the above.  We were approached recently by a real estate broker who sells houses and condos in the upscale neighborhoods of Toronto.  Based on the high selling prices, the commission per sale can range in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars.  This individual thought that spending anything over $1,500 to build a website was a very high cost.  As the website needs to align with the agents market, people who are prepared to spend upwards of a million dollars or more on a home, there is a disconnect between the agents investment and providing a high impact web experience that will convert a visitor to a customer.

In another case, we have an existing client whom we had built a website for and they now wanted to add Internet marketing to increase their market share.  Based on the goals and objectives they were looking to add an additional $1.3 million dollars in sales.  When they were presented with the cost to do SEO, they were shocked the number.  However, when you evaluate the potential outcome, the client investments in the Internet marketing represented less than 2% of the planned revenue gain.  In other words, it would have cost them less than 2 cents to make a dollar.

By investing your time on the above points before you contact a website vendor it will help you greatly in your selection process. Thinking about what you hope to gain from the website, your budget, and the value that an upgraded website can add to your business are three integral steps to setting yourself up for a successful website project. If you are comparing vendors, you will know that the numbers you are getting from the different companies align and are for similarly sized projects within the same scope. While the Business Development representative is available to help answer questions and offer suggestions, having an idea of these things before initiating conversations with website vendors will ensure a smoother process.

Save time and avoid these mistakes. Fill out questionnaire and get started on the right track. Request the questionnaire.

Avoid making these mistakes and contact 9th sphere today for a website consultation!

Mobile phones and mobile web presented an increasingly popular medium for digital marketing.  With more companies investing in mobile, more advertising dollars being allocated into mobile campaigns and Smartphones becoming more advanced than ever before (flash integration, better usability, html5).  Although this is still a small part of overall advertising budgets, it will continue to have strong growth in the New Year.

Search engines rolled out some big changes to the way their search algorithm works in 2011. Google emphasized cleaning up their search results, as seen with the new Block Sites feature and the release of Panda.  The update represents a new path for the future and a change that has made SEO and internet marketing much more challenging – but  also creates a better landscape for quality content online, which is beneficial to everyone.

In terms of web activities on the search engines, while most web users searched for celebrities, some key news stories ended up on the top 10 list of searches for 2011. Each year Google lists the Top 10 global search trends, in a variety of categories, and then breaks those trends down on a nation-by-nation basis. According to Google’s Zeitgeist list for 2011, the things that Canadians most googled were Statistics Canada’s census website and, not far behind, the Canada Post strike.

2011 Canada’s fastest rising search’s from Google

1. www.census2011.gc.ca
2. Skyrim
3. Canada Post strike
4. Rebecca Black
5. Ryan Dunn
6. Japan earthquake
7. Game of Thrones
8. Jack Layton
9. Royal Wedding
10. Google Plus

We have also compiled a list of the major internet marketing and online business news throughout 2011.  Here are some big news makers.

January:

• Canada named world’s top country brand

February:

• Google makes a major algorithm change (aka Panda) in efforts to remove copycat websites from search results

March:

• eBay agrees to buy GSI Commerce, provider of ecommerce and interactive marketing services, for $2.4 billion
• CRM company Salesforce.com acquires social media monitoring company Radian6

April:

• Facebook launches “Social Deals” to challenge Groupon and LivingSocial

May:

• LinkedIn IPO
• Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 Billion
• Google stops its project to scan newspapers

June:

• Report showing Facebook loosing visitors for 2nd straight month. Lost 1.52 million users (down to 16.6 million)
• Introduction of new social networking site, Google+
• Music streaming site, Pandora, prices IPO at $7-9/share
• Google’s Panda 2.2 update goes live with improvements to scraper detection

August:

• Google buys Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion

September:

• The 60-day comment period on draft regulations related to Canada’s anti-spam legislation ended
• Google+ social network open to everyone

October:

• Google redirects signed in users to https:// and removes search referral data

November:

• Google crawler able to execute JavaScrip/AJAX
• Google+ Pages released worldwide allowing business to create their own profile page.
• Groupon IPO debuts at $28/share
• Twitter and Mozilla struck a deal that makes Twitter search one of the default search options in the new Firefox 8 web browser.

December:

• YouTube launches biggest redesign in its history
• comScore reports Bing and Yahoo have 15% equal search market share in US. Google holds 65.4%
• comScore reports Canadian have the highest number of videos per viewer, average about about an hour watching 10 videos online / day
• StatCounter reports Chrome 15 becomes World’s most popular browser, beating IE 8
• Twitter Launches Self Serve Ad Platform
• IBM found online shopping jumped 16.4% on Christmas Day over last year. 7% of all online purchases were made using the iPad

Did I miss anything?

It was an eventful year to say the least. I project that has more to come 2012 in the mobile web and that we will see watching videos online becoming more mainstream.  Just as the music and newspaper industry has changed with the rise of the Internet, watching television and movies will continue to evolve into more web based platform.  I see the number of new social users leveling off, rather than increasing, and instead the social networks will focus on expanding their service offerings and integrating features with other applications.

It’s never a dull day in the world of the web!

This is a must-read before you flick that switch. There are several key pieces of information you should know before you make your new website live to ensure that traffic levels, sales or leads don’t disappear.

Whether your website is being updated or redesigned, there are many items that need to be reviewed before the launch of a new website.  Depending on your exact situation, there may be more that is needed than is covered in this article, however many of the key parts are mentioned here.

Alterations to a website that involve large amounts of deleted or moved files, new technology implementation, content modifications, changes in domain names or hosting providers may have a significant impacts.  This could affect current clients, new prospects, partners and often most detrimental, the search engines. Any of these circumstances are potentially a dangerous situation for search engine ranking, which has the ability to cut the life blood of many businesses today.

At a minimum, these should be reviewed to confirm that everything is in order before proceeding.

URLs Are Critical
The main concern that stems from these changes to your website is rooted at the path changes to URLs. For instance, your old website will potentially have hundreds of URLs like www.domain.com/page.php or www.domain.ca/image.jpg.  When a redesign is done and technologies, domain names, hosting providers, file names, or images are changed, this will result in either broken parts or invalid URLs.

Clients, friends, partners, and others, familiarize themselves with URL’s, and bookmark pages they like or want to reference again.  The search engines crawl the site and, if designed in a search-engine-friendly way, will find all the files being referenced on the site.  Search engines later place a value and decide how each page, image, video, and/or file will be ranked in the search result pages.  Other websites may then start to link to these different files, referencing images, content, logos, or videos and rely on your website to provide the source of the reference.

Over time, your website becomes a pool of assets for partners, companies, clients, websites and the search engines.  These connections rely on your website to work properly.  A broken site can result in upset clients, poor usability, loss of traffic, sales, prospects and a damaged reputation.

How do you ensure a new website launch goes off without a hitch?

1.    Take Inventory. Create a website asset document that outlines who, what, where and when the domain name was registered and hosting provider(s).

2.    Domain Name Check. A domain name is a key asset that is the primary link between all of these broken files.  A change to a domain name often has the most dramatic effect.  Make sure you have access to your domain name settings so that when needed, you can change the Name Servers (DNS) or any IP’s.  Note that any DNS changes may take between 24-48 hours for DNS Propagation. That is the time it takes for the update to circle the world and update DNS records at all the different Internet Service Providers (ISP).  It’s only when this is completed that website visitors will see the updated website.  While updating your domain name, it’s also a good time to check the expiration date (and renew, if necessary) and if the WHOIS ownership data is up-to-date.  I suggest renewing your domain name so you have at least a 5 year window before it expires.

3.    Setup Website Hosting. Will you be changing your hosting provider?  If so, where is the geographic location of the new provider? If different then your current location, the new location and IP changes can sometimes effect how the search engines geo-target your ranking.  The type of hosting, such as sharing an IP, may also affect the credibility of your site if the IP is the same or in the same range as other poor-quality sites. If you have an SSL, changes in hosting providers will often result in the SSL certificate being re-issuing.

4.    Configure Email. If you host your email server with the same provider was your website, the change may affect your email functionality. Get access to your hosting provider’s admin panel and list all of the email accounts and aliases created. Make sure you go through the list and plan changes accordingly to get your email accounts moved to the new server.

5.    Have Website Backup. In case anything goes wrong, it is always best to have a back-up plan. Do you have a copy of the old website?  Make sure you have a copy that doesn’t require a connection to the server, commonly needed for databases. This will allow you to easily view any text, images, videos or URLs you need.

6.    Create URL List. You should also have a full list of your URLs. Ideally all of them should be indexed by search engines. Are you planning to change any of them? Before the launch is the right time to create a new sitemap and set up permanent (301) redirects to point updated URLs to their new homes.

7.    Review 3rd Party Tools. List any tools currently connected to the site.  These may include analytical tools that have code added to each of your pages (like Google Analytics) or any specific files (like verification files for Google Webmaster tools). Third-party sites you are referencing materials from, like YouTube, shopping carts, payment gateways, shipping API, newsletter API, lead capturing or communication applications also need to be included in this list.

8.    Adjust Ad Campaigns. Next, review your current marketing efforts. Do you have any ad campaigns driving traffic to your website?  Or even Search Engine Marketing campaigns, such as Google Adwords or Bing AdCenter?  Make a concise list of your efforts and ensure that you have the necessary access and check to see if any changes are need.

9.    Update Social Profiles. Also list and review your social profiles.  Links or file references on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the like will need to be revised.

10.    Review File Names. If you are able to, it is best to keep the same names of the key pages and files.  This will help keep those files and images intact even though they may have been changed.  The name of the logo file, contact, privacy policy or payment pages, for instance, often have numerous connections.

11.    Create a Custom 404 Error Page. A custom 404 error page is just a simple page that matches the design, layout, and main navigation of your site. It’s a page that a visitor sees when they visit a webpage that no longer exists.  It shows a short message of what went wrong and gives clear directions for the visitor of how to find information via the sitemap.

12.    Implement 301 Redirects. The safest way to preserve your ranking when web page file names (URLs) have been changed is with the 301 redirect.  In its simplest form, this is a way to tell the search engines that the old page name have changed and to instruct the browser, visitor and/or crawler that any value the old page had be transfer to the new one. The next time the search engines crawls your website, the old domain name or old path should disappear and the new one will take its place.  Note that this does not happen instantly and could take up to a few months, although many of the search engines are vastly improving their crawl rate.

13.    Create a Sitemap. Add an XML sitemap via Google Webmaster Central (or Google Webmaster tools) and Bing Webmaster Center (www.bing.com/webmaster/) in order to improve the amount of indexed pages by Google and Bing. These files have special formats and will contain a list of all pages that you would like to get indexed.

14.    Analytics Setup. Last, but not least, don’t forget about your analytics.  Ideally you want to keep your same account to preserve the history and evaluate changes based on the same benchmarks. That means you want to make sure you have setup tracking in such way that the same analytics account gets data from the old and new pages. And, obviously, you still have access to your analytics account with Administrator privileges.

Now that you have a list of your assets, you are much better prepared for the new launch. You have all of the details to ensure that when you flick that switch to go live things go smoothly.

Even the best of planning has a chance for missed items. Ensure that you have the resources available for any emergency fixes or alterations immediately after the new launch. For this reason, we usually recommend that sites be scheduled to go live in the beginning of the week so that your web company will have their full staff onboard to assist you during the transition.

If done right, your current customers, partners and the search engines should love your new and improved website.  Take it slow and steady.  In my experience, websites that I have launched have almost always improved both usability and crawlability, which improves ranking and ultimately improves the business with higher levels of success.

It’s important to note that blogging and WordPress are two different things.  The action, to blog, is to write about something.  The thing, WordPress, is the software that provides a tool to post the written content to a website.  Some design and develop a blog as a part of their website to write articles, case studies, news, some even use it to manage all of the content on the entire website; in essence using it as a content management system (CMS).  WordPress is a type of blogging CMS, however, it is not built to be a corporate or retailer’s website CMS.  Some have used it to do so and this is when things get interesting. Using WordPress as your entire website’s CMS, when it was built as a blog, comes with some inherent challenges.

Below I have outlined some of the pros and cons to using WordPress.

Let’s start off with the pros.  The WordPress.org website and other unofficial websites have many third-party plug-ins that allow you to add features. These plug-ins include social media sharing tools, polls, as well as hundreds of others that provide a large library of nice-to-have features to enhance functionality.  Plug-ins are built by other developers that are not associated with WordPress, but want to contribute to the community.  Within the library, there are thousands of free templated design themes from which to choose to further add features your site.  The creative templates on the WordPress website have gone through the WordPress staff for review and approval before being posted.  As long as you follow the creative template that matches your version of WordPress, the installation should go smoothly.  It is based on the most popular web programming language, PHP, and many PHP programmers are familiar with its structure.  This provides a larger resource of programmers available to you when in the need to make revisions or resolve an issue.  Lastly, many hosting companies have WordPress pre-installed on their servers so the installation process is more simplistic and you know it’s already supported.

Despite the advantages listed above, there are some disadvantages, too.  WordPress is built as a blogging platform and when being used for purposes rather than its original intent, the system lacks the full flexibility and scalability, unless major changes and hacks to its infrastructure have been done.  Although there is an API and bug tracking systems for developers, there is generally a lack of documentation on how it’s structured, contributing to making it not very developer friendly.  There are community forums and groups that discuss issues for developers that will need to spend the time to figure issues out.  Version 2.7 is known for many security vulnerabilities due to its programming structure and open source nature.  Version 3 has resolved many of these security issues.  There are often many bugs that present themselves during upgrading, so it is better off to start from scratch if you want to use a newer version.  Many malicious Crawlers seek WordPress components to exploit and spam.  If you are currently using WordPress, you are more than likely to get spam comments from who knows were.  One of the biggest issues is that there is no single company responsible for the product. Therefore, any technical issues or problems are up to you to resolve.  WordPress has a large footprint, meaning it has a lot of features that are commonly not being used and can sometimes cause this to be overly complex.  The difficulty to change/customize it significantly reduces the potential for future upgrades, since the hacks are not compatible with its upgrades. Where WordPress is good for smaller and simple websites, it’s not workable, from both an administrative and website visitors perspectives, when hundreds or thousands of content pages are required

For many smaller companies or people that want to start their own blog and don’t foresee future enhancements, WordPress may be a good solution. WordPress is especially useful to those that have very small budgets and don’t really care for custom designed work and are satisfied with templated designs.  However, for corporate, retail, social or other custom requirements, WordPress will likely hold you back – restricting you from being unique and distinctive.  The key is to confirm your needs before deciding on proceeding or you may end up starting over again.

Have a positive or negative experience with WordPress. We would like to here your experience.

For retailers who manage their own website, this is a can’t miss event. However, for those who did miss it, here is a quick recap of the main topics.

Large US retailers like Best Buy, Lord & Taylor, and the Hard Rock Cafe, to name a few, showcased their websites and discussed elements that are working and some that aren’t.

Many discussions geared to remind Internet retailers about proper usages of navigation and its usability, including shopping cart clarity. This had to do with  really going back to the fundamentals.  These days, customers are more Internet savvy and expect a certain level of familiarity as well as functionality.

Where cost is no longer a major barrier, product reviews and videos are paramount.  The benefits of implementing these types of added features are huge and improve conversion rates drastically.

Even small adjustments to components of a product page and shopping cart with  continually testing have shown results of strong returns to sales growth.

Kurt Peters, Editor in Chief of Internet Retailer, said that mobile will be the future of ecommerce.  Most mobile websites are still in early testing mode, but it’s already evident  that providing customers with information at the time they want it, no matter where they are, is of high importance and advantage.

Many presenters at the Conference talked about new features they focused on during their recent site re-designs. The process ranged on average from 10 to 12 months from beginning to end. Interesting to note is that majority of the retailers teamed with an external web design company or technology provider to help with new implementations.

Lastly addressed were our still early days of social media integrations of Internet retailers with sites like Facebook and Twitter.  Some retailers are providing very timely product announcements and discounts through these social sites while others are building communities around their sites’ topics and themes.

As an owner of a website solutions company, the conference really echoed what I come across every day.  Getting the core fundamentals and best practices properly implemented is key. With a sound foundation in place, the next step is to add one feature at a time while testing and monitoring its effects to website analytics and sales to guide the way.

9th sphere’s ecommerce clients will be receiving a briefing of key statistics and features their categories’ counterparts are undertaking.

Feb 2009:

• Yahoo Enables Video and Other Rich Media in Search Ads

March 2009:

• Canada’s first street view provided by joint effort between British Columbia-based Canpages.ca and San Francisco-based MapJack
• New version of Internet Explorer version 8 released

April 2009:

• Oracle buys Sun

June 2009:

• Microsoft launches Bing, a rebranding of Microsoft’s search engine, Live

June 2009:

• Rogers launched Google’s new mobile operating system – Android – in two HTC phones

July 2009:

• Canada’s Privacy Commissioner Takes on Facebook regarding its non-compliance with Canada’s privacy act – PIPEDA

July 2009:

• 9th sphere launches REF:CODE Analytics, a new way to track phone calls that are referred to from a website

August 2009:

• Yahoo announces new versions of Yahoo! Mail, Messenger and Search

September 2009:

• Google launches Google Wave, their vision of next level of email communication
• Century 21 sues Rogers’s Zoocasa for “scraping” property data from the Century 21 website
• Skype available to Canadian iPhone users

October 2009:

• Yahoo shuts down GeoCities servers, the well known free website hosting service
• Windows 7 released
• Google’s Street View launched in Canada (Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Quebec, Toronto and Vancouver) – second available street view
• One Degree stops production of its Canadian focused Internet marketing blog

November 2009:

• Amazon’s Kindle, a platform for reading electronic books, comes to Canada
• The Canada Revenue Agency expands investigation of eBay power sellers and GST collection

December 2009:

• Canadians reported as top users of social networking sites in the world, according to a new survey
• Microsoft loses appeal on an August district court decision that awarded i4i Inc. (Toronto based software company) $200 million and an injunction on selling Word in its current form

Looking back, 2009 saw the expansion of numerous US based products and services into the Canadian market. On our front, we’ve seen fewer Canadian innovations and more legal battles spotlighting the social and ethical parameters of the web.  The Internet continues to make more headways into our daily lives, both personally and professionally.  Remember, the web is still very young, but growing at an accelerated rate.  2010 has the momentum to bring the web to its next level, as we foresee companies continuing to push the envelope. Or should I say the processor.

Far too many people take the wrong approach by focusing first on the design and layout of their website, only to fill in the content afterwards. This is a misguided and ineffective approach. First you should decide what and how much you want to say and how it should be categorized, only then would you determine navigation and creative. Don’t sacrifice good content for the creative.

Another common inclination for website owners is to want to share all the information about their business at once. But the key to writing persuasive and compelling web content is selectiveness.

Selling your benefits to website visitors is not the same as selling to them face-to-face or over the phone. On the web, being direct about your goods and services has a greater impact than being warm and endearing. You just can’t afford to be long-winded with your online communication. Your business is competing with hundreds of similar organization just a click away. You have a very short time in which to grab the attention of your website visitors, convey your company message, offerings, differentiating factors, and compel them to act.

Often website projects end up severely delayed as website owners struggle to narrow down the right words to most effectively express the benefits and the tone of their organization.

Many helpful hints for writing website content can be found on the Internet and in print. We’ve determined that they all fall under the basic guidelines outlined below.  Note that these are general guidelines, which may be altered based on different objectives.

CONTENT: Catch attention.

• use the AIDA approach; ideally each element should have its own paragraph :

- attract Attention
- generate Interest
- create Desire
- call to Action

• put most important content and keyphrases in headlines
• convey strongest benefits first
• answer visitors’ unspoken questions immediately
• use popular industry keywords or keyphrases according to your audience
• tell the visitor what you want them to do next – make it easy for visitors to take the next step i.e., “Buy product”, “Contact Us”, etc. -  use verbs
• limit one subject or area of focus per page
• keep length to 200-300 characters per web page – expand on page that call for it eg. FAQs or Support documentation
• provide more detailed information on secondary pages for visitors who wish to browser deeper into the website
• repeat the main idea in the last paragraph using the same keyphrases

STRUCTURE: Write for scanning.

• don’t write walls of information
• use headlines and subheadings where appropriate
• break up large amounts of content with lists, bullets, tables, sections, captions & hyperlinks where appropriate
• highlight keywords
• keep sentences short and impactful
• use short, common words
• keep text lines no wider than 60-65 characters – otherwise they’re unreadable
• don’t use italics if you can help it

Of course, an experienced copywriter will have the necessary skills to incorporate these prevailing tactics and fluently convey your organization’s uniqueness. If you’re overwhelmed or stuck with your writing, hiring a professional to help you communicate your message is a worthwhile investment.

The overall objective that does not change no matter how you endeavour to reach your consumers, whether online or face-to-face, is to sell your benefits. You just need to be more clever with it online.

PHP is an Open Source programming language that was mainly developed by Zend and contributed to by other web developers around the world.  .Net is a Microsoft Framework that supports most popular languages including C#, C, Visual Basic, J# and others.  Java was developed by Sun Microsystems. ColdFusion was created by Adobe.  PHP currently makes up one third of the web applications online due to the nature of Open Source; the environment of continually shared development projects and the low costs involved.

Though each language has its pros and cons, many web developers typically have one preference and it’s usually the language they have most experience in. Nevertheless, a well versed programmer can get the same outcome regardless of the language.  There are also cost differences to be considered between the different web technologies.  Another factor to keep in mind is the level of complexity. Some web technologies can be more challenging to work with than others.

For instance, the Open Source movement comes with its own challenges.  There are complaints about its lack of documentation, support, and reliability.  Since there is really no one company responsible for PHP, if you have installation problems, maintenance issues, want to expand, or if you found an issue that needs fixing, you’re essentially on your own.   Though Open Source doesn’t have any licencing fees, when you add up the time it takes to setup, make changes, any customization, maintenance, etc. etc. it’s no longer free.

9th sphere develops most of its applications in PHP, followed by .Net.  We service, support, and maintain our work for clients, providing the best of both low costs of Open Source and the support needed from a solution provider.

Many software providers have been watching Open Source closely trying to find ways to work around the risks and with the opportunities it brings.  For instance, Microsoft has built a team that focuses entirely on Open Source.  Earlier this week I had the opportunity to meet with Garnett Serack of Microsoft’s Open Source Labs.  He gave a presentation on the initiatives Microsoft has been taking with Open Source and specifically with PHP.  Microsoft’s team of 12 full-time developers, dedicated to these initiatives, have been working closely with Samba, Apache and Zend to more effectively deploy PHP applications on the Windows environment.  This is a very big shift for Microsoft.  This movement from traditionally licensed software companies is not new, but more are working towards a similar model.

A website solutions company should understand your needs and suggest the solution that is best suited for you.  Be sure to ask why, so you can fully understand the pros and cons of the suggested technologies.  Your education and understanding is important to feeling comfortable with making the right final decision.

Inspired by a recent website, 9th sphere has taken the social media tool a step further.  Similar to a social website styled mashup, a Lume is a navigational type widget that can be customize with own image, titles, and links. Now your friends need only to remember one website address to access all your other links. They can also move the Lume to any position on screen so that it doesn’t interfere with their viewing experience.

The intention of the Lume is to provide those with a collection of social media profiles a simple all in one reference point for their friends, colleagues, and other visitors. You could also use if for your own web pages instead of directing to third party web properties.

The process takes just 4 steps if you have your own domain name and website hosting account.  If not, we can assist you with getting set up.  Note that HTML, JavaScript, and Flash are the technologies being used – nothing a basic website hosting service from any hosting company can’t handle.

We’re happy to introduce the first style of our Lume and intend to add many more layouts, colours, and functionalities.  Try it out and let us know what you think.  We would like to hear your feedback as it will certainly contribute to further future developments.

We hope you like it.