Link round-up (7/2/07)

• OPA: Pre-Roll Ads Work, Longer Is Better
  

  “So much for marketers’ presuppositions: The much pooh-poohed 30-second pre-roll online video ad - when coupled with a display ad - is the best way to drive awareness in an online campaign, according to a study by the Online Publisher’s Association (OPA) and Online Testing eXchange (OTX).”

• Persuasive Search Engine Marketing
  

  “…it no longer is enough to fluff up pages organically and hope they’ll grow big and tall in search engine gardens. Universal search offers up images, books, links to maps, business directories and videos mixed into certain search results, rather than split off as sub-paths. This makes alternative routes to the bottom line interesting because there are more options, in one place. The challenge now is to optimize those options and learn to use them to attract clicks, communicate brand and sell your story.”

• Writing Headlines for Regular Readers, Search Engines, and Social Media
  

  “In an ideal situation you would be able to write a title that fits all three categories but that is rarely the case. There is a marked difference between the different kinds of readers and that’s why you need to market your content to them in different ways.”

• Design Questions
  

  “…the initial direct contact with clients during the discovery meeting is likely the most important moment in the life of a project. While most of my previous reference in this regard has been toward the establishment of designer competence and development of fellowship with the client, there is another vital aspect to this initial meeting: the specific questions asked.”

• Tiny Fonts Trigger Spam Filters
  

  “Our customer really had a nice looking template, and wasn’t trying to hide anything. But spam filters think that tiny fonts are a sign that some spammer is trying to embed a whole bunch of confusing content into their message to throw off their scent.”

• The Eight R’s for Email Marketing Success
  

  “[Requested, Relationship, Reputation, Received, Rendering, Relevance, Reporting, Resources]”

• Four Web Annoyances to Avoid on Your Site
  

  “One of the reasons why I tend to stick strictly to RSS feeds for some sites and have completely abandoned visiting others is that although they have interesting content, it often comes at too annoying a price. So in an effort to educated others to not make the same mistakes as some even well-established sites, I have compiled a list of what I think are the 4 most annoying things you can do on your site (in no particular order).”

• 50 Online Accessibility and Usability Tools
  

  “Usability and accessibility go hand in hand with conversion rates, customer satisfaction, targeted traffic and the list can go on. That’s why we provide a list with 50 online tools to improve your web site usability and accessibility in order to reach the objectives mentioned earlier.”

• Microsoft’s Inductive User Interface
  

  “According to Microsoft, IUI gained traction as a design process as a result of the research they’ve done on actual users performing tasks on their products. In short, they found that a number of important assumptions that are commonly made by User Experience practitioners are incorrect. They found that, contrary to the commonly held notion, most users are unable to successfully perform even basic computer tasks.”

• Web Domains: Tools To Use, Articles To Read
  

  “A thought-out domain name can save you a lot of time and bring you a lot of traffic. Search engines love topic-related domain names and they seem to be an important aspect which is being used to evaluate web-pages. Besides, if you have a popular web-site with enviable reputation, you might be willing to make sure that your visitors don’t get to some surprising web-sites mistyping your site’s URL.”

Link round-up (6/7/07)

• Putting Out Fires
• How to Deal With Crisis—and Defend the Brand
• When Observing Users Is Not Enough: 10 Guidelines for Getting More Out of Users’ Verbal Comments
• Pricing a Project
• Don’t be a hero: Giving up is good
• 12 Breeds of Client and How to Work with Them
• Protect Your Brand and Your Customers
• 8 Tips for a Stronger Call to Action
• Design Questions
• US Privacy Update: Experts Offer 6 Strategies to Build Consumer Trust

Link round-up (4/11/07)

• Market Perception: The Good, The Evil, and Switching Sides
• No More Campaigns | How Google is trying to change the way the marketing industry (and everyone else) thinks
• Love is Alive
• 25 excellent usability/UX articles and resources
• Attention Marketers: You’re not special
• The Four Returns Of Social Media Marketing
• A Simple Four-Step Strategy for Developing Content That Connects
• FREE is not a Benefit
• Is it Worth it to Flash Your Customers?
• Breadcrumb Navigation Increasingly Useful

Link round-up (3/27/07)

• Redesigning the ExpressionEngine Site
• How to: Receiving Customer Feedback
• Wireframing With Patterns
• Time Rich or Time Poor?
• Web 3.0: When Web Sites Become Web Services
• Attention Mapping: The 10-Point Exercise
• 101 Great Posting Ideas That Will Make Your Blog Sizzle
• Do These Headlines Work For You?
• 12 ways to pimp your office
• Temporarily pause active applications

Link round-up (3/21/07)

• 10 High-Profit Redesign Priorities
• The Seven Tips for Agency Survival
• Top Bloggers on Communities
• Five Principles to Design By
• Eyetracking points the way to effective news article design
• Innov8 (or Die): What Banks Can Learn from Geek Squad
• The Future of Online Publishing
• Twelve Tips for Conducting Effective Surveys
• Think Outside ‘the’ Web Site for Post-Click Marketing
• Research Is a Method, Not a Methodology

Link round-up (3/12/07)

• Accessibility matters to…
• Control is Evangelism’s Kryptonite
• Why We Need to Rethink the Way we Look at Customer Service
• Why Employee Satisfaction Is Also Your Business
• The Attention Economy: An Overview
• Using social media sites for reputation management
• Experimentation and Testing Exposed - Optimization Approach #1
• Not trapping users’ data = GOOD
• The Swinging Pendulum of Business Theory
• Offending Experts and Pleasing Everybody

Link round-up (3/8/07)

• The Official CGM Glossary
• 16 Social Media Networking Ideas for Marketers
• Amazon.com’s Social Design
• Mequoda Email Newsletter Scorecard
• Links Are the Grammar of the Web
• Branding is for cattle
• The Rights and Wrongs of Brand Evangelism!
• Landing Pages & the Value of First Impressions
• Banner Blindness
• Advertising on Loading Screens

Link round-up (2/28/07)

• WSJ: Using a Customer’s Journey to Tell a Compelling Story
• Even if it’s made to be viral, it’s not viral until it goes viral
• 7 Rules for Landing Page Optimization
• 2 Simple Steps to Finding Your Website’s Voice
• 83 Beautiful WordPress Themes You (Probably) Haven’t Seen
• Minimizing Usability Risks in Web Applications
• The Complete Ad-Writer’s 12-Pack
• Color Me Bad? or ‘How Not to Waste Your Time’
• How to kill innovation hype
• swfIR: swf Image Replacement

Link round-up (2/22/07)

• Image Blocking in Email Clients: Current Conditions and Best Practices
• Designing for Content
• Making Meaning to Customers, Employees
• “If you know the exact cost and the exact schedule, chances are that the technology is obsolete.”
• One Out of Four Consumers Use Preview Panes; 59% Block Email Images
• Permission starts at home(page)
• Seven steps to remarkable customer service
• Does Your Copy Hold Up To A Quick Glance?
• The Compassionate Creative: Calling for Advertisers to Let Empathy and Insight Drive Design
• Five weeeeeeeeird tips for great meetings
• Are You Ready to Radically Trust Your Consumers?

Link round-up (2/16/07)

• ‘Automated’ Advertising Systems Another Threat to Agency Infrastructure
• Early and often: How to avoid the design revision death spiral
• Web Misunderstandards
• Don’t be the weakest link (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
• The Village Stew
• Free Newsletter Templates
• Cool 2.0 Ideas Executed With 1.0 Mindset
• Sheepwalking
• Good Headings help, bad Headings hurt (hat tip: Jason Macemore)
• Why Spec Creative Doesn’t Pay