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Marketer. Designer. Entrepreneur.
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Salt Lake Property Management Site Design

August 10th, 2008

I recently finished up a design project for Bristlecone Realty, a salt lake property management company I found through a friend.  It was a fun project, a clean, simple design with some embedded PHP and HTML elements that they could use with a WYSIWYG editor to make changes on the site they update frequently.

They also wanted some SEO work done and so I have also been tackling that this summer with the most mixed, unusual results I have ever had with SEO.   I am optimizing for the keyword string “salt lake property management” and right now they are sitting at #1 for MSN, #32 for Yahoo, and nowhere on Google.  Yup, one day we were steadily climbing around #45-50 and the next day it was delisted…why?  I have no idea.  I submitted a reconsideration form and am waiting on that.

A weird thing to happen when there appears to be nothing black hat at all about the site.  I scoured over every inch of the HTML and found only a period that was “hidden” to hold space in an area that was showing up differently in FF and IE.  I removed that and am now just waiting for Google to give the page back its proper place.

Meanwhile, you can check out the page at http://www.brgsaltlake.com


Sometimes Dumb, Illogical Things Work

August 9th, 2008

I went to a concern a few nights ago…Nada Surf was the main band.  The opener, Tim Fite was a dude in blue, cut-off overall singing some of the weirdest stuff I’d ever heard.  It was a cross between Salad Fingers and Weird Al.  Crazy at is sounds, I liked it…really.  The dude was so crazy eccentric that it was fun, I have no idea why.

So, sometimes I create a website or product or whatever that is logically perfect and smart…and it turns out average.  Sometimes I see a product or website that makes me scratch my head and wonder why moron spent 10 minutes on this one…and then notice that is in the top 20,000 in Alexa’s rankings and kicks the trash out of all my sites.

So why do they work?  I dunno…I honestly don’t.


TimeClick…Google #4!

April 28th, 2008

So my original goal for TimeClick software was to get them into the top 20 ranking on Google for time clock software. We hit that about a month and a half ago. So we upped it to top 10…and today…

…well, check out the screen shot below!


Why I Love Web 2.0 Design

March 17th, 2008

I love web design! I love to analyze the trends in color, shape, and layout and how that ties in with a marketing approach that guides the site visitor to where the creator wants them to go. Lately I have noticed a few reasons I like the latest wave of web 2.0 design more than any others.

1) Clean. I love white space and these designs feature plenty of white space around important headlines and images. No super-bright colors and animated GIFs to distract.

2) Simplicity. Perhaps I like this idea the most because you don’t have to have an intricately designed website to have a good looking one. Soft gradients combined with white space, rounded fonts, and “to-the-point” layouts keep things looking professional without the need for complex designs.

3) Color. Colors finally are soft enough that the view can look at them all day long without destroying their retinas! Clean, low-key combinations of colors can convey the feeling the designer wants without overpowering the senses of the visitor.

4) Fonts. The fonts are classy, rounded, and easy-to-read. I recently stumbled on a list of the top Web 2.0 fonts used in some of the top sites and spent a good hour just enjoying the fonts, finding some that were free, and trying them in a few basic designs.


Whoa, Too Much Information!

December 7th, 2007

I have been mulling over in my mind a concept this morning after a call from a interested snowmaking customer; we’ll call him Joe because that was his name.  Joe had done his homework…and I mean REALLY done his homework.  He knew about every home snowmaking site that existed and had questions about each one and how their products compared to mine.

I really had to be on my toes.

But at the same time I wasn’t worried.  I trust my product 100% and I know its place in the snowmaking world and why it’s better than my competitors.  With that trust and knowledge, I was able to easily respond to every question he threw at me without attacking my  competitors or belittling their products.  Plus, Joe was a great guy and very kind and interested, he had sincere questions and wanted simple answers.

After his barrage of questions, I got to thinking about which ones could be answered on the site and which ones couldn’t.  To answer all of Joe’s questions  would require A LOT of information on the site, information that most customers may not need.  Information that, perhaps, would bog down other visitors to the point they would get stuck or lost and end up leaving.  So, the question arises…how much is TOO MUCH information?

MarketingExperiments.com has found over and over that long copy converts better than short copy.  However, how does long copy compare to really long copy, super long copy, and even the dreaded ridiculously long copy?  Of course there is a medium between drowning the visitor in relevant but not necessary information and simplifying things to the point where the customer doesn’t dare take action because they have so many unanswered questions.

The trick is finding that sweet spot…if only they made oversized drivers for internet marketing with giant sweet spots…


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