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Queen Bee Marketing’s Blog About Marketing, SEO, and Design.

The Importance of Choosing the Right Color

Posted on Tuesday, Feb. 26th 2008 10:08 PM, by Cassi

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Подарък иконаI’ve written about color in the past, but I believe it’s one of the most important aspects of design and had to bring it up again when I came across this site: www.soundofcolor.com.online casino net It has a music video for each of the 5 main colors and lists different associations and emotions attached those colors. Another point they made is that different colors have different cultural meanings. These facts are important to know when designing so that you don’t confuse your viewers or even make them angry. Below are a few of the things I learned from this site that I didn’t know about certain colors before:

If you’re designing for a culture other than your own it’s important to realize that colors have different meanings to different groups of people. Be sure to research any major color decisions you make, especially if you are unsure on their subtle meanings or associations.

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Google (like Savoir Faire) is everywhere…

Posted on Sunday, Feb. 17th 2008 2:15 AM, by James

Google has now launched it’s own free 411 service. All you have to do is dial 1-800-GOOG-411 and tell it where you are an what you want and it will find local listings for you. What will these guys get into next?

They already have blown people away with street mapping and created a stir because some people feel their privacy has been invaded it they where on the street when the Google camera vehicle rolls thru town.

I’ve loved the trending lab for years now. Google video ranks right up there with Youtube.  They also have Google Page Creator  where you can create you own web page.

I’ll be real impressed when they get around to creating Google health insurance, Google global cooling, or Google pedophile identifier.

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Meeting User Expectations

Posted on Friday, Feb. 8th 2008 5:43 PM, by Cassi

What’s the quickest way to lose a visitor to your site? Not meet their expectations. A person goes to a Web site, clicks through a search engine listing, clicks an ad, etc. because they are expecting to do something when they get to the site. If they can’t find the information they want, or fulfill the task they had in mind, they go elsewhere.

At the moment, I’m in the middle of this frustrating struggle. I’m trying to buy a car. I don’t really know what I want yet, so I’ve been busy scouring the net for as much info as I can find. Some car company’s sites are easy to find information on, and even go beyond my expectations, however some don’t come close.

First, the good - www.fordvehicles.com This site has met my expectations. There is thorough information on the various Ford models, and it lets me search dealer inventory of new Fords. This is exactly what I want to do. I want to find the car I’m looking for before I go to the dealership. The dealer listings show me the window sticker and offer an easy way to contact the dealer. In fact, I just found the exact vehicle I’m interested in at a dealership that they tell me is 6.4 miles away.

Second, is a site that’s disappointing for me. I love Mini Coopers! So went to the Web site of the only Mini dealership in town - www.dreyerreinboldmini.com. I wanted to find out what kind of inventory they have. It turns out they have their inventory listed, but with no specific details, such as options that are installed, for the individual Minis. There is a disclaimer at the bottom of each description that reads, “The features and options listed are for the 2008 MINI Cooper 2dr Coupe and may not apply to this specific vehicle.” I know they want me to come into their dealership to talk to a sales person, but I’d be more interested in going in to talk to someone if I already knew they had the exact Mini I want on their lot.

Finally, a mix of both bad and good - www.pontiac.com This site allows you to easily search dealer inventory as well. You can see the window sticker and the dealer’s contact info is readily available. The downside is the “Build Your Pontiac” section. It is all crammed into the bottom of the browser window and hard to follow. Some of the important options, like adding on an automatic transmission, are tucked away and harder to find. It also automatically plays music. It’s okay to provide music on a site, but let me turn it on if I want to listen to it.

Always put yourself in the shoes of your site’s visitors. What do they want to do on your site? Meet their expectations by helping them do that as easily as possible, and they’ll be more likely to stick around longer and convert.

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Social networking sites helping researchers

Posted on Sunday, Jan. 27th 2008 3:14 AM, by queenbee

It’s been a while since we’ve posted anything, due to Holidays, family, and work issues. Sorry, but we’re back. I recently ran across an article discussing how researchers are now using social networking sites to record data about today’s users. Everything from tracking habits and moods to identifying users at risk for suicide.

We’ve all heard of people getting fired for what their employers found on their myspace page, but it was a surprise to me to realize that researchers are now monitoring social networking sites to gather data. We also know that stings are used to find online pedophile predators, but are police now beginning to watch myspace pages to crack down and find underage drinking or drug use?

Social networking sites have become the latest rage of the internet and continue to grow in popularity. Over the last several months I have seen more and more activity revolving around eons.com, a website targeted at users that are 50 years or older. Business networking sites like Linkedin and Merchant Circle are also starting to complete for their place online.

While the internet can be a great source for data, business, and entertainment, I believe that many people are using it as a way to connect, to feel socially accepted, and ironically, find humanity.

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Submitting Your Web Site to Search Engines

Posted on Friday, Dec. 7th 2007 8:14 PM, by James

Matt Cutts recently wrote a post regarding junk mail he received soliciting search engine submissions. While the simple fact that they are sending this junk to him is extremely funny, this is a common problem in the SEO world.

Today, most of the major search engines don’t need you to submit your site to them, they can find it on their own- if you have search engine friendly links from other sites on the Web. So to pay an SEO company to do something the search engines do automatically is a little ridiculous. There are however some common misconceptions. I read an article recently in a trade publication for Realtors regarding SEO and it was very informative and mostly accurate, but the article stated a submission to Yahoo cost approx $300. This is not totally correct, a listing in their directory cost about $300, but if your Web site is designed correctly and you have a link program in place, your site should be found by Yahoo naturally and included in their search results without paying to be in their directory. I do recommend that many businesses pay to be listed in the Yahoo directory, because of the qualified traffic the directory can provide, but again it is not required.

While we normally don’t need to submit the Web sites we create to the major search engines, we do monitor the sites to see if they have been indexed or not, and if a site hasn’t been indexed within a reasonable time frame, we will take the steps to submit the site (at no charge to our customers) to the needed search engine.

I have heard of many instances where a business owner was charged hundreds of dollars by a web design company to submit their site to Google. To me this is an unethical business practice since it only takes a few moments to submit your site to Google and there is no charge from Google themselves. The argument can be made that the SEO company is getting paid for their knowledge and ability to perform this function, but I really don’t think it’s worth the hundreds of dollars many business owners have paid.

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Happy Turkey Day

Posted on Wednesday, Nov. 21st 2007 5:36 PM, by queenbee

Since we are off for the next two days, and many people have already cut out of work early today (we’ll be leaving around 2pm this afternoon), it’s been pretty quiet around the office and we started doing a little Turkey Day research online. We found a ton of interesting stuff and figured we would share a few:

Each year the president pardons two turkeys from the Thanksgiving dinner.

Change things up this year with some slider stuffing from White Castles.

Some interesting Thanksgiving facts.

Mix up your traditional turkey recipe with Orange Roasted Turkey.

Here is a long list of Thanksgiving Poems.

No list would be complete without some Turkey cooking techniques.

Adam Sandler’s classic Turkey song from SNL.

Some Thanksgiving horror stories.

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Web site.

A Thanksgiving guest liability and indemnification contract.

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Find Out How Competitive Your Market Is In 5 Easy Steps

Posted on Friday, Nov. 16th 2007 5:53 PM, by Cassi

Before getting started in any new market online, it’s necessary to do some research. Many times, people will skip this research phase because they don’t know where to start. It isn’t very difficult to do some basic research once you know how to begin. Here is a 5 step outline of what you need to know to move into a new market.

1. Keyword Brainstorming - Start writing down any possible keywords you feel people might use in the search engines to find your site. Write down everything you think of, even if it’s a stretch. Ask your friends and family what they would type in to find your product. You won’t think of everything on your own.

2. Search - Go to Google, Yahoo, and MSN and type in the keywords you just wrote down to start to look at your competition.

3. Review the Search Engine Results - Look at the number of sites each keyword returns, the relevance of the top results, and the Pay Per Click (PPC) popularity they have. You may also check Google Trends to get a better idea of keyword popularity. All of these factors will give you valuable information on which keywords others are targeting and receiving search traffic from.

4. Identify Top Keywords - Using the data you gathered from the search engines, choose your top keywords that you want to target on your site and in your online marketing campaigns.

5. Analyze Top Results - Using your narrowed keyword list, analyze the top search results’ Web sites for those keywords. A few factors to take into consideration include: site design, search engine optimization, usability, and page popularity (inbound links).

Now that you know more about your competition, you can develop an effective and successful strategy.

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Pay it forward in the business world.

Posted on Friday, Nov. 9th 2007 7:00 PM, by James

You’ve all heard the saying that “It is better to give, than to receive.” I firmly believe that if you give of yourself you will get more in return.

I like Mexican food and and will stop by my local Chipotle for lunch on a regular basis. They always have a fishbowl there for people to drop business cards into for a free meal and it’s always full. I am happy to say that they do indeed provide free meals to people that drop their card in the fishbowl. About 2 weeks ago, I got an email from my local Chipotle at 86th and College Park telling me that they had drawn my card out of the bowl and that I could schedule a lunch or dinner for between 15-20 people! So, I called up some family and friends and we met for a great little dinner this week. On a more national level, Taco Bell recently promoted it’s “steal a base, steal a taco” idea to the U.S. (I like this example because it’s about Mexican food again).

These are both very specific examples, but I’m sure you’ve been to a fair, trade show, sporting event, or any number of other public events where a business is handing out free stuff. Ok, so a little taco may only cost them $.20 each, but if you end up giving away 500,000 of them… it comes out to a $100,000.00 price tag (I have no idea what the actual operating cost of a taco is for them, or how many they actually gave away). But the question becomes: Why would they do that?

The biggest reason is the belief they will get business in return. So they give away a $.20 taco, the average consumer is likely to walk out the door having spent 5-10$ after getting their free taco. About half of the family and friends that dined at Chipotle with me this week had never eaten there before. I know they enjoyed the meal and I’m sure some will return in the future and others may even become regular customers.

While the motive may normally be to generate further income, I am happy that several charities and those in need have benefited from the generosity of businesses. For example, how many of our homeless received a free taco because of this promotion? You may think that idea is a little far fetched, but you may not have seen Tom Mabe’s idea on feeding the homeless.
My point is this: If you want to increase sales and promote goodwill, practice the art of giving. Even if it doesn’t return a profit, you may help to make this a better place to live.

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How Do I Choose Which Directories to Submit to?

Posted on Wednesday, Nov. 7th 2007 8:52 PM, by queenbee

For many SEOs, directory submissions form a solid base of links for a Web site. Of course there are many ways to obtain inbound links, but you have the most control over directory submissions. But not all directories are worth submitting to. Some are spammy link farms that are best avoided. Here is my quick list on how I choose which directories are good enough to submit to:

1. Is it human edited? This is really important to me. If every single submission, spam or not, is accepted automatically it greatly reduces the integrity of the directory. It may take longer to get listed in a human edited directory, but it is worth it to keep out the spam.

2. Number of Inbound links. Does the directory have a substantial number of links? I like to check that both the Home page and the sub pages have some inbound, natural links.

3. PageRank on sub pages. There has been a lot of talk over some sites losing or having their PR lowered. Obviously, this is just a number, but it does indicate some level of trust with Google. Checking to make sure the internal pages of the directory have some PR lets me know the directory is trusted by Google.

4. Quality of current listings. If all of the listings in the directory are spam, I don’t bother submitting my site. It’s not a quality directory.

5. Submission Guidelines. I like to know what the submission requirements are up front. I’ve been on too many directories that don’t clearly state the cost and other guidelines before I’ve started the submission process.

6. Web site usability. If a directory has broken links, database errors, or is confusing to use, I don’t view it as a quality directory.

7. Visitor usability. I want to make sure visitors to the directory have an easy time navigating the site. We don’t just submit to directories for the link value, we also receive decent traffic from various directories. But if the directory is confusing and hard to use, we won’t get any traffic from it.

We also carefully track our directory submissions. By recording the date is was submitted, and the date it was included, it ensures we don’t double submit a site. It is also good to know how many directory links your site has, as opposed to natural links. It also helps to know how quickly a site is included in a directory for future submissions of other sites.

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Leopard Design Changes - My Observations

Posted on Friday, Nov. 2nd 2007 6:01 PM, by queenbee

Last Friday the new Mac OS Leopard came out and was met with criticism from some, and praise from others. There are a few things I wish they hadn’t changed, but over all there are many new features that are useful. A few of the design related changes I’ve noticed are listed below along with my observations about them.

1. The Dock - The dock didn’t change much, but the parts that were changed, weren’t changed for the better, in my opinion. The blue orbs indicating a running program are harder to see than the previous black triangles. Also, the “ledge” that the program icons rest on now only comes up half way behind the icons instead of all the way. This reduces the amount of contrast between the icon and the background. These changes reduce the over all readability of the dock.

2. Stacks - Stacks is a new feature, and a helpful one. Stacks allows you easy access to downloads, programs, and documents. It makes navigating to these items much easier.

3. Preview - Preview works in two ways. One is Icon Preview. It displays the icon of a file as a miniature version of the real file. You can also press the spacebar while an icon is selected and it will bring up a preview window of what the file looks like. This is extremely helpful for text and PDF files. It’s no longer necessary to open a file to view its contents.

4. Spaces - Spaces allows you to have various desktops running at once. This could be good for organizing types of programs, differentiating between work and home, or just to reduce clutter. I haven’t had the need to use this yet, but I think it will be a great tool in the future.

5. Dashboard - Dashboard still works the same way, but has one new feature that I really enjoy: Web Clips. You just “clip” a portion of a Web site and it will display that part of the site on the Dashboard. I’ve been using this for Web cams. I clipped a Web cam of Waikiki, Hawaii and put it on my Dashboard. Now when I need a short break, I can check in on Waikiki beach and watch the surfers!

6. Coverflow - Coverflow is a feature I haven’t used a lot either, but I know a lot of people who think it’s great. It uses the same concept that iTunes has been using for a while, which allows you to flip through files quickly while previewing the contents.

These are the main design and usability changes that have stuck out to me. Feel free to agree or disagree, or leave your other observations in the comments!

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