Web Page Production — It’s Not Just HTML Anymore

January 5th, 2009

Okay, you could quibble that webpages have LONG since gone beyond html, and that’s very, very true.

But have you stopped to think about all the pieces, and all the different skillsets, that can go into making a webpage today?

Let’s take a look at the different skillsets that come into play…

1. Webmastering

Okay — this isn’t anything new.  The webmaster is involved with getting your webpage up and working on your domain.

The webmaster will be concerned about user access issues, security issues and resource issues.  A recent client has over 2G worth of downloads on one site.

Depending upon her hosting plan, she could have run out of bandwidth.

This would not look good, for potential clients to come to sales page and not be able to access it because you’ve run out of bandwidth.

It would be especially bad if you have affiliates that are sending pay-per-click traffic to the site and the site wasn’t available!

2. Copy

If you are going to sell something, or you want people to take action, some copy power is required.

Copy can be found on the salespage proper — but also in popup forms and in auto-responder sequences sent to the people who opt-in and to the people who buy.

3. Webdesign

That is, the layout of the page.  This isn’t the same as graphics.  A good Webdesigner should know something about css.  Hopefully, a LOT about css (though a little can go a long, long way — depending upon which parts of css are used.)  It helps if the webdesigner understands basic graphic design principles, though. But I know great graphic designers who know very little, if anything, about css.

Web layout gets more complicated because of differences in rendering that occur on different browsers.  There are estimates that there are over 10,000 different browsers out there!

The webdesigner needs to coordinate with the providers of the other parts of the sales page, to get all the pieces put together.

Sometimes the copywriter might be providing the webdesign services; sometimes a graphic designer.  Most copywriters will definitely want a say in how the webpage looks, though — even if they are simply providing “words”.  Frequently, copywriters provide their words in “mock up” in something like Word, so the essential fonts & formatting are communicated.

4. Graphic design

These are the people who make your ecovers header graphics, buy buttons & logos.

5. Software

What are all the pieces of software that you might find on a sales page?

Four come immediately to mind:

  1. The buy button (even if the software isn’t directly on the sales page…there’s got to be software on the other end of the buy button.)
  2. The opt-in form.  Again — even if the software isn’t directly on the sales page, there’s got to be software at the “receiving end” of the opt-in form.
  3. Tracking software — such as google analytics
  4. Popup software — either entry or exit — having popup software which interacts with the user to encourage them to sign up on your opt-in form.

Are there others?  Sure.   But those are the essentials.

Interactivity in websites is a huge issue, all made possible via software.

(What other kinds of software?  Well, what about surveys?)

5. Multimedia

For all your pictures, audio, video and more!

How do you put up the audio?  What are the constraints? Do you make the audio downloadable, or streaming?

How do you put up video?  What kind of format?

What about Flash?

And we can go on…

6. Legal & Other Important stuff

Privacy policies, earnings disclaimers, “about us”, helpdesk links, Terms of Service — all part of what needs to be on your page.

7. Quality Assurance

You need to make sure your page works at a variety of levels.

Most important to you, you need to make sure that the opt-in forms & the buy button work!  But it also includes proof-reading and design testing — testing the design to make sure that it works on the majority of browsers that your prospects use.

8. Project Management

With all these pieces, someone needs to coordinate things.  That would be a project manager.  Most merchants are going to be doing this themselves — if they have the knowledge.  Otherwise, someone doing one of the other tasks will need to do it, simply in order to get their piece done.

A good project manager is going to understand how all the pieces fit together and what the timeline is, who the players are and what they are responsible for.

They basically know, as it’s called in engineering, the “gozintas & the gozoutas” — that is, what are the things coming out and what will be the end result.

So…if you are embarking on putting your business online…or you have a website and want to bring yourself up-to-date — these are all things you should consider!

As the web grows up and becomes more and more sophisticated, so do all the aspects that need to be considered.

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Copywriting Beyond Words – #1

July 13th, 2008

There are a lot of things that affect people’s reactions to what they see on a sales page.

Words, surely. And along with words, people use size, font “decorations”, font weight, font color and the like to change how things appear on the webpage. With cascading style sheets (css), webdesigners can make placements onto webpages down to the pixel. Line spacing, justification, first line indents — the choices go on and on.

Of course, that raises another issue: once a page is designed — pictures and font decisions, centering text or not — will it look the same on all web browsers? Wait! All web browsers might be a bit of an impossibility, at least within a reasonable time & cost constraint.

So let’s step back, before we go too, deeply, and start looking at this problem a bit more simply.

But not too simple.

After all, If I provide you a page of black text, with one font and only enough variety with capitalization to make your 8th grade grammarian teacher happy — you probably will not find the page as interesting as you would with more variety. It wouldn’t be as interesting as it might if I use such things as: bolding text; capitalizing some words; making some parts of the text centered, other parts left-justified; using different colors of text.

Within reason, of course. Too much variation, and visitors can get overwhelmed. Too busy, and visitors can not easily reach into your design and connect with your message. Too crowded, and the reader can feel suffocated.

What’s reasonable? How much is enough to make the text interesting, but not so much as to be, well, offensive. Off-putting.

While there are many aspects we could discuss, let’s just take two that reportedly make text more interesting. Granted, at least one of them I’m not doing in this blog at this time. And that is first line indents. I did change it on another blog I recently started. I think it makes things more pleasant to read — what about you?

The other is justification. It’s been reported that “ragged right” (aka “left justification”) helps to prevent “eye fatigue”. Anything that makes it easier for readers to view the page should be done. Who knows at what point just a subtle bit of eye fatigue distracts the visitor from your page — never to return again?

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Power Your Sales — Copywriter’s Toolkit

May 11th, 2008

I started out to write a review of John Ritskowitz’ Copywriter’s Toolkit (CWT).

And I started to describe just ONE feature, the headline generator, and got so carried away that I decided I need to create posts for various aspects of the toolkit.

Don’t think — for a second — that CWT is ONLY for copywriters. It’s for anyone whose income depends upon stringing words together.

Who is John Ritskowitz?

The creator of CWT is John Ritskowitz. John is a very successful and talented East Coast copywriter who charges 5 figures for a sales letter. He’s written for some of the top names, and, if you are in the internet marketing community, you’ve undoubtedly read some of his copy.

John also has a background as a software developer, and the combination of skills can be awesome, as part of the Copywriter’s Toolkit is exactly that: tools. Tools, any number of which could cost you a chunk of change. When considered in combination, you could easily spend far more for these tools if you purchased them individually, than if you just got them through the toolkit.

Tools — some of the likes of which you’ve never seen before — and obviously useful!

Want an unblockable popup? It’s there!

Want to create a dynamic salesletter, where the copy changes based upon an option the reader selects? It’s there, too!

And, of course, I mentioned the headline generator (see a separate post about that!)

In addition, there are some ingenious tools that John has created that have a bit of the “gee whiz” effect…

Itracker — a clever piece of software that will help you evaluate how far down your salesletter visitors read.

Interactive Johnson Box — great if you have so many testimonials you don’t want to bombard the reader with all of them, all at once.

If you ARE a copywriter, John allows you to use these different pieces of software on client sites. If you are a copywriter and can’t see the value of that, I seriously have to wonder if you are paying attention.

A few things you should know…

John sells the toolkit as a “membership”.

However, unlike most memberships out there, there is just one fee — for a lifetime! (I keep wondering how long he’ll keep that up!)

Now, in case you think that you join and what you see is what you get — know that John continually updates the toolkit. When he creates new tools, he frequently will add them to the toolkit.

The Copywriter’s Toolkit seems more like a labor of love for John. Sure, he wants to make money from it — but his livelihood doesn’t depend upon it. But he seems to cherish it, and keep adding to it and polishing it up like a teenage boy with his first car.

Such products — if they have any value to you — will always be more than worth the money.

BTW — did I mention that John gives quick and personal support?

Want to check it out? Just go here: John Ritskowitz’ Copywriter’s Toolkit

Or check out my other post — on the headline generator :)

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Copywriter’s Toolkit Review — The Headline Generator

May 11th, 2008

The headline generator — worth the price alone!

( John Ritskowitz’ Copywriter’s Toolkit )

If you need a headline — for an article, a salesletter, email subject lines — the online headline generator is superb. How superb? Well, I was hired to write some headlines for a client for a little over the price of the toolkit. I have more than a few headline writing resources. And, to tell you the truth, the headline generator in John’s toolkit wasn’t what I considered using first.

But after going thru a number of different tools, John’s headline generator gave me the greatest ease in fulfilling the client’s request.

How Does The Headline Generator Work?

The headline generator asks several questions that help to focus on what are elements of proven, successful headlines.

The headline generator harnesses the power of computers to do what computers do so well — create hundreds of combinations at the click of a button. And then you can select from all the combinations the ones you like and want to save — and even make changes and create some more!

So it turns headline writing inside out. Rather than taking the checklist and applying it to a headline, it takes the points of checklists, gathers the information, and generates a candy-store full of checklist-satisfying headlines.

To say that the headline generator can save a lot of time in what is often the copywriter’s most time-consuming task misses the point. It takes headline creation to a whole new level.

And the headline generator is only ONE tool in the copywriter’s toolkit.

I’ll be talking about more of the features of the Copywriter’s Toolkit soon … but if I’ve piqued your interest, and want to discover more about it sooner, why not just check it out here:

John Ritskowitz’ Copywriter’s Toolkit

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How Does The Cost Of Gas Affect You As A Marketer?

March 15th, 2008

Preamble: You can ignore this if you want; it just tells you how I got to thinking about the situation, with a bit of local color of Silicon Valley thrown in. Want faster reading? Just go to “Meat“.

Monday, I am attending Mashup University at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. It’s 15 miles away from my home in San Jose.

Now the Computer History Museum is located in a “public transportation undesirable” neighborhood. East of 101, high tech companies abound among the streets — Shoreline, Charleston, Amphitheatre Parkway. Companies such as…Google. Sun and Silicon Graphics used to be in this area as well. My former employer, Ariba, had been located in this area when I hired on in 2000. Microsoft’s WebTV (now MSN TV), who had competed for my employment at that time, had recently moved to facilities tucked away in a corner south of Shoreline.

Most of the companies provide transportation from other points into this area. Some from the Mountain View Train Station. Google, all the way from points in San Jose. I seem to recall that several smaller companies pooled together to provide a small local bus, a bit smaller than those you take to get to the hotel from the airport, to their employees.

So, hating commute traffic, I decided to find out if there was some possible way to get to my destination from San Jose. I used the handy site, http://www.511.org

But what was amazing was that 511.org, in an attempt to encourage my use of public transportation, pointed out that the cost of my trip on public transportation, $5.25, would cost me $7.47 if I drove. 50c/mile to drive.

Oh…the problem? The route shows that I should walk from points in Mountain View, west of 101, to the Computer History Museum. The only indication of the route I should walk is an arrow from the start point to the destination point — an arrow that goes over open land (I don’t know who owns it, or what paths may exist), and crossing the 101 freeway where there is clearly no crossing) to the Computer History Museum. Completely unhelpful. Even with the Google Map.

MEAT

Europeans and the Brits (oh, and the Canadians?) must think we Americans are insane to be so concerned about gasoline going up to $4 and even $5 a gallon.

I asked our UK Warriors on the Warrior chat earlier this month how much gas (petrol) cost them.

Answer (Americans, hold onto your hats): nearly $10/gallon.

(This post is both an historical marketing comment as well as
something to think about, so if you were wondering…)

So why is $4 or $5/gal such a problem for the U.S. — and not for the countries mentioned?

I think, primarily, since the U.S. was, for a long time, the chief exporter of automobiles, we became a much more mobile economy. The automobile looms large in the American mind; boys look forward to their first cars, and tinkering with them, a passion.

The ready access to automobiles has made for a mobile economy. “Shopping Centers” were created, not just neighborhood strip malls. Local farming could give way to produce shipped from the middle of the country.

This dependence on the auto — and on trucking — reduced the dependence on railways. Much valuable right-of-way of the railways was sold off to developers.

So what does this mean going forward?

Well, there’s a site I learned about recently — the name of which escapes me, something with ‘walk’ in the name — that, given a particular point, will show you how far various kinds of shopping is from you.

Overall — economies (certainly the U.S.) are going from “information expensive, travel cheap” to “information cheap, travel expensive”.

What does this mean to you as an information marketer? (Yes, I hate to disillusion you — information marketing may or may not be as lucrative as it was in the past because there is so much more readily available. Think about it.)

Will postal mail suddenly make a comeback, as a more economical way to get goods ? More catalogs? That would be good for internet marketers, but not necessarily information marketers.

It certainly will be a boon for local businesses. And for folks looking at helping local busineses market.
Remotely located discount houses like Costco may not fair as well, when people start to include the cost of trips into their calculations. Or maybe the lines will be longer at busy times — making systems for “load balancing” customer load, by showing customers when they are busiest and when they are less busy, feasible.

Certainly, the websites which tell you where to find the cheapest gas will become even more popular — as will sites that show you how to keep your car up to get the best mileage (tire air pressure, anyone?)

So — non US folks — how do you get around? How much do you travel in a given week, and by what means?

US folks — how is the cost of price affecting you?

Marketers — how do you see the cost of gas affecting you?

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“Restart Later…” — A Story Of Rescue

October 7th, 2007

If you have your Windows PC on “automatic updates” (and you really should…one of Microsoft’s not-so-brilliant moves was to alert you to the updates by a little dialog that lets you “restart now” or “restart later”.

The default is “restart now” — so, if you accidentally — hit “enter”, or think that the keyboard equivalent for “n” (for no) will save you — guess again. But there’s hope if that should happen to you! Keep reading!

The other choice is “restart later”. The only problem is, if you select this option, the dialog will pop up shortly later.

Years ago, when I did software quality assurance, we classified bugs by the problems they caused.

The worst bugs were those that could go out and destroy other data.

But that type of problem is fairly rare, unless done with evil intent.

Next to that — and far more common – the worst kind of bug is one that destroys data. Especially if if destroys *user* data.

And that is exactly what this facility does.

You have a few choices…

1/ don’t select automatic updates … bad idea

2/

http://www.xiven.com/weblog/2004/05/01/WeHaveWaysOfMakingYouRestartYourComputer

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000294.html

So here are my attempts to fix this …

cmd> sc stop wuauservSERVICE_NAME: wuauserv
TYPE : 20 WIN32_SHARE_PROCESS
STATE : 3 STOP_PENDING
(NOT_STOPPABLE,NOT_PAUSABLE,IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
WIN32_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
SERVICE_EXIT_CODE : 0 (0x0)
CHECKPOINT : 0x1
WAIT_HINT : 0x7530cmd> gpedit.msc
'gpedit.msc' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

So, I guess you need to have Windows XP Pro and I have home edition in order to run the last program. Hopefully I’m safe — and you can refer to the above links for more information.

Hope this helps!

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Top Copywriter Michel Fortin 48-hr Copydoctor special

August 16th, 2007

Sorry for not writing sooner, and finishing up the story I began in the last post. I was waiting to hear from someone before I continued.

However — this is breaking news and only good for (less than, now) 48 hours…

If you are interested in copywriting — either as a profession, or as someone who needs copy, you need to check out this amazing special — where Top Copywriter Michel Fortin is drastically reducing the price of a lifetime membership to his excellent copydoctor site. I urge you to go there now and check it out, you won’t be sorry!

Here’s a link:

http://www.TheCopyDoctor.com

choose “lifetime membership” and use this coupon: 541231ABEA

and get a whopping $600 off! And contrary to what my Mother used to say — you don’t have to spend at least that much to save that much. This is more than a 50% off offer (how much? check it out here!)

I’ve been a member for a number of years now, and have renewed even when money was tight — it’s that good!

You owe it to yourself to at least check it out now — before he changes his mind!

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On Copywriting — Drama and History in Strunk And White

August 7th, 2007

It’s often claimed in copywriting circles that grammar and spelling doesn’t have to be perfect.

And I have no doubt that that is true.

However, I have to wonder if there are any spelling or grammar errors in the Wall Street Journal letter; I suspect not.

So there are a couple of points that are worthwhile considering, especially those who are new to copywriting.

First, I have heard a copywriter of no little talent, John Carlton, heartily recommend Strunk & White, the “liitle book” titled “Elements of Style”.

Because the original version was published in 1918, that edition falls outside of any copyright protection, and the book can be found on the Web for free –

Here — if you wish to refer to it while writing online; or, failing that website, you can also find it at the stalwart Bartleby’s site, here.

And a version for download, here.

Strunk Wrote Alone

Interestingly enough, even though E. B. White was a student of Professor Strunk at Cornell University in 1919, he only became involved with the 43-page book after Strunk’s death in 1946.

Posthumously, Strunk Gained White As A Co-Author

The fog of time obscures what inspired publisher Macmillan & Company ro request White to revise and update the book. However, it may have been due to his authoring a laudatory article New York Times on the book. Under White the “little book” grew to over 80 pages. The classic “Strunk & White” came to be a staple of English classes throughout the U.S. after it’s initial publication in 1959 — a fame that the book never achieved during Strunk’s lifetime.

White Eschews Political Correctness — But Plea Removed in 4th Edition
White revised the “little book” 2 more times, the third edition containing an essay vigorously supporting the use of the word “he” to refer to people of any gender, instead of “they”. The fourth edition, revised in 1999 after his death, removed White’s impassioned plea — and political correctness reigns. You can purchase that most recent revision at Amazon, here: StrunkAndWhilte-4thEd — although the “illustrated” version, first published in 2005 using the 4th edition text, might be more entertaining — and a revision, due out at the end of this month, is available for pre-order

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