Marketing Your Website: A 12-Step Program

Is your website simply languishing in the corner, failing to deliver on the promise of the Internet? Change your online strategy and learn the tactics that actually deliver results:

• Identify the REAL target audience of your site
• Optimize so Google knows who your are
• Leverage the power of social networks
• Get site visitors to raise their hands

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: Cost: $30 for PC members; $35 non-PC members/advance registry (includes tax and gratuity) + cash bar; $40 at the door.

You can register at the Women of Wit and Wisdom site or check out the event page at the Philadelphia Business Journal.

Hope to see you at the event!

Keys to your Domain

Just to add as a side note, you can use QuarkBase to help research the whois information about your domain.

Marketing Your Website: A 12-Step Program

Is your website simply languishing in the corner, failing to deliver on the promise of the Internet? Change your online strategy and learn the tactics that actually deliver results:

• Identify the REAL target audience of your site
• Optimize so Google knows who your are
• Leverage the power of social networks
• Get site visitors to raise their hands

What: Guest Speaker, Dinner & Networking
Date: Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Time: 5:30-8pm
Location: Pyramid Club, 1735 Market Street, 52nd Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19103-2921
Cost: Cost: $30 for PC members; $35 non-PC members/advance registry (includes tax and gratuity) + cash bar; $40 at the door.

You can register at the Women of Wit and Wisdom site or check out the event page at the Philadelphia Business Journal. As a side note, you don’t have to be female to attend!

Even though my day to day has more to do with strategizing with clients, I still love to roll up my sleeves, fire up my graphics programs and code editors, and get under the hood for some good old fashioned website development. With that in mind, one of my favorite tools is Iconfactory’s xScope.

Think of xScope as a graphics Swiss army knife. It helps with all of those little jobs where there is no really good way.

• Rulers – measure horizontally and vertically and even angle the rulers on the screen.
• Dimensions – measure the inside dimensions of any element on the screen, which is great for figuring out the margins or padding of objects.
• Screens – this gives you an overlay of standard browser windows at a variety of screen resolutions, which is perfect for design mockups.
• Loupe – magnify anything on the screen which also shows you the exact color of the center pixel and gives precise coordinates for the point.
• Crosshair, Guides and Frames – vertical and horizontal tools for additional ways to measure screen areas.

If you use a Mac and do anything design related, this is a great tool to have at the ready,

The problem is that clients create a broad definition of the purpose of the website. Typical example:

• Generate sales leads
• Provide customer support
• Promote business partnerships

That is three distinct audiences, each with their own set of tasks for the site. Typically, I try to recommend a balance of these for my clients.

Lately, I’ve started talking to the clients about picking one audience and not compromising. And if you need to support multiple audiences, consider having different targeted sites for each audience with content and functionality just for them. At first, it might seem more expensive to create and support multiple sites, but compromising on the audience will almost always compromise your results.