Myspace Web Stats

Here are some interesting stats about Myspace usage courtesy of B and T.

The Australian version of popular social networking site MySpace claims more than 50% of its users are over the age of 25.

Research from Nielsen Netratings show that over 1.1 million MySpace Australia users are in the 24 to 34 year-old age demographic.

I think its interesting the demographic change. Although I am putting my foot in this and laying down my prediction that Myspace is a fad. I also think that too many people are wasting their time on it and that it will die a slow painful death just like AngelFire, Geocities and Friendster.

Sorry Myspace lovers, but its just my internet history that gives me this hunch.

What resolution should you design your website to?

There are 2 things you should look at for this.

1. Websites statistics resolution stats - What resolution do most of the people that visit your website already use? Use these stats to determine what size you should do it in.
2. Internet trends - Check the current resolution stats, although keep in mind that this is the entire internet and your particular website might have very specific trends. Again use these 2 pieces of information together, i.e. the trend of the internet users and your specific website.

Search Engine Room slides

Thank you to everyone who listened to my talk at the Search engine room yesterday. I thought I would post up my slides for you to review. If you have any questions please dont hesitate to comment and I will reply to them.

Keyword Discovery With Latent Sematic Indexing.ppt

Let me know what you think.

Fred

Talking at Search engine room

Just a quick one. I am talking at Search engine room and will be catching up with a few people at the event and afterwoods. If you wanted to catch up just email or call the Freestyle office and they will connect you to my mobile 02 9818 7300.

When to fire your Web Design company

A lot of people ask me what makes the business Freestyle Media different from other web design companies. I will tell you an analogy to explain this. Ask yourself right now and be brutally honest, Do you have a brochure website or is it a marketing tool? Have you just wacked up a site and hoped for the best. If you work with a web design company they will build you a website without a single regard for how you are going to get traffic.

"Web designers are builders NOT marketers."

Its like if you get an engineer to build you a house. They dont care what it looks like that is the architects job. The engineer if they had their way would make the whole thing 1 story and plonk all of the rooms together to make them as structurally sound as possible. With your website you dont want the most technically sound website you want one that brings in the most traffic and makes the most sales. Get an online marketing agency to build your site if you are a marketer not a web design company nor an advertising agency.

3 quick ways to tell if you are working with an Online Marketing Agency or a Web Design company

1. No keyword recommendations - If your company isnt providing you with keyword recommendations before you build your website fire them. That is like building a super market and not knowing where the people live. If your site isnt setup for attracting visitors to your website from the beginning you will be forking out for retrofittings from search engine optimisers to make it attract visitors.
2. None of their websites rank well in the search engines - Browse their portfolio and see where the sites rank in the search engines. No rankings... fire them.
3. They can't code in CSS and xHTML - If your agency cant code in CSS and xHTML fire them. There is no point coding in tables as opposed to CSS and xHTML as it will cost you the same amount. Choose the premium way to code and get the piece of mind that you won't be retrofitting your site with SEO addons.

How to improve your conversion rate from Google?

I try to improve all my clients website conversion rates all the time. I thought these Google articles might be of interest to you if you are trying to improve your conversion rate.

Google Conversion University

3 quick tips to improve conversion

1. Add security logos - Your SSL provider will normally provide a logo you can use to show that you are using their SSL certificate. If you use Verisign then you can use their logo.
2. Provide a telephone number - Providing the phone number is good but making sure it is answered within the first 3 rings is even better!
3. Keep your website up to date - Add something fresh and new to your website all the time because you never know when that one client you have been looking for is browsing your website.

What has been your best tactic to improve conversion?