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SurveysAdministering a survey is a great way of gathering information on site visitors in order to tweak your product/service and site to better serve them.(Of course, this is predicated on the assumption that your site is providing value-added content to its visitors, otherwise there is no incentive for the survey to be completed.) The mechanics of designing and posting a survey page can, however, be burdensome for the technically-challenged. SurveySolutions for the Web is a complete package which simplifies the design, delivery and results management of surveys. The package is Microsoft Office Compatible, and "builds on your familiarity with business software to streamline designing, conducting and analyzing Web and e-mail-based surveys". You can download a 30-day evaluation copy of the package from the Perseus site - which is attractive and easy to navigate. The full version costs $149 (electronic) or $179 with disks and full documentation. July 23, 1998 Web PositionAt the end of the day, a major source of site traffic must be search engines. (We are of the opinion that their utility has become severely circumscribed recently, and that this process will continue. Still, for the time being...).In point of fact, being in a SE index will do little to promote your site traffic - unless you are on the first three pages (how many times have you been to page 20 in Alta Vista?). Web Position Analyzer is a promotional spider which "utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) to read the content of your web pages and makes dynamic additions to your postings. It greatly improves the quality of registration and places you near the top of categories in most of the search engines." Not only that, but it allows you to monitor positioning of your site in the major (and some minor) SEs - as well as that of your clients or competitors. You can download an evaluation copy, which comes packed full of information about how SEs rank sites, hints on keyword usage and how to best use this useful gizmo. The full version is undergoing a major upgrade, and is currently unavailable. Net Submitter Professional costs $100, with a year of upgrades costing an additional $50. After you have registered your evaluation copy, you are offered the opportunity to subscribe to MarketPosition Newsletter, which will help you through the SE maze. We also liked the fact that the folks at WebPosition followed up with an eMail offering free advice and help if any problems were encountered using the application. Go for it! July 22, 1998 Cutting through the ClutterAs hardware prices drop through the floor (at least here in the US), so the specifications of the average "newbie's" starter-kit rise to unprecedented levels. (This is based upon a correspondent's completely unscientific observation of the thousands of dollars' worth of hardware leaving a CompUSA store on a recent Saturday.)The behemoths being purchased in profusion feature the ability to support all the latest and greatest multi-media gew-gaws. And, of course, the ability to access the Web through a couple of mouse clicks (credit card in hand) is a given. But having accessed the Web, where does a "newbie" go? Well, probably in the first instance, to either the Gorilla or the homepage of the ISP whose CD they picked up in the store. Novice traffic then cascades down from these sites, in most cases to the sites of established players, corporations with household brand-names. And these sites will probably feature effects supported by our novice user's new machine. This phenomenon will tend to shape the novice's expectations of what a website does and what one looks like. So what can smaller fish do to make their sites attractive to those whose expectations have been shaped by the full multi-media monty? The answer lies in simplicity. In much the same way as twentieth- century abstract art evolved as a reaction to the Baroque complexity of the visual art of the Victorian age (we are thinking here of Mondrian and Picasso as prime exemplars), so we believe that simple, elegant design will, in the end, win out. But when approaching site design and
architecture, keep in
mind these two fundamental principles:
Content is King July 21, 1998 What's New?As part of our ongoing process of monitoring recruitment-oriented sites, we subscribe to a number of agents which monitor the appearance of new sites and report back via eMail.Whats New?, for example, reports back weekly on new entrants in a wide variety of fields. In the field of Jobs and Employment, What's New? reports an average of 30 - 50 new sites a week. A lot of these new sites, it's fair to point out, are MLM-oriented and are blatant pitches for other spurious "get-rich-quick" schemes. Nonetheless, that leaves a healthy number of new recruitment-oriented sites joining the 25,000+ already out there. Cresta Recruiting is one such new site. It bears the hallmarks of some thought having gone into the design and architecture. Images are suitably minimalist, and the site has a clean look and feel. Job descriptions are comprehensive, and the copy is appropriate for the audience. And Cresta has adopted the practice of including full contact information on every page, something which eludes many. We would venture to suggest, however, that Michelle Cresta re-examine her META TAGs - they do not appear to be particularly user-oriented. We wonder what Cresta's plans for site promotion are. In other news, Digby Clarke alerts us to his new site Recipes for Life. It's straightforward advice for those facing life crises, presented in a tabbed notebook format. The site is a mite graphics- heavy for our taste, and that "splash page" serves no apparent purpose. Nonetheless, if you feel the need for reassurance that you are "normal", Digby's site is worth an off-duty visit...
795 Mammoth Road "Less is always more."
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