Topics can sometimes grow organically as you write about them and do a little research. The topic here was to throw out a challenge to develop the best 125px x 125px ad since I had developed one today that I thought was pretty good. I still would be interested to hear whether you can do better than the ad on the right here. However there’s more to all this than meets the eye.
Beatles’ fans will remember an early song from the Liverpool favourites when they hear those evocative words.
Hold me tight is a straightforward and direct message so what does that have to do with websites? The link may escape you but read on and all will become clear. The progression of ideas runs as follows
Hold me tight is also the title of a book by Sue Johnson. It sets out the key principles involved in the EFT approach that she has developed over thirty years. Sue Johnson is a professor at the University of Ottawa. She is also the Director of both the International Centre for Excellence in Emotionally Focused Therapy (ICEEFT) and the Ottawa Couple and Family Institute Inc..
The book covers a most important topic and here we pick up on only one small sliver of the knowledge she covers. A key reason why two people in a relationship may get at cross purposes is that the couple are hardwired to react instinctively if they feel that their relationship is threatened. To fully understand, you should read her book, but the essence is that this threat of losing that key relationship triggers an extremely rapid primal fear instinctive reaction. This occurs in the amygdala, which is part of the limbic area of the brain.
This is the area in which the fight or flight reaction is triggered when threats occur. You might almost say that this is unthinking reaction, since it occurs unbidden and instantaneously. Any primate or indeed any mammal has this possibility of being affected by such a primal fear of losing a connection with a significant other. It starts at birth with a link between a mother and child and is always a feature of our human nature although linkages may change over time.
Her thesis is that subsequent actions and reactions are all affected by what happens in those first microseconds of primal reaction. Although our reaction to a given website will rarely involved anything as gripping as a primal fear, it is not too much of a stretch to believe that reactions to a web page are not just affected by what is logically perceived. Perhaps they can be affected by how our emotions affect that perception.
The words of Sue Johnson to an extent are in sync with the approach suggested by Fritz Glaus and Stephen Goldberg, cofounders of Three Brain Synergy.
They suggest that each human being in a sense has three brains, which have been labeled ”head brain”, ”heart brain”, and ”gut brain” by the neuroscientists. The head brain is concerned with logical reasoning, the heart brain deals with emotions and the gut brain deals with those instinctive reflex actions generated by the limbic area of the brain.
Humans will react in any given situation based on how these interacting parts of their brain function are interacting. Sue Johnson’s work is building on the same foundation. In both cases the gut brain, or the limbic area, may have already triggered a certain sense which then affects and perhaps limits the actions that the other parts of the brain can consider and act on.
Malcolm Gladwell has written persuasively on the notion that people can react to websites in milliseconds in deciding whether to stay and interact with the website or flee elsewhere. The specific trigger may not be as primal as the fight or flight reaction but undoubtedly it can be very rapid. Given that it happens, we should not discount the notion that our reaction to a given web page is not just a logical, intellectual response to seeing what the web page displays. Our emotions and even our gut reaction may modify or distort what our thinking brain is perceiving.
The most reasonable description of our reaction to a web page must be that the perception is made up of our logical, emotional and even gut reactions to what is on display. This will also be affected by our expectations of what we might see in opening that web page.
If we wish to have engaging websites where visitors interact with the web pages by pursuing the calls to action, then we cannot just rely on a logical analysis of what appears on the web page. As so often, we must approach this in a visitor-centric manner. What is the visitor expecting to see and what will their three brains working in concert perceive when the web page opens in their browser.
Identifying exactly how a given visitor is perceiving the web page may be challenging. Not everything will be necessarily perceived consciously. Some aspects may be instinctive and unspoken. All one can do is stay open-minded to the possibilities. What may appear to be an illogical reaction may be explained by some emotional factor. This three brain synergy explanation raises some interesting challenges for the search engines and what they are attempting to do. Google might hope to deliver the most relevant web page to a keyword search query. If that relevance should really be based on a tri-brain perception, how can a spider using only logic deliver the most relevant page. The answer will be suggested in a follow-up post.
In the end, one can only hope that the visitor’s total reaction is in line with the objective we had for that particular web page. Hold Me Tight is in many cases a worthwhile goal to shoot for.
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Google has a bigger Search Box and many observers find it big and ugly. It is surprising how a move from a 13-pixel font for the search box, up to 17 pixels can have such a visual impact. This same font size is used for the list of possible searches that is presented by the Google Suggest process. If this change is not yet apparent in your part of the world here is what the Google Search Box with the Google Suggest list looks like.
Below the Search box, the buttons also are increased in size and are now more square:
It is surprising how that I’m Feeling Lucky button survives. Even more so when you realize that whenever this button is clicked, it may well cost Google in lost advertising revenues.
The thinking behind this change is not at all clear, given so many adverse reactions.
The official word is that the Google Search Box is now S-U-P-E-R sized. Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience introduces it as follows:
For us, search has always been our focus. And, starting today, you’ll notice on our homepage and on our search results pages, our search box is growing in size. Although this is a very simple idea and an even simpler change, we’re excited about it — because it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use.
It is perhaps something that only its Mother could love.
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A website is not something that should merely be seen like a sculpture without any objective to influence potential prospects to take appropriate actions. Instead it should be a website that performs.
To do that it must have strengths in a number of areas. The following lists some of the more important:
These features must be considered in designing the website: they cannot be added later.
To do this requires a particular kind of web design company that has all the necessary skills. An example of such a company is Primeview, which provides full services for arizona web design. That includes a strong emphasis on arizona seo, since this is critical in ensuring high website traffic.
Although search engines work particularly with the text content of websites, that does not imply a drabness for the websites created as you can see from Primeview’s cool before and after gallery. If you are in Arizona, this would certainly be a company worth reviewing if you are looking for full service web design that will create a website that will help you achieve your business goals.
This SMM blog, BPWrap, after five years has moved to a new home. It had been located at a Cre8asite Forum’s subdomain (blog.cre8asite.net/bwelford) since it started in March 2004. At its inception for four days it was called BWrap. Almost instantly it was noted that the name was already in use, so the name was switched to BPWrap.
There are disadvantages in having such a complex URL as a location so finally it is now to be found at its new domain, www.BPWrap.com.
At the old location there is still an htaccess file which arranges a 301 permanent redirect to this new location. This maintained the search engine visibility throughout the switch and ensures continuing high rankings in keyword searches.
The only minor dissatisfaction is that the Google Toolbar PageRank indicator has not yet returned to the 4 or 5 level that has been seen recently. This visual indicator is not updated frequently so it may be a month or two before the correct value is showing.
If in your blog or your website, you linked to any of the BPWrap posts, it would be most helpful if you would ensure the correct URL is now showing. Visitors do not get lost in using the old URL but this will help confirm the switch with the search engines. We look forward to many more years of providing insights and revelations on the Internet marketing world from this new home.
Update
A Search Engine Journal article, URL Structure: The Closer to the Root – the Better?, provides a pleasing confirmation of the wisdom of this move.
Opera Unite reinvents the Web, according to Opera who feel that cloud computing and Web-based applications will never be the same.
Seth Rosenblatt at Cnet thinks Opera may have something interesting as it tries to Unite users across browsers.
The Web server is interesting, as well. Being able to host a Web page from your desktop computer, without having to worry about paying somebody for the privilege, has the potential to usher in a new age of Web hosting where the only cost is what you pay your ISP and there’s no middle-man to go through. However, the most popular things to do online that require your own site–sharing media and writing blogs–can be done effectively and cheaply from third-party hosts. Still, Unite-based Web-serving has potential.
What as yet has not been sufficiently discussed are the security aspects of allowing others to use your computer as a server. Some feel that Opera’s Unite Is One Incredibly Bad Idea
Then there are the security implications. Unite lets users set permission levels for who can access their files, but one of these levels appears to be "completely open." That doesn’t sound good. Ostensibly, you’re sharing files with people you know, but I could envision someone setting up a link to their Opera Unite service that leads people to a file that’s really malware.
For most of us, we will stick to traditional web hosting. There are many fine hosting services that are economical and reliable throughout North America. Even if we all become confident that Opera Unite can be the way we share some of our online properties, undoubtedly this will be complemented by a standard web hosting arrangement.
As Dave Brock points out, People Don’t Like To Be Sold—But They Do Like To Buy!
How do we facilitate the customer’s buying process? It’s a few simple things, but that can have great meaning to the customer—again much is focused on educating and informing. Things like: What are the questions they should be asking—of you and of your competitors? What should their expectations of a solution be? Are they realistic, unrealistic? What are the pitfalls involved in selecting a solution? What are the things they should be considering, but not thinking about?
Although many company owners may not realize it, one of the most complex purchase decisions they have is how to ‘buy’ their website. If the website is to be a Powerful Sales Representative, then careful Website Planning is involved. A website is as complex as an automobile and it is far too easy to create a website that is "Unsafe At Any Speed".
Given the ever evolving complexity of multiple browsers and a wide variety of devices, the only safe and sure way to avoid major disappointment is to carefully define the website functional specifications. To understand what that involves, it is worth checking out a sample website spec. Only with a carefully detailed specification can disaster be avoided.
Undoubtedly most websites can be seen by their designers and by the website owner in a satisfactory way on their preferred device/browser combination. However it must be seen in an attractive way by all their prospects with whatever device/browser combination they may be using. That takes the right functional specification to achieve that.
Or perhaps that should read – Arial Font – No – Wider. Our ever sharp-eyed readers may notice a subtle change in the appearance of the SMM online properties, in other words the website and the blogs. It is perhaps a long overdue change and indeed many others may wish to adopt this change so we offer a few words of explanation. Graphic designers will find nothing new here but this is a case where a little knowledge can be helpful.
This is hardly a new topic since back in December 2001 Mark Simonson wrote an excellent article on The Scourge of Arial.
Arial is everywhere. If you don’t know what it is, you don’t use a modern personal computer. Arial is a font that is familiar to anyone who uses Microsoft products, whether on a PC or a Mac. It has spread like a virus through the typographic landscape and illustrates the pervasiveness of Microsoft’s influence in the world.
Arial’s ubiquity is not due to its beauty. It’s actually rather homely. Not that homeliness is necessarily a bad thing for a typeface. With typefaces, character and history are just as important. Arial, however, has a rather dubious history and not much character. In fact, Arial is little more than a shameless impostor.
He then goes on to lay out the history of how Arial evolved from a font much used in print media, Helvetica.
Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, one of the most popular typefaces in the western world was Helvetica. It was developed by the Haas Foundry of Switzerland in the 1950s. Later, Haas merged with Linotype and Helvetica was heavily promoted. More weights were added and it really began to catch on.
An icon of the Swiss school of typography, Helvetica swept through the design world in the ’60s and became synonymous with modern, progressive, cosmopolitan attitudes. With its friendly, cheerful appearance and clean lines, it was universally embraced for a time by both the corporate and design worlds as a nearly perfect typeface to be used for anything and everything. “When in doubt, use Helvetica” was a common rule.
Arial is an example of a font without serifs. Serifs are those small projections that are added to letters in a font like Times Roman, which is a standard font used in MS Word. They look fine in print but do not work particularly well on a computer screen. Arial is just one example of a sans-serif font and there are now many others.
If Arial is so popular why would anyone wish to change. One reason is to stand out from the crowd. The other reason is that Arial can have a slightly cramped look and others spread out the letters a little more. This helps readability particularly with smaller letters.
Our choice is Verdana, which is now a very popular font. In consequence, the CSS style sheets now start off with the following lines of code:
The font-family line means that verdana is used if available. If not, then arial is used if available. If not then whatever sans-serif font is available is used. No surprises there.
The font-size: 0.9em; introduces a very important point. It could equally have been written as font-size: 90%; If a font-size is not specified, then each browser uses whatever it has designated as the default size for that font. Here are the default sizes for Arial and Verdana in Firefox and in this case Internet Explorer looks very similar.
In short, Verdana is slightly bigger. To have approximately the same height for Verdana as appears with Arial the font-size must be set at 90%. Here is how that appears:
The letters are spread out a little more, which gives improved visibility. This is more apparent at smaller character sizes. This is shown in the following comparison where both are half the size of the previous version.
The other spacing consideration is the distance between the lines and this is governed by line-height. More and more people seem to be moving to line-height set at 140% or 1.4em. The difference is illustrated in the following image:
As you will see, setting line-height at 100% reduces the default spacing which is equivalent to a line-height of 120%. That is now our standard – Verdana with a line-height of 140%. We hope you find that more legible and welcome your comments on any thoughts you may have on this subject.
Update
Just for balance, I should mention the very fine article by Sander Baumann entitled, Font Series: Arial is everywhere. It has some very fine examples of large signs in Arial that are really very striking.
The WordPress blogging software is quite rightly immensely popular. The Open-Source community that supports it has developed a whole raft of supporting code and applications that make it a pleasure to use.
This blog and the other SMM blogs now have a slightly different look. This is because we are now using a feature of WordPress, Multiple Loops. The beauty of WordPress is that the concepts are all very easy to understand. This particular feature will hopefully give much more reader satisfaction.
There are two elements to the change. The first is that you will now only see one blog post when you visit. Although Google tries to be helpful, it can occasionally provide more from a blog that you wish to see. Now you will see precisely the blog post that is relevant to your keyword query.
The other element is that at the bottom of this single blog post you will now see a list of the most popular blog posts as determined by our visitors. If you like what you see in the initial post then perhaps some of the other blog posts may tweak your interest.
The changes to the theme required for this new look are very straightforward. Hopefully this simple explanation will help you apply this same approach to your blog if you so wish.
Web pages in a blog are produced by WordPress templates. These are files with names such as index.php or single.php. Within these template files, the heart of the WordPress software is code which is called The Loop. The WordPress Codex gives a more detailed explanation of The Loop In Action.
The content of all blog posts is held in an associated mySQL database. When a blog web page is displayed, the web page will show certain information for every blog post entry that fits the particular database query implied by your selection of web page. For example, if you want the most recent blog post, then the loop picks up only the information on that blog post. This is illustrated by the following image of a WordPress blog page.
When you visit the home page of the blog, you are often seeing a series of blog posts that are created via the file named index.php. The number of blog posts is selected by the blog webmaster. For example if it is arranged that the blog would normally show the 3 most recent blog posts, then this is illustrated by the following image.
When Google sends you to a single blog post to fit your keyword query then you are often seeing what a file named single.php produces by applying the loop. Normally in the index.php and the single.php files, the loop starts with the following code (note that a space has been inserted after < in the following code samples to ensure the code could be printed.):
< !-- start of the loop --> < ?php if (have_posts()) : ?>
The Loop is then all the code before a final < ?php endif; ?> terminates the Loop (again as mentioned a space has been inserted between < and ? to allow this code to display correctly).
As mentioned the new feature is that we are now using Multiple Loops in the WordPress software. The following image shows what is being displayed. The first post is produced by a first Loop. The list of Most Popular Posts is then produced by a second Loop.
In order to have only one post appear in the first loop, we use a Template Tag, query_posts. This query_posts tag can modify what the Loop accesses from the database. In this case we wish to have only one blog post to appear so the first Loop starts off as follows:
< !-- start of first loop -->
< ?php query_posts('showposts=1');
if (have_posts()) : ?>
The only complication here is that as entries are taken from database in The Loop, the database software maintains a count of the data that has been used. Normally other applications of the Loop will access only new data since past data has already been accessed. In order to see the posts which are of interest, we use another WordPress Template Tag as the second Loop starts to reset the count. This tag is the rewind_posts tag.
In order for the list of Most Popular Posts to be displayed, a new category, popular, has been created. When visitor traffic confirms that a blog post is popular, then it is assigned to this category in addition to whatever category may have been appropriate.
The code to start the second Loop to achieve the effect shown here is as follows:
< !-- start of second loop -->
< ?php rewind_posts();
query_posts('category_name=popular&showposts=-1');
if (have_posts()) : ?>
In addition to displaying popular posts for greater visitor satisfaction, this also ensures that such posts have more links pointing to them. This should ensure greater search engine visibility for these posts. In all, this format would seem to have only benefits. It will be interesting to see what reactions blog visitors have to this new format.
This is a guest post by Ben Johnson of Logoinn, custom logo design service provider based in the UK.
Have you ever wondered when and why people felt the need to create logos to stand out from others? The history of logo designing dates back more than 2,000 years when the Ancient Greeks used to have ciphers on their coins. They carved in different designs on different coins just to give them an identity and recognition. This practice proved to be very effective in distinguishing between coins from different regions. The importance of logo designing became even stronger in the pre-industrial era, when many people began to get involved in barter trade. At that time, everything that was sold or bought carried a signature stamp that differentiated one trader from another.
The next evolution was that people expanded their trading activities and set up companies for their trading. Just as traders felt the need to identify themselves, companies also wished to have instant recognition.
Logos have stood the test of time and if anything, there is now an even stronger need for logo designing. IBM is a great case study to see how one company has adopted this idea of creating an identity and instant recognition for itself and how much this logo has been modified over time.
IBM is perhaps the most recognized name in the field of IT products and services. But, people may not realize that it was not IBM when it started its operations in 1888. Its name then was the International Time Recording Company (ITR), whose major products were mechanical time recorders, invented and patented by William L. Bundy. This is ITR’s initial logo with its initial letters, ITR, inscribed on it.
In 1891, ITR decided to make changes in its logo again and came up with this. The changes they made were quite complex and the logo was not easy to understand at a glance. Nevertheless this logo lasted for 20 years till they made a merger with another company.
Later in 1911, ITR was merged with the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company and as a result the company had to modify the logo. Clearly companies must alter their logos to reflect the changes they are undergoing and the evolving IBM is a really good example. When one company merges with another company, they need to create a new identity to signal the change to the rest of the world.
However, in 1924, the company wished to signal an expanded business role. The ornate, rococo letters that formed the ‘CTR’ logo were replaced by the words ‘International Business Machines’ which were written in more contemporary sans-serif type font. The design of it was arranged to have the look of a globe, which confirmed the company’s intention to be ‘International’.
Over 20 years later in 1947, International Business Machines (IBM) decided to eliminate the globe from its logo. Besides this, they also had a major change in their business; they expanded from the punched-card tabulating business to the new world of computers. The typeface of this logo was called Beton Bold. The logo was cut short to IBM alone.
After 9 years, in 1956, Thomas J. Watson appointed Tom Watson Jr. as the CEO. As soon as he took over, he decided to change the logo of the company. He hired Paul Rand, who was a famous logo designer. He asked Paul to make subtle changes to the current logo and make it more solid, grounded and balanced. He wanted a logo, which would be an evolution of their logo and not a design which would look entirely different.
So, IBM retained the basic design of their logo and made a subtle change of filling black color in place of white in the letters to give it a solid look. Later Paul Rand decided to design another logo with horizontal stripes on it which depicted ‘Speed and Dynamism’. He also changed the color as well.
After that the logo has remained basically the same, with just a color change. It was blue previously, and this is now changed to black. However, there have been no design alterations in the logo.
There are several lessons that can be drawn from the evolution of the IBM logo design. There are countless other companies who have also gone through major alterations in their logos. Any business owner must realize that your logo needs to be refreshed from time to time in line with changing business goals and objectives. Only in that way can the world have the best image of your company and what it offers.
The way logos evolve is a fascinating study. If you are struck by other examples of how particular company logos have evolved with time, why not add your thoughts in a comment.
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