Web Standards [a visit by John Allsop]

John Allsopp stopped by last week for a 'passionate' talk about the importance of web standards.  I really enjoyed the talk and learned a lot from it hence this blog.


......Are you in need of a vacation from your life - where a beach, a cabana and a cold drink in your hand felt more like a necessity? Say you were to surf for vacay spots. You then decide on Tuvalu or Timbuktu [stay with me]. You search online using your preferred browser, make reservations and mozzie on over there. When you get there, everyone speaks a language you do not understand, and likewise, they do not understand you. Huge Problem! Thankfully, the world has an unofficial universal language a.k.a. English! A nice, funny and humor filled book about this fascinating language, (as per recommendations from Mr. Allsop) is The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

So what does English have to do with web standards? Everything! well kinda. Albeit a metaphor, English, much like web standards affords consistency, eases the sharing of information, reduces cost, and saves time. In similar ways, web standards enable consistency of information across browsers and other electronic devices accessing the web, gives web pages a longer shelf life, eases the burden on developers to have code functional across browsers, and - of course - results in huge cost savings. 

Referenced from Designing with Web Standards

In his book Designing with web standards, Jeffrey Zeldman discusses forward compatibility in relation to web standards. He writes, "designed and built the right way, any page published on the web can work across multiple browsers, platforms, and internet devices—and will continue to work as new browsers and devices are invented..". He also goes into length of why web standards are important. Take browser sniffing code for example. Owing to the complexities in each browser and their upgrades, developers have had to write browser specific code, a practice that is not only costly and time consuming but births a myriad of problems such as double digit browser versions that Mr. Zeldman says shows "fallibility of UA sniffing..". [The User Agent (UA) is a "short string of text that contains the browser's name, version, and platform, and acts as a digital fingerprint for the browser", which unfortunately can be undetectable in certain circumstances. This in turn means that browser specific code is not executed] 

My browser of choice currently - Firefox. Firebug plus other Firefox add ons make it my to-go-to browser. I also enjoy an online game or two. What I really dislike is a message - IN RED no less - that I cannot play said game on Firefox... and I have to switch.... bla bla bla. Annoying!! To say the least. Now - if all browsers conformed to web standards - such uniformity would make for a much richer user experience.

The CSS Zen Garden is an excellent website that shows just how powerful web standards can be. Each of the designs incorporate the exact same base HTML code and the examples therein [with the help of CSS] exemplify the many ways design can vary, despite having the same code.

Invalid Markup is another problem that web standards will take care of. I have written code in times past, where I inadvertently forgot to close a tag or two. Most browsers have rendered the page but a few catch the mistake. Bad Markup that is not picked up by browsers will only cause problems down the road which makes debugging/redesigning more difficult, where old problems crop up as new ones. This only adds to time and cost spent on the whole development process.

There is yet to be a browser that is fully compliant with web standards [as laid down by the W3C ] but with more noise generation from developers and users alike, the future does look promising when compared to times past when browser compatibility was - to a much larger extent - wishful thinking.

Information Architecture

Ever visited a website whose eyeball appeal was magnetic and made you go WOW? Whose hypnotic design invited you to 'enter' and stay a while - and while you stayed [hopefully not on Ceasar's time], you glided smoothly from page to page finding what you were looking for without much trouble? Though I have yet to spend a red cent on their products, one such website - in my opinion is - is The Swoosh Guys.

Effectively designed websites are in part a result of solid Information Architecture (IA). Below is a definition of Information Architecure as defined in Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville's book "Information Architecture for the World Wide Web":


in·for·ma·tion ar·chi·tec·ture

1. The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system.
   
2. The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
   
3. The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites and intranets to help people find and manage information.
   
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.
   

IA can be broken down into four components:

1. Organization Systems
This refers to the technique/study/classification of a site's content. It is the way a site content is presented.
2. Labeling Systems
These help describe categories, options, links using descriptive and appropriate language. They help the user know where they are, what the page is about, where and how to search and get what they are looking for, leave feedback, e.t.c
3. Navigation Systems
Navigation systems aid users movie easily throughout the web site and the content therein.
4. Searching Systems
Search systems give users the ability to search content locally(search within website) or globally(search the internet) to find exactly what they are looking for.

Web Writing [summary taken from Erin Anderson et. als’ book : InterACT with web standards: A Holistic approach to web design]

A visit to any website reveals that all cyberspaces – good or bad – contain text. Think of any horrible ones? Click on the link to see some Web Pages That Suck.

Properly designed and organized text generates eyeball appeal. Words tie the whole website together – be it image tags or paragraphs.

What constitutes good web writing?

• A balance between user needs and business goals:
  
  • Knowing what your users need and how to present it.
    
  • Help the user accomplish a task.
    
  • Be consistent
    
  • Answer user questions
    
• Having a good strategy
  
• Following the rules of good composition
  
• Being able to solve content problems to ensure that the voice, tone, style, business objectives and customer goals are met.
  
• Having solid web design and development e.g. knowing how to break text into visually appealing blocks.
  
• Having good metadata that helps your website become more visible to search engines and findable by users.
  
• Understanding the online/offline user experience.
  Goals and expectations of online and offline users differ. Online readers are task oriented – they know exactly what information they require and want to get it in the shortest time possible and move on.
  On the other hand, offline readers are passive and relaxed readers.
  
• Taking into account all your users even the ones that lack visual abilities and access the website through screen reader devices.
  
• Engaging content
  

Good web writing has the ability to solve business problems and can help an organization form a lasting relationship with its customers. It can also help strengthen the company brand and solve many business problems.

Some challenges that come with web writing:

• Not being part of the design process from the inception.
  
• A website is a representation of the firm as a whole and therefore ensuring cohesiveness might present a challenge as each business entity within the organization might want content written in a specific way.
  
• Also, lack of editorial oversight as no one part of the business owns the material thereby leaving web writers without clear leadership.
  

TOP 10 WEB WRITING TIPS

1. Love the inverted pyramid.
   
   
2. Believe less is [almost always] more.
   
   
3. Avoid sounding like an infomercial.
   
   
4. Make your copy easy to scan.
   
   
5. Write killer headings.
   
   
6. Lead with Active words
   
   
7. Use simple sentences
   
   
8. Keep your promises
   
   
9. Set up a good review process
   
   
10. Benchmark off good websites
    
    

What is Enterprise 2.0?

Just when you think the coining of Tech terms might have finally ebbed away, here comes another one! Enterprise 2.0. The question then is - What is Enterprise 2.0? As Andrew McAfee put it, it is "the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers". A better definition is from AIIM which defines it as "a system of web based technologies that provide rapid and agile collaboration, information sharing, emergence and integration capabilities in the extended enterprise". It involves utilizing collaborative, social media and networking, and productivity tools in a business setting.

What is Enterprise 2.0?

Examples of Enterprise 2.0 tools are blogs, twitter, mini wikis, mashups. Some examples utilized in class were twitter, blogging, YouTube, Google Wave, aggregation tools such as - Yahoo Pipes - (I so miss Microsoft Popfly though.....)and iphone apps that we learned how to develop (some...).

While this field is still in the early stages of development and growth, some benefits of Enteprise 2.0 include:

1. Employees have tools that enable the free flow of communication/information. This might in turn encourage participation and foster a creative environment where ideas that help boost productivity can be born.
2. Greater knowledge capture and retention.
3. Transparency of information.
4. Better collaboration of information.

Cons
Social media tools e.g. blogs can be valuable when it comes to sharing knowledge, better agility and more fluid dissemination of information, but the issue then arises - how does an enterprise control access and dissemination of information, ensure information integrity, organize information gathered and realize any ROI with these tools?

Impact on ROI of these technological applications is another concern.

Another issue is that businesses are always continually in the process of adapting technologies as the technological landscape evolves. With that said, I believe it is safe to assume that businesses will organically evolve, progress, and adapt to technology as it changes and in ways that will add to their business value - social media platforms or otherwise. Which begs the question is Enterprise 2.0 a fad or a trend? The jury is out on this one and only time will tell if Enterprise 2.0 will be a 'one-hit wonder' or if it is here to stay.

Net Neutrality & Building a Business Model (11/05/2009)

For class this week, we had a debate on whether Net Neutrality regulation is necessary. As passionate as one may be (in this case me) about the issue, we had to leave our opinions aside and focus on the resolution that "Net Neutrality Regulation was unnecessary". I was on the pro side (and we won!). The debate not only added to my know-what of the whole issue, but also from the dangers of letting govt. get involved. Some dangers include infringing on people's access to information, interfering with free market, hindering innovation, management costs that would be borne by the taxpayers,and the how-what-why-where-when regulation would be carried out. The biggest question I guess is CAN GOVERNMENT BE TRUSTED TO REGULATE INFORMATION CONTENT ON THE INTERNET? Given their inefficienty in times past with use management of the ARPANET, the far from below expectations from recent examples (SEC vs. BOA), and the fact that rules to protect the consumer are already in place, I personally arrived at the conclusion to best let the internet be and engage the powers of demand and supply.

How To Develop a Business Plan

The prof introduced us to a very relevant topic. For any business to be successful, one has to draw up a business plan/model as to how Goals and objectives will be met. He broke the up into the following categories:

• Value Proposition
• Marketing Strategy
• Management Team
• Competitive Strategy
• Competitive Environment
• Revenue Model
• Market Opportunity

Sherpa Studios Dude (10/29/2009)

Search Engine Optimization:

Organic:SEO

Organic SEO is based on the site content and structure who links to it and who does not which is 70% of traffic to most websites.

Sponsored Clicks:

Every time someone clicks on your add, kaching! Every time does a query, there is a micro auction. Pay-per-click means "you pay to play".

There is a high correlation btwn sponsored clicks and organic searches. Drop positions in search results when cpc is turned off despite Google's denial that any correlation exists.

Search Engine Marketing is an umbrella for both SEO and PPC. Sometimes used to interchangeably mean PPC by amateurs.

Two things that control pages - on & off page trackers(everything you do not have much control over e.g. linking to your website). On page trackers are things you have control on: e.g code, org, structure, server of the website.

They matter because of :

Deployment ease:

iterative: manipulate factors and quickly see the effect: e.g. changing texts and Urls within web page to have as much keywords as possible. e.g small tortoise.

control: all within your control.

weighted: top ranking influencers in non competitive environment.

Keyword Density:

Assumption is that the higher the ranking the better the quality and that is not necessarily true.

Google is great target market. Bing and Yahoo less frequent in updating their search engines. When doing SEM, design for both Search Engines & Humans. e.g. Tankless Water Heaters page: The design is appealing to the eye and is structured and designed to draw in customers but the source code is optimized for search engines. Some text appears bold when in actual fact is composed of headers.

Important Factors for SEO

1. Title Tag: In SEO its all about key phrases.
Best practice - Use few but exact keywords.

2. Body Tag:
Better practice: frequent use (keyword density)

Best practice: withing first 200 words (keyword placement)

3. H1 H2 H3: It is better to use the entire Hx family.

4. <'bold/strong'>:emphasizing keyword with <'strong'> links

5. Domain/URL: include keyword in URL keyword.com
Homepage has most weight

6. Filename - including keyword in page name.

Best practice - keep files near root directory

7. img ALT-including keyword image alt tags
Best practice - use short, brief descriptions.

8. Inbound link anchor text: include keywords in internal links
Best practice: avoid superfluous words

9. Inbound link popularity: increasing number of links to an internal page
Best practice: use the to superfluous pages - "link sculpting"

10. Use clean, lightweight markup: separating presentation (formatting)
from data (content, images).

Best practice: separate css file

4 Negative Factors:

1. server often inaccessible to robots: cannot crawl a website that is
not up.

2. content similar/duplicate: splits the power of links and serves penalty

3. External link quality - not all external links equal;

bad links are harmful

4. META keywords - does not hurt to use them, but its best to avoid doing
keyword research for competition.

5. Stop using plural as much as possible.
Research has shown volume of traffic/conversion were much lower.

6. Find out how consumers type searches.

e.g. tankless water heater gas vs tankless gas water heater. Research
has shown that consumers searching for tankless water heaters type
"tankless water heater gas" versus "tankless gas water heaters".

Find out what consumers type in from resources such as
"Google Adwords traffic estimation"

Some useful links:

1. The Web's Best SEO Resources

2. Search Engine Marketing Blog

3. Google Ranking Factors - SEO Checklist

4. Search Engine Journal

5. Internet Marketing Services

Find·a·bil·i·ty as defined by Peter Morville is:

a. The quality of being locatable or navigable.
b. The degree to which a particular object is easy to discover or locate.
c. The degree to which a system or environment supports navigation
and retrieval.

It is the ability to direct one's target audience to their website.

In his book, "Building Findable Websites", Aarron Walter lists the disciplines of findability as:

• SEO
Search Engine Optimization helps a website become findable. Implementation of SEO techniques help in page rank, relevancy and search visibility.
• Accessibility
• Us·a·bil·i·ty
Usability refers to the ease with which a User Interface can be used by its intended audience to achieve defined goals. Usability incorporates many factors: design, functionality, structure, information architecture, and more. (sitepoint.com)
• In•for•ma•tion ar•chi•tec•ture
In their book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, Peter Morville & Louis Rosenfeld define it as:
1. The structural design of shared information environments
2. The combination of organization, labeling, search, and navigation systems within web sites and intranets
3. The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability
4. An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape
• Development
• Marketing
• Copyrighting
• Design

General Iphone Web Pages Best Practices:

• Make your web page unique but user friendly e.g. using accelerometer features for tapping, shaking, etc
• Test, test and then re-test again!
• Provide adequate support
• Make sure you are current with SDK updates
• Ensure that image resolution is not too big

Here is a good link with information on ViewPort & CSS for the Iphone => Iphone Tips

When Posting an Online Video...............

Best practices for producing and distributing video on the Web:

Say there is a company that has produced a great how-to-video on making widgets. The next thing they need to think about is how they are going to publish or distribute this video on the web. When posting videos online there are a couple of things to consider. First what is the goal of posting it? Is it to start a viral marketing campaign about a social issue or is it to provide a service on the company's website to draw more people in? And secondly, what kind of web server does the company have and how knowledgeable is the webmaster? The answers to those questions can help the company decide whether to host the video on their on server or post your video to a sharing site such as YouTube.

Benefits and concerns of a company hosting its own videos:

Hosting your own video can draw more visitors to your site, enable you to customize how everything on the page looks, and one can choose to sell ads or not. There are a few things that need to be in place before this is a viable option. First, you have to know how to work with the video files if you are going to host your own videos. The webmaster will have to encode the video into a different format to incorporate it into the website. For example a lot of videos are edited using mpeg or avi but to put them on the web in an easily usable form they need to be in Flash (by Adobe) or Quicktime (by Apple). Most web videos are streamed using Flash. The second thing to consider is can I afford the bandwidth? Video files are large and require a lot of bandwidth to host.

Search Engine Optimizations tips:

Limit each page to one video, allow the URL to be specific to a video, place all videos in a central folder/directory, use an embedded player in the page instead of a popup, use text on the page to describe the video, use tags and meta tags to help search engines, submit the video to Google sitemaps to help speed up the indexing of the video for search, and allow users to share the video with friends by providing the url or providing social networking links.

Benefits and concerns of a company posting videos:

Unlike a hosted solution that requires video conversion, the posted solution takes care of converting the video files, and they pay for the bandwidth. Also, most of these sites, like YouTube, MetaCafe, or GoogleVideo, have a good reputation and a large user base that is constantly watching videos and sharing the videos with friends. This is a great solution for any type of viral marketing campaign. Popular YouTube videos are tied into universal search (incorporated into Google "web search", people don't have to be specifically searching for videos to be shown videos on that topic ) in Google which is a great way to publicize a video. Going with a posted solution however, you lose the full customization over the look of the page and whether ads are shown. In most video sharing sites, ads are displayed. Some ads maybe images or text but some maybe videos that play before your video is shown. In some cases this could be an ad for a competitor.

Search Engine Optimization tips:

Post your website URL in the description of the video, create your own account/channel/brand to allow people to follow all of your videos and any future updates, use your url in a watermark in the video because these might be copied and posted elsewhere (it is viral), allow comments and ratings to generate user excitement and discussion, and use tubemogul.com to upload the video to all major sharing sites and see analytics on those videos. TubeMogul looks like a very powerful tool for businesses or individuals to track videos all over the web.

Information from http://www.reelseo.com/seo-best-practices/