After testing YPN for the last two months it looks pretty conclusive: YPN has a long way to go to catch up to Adsense. In all fairness I believe YPN is still in beta, still there are some things they need to work on. My not-too-scientific approach was to use a site that was already pulling a small but steady amount of traffic and Adsense clicks and then swap the Adsense for YPN.

Problem #1 - YPN doesn’t offer link ads. On advice from Mystery Mentor, my plan was to use the ads he recommended for Adsense including the text link ads across the footer. YPN offers the standard text ads but not link ads. And because you can’t use Adsense and YPN ads on the same page because of the TOS I had to choose to either keep earning the money I was getting or continue the experiment. I opted to continue forward.

Problem #2 - YPN’s relevancy falls short. The ads that appear for Adsense sometimes make me scratch my head but the YPN ads were almost always off-base. I figured that it might take time for them to align to the content but after two weeks I had 0 clicks and was considering swapping back. I found a setting in the control panel that let’s you tighten the focus of the ads. I made the appropriate change and saw a very minor improvement.

Problem #3 - Low CTR. The ads were still targeted too broadly and the CTR didn’t improve.

Problem #4 - Limited pool of advertisers to pull from. I don’t have proof but I suspect the industry this site covered just didn’t have a very broad advertising base. I saw a lot of ads for “mortgage” which probably pay well but I’ll never know because my viewers aren’t interested in that and didn’t click the ads.

Problem #5 - Low gain for clicks. I thought that maybe the problem of fewer clicks would be compensated for by high payouts for the few clicks I did get. No such luck.

YPN has a solid platform and implementing ads is just as easy as Adsense. I beleive that as they progress and recruit more advertisers the relevancy will improve. And I did only test one site. Other sites or industries may have better luck. But for now the steady money is in Adsense, at least for me.

Posted in Business Owners, PPC, Reviews, Industry News

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A lot of the questions I get from people new to online business revolve around the differences between online and offline, brick and mortar business. This makes sense as we’re all familiar with offline business, at least from a consumer point of view and most of us have worked retail jobs through high school and college.

The main difference between brick and mortar business and the internet is expectations and interactions.

We all know great service when we see it offline: the friendly greeter, the helpful sales associate, the discerning cashier and the customer service department that really represents the customer (instead of the accounting department). Determining great service online gets a bit harder as we don’t know what to expect. Common questions include:

• How do I find…?
• What is the policy around…?
• Where do I get help for…?

Usability addresses these questions. Good design and use of conventions gives the power to the viewer to get answers to their questions and instill them with confidence. Of course, looking for the answers is still up to the viewer. Websites don’t have a mechanism to see the frustration on a viewers face or read their body language and rush to the rescue.

…at least not yet.

Consider that if offline business is a system of great people, online business is a great system backed by people. In either case the people make the difference.

As clever website designers and marketers innovate the online experience will resemble the offline one more and more… but it will always be different. And it will never reach everyone. Sometimes the whole point of going out is to have human contact, even if it is just with a friendly waiter.

Posted in Business Owners, Useability, Web Design

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After several conversations where people asked if I had a facebook account and I was forced to admit “no, I don’t” I have finally given into to the peer pressure and joined the facebook cult.

Check out my profile, befriend me or drop me some tips to make my facebook experience as cool as I’ve heard!

So far the signup process was very easy. But the search process is a bit cumbersome. It seems facebook really wants you to plug in your email manager and I’m not comfortable with that. Searching for individuals doesn’t seem possible as they want you to look for groups but the groups don’t include “industry” just company, education or location. Kinda short-sided IMO.

I’m still in the dark as far as the facebook culture goes but I hope to learn fast - especially if you help… maybe drop some tips in the comments bellow…

Posted in Sales and Marketing, SEOs, Website Designers, Business Owners, Reviews

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Dear Web Hosting Company,

There is a major issue in your industry that you may not be aware of and I’d like to take a few moments to tell you about so that you can do a better job serving my peers.

I know you do a great job (at least 99.9% which is no small feat!) but lately even big, established web hosts have been failing us in one particular area: Digg traffic.

Digg traffic or the “Digg phenominon” is where a site that normally attracts a couple hundred to a few thousand visits in a day spikes to thousands of visits per minute. Of course this effect isn’t limited to Digg. There are other sources of large traffic jumps (like other social bookmarking sites and the news media) but the Digg phenomenon is probably the best known and most often referred to on message boards and blogs.

To the untrained (and automated) eye this may appear to be a DOS attack, but it isn’t. It’s real traffic from real people coming to our sites to see something cool, interesting or useful.

We work hard to make this happen and it really sucks when our host lets us down.

Of course we are aware that you have policies that we agreed to when we set up the account where you are justified to drop the site when big traffic spikes occur and in extreme cases suspending or terminating our long-standing business relationship. When these things happen we can’t help but wonder if you are missing the point: as website owners we count on you to stand up for us.

After all, we need you and the services you provide. As more stories of dropped sites when that magic moment hits spread across the internet, expect future customers to ask about how you handle these situations.

And you better believe that as website owners, promoters, SEOs, SEMs, designers and marketers we do talk about which web hosting companies can handle a couple days of boom traffic and which ones can’t. We are taking names and sharing them on forums, blogs and through email. These conversations are happening daily. And we are the people on the front lines. We are the decision makers and influencers. We need to know we can count on you not only when the worst happens, but the best.

Conversly, being able to take a Digg-pounding may result in some positive publicity for you.

What we are asking for is:

• A clear policy on boom traffic
• You to know the difference between the Digg phenomenon and a DOS attack
• You to help us out when such an opportunity comes along

If you do these things and we can take advantage of these boom traffic situations it means our websites will be more successful and that we will need to upgrade our accounts (which means more money for you). If you won’t handle it we have to find hosts that can. You’ve been great to us so far, please see what you can do.

Sincerely,

Your web hosting clients

Posted in Website Designers, Business Owners, Promotion, Industry News, Marketing

3 Comments »

Smart website owners understand their website is a “work in progress” and never truly complete. The ideal website is updated regularly, if not constantly. But scope creep and other problems may cause the website to become unwieldy and appear disorganized to the average visitor. At some point the decision for a redesign is made.

When I offer a professional website review I ask the following questions:

Does this page or feature help the brand or hurt it? How?

Brand management can be tough. Just by asking this question fluff gets cut and important content gets pushed forward. This also reduces scope creep.

Is this page for: Vendors, Internal Employees, Potential Customers, Existing Customers, Search Engines, Other?

If I can’t tell who the page is for it needs to be reworked or cut. Every page should be clear in its intention and deliberate in presentation.

Can anything be cut? Should anything be added?

Content should be specific and comprehensive, not filler.

Sometimes pages are added to websites because competitors have similar pages. These pages tend to be short. While server resources are nearly infinite for an average site viewer patience is not. Get rid of these pages.

How is the site structure? How will the search engines view it?

The most important pages should be listed in places of prominence (above the fold and/or at the top of the navigation). This is a usability issue but also clues you in to how the search engines will crawl the site and how the PR/linkjuice will flow. The most important pages should be one click away at all times. Important pages include anything in the sales cycle like “products” and “contact”.

There are some links you want to down-play or deemphasize like “about” or “management team” type pages. While these feed the ego and should be included people will look for them if they are interested. These pages distract from the sales cycle and sometimes turn viewers off - if your profile is listed above the products it is clear where your priorities are. Links to legal pages like “privacy” don’t need to be in the header at all - these should be tucked away in the footer if they are really needed.

All links should be HTML, not hidden in JavaScript.

You may consider adding “nofollows” to pages that are essential but don’t help your search engine efforts like legal disclaimers.

Is anything broken?

Mainly this is links, especially navigation. Old sites may have dead links pointing out. This also applies to broken scripts and script errors appearing on pages.

I consider inconsistent design and navigation “broken”. It confuses the viewer and sometimes hurts the brand.

Should any pages be merged or moved?

Some websites offer more than one contact page - a general one and one for sales, support or press. If someone does a search for [contact yourcompanyname] which page should appear in the results? Other times a page will be included under the wrong subheading. Navigation should be intuitive. Large sites should include a search feature to help.

The main consideration for website redesigns should be enforcing the sales cycle, making presentation clear and including everything necessary without anything extra that distracts. If you do this a lot of the problems will clear themselves up and even your SEO efforts will be improved.

Posted in Website Designers, SEOs, Business Owners, Reviews, SEO, Web Design

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