Web 2.0

Web Design Tips For A Slow Loading Page

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Did you know that there is a possibility that your website will less likely to rank in a search engine if it has a slow loading time compared to other fast loading site?  Some experienced marketers have conducted an experiment on page loading times with their own sites and have come to the conclusion that fast loading time is always better for ranking. Web page loading time is just one of the contributing factors on how a site should rank in Google and other popular search engines. Different search engines always find great ways on how the user can enhance his or her experience and Google seems to lead the way.

It is quite disappointing when you click on a certain site and the site seems to take all the time in the world to load completely. If your site is like this, has a slow loading time, then do not expect that more visitors or guests will visit your site. There is a huge chance that your visitor will look for another site to click simply out of frustration. If you are selling products or services, then you definitely know that this is bad business and customer experience.

There are several ways on how you can enhance a slow loading page:

Images and their sizes:  Generally, images have large file size and most people will tell you not to use large file size images on your page because it can contribute to a slow loading page. This is alright but it can weaken the appeal of a web page and some web designer likes to be creative using their artwork. For you to get around with this problem, then there is a simple solution to that. If you have twelve individual images to be placed in your page, then try to group them together as one. This technique will not mainly reduce the file size of your images but the http requests. This is a simple trick but can be an effective way to speed up your downloading time.

Clean up your code:  Making sure that your website’s code is up to snuff with no errors will go a long way to make it load faster.  This includes getting rid of any plugin’s or javascript that might be set up on your page but you just are not using.

Use CSS:  Getting a good handle on CSS coding and knowing all the aspects of it can bring a lot of speed gains as well.  It can greatly reduce the code you need so it is less for your browser to handle.

Flash:  These days, with new HTML standards, there really isn’t much need for Flash (sorry, Flash!).  Flash files can get huge and bog down a bit fast.

Hosting:  Get a good hosting account.  This means stay away from the freebies.  With the number of people on these sites, it’s bound to get slow.

These are just a few of the areas to look at to help speed up your site.  If you are stuck, seek the help of www.piercecommunications.co.uk/  professional web designers on how they can enhance your website.

Entrepreneur Spotlight – Sean Parker, Shervin, Pishevar, Alexia Tsotsis

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This is an amazing video on the state of Startups, VC, and Entrepreneurial Talen.  It comes in at almost an hour but is definitely worth your time.  Sean Parker discusses music, his past, gowalla, and facebook.

Sean Parker continuously discusses the talent you surround yourself with. He discusses Gowalla’s talent moving to facebook, surrounding himself with the wrong talent at napster and eventually leaerning how important surrounding yourself with good talent can be.

inspirational.

QR Codes for SMBs / Enterprises

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The company I currently work for has recently jumped on the QR code bandwagon… and I am glad they did.  We’ve been implementing QR codes in almost every aspect of our print marketing for the last 3 months and have seen noticeable dividends.  For those of you unaware of what a QR code is, it’s essentially a bar code that you can create and using a smart phone, you can process the information encoded within the QR codes.  This information can be almost anything from text, vcards, or URLs.  Currently, we’re using QR codes on our print collateral at shows and on select business cards.  We have been seeing substantial buzz from industry and potential clients / customers.  We’re also able to track the QR code “clickthroughs” via services such as bit.ly.  It’s been a pleasant surprise to see the responses and be able to test out new mediums for advertising efforts.

Now, on to the business implementation. I see great benefit for smbs and select enterprises that want to incorporated QR codes into their print advertising specifically for :

  • coupons / deals
  • leave behinds
  • business cards
  • banners
  • print ads
By incorporating these simple images in your current advertising efforts, you will be able to measure (to an extent) how your advertising is working while letting your potential customers know you’re technology savvy and on the forefront of technology.

Is RSS really Dead? Not yet.

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Over the past couple of weeks, I have been seeing more and more news trickle through my twitter, rss, and facebook streams informing me of the apparent death of RSS.  This Death is definitely news to me.  While my RSS usage has fallen quite a bit over the last quarter,  RSS has become much more valuable for me in different ways.

For the latest technology, industry, and web design news, I have joined my counterparts in utilizing twitter as my primary source for immediate information.  For social interactions and a secondary platform for other relevant news, facebook is my best friend.  For a third-tier source of information – comedic, industry, or otherwise, I love me some digg.  But as a database for important articles and information, RSS is still king.

I find myself using RSS more and more as an information trove instead of a resource for the latest up-to-date information.  Google Reader has amazing search capabilities that allow you to quickly, easily, and efficiently, go back and find articles relevant to anything you need.  Obviously, logging into any RSS reader and finding over “1,000 unread items” can be overwhelming.  When this happens, I usually quickly browse through my favorite folders and then mark the rest as read.  If I need to go find information at a later date, I can just do a search.

In my opinion, RSS has been surpassed.  The web 2.0 revolution has created new ways for information to be pushed to the eyes and ears of the web.  As an archive of information, RSS still may have lasting power, but the shift has begun away from RSS as the primary source for up to the minute information.  It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the RSS dominance to fully fall as more efficient methods continue to take over.

What are your thoughts?

twitter vs. tumblr vs. the next big thing – it’s up to Google.

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google, twitter, tumblr

google, twitter, tumblr

It’s no secret that twitter is the current media darling and most popular up and coming “web 2.0” website.  Twitter, in its simplicity, is honestly a very valuable application.  It has done everything from help a student who was arrested in Egypt get released, provide amazing data for the swine flu hysteria, and help bring much more awareness to the current Iranian conflicts during this years presidential elections.  Originally, I was cautious of the practically of a service such as twitter.  I was content with my facebook status updates.  Twitter won!  I am drinking the kool-aid.  Everyday, I see new uses for it.  I am constantly finding new music, learning new photoshop and SEO tricks, and finding out when other colleagues in the corporate world are taking their afternoon bathroom breaks.

Personally, I don’t update often on twitter.  I believe I have some valuable insights and opinions, but I am not organized, nor do I have the time, to constantly update my status with ideas, opinions, and what I am eating for lunch.  One day, I hope my economic situation allows me the success and time to devote a decent amount of time to participating in the constant information exchange revolution that is in our midst, but I am not sure if twitter will still be the micro-blogging leader when that day comes.

Twitter is great, Oprah uses twitter, Shaq uses it too, but for how long?  Twitter is still a VC funded startup with no current long-term profit model.  I am not naive, I know both internally, and in the news, analysts are predicting ways for twitter to become a profitable media giant.  Until this model is released, there is no long-term certainty twitter will last longer than a few more years.  Granted, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, or any other tech giant could offer the tremendous fee to acquire twitter.  But I am hesitant that any company will fork over the large sums of money required until there is a real profit model.

Additionally, there are rumors that twitter has a 40% fall off rate after initial sign-up.  Analysts are speculating that 2 out of 5 people that sign up for twitter only tweet once and never come back.  This is understandable.  If you look at how many soccer moms signed up the day Oprah put her first tweet online, you would be completely shocked.  As Oprah goes, so goes the a large percentage of women.  She has that much power.  Some believe that many people sign up for twitter, think it’s just another way to tell their friends what they’re doing, and don’t use it again.  This is honestly a great possibility, but as I said in my opening, I don’t tweet every day and I still find great value in the use of twitter.  I wonder how many people are out there that actively use twitter and either don’t actively update their status OR may not sign up at all.  These are just a few thoughts that I will have to research in the very near future.  I will post these results as soon as I have some proven statistics to back up my findings.

Moving on, as twitter gains prominence, every person who was pissed off that they didn’t think of twitter first is now trying to create their own twitter… only better.  Enter tumblr, etc. etc. etc.  There probably hundreds of new twitter clones on the internet by now.  Can one of these clones actually offer better or similar features and gain enough market share to present a real challenge?  This is very possible, and tumblr could have a chance.  tumblr has some great functionality and encompassed everything I would want in my micro-blogging suite including easy access to video, images, quotes, etc.  I think the GUI of tumblr is also very well laid out and could possibly start to gain a substantial market share.  Will this turn into a big myspace vs. facebook battle?  I don’t know.  But, I wouldn’t be surprised if the premium is too high for companies to acquire twitter, they make take a very close look at one of twitters main competitors, especially if one has a decent share of the market.  I firmly believe that within the next year Google will own twitter, tumblr, or something similar.  If they don’t, they will have something developed in house similar to what’s already being developed in Google Profiles.  Google needs to own micro blogging the way it owns us with gmail, youtube, and search.  At the end of the day, Google will choose the winner.  Whether they pick twitter, tumblr, or create their own.  Google will win again.