Designing Effective HTML Emails
- Don’t give up on graphics, but understand that many of your recipients just won’t see them.
- Make sure not to contain any important “Call to Actions” in an image.
- Alt tag copy is an art.
- When Images are not displayed, often time alt text is shown in its place.
- Use alt text to describe the benefit they are missing by not being able to view the image. EX: “50% off our entire stock, July 4th only!”
- Also, be aware not all email clients, such as Hotmail, do not display alt text.
- Make sure your graphics don’t depress response.
- Use graphics to reinforce messaging, not for messaging itself.
- Make sure the reading pane* contains a call-to-action, not just graphics.
- Always state benefits for the reader in the vary top of your email because this text is often used in the “*reading pane” displayed before they open your email.
- If using columns design the smaller less important column on the right. (People read LEFT to right).
- Use your subject lines, sender name and “From” address to their best advantage.
- The sender name should include the name of your company or brand
- Use an email address that makes it clear who you are and what you do. EX: newsletters@mycompany.com
- Use the subject to state a benefit to the reader not you.
- FYI: You have less than 10 words to catch the readers attention
- Use inline CSS, expect the <head></head> to be ignored
- Use a proper width for your email.
- Due to Multiple side bars (inbox, ads…), and standard screen resolutions, expect the width of you email to be between 750-800px.
Overall state the benefit the person reading is getting weather it’s a super deal IE: free shipping / 15% off or a knowledgeable tip you are giving. Make sure this is the forefront because after you have them interested they are more likely to find out what your true call to action is, whether it be making money, generating traffic or providing helpful information.
Have fun with it and everything else you do!
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Loading ...4 Easy Steps – Writing Good Copy
- Be passionate about what you’re writing about.
- Depending on your product/topic you should want to buy it, use it, talk to it, love it, and sell it.
- Know who your audience is.
- Don’t use today’s popular slang words when 80% of your readers are 80 year old women. Write to who’s reading and have this target person be your reviewer.
- State benefits for the reader in less than 10sec.
- Not about you, who cares about you? How is it going to immediately benefit the reader?
- Keep it short.
- If you can say the same thing in half the words, then you probably should. Don’t ramble just to fill space, it works against you.
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...The Remote Party Has Ended the Connection :: AT&T Blackjack
If you keep getting the annoying error “The Remote Party Has Ended the Connection” while browsing on your mobile phone then keep reading on for a quick fix to stop getting this error.
On the main screen go to:
Start > Settings > Connections > GPRS > AT&T IMS (WM5 will be cingular IMS)
Make sure the AT&T IMS settings are as follows
Connects to: The Internet
Access point: wap.cingular
User name: should be blank
Password: should be blank
Authentication Type: CHAP
Primary DNS: 0.0.0.0
Secondary DNS: 0.0.0.0
IP address: should be blank
After the settings match the above, click Done (the left soft key) and you are good to go! No more annoying error message.
Hope this helps!
(5 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...Outsourcing, A Magical Unicorn…
In today’s world when it comes to technology outsourcing is an inevitable option. At first I was a bit skeptical, I heard good things about outsourcing, but I also heard a lot more horrendous stories about how outsourced projects would only be 50% completed and the company or coders on the job was non responsive and not as competent as they led you to believe. I have a relative who recommended RentACoder.com (A place to post a job and company’s/coders will bid on your project) at first this was the last direction I wanted to take, but after having my back in a corner I posted my job just to see how the process works (no strings attached). After finding out that you can view the bidders work history and read reviews past clients have posted I began to drop my walls and thought, maybe this will work out. I immediately set some guidelines:
- The coder had to have a rating of at least 9 out of 10.
- The coder had to have at least worked for 30 clients.
After a few days passed I narrowed my bidders down to about 5 coders I was interested in (watch out for the, I’ll do it for dirt cheap no question asked guys). I went with the user ‘MOJO Coder’ also known as Josh over at ibot.tv. I went with Josh because he met my guidelines and had the most experience in my particular project. After locking all the funds in escrow (including Josh’s 20% down to insure his performance) work began and Josh was a dream come true. He was that magical unicorn galloping off in the distance coming my way to save me from the code monster…
Through the entire process Josh was EXTREMELY attentive and always there to answer questions, give great suggestions, and complete the work above and beyond reasonable expectations. If you are looking for PHP coding and more specifically WordPress back end customization look no further, Josh is you man (or white magical unicorn…) check out ibot.tv for more info.
So next time you need work done don’t hesitate to outsource, just make sure you do your research on who you are hiring.
(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5) Loading ...Google Simple, Apple Elegant
When designing a website or print work I can’t stress enough to K.I.S.S. (Keep it simple stupid). When somebody comes to your home page it should be clear what you want the visitor to be informed with. A good way of doing this is to give a brief description of each item (max 4-5) making your newest/best item the most prominent, and giving the visitor a CLEAR CALL TO ACTION on how they can reach this information. I’m sure you have heard people say “Where do I click?” or “Where do I go?” take out the guess work, people like things easy. An entrepreneur friend of mine lives by the motto “Google Simple, Apple Elegant” and Apple is a perfect example of the clear call to action. Visit their home page and you will notice there is no confusion on what Apple wants to share with you or how to get to that information.
Revisit your website with a fresh set of eyes and see if your website is overwhelming with content, offering 100 different paths to take or if it’s clear where to go with the important stuff.
When designing for the consumer just remember you can get your design lookin’ darn sexy while keeping the users experience easy by keeping it Google Simple, Apple Elegant.
(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5) Loading ...10 SEO Tips [that work]
Here is a list of SEO methods I find help crack the magical SEO challenge of getting your website higher up in the rankings.
Title Tags:
- Your title should contain important keywords.
- Use a different title on every page.
Links need titles too:
- Add a title tag to every <a> tag and give a short description (5 words) what the link is about.
- Tip: Be honest and don’t just cram random keywords into this section.
- EX: <a href=“about.html” title=“Come find out more about us”>About Us</a>
Image Alt:
- Add the Alt attribute to all of your images.
- EX: <img src=”gnomes.jpg” alt=”A bunch of happy gnomes” />
Be standard:
- Validate all of your work.
- Search engines / Spiders like websites that are created properly.
- Validate your site via w3c – Validate Now
Use common tags:
- Be sure to use the <H1>, <H2>, <P> and other common tags.
Link around:
- Make sure you have links coming in to as many pages as possible.
SiteMap:
- Google + SiteMap = Love
- Create a sitemap via XML-Sitemaps
- Link to your sitemap here via Google Webmaster Tools
Submit your site:
Local business center:
- If you type in “restaurants 92106″ into google maps it will give you a listing of local restaurants around the area code 92106.
- To get your site to do this, add it to Googles Local Business Center Click here to add your site
Helpful tips:
- Get the word out by adding your URL to any account you have online (facebook, myspace, youtube account…)
- Help people out on forums (people wit questions) and have your URL in your signature, Don’t spam. Help and they will come.
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...How Google Analytics Tracks: Avg. Time on Site
If you’re confused why the average time for a specific visitor is 00:00:00 or is flat out lower than you’d expect don’t dump your adwords campaign just yet.
Google analytics needs at least two points (A and B) to track time. So if a visitor comes to your home page (point A) and looks at information for 1min and then click through to your about page (point B) on that click analytics records current Avg. Time on Site and will read as 1min. Now on your about page the visitor spends and additional 2mins and exits (google needs another page to record time) their Avg. Time on Site will still only read as 1min even though they spent 3min total on your page (1min home page, 2min about page). This is because Analytics did not have an ending reference point to calculate the time.
Basically analytics tracks Avg. Time on Site from page to page (when it calls the tracking code) so the last page the visitor views will not be included in their Avg. Time on Site. With that said if a visitor comes to your home page (point A) and exits no matter how long they were on that page their Avg. Time on Site will read as 00:00:00.
Hope this helps!
>>Be the first to rate! Loading ...Getting those little marks above letters [Acute Accent Marks]
So what letters are we talkin’ about?
Á á É é Í í Ó ó Ú ú Ý ý (ex: resumé)
How do we make these letters?
For MAC users just hold down the Opt key and type the letter! So simple.
Windows users have it a bit more difficult. To get these letters Hold down the ALT key and then type in the follow codes on the keypad (numbers on the right of the keyboard) to create the accent mark.
Hold down ALT and type the code for the accent you want:
- 0193 (Á)
- 0201 (É)
- 0205 (Í)
- 0211 (Ó)
- 0218 (Ú)
- 0221 (Ý)
- 0209 (Ñ)
- 0225 (á)
- 0233 (é)
- 0237 (í)
- 0243 (ó)
- 0250 (ú)
- 0253 (ý)
- 0214 (ñ)
- 0153 (™)
- 0169 (©)
- 0174 (®)
- 26 (→)
- 27 (←)
- 1 (☺)
- 3 (♥)
- 7 (•)
- 9 (○)
Hope this helps out!
(6 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...