Anticipating a positive response to this offer, I’ll be accepting submissions only until midnight Saturday, Jan 3rd—only about one day!

To be considered for this pro bono web work:

1. Be a non-profit organization with a direct impact on the Charleston, SC area
2. Be a direct contact at the non-profit requesting consideration
3. Be available for an introductory conversation by the close of business this Monday, January the 5th.
4. Submit your organization

That’s it! I look forward to speaking with the winning organizations this Monday.

I’m writing this post after recently being served some unsolicited criticism. Naturally, the first reaction is defensive. Recognizing this knee jerk reaction from a sensitive pride, I set the email aside and read it again later to hopefully learn something from my ‘e-lashing’ by the anonymous critic.

From this person’s perspective, the missing or misplaced website elements from particular portfolio projects appeared to be poor workmanship and a general lack of skill and knowledge. Of course, what is anything without proper perspective? Well, it’s your own reality.

So after digesting the feedback, I thought it better to give my critic a better understanding of my work and that scope and budget, among many other project factors, can influence a final product . . . not to mention the natural aging and evolution of a live website.

I replied, not as a mater of pride, but in an effort to correct a misperception of the services and quality that I deliver.

Everyone receives negative feedback. Most often it’s an opportunity to learn and improve. On other occasions it’s a chance to be humble. But some times, it’s a case where the record needs to be set straight.

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

Following are steps and corresponding documentation for setting up Google tracking links for your website. The specific example that we discussed was to set up tracking links from Clear Channel radio station websites, but this method will work for any inbound links where you can provide the custom tracking link to the source – website, email, or anywhere a link can be displayed.

Google Tracking Link Documentation:

How does campaign tracking work?

How do I track my Links?

Understanding campaign variable: The five dimensions of campaign tracking.

Tool: URL Builder.

Back-end Google Tracking Link Setup:

• Go to the Google Tracking Link URL Builder
• Enter the destination URL – for the radio stations we discussed using the splash page (http://www.yourwebsite.com/welcome.html)
• Fill in the five campaign variables (source, medium, term, content, name)
  • The variable “Campaign Name” will be used to group the traffic data together for reporting. So enter a single name for the traffic that you want to group together. For example: if you would like to group all radio station traffic into a single campaign, use something like “Clear Channel Radio” for all links
  • “Campaign Source” could simply be “Clear Channel”
  • “Campaign Medium” could be used to separate different types of source links. For example: if you will have both text links and a banner ads being displayed on their site, you could provide tracking links specifying “text link” or “banner” as the medium.
  • “Campaign Content” will let you differentiate between two different graphical banner ads that you may rotate on the same site. This will allow you to see if the yellow ad with brown text was more effective than the image of the smiling business people . . . for example.
  • “Campaign Term” is something you may or may not want to use. This refers to which term or “keyword” you’re paying to have the ad display for. Your Clear Channel ads are not keyword or term specified.
• Provide special tracking links to the source (Clear Channel).
  • If you’re going to provide multiple links for multiple banners, it can be helpful to do so in a consolidated spreadsheet, with each ad on a single row, with respective info – i.e. | name | link | graphics | description |. It can also be helpful to use a date in the file name so that updated files are easy to identified.

Google Tracking Link Reporting and Analysis:

• Log into you Google Analytics account
• In the left-hand menu, go to Traffic Sources > Campaigns
• In the main body, all traffic sources will be presented.
  • Those that haven’t been set up under a campaign will be presented as (not set) – for now it represents almost all of your site traffic
  • I had set up a test campaign link under the Campaign Name “test promo”
• If you change the “Dimension:” from the dropdown menu in the header row of the table, you can see the various tracking link variables (source, medium, campaign, keyword (term), and content). Under dimension, you can also separate traffic by city, region (state in U.S.) and more.

If you have any questions about the process, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thanks,

Dominic

Dominic Taverniti is the owner of Applied Web Vitals, a web design and development company specializing Dreamweaver templates and the Adobe Contribute CMS. Please feel free to contact us any time to explore your next web design or development project.

Surely it’s not because the mega franchise can’t afford to give it away. Which begs the question, do they charge just because they can? Or are there other considerations involved. Maybe it serves as a way to shew away squatters that plant themselves for hours on end. But the squatters at cafes are generally caffeine addicts that chain drink. I’m on my third cup now, not to mention the breakfast sandwich, bottled water and 1 lb. bag of coffee beans that I purchased.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bashing Starbucks. I’m actually a fan of franchises and admire their finely tuned business model. So I’m left to think that the free vs. paid wi-fi decision must have been run through “the formula” and the pay service option came up the winner.

On a side note, didn’t the company just announce the closing of over 600 stores due to changes in in-store traffic? …changes in traffic just like my relocation to another local cafe for free wi-fi? Perhaps not, but you have wonder.

So how does this example apply to your business? What is the relative cost of providing a service or feature that would keep customers at your store or on your website, vs. the added revenues gained by simply keeping that customer around a while longer?

To be sure, there are cost-benefit considerations to any and every service that you offer. A recent example with my business was discontinuing our email marketing service. The time and cost of maintaining the back-end applications outweighed the return we were getting. Now I refer clients to third-party email marketing services. While I can’t help thinking that I’m sending business elsewhere, I know that I made a business focus decision that made sense for my business at the time.

From a consumer’s point of view, the Starbucks paid wi-fi decision seems like a poor one. But is it?

I turn the question to you. What are some cost-benefit decisions that you’ve made recently with your business?

Worth noting however, the decline in Yellow Pages use from 33% in 2007 to 30% in 2008, resulted in an increase in Internet Yellow Pages use from 17% to 19%. So with that, the 3% lose in Yellow Page use went online with 2% going to going to Internet Yellow Pages and 1% converting to search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Also interesting, despite the advancements in mobile technology, handset functionality and mobile broadband speeds, local search on mobile devices did not see an increase from 2007 to 2008. Curious! I’m not a mobile Internet user, so when I watch TV advertisements and read tech articles, I’m convinced that more and more people are going that direction.

The Take-Away: Local businesses can no longer rely on print alone to get in front of customers. A web presence is increasingly more important as local business search trends migrate to online resources.

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.

Over the course of the past year and a half, I’ve had the great privilege of consulting a number of Myrtle Beach small business owners. And in such a turbulent business climate, the value of our discussions were worth their weight in gold . . . for everyone involved. As a web specialist and small business consultant, my continual education is the value that I pass along . Well, this past year spent with local Myrtle Beach businesses—discussing their website needs, marketing campaigns and branding efforts (among many other topics)—has been a great leap forward in my professional education.

In the next chapter of my career, aptly named “Charleston,” I’ll be firing up a new web discussion group in the Charleston area for small business owners and non-profit organizations. A continuation of the Myrtle Beach incarnation, the Charleston Web Technology Discussion Group will be free and open to everyone, with discussions on topics such as: building and maintaining websites; search engine optimization; Internet marketing and measurement; business blogging; graphic design & do-it-yourself advertising; or wherever the discussion leads…

As always, bring your curiosity and any unanswered web design questions.

The Charleston Web Technology Discussion Group is led by Dominic Taverniti, owner of Applied Web Vitals.

We were hired to write and implement the XHTML, CSS and Java Script for this one page special purpose website. The website incorporates the latest standards in usability and web semantics as well as clean, light, search engine optimized code.

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.

While on the topic of freeware though, some other thoughts have come to mind…

The reality of open and free technology catches up with us eventually. PodPress was developed and is maintained by a gracious individual who doesn’t profit from his work and offers it free to the public. Thousands (141,380 to be exact) have benefited and profited from this great tool. And at the same time, when it stops working, the same number of users come to a screeching halt. While some users like myself are occasional to frequent users, I know that others include large news syndications. What a great deal of faith and operating efficiencies we put into freeware!

Man, it hurts when your tools stop working! But if I tallied up the potential cost of all the freeware tools that I use, my business wouldn’t be able to afford them and wouldn’t be anywhere near where it is now.

…And so we appreciate the great benefits of the latest information revolution

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.

Well, don’t take this news as the definitive green light to go 100% flash just yet. There are quite a few considerations before replacing your HTML with flash and the “advancements” are just that—steps in the right direction. We’re not there yet and I suspect in the end, there will always be some limitations.

Google recently reported on the progress that they’ve made in crawling flash files – “Now that we’ve launched our Flash indexing algorithm, web designers can expect improved visibility of their published Flash content, and you can expect to see better search results…”

No question, this is great news. The ability to search and index flash files offers a significantly greater range of flexibility in building and presenting web content. There is still more progress to be made (a great deal more), but the hard and fast flash vs. html argument is starting to change. Some of the pull quotes from Google below highlight the limitations, which for my preferences, still leaves flash as strictly supplemental media and not a platform for mission critical content delivery.

“…if your Flash application contains links . . . Google may now be better able to discover and crawl more of your website.”

This MAY be a matter of semantics, but the comment “…Google may now be better able…” leads me to believe that indexing links in flash files is still on the horizon and not a here-and-now ability.

“If you prefer Google to ignore your less informative content, such as a “copyright” or “loading” message, consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to us.”

I’m not pointing this comment out to support the flash issue, but to reiterate the limitations of some forms of media on your website. When Google uses the term “effectively invisible” and your ultimate goal is visibility, then you should examine your site for needless and/or replaceable images that contain key content for your site.

“Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.”

There are tremendous advantages to using a JavaScript loading function for flash, including flash player version compatibility or availability, cross-browser functionality, speed, and more.

“We currently do not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files. If your Flash file loads an HTML file, an XML file, another SWF file, etc., Google will separately index that resource, but it will not yet be considered to be part of the content in your Flash file.”

Separately indexing loaded resources sounds pretty nebulous. Delivering content via XML tuns flash into a living and useful tool. The value of this content comes when presented as a whole not as disparate singular bits of information. Regarding loaded SWF files, this cuts the legs out from under the CMS (content management system) functionality of flash – think of a slideshow or presentation like powerpoint slides. The back-end CMS access to the flash file offers a practical way to manage and contribute content to a web site. Now, I’ve recommended and used flash for this purpose well before search engines suggested indexing the information—so in nothing has changed. I’ll continue to use and recommend it, but when that content is fully accessible, then we’re really getting there.

Back to the question of using flash vs. HTML for content delivery. Today’s verdict: HTML is still king. But keep your eyes on news as it develops. Your flash should slowly gain more mileage as Google and the search industry marches forward race to index flash.

About the author: Dominic Taverniti, owner of Applied Web Vitals, is a web design and development professional with clients throughout the U.S. and abroad. Dominic was recently honored with a Webby Award nomination for work on the Eyes On Darfur website, an Amnesty International special project.

Situations like this call into question the professional ethics and reliability of the virtual web professional. Being a web designer and developer myself, I know that we shouldn’t all be painted with the same brush. Perhaps it’s my business background or the value that I place on my reputation that makes me push to please, complete, improve, excel . . . or to simply do what it is that I say I’m going to do.

The inspiration for this post came from a recent personal experience involving hiring and working with another web designer. The “incident” was painful, costly and (in retrospect) avoidable, or one where the damages could have at least been mitigated.

So over the past several months I’ve been searching out other web professionals to put in my short list of “go to” sub-contractors that I could outsource specialty projects or project pieces to. In my process of identifying these “professionals,” I disregarded the steps of selecting a web designer that I advise others to use (listed below). Perhaps it was the lack of urgency that accompanied this early-stage, network-building effort, but in the end it would be this list that I would go to when the need arose and the work was at hand.

Well, the work was at hand just two weeks ago. An incredibly valuable client handed my name off to their associate with a very high personal recommendation. The work for this new client had a very tight time line, but was within my abilities and my schedule was open so I took it on. As soon as the project got underway though, two separate fires broke out with existing clients that required my immediate attention.

No problem, right? I was prepared, having preemptively assembled a list of professionals to turn to in just a situation as this. With a hard-earned recommendation and my reputation on the line, I went straight to the top and contacted the individual who appeared to be the most capable, professional and expensive. Everything went as planned . . . right up until the due date! Daily communication over the four days of the project pointed to a successful completion. The evening before the due date, I received what would be the last communication with my “professional,” stating that polishing touches along with the latest revisions were being made. And then silence________. I haven’t heard from him since. When noon rolled around the next day, after several (a dozen) phone messages and emails, I got the sinking feeling that I was left holding the bag . . . and the bag was empty.

After the anger and frustration was pushed back, I contacted the client—who in turn needed to present drafts to their client that day—and let them know that I had nothing. Nothing! I was sending them into their meeting empty handed. Just thinking about it right now gets my heart rate up. What in the world happened? Where was this guy? Who was this guy? Ah, now we’re getting some where! (try that last phrase with your best Inspector Clouseau accent) Clumsy and disoriented is exactly how I felt too. My pre-assembled list of web designers was put together without a sense of urgency. Well, the urgency was being sensed now.

In the end, I needed to purchase additional tools (consequently equal to the project budget itself) and work through the weekend to make the launch deadline early the next week. While I’m please to say that the project was ultimately completed on time, I’m even more pleased that the client relationship was preserved–not just with the new client, but with the referral source as well. There was no easy out in this situation. And in the end, being open with the client and doing what it took to get the job done earned their appreciation and desire to work together in the future.

So back to the “who was this guy?” question. Where I went wrong was not doing my homework and background checks, namely not checking references and past work. The process doesn’t have to be as involved as it sounds. Read on for some valuable comments on selecting and hiring a web design professional.

Considerations for selecting and hiring a web designer

• Professional web designer vs. do it yourself. Hiring a professional for the job isn’t a new question; it can be asked at almost any juncture—plumbing, auto care, even dinner. The answer of course isn’t necessarily straight forward. Ask yourself: What is your time worth, how much will the right tools cost, what quality does the final product need to be? and on… The tools available to the do-it-yourselfer have definitely improved over time and have made it a viable option for some entry-level, low-budget or semi-professional projects. From my experience however, if the need is business related then the choice is professional. Sometimes, too often in fact, that decision is made after taking the do-it-yourself road to only find out that the end product missed the mark by so much that it’s embarrassing to show friends, let alone potential customers. In those cases, more money was spent than simply going with a professional web designer in the first place.
• Choose a web professional. There are several professional options to go with. Often the two choices presented are freelance or big company. But consider the often overlooked players in the web design world, including small design shops and branding/marketing firms.
  - Freelance web designers are individuals that take on every facet of the project and will be working personally with you. This personal touch can provide a level of comfort that a large company can not. On the other hand, many freelancers have no structure or formal business to point to, leaving a lot to question.
  - Big web design companies appears to have credibility. Sheer size can give clients a sense of security and confidence. However, as company size increases the cost of personal touch increases as well.
  - Small web design shops can offer both a personal touch and the security of a formalized company (LLC, corporation). Small web design businesses often have the internal resources and skills to fully handle small to medium size/complex projects. When and where needed, small web shops will bring in outside experts to get the job done right, but will continue to manage the project and provide you with a single point of contact and accountability.
  - Branding and marketing companies, both large and small, can be excellent web design facilitators. Using a branding and/or marketing company to manage the project offers the advantage of consistency across your businesses marketing collateral, but this level of professional consulting also comes with a higher price tag.
• Ask for a price quote. But keep in mind that an exact price quote requires an accurate project scope – the more complex the project the more work is require to scope it. Often web designers are asked to provide an itemized quote (scope) of a project. In essence, the “potential” client gets the web designer to do the leg-work on a project for free. If you haven’t done your homework on the concept first, don’t be surprised to get little in return from a designer/developer who is asked to risk their time and effort in exchange for a “chance” at getting selected for the project.
• Call and ask questions. Have a conversation with the professional to see if you’re both compatible. If they speak over you with technical jargon or speak at you in a way that you’re just not comfortable, then it’s a good sign that you should keep looking. The web design and development process has a high level of client touch and you will be spending a good deal of time with them on the phone, back and forth with emails and possibly in person. If you don’t communicate well with your designer, an already intricate and challenging process will be made impossible.
• Check references. Read testimonials and talk to clients. Don’t be afraid for contacting clients directly by tracking them down from the professional’s portfolio. When a web designer values their reputation, they will be more then happy to put you in touch with satisfied clients. And in the end will have a vested interest in preserving that reputation to which you now have direct access.
• Local vs. remote. Meeting with a designer in person is a personal preference and I completely understand the need for some to have the “hand shake” introduction. I tend to gain clients from word-of-mouth and referral, so a level of comfort on both sides is achieved that can often overcome the need for a face-to-face meeting. If you’ve considered all of the previous comments and recommendations listed here, then the decision to hire a local or remote web professional will be a fairly easy one when decision time comes.

About the author: Dominic Taverniti, owner of Applied Web Vitals, is a web design and development professional with clients throughout the U.S. and abroad. Dominic was recently honored with a Webby Award nomination for work on the Eyes On Darfur website, an Amnesty International special project.