A total of 480 Internet users who participated in a recent Webcopyplus poll rated the overall quality of web content, and the marks are less that stellar. In fact, more than 88 per cent of the online poll respondents believe they are served “poor” content on the Web.
Additionally, subsequent interviews with web users revealed numerous common concerns.
Read the full story: Web delivers poor content
While growth of the US online population has slowed in recent years (projected to be 3.1 per cent in 2008), the number of the nation’s Internet users will reach nearly 200 million in 2008.
That’s according to eMarketer, which analyzes Internet information from more than 3,000 sources.
The Internet research firm also reports Internet usage in the US is becoming a daily habit. Moreover, it reports US Internet users spent 15.3 hours a week online last year.
eMarketer also projects that this year there will be 193.9 million US Internet users — two-thirds of the population. By 2012, 217 million Americans will be online, it reported.
Meanwhile, Internet World Stats, which utilizes data from Nielsen, ITU and other reliable sources, reports 215 million Americans already use the Internet – 71.4 per cent of the US population.
In either case, those are huge numbers and worth tapping into — regardless what business you’re in.
When delivering web content courses, business owners often ask, “How do you find a good copywriter for the Web?” Whether you’re based in London, Toronto or New York, the answer is simple.
Do an online search.
Good copywriters know how to craft copy that persuades people to act, be it to enlist as a member, sign up for a newsletter or purchase a widget.
Good web copywriters can deliver potent copy for people. But they also understand how to write effectively for search engines. They help businesses choose and strategically use select words that will drive targeted audiences to their websites.
Consequently, an effective way to find a good web copywriter is to see who shows up on the top rankings of Google, Yahoo, MSN or your search engine of choice. If they can promote themsleves, they can promote you.
Plug in words surrounding web copy writers, professional web copy or what have you, and away you go. A few searches and you’ll be well on your way to finding the right web writer to optimize your website and your business.
Despite major drawbacks of Flash-based sites, some business owners continue to fall into this trap.
As previously noted in Backbone Magazine, Webcopyplus recognizes Flash is an outstanding tool for adding audio, video and animation to a site. However, Flash-based sites can’t be indexed by search engine spiders, which account for the majority of traffic to websites. As a result, these beautiful websites often draw little, if any, traffic.
Moreover, Flash intros prove to be a waste of time and resources. Fortunately, most businesses and designers are moving away from this pointless gimmick, which squanders visitors’ time and web owners’ money.
The Flash topic is one that many individuals are passionate about. In fact, the noted Backbone article prompted a prolonged Ubuntu Forums debate that involved more than 3,400 viewers, almost 300 votes and more than 80 responses.
Expensive lesson
Going against Webcopyplus’ advice, a client in the Canadian fashion industry forged forward with plans to launch a Flash-based site. That was in the spring of 2007. Less than a year later, the business owners are preparing to invest in another site.
They now realize it doesn’t matter how good their site looks; if no one can find it, it might as well not exist.
Why did they do it? The business owners wanted to work with a specific designer based in Los Angeles. This designer, it turns out, was only familiar with Flash and did not wish to collaborate with others.
Had they taken the designs and contracted a programmer to incorporate the images into an HTML or CMS site, this business would be thousands of dollars and several months ahead.
Think long and heard before you agree to a Flash-based site. Chances are you’ll be glad you did.
Content Convergence and Integration 2008 is coming up from March 12 to 14 in Vancouver, B.C., which promises to help content professionals find more strategic ways to manage content.
This is integral in the new digital world where content gets created and syndicated, integrated, repurposed and redistributed.
Content professionals, from Web to marketing to technical communication professionals, can discover and tap into new techniques to stay ahead of the curve.
Microsoft Corp. has made an unsolicited takeover offer of $44.6 billion US for Yahoo Inc. in a bold bid to challenge Google Inc.’s supremacy of the increasingly lucrative online search and advertising markets.
The offer, made late Thursday, was publicly disclosed Friday in hopes of rallying support from Yahoo’s shareholders.
Microsoft views Yahoo as its best chance to put a stop to Google, which has leveraged its leadership in Internet search and advertising to threaten the world’s largest software maker’s influence in the computer world.
The deal could change the landscape of online marketing for years to come.
Read the Microsoft press release.
* Update: May08 - On May 3, Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer withdrew his offer for Yahoo after its CEO Jerry Yang held out for more money. While investors think Microsoft might try again, the company says it will expand its business organically.
Average monthly unique audience figures for newspaper websites grew by more than 3.6 million in 2007, a record year for the industry and an increase of more than six per cent over 2006 numbers, reported the Newspaper Association of America (NAA).
Monthly unique visitors to newspaper websites averaged 62.8 million in last year’s fourth quarter, a record number in itself and the largest in any quarter since NAA began tracking online usage in January 2004.
According to the data, which is part of a new report by Nielsen Online for NAA that takes into account home and work Internet usage, unique visitors in the fourth quarter represented a nine per cent increase over the same period a year ago (57.6 million).
It’s proof newspapers are venturing outside their traditional means and Internet users are keenly receptive.
Web design and development firm Raincity Studios today acquired Bryght.
The companies, both based in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, are pioneers of “Web 2.0” and open-source software communities. In fact, this acquisition is hailed as another success story from Vancouver B.C.’s new media technology industry, which has launched companies like Flickr, Dabbledb, Now Public and nitobi.
“This announcement is exciting for the local tech industry as Raincity Studios and Bryght are perfect examples of the rapid success achievable in the Vancouver new media sector with a good plan, talented team and hard work,” said Adam Gooch of New Media BC.
The expanded company will continue to create custom web applications and community websites, and offer hosting and infrastructure support and services to clients globally.
Kris Krug, renowned Web 2.0 expert and former head of Bryght, is the newly appointed President of Raincity Studios.
Google accounted for 64.49 per cent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ended October 27, 2007, while Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com accounted for 21.65 per cent, 7.42 per cent and 4.76 per cent of searches, respectively, reported Hitwise.
The remaining 49 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.68 per cent.
IT search engine start-up Paglo launched beta software Nov. 19 that’s designed to help IT personnel stay on top of their companies’ computer, network and security systems.
The Paglo search engine, which the company is billing as “Google for IT,” is said to be an answer to increasingly complex hardware devices, software programs and other technologies.
The Web-based Paglo application will crawl a company’s IT infrastructure and report on a wide range of queries about the hardware and software within the systems. It will run on IE7, Firefox and Safari browsers.
The platform includes the Paglo Crawler, an open-source discovery spider that businesses download on one computer to gather IT information from all devices and software.
Users can register for Paglo’s private beta, which is slated to go live later this month.