Their new app especially for iPad shows off all the myriad uses of the device – and helps tap into the fascination by getting people excited about giving way their email address! I can see it being a great use at trade shows, stores, restaurants and more. I would suggest locking down the iPad so it doesn’t find a new owner though.

MailChimp’s iPad App, Chimpadeedoo, is live

That numeral shows how many plugins are out of date.

This is a problem, but usually not the thing that is going to cause the site to not function or function better after updating. Most plugin updates are fairly minor but some are very important.

WordPress updates however should be done either immediately if it is an dot.dot release or wait a week or so if it is a major release (or wait for the .1 increment to come out.)  The increments are usually bug fixes or security patches. Look at the release notes or the blog post in your dashboard.

CHRIS: Everett, thanks for taking the time to answer a few questions.

EVERETT: No problem Chris. Like you, I’m always game for an opportunity to clear up some myths surrounding SEO.

CHRIS: Optimizing a site for search engines is one of the things I focus on with clients both early on and after launch, and I’ve found that more and more people are aware of the importance. What I also find is that there is a sort of Y2K mentality with many people when it comes to meta data. I know in the old days sites used meta keywords to “stuff the ballot box” if you will, but we know now that Google has downplayed the value of those, true?

EVERETT: Yes, it is true that the relative value of some meta tags has gone down in recent years. What strikes me as odd is how many people still think SEO is all about meta tags. Maybe 1/20th of my time is spent dealing with them (if that), yet people seem to think that’s what SEO is all about.

CHRIS: So what role, if any, does meta data play in search engine results these days?

EVERETT: That all depends on what type of meta data you’re talking about. Videos have meta data associated with them and even the keyword tags seem to still play a significant result in their rankings.

CHRIS: Ok, but what about the HTML header meta data that is in our source code? Waste of time?

EVERETT: It is true that keywords in your keyword meta tag play little, if any, role in the ranking of your web page on most search engines. Several tests out there indicate that Google doesn’t even index the keyword meta tag anymore and as recently as this October Yahoo said publicly that they don’t either. But then the very next week Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Land proved that Yahoo still does index and use the keyword meta tag, prompting them to change their story. Now they say meta keywords are “the lowest ranking signal in [their] system.”

CHRIS: So should we or should we not worry about meta keywords? The reason I ask is because that seems to be one of the few SEO tactics that everyone has heard of and depending on the amount of pages in a site—could take substantial time that could be spent elsewhere.

EVERETT: Personally, I still use them. Whether they play no role at all, or are just “the lowest signal” in a ranking algorithm, keyword meta tags are there as a reminder to future web designers, SEOs and copywriters. They tell them at a glance what the page is supposed to be optimized for without having to do any textual analysis on things like keyword density of frequency. They also keep me focused when optimizing a web page and tell me what text I want to get inside links to those pages when I move on to linkbuilding later in the project.

CHRIS: Interesting, that’s definitely a great insight into how you work. OK so let’s assume that the keywords inside the keyword meta tag don’t do much good, if any. What about the keywords inside the meta description or the title tag?

EVERETT: Yes, the keywords located inside both of those absolutely factor into the ranking of a web page, the Title Tag more so than the meta description.

CHRIS: On scale of 1-10 for each with 10 being extremely important?

EVERETT: For the title tag, I’d give it a 10. Keywords within the title tag are probably the single most important ranking factor, although the text within external links to the page and the content of the page itself are certainly close runners up. I’d give it about a 3-5 for the meta description though. It is always important to use the keywords you’re optimizing a page for in both the title tag and the meta description not just because it helps with search rankings, but because that is usually the first impression a searcher is going to have of your page. These are the two things they’ll see in a search result as they make the decision on whether or not to click on that result. The URL used to be another first impression, but at least on Google they are quickly being replaced by breadcrumbs.

CHRIS: How come the meta description we use on the page isn’t always the thing Google shows in the search results?

EVERETT: That could be happening for a few reasons. First, they might be using the description provided by the Open Directory Project, also known as DMOZ. If this is the case, you can put in another meta tag called NOODP that will keep this from happening. Also, if the search query matches a phrase that shows up within your content better than anything provided in your meta description, Google may instead choose to show them that snippet. Usually this is good for you because when a searcher sees their exact phrase bolded inside a site description on a search result it tends to increase the click-through-rate. It could also tell you that your meta description isn’t optimized for the page well enough.

CHRIS: I agree. Maybe it’s best not to even do a meta description so you get that benefit?

EVERETT: I’ve tried it both ways and prefer to provide the meta description. Why voluntarily give up control of a major piece of first impression marketing? If Google chooses to show something else, fine, but let’s at least give them a hint about what we think they should present to potential customers as a way of describing our businesses. More often than not they seem to take that hint.

CHRIS: What advice would you give to people who want to write search engine optimized meta tags and titles?

EVERETT: 1. Match the keywords in your meta tags and titles to the keywords that show up most frequently on the page. If those aren’t the keywords you were hoping to rank for, it means you need to rewrite your content. 2. Write for humans too. Not trying to optimize any one page for too many keywords will help you with this. Which title would you be more likely to click on if you searched for “Denver Movie Times”:

#1 Denver Movie Times, Colorado Movies, Denver Showtimes, Cinema Listings
#2 Denver Movie Times: Find What Time Movies Are Playing in Local Theaters

CHRIS: Wow. A very simple tip that many sites don’t take advantage of. Thanks for sharing your knowledge, Everett.

EVERETT: My pleasure. Thanks for giving me the chance to clear some things up. I wish more designers had the desire to learn as much as they can about SEO. Your knowledge of search engine optimization should be a major point of differentiation when being considered for a design project.

Everett Sizemore is an eCommerce SEO Consultant and self-described “keyword farmer”. He has presented at several conferences and events, including Colorado SEMPO, RMDMA and SMX, and has guest lectured at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business. You can follow him on Twitter @balibones.

All clients should upgrade their installations as always as they see fit, but I would recommend going ahead with this one.

While it’s not a revolutionary upgrade on the surface and, for the most part, looks very much the same—there are a few things that stand out as nice additions regardless.

1. Trash Feature — Now rather than “deleting” a post you trash it just like you would do on your computer. This not only gets rid of those cold sweats every time the “Are you sure you want to delete this?” question comes up, but also keeps you from being a pack rat as much by keeping those little “Draft” status posts around just in case.
2. Image “Editing” — Much has been made of this but it really depends on the user as to how useful it might be. I have a feeling for my clients it will prove to be a very popular way of getting images ready for the post since most do not have Photoshop open 24/7 like I do.
3. Batch Plugin Updates — How many times have I gone into someone’s WP admin to find that 15 plugins need updating.  I’m hoping this will make it much easier to do this rather than one by one.  Go to Tools > Upgrade.
4. Thumbnails — Will help developers of themes get away from custom scripts and fields to create simple post thumbnails for users.
5. Video Embedding — Just paste a video’s URL into a post and it will “magically” put the video into your post without all that embed crap.  This is perfect for getting those cute chihuahua videos onto your blog asap!  Be sure it is on its own line.

The following video has been embedded by a simple URL pasted in:  “http://www.vimeo.com/4749536″.  The URL must be on its own line (unlike the one in this sentence which will remain text.)

I’ve had mixed results with this but will keep experimenting.  There’s many other bugs, fixes and changes but the rest are mainly behind-the-scenes stuff that will help make better themes and sites.

WordPress 2.9 intro video and links to download on WordPress.org

CLIENT: I was looking at the analytics today!
ME: Great!
CLIENT: We have to figure out what’s wrong!
ME: Whoa, what do you mean?
CLIENT: The site is bouncing!
ME: Really? And the analytics told you that?
CLIENT: The bounce rate – it’s really high!!
ME: Oh, okay. Tell me what it is.
CLIENT: Fifty percent!
ME: Ah, well – yeah that is a bit high but not totally unheard of…
CLIENT: Oh… I see…. So, what is a bounce rate?

Hey, I just report the facts. And this is not meant to make fun of anyone, but rather use it to illustrate something that only really started happening with the appearance of Google Analytics – which is the free & easy access to analytics, and free & easy methods of misinterpreting them.

All too often website owners love to look at their stats or talk about hits and page counts and time on the site, but are often not really able to discern what it means.  And I’m not talking about just the definition of bounce rate, CPM, organic, absolute unique vs unique — the main thing is that they are missing context.

Usually after installing any analytics package the first (or maybe tenth) thing someone does is try to “test” it to see if it’s working properly.  This can be comparing to another analytics system or an internal accounting system or web logs.  Newsflash: it ain’t gonna match.  Probably not ever.  In fact, if it did match I would be more surprised.

If you set up a report tracking sales as a goal in Google Analytics and it tells you that you sold 46 hats but you know from the orders you received that you actually sold 51, then you have a problem right?  Wrong.  This is a hard pill to swallow for (especially) business people who are used to accounting reports, reporting to the IRS and those pesky Sarbanes/Oxley dudes.  It has to be exact.  But in the online analytics world it just doesn’t happen.

So we’re back to “context”.  So Google Analytics is telling us we sold 46, but last week on the same day of the week (a different sort of context) we sold 78.  Why?  And should it matter if our reports are off by a different number this time?  No.  They just might be off by more or less.  Or exactly right.  The more important thing is the trend and the disparity in those sales within the closed system of reporting that we are choosing to look at.

Again, it doesn’t mean something bad happened the week before, but some factors must have influenced the sales rate to go up the next week.  Time to dig deeper and discover more context for that uptick which is why we put up with this loosey goosey off by this much type of reporting tool.  Because it allows us to put contexts within contexts within contexts (and so on)—which systems that are only concerned with tabulating orders and shipping some stuff out are not able to do.

So, while Google Analytics is a fabulous tool, and the fact that it is available for free gives ordinary folks great insight they never had before—taking the extra step of asking “why” and not focusing on the “what” is a good start.

So back to the “bounce rate” (which, by the way, is the percentage of visitors that only view one page before leaving). Is her bounce rate bad? As it turns out there is a buy button on the homepage that sends users off to a shopping engine that is not on the same domain, thus Google Analytics determined they were “leaving” instead of moving on to buy something.  This didn’t account for all the bounces, of course, but it could explain the strangely high number.

This is a question people ask about every single stat in their analytics.  And usually the answer should be “that depends.”

Yeah, people hate that answer…

I had previously used a Wacom Intuos3 and then last year invested in the Graphire Wireless tablet.  Both of them were the 6×8 size.  While frankly this is great for the mouse, I found using the pen with a 24″ monitor was a little challenging for me. I really wanted to let it fly and more often than not I ran out of real estate.  The Graphire Wireless had other deficiences as well—the main one being that the bluetooth constantly disconnected even though it was 2 feet away from the laptop. Not sure if this is a common problem, but it happened often enough to make it annoying.

When the Wacom Intuos4 Large Pen Tablet
was announced, I calmly rationalized to myself why it would be a “smart” decision to upgrade. Even though the Graphire was less than a year old.

Well, I’m here to say that I am very pleased with the new Wacom Intuos4 and to give myself the added bonus—I opted for the “large” size.

And large it is. Mainly due to the mini-led display on the left (or right as it is changeable) that takes up a bit of room, but this thing really provides a nice drawing space.  Frankly, with the 6×8 I felt it was really more of a mouse pad, but with this – the tablet takes center stage.
Everything about it feels better than the Intuos3 and the Graphire.  It is well-constructed, nicely packed, beautifully designed. The Grip Pen has a weightier feel and the stand acts a a nib holder so you can change them out when you want rather than hunt in your desk.  It has also been updated with new Tip Sensor technology that allows near-zero grams of starting pressure and delivers 2,048 levels of pressure (double the 1,024 levels of the previous generation), giving you smoother, more precise strokes.

The hotkeys and scroll pad are nicely implemented, although my keys look a bit haphazardly placed in.  Not sure if that is normal or not.  It does take some getting used to having it there as old habits die hard and I tend to stick with my left-handed key shortcuts.

It also comes with a nice selection of software that is actually useful in its own right.  I actually like Corel Sketchpad more than Painter for some reason.  It’s just nice and simple and stripped of anything that gets in the way.

The only negative I’ve really found is that the mouse sometimes takes a harder ‘click’ to register on the Mac for some reason.  The clicking sound is very responsive but it sometimes clicks when the mouse doesn’t actually send the left click.  Again, no idea if this is just mine or a feature or a defect (hardware or software).

So this one gets a ‘thumbs up’.  It’s more than just a name change and version increase.  I would highly recommend it as an upgrade to an old tablet.  But… if you are a strict mouse user, then it definitely won’t wow you as much and frankly you’ll be wasting its best qualities.

This all takes place at Antwerpen’s Centraal Station in Belgium.  You can tell that the regular travellers are genuinely baffled.

On this tax day watching hundreds of people having “tea” protests here in America makes me wish they would instead drop their leaves and do a little of this.

There are a few upfront items that any potential client should have in hand when considering their project for submission to any designer or agency.

1. What is the scope? Consider the boundaries of what you want to accomplish or if it is a longer project that needs to be phased. Most people have heard of “scope creep” and no this is not a weird guy outside your office with a bottle of mouthwash. This is what happens when this item is not clearly defined and signed off on.
2. Have you prepared a project brief? This is different from a design brief but can include necessary design requests if they impact the project. This includes overall goals, current problems that need solving, budget considerations, timeline considerations, platform dependencies, etc.
3. What are the certainties? There are always things that have a barbed wire fence around them. What are they?
4. What are the variables? These are things that a client thinks they might want, has heard something about, or is just a wild idea – but they are nice to know.
5. Access to files and servers secured? Make sure that once the project is a go that you are able to get everything we need to start. After all, you and your team want to get to the fun stuff – not figure out who threw your site together back in the 90′s and what slip of paper he wrote the login credentials on.
6. Are you using analytics on the current site? If you have a site already pull the last 6-12 months of reports and have them ready. This will help see what your visitors are doing with your current site and a bit more about them. Again, not needed to get a proposal out but start getting it together.

Many of these might be obvious, but there are many times that people really want to get a project going that it’s the simple and obvious things that get overlooked in the excitement of doing something pretty.

Sometimes there is no way to have even this simple info before a project which is not great but not impossible to overcome.  I’ve actually spent afternoons in cafe’s sipping espresso drinks with a client while we work this out – it seems daunting, but if you break it down into steps it becomes more manageable.

It’s the boring, tedious preparation at the beginning that can make a smooth and successful project that is cost effective.

But fixing or improving or simply replacing your site in these down times is not a luxury—it is a piece of equity that you should invest in. Namely your own business.

I’ve often heard the phrase “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” which sounds really convincing and since it has that weird circular logic that defies questioning it is often the rallying cry of those who simple don’t know what is broken. The U.S. economy is a perfect example of something that seemed to be doing great. Housing values were skyrocketing, people were getting loans without all the fuss of yesteryear, cash was flowing into new businesses—so why fix it?  Things are great!

My goals when looking at redoing at site—is not how I can come up with all sorts of window dressing that will add up to giant paybacks for myself, but rather helping the client to understand their site, their business on the web and what can be done to make this a long-term growth project.  Not just a redesign or a fresh coat of paint.

Often this means starting over doing something the right way that was homemade in whatever program was on sale at the Best Buy 3-4 years ago. The great thing about software like MS FrontPage is that it allowed everyday folks to easily get themselves out on the web. The bad thing is that it allowed everyday folks to easily get themselves out on the web, and now they are smothering under their own creation. Very seldom is my recommendation let me just twiddle the code a little bit or make your graphics prettier.

Taking a step back to really get to the heart of what you are doing, what you want to be doing, and how to do it is really where a professional can help a great deal. Spending (even a little) on your own website rather than putting it into a down market is really an investment that will continue to payoff for years to come—not just for you but for your employees, your customers and your family.

You start above New York City and after hitting play you hear the plane talking to the air traffic controller.  It is soon apparent that he is still on the ground as you swoop in and actually enter the 3D plane model on the runway.  The aircraft is cleared for takeoff and you slowly begin to taxi and then takeoff.

It seems like a normal flight with the normal air to ground chatter about altitudes and headings.  The buildings and ground glide underneath.

Then as you gently start to turn there is something off in the distance.  You guessed it – a flock of birds.  Well, in this case it is a picture of birds but there they are waiting to attack.  They get closer and closer as the plane ascends.  And soon they disappear, sucked into your plane’s engines.

Soon after you hear Captain Sully tell the controller what has happened and the rest plays out in real time as you can see everything that the pilots and passengers saw in real time with a cacophony of radio chatter erupting that grows and grows as the plane descends.

It is a brilliant piece of work.  Brilliant because it does something that reading about it in the newspaper, or watching the pictures on television, can never do: fulfill the immediacy of the moment not by telling you what happened (past tense), but placing you in the moment as it happens.

I highly recommend checking it out.

After downloading and installing Google Earth 5, download the tour from here.

With a current project the client agreed that getting reaction to the wholesale changes we were doing on the website was a good idea. He had a new logo done by another designer that he was happy with and I told him I would work with that in my new designs.  One thing that came out of the design exploration was that the colors the other designer had used were a bit garish.  I showed him some alternatives that I felt fit in with his audience more.

We worked out the survey questions and he sent it out to some of his customers to get their reaction.  To our surprise they seemed to choose the bright colored original that we were both starting to dislike. In most cases it would have stopped there and that would have been it. Luckily, this client was open to keep prodding the database to see why we were getting responses that we just didn’t expect.

We changed the questions, tweaked the new colors a bit and sent out the new survey. Sure enough it came back with the same verdict – the original bright colors were the choice. But… as we looked at the open ended feedback we found something interesting: they didn’t like the design of the logo and the color of it was of no consequence.

We hadn’t even asked whether they liked it – they just offered up that opinion. This intrigued him (and me) enough that he wanted me to design some alternatives we could show and I did. There were two that he loved, but we wanted to query the customers again with these new logos. Frankly, inside I felt they would probably choose the one they had been choosing (although each time we queried new people.)

I was wrong.  They loved the one both he and I liked best. And the logo they had been choosing as the winner was dead last!

This points out that just asking questions is almost as dangerous as not doing any surveying. Had we stopped with one round we would have been confident in the design choices based on feedback that was tainted.  And simply because we asked the wrong question (or didn’t include the right ones) we would have ended up with a design that was less than ideal.

So remember:

1. Listen to your gut when all else fails. If you are getting results back that just don’t seem to make sense you could be damaging the results with poorly written questions, confusing choices or plainly not asking them what needs to be asked.
2. Always provide some catch-all place to allow participants to tell you something other than what you are asking.
3. Always do a few rounds of questioning to make sure you aren’t leading the participants to certain conclusions.
4. Don’t just look at the fancy pie charts and tables. Reading the free-form data is a pain and it’s hard to quantify, but there is likely some good stuff in there.

And potentially stuff that could change the entire site for the better.

Welcome.

The Keurig B70 Gourmet Single-Cup Home Brewing System is everything that those other guys aren’t in my book – worthy of a place on my counter. I was a bit wary at first to invest in another coffee maker that didn’t allow me to use my beloved Starbucks beans in (well, you can technically but I usually don’t.)  Previously I had one of those pod brewers and was not impressed.  I like my coffee strong and those teensy little pods just didn’t cut it. So after my espresso machine started requiring more maintenance than my car I dove into the Keurig.

At first I was disappointed.  The samples that came with the machine produced lackluster coffee.  But I tried different brands and sure enough – the ones marked DANGER Extra Bold (okay I added the “danger” part) actually produce a pretty full-bodied cup of brew.  Enough to stand up to whatever sissified stuff I put into it.

Then I discovered the Green Mountain brand of K-Cups at Target and was hooked.  Finally, a cup of coffee that made me stand up and salute.

This little machine may not be everyone’s style or price range, but if you work in a small office or studio with many people having different tastes it will fit right in.

And for those that like it the old-fashioned way…

I must say I am a bit of a snob and really prefer coffee that comes from an old French Press.  Most real coffee people will tell you this is the only way to do it right.  Well, when you feel like spending a little more time pressing it French-style then just pull out the bottom, grind your beans coarsely, pull any pods out, let the water run in (at precisely 192 degrees) and let it steep.  Easy.

Recommended K-Cups (smoky, dark, rich ones I’ve loved)