Where are your website hotspots?

Two recent reports released by web usability guru Jakob Neilsen have shed new light on just whereabouts on a website visitors look the most.

In one report Neilsen revealed that "Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the page fold. Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold." The fold he refers to is the traditional direct marketing term for information above or below the fold in a letter or mailer. In web terms, he means information below the bottom of edge of your browser window.

In his other report, Neilsen confirms that: "Web users spend 69% of their time viewing the left half of the page and 30% viewing the right half. A conventional layout is thus more likely to make sites profitable."

So in summary if you want to push one thing on your web page - a newsletter sign up, top products, enquiry form etc. - then you should put it on the top left hand section of your web page.

There's also a possible argument for creating short pages that within most browser windows without the need for scrolling, although I have also read a lot of material which says that sales oriented conversion or landing pages should be as long as possible - go figure!

Search Latest Twitter Chatter Using Google

Now here's a nifty trick - you can search Twitter traffic in real time or past discussions, using Google.

Simply search for a search term on Google like normal,  then click on “Show options” on the search results page, then select “Updates.” You'll see a graph showing the frequency of mentions of your search term on Twitter, which you can extend to a longer period of time. Here's an example on the search term 'volcanic ash'.

An amusing distraction, or evidence of the growing importance of Twitter activity?

Creating yet another mixed Twitter account

This is getting to be something of a habit - I've just been working on creating another new Twitter account for a client, in this case www.zencartwebdesign.co.uk who sell Zen Cart e-commerce add ons, hosting, installs etc.

I firstly created their new Twitter account at http://twitter.com/zencartwebsites then I found some third party RSS feeds from Zen Cart forums and sites. I plugged these into my account at http://twitterfeed.com which aggregates them and pushes the feeds to the Twitter account.

Then I went through the client's website and pulled out 30 odd products and articles, and wrote a tweet about each one, with a link of course. Then it was off to my account at https://www.socialoomph.com where I pasted each tweet in, pre sent to publish one a day for the next month (I noticed that if you pay to upgrade to the Pro, you can create a reservoir of tweets and have it publish one a day randomly).

So now we have a nice new Twitter account publishing numerous tweets daily all on its own, with each tweet  packed full of keywords so they'll appear in searches on twitter!

Now I just need to submit to some twitter directories and start following some e-commerce twitterers to get the ball rolling.

Playing with Plugged.it

I've been playing around with a new social networking site called www.plugged.it (you can see my profile at www.plugged.it/joshwhiten).

I quite like the premise, in that its for all of us people looking to plug things online - products, businesses, websites etc. I'm still trying to get to grips with the best ways of doing this though. I've added a link to my own site in my profile, but I really need to find how to get client sites mentioned. I've started by doing a blog post on a new client, www.zencartwebdesigns.co.uk.

Will wait to see if the links appear on Google's radar, by using the Google Webmaster links report.

There ARE real people at DMOZ!

I just received an email from an editor at DMOZ, the open source directory project. A listing on DMOZ is widely accepted as helping improve your rankings in Google natural search results. The email says;

"Thanks for suggesting that we list http://www.youressex.net within our directory. Sadly, it's not possible for us to evaluate the site without a logon and so it's been declined. If you suggest it again, please include logon details in the description like this [User, PW] They won't be published."


This must be the first time I've ever had any human contact with DMOZ let alone such a prompt review - I submitted the site on24/03/10 so that' approximately 1 month. The last site I got accepted took over 6 months! Plus of course some useful feedback about actually letting them got into the site, which is a little odd as they have accepted sister sites without asking for this. Must just be the views of different human editors.

Kent 2020 Exhibition: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Isn't it strange how people behave at exhibitions? I had an interesting and somewhat varied afternoon at the Kent 2020 business exhibition yesterday.