ClickBrain

I am a progressive politically, but one of my favorite true to his convictions conservatives is Andrew Sullivan and I visit his site very often. Last night The Atlantic, the parent site to his blog launched a new design. I like the style, but from a usability perspective it is severely lacking.

Here’s my email to Andrew:

Andrew,

The new design looks nice, but works for nada in terms of being an interface to an application, which it is. I realize it may work for the ad, but if I don’t stay on the page(I not being me I refresh obsessively) because I can’t see any content, then whats the point?

 1. Cut the masthead down to about a 10th of what it is. “The Atlantic” does nothing for me as a visitor to your site.
 2. Kill the all caps navigation and the java script sub nav. Bad interface design. Not intuitive and not easy. It keeps me from
    visiting the rest of the site.  All CAPS is bad on the eyes too and expresses urgency, yet those links are not urgent.
 3. Why the tiny search box? Move it to left below “The Dish” masthead.
 4. Do you really need a “Dish” masthead/banner? At least one that big?
 5. Mixed fonts everywhere. MY EYES!  mY EYeS!!

Love your writing and love your point of view. I don’t always agree, but I enjoy myself when I visit.

The main point here is that when you visit his blog, you can’t get to actual content without scrolling way down.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

Brad web marketing interface, intuitiveness, UI

This news validates everything we are doing with our new company, because we are offering a powerful integrated web platform with CMS, Marketing, Email, CRM, Shopping Cart, and much more with outsourced marketing services, management services, and sales and support. Clients can choose what they want from beginning to end.

Warrillow | Weekly News

In this day and age, everyone who owns a company has a website, right? Surprisingly, less than half of small business owners have an independent website representing their business, according to a recent Warrillow study. Amidst all the discussion and appeal of social networks and iPhones, it’s easy to miss the fact that most business owners have not yet established a basic presence on the internet.

Hiring a 5th employee appears to be the tipping point for a small business owner creating a website; website ownership for businesses with 5-99 employees approaches 70%. Small businesses with one to four employees are evenly split on the factor, while only one-third of sole proprietors have a website for their business.

Brad web marketing Business, Customer relationship management, General, Marketing, Small business, Social network, Sole proprietorship

This is one of the better uses of imagery and even Flash(of which I am not usually a big fan), I have seen on the home page of a web site. Reed Shay is an executive recruitment company. They provide recruiting to some of the biggest companies in the Internet space and the images on their home page tell you that and make it perfectly clear that you will be dealing with the very best when you deal with them. Simply and clearly, you understand they are Reed and Shay.

They follow that with a fantastic use of testimonial and huge names in the industry saying they are the best recruiters that ever lived with an interface that is instantly easy to understand and use.

I am still not a big fan of all Flash interfaces, but I really do like this site.

The designer is CurtByDesign – New Media Designer – Interface Design & Flash Motion.  Curt’s on my list of designers to call.

ReedShay: Most Successful Recruiters for Leadership roles in Silicon Valley and Beyond

Brad web marketing

KeywordSpy

Increase your Ad Campaign by finding profitable keywords.
Get access to over a billion keywords in our database.

• Used for researching competitor keywords and understanding strategies.
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Brad web marketing

This study and others from AOL and Cornell, prove that once again, Google is changing the way we function on the net. Most users now only use the top 5 results from any search. In addition and something I believe needs to be studied more is the fact that users are often ignoring ads.

Why Google Results are Crucial

It’s not clear that Google has gotten any better, but certainly our use of it has become habitualised. Google’s popularity and dedicated following mean that a large majority of users have grown extremely familiar with the search giant and refine searches to display exactly what they need within the top 5 results. We now expect to find our required answer in the top 5 results.

The use of Google has become habit and users have optimized their behaviour accordingly; they now act in order to eliminate the need to scroll below the fold or sift through additional pages of results. Nowadays to compete competently, you must know your customer’s search words, and land in the top 5, if not top 3 results.

Brad Adwords, Google, SEM, SEO, heat mapping, search

How I Optimize My PPC Campaigns – ShoeMoney®

KEYWORDS

When initially setting up your campaigns, DO NOT go to some keyword tool and dump in a gazillion keywords into your adgroups and campaigns– unless you want to boast about how many terms are in your keyword portfolio. The majority of these terms, scored by whatever techniques are going to be junky and low volume– and the engines will penalize you for it. Rather, what I do is hand pick just a few terms per ad group and then borrow ads from competitors that are already bidding on those terms. Sounds simplistic? Well, it is– but it works. Make sure you group your keywords tightly, so they all reflect the same user intent. The engines will choose one of the ads from that ad group to show, so make sure that each keyword is just as relevant for the ad you show.

Brad Adwords, PPC, web marketing

Blogger King Teaches You How to Make More Money Blogging | CenterNetworks

The Blogger King stopped by the CenterNetworks office today and asked me to setup the tripod and camera. Here’s his newest video on how to increase your blog traffic and drive more advertising dollars. Apparently he will be back this week with another “gem” as he called it.

Brad blogging, weblogs

I’ll let you know when I get an invite if this site is worth it. Sounds intriguing and beyond social network aggregation. Part of my incubator products review series.

ShareMeme : About

Between email, IM, your mobile phone, and Facebook, are you overwhelmed with too many ways to stay in touch? Would you like a service that connects you with your friends, with invites, polls, and links, simply and easily no matter how you communicate with them?

With ShareMeme, you can send invites, polls, and links quickly and easily from a text message or the web through email, IM, text message, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, or Facebook. ShareMeme organizes and communicates with all your friends, no matter where they are. Organize going out tonight with your friends without thinking too much! You’ll know who’s coming in a text message from ShareMeme

Brad web marketing