E-Biz Booster Blog - Usability

Email Feedback Loops And Some Internet History

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 12:25:37 -0700

John W. Furst

In 1994 about 14 years ago I started to use the Internet at the University campus. Very quickly Email became one of the most important tools for me and it is still today. However, with the upcoming of spammers and anti-spam measures Email has lost some of it's reliability.

I mean, are you sure you receive all important email messages, or are you sure all your messages you send are received?

I'll show you in a minute what I do to make sure Email works reliably for me, even for most important communication needs. Before that, let me tell you, how it all began for me (scroll down, if you are in a hurry).

How It All Began

Do you remember those times, when the “World Wide Web” and it's HTTP protocol were fairly new. I remember using the following services and protocols to find and research information on the Net. (This was not exactly fun and easy like it is today.)

Gopher
Archie
FTP
Email

Here are the details about those ancient protocols and services.

Gopher

Gopher is a distributed document search and retrieval network protocol designed for the Internet. Its goal is to function as an improved form of Anonymous FTP, enhanced with hyperlinking features similar to that of the World Wide Web.

The Gopher protocol offers some features not natively supported by the Web and imposes a much stronger hierarchy on information stored on it. Its text menu interface is well-suited to computing environments that rely heavily on remote computer terminals, common in universities at the time of its creation in 1991 until 1993.

With the vast popularity of the World Wide Web, Gopher is all but disused at present, with remaining sites being run by individual enthusiasts. Source: Wikipedia
Archie

A simple search engine for content on FTP servers created in 1990, which could be queried by email or direct login with telnet, and later via a Web interface
FTP

Most of the information was stored on FTP servers at those days. You had to deal with lots of file listings and plain test files. There were graphics, but not embedded into the document.

Things started to change for the better with the rise of the Web and the use of the Mosaic/Netscape browser. Suddenly pictures could be shown inside a document and could be clicked…

There was something else: Email

It turned out that email became very quickly one of the most important applications and services for me. I was traveling a lot between the USA and Europe, but I still could communicate with my friends and colleagues quite effectively (most of them already had email).

Now more than a decade later Email is still my preferred means of communication for any purpose. Especially for business. (Yes, I also use the phone from time to time.)

The Problem

Email doesn't always reach the recipient's inbox, does it? An error message will usually be returned to the sender, if the email address is wrong, the mail box is full,… but not for any spam filter related issues.

Most email service providers don't support sending back a delivery report (spammers have abused this to harvest email addresses), and even message display reports are not widely supported or turned off in most email clients nowadays.

I want to remark that delivery of a non-registered piece of postal mail (snail mail) is not guaranteed either. And in my experience email works more reliably anyway with the additional benefit that you can retrieve your messages Worldwide while you are traveling.

In fact email deliverability of my personal messages never has been an issue for me and I safely assume no one involved has a problem once an email conversation is ongoing.

However, I remember some people could not get their email through to me sometimes. This can be critical in some situations, where one needs to meet deadlines or something like that.

Let me tell you, what I am doing about this. It's not a perfect solution (because it is not automated), but it works pretty good.

Give People Confidence: Establish A Chain Of Feedback

A very simple solution is to use an autoresponder on your incoming email box that sends back a message to the sender.

I don't use this on general purpose email accounts, but on those where I receive important email messages and notifications.

The senders know a delivery report and error messages will be returned by my mail box.
If not, they should call by phone.
The delivery report also contains further info what to do, if I don't respond let's say in 2 business days.

Here is what I am writing in most of my autoresponders:

Subject: [Auto-Reply] Your Subject

Your message to me@example.com is on its way.

There's a very good chance your email has been delivered to my inbox, unless you have received a 'failure notice' from MAILER-DAEMON@smtp.example.com with a specific error report like 'Mailbox Full', etc.

I usually will get back to you within 2 business days, if a response is necessary.

Yours
me@example.com

P.S.: In case of an emergency or if I don't get back to you in a timely fashion, please, call me at my mobile. Leave a brief message including a phone number(s) where you can be reached. You find my mobile telephone number in my email signature. Thank you.

P.P.S.: However, my preferred media for communication is email.

Feel free to steal it from me, but change the mail addresses and adapt it to your specific needs. As you can see I am not including my phone number in this messages, because I know this email address is only used by parties, whom I have given my phone numbers before.

That's for giving people who need to send important messages to me the confidence that it will be taken care of, and it eases me, because I know there is a closed feedback loop.

It doesn't stop there. On the other hand when I am sending important emails

I always ask for a quick email back to confirm delivery.
If I don't get it, I simple call the other party to check the status.
When it comes to automatically sent email notifications, I don't rely on them. I check status of important things, when my task list shows I should do it, regardless of any email alert. That way I cannot miss anything.

How do you make sure email works in a reliable fashion for you?
Leave a comment and let us know?

Yours
John W. Furst

Copyright 2008 by John W. Furst. Some Rights Reserved. Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 2.5. - If you find this content on a site that is violating our copyright, please, report its URL to us. Thanks for fighting copy scrapers.

Got Your Dream Domain?

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 13:01:40 -0700

What's A Great Top Level Domain Extension?

A couple of days ago I have received an email from some gmail.com address saying,

“You own the domain SOMEDOMAIN.BIZ^(*) and we thought you might be interested in purchasing SOMEDOMAIN.COM, which we own. We offer it to you for US$ 195.00. ...”

(*) I obviously changed the real domain name into a fake one.

Why would I want to buy SOMEDOMAIN.COM?

A short list of reasons:

Well, the classic .COM top level domain extension has the widest recognition as Internet - Web - Domain among all other extensions.

Say “WHATEVER.COM” and almost everybody, who ever has browsed the Web, will know what you are talking about and how to get to your Web site. Some SEO (search engine optimization) specialists also claim, that .COM domains are treated favorable by search engines, especially Google. Although Google likes .ORG domains these days as well.
Many of the new domain extensions like .BIZ already have been heavily abused by spammers and have got a bad taste in the perception of anti-spam tools.

E.g. Whenever I am sending a newsletter from my FCON21.BIZ domain I am reminded by the SpamAssassin™ Score that emails originating from a .BIZ domain are penalized with some extra points into the red.

Obviously, when I registered this domain. I didn't really know what I was doing. But I'll stick with it for now.
Today you find all sort of commercial and non-profit sites both in the US and every other country in the World using the famous .COM extension. Use it, too.

When I originally bought SOMEDOMAIN I was looking for .COM, which had not been available at the time.

Will I jump on the deal?

No, for several reasons.

SOMEDOMAIN was not a good choice for a domain name anyway.
The latter point also seems to be proved. SOMEDOMAIN.COM is available for registration! (Would it be, if it were such a hot deal?)
The offer obviously came from some sort of spammers, who search the WHOIS database. They did not even bother registering the .COM domain at first. Probably they would, if I showed interest. Or they simply want to receive some cash via Western Union. (I'll never find out, because I don't react to spam.)

Above I have recommended the .COM extension, but what makes up a good domain name?

A Great Domain Name - Some quick rules

Is it unique and catchy?
Is it descriptive?
Does it convey the right image?
Is it memorable?
Can people type it without misspellings when they only hear it?
The shorter the better!

My SOMEDOMAIN example failed, because of high potential for misspellings that' why I don't bother registering it, and I also will let the .INFO and .BIZ versions of it expire.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: I originally jumped on the bad SOMEDOMAINs, when GoDaddy had one of its frequent sales. At this time I was not aware of the advantages of .COM and I didn't have any clue about qualities of a good domain name at all. I mean FCON21.BIZ kind of is a remnant from this time, too.

Colour tools, palettes, schemes and theory - Thanks David Airey!

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 11:40:34 -0700

Just a quick post, but I thought I should share those wonderful resources with you. So far I did not get any complaints that I wrote some Web site development related posts lately. Okay, here is another one.

Graphic Designer David Airey wrote a post about resources for anything that has to do with colors.

Colour palettes and combinations
Colour theory
Colour tools

→ Colour tools, palettes, schemes and theory

I did not count them, but for sure there are more than 50 different links, each with a short description.

Wow, thanks David!

Now, there is quick release, if you have the “color block”... Check it out and bookmark it with your favorite social bookmarking tools.

Yours
John W. Furst

Google Everywhere - Even More In The Future

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 19:00:00 -0700

inewidea.com

I hope you enjoy the weekend. It was a great sunny day (as usual) here in Tenerife. When stumbling (↑) (after coming back from the beach) I found a blog post with a well depicted, futuristic view of “How we might be able to use Google^® in the future!”

I left a comment as well, ... privacy concerns, and that kind of thoughts. However, I like the idea to have Google in my pocket, always ready to answer my questions.

Here's the post. Check it out:

Futuristic Google Device (↑)
at I New Idea Homepage (↑)

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: That's probably my shortest blog post ever.

Sick of Dull Internet Marketing Videos

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 12:20:37 -0700

How many times have you watched an Internet marketing video online that promised “great, special info”, but did not deliver? That's really a big turn off.

“A bad video steals you up to 20 times more time than a bad PDF document”

Unfortunately you cannot always tell in advance, if a video will deliver on its promises or not.

I have seen poorly produced, short and long videos that contained more than expected and
I have seen studio production quality kind of videos that didn't tell you anything, except that it must have been expensive to produce.

Too many videos just waste so much time with introductions and typical “Let me tell you my / his / her / their story …” phrases. Too many videos show just faces or other static information. Could be an MP3 audio, and just a piece of written text instead.

I am absolutely tired of this and simply prefer written material, since I can quickly scan through it. Most people also can read faster than those video guys and gals do speak. It's just a waste of time and not to forget a waste of bandwidth.

Of course, there is room for video. The visual aspects can add tremendous value, but not everything needs to be in video. Shooting a video from lame content does not make the content better, it just gets thrown into a different package.

Some folks claim that it takes less time to make a great video than it takes to provide good quality written material. Well, that's true. But only for the producers, who actually have the ability to write good quality content at first place.

All others are just showing their stupid faces into the camera and that is definitely not worthwhile watching. And furthermore they are showing that it is not even worth their own time to create quality content for others. “To hell with them.”

Now, let's talk about some absolutely positive aspects of online videos.

Good reasons for use of video

Showing onscreen actions that would be hard to describe otherwise. Videos are great for tutorials, but should be accompanied with a written add-on, like a cheat sheet.
Showing animated graphics that tell more than words. I have shown an excellent piece of descriptive statistics here on this Blog.

Another excellent example are the recent StomperNet Going Natural 2.0 Videos (↑) about SEO, conversion, … facts that help you increase your sales. For my personal taste the intros are too long. However the content is very valuable.
Adding artistic, humorous, graphic, … value
or just adding a moving pictures to otherwise great content

Since not everybody is following quality gidelines, how can you protect yourself from wasting time with bad, empty, or hype only videos?

Tips for saving your time

Watch only videos that have been referred to you by a trusted person.
Build a list of trusted, good quality sources.
Watch a video only one time and take notes (if it is worthwhile).
If the video doesn't capture your full attention during the first 30 seconds. Click away.
Prefer material that will give you transcripts of the video content as well. Especially, if you have to pay for a course or something similar.
…

What additional tips do you have to share?
Leave a comment, let me know.

Yours
John W. Furst

Webmaster Articles Carnival - December 03 2007

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:56:32 -0700

Welcome to the December 3, 2007 edition of Webmaster Articles Blog Carnival!

My name is John and I am your host. This edition is packed with a great variety of articles. You'll meet “old friends”, as well as new fellows in the carnival scene. I am hosting this carnival for the first time, and I was pretty much impressed by the high quality of the submitted posts and Blogs. No problem with Spam Blogs (Splogs) at all. Might be the technology part of this carnival that doesn't attract so many spammers as compared to the business related carnivals.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Each of the 41 articles below is handpicked. I suggest that you do not only look at the articles, look at those Blogs, too. I have found a lot of great recent posts on those Blogs, too. Check it out. Maybe this carnival should be run at least every month. My comments are open, so just say what you think.

Question of the day: Who will be the next host for this carnival?

Write a note to the organizer (↑).
Get more exposure for your Blog
Volunteers preferred.

You also can submit your article to the next edition already. More info at the bottom of this post.

We have the following categories today: Design, Monetization, Traffic-Building, and General

Design
Monetization
Traffic-Building
General

The links to the posts and Blogs will open in a new browser window. By the way: The posts are ordered somewhat arbitrarily and don't reflect my preferences. Leave a comment here about what you liked most.

Design

Anthony Williams presents Reduce Bandwidth Usage by Supporting If-Modified-Since in PHP posted at Just Software Solutions Blog, saying, “Supporting If-Modified-Since and Last-Modified HTTP headers can reduce your bandwidth requirement for repeat visitors.”

Paul presents CleverWorkarounds » SharePoint Branding - How CSS works with master pages - Part 1 posted at CleverWorkarounds.

Maria Fernandez presents How to view PDFs with forms on a Mac posted at Learn a foreign language - Blog, saying, “How to view PDFs with forms on a Mac.”

Zac Garrett presents Wordpress Sucks, Use Serendipity Instead posted at Zac Garrett :: Technology Geek, saying, “Reasons to use Serendipity instead of Wordpress”

Kate Blogs presents My Top 11 Tools posted at kate blogs about writing & web design, saying, “A quick round-up of my ‘must have’ blogging and design tools - what are yours?”

Artdian presents Tips on how to Speed Up Your Photoshop - episode 1 posted at Skool of Arts.

Monertize YourBlog presents How To Enable Expandable Post Summaries On Your Blogger Blog posted at Monetize Your Blog, saying, “Pros and Cons of Expandable Post Summaries and how to implement them on Blogger.”

Samir Bharadwaj presents The Face That Launched a Thousand Ships posted at SamirBharadwaj.com, saying, “Is your website layout or blog template remarkable, and why it should be.”

Yuri presents Use Words on Your Site Correctly: The Complete Guide posted at Improve the Web, saying, “People should use words correctly on their websites for other people to read them well and do what they want on the website.”

Sutocu presents 7 Steps to Profitable Website Planning posted at Your Website Profit.

Vandelay Website Design presents 40 Resources for WordPress Theme Designers posted at Vandelay Website Design, saying, “A collection of resources for WordPress designers.”

Jones Hansen presents Free smooth Vector graphic collection posted at 0tutor.com tutorials blog.

R. Pettinger presents Guide to Moving Wordpress Blog to New Host posted at Net Writing, saying, “Some tips on moving blogs.”

top ↑

Monetization

Terry Dean presents 18 Possibilities to Build Your Unique Selling Position posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.

Christine presents Me, My Kid and Life: The Single Mom and The Cost of Starting an Online Business posted at Me, My Kid and Life: An American Single Mom Living in France, saying, “Making the money you need to live the life you want! This article is specifically geared toward single moms and stay at home moms who want to start an online business without needing start-up capital. It's written by a single mom who has made 100% of her income online for the past several years and who is raising her daughter in France supported by her online income. If I can do it, anyone can do it!”

Sarba Raj Bartaula presents Make Money Online posted at Sarba Raj dot com - Tips for Webmasters and Online Money Makers!.

Robinson Go presents 8 Killer Ways to Skyrocket Your AdSense Revenue posted at Advice, saying, “Effective. Innovative. Killer.”

Aahz presents Get Paid For Your Non-Sponsored Blog Posts Too! : Philaahzophy posted at Philaahzophy.

James Alenteal presents How about THIS response booster: 26.7% Conversion Rate! posted at James Alenteal's Conversion Rate Clinic. It's a short post, but nevertheless it shows two different conversion boosters used by Terry Dean and Ryan Healy

top ↑

Traffic-Building

Rodney Burge - Marketing Strategies presents How Important are Blogs to the Media? posted at Lori Prokop - Keyboard Culture, saying, “Free publicity is a great way to get your message out to the world, attract new customers and make money online. To get free publicity for your blog, products or services, you need to get the media’s attention. In this blog post by Keyboard Culture Expert Lori Prokop at http://www.keyboard-culture.com it’s amazing to see how much the media is depending on blogs.”

Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury presents Search Engine Optimization Tips to Build Traffic posted at SEO Consultant India - SEO Kolkata, saying, “Tips on how to get search engine spiders to crawl you blog and index the site completely. Also tip son how to improve rankings through organic SEO.”

Raj presents

posted at MT Herald Dot Com. Check out his other Blog posts, too. Like his recent post “Importance of Backing Up Blog Regularly.”

Steven Lohrenz presents Giving Is the Beginning of Receiving posted at Steven Lohrenz, saying, “The best way to build a community is by giving away little things to your readers. Here's a list of ideas for giving to build your community.”

Sagar presents The Digg Toolbox: 70+ Digg-related Scripts, Tools, and Tutorials posted at Virtual Hosting.

Carl Galloway presents 4 Must Use SEO Pointers for Bloggers posted at Carl talks blogging and making money online, saying, “Use these solid techniques to increase your search engine rankings and boost traffic to your blog.”

Robinson Go presents How to Rank #1 in Google through On Page Optimization posted at Advice, saying, “Rank #1 in Google now and get loads of traffic! This is a recommended resource for your readers.”

Amy S Quinn presents 17 Specialty Search Engines Every Web Developer Should Bookmark posted at Virtual Hosting.

Derick Thomas presents Lesson - Patience for Webmasters posted at derick.in, saying, “This article deals with the patience needed for Webmasters. This is from my personal experience when I launched this blogged and waiting this blog to be indexed by search engines.”

Chris Crompton presents The Link Not Taken? posted at Chris Crompton, saying, “Getting more traffic to your site. Why not use my script that finds Wordpress blogs with comments enabled and a ‘NO NOFOLLOW’ policy.”

Jim presents 15 Minute Link Exchange Strategy posted at The Kaizen Business. Users of the Relusi Link Directory Software should read this.

Karl Sultana presents High pagerank one way links for you! posted at OutRankSmart Blog.

top ↑

General

Cassanova presents Graphic solutions for web developers. posted at SEO is always welcome !. Check out the cool Traffic Plugin in the sidebar of this blog. It shows the location of visitors as they show up on the Blog.

Danogo presents

The Ultimate Band Guide to Building a Myspace Music Community, saying, “Teaches site owners how to make money online by selling songs and music on myspace.” and
How to Make Real Life Money in the Second Life Virtual World, saying, “People are making millions of real dollars in the virtual real estate business. Are you missing out on the next Web gold rush?”

posted at Danogo.com - Discover. Inspiring . Media

Desinet1 presents Get a Free Backlink from This Blog posted at Web Tools and Tips, saying, “I am starting my own way to build some crucial backlinks, which should appear to be natural and organic to Google. They will be helping both your blog, as well as mine. Just, send me the URL(s) to which you want a backlink, alongwith the keyword(s) of your choice for every URL. I will accommodate it within my next few posts.”

Jones Hansen presents How-to-promote-through-videos posted at seo Online marketing blog. Don't waste your time! Submit your promotional videos only to popular, high traffic sites. There are a ton of them.

Jones Hansen presents

posted at 0tutor.com tutorials blog.

Niharika presents The Mobile Productivity Toolbox: 100 Resources to Keep You Productive When on the Move posted at TruckingAccident.org Articles.

Pushpa Sathish presents WebDev Rage Hall of Fame: 10 Hilarious (and Familiar Sounding) Rants posted at Virtual Hosting.

Terry Dean presents Secret Ingredient in Your Business posted at Integrity Business Blog by Terry Dean.

Wakish presents Upload your own image on the Internet, can you? posted at Wakish Wonderz.

top ↑

That concludes this edition.

Please, help us and eachother to spread the word and take some time to give feedback via comments, trackbacks, and use the social bookmark tools to further promote articles that you have liked. Thank you.

Also, special thanks to the Carnival organizer Matt Harzewski. He has also hosted the previous edition of October 01, 2007 (↑). And thanks again to Mary S. (fcon21.biz), who had created the logo and did the ‘dirty’ work of typing.

Yours
John W. Furst
Creative Director - fcon21

Carnival of Webmaster Articles

Submit Your Article Today (↑)

Carnival Archive (↑)

Technorati tags: webmaster articles, blog carnival, internet business, monetizing, usability, blogging, web design, monetization, web development.

FireFox Toolbars - Best Of Selection

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:48:38 -0700

It seems that I am in the mood of discovering more and more browser toolbars this month. Just recently I have recommended 3 browser toolbars, which are available for Firefox and Internet Explorer (IE).

Google Toolbar and Alexa Sparky to check your rankings and the
Stuble Upon Toolbar for discovering new Web sites and being part of the Stumble community of 3 million people Web enthusiasts.

Andy Beard says Google Toolbar Is Not Family Safe (↑) and removed it. Well, that might be true, simply don't let your Kids on your computer. There are many more areas of danger.

Today I have another 2 toolbars that I want to tell you about. Since I am using Firefox, I did not even check, if those or similar ones are available for IE.

Stop, complaining and finally get a decent browser:

Download the ultimate Web software now (if you haven't already)

Here we go:

Cooliris Preview
by The Cooliris

Cooliris Previews gives you the power to browse and share Web links and rich media faster. Just mouse over any link, and the Cooliris preview window immediately appears to show you the content. To email it, just click.

Preview web links, images, and videos without even clicking.
“Stack” previewed items into temporary bookmarks to quickly preview later.
Instantly send links to friends and family with just a click.
Automatically subsearch Google, Wikipedia, and many others by right-clicking on any phrase.
Customize preferences to control preview window activation, time delay, size & position, etc.

Get it now:

Cooliris Preview (↑)

Web Developer
by Chris Pederick

This very powerful toolbar is the right tool for Web developers, Web designers, and Web masters.

You can alter CSS inline and style sheet parameters and see immediately how ot affects the page you are viewing.

Also very useful are the information functions that will show you details on the design of the page: draw boxes for otherwise invisible <div></div> containers or tables, and much, much more. Go and check it out.

Web Developer Firefox Add-on (↑)

My favorite plugins:

Happy browsing
John W. Furst

P.S.: Always be careful when downloading and installing third party software or extensions on your computer. Make sure they are from a trusted source, are free of Adware, Spyware, and viruses.

Webmaster Articles - Submit To This Carnival

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 18:08:56 -0700

This is an announcement for the next upcoming edition of the “Carnival Of Webmaster Articles”

We already have received some very good articles, but there is still some room for high quality writing.

Carnival of Webmaster Articles

Current Edition: Tuesday, Oct 02, 2007 (↑)

Next issue: Monday, Dec 03, 2007
will be hosted on this Blog

Description: Everything of interest to webmasters and bloggers.
Categories: Design, Traffic-Building, Monetization

Submit Your Article Today (↑)

Deadline: Friday, Nov 30, 2007,
04:00 pm PST (Pacific) [24:00 UTC]

Carnival Home (↑) | Host This Carnival On Your Blog (↑)

I am looking forward to your submission. If you do not know what a Blog Carnival is good for, read my post “You Need Some Carnival” next.

Yours
John W. Furst

Technorati Tags: Carnival Of Webmaster Articles, Blog Carnival

Avoid The Top 20 Traffic Disasters

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 18:33:11 -0700

There is absolutely too much bad information on the Internet about “How to Get A Lot of Targeted Traffic To Your Website”. It is too easy for a newcomer to do it the wrong way and end up without any serious traffic.

I want to keep the story short, so I am simply offering you the free report

“How To Avoid The Top 20 Traffic Disasters”

This is not some dry report that you will fall asleep over, while reading it. The report I am giving you is written by one of the most prominent traffic experts on the Internet, Michael Cheney. This 37 page report in PDF format draws easy to understand analogies to real World examples.

Success on the Internet can be achieved quite simply. All you need to know is:

How to get thousands of the right kind of visitors to your Web site
How to convert that traffic into cash
Most important: Consistent effort in applying and improving the above steps over and over again.

Most folks make the big mistake to try out one method after the other half ways. You cannot get results from that.

Lets's start with bringing targeted traffic to your Web site the not the wrong way. This could hurt your long term success.

Start now:

Get the report: “How To Avoid The Top 20 Traffic Disasters”

The Chapters of this free report
1. Forgetting To Put Your Fuel Cap Back On
2. Not Using Your Mirrors
3. Trying To Use The Same One Road To Get Everywhere
4. Trying To Fool The Police
5. Stalling
6. Buying A Deal Of The Century Ferrari For $100
7. Taking Long Routes Just Because Some Roads Have Tolls
8. Getting Stuck Under The Hood Of Your Car
9. Inventing A Flying Swimming-Hover-Car
10. Polishing Your Car But Never Using It
11. …
20 chapters in total plus a powerful conclusion.
Read it
Put it into action
All you need to do for receiving this report for free is to signup to my Newsletter. You'll receive the download instructions after confirming your email address.
I also give you my special free report “Usability recommendations for SEO” about onpage search engine optimization (SEO) and Usability, which helps you to build better pages for your readers as well as for search engines. “Better pages” will turn into more sales, affiliate commisions, advertising revenue, however you have decided to monetize your Web site.

Don't hesitate, sign up now in the upper left corner. And I'll see you on the other side.

Yours
John W. Furst

P.S.: If you are already a subscriber of my email newsletter, you will get an email with download instructions shortly.

Google's Gmail Rejects Regular Email

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 23:02:44 -0700

Andy Beard (↑), who runs a Niche Marketing Blog, wrote yesterday, that Gmail did not deliver a plain text (↑), legitimate email that he had sent.

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: SMTP Error (state 16): 554 The message was rejected because it contains prohibited virus or spam content

Probably one should use the Morse Code (↑) again to make sure emails get delivered? What do you think?

What is more important?

Less spam in any inbox or
Email Deliverability?

Isn't the customer of an Internet Service Provider (ISP) or Email Service Provider (ESP) the person who knows best what email is spam and what email is a legitimate one? It might go wrong whenever providers try to get into that role.

Many ISPs and ESPs drop “good” emails without giving the recipient or the sender notice. In this instance with Andy, at least Google sent a non delivery report back to Andy.

Google is proud, how they fight spam. There statement,

“More SPAM worldwide, but not in your GMail Inbox!”

You can read the full post: More spam, but not in your GMail Inbox! (↑)

Not well done! Is less SPAM more important than email reliability and deliverability? I don't think so. My standpoint of view has not changed over the years:

I had some bad experience in the past with dot NAME emails, when it was a third level domain only. At the time SPF was introduced, the setup at the registry for the second level email addresses was wrong. The emails simply disappeared. dot NAME was not very popular back then. I guess not a lot of people complained, but I was persistent and got the designated registry operator Global Name Registry gnr.com and GoDaddy.com - my registrar at this time - talk to each other and sort the problem out within two weeks or so. Still it was very annoying.

From this experience I have the following requirement for a good Email Service Provider:

“An ISP or Email Service Provider must give the recipient or customer the option to bypass all Anti-SPAM filters. At least the provider must respect the users' whitelists.”

I know this might not help the average users much, but at least some professionals.

Imagine your prospects or clients are sending you emails that get stuck, probably without any non-delivery message.

What could you do to prevent “losing” Emails?

You could enable an email autoresponder that send back a delivery notification. On your Web site you could instruct your users that there is some sort of email problem, if they do not get the delivery notification.

This works two ways to detect problems:

The client probably cannot send a message to you or he cannot receive email from you.

I did not implement such autoresponder so far. What about you?

Yours
John W. Furst

Winning Titles And 8 Tips For More Traffic

nospam@example.com (John W. Furst) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:46:54 -0700

“More readers” is your ultimate goal for your Blog. The more readers you attract on a regular basis, the more your Blog will work for you. Whatever you want to get out of it, like money, influence on public opinion, etc. Follow some basic rules for writing on the Web and the same kind of information you provide will gain more popularity.

Did you every write an article or a Blog post and many readers left a comment how great and valuable your info is. They say, they stumbled it, dugg it, bookmarked, printed it and put it on their board right in front of them. You feel flattered and think you have hit it this time.

Then later you look at your Web stats and recognize those readers were about the only ones that have read it. Sad story.

What went wrong? Most likely your title, your headline, sucks and probably your first paragraph, too.

To understand this you must realize how Web users find the way to your post. Your loyal readers, those who probably left the comments, have subscribed to your Blog's RSS feed, email announcement list or simply type in your URI and read whatever you write.

All the others, whose attention you wish to catch, only see a link to your site somewhere. Based on that link, they quickly decide: “Click or Not To Click”. How much they get to see depends on where they come across the link to your post. Here are a few examples.

The Title and the Blog's name like with BlogRush (have a look in my sidebar).
The title and some excerpt line on a Search Engine's Results Page (SERP). If you do your SEO homework right. The excerpt should be something like the first paragraph of your post or the content of the Meta Description Tag. That differs between search engines. But it is usually not much. Look at this example from Google. Doesn't say much, does it.
Google SERP (↑)
Listening in a Blog Directory
A totally different link text as used sometimes by bloggers to fit your link into their content. You don't have much control over that.

…

I guess you probably start to see that is all about “winning titles” and “hot topics”.

Here are my tips:

1. Write about “hot” topics. At least sometimes!

For example: My article about PageRank was more “successful” than the latter one about Customer Service. You heard about the Google Slap for sure (otherwise you likely would not read on my Blog).

The hot posts will get you additional readers, some will subscribe and also find value in the other posts of you that might not be as hot as considered by the masses.

2. Use winning titles!

Surf social bookmarking sites and see what kind of titles are popular in your “market” that you are writing about. Get a feeling for “wining titles” and “hot topics”. Of course the story must deliver on the title. The title should be the most condensed version of the article that gives a reason why someone should click that link and read the whole story.

Technorati.com (↑)
Digg.com (↑)
StumbleUpon.com (↑)
Del.icio.us" (↑)
Leave a comment, if you want me to add your favorite platforms. Which is …?

3. Put most important words to the front

Recent usability research has revealed people often read only the first two words of a paragraph. They scan Web pages. That means it is important to get those first two words right in titles, headlines, subheads, summaries, captions, hypertext links, and bulleted lists.

Usability expert Jakob Nielsen (↑) derives two rules for winning articles:

Don't use the same initial keywords in your headline and summary. You have 4 words to make your point, so use 4 different words. That is 2 words in the headline and 2 words in the summary, which should be your first paragraph.
Avoid repeating any headline words in the summary, except for the most important one or two keywords. You can repeat these halfway through the summary to reinforce them for people who scanned past them in the headline.

In order to get the first two words right, you might need to use passive voice. This is a new exception to the general rule, that you should use active voice in your Web writing. For example:

Active Voice: Yahoo Finance follows all 13 design guidelines for tab controls
Passive Voice: 13 design guidelines for tab controls are all followed by Yahoo Finance

The second one gives the better title, because the article referred is not about Yahoo Finance. It is about the design guidelines and their impact on Yahoo Finance.

Jakob Nielsen explains that point wonderfully in his new article, Passive Voice Is Redeemed For Web Headings (↑). I recommend that your read the whole article.

This actually also corresponds with classic search engine optimization (SEO) technique to pull you most important keywords to the beginning of link text, titles and so forth. Again, another instance for synergy of usability and SEO.

4. Keyword Research

Do some keyword research to find out how and what people are actually searching for in search engines. Using those phrases in your post will make it more visible in organic search engine results (↑) This is a link to a post I have written earlier.

However, the popular WordTracker Keyword Research Tool currently runs a special sales promotion:

Sign up before Friday 30th of November 2007 and they will give you 15% discount on an annual account.
You will pay $254.15 only.
Of course, you enjoy a full 30 day money back — no questions asked — guarantee. Nothing to loose, only traffic to gain.
Use the promotion code “us-annual-15”
Read about the details and order:
Wordtracker Sales Promotion (↑)

5. Stick to a somewhat regular posting schedule.

Depending on your readers and their location and timezone, you might consider posting at certain times (↑) for best impact. Like keep your best posts for some weekday afternoon (not necessarily Monday or Friday) There is much debate on this subject, but it kind of makes sense to assume that the posting time determines the chances for good visibility of your article in popular social bookmarking networks.

6. Encourage your readers to interact.

Make it easy for your reader to submit your post to their favorite bookmarking sites. there are numerous plugins available for popular platforms like WordPress.

Encourage comments, trackbacks, and pingbacks with “no-nofollow” and probably show recent comments and most active commentators in the sidebar. Again, there are plugins available for this.

7. Submit your best articles to social bookmarking sites yourself.

Don't overdo with this one and also submit good articles and posts you read. If the only content you stumble or digg is from your Blog, you might get banned as content spammer. Once you gain some popularity many of your posts will be submitted by readers, which is actually better.

8. Join online communities and play an an active role in them.

Leave your trail, which leads to your blog home page and individual posts. Do this when ever it makes sense. Also submit your posts to Blog Carnivals (↑).

I know there is much more you can do, but I talked about 8 tips in the introduction. That's it for today.

Yours
John W. Furst