The activities involved when researching, designing, developing and bringing a product to market. Includes things such as customer and competitor research, product research and advertising. For a web specific example, user studies and research would be subsets of marketing.
Lately I've taken to subscribing to many newsletters and the "free" programs being offered by internet marketers - think Frank Kern, Yanik Silver et al. - and people like Aaron Wall and Shoemoney and that Brian fellow over at Copyblogger. If you, like me, receive some of these emails, you may have... Read more »
Lets face it, when a visitor does arrive it only follows that we should do our best to help them see the value in our website, no? Welcome new visitor, here is our feed, blah blah... Can't we do better then that? I see a lot of variations on the Welcome new visitor, here is our feed type of thing... Read more »
The mistake I called him up to mention the error, and he explained to me that he had noticed the error and managed to stop the delivery before too much damage was done. No problem. But hours later, he called me stating that he felt really bad, and wanted to try something. The recovery His idea... Read more »
Near the end of his post, Paul asks: If you’re going to spend that kind of money [e.g. $89 per post] for professional copy, why not just post something on the 37signals job/gig boards looking for a motivated, experienced copywriter? My experience has been if you have the amazing luck of finding... Read more »
Squeezing more water from the sponge We spend a lot of time working with clients to help increase the effectiveness of their websites. Using CrazyEgg to Write More Effective Copy is one small example, and in this case we have used similar tactics with a client's newsletter signup to try and increase... Read more »
If you haven't heard of Crazy Egg, check out the demo here. Also see this comprehensive review at Solution Watch. Rather than run month long tests as Kyle successfully used, with some clients we've run short tests (hours to days) on a fixed amount of traffic in order to how evaluate how different... Read more »
Not a chance Call me crazy, but how has anyone "won" yet? I would think that there is still plenty of space for a bookmarking app to "win", and would hazard to guess that will be the case until one company "wins" over mainstream users, not just niche areas occupied by web power users (internautas,... Read more »
I've been around long enough to know that a catchy title is not only an essential component from the standpoint of having people visit your site, but it is also an essential element from the purposes of search engine optimization. If you're not up to speed on the issue, have a read over at the Doctors... Read more »
Update: The WSJ article quoted below can be read in full, without subscription, here. Okay, maybe 'don't get it' is a bit harsh, but something has happened here and it's worth noting. Read between the lines Looking at the del.icio.us comments that link to Call an Apple an Apple, you can sort of decipher... Read more »
Another skill in the toolbox There's been a lot of talk on the internet about the different skills web developers need to survive in today's web services marketplace. Truth be told, the required skillset largely depends on the services that you or your company offer. Regardless, as the web... Read more »
Sitepoint's web devlopment books have helped me out on many occasions both for finding a quick solution to a problem but also to level out my knowlegde in weaker areas (JavaScript, I'm looking at you!). I am recommending the following titles from my bookshelf:
I started freelancing by diving in head first and getting on with it. Many years and a lot of experience later I was still able to take away some gems from this book, and there are plenty I wish I had thought of beforehand. If you are new to freelancing and have a lot of questions (or maybe don't know what questions to ask!) do yourself a favor and at least check out the sample chapters.
The author line-up for this book says it all. 7 excellent developers show you how to get your JavaScript coding up to speed with 7 chapters of great theory, code and examples. Metaprogramming with JavaScript (chapter 5 from Dan Webb) really helped me iron out some things I was missing about JavaScript. That said each chapter really helped me to develop my JavaScript skills beyond simple Ajax calls and html insertion with libs like JQuery.
Like the other books listed here, this provides a great reference for the PHP developer looking to have the right answers from the right people at their fingertips. I tend to pull this off the shelf when I need to delve into new territory and usually find a workable solution to keep development moving. This only needs to happen once and you recoup the price of the book in time saved from having to develop the solution or find the right pattern for getting the job done..