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ex·pand [k-spnd]

n. 1. New, unique and safe technology for increasing search engines site rankings
2. Generation of up to 300+ incoming links to your website
3. SEO live consultation
4. Create your own branded screensaver, with your company or website logo, and a link to your website
5. Submit your screensaver to 300+ software download sites
6. PAD file creation, validation and hosting
7. Submission progress tracking
8. detailed submission reports
9. awards and ratings tracking

.: [read more] :.

Psychological Impact Of Website Colors

by Clyde Price Wharton III

I have spent a great deal of time surfing the internet with a critical eye bent on the psychological impact of websites to the viewer.

I have attempted to "feel" the verbiage and color choices of certain websites in how they make the visitor feel emotionally. Some websites go over the top with overt marketing copy, flashy photos and extremes in color. While many site designers choose the "minimalist" approach with overly subdued hues, small fonts, fewer images & less, but more descriptive words.

In my personal research, I have discovered that the most important first-impression, psychological factor impacting website viewers is COLOR. The internet is truly a very visual and extremely psychological medium. However, before reading a single word of your marketing copy, your website visitors are confronted with the background color of your website, the color of your header, the color of your text and headlines, etc. Remember, colors, like words, can be used as a language of expression as well, sometimes to a greater degree of emotional impact on the viewers senses.

Here is a simple guide list containing the common colors and the types of first-impression, psychological emotion they may invoke upon the website viewer:

RED invokes feelings of love, passion, danger, warning, excitement, food, impulse, action, adventure.

BLUE can invoke feelings of trustworthiness, success, seriousness, calmness, power, professionalism.

GREEN can invoke feelings of money, nature, animals, health, healing, life, harmony.

ORANGE can invoke feelings of comfort, creativity, celebration, fun, youth, affordability.

PURPLE can invoke feelings of royalty, justice, ambiguity, uncertainty, luxury, fantasy, dreams.

WHITE can invoke feelings of innocence, purity, cleanliness, simplicity.

YELLOW can invoke feelings of curiosity, playfulness, cheerfulness, amusement.

PINK can invoke feelings of softness, sweetness, innocence, youthfulness, tenderness.

BROWN can invoke feelings of earth, nature, tribal, primitive, simplicity.

GREY can invoke feelings of neutralality, indifference, reserved.

BLACK can invoke feelings of seriousness, darkness, mystery, secrecy.

Here is a link for a comprehensive "color chart" that will assist you as to which web colors compliment each other, and which ones will clash:

http://www.visibone.com/colorlab/big.html

Colors help sell your website products or ideas. Colors can distract, even turn off the website viewer. Therefore, choose your colors wisely. Do not simply choose the colors you like or unusual colors just because they are different. Keep in mind that you are trying to appeal to the widest possible demopgraphic of website viewers. Be sure your website colors appeal to most, not just some.

Your thoughts and opinions are welcome.

A.I.D.A: A Simple Tool to Improve Your Advertising

This is an excerpt from a great article about four simple advertising campaign steps, taken from the Better Local Marketing blog by Kevin Stirtz, see here for a full text.

ATTENTION

The first job of any marketing message is to get the ATTENTION of the prospective customer. Whether you are using print advertising, direct mail, radio, TV or personal networking, your goal is the same. Get their attention so you have an opportunity to deliver your message.

Whatever you use to get your prospective customer to stop and pay attention, it should meet some criteria.

Your headline (or other type of attention-getter) should be:

*Honest
*Relevant to your marketing message
*In good taste (however you define good taste)
*Understandable

Some ways to get people's attention:

*Ask a question
*Cite a statistic or fact
*Make an offer
*Use a testimonial
*Make a declaration or statement

Examples:

“$9.95 Oil Change”

This is simple and to the point. Easy to understand.

“We Sell Houses Fast”

Again, simple and direct. This will appeal to people who want to sell their house quickly.

“Dr. Smith got rid of my back pain in one visit!”

A testimonial from a satisfied customer is a great way to promote professional services.

“Garage and Basement Overflowing?”

A question like this will resonate with people who have garages or basements that are full (or their spouses!). They read or hear it and will subconsciously answer “yes” making them a good candidate for any business that can help them empty their garage or basement.

Remember - your headline (or other attention-getting device) is not supposed to sell your product or service. The job of your attention-getter is to get people to stop and pay ATTENTION to the rest of your message. So, keep it simple and on point and you'll have better results.

see here for a full text

A MUST read for everyone

This is not about software marketing, but it is all about life. A greatest comic strip I've ever read. "Mom's Cancer" focuses on how a serious illness can affect patient and family, both practically and emotionally, in ways that the author's discovered are very common. Reading this will give you something to think about.

see for yourself

New US ESD service announced

AskNet AG, a global leader in outsourced electronic software sales and distribution services (ESD), announced today the foundation of its U.S. subsidiary, asknet Inc. and the formation of its North American team. The team consists of seasoned eCommerce professionals who have provided sales and marketing services, operations management, customer service, deployment and fulfillment to North American software publishers over the past decade. The new division was established following a recent funding round granted to fuel the expansion of company's ESD services into the North American and Asian markets.

see www.asknet.com/

Sligtly off-topic and about Bill Gates

from cio-today.com

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer tagged Gates as the spammedest person in the world, receiving an estimated four million e-mails daily, most of them junk.



read the whole story here

A book worth reading

This is a book that a software developer and marketer really should take a look at - a Beyond Software Architecture: Creating and Sustaining Winning Solutions by Luke Hohmann

As one of the happy readers explains, this book delivers on its promise to discuss the larger business realities of creating software products. If you're a software architect, or dream of being one, this is a must read book. Appropriately, it eschews the details of implementation, and focuses mainly on the business issues an architect must focus on to succeed. It works from the assumption that the reader has done a fair bit of design work, and now wants to create software architectures that will last for multiple releases. Luke expands your horizons to include new areas you probably have not have considered.

Digital River Buys BlueHornet Networks

from Internet Week

E-commerce outsourcer Digital River Inc. on Thursday said it has acquired BlueHornet Networks Inc., a maker of e-mail-marketing technology.

As a result of the acquisition, Minneapolis-based Digital River plans to offer online merchants an expanded range of software tools for survey and e-mail creation, database and campaign management, customer loyalty building, revenue tracking and statistical analysis.

see full article

2005 SharewareJunkies.com Awards

This year's nominations for the shareware programs at SharewareJunkies.com has been announced. The results will be presented on January 3, 2005.
Users are invited to cast their votes at http://www.sharewarejunkies.com between now and December 18.

An alternative to Mozilla Firefox

While talking about Mozilla's FireFox an alternative to it for Microsoft Internet Explorer users must be mentioned - a free and very powerful web browser named Maxthon (formerly MyIE2). This is the browser that we use and like a lot.



www.maxthon.com


Maxthon is a powerful web browser with a highly customizable interface.
It is based on the Internet Explorer engine (your most likely current
web browser) which means that what works in IE, works the same in
Maxthon but with many additional efficient features like...

• Tabbed Browsing Interface


• Mouse Gestures


• Super Drag&Drop


• Privacy Protection


• AD Hunter


• Google Bar Support


• External Utility Bar


• Skinning


• And Much More to Explore...

Firefox - a second look at your website

With the release of Firefox 1.0 more and more users may switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer to a new Mozilla Organization product.

It is believed, that many Windows power-users will try this first release version of Firefox and use it for everyday browsing. In fact, there has already been a 10% drop for IE in the browsers popularity rankings, and this is a first drop from the time when Microsoft won the browsers battle with Netscape.

While Firefox may be the new alternative for Internet Explorer, it is important to download it, install and use it just to take a look at your own website. Does it render properly? Do everything works without problems? Are there no script errors on the site? Your site must work perfectly on all common web browsers, and Firefox is number two right now.

Keywords Advertising at SharewareRiver.com

Keywords Advertising releases a new advertising option at SharewareRiver.com

Keywords Advertising allows you to display ads each time when user searchs one of the keywords you purchased and you only pay for that impressions. It is the most targeted form of advertising because your ads will be seen by qualified users only.

Overture Extends Relationship With Microsoft

Overture has extended its sponsored search distribution relationship with Microsoft in the United States and internationally through June 2006.

"Overture has been a strategic partner of MSN since 2001, and we look forward to continuing our productive relationship," said Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president for the MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform division at Microsoft. "We are pleased that our collaboration has helped grow the online ad industry and benefited consumers and advertisers in the process."

Under the terms of the extension, Overture will continue to provide its sponsored search results to MSN sites in the U.S. and Canada, Europe and Asia. The previous agreement ran through June 2005.

"MSN is a valued industry partner and we are pleased to extend our successful relationship in the U.S. and around the world," said Ted Meisel, president of Overture. "We appreciate the vote of confidence from MSN and we look forward to working with them on innovative sponsored search solutions."

New design for File Cart

FileCart.com has just launched a brand new design, marking their one year anniversary since the new engine was implemented. File Cart has only been around for one year and during that time they have made File cart one of the top 100,000 highest traffic sites in the world. With this new look comes a host of new features, visit the site and have a look.

www.filecart.com

MSN Search

While everyone is talking about the new MSN Search from Microsoft and will it be a serious cometition for Google, which I seriously doubt, why not try it for yourself? The url is http://beta.search.msn.com and they still need your feedback.

How to build a home page that sells

by Sebastian Zaklada


Here are tips gleaned from roughly 10 years spent building websites and optimising them for high sales before, and even after the search engine submission and optimisation process.

The home page content needs to be "catchy". You've got approximately 5 seconds to draw visitor's attention to the content of the site. When I enter the site, there has to be an incentive for me to stay.

Your home page should tell the story, preferrably in the headline and first paragraph. The rest of your web page should provide the detail. As I said, you have a matter of seconds to grab your visitor's attention. Do not blow it with a weak opening.

A good home page answers all of the "W" questions:

- who (is the site for),
- what (do you offer),
- where (your geographic area),
- when (if it is time-related, ie. an event),
- and why (why choose your services),

providing the visitor with useful information about your organization, product, service or event. If you look at your home page and it does not make you want to stay on the site, you need to rewrite and redesign it.

Another letter? "C" for example... because a home page should be

- catchy (draw attention),
- clean (both in design and code),
- content-rich (no need to explain),
- and convincing (when it comes to make a sale)

How to do it?

The great thing about this day and age is that you can have a website in no time. You can do it yourself or have someone else do it. But you should start with "How" questions first:

How do I want my business represented?
Professionally, honest, just like everyone elses, etc.

How will it be created?
Will you learn what it takes to create it, will the person you have creating it know what you want them to know, or will you just cross your fingers and hire the neighbors 15 year old.

How will it be marketed?
This depends on the geographic profiling. Whether you want it marketed locally, within your country, or world wide.

How is the market online for my product/service?
Do the research before the site goes live, just remember the internet is always changing and tomorrow may look better for your market.

The further you go, the more questions arise. Answer them well and you will have a great sales tool!