Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick aside about the 3 Wolf Tee meme that has made it off the internet and into the mainstream media (BBC, Washington Post) and some of the more interesting and applicable aspects of this phenomenon.

User reviews and creative content made this product a hit.

By all means, the 3 Wolf Tee seems an exception to the rule for most retail descriptions. Nobody is going to openly ridicule their products or allow reviewers to do so with such impunity, regardless of how funny it turns out. But this particular tee’s sales have put the t-shirt maker’s kids through college in a matter of months, and that’s nothing to scoff at.

It’s easy to write these sales off to the 4chan/collegehumor set and watch as the sales ebb and the meme recedes into the waters of the Rickroll and All Your Base Are Belong To Us, which it will inevitably do, but that is shortsighted and counterproductive. User reviews and creative content have made this product a hit. No matter how you look at it, when it comes down to it, people buy products when they like the presentation.

Whether you use informative product descriptions, social networking, creative reviews or capture attention with potent ads; you must engage your online customers. Use humor, be descriptive, use irony, talk directly to your audience, be human; these characteristics don’t only drive sales, they drive loyalty.

Search Engine Optimization isn’t the only reason for site content.

Although search engine optimization is obviously essential to any ecommerce business’s copy; creative and brand-aware content is equally important. Where would Woot be without their amazing descriptions? Why can American Apparel reference church burning humorously? Why does Haband use cliché slogans and sales lines? These sites owe their success to using creative language geared toward their demographic as an intrinsic element of their branding and site content, and do so very well.

Your content doesn’t have to be funny or hip, (Woot and American Apparel are kind of paragons in these categories) and it often won’t make sense to your business plan to be that way, but your content has to speak to your audience. Reading product specs is about as fun as reading the tag of a shirt and consequently makes shopping about that much fun. Make your products unique, differentiate yourself from the competition and I can guarantee that chicks will adore you, the god’s will smite your enemies and all that is righteous and holy will be yours for the taking.

News from Google that web page load times of landing pages will now be a component of your AdWords Quality Score. This information can be found be viewing your Quality Score on an Ad Group or individual keyword level.

Landing page: Your landing page is the page where users ‘land’ when you they click your ad. This is also called your destination URL.

From Google AdWords:

Your landing page quality is a crucial part of your Quality Score. The quality of a landing page is represented by such things as the usefulness and relevance of information provided on the page, ease of navigation for the user, page loading times, how many links are on the page, how links are used on the page, and more. If our system finds that your landing page isn’t highly relevant or loads slowly, you should optimize your landing page in order to improve your Quality Score and ad performance.

As you can see from the following list of Quality Score Calculations, landing page quality will now be a core component in virtually all quality score calculations.

Google Quality Score Calculation Components:

1) For calculating a keyword’s minimum bid:

* The keyword’s historical clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered
* The relevance of the keyword to the ads in its ad group
* The quality of your landing page
* Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
* Other relevance factors

2) For calculating a keyword-targeted ad’s position on a search result page:

* The historical CTR of the ad and of the matched keyword on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered
* The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query
* Your account history, which is measured by the CTR of all the ads and keywords in your account
* Other relevance factors

3) For calculating a keyword-targeted ad’s eligibility to appear on a particular content site, as well as the ad’s position on that site:

* The ad’s past performance on this and similar sites
* The relevance of the ads and keywords in the ad group to the site
* The quality of your landing page
* Other relevance factors

4) For determining if a placement-targeted ad will appear on a particular site:

* The quality of your landing page

Google already visits landing pages on a regular basis. The frequency of the visits depends on the level of traffic to ads and the limits of the AdWords system. However, Google states that they plan on visiting landing pages once a month at a minimum, but they may increase that frequency during implementation and testing.

If you are using AdWords, the best course of action would be to immediately review your AdWords Account.

How do I know what my Quality Score is?

To see your keywords’ Quality Scores within your account statistics:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Select the campaign, then select the ad group for which you’d like to see keyword Quality Scores.
3. Click Customize columns at the top of Keywords tab in the ad group table.
4. Select Show Quality Score from the drop-down menu.
5. Click Done when you’re finished.

You can also evaluate each keyword’s Quality Score by looking at the Keyword Analysis page or at the keyword’s minimum bid.

Next, run a site crawl program that examines all of your website’s pages and their respective page size and load times. Make sure that any high traffic and/or crucial AdWords landing pages have optimized images and code to allow quick page loads. If you find a landing page with slow load times that cannot be modified quickly or easily, simply change the destination URL for any ads pointing to that page to a faster loading page, until such time that offending page can be edited.

1. Soft/Even lighting – Photographers use contrast and shadows to create atmosphere, but for product shots, ditch the art for clarity. Dark shadows and bright highlights can influence the appearance of a product which can prove to be deceptive to a customer. To avoid this kind of lighting, bounce light towards an object, pull the light away or even try lighting from above. This will provide the necessary illumination, but won’t create a harsh glare.

2. A Steady Hand – If you’re using a digital camera (which, let’s face it, you are) the LCD display on the back of your camera is what you check to see how the shot turned out. The problem with that, however, is you can’t always see camera shake on your 2”x 2” screen. With product photography you’re looking for product detail, so the closer you take the photograph, the more obvious the blur will be. Go out and get a tripod and, if you have one, use a remote shutter release for even more stability. Steadiness is key. If you follow this rule, you’ll see an immediate difference in the sharpness of your images.

3. Focus/Zoom – Zooming in before taking a photograph has its pros and cons. The pro is that you reduce the distortion from the lens, and it becomes more like a telephoto lens. The con is that you lose your depth of field and, depending on the product, parts of your image may be out of focus. The solution is to find a balance in the middle and refocus your camera before shooting each product. Also, putting your camera in aperture priority mode will help you attain the largest in-focus area, especially if you’re getting up close and personal with the product.

4. Over/Under Exposure – Similar to the first tip, misusing over or under exposure can cause your image to lose important details like the contours, edges and color strength. Under expose one or two stops when shooting on white and over expose one or two stops when shooting on black to retain the integrity of your product against the background. You can always go back and doctor an image before it goes live, which leads me to my last tip.

5. Image editing software –Photoshop. Learn it. If you’re good at it, you can transform a terrible image into a decent product shot. Just don’t forget that the more you shop your image, the more quality you’ll lose. So if you’re shooting the photos yourself, save yourself the post production time and work and shoot your photos better.

Terms, Terms, Terms
Section 508 – In 1998, Congress amended the Rehabilitation Act to require Federal agencies to make their electronic and information technology accessible to people with disabilities. Inaccessible technology interferes with an individual’s ability to obtain and use information quickly and easily. Section 508 was enacted to eliminate barriers in information technology, to create new opportunities for people with disabilities and to encourage development of technologies that will help achieve these goals. The law applies to all Federal agencies when they develop, procure, maintain, or use electronic and information technology. Source: http://section508.gov

ADA – Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 – The ADA is a wide-ranging civil rights law that prohibits, under certain circumstances, discrimination based on disability. It expands upon the protections in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination based on race, religion, sex, national origin, and other characteristics illegal. Source: http://wikipedia.org

W3C – World Wide Web Consortium – The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. W3C is a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding. Source: http://w3.org

WAI – W3C Web Accessibility Initiative – The Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) works with organizations around the world to develop strategies, guidelines, and resources to help make the Web accessible to people with disabilities. Source: http://w3.org/wai

WCAG – W3C WAI Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) documents explain how to make Web content accessible to people with disabilities. Web “content” generally refers to the information in a Web page or Web application, including text, images, forms, sounds, and such. Source: http://w3.org/wai

The Breakdown
Definitions are helpful, but you’re probably still scratching your head. I’ll try and simplify it more for you… First and foremost, the Americans with Disabilities Act focuses more on discrimination of people with disabilities in the real world, not the electronic or virtual one. You can read more about the ADA on their web site, http://ada.gov.

Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act forces all Federal agencies to provide electronic information in an accessible format. The Assistive Technology Act of 2004 (an amendment to Section 508) requires many state level agencies to comply with Section 508 as well. But, what they don’t tell you is that Section 508 is based off of the W3C WAI WCAG; did you catch all that? That’s the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Web Accessibility Initiative’s (WAI) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. So, if you are compliant with WCAG, then you are compliant with Section 508 (for the most part). There are few differences between Section 508 and WCAG, but the important thing to note is that WCAG will offer more up to date guidelines to follow.
Jim Thatcher has put together a side-by-side comparison of Section 508 and WCAG 1.0 if you’re interested in seeing the differences. http://www.jimthatcher.com/sidebyside.htm.

How does accessibility apply to your online presence?
Online accessibility is as important to your web site as ramps and automatic doors are to a brick & mortar business – it needs to be accessible for people with disabilities in order for them to purchase your product or service. If you choose to disregard people with disabilities when building a store or web site, it could have serious ramifications. For instance, a class action suit against Target.com (Target’s ecommerce web site) was brought about in California last year. These types of law suits against major retailers have increased in recent years and are prompting many ecommerce retailers to overhaul their sites to include accessibility features.

Many organizations, like the National Federation of the Blind (NFB), are pushing for legislation to require all web sites to be accessible for people with disabilities – similar to the Section 508 requirements placed on federal & state agency web sites.

What does it all mean?
Whether you’re publishing a small blog (about that weird mole on your back), or running a multi-million dollar ecommerce web site, accessibility is important. People with disabilities should be able to navigate your site, read your content, and purchase a product with ease. Developing a site that enables people with disabilities to do that should be a fundamental tool in a web developer’s tool belt.

In the upcoming posts in this series we’ll be covering what goes into making a site accessible for people with disabilities and examining some assistive technologies.

We encourage you to bring your personality to the table, wear what you’re comfortable in and, most importantly, be given the means to truly excel by working with smart and funny co-workers on big name brands in a truly egalitarian environment.

We’ve even got a bar/restaurant downstairs where you can swap stories with co-workers about run-ins with the law, music, movies and business over drinks and dinner. Our libertarian leanings, progressive practices and business savvy aren’t for everyone, but if you’re looking for a workplace full benefits, and the chance to see your work make a difference; it does exist, and it’s right here.

WebLinc is hiring. View our Careers page for our current openings and apply.

We decided to do a follow-up to a 2005 study conducted by our friends over at Happy Cog Philadelphia concerning the HTML and CSS validity of Philadelphia area web design companies’ homepages. That study found a majority of these Philadelphia web firms were not following the W3C’s HTML and CSS recommendations.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) was founded over a decade ago by Tim Berners-Lee, the man who originally invented the World Wide Web. The W3C’s goal is to lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web. These guidelines or “web standards” are important for a multitude of reasons, including faster page loads, easier site maintenance and accessibility for disabled users. (For more information on why you should be using these web standards, visit webstandards.org)

Of the 42 companies we’ve compared, only 3 had both clean HTML and clean CSS. Those companies are WebLinc, Happy Cog, and Advance Web Design.

When you hire a contractor to implement that beautiful new design for your home’s remodeling, you’d expect the design to be constructed in a manner compliant with modern building code practices and standards, right? Why wouldn’t you expect the same from your web design and development company? If your web vendor does not include web standards in your specifications documentation and final site output, it may be time to ask questions.

This study in no way implies the mentioned companies are not capable of creating beautiful designs for their clients, nor themselves. Rather it is the implementation of the design that comes into question here.

Please refer to the W3C validation tool for the most up-to-date validation information. If your company is listed above and you’d like to update your site’s status here, my email is jferry [at] weblinc.com.

*Update: 4/27/07 Electronic Ink’s homepage now validates.

SEPTA (www.septa.org)
The mass transit organization serving Bucks, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, and Philadelphia counties is currently using an old table-based site that doesn’t conform to any web standards. Their site is littered with font tags, missing alt attributes, inline styles, and empty p tags for spacing. As for accessibility, SEPTA provides no support for users with disabilities via their web site, although SEPTA is required to provide transportation assistance to people with disabilities within their service areas.

SEPTA does do a great job at providing people with useful maps, schedules, travel alerts, and up to the minute train status.

Throughout the entire family of SEPTA web sites the designs are inconsistent, hard to use, and worst of all – non-compliant with web standards.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance and information architecture.

Philadelphia International Airport (www.phl.org)
Where to begin… Table-based, invalid DOC-TYPE, font tags, and inline styles make up this debacle of a web site whose only redeeming feature is that the site does have an ADA compliant text version of the site – but even that version didn’t provide a valid DOC-TYPE or a language attribute. The information architecture of the web site is disconcerting and the presentation of content is compact and poorly organized. Although Philadelphia International Airport’s web site doesn’t comply with web standards, the site does offer a lot of useful content. Travel preparation and flight information is readily available and accurate. Terminal and parking maps provide visitors with helpful tools to find there way around the airport. They also have a section devoted to Art & Exhibitions that provide information about the artists, the exhibits, and detailed pictures of the work.

With these recent expansions and upgrades made at the Philadelphia International Airport I would expect an upgrade to their web site. By developing a web standards based web site, they could offer more user-friendly ways to deliver their important and highly desirable content.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, information architecture, standards-compliant content management system, more intuitive search.

Commerce Bank (www.commerceonline.com)
The beloved, open every day Commerce Bank is a favorite among many in the area. With convenient locations, a wide-array of products & services, and amazing hours you would think they could do no wrong. Well, they have. It’s the typical lineup of wrong doings: Table-based layout, missing DOC-TYPE, use of deprecated elements, animated GIF’s, scrolling stock ticker and news, empty/missing alt attributes; I could go on and on. On some computers, the stock ticker actually crashes the browser and causes the screen to flicker. I didn’t even bother validating. Their online banking web site is a whole other mess of web standards non-compliance. At the very least you would hope that the web site would work cross-browser, but alas, it does not. Using their online banking web site in Firefox looks like 52 card pick-up, with elements aligning randomly. That being said, Commerce Bank does an amazing job with the brick & mortar establishments. I wouldn’t bank anywhere else.

Always expanding and loved by all of their customers we can only hope Commerce Bank comes to their senses and undergoes a complete overhaul of their web sites.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization.

Tower Investments (www.towerdev.com)
These urban developers have designed some amazing properties and turned troubled neighborhoods into hip urban communities with retail shopping and luxurious living spaces. But although their properties are chic and trendy, their web site is outdated and non-compliant. Flash based web sites, like Tower Investments, are impossible to use for disabled users, therefore excluding them as potential clients. By adopting web standards and Section 508 recommendations you open up your site to all visitors, instead of just sighted visitors. Flash is an amazing tool, and has its place on the web, just not as a primary tool for web site development.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization.

Amoroso’s (www.amorosobaking.com)
The beloved baking company, famous for fresh hoagie rolls, delivers a stale web site. The table-based web site fails at delivering standards-compliant content by using inline styles, tables for non-tabular data, and the ever present spacer.gif. The web site also uses a fluid or 100% wide layout, which is not necessary when the content being presented would easily fit in a fixed width layout for 800×600 screen resolution. Although when the site is resized for 800×600 screen resolution the browser scroll bars are activated due to the content area being too large for the resolution size. Also, fixed width font sizes are used throughout the site and don’t allow text scaling in certain browsers, making it difficult to read. Overall, Amoroso’s web site fails at meeting almost every web standard, but where their web site lacks, their products do not. Amoroso’s is still Philadelphia’s favorite roll, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization.

Rohm and Haas (www.rohmhaas.com)
The international specialty chemical producer, Rohm and Haas, breaks all the Web Standard rules. By combining table-based layouts with invalid CSS, missing DOC-TYPES, drop-down menu’s that break Section 508 accessibility standards, and others, they offer pages that possible investors and/or clients are not able to access. Their imagery and text color combinations also pose many problems with visitors who are color blind and/or have other vision problems. It amazes me that a global company of this size doesn’t deliver standards-compliant content, when their reach extends to all corners of the world.

That being said, the imagery and content on the site still delivers a consistent message and provide tons of important information to the end user.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization, Multiple Language Support.

QVC (www.qvc.com)
The television shopping channel, QVC, has an ecommerce web site that generated $1.09 billion in 2006 and they are ranked #14 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide. Their total revenue for 2006 was $7.07 billion with online sales accounting for a little more than 15.4% of their total revenue. The web site is currently a table-based non-compliant web site which is a Section 508 nightmare. From missing alt attributes to blue text on a blue background color the site is in desperate need of an overhaul. If the site were standards-compliant this mega online retailer would be able to open up their online business to many more customers; then couple that with the addition of a multiple-language support system and this site’s international use would exponentially boost.

Quality, Value, Convenience. QVC definitely delivers upon their name with their web site, even if it is lacking web standards. The product imagery is presented gracefully and the site is constantly being updated with new and featured products which shows that QVC takes the time to deliver what they stand for.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing, Multiple Language Support.

M.A.B. Paints (www.mabpaints.com)
Founded over 100 years ago in South Philadelphia, this family business has been a favorite among professionals for many years. Their slogan, “On Time As Promised, Or We Pay,” defines their loyalty to their customers. By supplying hundreds of stores throughout the country, M.A.B. Paints has a responsibility to their customer base to provide standards-compliant content on their web site. Currently, their site is using my all-time favorite gaff, frames. Needless to say, there’s a long list of problems with the web site. M.A.B. offers a retailer portal, most likely to provide their retailers with up-to-date inventory, pricing, and order tracking. I can only hope that their retailer portal does a better job at providing standards-compliant content, but I have my doubts.

Being in business over 100 years proves the strength of M.A.B.’s brand recognition and strength. In addition to their strong values and core principles, I believe that M.A.B could exponentially increase their business by offering a more compliant web site.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing.

PhillyCarShare (www.phillycarshare.org)
I am a huge advocate for car sharing and cleaner emissions for automobiles and I tip my hat to this great organization and commend them on their efforts thus far, but their web site is far from par. I am aware of the funding issues when it comes to non-profits and funding non-program initiatives but developing a standards-compliant web site isn’t something that costs extra. The basic standards-compliant web site can even be developed, in some cases, faster than a non-compliant, table-based web site. Needless to say, PhillyCarShare’s web site could benefit enormously with a web standards re-design.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization.

Philadelphia Management (www.philadelphiamanagement.com)
If you’ve lived in Philadelphia for more than a year you’ve probably come across this name. Philadelphia Management manages more than 4,600 residential and countless commercial properties, arguably making them the largest property management company in Philadelphia. Their web site makes the cut by breaking all the fundamental rules of web standards. Missing DOC-TYPE’s, table-based design, deprecated elements, and one of my favorites – spacer.gif. They, like many other sites mentioned, also use a fluid or 100% width layout, which is not necessary for their content.

They do a tremendous job, however, of providing detailed property information for their visitors as well as providing detailed photos of the property. Many property management companies do not take the time to provide this level of information for their visitors. With such a wide array of possible visitors Philadelphia Management needs to bring their web site up to speed with web standards and offer more accessible content for the end user.

Recommendations: CSS Redesign, standards-compliant content management system, Section 508 compliance, information architecture, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engine Marketing.

By the way, if your company happens to be on this list, we’d love to offer you one free hour of consulting. Just give us a buzz.