7 Signs your Website Calls for A Revamp

We all know that Internet changes at lightning speed (could be faster) and that means, techniques and technologies we used 3 years ago are obsolete! You should be on your feet and keep up with these changes constantly. Luckily, there are some clear warning signs that tell you that your site needs an update. Here are the ‘red flags’ that will let you know.

1 – Your Site Looks Like a Coding Freak

How does this happen? You hired a designer to create the site, and then when you needed an overhaul, you hired another to fix it. And then another to fix it. Now, you’ve got ten years of bad code piled on top of bad code and your site’s design is a mess. A better idea is to make a fresh start.

2 – A Fancy Flash Intro Dazzles Your Visitors

Flash was so cool about ten years ago. Now, it’s ‘so ten years ago.’ I guarantee you that nobody’s impressed anymore when you’ve got a flash intro welcoming them to your site. People have no time for this clutter; your visitors want to access the information that they are looking for as fast as possible.

In fact, a flash intro may even keep them from viewing your site. On an older browser, it takes forever for the intro to load. While they’re waiting, they’re going to be clicking the ‘back’ button or heading somewhere else.

3 – You’re Not Being Social

We now live in the world of Web 2.0, and it’s all about communicating and networking. Your site isn’t a billboard or print advertisement; it should be an active part of a community. This means that you need to get out in the social networking sites and create some community.

The more you let your users get involved in your site, the more they’ll stick around. You can install Facebook widgets, ‘Tweet This’ buttons, and even user profile functions for your customers. You should at least have a comments section and be running a fan page on Facebook. These social networking sites are some of the most popular places on the web, so you should be there mixing it up!

4 – The Site Is Covered With Tables

Several years ago, tables were the main design used for websites. Nowadays, it’s totally a thing of the past. Tables are hard to read, and they’re just about impossible for search engines to find. In fact, they’re technically made with invalid HTML code. So, they’ve got to go!

5 – You Still Need To Go Mobile

The entire internet is now going mobile and if you’re site’s not set up for it, you’ll lose customers left and right. If your site isn’t mobile-compatible, it will take forever to load on their mobile devices and it will look like garbage.

Techie experts predict that mobile is the thing of the future, and the number of sales of smartphones is supporting this prediction. Get a mobile version of your site going so you don’t get left behind.

6 – You’re Hiring A Programmer For Every Little Change

These days, more and more companies are using a CMS, or content management system. This is an interface that allows anyone in your staff to make changes when needed. Things happen quickly in the world of the internet, so you’ve got to be able to make these necessary changes without having to hire a web designer again.

7 – No Inspiring Towards Action

Your site needs to have a simple, clear and effective call to action to get them moving. It doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to get them to sign up for a newsletter, donate to a non-profit organization or hit the ‘Buy Now’ button.

Everything needs a strong call to action to get them moving. For example, don’t make them sign up for a membership to buy your product; let them buy as a guest and you’ll remove one more barrier from them taking action.

(Via hongkiat.com.)

(Via Tybee Guy.)

Google URL Shortener Launches Website

Google URL Shortener, aptly named Goo.gl, has been available for use for almost a year, and it finally has its own website. In the past, you could only use it through the Google Toolbar, or through specific Google products such as Feedburner, News, Blogger and Picasa. Now you can get all your Google URL shortening needs done on their recently launched webpage.

Google went about things in a somewhat back-to-front fashion, launching the service itself before the website. Now, with the new website, you can get access to statistics on all URLs you’ve shortened using Goo.gl, provided you’re logged into your account. These stats include traffic, referrers and visitor profiles.

As far as features are concerned, that’s pretty much all you’re going to get. Google have chosen to focus instead on stability, security and speed. According to their blog, their priorities are uptime and spam detection. They’ve also managed to double the speed of the service since its launch, and want to keep it that way.

There are a few unofficial browser add-ons already available to use with Goo.gl, like Chrome’s goo.gl URL Shortener and Firefox’s goo.gl lite, and Google will be releasing the Goo.gl API in the future, making it easy to incorporate their URL shortener in other third party applications.

Via Lifehacker

(Via MakeUseOf.com.)

Web Users Now Spend More Time on Facebook Than Google

We already know that Facebook is the web’s biggest time sink. If you look at the average amount of time (according to Nielsen) users spend on the social network, Facebook is a clear winner over sites such as Google or Yahoo.

Now, according to comScore, Facebook is also first when it comes to the total amount of time users are spending on the site. In August, U.S. web users spent 41.1 million minutes on Facebook, which was about 9.9% of their entire web-surfing time in that month. In this same period, people spent 39.8 million minutes on all of Google’s sites, and those include another huge online timesink – YouTube.

comScore puts Yahoo in third place, with U.S. web users spending 37.7 million minutes on its sites, which was about 9.1% of their web surfing time in August.

The numbers are even more impressive when you consider that Facebook had just overtaken Yahoo in July, and in August last year U.S. web surfers had spent less than 5% of their online time on the social networking service.

Still, it hardly comes as a surprise: Facebook has been growing steadily in the last couple of years, and in July it announced it had over 500 million active users.

If Facebook keeps growing, a year from now Google may find itself far behind Facebook when it comes to web users’ minutes. But does Facebook have room for growth? Mark Zuckerberg predicts the site’s userbase might even reach one billion. The number doesn’t sound too far-fetched, given that Facebook still has room for international growth — for example in China and Russia.

Of course, comScore only counts users from the U.S., so the global picture is still blurry. But the facts show that Facebook users spend a huge amount of time on the site, and it’s a worrying stat for Google. Google’s many online properties (Gmail, Search and YouTube, to name a few) have vast influence and reach. But right now, without a large social networking property (Orkut doesn’t count as serious competition to Facebook anymore), Google will have a hard time snatching users’ time from Facebook’s hands.

(Via Mashable!.)