Why Your Website Should Be Disability Accessible
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Have you ever thought about creating your site in the interest of those with disabilities and how they would view its content? Probably not.
To be honest with you, I never thought about the issue myself until recently. A friend of mine who works with those with disabilities to access everyday services that the average person takes advantage of, informed me about a service he provides which involves a complete website evaluation to determine how to make your website more accessible to those with disabilities. You could be missing out on a lot of money from customers who ordinarily would just pass by your product or service because they can’t read it due to a specific disability they may have.
Currently, 90% of websites on the Internet are inaccessible to those with a disability. There are 54 million people in the United States with spending power of more than $1 trillion — and they all have disabilities. Imagine the lost revenue your business is missing out by not catering to their needs.
Everyday, thousands of people probably pass your site because it’s not accessible to them. One large hotel chain recently made some small adjustments on their site and noticed a 110% jump in traffic and sales because of it. Those with disabilities are just as loyal to brand names and popular services as the next person, but without the proper on-screen tweaks and improvements, they won’t even know you and your company exist.
There’s an easy solution to fix this problem, which effects millions of people who would normally want to purchase the same products and services as you, but cannot.
Continue reading Why Your Website Should Be Disability Accessible…
Sunday Chatter - 10/5
Easy Favicon Generator
A favicon is the little image you see up near the address bar in your Internet browser. As you can see on this blog, there’s a little square of a man flashing cash. Having one of these for your site sets you apart from the rest and gives it a unique look, especially if a visitor saves it to their bookmarks folder — which will easily be identifiable to them. Take any image and have it converted to “.ico” format automatically and then upload it to your server.
Once you’ve uploaded it, add this one line of code between your <head></head> tags.
<LINK REL=”SHORTCUT ICON” HREF=”http://www.yourdomain.com/name_of_icon.ico”>
5 Free Internet Marketing eBooks
If you’re just getting started in the field of Internet marketing and don’t have any cash to do it, you’ll appreciate these 5 free eBooks. The material contains The New Rules of Viral Marketing, Google Adwords & Yahoo PPC Tips, The Social Web Analytics eBook, Introduction to Good Usability, Increasing the Response to Your Email Marketing Program.
Has Your WordPress Blog Been Hacked?
If you’re running WordPress, there are several steps you should take to ensure that your site is safe and remains hacker proof. Simple things like updating to the newest version of WordPress and making sure your plugins are up to date can prevent your blog from being taken over by malicious parties. Those aren’t the only things you can do though. Take a look at how to secure your blog and avoid being hacked.
50 Simple Steps to Improving Your Website
HostGator runs a blog where they touch on everything website and hosting related. There’s some great material on there, including most recently, a list of 50 things you can do to improve your website. I’ve done about 95% of these, but you can always learn something new.
Stomping the Search Engines 2
A few weeks ago I took advantage of the free offer from StomperNet and picked up Stomping the Search Engines 2 (STSE2). It’s put out by SEO extraordinaires Brad Fallon and Andy Jenkins who have built themselves multimillion dollar online businesses by ranking their sites in the top of search engine results.
I was a little skeptical at first, but hey, who can pass up free? The material finally arrived in the mail (yes, it’s a physical product) on Monday and I’ve been hooked on it ever since. It’s a two disc DVD series, featuring the first ‘Stomping the Search Engines’ which came out in 2004. The first DVD is a little outdated as far as the Internet goes, but it’s still very valuable in some respects.
Moving on to the latest version (STSE2), I’m overly impressed with just the first few modules I’ve listened to. Brad and Andy really hit home with this stuff and give some amazing tips and insight on how to boost your ranking. They go into the specifics of what a search engine actually looks for while visiting your site and how you can improve their visit. While the Google algorithm isn’t exactly known to anybody, StomperNet has a pretty good sense of how it works and they take advantage of that knowledge to help out their fellow ’stompers’.
Also included with STSE2 is a 45-page glossy magazine called “The Net Effect”, which accompanies the modules and enforces the material you’ve just learned. It’s filled with tips and tricks from experts at StomperNet whose only goal is to make you succeed with your business. The first edition of this magazine was free and I’m almost done reading it. After the free copy, you’ll be charged $30 a month if you wish to continue receiving The Net Effect. I haven’t decided if I’ll continue that subscription, but I’m assuming I’ll at least wait for the second issue before I make up my mind.
Overall, I don’t think I’ve ever listened to or read better Internet marketing material solely based on search engine rankings and building your business. I’d also like to thank a very smart lady, Lynn Terry, for letting me know about StomperNet in the first place. She’s very trustworthy and only recommends the best material to her readers.
MySpace Advertising Network — One Week Later
Last week I posted a full review of the new MySpace advertising network. After using it for about a week and really getting a feel for it, I’ve come across some cons.
Firstly, getting an ad approved takes days it seems. At the beginning (I signed up on the first day), my ad was approved in a couple of hours. However, because of the surge of traffic that MySpace is now getting from advertisers, it’s slowed down the entire process. I placed a new ad on Monday and only got it approved earlier today — almost three days later.
From the ads I have got approved, they don’t seem to be converting as well as they did at the beginning. Again, coming back to the traffic surge issue — too many advertisers placing too many ads at once makes the consumer feel overwhelmed with advertising all over the place.
There also needs to be more category options to sort and target your ad. If I’m running an ad based on getting out of credit card debt, there is no option to select “Debt” as someone’s favourite past time shown in their profile. And I doubt anyone would put they enjoy being in debt anyway. It would be great if there was a keyword tool that you could also use in conjunction with the categories, but for now you’ll have to make do with what MySpace offers.
By talking to a few other Internet marketers, I feel lucky by getting my ad approved in only 3 days. Some are still waiting over 5 days to get an ad stamped with the seal of approval.
I’m sure these little bumps will get smoothed out as the network progresses, but for now, I think I’ll stick to Facebook Ads and Google AdWords.
How to Automate Twitter with TweetLater
If you want to cash in on new Twitter followers, send them an automatic message once they start following you. You can offer them a free eBook, pass on a link to your site or promote whatever else you wish. Currently (and by default), Twitter doesn’t offer any sort of automatic reply once someone starts following you.
I discovered there was a way to do this though when I started following @chrisgarrett (co-author of the ProBlogger book
The service used to do such a thing is called TweetLater and it’s completely free. Here’s a look at how you can set this up.
As you can see, you can set up the option to automatically send a direct message to new followers and you can specify what you want to say. This service directly links to your Twitter account
Another neat option that’s available to you is the ability to send out a future “tweet” to all of your followers on a specific date and set time. You could even wish everyone a Merry Christmas on Dec. 25th if you wanted to. 
If you’re not already doing so, follow me on Twitter.
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UPDATE: Oct. 4, 2008
Unfortunately, I just received this e-mail regarding TweetLater.
Unfortunately I need to ask you to update your TweetLater account settings.
Twitter used to have a rule that said, “You can send me a DM if I follow you, even if you don’t follow me.”
They have now changed that rule to: “You can only send me a DM if I follow you AND if you follow me.”
The nett effect is that you now cannot send auto-welcome DMs with TweetLater if you don’t also auto-follow new followers.
As an interim measure, I have unselected the auto-welcome message option in your automation settings, so that we don’t keep hammering Twitter with requests that they don’t allow.
The options available now are: 1) auto-follow new followers and send them DMs, or 2) don’t auto-follow and send a public tweet as an auto-welcome message (not recommended if you attract many new followers because it kinda spams your own public updates).
Please log in to your TweetLater account (http://www.tweetlater.com) and change your Twitter account automation settings to your desired option.
I apologize for the inconvenience, but this is something imposed on all of us by Twitter.
Best regards,
Dewald Pretorius
Owner of TweetLater.com
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