Used in the right way a Flash Intro or Flash Template can make a great impression.  Finding Flash applications that are fast-loading and don’t stop your SEO is the biggie.

I recently visited the Smarter Systems website of Marc Tracy and saw some great client sites I asked Marc for an interview.

How did you get into web design?  “Website Design was a natural progression for me. Initially in 1991, I was building Network Computers for my clients, then my varied clientele were asking for websites for their businesses and as I have an artistic flair I found it quite simple to create a unique web presence for each.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed?  “Yes indeed, My first website was for Hanwells Car Centre in London. Hanwells sell pre-owned Bentley and Rolls-Royce Motor Cars. They were unhappy with the service they were getting from the company they were with and asked me to construct a comprehensive web site for them.  Initially their business was concentrated on the west of London area, but after 5 Years Hanwells now have an enviable worldwide reputation as the largest retailer of these luxury vehicles They now sell Bentley and Rolls Royce Automobiles to all corners of planet.

“You are doing a lot of Flash Animations, is this a specialization for you?  “Yes, I love the ability of expression that Flash allows me, I am incredibly passionate about my work and I find that small Flash movies enhance the pages I create, giving the end user a unique experience that holds their attention long enough for my clients message to really hit home.”

Where do you get your art for these webpages?  “Mostly the artwork for our pages come directly from the clients themselves. Some I create myself, Some is sourced from Libraries and rarely, some is outsourced. We have to evaluate each project on it’s own merits and always keep an open mind with regard to creating imagery worthy of the clients particular product or service. We never forget that the client has a choice of web designer.”

What will be the next big development in webpage design?  “Who knows! Personally I believe we will have more interactive websites. In my world the client is always King and the end user benefits from the fruit of our labors. I am always excited by the possibility of a challenge.”

Have you ever worked with website templates?  “Yes indeed, We started creating Website Templates some years ago, mainly for Car Showrooms these have received great exposure and form a substantial part of our business portfolio.”

What website template providers have you tried?  “We have found over a period of time that for various reasons, we and our clientele were not satisfied with the majority of templates on offer and always preferred to create our own.”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash?  “We have found that Flash is an amazing tool but feel that it is better utilized in small quantities as with many of our websites.”

What are your sources of inspiration?  “Our Clients… always.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself?  “http://www.jacquielawson.com   This is a remarkable website the quality of the work is truly exceptional http://www.bentleymotors.com  This is a very Classy Website http://www.sanibel-resort.com   This is a well constructed website. I spent my 5th anniversary here and it certainly lives up to the website, or vice-versa.”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered?  “This is a really difficult question for me to answer. I’ve never come across a situation that presented a really overwhelming problem. In tough situations I go back to the client with my team and we work through the specifics until a solution presents itself. Which it always does.”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design?
“Broken Links and Bad Navigation are possibly the worst elements of website design and yet there are so many websites that are not properly maintained, resulting in the end user giving up on the site and moving swiftly along to another website. At SMARTERsystems we pride ourselves on the maintenance of our websites at all times.”

Thankyou Marc for the info and fine examples.

Dreaming the Future,
Arthur Browning

Still photography will always be big, altthough it may gain some digital tweaks like 3D appearance etc.  Movies and holograms have their place but a good two dimensional image is the staple for the foreseeable future.

Flash Technology offers an interesting balance for the world of the still photograph.  A Flash website gives a photographer’s online studio/portfolio a third dimension  and a soundtrack.  This dramatizes the overall presentation, and if done right makes the photos stronger.

Flash templates are a coherent package for the webpage, designed for motion and a soundtrack.  The Flash template below is one example of the many that are available for under $80.

Flash Template # 13418 Template Monster

Next time you want to show off your portfolio, think about a Flash Template website - big effect, small price.

Mr. Image Conscious,
Arthur Browning

The mainstream media and blogosphere both have their fans. Fans on both side recite positive and negative vignettes - researchers proffer their numbers and writers play the action. (I believe my WordPress blog and WordPress theme are MSM).

A recent example of this action pictures the Wall Street Journal’s editorial features editor Joseph Rago’s salute to the work of journalists as opposed to blogger-generated info. Rago was quoted, “The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.”

Blog lovers must admit - some blogs are pretty sad versions of “information”, at best. Considering that the huge majority of blogs are Mom and Pop enterprises, or worse, the meanderings of a single uneditted mind, it would ruffle any professional journalist’s feathers to be compared categorically to the blogosphere. But, don’t forget, a lot of jouirnalists read blogs for a weather report.

Aside from pure information, bloggers necessarily have the edge in personalized “expressions”, niche musings, and “local” blab - which are all big pastimes in our well-fed society - whether you have a WordPress theme or some other blog.

Journalists can denounce many of the blogworld for a lack of objectivity, knowledge, etc. This may be a bit like comparing the stuffiness of the Opera to the scruffiness of the County Fair. Yet, both Mainstream Media and Blogs serve many useful functions. Intellectuals, politicos, zealots of every bent need a place to read and comment - just as do teenagers, idiots, and criminals. (Before you assign me to a dungeonlike pigeon-hole, remember I left out soccer-moms and the mentally ill.)

THIS is all well-monitored and has its ultimate good side, and its darker side. Like society, it’s the mobs that get the attention - whether of the boardroom or of the alley. (WordPress themes are used in both places).

By the way all the major, well-moneyed organizations all have blogs. It’s a MULTI-MEDIA world! Domini, Domini - here’s your Rolex. (Aw shucks - I could have had eternity.)

Dead Head,
Arthur Browning

Yes, some bots can enable or commit several types of fraud, including click fraud against PPC providers such as Google, Yahoo and smaller pay-per-click programs.

Botnets are growing across the Internet at an alarming rate. The only thing matching the increase in criminal use of botnets is the increasing sophistication of their operators.  You can get a bot cleaner put on your computer to protect you from most bots, but you have to run it and update it.

People who are operating these networks of bots are unidentified, and there is a real chance they will expand their work. The folks who hack at this level are very dangerous and so are the people that they work for.  Several operations were traced to Eastern Europe, the former Yugoslavia, China, and even to North Korea.  There are several crime organizations reportedly doing this, some of whom sell Trojans to each other and outsiders.

Botnets are described as a cross between a computer virus and the Borg. Where viruses are designed to act independently, botnets are literally networks of infected computers that can be controlled by a master computer. Infection comes in the form of a malicious code or malware. This code can get onto a system in a number of ways including email attachments, music or video downloads, and through open ports and flakey firewalls.

Most people never know they are running it.  It is said to be amazingly easy to acquire these malicious files. These types of files come in all shapes and sizes. Some burrow into a computer’s registry as a worm, some are invited in as Trojans, and some are attached to ID phishing attempts. Inside a computer, malicious files can perform whatever functions they are programmed to do. Some are even designed to accomplish multiple tasks from recording ID and keystroke information to using infected computers to mimic live visitors in click fraud schemes.

Let me know what botnet cleaner utilities you can find out there.

Congratulations to the University of Florida Football Team on their National Championship win over Ohio State University!

Arthur Browning

Before you start a business blog, ask yourself a few questions.

1) Do you really need a blog? Writing and maintaining a blog takes some work. It needn’t be a lot of work, however. This blog is a WordPress Theme.

2) Who do you want to read your blog? Customers and potential customers need information, a WordPress theme makes informing them an attractive experience.

3) What do you want to achieve with your blog? Increase your visibility, brand yourself, build a community and network, establish your credibility, put a human face on your business, reach out to potential customers?

4) How much time can you spend on your blog? Keeping it brief and to the point can save time.

5) What blogging platform will serve your needs best? WordPress is free and so are the WordPress templates.

6) How will you promote your blog? You have to let people know you have a blog so they can find it and read it.

Sensationally Sublime,
Arthur Browning

How important is SEO? For some businesses it is crucial, but for not as many as you might think. There are two main reasons this is true: 1) Traffic, clicks, links, content and page rank are overrated by SEO contractors 2) The inferences presented by these SEO statistics are often inaccurate and/or immaterial to the goals of the website.

Like most new industries, SEO, a child of the internet revolution, has been over emphasized, it is in a state of constant change, it is too skewed and stilted for real efficacy, and it has been oversold by the industry practitioners, and finally it has been overreported by the media.

SEO has some features reminiscent of the California Gold Rush of 1849. A few guys discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill. A few more guys found out about it. A few guys made some money. A lot of more guys wanted into gold prospecting. Many more businesses sprang up to sell prospecting equipment and supplies. Fake reports, maps, deeds, and contracts became a huge spin-off. Criminals and security industries sprang up.

Overspending and bankruptcies were a major result. What businesses profit most from SEO? Businesses with some or all of these characteristics benefit the most: 1) Sales to national or international markets 2) Selling services or products that are easily stored and shipped so that physical location is not a cost factor versus local competitors 3) Companies who are capitalized well enough to meet short term and long term changes in their industries 4) Companies with internet and SEO expertise that is dominant but flexible, and cost-effective.

What businesses profit least from SEO? Businesses with some or all of these characteristics benefit the least: 1) Sales to local markets 2) Selling services or products with major storage and delivery costs, that have poor shelf life or need constant maintenance 3) Companies who do not have enough capital to follow through in their SEO expenditures when short and long term changes and unexpected problems arise 4) Companies without dominant, flexible and cost-effective internet and SEO expertise.

There are two exceptions to these characteristics that come to mind. Notably, the company that holds a monopoly hardly needs SEO expertise. And a company that deals in a niche area that is so exclusive that no one wants to compete with them.

How is it that clicks, traffic, page rank, links, content are overrated by SEO contractors? First and foremost, they are SELLING their services. Secondly, many clicks and traffic are from NONCUSTOMERS. Many clicks and traffic come from employees, the website owner and webmaster, technicians, SEO experts, the competitors of your business and your technicians and your experts, fraudulent clicks, spammers, bots, AND all the wannabes of all the above categories.

What about content? Content is also oversold. Search Engines are moving to better indicators in their algorithms. The benefits from paying for redundant content generation are nearly over.

What about links and rank? Links are less important everyday and rank is tied to the other oversold SEO factors. The only trustworthy statistics are based on sales and the factors of internet related revenues.

Bottom Line: If your company doesn’t meet the criteria for real benefits from SEO then you are wasting time and money on a no-win situation. You would be better off using a multiple media approach to sales - internet presence mixed with traditional forms of advertising and marketing.

Us R I + U,
Arthur Browning

As you know, I love small business websites. The variety of the designs is amazing. The needs of the owner, the types of products they sell, the inclinations of the designer are all manifest in these varies webpages. Using webpage templates for small business websites is my focus.

I recently looked throught the website of Carlos Dantas and saw some very good designs - so I had to interview Carlos.

How did you get into web design? “I always had the passion for arts and any creative form of expression. In 1979 with some college’s classmates to develop a program for our business school project anyway I became more addicted to the internet in 1985 when I came to the US to study marketing and design for the advertising industry.”

Do you remember the very first site you designed? “Yes I do, my first professional website was made in 1991 for a Brazilian company call ME Editora this site is no longer available on the internet.”

Where do you get your art for these web pages? “Basically from my own ideas and some from what you see on the internet.  I have in mind that what is important for any web designer is to accommodate the customer’s message with the layout. It is very important to understand the business, their marketing niche, if you are designing a personal site you have to understand the person’s ideas, which you as a designer have to express on the webpage.”

What will be your next project? “The new autoseats.com website, it is full auto accessories store the pilot is on you can check it out http://www.autoseats.com/newSite/ it will be lunched on June of 2007.”

Have you ever worked with website templates? “Yes I do work with them sometimes, especially when clients bring the templates to us for integration and changes to accommodate their ideas and business to it. You can be creative but not all the time, so it is important to be open for someone’s ideas and take the good from these ideas and bring it to your work.”

What website template providers have you tried? “I have worked with the Boxedart.com and Templatemonster.com templates.”

What was your experience with them? “I personally do not have much experience, because as I told you previously usually the clients bring the templates, but all the templates we have had to change or work with were well done and easy to change and integrate to the original client’s project.”

What do you think about Flash technology? “I see Flash technology as the jewelry of the internet. Let me explain it. Flash is an important accessory, but not the body, unless the brand name itself is so powerful that you can design the site in flash and it won’t compromises the search index or the download time. I.e. Disney or Coca-Cola, etc…”

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using Flash? “The advantages is the animation and multimedia capabilities that make flash the most powerful instrument to enhance any website, Flash brought to the internet, life, interaction, you can design your site to achieve the 2 must important senses (Audio and Visual) to be successful on any message you have to delivery, but the disadvantages is that if you populate the site with to much flash movies, menus, it can be very trick to be indexed by the search engines and then we come to the dilemma beautiful but not found, or to hard to be indexed. The search engines, besides google, yahoo and others that claim their spiders can index flash movies; if you run a search on those engines you don’t see much of full flash websites on the first 5 pages. Most companies, for example don’t have Disney characters tied to their products.”

What are your sources of inspiration? “I use my entire surroundings, my personal experiences, my imagination and I put my self always open to new ideas and up to understand the client’s business. I also have in mind that You ‘Can’t Please All of the People All of the Time’ it is impossible then you have to express the client’s personality and their point of view.”

What are your favorite website designs that you did NOT design yourself? “http://www.netinho.com.br – click on Entrar”

What was the toughest project or customer situation you’ve encountered? “http://www.Masterpiecefactory.com this website is in constant development and the project is huge involving most of all internet technologies and the client is very creative and demanding, constant alterations and updates to the site which makes this project the toughest, maybe the correct word is the most challenging, of all times.”

What are your interests and dislikes in webpage design?
“Every aspect of the webpage design interests me. The fact that you can create anything amazes me and the constant technology development makes you never loose the urge to learn and discovery new frontiers. I have no dislikes, when you love what you do there is no dislikes, maybe to let it go, because each project is like your child and is very hard sometimes to let our babies go…LOL.”

Thankyou Carlos for the benefits of your experience and your viewpoints.

Mr. Special,
Arthur Browning

If you write articles for any of the ezines and syndicators of original content you can increase traffic to your website. You also have text links from your articles to your wesite for the search engines to read, possibly move you up in the SERPs.

Internet marketing is a big industry nowadays because of the way the search engines work. As search engines change their methods so internet marketing adapts. Whether you use a Flash Template or a WordPress Theme, writing articles with links to your webpages will help you out.

One very good way to establish some traffic is to write several articles is a series, with parts or chapters, 1,2,3 etc. You can put part 1 on the ezine, then publish the later parts, 2 and 3 on your blog or website. Any interested reader will follow the link and read your WordPress theme blog or Flash Template webpage.

You of course sacrifice the links that you would have had from parts 2 and 3 if you had published all the parts on the
magazine, but you still have one or two links and some new readership traffic. Some people still think that reciprocal link building is the best way to improve your site’s link popularity, but this isn’t true. The number of inbound links are the big factor.

Articles provide inbound links. Your best approach to increase traffic and improve internet marketing for your webpage, whether Flash Template or WordPress Theme, include these:

1. Write articles that solve a problem for the reader, like a tutorial.

2. Write new topics in the industry that people will be searching for.

3. Write the article in two or three and save the key instructions for parts two and three.

4. Create your text link in the ezine to go to the completing segments of your article.

5. Make sure the first part of your article is interesting.

6. Submit the first part of your article to free distribution lists.

Break the Petroleum Addiction,
Arthur Browning

Everybody has a social life, or needs one.  Groups of all kinds need to post meetings, news, events, calendar changes, dues notifications, votes, financial information, new projects - just to name a few of the messages that could be made more convenient and less expensive than mail.  That’s where a WordPress Theme comes in.

You just start a FREE account at wordpress, then put on a wordpress template and your communication improves. By the way, a WordPress Theme on a WordPress account is not only a less expensive way to communicate - it takes much less time than sending emails or making phone calls and leaving messages on voicemail.

Your association, club or hobby group can have a classy way to communicate - and it does a lot for esprit de corps, mon ami. Below is just one of the many low-cost WordPress Themes out there for your newsletter or bulletin  board.

WordPress Theme #11567 from TemplateMonster.com

You don’t have to struggle to communicate with this kind of internet webpage - and WordPress makes it possible.  Shout out to your crew anytime, 24/7.  And it’s very easy to add text and pictures - you can even plug one another’s businesses with ads in the columns.  Your club can even raise money by selling ad space on your Wordpress Theme webpage.

A Hooligan Free Clubspace,
Arthur Browning

A strong integration of social networking, blogs, and search will be important to success in ecommerce for the near future. Bloggers reportedly drive qualified traffic, comparable to major news sites. The relationship between social networks, search engines, and blogs confirms what we already know about word-of-mouth and telephone directories in the real world, but it can be much more efficient on the net.

Ebay.com has already devised, and systematically refined, a word-of-mouth system over the last 10 years. If you aren’t familiar with this system you should see how feedback is left by any member, buyer or seller, for every transaction. Comments are encouraged and are easily read by any member about themselves or other members.

Ebay.com also has some interesting numbers prominently displayed next to each member’s name. These numbers show: 1) how many transactions a member has made totally and 2) the percent of those transactions that were rated as satisfactory by the cotransactor. These numbers say a great deal to Ebay.com members.

From these two numbers alone you can see how much business a member has transacted and how happy are their customers. Many Ebay members won’t transact with members holding less than a 97%. Some Ebay members won’t transact with other members unless they hold over 100 transactions and have a 99 -100% rating.

I can’t remember seeing any members, recently, that have less than a 95% rating. And there is a somewhat effective system for determining what members are overly critical in their judgments. Ebay also provides a dispute resolution process. And there are discussion forums available as well.

Similar systems will find their way to all internet transactors because they work. They are not foolproof, but I have seen Ebay’s system work very well at weeding out the manipulators and con artists, and at the same time promote the honest and helpful members.

A legitimate, comprehensive, and well administered Web Directory is LONG overdue. The search engines have been able to stay just ahead of a truly legitimate directory by some refinements, but they have been so profit-motivated and controlling in their changes and methods that their days as major sources of the “information” pie graph are numbered.

No Joke,
Arthur Browning