Macronimous Web Blog

A whole new browser. (?) Can’t agree to that fully, since it is based on Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox components.
I personally like the products from Google, and I believe Chrome would also make some difference in the Browser market, though it is available only in XP and Vista. A Linux version should make this difference easily. Few good things are  a Quicker installation, quick loading of pages (do they show them from their cache?), and recently visited pages shown as thumbnails.

You get a bigger screen for websites, unlike the other browsers there is no bottom information bar, the page loading information just comes as an Ajax(?) window, and vanishes after the page gets loads.

Our website menu is not positioned properly; Our CSS team is working on it to fix that soon. I used Chrome for writing this blog, and found it is working very fine. I hope Wordpress team do not have to work hard for these browsers. I noticed on issued in Wordpress editor issue - The format had gone completely, when I saved and opened this blog entry. This has to be fixed in the WYSIWYG plugin in Wordpress.

I am keen to check some of the DHTML sites, probably the scripts from Dynamicdrive.com, as their scripts are widely used for menus and browser side dynamics.

There is no favicon appearing in the address and title tab, no Google chrome Logo and title anywhere. The location of the Tab looks nice, most of the browsers do use this project for Product title. This is a smart move.
No Google toolbar for Chrome yet, hope it is in development, they should launch it any time now. Chrome does import your favourites etc from IE quickly.

Developers and designers have to spend more time for this browser too, as I do not think Chrome is going to be just another Browser, since it has better focus on web applications. Google office documents should perform well with Chrome, But I didn’t notice big difference when I opened Spreadsheets in Chrome. I expected the suggest for work well inside the columns, seems like such features are yet to come.
Overall the Browser is impressive, and I hope it will affect the market Share of IE and Firefox to an extent, especially the later one.

Do you own a successful internet business? Built a great website and promoting it online? Is website your business gateway? So you value your website very much and  it’s time for knowing the attacks your website - your brain child, may face. There are both and good bad eyes looking at your website.
Apart from Physical and application level attacks websites may also face certain threats in few of the following ways.

1. Distributed denial of service (DDoS)
2. Website Defacement’ attacks
3. Spreading false information
4. Google bombing
5. Pagerank attack
6. Malware-based attacks

These kind of attacks are called reputation attacks, and primarily they aim to collapse your online business reputation. I recommend reading a detailed article at Reputation Attacks: A Little Known Internet Threat, as the article calls, these threats are little known, But which you must know your enemies to do better actions.

When you plan for your site promotion, there are few things you should keep in mind before working out a cost or make a budget.

I will make that as few questions to ask yourself or your marketing team.

How important SEO is to your website?
Do you want to make your website as a primary business gateway?
Do you know SEO is a continuous activity as your conventional marketing methods?
Do you know your competitor online?
Have you determined your keywords and targeted visitors?

If you say Yes, you probably know the importance of SEO and now you want to know how the process is going to be priced, and what factors determine your budget.

1. Your present site and its status.
If yours is a simple brand new site or a site which is not visible to any search engine - Your site will need Search engine readiness review and preparation. Commonly called as SEO setup. Your SEO consultant will start from this, and will make your site ready for Search Engine spiders, while they visit the site.

2. Your Industry/Market:

There is a difference between promoting a site which is selling houses and selling antique rocks. You know which segment would be more competitive and costs more to do SEO.

3. Link building efforts:

This is somewhat related to the previous factor, and based on the keyword and its competition determines the volume of link building efforts to be made. Link building will be a continuous activity, and mostly done on fixed monthly costs.

Finally, you should know SEO is not a onetime task, and can not be done for a one time fixed cost as your answer was Yes to the questions asked above.

As a Web Marketing professional, I was attracted by Two books during last week. One is on Marketing - this is for every business in the market and one is for the Internet marketing. Both are from the same author(s). The first book is The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing and the second one is The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding. The Amazon links are in the bottom, and if you are in (internet) marketing professional, I am sure they are great books which you must read and own. This blog entry is just to introduce you those laws, and not a book review. The laws will ignite some thoughts and

I have just given those laws, But in the book they are dealt in detail.

22 Immutable Laws of Marketing:

  1. It is better to be first than it is to be better.
  2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
  3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
  4. Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.
  5. The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.
  6. Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.
  7. The strategy to use depends on which rung you occupy on the ladder.
  8. In the long run, every market becomes a two horse race.
  9. If you are shooting for second place, your strategy is determined by the leader.
10. Over time, a category will divide and become two or more categories.
11. Marketing effects take place over an extended period of time.
12. There is an irresistible pressure to extend the equity of the brand.
13. You have to give up something to get something.
14. For every attribute, there is an opposite, effective attribute.
15. When you admit a negative, the prospect will give you a positive.
16. In each situation, only one move will produce substantial results.
17. Unless you write your competitor’s plans, you can’t predict the future.
18. Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure.
19. Failure is to be expected and accepted.
20. The situation is often the opposite of the way it appears in the press.
21. Successful programs are not built on fads, they’re built on trends.
22. Without adequate funding, an idea won’t get off the ground.

 The 11 Immutable Laws of Internet Branding

1. The Internet can be a business or a medium for your brand, but not both.
2. Interactivity is the single most important ingredient of any Internet site.
3. The kiss of death for an Internet brand is a common name.
4. Being second in a category is tantamount to being nowhere.
5. You have to be fast. You have to be first. You have to be focused.
6. Everyone is talking about convergence while just the opposite is happening.
7. Build a brand that will dominate a category over an extended period of time.
8. Find a proper name (instead of a common one) for your Website.
9. Take your brand into the global marketplace.
10. Avoid the biggest mistake in Internet branding: the belief that you can do everything.
11. Take advantage of the transformations that will occur in all aspects of life, thanks to the power of the Internet.

In a survey, by the Information Architecture Institute, 47.6% of people says “My CMS is not flexible enough to accommodate my design”, as a key issue they face with many Opensource CMSs available in the market. This made me to think about the truth behind this. What prevents them from making a great design for their CMS driven site? Is it the CMS they’ve chosen or they customization skills they lack?

When we offer consulting for Opensource CMS selection, it is not an easy job always. Building websites with the CMS our clients like and to make it work with our own custom design might become a nightmare if we aren’t considering and planning the UI design in advance.

We have customers who supply design for their web sites (as Photoshop source files - if they know Photoshop) since they have good sense of designing and they know how their site should look like. We can happily accept it and build HTML/XHTML and CSS based Static pages without any issues or provide a Custom written CMS easily. The real challenge starts when they want to make their site CMS enabled with an Opensource CMS framework such as Joomla, Wordpress or Drupal.

Most of the opensource CMS applications strictly adopt some design standards, and they give clear instructions for UI designing. Your design will not work well with the CMS, if it does not obey their design rules. The primary reason for these strict rules is to help with the CMS applications for design-content separation and for easy user interface maintenance. You can easily change the design without changing the programming sections and vice versa. But can you easily fit your custom design which is created as your mind wishes to an Opensource CMS application? Most of the good CMS applications does not allow you to create an unique site with your own custom design, custom graphics and custom XHTML.

Simply configuring a Opensource CMS application along with a template design (meant for that CMS application) may ease your job, But it will not give your client an user interface, which is unique for them. It will look like one another site made with that particular CMS. I have seen several Ecommerce sites with similar structures; I can easily identify them as “made with osCommerce without added efforts”.

So, how do we deal with this situation?

Take the case of Wordpress. If you start designing a site without keeping Wordpress in mind, and wanted to enable Wordpress CMS at later stage, I am sure you need much experience in XHTML coding  you may have to give up Wordpress in order to keep your look and feel remain unchanged.

Few months earlier, we did an Ecommerce web site design with Cubecart; with the help of Programmers and good HTML scripter, we were able to make the user interface which is very unique and no template look. Yes, good PHP and HTML programmers will have to give hands to change the way the application works and to fit your custom design with the CMS. If you need a decent design which does not offer you a standard template based site look, you need an experienced team’s support to make it possible.

Cost is one key factor why people like to use opensource applications and in most of the cases we almost get a free solution. Installing Drupal or Joomla with a pre-existing design, will only help you to offer a cheaper solution, But to give a unique look and feel to your site, you must be ready to invest in application customization too. Your CMS theme or template will need your programmer’s support to provide coherent CMS driven website, which is exclusive for the customer.

Opensource CMS applications are excellent tools for professional web solutions. No objections!. Opensource CMS applications will not cut the cost of custom development completely and making a design which has an exclusive and aesthetic look to your customer will need the time/cost of your developers and designers.  Don’t leave the CMS application to decide your site user interface by cutting the customization efforts.