Fabulous Favicons

When it comes to jumpstarting your branding, it makes sense to take it top down. Since the address bar is one of the first things viewers see, having a cool little favicon next to your URL builds recognition and shows surfers you know what’s up. If people bookmark your site, every time they scroll down their list of bookmarks, or favorites, they see your favicon, or “favorites icon,” once again. This gives you exposure and ingrains your branding, even before people go to your site. Plus, when viewers go overboard in using tabs and space is limited, a favicon will label your page’s tab when all the words get kicked out into oblivion.

Google has the ‘G.’ Craigslist has the peace sign. Gmail has the ‘M’ over a piece of mail. How will you make your mark?

A lot of popular sites will use the first or most prominent letter of their names in their icons, as in the two examples above. Sites like Microsoft, Wikipedia, Facebook, WordPress, and WordTracker all do this. Others, like Yahoo and Bed Bath and Beyond do that too, but mix it up a bit with an exclamation mark after the ‘Y’ and making ‘B’ to the third power.

Others stick to their main logos, like Starbucks. However, these can be hard to read if your logo is complicated, which really defeats the purpose of branding anyway. Perhaps that is why so many companies choose logos representing letters in the first place, like McDonald’s easily-recognizable golden arches. Companies with short names like eBay can also get away with using their regular logos.

Others choose some kind of symbol that marks their personality or movement, whether it is incorporated in the main logo or not. Examples are Craigslist’s peace sign, the White House’s patriotic eagle, Digg’s networking diagram, and Doba’s simple green dot.

Placement, Heat Maps, & CrazyEgg

If you’re of the opinion that the placement of various elements on your pages work themselves out naturally, there is more to the art of layout that needs discovering!

If you were a starving cross-country road tripper pulling off the freeway to get something to eat, most likely you’d choose one of the closest fast-food restaurants right off the exit. For that reason, those lots on by the freeway exit are probably much more expensive than land a few miles into the countryside.

Just as a realtor would notice the value difference for land lots, you should consider the space on your website to be very unequal.

Tools like heat maps visually track mouse movements so you can instantly see where on the page viewers are most prone to click. Crazy Egg has devised some really nifty innovations that track related indicators to help webmasters use their page “real estate” wisely.

Here’s also a great basic little map created by Google that shows general trends of places on pages that the eye goes to first. It’s crucial that you use the prime space with warm colors to specifically and succinctly have your purpose noticed.

Some areas of a site are noticed, and some aren’t. Marketing is all about being noticed. Therefore, it’s essential to take a step back and ask, “What is the purpose of this page?” If you know your purpose, it’s easier to make it a priority.

When dealing with purpose, there are three main steps:

1. Identify.
2. Prioritize.
3. Place.

To use your most valuable space on your website for the most important parts of your cause, consider what exactly you want to have happen. Do you want viewers to buy something? Do you want them to sign up for an auto-responder so you have their contact info? Do you want to draw emotional support for your cause? Or do you want to highlight a few products on your home page to link customers to other areas of your site, etc? Do you want to come across as looking professional?

Then, decide what the most important elements are and organize accordingly!

Sure, if you saw a sign or some kind of promising indication that your favorite restaurant was only a mile down the road, the extra time spent might be worth satisfying your hunger appropriately, but that’s a big ‘might’ in the face of immediate gratification. Web surfers need that same instant gratification, so if you want them to notice it—make it instantly available!

The joys of Gmail

It’s time folks. If you haven’t joined the Gmail bandwagon, you have no excuse for complaining about AOL, MSN, Hotmail, or any other frustrating email program for that matter. I feel your pain. After nine years of loyalty to the same address, I took charge of my email accountability and put an end to emails being lost or delayed or never having enough storage. You too can sign up for a free Gmail account . . . today. Believe me, your stress load may be relieved considerably!

One stop shop

Not only does Gmail offer tons of free storage space (2.8 + GB and counting), you’ll always be able to sort your archived mail quickly (one of the first in the game to let you do this!). Gmail also will facilitate sending/receiving larger files (20 MB) than the competition so you’re not as limited when it comes to updating friends and family with your latest photos.

The chat function is another excellent attribute that allows you to chat (or group chat) with anyone who has a Gmail account. That’s starting to include most of America, minus the people to whom you should send a link to read this blog J Plus, the excellent part about Gmail chats is that they’re archived so you can easily search for them along side your emails. You can even respond to an email via chat if you see your friend is online, to speed delivery while keeping everything recorded in that message’s thread.

If chat doesn’t make you accessible enough, you’ll love Google Talk, which lets people leave voicemail messages for you that you can open up as sound files in Gmail! Seriously, Google created a whole new ball game with Gmail.

Plus, with Google Documents you don’t even have to download files to view them. This is great as a preview option to ensure you don’t put junk on your computer, but it’s also nice if you’re working on a public computer at a library or at work.

And, if you’re looking for a better way to manage and edit your photos, you’ll love the Google-integrated program, Picasa. You can quickly create a slideshow or set incoming photos as your screen saver. Plus, you can make them brighter, in another color tone (like sepia, etc), and play around with a plethora of other free tools.

Once you realize how great Gmail is, and all the cool products connected to it, you’ll find it easy to get lost in Google’s almost endless array of helpful free products.  I even text message GOOGLE (466453) to find addresses and phone numbers for companies when I’m out and about.  And that’s just a glance at the tip of the iceberg . . . If you ever have a problem, most likely Google can both find an answer, and provide a solution.