Ryan Doom

EMP Visual Solutions

Ryan Doom — Mon, 24 May 2010 11:37:00 GMT

I wanted to showcase a cool Michigan company that we have been working with. They specalize in:

Which are all just names for large LED signs. These signs are assembled in Farmington Hills Michigan and Electro-Matic serves companies through out the nation. Their signs are often used outdoors in front of banks, churches, retail stores. Since they are in the metro-Detroit area their displays are also used indoors at many manufacturers and automotive companies.

Popular Free Font Websites

Ryan and Kevin — Sun, 16 May 2010 09:17:00 GMT

Fontsquirrel.com
Fontspace.com
Dafont.com
Urbanfonts.com
Acidfonts.com
Fontstock.net

Starting a software product company

Ryan Doom — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:19:00 GMT

We recently launched a DotNetNuke module development company. These are components to plug into existing websites to add functionality like a DNN store module that adds a shopping cart and e-commerce.

Don't forget about the empty screen

Ryan Doom — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 22:50:00 GMT

When creating web applications designers usually consider what the screen will look like when it is full of data, not empty. The first impression a user has with your application should not be a blank screen.

My First week with a Macbook

Ryan Doom — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:43:00 GMT

Picked up a Macbook on Craigslist to start to get in touch with this hipster coffee shop, "I use a Mac I'm so cool" lifestyle. Well, and to rock out some Ruby on Rails development and have a good excuse to do so.

I have outlined 3 days of things I have loved and hated about the Macbook. I did this entire post, and photo editing on it, so I'm coming along.

Making Custom themes for Gmail

Ryan Doom — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:30:00 GMT

I wonder if Gmail will be allowing us to make custom themes for their web based email client? This week they launched a feature under the settings area to change the look and feel of your Gmail...

Presenting at ASTD

Ryan Doom — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 16:21:00 GMT

I presented at GreenStone Farm Credit Services today from 5:30 to 7:30 about Social Media.

How to Sell Agile Software Development

Ryan Doom — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:32:00 GMT

I have found that Selling Agile Development is easier than I would have initially expected it to be. The selling process is usually so complex. In the more complex cases it starts with a Request for Proposal. You will then wade through dozens of pages that may specify technologies, and how much load they are expecting, what type of hardware it will be on and usually only a ...

Roles a web company must play

Ryan Doom — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:27:00 GMT

What skills do you need to create an all-star website? It’s something I think about often, and I have had a ton of people come to us recently who have been burned. Burned because they had their friend who ‘did websites’ or a design / creative company start their projects and after in one case 10’s of thousands of dollars they had nothing to show for it. What skills do you need to look for to create a significant web project. I’m not talking...

Better services, not more services

Ryan Doom — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:49:00 GMT

As a business owner I am always paying attention to how other companies operate and market their businesses. Recently I have noticed that some companies tend to just offer more services to try to get more business. Why don’t companies just stick to ...

Top 5 3rd party DotNetNuke modules

Ryan Doom — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 21:11:00 GMT

After delivering over 100 DotNetNuke sites we have used dozens of 3rd party modules and have custom programmed even more. I was trying to assess what 5 3rd party modules would be the top on my list for delivering a solid website with DNN. In no particular order...

Liquid Web - Hosting and customer service

Ryan Doom — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 07:40:00 GMT

Web Ascender has always outsources our website hosting. They are essentially our machines, we have 100% access to them but our hosting company makes sure they are always up, always have internet connectivity and are in charge of the hardware if it ever bombs out. You would think website hosting and server hosting would be easy, but it is not, I assure you it is not. We started off...

Lansing Day of .NET - LDODN - DODN

Ryan Doom — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:16:00 GMT

On Saturday June 21st the Greater Lansing User Group for Microsoft .NET (GLUGnet) organized its first major educational conference. GLUGnet was...

Why use Twitter?

Ryan Doom — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 01:00:00 GMT

I have only been on Twitter for about 6 months and have only updated my profile a handful of times but I think I finally ‘get it.’ I understand why...

A few usability items you may consider with your cart

Ryan Doom — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:22:00 GMT

Outlined are some things you might now have considered when building your last e-commerce system.

Top Website Usability Tips

Ryan Doom — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 02:57:00 GMT

Usability is a measurement on how easy a website or user interface is to use. This term is also used to refer to how to improve the overall ease-of-use when designing an interface.
The core components of usability are:

Learnability: Can users accomplish basic tasks on their very first visit? Is it intuitive?
Efficiency: Once the user has learned the system can they do the tasks quickly?
Memorability: How easy is the system to use after not using it for a period of time?
Errors: How many issues did the user run into, how severe were they, and how easily can they recover from them?
Satisfaction: Is it fun and easy to use?
Utility: Does it do what the user needs?

General Website Tips

Use a descriptive tagline of what your website does

Have you ever been frustrated by a website after searching high and low and still cannot find out what they do? Consider starting a practice of having a one line descriptive slogan of what the business does on the homepage or every page. Not some lame marketing jargon but plain easy to understand English of what the site is for; if your parents could read it and get it you should be all set.

Using the Window <TITLE>

The number one factor to how your page is indexed in search engines is the description used in the pages title. Start getting away from the old “Company Name > About” style and move to “KEYWORD PHRASES RELEVANT TO THIS PAGE | Company Name” and excluded the company name if you feel it is not necessary.

Search Box Tips

You do not need to add the text “Search” in front of a textbox if there is a button that reads “Search” to the right that the user is supposed to click on. People have caught on, this is now intuitive behavior and it’s ok to remove that redundancy.
General rule of thumb, make your search box 27 characters wide.
Definitely include search on your site if it has over 100 pages

Having a Home link on the homepage

If you are on the homepage you don’t need to have the Home button in the navigation. If you have a consistent navigation on all pages that includes the Home page that at least make sure that the navigation element is highlighted differently when they are on that page.

Name and Logo

Include the name of your site and the logo on every page; link the logo to the homepage.

Links go to new pages, Buttons perform actions

As a general rule of thumb text links should take you to a new page when you click on them and buttons should submit some type of information or take you to the next step in a process.

Using PDF’s on your website

As a general rule of thumb you should try to avoid using PDF’s on your website when possible. They break the natural flow of website browsing. Often users will click on a link and not know it was a PDF link, it then opens up and they have to wait for it to download and for acrobat to start running within the browser and then often times they close it immediately and end up closing their entire web browser. Plus a PDF is just a mass of content that is very difficult to navigate through. Use PDFs if you are distributing large documents that the user needs to print, or documents that must be formatted in a very specific way.

Avoiding Banner Blindness

Studies show that users now understand what banners and advertisements look like on websites and often look right past them. This means it is very important to ensure your content and images do not look like banners. Avoid creating images the size that banners usually are, avoid blinking or animated images, and definitely avoid using traditional pop-ups when at all possible. Text only ads are now proving to be the most successful banner ads because users are still reading them.

Don’t open new browser windows

When you think about building websites you must always be thinking what is intuitive and what is consistent. You don’t want to break many of the normal browsing norms because you want users to feel at home on your site and have little to learn. If you program your site to start opening windows up in a new browsers as users clicks you open up a world of issues. The first and most important is that the back button does not work on the new window; and this button is extremely popular and critical when navigating the web. The second is that different web browsers handle new windows differently. In one it may be a new window or perhaps a new tab, and if it’s a new tab and then moves the user to that page they have to scan their tabs to get back to where they were. Remember, the user always has the option to make the decision themselves if they want the link to open up in a new window by right clicking or CTRL clicking on a link on your site.

Restrictive Form Behavior

Rethink your website forms. Remember that each field that the user has to fill out is some burden to them, so if you don’t need or use the salutation don’t ask for it, and ask yourself that question for each form field. When asking for phone numbers don’t split it into three separate boxes when one will do. Don’t require the user to type the phone number in a specific format or their credit card in a specific format if it doesn’t really matter. Is that field REALLY required or do you just feel it would be nice to have? Think about your forms a bit more, make them easier for your users, not just easier for you.

Splash Screens and all Flash Sites

Don’t do it, they give the impression that the website is more concerned with its own image then that of the users actual needs and their time.

Think about your Typography

You can achieve more with choosing the right fonts, sizes, colors and placement then you can achieve with large graphics and bloated designs.

Website Supplements

Email Newsletters

Your viewer is engaged in your information while they are on your website, but once they are done you have lost that connection. They might not ever come back. Enticing users to sign up for an email newsletter can help you maintain...

Getting Things Done Email Technique

Ryan Doom — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 23:57:00 GMT

I have revamped my email strategy this weekend because it was getting a bit overwhelming and my previous strategies have been failing miserably. When 50 to 100 valid emails come in every day how do you handle that? My previous technique was to read it once or twice a day, reply to what I could then mark anything I had to spend some time on I would mark them as Unread and flag them.

As I type this out I realize once again how ridiculous this ‘system’ was.

So… the new goal is to keep the inbox completely empty. I am taking some of the techniques from Getting Things Done (GTD) to create Ryan’s own Getting Things Done email technique. To start you must make 5 directories...

ASP .NET MVC vs Monorail Castle Project

Ryan Doom — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:52:00 GMT

Microsoft is releasing their own ASP .NET MVC platform that will create a development environment similar to Ruby on Rails and the ASP .NET Castle Project Monorail.

I have tried to start a list of some thoughts I have comparing the two at this point, but I feel Microsoft’s ASP.NET MVC will be a better choice over the Castle Projects Monorail.

How can Business Networking improve your business?

Ryan Doom — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 03:10:00 GMT

Many entrepreneurs and salesmen know that networking with other people is an important factor in creating a successful business. However, I fear that many people overlook this simple and effective way for growing your business, increasing your income and meeting great people. I attribute much of Web Ascender’s success to the "soft skills" of building relationships and working towards lasting friendships with everyone we meet...

GoDaddy has great customer service

Ryan Doom — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:37:00 GMT

How awesome is Go Daddy? Well let me tell you, that their prices for domain names are virtually unbeatable, their prices for secure certificates untouchable, and their customer service is ...

Where does the users eye go on a webpage?

Ryan Doom — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 14:57:00 GMT

Eye tracking studies involve using cameras and pattern recognition to track where the user's eye travels on a web page. They can then take this camera data and create heat map overlays of the web page and get an accurate measurement of what really draws the users attention.

Here are 20+ lessons learned from a recent study.

Ads in the top and left portions of a page will receive the most eye fixation.
Ads placed next to the best content are seen more often.
Bigger images get more attention.
Clean, clear faces in images attract more eye fixation.
Fancy formatting and fonts are ignored.
Formatting can draw attention.
Headings draw the eye.
Initial eye movement focuses on the upper left corner of the page.
Large blocks of text are avoided.
Lists hold reader attention longer.
Navigation tools work better when placed at the top of the page.
One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats.
People generally scan lower portions of the page.
Readers ignore banners.
Shorter paragraphs perform better than long ones.
Show numbers as numerals.
Text ads were viewed mostly intently of all types tested.
Text attracts attention before graphics.
Type size influences viewing behavior.
Users initially look at the top left and upper portion of the page before moving down and to the right.
Users only look at a sub headline if it interests them.
Users spend a lot of time looking at buttons and menus.
White space is good.

Found from Seth Godin based on Tim's study

How to measure website sales?

Ryan Doom — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 17:34:00 GMT

How do you measure the success of a website? Success is measured the same regardless of whether you are measuring your website, your business, the success of an event or a grade on a test. You have to have an actual goal in order to measure it. If you have no goals, you cannot define success.
What are some goals you may strive for with your website...

Do I need a computer server?

Ryan Doom — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:17:00 GMT

Many small businesses start off with buying a couple of computers, connecting them to the Internet and then they operate completely independent of one another. That means that the computers are connected to a network but nothing is shared between them. A common next step is to do some simple file sharing between the computers so user A can access files and data on user B’s computer and vice versa...

What's new in Adobe Fireworks CS3

Ryan Doom — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:04:00 GMT

The new Adobe CS3 Suite is pretty awesome. As many of my designer and programming associates know I am a diehard Fireworks fan. The first art application I started using was Photofinish on Windows 3.1. This tool really had a lot to offer, nothing vector but you could get just about everything done with this tool. It had excellent gradients, smudge tool, cloning, it was packed full of goodies. I eventually converted to Photoshop around version 3 ...

What is long tail marketing?

Ryan Doom — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 02:34:00 GMT

“The Long Tail” as you hear it used today is a term coined by Chris Anderson editor of Wired magazine based on the statistics curve called “long-tailed distributions.” Chris Anderson has brought to light how the technological era and Ecommerce is changing today’s Marketing and Economics strategy. Imagine you own a brick and mortar record ...

5 Easy ways to improve your business with the web

Ryan and Kevin — Sat, 09 Jun 2007 17:07:00 GMT

There are 5 easy things you can do to make sure your business embraces the Internet as a sales and marketing tool in 2007:

Purchase your own .com Domain Name for your company
Use your .com Domain Name for all email communication
Create a professional website and make it part of your sales team
Internet marketing with Google, Yahoo and MSN
Start an e-newsletter to communicate with customers

You may not realize it, but if you’re still using an email address from Yahoo, Hotmail, SBC, Comcast, or some other free email service to communicate with customers, you’re losing some “professionalism points.” If your website is not portraying your company effectively and generating business for you, then it’s time to take action! Following these five steps is a good start to making your website function as an extension of your sales team.

Purchase a ‘.com’ Domain Name for your company

You have to buy “yourcompanyname.com” as soon as possible, or someone else will. Buying an internet Domain Name (.com, .net, .org) is extremely affordable and is the first step in getting your own email

Your Personal Marketing Strategy

Ryan and Kevin — Mon, 04 Jun 2007 01:14:00 GMT

Every salesperson should develop a marketing strategy specific to how they do business. It should be a plan that you personally create or possibly design alongside a professional to outline how you can satisfy your customers and achieve your goals. I define marketing as “identifying the needs and wants of a target customer and then appealing to and satisfying those needs.” Creating a complete marketing plan may consist of such items as: research on customers, defining their needs, product design, pricing and promotion. Here are a few ideas that might not be part of a corporate marketing plan but can immediately become part of your personal marketing plan.

Review your Business Card – It should be informative and be memorable

Your business card is important. When you meet a prospective buyer this is what they will have in their hand after you have introduced yourself and parted from one another.

8 Ways to Boost Your Performance

Ryan Doom — Sun, 03 Jun 2007 14:26:00 GMT

Don’t have enough time in the day? Have the feeling of not accomplishing what you set out to do that day? Feeling overwhelmed by what is still yet to do? Here are some tips that will help you make the most of your day. If you would like to adopt any of these performance boosting secrets I wouldn’t recommend taking on too many of them at once. It is important to slowly adapt to change, consider taking 1 or 2 of the items and telling yourself you will stick with it 100% for 30 days. A short term commitment is a lot easier then long term; mentally you can see yourself sticking it out for 30 days, and even use a calendar to mark the days off. Once you are done with your 30 days reflect back on the success of the new habit. At that point quit, extend it for another 30, 60 or 90 days, or let it be a permanent habit.

Web Tracking - A Real World Example

Ryan Doom — Tue, 01 May 2007 02:10:00 GMT

Read about why we overhauled the Web Ascender website...

What the heck is RSS?

Ryan Doom — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 00:52:00 GMT

Do you know how much information is out there on the internet? The information can be overwhelming, especially if you want to stay in touch with current events or keep up with your industry. If CNN publishes hundreds of articles a day, and there are 20 websites you visit to get information on breaking news in your industry, how is it possible to stay up to date? You don’t want to check every website every day, what if...

Microsoft Word 2007 Upgrade

Ryan and Kevin — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 19:22:00 GMT

Learn about some of the new features in Microsoft Office 2007, and why you should upgrade...

Mixtopia Premier - Success Story

Ryan and Kevin — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:17:00 GMT

Mixtopia Premier of the Metro Detroit area is experiencing excellent results with Web Ascender’s Internet Marketing.

Mixtopia spent only $25 in the month of January, but their Internet ad was viewed over 3,000 times, and produced more than 50 qualified leads to their website. This has resulted in a number of phone calls and inquiries via their online contact form which has ultimately led to booking new bartending appointments.

Here is a quote from the co-founder of Mixtopia Premiere, Steve Csaki, after we revamped their internet strategies.
“What did you guys do! Our traffic has at least tripled”
www.mixtopiapremier.com

Mixtopia Premier uses the Standard SiteCTO plan with 1 Google AdWords package that Web Ascender manages.