The long standing questions – What is Flash?  Should we use it and if we do what are the implications?   For years we advised people to steer clear of flash because the search engines just could not get to grips with it but now its quite popular to add a small element of flash to enhance the look and feel of a website.  We do still advise on the best use of flash becuase it can cause problems for users especially if they do not have flash player downloaded onto their computer. So to answer the questions:

What is Flash?  a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages.

Should we use Flash?  What are the Implications? Yes, why not as long as it enhances the sales message and does not take from it.  There are different ways to integrate flash into a website and here are out thoughts:

Flash introductions – pure vanity? You know the scene – floating images combining to form a one image over a few seconds, and you search frantically for the ‘skip’ button. Bad news when research confirms you have only seconds to grab the attention of your visitor.   As well as being almost universally disliked by web users, this combination of Flash and ‘splash page’ can also block search engine crawlers.

Flash built websites -  This was a short lived fad in the late 1990s.  Building your whole website in flash means high costs, poor usability and visibility on search engines.  Some agencies used bad practice to ensure that flash sites were visible to search engines and lets just say, they did not like it much.

Flash navigation - just don’t do it. Bad for usability, accessibility and search engine performance.

Flash banners or embedded flash objects - This option is very popular and does not really affect search engine performance unless it is very heavy, you will need alternative content to remain accessibility compliant. Ensure it does not distract from the most important thing, the sales message. Good if you are selling a moving part that you need to demonstrate.

I have been amazed recently at the amount of people still using Internet Explorer version 6. Late last year I was delivering training programmes and out of 3 training locations, 2 were still using IE6 on some computers. This is madness, it went out with the ark, well not really but it is several years old and does not work properly. So why upgrade?

1. Web designers and developers do not support this version anymore
2. Some websites don’t displayed properly
3. There are security issues which can put your computer, your data and your privacy at risk. The latest versions are safer, easier to use and include a host of new features
4. Its OLD and OUTDATED – would you use a cassette player when you could easily upgrade to an iPod?

It’s FREE so upgrade to IE8 now, just visit http://www.microsoft.com/ireland/ie8ireland/ and download.

Ever wondered where spammers get your email address so they can send in those wonderful emails about enlarging parts of you body that you dont have or trying to flog pills or watches, well chances are they took it off your own website.  Using a programme, spammers can scrape email addresses off websites, hence you get lots of spam.  A few years ago I landed into work with 1279 emails awaiting me, tankfully not all work but I did have to delete all the spam, 1272 of them, which took some time. 

Do you want to ensure your email address cannot be scraped?  Use this Email Address Encoder tool http://www.wbwip.com/wbw/emailencoder.html. Its easy and best of all its free.

I heard this last week and could not believe it, Web 2.0, something I am always talking about has now become an official word in the english language and not just any word but the one millionth. Other words bidding for the position included coddies, chengguan, slumdog, fundoo and Jai Ho, but no, they picked Web 2.0. 

The Global Language Monitor (GLM), based in Austin made it official on 10th June  at 10:22 am GMT.  Web 2.0 is a technical term meaning the next generation of World Wide Web products and services.   Isn’t it funny to think that its only the one millionth, I would have thought that this would have been exceeded a long time ago.

A lot of our clients have been calling and emailing us recently after being approached by web marketing companies offering them the world at a reasonable cost.  Offers include getting you to a number one position in Google – guaranteed.  Google AdWords set up and management, again promising the earth at a low cost.   The problem with this is that to start you cannot guarantee anyone a number one position in the organic/natural listings in Google, to guarantee this you would have to use AdWords.  The AdWords offers may be somewhat legit but you MUST read the small print.  I dont want to tar everyone with the same brush but I would be wary.

One client in particular is about €1000 out of pocket.  A company in the UK contacted them with such an offer, the client only wanted the AdWords campaign to run for 3 months but on the invoice there was small print saying that the campaign will run for 12 months unless they state in writing within 30 days that they do not want this.  They missed this notice and as a result more money was deducted from their credit card.  When they called to complain the company played back the telephone conversation and they did explain it in the original conversation but not clearly enough.  The AdWords campaign runs badly, they will not provide any believeble reports (AdWords can auto generate reports but the company are generating their own and putting the figures in excel), they are only targeting 4 key phrases, more will cost an additional 15pound per phrase, they will not give them access to their account …… the list goes on.  You do get what you pay for so be wary.

Have you had any experience with this (good or bad)?

In the week where the battle for D4hotels.com reached the courts its worth a pause to see if in fact you do own your own domain.  In the Fáilte Ireland WebCheck scheme all five service providers are finding this a potential issue, especially for .com domains – as many as half of our own clients in this scheme may have issues as .com domains are registered in the names of web designers, some of whom have disappeared off the face of the earth and cannot be tracked down.

A simple check of whois data can reveal if there is a problem, its a no brainer to make sure that the admin contact is in your own name with a valid contact email.  Expiry dates can be checked too – the longer the period of registration the more likely it is you will forget to renew the domain or that the email is no longer in use so reminders are not received.

And yes folks I admit it.  www.sitestogo.biz expired for a whole  day last month… so the pot is definitely calling the kettle black here!

Moved to Days Inn Dublin this week – just worked out if I avoided three long car commutes I saved the planet and found the extra hours I needed to keep up. Plus taking the train gave me an extra hour on 3g which is not half bad on the Kildare to Heuston route. Did not however appreciate that the hotel was advertised as 3 star on late rooms and is pretty much unclassified. Tiny rooms but the great Days bed about which I have blogged before. But there is more than a subtle difference between a Days Inn and a Days Hotel! Why do so many hotels devalue branding like that? Hilton being the classic college case history.

Thursday night was my first ever attendance at the Golden Spiders as the guests of Hibernian Health Insurance – many thanks guys for the company on the table was just brilliant (and we give all staff their insurance as we think it is the best value out there and we need to keep ‘em well!) and I had the chance to meet Aodhan of Statcounter who is a personal hero (we have at least 500 clients on their free level of stats and although Google analytics have made some progress in our stable of sites I really do not think they need to have complete world dominance yet)

As for the Spiders. Well, was I alone in feeling the party spirit was a little strained? What with all the controversy on criteria and transparency for judging I just knew our shortlisted client PrivateSeller.ie had not a prayer – (not with a guy from Daft on the panel!). I liked that many of the winners were cited as having simple easy to use navigation and I loved it that Aodhan got an award.  But did I really need to be greeted by a bevy of blank faced bewigged blondes wearing skimpy elongated gold sequinned boob tubes pinned to black bras? It may be a male dominated event but frankly I thought that stopped back in the 70′s when every sales conference in my then employer started with girls in can-can gear.

On the other hand I was  really glad to make it to the Irish Internet Association AGM this year.  Fergal O’Byrne and his team have done a great job of turning round what used to be a real old boys club – and I was amazed to learn how cost effectively.  Involvement in crafting the standards for schemes like the Fáilte Ireland Web Check and Web Build (for which we are delighted to be suppliers) have boosted the credibility of the organisation big time.  Watch this space. Those guys are going places.

 Update! http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.htmlThe launch of Google’s latest product has been very low key so far.Tomorrow they will launch the beta version of their browser.It’s called ‘chrome’. It will be interesting to see whether it willpersuade any IE users to switch.Personally , I love the latest firefox so i doubt i’ll be ditching that any time soonbut i shall remain open minded. update….Well I have downloaded and installed chrome 
First Impressions?
I like it. I’ve already seen a couple of things on websites that dont work properly
but this is a beta version after all.
Overall i like the interface – its clean and simple (Its a google product after all).
I look forward to many updates/improvements over the coming months

Thanks to the two people who spotted some broken links on an article linked to the GiftGallery.  It often happens when you are at your busiest the simple stuff gets missed and it set me to thinking about the tools we use every day to check stuff, in addition to our more specialist auditing software.  All I need to do is use them myself occasionally!

W3c has a range of tools including their Link checker 

I like this page size checker although it is rather draconian on advisory sizes ( I am not today going to talk about the state of Irish broadband!) but page size has an effect on search performance as this recent article on why heavy web pages can cost you business shows

And my latest fad is the new Google Alerts Service right now I am beta testing it against the media search service we use – it could save me a packet! And when I publish this blog I know I will get an alert for GiftGallery within hours. Ever felt you were being watched? Is this good? Of course it is for SEO and for watching others but… anyone else feel this has a privacy implication?

More useful web marketing links can be found here

Marketing speak just does not work on the web. Superlatives are filtered by our scanning style of reading and can obscure the main message.  But the web does encourage people to say more, and perhaps less carefully in print and perhaps to make commitments they cannot keep. However the web also has mechanisms for exposing untruths.

I write this from a very noisy lobby in the Silver Springs Moran Hotel in Cork. Despite the claims on its website and in the room info that the whole hotel has broadband I can categorically assure you that room 502 does not! Nor does the establishment seem to think that researching my business plan in a lobby full of first communion kids and families should be a problem. In fact its a disaster when two valuable free days to lock myself away with the most deferred task on my list, led me here to take advantage of the claimed pervasive broadband and a nice hotel room with plenty of damp towels to keep me awake! Nor is the spa that I promised myself a reward with a) on site or b) open for treatments on Sundays.

Ah I hear you say did you not value the Ireland of old? Yes but was not truth part of that? And will not Trip Advisor catch up with the truth eventually?