Cameron Olthuis

There’s a lot of really cool things that can be done using CSS and I’ve found some of the following resources to be very helpful to inspire ideas and learn new techniques. There’s a lot of good CSS tutorials out there so it’s pretty hard to narrow it down to only the 10 best. So instead of taking this list as the top 10 consider it as a collection of 10 great tutorials. I recommend having a good working knowledge of CSS/HTML before trying any of these on your own site.

Great selection of Halloween Costumes and more at Halloween Mart.

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In order for your brand/website to be successful you need to build trust and credibility with your target audience. Without it, people will take their business elsewhere. Building trust and credibility takes open communication that goes both ways. It takes to time to develop but will only take seconds to lose. What takes years to build can be lost over night. Here’s a few tips to help you build trust and credibility online.

Website
What impression does your website give? There’s a good chance your website will be the first time a potential customer comes in contact with you or your company. Needless to say it’s pretty important that it makes a good first impression. You wouldn’t setup a retail store in an old dirty building, so why would you even think of doing that with your website? Would you meet business associates for the first time wearing grubby clothes? I sure as hell hope not.

Your website is not a place to skimp on your budget, yet some many people still do it. They think saving a few bucks asking their nephew to design their site is a smart decision, when in fact it probably ends up costing a lot of money in lost business down the road. A professional looking website is a must.

Marketing
What kind of marketing messages are you sending? Are you annoying people with spam such as; unsolicited email blasts, pop-ups and pop-unders, spyware, or other in-your-face sales techniques? If you are and you want a credible brand you should stop, immediately. These do nothing but piss people off.

How visible is your site? When people search for your company or keywords relevant to your website are you easily found? The more someone sees your brand around the web the more they will trust it. It’s important to invest money and time into your search engine marketing. Not only will this bring an increase in business, but it will build the credibility and trust. How can your customers trust you if they can’t even find you on Google?

Build alliances with other credible third parties.

Assurance
This is one that also deals with your website. There are little things you can do on your website that tells customers your are a trustworthy company that can easily be contacted if something goes wrong. So with that said, make the contact info prominent on your site, don’t try to hide it and don’t even think about leaving it off altogether. Make sure you have a well written ‘about page’. Let your customers know that you’ve been around awhile and you know what you’re doing.

There’s plenty of other little things you can and should do as well. For example, display your security certificates in prominent locations. Make it easy for your customers to see that you take security seriously. Are you a member of the BBB? If so then you should display the logo on your site and link it to your profile. Ask for testimonials and proudly display them on your site, often times customers are happy to do this, especially if you’ve pleased them.

You’d be suprised at how far these little things go, they really do give peace of mind and comfort to your customers.

Communication
Communicate early and often. You must be willing to admit(and take responsibility for) mistakes, deliver bad news, and openly share information. Don’t be afraid to apologize if necessary . Acknowledge and listen to what your customers have to say, let them know that you care and value their feedback. Speak in a language that is easy to understand. If problems arise then take care of them.

Bottom line: Don’t let you website fall victim to a crisis in consumer trust. Build and maintain trust and credibility and keep the lines of communication wide open. Building trust after you lose it is a hard thing to do and takes time, make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

Do you have anything you would like to add that you’ve found helps build trust and credibility.

branding, user interface, marketing, branding

Jeremy Zawodny throws SEO and Google Base into the boxing ring.

Is my money better spent on Search Engine Optimization techniques and advertising, or should I be paying someone to build tools that make it easy to get my data loaded directly into Google Base (and kept up-to-date)?

Personally I don’t care much for Google Base but I am prepared for this to happen. You should be too, chances are Google Base results will be showing up in the SERPs soon. I sure hope it doesn’t happen though, it will plague the results.

Rand says that links are taking awhile to get credit.

On a recent project in which SEOmoz did some serious down-and-dirty link building, we found that it was not until 10 weeks after our efforts had begun that the rankings showed progress.

I’m tracking this right now with my recent digg, I got a ton of good inbounds from it. I’ve noticed a lot more people coming from MSN and Yahoo, but haven’t noticed much from Google. Then again I’ve only had this blog since last November, I could still be slightly boxed. That and haven’t done a minute of seo work on it. I’ll keep you up to date on what I notice as time goes on.

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For those of you in the San Diego area there’s a refresh meeting tomorrow night, Tuesday, April 11th. If you’re in or just looking to get in the web industry you should try to make it out. Basically it’s going to be a group of people in the industry that get together, toss ideas around, and learn from each other. We want to refresh the web and bring it out of the 90’s.

If you’re not in San Diego then check the other refreshing cities. If there’s one in your area you should go, there fun. If there’s not one in your area then you should start one.

How do you increase the conversion rate on your website?

Neil Patel says

The key is to create your pages with a spectrum of detail and features so you have something for each type of visitor. The Mac Mini page on the Apple.com website serves as a perfect example of this concept.

I would like to add a little to that. Not only is the key making your website appeal to everyone, you also need to make it as easy as possible for these people to take the necessary actions on your website. It’s one thing to serve them up the information they’re looking for but you also need to close the deal and make it as painless as possible for the customer. Think simplicity. Don’t make your customers give you two phone numbers when one will do.

If you have a shopping cart on your site that takes 5 pages to checkout you risk losing a lot of customers. Every time a user has to take an extra step to complete the appropriate goals on your site is a chance for them to abandon your site. In fact, I bet if you have the analytic data to see what pages people are abonding your cart you will notice at each step your are losing customers. Each time a user want to take an action and they can’t easily do so is a chance of losing them.

Apple’s website does a great job because it’s very simple to use. All the information is displayed right there for you at your fingertips. They also do a great job of creating a feeling that they’re something special. It’s simple and beautiful, and like Neil says, no matter where you are on there site you can easily get to the next place you want to go, whether that’s making the purchase or learning more about the products.

You need to be careful though. There’s definitely a fine line you don’t want to cross. When you’re trying to offer something for everyone remember to only try and do so to your target market. If you selling home furnishings don’t try and offer something for people looking for a mortgage. I think you get my point.

Instead of trying to reach out to a broader market focus on serving all of your current audience first. For example, add the information that the tire kickers are looking for, but don’t make me read if it I just want to make a purchase and get out.

Make it as easy as possible for every person that comes to your site to complete the goals they had in mind when they came.

Conversion rates, User Interface, Design

Friday marked my first ever homepage Digg. Interestingly enough it was from an entry that I posted back in January. Better late than never I guess.

First of all I’d like to give some props to Godaddy. I know they’ve got a lot of bad press lately in the blogsphere and they probably deserve it. However, my blog’s hosted on the GoDaddy economy plan and it never once went down from the Digg effect that I know of, and I watched it closely. I pay $4 a month for the plan, not bad. I’ve still got plenty of bandwidth to burn.

So what does the traffic breakdown from the Digg effect look like.

All these numbers are from a weekend Digg, from what I understand the traffic is much higher if you get Dugg during the week. Before the Digg the average uniques per day on this blog was about 100.

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I came across this site tonight and just had to share it with everyone. This guy is flippin hillarious! Basically, he dances to a new song everyday.

Daily Dancer

Funny Stuff.