Power Structure: Slide Shows

When I worked for a major consumer website back in the 90s and early 2000s, I found that slide shows were one of the most effective tools for boosting page views per visitor. In fact, I quickly discovered that there was virtually no limit to the number of slides our visitors would click through. Because the site was associated with a monthly magazine, I had access to thousands of high quality photos. Our slide shows soon went from 15 to 20 slides to 30, 40 or 50 or more images. Most of our shows centered on recipes, but topics like decorating, gardening and home improvement also worked well.

Now imagine that you’ve just been put in charge of your company’s website, and your first order of business is to update the “Our Team” section of the “About Us” section. You could stick to the typical approach: a long scrolling page of postage-stamp size images accompanied by meaty chunks of biographical information.  If you’re very lucky, your average visitor will make it as far as the Chief Financial Officer before heading off in search of a stock quote or the latest annual report.

But what if you put much of that same information into a slide show? Now your visitors are greeted with a large photo of your CEO and a brief but compelling bio. Click. Another slide, another key member of your management team. Click, click, click. The Assistant Vice President for the Eastern U.S. Click, click ... click. Hey, that’s the intern that changes the toner in the copy machine.  Your visitor has reached the last slide, number 32, and  she’s still looking for the button to choose the next slide!

Not only have you added 31 page views to your website’s tally, you’ve suddenly become a hero in the eye’s of every team member who’s given his or her star turn on the pages of your site.

How to Proofread

A friend of mine, a lover of all things French, posted this simple yet eloquent snippet of prose in her garden. To experience its maximum poetic effect, please read the sign ALOUD now:

Did you just say “Paris in the Spring”? Or, did you say “Paris in the the Spring”? If not, take a closer look at the sign.

Why do so many of us miss that second “the”? Because we know what the sign should say. And that leads us to the first of three simple rules that can ensure your proofreading catches the sort of little (and big) errors that diminish your credibility and tarnish your brand.

The Easiest Tool for Better Search Engine Results

Getting visitors to your website depends on several factors. In the long run, the very best way to boost your visitors is simply to create lots of good content that your target audience will want to read.

That said, a well-written page title, meta description, and keyword list are all helpful in raising your web page's search engine ranking. So how do you find the right words to create these key elements? For years, I used Google's Adsense keyword tool to guide me.

Today, I tend to use a much simpler approach: I enter my topic (stated fairly specifically) into the Google search box, then scroll down to the bottom of the search results page. That's where I'll see a collection of words and phrases that people are using right now to search my topic. The benefit of this approach is that you are getting search terms that people are actually using. Often, you'll be surprised and even inspired.

Work the most appropriate of these search terms into your web page and meta-data and you'll give yourself a real-time leg up on the search engine scene.

A Quick Secret to Better Photos

If your digital camera has an optical zoom, here's a professional quick tip that will immediately improve all of your photos:

• Set your camera's optical zoom to its widest setting and leave it there -- permanently

Three reasons this works

1. The wider your lens setting, the closer you must get to your subject. This lends a sense of what photographers call "immediacy." In other words, you are drawing the viewer into the scene. (Just don't try to get 6 inches from your subject's nose, or you'll wind up with a very unflattering portrait.)