How do you increase the speed and response of your web site? Good question. We’ve talked about it some in the past, but the people at Inside CRM have provided a list of 50 items.

While this can help with the loading of your site, it also takes someone who knows how to implement these changes. One other thing to check on is how will this affect the other aspects of your web site? For example:

• Will modifying your web site affect how users use your site? The usability of your site will directly affect how effective your site is in getting sales or leads. Granted, the speed of your site directly relates to your site’s usability, but it is only one part of many that make up your usability. Especially since some of the efforts is in reducing image use – which might be very important to your site.
• Will your modifications affect your search engine optimization for better or worse? Generally a site should receive anywhere from 35-80% of their traffic from a search engine. If you negatively effect your search engine optimization, you could seriously hurt your ability to be found on-line. So always consult your search engine specialist first.Recently Online Marketing Blog wrote about needing to talk to your search engine person first. You don’t want to make a change to your site, which makes if faster, but harder to be found in the search engines.

If you don’t have someone to advise you on search engine optimization or website usability contact me, and I’ll help you out. I have over 10 years of experience in optimizing websites to get them to run faster for you.

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People often want to know how fast to changes occur on-line.  They may be used to traditional print advertisign, such as newspaper and magazine, in which changes to an ad might take weeks or months to be seen.

Even worse, consider wanting to change some text in your phone book ad.  If you see an error (imagine a wrong phone number), or want to make a change the week your book comes out, it will take a twelve long months to update your ad.

On-line, things can occur much faster. We can see errors and correct them at almost the same instant. We can try different lines of text in an ad, or add in products to our catalogs.

Recently, I was working with a client updating their website. They wanted to add a new package to their offerings on-line. They contacted me that morning, I made the change to the website the same day (which is fairly typical of minor changes to a site such as some text, or a new product or service) and within 5 minutes of posting it to the web server, the client had a request for the new service package. You can’t get that quick of turn around in any medium other than the web.

Popularity: unranked [?]

The best compliments come from people you’d never expect them.

Recently, for one of my clients, I was looking at some of his competitors. I wanted to get a feel for what they were doing, and see how my client compared.

One of them has on their site “No, we do not have a fancy drop-down program that lets you choose from our other showcase designs and mix and match. That would cost lots of money“. Well when looking at the competition field, he is clearly referencing the Options Showcase page for my client.

The fact of the matter is, while I try to provide sites that look expensive, they often are not. The feature is fancy but not expensive compared to the returns on having a well developed website, and the income it can generate for you.

So I’ll take the compliment, and if you want a website that looks expensive, but isn’t necessarily so, let me know.

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This week I had a chance to spend a few days at the eLearning Guild’s Annual Gathering – immensely enjoyed it by the way. It combined two of the things I really enjoy – education/training and technology.

I gave a session on Free and Low Cost Tools for Developing eLearning Content. In the current economy it helps to find the best resources that you can, at the best prices. And while there are many expensive solutions, there are also many low cost solutions.

I have posted a website as a resource for the session I gave, and am opening it up for everyone else as well. http://www.lowcostelearning.com/ is a free resource  to find out about tools for devloping eLearning content, as well as other content, while not breaking your buget.

It is built upon WordPress, and using several plugins to allow communication between the readers and myself, as well as allowing users to rate the tools if they have experience with them.

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