Edit Your Website Photos Online

Need help editing your images for your website? Photos coming up to big? Not a Photoshop Pro? There is a solution, www.Picnik.com offers a free online photo editing application that provides many useful tools for editing photos for your websites without registration! You can also upgrade to Premium for more available features. This is the easiest solution we have found for editing your pictures. It works on Mac and PC, let’s you re-size the images, upload from social networking sites, change colors, adjsut brightness, saturation, rotate, flip, format your files and many more!!! If you are looking for an easy photo editor Picnik is definitely the best bet!!!

Some of the options offered:
• Fix your photos in just one click
• Use advanced controls to fine-tune your results
• Crop, re-size, and rotate in real-time
• Tons of special effects, from artsy to fun
• Astoundingly fast, right in your browser
• Awesome fonts and top-quality type tool
• Basketfuls of shapes from hand-picked designers
• Works on Mac, Windows, and Linux
• No download required, nothing to install

Upload your videos to YouTube and help your site get noticed!

Help your company get noticed more on the web. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload, view and share video clips. Unregistered users can watch the videos, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos.

If your business has a commercial, promotional video or product demonstration video, YouTube is a perfect place for it. You have the ability to upload unlimited videos and can add helpful tags to these videos to get your company exposed to more people. You can link your video up to your site in your News section or call us and we can add the video link to a page on your site. Having the videos out on the Web will definitely help with your Search Engine Optimization!

Below is a breakdown of a few key items you need to think about when uploading videos.

The title of your video should be the most common search term (the combination of words that most people are likely to type in to the search box)

The description box should also contain this common string of words. Plus other text if you wish to describe the video more in depth.

The tags should contain all the variations of likely typed search words in order. (Very Important! This helps with SEO for your video) for example: if I had a demonstration video showing people how to do assemble a box. I need to make sure as many people can find it.

To do this you need to understand how search engines work. They track, store and deliver words based the order that people string words together in real life. People generally think and type in the order that they speak: ‘How to assemble a box’ ‘I want to learn how to assemble a box’ ‘best tips to assemble a box’ ‘how do I learn to assemble a box’.

With this in mind, this is the basis for completing all the input boxes on YouTube.

Title: “How to assemble a box tutorial” This starts with ‘how to assemble a’… very common search term for anything.. ‘box’ a very specific search term for a package… and lastly ‘tutorial’ because more people think speak and type ‘box tutorial’ than ‘tutorial box’ …. therefore the word ‘tutorial’ must be last. Sure some people won’t use this natural order of words, but most will.

Description: ‘How to assemble a box? Box assembly tutorial, assembling a box, what is a box? how do I learn to assemble a box?’

This area needs to display all the various combinations of what people would type. Without this, your clip wouldn’t stand a chance of being found frequently. You can also add any other text in this section to describe the clip. Focus on popular search terms first! You could put them last, but that isn’t logical if you want things to be found first.

Tags: ‘how to best tips learning box assembly tutorial box assemble instructions demonstration’ You want to keep these in order of most relevant to least relevant.

Google dominates ad server market, study shows

Cited from (CNET.com) Natalie Weinstein

It will surprise no one that Google accounts for a lion’s share of the ad server market. However, it may come as a shock that Microsoft holds only the equivalent of a lion’s paw.

Attributor, a content-tracking company, analyzed ad server calls across 75 million domains in October. According to the data Attributor released this week, Google–through DoubleClick and AdSense–accounts for 56.5 percent market share.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s equivalent figure hovers at 3.8 percent. Yahoo came in behind Google with 9.7 percent. If Microsoft and Yahoo ever end up combining forces, they still wouldn’t touch Google.

A server call, by the way, is the “moment when a Web site requests an ad to serve up to a user. The study examined whose ad code was on that page,” according to AdAge.com.

Here is Attributor’s breakdown of the ad server market, as of October.

(Credit: Attributor)

DoubleClick and AdSense are definitely playing to different markets, according to Attributor’s figures. DoubleClick dominated with larger sites, while AdSense did so for smaller sites.

It’s not all good news for Google, though. Back in Janary, when Attributor last took a look at ad server calls, Google’s AdSense and DoubleClick accounted for 69.7 percent share. That’s a drop of more than 13 points.

Google didn’t lose out to Microsoft or Yahoo, though. They also lost share. Instead, Google lost little bits to a lot of other players, including AOL and Revenue Science. The latter shot into the top five with 6.7 percent market share in October.

Website Imagery

Just a few pointers for imagery used on e-commerce sites, There’s alwasy room fro improvement…

The Quality:
The quality of a website and its products can be obtained by the quality of the images displayed on the site. Users of a website have no other visual cues to help them when making purchases, therefore product shots are very important.

The more professional the images on a website, the more professional the website looks. The investment in high quality professional photographs and product shots is definitely worth the investment, with sales conversions having been known to double with the addition of better imagery.

The Quantity:
There is one thing that is clear. Users like seeing more than one image of a product. Unfortunately, many ecommerce websites only show one view of the product. This takes away the user’s ability to fully grasp the scope of the product.

The best thing to do by rule of thumb is to have roughly 2-3 images of a product. This will help give the impression and control the user may have of a product in a physical store, whilst helping them decide whether or not the product is suitable for them.

The Size:
To give the users the best possible shopping experience, images need to be available in a larger version, so the product can be examined in detail. The most common practice of this is having a “Thumbnail” (or small version) and an “Full View” (Enlarged high-resolution version).

It is also most common practice to have the image shots appear in a pop-up window, although with technology today there are many alternatives such as “Lightbox” which will backout the screen and focus the user’s attention on the large preview of the image in the centre of the screen.

The Speed:
Unfortunately, the larger the images and previews get, the longer the time it takes to download the images on a users internet connection. The best solution to this is to have a high quality web server. This will provide optimal speeds to the customers of your website, enabling them to download the images quickly, enhancing their online shopping experience.

If you have a large quantity of users viewing your website, you may also consider having additional media servers to serve the images from multiple locations around the world; this can help ensure all users have a pleasant shopping experience. Speak to your Rival Professionals for more information on web hosting services.

The Detail:
Depending on the products you are selling, they may have smaller or more complex areas that may require more detail.
For example, if you were photographing a laptop computer, customers would most likely want to see the connections on the front, rear and sides of the computer to make sure it meets their needs. The solution? Include close up shots of all the complex areas of the product.

A good method to use is to take 1 full view of the product, then smaller close up views of areas of importance. Having these detailed photos could be the difference in an online sale or not.

The Package:
Some products may include one or more smaller packages. For example a digital camera. It is one thing to include a photo of the camera itself, but what about all the extras? It is good to answer all the customers’ questions before they even think of them! The best way to accomplish this is to take a “Full Package Shot” of the contents of the package.

It is also a good idea to include the product box in these photographs if possible, jus in case the product has multiple versions which may be similar in one way or another.

The Relevance:
One of the most important things to remember when dealing with ecommerce imagery is relevance of the images. Irrelevant pictures detract from the message trying to be portrayed by the store owner. It is best to keep the image precise and clear, don’t include images that could confuse the user or make them doubt the products quality.

Summary
Professional, high quality website images help sell products online. Fact.

The internet sometimes gets a negative spin put on it because of users not getting the products they “thought” they were getting. It is best to keep your ecommerce site professional and remain loyal to your customers by providing precise and detailed images.