Ads and Affiliates: Do Affiliate Websites Really Work?
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Concludes that it is possible and realistic to build an affiliate site that generates hundreds of dollars per month. But strongly recommends Ken Evoy's Site Build It! to improve chances of succeeding. Date: Jun 2, 2004, 10:30 PST"

Site Promotion: Organic Search Placement is Vital
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Only half of searchers in a study by Enquiro even looked at sponsored links (Pay Per Click ads), making it all the more important for marketers to rank high with organic or natural search on their keywords. Date: Jun 2, 2004, 01:47 PST"

Conversion: Tweaking the Landing Page
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Split-testing results from the SonicMemo landing page show that testimonials with clickable links tend to lower the conversion rate since those links encourage people to leave the landing page. Making the links inactive raised the conversion rate from 2.9% to 4.1% Date: May 26, 2004, 11:03 PST"

Ads and Affiliates: So-called Contextual Ad Networks
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"While many ad networks boast of "contextual advertising," the truth is that most don't have enough advertisers to really achieve this. The current winners in real contextual ads on both search sites and content sites are Google and Overture. Date: May 26, 2004, 10:55 PST"

Conversion: Do Audio Clips on Landing Pages Increase Conversion Rates?
From: www.wilsonweb.com

"Ken Evoy, author of Make Your Site Sell!, has found that audio clips can increase response rates as much as 15% to 30%. But loud, pushy audio can hurt sales. He recommends testing and using audio judiciously. Two vendors are AudioGenerator and Sonic Memo. Date: May 19, 2004, 13:48 PST"


LookSmart Partners With Cal For Search Services
From: www.webpronews.com

"The Cal Athletic Department announced a partnership with California based search engine LookSmart to develop a branded search engine for the Cal Athletics department that will support the university's athletic programs. This partnership will also provide search services for students and alumni."

TransitionalMedia Integrates Metamend Search Engine Optimization
From: www.webpronews.com

"Metamend and TransitionalMedia have joined in a private label agreement to provide Metamend's SEO techniques to TransitionalMedia's client base. Metamend's technology analyzes a web site's content, and then submits these sites to a number of search engines."

Dogpile Search Engine Toolbar Wins PC Magazine Editors' Choice Award
From: www.webpronews.com

"Metasearch engine Dogpile has won the PC Magazine Editor's Choice Award for their search toolbar. The issue is scheduled to come out on June 8, 2004. This award marks the third major industry award won by Dogpile this year."

Siemens Announces Mobile Phone Search Engine
From: www.webpronews.com

"Mobile technology giant Siemens has announced their plans to introduce a mobile phone search engine function. The search engine that will be integrated was developed by MotionBridge, a French start up funded by Siemens."

New Yahoo Toolbar Does Not Default Scan For Adware
From: www.webpronews.com

"Yahoo's new beta stage toolbar contains a feature called Anti-Spy. This marks the first search engine toolbar to have a spyware remover integrated into it. As reported in a previous (http://www.webpronews.com/news/ebusinessnews/wpn-45-20040527YahooIntroducesNewToolbarFeaturingFreeSpywareProtection.html)WebProNews article , Yahoo's Anti-Spy beta is powered by PestPatrol, a third party software designed to combat spyware and other malicious programs."


Sony Technology at the Movies
From: www.wired.com

"Sony announces a new digital projection system for theaters. Also: Symbol Technologies' chief officers face charges.... Mitsubishi recalls more cars.... and more."

Comcast's Cable Game
From: www.wired.com

"The company offers games on demand to its high-speed Internet customers. Also: Mitsubishi admits it hid automobile defects.... New York sues GlaxoSmithKline... and more."

Phishers Put Surfers on the Hook
From: www.wired.com

"Trolling for credit card numbers with phony websites and e-mails is becoming more and more popular, but enforcement is still playing catch-up. By John Brandon."

Wanted: Drugs to Fight Bioterror
From: www.wired.com

"Armed with $5.6 billion, the U.S. government wants to woo pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs and vaccines to combat bioterrorism. But the money may be just a drop in the bucket. By Randy Dotinga."

Taking Stock of a Dot-Com Freebie
From: www.wired.com

"Travelzoo, the discount travel website, engineered its 15 minutes of fame back in 1998 by giving away free stock to all who visited. Today -- with shares trading above $20 -- only a small fraction have succeeded in claiming their loot. By Joanna Glasner."


Matthew Oliphant Is Blogging UPA 2004
From: webword.com

" Matthew Oliphant is blogging the Usability Professionals Association (UPA) 2004 conference.

Matthew has been visiting WebWord for a long time now and this is my opportunity to help him out with some traffic. Also, I encourage you to donate just $5 (via PayPal) to help him with the conference expenses. As a friendly gesture in return, he will post a visible Thank You on his site, indicating that you have helped him.

One more thing. Matthew is the CEO of Business Logs. It is new business that will be helping people with knowledge management and reputation management. I think the idea is to use blogs to get this work done. What do you think of that idea? What are the pitfalls?

"

Maybe a week, maybe a while
From: webword.com

" V-2 -- "The battles have been fought and won; I can't imagine that there's much of anything interesting left to say about Web design, and frankly I wonder about the priorities of those who can still work up a good head of steam behind discussions of Flash or Jakob Nielsen or the proper amount of respect due to so-called gurus."

Is usability dead?

Read the posting...
"

Stupid Users Generate Profit for Ask Jeeves?
From: webword.com

" Traffick -- "Is it possible that many of Ask Jeeves' users are unsophisticated, and that's the reason for the continued profitability of the company, built on search engine results pages that sometimes display up to ten sponsored links at the top of the page, dominating the entire real estate of a user's screen?"

Is this possible? Are profits driven by stupid users? Are users stupid? Are they finding answers? Are the paid links actually useful? What is going on here?

Read the article...

"

Simple passwords no longer suffice
From: webword.com

" MSNBC -- "There s a delicate balance between maintaining security but also providing customers with ease of use"

That's the real issue. The core. Usability and security are sworn enemies. Solve this problem and you'll make a lot people happy, and you'll make a lot of money.

Read the article..."

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
From: webword.com

" GrokDotCom -- "The thing is, start measuring. Through your numbers, you possess powerful information. You don't need to grope in the dark or drown in an overwhelming ocean of digits. It doesn't even require genius to work with this stuff. It just requires that you do it. Just like brushing your teeth after you eat."

Read the article...

"