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Contents:
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A Web Site is NOT a Shop Window
A lot of people think of their website
as being a Shop Window for their business.
They are wrong!
The purpose of a shop front is to:
get the attention of passers-by
inform them of what you are selling
make a memorable impression
make them want to enter the shop
One would thing that all the above are also true
of your website. But there is a difference.
Once your visitor is at your website he is actually
inside your shop. Now would any sane shopkeeper
insist that all his shoppers should go out
again to look at his shop window? Well that is
what a lot of websites are doing. Even worse
some will not allow the visitor in again till
he has spent a reasonable amount of time admiring
the window. And even crazier are those that send
the would be customer three doors down the road to
get a special pair of 3d glasses so they can admire
the window in all its 3 dimensional glory.
So, unless you are getting a cut of Bills millions,
don't tell your website visitors to download the
latest version of his browser, nor the latest plug-in.
By all means put all the latest gizmoes on your site,
but please make your site usable by everyone else who
is not quite so fascinated by the latest tech toys.
My email newsletter selections
This is a regular slot - each issue I review one or two
email newsletter that have recently got my attention
with some good or interesting material:
My current favourite can be accessed at any time
by sending a blank email to my autoresponder at
mailto:goodnewsletter@amcho.com
or you can see the text version at
http://www.amcho.com/goodnewsletter.txt
This month The Internet Marketing Chronicles and
the www.AssociatePrograms.com newsletters have got my attention:
The Internet Marketing Chronicles appears in my best newsletter
slot
with boring regularity, the issue Issue 172 -- November 3, 1999
contained a good write up about creating a favicon.ico file.
This file is requested whenever someone bookmarks your site
and is stored with the visitors bookmarks,
so I have been meaning to create a couple of favicon.ico files
for my site.
There are icon editor programs available at:
http://FavIcon.com
http://www.fh-sbg.ac.at/%7Ehwieshof/english/icon32.htm
http://members.home.com/rsimmons/irfanview/english.htm
Use one of the above programs to create an icon
it must be 16x16 pixels, and 16 colours
Then store the favicon.ico file in each of your directories.
I have read that you can create a 16x16 bmp file
and rename it .ico, I have tried this,
but have not as yet got it to work.
There is also a good write up entitled
'The Dastardly "favicon.ico not found" Error' at
http://www.wdvl.com/Authoring/Design/Images/Favicon/index.html
A warning - it is apparently possible to crash your MSIE5 browser
if you try to save a badly formatted icon file in your favourites,
but then I can crash IE5 by just looking in the other direction!
To subscribe to The Internet Marketing Chronicles
http://www.marketingchallenge.com/index.cgi?12369
My second choice (in chronological order) this month
is the excellent newsletter from Allan Gardyne of
www.AssociatePrograms.com.
If you are a partner in any affiliate program or if you are
considering becoming one, you should subscribe to his
newsletter and his website is a 'must visit'.
One important bit of news for the affiliate industry is that
Net Detective has "closed" its affiliate program to
new entrants.
All of a sudden being an affiliate has potentially aquired a
monetary value. If you are an affiliate for NetDetective you
should be able to sell the 'business' for real money even if
you have not been able to make anything with it yourself.
I think we should all go back and review our affiliate agreements
to check under what conditions we have the right to sell these
on to third parties.
Another interesting result will be that over time if all the
badly performing affiliates drop out the average income per
affiliate will increase. This will make 'closed' affiliate
programmes appear to be much better payers.
I wonder if there is anywhere on the web that collates such
statistics - it would be very interesting to see the
average payout per affiliate.
Another Affiliate Program that intends to limit
the number of partners is Ken Evoy's
"Make Your Site SELL!" 5 Pillar Program Program.
Join up (using my partner id) below:
http://www.sitesell.com/amcho.html
Allan has recently had a page of his copied -
A sign of a true 'internet guru' is to have your web page
stolen - so if you want to nick one of my pages - go ahead -
I'll be able to add it to my guru score. I'll probably
remove these words if it does happen to me! The stupid
thing is that if you ask to use someone elses material
the usual response is 'please do - just include a link
to the original author/website.' I have only tried this
with material in newsletters.
© 1999 Amcho Computer Services Ltd. All rights reserved.
Feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you want to.
but please check with us before reproducing the content,
normally all we will ask is a link to our website.
All feedback is welcome: mailinglist-feedback@amcho.com
To unsubscribe please send an email to
unsubscribe@amcho.com
To subscribe please send a blank email to
mailto:subscribe-mailinglist@amcho.com
Mike Choroszewski
Amcho Computer Services Ltd
Little Honeycombe, Tamar Way, Gunnislake, Cornwall, Pl18 9DH. UK
phone: 0870 740 7683 (Uk national rate)
www.amcho.com/newsletters/1999-12.htm
December 1999
www.amcho.com/newsletters/1999-11.htm
November 1999
www.amcho.com/newsletters/1999-10.htm
October 1999
www.amcho.com/newsletters/1999-09.htm
September 1999
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