AdesBlog.com

Author info: This is a guest post by Alan Johnson, the author of The Online Business Handbook.

Do you think that generating traffic is all it takes? You couldn’t be more wrong, convincing visitors to drop by again is simply a must if you are serious about making it in the long run.

Most people seem to have thought of everything, yet have forgotten to try their best in order to convert visitors into loyal readers. If you do your job right as far as website promotion is concerned then yes, you will get people to visit your website, but what happens after that? You may not know it, but most of your potential readers may choose not to stick around, and here’s why:

1) You Make Promises Through Your Title and Don’t Deliver

Yes, a catchy title can “convince” others to check your article out but if you fail to deliver afterwards, you can rest assured that the reader in question will be quite disappointed. Actually, that person leaves and never looks back in most cases, so that it should come as no surprise that readers are not exactly tempted to stick around under such circumstances.

2) You Are Too Aggressive

Sure, you don’t have to lie to readers and tell them that they are perfect but that doesn’t mean that you should start insulting them. You can definitely tell a person that there are certain areas where improvements are in order in a more delicate manner, being too aggressive is not an option.

3) You See Writing as a Chore

If you are not passionate about a certain topic, your readers will definitely pick up on that and the results won’t exactly be worth bragging about. Don’t see writing as a chore and, instead, make sure that your content reflects just how passionate you are about a certain topic.

4) You Assume That Everyone Is an Expert

Just because you are extremely knowledgeable as far as the topic you’re writing about is concerned, it doesn’t mean that each and every one of your readers is. Don’t be afraid to explain certain terms when you think that it is necessary, as a good writer needs to be able to cater to the needs of beginners as well. Otherwise, readers who are not yet experts will leave and that is definitely not an option.

5) You Explain When It Isn’t Necessary

While assuming that each and every reader is an expert is not the way to go, explaining the obvious is not necessary because, if you have such an approach, your entire article will end up being filled with all sorts of explanations and your readers will end up being distracted from what is truly important.

6) You Go Off-Topic Way Too Often

While there is nothing wrong with the occasional off-topic remark, you have to be able to determine when enough is enough. After all, the last thing you need is readers leaving as a result of the fact that you are not able to focus on the topic you are writing about and insist on useless information way too much.

7) You Don’t Remind Them

If you want readers to stick around, why not remind them to subscribe to your newsletter or RSS feed at the end of the article? If you are writing an article series, why not remind them to drop by for the next article? Something as simple as reminding your visitors to stick around can and will make a difference, so why not act accordingly?

If at least one of these reasons sounds familiar, I’m sure you know what you have to do. Identifying what you did wrong is an important first step, but taking things to the next level by acting accordingly is simply a must.

Best wishes,
Alan Johnson

I have been working on the new version of my color picker software - AdesClrPicker. The new v2.2 version is out now, you can download it here.

For those who are not familiar with AdesClrPicker, it’s a software for picking colors from anywhere on your screen. With one click you can get the color code of that spot in 5 different codes (HTML, RGB, Delphi, C++ and VB). For example if you click on a white space on your Desktop, it would give you #FFFFFF (it will be copied to your clipboard). Setting up your AdSense ads will be very easy with this program ;)

New features in this version

Floating Panel

Floating Panel (see image to the left) has been redesigned to include most used functions of the program. Previously it used to show the last 10 captured colors only. Now it has a lot more useful features on it. Floating Panel just sits on your screen, on top of all your windows. It’s small in dimension, so it can easily be positioned in any corner of your screen. If you do not want, you can always minimize it to taskbar.

Export Captured Colors as Image

New export feature has been added. Now you can export your captured colors as an image (jpg, gif or png) as well, in addition to Adobe Photoshop table export feature that it has. Exported images will have a colored box + color code. These images are useful if you want to share your colors with others. Instead of sending just the color codes, now people can actually send the colors together with the color codes.

This is how the exported image will look like (image + color code):

Change Preview Pane Size & Zoom Level

I have also added a new feature that allows you to change the preview pane and its zoom level. Some people suggested that they want to have a bigger zoom level. With new version that will be possible!

As you can see, a lot new exciting features are added to the new version. But it’s still small in size, only 1.5MB.

Promotion: Get 50% Discount

The program costs $9.99, but I am giving 50% off to all AdesBlog readers. Just use the following coupon-code on checkout page ACP-4CJB-BLOG and you will get $5.00 discount. Expiry date for this coupon is 20th May 2008 (another 7 days).

Congratulations to Walter Jessen for winning one copy of Revolution Theme! He will be able to choose one theme out of 8 available Revolution themes from http://www.revolutiontheme.com.

Sponsor of the contest

Big thanks to Brian Gardner of http://www.revolutiontheme.com for sponsoring this contest.

P.S For those who didn’t win - better luck next time! I will continue to organize more contests after this. So, stay tuned!

Last week in my MBA class (Management Control Systems) I had a case-study about “Balanced Scorecard” and how it was implemented in a particular company in the banking industry. Obviously the company had a lot of challenges and issues during the BSC implementation.

One of the lessons from the case was, for the BSC to be implemented successfully and fully, you need to keep improving it as the implementation phase moves along. One of the reasons cited for BSC implementation failure was because some companies want a perfect BSC - from the start. But that’s not possible, since BSC is a continuous thing, which has to be improved, changed, and adjusted over time.

Relating it to web-projects

This case-study reminded me of few occasions where I noticed how some people want everything to be perfect. They pay attention to the wrong (or shall we say less important) parts of the project. Every project consists of different parts, if it is a web project for example, then it could be divided into design, development, choosing hosting, choosing domain name, marketing, advertising etc.

However in order for the work to begin, you only need design and development (i.e scope of work) first. So don’t waste your time thinking how you will promote the website after its completion. Similarly, if you just want to test the waters whether the project will work or not, then don’t delve too much on the design of the interface. Just get a functional user interface that will do the job fairly and see if your project will stand the test. Because I noticed that some people will spend so much time perfecting the design of the website that they delay the launch of the project, or even worse the project gets not launched at all.

Because in most cases, it’s not the user interface that determines if the project will work or not. It’s the IDEA that determines the fate of your project. If your idea is good, then even if your website is not that “good looking” - it will still work! But not vice versa. You might have the best designed website, but still fail.

Lessons to be learned

So, in conclusion; first prioritize your tasks, identify the parts that are most important for the project to be completed. Once you have identified, work on those important parts first. Don’t waste your time on the tasks that will follow after the project has been completed.

Secondly, try to learn how to sacrifice on the design. Yes great logo is important for the brand, but don’t search for it 6 months until you delay the project. Same goes with the design of the website, some people spend so much time on the design that the real objective of the project gets forgotten. If your site supposed to be an auction site, once it has all the features developed and can do the job fairly well - just launch it! Don’t kill the web designer with small insignificant adjustments that won’t contribute to the overall objective of the project.

Don’t you agree with me? I think WP is moving towards that direction now. In the very near future, I am positive that it will become full fledged CMS (content management system) instead of being just a blogging platform.

With its open source and open platform nature, it will be so much easier to setup a website (for anybody) then. Just like now, there will be tons of plugins that would be built for standard website requirements (i.e payment gateways, statistical tools, newsletter integration, photo gallery.. etc).

I hope that WP 3.0 version will move in that direction.

Do you find reading news boring? How about adding some flare to it? Well, MSNBC is trying exactly that.

MSNBC has launched new visual news reader called Spectra that makes reading news a lot more entertaining.

It’s a flash based reader that shows news in a 3D fashion. You can choose different channels (e.g top news, international, US, Iraq..etc) and add to your reading queue.

Spectra