The Lost Knowledge Blog for Web Design

I came across what I think could possibly be one of the most cost effective ways to see how people use your website. This can help to shape your site to become more effective. I’ve been using it for a week now and have made several small changes that have already paid off.

Stats can only tell you so much and even for a stats junkie like me there is a lot of assumptions that you need to make, not ideal.

What you really want is to be able to watch people use your website, but the problem with that is they are usually aware that they are being watched. This can influence how they use your site. They also tend to not actually be your customers, so the data is useful, but is missing some vital information – how your actual customers use your site.

If only there was some way to be able to see what customers do on our sites without them knowing it? Well there has been something for a while now, but it was a very VERY expensive thing to do.

No longer though, go here http://www.userfly.com and sign up for a free account. You get 10 free captures a month or you can upgrade to get more. All you need to do is then add a piece of code to your website (ask me if you need help doing this – I’ll do it for free) and enjoy watching your customers actually using your website.

I feel I should let you know they are updating the site and it’s features constantly, so there are a few bugs here and there, but I still think the data you get to see is invaluable.

Do you have a time saver or something like this site that you can share with us, leave a comment if you do!

Alan

Today I had a client ask me where she can get free photos for her site, so I had a quick look around on the internet and came across a very handy collection of free stock photo sites (someone else has kindly collated them for us).

It’s always difficult choosing the right photo, so having plenty of sites to look at increases the chances that you’ll find the perfect one.

What I would say though is sometimes free sites just don’t have the image you need and for the sake of a few quid you can save yourself a lot of wasted time trawling through the free sites if you just buy the images. Also it helps to support the photographers being able to take more.

Anyway happy hunting, here’s the link Free Stock Photo list

I got asked by a client how we go about choosing keywords for websites, mainly because we showed them that potential customers were typing in keywords that they didn’t think about. This is mainly due to the fact that they are too involved in the technicalities of their products and not aware of how customers see or describe them.

This is one of those moments where you normally tell a half truth, why you ask? Well you don’t want to give all your secrets away to potential clients and you will potentially lose out on paid if you told them everything, think about it would you tell them your secret?

Now I’m not going to give away all my secrets, but I will give away a pretty big one and that’s a tool that helps you with what keywords people enter into search engines. This tool does charge an annual or monthly fee, but it is the standard keyword tool for any web designer or Search Engine Specialist that would like to add value to a client by having the most relevant keywords on their site.

Of course you can try to figure out what keywords are relevant to your potential customers, but why guess when you can have the facts.

If you have a Content Management System like ours then you will be able to do you’re updates yourself, which means you can really get into optimising your website for no more than the subscription and your time. That’s not to say the a web design company cannot help you improve your SEO, they can, but wouldn’t it feel great to be a little self sufficient

Free 7 Day trial for the best keywords for your business and drive more traffic to your website!