When you go to google.com, are you confused? No one gets to Google’s homepage and thinks, what am I suppose to do?
When you land on Yahoo’s home page, there’s significant confusion. There are a million different things all screaming for my attention.
Why does Google have approximately 70% of the search market while Yahoo has about 25%.
When you show someone your homepage, if they aren’t familiar with your business, do they “get it” within 8 seconds?
If a visitor only gives you 8 seconds, and may drop in on any one of your pages, can you convert them? If you keep it simple, you have a chance.
If you haven’t read Don’t Make Me Think, you should, it will help you make your site better.
Now that Internet giant Google has started telling it’s users to stop using IE6 to access GMail, you should to. The only time anyone should be supporting IE6 anymore is when they are working on an intranet app that will only be accessed by the poor souls forced by corporate policy to use it.
Microsoft even sent out an update last February that “auto-updated” users to IE7. But, not everyone has those turned on, or installs them once they are downloaded.
Reason #1 is simple. IE6 is a terrible browser. It couldn’t be any more non-compliant if it had set out to be.
Reason #2: Usage has dropped to 20%. In 2005 usage of IE6 was over 80%. Firefox users now outnumber IE6 users.
Reason #3: If you continue to support IE6, people will continue to use it, which is bad, see reason #1.
Reason #4: When someone like Google stops supporting a browser, it’s a watershed moment for that browser. I understand part of the reason Google is doing this is to push Chrome, but the fact remains that hundreds of millions of people will be nudged to abandon IE6.
Reason #5: The other choices are far superior. Even users that want/need to stay with IE can upgrade to 7 and be much better off. Just the tabs in IE7 will be a productivity boost for most users.
Photo By: Tansan
Reason #6: No transparent png support.
Reason #7: The IE Developers Toolbar is sub-par. Trying to debug and fix IE problems are too much of a hassle now. Once tools like Firebug became available for Firefox, who would ever develop in IE?
Reason #8: Security. IE6 has so many holes in it it is still the #1 target of script kiddies and real hackers.
IE6 is the Chevy Chase of browsers. At one point in the past, popular, everybody liked it and it did a good job. Now, it’s outdated, nobody likes it and it just can’t do the job any longer. It’s time for IE6 to retire.
My friends down in Fort Worth, Texas are planning a major redesign of the Star-Telegram.com website.
A couple years ago, I helped them move from their old Knight-Ridder platform, to their new McClatchy CMS. The move was major, but the design was kept the same. Then about a year ago, they gave their site a face [...]
If you don’t follow Matt Cutts on Twitter, you should, because you can get confirmation of Google Toolbar PR updates.
Google’s PageRank is not the big deal it once was, it is now just one piece of the puzzle, and they keep adding more pieces. With that in mind, it still gives you some insight into [...]
According to the latest numbers out of comScore, Google’s share of the search market is up another 1/2 percent to 63.5%.
To put that in some perspective, that’s almost the same percentage of marketshare that Microsoft Internet Explorer has of the browser market. The difference is that Google’s market share continues to grow while IE is [...]
I went to my first meetup meeting tonight. It was a Raleigh/Cary SEO group led by the fabulous Ashley Berman Hale.
I had no idea what to expect, except a lot of people. When I checked at 5pm, there were 26 people planning on attending - who knew there were so many search geeks around?
Ashley’s company [...]
For the past few weeks, I’ve been working with the awesome online team at the fresnobee.com website.
On Tuesday morning, about 6am PST, the site went live. One of the add on features that McClatchy newspapers is the Pluck SiteLife product. Pluck SiteLife allows visitors to comment on stories, rate and recommend stories, but, one of [...]
I realized a few weeks ago that I have a number of sites that I really value for straight-to-the-point SEO information.
When I have a question that is slightly off and I feel like I need a little more confidence before I answer, I almost always turn to my first choice, SEOmoz. One of the best [...]
I finally got around to actually looking at what the Inside AdWords blog recently announced, the beta release of Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool.
Lots of helpful information in this new gizmo. This is something every PPC advertiser should take advantage of, and even if you’re not an AdWords advertiser, you can make use of it.
I think [...]
