6 Ways to Optimize Your Site for the iPad

6 Ways to Optimize Your Site for the iPad

The iPad is no Apple Newton. It truly is a revolutionary device. The whimsical blog of “Fake Steve Jobs” calls the iPad a “life-changing, mind-altering product”. Although that may be an overstatement, the iPad is certainly important — to the computing industry, to computer users, and to online marketers.

The launch of the iPad marks a significant step forward for mobile computing, and for computing in general: one’s productivity can finally be as high as when they are in front of their laptop or desktop computer. The iPad user can efficiently and effectively do their shopping, banking, email, YouTube video watching, and general web surfing. It is also surprisingly easy to use the iPad for more complex, input-intensive tasks, like writing term papers, building slide decks, and manipulating spreadsheets — particularly when also equipped with a Bluetooth keyboard. In fact, the iPad just may be versatile and powerful enough for the road warrior to travel with sans laptop. Conversely, smart phones and other handheld mobile devices, really only serve as a complement — rather than a practical replacement — for the user’s laptop or desktop machine.

Technically speaking, the iPad’s operating system is the iPhoneOS, but practically the OS is the Internet. Just upload your documents into “the cloud” (e.g. MobileMe, Dropbox, Xythos) and you are off and running. For the multitude of Google Docs users this is an unnecessary step, as the documents already live in the Cloud, not on any local hard drive. The iPad will undoubtedly speed adoption of this trend towards Internet-based file storage.

Overall, it looks like this launch is going to be a success and the iPad, like the iPod, iPhone, and the iMac before it, will gain significant distribution among consumers globally. And, since it includes a browser with a different set of specifications from either the standard mobile devices, the question for advertisers becomes a practical one – “will my web pages come up on this browser?”

With the iPad’s Safari browser, the Web generally looks and works like one would expect on any traditional laptop or desktop computer. However, there are important differences in the browsing experience and these differences could thwart your web visitors, stopping them in their tracks. As a site owner, you must compensate for these differences, or risk losing the conversion, and more importantly, the customer.

“Mobile-Friendly” Does Not Equal “iPad-Friendly”

If you created a mobile-friendly version of your website, you are probably seeing the fruits of your labor in customer adoption already. That mobile site, however, is not suitable for iPad user consumption. Mobile sites are designed for a teeny-tiny screen and translate to a deficient user experience on the iPad. Consequently, your mobile site should never be served up automatically to the iPad user. This can happen inadvertently when your web server’s “user-agent detection” is overly broad in its matching of mobile user agents (the user-agent strings for the iPhone and iPad are very similar; the iPad’s even includes the word “mobile”). This is the case for Walmart.com and Officedepot.com (screenshots photo-2 & photo-21). Thankfully this is easy to correct.

Avoiding the mobile-friendly version is one thing, serving up a site that offers an iPad-optimized user experience is quite another. It can involve overhauling page layout, recoding CSS, redesigning navigation, and adding alternative non-Flash elements.

Layout and Formatting

Your website design should lay out correctly whether the user is holding the iPad in landscape mode or portrait mode. Furthermore, when in landscape mode the primary call-to-action should still be visible without scrolling.

Even if the page renders properly on the Safari browser for the Mac or Windows, it will not necessarily render the same on the iPad. Case in point: Homedepot.com, with overlapping text where the breadcrumb navigation displays. This anomaly does not occur on Safari for the Mac. (screenshots photo-26 & screen shot 1)

Bear in mind that the browser window cannot be resized on the iPad. This means you cannot force elements to stay in a specific fixed position on the screen like you can for desktop browser users. Fixed positioning should not be used, if at all possible.

Retool Your Navigation

The multi-touch display provides an elegant and intuitive interface for users, but it also presents some unique challenges to web designers who are use to designing for the desktop. The biggest one is that iPad users cannot hover their cursor, potentially rendering any mouse-over navigation unusable. On the iPad, holding your finger down invokes the copy-and-paste function rather than creating a hover state.

On Officedepot.com, once you manage to get off of the mobile site, you will find that the sub-navigation items underneath the main navigation tabs are practically inaccessible. When you press on a tab (e.g. Furniture), the sub-navigation is displayed, but at the same time you are taken to the Furniture category page. So there is not enough time to select a sub-item (such as Modular Collections) before you are whisked away to the top-level category page (screenshot photo-18). The aforementioned sub-section (Modular Collections) is not accessible elsewhere on the page, like in the footer. It is not in the sub-navigation directly under Furniture on the mobile site either, curiously.

On Homedepot.com, pressing on a top navigation button caused its sub-items to display — without loading the top-level category page. Clicking on the top navigation item a second time takes you to the top-level category page. Unfortunately, you have to click twice on the sub-item before it will load the requested page. (e.g. to get to the Light Bulbs page from the navigation requires pressing on Electrical once then pressing on Light Bulbs twice (see screenshot photo-24). That was not at all intuitive.

The CDW.com top navigation and MacConnection.com’s left navigation both functioned beautifully on the iPad. Press on a category, and the sub-categories are visible and accessible with one click (screenshots photo-9 & photo-8). You are not whisked away to a top-level category page before you made your sub-navigation selection. On MacConnection.com you can go to the top-level category page by clicking that item again; on CDW.com you cannot, presumably, because there is no corresponding top-level category page for Products, Services, etc.

Lack of Flash Support

This is one of the main complaints with the iPad. No, this was not an oversight. The lack of Flash support was intentional. The company line at Apple is that Flash is prone to crash and is too resource-intensive. Just ask the helpful employees at the local Apple Store and that is what they will tell you. I do not buy it. If Flash really were that unstable, wouldn’t we notice it on our desktop machines? Speaking for myself, this is not something I experience regularly. Google’s Chrome browser, which I now use as my default, even calls it out when Flash crashes and displays an unhappy icon in the place of the Flash animation. Note that in Chrome, Flash does not crash the browser or even the tab/window. Surely Apple can follow Google’s lead and build this same capability into Safari? I feel this is more a political/competitive issue than anything else.

What are the implications of not having Flash? For one, you will find a content-less hole in many home pages across the Internet. Some sites will display a blank space where the Flash animation would have been (photo-20 and photo-5 screenshots). If on your website this represents a large amount of the screen real estate, that void could cost you a conversion. Other sites fill that void with a message urging the user to download and install the Flash player from Adobe’s website (photo-23 screenshot), thus sending the user on a wild goose chase that will ultimately end fruitless. Still other sites discretely display a warning that the lack of Flash makes their site inaccessible or somehow unusable. (photo-10 screenshot)

The workaround involves a mix of user-agent detection and HTML5. First, detect the iPad Safari browser, then selectively serve up a version that eliminates the dead space and compensates for the loss in content/functionality. If the Flash was navigation or a rotating carousel, this can be accomplished with HTML and CSS. If it was a video (the majority of video on the web is Flash-based), then develop an alternative HTML5-based player or utilize a solution like BrightCove’s (examples: eBags, onlineshoes.tv, screenshots photo-1 & photo-4). If your Live Chat function relies on Flash, then you have a very big and immediate problem. MacConnection’s customer service chat (screenshots photo-7, photo-6) is fully functional on the iPad. Is yours?

Expect Glitches

It’s still early days for the iPad. This is version 1, with many more revisions to come. There are still many kinks to be ironed out, including in the iPad Safari browser rendering engine. So do not be too surprised if Safari for the iPad mangles your website with browser rendering bugs and inconsistencies. For example, notice in the figure below (insert photo-11 screenshot) that the “New Account?” checkbox partially overlaps the input field, the combination of the two resembling a pull-down list. User confusion could result: if the user doesn’t recognize the checkbox, then they are liable to mistakenly expect the “New Account?” label to be a clickable link and find themselves unable to proceed to checkout.

Bottom line: expect to compensate for Apple’s bugs and glitches, and develop workarounds. The process starts with good old-fashioned QA. Without rigorous testing, you may never know that your site does not work on the iPad. Please do not rely on your users to tell you. Broken websites can happen to anyone. Even to Apple, ironically. Parts of Apple’s Safari Dev Center are un-navigable when accessed from an iPad, including their “Preparing Your Web Content for iPad” technical note in their Safari Reference Library, which does not scroll (screenshot photo-0).

A Simple Solution

If implementing an iPad-optimized version of your website quickly is not feasible or would be a struggle, there are a number of vendors that provide real-time site translations – one such solution is our own Mobile Site Optimizer. These solutions can be implemented quickly, cost-effectively, and with minimal IT involvement. See our product overview at http://www.covario.com/what-we-do/deployment-software/mobile-site-optimizer

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site.

7 Simple Geo Targeting Tips for Your Site.

How do they do this?

By looking at a number of factors, such as:.

• Country-specific domain name - eg. .com or .com.au or .co.uk etc. etc.


• Where your site is hosted - be careful with this as a lot of hosting providers may have their offices in one country, but use servers and equipment based overseas.


• Language used in your website content - even things like UK English vs. US English can make a difference due to spelling and colloquialisms.Inbound Links to your site - are they mainly from other Australian websites, US sites, UK sites etc.


• Listing of your address / location / phone number on your website.


• Location of people who look at your site - if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

Knowing the above information makes it a lot easier to perform a Geo Targeting audit on your site. Here are the things I would do:

1. If you run an Australian website and your main customers / clients are other Australians, spend the few extra dollars and buy a .com.au domain name. If you’re targeting clients in the UK, buy a .co.uk. etc. etc.


2. Apply the same logic (as above) to the web hosting - spend a few extra dollars to have your website hosted in the country that you are targeting.
   Be sure to check that your hosting provider uses equipment based in your country too. If you still aren’t certain you can check their IP’s using SEOmoz’s IP Location Tool.


3. Take the time to check your spelling and use the type of wording your clients will understand and are familiar with.
   For example the term swimwear, swimsuit, beachwear, cozzies, bathers and togs all mean the same thing but people in Queensland, Australia (where I’m from) rarely use the term bathers or cozzies - we wear ‘togs’.


4. An inbound link is like a personal referral or testimonial for your website. Having links from other relevant local sites will be far more valuable with Geo Targeting than having lots of inbound links from overseas sites.


5. Submit your site to local business and local search directories - this can often be one of the easiest methods of attracting local links and local traffic.
   As a rule-of-thumb, just make sure the directory presents well and that you are comfortable being listed amongst the other sites that are in the directory. If you think the directory isn’t great quality, you’re probably right and it should be avoided.


6. Mention your address, location and contact details in the footer of each page - this is one of the easiest things to do which can help tell your clients and the search engines that you are a local business.
   The only time this doesn’t really help is if you have offices in multiple locations. Mentioning a dozen countries / cities in the footer won’t do much for your local profile in each of those places. If this is the case you should build separate sites (or at the very least separate pages) for each location.


7. Build your brand locally as you will usually rank well for your business name before you’ll start ranking for more competitive terms.
   Ensure you promote your site through off-line advertising methods, which can be as simple as including your website on your business cards, letterheads and other corporate stationary.
   This will help you gain local search traffic and as mentioned above, if your site has more traffic from Australian visitors it is likely to rank better in Google.com.au than it would in Google.com.

GEO-targeting Analysis.

GEO-targeting SEO doesn’t end at SEO-targeting promotion. To fully understand visitor behaviors of each GEO market, try using geographic Meta data for accurate results. Several Boston Internet marketing companies have used Web analytic software and IP databases that provide a range of locations for specific requirement when a version of a web site or advertisements need to reach only a specific city within the states.

GEO-targeting Design.

Websites targeting multiple GEO regions may have a few versions of the site. And each version targets one particular language. For the same version, the page may be configured according to the location automatically. It’s a common practice to use IP address to identify the geo region of a visitor. For design of each version, make sure to work closely with the designers who really know about that market. The design of the website should suit the style and taste of the local users. A website targeting US market has much better chance of success if a Boston web design company is involved, instead of a web design firm from India. Geo-targeting depends on the user's settings. As an example, an English web site may display different versions according to the user's location, whether Canada, Australia or the United Kingdom, since Geo-targeting identifies the user's keyword settings, language and location.

GEO-targeting Promotion.

All major search engines serve the search results based on both what users are looking for (the quires) and where they come from (location). In fact, major search engines Google, Yahoo Search!, and Microsoft’s Live search all have a different version of the main search engine for either major language or a country. A searcher from UK will see the different search results than a searcher from Australia even though they use the same search engine and search for the same term. Search engines rank pages according to what kind of links a site is pointed and where the links are from. If a website site gets most of links from UK, the site will rank well when UK users look for information in a search engine. If you’re not located in the GEO market you target, work with a local SEO firm is productive and rewarding. A Boston internet marketing company that really knows about Boston SEO will do a much better job for acquiring links from either US sites or Boston local websites.

Courtesy: SEO-NEWS

30 Resources on Google; SEO Changes in 2010

Google changes faster than you can blink right now. Just some buzzwords that will bug you in 2010:

1. Google Caffeine
   
2. Google Real Time search
   
3. Google Personalized search results
   
4. Google Living Stories
   
5. Google Phone
   

I could go on like for a while. It’s not my intention to confuse you even more though. I want to shed some light on the near future of Google, search and SEO. It’s a daunting task as I’m overwhelmed as well.

Thus I picked 30 resources on Google, search & SEO changes in 2010 from around the search industry and some main stream sources.

These articles explain some or several of the upcoming changes.

Google Caffeine

• Expect Caffeine after the holidays
• Google Caffeine Search Index & Algorithm Update
• More info on the Caffeine Update
• Google Caffeine Test Suggests Too Much Emphasis
• Google’s Caffeine May Cause Corporate Jitters
• Will Google Caffeine “Jolt” The SEO Community
• Google Caffeine SEO Notes
• Google Caffeine and “SEO”

Google Real Time Search

• Relevance meets the real-time web
• Google Launches Real Time Search
• What is Google Real Time Search?
• Google Enables Real Time Spam and More

Google Personalized Search

• Personalized Search for everyone
• Google Now Personalizes Everyone’s Search Results
• Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention
• The SEO guide to Google personalized search | Search Engine Optimization | Search Engines
• SEO 2.0 12 Effects Google Personal Search Will Have on SEO, Blogging, Social Media
• Google Extends Personalized Search, Further Complicates SEO

Google Living Stories

• Exploring a new, more dynamic way of reading news with Living Stories
• Google Launches Living Stories News Experiment With New York Times & Washington Post

Google Phone

• Google gears up for attack on mobile-phone market
• Google Phone Could Mean Free Mobile Phone Service

Google Breadcrumbs

• New site hierarchies display in search results
• Google Adds Breadcrumbs to Search Results Interface

Misc. Resources

• How to SEO for Google Place Rank
  
• Local SEO a million times more important
• Could Google Make It Happen?
• All You Need to Know About Google’s New Feature Updates
• Social and Search Marketing: It’s Complicated

Courtesy: 30 Resources on Google, Search & SEO Changes in 2010

10 reasons people criticize SEO

10 reasons people criticize SEO

SEO is a polarizing subject. Bring it up in the company of the tech set and chances are you'll get a debate not unlike one you might get when talking about religion and politics.

A lot of the criticism of SEO is misplaced while some of it isn't. When addressing SEO criticism, it helps to have an understanding of why critics are so skeptical. Here are top 10 reasons.

1. They don't know what SEO is. While the phrase 'search engine optimization' seems pretty straightforward, it's pretty obvious that many of the most ardent SEO critics don't really know what SEO is. Case in point: Derek Powazek's recent attack on SEO equated botnets and hacking attempts with SEO, a clear indication that Powazek didn't really know what he was talking about.


2. They had a bad experience. There's plenty of SEO snake oil out there and a bad experience with an SEO snake oil salesman could easily lead someone to believe that SEO itself is a scam. People throw the baby out with the bath water all the time and SEO in particular is no exception.


3. They're listening to the wrong people. It's easy to form a bad opinion of just about anything if you listen to the wrong people. Just as in social media, there are plenty of people in the SEO world who promulgate myths, misstate facts and make sweeping proclamations. These things aren't always done intentionally but the harm is done regardless. Unfortunately, the people who are most apt to do these things are often the ones who have the time to hog the spotlight and are most visible to newbies.


4. They're jealous. If the competition has great SERPs thanks to its SEO efforts, and you don't, it's convenient to criticize the competition's use of SEO. After all, you're better than the competition so any competitor who appears more prominently in the SERPs must be scheming, right?


5. They're lazy. SEO is hard work. From learning the basics to staying abreast of the latest trends to actually applying your knowledge in practice, SEO, like most things worthwhile, requires hard work and an investment of time. Out of all the people who criticize SEO, how many do you really think have actually made a reasonable effort to see what SEO can do for them?


6. They already have great SERPs. It's completely possible to obtain great SERPs without making a dedicated SEO effort or being an expert SEO. That's because so many of the important aspects of good SEO (content, information architecture, design) aren't exclusive to SEO. So someone who has acquired great SERPs but who didn't consciously focus on SEO has good reason to ask what all the SEO hoopla is about.


7. SEO seems too complicated. SEO is a nuanced field and in many areas, there are no black and white answers. Much is unique to individual circumstances and there's also a lot of myth and misinformation that needs to be sifted through. This can easily deter someone.


8. They experienced failure. There's no magic formula when it comes to SEO and results aren't realized overnight. For the impatient, a lack of instant results can serve as the foundation for SEO skepticism.


9. They're master link builders. What's one of the fastest ways to acquire new backlinks? Write an inflammatory post calling SEO a scam. Oh the irony!


10. They're full of nonsense. A lot of the people who criticize SEO don't really believe what they say. Take Jason Calacanis, for instance. He's said some pretty mean things about SEO yet his company, Mahalo, is basically an SEO play. And uses some pretty aggressive tactics at that.

Have I missed anything? What rationales have you seen behind SEO criticism?

Twillist Wants The Ultimate Resource For Twitter Lists

Ever since Twitter started increasing in popularity, there’s been a clear need for a more efficient way to manage groups of users than Twitter natively provides. We’ve seen desktop clients like TweetDeck and Seesmic build their own grouping functionality, as have standalone sites like WeFollow. TweepML has even created an open standard for managing and sharing groups of Twitter users. Today, you can add one more to the bunch: Twillist, a dead-simple site for building your own list of Twitter users.

Of course, Twillist’s release comes less than two weeks after Twitter announced that it would offer its own natively supported Lists, which are still in testing with a subset of users. So where does that leave Twillist?

Founder Michael Broukhim (who is also the co-founder of Totspot) says that the site plans to feature heavy integration with the upcoming new Twitter API features, with the intention of becoming the de facto place to create and find Twitter lists. The site will include added features like the ability to see which shared links are most popular in a given list, embeddable lists that you can share on your blog, the ability to collaborate on Lists with friends, and a feature that would let you see which Twitter users appear in the most lists. These features would all certainly come in handy — at this point it’s a matter of where users are going to turn to to find them.

Twillist is easy to use, and can effectively serve as an alternative to Twitter’s web interface. At the top of the page is a box where you can tweet new messages, along with a menu containing all of the lists you’ve created. Clicking one of the lists will bring you to a page that looks similar to your normal Twitter feed, except it only shows tweets from the members of the list. Creating a list is simple too: just enter what it should be titled, as well as their user names (you can add more people to the list later on, too). My only gripe with the process is the lack of an autocomplete function, so you’ll have to make sure you’re spelling each name correctly.

Twillist is quite well done, with a simple but good looking interface and straightforward functionality. That said, it’s certainly got its work cut out for it: along with the aforementioned grouping/list sites that already exist, we’ll likely see quite a few other sites spring up that look to become the authoritative site for Twitter Lists. And this all assumes that Twitter isn’t intending to make a hub of its own, which is hardly a given. But for now, Twillist offers a good way to create and use Lists on Twitter, before they’re actually available through the service itself.