Monthly Archives: February 2008

WYSIWYG – This popular acronym (pronounced “wiz-ee-wig”) has become popular when screen graphic presentations become virtually identical to those when printing or displaying them on the web. For example, the way you design your screen graphic presentation in a word document will be identical if printed or published to the web. I would however like to caution you that a serious issue might exist distorting your web site and creating what I call the WYSINAWYG syndrome. “What you see is NOT ALWAYS what you get.”

When was the last time you or your web development partner decided to test your site to make sure it properly displays and works through the major web browsers and even some older browsers? If you think this may not be a big issue, you should read the rest of this post.

We always attempt to take advantage of the latest in programming languages that is available to us when developing web sites for our clients. We also focus on the latest and greatest in browser technology. I come to realize that this might create serious challenges with individuals using older technologies who are not quick to upgrade their software and Internet browsers.

Below are three screen-capture examples from David Newman’s blog. Notice the books on the right hand side displaying properly in Microsoft Internet Explorer browser (click on images to enlarge):

In the next display using the Mac Safari browser, notice that only four books are showing on the right hand side and several are actually missing:

Below is the example using the Firefox browser, which happens to be my default and favorite browser. Notice that the books are displaying diagonally from right to left and are actually distorting the text of the post:

Here is an interesting chart showing that the most popular browsers are Microsoft IE7, IE6 and Firefox (which is constantly gaining popularity.)

Which brings me to my final point and recommendation that you test your web site(s) using these top browsers as well as Safari. Or you too may be surprised that what you intended to be shown is not correctly shown.

What You Say Online May Damage Your Credibility

As I write on this quite often, blogs are a powerful tool to enable you to rapidly publish content about you and your company. If done well, they can add tremendous credibility for your organization and create an online dialog between you and your customers. However, I would also like to caution you that if in the wrong hands, blogs might become a competitive advantage for your competitors.

We use Constant Contact as our email distribution engine when electronically delivering our clients’ newsletters and ours. We find it easy to use, extremely stable and it generates good successful results. While reviewing newsletter services available from other companies, I came across an interesting company by the name of iContact. When visiting their blog, I was surprised to read their own post from 1/22/08 and 1/28/08 reporting serious issues with their products and how they fixed it. As an Internet and software development company, I do believe in taking action, communicating with customers and being responsible when software defects are discovered. However, I do not find this public open admission to be a good business practice. It’s one thing to contact and notify the customers affected, let them know of the issues and how you have taken care of it now and for the future. It’s another to openly broadcast this message on your blog, scare away potential new customers or even existing ones and give your competitors great research ammunition to use against you.

(Screens capture from iContact blog. click on images to enlarge):

The second most successful outcome of a newsletter strategy is to increase your email distribution list. The first of course is to increase your business with new orders and new projects. I’ve written on this topic extensively in my articles section on my web site as well as here on this blog. Checkout my previous article: How to grow your email distribution list for a good place to start. The best and most ethical practice is when visitors add themselves to your distribution list. Another option is to send a personal email to someone you’ve met and invite them to join your newsletter or ask them verbally for their permission to do so when you are with them. I would even suggest that it is somewhat acceptable to take the liberty and add someone to your list if you had a strong contact with them. However, you must allow them to easily reject your invitation (opt-out) by either allowing them to reply to your invitation or easily opt-out when they receive your newsletter.

My strong position remains that it is intrusive, poor business practice and unethical to add “strangers” to your list without their permission. When I get such obnoxious emails I view these individuals as desperate spammers, poor business people whom I would never do business with.

Checkout the following irritating example. Without my permission, I was placed on this email newsletter from someone (monica@monicawofford.com) whom I’ve never met before. Below is the newsletter that opened up in my email (click on images to enlarge):

I immediately realized that this has no value for me, so I paged down to the bottom of the email to look for the unsubscribe option. There, all the way at the bottom of the page I noticed the “Update e-mail preferences” option:

When I clicked on it I realized a serious problem with this person’s logic. The email address embedded into the preferences option was not my own but their generic newsletter1@contagiousconferences.com address which would not allow me to unsubscribe. Here is what this screen looked like:

Now I started to get irritated. But quickly thinking on my feet, I realized I could simply reply to her original newsletter email and tell her to unsubscribe me. So I did, and within seconds of sending my email I got an email reply from her server (see below):

Apparently and in order to reduce the spam she receives, she decided to use this SpamArrest software (intrusive and I would NEVER
recommend it) which forces a first time user (such as me) to click on the link and request her permission to accept the email. Now I was livid. First, this confirmed that we were complete strangers who never exchanged emails before. Second, this demonstrated the hypocrisy of her trying to protect herself from the spamming techniques she was using on others.

I did click on the link to make sure she hopefully gets my email. The screen bellow did confirm that my email was hopefully sent.

Smirking, I looked at the screen pondering how better this world would be if these amateurs were arrested by the spam police.