Simon Baier » Web Development

Establishing Website Credibility

Simon — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:16:47 +0000

It is easy to take for granted how we subconsciously assess people for credibility every day. Think of your inner monologue when your phone rings and your caller ID identifies an unknown caller. You’re already on the defensive, and you hear something like this:

“Good morning Sir, this is Troy from American Financial Partners in Boca Raton…”

You’re probably not likely to listen to the next sentence. However, something like this next approach might trigger a completely different response.

“Good morning Mr Baier, this is Troy Stewart. Your accountant, Mel Weinberg, suggested I give you a call. I’m with American Financial Partners; we are a 90 year old wealth management firm owned by Warren Buffett…”

You’re probably going to give this person the benefit of the doubt, or at least continue to listen to what he has to say.

What’s the difference? Credibility. The first caller sounds deceptive by omitting his last name. The name of the company – American Financial Partners – sounds conspicuously (maybe deceptively) generic. And Boca, for all its manicured beauty, is not famous for its business integrity.

The second call adds a few all-important credibility factors. Troy uses his last name, which, is not in itself a credibility indicator, but it keeps the listener listening. He immediately brings up a familiar name. Third-party endorsements are a powerful tool in establishing credibility. In essences he’s coat-tailing on the credibility of a trusted advisor, and implicitly saying “Mel trusts me to give me your number, so you should trust me” But Troy doesn’t end there; he also adds age credibility (We’re not a fly-by-night. We’ve withstood the test of time.) and for good measure, some additional credibility with the name of a known and respected personality who has attached their name to his company.

But who is Simon Baier to speak authoritatively on the subject of credibility? Well, if you don’t believe me, I have some sources for third-party credibility of my own …

Instant Street Cred

A Real Credibility Guru

So seriously, where did Bart learn so much about credibility? Probably from the real expert on the subject of web credibility, B.J. Fogg (@bjfogg), Director of the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, and self described as “a psychologist who investigates how technology persuades people”. Fortune magazine profiled B.J. fog as one of the 10 New Gurus You Should Know, and “one of the most sought after thinkers in Silicon Valley”.

The Lab’s Web Credibility Project provides the following ten guidelines for establishing credibility on a web site.

Web Site Credibility Guidelines

1. Make it easy to verify the accuracy of the information on your site.

You can build web site credibility by providing third-party support (citations, references, source material) for information you present, especially if you link to this evidence. Even if people don’t follow these links, you’ve shown confidence in your material.

2. Show that there’s a real organization behind your site.

Showing that your web site is for a legitimate organization will boost the site’s credibility. The easiest way to do this is by listing a physical address. Other features can also help, such as posting a photo of your offices or listing a membership with the chamber of commerce.

3. Highlight the expertise in your organization and in the content and services you provide.

Do you have experts on your team? Are your contributors or service providers authorities? Be sure to give their credentials. Are you affiliated with a respected organization? Make that clear. Conversely, don’t link to outside sites that are not credible. Your site becomes less credible by association.

4. Show that honest and trustworthy people stand behind your site.

The first part of this guideline is to show there are real people behind the site and in the organization. Next, find a way to convey their trustworthiness through images or text. For example, some sites post employee bios that tell about family or hobbies.

5. Make it easy to contact you.

A simple way to boost your site’s credibility is by making your contact information clear: phone number, physical address, and email address.

6. Design your site so it looks professional (or is appropriate for your purpose).

We find that people quickly evaluate a site by visual design alone. When designing your site, pay attention to layout, typography, images, consistency issues, and more. Of course, not all sites gain credibility by looking like IBM.com. The visual design should match the site’s purpose.

7. Make your site easy to use — and useful.

We’re squeezing two guidelines into one here. Our research shows that sites win credibility points by being both easy to use and useful. Some site operators forget about users when they cater to their own company’s ego or try to show the dazzling things they can do with web technology.

8. Update your site’s content often (at least show it’s been reviewed recently).

People assign more credibility to sites that show they have been recently updated or reviewed.

9. Use restraint with any promotional content (e.g., ads, offers).

If possible, avoid having ads on your site. If you must have ads, clearly distinguish the sponsored content from your own. Avoid pop-up ads, unless you don’t mind annoying users and losing credibility. As for writing style, try to be clear, direct, and sincere.

10. Avoid errors of all types, no matter how small they seem.

Typographical errors and broken links hurt a site’s credibility more than most people imagine. It’s also important to keep your site up and running.

On-Page & Off-Page SEO Techniques

Simon — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 03:02:27 +0000

I recently started work for a client who has come to depend on his web site for 100% of new business. Whether it’s the economy, or increased competition, or other macro trends, his business is down about 25% from last year. The web site is simply not generating the leads it once did.

I saw that the site had recently been “optimized” by a dark hat firm with plenty of sparmy (spammy + smarmy) techniques. When asked, he told me how his efforts to increase traffic had been an experience akin to pushing a boulder up a hill. Lots of activity, and little to show for it.

Every web site I have worked on over the last ten plus years has had SEO squarely in mind during development. Most of my recent projects have used a content management system or ecommerce platform that is highly search-optimized structure out of the box. (WordPress and Magento are my respective favorites.)

I have learned that SEO is not about “tricking” search engines into giving you a high listing, but rather it’s about presenting yourself well, and adhering to a handful of best practices.

SEO can be sub categorized as on-page, and off-page. On-page is your internal page and site structure, and off page is gaining recognition (and almighty links) from every other site on the Internet.

On-Page SEO

Your on-page SEO strategy is all about presenting your company in bite sized chunks in a manner that is accurately and optimally indexed so as to directly address every conceivable customer search query.

Components of on-site and on-page strategy involves:

Site copy– content must be written first for human usability, and a close second for search engine algorithms. Keep an eye on length, concise subject scope, and keyword density.
Information architecture – subject matter silos with focused keyword sets
Navigational structure – internal text links that preserve and enhance page rank
Semantic structure – meaningful use of HTML markup tags
Landing pages – narrow topic, minimal distraction, clear call-to-action
Meta data – titles, description, keywords, alt text, titles, relationships, and micro formats are all critical elements to help effective indexing.

Off-Page SEO

Off-page SEO strategy is all about demonstrating relevance, and search engines recognize ones relevance by what other sites are saying about you as indicated by their linking to your site.

An inbound link building strategy should seek well-formed links from a quantity of significant sites pointing to a wide breadth of pages in your site.

I typically start with paid and unpaid directories, then follow up with member associations and strategic partners. In addition, inbound links are one of many benefits to an ongoing social media campaign. And lastly, good old PR can go a long way to gaining valuable inbound links.

SEO is a Journey

Above all, remember that effective SEO is a journey and not a destination. Do not try to manipulate search engines into giving you high relevance and therefore a high ranking, instead, present yourself in a organized and “consumable” manner, engage in the online discussion, and actually be relevant.

Be relevant, and discover how much easier it is to roll that boulder down the hill.

WordPress Error: Nothing found for Wp-admin Post PHP

Simon — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 17:52:37 +0000

Recently I was working on a blog post which, for some reason, failed to save. Instead, it generated the following error:
Nothing found for Wp-admin Post Php

The post was longer than average, so my first thoughts went to a PHP memory issue… but that rabbit hole did not bear fruit. After much searching, I narrowed the error to an Apache security module called mod_security. At first it did not make sense to me that a failure to post could be related to a security issue as shorter posts, and long test posts saved just fine. What I found out was that my problem post contained enough SQL keywords (such as SELECT, FROM, WHERE, JOIN, etc) to cause concern to a SQL injection detection algorithm. (as it was explained to me by my Liquidweb guy)

The problem was quickly fixed by adding my web site domain to a mod_security white list using the following syntax:

SecRule SERVER_NAME “baier.com” phase:1,nolog,allow,ctl:ruleEngine=off

By the way, if you are looking for a great hosting company, I can’t say enough good things about Liquidweb. Their pricing is very reasonable with shared hosting starting at around $15/month, and dedicated at around $200. What really differentiates Liquidweb is their service. For me it’s like having a part time employee looking after my web server. I have always received an answer from their 24/7 telephone tech support, and have found them to be very knowledgeable, and eager to solve my problems.

Liquidweb (affiliate link; genuine recommendation)
mod_security web site (including full documentation)

Cumberland County Maine – Farmers’ Markets 2009

Simon — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:22:30 +0000

Lovin’ that Google Calendar

If you haven’t already, check out the Google Calendar. I use it every day within my organization for scheduling, but it is also very useful for quick public calendars such as this local Farmers’ Market Summer 2009 schedule.

The calendar below was, created, posted and published in less than an hour. It can easily be imported into your iCalendar compliant calendar software. It’s easily shared with viewers and designated editors.

Google Calendar is FREEEEEE … but requires you to have a Google Account (which is also freeeee, and will take you only a minute or two to create).

Questions?

If you have questions about an event, please contact the individual referenced in the event notes.

If you are the person responsible for updating event data, and would like editing access to this calendar, please contact me directly.

Information sourced from the State of Maine web site.

Killer WordPress Tutorials

Simon — Sun, 03 May 2009 17:19:14 +0000

I stumbled across this series of instructional videos buried in the Themeforest web site. The presenter, Drew Douglas, does a great job of progressing through all pieces of WordPress in real time. If you have at least a cursory understanding of HTML, CSS, PHP, and PhotoShop this series will get you up and running fast with WordPress development.

If you haven’t already, check out the Themeforest web site for a wealth of theming resources.

Day 1: Installation

Installation of WordPress with a bonus of setting up a MAMP, or XAMPP development server on your desktop complete with web server, mysql, and PHP.

Tutorial reference links

Day 2: Basics

Explores the basics including the ins and outs or the WordPress Admin panel.

Day 3: Create a theme from scratch.

It’s easier than you may think.

Day 4: Looping

Learn how to loop through arrays of information like posts and pages. There are lots of neat tricks along the way.

Day 5: More Functions

Divide a page with header, sidebar and footer files. Learn to set up a widget ready section.

Tutorial reference links

WordPress Codex: wp_list_pages

Day 6: WordPress Template Heirarchy

This session investigates the template hierarchy as well as an in depth look at the single.php file – the page the displays static pages.

Tutorial reference links

Day 8: Intro to Managing Comments

The presenter discusses how to create the form necessary for posting comments. Also, he shows how to insert security checks at the top of an include file. And lastly he shows how to easily add avatars to comment posts.

Tutorial reference links

Day 9: Advanced Comments

Drew shows the advanced commenting options (threading, pagination, etc) introduced in version 2.7, and how to upgrade older templates.

Tutorial reference links

Day 10: Create a Basic Plugin

Lots covered in this episode.

Tutorial reference links

Day 11: More with PSDs

This video demonstrates the process of translating a PSD design into a WordPress theme.

Tutorial reference links

Day 12: More PSD – Slicing

Tutorial reference links

Day 13: Styling WordPress

This session covers a basic reset, and coding the home page.

Tutorial reference links

Starkes Reset Theme

Day 14: Styling the Static Page

Enjoy seeing lots of great CSS and WordPress tricks and techniques.

Tutorial reference links

Carousel WordPress Plugin

Simon — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:22:55 +0000

Carousel

Here is my first WordPress plugin (Under Development (pre-alpha) as of 4/23/2009). It was commissioned by a client, and I coordinated development through a mysterious freelancer named EL. The code base for the carousel came from a Cnet who generously provide an Open Source MIT license.

As you can see I have a few CSS conflicts to work out. When the plugin is fully functional it will be made available to the online community via WordPress.org. To be notified of its completion, subscribe to my RSS feed, or enter your email address to the right.

Update 5/3/2009: It appears as though we have worked out all of the conflict issues. I plan to release this later in the month. Feel free to contact me to request a pre-release version.

Update 5/15/2009: Stable version 1.0 released. For more information or to download, visit the WordPress Carousel Plugin page