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Color is often overlooked in the business of optimizing websites for better returns on investments. Website sales can be greatly affected by simply changing its colors. Ever come across a website that uses some funky combination of print and background colors? If you ever want to experience an eye-twisting headache, try reading yellow print on a blue background. The reason you see black type on a white background so much is that it is the best color combination for reading, both on and offline.

And since it is even harder to read text on a monitor than it is on paper, we must all be especially careful with the colors we choose for our websites, or suffer less-than-optimal site traffic and repeat visitors.

Color choice should also be dictated by other, less obvious goals, when designing or re-vamping a website. It’s important to realize that different colors invoke different emotions, are associated with specific concepts and say different things in each society. For instance, green often times is associated with freshness or money, which is fairly obvious if you think about it. But every color does this, and some of the emotions and concepts are more subtle. For example, white means pure, easy, or goodness and purple can be associated with royalty or sophistication. What’s more, each color carries with it both positive and negative ideas. The emotions and concepts that you associate with specific colors may differ from other people’s associations, but there are themes that run throughout each color. Read the rest of this entry »

Just about a month ago Zend Technologies announced Zend PHP Framework in line with the Zend PHP Collaboration Project with the stated goal to offer a “de facto standard PHP Web application development and deployment environment”. Not much information has been made public by Zend, which caused a lot of discussion. Just here and there, involved persons piped up and delivered more or less useful information tidbits. Currently, Zend is working on a first version while working out the collaboration infrastructure and engagement guidelines.

While Zend is enjoying the attention in the PHP world, eZ systems determinedly worked on a very similar project called eZ components, of which a first beta version is to be released tomorrow Monday. Let’s have a closer look at what it has to offer and how it compares to Zend’s PHP Framework.

Design

Both projects seem to come as independent, loosely coupled components to reduce dependency, of which each user can choose for himself which ones to use. While eZ components shows no signs of designated application design, the Zcontroller and ZpageController components in Zend PHP Framework could foreshadow some sort of MVC framework.

Components

A list of eZ components will be available soon. Unfortunately it’s hard to compare it to Zend’s PHP Framework since there is only a small directory list available, which dates to October 24th. Nevertheless, first similarities can also be found: Standard components of a framework like database abstraction, exceptions, logging, templating but also input filters can be found in both projects. Read the rest of this entry »

Here is an intersting article about The Seven Worst Adsense Mistakes You Can Make

Not Enough Content Per Page - It looks like if there’s not enough content per page, Google has a hard time justifying giving you lots of Adsense ads (or, in some cases, any Adsense ads). As an experiment, I made two posts on the same subject - with the same words, and I just reordered the words in the sentences and repeated them. The first post simply read -

“Google Adsense - Fantastic for pay per click advertising.”

(It should have more accuratety read “Google Adwords - Fantastic for pay per click advertising.”but I needed my keywords in there.)

The second post repeated those words about 20 times in varying orders and what looked to me like keyword spam. The results were surprising - I initially thought that I would see the same types of ads. What actually happened is that I saw various unrelated ads and public service announcements (PSAs) for the short post. On the longer post (which I basically keyword spammed with “Google Adsense” and “Pay Per Click Advertising” and the word “Fantastic”) I saw many Advertising related ads. The moral of the story? Try to write at least a paragraph per page, or Google won’t give you any ads. I say shoot for 75 words minimum. Google specifically mentions this as well (search for “Your web page may not contain enough content”). If you have a blog, keep the “About this Blog” section filled with general keywords on what you discuss, to give them something to go on, and use section targeting. Not familiar with section targeting? Post Link from Sid On Adsense

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Overstock.com’s entire inventory is available through GoldenCAN’s Data Feed Integration program at no charge to affiliate marketers.

Cape Coral, FL (PRWEB) November 22, 2005 — GoldenCAN.com, online marketing’s best and brightest new program, is offering thousands of affiliate marketers the power and versatility of Overstock.com’s data feeds with a simple click of a mouse. At no cost to affiliates , thousands of Overstock.com® products are now available for use on affiliate Web sites with the addition of only one line of JavaScript code, available at http://www.goldencan.com/merchants/display_25.aspx.

GoldenCAN creator Asif Malik was proud to unveil the latest news, stating, “Adding Overstock.com truly solidifies the GoldenCAN Data Feed Integration program’s position as one of the most unique and necessary affiliate marketing tools on the Web. When the best retailer on the Web and the best Web marketing program come together, Christmas comes early for online marketers. I am confident this partnership has come at the perfect time, in anticipation of what will certainly be a busy and successful shopping season.”

Since its inception in June of 2005, GoldenCAN.com has quickly become a leading provider of affiliate tools online, featuring its revolutionary Data Feed/Store Integration program. The addition of Overstock.com’s vast inventory to the program makes GoldenCAN’s Data Feed Integration the simplest and most comprehensive marketing program on the Internet.

“To date, I have yet to see an easier way to incorporate a merchant data feed into an affiliate site,” notes Jacob Hawkins, VP of Online Marketing at Overstock.com. Read the rest of this entry »