Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Sulit.Com.Ph register and get a chance to win a...

This holiday season, Sulit.com.ph will have a holiday raffle where members get a chance on winning a brand new Apple Ipod Touch (8GB), Nokia 5310 XpressMusic Cellphone or Sony PSP-2000 (Slim Version). Join now by clicking here.

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Buy and Sell Philippines

The next evolution of labels for GMAIL users

Back in the Paleolithic Era, the world was a very different kind of place. People were hunter-gatherers, lived in caves, and kept all their email in folders*. You can't really blame them. Between tracking woolly mammoths, fashioning crude stone tools, and auditioning for commercials, having a highly tuned system for organizing email wasn't their highest priority.

But people changed. We moved out of caves and into skyscrapers. We hunt for bargains at the corner grocery. And we play video games simulating ourselves playing video games.

As we've changed, so too have our demands for email. Out of the email primordial ooze, Gmail was born with evolutionarily advantageous features like threaded conversations, a mitochondrial symbiosis between mail and chat, and labels. Most email solutions make users slot their emails into bland manila folders, classifying their contents as either black or white, with no subtle shades of gray. But where do you put the heated debate about M&M color superiority: the "ridiculous philosophical discussions," "all things brown," or "chats with mom" folder? With labels, you no longer have to choose. You can sort it all three ways.

Today, we're happy to announce the next evolution of labels: the colored label. Until now the label has been a little inconspicuous creature, subtly suggesting categorical associations in its simple green coat. Oh, we've seen the colored label here and there, its precursors surfacing in various experiments and Greasemonkey scripts; but the label has never before been so brazen, so bold. How will it use its new colors? Will it disguise itself with the chameleon's camouflage or clamor for attention with the monarch butterfly's vivid contrast?

Me? I'm subscribed to a lot of mailing lists: "The Britney Spears Fanboy Club," "Foie Gras Lovers Anonymous," and "UFO Sightings Daily," just to name a few. I get so much mail from my lists, I filter and archive most of it right away but I add labels just in case I need to find it again later. Those labels are my chameleons draped in subtle tones of green and blue. They're there doing their job, but I barely notice them. Every once in a while I get mail that's really important. These emails get my monarch butterfly labels, sporting bright red and yellow. Thanks to colored labels, it's easy to scan my inbox and immediately find all the emails that are really important to me.


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Website Design for your Customers - It's not what you want

Yes, believe it or not, your website design should not concentrate on what you want or what you would like to see in your website, but it is about what your customers want from your website and it’s design. You can get website designers to make great looking website for yourself, however you cannot get customers to visit and re-visit your website just because you have got a great looking website or you cannot convert visitors in customers just because you have a great looking website design. Neither do you need a website that offers a lot of functionality if your customers don’t need that functionality. If you are selling flowers, the functionality your customers desire from your website will be different to the functionality available on a tyre manufacturer’s website. So in simple terms you need to develop a website design and functionality that your customers expect from your type of business.

What should I be aiming at?

Even before you go to a see a website designer to undertake website design for your business, I would recommend that you do your fieldwork.

It would be useful to understand:

  • Who your audience is: This probably is the most important step before you go and see a website designer to develop a website for your company. You have to understand who your audience is. Try and estimate who are the people who would regularly come to my website?

  • What does my audience expect: once you identify your audience, the next step is to understand what your audience expect from your website design? Understanding this will not only help you understand the path you should take with your website design, but will also help you explain your requirement to your website designer.

  • What will bring my audience back: An important aspect of a good website design and a successful website is the ability to bring the visitors back. In marketing terms, it is like customer retention. For any business it is important to retain customer loyalty, similarly for any successful website, the ability to bring back your customers is paramount. Customer loyalty leads to increase in traffic. Look at some of the successful websites around you: amazon.com, Youtube, myspace. The success of these websites is an example of the power of customer retention and referrals. If you analyse the website design of these sites, it is fairly simple but it offers its visitors what they need: products and services that matter to their audience.
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