The MaGic of Lexical clouds: for higher rankings and enhanced user experience

Web BuzZ-BuZz, Web 2.0 BuzZ-BuZz
There has been so much of buzz about Web 2.0. Many webmasters have embraced weblogs, mash-ups, RSS feeds, bookmarking, social networking, tag clouds, wikis etc. But what excites me most about Web 2.0 are Tag clouds that so many website owners are using these days, for higher website rankings and an even richer user experience. For those who haven’t heard of these lexical clouds before, this is how a tag cloud for flickr looks like:

There are so many websites today, that are using tag clouds but the reason why I mentioned only flickr is because flickr was the first Web 2.0 website to use this concept successfully. Check out the tag cloud for Technorati:

Tag clouds, for better user experience
Tag cloud according to Wikie is – “ A visual depiction of user-generated tags used typically to describe the content of web sites. Tags are usually single words and are typically listed alphabetically, and the importance of a tag is shown with font size or color. Thus both finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity is possible. The tags are usually hyperlinks that lead to a collection of items that are associated with a tag thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information”. Flickr says – “Tags are like keyword or category labels, and they can help visitors find items which have something in common“. The simplest way to explain a tag cloud is that it is a Web 2.0 way of categorizing, organizing and navigating your website content with keyword links.When a user saves, bookmarks or votes (what ever they may call it) for some blog post, picture, video etc on a web 2.0 website like flickr, technorati, del.icio.us etc, he/she has to enter a keyword that the user thinks best describes it.

If you look at the picture above, you will notice that each tag (or keyword link) have different font sizes. The font size of these tags depend on the number of times keyword has been used to tag that an item. More the items are associated with the keyword, the more it is popular and bigger will be the size of the font. So it’s an intuitive means of navigation on a website.

When the user clicks on a tag, he/she is navigated to a tag page which on flickr looks likes this:

The tag page comprises of the most recent items tagged by visitors using that particular keyword they have clicked on. Please note that these tag clouds are not necessarily the only way to reach to the items on the website, but they serve as an alternative & intuitive way of finding them. Most often then not, you will also find the item’s tag adjacent to the item, clicking on which will take you to the other items tagged using that keyword tag. ‘Related tags’ are the other common tags which contain that same item.
Tag clouds: not just usability, it’s also an amazing SEO tool
So you still have doubts, if you should incorporate these lexical clouds on your website or not? I will give you one more good reason to do so – With Tag clouds, you consolidate your website’s internal linking which means you have better strategical control on your link equity (juice) and since the anchor text of these tags is extremely keyword rich, it boosts the ranking of your website or weblog far more than what conventional navigation bar does and hence increases the website’s ranking for significantly larger variation of keywords. You yourself will be surprised to see the keywords tags (including long tail keywords) that people will associate your content with (even wordtracker would have failed to find those). Bloggers will be glad to know that WordPress 2.3 comes with tagging in-built. Ultimate tag warrior is an awesome plugin to create a colorized tag cloud or heat map.

Other Tag cloud resources:
How to make Tag clouds using PHP, MySQL, CSS
Tag clouds using ASP.Net

Posted in SEM, Web Design, Web Development, Web Usability | 1 Comment »

3rd party ecommerce solutions

Have you ever had to make the choice for your business of what shopping cart to use? You can have your own customized solution developed, or choose from a range of pre-built shopping cart options available like Volusion, XCart, Shopsite etc. Each of these shopping carts provide a host of features available ranging from a robust back end, to a user friendly front end along with SEO compatibility.

At first it’s quite tough when you know nothing about each of the different types of shopping carts and software packages. Which one do you choose is a tough choice to make.

Today I’m going to do a review of an all-in-one externally hosted shopping cart system, called Volusion. My review is mostly based on what I have read on the “Volusion” website and our own experience while integrating “Volusion” for a few of our clients.

All in one solution Volusion provides all the tools to create an online ecommerce company. Their software provides total ecommerce solutions including ROI tracking software, SEO optimization software, hosting by RackSpace.com, email marketing software, affiliate software and much more. This ensures that the buyer will not have to work with different providers for all the above mentioned features thus saving time, energy and money.

The components of the solution are completely customizable, and the site can be designed as per the industry and the target audience. Volusion gives enough creative independence to the site owner to have his website designed as per the requirements.

Some companies charge a percentage of sales from the site owner, but Volusion does not. This ensures that the cost of site maintenance remains the same as your online business grows. Volusion charges only a monthly fee for the hosting of your online store, and additional band width (as your business grows) can be purchased at an additional cost.

The pricing structure for Volusion plans is good, with an entry level plan starting at $20 a month, going up to a $100 platinum unlimited plan. All in all, Volusion seems to be providing good shopping cart software with almost all the required features. There are often inherent problems with jack-of-all service providers, but looking through the features of the Volusion website, they certainly have their game together based on their website presentation.

Posted in Web Development | 2 Comments »

Important aspect often overlooked while considering a web development company

When searching for a web development company for a new website, it is wise to also evaluate the level of post development support that you can expect to receive.

Post development support may include guidance on how to use some of the back end features, adding any new features at a later stage, receiving suggestions, evaluations of new ideas etc. What is often overlooked is support in terms of website marketing. Just having an entity out there in the World Wide Web is not enough. It is critical that just before the website is about to be completed, a complete Online Marketing Plan is worked out so that it can be launched along with the website. This Online Marketing plan should focus on getting traffic and conversions both in the short term and long term after finding out the amount and kind of dependency required on search engines for getting traffic, exploring other sources of getting traffic like banner advertisements etc., This should be a complete plan that would also evaluate the traffic to find out how it is interacting with the website, what is the conversion rate etc. and necessary actions should be taken on the basis of this to get a high conversion rate.

Hiring a development company that can provide support in working out a right marketing mix as well, ensures that your website is a successful online business.

Posted in Web Design, Web Development | 4 Comments »