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I just received an email from WebProNews.com that had some very interesting statistics about the general internet public. Hopefully this information will give you a bit of an idea about how many and what kind of users view your advertisements.

Men tend to be more intense Internet users than women, being more likely to go online daily (61% of men and 57% of women) and more likely to go online several times a day (44% of men and 39% of women).

67% of the adult American population goes online, including 68% of men and 66% of women

86% of women ages 18-29 are online, compared with 80% of men that age.

34% of men 65 and older use the Internet, compared with 21% of women that age.

62% of unmarried men compared with 56% of unmarried women go online

75% of married women and 72% of married men go online

61% of childless men compared with 57% of childless women go online

81% of men with children and 80% of women with children go online.

52% of men and 48% of women have high-speed connections at home

94% of online women and 88% of online men use email

If you are annoyed by the sound internet explorer makes every time a page is refreshed, on a news site for example while listening to music, all you have to do to stop / disable it is the following:

Go to Start Menu >> Settings >> Control Panel >> Sounds and Audio Devices. Then click on the Sounds tab. Once there, scroll down the list of Program Events until you see Windows Explorer. Underneath that you should then see Start Navigation…

Select (highlight) start navigation. Now, looking underneath the list of Program Events you should see a section for Sounds. Use that drop-down box to select (None) which is at the very top of the list in most cases.

This should should do the trick once saved or applied.

The “annoying refresh click” is a windows sound ( c:\windows\media\start.wav ) so it can be taken care of within your operating system instead of within Internet Explorer options. Hope that helps!

Did this tip help you? If so, please leave a comment and let us know.

Google has shown us the way; simple clean layout with just the necessary amount of information to get what you’re looking for equals success online.  Not that this has not been done before, but Google showed us that a company can follow the clean look aesthetic and become hugely successful.  Myriad of websites have caught on and followed the path to a cleaner, more Usability-oriented design.  Now most of the major players on the internet are paying close attention to usability over mere design.  Perhaps it’s time for banner advertisers to take the plunge.

A vast majority of banner advertisements on the internet aim to distract the user from the content of the page with flashy graphics and annoying animations.  Sure, that’s the main purpose of a banner add – get the surfer’s attention and get her to click on the banner, right?  The problem is that most web users have learned to recognize what part of the page is a banner add and what is content, and will simply ignore the advertisement.  Given this scenario, a new strategy needs to germinate in the world of banner advertisement that is more in tune with the Googlesque philosophy of favoring content over visual stimulation.

When looking at a new website, and trying to determine its chances of becoming a success, one should pay close attention to its design.  Invariably, sites that pay more attention to allowing the user to get to the information outperform those that give way to gratuitous design.  Less is more – this is the new model of successful web design.  Does this mean we can do away with web designers altogether? On the contrary, it takes a seasoned and sophisticated designer to present the information in the most clear and readable manner possible.  A successful design will allow the information to shine while offering the viewer a pleasant and fulfilling browsing experience.

Much like makeup should emphasize a woman’s natural beauty, not the makeup artist’s skills, and like spices should mix gently with the inherent flavors of the meal, rather than showing off the skills of the cook, so too should good web design make the information appealing and enjoyable to take in, rather than draw any attention to the designer’s skills.

There will, of course be exceptions, and once in a while it will be necessary to make things pop more.  When designing a site for teenage girls, one would want to apply methods of design that would otherwise be frowned upon.  For the most ecommerce websites with conversion in mind, however, it holds true that a transparent design will deliver better results.

But getting back to our friends in the banner design business, how can they benefit from the philosophy of more is less?  One path that is very popular, is to ignore the shifts in web design trends, and to continue to pump out ads that are more obnoxious, and more distracting, in hopes that with most pages getting cleaner and calmer, the banner will stand out even more.  Well, I will be the first to say, that this strategy is working, although not to the advertisers’ advantage.  Banner ads are becoming easier and easier to spot, and thus to ignore; obviously not the results that banner advertisers are looking for.  So what would Google do?  For a long time now Google has been integrating paid, text-based advertisements into web pages in an unobtrusive manner that actually serves as a useful tool.  Google uses its superior search algorithm to insert just the right type of ad into a page that will be related to the user’s quest for information.  But these aren’t really the same as banner ads.  It doesn’t exactly take a designer or a flash artist to come up with a Google adword box.

For the answer to banner ad dilemma, let’s look to the advertising world outside the web.  In the early days, CocaCola used to give out free awnings and signs to bodega owners that sported their logo.  These were unobtrusive, useful tools for building brand awareness.  There are countless examples of other campaigns that utilized imprinted coffee cups, umbrellas, pens, etc., to build brand awareness.  The method is simple – Get people to know your brand, and associate it with the product or service you provide.

Surprisingly, few banner ad campaigns utilize this philosophy.  A banner can have one simple purpose – build brand recognition.  Try this for your next banner ad campaign.  A clean, concise banner designed to simply associate your logo with the service you provide.  Don’t make it flashy, don’t even put a click here button.  Try to make the banner integrate seamlessly with the site where it is to be published.  Submit this banner to a site that charges per click rather than per impression.  Since you only pay every time someone clicks on the banner, you will get massive amounts of free brand awareness.

I will be the first to admit that his proposition has a very selfish hidden agenda.  Much like many other web users, I hate annoying banner ads, and would like to see them wiped off the face of the World Wide Web.  My only hope is that some banner ad gurus will take this suggestion and turn it into a superior banner ad campaign that succeeds by enhancing our web browsing experience rather than annoying it.  Perhaps it will be so successful that others will follow in their footsteps, until in the distant future, we might experience a web browsing experience that is free of annoying banner ads.

Don’t hate the playa’ hate the game, is how it goes. But who knew this saying would ever apply to the world of search engines..? Apparantly now it does. AOL has been a very mishchevious entity lately. In the beginning of the week, the Wall Street Journal reported a tentative deal involving MSN and AOL to partner in search. For those of you not familiar with the situation, if you run a search at search.aol.com the results given are actually Google results. Google and AOL have had this sort of partnership for organic search as well as Pay Per Click for some time now.. Since AOL’s massive collapse in relevance to the internet world, much specualtion has come about as to what was going to happen to this once mighty internet presence. Most of it has had something to do with Google, MSN or Yahoo aquiring AOL entirely from Time Warner.. However, AOL has somehow pulled together a newer and stronger sense of self worth recently and nixed the aquisition idea. They are now dangling their 11% search marketshare out there like they’re on 42nd Street, searching for the highest paying suitor that will provide them with the most benefits.

This is where the ‘playa’ factor comes in. AOL has been courted heavily by the big 3 and is playing them all like a highly talented hot chick. The outcome of it all will be very significant.

If say, MSN reaches a deal with AOL, it would instantly gain 11% of the search market share and Google would instantly lose 11% of its current market share. That’s a 22% swing which would put Google and MSN at just about an even level. Same holds true for Yahoo, but it hasn’t come onto the scene as an actual contender yet. Anyway, a deal was supposedly struck between MSN and AOL that would completely re-shape the search world. When i read this, all I could picture was Bill Gates with a huge grin on his face thinking about how he just made MSN search a force to be reckoned with

BUT.. was AOL only playing games with big bad Bill to make Google jealous? Maybe so.. Just today, an even bigger story hit the wire confirming AOL’s true playa status. The new buzz is saying that Google is planning to purchase a 5% share in AOL from Time Warner for the small fee of 1 billion dollars and keep its current search partnership with AOL in tact.. Note the link i just posted is to MSNBC!! Bill and Balmer must be shaking in their little space boots right now.. You go AOL! Play on playa..

I’m always amused when reporters decide to write about SEO and the world of search marketing in general. This time it’s Newsweek providing the insight, or lack thereof. The article isn’t bad per se, but one can easily tell the writer really has no idea what search engine optimization is. This quote:

Then the owners hired a Seattle consultant named Rand Fishkin, who performed an obscure procedure called a “search-engine optimization.”

is a gem. An obscure procedure? Called a “search-engine optimization”? Sounds like brain surgery, thanks for the credit Newsweek. That and the title of the article speak volumes to me. Take a look at ‘Hotwiring Your Search Engine‘ if you’d like to read through..

It should be noted that Rand Fishkin, who was interviewed for this piece is the man behind SEOmoz and in my opinion, a great example of what makes the real practitioners in our industry the complete opposite of ’shadowy’.

In the ecommerce world every Tom, Dick and Harry is trying to cash in on this time of year. According to data from Nielsen//NetRatings’s Holiday eShopping Index, weekly shopping sessions at online retailers rose from 348.3 million over the holidays last year to 462.5 million in 2005. The increase is a 33 percent jump over the 2004 holiday season. So what can you do to be a part of this? ECP is quite proactive with this sort of thing so I searched around for some useful information that will help you improve your online sales from last year. Give Your Online Sales a Boost: Avoid These Five Common Mistakes 12 Ways to Increase Online Sales Ten Tips to Increase Online Holiday Sales Improve Your Online Holiday Sales Read these articles closely. Let us know which of the mentioned strategies you would like us to implement for your website. If you have any other suggestions that might help others, please post a comment.

Not one to be outdone, Microsoft is now entering the world of online classified ads with a software project code named Fremont. The overwhelming popularity of Craig’s List must not have been enough to push Microsoft into action, but the announcement of Google Base certainly was.. You can read more about Fremont and it’s supposed functionality Here

Who knew online classifieds were going to become such a coveted share of the internet market..? Free listings for people to buy/sell/trade goods doesn’t make any money, just ask Craig

But, as we mentioned when Google Base came to be.. there CAN be money in classifieds. Huge Money. If Microsoft or Google eventually provide a PayPal like service to the buyers/sellers, they will in essence get a piece of every transaction that transpires from their free listing service. That’s potentially a lot of dough.

Well maybe not a franchise but apparently, the search engine giant is getting into internet cafe’s. According to this article, Google opened a “Google Space” internet cafe at London’s Heathrow airport. The Google Space cafe is open through December 19. Two Google employees will be on hand to help people use 10 laptops and discover Google products.

Related article: Google turns Heathrow into testing lab