Articles by “ablereach”
Elizabeth Able is the Cre8tive Flow editor, and is an administrator at Cre8asiteForums.
Visit ablereach's web site.
Thread pick: Usability of Ads.
What is the relationship between usability and advertising effectiveness?
Usability has user-friendly written all over it. Online ads are so rant-friendly that ISPs boost branding by offering free ad blockers.
Effective ads motivate and inform. Online ads also hang on click thrus. Click thrus, not end results, are the most commonly discussed benchmark. Results for destination sites are more connected with targeted traffic, branding and usability.
Hated, in-your-face, online ad techniques can increase click-thrus. Is irritation a necessary evil?
Could advertising results be better if user experience is respected?
The Cre8tive Flow just became a WordPress-powered blog, with behind-the-scenes help from Cre8asiteforums staff on three continents. Our custom WordPress theme comes to you courtesty of Adrian Lee, ace moderator of Cre8asite’s CSS Forum. I’m liking the fresh, clean design.
Elegant design solutions like this are more than sleek looks; they reflect a total package, from content management to useability. In addition, I think it shows when the designer/programmer enjoys their work.
This week we rolled out the red carpet for Donna (Swainzy) and Paul (Send2Paul,) two goodwill ambassadors who will be moderating our After Hours and Introduce Yourself areas. We’ve long enjoyed their wamth, humor and varried experience. You can find Donna in the USA on Cre8asite’s Frappr Map. Paul is in the UK. As Paul said, he and Donna “happen to be in considerably different time zones,” which gives Cre8asiteforums lovely multi-time-zone coverage and reminds me of the miles between us. So very often I expect members from Syndey to India to be close enough to meet up at a favorite bakery in my own town near Seattle.
I remember debates in the mid to late 90’s about if outlinks are a “good” idea. There were some fascinating attempts to make profitable traffic law for an Internet superhighway that was more like a frenetically fertile Wild West.
I subscribed to anyone who had a listserv or newsletter on how web sites work, for the sheer coolness of learning, of being able to “link” up with different worlds of information by simply using a mouse. I was hooked.
My attitude then and today is that when to link is a usability issue. I saw any SEO benefits of links as a desirable side effect.
This is a preview of
On Link Love, “Textbook” SEO and Usability
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Read the full post (403 words, estimated 1:37 mins reading time)
On Wednesday, SEOmoz’s Web 2.0 Awards was spotted at number nine on Alexa’s movers and shakers list, briefly trumping such sites as Wikipedia and Microsoft.com.
I can’t let this go by without a happy rave. Registered mid February, launched mid March and securely into Alexa by April, web2.0Awards.org is sleek, deep, beautiful, usable, interesting and a masterful piece of savvy networking.
Choosing the domain 0awards.org was a strike of creative (fun) genius. The SEOmoz gang already has the domain for web3.0awards and more. 
Join our congrats to Rand, Kat, Matt and everyone at SEOmoz.
Permanent link to this post (95 words, estimated 23 secs reading time)
Cre8asiteforums member Bob Mutch first shared his Rating System for Inbound Link Quality with our community when it was hot off the presses of ABAKUS SEO Blog in late March. Now he’s released “ILQ” to the world through PRWeb:
This new rating system, called ILQ (Inbound Link Quality), is not easily manipulated or artificially inflated through purchased links…
Because of the huge increase in the buying and selling of text link ads, search engines are giving more ranking weight to trusted sites. This is why it is important for Websites to gain links from high ILQ-rated sites and makes the ILQ rating system an important gauge when considering link placements.
Trying to make a living can mean that forum members balance between supportive learning and giving away the farm. Fence-sitting is only a beginning. Healthy exchange of ideas about member tools and tutorials is one demonstration of how the Cre8asite Forums community works to deepen knowledge and broaden connections.
eKstreme agrees:
Tools like these are all about communities. Even if there was only one person actually writing code, the ideas that shape the development and inception, the testing, the feedback from users, etc., are all community based. If you are involved in a community like Cre8asite Forums, promoting tools created by other community members is the way forward. It fosters community feeling and makes you new friends.
Confession: I loathe cell phones. Cell phones are intrusive and addictive and contribute to car accidents.
At the same time, cell phones have huge potential for community building. They’re everywhere and a heck of a lot more portable than my beloved desk top computer.
I’m big into community building. I surrender, a little.
I may be about to surrender some more. Stanford’s persuasive technology folks have taken a new direction in captology research. Cell phones are this year’s first new project:
“By concentrating on mobile persuasion, we hope to develop a theory of what makes mobile devices (mobile phones, PDAs, handheld gaming systems, etc.) uniquely persuasive. Although our research has just begun, we already have a few ideas.
