Anybody who’s seen any teen romantic comedy worth its salt knows the makeover scene. It goes something like this (cue trendy pop song):

Cool friend takes dork friend to the mall. Dork exits the fitting room in a preppy outfit, friend shakes head. Dork tries on a rock-and-roll outfit with sunglasses, snaps fingers. Friend pushes dork back into fitting room. Dork emerges wearing the perfect outfit, looking better than friend. Friend gives one resounding nod. Transformation complete.

What’s important in those scenes is that the makeover happens with the help of a cool friend.

You, blog reader, are our cool friend, and it’s makeover time at the Talance flagship newsletter. If you subscribe to our newsletter already, great. If not, you’re probably acquainted with it through our monthly blog summaries. You can also refresh your memory by looking through our blog archive. And if you don’t subscribe, sign up now!

So help us find the perfect mix of what you want to read and find useful by taking our newsletter survey. Bonus: if you give your e-mail address, you’ll be entered into a drawing for an Amazon gift card.

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[This appeared in the most recent version of our newsletter. Subscribe now so you get monthly tasty tech tidbits and special deals.]

There’s a reason we learn to read with picture books rather than novels. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? We humans are very good at gathering meanings from pictures, even better than we are at interpreting words. Images carry powerful messages to which words can only aspire. You can gather a whole story from a picture (remember Life magazine?), but it’s easy to be distracted by just about anything while reading big blocks of text.

Using well-appointed pictures on your website, online course or other online initiative will not only help you tell your story better, but it can also help your visitors hear you.

Icons are quick informative hits, like this example from Mass Mentoring Partnership.

Favicons help you find the browser page you seek.

An evocative photo can earn a donation or volunteer, such as this stirring one from the Global Animal Foundation.

Here’s a quick test to see whether you’re using imagery effectively on your website: translate it into a language you don’t understand. Google has a good tool for this. Can you tell now what your site is about? Would it make sense to someone who had no background in your industry? If the answer is no, then you must think about what visual elements will help you to communicate your message better.

This issue of the Talance newsletter is all about imagery. Read on for tips and ideas to help you create and use graphics better. Here are a few articles from our blog to get you started:

Web Design Tips for Better Images

You’re Doing It All Wrong! How to Use Pictures on a Website

What Happens If You Go Bonkers for Pictures

20 Free Icon Sets for Non-Profits

The Good, The Bad, The Logo

Do you have any interesting stories about how you’re using imagery effectively? Send us your thoughts and suggestions, and we’ll feature them in an upcoming blog post.

[This appeared in our March newsletter. Wanna subscribe? Do it now!]

I’ve yet to work with a client who doesn’t use the word “welcoming” in some way to describe the website they want. No doubt that goes for just about anyone reading this article right now. In fact, most people will spend considerable thought and effort coming up with the best open-looking fonts, the friendliest text, the warmest colors when it comes to designing a website or online course, all in the service of being more appealing to their audience. For this, I commend them.

But you can’t really be selectively welcoming. “Welcome,” by definition means everybody, not cherry-picking the people who are the easiest to accommodate. It means you need to make your website accessible. It also happens to be a legal requirement for many states who have to comply with Section 508.

So your job – if you’re serious about welcoming – is to make sure your website appears for everybody, no matter if they’re using an iPad, have low vision or some other disability that prevents them from using your website as you intended.

Where to start? An accessibility evaluation is the best place. Talance works with many government clients who are required to follow Section 508 accessibility rules, so we can give your site a thorough evaluation. Contact us for information.

You can also improve your website’s accessibility by running it through one of these free tools. They’ll give you a handful of items you can fix yourself, as well as a solid notion of what to take to a web company to address. Try any or all of these:

Wave

Evaluating Web Sites for Accessibility

Functional Accessibility Evaluator

WebAIM Section 508 Checklist

Want more? Talance can provide expert web accessibility evaluation and consulting to pinpoint problems and provide specific recommendations. Contact us for information.

Websites can have as many moving parts as a jumbo jet, so it’s easy to lose track of something. That’s why checklists abound here at Talance HQ. They’re one of the best ways we know to make sure we don’t forget something while juggling all the building, writing and planning pieces. We know that when it comes time to launch, it’s particularly easy to forget something important.

Below is a list of top items that can make the launch of any website easier and more organized. We’ll keep adding if we think of anything new. Did we forget something? Add it in the comments, and we’ll update.

Also check out our 9-point SEO checklist to help you show up at the top of those search engine results.

[This appeared in our January newsletter. Wanna subscribe?]

Copy

• Spelling correct on every page
• Check for typos
• All pages reviewed and accounted for
• Outdated content removed
• Placeholder content removed
• Check for consistency in writing voice, tone and style (including first person vs. third person, singular and plural, eccentric capitalizations and words like “website” vs. “web site”)
• Non-spelling errors, such as old addresses, phone numbers, former employees, etc., corrected
• Stylistic inconsistencies fixed
• Terms of use updated
• Copyright updated
• Privacy policy updated
• Contact information accessible on every page
• All hidden copy checked (error messages, JavaScript functions, transcriptions)
• Jargon removed
• Content quality evaluated

Formatting

• Most important info listed at the top of the page
• Appropriate use of bold and bullets for easy scanning
• No written text within images
• Colors and typefaces consistent on every page
• Each page format uniform
• Images resized and consistent
• Menus not overloaded with too many items
• H tags used for headlines rather than bolds or size increases

Technical Quality Assurance

• Internal and external hyperlinks work
• Pages checked against WCAG guidelines
• Private data secure (passwords, contact info, etc.)
• Usability testing complete
• Sitemap updated
• Everything works
• Important pages print OK
• All old URLs point to new URLs

Accessibility

• “Alt” attributes used for all descriptive images
• Pages accessible
• High contrast color used everywhere
• Color and size used for critical information
• Tested on most common browsers
• Tested on mobile devices

Marketing

• PR releases written
• Social media launch campaign planned
• Off-line promotion planned
• Friends, colleagues notified
• E-newsletter notification written and ready to send
• Business cards, letterhead, envelopes and other printed material updated with new address
• Voice mail updated with new address
• Email signature updated with notification about launch
• Link submitted to directories and search engines
• Ads created
• Blog entries planned or written
• Marketing plan revised
• SEO checklist completed

Support

• Training completed
• Extra help on website support procured
• User feedback surveys written
• Maintenance and update schedule created
• Plan established in case of heavy traffic
• Databases set to backup in case of roll-back

It’s the gift that keeps on giving: a new online marketing and promotion tip every week. As part of our year-long birthday festivities, we’re celebrating by giving away a new e-newsletter.

52 Web Marketing & Promotion Tips helps you energize your website with a piece of actionable advice delivered directly to your inbox every week, so you can keep your site fresh and vibrant. From writing and link building to best practices and strategy, we’ll help you reach your website goals in for the whole year.

One short and sweet tip each week, all year long. What could be easier?

Click here to subscribe before you get behind!

[This little gem is the e-mail newsletter our subscribers just received. Want a slice for yourself? Sign up now.]

The more you know about the people who visit your website, the better. Creating a profile of the people who visit your organization site can help you make better decisions about what you can do for them.

Your website should be the central repository for this research. Here are a few tools you can add to your existing website to compile info on your users.

Feedback forms.

A simple feedback form can gather so much. Tuck these around your website soliciting comments, and you’ll start learning more about who your people are.

Surveys.

If you want serious feedback, host a survey. If you build this into your website, you can keep names, contact information and responses local to your website rather than a third-party service. You can also set it up so you receive e-mail alerts every time someone submits a response.

E-newsletters.

E-newsletters are good sources of information as well as good ways to deliver targeted information to your subscribers. Make sure you have a sign-up form on your website as well as archives.

Call (888) 810-9109 or e-mail if you want demos or pricing.

August Birthday Goodie: Free Webinar

We’re halfway through our 10th year and still celebrating. For August, we asked you what you wanted for a freebie, and you spoke. You want a crash course on how to write for the web. We’re taking registrations through August, so sign up now for this handy session on how to fine-tune your writing to appeal to online readers.

Keep, Cut or Kill: Writing for the Web is Sept. 2, 2010 at 2 p.m. Eastern.

>> Register now!

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The best websites are organized websites. Plan your pages with a content analysis before you write one word. Here’s how to start:

Define your writing style.

You might appear in some of the most distinguished academic publications in the nation, but is that what your website visitors read? If they’re teens looking for activism opportunities, probably not. Think about the writing style (serious, academic, slangy, sensational) they’re most likely to respond to before you start to write.

Create categories.

Divide your existing or to-be-written pages into main categories. They may align with your menu options, but don’t think too much about that yet. Just group pages into the most important categories. Better to be general at this early stage than overly specific.

Make a content inventory.

Take a close look at the pages you already have and decide if they fit into your categories. If there are gaps, plan for new pages. Add all pages – existing or planned-for – into a spreadsheet. Add columns for categories, intended audience members, who’s responsible for writing each page, importance, topics, keywords or anything else you might notice.

This kind of analysis takes work, but it’s the best way to know that you’re saying what you need to say. It will also help you enlist the right authors and give you a clear understanding of the most vital – and outdated – information on your website.

Never one to turn down a free bagel, I sent away for a coupon from my friendly neighborhood bagel shop. They e-mailed it, as promised, but without any regard for the way most e-mail programs by default disable images. Because the entire thing is an image, I couldn’t tell what arrived in my in-box, and I almost deleted it before recognizing the subject line.

Here’s what I was looking at:

What happens if you go picture-bonkers

The lesson? Use images judiciously in your outgoing messages. And always make sure you use ALT text in case pictures don’t display.

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Anybody who’s ever built a new kitchen knows that just because you hire someone to lay the granite counter tops doesn’t mean your job’s over. It’s true with websites, too. You have to be organized, communicate preferences and prepare to work with the completed project.

When Talance takes on a web project, we’re there to apply our expertise, but our clients are key participants. It might be tempting to think, “I’m no Web developer. I’ll leave it to the pros.” But if you’re not involved in the development of your site, you’ll never have what you really need. You’re the expert on both your organization and your audience.

Good Web companies will hold your hand through the process and guide you through decisions. Here the some steps you can follow on your own when you’re starting a new web project. Follow the hyperlinks to learn more about each step in the process from our blog.

Perform a needs assessment.

Survey your staff, leadership and audience to find out what they need a website to do. Ask them what works with the current site and what doesn’t. Also look at any analytics software you have on your current site (if you have any) to evaluate your site’s performance.

Write a clear, detailed Request for Proposal (RFP).

Take the information you’ve gathered from your stakeholders and put it into an RFP. This will help you organize your thoughts and help a web developer better target their proposal.

Assemble a dream team.

These are the people within your organization that have oversight of the web project as it unfolds. It’s a smart idea to appoint one person who is the main interface between the developer and your internal team.

Get ready for content.

Your web developers may be in charge of populating your website with text and graphics, but you might choose to do this internally. Start planning early so your website’s launch isn’t delayed while you wait for people to turn in their copy.

Test and revise.

The moment your website is launched is not the moment it’s complete. It just means you need to see how your decisions and design fit your needs. Make notes of potential improvements or changes, and put those on the calendar. It’s a good idea to plan new website releases every 3-6 months, rather than release small updates here and there as they come up. This 4-part article tells you how to reevaluate all aspects of your website.

June Birthday Goodie

This month, as part of Talance’s year-long 10th anniversary celebration, we’re giving out free $150 gift cards. Really! Use yours to update an existing Talance website or toward a new one.

>> Request your FREE gift card now!

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Websites are like silverware drawers. They start out the vision of order, with special compartments for everything. Then a grapefruit spoon gets mixed in with the soup spoons. Someone tosses in a ladle because they can’t figure out where else it should go. Toast crumbs accumulate at the bottom. Before long, what was a bounty of neatness can become a chaotic mess just from day to day living.

It’s understandable, because websites are always growing and changing. Nevertheless, it helps to take a periodic assessment to figure out what should go where, and if it’s operating at optimum capacity.

Here are a few things you can check right now:

1. Is your name clearly identified on your homepage? Make sure it appears on internal pages too.
2. Are your organization’s colors consistently used? It’s a good idea to limit your colors to two.
3. Are there broken links? If so, fix them right away!

While that’s a good start, you should do a complete website assessment and do it regularly. Lucky for you, we’re here to help.

This month, as part of Talance’s year-long 10th anniversary celebration, we’re performing free website analyses to determine how you can improve the performance of your website. The analysis includes a review of design, user-friendliness, search engine visibility and how popular it is in social media. We’ll deliver you a handy report you can keep and refer to while you make updates.

>> Request your FREE website analysis now!

[Image: Flickr user vinnie7]