Stanford Workshop: Best Practices for Your Website

Produced

• 2003

Key Features

Special: All 7 videos - Save $224
Buy all seven of the Stanford Best Practices for Your Website videos, at the special price of $399.00. Video - Doing the Deals
Video - Driving Traffic to Your Website
Video - eNewsletters: a Primer
Video - Getting the Basics Right: Navigation, Usability and Content Management Techniques
Video - Making Your Website Work - For Your User
Video - Search Engine Optimization
Video - Staying Out of Legal Trouble

This year, for the first time, Stanford University's Best Practices for Your Website course is available on videotape. Learn from the pros how to make your site more visited, more "sticky," more successful.

Doing the Deals

Featuring: Jonathan Hart, Partner, Dow, Lohnes and Albertson, PLLC

Managing a website involves signing off on a host of legal questions, from who owns the underlying code to what happens if you forget to run a partner’s banner ad.

How should you structure these relationships? Attorney Jon Hart outlines what you need to consider when you are “Doing the Deals.”

Highlights:

• The two dimensions of contracts—coming to terms vs. allocation of risks
• Outsourcing your website construction – do you need to own the design?
• Agency vs. independent contractor status
• Term sheets vs. letters of intent
• The importance of keeping options open
• Specific requirements for advertising contracts

Jon advises us that, when all is said and done, good contracts are not designed to win litigation, but to avoid it.

50 minute VHS or DVD video

Driving Traffic to Your Website

Featuring: Ulla McGee, General Manager, PCWorld.com Network

Ulla McGee sets theory aside, and explains what has actually worked and not worked for driving traffic to her company’s site. Ulla focuses on five approaches.

Email marketing – providing double-opt-in, easy unsubscribe, an up-front privacy policy, and most important: meaningful content.

Buying keywords on search engines – the benefits (and two pitfalls) of using Google and Overture.

Offline communications – the least expensive traffic builder to date for PCWorld.

Barter deals – the art of identifying complementary sites.

Content deals – why branding opportunities can be worthless.

Whether your site’s purpose is to sell products or market your firm, Ulla’s real-world experience will provide useful guidance in your own Web marketing efforts.

30 minute VHS or DVD video (2003)

eNewsletters: a Primer

Featuring: Loren McDonald, Founder and President, Intevation

Loren McDonald examines the necessary steps for a successful eNewsletter.

Getting signups:

• Promoting your newsletter signup link
• Double opt-in or not?
• Lead generation
• Forward-to-a-Friend” — worthwhile?

Getting newsletters opened:

• List hygiene
  
• ISP filters – what do they flag?
  
• Blacklists – be concerned or not?
  
• Hard versus soft bounces
  
• Is midweek better?

Encouraging action :

• Using consistent, commonsense navigation
  
• Measuring results
  
• Testing/improving/testing
  

McDonald's suggestions will give your eNewsletter the chance to stand out from the rest—and actually get read!

50 minute VHS or DVD video (2003)

Getting the Basics Right: Navigation, Usability and Content Management Techniques

Featuring: Brian Sullivan, Creative Director, Atomz

It costs you money to create content. It costs you to post content, and it costs you to drive traffic to your site. If visitors can’t find your information, all that investment is wasted. Brian Sullivan explains design and site architecture techniques that increase the odds that visitors to your site will find what they’re looking for— and what you put there for them to find.

Highlights:

• Five dimensions of effective navigation
  
• Site maps – useful or overused?
  
• Managing content
  
• Making the visitor’s experience positive
  
• Improving the search function
  

Brian teaches you how to step away and experience your site as a visitor experiences it for the first time.

46 minute VHS or DVD video (2003)

Making Your Website Work — For Your User

Featuring: Michael Gold, West Gold Editorial

Michael Gold takes us on a tour of the Web – identifying sites that offer a great user experience, and sites that are too clever for their own good. Michael suggests we keep in mind that our site user is busy— a clicker, not a reader; easily lost; and not a geek.

Highlights:

• "Webifying” information – presenting it in a scannable format
  
• The Rule of Seven – and how to compartmentalize information
  
• Maintaining consistent navigation on internal pages
  
• The value of offering multiple seeking methods
  

Michael reminds us the purpose of a web site is not to win awards – it is to serve the visitor quickly and painlessly.

46 minute VHS or DVD (2003)

Search Engine Optimization

Featuring: Bruce McCurdy, Project Manager, PCWorld.com

Bruce McCurdy explains the mechanics of search engine optimization and what it means to design a site that is friendly to automated Web crawlers.

Learn about:

• the power of the title tag
  
• the increasingly irrelevant role of keyword meta tags
  
• the still important value of the description tag
  
• Google – the 600 lb. gorilla – and the importance of link popularity and link relevance
  
• solutions to the dynamic page problem
  
• when ASCII characters can help you
  
• page cloaking – and when it won’t get you banned
  
• the advantage of multiple site entrances
  

Search engine optimization is an ongoing process, but with this overview you will be more able to sort through the promises, and understand what can be done to increase your site’s visibility.

30 minute VHS or DVD video (2003)

Staying Out of Legal Trouble

Featuring: Jonathan Hart, Partner, Dow, Lohnes and Albertson, PLLC

If you have the print publishing rights, do you have the Web publishing rights? Jon Hart discusses this, and dozens of other hot issues.

Highlights:

• Copyright law, including the impact of the Tasini decision
  
• Legal implications of linking and framing
  
• Freelancers and works made for hire
  
• Understanding fair use
  
• Trademark law, including look and feel
  
• Domain name disputes
  
• Privacy policies
  

Hart packs this presentation with a wealth of information. After viewing this video you will have a good feel for the many legal issues impacting your company’s presence on the Web.

47 minute VHS or DVD video (2003)