For about 10 years Jakob Nielsen has been telling the web development community to focus on the basics, and on the customer. One of his favorite admonishments, to site owners and designers, is "you are not the user."

Clear content, simple navigation, and answers to customer questions have the biggest impact on business value. Advanced technology matters much less.

We hope you will take a minute to check out our new website. You can explore the work we've been doing lately, and the cutting-edge web development services we are offering these days. Please check back often — we'll be posting useful news and tips here in the "net news" section of the site. Use the comments links to tell us what you think!

We'll be sending out a website "birth announcement" in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, if there's anything you used to do on the old website that you can't seem to do now, please don't hesitate to give us a call and we'll get it straightened out for you. Please pardon our dust — we're working hard to make our site a useful tool for you.

A recent study commissioned by Google and conducted by Harris Interactive has found online media to be just as effective as traditional 30-second television spots for brand-building efforts.

Google tested the impact of running 30-second commercials from three major packaged goods categories - beverages, salty snacks, and skin care - on three different video platforms: conventional television, YouTube, and embedded in online content.

The study found that the commercials performed equally in all the major attributes on each of those platforms, but that embedded video ads might actually perform slightly better in terms of their ability to influence "purchase intent."

Read the Article at Media Post

In a down economy, it is important to integrate optimized landing pages with search marketing campaigns, and to use multivariate testing to increase conversions. Tools like Google Analytics greatly simplify this process, making it easier than ever know what visitors to your site are doing and — more importantly — why they are doing it. This article from Adotas does a good job outlining the benefits of this approach:

Go beyond traditional SEM tactics and turn your attention to the next critical step in optimizing your user experience -- the landing page, which is the page where search ads direct users for more information and, ideally, a conversion transaction. You don't have a fully optimized search campaign until you've optimized your landing pages and all other page elements your users encounter on their way to a conversion.

Read the Article

This past winter, we helped Smugglers' Notch develop an online RideShare board as part of their "Keepin' It Fresh!" efforts. The board encouraged the reduction of CO2 emissions for employees and visitors traveling to and from the mountain, by allowing them to arrange shared rides.

This is just one of the many green initiatives underway at the resort. Others include Stormwater Control, an Environmental Preferable Purchasing Policy, a No Idling Policy and a 250,000 mile sponsorship of NuRide.

Read more about green initiatives at Smugglers' Notch

The Cabot Creamery has just launched a revised section of their website called Community & You. This section of the site highlights Cabot's education and fundraising resources for teachers and parents. There are games and activities for children, and an "Ask the Expert" area for parents.

Visit Cabot's Community & You section

In a sure sign that they have achieved success in the marketplace, Firefox and Safari have finally become the target focused hacker exploits. After years of flying under the radar this is a new and unwelcome note of celebrity for browsers that were previously touted as safe alternatives to MS Explorer.

Many people are switching from Internet Explorer to alternative browsers such as Firefox and Safari. Though that might make them feel more secure, the shift has also opened new doors for bad guys.

Case in point: We have no IE bugs to report this month, but both Firefox and Safari have been hit hard.

So forget the idea that just because you've switched to a new browser, you're magically safer. You may be for a time, but to stay safe with any software, you need to keep current with fixes.

Read the Article in Inforworld

As marketers scramble to figure out how to effectively spend suddenly smaller advertising budgets in an increasingly competitive marketplace, social media has become the hot platform for brand building, and "motivating consideration".

The looming economic downturn will inevitably lead to a decrease in ad spending, but marketers are likely to continue shifting money into social media, according to a new study. According to the Forrester Research report, marketer moves into areas like word of mouth, blogging and social networking will withstand tightened budgets. In contrast, marketers are likely to decrease spending in traditional media and even online vehicles geared to building brand awareness.

Those findings stand in contrast to the previous economic downturn, when spending on Internet advertising cratered as marketers turned to tried-and-true media.

Read the Article in AdWeek