Shopify Expert Insights

Too often have I seen clients agonize over 30 word ad copy while ignoring the importance of photos on their website. If a photo is worth a thousand words, then it's worthwhile to provide customers with great photos that tell your brand story. Through the immediacy of photo-sharing sites, the inclusion of cameras in seemingly all consumer electronics, and the radical improvement in digital cameras in the last decade, there is a heavy burden placed on commercial photography. It is now expected that pack shots, location images, and staff portraits will be nearly perfect if not stunning. No longer can we get away with the photos our nephew took for his high school photo class, or the iPhone photos you took last January. Consider that:

• Product shots make your item tangible.
• Pack shots improve product recognition on the store shelf.
• Location shots give credibility and help customers find you.
• Staff shots give your business a face.

Providing photos of yourself, your products or your business is a great way to tell the story of your business. Professional photos make your brand shine.

Traditionally, the problem with browser statistics is that the research data is based on developer-biased group of users. To avoid that problem, we used Google Analytics data from a chain of Chicago pizza restaurants as our basis for the average user. With 3,041 unique visitors looking for pizza during the month of September, Gulliver's data should provide a representative sample of Chicago's average user.

Other conclusions suggested by our data:

1. Dial-up is nearly non-existent.
2. 1024x768 is the most common resolution by far, which is good news for the 960 grid system.
3. 1 in 6 computers are Macs.
4. IE is anything but dead, with IE8 taking the largest individual market share.
5. 1 in 10 browsers were on an embedded device
6. 2 out of 3 embedded devices are Apple products.
7. The web is moving forward!

Along with other local business (including our clients 2 Sisters and Amphora) we're sponsoring Operation Holiday, a fashion show charity event benefiting Wings.

The show will be held at Amphora on Sunday, November 7th starting at 1pm. We're proud to be involved. Found this post helpful? Follow us on Twitter.

To increase your business's visibility in local searches it's important to be in geographically-sorted directories. Here are ten of the best directories to list your business:

1. BrownBook
2. CitySearch
3. CityVoter
4. HotFrog
5. InsiderPages
6. JudysBook
7. GuideSpot
8. Local.com
9. SuperPages
10. YellowBot

The actual text you use in the title of a page is one of the most important factors in how a search engine may decide to rank your web page. In addition, all major web crawlers will use the text of your title tag as the text they use for the title of your page in your listings. The most common mistake made by small business owners is placing their name exclusively in every title of every page. Since the business is presumably already the domain name, this is both redundant and counter-intuitive to searches. With the exception of the home page, using the business name in the title is probably a waste of valuable keywords and space. Dedicating the first three title words to descriptive keywords (while avoiding stop words like "and" or "at") is crucial to search engine optimization. Your title tag is the single most powerful on-page factor in your SEO toolbox. Use it wisely.

Over the weekend we attended BarCampMilwaukee5 at BucketWorks in Milwaukee. BarCamp is a self-described "unconference," meaning that it is essentially sourced ad-hoc the day of the event by its own participants. Being totally free, there is no barrier to entry, so absolutely anyone was able teach, learn, and share in an open environment. The attitude is equal parts positive and relaxed, and the participants seemed to be shining stars in their fields. It was inspiring and humbling to attend. At the end of the night, while sitting at a table covered in Lego, we listened to the endlessly enthusiastic James Carlson discuss his overarching plans for the community he was bringing together. During this five minute "lightning talk" we saw a glimpse of what the future of learning and collaboration could be like. What we witnessed there drew strong (positive) parallels to the communities depicted in Daniel Suarez's Freedom. It was an absolutely thrilling and inspiring experience when I realized the power of the community we had just become a part of. Thank you, BarCampMilwaukee.