If you’re anything like me, around the holidays you spend lots of time searching for perfect Christmas gifts online. For friends and family who are far away, anything that helps you avoid the lines at the post office is sweet – but did you know that there is a great tool our there that will tell you if what you’re buying can also benefit a charity?

GoodSearch has created a toolbar and search engine plugin for FireFox that lets you know when your search results in money for charity. Part of what makes this solution so great is that *you don’t have to change your behavior at all*! Talk about perfect usability – just by doing what you always do, you might be helping someone out.

For those merchants who participate, there are coupons available for things like free shipping offers – but the toolbar will tell you exactly how much you would be giving to charity by buying through their service.

What a wonderful way for technology to help us get in the spirit of the season!

User Experience comprises many aspects of a website, including the navigation, the content, the design, and the staying power.  While there are some blanket rules for web usability (from Wikipedia)…

1. Present information to your users in a clear and concise way.
2. Remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action e.g. clicking on delete/remove/purchase.
3. Organize your content so that it’s obvious how to use the site.

…there are also specific usability & user experience guidelines for each web niche, including author and book websites.  Having designed many author and book websites, and tracked analytics to determine design success, here are some guidelines I’ve come up with that help create a great user experience for author and book website:  Read on to learn about usability and user experience tips for author and book websites…

We all know how it’s important to make meaningful connections with your clients and/or customers. One of the ways you can do this is by sharing with them not only through Twitter and Facebook, but also through YouTube and Flickr. Your brand is an extension of your personality, so use the great tools out there that help you bring it to life!

Putting a face and a voice to a name brings an instant connection that may not have been there previously. It also gives you the chance to share goings-on in a way that enhances your customer’s experience…

For example, if you’re opening a restaurant, add photos and videos of the process of creating the venue to your blog posts – or even create just a photo-blog as a way to start building publicity. People are often invested in and excited about what you’re doing well before they set foot in the door. Or, if you’re building a small business around dog training, offer up some free video tidbits of you and your pup in action. Be creative! If you’re reluctant to be the star of the show, collaborate with someone else – or keep yourself behind the camera. There’s no right or wrong way to go about it.

Bringing your business to life like this can make it, and you, much more approachable & lowers the bar for initial customer contact. It also allows you to spread awareness to audiences who might not otherwise have discovered your offering. With user bases in the millions, using targeted tags and linking back to your website on YouTube & Flickr is fantastic way to bring a new audience to your offering.

There are a few things to keep in mind when writing website content:

1. Keep it short: Website readers are impatient, so they scan website content – it’s often too much work to really “read” on the web & there are so many sources of information that people will find another source if yours doesn’t immediately deliver. Also, because of the nature of the medium people read more slowly and avoid large blocks of text. You can deliver a longer message below the fold or on other pages of your site, but avoid information overload on landing pages.

Read on for more tips on writing website content . . .

This week in “Ask a Reviewer” I’m delighted to feature some quick tips from Marc Schuster of Small Press Reviews, where Marc and Tom Powers review works from small and independent presses

My biggest “do” is to keep the pitch concise. It’s good for authors to remember that we reviewers usually have day jobs! If I get a query that goes on and on, I begin to wonder whether the book will have a tendency to ramble incoherently as well. Basically, I’d like a sentence or two that tells me what the book is about and why I might like it. If that brief description of the book intrigues me, then I’ll ask to read a copy.

My biggest “don’t” is to avoid asking a reviewer to read a PDF copy of the book. I spend so much time in front of a computer all day that when I read for fun, I prefer to do it the old fashioned way–with an actual book, words on a page.

In addition to the books he reviews on his blog, Marc’s first novel is The Singular Exploits of Wonder Mom and Party Girl. You can learn more about Marc Schuster at his website: http://www.marcschuster.com.

First impressions are often made online today, and your online identity is your public face to the world. In addition to doing a Google search on your own name to find out what exists about you, setting up one or more Google Alerts so that you can thank the source and rebroadcast what was said about you (or manage it if it’s not positive), tracking what’s said about you and/or your products on social media outlets, and making sure you own a domain that maps to your name, you need to think strategically about what you want your online identity to be. Choosing an identity doesn’t mean you’re locked into it forever, or that you can’t branch out, but it does give you a starting point to establish yourself when you’re just starting out or are working to establish your brand.

Recently I’ve worked on projects for clients who happily have their hands in multiple pies. For example, they might have a consulting business and also be an author. Ideally these projects start with an established web presence for the consulting business, which can then be leveraged for marketing the related book – and a new site can be created specifically for marketing and selling the book. But what if the book came first? And what if a single person consults about Topic A, and writes books about Topic B? What to do then?

Read more about creating and managing your online brand…

This week in the Client Spotlight is Ann Levine, Esq., Law School Admissions Consulting Expert and author of The Law School Admission Game: Play Like an Expert. Ann is the former director of admissions for two ABA law schools, and more than 100,000 law school applicants have relied upon her Law School Expert blog to guide them through the application process.

What do you wish you’d known about creating an online presence before you started?

I wish I’d understood the importance of branding. I started in 2004 with a free template website that looked TERRIBLE. I spent a lot of time teaching myself everything and thought that because I had a lot of credible information on my site that the site itself should appear credible. A year later I upgraded to a basic web design and paid about $700 for it – which felt like a lot at the time. It looked better, but was really still a template. It did the trick but didn’t brand me because it was fairly generic. Only when I (literally) sat down with someone who understood my brand and what my online presence needed to project did I feel like I was projecting credibility and deserving of charging higher prices to my clients as a result.

What’s the most important thing you learned about online marketing along the way?

To employ experts. People hire me to have an expert at their side through the law school application process, and I hire others because I don’t have time to become an expert on web marketing, SEO, PPC, etc. So, I hired people to help me who already know this stuff better than I ever could learning it on my own. It’s not as expensive as you might imagine, but it only works if you work with people who “get” what you’re all about. I flailed using big companies that I found online and only thrived once I found that one person who understood what I meant in a sentence long email or 2 second phone call and didn’t need me to coach her to get what I wanted.

What’s the best advice you have for someone just getting started now?

Use a blog to provide quality information and form relationships with others in your field and related fields. If you are good with people, Twitter and Facebook. Network constantly, and help others in their quests because good acts come back around.

There are so many awards out there online – for everything from awards for women in business to awards for great use of the internet to awards for the best blogs. Some are free to enter, and some have an entrance fee. Some offer a cash prize, and others the notoriety that comes from winning. All help put your name out there, though, and may be a way to get your product in the hands of major influencers. So, if you’re looking for another way to get your name out there and bring some great positive attention to your work, consider entering your project (or having a friend nominate you) for an award!

This isn’t the time to be shy or lack confidence as there’s little-to-no downside to entering (especially the ones with no entrance fee). And the benefit of being nominated as a finalist or winner is huge.

Since I often work on websites for authors/books, I have collected a list of awards that you may not yet know about as an author.

Read on for online awards offered to authors/books…

It used to be that hosting ads on your content-driven site was a no brainer – there was lots of money for ads out there because there wasn’t much evidence as to its effectiveness. Everyone was throwing money at the internet just to see what would stick. These days it’s unclear whether the time/money/thought you put into online advertising is actually worth it in the end. This doesn’t mean that online advertising is a bad idea, it just means you need to go about it thoughtfully & creatively.

Read more about ways to advertise effectively and creatively…

In addition to interacting with your site visitors through comments on your blog posts and pages, there are a handful of other simple things you can implement on your website that will engage your readership:

• Polls. Polls are a way for your readership to feel involved in your story – they allow a reader’s voice to be heard, however anonymously, but are also a great tool for finding out more of what your readership wants from your site. Rather than wonder if your readership wants more content about subject “x” – either mine your data to find out whether it’s successful, or just ask them through a poll. There are a number of free, simple, poll generators, but PollDaddy is a great place to start.
• Photos. Just like you can use a Flickr RSS feed to place your own photos on your blog via tags, you can invite other people to tag their photos with a keyword you will use to display photos on your blog. This is a great way to invite audience participation whether it’s around creating something, going somewhere, or any number of common experiences. If you’re concerned that people might take advantage, then create a Flickr group where you approve membership to add photos to the group, then base your feed on the group’s content. Photos are a great way to feel connected to an audience, and videos as well!
• Competitions. Ask your readers to come up with the best way to do something, then give an award for the best answer/submission. It doesn’t have to be a big giveaway – people love to get stuff for free, no matter how small, and if a competition brings you a large audience, it’s well worth the investment. Your giveaway could be some free time with you if you’re a consultant, or a copy of your book if you’re an author, or a coffee mug with your logo on it no matter who you are.