Does your website have the wrong year in the copyright? Or worse – is your website missing a copyright completely? Let’s find out why it’s important to fix your copyright immediately…

Get More People to Actually Use Your Website

Google discovered the importance of the copyright back in 1998. They watched people use Google.com with and without a copyright and the results were incredible. Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google talks about the testing (read the entire article here):

[Our beta testers] would sit in front of the Google screen for 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, a minute… Google was perplexed.

So Mayer would eventually intervene and ask what was holding up the searchers. “I’m waiting for the rest of it,” they’d say.

Without the copyright, internet users didn’t use the site because they weren’t sure if the site was finished…

As a result, the company put a copyright notice at the bottom of the page. “It’s not there for legal reasons,” Mayer said. “It’s there as punctuation. That’s it. (It tells the searcher) ‘Nothing else is coming; please start searching now.’”

What’s this got to do with your small business website?

Don’t let customers sit and wonder if your website will ever finish downloading. Tell your customers it’s ready by adding a copyright.

Let Customers Know You’re Still Open for Business!

Yesterday, I found a website with a copyright that said “2004.” It’s now 2009. I didn’t know if the company was still in business because the copyright was 5 years old – that’s a long time in internet years!

Did they shut down and forget to pull the plug on the website?

Determined to find out what was going on, I found an email address on the contact page and sent an email. However, I didn’t know if the email address was still working because it looked like they hadn’t done anything to the website in 5 years – how stressful?

Please update the year in your copyright. Make it current – or you risk losing a few customers (and making them wonder if you’re still open for business.)

How to Automatically Update the Year in Your Copyright

For all you small business website masters and do-it-yourself types, here’s how you add code to automatically update the year – every year – without ever having to touch it again.

The code reads the year on your web server, then writes the correct year on web page – sweet!

First, you need to find out if your website hosting service is using PHP or ASP. The fastest way to find out is to look at the URL of a page on your website (but, not the home page.) Then look at the very end of the URL.

If you see .asp or .php then you know exactly what you’re working with.

Examples:
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.php ← You’ve got PHP
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.asp ← You’ve got ASP
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.html ← Call your web developer
www.yourwebsite.com/contact.htm ← Call your web developer

PHP
Got PHP? Paste this text into the CODE of your web page where you want the year to be displayed: <?php echo date(“Y”); ?>
Example: Copyright <?php echo date(“Y”); ?> Minneapolis Web Guy
This will show up as: Copyright 2009 Minneapolis Web Guy

ASP
Got ASP? Paste this text into the CODE of your web page where you want the year to be displayed: <% Response.Write Year(now) %>
Example: Copyright <% Response.Write Year(now) %> Minneapolis Web Guy
This will show up as: Copyright 2009 Minneapolis Web Guy

What the??

If you need help, contact me or DM me on Twitter.

Get An Up-To-Date Copyright is a post from: Web Designer in Minneapolis, MN

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At the  San Francisco Usability Week in 2008, a website designer asked Jakob Nielsen (the world’s most well-known website design guru) if she should use PDFs on a corporate website. Jakob’s reply…

“PDFs suck.”

Jakob Nielsen has been testing website designs for years. He found that PDFs kill website design because of the huge negative impact on the person using your website.

Jakob said that website designers don’t realize website visitors hate using PDFs – for many reasons:

1. Jarring User Experience – Internet Explorer (and other web browsers) have their own set of commands and tools to print, save, etc. PDFs have a completely different set of tools & rules that confuse people.
2. Boring Content – The typical PDF is a document that was meant for print and is full of long, boring content that visitors don’t want to read.
3. Broken Flow – You have to wait for Adobe Acrobat to open before you can read the file. After Acrobat opens, you still have to wait for the PDF to download.

Find out why “PDFs are Unfit for Human Consumption”

Does your website designer only care what the website looks like and ignore how real people use your site?

Talk to me about designing a website for your small business – that people will love to use – and like the way it looks.

Main photo credit: A.M. Kuchling

Good Website Design Killed by PDFs is a post from: Web Designer in Minneapolis, MN

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