When my kids were small, a regular routine at bedtime was telling them a story. I would sit at the top of the stairs and weave a tale inspired by recent events of one sort or another. Their favourite was about an old lady who lived deep in the woods. The Bucket Lady, as she came to be called, loved to catch children and scrub them clean when they were careless enough to enter her domain.

Okay a little weird, but they thoroughly enjoyed it and it went on for months. My kids, who were key characters in the story, got great pleasure out of cleverly avoiding the cleansing from the Bucket Lady on a nightly basis.

You might say that it was my first pre-internet blog. It was original content that resonated with my listeners, who looked forward to the next release and shared the story with their closest friends. Moving forward, we’re now telling our story to a vast audience, eager to listen and share information too…if it’s relevant.

What’s involved? Personally I take a few hours every weekend to create my blog for the following week. After a while it becomes a habit. You let recent events shape the article and relay something you find interesting and others might too. Blogging is a big contributor to our significantly increased rankings on Google. Like any new initiative it takes time, someone in your organization needs to champion the cause and collaborative writing across your team is a big help.

Lee’s quote for the day, “It is better to have blogged and not been tweeted then to never have blogged at all.”

When developing fixed width websites, there was always some kind of width standard in place. Back when a majority of users were using a 800×600 pixel screen resolution, we would design our websites at 770 pixels. All of the fixed width sites that we develop now are at 960 pixels (for 1024×768 resolutions), and it will probably stay that way until later this year, were we’ll re-evaluate at what new standard we will develop websites for. According to W3Schools and NetMarketShare, there are still 20%-25% of users out there that utilize a 1024×768 pixel screen resolution, and anywhere from 1%-3% that utilize 800×600. In fact, 1024 by 768, is the leading screen resolution according to NetMarketShare. So when developing a website you don’t want to alienate over 1/4 of your visitors by having them do side scrolling in order to get to content. We know that 1024×768 is in decline. Around the same time next year, there will be probably less than 15% of people utilizing 1024×768 or lesser resolution.

So the question becomes, what is the next “standard”?

If you had asked me this question a couple of years ago, I would have answered without hesitation, as the next resolution for 4:3 aspect ratio screens after 1024×768, is 1280×1024. Things were a bit simpler to figure out back then. Over the past decade, the most common screen resolutions were 640×480 (VGA), 800×600 (SVGA), 1024×768 (XGA) and 1280×1024 (SXGA), that is, until widescreen (16:9 aspect) monitors came along. Along with the widescreen monitors, we saw an explosion of portable devices such as laptops, netbooks, tablets and even cell phones utilizing the new aspect ratio, and varying  screen resolutions such as 1280×800, 1440×900, 1680×1050, 1366×768 and the list goes on.

So when it comes to developing the next standard consider a width that is divisible by 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 15, and 16. A year ago, Cameron Moll gave several suggestions for the next ideal width on his blog, being most comfortable with 1080. This is the most likely resolution that we will switch to.

Keep in mind though, that not everyone will surf the web at full browser width, so the 960 pixel standard may stick around for a while. In addition to this, many big sites such as Yahoo!, Youtube, CNN, and the majority of corporate websites are still designed for 960. If you wish to make your website design slightly more unique, you may want to experiment with unique backgrounds that extend the limitations of the 960 design space. In the meantime, we just might upgrade to 980, which is the upper width limit for 1024×768.

Happy Web Designing!

Of the 25 different deliverables Palmer Marketing provides, promotional products is my area of responsibility. I recently attended one of the major trade shows for the industry and came across some statistics worth sharing. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that advertising specialties aka “promotional products” or “trinkets and trash” beat out all forms of TV, radio and print advertising as the most cost effective advertising medium out there.

 Here are a few of the stats:

•  84% of people remember the advertiser on a product they receive
• 42% have a more favourable impression of an advertiser after receiving an advertising specialty
• Approximately 24% indicate they are more likely to do business with an advertiser on items they receive
• Most respondents (62%) have done business with the advertiser on a product after receiving it.

 All of which proves the point that promotional products still provide good measurable results for a very reasonable investment.