It is this day of the year again, when even the big and popular crack on some jokes. April fool’s day is the day when the internet is not trustable anymore. Keep repeating yourself that and dive into our list. And don’t follow the panda.

Flickr is certainly going to entertain you today with some picture of the “real” world, like:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jaggers/3403964346

Experience a new generation of browser with the upcoming features on Opera:

http://download.cnet.com/8301-2007_4-10208949-12.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=TheDownloadBlog

It is also a day to make good deals, like Warner Bros and their new partner:

http://torrentfreak.com/warner-bros-acquires-the-pirate-bay-090401/

Google employees have always been very productive on April Fool’s day:

http://mail.google.com/mail/help/autopilot/index.html

http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/cadie/index.html

http://cadiesingularity.blogspot.com/

http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/cadie/

Microsoft is also about to release IE8.1 as revealed by smashing mag:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/03/31/breaking-internet-explorer-81-eagle-eyes-leaked/

Youtube goes upside down:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xadS1NpPsPM&flip=1

What about a little try to Mars, cheapest ever!

http://www.expedia.co.uk/daily/mars/flights-to-mars/?mcicid=mars_home_uk&rfrr=-57400

That should keep you busy for a few minutes. And if you are wondering why are they bothering about doing this I would say just two words: Link Bait.

I am going to enter rant mode today and talk about a style of site design that I see almost daily. If you have a product or service to sell you will want to maximize the impact of your site. If your site looks poor and is almost unusable then people are very likely to simply drop off and go elsewhere. So why do I see apparently rich successful businessmen and Internet marketing experts making sites that look like they were created in 1993?

I thought I would break down the sort of things that these sites do and give some suggestions on how to go about solving each one.

Infinity Scrolling

The single biggest thing that irritates me on these sites is the masses and masses of text, all of which is contained on a single page. This makes the page very, very long and users are therefore forced to scroll and scroll to find out what it is that the site is trying to sell. How is this usable? It simply makes it difficult to see exactly what you are selling and users are forced to scroll up and down to find the information that is relevant to them.

Solution
Split up that single massive page into different pages. Your users will expect to see sections containing content because that is what they see on every other site on the Internet. Designing the site like this will allow users to digest the content on your site on their own terms. This also means that your users are more likely to convert because they can see your buy buttons and contact forms.

Empty Hype

Although these sites contain a hell of a lot of text, the chances are quite high that they will not actually give away many details. They will talk endlessly about how good the product is and how you can’t possibly live without it, but don’t actually say what it is. How can you expect people to sign up for something, when you don’t even tell them what it is that they are signing up for?

Solution
Trust is important on all websites, and you can gain people’s trust by being as transparent as you can. Of course, there is a fine line between this and giving away company secrets, but you should at least tell people what you sell.

Testimonials

The site will fill out a lot of text with endless anecdotal evidence about how “Bob” absolutely loved the product and that it changed his life, when there is little evidence that “Bob” even exists. These testimonials are quite likely fake and will contain phrases like “I was apprehensive at first, but then…”.

Solution
It’s nice to have a testimonials page, and you should put positive feedback on your site as this can be a neat selling tool. However, don’t rely on it. The testimonials page should not be the focus of your website.

Poorly Designed

It almost seems as though not a lot of thought has gone into the design of the site, for some reason they all have the same style of having a center aligned box that only serves to make the content scroll further. The styles will be a mix of thick borders with lots of different (but largely incompatible) font sizes and styles. The heading will generally be in a very large font and probably take up most of the screen area.

Solution
At least make it look as though you spent some time on the site. This helps to build user confidence and leads to increased conversions. Poor designs lead to poor conversions not only because the user lacks trust, but also because they can’t find anything.

“Dear Friend”

No, no, no! The worst possible thing you can do is to start off by condescending to your users. This sort of sleazy sales language makes you look like a con artist trying to push some sort of get rich quick scam on any user stupid enough to bite.

Solution
Try not to address people directly in the content on your site, just tell them about the product or service and let them make their own minds up. You should definitely not use condescending terms like “Dear Friend”, ever.

Image-tastic!

These sites will normally have a multitude of images, but most of them will be meaningless or irrelevant to the product. This does little to convince the users that your product is worth the price tag and only really serves to increase download times.

Solution
I absolutely encourage the use of images, but don’t plaster them all over the site, this is a real pain for users as they will be forced to download them all.

Numerous buy buttons.

Due to the fact that these pages scroll and scroll and scroll they are normally plastered with buy buttons. This just means that your users will get confused and will not be sure which button to click on first.

Solution
Splitting the single page into different sections will stop this problem. Having a clearly laid out site will mean that your users will navigate to the sections they want to see, and then decide if they want to go ahead with the purchase. Engaging the user in their own terms makes them feel in charge and they are more likely to make that all important conversion.

Conclusion

Creating a site like this makes you look like some kind of con artist, even if your business is legitimate. With the amount of free templates available on the Internet there really is no excuse for creating a site consisting of a single massive page. By putting a little bit of effort into your site you can increase the likelihood that people will interact with it and actually buy something.

If you spend a lot of time on the Internet you will almost certainly have come across one of the memes that appeared this year.  So as a round up of the years events I thought that I would do a list of the best memes of 2008.

But first, what is a meme?  The term was created by biologist and evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins in 1976 to describe a unit of cultural information that acts like a gene.  A good meme will start off as an idea, which people will send to their friends.  This is then copied and changed into other themes, sometimes quite different form the starting point. It can remember the “all your base are belong to us” thing from a while back then you get the idea.

Has X happened yet?

As far as I know this started around September with the first run of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).  Someone bought a domain called www.hasthelhcdestroyedtheearth.com and put a page containing the word “No”.  Presumably this would be updated as events unfolded, but this was really a dig at those people who thought that the LHC could ever destroy anything at all.

This has grown into all sorts of things, including whether it is christmas yet, whether it is 2009 yet or even if tables should be used for layout.

The Fail Blog

This meme involves adding the word “fail” to embarrassing, ironic, or compromising photos or short videos.  The term can “epic fail” also be used when the photo is particularly embarrassing.  I can’t mention fail without mentioning the Fail Blog (which can be found at failblog.org), which is a great place to find lots of examples of this meme.  The oposite of “fail” is “win”, which can also be used as the term “epic win”.

Although I’m sure that this meme was around in 2007 it has really taken off this year.  It even seems to have broken away from the internet and is now being used in everyday speech. Only the other day I was listening to a podcast and one of the speakers said the phrase “that was just an epic fail”.

Rickrolling

This is the practice of giving someone a seemingly legitimate link to a related resource, only for it to be a link to a Rick Astley song, typically Never Gonna Give You Up.  I must admit that I have clicked on a link once or twice during 2008 and been presented with Rick Astley. Officially, this meme started out on 4chan in May of 2007, but it was not until 2008 that it appeared on the rest of the internet, and even on a news broadcast.

IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAND!

This is a meme that was started by the anime Dragon Ball Z.  Well, not really started but first appeared in.  I think the credit for taking this phrase and creating the meme probably goes (again) to 4chan.  The scene goes like this:

Nappa: “VEGETA! What does the scouter say about his power level?”

Vegeta: “IT’S OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAND!” *crushes scouter*

Nappa: WHAT NINE THOUSAND!?

This has been used on lots of other themes, including the USA stock exchange and even Oprah Winfrey.

Do you have a favourite meme from the past year? If so, then share it with us.