Mad flow from The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) is back with another marketing rap. This time he describes how web standards and proper design can affect the ranking and conversion of pages on your site.

Lyrics:

Your site design is the first thing people see
It should be reflective of you and the industry
Easy to look at with a nice navigation
When you can’t find what you want it causes frustration
A clear call to action to increase the temptation
Use appealing graphics they create motivation
If you have animation
Use with moderation
Cause search engines can’t index the information
Display the logos of all your associations
Highlight your contact info that’s an obligation
Create a clean design you can use some decoration
But to try to prevent any client hesitation
Every page that they click should provide an explanation
Should be easy to understand like having a conversation
When you design the style go ahead and use your imagination
But make sure you use correct color combinations
Do some investigation, look at other organizations
But don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation
Design done, congratulations but it’s time to start construction
Follow these instructions when you move into production
Your photoshop functions then slice that design
Do your layout with divs make sure that it’s aligned
Please don’t use tables even though they work fine
When it come to indexing they give searches a hard time
Make it easy for the spiders to crawl what you provide
Remove font type, font color and font size
No background colors, keep your coding real neat,
Tag your look and feel on a separate style sheet
Better results with xml and css
Now you making progress, a lil closer to success
Describe your doctype so the browser can relate
Make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
Check in all browsers, I do it directly
Gotta make sure that it renders correctly
Some use IE, some others use Flock
Some use AOL, I use Firefox
Title everything including links and images
Don’t use italics, use emphasis
Don’t use bold, please use strong
If you use bold that’s old and wrong
When you use CSS, you page will load quicker
Client satisfied like they eating on a Snickers
They stuck on your page like you made it with a sticker
And then they convert now that’s the real kicker
Make you a lil’richer, your site a lil slicker
Design and code right man I hope you get the picture
What I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture
If it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter
Everyone will want to follow you like Twitter
Competition will get bitter and you’ll shine like glitter
If you trying to grow your company will get bigger
Design and code right man can you get with it

Thanks to Lucas for this one.

Where music meets the elements. Essential for physicists and dub fanatics alike.

Available for purchase at Red Bubble.

Now there’s a headline for you! Below’s an excerpt from Chapter 13 of Luke Wroblewski’s forthcoming book Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Rosenfeld Media, 2008). And the excerpt is an excellent read for what it’s worth.

I’ll just come out and say this: sign-up forms must die. In the introduction to this book I described the process of stumbling upon or being recommended to a web service. You arrive eager to dive in and start engaging and what’s the first thing that greets you? A form.

We can do better. In fact, I believe we can get people engaged with digital services in a way that tells them how such services work and why they should care enough to use them. I also believe we can do this without explicitly making them fill out a sign-up form as a first step.

Read the full article at A List Apart.

Hi! You will have noticed that I’ve made quite a few changes on the site over the last few days which has been in the pipeline for about three months now. Yes, it is actually version 16, which isn’t too many considering that the site is 13 years old!

New features, some that you can see, some that you can’t, including:

• A new coat of paint and CSS driven layout - a clean look to allow the you, the user to focus on the photography across the site
• Content management system upgrade - to Wordpress 2.3.3 (from 2.0.4)
• Improved search engine optimisation (SEO)
• XML sitemap capability - a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo
• Social bookmark “chicklets” - share the posts across your favourite social networking sites like Delicious, Facebook and Digg

There’s a few bugs and some further improvements to be introduced over coming weeks, but nothing that will stop you reading the content. So, let me know what you think!

The members of Kraftwerk get spelled out. Buy at Redbubble.

Here’s an old ad that David Ogilvy wrote the copy for -

Forgot your glasses? Here’s the copy.

Meet Commander Edward Whitehead, Schweppesman Extraordinary from London, England, where the house of Schweppes has been a great institution since 1794.

Commander Whitehead has come to these United States to make sure that every drop of Schweppes Quinine Water bottled here has the original flavor which has long made Schweppes the only mixer for and authentic Gin-and-Tonic.

He imports the original Schweppes elixir, and the secret of Schweppes unique carbonation is locked in his brief case. “Schweppervescence,” says the Commander, “lasts the whole drink through.”

It took Schweppes almost a hundred years to bring the flavor of their Quinine Water to its present bittersweet perfection. But it will take you only thirty seconds to mix it with ice and gin in a high ball glass. Then, gentle reader, you will bless the day you read these words.

P.S. If your favorite store or bar doesn’t yet have Schweppes, drop a card to us and we’ll make the proper arrangements. Address Schweppes, 30 East 60th Street, New York City.

Now I ask you to think about this for a moment. What is about this ad that oozes class? Not sure?

Take the classic P.S. which is so common in DM. “Drop a card to us and we’ll make the proper arrangements.”

Right there. We’ll sort it, for you. That’s the ticket to a premium brand right there. A class act all the way is David. There’s a reason that Time Magazine called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry”.

Thanks to ciAd for the scan of the print ad.

I’ve been chosen to sit on the judges panel for the Web Marketing Association’s 2007 WebAwards.

The 2007 WebAwards will name the best Websites in 96 industry categories.

The WebAwards are a high profile set of awards in online circles, and with finanancial services organisations such as Fidelity, Merrill Lynch and Charles Schwab winning several awards in 2006, not to mention agencies such as Leo Burnett, Wunderman and Tribal DDB - it shows that the big guns take such awards seriously.

Further, it will be interesting to understand the criteria used in judging the websites and how this compares with our industry based efforts to ‘judge’ websites that I have either seen or been involved with.

Up to the challenge? Why not Tonk A Pom.

Amazing new ad from Sony, the second in the series for the Bravia product (the first being the bouncing balls in San Francisco.).

Our latest TV ad - featuring massive paint explosions - took 10 days and 250 people to film. Huge quantities of paint were needed to accomplish this, which had to be delivered in 1 tonne trucks and mixed on-site by 20 people.

The effect was stunning, but afterwards a major clean-up operation was required to clear away all that paint!

The cleaning took 5 days and 60 people. Thankfully, the use of a special water-based paint made it easy to scrape-up once the water had evaporated.

Also available for viewing is a 5 minute behind the scenes documentary.

Wow. Mr. Hart! What a mess!

Not everyone gets to see the steps in between the time the model walks in the room to the time the artwork is complete and sent to print.

We all know how make-up can transform a person’s look, but do you really know what happens on desk of the Mac operator as they take a copy of Photoshop and wield their light pen like a craftsman uses his chisel, carving up the initial creating, sculpting and re-shaping until the original product is no longer identifiable.

Watch. Be surprised. Be saddened. Our chase for perfection is such an unfortunate and unforgiving indictment on Western culture today.

By Dove Canada and Ogilvy Toronto. Find out more about the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.