Burst Chief Marketing Officer Dave Borland was recently featured on FOX23 News.

When customers go into a restaurant and see a dirty floor, for example, they’re going to walk out, Borland told FOX23 News anchor Stephanie Grady. The same is true for websites.

Watch the complete clip below.

Filed under: Design, Experiencing the Web, General News, Usability
Tags: Dave Borland, design, FOX23 News, interview, media, tv, updates, Website
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How many is too many? When it comes to browser toolbars, usually one or two is plenty.

A problem we see all the time is a browser with too many toolbars.

They can crop up unexpectedly – especially if you unintentionally install them.

Like that painting you bought last year and hung in your living room, it’s easy to overlook toolbars after just a short while.

These days it’s not uncommon to still have a small monitor or a laptop screen that’s blown up so you can read small text. But if you have too many toolbars at the top, your browser window size could be diminished by a third or even half (we’ve seen it before)!

First off, why do you need them? Are you really using the toolbars or were they neat for a day and now you’re not sure how to get rid of them?

Second, they could be harming your computer by allowing malware, viruses, etc. in without your knowing.

Third, it could be slowing down your browser. Those little bars are loading every time you open your browser.

Getting rid of toolbars

So you’re ready to delete those space-hogging potentially dangerous toolbars. Congratulations.

Really all you need to do is right click on the toolbar itself and uncheck the toolbars you don’t need. There may be many of them.

You may also have to remove the root program as well through your computer’s Control Panel. You may want to ask your friendly office IT person to help.

Remember that when you’re browsing the Internet, be careful to read those messages that pop up so you don’t get suckered into clicking yes to download something you really don’t want.

Still wondering about how end users might see your site? Let the experts at Burst Marketing and IntelliSites help!

Filed under: Articles & News, Experiencing the Web, General News, Web Tips and How-tos
Tags: browser, Internet, internet browser, malware, popups, surfing, toolbar, toolbars, viruses
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When it comes to online video, YouTube and other Google video sites are still king.

A comScore Video Metrix report found that 180 million Americans watched an average of 18 hours of online video content in August. That’s what the company called “a record 6.9 billion viewing sessions.”

Not surprising, Google sites and Hulu logged the longest viewership – with an average user watching 5.7 hours on YouTube and 3.2 hours on Hulu.

That means video ads aren’t going away anytime soon.

Americans watched more than 5.6 billion video ads last month — 996 million on Hulu, according to comScore.

More than 85 percent of Americans using the Internet watched some form of video online last month. The average length of video – whether viral or favorite TV show – was 5.3 minutes.

Want to learn more about online video and how it can help your company? Ask the Intellisites’ Albany web design team.

Filed under: Content, Experiencing the Web
Tags: Content, videos, youtube
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In the world of web design it seems like it’s often the brightest, flashiest and most visually complex sites that win attention.

While there is no doubt that these creative websites certainly deserve their time in the spotlight, they are not meant for everyone. Which brings up the question – what do you do when your target audience isn’t the tech savvy, computer literate 20–something?

The great thing about the Internet is that it is a powerful resource for anyone, young or old. And if your business caters to a much older or much younger generation, there’s no reason why your website shouldn’t do that, too!

Senior citizens are slowly becoming more comfortable using the Internet. Older Baby Boomers may have resisted new technology toward the end of their careers but studies show they are now finding time to learn in retirement. Between 2004 and 2010, active Internet users age 65 and older increased by more than six million. Seniors are eager to learn and stay active, which is why the Internet is so appealing.

Today’s children and young adults (Millennials) have grown up with new technology and 50 years down the road will be a much more competent generation of senior Internet users. Right now though, it’s crucial for companies targeting seniors to make sure their sites are accessible to all.

Here are a few simple ways to translate web design for an older generation:

• Keep the fancy web lingo to a minimum. URL, HTML, FTP and HTTP can all start to look the same if you’re new to the Internet.
• Make sure everything is easy to find and easy to click – with aging comes a decline in motor skills.
• Light-colored font on light-colored backgrounds and small buttons that move and change can be difficult to navigate. (Adidas is a great company but one glance at their homepage makes it clear exactly who they have designed for. No 80-year-old should have to figure this one out!)

Giving users the option to change their font size is also a common practice these days. Most browsers allow for the capability, but giving users the option right on the page is more likely to keep them on the page longer.

Most importantly, not everything needs to be written in 72 point bold font, but keeping pages clean and maintaining a basic and logical sense of navigation is a must. Don’t forget to mention to your favorite web designers at IntelliSites if you have a specific age target in mind for your next project!

Filed under: Experiencing the Web, Usability, Web Design
Tags: organization, Web Design, website visitors
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Facebook and Google. Whether you love ‘em or hate ‘em, you’ve gotta admit that together they make up an enormous part of the internet as we know it.

But it’s probably not surprising that the two giants tend to bump heads. The websites may have had separate purposes initially, but as each site gets more and more complex, their functions have started to overlap. And this, of course, makes them rivals. Then, the fact that both companies also collect mass quantities of info about the people who use their websites fuels the rivalry because it also puts them in competition for this information. And then there’s the fact that internet marketing has taken off big time, and every day everywhere, businesses are deciding whether to send their advertising dollars to Google or Facebook. In short, these companies are becoming more the same than different, which actually makes them less likely to hold hands and frolic through the playground of cyberspace.

What the Rivalry Looks Like

The beef between the two rivals made the news in the spring when Facebook hired a public relations firm to get the word out about privacy concerns relating to Google’s Social Circles feature. Not surprisingly, this move didn’t improve the relationship between Google and Facebook, and ultimately it brought negative publicity to both companies – Google, because of the allegations, and Facebook, because of the way it went about publicizing them.

Meanwhile, despite the drama, both Facebook and Google are still growing and changing. And as they do, it seems that both companies are moving toward the idea of a hybrid between a search engine and a social network. For Facebook, this meant partnering with Microsoft’s Bing to incorporate recommendations from one’s Facebook friends into one’s Bing search results. (Check out this PC World article for the details.) For Google, that meant rolling our Google+, the hot new Google social experience (think Facebook, but with the Google look and feel) But whether you use Google or the Bing/Facebook tag team to conduct your web searches, you’ll find that your search results might incorporate some feedback from your acquaintances. Or in other words, that the idea behind Google and the idea behind Facebook are merging to create a new idea – “social search.”

Regardless of how things play out for these two, it’s a fun time to be an Albany web designer and overall computer nerd. We get to sit back and enjoy the play by play of how these gargantuan internet forces change the average guy’s internet experience. One day Facebook starts using facial recognition software to help you tag your friends in photos…one day Google makes voice and image search possible…and little by little they make that internet of ours bigger and smarter and more powerful. If competition is going to keep these companies experimenting and growing and moving forward…then by all means, guys, keep that rivalry going strong.

Filed under: Experiencing the Web
Tags: Bing, Facebook, Google, search engines, Social Media, social search
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