Psychologists will tell you that there are large groups of people who feel overwhelmed by “information overload,” or the ever-growing and expanding amount of data that’s available on the Internet. We regularly meet with small business owners who seem to be suffering from a similar effect – one we might call feature overload – where they aren’t sure which of the “must-have” tools and technologies need to be integrated into their next web design.

In other words, they often aren’t sure exactly how new a new business web design actually has to be in order to be an effective marketing tool.

Even though it might run contrary to a lot of thinking within the industry, we’re going to go out on a limb and say for the record that having the latest and greatest features on your business site isn’t always all it’s cracked up to be. Don’t get us wrong, there are definitely some fairly-standard features – like a good content management system, social media integration, search engine optimization, etc. – that can make your company more profitable in a hurry. But there are also a lot of things that just add to time and expense of your business site, make it more complicated for people to use, and generally get in the way of good usability.

Good design is classic. The way we code websites might change, but the basic ideas and information that most customers are looking for has remained fairly constant for thousands of years. In other words, you might use an online video to tell a potential buyer what you would have explained in a brochure 10 years ago, but the focus still needs to be on the right message, rather than on any one specific web design tool.

A good, high-quality business web design can easily last 3 to 5 years before it needs any major changes. If you find that you’re needing to redesign your business website a lot more often than not, it could be that you aren’t investing in quality layouts to start with, or are being too distracted by small changes, rather than concentrating on your most important business goals.

Having a new website for your company can be very exciting, but having one that helps you make more money month after month is usually a lot more rewarding.

While still in it’s infancy, YouTube has introduced a video editor (available through labs) or at this address.

It is a rather simple interface that allows you to clip the front and end of any of the videos in your account and then join to other portions of your own video archive. A second track allows you to add a sound track from a list of available royalty free selections.

As with all Google products it is likely to be expanded upon in the near future. The addition of transitions and filters would be welcomed.  As it stands today it is still rather clunky, but as with most Google initiatives I hold hope for it. I would be disappointing if I had to buy it, it it’s current state, but as is usually the case with Google’s beta offerings it is without a fee and of course no obligation to use it.

Watch for other features to roll out soon too; such as the ability to synchronize slide shows with your uploaded video.

If you have a YouTube channel, have a peek.   (click the image to enlarge it)

http://www.youtube.com/editor

Cheers

David A. West

This is pretty brilliant – this YouTube video explains how Ikea used existing tagging capabilities of FaceBook to encourage syndication and interaction with their online gallery promoting the opening of a new store.  Watch the video…