Friendlypop

My new site friendlypop.com has just launched. This site is more for web developers than anything else, I think that this is going to be an interesting project and hopefully one that is successful for me. If not I'm not too concerned, like Lopico this did not take much for me to create and launch, and my costs should be very low for this site.

Friendlypop is primarily a resource for web developers that utilize pop-ups in their sites in a site enhancing way. For these developers pop-up blockers are a hassle that they have to try to avoid, friendlypop is potentially a way to avoid pop-up blockers. But, friendlypop is not just for developers - it also has resources for web surfers that want to know more about pop-ups and numerous links to pop-up blockers and antivirus software.

Lastly, Lopico redesign is 49/50ths complete, I only have one state (OHIO) remaining to be redesigned and it should be up sometime tomorrow.

Redesign Roll-Out

The roll-out of my redesigned site has begun. Unfortunately, I'm already thinking of ways to change and improve upon it. However, unlike previous design changes I am planning to go ahead with this one 100% before changing again.

Some new features:

• Easier navigation thanks to a top row of buttons that allow users to quickly change category - rather than having to revert to the city page.
• Help page/FAQ - answers some questions about usage of the site - including what I believe is one of the biggest obstacles and one that will be addressed even more in my next redesign: adding only the name of your favorite not the address.
• More Categories - about 20 more per city and some cities will have custom categories
  
• More Cities - 19 new cities have been added with plans for even more in the next few weeks
• A cleaner new look - I've addressed some of the design issues, and since Lopico is becoming more of a "yellow pages" type site I've added some yellow color to my pages
• New Advertising page, and lower cost ads. Yahoo! local may be able to offer some things that I cannot, but they'll never offer a headliner at the price that I'm asking
• And more! Just try it you'll see.

As the title of this post suggests this is still a roll out - so not all cities are ready to go but should be in the next few days.

As always, the more you add the better we get!

Hopefully this one will be short, but they almost never are.

I am really impressed with Google lately. As much as I hate to say, I am. There new features in AdWords are really great an helpful. I've often talked negatively about Goog before but, I must say my search for other advertising outlets combined with their new features really makes me appreciate Google. Google now does three things right in my opinion, Advertising, site design, and Branding. As far as the actual SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) and algorithm of Google are concerned I think things could be better. But, it's not just Google, I really believe that all search engines could be doing a lot better. I also think advertising online could be handled much better. But all that this does is give me hope for the future. I was going to attempt to go this entire blog without a negative comment about Google, but the thing that bothers me the most about Google, from a consumer standpoint - not b to b I'm still impressed on that front - is the homepage. The design is fine, that's not what bothers me, it's the line at the bottom that says "searching 8,168,684,336 web pages." To this I say who cares. When was the last time you looked past the third SERP? I rarely look past the first page. So most of the pages are just lost. And if you listen to some internet enthusiasts / experts they'll tell you that most of what really matters on the web is hidden in the "Deep Web." The Deep Web is essentially the uncrawlable. I would have to agree with this statement - at least partially - because so many things are not crawlable, either because of password protection or robots.txt files (file that tells a web crawler pages it cannot crawl). However, I think that there are ways around the 90% uselessness of search engines - they just haven't been implemented yet. I'm sure that some of this has to do with building trust of web users - our society is overly cautious when it comes to the web and hesitant to give out information even though it could definitely make the whole web experience more rewarding, faster, and easier. The time will come - just not for a while. I'm still working on trying to make Lopico popular, so I guess I can't really be spouting off my search ideas until I've had some more success on Lopico.

As far as new news on Lopico - I've been getting quite a few additions lately, and I've really been playing with my advertising a lot; it's amazing how a small change can have a huge effect. If you've been to the site recently, and you had been before you'd probably notice that the homepage got a facelift and may have noticed the friendlypop.com logo on the bottom of the page. Friendlypop.com is another new idea of mine that I'm working on, and that has been a distraction from the Lopico redesign. But, I think it's going to be a wonderful site and will really help the progress of the internet as a whole. I'll say more about friendlypop when it gets closer to being finished.

As always the more you add the better we get.

July Wrap

July was an interesting and productive month and hopefully August will continue the trend. While certain indicators would suggest a decline for Lopico, the most important numbers are steadily increasing. To me these numbers are the number of additions and votes that I receive and site revenue. I'm not going to give away too much information, but it was a strong month, with Chicago, IL leading the way as the most visited and most frequently added to. Coming out of the woodwork this month was Milwaukee, WI which had never been very strong for Lopico before, but this month managed to be very productive. This is of course because of my ads targeted to this region. It is probably a very good fit for Lopico, since it is a big city but more of a mid-level market. These types of cities tend respond better to the Lopico concept, but Chicago which doesn't fit the mold is still my leader.

Most likely the most significant change to Lopico in July was the Title Tag, which hopefully will increase the number of queries resulting in trips to Lopico, but as of yet I haven't seen much difference.

I'm also working on another site, that will serve as an aid to Lopico as well as many other sites. When it is fully launched I will announce it and there will be a link on Lopico.

August is going to be the month (I may have said this in July) when the redesign is finally launched, it is about 80% finished and I just need to run some tests and import my data from my database, but that won't take too long. So, with a little luck the new version of Lopico will be here soon for all to enjoy.

As always - The more you add the better we get.