"It wasn’t that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. I just thought of mainstream culture as lame as hell and a big trick" says Bob Dylan in Confessions.

The web makes media less lame. Umair Haique explains theoretically why this should be and demonstrates that it will be a permanent effect: The New Economics of Media(long PowerPoint presentation). In short, the web increases the returns on investing in quality content and reduces the returns on marketing it.

John Battelle confirmed this theory anecdotally. Asked, "How do you market content in the new economy?" he replied "You can't (except for a little bit of AdWords), you've just got to make it as good as possible and hope it spreads."

(Link via: Paul Fisher)

The Nudo site is New Media Age site of the week. Thanks!

like Flickr for music, but better... absolutely brilliant

http://www.last.fm

A breathtaking website.

Strong use of photos. Lovely, slightly unusual, shopping basket.

We've moved into a new office.

Address: N301 Westminster Business Square 1 Durham Street Vauxhall London, SE11 5JH

The Click #19

I have always shied away from writing about Search Engine Optimisation. (Search Engine Optimisation, or SEO, is work done to make your site come higher up in the results of Google or other search engines.)

It takes a long time for SEO work to have an effect and you can not predict how beneficial it will be. Combine these two, and it makes for a murky world full of dodgy "First p1ace on GOOGLE!!" promises.

However, recently a couple of clients boosted their businesses dramatically through improving their visibility on Google. This made me think I should share what little I know.

Then I thought, better to get the opinion of a real expert. Richard Day came first in an SEO competition organised by .Net magazine. He is a true professional. Here is how he answered my questions:

1. What is the easiest way to improve your search engine ranking?

Get some links of the right type. That is links from pages on other sites that are both highly regarded by Google and on a similar subject to your own site.

2. How long does it take to see any beneficial effect from SEO?

Sometimes just a few days in Yahoo and MSN, but often many months in Google.

3. There is lots of chat about link swaps. Some people say Google will see through it if you link to a site in return for that site linking back to you. What do you think?

Link swaps can be good, if the sites have related content, and will not be bad unless your site links to a "bad" site (that is a site that Google suspects of trying to manipulate search engine rankings unfairly). Link swaps between wholly unrelated sites are probably worth little. If a link provides benefit to your visitors, then it is a good link.

4. With SEO work, I have always worried that you are at the mercy of Google changing the way it values sites. Is this a concern?

If you have content good enough for other sites to want to link to you without reciprocation, then no. Otherwise, you are always at the mercy of changing algorithms to some extent. But Google will always need to look inside your site to see what it is about - so "optimising" your site so that its subject area is clear to Google will always be good. And if sites which are "authorities" in your field link to your site - that will always be good.

5. What do you eat while doing SEO work?

Sprats.

6. Hypothetically, if you were hiring a company to help you with SEO what would you look for?

There are a whole bunch of things to watch out for [check this for the full list http://www.beaufortweb.co.uk/article-3.htm] but in short an SEO should not try to "cheat" the search engines. For example they should not create deceptive or misleading content and they should not create hidden links. Both of these were once effective but now may well get a site blacklisted.

7. By how much should a SEO be able to improve your rankings?

It depends how competitive the chosen keywords are. In some cases it may be more cost-effective to spend money on sponsored links (like Google AdWords).

8. How do you discover what SEO techniques work? Is it trial and error?

There are some good forums (especially http://searchenginewatch.com/webmasters/) and some good books. Also, we have learned through experimentation.

My conclusion: ride to victory with the good guys

There has always been a crooked side and a honest side to SEO. The crooked side - trying to manipulate search engines with fakery - does not really work anymore. The virtuous side is winning hands down. This is great news for everyone except the SEO Cowboys.

Honest activities include making your site clear for search engines and trying to persuade authoritative sites in your field to link to you (this is what worked for our clients mentioned at the start). However, paramount - as search engines get cannier - is to make your site worth visiting. Now, apologies for the extraordinarily blatant plug, but who better to help you with this than Mint Digital?

We are looking for a hugely passionate web designer with 1-3 years experience. Must be inventive, humorous and mad keen on using the web to communicate. Will be expected to do all sorts of jobs brilliantly. Experience with Photoshop and HTML essential. PHP, MySQL, Wordpress or similar would be a plus.

Great creative environment. We always stop for lunch.

Salary: £20-27k depending on experience.

Location: based in Vauxhall (we are moving there next week)

Please send a CV and a covering letter to jobs@mintdigital.com

Warning: this Click is entirely self promotional. Feel free to delete it immediately.

Many companies invest heavily in getting you to their website and then aim to be as boring and straight and uncontroversial and unmemorable as possible once you get there.

I think this is a good use of Salesforce's homepage:

The Click #18

Warning: this Click is entirely self promotional. Feel free to delete it immediately.

Last Click I was prattling on about the importance of prices on a website. Half way through I realised our site totally ignored all the advice I was giving. A bit further on I was hit by an idea so momentous that I was worried it was a brain spasm. I checked with my partners. They said it wasn't. So here goes:

Mint - take it or leave it

For £450 we'll mock you up a new home page.

What's the big idea?

Many people we meet know their website isn't up to scratch. A major stumbling block to improving the situation is the fear that a new one won't be any better. Or, more precisely, that it won't be sufficiently better to justify the expense.

This frustrates us. Every single client we've had agrees that their site has been, at the very least, a very worthwhile investment.

So we want to remove the fear from commissioning a website. The plan is we have a chat on the phone and then create you one home page redesign. This allows us to you show how much better your site could be, without you having to make a big commitment.

As part of the deal, we ask for an hour of your time to pop in and discuss what we have created. (A mock-up inevitably has loose ends that are best discussed round a table.)

What then?

Well, the choice is yours. We can discuss how we'd take the design and make a site based round it. Or you can take our ideas and use them yourself.

Or, if you don't like it all, you can walk away (well, we'll walk away). It is called 'Mint - Take it or Leave it' because if you (really, truly) don't value it, you don't have to pay us a penny.

What could be less risky than that?

Sign up now! Email andy@mintdigital.com or call 020 7193 7312.

By some fluke, 3 sites have rolled off the production line at the same time:

Adopt an olive tree at Nudo Italia.

Buy lovingly designed jewellery at Advanced Jewel-Craft.

Start a firm with the advice at Business Bricks.

"SaveMyAss is a personal assistant that keeps your girlfriend or wife happy by sending her flowers on your behalf, on a regular but semi-random basis." - http://savemyass.com/

The one bit of Strunk and White's The Elements of Style that is widely remembered is 'Omit needless words'.

I've often tried to apply this principle to design.

It's nice to hear a different perspective. Yagoda notes (quoted in the fab FT magazine), Strunk and White's "implicit and sometime explicit goal is a transparent prose, where the writing exists solely to serve the meaning, and no trace of the author - no mannerisms, no voice, no individual style - should remain."

"We think of shopping as basically an application of search" says Jan Pedersen at Yahoo (quoted in John Battelle's new book. Cracking excerpt in the FT).

It reminds me of Marc Andressen saying years ago that Netscape would "reduce Windows to a set of poorly debugged device drivers". It sounds right but its going to take a while to figure out what it means.

The Click #17

We recently completed a project for a telecoms/ISP client comparing their website against its competitors.

Their main motivation for commissioning the project was the fear that other websites might have clever functionalities that they were missing.

We found something else.

User after user just wanted to see prices. No one cared about Company X's white paper: 'A vision for the future of telecoms'. No one wanted Company Y's site personalisation options.

If a user is scanning a page, a price catches the eye and shows that something is for sale.

But that's not all.

Web usability 'guru' ('bore', some say) Jakob Nielsen puts it well: Price is the most specific piece of info customers use to understand the nature of an offering, and not providing it makes people feel lost and reduces their understanding of a product line. We have miles of videotape of users asking "Where's the price?" while tearing their hair out.'

The price hiding impulse Most of our clients are nervous about displaying their prices.

I know the feeling.

With the initial draft of the Mint Digital site, I tried to be up front about our prices. I was advised by wiser heads that it would limit our flexibility.

But I wish I had stuck to my guns. The web has increased the pay-off from clarity.

Even if you can't be totally clear, you can give some indication.

Our friends at Natural Training mainly do bespoke training for big firms. It is hard for them to state a price as every course is a one-off. However they also run open workshops – fixed price group training for individuals. They've recently added prices for the open workshops to their site (which gives all potential clients their bearings) and a prominent quote request form for bespoke training.

It has made a big difference to their response rates. Their conclusion: 'prospective customers surfing our site want to find out as much as possible before making contact'.

I need to drink my own medicine I'm keen to make the Mint site follow this advice. While writing this Click I've hatched a plan. If my partners agree we'll launch it next Click. Read next fortnight to be the first to hear about 'Mint: take it or leave it'.

Welcome, sports fans! Suggest the best new slogan for our banner and we'll invite you to watch the cricket from our roof on Sunday.

Either leave your slogan in the comments or email andy@mintdigital.com.

NOTE: THIS COMPETITION IS NOW CLOSED

(Note: the view from our roof is blocked by the video replay screen. With a bit of luck you may be able to squeeze along the roof. Otherwise, it is pleasant to watch it on TV and hear the atmosphere.)

Click #16

Bloggers solve murders. Law professors make techno. Illustrators draw on rubbish.

There is a shift from professional to DIY happening all over the web.

The creative urge Clever websites tap in to this.

eBay lets you play at being a shopkeeper (the line between play and reality quickly blurs). Wikipedia invites you to read (like a conventional encyclopaedia) but you can write it too. Boing Boing and CollegeHumor have content submitted by thousands of volunteers, edited by a small core team.

Easy self-expression It isn't always obvious how to let your customers stick their heads above the parapet. This site for world environment day does it well.

Mint are making a site which lets you adopt an olive tree. Our favourite idea is an interactive map that lets you check out all the orphan trees. When you adopt a tree you'll upload a message - 'Happy birthday, gran', 'Freddie Flintoff ate my hamster' or whatever. This messages will become part of the map - defining neighbourhoods and influencing future adoptive parents.

We are currently reworking Matt Weston's BusinessBricks. The aim is to create easy - but meaningful - ways for readers to interact. When we get the infrastructure right there's lots of scope for a community to flourish.

Let 1000 customers bloom Ten years ago, you sat there while TV bludgeoned you over the head with advertising messages. The internet - especially the way it has developed over the last 18 months - lets much more interesting interactions happen. How can you let your customers bloom?

Cycling back from Pecha Kucha, I stopped at the lights in Parliament Square.

This huge American couple approached. The woman was taller than me and twice as wide. The man was much, much bigger.

'Excuse me, where's the Big Ben?' she asks.

'Up there', I point. (It was less than 50m away and directly visible.)

'Oh, I was expecting it to be big.'

Nowadays, Aussies gloat over a draw.

Read the Guardian's over-by-over Ashes coverage.

Intimate, informal and current - great web writing. This is their desciption of Warne's wicket last Sunday:

WICKET! Australia 220-9 (Warne hit wicket b Flintoff 42) Freddie does it again, albeit in bizarre circumstances. Flintoff speared a swinging yorker in towards Shane Warne's leg stump, it missed by quite a way, but Warne did a Cruyff turn on his off stump and sent it flying. You couldn't make it up, and luckily you don't have to. Priceless slapstick.

(There's two types of writing. Know which you're about.)