Ok, I’ll start by saying that this isn’t easy. It’s not for the lazy. It’s not easy money. It takes a lot of effort, but you can do it. It’s making money from a blog. So how is it done?
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Last week, we launched the new Thalhimer web site. For those not in Virginia, Morton G. Thalhimer, Inc. is a commercial real estate company based in Richmond, VA with multiple offices across the state. We redesigned and redeveloped their web site.

The process started with a full web site assessment. We analyzed how their target audience used their web site by conducting usability studies and examining web analytics. We used all of this information to complete a full visual redesign of the web site, and we redeveloped the site to make it easier for customers on both traditional screens and on mobile devices to use. The site is also easier to update — they don’t have to involve the IT group to make changes or add content.

The site uses Expression Engine to control most site content, and integrates with internal databases as well.

See the site at thalhimer.com.

When publishing articles online, there are a few guidelines that help people read your site — use bullet points, write in short paragraphs and offer an article summary. CNN’s web site, though, provides the best implementation of article summaries I’ve seen.

While I’ve seen and even recommended the approach of using article summaries before, I think CNN’s article summaries do a few things very well.

• The summary is located in the right place. The headline is large and attracts attention, and the summary is immediately to the right.
• The summary uses short, one-line bullet points
• There’s a small yet noticeable link to the next article in case the current one does not interest you.

E-consultancy has posted an interesting blog post today — an interview with Beautique’s Jason Russell (read the blog post here). It’s a short but interesting Q&A session with an etail startup, and covers issues like the relationship between the online store and brick-and-mortar operation (salons in this case), ways they acquire new customers, implementing customer reviews and ratings, international shipping, recruiting talent and the agency versus in-house debate. Worth the read.

This isn’t a political post, rather to show you how not to keep your “customers” up-to-date. After hearing today that the bill the US Senate passed last night included hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars for manufacturers of wooden arrows for children, Puerto Rican rum manufacturers and American Samoa. Wanting to read the bill myself (all 400+ pages, I hear), I went to senate.gov.

The fact of the matter is that you, the American citizen — the “customer” — won’t find any mention of the bill on the Senate’s homepage. Matter of fact, I spent 20 minutes searching for it, and think I found it, but I’m still not sure because half of the bill isn’t about the economy. I turned to a news site that offered a clear link to the legislation, and I found:

Sec. 308. Increase in limit on cover over of rum excise tax to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 309. Extension of economic development credit for American Samoa.
Sec. 314. Indian employment credit.
Sec. 502. Provisions related to film and television productions.
Sec. 503. Exemption from excise tax for certain wooden arrows designed for use by children.

…and the list goes on.

Why do the American people detest Congress? Perhaps it’s because Washington doesn’t provide us adequate usable access to the legislation that crosses the floor. Here’s a link to the bill, and if you’re for or against it, call your Senator or Representative, but good luck trying to find their contact information on their web sites.

I’m digesting this blog post today from Bazaarblog about how Office Depot increased clickthrough, conversion and sales from their Google ads simply by putting information based on customer reviews in their ads. What a great idea! Office Depot recently started a creative test to see how searchers would respond to messaging from product reviews on their site. The result was a 78% increase in clickthrough rate, 23% increase in conversion and almost 200% increase in revenue from their Google ads.

Here’s a sample of one of their ads (from the Bazaarvoice case study):

Office Depot Google ad

This would be an interesting test for online retailers that test copy in Google ads. You can bet we’ll be testing it!