It is common knowledge that Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertisements take a good amount of testing to test which advertisement will receive a higher Click-Through Rate (CTR). This can be a tedious and long process to endure for any publisher. It would be much easier to be able to see where a visitor would click and which spots are more popular when compared to others.

Well now there is a service which will map which spots receive the most clicks on each page, CrazyEgg . It is extremely simple to setup on a website. All it requires is a simple JavaScript Code which is placed anywhere in the HTML Code (it will be easier if you place it in your footer.php if you run a php Website). This JavaScript Code will create a "heatmap" for every page and record where the visitors click the most, which is indicated by a red color.

Here are examples of the type of content which can be recorded:

• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertisements
• Video Embeds (usually YouTube videos)
• Non-Clickable Parts as well

All these factors can affect how you design your website to have optimal click-through ratio for your advertisements.

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Up until now, Google was mostly BETA testing their click-to-call service on certain advertisers in the UK. Recently, Google has released their Click-To-Call service to advertisers in India. This seems like a decent idea since most companies have employees in India manage their support/sales phone department.

Advertisers participating in the Google Click-To-Call program had an advertisement displayed on the Google SERP's under sponsored links which resembled the picture on the right.

When you click on the advertisement, a small menu would drop down and ask for your home phone number. After you enter your home phone number, you will receive a call from Google, who will forward you to the advertiser. This service does not affect the internet user who enters their phone number. Google is used as a middle person who will forward your call to the advertiser for no charge.

When you look at the statistical side of this service, you would notice that this would be more effective than Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Campaigns. The conversion rate when you talk with a potential customer would be much higher than simply displaying an advertisement on Google's Sponsored Links section using Google AdWords.

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While Photoshop may well be the industry standard for graphic designers to edit images for the web, not everyone wants or needs such an extensive and expensive application.  If your needs are primarily to edit banners, buttons, and insert images into your existing website, then you won't need to spend $800 to do it.  GIMP offers the basic functions that Photoshop does, but it's free!  

As an open source application, GIMP is constantly being made better by the people who use it.  It's a great tool for basic image manipulation, I suggest you at least check it out.  

You can get more information as well as download it from here:  gimp.org

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Clients hire a designer or an illustrator because they either lack the skills to do it themselves or they don't have time to do it themselves.  if your case involves the latter, then showing a series of progressive rough drafts will be beneficial.  Your client will recognize the creative process and give you feedback to help you along.  When your client has hired you because they do not have the skills needed to make what they want, then a rough draft could mean all the difference in the relationship you have with your client.  

If you've got a contract with your client and they've paid up front (which is standard and recommended) then you will probably not be as effected by their feedback when viewing rough drafts.  But if your agreement is that they will hire you upon approval of a rough draft and you are in a position that you have no choice but to agree (haven't we all been there are one time or another) then how do you handle showing a "rough draft"?  

I've come across this quite often lately, as clients are requesting jobs I can do, but that I have no comparable material to show as a sample of my skills.  They want to see a rough draft before they decide.  A rough draft takes an hour of research and sketching ideas and then probably about 2 or more hours to get to a stage that might be acceptable, but nowhere near final…of course, this depends on the complexity of the illustration, it could take less time.  Being able to sell the client requires having incredible communication skills, a lot of courage and hopefully some imagination on the client's part.  It also means you could have spent a lot of time on something you won't get paid for.  It's always a gamble, but usually it's worth the risk.

If you are so lucky as to have a great team behind you and your sales people can sell refrigerators to eskimos, then you can expect to have an advantage over the majority of designers who are on their own and have to sell themselves both verbally and visually.  Artistic people usually express themselves better through their work, rather than verbally.  Communication skills and experience can help convey the ideas to your client even when they insist on seeing the work while it's still hundreds of little layers of shapes and gradients that don't really mesh yet.  It's another talent to be learned, and it's an asset to you if you can do it well.

Comments are most welcome on this subject, both from a designer and client point of view. 

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