How do the print styles work? Basically, there are the same CSS rules as you are using for your web site’s layout and design today. The only difference is using a print media to mark the rules valid for printing. You can, for example, add a print style on your web site just like this:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="print.css" type="text/css" media="print" />

Do you really want to print everything?

Except from the actual non-ecological nature of printing the web pages the way you see it displayed on the screen, you should also think if all those sections are really necessary when printing. Does the printed left menu help your visitors in any way? And what about those ad banners – what’s their actual role on a printed sheet? And what if you would like to provide an additional information in print that is not visible on your web site? Or even more – you would like to have your logo and photos printed in better quality?

Print styles come to your help. Eliminate the unnecessary elements of a page or simplify the printing layout of your web site. Let’s say that an element banner contains advertisement you don’t want to print. We will also remove the left menu that is useless on a paper. And a logo, of course, will look better when printed, if we provide it in higher quality. We will add the following rules in the print.css stylesheet:

#banner, #menu { display: none }
#logo { background: url(images/logo-hq.png); }


Call to action on a paper

On the other hand, we want to show an address of a page (URL) that is printed out – we will add a hidden element printurl into HTML and a rule to make it visible to the print stylesheets:

#printurl { display: block; font-size: 120%; font-weight: bold; }

A reader of the printed version will immediately know the actual web page address. You can even add a call to action to an element visible only when printed, e.g. “Visit www.example.com and get a 5% discount!” or “If you order until September 30th, you get a free shipping!”.

Printed order available for an immediate checking

Ideally, you should be using the specific CSS print styles during shopping process for every “thank you” screen offering a summary of an order, travel itinerary, important contacts or a date of delivery. That’s the good time, when the use of special CSS rules makes the printed pages easily scannable with all information available immediately. Save your customers a bunch of frustration and yourself time spent answering the same questions about the orders repeatedly.

By the way: you will even get this article served a bit differently when printed (use the Print Preview to see an example).

Do you know other uses of printed stylesheets for offline marketing? Let us know about them in the comments!

http://blog.pizzaseo.com/print-styles-offline-marketing/

In 2010 we therefore designed a completely new audit, the Web Presence Audit (the working title had been the Web Visibility Audit but a Slovak competitor) beat us to this word. The new audit goes even deeper in analyzing clients’ (and their competitors’) overall presence on the web – in social networks, local search results, covering the basics of online reputation management and synergies between paid search engine presentation (PPC) and optimization.

We are therefore sharing our Effective Web Audit, in most respects still valid, with everyone. Website owners and designers can check their sites, and SEOs can compare it to their audit practices (not all of which stand up to scrutiny).

Our Effective Web Audit evaluates your web site in six main parts:

1. (X)HTML and CSS code – is your code well structured and valid? What kind of layout are you using? What about your CSS and Javascript? Do you have well-titled pages and use META information?
2. URL addresses structure – do you use friendly URLs? Any duplicate content issues?
3. Technical issues – is your web site indexed by search engines? Are pages cached and links working? What does your robots.txt file say?
4. Statistics - do you know your traffic? Do you use Google Webmaster Tools? What are your keywords and their positions? How is your backlink profile?
5. Accessibility - does your website display properly in every browser? How do text changes impacts your web site? Do text links clearly stand out? How fast does your web site load?
6. Usability - is your logo positioned properly? Is web site navigation clear? Does the user know at all times what page he is on? Do you offer a sitemap? How are your links targeted? Are they well described? Is there meaningful content on your web site? Does your error (page not found) page help or scare people away? Does overall look and feel of your web site agree with its goals?

To download (licensed under Creative Commons Attribution cc by license):

• Effective Web Audit – PDF format

ODT or DOC formats available on request.

See if the Effective Web Audit helps you understand web marketing better. If you require professional internet marketing advice or help contact us.

Some of his tips include unplugging mouse and using only keyboard to work with the web, using only a software keyboard, turning off the monitor and navigating by screen reader only, sitting far away from the screen or decreasing brightness of the screen.

His tips are well thought and if more developers and designers followed them, it would make websites better in general.