by Jeff Carlson (Author) 

Photoshop Elements is geared for business users, students, educators, and home users who want professional-looking images for their print and Web projects, but don't want or need the advanced power of Adobe Photoshop. With Photoshop Elements 7 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide, readers can start with a tour of the interface and image-editing basics, or they can look up specific tasks to learn just what they need to know. This task-based, visual reference guide uses step-by-step instructions and plenty of screenshots to show readers how to capture and import photos, reduce red eye, enhance color, work with layers, and much more. New features coverage includes: applying direct effects with the Adobe Smart Brush, softening surfaces and keeping edges crisp with a new filter, and finding photos easily with keywords. Both beginning and intermediate users will find everything they need here--in straightforward language and with readily accessible examples.

Training: As a website development company engaged in helping clients learn how to manintain their own website content, we are especially excited about this book. It includes instructions on everything you'll need to know to make your photos and images Web-ready, including cropping (by specificfying the target height and width of the resulting image in pixels - the dimension used in Web images), sharpening and optimizing images in order to maintain the integrity of their website.

We use this book in our online education series. If you're planning on attending one of our virtual training session on Adobe Photoshop Elements it will be very helpful for you to have this book on hand and to refer back to it when you have questions.

or, Tips and Techniques to Get Your Site to the Top of the Search Engines and Stay There

Author: David Viney

I've been working exclusively in this industry since 1995. I recently finished reading this book. Before I began, my colleagues gave me a hard time for purchasing the book and scoffed at the title. You see, a lot of internet geeks look at SEO as foolishness and trickery. In his book, the author, David Viney, demonstrates his respect for the topic and the way search engines like Google rank sites. Mr. Viney doesn't offer trickery but rather sound business advice for anyone managing the public relations for a website. In fact, the book really goes beyond search engine optimization and offers any internet traveler an introspective look at how the internet works.

This book is a "must read" for any of our clients interested in the promotion of their website, whether we provide the service of they work on their own. ~john byers

Book Description (from Amazon):

From one of the United Kingdom's leading search engine optimization (S.E.O) experts who has worked with major companies like Amazon.com, Get to the Top on Google is the most comprehensive, accessible and up-to-date guide to S.E.O available. Written in a readable style for the beginner, but at the same time comprehensive enough for the skilled marketer, Get to the Top on Google will show businesses, both large and small, how to improve their search engine rankings, leads and sales…

by Maria Veloso (Author) 

"Web Copy That Sells" presents copy strategies that have been proven time and again in the e-commerce arena. Maria Veloso, perhaps the most widely acclaimed Web copywriter in the world, bases her revolutionary "Million Dollar Blueprint" on five simple questions - the reader answers them and the copy practically writes itself. Veloso crams all the information from her 12-hour, $997 live seminars into an accessible book that helps any Web copywriter.

Available for Kindle: Amazon's Wireless Reading Device

by Tim Ash (Author)

How much money are you losing because of poor landing page design? In this comprehensive, step-by-step guide, you'll learn all the skills necessary to dramatically improve your bottom line, including identifying mission critical parts of your website and their true economic value, defining important visitor classes and key conversion tasks,   gaining insight on customer decision-making, uncovering problems with your page and deciding which elements to test, developing an action plan, and avoiding common pitfalls. Includes a companion website and a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool.  

Packed with case studies, practical strategies, a detailed review of the Google Website Optimizer tool, and a comprehensive companion website, this one-of-a-kind resource will help you make your landing pages more profitable.

"Tim has figured out what so many people don't understand: your website can (and should) get better. Every single day."
-Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae

"This book is a must-read for the modern Internet marketer."
-Kevin M. Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch

"This is the best business-focused, measurement-based guide to website design I have seen."
-Don Norman, cofounder of Nielsen Norman Group and author of The Design of Future Things

"Stop guessing at the best landing page designs and embrace true customer centricity. This book shows you how!"
-Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist and author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day

by Jennifer Grappone (Author), Gradiva Couzin (Author)

Back and bracing as ever, Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day, Second Edition offers brisk advice, bite-sized tasks, and smart tools to help you increase visibility for your website on the major search engines. In this new edition of their bestselling how-to guide, SEO consultants Jennifer Grappone and Gradiva Couzin offer surprisingly easy do-it-yourself techniques as well as the very latest SEO strategies for small, very small, and large businesses, as well as for bloggers and web designers.

by Avinash Kaushik (Author)

Learn web analytics the right way with this unique, thoroughly modern guide to today's web analytics challenges and opportunities. Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this book goes beyond concepts and definitions to challenge prevalent thinking about the field and provide a step-by-step guide to implementing a successful web analytics strategy.

Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his thought-provoking style, debunks leading myths and leads you on a path to gaining actionable insights from your analytics efforts. Discover how to move beyond clickstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company's bottom line.

• Learn the pros and cons of data collection methodologies

• Find out how you can stop counting page views and still get a rich understanding of your customers

• Discover how to identify valuable metrics with the "three layers of so what" test

• Optimize your organizational structure and choose the right analytics tool

• Understand and apply advanced analytics concepts, including SEM/PPC analysis, the power of segmentation, conversion-rate best practices, and others

• Leverage quick-start solutions for blogs and e-commerce, support, and small business websites

• Learn the key ingredients of a great experimentation and testing platform

• Use competitive-intelligence analysis to glean insights and drive actions

You'll also find:

• Ten steps to turbocharge your web analytics

• Seven steps for creating a data-driven culture in your organization

• Six ways to measure the success of a blog

• Three secrets behind making web analytics actionable

• Ten signs of a great web analyst

Valuable CD Included

by Steve Krug (Author) 

Five years and more than 100,000 copies after it was first published, it's hard to imagine anyone working in Web design who hasn't read Steve Krug's "instant classic" on Web usability, but people are still discovering it every day.  In this second edition, Steve adds three new chapters in the same style as the original: wry and entertaining, yet loaded with insights and practical advice for novice and veteran alike.  Don't be surprised if it completely changes the way you think about Web design.

Three New Chapters!

• Usability as common courtesy -- Why people really leave Web sites
• Web Accessibility, CSS, and you -- Making sites usable and accessible
• Help! My boss wants me to ______. -- Surviving executive design whims
  

"I thought usability was the enemy of design until I read the first edition of this book.  Don't Make Me Think! showed me how to put myself in the position of the person who uses my site.  After reading it over a couple of hours and putting its ideas to work for the past five years, I can say it has done more to improve my abilities as a Web designer than any other book.

In this second edition, Steve Krug adds essential ammunition for those whose bosses, clients, stakeholders, and marketing managers insist on doing the wrong thing.  If you design, write, program, own, or manage Web sites, you must read this book."  -- Jeffrey Zeldman, author of Designing with Web Standards

by Elizabeth Castro (Author) 

Need to learn HTML fast? This best-selling reference's visual format and step-by-step, task-based instructions will have you up and running with HTML in no time. In this completely updated edition of our best-selling guide to HTML, Web expert and best-selling author Elizabeth Castro uses crystal-clear instructions and friendly prose to introduce you to all of today's HTML and XHTML essentials. You'll learn how to design, structure, and format your Web site. You'll create and use images, links, styles, lists, tables, frames, and forms, and you'll add sound and movies to your site. Finally, you will test and debug your site, and publish it to the Web. Along the way, you'll find extensive coverage of CSS techniques, current browsers (Opera, Safari, Firefox), creating pages for the mobile Web, and more.

Visual QuickStart Guide--the quick and easy way to learn!

• Easy visual approach uses pictures to guide you through HTML and show you what to do.
• Concise steps and explanations get you up and running in no time.
• Page for page, the best content and value around.
• Companion Web site at www.cookwood.com/html offers examples, a lively question-and-answer area, updates, and more.

by Garr Reynolds (Author) 

Presentation designer and internationally acclaimed communications expert Garr Reynolds, creator of the most popular Web site on presentation design and delivery on the net - presentationzen.com - shares his experience in a provocative mix of illumination, inspiration, education, and guidance that will change the way you think about making presentations with PowerPoint or Keynote. Presentation Zen challenges the conventional wisdom of making "slide presentations" in today's world and encourages you to think differently and more creatively about the preparation, design, and delivery of your presentations. Garr shares lessons and perspectives that draw upon practical advice from the fields of communication and business. Combining solid principles of design with the tenets of Zen simplicity, this book will help you along the path to simpler, more effective presentations.

Available for Kindle: Amazon's Wireless Reading Device

by David J. Clark (Author) 

Microsoft Office Word 2007 may be the top word processor, but to use it with confidence, you'll need to know its quirks and shortcuts. Find out what the manual doesn't always tell you in this insider's guide to using Word in the real world. How do you use the new Ribbon? What's the best way to add pictures? From deciphering fonts to doing mass mailings, first get the official way, then the best way from an expert.

Unbiased coverage on how to get the most out of Word 2007, from applying templates and styles to using new collaboration tools

Savvy, real-world advice on creating document for the Web, saving time with macros, and punching up docs with SmartArt.

Time-saving techniques and practical guidance on working around Word quirks, avoiding pitfalls, and increasing your productivity.