Here are a few resources for spiffing up your "artist" and "seller" hats: === The Artist === . The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams. This short,

Here are a few resources for spiffing up your "artist" and "seller" hats: === The Artist === . The Non-Designer's Design Book, by Robin Williams. This short, easy read details four essential design principles that will help you consciously communicate better visually. It's also available on O'Reilly's safari service. . Universal Principles of Design: 100 Ways to Enhance Usability, Influence Perception, Increase Appeal, Make Better Design Decisions, and Teach Through Design. This book will help you build your design vocabulary and better understand concepts in design that you likely haven't thought of. It will help you describe the ways in which this page - http://www.sandstromdesign.com/nav.html http://www.sandstromdesign.com/nav.html - sucks (it lacks external consistency and it contains interference effects, to begin with). The book has a great format, describing a topic on one page with visual examples on the following page. The descriptions are short of enough that you can read them in about 4 minutes. . http://www.hallwaytesting.com http://www.hallwaytesting.com - this is actually my own site. You can post your site for usability feedback and give usability feedback. Live usability tests allow you to get more details, but the users on my site also give valuable feedback, and it doesn't cost you any money or nearly as much time. I try to give feedback for as many sites as possible and am usually pretty thorough about it. Users have told me that the site has helped them a lot. === The Seller === . http://www.marketingexperiments.com http://www.marketingexperiments.com . This site is absolutely the best web development resource I've found, ever. It contains articles on developing a unique value proposition, doing competitive analysis on the Internet, and of course actually marketing your site using PPC, SEO, and other online marketing techniques. Perhaps the most valuable thing I learned from this site is that online marketing is online testing. . How to Win Friends and Influence People, by Dale Carnegie. For a long time I didn't want to read this book because I thought doing so would make me a sleaze ball. Instead it's made me a more effective communicator. When you think about it, honing our skills in most areas involves learning how to communicate with other humans better. As The Tech Wizard it's essential that you communicate the purpose of your code. As The Artist it's essential you communicate the purpose of a site and each of its elements. As The Seller you must know how to communicate value. Dale Carnegie's book will show you how to effectively communicate value.