I found a very cool tutorial on Nettuts that helped me understand and create better sprites. Basically you recreate the navigation for Dragon Interactive, which has a perfect example for the use of sprites.

This is the final product as you can see it is all one large image. There is also a demo so you can see how it interacts when you are finished.

The above image is how your result from the tutorial should look.

Recommended Reading:

What Are CSS Sprites?

CSS Sprites: What They Are, Why They’re Cool, and How To Use Them

The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

1. Decide if you want it.

Companies left and right are adding video to their product pages, to their “about us”. They are posting information and promotional segments on their websites. You can now walk a potential customer through a complicated process, or the steps for using a product. You can give them a better look at what they are buying and entice their senses. According to the BIA Kelsey Group, viewers engage more after watching a video, with clicks for more information increasing by 30-40% and phone inquiries by 16-20%.  Web video is a proven selling technique and is far cheaper than traditional advertising.

2. Get it done.

Whether you take a DIY approach (perhaps through a blog format) or hire someone to do it (Captico can include it in an SEO/SEM campaign), you find a way to get some videos put together that reflect your goals and brand image. Remember that this video can add to your credibility, build trust, and improve your customer experience, so whatever you do, do it right. If the goal of your video is to sell a product, make sure that it:

a) Tells the viewer why to buy the product or service;

b) Explains what they need to do or the steps involved clearly – whether that is “click the buy button” or walks them through a sign up process;

c) Motivate the viewer! Make sure you have a call to action and end the video on a strong note!

Your video does not need to be lengthy or overly flashy- in fact its better if its not, customers can see through overly scripted sales pitches- but you need to keep your end goal in mind and focus the viewer onto doing what you want them to do. [I recommend reading Creating Persuasive Interactive Video for E-Commerce.]

3. Get it out there!

Whether you host the video on your own site or embed it from a YouTube service, you need to get it in front of people. Post it on your Facebook page and add it to your Google Local Business Listing.

Don’t forget optimization in your video plan though. Search engines return what are called “blended results” meaning they find images, videos, articles and more, so you want to take advantage of this.  According to a recent experiment by Nate Elliot of Forrester Research, when analyzing search results from common queries, they found that on the keywords for which Google offers video results, any given video in the index stands about a 50 times better chance of appearing on the first page of results than any given text page in the index. That’s HUGE for any business. Elliot suggests the following tips for optimizing your online videos:

a) Insert keywords into your video filenames. [Google pays a lot of attention to the titles of videos]

b) Host your videos on YouTube, and embed those YouTube videos into your own site. Google says its algorithms consider how many times a video is viewed, and any views embedded videos receive on your own site get added to the ‘views’ tally on YouTube. (And yes, nearly every video we saw Google blend into its results came from YouTube.)

c) Optimize your YouTube videos by writing keywords into your videos’ titles, descriptions, and tags.

d) Embed videos into relevant text pages on your site. The context provided by the text on those pages (which is hopefully already optimized for search as well) will help the search engines figure out what your videos are about.

e) Also create a video library on your site, so Google knows where to find your video content. (Google Video Sitemaps can help with this too.) Write keyword-rich annotations for each video in the library.

[You may also want to read additional Video SEO Tips and Techniques.]

You may also be interested in reading: ROI: Web Video sells. Even if customers don’t watch it!