Archive for the ‘Website Design Articles’ Category
Monday, May 12th, 2008
As a web designer, it’s important to know the basics about how SEO works. It’s important to know what is effective so you can incorporate it into your design process. It’s also important to know the basic steps that will help your client with their website once it’s live and running for all the world to see.
WebmasterRadio.FM has put together a great 10 part series that covers SEO and marketing in general. Here are the 10 topics that they cover:
1. Keyword Research
2. Competitor Analysis
3. Site Structure
4. Content Optimization
5. Link Building
6. Social Media
7. PPC
8. Statistics Analysis
9. Conversion Optimization
10. Keeping It Up: Sustaining Search Rankings and Increasing Conversions
The nice thing about using WebmasterRadio is that you can listen to this series instead of reading it. This means you can work and listen at the same time! Multi-tasking made easy, haha. I would encourage you to listen to it. It may be a good refresher for some of you and for others, invaluable information that you have not yet considered. Check it out!
**I like their logo too! Bright, eyecatching, and it contains their full website url in it. Nice…
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Saturday, April 19th, 2008
Recently, one of our readers took us up on the offer we display on our site (to have your site reviewed in our blog). So, without further adieu, here’s the scoop!
Geoff Blake has created a site called Ten Ton Books. We’re actually going to post a couple of articles based on the content of his site, because we like it and because we can, haha. The first thing I’d like to highlight from Ten Ton Books is Geoff’s article about Dreamweaver’s site management tools. His article hits upon ten great time saving ways to effectively use Dreamweaver. Check out the article…he’s got some great tips!
Within the next week, we’ll be discussing some of his video tutorials (after I’ve had a chance to sample them). Also, while you’re visiting his site, check out the layout because it’s cool. It has a comic book style to it which works very well. Good stuff Geoff! Thanks for reading our blog and submitting your site for us to review! We appreciate it!
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Thursday, March 13th, 2008
I found this article earlier today that discusses the top 10 complaints users have about corporate websites. Since have a website is incredibly important in this day and age, it’s probably a good idea to listen to what the end users have to say about certain aspects of a site’s usability. As a web designer, I think it’s unbelievably important to be able to listen to your client, address his/her needs and desires and at the same time make sure you create a site that is user friendly. This list is helpful in accomplishing the goal of making a user friendly web site.
While it specifically targets corporate websites, I think many of the issues brought to light apply across the spectrum of all websites. It’s a good read and just adds another tool to your web design toolkit!
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Monday, February 25th, 2008
Extensive list of resources for web designers (and other creative types). Inspirational, tools, ideas, examples, all that and more.
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Thursday, February 21st, 2008
It appears that Amazon.com isn’t happy with just being the largest online retailer. So, what’s their plan? They’re now going after the web services market. That’s right…Amazon Web Services is now selling storage, computing power and other data center services.
Their idea is to slash how much Internet startup companies have to spend on infrastructure. Their system, the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), allows customers to quickly start up a virtual computer in the “cloud” (industry slang for worldwide data centers), use it as a web server or for processing data, and have the ability to shut it down quickly. The system is billed out “utility” style, similar to your electricity bill. The more data that is sent and received, the higher your bill will be at the end of the month.
So, the obvious question here is: What does all this mean to you and me? The answer…is complicated. In the short term, it means unfortunate “big box style” competition from a company with huge name/brand recognition in a field that many of us have spent a lot of painstaking time in refining our skills. Their foray into this market sector is going to create headaches for many web designers, IT staffers, and system/network administrators. Are people going to lose their jobs? Probably. At the least, there will be fewer jobs available.
When I first read about Amazon’s plan, my first reaction was, “why?”. They aren’t satisfied with reporting billions of dollars in sales each quarter? For a long time now, Amazon.com has been touted as a “niche” market leader and a company founded on The Long Tail economic principle (we’ve even written about it here in this blog). Now though, it looks as if they are trying to cover every niche they can possibly find. Why? The only answer I keep coming back to is comprised of one word: greed. Nothing else really makes sense other than sheer greed. The fat cat just wants to get fatter. CNN.com had a story about Amazon’s plan and used a quote which I think sums it up fittingly: “It is hard to get your head around: ‘Why is this retailer that ships me toys for my kids for Christmas … also my supplier of IT services?” Does not compute…
To add more fuel to the fire, Wal-Mart has also announced that it is now providing SEO and SEM services. Oy Vey! Cut-rate SEO and SEM? Yep, $25/month and $50/month packages are what they are promoting. What exactly is a business owner hoping to achieve by enlisting Wal-mart to optimize and promote their website? In the long run, this might prove advantageous to good, qualified SEO and SEM companies and individuals. One approach might be, “So, you tried the budget approach to promoting your website with Wal-Mart and it didn’t yield results, huh? Well, why don’t you give us a shot and see how REAL SEO/SEM works.” Good grief.
After reading about these two giants entering into the web services industry, my mind started to wander off, words such as ‘monopoly’ and ‘antitrust’ began emerging. What force drives these two companies to enter into a market sector that lies completely out of their normal scope of business? Well, again, greed comes to mind along with control, manipulation, and power. Keep in mind that none of those words are real consumer friendly.
In my opinion, this is a trend pointing us toward an oligopoly, in which four or five large companies compete against each other in an individual market – that market being the Internet. Right now, we have three…maybe four big players (Amazon, Wal-Mart, Yahoo!, and Google).
While doing some research about oligopolies, I came across an article that was written about the Microsoft antitrust suit and thought it contained some nuggets of relevance for what is taking place with Amazon and Wal-Mart.
“The economy is so much bigger today that even its largest companies play a smaller role than U.S. Steel, Standard Oil or AT&T did a century ago. The Microsoft case cannot have as much economy-shaking impact. Technology also seems to be moving sufficiently rapidly to make whatever antitrust remedy is reached in that case of doubtful relevance: The market and the industry will have changed too much. The smaller impact of any single case and the difficulty of keeping pace with changing technology may end up making judicial antitrust remedies irrelevant. Perhaps courts and prosecutors will try to maintain the standard pattern: Tolerate oligopoly, break up monopoly. If so, antitrust authorities will have a busy time as they watch economies of scale create a dominant natural monopoly in sector after sector, then move to break up the monopoly and restore competition. Will such a pattern lead to an efficient and productive economy? We are not sure.
A second possible direction would be to have greater tolerance for monopolies that played fair: to focus on establishing and monitoring a code of conduct for information-age natural monopolies that allows us to reap all the efficiency benefits of bigness and still maintain a degree of virtual, if not real, competition. But can such a code of standard-setting friendliness be specified and enforced? We are not sure.” (http://econ161.berkeley.edu/TotW/microsoft_history.html)
For now, my suggestion is this: network hard with everyone you know and develop a strong, happy core of customers who are pleased with your services. Get out in your local community and let people know about your services. On the local level, there is fortunately still an element of loyalty in working with other local service providers. Use this to your advantage! Encourage word of mouth referrals, join your local Chamber of Commerce if necessary and get the word out to potential customers. Promote your business and services as much as possible. The bottom line in all of this too is that you need to do your job well, thoroughly, and honestly. Your reputation will be about the only edge you will be able to use to battle these two companies.
Let me know your thoughts on the announcements from Amazon.com and Wal-Mart. I’d like to hear other suggestions on how you plan to handle their ‘intrusion’ into a highly targeted, customer specific (SEO and SEM), labor intensive, technical field that doesn’t lend itself to flat rate pricing and impersonal handling.
TwoSpots website design company - Website Design, Web Develop, VRML, Flash and Graphic Design Company
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Monday, February 11th, 2008
Since the visitor of the page is the only person who clicks the mouse and therefore decides everything, user-centric design has established as a standard approach for successful and profit-oriented web design. In order to use the principles properly we first need to understand how users interact with web-sites, and how they think.
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Monday, January 21st, 2008
I decided to take the top 10 sites from Time Magazine’s 50 Best Sites of 2007 and briefly review each of them here. I think we can all benefit from analyzing each of these sites. In doing so, perhaps we will glean some ideas that we can incorporate into web designs for our clients in the future.
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Mozy.com – Awesome concept. I’m going to check this one out further. This is a very user friendly, informative website offering a fantastic service for a low price. 2gigs of storage online for $4.95/month is a good deal! |
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StumbleUpon.com —This is a site I use myself currently. As a social media site, it allows you to tag and recommend sites to other people. It will also generate recommendations for you based upon your interests. It’s inherently user focused and a great way to promote sites or particular pages on a website. |
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Last.fm – Finally, your own customizable radio station on the web. Last.fm allows you to type in the name of your favorite artist and be listening to them in just a few seconds through your browser. As long as your browser stays open…the music keeps crankin’. To gain the full experience, you need to register with them which will allow you to further customize
the system for your listening pleasure. It’s a great site full of features for their listeners. Their site has a nice clean look to it. Their logo is a simple, yet effective design too. |
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Weebly.com – This is one we won’t necessarily refer our customers to visit. This is a free website building tool. It gives people the ability to create websites and build blog platforms in a WYSIWYG style. There are templates, formats, designs, and functions here that might be helpful and useful to check out. |
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Etsy.com – Here’s a niche marketing website that’s a good example of putting The Long Tail philosophy into action. Etsy is dedicated to selling products that are handmade. This is an extremely popular site for artisans and crafters looking for a way to ply their wares globally. Its design is simple, easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye. It’s definitely an appealing
website which justifies its position on this list. |
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Wotartist.com – Another niche site. Wotartist is dedicated to promoting abstract art from artists all over the world. It’s a beautifully designed site. All of the navigation for the site is reduced to one corner in order to free up space for displaying artwork on the main page. I like the design of this site a lot. This site is full of awesome artwork. This simple design let’s the artwork be the focus instead of the site. Awesome concept. |
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Fatsecret.com – This social networking site is dedicated to helping people drop unwanted weight. By capitalizing on a universal problem, this site has created a huge following by allowing people to discuss what works for them, swap recipes, and encourage each other to their goals. The site is completely geared towards interactivity and information. People can get really personal
by sharing their journal entries, charting their weight and goals publicly on their member page. It’s a site that encourages people to step out, be bold and share their desire to lose weight. There are some good ideas that can be derived from its design and its ability to let users create charts and graphs to track their success. |
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Netvibes.com – This is a cool site. Netvibes puts everything you want from the web onto one very customizable page. Customizable modules allow the user to check email, display RSS or Atom feeds, display news sites, weather, and just about anything else you can think of. Netvibes is a prime example of Web 2.0. Everything about the site is focused on the user. It’s completely customizable allowing everyone the ability to create their own, unique home page for the Internet. There are many great tidbits here for designers. Great site! |
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Chow.com – A tasty website all about good food. This site covers food, recipes, food culture, and basically everything you can think of that involves food. It allows users to receive their content in multiple ways (audio, video, photos, blogs, podcasts, boards, etc.). It’s a “themed social networking site” that gives users the opportunity to interact with others revolving around a common subject…food. |
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OhDon’tForget.com – For all you text messagers out there, this is an easy way to keep your friends and contacts up to date with what’s happening in your life. Probably the neatest feature on here is the ability to schedule a time and date to have specific messages sent out to specific people. The site has some pretty cool features. Its scope is pretty narrow by only focusing
on text messaging. But, the services it provides for users is excellent, which is why it’s a top ten finisher on this list! |
Each of these sites is unique and extremely focused on achieving a particular task or service. Every single one of them is full of user friendly features. The combination of focus, use-ability, and excellent design is what makes each of them successful in their particular niche. Each one of them has something to offer the web designer as well. Designers should take a look at each of these sites as prime examples of how to create websites that are beneficial to the end user.
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Tuesday, January 15th, 2008
While surfing the web to come up with some ideas to write about this morning I stumbled onto this Study of Website Navigation Methods Paper that Fidelity Investments firm in Boston Massachusetts did while developing their website. So I did some more digging around on Website Navigation and found some interresting studies and ideas.
The Yahoo-style and Drop Down menu, both, scored low on the error report. That is a good score, in case you’re wondering. I personally would agree that over the other styles, I’d preffer these two. Honestly, I never thought about the Yahoo-style navigation while designing a website before but this actually is great, the visitor gets to see all the sub-directories, which gets him one click closer to the destination.
Drop Down menu is very easy for a fellow visitor to find their way around, the sub-categories are visible without having to click or change the page, and remember, web surfers are lazy, less clicks, less pages to go through, equals more conversions. There are some negative things about the Drop Down menus if you are not an advanced drop down menu creator. The problem is broken menus, which turn into lost business. I’ll talk about that in a bit.
According to the Clickstream Study done by University of Hamburg, top-left half of a web page is premium realestate - this is where over three quarters (76.5%) clicks happen. This also is what happens with eye tracking studies done by Hotchkiss and Nielsen. They both follow a simmilar F-shape pattern. This tells us that the best place to put our navigation is within that area, top-left half of the page.
A few other issues come up when designing navigation is the speed and functionality. The navigation style that you choose has to keep up with the speed of web navigation. With the high-speed internet acces available to most now-a-days, the hover buttons, pop-out and drop-down menus have to be lightning fast to keep up. Before the site goes live it should be tested, re-tested and tested again. Run it in several browsers, on various operating systems, make sure it works before it’s unleashed. There are so many broken navigations out there, so much resources wasted and business lost when it is so easy to prevent it by testing.
Lots of discussion going on about what a navigation link or just a link on a page should look like, many strong opinionated individuals will tell you that they religiously believe that their way is right. From what I’ve seen on forums and around the web the standard underlined link is the most effective. Using a pale dotted line to underline is another nice way to specify a link. There was time when leaving a link without the underline, looking like a “small sentence” was cool but that time has come and gone. I think that you have to use your own judgement and decide what will look good and do the job it’s intended to do. What will speak to the user, make their “trip” through your website memmorable, deliver what they are loking for and make them come back later for more. When it comes to in-body links, someone suggested placing links in the footnote, to keep the user from leaving the page before reading it to the end. Personally, I don’t know about that, it sounds like an annoyance to me.
When designing a website, it helps to remember to apply the (KISS) “keep it simple stupid” element.
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Monday, January 14th, 2008
I have mentioned Amazon many different times in previous articles and now I want to start analyzing its strengths and weaknesses. Tackling such an e-commerce giant can be a bit overwhelming in some respects, however it’s necessary to look at their successes and failures to see what should possibly be replicated in projects that come up for us as web designers. Amazon is one of those web giants that is loved by some, hated by others, but used by all whenever necessary. So, how does Amazon do it? What makes them such a massive, successful presence on the web? Let’s find out!
Amazon has built its business slowly and methodically (founded in 1994 and launched in 1995, posting their first profits in 2002). The original concept was simply to sell books online; however it quickly branched out into other diverse products. In fact, many other large retail companies now use Amazon to power and host their websites (Borders, Virgin Megastores, Target, Sears and many more). It seems that these companies have adopted the “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em strategy.” In a nutshell, the Amazon system works. It works so well that Amazon.com attracts over 50 million visitors every month from just the United States alone.
Even though the Amazon website is so humongous, they create a personal feel for every user. Every time I log in, they have suggestions for me based on my previous orders or searches. Sometimes I think…’how nice’ while at other times I think, ‘I’d never buy that item.’ The point I’m trying to make here though is that they are engineering their site toward one thing…THE END USER. The list of ‘benefits’ offered to the customer is pretty lengthy. Yes, all of these benefits are geared toward the goal of making money for Amazon…but isn’t that the reason capitalism and free enterprise exist? Yes, they are trying to make a buck…but their approach is user friendly. Customer product reviews, shipping discounts, their own credit card with bonuses, Amazon Prime membership, 1-Click ordering, product forums, etc. are all great ways to get the customer involved. Amazon’s goal isn’t just to be a place to purchase items. Their goal is to make it an experience…a good experience. They want it to be an experience that people will want to be involved in over and over again.
Amazon has become a ‘one stop Internet shopping destination.’ Because of their appeal, they now have over 900,000 associates (their term for affiliate marketing companies). Simply put…you can buy almost anything on Amazon. You can usually get it at a reasonable price too. With their adherence to The Long Tail economic principle, they also give people easy access to hard to find items as well. Sometimes these are specialized products that aren’t available in your nearest brick and mortar store. This ability to offer people hard to locate items simply by searching on one website is of great comfort to millions of people around the world. “Can’t find it at the store? Look on Amazon.” I know of several families who live in remote areas of Alaska within the Arctic Circle who use Amazon as their grocery store…because they don’t have a local grocery store. They order their supplies through the Internet and pick them up at the airport. It’s a pretty awesome setup for them. This is just one of many different niches that Amazon fills. The cumulative total of these small niches results in posting revenues like the ones they posted in 2006 ($10.7 billion).
From the customer end of things, Amazon’s site is simple in appearance and simple to use. The order process is easy. This is the most critical component of their entire site. Keeping the ordering process uncomplicated is what really makes customers return. If you were to only use two key components of Amazon’s site and replicate them into your own site or your next customer’s site, they would be customer features and simplicity in giving the customer results. Whether those results are retail oriented or information oriented, keeping the process simple will in the long run create happier visitors on the site. Whether you love or hate Amazon, you have to recognize the fact that they are successful as a website. In recognizing that, look at what you can use from their example to make the next website you design a successful one.
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Monday, January 7th, 2008
Why is this good news to web designers? Because it means more design projects. It also means larger revenues can possibly be generated on your websites. The projections for online advertising in 2008 are expected to total $12.6 billion. According to this NewsFactor Network article, some marketing segments are anticipating a 48% increase in advertising. It appears that most of this growth is going to target local markets.
“The firm [Borrell Associates] predicted local search advertising will more than double next year to $5 billion, while locally placed online video will triple to almost $1.3 billion.”
“Key advertising segments for 2008 will continue to be the Big 3 classified categories of automotive, recruitment, and real estate, with online political marketing holding promise for local sites as state and presidential campaigns heat up,” the report offered. “A major component of local video advertising will be long-form pieces for home, automotive, and health-related categories.”
The shift from global marketing on the Internet to the narrow, local marketplace is a prime example of several points we have discussed here in the blog. Niche marketing (The Long Tail approach) is continuing to gain in popularity. As major corporations see the success of Amazon.com, Netflix and others, they are now willing to embrace the same approach.
“You might see an ad for the new Honda Accord that will direct you all the way down to your market and a particular dealer in your area where you can test drive the car,” Sterling said. “That approach combines the brand advertising, which has historically been disconnected from local distributors, to a place in the market where you can find the product. The challenge for small businesses is making it simple enough.”
These behemoth corporations are also starting to embrace the concept of the user-centric, web as a platform approach to enticing customers. In my opinion, this is a huge shift in their marketing strategy altogether. Previously they used what I would term as the ‘carpet bombing technique.’ Their approach had the idea of inundating everyone with their advertisements in the hope of gaining customers here and there. This new idea seems to be more focused. Now, they are targeting all the way down to your hometown with the hopes of garnering a few new customers locally. This approach will be duplicated in many, many other local markets…but it will be targeted specifically for each of those regions.
As a web designer, you should be trying to use this pending boost in local advertising to your advantage. If you have several of your own sites, you should be able to benefit from increased advertising revenue on your own sites. With your local design customers, my suggestion would be to inform them of this shift in corporate advertising. Create some unique proposals for them which include designing local ads of their own to compete for their own share of the local market.
One thing I have learned as a small business owner myself is that locally owned businesses generally want to use other locally owned businesses whenever it is possible. Of course, this is all still based primarily on competitive pricing of goods and services along with the ability to complete the required task in a timely fashion. However, the general trend is to stay local. As a web designer, you can use this to your advantage as well. Target local businesses around you and let them know about your services. Communicate to them the idea that the Internet can be useful to their business locally. There are still a ton of small businesses who believe that the Internet is ‘too big’ for their company. Take the time to show them how wrong there are in their assumptions!
“Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising.” Read about it here.
Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court
I’d like to get some ideas started with my readers. What kind of tactics do you think would work well to assist local businesses with their Internet presence? As a web designer, what are you doing to gain new customers in your area? As a web designer, what are you able to do to help the businesses around you? Let me know, let’s discuss some ideas and brainstorm together. Let’s see what we can do to get our share of that potential $12.6 billion!
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