Archive for the 'Web Design' Category
Last week, I was given an opportunity to present at a West Virginia Department of Agriculture “short-course”. The presentation focused on how everyone, including small agriculture-based companies, can benefit from having a website.
It was a special opportunity for me to give back a tiny bit to a community that played an important part in my family heritage.
My goal in making these types of presentations is to help other businesses succeed. This particular presentation had additional meaning, as I meant it to be a small tribute to my late Grandfather who was very important to me. If you could humor me for just a moment, I would like to share a story about him.
My Grandfather grew up in lumberjack camps across the state of West Virginia and his high school years working on a family farm in Doddridge County. In that era, education was a secondary priority and in order to continue in school my Grandfather was required to first complete his daily farm chores.
He worked his way through high school in that way, and then with the help of others he worked his way through college and earned a degree in Agriculture from West Virginia University.
He spent time in the Pacific Rim during World War II and then taught Vocational Agriculture at Cairo High School until 1975. Each summer my Grandfather would give his students a summer project, in many cases it was to grow a particular crop.
Some years ago, a former student of my Grandfather’s approached me and shared a story:
I cannot recall what the crop was that this student was growing that year. However, he told me that he was working one day in the field and looked across the field to see my Grandfather walking towards him.
He told me, “I thought, ‘Oh, no, here comes Mr. Strader to grade my project’ and I wasn’t ready to be graded.”
My grandfather walked across the field, and approached the student. The man told me that when he came up to him, he simply greeted him and said, “I was just stopping in to see if I could help.”
He had went out of his way to try and help. He was wanting to impart a small bit of his knowledge in order to help his student learn something that may benefit him in the future.
That is the basis for my desire to help people. To share something I know, that could help a business succeed.
It may seem corny and trivial, but to me my presentation was a small tribute to my Grandfather. A man I respected and loved and learned a great deal from. I miss him everyday.
Ironically, the day of the presentation….was his birthday.
Download the Presentation Files
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I have had a number of questions about this lately; “Don’t people read anything?”.
The answer is….yes, visitors do read online, just in a different way.
Keep website copy succinct. Brevity, online, is a virtue…and bullet points can provide information quickly.
For example…
Instead of:
Our cabins include a wide variety of amenities including utensils, linens, towels, appliances, hot tub and a great location.
Try:
Cabin Amenities
- All Utensils
- Linens
- Towels
- Appliances
- Hot Tub
- A Great Location!
Simple enough isn’t it? Keep in mind that the majority of website visitors ’scan’ a page in search of visual cues. Continual blocks of text become monotonous and visitors will quickly lose interest.
Write for the Web With:
- short paragraphs
- bulleted lists
- clear topical headings
Leverage your photography by presenting relevant photos adjacent to blocks of text or bulleted lists.
If your list is about what you offer for lunch, provide a photo of your lunch. If the paragraph is providing information about your location, provide photos of your location.
Quality page content is an essential component of any Search Engine Optimization campaign. Keep page copy topically relevant, use proper heading tags (H2, H3) and bulleted lists in conjunction with relevant photos and graphics.
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Participate! It is your product, your website - invest the time to participate to ensure you receive the type and quality of website you expect.
All too often I see companies select a designer and SEO, then disappear, leaving design teams, strategists and marketers in the lurch. The end result is all too often a client with a product different from what they had envisioned….and no one to blame.
Why can’t the contract be signed and project handed off?
Easy, the primary stakeholder knows the product best, and must provide direction and the materials (logo, content, photos) necessary to complete the project.
There are a number of different tools available to help keep the project on course, and to keep clients and production team members in constant contact throughout the process.
A simple, and useful, online project management tool is available at BaseCampHQ which allows communication, file sharing and project tracking. The web based application allows you to access project information from anywhere in which you have an Internet connection. Share files, to-do lists, chat and send messages to team members involved in the project. Ideal for production team members, the software allows stakeholders to track the progress of the project using simple visual cues such as strikethrough text indicated a task has been completed.
Another useful tool, for brainstorming and mapping out site architecture, is MindJet - Mind Manager Software. This product allows you to layout thoughts, or content sections, and map them to the central theme and dependents. The maps can be easily customized, and shared via exporting to different formats.
The point of this post, however, is that as the client, your role is not over upon signing the contract. If you want the highest quality product provided, you must make the effort to provide your production staff with the direction and information they need to complete the job.
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This is a brief recap of a poignant presentation I made at a recent conference. I crammed a tremendous amount of information into a roughly 16 minute period. Brief, quick hitting…and admittedly, cursory.
Here it is in a nutshell.
In developing your website you need to take a number of things into consideration before going to market.
One of the most common questions I am asked is, “How can my site rank highly in the search engines?”
Rarely have I been asked the most important question, “What can I do to improve my website?”
Before you begin to market your website, you must consider the following things:
Do you offer quality, relevant content that a member of your target market would find useful?
Are you offering things which will help them plan a trip and learn about your area and offerings? Or are you busy telling them how you are the “best” and the “greatest”? If you are going to make superlative claims, you’d better back it up as people’s BS meters are more sensitive than ever. Make sure you are providing useful information on the visitor’s frequency, WII.FM. (what’s in it for me?!)
Make it immediately clear what you do and who you are
Make it easy for people to find what they need, to do what you want….you do know what you want them to do don’t you?
This is a component of what is termed, ‘usability’. Steve Krug has written a great book on the topic and the books title provides us all with a mantra to put into use when developing and designing our websites, Dont Make Me Think
. If people have to stop and figure out what you do….they will leave.
Provide thoughtful, intuitive navigation systems for people to move about your site in finding information to help them. With smaller sites, this is a rather easy task, however when you have a wide variety of products, trips, or lodging options, you must implement a thoughtful navigation schema using a practice known as “Information Architecture”.
All too often I see homepages with dozens and dozens of links which confuse and intimidate the visitor…..remember, make it intuitive, logical and consistent. As Mr. Krug says, “Don’t Make Me Think!”
Compliance and Availability
Ensure that your website works on all browsers, is not entirely dependent upon technologies such as Shockwave, Java and Flash, and ditch the intro pages.
All too often I see over-designed websites that have a great number of visual cues and are “cute” …yet in the end are just junk in a fancy wrapper.
Use technologies such as Flash, Shockwave and Java as a component of your website, not its basis, and keep them at least one version behind the most currently available. The overuse of animations, and video can clutter your site, cause your visitor to lose focus and distract from the primary goal of converting them into a paying guest.
2 no-no’s…auto-play video and embedded mp3’s. People at work don’t want to be found out and if people want to watch your video, they will….when they want to.
Make sure your designs work in at least Firefox and Internet Explorer and begin taking mobile devices into consideration. If you are starting a new project, insist on a CSS based layout which will help eliminate cross-browser issues.
Provide a site that works on all browsers and put the emphasis on substance over superficial fluff and eye-candy.
If you have a website that contains these basic elements you have a website ready for market that will be a success.
There are a number of effective methods for marketing your quality site. I am going to provide some very quick overviews of two of the most important ones.
Organic Search
Holy Grail – free clicks based upon the relevance of your content to the search terms used.
There are a number of things which you can do, in addition to providing quality content, to help in this regard. However, ALWAYS, build your sites for people, not GoogleBot.
You can however, leave a mint on the pillow for GoogleBot by making sure you have quality, unique page titles, H1 tags and keyword rich text links within your site. Do not keyword stuff your titles…it is no longer 1997 and Alta Vista no longer cares how often you can stuff in a keyword.
Also, eliminate duplicate content. If you have multiple domains which “mirror” sites or you utilize tracking links you are creating multiple sets of the same pages and you are confusing the search engines. Use what is known as a 301 redirect, NOT a META redirect and eliminate your duplicate content.
Build quality inbound links. Stay away from link farms, FFA links pages and links from casino, pharma or porn sites. Obtain links from topic relevant sites.
Keyword research is paramount.
Pay Per Click Campaigns
Pay per click campaigns are a great way to increase traffic, extend your online footprint and reach new markets. However, if you are uninformed, utilize poor tactics and bid on the wrong keywords you will walk away disappointed, with little return on your investment and a lighter wallet.
Done correctly, you can realize a tremendous ROI.
Utilize your keyword research your organic campaign and craft quality ad titles and descriptions and test them using A/B and A/B/B methods until you find the best possible combination.
Utilize the new tracking and conversion features available from the major ppc engines, including Google and Yahoo! search marketing.
Do not fall into the set it and forget it mindset. You need to monitor, adjust and be careful not to fall to the temptation to bid the farm for the upper-most, top-level terms. These are people just entering the buying cycle…you can hit them when they get closer to the purchase by bidding on drill-down terms that are more relevant to your specific area of trip offerings.
Other important marketing considerations include email marketing, social media marketing, and article marketing.
Tags: online marketing tips, website development .
Some local search information that is going to help people find you…this is going to be posted as I have time to review it.
Here are two solid options to get you started.
Yahoo! Local Merchant
You can choose from three different levels of service, depending upon what you are trying to accomplish…and will assuredly be dictated by your level of competition.
Very easy process to sign-up, include your business and make it available for people to find easily. If nothing else, test the free version, then go from there…the free version DOES include a link to your website!
Try it out - http://listings.local.yahoo.com/
YellowPages.com
Visit the link below, click the ‘Get a free listing’ link and use your common sense.
http://www.yellowpages.com/sp/advertise/
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Those that use CSS for page layout, know what I mean. As I have learned more and more about CSS and ways to use it to position page elements and provide unique styling options, (beyond the typical font and link styling) I find myself saying, “why didn’t I use this sooner!”
This afternoon I took my wife out for Saturday afternoon beer and pizza and I proceeded to bore her to tears as I babbled about CSS and how great it was.
Apparently, I sounded like a teenage girl jacked up on Red Bull…and her obvious distaste for my love of geekdom was crumbled by….”What CAN’T CSS do?!?”.
Therefore…I was inspired.
Top Ten Things CSS CAN’T Do:
10. It can’t help (insert friend of family member) with their ‘I can’t get online’ or ‘my email isn’t working’ problem of the day.
9. It can’t make pizza, tacos or melt cheese for nachos.
8. It can’t make DaveN like Digg Nation (Or Google!).
7. It won’t turn off my lights when I clap twice.
6. It can’t discuss my health status with my doctor to ensure that I am healthy enough to engage in sexual activity.
5. I can’t apply it directly to my forehead when my head hurts.
4. It can’t help the sorry ass Front Page site your cousin’s friend built for you.
3. It can’t stop pop-ups or mute background sound files.
2. It can’t keep your competitors from deleting your wikipedia entries.
1. It can’t get me another beer because I have fallen and can’t get up!
What do you love about CSS?
Tags: css design, lists .
Who doesn’t want more traffic from search engines? Aside from George ‘Miserable Failure‘ Bush, we ALL do!
Gaining more traffic is easier for some than it is others, especially when there is no place to go but up.
Many brand new, and grossly under-performing, websites can make some very simple changes, which can have significant impacts.
First, give each of your pages unique, descriptive titles. Don’t cram them with keywords, but certainly put the primary keywords, pertaining to the page, in there. Far too many websites use the exact same title for every page, which confuses the bots, and even more pages have NO title! A search for ‘untitled page’ returns an alarming 36 million plus pages…there is no excuse. Add a title.
Secondly, clean up your page copy. Make it relevant, coherent and unique from one page to the next. If you have multiple pages, utilizing large blocks of identical content, you are creating duplicate content…a no-no in Google.
Third, make sure your pages link to each other efficiently. A good internal linking structure makes it easier for search bots to crawl your pages and also makes it easier for visitors to navigate your site. Use descriptive link, or anchor, text (the text that is the actual hot link) that accurately, and descriptively, describes the page it links to. Avoid using the proverbial ‘click here’ link text.
There you have it…three simple and easy changes that will assuredly help your search rankings and site traffic.
Get to work!
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Top 10 signs you need a new website:
10. Your website content copyright says 1998
9. Your contact email is you@aol.com
8. It contains a link that says “send an e-postcard”
7. Your contact form contains ‘referred by: surfed on in’ or ‘referred by: alta vista’
6. It is “optimized” by keyword stuffing, long meta tags and a 75 word page title.
5. It is hosted by GeoCities.
4. You have pictures of people wearing ‘Jack Tripper Shorts’ and glacier glasses.
3. Your site uses the blink tag
2. You can find 10 different fonts in five different colors…on one page!
1. Your site is ranking high and kicking ass on Alta Vista!
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You ever walk away from a conversation thinking, “Wow…that is unreal!” I often wonder how some people make as far as they manage to do in the business world, and I have a whopper to share.
Recently I overheard a self-professed upper-echelon designer and online marketing “expert” speaking in a classroom setting. I was appalled what he was telling the unknowing participants whom were sadly…scribbling away taking notes.
The flag first went up when he mentioned the importance of submitting to the Open Directory Project, which at the time was frozen in time by some major infrastructure problem. As many of you know, submissions for a long period of time where not possible. I mentioned that aspect…and the “expert” was unaware of the situation.
An “expert” with paying clients…yikes!
The final straw for me, was when the “expert” explained that pay per click (AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, MSN) where all simply a waste of time. To each his own you say…well I agree…but the following comments, as someone involved in helping people maximize PPC, made my stomach turn.
The gentleman relayed a story of a client that sold window blinds, for whom he had built a “fantabulous” site. Mentioned the client bid big bucks on very general terms, received a ton of clicks, but no customers to show for it….and subsequently went out of business!
With not even a hint of remorse, “well at least I was paid for my design work”.
This comment really pissed me off. It bothers me that someone involved in helping businesses succeed can simply shrug off that a client went out of business because of their glaring lack of knowledge.
The fact is, PPC can work…and can help someone build a business and generate income. Keyword discovery, testing ad copy, and evaluating the topography of your search vertical…hard work, but can pay off.
Drilldown and find the terms with low cost per click, and high relevancy and you have found a winner. A paradox of PPC is that the terms with the lower PPC (most often more specific terms) are more targeted and will generate a higher ROI.
For anyone out there reading this that is searching for someone to facilitate a PPC campaign, please know, it CAN be done. Find a quality search marketer and ask questions.
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