Hello folks. First let me apologize for the space between posts, we have realized that writing everyday can lead to some pretty boring and non-informative posts. We want to provide to you great content and interesting stories.

Are you designing for your clients or for yourself?

Recently I have had the pleasure of designing a web page for a client. The design is very different than anything I am used to. It is a very professional, straightforward serious website and it needs to communicate that. My first draft I liked a lot, it was creative, colorful and was in my usual style. I sort of knew that it wouldn’t be right for the client but I though “once they see it this will be what they want”. WOW. I was so wrong. I basically received an email back telling me everything that was wrong with it and that they were very disappointed with my work. I felt terrible. So i started thinking about my process and I realized that I was not designing for the client at all. I was designing something that I liked to look at and that I was designing for myself. No wonder they hated it.

I took a look at my notes and compared it to what I had created. I basically took nothing that they said into consideration. They wanted a left nav and I gave them a top nav. They wanted a certain type of picture browsing, I gave them another one. They wanted a wave in certain places, I put it only where I thought it was good. No wonder that they hated it.

So, I went back to the drawing board. I did a complete redesign and I have to admit every single step of the way was a struggle. I must have tried 1000 different design options in each space. But I found out that I don’t settle for a design that I am not happy with and I kept trudging along until I nailed it. I sent it to the client and she sent back “You nailed it!” I can’t tell you how good that actually felt to go from them being disappointed to them really loving it. I also learned that I can still design for someone else while still keeping my own style, that’s why they chose us in the first place because they liked what we brought to the table.

If you ever find yourself in this position just take a step back and make sure that you are giving the client what they want, not what you think they want, there is a very big distinction there.

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Filed under: Business Functions, Site Design by Dean Karasinski
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What a wonderful day. Its Monday, rainy, and a bit chilly for August.  Since its Monday it is my turn again to write another lovely post, and after trying to think of what I should write about for the past hour, I have decided.  Basics to web design.  Why do you ask?  Well why not.  I haven’t been designing too long, I’m actually pretty new to it.  I’m in the process of designing a few sites and I figured I would share some of what I have learned (and hopefully learn something myself.)

When you are designing a website there are tons of thing to consider.  Your background, your font, navigation, graphics, links, color schemes, advertising…….the list goes on and on.  The simplest little detail can make all the difference for your site.  Take the color gray for example.  Gray is a very plain uninviting color, doesn’t bring emotion to your site, very neutral. Generally speaking gray is not a good color to work with, especially for your background.  Your background should have nice inviting colors that highlights the page and does not make the text hard to read.  Colors can be tricky, I recommend getting to know what colors mean and how they affect people (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_symbolism_and_psychology) it’s pretty interesting stuff.  Take this information in and use it to help your color schemes.  It’s going to take some trial and error, but before long you’ll figure out the best color combination for your website.

The graphics you use on your site can also easily affect peoples opinion of your website.  You don’t want anything to large that takes away precious space at the top of your page.  They should be subtle and blend well with the overall flow of the site.  Large images also take longer to load and slow down the load time of your page.

Font/Text:  Texts that are hard to read, strain the readers eyes, or blend in with your background will frustrate your reader equaling out to not much time spent on your site.  Your text should be easily readable. Make everything flow together and easy on the eyes. You’re not trying to give your reader a headache by reading your page.

Don’t forget about navigation.  Navigating through your site should be easy and efficient.  It should be accessible and consistent on every page.   Navigation bars gives the visitor clues to where they are on the site.  Now like I said there are tons and tons of information you have to take into consideration when planning the layout of your website.  And your plan will change as you start putting everything together.  The best thing is to build it as if you were the visitor.  Would you like how the navigation is set up?  Do the colors make the site look plain and bland?  As long as you keep looking at your design through the visitors eyes everything should come together nicely.

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Filed under: Site Design by Matt Fern
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I wrote one very short post about web site design tips before, so I figured I’d write a little more. I’m going to continually complain about writing on Friday, because it just feels impossible sometimes.

So you’re designing your website yourself. You throw some images on, you do some colors, you think it looks real spiffy. You post it online, thinking this is the best you can do, and it looks great. You’re not a professional, but this is still good.

I hate to say it, but I run across this all the time. People are always designing their own sites, because they can’t afford to pay a designer. I can understand this, but remember, thousands (if you’re lucky) of people are seeing your website each day. Is it costing you sales because your website’s not up to snuff? If you designed it yourself, it just may be doing that.

Logo
When the coffee’s gone, what do you do? You go buy more, of course. Everyone’s got a favorite brand, and you know it by the name and by the logo, whether you think about it or not. Your logo speaks the same for you. People identify with it. Everyone can recognize the Apple or Chevrolet logos. People who come to your site should recognize yours too. So look at your logo, look right now. Is it memorable? Is it memorable for a good reason? Does it look good? Does it relate to your business? Is it unique? If you have any doubts, then your logo isn’t good enough. Brand recognition, starts with the brand, the logo.

Tags
This is more of an SEO issue, but when your website is designed and coded, these things need to be taken care of. Do you image tags have an alt declaration? They should; alt declarations provide a better description of the image, and give a place to put major keywords. Don’t overdo it though. Do you have a title tag? Again, you should. This is what identifies your page, distinguishes it from all your other pages. Keep it short, but make sure it’s there and it concisely describes your page. Are you using header tags such as h1, h2, h3, etc.? From an SEO standpoint, these tell the SEs that those keywords are important to your page. They should be used to show different sections of the page, the important ones.

Javascript and CSS
This is one of my pet peeves: do you have <script> or <style> inside your <head> tag? Why is it there? With the advent of included files, you can/should keep your CSS and Javascript in separate files. This cuts down on code length, and brings your actual page’s code higher up, making it more relevant to the engines and given the SEs less code to sort through. Javascript is great to use for dynamic sites, you can do all sorts of cool things with it. But it’s not SEO friendly. The search engines can’t replicate the effects of Javascript because they can’t run Javascript. The same goes for flash. You might have a great flash index page that looks awesome, but if you’re looking for SEO, there’s nothing that can be done, unless you get rid of the flash and do a new site. CSS, on the other hand, is great all around. It doesn’t help or hurt SEO, and it makes everything look all pretty.

Ok, so this wasn’t just design tips, I through in some minor SEO hints. But hey, I can’t give away the farm, so there are only so many tips I can share with you folks. Hope this helps nonetheless.

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Filed under: Search engine optimization, Site Design by Tim Caspersen
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Over the past two weeks I’ve been explaining about the whole Adwords certification thing, and now I’m a certified individual (not to mention we are a certified company now as well)  Now I’m going to talk about a few things that can increase your sale and profits.  Adwords has all sorts of tools and options to optimize your accounts.  Even with all these options one of the best ways to improve your profits is your landing page.  Conversion’s the word.  You can get all the clicks you want but if you can’t get any conversions you’re just throwing money away.

So what is a landing page?  A landing page is the page visitors arrive at after clicking your ad.  It is important that your landing page is simple, easy to understand, and matches the ad that was clicked on to get to the page.  When deciding your landing page it is important that you think of the user.  Think of what they are seeing through their eyes.  Think of all the thoughts that are going through their head.  “Does this site look trustworthy”, “is this the right place”, “how much time will this take?”  The site must me user friendly.

Make sure that your landing page works in conjunction with your ad text.  In other words if the ad text is describing a certain product, make sure that the landing page takes the user to that products page.  It may frustrate the user if they click the ad and then have to go search for the product.  Remember your goal is to get the conversion.  If the user clicks the ad and get frustrated then just backs out of your website you’re not making any money.

Your landing page is key to making profits.  Just keep in mind these two rules about landing pages and you should be fine:  1) make the content useful, relevant, and trustworthy.  2) Make the site easy to navigate.  Landing pages are not that hard but one little mistake can completely ruin your traffic/conversions.  One of the most important things to do is TEST, TEST, and TEST!!  Try different things.  One little difference can make a huge difference in sales.  After you make a few changes and test them, you will be able to see what works best for you and your customers.

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Filed under: Affiliate Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engines, Site Design by Matt Fern
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Your website is your online business card. You’ve probably heard this many times, but it’s true. If you want people to take you seriously, you need a good looking website. I’ll give you a couple quick tips on how to improve upon what you have. Some of these might be no-brainers, but bear with me and hopefully you can glean something from it.

Color Scheme
Your colors have to be relevant to what your purpose is. Someone selling organic vegetables shouldn’t have a site designed with hot pink as their primary color. Instead, green would be the obvious choice for them. Keep in mind your visitors. Just because you like a color doesn’t mean they will too.

Pictures
Everyone loves to have pictures on their site, but seriously, there is a such thing as too many. If a page takes a long time to load on a broadband connection, just imagine what it’ll do to a dial-up connection (yes, they still exist). Plus, keep in mind your picture file size. With HTML, you can shrink the size of a picture, but it doesn’t shrink the size of the file, so the whole thing loads in the browser. This is especially important to understand if you take pictures with a digital camera. The file sizes are 2MB or more per picture, when really they should be under 100KB for the website. Makes a big difference, and even with a fast connection they load slow.

Layout
This one is easy. Does your website look cluttered? Does it make sense where everything is laid out? Do you REALLY need that much stuff on one page? If it’s hard to find something on a webpage, odds are it’s too cluttered or the layout is done poorly. Your layout has to make sense to your visitor. People today have a tiny attention span, so if they can’t find what they want immediately, they’ll go somewhere else. The navigation of your website should be clearly marked, all links should look like links, and major items should pop out to the visitor.

These are just three quick examples of site design tips. I’ll provide more later.

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Filed under: Site Design by Tim Caspersen
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