Even more importantly, you need content that will appeal to the search engines, giving your website a real chance to rank high when a search term is used that pertains to your chosen niche. The question then becomes to create content that will make the visitor to your site and the search engines happy. There are a few steps you can take, and it all begins with developing a killer title for your content. A great title can help pull the reader in and make them want to read more, and it can also contain a relevant keyword or phrase that will tell the search engines what the subject is about. For example, if you have a site devoted to golf, which title seems more appealing: “Great Golf Balls,” or “How to Choose Golf Balls That Will Add Length to Your Drive.”
The latter of the two titles gives more detail about the subject of the content and will make them more likely to want to read more. It also helps that the content being delivered is answering a common question or concern that the reader is looking to have addressed. When you build a website, you want to separate yourself from your competitors by showing that you are an authority on your chosen niche. Great content will help you do that.
Getting back to the search engines for a moment, the best way to get your site discovered is through search engine optimization (SEO), which means creating content that contains relevant keywords. That doesn’t meaning stuffing as many words as possible into your piece, but rather including them in a way that sounds natural to the reader. A good way to do this is to break up the content into several pieces, using headers and sub-headers that clearly show what you are going to talk about in each section. This makes it incredibly easy for the reader to pinpoint what they are looking for, especially in longer articles. A well-written piece of content will end with a summary that recaps what the reader has just read. This may be done by using bullet points or simply a brief summary of the content.
As you can see, there are a number of simple steps that you can take to make sure your content is fresh ad entertaining to the reader. Bring them in with a great headline, and then deliver keyword rich content that informs and comes across as appealing to the search engines. Do that and your visitors are sure to come back for more.
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]]>QR Codes were present in 1% of print advertising in January of 2011, a number which shot up to 6% by December of the same year. Advertisers obviously like them but the real question is are consumers actually scanning them. A report titled “9 Things to Know About Consumer Behavior and QR Codes”, released in January 2012 by Consumer Pulse, provided some insight. According to this report, 79% of respondents had never heard of a QR Code. However, when shown a picture of a QR Code, 81% of respondents claimed to have seen one before. The report also claims that ½ of smartphone users have scanned a QR code before and 70% did claim it was an easy process and 42% had mixed feelings about how useful they were. There figures do not convincingly support the argument in either direction but it does provide some solid evidence that when presented with a QR code, the majority of smart phone users will know what to do with it but roughly half may actually scan the code.
What this study tells us is at worst QR Codes are a fad that will fade quickly and best case, a great way to grab the interest of smartphone owners, but you will need some convincing that your target market is ‘QR savvy’ and will want to scan your code. The real problem for business owners comes down to how the code is used. Setting up a QR code to simply launch your website homepage is a waste of time for both you and the consumer. In order to get a user to want to scan the code you need to get creative. If you are placing a QR code on a product for example, have the code launch a page on your website that explains that product in more detail. If the QR code is going to be placed on an ad, have it launch to a specific landing page geared towards that ad or a page that generates a coupon. Envision the QR as a call-to-action on your website. By serving a specific purpose you may see better conversion rates.
]]>You’ll need to regularly monitor your efforts to ensure that they work. Google Analytics is a great starting point. With the addition of a couple of lines of code to your website Google Analytics will output useful data to better evaluate your SEO performance. This includes seeing where geographically your visitors are coming from, whether they are returning or new visitors, the type of devise they are viewing the website on and also the keywords that were used to search for your website. If you are a 540 client and do not have Google Analytics already installed on your website please let us know and we will set it up free of charge.
Unfortunately I have seen clients fall victim to spam email traps like “Get your website #1 on Google” and it has ended up costing them in the long run. Search Engine algorithms are constantly changing and concepts like multiple landing pages all over the web, redirects and title stacking are now being detected and will eventual hurt your ranking and in extreme case be all together banned from a search engine. True SEO is an ongoing process that evolves along with your business. Clean code, using elements like proper title and description tags certainly help but it is more than code and keywords. Great content is the significant driving force, if you can produce excellent, keyword-rich content on a regular basis, you will be one step ahead of the competition!
]]>The obvious solution may seem to just build an app. Having an app for your business is a great idea but for most businesses, especially smaller start-ups it can be a costly. To cover the majority of mobile users you would need effective app solutions for tablets and smart phones on both Apple iOS & Google Android just as a start. For mobile website specific design, a more cost effective solution is responsive web design.
In a responsive web design approach our goal is to create a seamless design experience so the website works equally well on any device. This website, matt540.wpengine.com is responsive. To see it in action on a desktop browser slowly drag in the corner of your browser inward. You should see the layout adjust itself to fit the new width of the browser. If you access this website from a smart phone you will see the layout looks different from the desktop and fits the resolution perfectly with an app like menu option. This is responsive design, the user does not need to pinch-and-zoom to read the text or worry about “fat finger” errors resulting in clicking the wrong hyperlink.
Responsive design uses a coding concept called media queries which detect the type of device you are viewing a website on and changes the site’s behavior accordingly. The width at which the website design begins to break down is where media queries are targeted in order to optimize the design. It does this with the help of a fluid grid. A fluid grid layout allows a website to squeeze onto a small mobile device or stretched across a huge high-res screen. Regardless of the screen size all of the elements in the layout will re-size their widths in relation to one another. With our fluid grid as a foundation we can use a series of media queries to essentially create if-then statements modern browsers will understand. When the website is viewed on an iPhone for example, a media query with a set pixel width of 320px is targeted and tells the browser to display the website in a certain fashion. A second breakpoint would be set at 600px to target the websites appearance in an iPad. This is simplifying responsive design extensively as there are several coding elements involved, but overall the concept allows us to define how our website will appear at different resolution breakpoints.
As a web designer I am always reading. Whether its my favorite design blogs, books on web design theory or coding languages on thing is certain… there is a radical change in thinking among the design community about mobile. The Mobile First approach to design is becoming the new standard. When designing a website for a client I will now first envision how the site will appear in mobile and then scale up from there. It is a different approach to designing a website and it represents the future and responsive design allows us to adapt to this change. The benefit to the client: You build a website once, and it works seamlessly across thousands of different screens.
]]>Below is our list of Awesome Plugins for WordPress. Awesome is a subjective word, since some WordPress users may argue there is a better plugin in a particular category.. which very well may be true. However, since developing custom themes and modifying existing client themes I have come to find these particular plugins never fail, are easy to implement for the most part and have good dev support.
Wordfence Security
Wordfence is a free enterprise class security plugin that includes a firewall, anti-virus scanning, malicious URL scanning and live traffic including crawlers. Wordfence is the only WordPress security plugin that can verify and repair your core, theme and plugin files, even if you don’t have backups.
Better WP Security
The easiest, most effective way to secure WordPress. Improve the security of any WordPress site in seconds. Includes several useful options, such as locking out users after multiple attempts and easy backups.
Akismet
This is one of the most widely used plugins to check your comments to see if they look like spam or not and lets you review the spam it catches under your blog’s “Comments” admin screen.
* You will need an Akismet API key. Keys are free for personal blogs, with paid subscriptions available for businesses and commercial sites.
Contact Form 7
A widely used form builder plugin that can manage multiple contact forms, plus you can customize the form and the mail contents flexibly with simple markup. The form supports Ajax-powered submitting, CAPTCHA, Akismet spam filtering and so on. We use Contact Form 7 in most of our WordPress site builds.
Fast Secure Contact Form
Easily create and add forms to WordPress. Fields are easy to add, remove, and re-order. The contact form will let the user send emails to a site’s admin, and also send a meeting request to talk over phone or video.
Google Analytics Dashboard for WP
The king of site analytics! The Google Analytics Dashboard will display analytics data and statistics inside your WordPress Dashboard. Track your WordPress site easily and with lots of metadata: views per author & category, automatic tracking of outbound clicks and page views.
All in One SEO Pack
All in One SEO Pack is a WordPress SEO plugin to automatically optimize your WordPress blog for Search Engines such as Google. You can set custom title and keyword attributed per page or post.
WordPress SEO by Yoast
This WordPress SEO plugin goes beyond basic SEO functions and automatically optimizing and inserting the meta tags and link elements that Google and other search engines like so much.
NextGEN Gallery
One of the most popular WordPress plugins of all time, It provides a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images, with the ability to batch upload, import meta data, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails and group galleries into albums. It also provides two front-end display styles (slideshows and thumbnail galleries), both of which come with a wide array of options for controlling size, style, timing, transitions, controls, lightbox effects, and more.
Gallery
This plugin makes it possible to implement as many galleries as you want into your website. You can add multiple pictures and description for each gallery, show them all at one page, view each one separately.
Socilable
It’s a banner that reminds your readers to spread the word. You can select and customize several features, such as text, color, and length in order to ensure your readers and their friends a great social experience.
Social Count Plus
Keeps a really nice tally of all your Twitter followers, Facebook fans, YouTube subscribers, Google Plus page followers, Instagram followers and more.
Share Buttons by AddThis
Help drive traffic to your site by helping visitors share, bookmark and email your content to over 330 services.
W3 Total Cache
A very fast caching engine for WordPress that improves the user experience of your site by increasing server performance, reducing the download times and providing transparent content delivery network (CDN) integration.
Google XML Sitemaps
This plugin will generate a special XML sitemap which will help search engines like Google, Bing, Yahoo and Ask.com to better index your blog. With a sitemap, it’s much easier for the crawlers to see the complete structure of your site and retrieve it more efficiently.
WP-DB-Backup
WP-DB-Backup allows you to easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.
If you have a favorite plugin let us know and post in our comments.
]]>Understanding the basics of copyright is important when planning your website content, including both text and images. Before we dive into copyright and web design lets take a step back and understand what a copyright is. Copyright is a form of protection under the U.S. Constitution for original works of authorship, fixed within a tangible medium. Copyright covers both published and unpublished works. A copyright allows anyone to create a creative work and call it their own. In the United States a copyright lasts the entire life of the author plus 70 years. This rule applies to works you create for yourself. Work for hire copyright is slightly different. As a web designer I pass that copyright to the client, meaning after a website is created and payment is exchanged the client now owns the full rights to the design and content. A work for hire copyright last 120 years after it was created or 95 years after it is released to the public, whichever comes first.
The act of creating a copyright is actually very simple. If I grab a blank piece of paper and drawn a smiley face stick figure I can say its copyrighted. It’s literally that simple, if you create something it belongs to you and you own the copyright as long as it is something tangible. You can’t copyright an idea unless it is integrated into something someone can see. If I have an idea for a great website I can’t declare it as copyrighted until I actually produce the website in a public forum. You do not have to register a copyright with the US Government when it is created, you will however have to register if you wish to bring a lawsuit against someone for copyright infringement. Registration outside of infringement is voluntary although many people choose to register to obtain a certificate and have their copyright recorded on the pubic record.
Any kind of original content including articles, photos, advertisements, drawings, videos, code and custom layouts. Basically all elements of building the website can fall under your copyright. Idea’s however can not be copyrighted. Also titles and slogans and your company name cannot be copyrighted. They can however be trademarked so you should consider looking into trademark law or speak with a lawyer on areas of your website which will not fall under copyright law but may afford additional protection. For purposes of this article we will stick with the basic elements of a website which are copyrightable with one big exceptions, domain names cannot be copyrighted. Depending on the subject of your website content may fall into some gray areas of the law. For example, if you are food service provide or chef any recipes you post are not copyrightable. Your website design, images and other content certainly are but the recipes themselves are not. If you have questions on specific content on your website and whether or not you can classify it under a general website copyright I would check out copyright.gov which has pdf downloads available of various sections of the US Copyright Law.
If you see your work being used on the web without your permissions can you immediately send a cease-and-desist letter to the site owner? In some cases yes, but not always. Fair Use is an exception to copyright law which lets individuals make use of your original work without your permissions. Schools for example can use copyrighted material for educational and teaching purposes. The press is another great example. Images and writings by individuals you see on news segments are all covered under fair use. Google would not exist is there was no fair use protection under copyright law. As you build content for your website you should be aware that at some point your content, images, etc. could be used for educational purposes or news stories without your permission. So before you take action against a website or institution for “stealing” your work be sure you fully understand the purpose in which your copyrighted material was republished.
]]>The minimalist approach allows a client to start with a blank canvas and ask what is the main purpose of the website. Do I offer a several different services that I need to display in detail or is my ultimate goal to promote a single product or service.
Our homepage at 540 Design Studio as well as a client website we designed, Plush Blow, were both designed with the minimalist approach. As you can see both websites consists of a plain white background, menu, a graphic element.
The graphic element is clearly the most important element and brings the color and texture to the homepage. In essence it defines our identity.
With the complexity of this particular graphic elements, more content on these page would have made it less noticeable, and less important. Keeping the content to a minimum, helps to achieve the perfect balance.
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Creating a website with no images is not necessarily bad but they do add a sense of balance to the site and help to draw user’s attention. Viewers want a full experience when they view a website, not just read lines of text, and the right images can create the perfect landscape to promote your brand.
Stock photography websites can provide a great resource for adding images to your website but if the wrong image is picked it can be detrimental. We live in a social world, the average person viewing your website is connected, educated and is used to interacting with others on the web. They can spot a stock image right away. Take for example business services websites. Images such as a person with a headset in a large call center or two people in business suits shaking hands are classic stock images used on multiple business websites. If the photos look to obvious, think out side the box. Positive images bring out positive emotions and using images on your website to leverage this can become a powerful tool. A perfect example is the creation of this website. When designing the latest version of our site I wanted as clean a look as possible but as the design went into the final stages I felt the layout needed additional color and images. Instead of using stock images of computers, software, etc. I added images I have photographed throughout the years of various landscapes. The images displayed creativity without saying “Hey, we use computers and design websites!”. You can be creative in your image choices to add a nice balance to your website without being generic.
If you plan on using stock photos, you need to be aware of the issues and restrictions that may be involved. There are generally 3 types of licenses for stock images- royalty free, rights managed, and extended licenses. Royalty free is the most common and affordable, rights managed offers exclusivity, and extended provides extra permissible uses. Royalty free is the most common stock image license used for web design. It means you are not required to pay a royalty each time you use an image. They are generally available under a non-transferable, non-exclusive, worldwide, multiple-use sub-license. The license is valid for the purchaser only. Additional restrictions may apply so always read the copyright carefully to understand your limitations with using the image.
Photo sharing agencies have come a long way in the past few years and new ones are coming on board everyday. Here are a few reputable sites to explore for stock images:
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