1. Your online presence, captured in a single QR code
There’s more and more talk of using QR codes these days. This short video shows a great way to put QR codes to use.

2. The Fold Exists but Does it Matter?
What do you think of “the fold” when it comes to websites? Are you a designer or strictly a web user?

3. iClip lite
A super handy widget that allows multiple clipboards for all your copy/paste needs. Especially useful when flowing content from a client or storing various links and images to reference throughout a project.

4. Five Copywriting Errors That Can Ruin A Company’s Website
A great article that discusses ways to improve your website and blog by focusing on quality content.

Some favorite tips:
• Set a “word budget”
• “A well-written category-level product page talks a bit about features, a little more about benefits and a great deal more about the experience.”
• Highlight your lead sentence
• Add some meta data
• Create a call to action

5. How to Make WordPress Easier for Clients By Removing Unnecessary Menu Options
This article explains ways to make WordPress more efficient for you and your clients by removing extraneous menu items.

6. A Graphic Design Primer, Part 1: The Elements of a Design
Even if you’re a pro at design, it’s necessary to re-review the basics from time-to-time. This refresher course contains lots of great examples to browse as well.

Noteworthy Resources:

7. Letter Count
Simple, but useful. Great for pre-tweeting and also includes character limits for various online tools, e.g., Google AdSense. The Word Counter is great for practicing your word budget too.

8. Convert Case
Ever get content from a client that’s in ALL CAPS? You can thank us later.

What interesting links/resources have you run across recently that you’d like to share?

A screenshot of our website in the Adobe Browser Lab.

I’m talking about a tool that makes it easier to troubleshoot the peekaboo bug, three pixel text jog, double float-margin bug, and the myriad of other browser bugs that plague web developers. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking… BORING! But hear me out here. When we develop websites, we start by making sure it looks perfect in Firefox, which is the most standard-compliant browser available. Ok, I think Opera has it beat, but it is not used much in the United States. But seriously, you have to be a REAL geek to use Opera. Next we look at it in Internet Explorer 7 (IE7), which is the most widely used web browser. Unfortunately, this is where things start to go wrong. It’s not usually catastrophic, but it does require some attention. When we start to look at it in IE 6, a thorn in all web developer’s side, this is when the real headaches start. In our office, we have a computer that is solely used for IE 6 testing. However, this computer is not located on my desk. So, when I attempt to fix a browser bug I have to physically get out of my chair and walk over to the “IE 6 computer” to hit refresh, shake my fist and see if my hack/solution has solved the issue. Generally, I have to walk over to this computer at least 2 dozen times to make it look presentable in IE 6. I’m no fitness enthusiast, hence my excitement when I found Adobe’s Browser Lab.

This ingenious tool now allows me to test several browsers (including the dreaded IE6) from the comfort of my chair. It’s got a really cool “onion skin” feature which allows you to lay one browser rendering on top of the other and toggle transparency for faster browser bug troubleshooting. Did I mention I don’t have to get out of my chair to do browser testing anymore?

Check out the new browser tool at – https://browserlab.adobe.com/. You know you want to do it.

My simple answer is that if you are in business you better have a web site – and it should be good – and yes,  you will need to update it or pay someone to update it. It doesn’t have to have a million pages to be good.  Here are just a few of the  reasons for having a website I bring up when I hear the crazy – to me – statement ” We don’t need a website!”

1. Do you have more business then you know what to do with?

2. Are highly qualified employee applicants lining up at your door – and begging to get in?

3. Does your phone ring off the hook? Only to find out that your staff is answering the same question over and over and over – “What time do you close?”

… there are several more, but this is a start – keep reading for the answers

Answers:

1. Most companies are looking for new business and a website will help you reach several market segments you have been unable to reach before. Believe it or not people are searching for your product and service right now on the web. If you want the statistics then contact me and give us a few key words associated with your industry and I”ll tell you how many searches are made per month, per year, regionally, nationally, internationally

2. When you are trying to hire well for your company having a solid, helpful web site with info on employment is powerfully important. You interview them but they interview you. Applicants are smart and they want to know more about the company they are applying to. They want to feel like the company is solid, dependable, probably friendly. Companies with better web sites can hire better from stock clerk to contractor all the way to CFO. We have set up systems so clients can post jobs and take applications online – how much money do you think  that saves?

3. Phone calls from your existing clients are good, but they can take up a lot of time. For lots of our clients we suggest and implement adding more info to their web sites. We can add “How To” manuals, and basic forms to download and
fill out before visiting. Even having simple info like hours of operation on your website can cut down on nuisance phone calls. Don’t you have more important things for your staff to be doing?

And believe it or not I have people who ask why they need a blog – but I guess you might be able to answer that question if you have read this far.

We develop the logo with the client’s initial input about their company history, services/products, brand position and competition. We then research their industry, markets and competition to make sure we make them stand apart while staying relative to the industry. After the research, we sketch concepts for the logo or website and refine the better comps via computer. After multiple internal samples and reviews with the design team, we show the client the first proof of the logo and website.

We show the client the proof and ask for their suggestions because they are the experts in their field and know their business best. And they will know subtle things that may work or backfire in their industry. The reason we like to show them the designs is because they have to see or use the design on a daily basis. The client is the one handing out the logo on their business cards, attracting clients and prospects with their website, and standing in front of their tradeshow display. Design, like art, is subjective. We can present a solid design and have a great reason for its usage, but in the end, the client has to like it.

Design is the balance of art & science as well as business & personality. Very few times in the design world does A+B=C, it’s just not that easy, but that’s what motivates us as designers. We want the design to capture the client’s grandest vision and have them literally say “Wow” when they see our work for the first time. The client needs to be excited about their logo, their website & all of their marketing materials. Without that excitement, the brand has no life and therefore the company becomes stagnant. A stagnant company is boring to their clients and uninteresting to prospective customers. That is why the client gets a say in the design process.

It is a fairly easy task for a web designer to create a favicon; it just takes a little know how. More recently, a favicon is created with a flexible system using two linked elements in the header of the HTML code. The two elements are generally 16 x 16 pixels and each is placed in the root directory. The two files are a favicon.ico file and a gif or png image. Some designers have learned to animate the favicons (like our Design the Planet website’s favicon).

In the past, favicons annoyed many server administrators because they created extra log entries and unnecessary use of bandwidth. Before Internet Explorer 6.0, some IT professionals had privacy concerns that the bookmarked image gave marketers a log of what websites visitors viewed. Since the arrival of Internet Explorer 6.0, the privacy concerns have been eliminated and with faster internet speeds, bandwidth is not an issue for the minute file size. Another benefit of the newer web browsers is that the favicon is no longer removed when a user clears his browser’s cache.

So next time you are surfing the internet, take a look at the address bar for a cool favicon. Who knows, your favorites menu may have a few favicons in it already.

You may have heard that search engines use a mathematical formula to rank their websites? and you would be correct. But, do you know what that formula is? Google and Yahoo are not known for sharing this information. Even if they did, it wouldn’t matter because the formulas change monthly. Sometimes the changes are slight and sometimes they are massive changes. Why change so often? To answer that question, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves how a search engine thinks. A search engine wants to give its users the most accurate response for each search. In plain English, if you search “New Orleans web design” you would want to see listings like Design the Planet, not Alaskan Crab Fishing.

Now, knowing this, what can we gather about the lengthy and complicated algorithms that search engines use? The good news is that there is a method to their madness and the items that weigh heaviest in the algorithm are content and links to your website. I call this the high school popularity method ? the best known and most liked website wins prom queen. When ranking each website, the search engine evaluates the text on your website and the number of links to your website from other websites.

The text on your website matters; all of it matters. Search engines evaluate the title of your pages, your headlines and each sentence – giving more weight to the headlines and sentences at the top of the page. For a search engine, it is better to title your page “Contact Design the Planet” than “Contact Us”. When in doubt as to how much text, remember one thing, CONTENT IS KING! When it comes to search engines, the more text, the better. Instead of having a few pages about your company and your products/services, you should have a book. This sounds like a lot, but search engines are looking for the authority for each keyword and key phrase. To provide the best search results to their users, search engines look for the master of each word, so providing more text presents you as the leader in your field. We all want to do work and buy products from the leader.

The other element of the algorithm that matters most is links. Not links on your website, but links to your website. Also, the more popular the website linking to your website, the better. In SEO talk, it is better to have links from websites with high PageRankings (we’ll discuss more later). It is important to take time to find non-competitor websites that will link to your website, especially if they are of a similar theme. For Design the Planet, a website of Louisiana web design firms or a web hosting company linking to our website is much better than a massive list of random websites. Also, when a website links to you, it is better to be descriptive saying “New Orleans Web Design Firm” instead of “cool link.”

How does a search engine like Google and Yahoo know what text is on your website or what websites link to your website? Simple, they use spiders. Yes, I’m serious. Search engines sends small robots (or bots) called spiders to crawl the web in order to gain this information. The spiders feed information about your website to a massive database and then the database ranks each website according to the previously mentioned algorithm. This ranking of websites is called PageRank. Google’s PageRank is number one of course. The search engine’s database then breaks down these rankings per keyword and key phrase. When it comes to links, Google considers each link to your website as a vote for your website and the better the PageRank, the more powerful the vote. Mostly democratic.

Surprisingly, traffic has little to do with your web rankings; partly because the search engines cannot determine traffic easily. They can, however, determine how much traffic you receive using the PageRanks of the websites linked to you and how long a user stays on your website after finding it through their search engine. If a user clicks on a website after searching a keyword and then quickly clicks back to the search engine, the search engine thinks that website was not the authority the user was looking for and eventually lowers the ranking of that website.

Now you have a few broad ideas of why your website is number one (or not number one) in the search engines. In later postings, we will discuss more specific methods of building your popularity and other things you can do to rank higher. We will even give you a few things not to do that will get you blacklisted from Google and Yahoo completely. Imagine what that will do for your web presence?

General

Brand – Your brand defines and promotes your business through the use of cohesive marketing materials, including your identity, website, advertisements, and more. Your brand should communicate a consistent message that appropriately reflects your company to establish trust and familiarity with your customer base.

Comp – A comp is a sample layout that shows how the product will look when it goes to print or goes live. You should review all aspects of a comp for accuracy and appropriateness, including text, images, contact information, and layout.

Corporate Identity – Your corporate identity is the cohesive visual image of your company as it is presented through your marketing and advertising materials. It is comprised of your logo(s), as well as all the other elements of your identity package (letterhead, envelope, business card, fax sheet, etc.), as well as your HTML email template and more.

Embossing – Embossing is a printing technique that creates a raised, three-dimensional effect, adding texture and elegance to a printed piece.

Exclusion Zone – An exclusion zone is the area around your logo that should never have any other graphics or text in it. The exclusion zone guidelines, as outlined in your Brand Marketing Sheet, should always be followed to ensure that your logo achieves the maximum impact at all times.

Raster Graphics – Raster graphics are formed out of collections of pixels, which means that they will lose quality if they are enlarged beyond their maximum original size. (All photographs are raster graphics.)

Vector Graphics – Vector graphics are created using mathematical components, such as lines, points, and curves, which allows them to be enlarged to any size without losing quality. Logos should be built as vector graphics so they are fully scalable

Web

Active Server Pages (ASP) – ASP is a server-side script engine from Microsoft that supports the creation of dynamic web pages by pulling information from a variety of sources. For example, ASP can be used to query data from the SQL Server database.

Backend – Back-end refers to any software or database functionality that resides on a server and influences the interactive behavior of your website. The technology on the back-end of your site supports the performance of your site but is invisible to your viewers. For example, the functionality that transfers data a user enters into a web site form to your e-mail is in the back-end.

Browser – Browsers are the programs you use to view web sites. (In fact, you are using a browser right now to read this page.) Several different browsers exist (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Netscape, etc.), which makes it crucial that new web sites be designed to work on all the major browsers (known as cross-browser compatibility).

Cross Browser Compatibility – Cross-browser compatibility is achieved when the appearance and functionality of your web site is consistent across the major browsers. This can require intricate coding and multiple, targeted style sheets, but it is a crucial part of a successful web site.

Domain – A domain is the Internet address that identifies where your web site resides and allows users to locate your site. Domains can have a variety of extensions (.com, .org, .edu, etc.), with the .com extension being the most common. Since users access your website by typing your domain name into a browser or by searching through a search engine, it is important that your domain be as simple and intuitive as possible. (Note: Domains must be registered and hosted to be affiliated with a web site.)

Frontend – The front-end of your web site is the portion of your site that users see when they are interacting with your site. For example, the user interface portion of a form, where the user fills out information, is in the front-end.

HTML – HTML (HyperText Markup Language) is one of the languages used to build the content of your web site. It describes the structure, and to a certain extent the appearance and behavior, of the content on your site.

Search Engine – A search engine allows you to search the vast amounts of information on the Internet. Examples of popular search engines include Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Successful websites are coded to achieve maximum search engine exposure because this is how people who don’t know your direct web site address or domain name will find you company.