Web Design tips to make your life incredibly easy

Learn from the best. Leading web design experts reveal the secrets of the trade, these are now yours to learn, follow, implement and win.

Every great web designer has a true secret or two that they use time and time again to provide the best service for their clients, this insider knowledge is vital when you are looking at your own design project.

It's quite a collection. Enjoy

The Optimum Line Length

The Baymard Institute suggest that 50-75 characters per line. This sort of length energises readers and keeps them engaged in your content, and we know that the more engaged readers are, the more likely they are to stay on your page and take the action that you want them to take.


Use Video to show visitors something real

Kendra Gaines at WebdesignerDepot.com rightly argues that visitors are wanting a connection to business and brands, video allows us to do this by showing them something real and of substance. I couldn't agree more.


Use only Appropriate Images

Graham at Effective Website Design makes the sensible point that images need to be carefully selected, and the process itself shouldn't be overlooked or undertaken quickly. “Do not use images indiscriminately, lots of images can lose the page focus.” says Graham, and he's right, there is nothing off putting that images on pages that have no context to the subject matter.


Responsive Design - it's the future

Nick Pettit at treehouse wrote a compelling blog post last year about Responsive Design, and steps readers through the concepts in a very practical manner.

User Flow in Web Design

Adrian Fraguela at Silver talks about thinking about the user experience in web design, one of the more interesting areas they look at briefly is User Flow, that is the need to consider exactly how users will move around your site and ensuring that your design allows them to interact with the site successfully.

That's it for this post.  Do you have a secret to your web design success? Don't be selfish, share it with others in the comments below!

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Digital Marketing Predications for 2015!

The life of a busy digital marketer is a varied one, and knowing where to put your marketing effort is an important factor, but where should you plan to put those efforts?

Everything is changing - and will continue to do so - remember that the only constant is change.

Technology, business models and consumer behaviours change in the blink of an eye; old tactics no longer work (or aren't as effective as they once were).

So as a digital marketer, what should you be considering for the year ahead?

In this article on LinkedIn, I've tried to capture some of the key elements that are important to Digital Marketing in 2015 - enjoy.

Digital Marketing: My Crystal Ball Predications for 2015

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Stop asking ‘How’ Google rank websites and start asking ‘Why’.

Seriously, if you are interested in improving your ranking for your website then you must stop trying to guess what ingredients are in the Google ‘secret sauce’.

What makes up the Google algorithm takes up way too much thinking time, just accept the fact that Google pushes websites through their machinery and out pops the ranking for your site.

A better question to ask is “Why do Google rank sites the way that they do?”

From a users perspective Googles aim of is very simple; it wants to understand what information you want to see when you query its search engine and then it wants to ensure that it shows you the very best results.

Why is understanding this a better way to understand Google? 

For Google to do it's job properly it needs to ensure that:

1. It understand what your site is all about
2. When visitors get to it they engage with it (good time on site, low bounce rate etc)
3. They potentially share your content

This all means that you can stop focussing your precious time on tying to get others to link their sites to you, spamming forums and blogs with your links and stop tweaking META Tags and focus on the important area … your content.

With the right content Google will understand your pages and be able to determine whether you can satisfy a search query well.  So your content needs to be able to answer visitor’s questions, the content needs to be exactly what the visitor is expecting to see when they click on your link in the search results.

This means that you need to ensure that you answer the questions you think that the market has for your products and services – this might actually mean developing a formal FAQ section, but it also means ensuing that they easily understand what your website and pages are all about, and how exactly you can help them.

Seriously, understand what Google is trying to do and help them to help you, and you will start to rank well within Google. Period.

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Web Site Usability - what do you need to consider!

Web usability is all about taking a look at sites, pages and designs to better understand the customer journey - the reasons why visitors are there in the first place, understanding any barriers that stop visitors from taking their desired action.

In essence, your web site should provide your visitors with an efficient and enjoyable user experience.

Web pages should be self explanatory and obvious.

The MUM Test

When considering the basics for web page usability, I like to ask the following simple question 'Would my Mum be able to use it!'. You see my mum wasn't a tech head, she wasn't particularly well educated in these modern technologies, so she wasn't at all web savvy; and if we think of our potential visitors in this way then we will always ensure that our sites are a simple (and easy) to use as possible.

Basically, if my mum could navigate a web site and get what she wanted, then it was a good site.

Key Areas to consider

Intent - what are you visitors intending to do on your site?

Web site Structure (appearance) – what your visitors see and interact with.

Whitespace – clean space that makes your site easy to view, read, understand and use. Good use of space can draw the visitors eyes to the important parts (and links) of the site.

Noise – is information fighting for attention or does any other element vie for the visitors attention (strong contrasts next to text for example (i.e. bold graphics or images next to key information can force eyes away from this text)).

Length – short page length, visitors shouldn't have to scroll too far to get to the information that they want, information “below the fold” will not get seen as much as information above it.

Consistence – across navigation, fonts, layout, colour etc

Images – need to be relevant and compelling.

Functionality – how well the site interacts with visitors and visitors with the site.

Organisation of information – and links. Do users know where they are and where to get to the common information they might need? Can visitors get to the action you want them to take easily.  Are the web pages split into clearly defined areas.

Speed – how fast the site loads (< 2 second is ideal) as customers may leave if they have to wait to view the information on your site. Site speed is also important for good Google rankings.

Interactivity – how well can visitors interact with your site, does search work well for example?

Things visitors should never ask themselves

• Where am I?
• Where do I start?
• Where did they put ….?
• What information do I need on this page?
• Why did they call it that?
• Why is that there?

Common questions to ask

• What is the first thing you notice on the site? Is your USP clearly visible?
• Is there a clear visual hierarchy? (headers, important information etc) – newspapers do this REALLY well!
• Are the pages consistent (everyone knows instictively how to read a newspaper and what the headlines mean, bold intro text, main story, caption under images, we know to go to the back pages for the sport and somewhere close to the middle for TV listings etc). Familiarity is reassuring.
• Do you think it's too cluttered?
• Are you having a hard time finding the information you want?
• Does the site feel well organised?
• Do you have to scroll to get to important information?
• Is the site slow?
• What do you think of the fonts, colours and images?
• Can you easily search for product information?
• Can you easily find the contact information?

The Search Engine Ranking factor

I've already mentioned that site speed is important for Google ranking, but also IF your site doesn't look very good to visitors they are likely to press the BACK button on their browser quickly.  This visitors action is classed as a Bounce by Google, and a high Bounce rate will go against you in rankings!

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Panda 4.0 and how to survive it

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Learn from Politicians!

In the UK the local elections are happening this week, so it gives us an opportunity to take a leaf out of our MPs' books and raise the profile of your business and website?

Just like our politicians, you too can build a professional online brand and profile for your business with some very simple tips; and changing the way your website portrays and promotes you could do wondered for your sales too!

The Personal Statement

Just like the political parties your business should employ a personal statement. Your personal statement and the way your present it on your web site is critical as this is one of the first ‘things’ that a visitor who doesn't know you very well will seek out (whether they are aware of it or not!), and it has the added benefit of helping them understand more about your business.

Your company's personal statement simply needs to be the top 2-3 things that you want your visitors to know about your business, they should show how you can help your prospects.

For example, you might want your visitors to be aware of your huge selection of products, the fact that you are an award winner, your customer service stats, your low prices etc – whatever it is that you think your market will go wild over and that you can satisfy.

Once you've decided on what your business personal statement should be you need to ensure that it is easily and quickly seen on your site. Are these 2-3 statements obvious on your site? Are they mentioned at all or hidden in your navigation?

Put them to your homepage and make them easily viable throughout your site.

Your Professional Profile

You only need to take a quick look at any of the political parties web sites to see what views, experience and values their leader has.
You can find out about their history, achievements, what they stand for and how they believe that they can personally help you.

Does your site portray its top Directors in the same way? Is it easy to find out about them, what skills, experience and background they have, and what they think that they can do for your prospects?

If you don’t talk about the top people in your business then you are missing a trick; research constantly shows that the “About Us” pages are usually one of the top pages that prospects visit on your site and these pages can help sell yourself and your business if done correctly.

Say what you want about our political system, the parties and politicians, they do know how to promote themselves and how to get us following them and believing in them, and by following these simple tips you will be able to better promote your site and make you more appealing to your prospects.

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POTS and PANS!

What type of site so you own or manage? Is it a Pretty Ordinary Trash Site (POTS) or a Pretty Amazing Natural Sites (PANS) site?

Obviously you don’t want to own a POTS, these tend to be trashy, thin content, poorly linked to sites, where as the more superior PANS have lots of lovely content that visitors want to read and share, their content also attracts links naturally.

A site needs to have a clear and definite purpose; if this can be portrayed successfully to visitors then half of the battle has been won.

Sleek, modern design is a winner. Visitor needs and design trends change often, sites that don’t follow these will look dated very quickly and will be an instant turn-off.

Content needs to be unique and fresh and needs to speak concisely to your target market – avoid waffle and clutter and keep the messages as simple and as concise as possible.

Ultimately for any website to be successful it needs people to use it; site design and appearance are very important, but they will never replace the need for excellent usability.

A websites navigation affects how usable it is, and when developing or redesigning an existing site then the navigation (how you visitors are doing to find the great content) should be your primary concern.

In Summary

	POTS	PANS
Site Design	Designed in the 80’s/90’s. Cluttered.	Appealing Modern – fresh, clean.
Content	SEO focused. Doesn't read well.	User focused. Clear, well-written content.
Clarity	Visitors confused. Unsure what you site is about.	Purpose clear. Visitors feel happy on your site.
Usability	Confusing leaving visitors impatient. They will leave.	Simple to use. Customers stay and look around.
Navigation	Visitors can’t find what they need. No structure to site at all.	Visitors can find what they need quickly. 1-3 clicks and they are there.

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Should you undertake Link Exchange with other businesses

In recent years the practice of arranging to create links to sites that link to yours has been frowned upon (especially by Google), but can this practice actually have a good and lasting effect on your website, traffic volume and rankings?

The idea of exchanging links with other websites, typically on some kind of special ‘we recommend’, ‘our partners’, ‘friends of ours’ or something similar, used to be a primary method of building links to sites.

One of the major ways that the Google ranking algorithm works is in making the suggestion that a link to your website from another one is a positive vote from them to you, Google used this vote to basically determine your reputation (in fact it still works this way today).

The problem was that as this method of gaining links if very cheap and very easy to do, suddenly all sites had hundreds (if not thousands) of links pointing to them, and search engines like Google realised that these types of links weren't really an honest vote of recommendation for the websites but rather just a way for businesses to boost their rankings.

Whilst website owners can still do this, this approach to link building is nowhere near as beneficial as it was in the past.

As a result, less weight was ‘reputation’ weight was given to what were labelled ‘reciprocal links’ – a term which covers the scenario I have just referred to.

As it became common knowledge that reciprocal links had been devalued, many businesses simply gave up on them. Some even went to the length of deleting all of the reciprocal links they had in case they incurred a penalty against their site.

It’s actually a myth that reciprocal links result in a penalty. These types of links have just become devalued, which is very different to them attracting a penalty.

Reciprocal links still provide value to the sites involved, however, the level of that value is less than it was before; but if you are struggling for links then some value is better than no value at all – so it would be a huge mistake to ignore reciprocal links altogether. You just shouldn't make this your only linking strategy, providing good quality content to attract natural and real links is always be best approach.

Two sides to every coin!

Whilst we are talking here about using reciprocal links to gain improved search engine rankings, there is also the other side of the equation and benefit to consider, that is, traffic referral.

Each link you have on another site is a chance that one of their visitors make click the link and come to your site; the way reciprocal links are tend to be set up (on special ‘links’ pages) then you probably won’t get much referral traffic from them, but again, some traffic is better than none.

Reciprocal links are not created equally!

Some reciprocal links are always going to be better than others and you do need to be very careful about who you exchange links with. For example if you sell soft furnishings and you have a link from a website that sells car parts, I don’t imagine you get any visitors at all!

Link partners should be in some way related to your own. In our example above, your soft furnishings site would be much better served if you had a link from a home improvement site!

Always think before exchanging links – “Would someone else consider this link to be logical? Or would they be confused as to why my site has a link from this one!”

A few links from irrelevant sites isn't a big deal, but the more you have the more confusing your site’s back link profile becomes, which makes it more difficult for search engines to clearly establish the topic of your website and which keywords to rank it well for.

Also, too many irrelevant links can look very spammy and would start to lead you to a penalty by the major search engines.

Quality wins!

Also consider the quality of the site you want a link from (Google will!), ensure that their content is of excellent quality and unique to that site.

If search engines see that you are linking to low quality sites, again this is a red flag to them and you may get a penalty (or just reduced ranking).

So, if you’re unsure about the quality or trustworthiness of a website then play it safe and don’t link to it.

Approaching other sites

Once you have a list of sites that look relevant and have great content, then it’s time to contact them, the best way is to use email or call them; explain that you have found their site, you love the quality of it and you think that a link between the two sites would be useful to both businesses.

You’ll find that the success rate for link exchange isn't great, and it takes some time and effort, but it does work. The key is to do a bit of research on them first. You shouldn't just send out hundreds of emails using the same set template. That might seem like the easiest way but your emails will mostly get ignored.

Finally!

As already mentioned, done well and carefully this can be a good way to get links to your site that WILL help ranking and gain real visitors to your site.

But this approach should be a low level tactic and not the main way to gain links, like I said earlier, great content will always attract natural links from other sites.

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