USA SEO Pros: Web Design Blog

Wedding websites are now on the rise, and many people have hopped onto the bandwagon to this new phenomenon. Many couples set up these websites before the wedding to share locations, times, gift registries, and other logistic information with guests. Once the newly wed couples have received their photos, they are usually quick to post them on the same site. Many newly wed couples start out with the story of how they met and finish with amazing photography of their special day. This very romantic trend is spreading across America.

Quick and Easy Sharing

These websites are set up and designed to allow a couple to share wedding day details and post photos of their wonderful experience. This is an easy way for couples to share what is happening at every single moment with their friends and family members. In a way, it has become a “social network” of its own. Relatives and friends will find information about times and address pertaining to the wedding and to any events happening before or after the wedding. Everything is posted, from the actually wedding date to which stores the couples are registered with.

Creating a romantic website like this offers family and friends the ability to view inside someone else’s love life. Some couples post their entire relationship story from the moment they met to how and why they decided to get married. A lot of information can be shared (whether their friends and relatives want to know it or not). Many website designers are now starting to advertise their ability to create the perfect wedding site that will meet any couple’s needs, and some even offer additional wedding planning services.

The Privacy Issue

Do couples run a risk of losing their personal privacy? While there is always that risk, each couple will have their own say in what they want to share with the world and what they want to remain private. No one has to share anything he or she does not want to share. However, many people are very free with what they want others to know, so seeing couples with their newborn child or posting their new email address is common. People in general love sharing their lives with their friends and relatives; that is just the social era we live in. Still, it is always wise to consider carefully how much information it is wise to share on a website accessible to anyone. Remember, it isn’t just your friends and family who can see your site!

Providing information on the Internet about what is happening in our lives is nothing new in society. We, the human race, are just using a newer and more advanced way to share our lives with others all around the globe.

Black and white design is trendy right now on the Web. The simplistic color theme allows for striking designs, which evoke a surprisingly emotional response from many viewers. Whether entirely black and white or mixed with a splash of color, these designs tend to be bold and unabashed. Leaving behind the “noise” of color is an attractive option for many websites, so let’s take a closer look at what makes a black and white design so powerful.

The Look of Confidence

Avoiding loud colors and complex imagery gives an impression of confidence and clarity to a design. Both black and white are on the opposite sides of the color spectrum and can provide you the sleek look that you are going for. By simply using the two extremes, you can create a more modern or minimalist look for your website. You can also gain a more sophisticated look by adding sharp lines and complex images.

Black and white can provide you with a classic look, if the modern look is not what you are looking for, by using gray tones in the larger part of a logo or background. You can soften the lines in your website with a little gray, ending up with a great image that will resemble a black and white photo. You could create many dramatic images and designs by using this tactic.

Drawing People to Your Content

Creating a unique, sleek, black and white website tends to draw visitors instantly into the content, making the words the focus and the “main event” on the page. Your website will become attractive and functional. Of course, if this website is for a business, having the content made clear and visible is important. By creating a simple main page with clean lines, you’ll have a sophisticated website with a great professional tone. Think about the different shades of gray that you can add to your website that can add depth and intense imagery that will bring your content to the forefront. All you need is some creativity and imagination to create a great website that will be functional and unique.

Black and White and…

Think about the image and the message that you want to send to users on the Internet. A black and white layout for a creative and artistic purpose can suit your needs and provide you with the unique look that you want. Black and white imagery does not have to be used in isolation. As mentioned earlier, you can add different shades of gray or even some color to bring your images to the forefront. Provide a dramatic look that will show off your artistic style in the images that you display on your website. If you have a great image that has some color, it will really show and become the center of focus on your website with a black and white background.

The black and white color scheme of your website does not have to be limited to just your main page. Gain a dramatic look that only black and white can offer by creating your logo and/or company name with the two extremes of the color spectrum. Your company name and logo will stand out better, and it will be imprinted in the mind of your visitors.

Black and white websites are always in fashion, but you can use more than those two colors to gain the response and image that you want. Strengthening and softening your website can be done with the help of more than two colors. If you make sure you know what look and feel you are going for, your black and white website can have a strong dramatic effect.

Organic Web design is becoming more common across the Web as designers begin to incorporate natural elements into their design motifs. Trees, landscapes, fabrics, and even urban environments are taking center stage in many websites, giving them a more textured, visceral feel. Web Designer Depot recently explored this trend to determine what makes up a successful organic design. In addition to defining what makes a design organic, they also laid out some fundamental elements and suggestions for incorporating organic principles into your own design.

Notice the wooden background and the animated insects giving the natural feel.

One of the first ingredients they found necessary for a successful organic design was a color palette of neutral tones that work well together, like burnt orange, grays, and purples with olive undertones. You can use these colors as often as you want without overwhelming your website design. In some instances, you can even use bright vibrant colors like fire-truck red. Vibrant colors can be organic too. You can find some amazing colors in vintage images and natural patterns that can provide your website the look and feel that you want projected. However, keep in mind that you also need some balance to bring all of your website’s aspects together to create an amazing organic look and feel.

Keep the balance of your website stable just like the environment. When you use earth tones, like grays, it is important to add vibrant color that will catch the eye. If you decide to create a vibrant background that pops out like wood, balance it with a simple table that is flat and large. In addition, it is important to note that you can have too much of a good thing, and sometimes using fewer elements or colors can achieve the look that you are seeking.

Having an organic design does not mean you have to abandon the modern look. Using concretes is very acceptable, and softening a modern design does not require much. You can soften your modern look with subtle changes like adding a simple curl graphic.

Creating an organic design does not have to be difficult. Just remember that keeping it simple can often do more for your website design than picking every odd item and graphic you think matches an organic look. Keep an open mind when shooting for an organic website design, and remember that anything can be organic, even urban areas. It’s all about bringing the details of the physical world into the virtual space.

There was a time when microsites were nothing more than flashy, push-marketing pages, usually comprised entirely of videos built in Flash. Now, however, a new generation of microsites is on the upswing. These sites help your visitors cut out the information overload of full-fledged sites while providing new opportunities and techniques for agile marketing and conversion optimization.

The new style of microsite tends to be pure HTML and usually have no Flash at all, lending them to the best practices of SEO. You can have rich and detailed content, with graphic designs that are engaging without being overwhelming. You can provide access to other pages via a simple tab navigation, with each tab focusing on a specific subtopic. The new generation of microsites can provide all these features, without any of the troubles the past microsites used to have.

Microsites can help you serve up an optimized visitor experience. Your visitors are searching for good content and instant gratification, both of which microsites can provide with their extremely targeted focus. You should have an organized collection of subtopics that can guide your visitors to the information that they want. You can deliver deeper content in bite-sized chunks using sub-topics, making it easier for your visitors to consume.

Since microsites live outside the formal framework of your main website, they often are deployed quickly. This can make it easier for you to use your favorite A/B or multivariate-testing tool to experiment with different content variations, presentations and conversion offers.

The new generation of microsites can provide conversion optimization professionals with new opportunities for targeting strategies, at the same time leveraging the practices and tools used in larger sites.

Today, many people are optimizing their websites to ensure that they reach their maximum ranking on the leading search engines. In general, this is a great idea and your website should be updated regularly. However, keep in mind that you are trying to attract consumers online, so your website should also be optimized for people and lead conversions. Optimizing your website is easy and can increase your conversion rate.

Guide Your Visitors

Before you start making any changes to your website, think about your visitors. How do your visitors view your website? You want to make sure that they are given the right information that they need to navigate through your website. Make sure that important information like contact information is visible and in front of your visitor’s face. Start making the right changes that will guide your visitors through your desired path.

Providing graphics, hyperlinks, and short forms on each of your pages can bring your visitors one step closer to where you want them to be. Make sure that any questionnaire that you place on your website is short and to the point. The less time your visitor spends providing you information, the better. Your visitors will be more likely to provide you with their name and email, than to fill out long forms that could take more than a minute.

As always, make sure that your content and imagery are interesting and compelling to your visitors. This is vital to your selling point, and it is your window of opportunity to gain your visitor’s interest long enough that they will stay longer on your website.

Compelling Landing Pages

Provide eye catching and amazing imagery that will attract your visitor. It is a proven fact that having great images and videos on websites can influence the way people feel about the website that they have just landed on.

Keep your visitors happy and entertained by providing:

• Entertaining content that is short and to the point
• Offering minimum choices to navigate through the website
• Proper imagery that gives an idea of what you sell or provide

Most importantly, do not let your visitor get lost on your website. Think about the way you naturally navigate through a website when you are searching for a product or service. Keep in mind how you might feel if you landed on a website that provided you 30 different ways to get to the next page. Keep it simple and to the point on every page. There should be no more than 8 links to other pages, and your content should not be overwhelming. Remember, people in general do not want to spend more than 5 minutes reading and trying to figure out how to get to the next page.

Offer Trust

Most people are generally scared to purchase or provide their information online. They feel that the information that they will provide could lead to identity theft, etc. Make your visitors feel at ease when they land on your website.

Provide your visitors with visual assurances like:

• Security buttons; these have been proven to increase conversion rates
• Testimonials of current and past visitors
• A company image or profile picture

The more your visitor feels at home, the better. Provide them with the proper security that they need and you are home free. About 1/3 of consumers will not shop online, and that is still a significant number of people. Then, you have those who only shop online at websites that they trust. Building trust for your website is a key factor to gaining more business from the people you seek.

Test Your Website

Once you make a change on your site, make sure that it works, and that it is being perceived properly. Make an A/B test and find out which changes better appeal to your targeted audience. Knowing your visitors can help you create the ideal landing page. Testing your website and its changes can be boring, but it is important, and will prove to be a worthwhile time investment.

Consciously changing and optimizing your website is very smart and an important step to make when considering maximizing your conversion rates. Having a well-optimized website for search and conversions can transform the way you do business. Get your website noticed, and create the ideal landing page with your targeted audience in mind.

Most of the Web sites online have white backgrounds. There are good reasons why this is the case, but it can also be argued that there are times when using a darker background could be a good option.

What it really comes down to when you’re considering what kind of background to use is who your potential readers are and what the Web site is going to be used for. If you want a stylish Web site that doesn’t require a lot of text, and can be improved by highlighting a few specific things on the page, a darker background might work. A photo-heavy Web site or one that logically deserves a darker looking theme are times when a dark background are fine. Just because a lot of Web sites use white backgrounds doesn’t mean they all need to.

If you decide that a darker background is for you, then there are a few things to keep in mind:

If the Web site might be looked at by people at work, you may want to consider a white background instead. If someone is trying to look at your Web site when they shouldn’t be, a darker background is more likely to grab the attention of those who the reader may not want looking over their shoulder. For these time wasters at work, a site with a white background may be one they are more likely to stay on and check out. Also, keep in mind that the majority of people prefer a white background on sites regardless of where they are.

If your demographic isn’t time wasters at work and you want to make a dark background, then make sure to leave a lot of empty space around the content. A darker Web site is more likely to look clustered if there are too many things on the page, so make sure everything is surrounded with a border of the darkness. This empty space even applies to the text on the site. Use text that is more spaced out and a larger font size if it doesn’t make everything look bad.

Also, if you’re thinking doing a solid black background, you may want to reconsider. Using a darker background doesn’t necessarily mean using a black one. A black background causes too much a of contrast and can strain the reader’s eyes. Instead of using the black background, consider using a dark grey with a text color that doesn’t stand out as much. Using a background with some sort of designs is also an option, but the solid black can be a turn off.

There are a few very helpful landing page design tips that people can take advantage of when they decide they need specific pages to attract customers to different kinds of products on their Web site. If your site offers more than on kind of service or product, it may be a good idea for you to create different pages there serve different purposes.

For example, if you sell different kinds of auto parts, it might be a good idea for you to advertise for those different parts separately online, and if you do, it’d be a good idea to have those different advertisements go to different landing pages. Below of a few suggestions on how to do landing pages correctly. If a landing page is done right, it can increase your sales significantly.

1. Know your desired user by defining you landing page purpose
   If you sell cheese and crackers then your landing page purpose is to sell cheese and crackers to hungry, cheese-and-cracker-loving people. If you sell cell phones along with cheese and crackers, then you have two landing page purposes and need two landing pages. Don’t make your landing page a one-size-fits-all for everything you offer. People are going to your site for a purpose. Know what that purpose is a use it to your advantage.
2. Simple Design
   With any Web design these days, going crazy with graphics, flashing text or anything that will distract your user from the intended purpose is a bad thing. Subtlety is key in your overall design. Make it very simple for your customers to find what they want and purchase it, no one is going to be amazed by flashing images, unless that happens to be what you’re selling.
3. Focus on Purpose/Interest and the Call to Action (conversion)
   These go hand in hand, and they are what should stand out since the site is ultimately built for a specific type of user with a specific interest and a specific purpose.
4. Simplify your forms
   There is no reason to make your forms anything more than they have to be. If you Web site urges people to sign up through some kind of form, make it easy for them. Make the forms in logical place, and only have users fill in the information that is necessary.
5. Testimonials - depending on the landing page
   Depending on the kind of product or service you’re providing, testimonials can be an excellent thing to include on a landing page. Testimonials can provide credibility and trust to your business, which will make potential customers more likely to buy from you.

Check out the video below if you need some more convincing on why landing pages are a good thing to focus on when creating a successful online business.

The average Web site on the Internet doesn’t scroll horizontally, it has vertical scrolling. That means when there is more content on a Web page than there is displayed in your Web browser, the site will scroll down to show you the rest of the content. Web sites don’t have to have a vertical scroll, but it has become the norm.

Another option you have when creating a site is to have it scroll horizontally. This means the site will scroll right to left, instead of up and down. There are some designers who are using the side-scrolling option and it just doesn’t work, but there are also those who are able to use this design method properly. What it really comes down to is whether or not the site you’re working on is compatible with a horizontal scroll.

Not all businesses can benefit from a side-scrolling Web sites. If your Web site doesn’t naturally work with the design, a horizontal scroll is just going to confuse people. One thing that comes with vertical scrolling being the norm is that it’s what most people expect when they are introduced to a new site. If you decide to make your site scroll sideways, make sure there’s good reason for it.

Horizontal scrolling can work for photography sites, Web design and other not-so-business-like sites. If you’re site is supposed to be fun and encourage people to play around with it, then this kind of scrolling can work for you. In general however, a Web site should be easy to use, and horizontal scroll makes it more difficult. If you’re interested in this kind of scrolling, check out some inspirational horizontal scrolling Web sites.

If you decide to go the horizontal scrolling route, make sure to take into consideration that not everyone has the same resolution on their monitor. If you don’t take this into account, it’s much easier to forget to make sure everything is included on the screen that you  want there. People with lower resolutions will end up needing to scroll down as well as sideways if you aren’t careful.

Stealing is something very common in Web design. People are always being inspired by the clever things they see on Web sites, and then going and trying to reproduce a form of them on their own site. Although a lot of this is just a evolution of Web deign, there is definitely a line that shouldn’t be crossed.

A designer should never steal another site’s complete design or concept. While little things throughout the site might inspire similar functions you want to produce, make sure to implement a good chunk of your own creativity as well. It’s okay to be inspired, but that’s as far as it should go. Never steal someone else’s code, or mirror their design. An article from SitePoint describes this rule of stealing in simple terms: it’s okay to steal the inspiration, but not the outcome.

If you find yourself in a situation where you feel someone has been “inspired” by your Web site a little too much, there are actions you can take to try and take back what’s yours. It’s good to be a little forgiving, after all, imitation is the greatest form of flattery. But if the offending site is obviously ripping off what you worked so hard for, it’s time to do something about it.

A great article was published on Freelance Switch concerning what to do if someone steals you work, and it’s a good place to start when trying to build up defenses around your content.

The first suggestion in the article can seem a little amateurish, but that means it may be effective against those amateur thieves who are looking for good content to steal. At the end of everything you create and own online, you can put a phrase that lets everyone know that your content has copyrights, and that it isn’t okay to steal the content without your permission.

If you need tog o further than a simple warning on your Web sites, you can always send a cease and desist request, or contact a lawyer if you want things to get messy. Make sure to examine what the damages are that were caused by the infringement, and if they are small, then it might be best just to let some stuff slide.

Here’s what not to do when being “inspired”:

When you begin designing Web sites, there are a lot of ways to go wrong in what you’re trying to accomplish. The following is a list of what not do, and how to do things correctly.

Over Complicated Design Schemes/Layouts

Keep designs basic, putting in more than the eye can handle will cause visitors to leave your site. Before you start coding your site, reevaluate your layout - even if you have to go back and start from wireframe.

Not Sizing and Saving Images/Graphics for Best Use

Make sure to pay attention to image sizes,  prevent aliasing when saving and decrease load time.  If images are larger than they need to be, it will take longer to load them, even if they don’t appear as big on the Web page.

Using Tables Instead of Divs

While tables serve their purpose in a Web site (tabular data) they should not be used for your layout or navigation. Your code will get unnecessarily bloated in a hurry if you use tables where they don’t belong, which makes it overly difficult for anyone coming after you to edit or make updates to the site.

Not Keeping Consistent Design on Every Page

This is a classic sign of a complete novice. Your Web site is the online face of your company, band or whatever you may be promoting or using the site for. Let’s say a visitor finds your site through a Google search and the first page they are taken to is the “About Us” page. It has a nice blue header, white background and black text - not the best but clean and professional. The visitor likes what they read so they click to the “Home Page” and all of a sudden they’re on what appears to be a completely different site. Now there is an orange header, black backroung and white text. The visitor will quickly be wondering to themselves if they’re even still on the same site.

Let’s Find the Navigation

This also falls under “not keeping consistent design on every page”. If your navigation is horizontally placed just under your header on one page and vertically placed in the left column on the next, visitors are forced to play “find the navigation” on every new page, and that game sucks. Also make sure that all of your links work before you publish your site, article or update.

Not Checking in All Browsers

Designers need to make sure their design works on all of the major Web browsers. Fortunately, there’s only one Web site you need to go to to make sure that your design work. It’s called BrowserShots. Use it.