Common Web Design Blunders and How to Avoid Them

Posted on April 10, 2012 by in Interactive Design

Nowadays, it’s hard to find a business that does not have a website to their name. With the sheer amount of freelancers, agencies, and web design contractors on the market, creating a website is easier than ever. However, a website is more than just pretty visuals and compelling content – it is important that it possess a solid foundation in web design. Whether your business decides to hire an agency or an in-house graphic designer, it is vital to make sure they avoid the most common of web design mistakes.

Stay Away from these Common Web Design Mistakes

Blunders can happen to even the best of web designers. Regardless of whether you’re a new or veteran professional in the market, the following tips are important for any web designer to keep in mind:

Understand the Audience

When working on a website for a client, many web designers make the mistake of failing to understand the client’s core target audience. However, it is critical to understand how to structure a website so it engages the target market. For example, web design for dermatologists focuses on an audience completely different from that of tattoo artists or dentists. One useful tip for web designers is to place themselves in the eyes of the customer, and ask whether they themselves would click through the links. If not, it may be time to go back to the drawing board.

Avoid Clutter

Businesses may be tempted to ask for a site filled with flashy images and impressive videos. However, all this clutter may distract visitors from the main core of your website. In addition, packing your web pages with too much graphics and text can cause your site to load slower, decreasing the overall user experience. Instead, focus on a balance between text and visual, so that they complement each other without detracting from the main purpose of the site.

Stale Content

Both web designers and clients make the mistake of treating a website as a standalone product once it is made. However, without fresh content, the website is prone to looking stale and passing on into obscurity. Beyond simply updating the content within the website, there are a number of ways to keep visitors coming to your site. For example, adding a blog is a great way to keep a website fresh, as it engages readers with relevant content.

Compatibility with Browsers

If a visitor is prompted with an “Only Compatible with Internet Explorer” button when clicking on your site, they may get an unfavorable impression of your business. It is vital to test this early on, as your website may look different from one browser to the next. Avoid this error by making sure that your website is compatible with all browsers. W3.org possesses a Markup Validation Service that can give you helpful information about the compatibility of your site, along with other helpful resources.

No Call-to-Actions

A call-to-action is more than a “contact us” link in the navigation header – it is a small button, banner or other type of graphic that compels a visitor to click. However, without call-to-actions throughout the website, visitors are unlikely to convert into leads. These buttons are placed on a variety of web pages, ranging from the homepage to the bottom of blog posts. Try out different combinations of text and color in order to determine which achieves a higher click-through rate.

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Overhaul Your Site With These Top Web Design Tips

Posted on March 26, 2012 by in Interactive Design

When trying to run a successful site, it’s crucial that you have a good understanding of good practices in web design. Good web design not only makes your website more visually appealing, but also more comfortable to use, and gives it a more genuine feel. Proper design will first attract visitors to your site, and then ensure that they return often. This piece has a lot of advice to point you toward ideal website design.

Even if you see designs you are attracted to on other sites, it is better to be creative on your own. You can incorporate designs of your own, alongside other ideas that you borrow from other sites. Using this technique will give you the ability to make amazing websites.

When building multiple web pages in the subcategory of your site, your best helper will be the copy/paste attribute on your computer. When you can re-use pre-existing code with only a few minor tweaks in each different page, generating all-new HTML code over and over is a waste of time. You can use the template file as much as you want.

A visual sitemap should be made so that you are able organize your next steps in an effective manner. A visual site map will show you how the structure of your site is evolving. This will allow you to hone in on anything that needs some tinkering, or perhaps something that you have completely overlooked. Having a visual representation is key to designing a website.

To work out the visual aspects of your site design, you can use a program like Photoshop to create mockups. Programs like Photoshop are great for new web designers, because it allows them to quickly create professional websites. Building a site from scratch can be overwhelming for amateur designers, so take advantage of design tools and programs that can do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Allow your visitors to contact you through email, a contact form, comments or social media. You will learn what is missing or misunderstood, and be able to make changes as needed. Letting your visitors get involved helps to ensure they will come to your site again.

It is essential to test the pages in your website to be certain they look as they should on every different browser; a successful site needs to display correctly in all browsers. A webpage that displays properly using Internet Explorer, could appear incorrectly or poorly on a different browser such as Firefox or Chrome. Before you set your site to go live, look at how every page shows up in all the major browsers.

Don’t assume that you have to make use of every last inch in your website layout. Using plenty of blank or “white” space is a common design strategy, and a very effective one. When you have open space on your website, your visitors can see what you have on offer and read your text with ease. This can only benefit you and them.

No matter how flashy your website is, it is vital that you keep the sizes of your website’s files small. Large files cause your website to load slowly. You want your site to load as quickly as it can. Remember that some of your visitors are going to be using slower Internet connections than others. Run tests to ensure that even dial-up users report a smooth user experience.

Using good web design technique is very beneficial. Good web design will make your website attractive and easier to navigate, ensuring that visitors read and trust its content. Never underestimate the importance of good design. This article has many great web design tips. Use what you’ve just learned and design a successful website.

Author: Pat Morgan
Pat has been writing for blogs and article directories for years now and specializes in diet, health, finance, saving money, internet marketing, family issues and cooking. He currently has a blog about Auto Blogging Plugins, where your can find up to date articles and free information on profitable Web Design.

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Improve Your Hiring Process and Build a Dependable Workforce

Posted on February 16, 2012 by in Interactive Design

With the high unemployment rate, some people are willing to say anything to get a job. Don’t believe me, well check out this infographic from Business.com that points out some of the biggest fibs people make during the hiring process, and learn how you can avoid them as an employer.


Visit Business.com for background checks and other business resources.

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Myths and Facts of SEO Consulting Services

Posted on November 13, 2011 by in SEO

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a vital marketing strategy offered by a host of companies and agencies.SEO is used by businesses to build a successful online presence. When search engine optimization is done correctly, your business website will be highly capable of driving targeted traffic and attracting plenty of potential customers and prospects.

However, because of the need for effective SEO strategies, there is also an influx of companies offering SEO consulting services which makes choosing the right SEO consultant harder. In fact, a lot of companies offering SEO consulting services practice out-of-date SEO methods and other unscrupulous SEO methods just to make a quick buck. The problem is that reputable and competent companies offering SEO consulting services also take on a bad reputation, when in fact; these companies are highly capable of implementing effective SEO campaigns. Likewise, dubious companies offering SEO consulting services make it more difficult for competent SEO firms in convincing potential clients that search engine optimization work, which is sad since SEO can be a highly efficient method when marketing businesses.

In order to help businesses decide on the perfect company to provide them with SEO consulting services, it is vital that they become acquainted with the various SEO myths and facts and go from there.

SEO Myths and Facts

Myth 1: Automated search engine submission programs, capable of building traffic and daily website submission to search engines to get a website listed are effective.

Fact: SEO consulting firms offering SEO consulting services like this typically submit to link pages that are ‘Free for All’ (FFA), and important search engines like Google and Bing ignore these submissions. Hand submission will still garner the most favorable results. But, search engines index web pages every single day. So you don’t have to submit at all really, but you must build links on other sites so that the search engines can find yours and index it.

Myth 2: Keywords in your meta tags are capable of increasing you website’s ranking.

Fact: Meta tags ‘mattered’ before, but now don’t. You can still however include meta tags in HTML codes if you like, but they do not offer an advantage since they presently do not have search engine ranking value.

Myth 3: Page generators that are keyword-based are important in order to obtain a top position.

Fact: If a company offering professional SEO consulting services offers this then stay away. These page generators, creating doorway pages,  are a nuisance at best and don’t provide a top listing capable of lasting for a long time.

Myth 4: All your web pages should be search engine optimized for best results.

Fact: Any company offering effective SEO consulting services will tell you that focusing on specific web pages to get your point across, in terms of your business goals, audience, and business model is what works. To illustrate, do you think that your site’s privacy policy page, contact page, terms and conditions page, or affiliate sign-up web page need to be listed by the search engines?

Web pages are independently evaluated by search engines. This means that your focus should be to optimize specific web pages to aid you in achieving your business goals.

Myth 5: IP delivery and cloaking are not spam.

Fact: The fact is that majority of search engines, especially the major ones, consider these as spam. This can lead to delisting, or worse, domain blacklisting. Competent SEO consultants may sometimes use these methods for something else, if they do, and not mainly for SEO purposes.

Myth 6: Linking your web page to quality web sites and sites with high traffic will greatly help with your page rank.

Fact: Linking your web page will help THEIR page rank, and not your page rank. Linking to highly trusted and authority web sites will however help build your credibility and online presence, and won’t negatively affect your SE ranking, but that’s about it.

Myth 7: Plenty of internal links in your web site is key.

Fact: While it is true that internal links are excellent tools for SEO, companies offering great SEO consulting services will tell you that linking is also an art in itself. What is more important in terms of page ranking is the placement of keywords in your anchor text. Likewise, you’ll need to map out which web pages you need to focus on and where to accurately place the internal links on.

Myth 8: Google Page Rank greatly helps with your site’s keyword ranking.

Fact: The Google Page Rank tool was developed so that people will be able to determine the popularity of a web page according to its backlinks. It is not related in any way to how your site will rank better with keyword searches. PR ranks are great for determining if a web site is trustworthy and for what the crawl requency is of pages. Pages with higher Page Rank are supposed to get crawled more frequently.

Myth 9: AdSense and Adwords are necessary for page ranking, especially with Google.

Fact: AdSense and Adwords are not capable of increasing your page ranking because they are not associated with organic ranking. You can make more money with AdSense if your site is ranking and drawing in lots of traffic. However, they are not built to affect organic SE rankings.

Now that you have some idea about the myths and facts surrounding search engine optimization, you can be more confident when looking for companies that offer SEO consulting services. Just stick with the SEO facts and avoid companies that offer services based on the SEO myths above.

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Freedom in Interactive Design

Posted on August 5, 2011 by in Interactive Design, SEO

When I mention freedom in interactive design I’m referring to the idea that search marketing and conversion rate optimization does not need to sabotage good design. Rather, SEO consultants and CRO folks should work to accommodate design and creativity.  The user experience should ALWAYS come first and not the search engine or CRO “best practices.” OK, so this is mostly for SEO people because generally CRO people are in agreement with this idea, but I digest. Oops sorry, just ate lunch.

I felt the need to create this post because I come across this battle between both IT and creative when it comes to SEO. Yes, even still the fight rages on. But I learned a very long time ago that as an SEO consultant it is your #1 priority to be best friends with these people because usually they will have the power to make or break the SEO. If you adopt this belief then you will surely find SEO success, and usability.

Now I’m not saying to totally be passive and give in to every crazy design idea. But you need to pick your battles, have an open mind, and not get emotional. If there is something that a designer wants to do that will absolutely kill the SEO then you need to tactifully point out the benefits of their design first, then note the drawbacks. Presenting both sides of the argument, especially the positive points first, helps decision makers understand the entire landscape and makes the designer not feel like you are calling them out.

If you can back your arguments with data then this always helps too. I’ve often used a quote from Matt Cutts to back an SEO strategy since he is from Google and what he says is often considered gospel in SEO. Even my most unknowledgeable clients know who he is.

So the moral of the story is that there is no need to fight. That part of being a good SEO is understanding that your job is to accommodate good design and not fight it in the spirit of just trying to appease the search engines. In the end, the search engines really want good design and usability anyways!

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Freedom Interactive Design

Posted on July 15, 2011 by in Uncategorized

Welcome to the Freedom Interactive Design blog. We will be working to provide our readers with information and updates around interactive design, online advertising, search marketing, and all things digital.

Another thing, we value your thoughts and opinions so please feel free to speak your mind in the comments. Let us know if there is something wrong with the site, if there is a certain topic that you would like to hear more about, or just what your opinion is on the subject at hand. We will not accept spammy comments, so don’t even try it. Be genuine and contribute to the conversation. After all, that is what social media and blogging is all about. And if you are interested in guest posting feel free to submit and inquiry via our contact page.

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