January 2nd, 2009 posted by Xander Becket 12:08PM | View Full Story
Whenever a client asks us why we do the things we do (especially when it comes to ranking their website on search engines), most of the time it’s unreasonably difficult to explain. Link building is especially frustrating.
To understand the importance of building links, you have to understand how Google works, and to understand how Google works you have to understand how the internet works, and to understand how the internet work…
You get the idea.
It turns out the best way to demonstrate how Google ranks pages has been staring me in the face for 6 months.
November 13th, 2008 posted by Josh Lasdin 12:08PM | View Full Story
After attending a few web design conferences this year (namely An Event Apart and Future of Web Design) I saw it fitting to put together a few tips that I’ve picked up, both technical and procedural. I feel these conferences have greatly changed my view on how websites are and should be created, and hope this list of tips can help strengthen my fellow web designers. So without further blabber, here they are:
1. The Magic of 62.5
Let’s start off with an easy technical tip. If in your stylesheet you set the font size of your body element to 62.5% your text will render on most browsers (we’ll get to IE6 in a minute) as 10px. You might be saying, “10 pixels?? Why is that so special?.”
Doing this allows you to create fluid layouts out of practically any design. With a base value of 10px you can now set every measurement in your CSS in em’s. Have a wrapper container that needs to be 1000px?
Well, now you can set it to 100em and the browser will display it just as planned, but if a user decides to increase their text size, your entire layout will grow respectively, essentially creating a “page zoom” that doesn’t break your containers.
For an example of what this looks like, check out one of our recently launched mini-sites: Beaujolais Duboeuf. Below is the code that you can put into your CSS, including an IE6 rule to balance out all the browsers. body { font-size: 62.5%; } * html body { font-size: 10px; } …View Full Story
June 9th, 2008 posted by Shawn Farner 12:08PM | View Full Story
I thought I’d share something with a little bit of humor today. This is a rap about search engine optimization by The Poetic Prophet (also known as The SEO Rapper). The video is called, “Design Coding” and the lyrics are below the video. Enjoy! Thanks to iJustine for finding this gem and GottaQuirk for the lyrics.
Your site design, the first thing people see. It should be reflective of you and the industry. Easy to look at, with a nice navigation When they can’t find what they want it causes frustration A click costs an action. To increase the temptation Use appealing graphics that create motivation You have animation please use in moderation ‘Cos search engines can’t index the information
Display the logo of all associations Highlight your content; therefore that’s an obligation. Create clean design; you can use some decoration But try to prevent any client hesitation Every page that they click should provide an explanation Should be easy to understand like having a conversation Create a site style you can use your imagination But make sure you use correct colour combinations Do some investigation, looks at other organisations But don’t duplicate or you might face a litigation You done? Congratulations start construction
Move into production, please follow these instructions: Your photoshop functions, slice that design Do you layout with divs make sure there is a line Please don’t use tables even though they work fine When it come to indexing they give searchers a hard time Make it easy for spiders to crawl what you provide Removed font type, font colour and font size No background colours, keep your coding real neat And tag your look n feel on a separate style sheet Better results with XMl and CSS, Now you making progress, a ‘lil closer to success Describe you doc type so the browser can relate Make sure you do it great or it won’t validate
Check in all browsers, I do it directly Gotta make sure that it renders correctly Some use IE some others use flock Some use AOL, I use Firefox Title everything including links and images Don’t use italics, use emphasis Don’t use bold please use strong Cos if u use bold that’s old and wrong
You use CSS your page should load quicker Your client’s satisfied like they eating on a Snickers They stuck on ur page like you made it with a stickers And then they convert now that the real kicker
Make u a lil richer, your site a lil slicker Design and code right man I hope you get the picture What I’m telling you is true man it should be a scripture If it’s built right you’ll be the pick of the litter Everyone will wanna follow you like twitter
Competition will get bitter You will shine like glitter If you tryna grow; your company will get bigger Design and code right man can you get with it?
Demand for your product has plummeted and revenues are falling fast.
You’re leaning on an unlikely side product to stay afloat: plastic tubes for telescopes. Turns out gun cases and telescopes are made from the same materials.
You need a way to jumpstart your telescope business. Most of your gun cases are sold through your website, but getting viable leads for telescopes would be virtually impossible at qualityfirearmcases.com.
So what should you do?
My advice: Build a whole new site for your telescope goods.
The internet isn’t like real life. In real life you have one store with one sign, and therefore usually have only one thing to sell.
People tend to think of the internet as an extension of the real world: “I have a physical business, and I need a website that reflects what my business is.”
But online it’s different. You can build a virtual store around every single one of your core competencies.
It doesn’t make sense to try to sell telescope tubes to people looking for firearm cases (or even to have the two groups of customers come to the same site), but both of your products deserve an equal shot at being sold.
If your business handles two completely different services, the best way to give each a chance at thriving is to build sites around each service.
A potential client will be confused with a site that tries to sell him gun cases and telescopes at the same time, but be delighted with one completely devoted to what he’s looking for.
November 10th, 2007 posted by William Craig 12:08PM | View Full Story
As a web development company who experienced the boom of the late nineties, where moderate sized web applications easily cost a quarter million to build, its amazes us that the cost of today’s web applications has become so inexpensive. We even surprise ourselves with how much functionality we are able to produce for our clients for their invested dollar with the speed our developers, new tools and reusable code.
Here are some recent figures to support this claim:
With costs to develop Web 2.0 applications at affordable cost levels for any new idea and startup it leaves one wondering why not start a site. With MySpace worth an estimated $20 Billion and Facebook gaining quickly at an estimated worth of $10. The risk v. reward tradeoff seems to be stacked for the entrepreneur. If you have a great idea, don’t delay, get a quote from WebpageFX today
As a 