Web design has undergone a continuous and surprisingly fast evolution. No longer just a playground for enthusiasts, it has become a mature rich medium with strong aesthetic and functional appeal. But what trends are currently making a difference? What new techniques, concepts and ideas are becoming important? Here are just a few observations on the current state of web design:
Print Design Influence
As more and more people migrate from printed information to online information There is a move toward the tabloid style layout, where information is carefully organized on columns, giving the visitor an opportunity to explore the site as interested, with feature blocks and multiple points of entry to various sections.
Large Logos, Headers and Images
Large logos and oversized headers create an immediate impact without the need to click through to the next page, as you would on the out-of-favor splash page. All you need to do is scroll down. Along with this, incorporating large illustrative images has become an easy way to establish the tone of a site.
Oversized Footers
Footers are becoming less of an after-thought and more of an integral part of the design. They often feature a more complete listing of site links and the less important and more personal information.
Real-Life Metaphors
User interaction is becoming very straightforward and intuitive. Attractive sites with real-life metaphors, i.e. larger realistic looking buttons, images presented as photos tacked on a bulletin board, etc. Elements that create a virtual atmosphere that is familiar in the real world, and compelling to visitors.
Minimalism
Sites featuring lots of white space, bold typography and fresh color schemes. Contrary to what some may think, minimalism does not have to be cold and impersonal. It can be warm and too the point.
Hand-drawn Elements
Used to personalize standard web copy in new and exciting ways and to convey a sense of whimsy, blurring the line between an impersonal web and personal interaction. Not so much as the main focus of a web design, but elemental.
While many good design practices are rapidly being incorporated into websites, there are also many “over-designed” websites that simply incorporate new trends for their own sake.
The key is to use the appropriate design in the appropriate context for the right purpose. That’s where the beauty of information design lies, and it makes the huge difference between a nice design and a nice and usable design.
Formatting websites for mobile browsers continues to be an important part of web development, and it only gets trickier as technology advances. With the advent and rising popularity of touch screen devices, mobile web development isn’t just about formatting a website so it’s easy to read on a small screen, it’s also about how that website behaves.
Touch screen devices such as Apple’s iPhone, iPod touch and iPad, Sprint’s HTC Evo and those that support Android have become large and functional enough that users sometimes prefer the full web experience instead of seeing a paired down mobile version of a site. In such cases, it’s important to be sure your site is compatible with the touch screen operating systems. Often times there are functions of a website that, while operating fine on a normal web browser, do not perform correctly on a mobile browser.
One example of incompatibility we’ve come across a lot lately is with fly-out (also known as drop-down or pop-up) navigation menus. On the web, they’re designed so that rolling your mouse over a button will trigger a sub menu. But with touch screen devices, we found we’d have to hit the fly-out link three times before it registered.
The fix for this? New software! There are many ways to create fly-out menus, and our previous program created code that wasn’t touch screen friendly. After some research and testing, we decided to go with the Pop Menu Magic 2 Dreamweaver module from Project Seven Development:
Easy to install and easy to use, this module creates code that works properly on both computers and touch screen mobile devices, and it has some pretty nice effects, too. You can see some samples here:
There are other solutions out there, of course. When you decide on one, just be sure to test the results with as many devices and possible…and be ready for OS updates to create even more odd behavior.
In this day and age size is everything. And when it comes to URLs, shorter is better. Better for Tweeting, better for SEO and better for tracking. Take a look at how smaller URLs can offer great benefits to you, your website, and your business:
Creating new URLs for better tracking can be a pain and downright tricky if you don’t know what you are doing. Sites like bit.ly and tinyurl.com allow fast and easy creation of unique URLs complete with tracking installed. You can see traffic, conversations on Twitter and a history. You can also find them easily in Google Analytics.
Yesterday you may have noticed something a bit different about Google as you searched: search results just started to appear as you typed. No clicking needed! This is the latest evolution for Google’s search engine, known as Google Instant.
Google Instant auto completes search results as you type. So, if I am searching for Butterfinger candy bars, as I type ‘butter,’ search results and ads begin to appear for the keyword ‘butterfly,’ which Google is predicting I am searching for. However, once I type ‘butterfi’ the search results and ads will change to show me results for the keyword ‘butterfinger.’
So what does this all mean (besides that I am hungry and thinking about candy bars)? Basically Google Instant makes searching faster and may eventually change how we use the search engine.
What does this mean for paid search campaigns? If ads are appearing before a user even finishes their search, does that count as an ad impression (an impression is when an ad appears in a search)? Not exactly. According to Google’s AdWords blog:
With Google Instant, an impression is counted if a user takes an action to choose a query (for example, presses the Enter key or clicks the Search button), clicks a link on the results page, or stops typing for three or more seconds.
Basically, the only thing that has changed is the three second rule. It is possible, but still unclear, if this will result in an increase in impressions. If it does, it will also result in a decrease in CTR, or click through rate, a percentage determined by the number of times an ad is clicked on over the number of total impressions. This is one more reason not to design a paid search campaign around the results of one specific metric, including looking only at the CTR. We will be monitoring our clients’ AdWords campaigns closely to see if Google Instant will effect anything.
The bottom line: Google Instant is a faster way to search and one more way to get your paid search ads seen and clicked on. It may result in an increase in impressions and a decrease in CTR, but it is too early to tell. Ultimately, the important thing to focus on is a paid search campaign that targets the specific keywords that will attract the right audience. If you have any questions about Google Instant or setting up a paid search campaign, shoot me an email at JD@DynamicsUS.com. I will be glad to help.
For a fun example of how Google Instant works, check out this video of a Google Instant search performed to the lyrics of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”:
Much has been written about the fun and adventure of writing your own standalone blog. But mostly we are involved in adding blogs to existing websites. In that case, we make the blog appear to be integrated into the site so that the posts appear as pages on that site (as you see now, if you are reading this entry on our site, DynamicsUS.com). Some of the advantages of an integrated blog are:
It allows a non-technical person to add fresh content to an otherwise static website.
It gives website visitors the impression that the site is timely and well maintained.
Blog posts get indexed in search engines and show up in search results. That brings visitors to your site.
It further conveys your visual branding.
Allowing comments gives you a chance to collect feedback on your content. You can choose to publish or not publish these comments. Comments also become searchable content.
Blog posts can be positioned in other social networking outlets, such as on your LinkedIn profile (see mine, very easy to add, but you must be connected to me in order to see it), your Twitter account (see ours), or on other pages of your site (see our home page).
Our recent implementations of integrated blogs have used WordPress, a very powerful tool for blogging and content management. See a recent installation here. Please contact us if you are interested in having a blog added to your existing site.
Recap of Top 5 Tips:
1. Optimize Images
2. Optimize Videos
3. Optimize Press Releases
4. Optimize your Blog
5. Optimize your Social Media
6. Submit Your Site to Local Business Listings – These are the group of links that appear next to the image of a map when you do a search for a local business or service. Some typical searches that bring up local business listings are “Lawyers in Cleveland” or “Cleveland Cosmetic Dentist.” If your site is not well optimized, a local listing can quickly get your site ranked in the top ten search engine results. Creating a local business listing is an excellent example of using blended search results to get higher rankings.
7. Create a Wikipedia Entry – Wiki entries are almost always in the top five search engine results because they offer a enormous amount of searchable content on almost every subject. While the information may, or may not be 100% accurate, search engines still recognize wikis as a valuable resource for information. Creating a wiki is free and can provide exponential benefits for your website.
8. Submit Products to Google Shopping (formerly Froogle) – Google shopping provides a quick and easy way to get all of your products listed in Google with minimal effort. The only thing you need to do is upload a spreadsheet with all of your product images, descriptions and prices. The only downside is that you must resubmit your database every thirty days. This is a small price to pay to get your products found. Now if you have an e-commerce website, you can set up a data feed from your site that automatically feeds products into Google Shopping.
Here is an example of a Google Shopping listing for the keyword “Discount Office Chairs”
Office Chairs from the OfficeChairsExpert.com
9. Optimize Online Presentations – Tools like slideshare allow you to easily post PowerPoint presentations to your website. This not only adds valuable content to your site, but is also extremely convenient for visitors and email recipients (simply send them a link to the PowerPoint presentation). PowerPoint presentations have been showing up more and more in both Google and Yahoo.
10. Optimize for Organic – This is a no-brainer. Make sure your website is optimized. It is best to start with your own website by taking advantage of all on-site optimization elements first. When you have covered all of your bases, start with a few tips that I mentioned here and in my previous post about blended search. One thing to keep in mind when you are trying to optimize for blended search results is that this is a marketing or branding campaign for your business. Try to be consistent with your image and the terminology you use across the board and you will have success.
If you want to ensure all your hard work creating videos, Tweeting, posting images and writing press releases doesn’t go unnoticed, subscribe to these five methods of optimizing for Blended Search.
1.Optimize Images – Use proper naming conventions that are loaded with the keywords or key phrases for which you wish to be searchable. Avoid naming conventions such as image007.jpg or company_logo.gif. By properly describing your images, you not only get an edge with Search Engine Optimization, you will find it helps keep your image folders organized and easy to reference. Optimize the size of your images, too. The speed at which people demand information is forcing websites to increase the download speed of images and documents. The faster your webpages appear, the better your chances to rank higher in search engines. Optimize using alt text. With the exception of the name of your images, this is the only way search engines can “see” your images.
2.Optimize Videos – As the trend of using videos to find information grows, optimizing videos continues to become more critical. Video sharing sites such as www.YouTube.com and www.dailymotion.com provide ways to optimize your videos when you upload them. They allow a title for your video, a short description and even tags. Take advantage of these elements by placing important keywords in them.
3.Optimize Press Releases – Search engines love press releases because they are relevant to the times. You can easily optimize them by using keywords or key phrases in the title and in the opening paragraph. Try to use different variations of the keyword and don’t be “spammy” by overloading the press release with your keywords.
4.Optimize Your Blog – First, if you are not blogging, start. Second, because blogs continue to be a more trusted source for information, they are becoming a large component of search engine results. They are a quick and easy method of getting more content on your site. Use the same optimization tips as you would for a press release.
5.Optimize Your Social Media – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, bloggin and forums; How can these help your business? Besides the fact that they are all extremely viral, search engines are indexing them. If you look back at my last post on Blended Search, you will see a screen capture of live updating Tweets from Twitter. Why is this so amazing? Because out of 61 million listings, it was in the 4th Google search ranking position for the search term, “Tiger Woods.” This opens the door for smaller, newer sites to rank well for other competitive terms, even if for only a short period of time. Follow the same search engine optimizing tips you would for a blog or a press release and you may find your social media ranked at the top for your most important keywords.
Check back on Friday, January 21 for the rest of my Top 10 Tips for Blended Search Optimization.
A hot topic at this year’s Search Engine Strategies Expo in Chicago was the emergence of Blended Search Results and how they can help improve your positioning in search engines. Blended results have been around since 2007, they just hadn’t made as big a splash as they are now.
What are blended search results? Blended search results combine the typical blue text link and the two line description with many other types of results including image, video, news, wiki, social media and more. For example, I did a web search for “Tiger Woods,” which returned:
Image Results
Video Results
News Feeds
Wikies
Social Media
How will blended search results affect my business? With more than 20 different types of blended search results, the top 10 search engine ranking positions are becoming more competitive. Before blended search was created, there were ten results listed on the first page in a search engine. These listings were driven by search engine optimization elements such as page titles, meta tags and inbound links. Now, the typical blue text link results are fighting for position with image results from Google Shopping or video results from YouTube.com, and even Twitter has found its way into the top ten.
How can my business take advantage of Blended Search? Similar to the search engine results of the past, you must optimize. Blended search is primarily based on keyword rich content and relevancy to the other content on your site.
To read my Top 10 Tips for Blended Search Optimization, visit our blog on Tuesday, December 22.
Having a company Twitter page is now more appealing than ever!
The three search engine giants, Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are now each planning to include Twitter “Tweets” in their search engines. This comes as no surprise considering that Facebook profiles and pages can now be found in web searches quite easily.
Twitter, which allows users to post short, 140-character messages, has fast become one of the most widely used social media applications to date. These text only “Tweets” can range from simple news entries to self promotion, or even pointless babble.
In a corporate setting Twitter is perfect for quickly announcing upcoming events, or commenting on related news issues. Think of it as a micro-blogging platform that allows potential customers to easily get the information they need about your company or organization.
Not convinced? Check out all the ways Twitter can be used:
Personal branding
Feedback
Hiring, finding prospects
Connects employees to one another
Customer notification
Setting up meetings
Acquire votes
Live coverage
Time management and analysis
Above all else Twitter is a great traffic generation tool. Each tweet has an incredible amount of “pass-along” potential, utilizing the viral nature of social media to it’s fullest.
Let us know if your interested in having Dynamics Online create a customized Twitter profile for your company.
This is a test to determine if a non-related website hyperlink can provide benefit to another site. The keyword we are optimizing for is Home Office Furniture.
