benefits-of-heatmaps

Benefits of heat maps

The benefits of a heat map are very rewarding, let’s say you’re wanting to know which areas of your website are getting the most attention, then a heat map shows you in a visual way that’s easy to understand and then make strategic decisions from.

set goals and objectives for your website

Set goals and objectives for your website

When planning a new website, every business or organisation should set goals and objectives for your website. It’s obvious that you might want to skip ahead to the “fun stuff” and brainstorm ideas.

Bad Design Habits for Websites

An important part of being a professional web designer is knowing what and doesn’t work. There are bad design habits for websites that a lot of builders don’t take notice of. Everything you design on a client’s website should be there for a specific reason, and should follow the most current design practices. Unfortunately, sometimes we all get stuck in a rut, and add certain website elements out of just habit, unaware that there might be a better, more freshen approach.

Dead Macintosh

We are half way through 2016, and it’s time to take a look at some of the most common offenders of web designs. Some are now out-dated, while others are actually toxic to the success of a website. We will examine why each should be forgotten, and what you can do instead to make sure you’re designing with the most current trends at your disposal.

Social Media Icons at the top of the Header

Every time your client has a visitor to their website, it’s a small win. So why would you want to give them a brightly coloured exit sign?

Usually in most cases, the point of a social media campaign is to drive visitors from social network sites to your client’s website, not the other way around. Even if a visitor follows the link with the specific purpose of following your client, the chances are that they will get distracted somewhere along the line, and not come back.

Social Buttons in Header

A Solution:

Your best approach is to start using social media plugins (WordPress) rather than a simple link icon. These will allow your visitors to like your Facebook or Twitter page, or add you on other social channels without bouncing them off the page. It means the users stay on the page, keeping your client’s visitors where you want them.

Try taking the emphasis off by moving them down the page, to either the footer or a sidebar. Also, I recommend to style them in perhaps a less eye catching way. It should only be visible for users who are looking for them, if you make them too colourful, it may entice the visitors to leave.

Tacky Stock Photos

We all know that full-width images are a popular and tired trend in web design, and they have actually been shown to increase conversions. Unfortunately, photos that are clearly of the stock variety can have the opposite effect. People can be turned off by anything they deem to think is not real, which causes distrust, thus taking conversion rates down.

Tacky Stock Photo

A Solution:

You have some choices, but will be largely determined by your client’s budget.

The first choice would be to hire a photographer. Customers respond very well to authenticity, so if your client’s actual photos are professionally taken, it will go a long way building trust. Photography can range in any price, so it can usually be achievable. These days, even a smartphone can take decent photo, if you put a little effort into it.

Another option, stick with stock photography, but choose it much more carefully. We have actually designed many websites using stock photos, but the trick is find the right image that don’t look cheap, and suits your clients business.

Only recently is there stock photo businesses that specialise in “authentic” looking photos. The kind that look like you would find scrolling through your Instagram feed.

Email Links

If part of the website you’re designing includes some type of staff bios, the question of email links will always come up. It’s an easy way of letting people get in touch easily with staff members, but it comes at a cost.

When you click an email link, it will trigger your computer’s native email client, which you may or may not use. Then, I must right-click the email address to save it, and paste it into my gmail.

Another issue is email links are usually crawled by robots, making your client’s website a sitting target for email spam.

Email Links

A Solution:

Most website have an email form on their site, (contact page,) just use this technique everywhere on the site that requires an email address. In the case of individual staff contacts, design one template you can use for each staff member, each with their own mini-contact form that will send to their email address. There are advantages to this approach:

  • Form emails are easily tracked
  • Emails sent through forms can be filtered through apps such as Google’s mail app
  • You can set up specific fields for emailers to complete

If you must include an email address on the website, just make sure they are not linked if you’d like to sidestep email spam. Your clients will appreciate that thinking.

Client-focused Copy

One of the best marketing tools you can bring to any website is professionally copy. In most cases clients use their websites as a brag-page, shouting to the world what makes them so damn amazing. The truth is, their customers could not care less.

Visitors need to be enticed in order to make a conversion. And what entices a user? Benefits. Specifically, how will this product or service benefit me.

By taking up valuable real estate space to brag about your client, you really aren’t looking at what matters. Take a look at the following example:

Client Focused Copy

Visitors don’t really care as much about the fact that they have been innovating since 1949.

A Solution:

Whether the websites copy is coming from you, or directly from your client, it has to address the benefits for the customer. A benefit is not a feature, and it’s not a brag. It should address an objection for a customer, and specifically say how they as a business can solve it.

So instead of “Packaging Quality, Service, and Innovation Since 1949,” you might try “Are You Tired of Paying for More Than You Need? High Quality Offset Packaging With No Minimum Orders.”

This addresses a specific point, and solves the problem easily.

Ghost Buttons that are a Call to Action

Ghost buttons are form over function. While they are not old-school it takes the visual weight out of a button, by surrounding the text with a simple rectangular stroke, it makes for a nice looking design element, but it comes with a price: it decreases click-throughs.

The trouble with ghost buttons is that they don’t always read as buttons. Good user experience states that buttons should be clickable obviously, and ghost buttons sometimes don’t hit the mark.

A Solution:

Simply stick with the basic. Your buttons (especially your main CALL TO ACTION) should be styled to look like a typical button. Here is some tips to design the perfect CALL TO ACTION button:

  • Shape – Rounded rectangles work better. Web buttons have always been associated with rectangles, and the rounded corners draw the eye inwards toward the copy.
  • Copy – Use action words wherever possible that highlight what the customer is getting, not what they are giving up. One example is “Get” is a more saleable word than the word “Buy.”
  • Color – The colour you use for the button should contrast with the background. Don’t go for subtle; You want your CALL TO ACTION to pop out at your customers.

While you should aim to avoid ghost buttons for your CALL TO ACTION, it can often a way to style your secondary line, especially when it is in close proximity to your primary line.

Ghost Buttons

In Summary

Every now you need to take a step back to see what features and techniques are adding to the success of your websites, as well as which ones are only getting in the way. We learn more about user behaviour, so we should always be evolving our methods in order to deliver the best possible result for our clients.

 

WordPress vs PageCloud

wordpress-vs-pagecloud

We are avid users of WordPress, we think there is no other website platform that offers the flexibility of speeding up WordPress, but every now and then comes along a new platform that is meant to wow us all, and PageCloud could be it? Let’s try and find the best platform to create a website using WordPress Vs PageCloud. PageCloud is a very new company that has been making a real big buzz and WordPress is the most popular platform.

What is PageCloud?
Page Cloud is web design software for dummies, it provides a What You See is What You Get (WYSWYG) editor for making all sorts of creative designs.  It’s goal is to give the whole world the ability to create and share information without using web developers or coders (so there goes that industry).

What is WordPress?
WordPress is a free and open source blogging tool and a content management system (CMS) based on PHP and MySQL.

Let’s look at the design comparison

PageCloud
The goal is to allow users to customise up to 90% of their website. If you designed your site in Photoshop, you can easily copy layers out of any desktop design tool and paste it directly onto your pages. With PageCloud you can drag/copy video, widgets, images, spreadsheet charts and text directly onto your site.

WordPress
WordPress is not really a builder, it’s all about installing. WithWordPress you are able to install over thousands of complex themes. Both WordPress and PageCloud require no coding. There is no theme that you can’t find. You can create a Facebook styled theme, video blog styled theme, etc. You are guaranteed to find the perfect design for your website or blog.

With WordPress you don’t need to know HTML, but if you do have coding skills, then you can put them to the test. For a beginner it will take you 5 minutes to create a WordPress website because SiteGround has an automatic WordPress installation wizard. See here how to install it.

Price comparison

There is difference when it comes to price. PageCloud costs around $20 a month, which is a little on the expensive side. The good thing about WordPress is that it is free. The only thing that you need to do is get hosting and domain name registration.

Domain names

PageCloud does allow you to have a custom domain, but you have to go buy one from a domain registrar, and then they will explain to you how to point it at your PageCloud site.

Ownership comparison

When you choose your own hosting, you won’t have to worry about deleting or shutting your site down. This is why people choose WordPress, PageCloud, Squarespace, Tumblr and Wix. With WordPress you own it, and you don’t have to worry about your hard work being gone one day.

Make sure that you have your own servers and you’re not on someone else’s servers. If you read the PageCloud terms of service you will see that they reserve the right to remove your content. This is not uncommon when you don’t have your own servers.

PageCloud’s Terms below:

2.2 License to Your Stuff. You grant us, for as long as you use the Services, a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive license to host, copy, transmit, display, and use Your Stuff in connection with the Services.

2.3 Content Removal. You are solely responsible for Your Stuff and your use of the Services. We don’t pre-screen Your Stuff, but we and our designees (including our third-party vendors and hosting partners) have the right (but not the obligation) in our sole discretion to access, review, and monitor Your Stuff, Your Site, or any information on or made available through the Services, and if we determine in our sole and reasonable discretion, that Your Stuff violates our Acceptable Use Policy, we reserve the right to refuse, remove or delete Your Stuff, without notice.

Flexibility comparison

WordPress

WordPress is flexible. There is no other website platform that can outdo WordPress when it comes it’s flexibility. Not only does WordPress have standard features that makes your site ready to go in minutes, but they also have 30,000 of plugins that extend what your site can do. With over that many plugins you can do anything that you want. You can start an e-commerce shop, real estate listings, photography and many more.

You can start a video or music site. All that you need to do is go to the plugins section and install them mostly for free. One of the first plugins that I like installing is a SEO plugin named Yoast to boost in the search engines. Then a cache plugin for speed.

PageCloud

This is something that you will not be able to do with PageCloud. It is not spoilt in features. They offer just a regular drag and drop builder, but they don’t offer any add-ons. Plugins are such a fun part of creating a website because you get to show your creativity. PageCloud does have a very fast spot-edit though, but once again don’t expect a site that is heavy in features. WordPress is far better for the future because it lets your site grow easily.

SEO comparison
PageCloud has common SEO options like page keywords, descriptions, page titles, file name, H tags, image ALT tags, etc.

WordPress has full SEO features. You can change your breadcrumbs, URL structure,heading tags, sitemaps, image optimisation and so on. On top of that you are able to install SEO plugins.

Many popular sites are using Yoast to achieve high rankings and it is only available with WordPress. You are also able to install cache plugins that will give your site a speed boost. If you want SEO features than there is no other than WordPress.

Popularity comparison
The keyword “PageCloud” has around 18 – 20,000 monthly searches.

The keyword “WordPress” has 2,700,000 monthly searches.

WordPress powers over 25% of the entire web. There is no other platform that comes close to this, and we believe that no other platform ever will.

Support and documentation

PageCloud

PageCloud has an answers page filled with plenty of information. You will not be lacking with their library of articles. It also has a great community forum. And they have a very quick responsive email support.

WordPress

WordPress is a large company, so it has a much larger amount of support and documentation. It has more users, more forums, more videos.

The verdict: The best for your next website.

PageCloud is not something that we haven’t seen before. There is nothing that you can get withPageCloud that you can’t get with WordPress. PageCloud is new so it needs time to grow. It does have potential, but right now WordPress is clearly (and will always be) the best.

WordPress has far better SEO options, more flexibility, more support, cheaper pricing options, more design options (I can go on). I don’t know how anyone can choose PageCloud over WordPress? We have been using WordPress for years, and it has been a blessing. We can create any type of site that suits the needs of our clients.

Talk to Spiros on 0431 926 575 anytime for your WordPress website.

SEO Tips for Designers

SEO For Designers

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a important component of any website. As a web designer or graphic designer, it’s important you understand how SEO works. There is in fact a serious lack of resources for designers who don’t know about SEO out there. Here are some easy SEO NJ tips for designers that will immediately improve the SEO on all of your websites.

Tip 1: Do Not Cheat

Do you think you could outsmart a room full of genius scientists with PHDs? No. Google has many genius scientists with PHDs, and their job is to work tiring hours a week to make sure you can’t fool Google. No matter, what you do, you can’t outsmart them. Just ignore trying to cheat Google and focus on making a web site with great content, and your site will show up fine in the search engine.

Tip 2: Use Your Keywords

Pick some keywords or phrases that describe your website. Use words related to them, whenever it’s natural to do so. Repeating keywords is no good, use them in headlines, sentences and links.

Tip 3: Yes, Content is King

Users search for content. If your website doesn’t have the content people want, then no one will look at it. It’s that simple.

Each page should lead with a relevant H1 tag with one of your keywords, and the first paragraph of text should be a summary of the rest of the page.

Tip 4Clean Code is Searchable Code

Build your website and write clean and readable HTML. It should follow the conceptual structure of your page, this means navigation is first, followed by the H1 tag, then the first paragraph. Try to use descriptive tags when possible. For example using UL for lists, P for paragraphs, H tags for heads and STRONG for bolded text.

Your site can still look great, this is why you CSS.

Tip 5: Home Page is the Most Important Page

The home page is the secret to your website being found by Google. It has to summarise the rest of the site, and give a clear, compelling reason for a user to look at the other pages in the site. It needs to sell your product or company, see it like a advert. You have one shot only to attract the buyer.

Tip 6: Links Need to Have Meaning

Links

Search engines do pay a lot of attention to the links on your website. Never use words like “click here” or “see more” for a link. The link text needs to describe where the link will take the user, for example “examples of CSS web design” or “learn how you can improve your SEO.”

The more relevant the links on a page, the easier to find the page becomes. Don’t go overboard, and don’t link to anything irrelevant.

Tip 7: Title Tags

Every page in your website should have a title with the site name and a short description of the page. About 70 letters in total. Include one keyword. Remember the page title is what appears in Google’s search results, it should give your user a reason to click on it.

Your navigation links should have title attributes that match the titles of your pages. This looks like <a title=”name of page” href=”link”>. It’s a small thing, but it will give you a significant SEO improvement.

Tip 8: Alt Tags Do Matter

Every image on your website needs to have an alt tag, especially images that are relevant to the page. If your page is focused on clothes for example, then label a screenshot “car for sale”, this will improve your page’s searchability. Labelling it “Pic-001” or “image” will not help.

Tip 9: Ignore Meta Tags

A long time ago meta tags were the secret to good searchable SEO. Those days are behind us now. The only meta tag that really matters now is the description tag. Some search engines may use it to provide the text under the link to your page in their results, but make sure it describes the page in a way that explains why a user searching for your content would want to look at your page.

Tip 10: Must have a Site Map

Just make sure you have a site map. This is an xml file that describes the breakdown of pages in your website. Make one, and upload it to Google.

Just remember that search engines are designed to find what a user want. This means the best way to make your site findable is to design it for a dummy (make it dummy proof). Your job as a web designer is to solve a problem, not make art, or feed your ego.

Your problem is to provide your users with a website that is easy to use and have helpful information for what they’re looking for. If you can do that, then the search engines will find you.

I recommend this page also SEO Guide for Designers.

 

Advantages of using WordPress

WordPress-Plugins

Advantages of using WordPress to Power Your Company’s Website

At DesignLab, we only build our websites for our clients using WordPress. It has been around since 2003 and is the most popular blogging software around. Over the past years, WordPress has also become the content management software of choice for non-blogging websites. Here are some advantages why WordPress is so popular and why you might want to consider using DesignLab to build a WordPress platform for your company’s website.

1. Easy to Use

WordPress is very easy to use.  Adding new pages, blogs, images, videos, etc. on a regular basis is a easy and can be done quickly.  The technology is so simple, which means less time spent on formatting.

2. You Manage Your Website from Any Computer

WordPress is a browser-based software. You can login from any Internet connected computer and manage your site. Simple. Easy.

3. There is no HTML Editing or FTP Software Required

WordPress is a self-contained system and does not require any HTML editing software such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Contribute. You can easily create a new page or blog, format text, upload images (edit them), upload PDFs, video files, image galleries, etc. all without the need for additional HTML or FTP software.

4. Search Engines Love WordPress

The code behind WordPress is clean and simple, making it easy for search engines to read and index a site’s content. Each page, post, and image can have its own meta tag keywords, description, and title, and be optimised for specific keywords, allowing for very precise search engine optimisation.  You can also use tags to further enhance your search engine optimisation efforts.

5. Control of Your Site is Yours

No more waiting for a web designer to make simple updates on your website. You have control of nearly every aspect of your site and can easily make those simple updates yourself, and if you run into trouble there is tons of free help on the internet.

6. Design of Your Website is 100% Customisable

WordPress acts as the engine for your website. The look and feel of your site can be customised so your brand of your company can come through on your site and provide a unique experience to your visitors.

7. Blogs are Built-in and Ready to Go

WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform, which means blogging capabilities are already built-in and easy to integrate. Setting up a RSS / email subscriptions to your blog, commenting capabilities, automatically adding the most recent blog posts to other pages of the site are also simple to set-up, and help to extend your company’s reach and make your site more dynamic.

8. Extending the Functionality with Plugins

You can add an video gallery, event calendar, photo gallery, shopping cart, Twitter Feed, Facebook Fan Box and more to your site. WordPress makes this possible with plugins, most of which are free or reasonably priced. You don’t need to be a web guru to install them.

9. Your Site Will Grow as Your Business Grows

WordPress sites are so scalable. There are hundreds of thousands of pages or blog posts on your site and the performance of the site will not be compromised in the least.

10. Multiple Users

As an administrator of a WordPress site, you can set-up multiple users for the website and assign access levels and capabilities to each user.

9 steps to better web design

As the old saying goes, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Developing a web design without a plan is like constructing a building without blueprints. Things end up in the wrong place, features are overlooked, and the situation is ripe for mis-communication between website developer and client. Planning your website ahead of time will give it clear direction as well as prevent missed deadlines and backtracking. If you are a web developer working with clients, then this guide will help both of you to plan properly. If you are a business owner or employee of an organisation, then this guide will help lay the ground work for your website.

  1. Set your purpose and goals. What is the purpose of your website? To rally support behind a cause? Is it to gain publicity for your business? To sell your inventory? It’s important to identify your website’s purpose, as well as your target audience. You should also define your goals. How many visitors do you expect per month? How many do you expect will sign up for your newsletter? How much in sales do you expect to make? Set measurable, specific goals for your website that are in line with your marketing goals. An analytics tool like Google Analytics will allow you to monitor your website’s performance over time.

  1. Create a budget. Whether you’re an established, mid-sized organisation or a fledgling start-up, you should always set a budget for your website. This will probably include funds for web design, programming, and hosting (though other expenses may apply). Research the market by shopping around and consulting with professionals. Don’t sell yourself short by comparing prices alone. What you save in money you may later pay for with a lack luster site and lots of headaches. It’s better to choose team members based on experience, insightfulness, references, and examples of work.

  1. Assign roles. Assemble a team of people who will be working on your website. Your team may consist of:

  • Company stakeholders (owner, marketing manager, or whoever else represents a primary function of the business)

  • Content writer and/or editor

  • HTML/CSS professional

  • Web and graphic designer

Make sure everyone on your team knows their role and what is expected of them, and that they stay abreast of deadlines and new developments.

  1. Create a content strategy. Content is king! What kind of content will you be displaying on your website? Content is basically anything that gives your visitors information. It can include, but is not limited to:

  • Blogs

  • Documents

  • Videos

  • Photos / Pictures

  • Slideshows

  • Embedded social media feeds (such as your Facebook page or Twitter stream)

Your content strategy is the way that you plan to present your content over time. For instance, you may want to publish two blog posts a month, and put out a free quarterly report for your subscribers to download four times a year. Since content is such a vital aspect of a website, bring in help if you need it. Hire a copywriter who is experienced with writing for websites, and invest in some professional looking photos of your storefront and employees.

  1. Structure your website. Decide what pages you’ll be using and what features will be on each one. Most websites have an About and Contact page, but the pages you use should meet your business’ needs.

  1. Create a mock-up. A page mock-up, also know as a wireframe, is essentially the outline of your website. Usually created in Photoshops, you don’t have to put too much detail into your mock-up.  Use placeholder text to fill pages, and don’t worry about details. This is just to give everyone an idea of what the website will look like.

  1. Start designing. The importance of good web design can’t be stressed enough. Good website design includes both usability and aesthetics. An ugly website will drive away visitors, as will a website that’s difficult to navigate. Keep in mind some basic concepts of usability as you go:

    1. Make your navigation easy to understand and easy to find. Research shows that most users expect website navigation to be vertical and centered at the top of the page.

    2. Use an easy-to-read font for blocks of text. Choose a background color and text color that contrast well (Hint: No red text on a hot pink background).

    3. Make sure your site fits the screen. Use responsive design (or an equally effective approach) to make your website one that adapts to all screen sizes i.e. iPhone, iPads, etc.

    4. Keep your website light in image reproduction so that it loads quickly.

    5. Make your logo and tag line prominent on the page.

    6. Keep styles and colours consistent across the website.

    7. Make copy clear and concise, and put important information and features (e.g., your newsletter sign-up form) above the fold.

Make notes about what to include in the style sheet as you design, as you want to keep style and function separate. This is important, not only to comply with web standards, but to make it easier to change something in the future if you need to. You should also design with the future in mind. For instance, your website may only have a few blog posts now, but what about when you have two hundred?

  1. Test it out. Testing is important for getting out bugs out and catching details that you might have missed initially. Make sure your website shows up the way you want it to in all browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer, and mobile web browsers like Safari and Opera Mini. Test it on your cell phone, your tablet, and your colleague’s cell phones and tablets too. You want your site to have a consistent appearance no matter what screen it shows up on. Make sure all of the links work, that the images are properly sized, and that you’ve replaced all of the placeholders with actual content. See to it that all of the forms and other input fields are working.

  1. Maintain your site. Once your site is launched, the work isn’t over. A website is an ongoing entity that continuously represents your company, so maintenance is very important. Monitor your analytics software to see how your website is performing with the public. Keep an eye on metrics like your number of unique visitors, bounce rate, and which pages are most popular on your website. You might find that certain metrics are more useful to you than others, but that is information you’ll find out over time.

You should also have a plan for maintaining the website, such as who is responsible for posting new content or monitoring site security. And of course, get feedback from your users. Feedback is a valuable tool for improvement.

Planning a website ahead of time is just as important as planning anything else in business, yet this step often gets overlooked by those anxious to claim their piece of internet real estate. Taking the time to plan your website is a great investment, and it will better you chances of having a finished product that serves you well for as long as you need it.