Usually reminiscing of the 90’s for me includes jamming out on my iPod to one hit wonders like “Baby got back” or “Macarena.” Although I was born in 1987 and was just three years old in 1990, I still remember messing around on dial up Internet in the mid to late 90’s and it seems all to easy to forget what the world wide web looked like just ten to twenty years ago. Today on The Denver Egotist, it seems they wanted to take a trip down memory lane and remind users, and themselves, what exactly June 15, 1990 looked like for their site. What was first a bit confusing turned comical and I really enjoyed looking back in time myself. I’m not sure which technology they used to do this, but I do know that you can visit a site called the Way back machine that will prompt you for a URL and then allow you to choose the year. So go mess around on it!  Just keep in mind the trends of the 90’s probably aren’t coming back anytime soon.

~Dionna

Since I started at Location3 in January of this year, I have been using WordPress to manage our internal website assets, and as a WordPress “newbie” I have been hearing buzz about version 3.0 and all the new features. Although our developers are using the beta now, I just had to investigate for myself and find out what all the fuss was about. I was pleasantly surprised to find it is revving up its CMS capabilities, and I think several of these new features will come in handy! I have listed four that I’m most thrilled to start using.

WordPress MultiSite (WPMS)
WordPress MultiSite, formally known as WordPress MultiUser (WPMU) now allows you to manage several WordPress sites with one copy of WordPress under the “Super Administrator” title. Basically this will let you manage all your websites under a single admin panel, reducing over-all maintenance for shared content, templates or plug-ins. We are anticipating it to be extremely useful for our clients that want to allow franchisees a page on the site they can make their own.

Custom Navigation Menu
The new custom navigation menu will now make WordPress more user friendly, which I greatly appreciate as a WordPress beginner. It uses a drag and drop management method to add Pages, Categories and Links. It gives you the ability to re-order the navigation, create submenus and page hiding from the menu. WordPress has teamed up with WooThemes to create this new feature.

Twenty Ten Theme
The new Twenty Ten default theme is a combination of a clean, simple and customizable template. With the new theme, you can add a custom background, change the header effortlessly, use of a drop-down menu with multiple levels of nested sub-pages and the option of a one and two-column template.

Custom Posts Types
Custom Posts is a combination of a new functionality and a step towards better website organization. This feature now gives the user the capability to create custom post and without having to rely on a plug-in to help power this need. A few ways to use this new tool are to create photo gallery posts, podcasts posts or calendar posts.

I can’t wait to start applying these new features to our website creation!
What tools are you excited for? Do you have any questions for our resident WordPress guru Ali Khan?

After revamping several dozen PPC landing pages for one of our clients, Crystal and I have turned our attention to re-creating the pages in the mobile space. While she dives into the actual work, I thought I would take a moment to review some best practices for mobile sites and landing pages.

I came across this great document a while ago, published by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Published in July of 2008, the document guidelines everything you could possibly imagine from use of large graphics, to style sheet size, to the default input mode. If you do decide to create a mobile website “from scratch” so-to speak, I would recommend sharing the entire document (ok, at least the free standing summary) with your web developer. (Or hey, did we mention we do web design and development?)

Some highlights:
•    Provide minimal (and consistent) navigation
•    Use clear and simple language
•    Limit scrolling to one direction
•    Ensure that information conveyed with color is also available without color
•    Do not use frames – avoid tables unless the device is known to support them
•    Don’t rely on cookies being available

Just like “traditional” web design, you should bear in mind the limitations of the devices where your site will be served. The W3C suggests catering to the Default Delivery Context, defined as “the minimum delivery context specification necessary for a reasonable experience of the Web” and is outlined as follows:
•    Usable screen width = 120 pixels, minimum
•    Markup Language Support = XHTML Basic 1.1
•    Character Encoding = UTF-8
•    Image Format Support = JPEG, GIF 89a
•    Maximum Total Page Weight = 20 kilobytes
•    Colors = 256 Colors, minimum
•    Style Sheet Support = CSS Level 1
•    HTTP = HTTP 1.0 or 1.1
•    Script = No support for client side scripting

However, the W3C wants to stress “many devices exceed the capabilities defined by the DDC. Content providers are encouraged not to diminish the user experience on those devices by developing only to the DDC specification, and are encouraged to adapt their content, where appropriate, to exploit the capabilities of the actual device.”

Bottom line, mobile web design is still tricky. A variety of platforms, sizes and browser access make it hard to pin point a common denominator. Therefore, my final recommendation is to design both a WAP-friendly site and a smart phone site…and test, test, test!

Are you thinking of redesigning your website? Or do you currently not have a website (*gasp*) but realize the importance and would like to develop one? With some million websites out there and approximately ­­­­1.08 billion people world-wide on the Internet (according to the Computer Industry Almanac, and that was in 2005, so it is most definitely much higher now), establishing an online presence is a no-brainer in today’s economy. But competition is fierce and Internet users are finicky. If your site isn’t easy to navigate or doesn’t have the certain finesse to set it apart from the millions of others, users will quickly abandon your site and take their business elsewhere.

So what’s a company to do? You’re at an important juncture right now—you’ve resigned to the fact that you either need an entirely original website or a redesign of your existing site. Now you’re faced with potentially one of the most important decisions of your company’s life: Which web design firm to hire?

I’m not going to lie to you. This is not an easy task. There are nearly as many web design firms and freelancers out there as websites. So how do you choose? What could possibly make them different? I assure you, there is one gravely important element to web design that can severely affect your business; however, it is one that many established web design firms overlook. And that would be search engine optimization-friendly designs.

How can experienced, professional web designers ignore this important element, you ask? I wonder the same thing, my friend. Maybe it’s because they are focused on creating an aesthetically appealing site. Oddly enough, as noted in one of my past blogs, “Appalling Appeal,” it’s common knowledge that ugly websites perform better than flashy ones. Whether it’s because they’re easier to navigate or because they have a higher trust factor due to a less sales-y appearance, bare-bones websites are often the more popular option for many internet users (just look at Google, Craigslist or IMDb—these ugly ducklings don’t aspire to be swans).

The most plausible reasoning that professional web designers don’t implement SEO strategies at the onslaught of design projects is because they just don’t know enough about it. And it’s not their fault—SEO is a medium that is constantly changing due to updated search engine algorithms and penalties for unethical strategies.

That, too, may be a contention among web designers—they don’t know the difference between white hat SEO (ethical strategies that are rewarded by search engines) and black hat SEO (conniving tricks that are seen as dubious and thus penalized by search engines, often leading to banishment from search engine results pages all together).

Before you determine the decision is too daunting and denounce your web design deal, consider this: many agencies that are very familiar with SEO offer website design services. These companies employ talented, experienced web designers and knowledgeable (ethical!) SEO experts. They develop your websites to include SEO-friendly elements right from the get-go—the most logical choice for any new website.

Here’s a brief overview of how it works—like any good web designer, the SEO-savvy firm discusses your goals and determines your needs/wants in regards to look and feel. They then research your industry—analyzing the competition and gleaning important competitive points—and pull keywords from your PPC management campaign, if you have one. Then, drawing on your current marketing theme from other advertising channels, they choose a few relevant, high-volume search terms to incorporate into your new website. These terms and phrases are not only appropriate for your business, they also receive a significant number of searches each day. The keywords are placed in prime sections of your new website prior to launch, instead of going back to a live site and messing with code, which could potentially lead to a broken or inaccessible site for a period of time.

True SEO programs require continuous monitoring and months of extensive link development after launch to ensure that that your site stays at the top of the search listings; however, the basic strategies that SEO-savvy web designers incorporate into your site are the foundation on which you can build a successful SEO campaign, should you have the time and resources. And if not, these SEO-astute web designers can either continue efforts after launch or refer you to an SEO agency that can.

By using a web design firm that knows SEO, you will avoid the headache of having to double back and make changes to a site that you just paid (probably a lot) to have designed. Plus, SEO strategies create a better user experience for you visitors. Don’t get caught up in the hype that SEO is just a sneaky way for businesses to get free advertising and exposure—proper implementation of SEO strategies will make your customers happy. And, ultimately, isn’t that what we’re all trying to do here?

Recently, our creative design team—graphic designer, SEO technician and copywriter—were charged with redeveloping a few websites. We have a series of similarly-themed pages, each with a slightly different layout. Some were converting exceptionally well, while others were not doing so hot. We all had our theories as to why some performed poorly—one index page broke the above-the-fold rule, one offered fewer paths to conversion and one was aesthetically pleasing.

Wait a second. Back the truck up. Beep, beep. One site was performing poorly because it was pretty!? Sounds counterintuitive, right? It surely left me quite baffled. I can only imagine the chaos ripping through our graphic designer’s mind. Ugly is preferable—such blasphemy cannot be easily comprehended by a creative, artistic individual.

The more I thought about it the more I realized that ugly sites are not only ubiquitous, they’re popular and prosperous, too. Consider some of the most frequently visited sites—MySpace, Google, craigslist, Wikipedia, eBay, IMDB—each is dull, boring and dare I say, ugly! However, they are some of the most popular sites today—Google is the second most popular, MySpace is third and the rest fall somewhere in the top twenty.

To understand this phenomenon, I decided to do some research. I guess I learned a few things about why people frequent these sites—they’re simple, easy to navigate, load quickly and seem to have an “anti-marketing” design. However, none of this information was mind blowing and I still felt that a deeper explanation was necessarily. There are a lot of simple things in this world, yet most people opt for the more complicated scenario. Why, then, the discrepancy with websites? In an attempt to rationalize this anomalous finding, I decided to utilize some psychologically-based theories (untrained, mind you) to explain the appalling appeal of these frightful sites.

I first considered the psychology of beauty. There is a natural tendency to be attracted to those that are healthy looking. It has little to do with buns of steal, perky breasts or lack of body fat. Instead, it’s a primitive and inherent attraction to those more capable of survival. Physically fit individuals are better able to provide and procreate, consequently passing along these vital genes to future generations. Whether or not one plans to have children, they are still an animal with the natural and unavoidable desire to propagate the species. Being attracted to individuals that are more suitable for endurance makes it more likely that future offspring will be well-suited as well.

Okay, so that explains nothing. Apparently the psychology of beauty does not apply to websites. Then what is it? Consider the following hypothetical situation—one that may be the consequence of a modern psyche adaptation rather than an ingrained slant toward natural selection—you’re at Target, ready to check out with a cartload of items. As you approach the registers, you see two lanes with lights aglow. One is run by an attractive being of your preferred gender with the most appealing features you’ve ever seen: intense, twinkling eyes; sparkling, straight white teeth; a perfectly shaped and sized nose; or whatever physical traits you’re attracted to. Just witnessing this masterpiece of flesh siphons your breath and wobbles your knees. (Remember, this is a hypothetical situation—don’t question why Perfection works at Target.)

The other cashier is a slightly homely looking individual with dull eyes and a smear of acne. Not repulsive to look at but certainly no Helen of Troy. Which register do you unload at? Personally, and I believe most people would agree, I would choose the second cashier because this individual is less intimidating and I wouldn’t feel self-conscious simply being in his presence. And even though I am attracted to males, I would still choose Uncomely Female Cashier. Same goes for websites.

Web users that are slightly self-conscious (unfamiliar with technology or fearful of online security issues) opt for the homely site because it doesn’t scare them and seems more trustworthy. They can do their shopping or surfing or whatever without fear of clamming up in the face of complicated exchanges and aesthetic pleasantries. Simply put, simplicity is the sincerest form of surety.

While most of the above is just conjecture, I believe it to be a semi-logical explanation for this ugly website phenomenon. Craigslist will never launch even one ship, let alone a thousand, but it will get over eight billion page views each month. Not bad for an ugly duckling with very little swan potential.