As a internet marketing company, it’s our main goal to help companies rank their websites higher in the SERPs.  That’s what we’re good at and that’s what we do.  But it’s my job as a designer to make the pages look good; an equally important proposition.  A well designed page gives your company and your product more credibility.  If your website is ranking high and features a great product yet looks like it was made in the late 90s by a neighborhood kid, chances are todays web consumer won’t be thrilled.

So with that in mind, and this being my first blog post in the holiday season, I have decided to share with all the readers of this blog some helpful tools and tricks to make your site look better.

1) Color scheme.  This is one of the most important things to focus on for the design of your site.  Granted, many sites are colored based on the corporate color scheme, but there are always ways to to spruce it up with complementary and secondary colors.  My go to tool for finding color schemes is the fantastic Color Scheme Designer by Petr Stanicek.  This is a great tool where you can enter a color hex code and automatically generate a color scheme.  Another great tool is Adobe Kuler, a newish tool that I feel I have yet to even scratch the surface of.

2) Standards.  If web 2.0 was centered around rounded corners and shiny buttons (I’m sort of kidding), then web 3.0 will surely be about standards.  It’s no longer only important that your page looks good, it has to be coded correctly as well.  And this isn’t just to satisfy people that care about code.  Properly coded web pages save bandwidth, function (for the most part) well in multiple browsers, and are easier to have function in mobile browsers.  The best resource for standards web design and development is A List Apart by Jeffrey Zeldman.  His new edition of “Designing with Web Standards” was released a few weeks ago and is an extremely helpful book.

3) Firebug. Want to see what that form would look like just a smmmmidge to the right? Want to know why that image is overlapping your text.  Firebug is the thing to get!  Firebug is a free plug in for Firefox (you are using firefox aren’t you?) and allows you to edit elements of your css code in real time without actually changing any of the code.  If you don’t have it…get it! A necessary plug in.

4) Fonts. As anyone who has developed websites will tell you, the variety of fonts you can choose from on the web is very limited.  Do you want Arial or Georgia?  Yeah.  That was a problem I have run into for a long time and have finally found a solution.  It’s called “Cufon” and allows you to upload a font that is then converted to a javascript file and is placed in the header of your website.  Then it replaces text in various css tags to be displayed in that font.  It is very cool and does not change your css coding of words inside tags.  You can check it out here… http://cufon.shoqolate.com/generate/.

Well there are some little tips and tricks to use to spruce up your website.  I hope you found them useful and your website has a happy holiday season.  If you have any suggestions or questions, the comment area below is a good place to put them.

If there’s one thing that most designers will tell you is important when designing a page, it’s that all of the important content should be “above the fold.”  It’s a common practice that dates back to when humans read something called “newspapers.”

These archaic gray monstrosities were often printed on thin paper and folded right in the middle.  Therefore, it was standard practice to put the most important content “above the fold.”

The difficult thing about designing above the fold on the internet is… well, we never know exactly where the fold is!  Nevermind the fact that most people use a variety of screen resolutions, ranging from the dreadful 800 x 600 up to the glorious 2560 x 1600. On top of that, people also can have an unknown variable of toolbars.  Currently, I have 3 toolbars on my 1680 x 1050 monitor, cutting out about 85 pixels from the top of my browser.

So what can a designer do?  Typically, the thought is to design a page for the least common denominator, assuming that your average viewer will be looking at your page on their grandmother’s 13in. CRT display.  This means putting all the stuff you deem as important up at the top and all the rest slapped down at the bottom.  The obvious problem to this is that it will look weird on regular monitors.

So what can you do?

First, you can take a look at your site statistics and figure out what percentage of users are looking at your page with various resolutions. If no one is looking at your site at 800 x 600, don’t worry about designing for them!

Second, you can determine which parts you absolutely want above the fold, like a call-to-action form, and place that higher up on the page. Then you don’t have to worry about whether or not you have an H1 and an H2 above the fold.

Third, and most importantly, you can ignore the problem altogether and read this interesting article about whether or not “designing above the fold” is worth the effort. The article comes with heatmaps and actual user testing.

Read this article…it’s worth your time.

I highly suggest reading this article and making your own opinion.  The most important thing that I took away from it is that your site should have enough important, relevant content on the page that makes me actually want to scroll down the page.

Imagine that?  People will scroll down the page if there’s interesting content!

It sounds so simple, but I think it’s a concept that most people forget.  If you have interesting and relevant content on your page – information that people are actually looking for – it won’t be a chore for them to read it.

Then, your content will be digested by more people and visitors to your site will stay longer, improving your bounce rate. That will help the overall ranking of your site.

So as a designer, this is an exciting revelation. Great content makes or breaks a page, not the designer!  Well, I’m off to forward this article to our copywriter.  The burden is all on you from now on, Ashley!  Guess I’m off to lunch now.

The design-o-sphere is abuzz today with the recent blog post by Douglas Bowman about his decision to leave Google. Douglas was more or less the first real creative director at Google and brought about much of the look and standards that The Almighty Goog has become so well known for. Here’s a short snippet of his blog post that I think sums up his point clearly…

“Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.”

He sums it up with this..

“I won’t miss a design philosophy that lives or dies strictly by the sword of data.”

Obviously most of the people linking to and talking about this are taking his side and agreeing with his reasonings. But I’m not the kind of person to respond to a blog post with “Amen, Doug! u Rock!”

I’m not sure I do completely agree with him. Yes, that sounds annoying. Maddening actually. But websites are not art.

Well, most websites are not art. Some are. And the other 99.9% aren’t. As an artist, I’ve noticed a funny trend amongst other artists. Some like to hide behind the shield of their black turtlenecks and macbooks and refuse to change or take other input from other people because they are creating ‘art’. My feelings are, leave your art to your personal website or separate projects.

If you are a designer for a company, you are not an artist.

Essentially, you are a designer of a salesman. Every time you create a page you are making a conscious choice about how you want that salesman to look. Will that salesman sell better to your customer base with a suit on or sweatpants? In that situation you are consciously making a decision about whether you want your site to be formal or casual. Once that is decided, you can start nitpicking. Does your salesman sell better with a blue tie on or a red tie? Based on the solid statistics you get from that, you can make an informed decision that, frankly, does “live or die by the sword of data”. And I ask you, if you were a business owner, is there a better sword to live or die by?

If Douglas is in fact leaving because he’s tired of the nitty gritty details, I can understand that. But isn’t that philosophy of testing and trial and error something that should be going on everywhere? He is right though that 41 shades of blue is a little ridiculous, but if one shade converts your traffic even .001% better, isn’t it worth it?

Art is great, but is the business world the best place for it to live? In my opinion the 2 should not (and to an extent can not) ever co exist. Does anyone disagree?

Years ago when I was looking for a design/artist job, I typed ‘artist’ into a job search engine and the only result was for a ‘sandwich artist’ at subway. So…assuming you don’t feel like asking people what kind of cheese they want on their hoagie, we may have a job for you!

ProspectMX is a Lancaster internet marketing company. Does this describe you…

You like to design webpages? You like to code them in html and CSS? You’re familiar with WordPress? You have a passion for Flash and actionscript? Then apply already!

What you should send…

Resumes are good and all, and we definitely want to see them, but please send as many work examples as you can. Sites, flash, video, drawings, macaroni pictures. The more the merrier.

Click here to apply…

…and if you’re this guy or gal….you’re hired!

Our home city – Lancaster, PA – has seen visits from both major party presidential candidates in the last week. Since the 2008 election is fast approaching, and the candidates have been playing the politics game in our backyard so frequently, I wanted to take a second and analyze each president’s internet marketing campaigns.

For starters, each candidate is using the essential social media and networking sites – Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg. Obama has the appearance of being more “tech savvy,” thanks to his Twitter profile with over 78,000 followers.

Obama’s use of the web as a driver for donations has been well executed. In a random selection of ways to get to Obama’s online home – Google organic search results, Google PPC links, direct website visits, and mobile searches by Blackberry – our team found four custom lead generation forms to fill out before hitting the main page. Two were e-mail capture forms, two were for donations.

Only one pay-per-click ad led to a donation form on the McCain site, but the Arizona Senator isn’t neglecting the internet. The Wall Street Journal noticed McCain’s camp is using an ambush pay-per-click campaign. Search “Joe Biden” and check out the top sponsored listings – “Joe Biden on Obama” links to McCain’s site. Very sneaky, sir.

McCain’s campaign is placing a heavy focus on this year’s election issues with its PPC. Search “housing crisis” and “U.S. economy” in Google… McCain will have a PPC ad there – Obama won’t.

The internet is definitely playing a huge role in this year’s election. Its cool to see how each candidate has found a completely different way to use the power of the mighty internet and search engines to their advantage.

Any other cool internet marketing tools the candidates are using that we missed? Drop us a line below.