Entries for category 'Trends'

With the recent announcement of Internet Explorer 9, the discussion of which browser is the best seemed approprioate.  For many people out there, Internet Explorer is the browser of choice if not simply because it came with their installation of Windows, and it's what they are familiar or comfortable with.  Though many people have been flocking to the many other browsers out there.  There are plenty of reasons for that too.  Hopefully we can cover a few of those reasons here.

We all hear the words “social media” every day; this is just one of the new buzz words. The overall number of businesses using social media to market their business grows rapidly each day. The goal for most of these businesses is trying to build relationships with their customers.

Common Factors of Social Media Success

Question: Don't you think its tough to measure social media?

After spending a little more time with the mobile web, there's a bit more to be said about issues surrounding designing websites for the mobile browser.  Differences in phone technology as well as new software technologies in development are changing the field of mobile web design.  This post takes a look at some of those phone issues and new developments.

A few months ago, I developed a ColdFusion/Mach-II implementation of the reCAPTCHA API.  This type of CAPTCHA requires the person to enter two words rather than a single sequence of random letters.  In addition to protecting your website from spam, reCAPTCHA helps digitize text books.  They do this by using a mystery word as one of the two words, until there is a consensus about what the correct answer for that word is.

With the rise of the iPhone, Google Android, Palm, Blackberry and several other touch screen phones out there that are not only web enabled, but offer a browsing experience similar to the one we are familiar with on desktop computers, the need for mobile friendly websites is becoming greater. I've had several web enabled phones, but the most recent one I purchased has given me a much more fluid and intuitive web experience. It's shown me, though, that most websites aren't coded with mobile phones in mind.

We’re not going to focus on the design or the layout of a website, although we may mention some basic elements that will relate to the design, but more importantly, we’re focusing on how the website is structured so it can be successful.

There’s no question on arguing how a website can help you obtain a successful online presence and that it’s the most effective marketing strategy one can have as a designer or a company. A successful website should already have basic information where a site visitor can learn, identify and quickly understand how you can help. Essentially, a website provides a solution to a problem.

CNN Money is reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo have reached an agreement to integrate search technologies and share revenue in their ongoing battle for search supremacy. Both companies trail Google, who currently enjoys a 65% market share. Even though Microsoft attempted to purchase Yahoo last year, this is a somewhat surprising development in the world of search advertising.

Read on past the break for more details about this new deal!

Not content with Chrome browser for desktop platforms and the Android OS on mobile devices, Google is planning to release Chrome OS later this year. Beyond that, it has plans to partner with hardware manufacturers to include the new OS as a standard install on netbooks.

According to the news posting on their blog, "Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve."

Read Google's blog here, or read some additional thoughts about Google's Chrome OS after the break.

Many modern day websites (in addition to being a source of information for customers) are now providing applications to clients and employees in order to improve customer service and allow instant access to information such as current inventory levels, custom pricing and sales quotes. These applications built into the website for ease of access and “hands free” administration are the reappearance of a software architecture that appeared with the original mainframes.

Hard economic time brings less people and traffic to you making you second guessing your advertising strategies.  Don’t have to spend a dime if you don’t want to but how are you still going to drive traffic? How are you going to announce your next big thing without any advertisement? 

Statistics are important data to business industries. However, statistics regarding browser display and the trend of advancing forward are important concepts to web designers and developers. As computer technology advances, the size of monitor screen is increasing; thus resulting in technology companies designing and developing sites at a wider scale. However, this opposes a problem for the general public, especially businesses and individuals who are still utilizing smaller monitor resolutions or viewing sites at the ancient resolution of 800x600 pixels.

Okay, I know that social media tools are flying at us faster than a teenager driving home with the latest version of "Halo", but this one's definitely worth taking a few moments to examine (and yes, this too is flying extremely fast).

Regular readers and my colleagues know that I'm quite the Twitter junkie. It's been particularly great to use Twitter to speak in an open conversation with local businesses, get tips and news from design colleagues, get quick texts about upcoming area events, and even to send myself RSS feeds of great local shopping deals within a few minutes of being posted. I don't have a ton of followers, but that's ok - my goals for Twitter are mostly personal/professional communication, and to dialog in an interesting way with people I might not meet otherwise. Are you happy with who's following you?

So let's assume you've read the article I keep posting regarding 50 uses of Twitter for business (heck, why not browse all of our Twitter-related articles), and you've started your Twitter account. But what's this? No one will follow your tweets? What do you do? I have some suggestions about getting those elusive Twitter followers, so read on past the break to learn some simple ways you can encourage followers and gain that Twitter audience you crave!

Still not sold on facebook, twitter, linkedin, and similar web applications? The most common reason I hear from people as to why they won't try social networking is the loss of their privacy. Well, if that's all that's keeping you from connecting with friends, colleagues, and potential customers, I'm here to share some simple things you can do to participate and maintain whatever level of anonymity you choose!

Read on for ideas for guidelines you can set for yourself, and settings relevant to several of the more popular sites to keep your personal information private.

Love it or hate it, it looks like Microsoft's Internet Explorer 6 is stubbornly clinging to browser market share. According to recent stats published by StatOwl.com, IE6 still clings to a 3rd place share, or 18.23% of all web users. This month, Firefox 3 took over the 2nd place position with 18.58%, and IE7 remains firmly atop the chart with 43.51%. The case for continued IE6 compatability becomes even more interesting when looking at the usage trends for corporate entities: In this case, IE6 leads the pack with over 41% , followed by IE7 at around 39%.

Want to know why the continued survival of IE6 is such a big deal? Read on to learn how not all browsers are created equal, and why IE6 looks to be sticking around for a bit longer.

Several weeks ago I posted an article about joining Twitter. If you haven't yet, give it a try! It takes just a few minutes, and can be adapted for a variety of different business purposes. Still not convinced? New Marketing Labs President Chris Brogan has written about 50 ways you can use Twitter as part of your business.

Check out the complete article here!

The old cliche Keep It Simple Stupid applies to website design as well.  Though it's certainly my job to design whatever will make the client happiest, I always do my best to explore options and explain to clients how visitors might get lost on their site based on the overwhelming amount of information they feel is needed on one page or another.  Recently, one client had me build in widgets on the home page summarizing and linking to nearly every part of their site over the course of several revisions instead of keeping the home page simple and building a flow through the site to ensure critical information was highlighted on the appropriate page.

I touched on some of this briefly in a previous article, but I'd like to take some to review why it's so important to keep things simple for your site visitors.  Read on after the break to learn some of the benefits to bringing focus and simplicity to your site.

The sitemap page is a critical addition for SEO and allowing search engines to crawl your site. Over the last year or so, sitemaps have been evolving. Once the standard stand-alone page that simply linked to every page, designers have found clever ways of integrating a sitemap into the framework as a usable site tool. Learn more about this new trend after the break.

Since the Internet went mainstream a little over 10 years ago, having a website has been an important part of a business marketing plan. You operate a website to communicate your message to the rest of the world, to encourage purchases, or maybe even to sell products online. Your site exists for visitors to visit, read everything they want to know, and then become a customer.  It’s that simple, right?

Not exactly. A website must go beyond one-way communication, meet definable customer needs, and achieve company goals. Most websites are too wordy, asking viewers to read the site like a book instead of finding ways to use the site as an interactive branch of the business. Text-heavy sites are built with the incorrect assumption that visitors will patiently click one page after another and read every word, eventually finding what it is they are looking for. These sites fall short of quickly directing visitors to critical information, and fail to encourage an actionable goal out of their visitors. Read past the break to learn how your site can avoid the same fate.