One of the biggest changes to homepages across the web, particularly with big brands, is the seemingly mandatory inclusion of the multiheader. Multiheaders allows multiple stories or features access to the primary visibility section of a homepage, and let visitors choose (through a click or hover) which featured piece they want to see. Let's take a walk through a few: ...
SEO blogs have been preaching the same old spiel again and again: have good content on your site. It's no secret, yet for many businesses, it seems hard to implement. I thought I'd change the argument up a bit and put it in perspective the only way I know how: by using movies as an analogy. Good content is like a Pixar film. Pixar films fall into the "You Have to be a Jerk to Not ...
I've been watching Mystery Guest shop online a bit over the weekend (while drinking beer and observing manly NFL games) and I was surprised to see so many "web 2.0" features on the e-commerce sites she browsed. More interesting still were how the numerous breaks from convention appeared to enhance, rather than detract, from the buying experience. Traditionally...
Following up yesterday's article, How to Convince a Client their Site Doesn't Need Music, I decided to write a similar one about splash pages. Splash pages are the pages that the user sees before they actually get to a website; typically, they're flash and offer some kind of introductory animation. The user clicks "Skip Intro&qu...
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Unless you've been living under a rock for the past couple of years, you may have heard about Ruby on Rails. It's the latest greatest web development platform that has become immensely popula...
Recently I've started working with Rand on doing site analyses for our clients. He's taken me under his wing by walking me through a typical site analysis and telling me what to look for. Obviously, since Rand is the resident expert, it is easy for him to know what to look for and what to recommend to the client.Unfortunately, up until I started working for SEOmoz, I was accustomed to ...
A friend of mine runs a content-based website monetized largely through page views. He recently shared a tactic with me that's been immensely successful in improving the number of page views per visit. His terminology - "link density." Link density refers specifically to the placement and number of links on a content page. For example, this page on ...
When people ask me what I do, I tell them that I am a "Web Developer". It's more accurate than "Web Designer" and much less narcissistic than "Webmaster." Even still, people have a hard time grasping what I do every day at my job. I'm sure if you asked 3 very important people in my life -- my girlfriend, mother, and best friend -- what I did at work every day...
I've always subscribed to the "content, content, content" philosophy of developing successful web sites. In my former life as a freelance web developer, I've far too often seen clients get neck deep in logo and font choices -- subsequently ignoring the main reason they got on the web in the first place: content. Unless you have useful, reliable and frequently updated content,...
When dealing with client recommendations for design, usability, and accessibility, we always stress the importance of a custom 404 page. Why? Because I think everyone gets a little sick of seeing standard pages that do little to direct users toward a useful solution. These boring, default 404s are not friendly, they're hostile. And without the proper presentation they risk scaring away less savvy ...
As a professional web designer I've noticed a consistent trend in the majority of the projects I've worked on: The more time that is spent dissecting, analyzing, and critiquing a design by the wrong kinds of people the worse that design gets. The same trend applies to the number of people involved in the design process.Group intelligence is multiplicative when id...
Reading through the the thread - Persuasion Architecture and the Art of Agreement for Website Success - is inspiring. Although the discussion starts with a short review (by Kim) of the Eisenberg brothers' new book, it evolves into a stirring debate and exploration of how websites can influence user actions. From the t...
Just a short post to note that OneStat has released figures about worldwide and country specific screen resolutions of Internet users. Here's the global averages: 1. 1024 x 768...
Last.fm's signup page is one of the best I've ever seen. It's elegant, user-friendly, and does a fantastic job of keeping the user aware of what's going on. Rather than splitting the signup process into several steps across multiple pages or combining them all into one massive form, it splits it into three steps but keeps everything on one...