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The Anatomy Of A Perfect Website [INFOGRAPHIC]

Doug — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 17:36:52 +0000

Even for the most talented amongst us, web design can be a tricky business at the best of times. It’s not just a case of being able to create something that’s pleasing to the eye, you have to consider usability, navigation, social media integration, validated mark-up, search engine optimisation, conversion optimisation and a whole host of other elements in order to put the together the perfect modern website.

So to help you put together a fantastic site, ROI Media has produced the following infographic, entitled ‘The Anatomy Of A Perfect Website’:

If you enjoyed this infographic, please consider sharing it using our social media sharing buttons. Feel free to repost this infographic on your own site, just please link back to ROI Media or Pixel Internet if you do.

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Best Retro Inspired Fonts of 2011

Doug — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:25:19 +0000

As designers we all love fonts, and some more so than others. They can easily be the making or breaking of great graphics, and matter a lot more than you might think. From legibility, display and compatibility on various devices to the style of the font, there is a lot to consider. With the huge proliferation of designers and material available on the internet today, there is a more baffling choice today then ever before. We’ve picked through and tested a lot of fonts this year, and here are just some of our favourites:

- Weston
From the excellent ‘League Of Movable Type’ collective (who have some other great offerings like Chunk 5 and Ostrich Sans) comes Weston. It’s retro, yet futuristic somehow, which is the perfect combination for me at the moment. A really lovely font.

- Pompadour
Although these are only numbers, I really love this set. The beautiful slab serifs are inspired by retro imagery from the 1950s, but look fantastic in all kinds of modern layouts. They’re really stylish and very versatile as well.

- Ranger
From the stunning collection of the Lost Type co-op comes Ranger, a beautiful bold italic font with subtle little points. It’s apparently inspired by old Colorado sign writing, and designed by Colorado native Evan Huwa.

- Highlands
Again from the Lost Type co-op, Highlands is another font inspired by retro posters; this time from National parks in America. The bold slab serif is very versatile and works really for headlines and posters.

- Bebas Neue
The fantastic Dharma Type are the creators of the final entry here, and again have lots of other really great retro fonts, many inspired by advertising and posters of the 40s and 50s. Bebas is a very simple narrow slab serif that echoes woodcut type of the past, and works in a huge range of situations.

- Duke
Finally, something quite similar to Bebas above, but with some lovely subtle shading to give it a 3D effect. It works just as well in the same situations, and makes really great looking titles and bold headers.

Adding The Google +1 Button To Your WordPress Website

Doug — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 11:35:26 +0000

If you’ve been following the activities of Google in recent months (or you’re an SEO engineer), you’ll have undoubtedly come across the +1 concept recently introduced by the search giant.

Initially an experiment in utilising user-based recommendations to inform search results, Google has rolled out the +1 button more comprehensively by allowing the integration of a +1 button into your blogs and websites.

There will undoubtedly be numerous WordPress plugins in the coming months featuring simple +1 button integration, but in the meantime here’s a simple guide to adding the Google +1 button to your WordPress-based blogs and websites yourself in two simple steps:

1. Editing your WordPress theme files

You will need to add a line of Javascript to your WP theme files, but this isn’t as difficult as it may sound to some people. Simply login to your WordPress dashboard and navigate to Appearances > Editor.

On the next screen, locate and select ‘Footer.php’, which should reveal the coding for your website’s footer. You’ll need to locate the closing body tag, which will look like this:

Then simply paste in the following line of Javascript immediately before the closing body tag:

To help you out, here’s a screenshot of what you’ll need to do:

Once you’ve placed the code in the right place, simply hit ‘update’ and you’re ready to move on to the next step.

2. Adding the +1 button to your website

Once the javascript is added to your Footer.php file, you’ll be able to add the +1 button with a simple shortcode:

This can be added to individual posts and pages easily, by simply adding the shortcode into the body of the post or page. However, you might find it a better option to add the button into the sidebar of your blog, post, page, etc. To do this, simply navigate to Appearances > Widgets in your WordPress dashboard.

From here, you can simply select a widget market ‘Text’, drag it into the appropriate sidebar section and add the +1 shortcode. This will give you a permanent +1 button in the corresponding sidebar, allowing users to recommend your site via the new Google button.

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If you have any questions at all on installing the +1 button on your own WordPress website, simply leave us a comment with the issues you’re having and we’ll do our best to help.

Quick Tips To Reduce Your Website Bounce Rate

Freya — Thu, 28 Apr 2011 08:04:01 +0000

Your website bounce rate is usually shown as a percentage, and refers to the number of people who land on your website and then leave again without navigating to another page on the same website.

A low bounce rate can suggest that the user hasn’t found what they’re looking for, or that they don’t consider the content on your site valuable enough to be worth sticking around. Having said that, it’s worth noting that a high bounce rate isn’t always a bad thing, and certain pages can lend themselves to having high bounce rates (blog posts for example, or in-depth, detailed content that gives the user exactly what they were looking for so they don’t feel they need to continue reading).

It’s also worth trying to lower your bounce rate however, even on these kinds of pages, as your visitors sticking around and viewing more pages can only be a good thing. Whilst bounce rate is often related to the quality of your content, there are a few simple steps you can take to try and improve your bounce rate, either on specific pages or on a sitewide basis:

Use ‘Read More’ or ‘Related Posts’
This is an excellent way of keeping users on your site, and is used by most of the big blogging, news and magazine sites (e-commerce sites also use a similar tactic to try and keep you spending, like Amazon’s ‘Customers who bought this also bought…’ section). Adding some related posts or pages at the bottom of your content can be a great way of ensuring your bounce rate decreases – if you’re using a WordPress based blog, there are a bunch of excellent plugins that can automate the process for you.

Include links on your 404 pages
If someone clicks on a broken link to your site, or mistypes the URL, they’ll likely land on a 404 error page. If there’s nothing on this page but a simple error, they may well leave altogether (and probably never come back). Try adding some links to your 404 pages so that if someone does land on one, they’re more likely to stay on the site and continue reading.

Try and improve the overall loading speed of your website
Not only is site speed an important factor when it comes to search engine optimisation, but it’s an essential element of your overall usability and can have a notable impact on your bounce rate. Internet users aren’t always the most patient of people and if your site loads slowly then you might find that people click away before the page has loaded. Improving your site speed therefore can remove these clicks away from your site, subsequently improving your bounce rate.

Improve your content
Poor or shallow content is a big factor when it comes to high bounce rates; isolate the pages on your website with the highest bounce rate (you can do this using Google Analytics) and evaluate the content on those pages. Try tweaking it or adding to it, add images and video or find a new angle on the subject matter – whatever it takes to improve the quality of the content for the user. You can then monitor these changes in terms of bounce rate via Google Analytics and try to get a good idea of what works and what doesn’t in terms of content (you can then use this to inform the content for the rest of your website).

The most important thing is to always be trying to improve your website, in terms of usability, navigation and content. The more useful you can make your content to the visitor, the more likely you are to have a website with a low bounce rate and a high quality, dedicated audience-based (which can then be leveraged or monetised through a wide variety of methods).

An Infographic Explanation Of Server Headers

Steve — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 17:19:56 +0000

For anyone new to web design, there’s a huge amount to take on-board – there are numerous different programming languages you can get involved in, a range of content management systems, experimentation with flash, javascript, HTML5, etc.

As a result, things that are relatively simple for experienced web designers can get overlooked; like server headers and their applications. The following infographic will hopefully help anyone new to the discipline looking to improve their grasp on the different server headers and their functions:

Creators: SEO Gadget

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The Best Places To Find Premium WordPress Themes

Freya — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 18:13:56 +0000

WordPress has become one of the most popular content management systems around over the last few years – and rightly so; it’s extremely versatile and features an incredible range of plugins, widgets, features and access to all the HTML and CSS, making the whole system hugely customisable.

Not everyone is proficient enough at web design to put together their own WordPress theme however, and as a result the market for pre-made, premium WordPress themes has become hugely competitive. No matter what type of website you’re looking for (business, personal blog, portfolio, forum, etc), you’ll be able to find a premium WordPress theme online that gives you all the design elements and functionality you’re looking for.

Searching through the thousands of themes available isn’t always fun however, so to save you a potentially frustrating couple of hours, here are our favourite places for premium, high quality WordPress themes:

WooThemes

WooThemes has an incredible variety of free and paid themes, although the majority of the really good ones will require a paid download. For $125 you can gain access to all WordPress themes (this doesn’t include Joomla or Magento themes), or you can take advantage or their permanent 3-for-the-price-of-1 if you don’t have the budget to join the theme club.
The WooThemes backend editor is particularly strong, making the themes hugely customisable and very easy to use. Along with Templatic, the backend is one of the best I’ve come across.

Templatic

Another particularly strong set of themes, the Templatic themes are excellent and of an extremely high quality. They’re some of the most visually appealing and professional themes I’ve come across, and the backend is particularly well set up.
The only downside to the Templatic themes is that they’re quite expensive – costing $299 for access to all their themes (more than double the price of WooThemes).

Elegant Themes

ElegantThemes contains a good range of themes for a variety of purposes, and they’re all designed by the same guy (who’s really good). ElegantThemes is one of the most affordable premium WordPress options I’ve come across, and is a great place to start for those with a smaller budget.
The downside to the ElegantThemes designs in the backend, which isn’t as easy-to-use as some of the previous options. As a result, customising the themes past a certain points gets a little tricky, but they’re great if you know what you’re doing.

ThemeForest

ThemeForest don’t put together their own themes, but rather it’s a dedicated search engine for finding CMS themes (including WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc). All the themes are generally well priced and they have an amazingly wide selection of themes and designers – a great place to start if you’re looking for an idea of the sort of themes available.

Top Tips For Improving Your Site Speed

Steve — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 12:57:01 +0000

The loading speed of your website is a crucial element to the overall popularity, traffic and subsequent conversions of your site, for numerous different reasons. The speed of a website is an important SEO element, as Google (and other search engines) are reluctant to reward slow-loading sites with high rankings.

So your site speed can affect the amount of traffic your website receives, particularly from search engines, but what about when users reach your website? Research has shown that a significant percentage of people will click away from a website that takes too long to load, with the vast majority of those users never returning to the website after that one negative experience.

Even if a user is patient and waits for your content to load, it’s unlikely that they will wait for every page to load, and if you’re an ecommerce site they’re far more unlikely to trust your site with their credit card details if it’s slow loading.

With such an impact on the perception and usage of your website, you can see why a site with a low speed should be addressed as quickly as possible. So how can we go about improving our site speed? Here are some top tips for doing just that:

1. Find out your current site speed
You’ll need to figure out how fast your site is compared to other websites before you start addressing any potential issues; whilst general checks are a good way to judge generally, a lot of it could be related to your internet connection so you’ll need to use an external tool that can give you far more specific information.

The best tool for this is the site speed section in Google Webmaster Tools, as this is provided by Google and gives you an accurate idea of your site speed compared to the majority of other sites.

2. Combine and externalise CSS files
Your website is far more likely to load quickly if it can reference one external cascading style sheet (CSS), rather than a difference CSS file for each page. Combine them all into one and minimise the source code as much as you can.

3. Compress your content
HTTP compression can be an excellent method for reducing your site speed, as it combines all of your website data into one file, rather than needed to request and reference numerous different files.

4. Optimise your website images
This is an important element in improving your overall site speed and can have a surprisingly notable impact. Different file formats (jpg, jpeg, png, gif, etc) have a varying impact on site speed, with some file extensions causing a substantial increase in file size. Know when to use the correct formats and optimise your images with site speed in mind (for example, GIF files tend to load quicker than JPEG or PNG files).

5. Put your Google Analytics code in the footer or at the bottom
If your GA code is at the top of your HTML document, then the browser will load this information before anything below, giving the impression that the site is loading slowly. Move your GA code to the footer or lower down the HTML body to ensure that browsers load your page content before the analytics, making the page seem much faster to users.

Web Design Trends To Watch Out For In 2011

Doug — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 10:30:43 +0000

There were numerous popular web design trends in 2010, and many of those (as well as a few new ones) are expected to continue enjoying a high level of popularity in 2011.

So, to help those web designers looking to stay ahead of the game this year, here are what we think will be popular web design trends in 2011:

1. HTML 5

Almost guaranteed to be a big trend this year, HTML 5 has seen a huge amount of publicity recently (and was just granted its very own logo by the W3C) and will see a continued rise in usage throughout the year as more and more web designers learn the benefits of the language.

2. Minimal Websites

A trend that grew in popularity last year; minimal, un-cluttered websites are becoming more and more common. They’re easy to navigate, very focused and direct and from what many people have been saying, tend to convert at a higher level. We’d expect this trend to continue throughout 2011, so keep your eyes peeled for increasing numbers of minimal, striking websites.

3. Typography

Typography has always been an important and popular element of design in general, but last year saw the relationship between website design and selected typography become more pertinent, as the top web designers demonstrated how well it could be done. 2011 will be no different, and we reckon you’ll see a far wider selection of custom fonts, particularly in relation to website design.

Also worth keeping your eye out for in 2011 would be social media integration (which saw a huge boom last year) and a continued improvement in mobile browsing and mobile versions of websites, which we think will become far more innovative.

The Best 404 Error Pages

Doug — Fri, 07 Jan 2011 10:18:38 +0000

404 errors – when you enter a URL and click a link and are greeted with ’404 Error – Page Not Found’ – aren’t traditionally associated with being particularly fun or entertaining. They’re generally annoying and usually mean you’ve either got the URL wrong or what you were looking for is no longer there. Some website owners are bucking this trend however, introducing a little bit of fun and creativity into their 404 pages.

Here’s a quick look at some of our favourite from the past few months:

1. From the 501st Legion website:

2. From the DigitalMash website:

3. From the Astuteo website:

4. From the Apartment Home Living website:

5. From The North Face website:

6. From the UrbanPill website:

7. From the Hoppermagic website:

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Website content is the King in SEO?

Brian — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:58:08 +0000

Seo services are basically performed to make a website visible in the search engine results at high posts. These search engine optimization services including further improvement and development, which is an important part of the site. Its not that content is what on which website complete depends but without wholesome content a website can hardly get into high ranks of the search engines. Content is what that fills up your website, related to your product or service, giving complete know how and information about the product or service. Content makes the high position, its basic purpose is to give the reader’s audience – websites – such way to complete its necessity and desire fulfilled. The best part of a website is when When the reader to visitors frequently and click the links as many times. This directly promotes the sales and the website gains in aspects, the money as well as rank in the search engine directory.

The content of this website can play a major role to attract readers in the audience. The content follows some good points; the first good point is simplicity. The simpler the content the more attractive it gets. This simple content is easily crawled in search engine directory. Use the keywords phrases and tags are all used to be placed in a web page. The content of this website is crucial, search engine optimization service is it should be executed with simple brain clever. Consider using the complex language and rich collection will enable readers to run away, and if the website content is very simple, readers feel to read this over and over again, believe to this statement, is the ideal perfection. Some weaknesses, should care, first is spelling, regardless of the reader to read the text, he wanted to provide appropriate. Small spelling errors, the use of language can make readers are not interested in blood, it is recommended to use good language vocabulary and simple words, so readers feel comfortable through it.

Content is one part of the website that means a lot to the seo services, it is believed that website design and website content go parallel. Though all the parts are equally treated and all of them have their own values, but content is believed to be the king of seo as it is the most in quantity and quality. Website content has no formula; it is all done with brains. The website content is a good use of keywords, correct knowledge, Concentrated statements and readers of the audience. Content in seo services is accorded to the change and alliance enhanced web design. The website content is king of Search engine optimization because it ranges in variety for changes and improvement. Complete the website of the reader’s audience and the content of the product or service.

The content of a website means a lot to the website owner, an owner usually to make his website perfect hires seo services to get rich content and appear unique. The website content needs to be unique and different from others, simplicity of words doesn’t mean it gets rough and dull; rather it gives a concept of direct and focus approach to the targeted audiences. For better results and higher ranking, contents needs to be treated in calculated intervals and the website must be updated to give the reader audience a fresh page every time he wants to get information.