A Blog.

Designing for screen resolution is a must-do component for successful website design. Choose what your minimum standard pixels should be based on your target audience. For example, the below statistics are reflective of WC3School students with an interest for web technologies. So naturally, their computer screen resolutions will skew higher, since this group is more likely to purchase newer computers which feature larger screens and higher resolutions. The below stats, provided by W3Schools.com, show that most of their students’ screen resolutions are 74% higher than 1024 x 767.

This number is interesting, because the current minimum standard is 1024 x 767, which has been the minimum standard for a few years. Looking at another source that features screen resolution stats from a library, a different story is told. 72.3 % of visitors to Crawfordsville District Public Library’s website in Indiana are typically viewing the site on a computer with a screen resolution of at 1024 x 767. This is likely because the library (versus web technology) appeals to a much broader audience.

In summary, consider your audience when starting the web design process with your web design firm.

Graphic Source: W3Schools.com

Graphic Source: Stat Owl

The Seattle Times
By Brier Dudley

Get ready for another significant change in the way Google looks and works.

The seach giant today is rolling out “Instant Previews” on its Web search page, giving users the ability to quickly get a peek at the Web pages listed in search results. The feature goes live today and will be available in more than 40 languages over the next few days. Here’s a page where you can try the feature if you’re not seeing it yet on Google’s main page.
Scroll down to read remainder of article.

Search results will display a small magnifying glass icon on the right side of links. When you click the icon, it launches “Instant Preview” mode. In that mode, a large preview pane pops up on the right when you hover the cursor over any of the search results.

It’s not just a thumbnail image of a Web page. Google highlights where your search terms appear on the page. If it’s a long page, the preview image is cut, pasted and displayed in such a way that you see the upper portion and the lower portion where the search terms appear. Google calls this a “tear” and displays a jagged line, as shown below.

It’s a cousin to Google’s “cached” feature, which shows snippets of Web pages, highlighting where search terms appear in the pages. But instead of just showing a snippet, previews show an image of the page with the relevant portion highlighted.

Ben Gomes, a Google distinguished engineer at its Mountain View, Calif., headquarters who worked on the project, characterized the new feature as an evolutionary step in the company’s ongoing effort to make searching faster and more precise.

It builds on the “instant” search feature launched in September, which predicts what you’re searching for as you type and begins delivering results.

“This is going to make the next step, finding the right result, much faster,” he said.

The previews give users a peek at pages’ look and feel, helping them decide whether to proceed.

Previews take advantage of Google’s early decision to capture and index full Web pages. There’s now enough computation power available to almost instantly present vivid page previews with results shown in context.

“Essentially we need to know where every word on the Web is placed. That’s a non-trivial task,” Gomes said.

Previews are displayed generally in less than a tenth of a second. (UPDATE: Gomes said that fetching images of all the pages in a search and figuring out where words are laid out “sometimes takes several seconds.” That work will be taking place after you first click a magnifying glass icon.) That’s really fast, but still slower than general search results, which take a few hundred milliseconds to assemble.

Gomes said the speed and smoothness of the feature make it feel almost like an application.

It also makes Google results more visual. The search giant has added more flair in recent years but remains minimalist compared with Bing’s more visual presentation.

Google claims that people who have used Instant Previews — which has been undergoing closed testing — are about 5 percent more likely to be satisfied with the results they click.

I wonder if this will up the ante for Web design. Site owners may be prodded to improve the appearance of their sites, to make it as grabby as their keywords.

Gomes said previews may have that effect. It may also reward sites that are already well designed, he said.

“Webmasters have put a lot of effort into their design already and I hope it gives them a win for doing that,” he said.

View article on the Seattle Times website >

Have you heard the rumblings? Get ready now for a new King County emergency preparedness website and follow-up advertising campaign, 3 Days 3 Ways.

After an extensive RFP process, Ad Ventures was selected to conceptualize, brand, design & develop the new 3 Day 3 Ways website. Mary Hobday, Emergency Managagement Specialist, said, “I am happy to let you know that AdVentures Design has been selected to complete the re-design of the 3Days3Ways website! We were impressed with your diversified portfolio, approach to product development and the proposal you submitted for this project.” A Homeland Security grant is helping to pay for the public awareness campaign.

“We’re researching why people put off getting ready, then will appeal to their underlying objections, and inspire them to quit procrastinating. Yes, we do plan to get extra creative – and have a little fun with it too,” said Karen Skeens, Ad Ventures’ creative director. “People really should get ready now if they haven’t yet, and that includes me!”

See a peak:

Go on an adventure and cruise the new NW Cruising website, launched September 2010. As you’re clicking through pages of NW scenic views, you just may be enticed to “Cruise Your Own AdVenture,” so the site’s new slogan goes.

The website, funded by the Northwest Yacht Association, was created to increase awareness about boating and one of world’s best cruising hot spots: the Puget Sound Bay surrounding the San Juan Islands.

The big picture plan for www.NWCruising.com? To take it places…beyond Washington State…beyond New York…to the far reaches of the world to entice boat fanciers to come cruise Washington’s waters.

Ad Ventures announces a remodeled website for the Master Builder’s Association’s annual Remodeled Homes Tour. Take a visual tour online, then do the homes tour October 16 & 17, 2010, in the greater Seattle area.
View the Remodeled Homes Tour website >

In the past it’s been presented by some almost like it’s a “magical” inside, proprietary knowledge that SEO “experts” have that they can’t share. Well, it is inside knowledge that comes from years of studying and most of all, keeping up to date with Google guidelines, which are non-proprietary. At Ad Ventures, we research SEO and Google updates to it on an ongoing basis, sometimes daily, at the minimum on a weekly basis.

Can you get this information on your own?

Yes, if you have the developer resources, and time to research and test, test, test and then test some more like we have.

Good SEO techniques have evolved over the years and are comprised of many components. The most important thing to remember is to follow Google guidelines to the T. Google provides the overview; SEO experts such as Ad Ventures provide the “big picture” of what is needed, the testing resources, the web development for the framework of your site, and the senior copywriters for writing good metatag title, description and image alt tags.

1. What does the phrase “search engine optimization” mean?

It means making your site visible to the search engines in a search-engine friendly way so that your site is included in search engine indexes, at the highest ranking possible. Almost every category of websites relies on website traffic, so if your site has good ranking for your most important keyword phrases, then people searching those keyword phrases will more easily find your site.

2. What should good SEO include?

Website SEO – an overview

• The keyword phrases you want to target (there are online sources where you can test the keyword phrases that are most commonly searched for your product or service in your area.)
• Tableless CSS development (not HTML tables, which are not SEO friendly)
• Keyword-rich H1 headlines (HTML headlines are best, but there are work-arounds for graphic, more aesthetic headlines)
• Title metatagas – clearly written to be both “search engine friendly” and “human friendly”. The Title should reflect 90 – 100% of what the content of the page reflects.
• Description metatags – clearly written to be both “search engine friendly” and “human friendly.” The description should reflect 85 – 100% of what the content of the page reflects.
• Image alt tags which clearly describe the image and keywords that further describe the image
• Error-free HTML code
• W3C standards compliant
• Keywords added into your site in the correct way (towards the top, no one keyword too heavy in keyword density, etc.)
• Keywords specific to specific interior pages that are written for the benefit of the human reader, not so much the Google robots. Aim for getting high ranking for not only your home page, but also your interior pages.
• Quality content: Google and other search engines favor a site that provides fresh, new quality content, content that is updated frequently. (This is one reason why we recommend a blog or news/tips section on websites that you can easily update internally.)

Local Listings

• Make sure your site information is listed at multiple quality sites, i.e., http://www.superpages.com; http://www.local.com
• Make sure your site information is listed the same way everywhere you list it (For example, our official corporate name is “Ad Ventures Marketing, Inc.” but our formal DBA company name that we list everywhere is “Ad Ventures Design & Marketing” for continuity.
• Update the “old-fashioned” listings such as the Better Business Bureau. In your business you’re likely dealing with younger “Facebook” users as well as older “newspaper readers and BBB users.” So don’t forget the Better Business Bureau. It may take just a couple of updates to change your B+ rating to an A like it did for us.
• Create local accounts with Yahoo, Bing and Google.

Competition Checks

• Check out the “competition” to make sure there isn’t any cloaking of your site going on. Check them out in the BBB and Linked In , for example as well, to make sure another company hasn’t “borrowed’ your company name, or a similar version of it.
• And another good way to check for competitors or “spammers” of your site, is to review the incoming link report that you can view via your Google and Yahoo webmasters accounts.

Webmaster Tools Account for monitoring and correcting

• Yes, Webmaster tool accounts on Yahoo, Bing and Google are an important part of maintaining optimal SEO. A simple link name change can affect all your incoming links from outside websites, and instead of linking back to your site, the user gets linked to a 404 (page not found) blank bage.
• Google now reports that they provide feedback on sites that receive penalties. (There are approximately 50 different penalties that Google issues for everything from duplicate content to hidden text.)
• See how Google views your website and your keywords. For example, if you are linking a style-guide PDF to your site that contains the word “hex” 100 times, get a robots.txt block on that ASAP. Otherwise, Google will include that “hex” word as one of your top keywords, thus diminishing your more valuable keywords.
• New features: Google provides load test tools and suggestions how to reduce your file size and load time. They have also included a tool that, with a click of your mouse, checks your site for any malware in less than 1 second.

Inbound linking

• Search engines value high quantity of high quality links from other websites to your website. So don’t sign up for link farms, sign up for Better Business Bureau, and other organizations that provide free listing services.

3. What SEO should NOT include

Believe it or not, there are SEO “experts’ who have been around for years who are still following gimmicky techniques that have potential to get your site penalized. Your short-term results may be good, but your long-term results as far as Google is concerned, not so good. Google, Bing and Yahoo continuously change their algorithms, so one day your site may appear on page 1, the next day it could drop to page 10.

Here are just a few of the “don’t do’s”:

(there are a variety of larger lists available on the web of what not to do with SEO)

• Signing up to any link farms (this will achieve seach engine penalties, which will result in lost ranking.)
• Hidden text
• Resubmission of your site each month (simply not necessary)
• Purchasing multiple domains that your host sets up as “alias” sites (this is considered duplicate content)

4. After your site has launched, complete with good SEO, will you need SEO maintenance plan?

Yes, for approximately the first six months so your agency/development company can test and experiment with keywords on your interior pages (and home page if necessary.)
It is important that there is a watchful experienced eye overseeing the search engines to assure that they have properly indexed your new pages. A good development company will also make sure that the proper 301 permanent redirects are put in place on old URLs that have been renamed with new URLs and new keywords.

5. Will you need an ongoing maintenance plan?

No, if you do not plan to do many updates, or your updates are confined to your content management section that you handle.
If you plan to make a lot of updates, it is recommended that you have a monthly or quarterly maintenance plan in place. For some sites that are large in size and do daily updates, a regularly daily maintenance plan is recommended.

What exactly is “Marketing Strategy”

To some, it means putting together a marketing plan where to focus your resources for the best return in results.

To Wikipedia, “Marketing strategy is a process that can allow an organization to concentrate its limited resources on the greatest opportunities to increase sales and achieve a sustainable competitive advantage. A marketing strategy should be centered around the key concept that customer satisfaction is the main goal.”

To Ad Ventures it means all that plus deliberate, thoughtful focus on a client’s company growth objectives, putting one’s feet in the targeted person’s shoes, and then strategizing how to lead that Business to Business, or Business to Consumer through a series of steps and decisions, and through the “buying cycle” stages: awareness, interest, desire and action. A good strategic process is one of resourcefulness, putting a client’s budget to use in the best, most cost-effective way to achieve short-term and long-term results for the benefit of complete client satisfaction today and tomorrow.

Implementing Marketing Strategy into Website Design

When we design websites, a large portion of the audience research and strategizing is implemented at the front end. I’m not just talking design strategy, but marketing strategy. We automatically include the marketing strategy in our website design process because we can’t imagine doing it any other way. (Our ultimate goal is to achieve complete client satisfaction.) The end result of a well-planned website is ease in interface navigating, a call-to-action placed in view on every page, visual graphics that support the messaging and text – all elements flowing in a connected way. A well-strategized website looks like something a visitor can quickly “get their hands around.” It doesn’t come off as a website that someone will instinctively want to bookmark for later reading, but something that draws them in immediately for a quick scan, that quick scan providing them the most important information they need to know.

The other important strategic approach that Ad Ventures uses is planning how to present the information in a clear, concise way. For example, the top three – five most important benefits to a website’s offering should be well-highlighted on the home page. And the competitive edge (these benefits or positioning statements) are repeated throughout the website, so that there is consistent flow from the start, through the body, to the end.

How we get to the end of successful marketing strategy is how we begin. We start the entire marketing strategy process during the discovery stage, when we sit forward taking notes on our laptops and listening to our clients and their employees. A client will tell you how to sell them, without even always realizing it. Same goes with telling you how to “sell” their company product or service. Our job is to take a look at the information with fresh eyes, and interpret the information so that it “sells” to the website’s target audience. We not only use strategy in how to present the information, but also in a way so it speaks to multiple audiences, i.e., the first-time web visitor who knows little about the company’s service or product, and the repeat visitor, gathering updates or additional information from your website.

Next article: When is the best timing for organizations to gather RFPs, before screening applicants or after screening applicants? The answer depends on what kind of RFP will achieve the best, desired results.

The Internet incorporates hundreds of combinations of website skill sets and technologies. Just because one’s skill set may be that of a “web developer or designer,” do not assume they have all the necessary web skills or know everything they need to know about websites.

In my role at Ad Ventures, I make it my business to know the key must-haves for every website. I’ve surprised more than one fellow new web developer, that a non-HTML type like me studies the left-brain geek stuff as much as I do. After all, my “creative director” title is a right-brain kind of title. But I love everything to do with website strategy and researching – it is my occupational hazard of a hobby.

Here are must-knows that I’ve come across over the years, that are so important that they are worth noting. It is staggering how many times I’ve encountered the three below must-knows during a web redesign, that weren’t known or implemented by a client’s previous web developer/company.

Must-Knows

1. When setting up your hosting: Resist the temptation to accept the hosting company’s suggestion that he set your business up with multiple ‘alias” websites (your website hosted for no extra charge at 5 or more different domain names.) It doesn’t matter what the host says in regards to SEO, what matters is what Google says. And Google penalizes for “alias” websites, AKA “duplicate content.” (Hosting companies are often confused as being SEO-knowledgeable. Remember, they typically specialize in hosting, not SEO.) If you find yourself with more than one domain serving up identical websites, a robots.txt file will block your alias sites from search engine view, and this issue will be resolved.

2. When beginning development: Don’t leave your site’s interior page URL naming to your web developer or web development company, unless they provide SEO as a specialized service and have included an SEO “foundation” in your scope of work. Not all web developers are skilled in SEO, and often they don’t know to include keywords in URLs. (Google weighs heavily on well-named URLs.) So be proactive and ask about the process naming URLs. Or ask to submit your own keywords and suggested URL names. Or hire a company (such as Ad Ventures) that does include SEO in the foundation of a website.

3. When launching your website: If you are one of the lucky few who got on board the internet in the early days and secured a ranking of #1 on Google or Yahoo just for being there, be careful not to lose it just because you launch an updated website. Far too often when a new site gets launched, the old URL gets left behind, only to lead the search engines down the path that you simply don’t exist anymore. So they report your missing site as “404” (page not found.) And within days, your site gets dropped from the search engine indexes.

How does something like this happen? The web developer didn’t know or didn’t take the proper steps to “connect” the old to the new. For example, let’s say you added a database to your new website, so your new URL has a .php file extension, instead of the old HTML file extension. Google doesn’t necessarily assume that they are one in the same. Unless a web developer takes steps by adding the proper redirects from the old URL to the new URL, as well as notifying the search engines of the URL change, your website will be treated as new and starting from the ground up in the search engine rankings.

At Ad Ventures, we take a team approach and have several “watchdog” check and balance systems in place for not just our web developers, but for all our team members. We regularly and thoroughly check each other’s work, keeping each other in-the-know. And we’re always on the look-out for what’s right for our clients.

You know who I am talking about: the web designer who, in an extremely convincing way, says “I can do that,” or “sure, won’t take long ….”
By the time you hire him, you’re so wowed that you’ve found the hidden gem, that you believe he can perform web miracles. Unfortunately, it sometimes takes a while for the average business owner or marketing director to see that the “can do” is nothing more than a definitely cannot do! But by then, months of valuable planning time and money may have been wasted going in the wrong direction.

What do you do?

We’ll tell you what some people did when this happened to them….they came to Ad Ventures, a full-service web development company, and started over. We’ve heard this type of story many times from businesses whose first website experience was a total misfire, so we empathize. (Perhaps some of these other talkative “web developers” should direct their talents to a good sales position, say at a car lot.)

Interviewing web designers and developers for the past 9 years, in my creative director / website project manager position at Ad Ventures, has made me truly respect the superior talent when it comes our way. I can recognize it a mile away. There is substance behind the knowledgeable developer’s words, proactive solutions, and, most importantly, ethics. A good web developer utilizes dozens and dozens of technologies and skill sets to produce quality sites, and he/she continually studies the Internet and new technologies because they find it rewarding. These are the kind of web developers Ad Ventures’ hires, tests and trains.

We work closely with our web developers, collaborating with them, providing them back-up, education, support, coaching and research so that the attitude is not only always “can do,” but “will do.” And our clients can be assured that there’s a team of highly skilled people “walking the talk” on every website we design on behalf of our clients.

Coming next: What web developers don’t always know….are must-knows for you.