[Updated November 27, 2016] Having a couple of hours of free time on the holidays, (instead of having at least some rest) I decided to take time looking for the ways to brand my images and PDfs I spread online. Basically I was looking for some basic tools that would place a cute watermark on […]
Website Design Tips by Ann Smarty
Coming up with a web design - and implementing it properly - is insanely stressful. You have so much to worry about: branding, functionality, look, feel, useability, social optimizations, in-page SEO, building up on Google...just the color can have a huge impact on the final result. Is it any wonder that “custom website design” is within the top #1000 keywords on Google. Or that often website owners will spend more time and money on the perfect design than almost anything else. It isn’t just a matter of design, but of first impressions. You are judged based on your website, and how it looks and feels is critical.
How do you make sure the first impression you give is a good one? You start by creating a solid, well designed site that acts as the face of your brand, and you go from there. While some might follow trends in popularity, those tend to ebb away over time. Are black and white designs as popular as they were ten years ago? No, but they might be again. It is better to go with something evergreen and timeless, and aim to make a site that is clean, functional, attractive, and reflects your brand strategy.
In this section we will cover all things website design, from practical tips to ways to incorporate tools like watermarks into your visual content for better traffic. We will also look at useability testing, proper SEO in design, laying a foundation that will help you in promoting later, the latest and greatest website design tools, and more.
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No, You Are NOT Allowed to Use Any Flickr Images
The common delusion (under which I’ve also been for some time) is that you can use any image you find at Flickr as long as you link back to it. Well, this is wrong. Let’s try to figure all Flickr image license types to see which images you are allowed to post at your sites […]
How to Test Your Site Usability with Five Second Test and Twitter
A few days ago I tested this blog homepage with one handy tool I recommend trying: Five Second Test. That was both fun and useful. Now what I did: got a screenshot of the blog home page; filled in the form; uploaded the screenshot there; posted the generated link at Twitter and asked my dear […]
SEO Logo – What Should It Tell Your Customer?
You might have already noticed (after my color branding, SEO Slogans and branding outside SEO) that I’m particularly interested in overall SEO niche marketing and branding recently – well, that’s all because I am just starting promoting my brand and service and so the topic seems new and exciting to me. Today I am going […]
Learning Web Design From Movie Posters
A movie poster usually determines whether or not I am going to watch the trailer or even go to the cinema. A website design is usually a crucial factor in making the decision whether a visitor is going to look through headlines and stay for some time to read the article or review the products […]
Color Branding: Geographic and Niche Targeting
A while ago I posted an article on color branding categorizing some general color symbolism theory. It resulted in a discussion over at SU where I was (fairly enough) criticized for looking only at one side of the medal. Really color perception differs from country to country and from niche to niche. Color theory deserves […]
Calls To Action Follow-up: Who and Where?
[Off topic] Mark Dykeman has just posted an interview with me so I decided to share it with my readers right away, please check it out: Catch the brainwaves with SEO Smarty! My previous post on calls-to-action attracted a number of comments asking for advice on my readers’ current website design. I am not a […]
