According to WordPress “using WordPress 3.3 will improve your looks, personality, and web publishing experience”. You can find out what improvements an upgrade to WordPress 3.3 will make to your website. Continue reading WordPress 3.3 Upgrade
Site Launch: Women of Influence
We revamped Women of Influence’s website to be an online magazine, event calendar and corporate website. Visit http://www.womenofinfluence.ca to see the new site.
Site Launch: Akuklink.com
We just launched a new site for Francis Rock’s Traditional Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture clinic. Visit http://www.akuklinik.com to see the new site.
Flash War – Adobe Hands Win to Apple
A war between Apple and Adobe was declared long ago over whether Flash should be on mobile devices. Apple took a stand that proprietary Flash would cause slowdowns and drain batteries and the future was delivering video using HTML5. Apple mobile devices powered by iOS continue to fly off the shelves in record numbers. Even though they can’t run Adobe Flash content and Apple device owners are still able to enjoy playing online games and video. Other devices such as the BlackBerry Playbook have bragged about their ability to handle Flash content, but it looks like Adobe has admitted defeat to Apple – at least on delivering mobile video.
What is Google+?
At the end of June 2011, Google launched ‘The Google+ Project’ social networking platform. Google’s previous two attempts at social networking (Google Wave and Google Buzz) failed to catch fire, but it looks like its third attempt (still in beta) might be both a winner and a potential Facebook killer.
Google seems to believe that Facebook has some shortcomings that they can fix by launching their own version that makes takes existing Google products social. The company certainly has a lot to work with, including Picasa, Gmail and Google Maps. Information and functions from all of these will be integrated into the Google+ experience so that you don’t have to sign into different services to share your photos and let your friends and family know what you’re up to.
Should Facebook and Zuckerberg be worried or will Google+ be the latest chapter of social networking fails by Google? Continue reading What is Google+?
Are You Ready for WordPress 3.2?
WordPress 3.2 was released yesterday and the minimum technical requirements have changed for your website back-end (PHP and MySQL) and your web browser (no more old, out-of-date browsers like Internet Explorer 6). Continue reading Are You Ready for WordPress 3.2?
5 Tips to Make Your Web Design Project Awesome
What’s the secret to making a website design project awesome?
In many cases it comes down to the working relationship between the designer and the client. I’ve had success working with both novice clients who have never worked on a website and experienced clients who’ve been through the process a dozen times. I think the path to success often comes from a client understanding the following:
Continue reading 5 Tips to Make Your Web Design Project Awesome
5 Things to Consider Before Starting a Company Blog
Blogging is not for every business, but I’ve outlined 5 tips for your company to consider before starting your company blog.
1. Write blog posts, not ads.
A blog is not another marketing tool for you to advertise and self-promote. Blogs readers are usually looking to read about your experiences and insights, or even engage you in conversation – they generally tune out advertising. The most successful corporate blogs consistently provide valuable content to readers, not just information about current promotions. Before you start blogging, see what successful bloggers in your industry are doing right and then decide how you want to share your stories with readers.
2. Identify the best person to write your blog.
Deciding who should be the main author of your company’s blog does not have to be a major hurdle. If you sell a complex product or service where customers need guidance from an expert, try to find a way for one of your experts to do the writing. If your offering is simple, choose a blogger with personality and the ability to write in a conversational style, often. Sometimes the best person to write the blog is just someone in your company who’s passionate about social media.
Continue reading 5 Things to Consider Before Starting a Company Blog
Content – Going Beyond the Website
It can sometimes be a small battle to convince our clients that they need to really think about a strategy for their online content. I often warn them that producing the content on their own (or with the help of a copyright editor) can be the hardest, most time consuming part of managing a website project.
The good news is that most of the companies I work with these days are really thinking about what should be included in their online content. Many of the more successful project I work on already have a content strategy in place before web design even begins.
Producing quality online content has become even more important as regular updates to websites, newsletters and social media are becoming the norm and search engines are always hungry for new content.
Microcopy – Small and Mighty
Microcopy isn’t small unreadable text hidden somewhere in the footer of your site. Microcopy is the tiny, important little bits of text (often shorter than a sentence) located on web applications and many websites. It’s a short sentence, a phrase, a single word. It is small copy with big impact.
These little bits of text can help clarify and explain exactly what is going on to someone when performing (or considering) a task on your website. You’ll find some examples of microcopy below…
Why do I want to sign-up? HSX.com uses two sentences to tell us how great their site is and why we should sign-up.
Should I enter my email? Twitter.com asks new members to provide their email account, but they make sure to let visitors know that the email will not be publicly displayed but can be used to search for them by people who know them.
Will they actually email me or should I just call? This simple blurb at the top of the contact form on EllsworthMedia.com gives visitors the expectation that someone might actually get back to them in a timely fashion.
