Old School Fashion: Bringing the Tradition of Print Design Online

There’s a growing stress on typography and the magazine layout these days as more and more web designers turn to old school strategies for inspiration. It’s a good thing they are, too. The fusion of print and online publishing practices is an interesting one.

The Magazine Layout

In keeping with CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) culture, the magazine layout is fast becoming one of the favorite layout choices for text-heavy websites. Why? It’s the only format that can actually contain so many links and still look pleasant. At the front page of the website, you’re likely to see a big, magazine-type heading, and below it, a directory, looking much like a magazine’s table of contents.

Instead of magazine pages, though, you’re given hyperlinks. These links are broken by “preview” images which give you a sneak peek at what you’ll find “inside the pages” of the magazine. The end product is charming because it’s retro and sophisticated all at once. The best part is that most blogs have this template. This means that even newbies in web design can make use of the template and just jazz up the boxes once they get a hang of the c-based codes.

Typography and billboard pages

Billboard pages are also called “single page” designs. In a nutshell, they contain very minimal text (most of the time, just the slogan or catch phrase) and a box containing all the vital information you’ll need to know about the service or product that’s being offered. Somewhere in the page, you’re most likely to find a single link (or at most, three) leading to the catalog of products or the portfolio of the artist or company providing a specific service.

Either way, this trendy layout design is reminiscent of magazine centerfolds for ads. They can also look like the printed billboards you’ll see from highways. It’s a “modern” approach to web design which is actually quite retro in its own right.

For modern website designers on the Gold Coast contact Ignition Media. We specialise in web 2.0 websites and code with only the cleanest css to ensure your website is fast to load while still looking amazing. We custom design each and every website to meet a clients needs to no two websites are ever the same.

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Installing Panic Buttons or Get-out-of-Flash Links

When you’re considering the design of your website, always put yourself in the website visitor’s shoes. Not all website visitors have fast internet connection. Not all of them will be viewing your website from flash-compatible gadgets. While flash videos give websites an “edge” because they look more modern and are, without a doubt, fancier, flash videos can take forever to load. On certain gadgets, the website might even be inaccessible because all your navigational buttons are on the flash video itself.

This is why it’s extremely important for websites to have a get-out-of-flash link. This link or button redirects the visitor from the default flash site to a simpler html website. Is a flash site a waste of money, then? No. People who can view the flash video are bound to be impressed by it if it’s well designed. We have to face the fact that we’re living in an audio-visual age. Sometimes, still images and fancy typography just don’t fit the bill anymore. Unfortunately, in some corners of the world, technology hasn’t quite caught on yet.

So, while flash videos are generally encouraged, it’s still nice to give the website visitor a choice. Perhaps you can even incorporate a nice little modal box explaining how the page is downloading slower than usual. You can install the get-out-of-flash link on your modal box so it’s not permanently placed on your flash site. That way, those who do have internet connections which are fast enough for the design element could see all the work you’ve put into your flash presentation.

A word of caution, though: never take the alternative html web page for granted because more than 50% of your visitors will probably be choosing this page to the flash page, no matter how fast their internet connection is. This is because internet browsers are generally impatient, and if the flash website takes more than a few seconds to load, they might turn away from your page or click on your alternative html page. To make that alternative html page attractive, apply everything you’ve learned about manipulating white space, typography, and images.

For a professional website that meets the highest level of website design, contact Ignition Media. Our Gold Coast website designers will design and develop a custom website to your needs.

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What Brick-and-Mortar Shops can teach us about Search Engines

People puzzle over the nuances of search engine rankings every day. Everybody knows that websites are somehow ranked based on “relevance” and “popularity”, but how are these things measured, anyway? There are actually a few things brick-and-mortar shops can teach us when it comes to getting the top ranks in search engines.

Know your Customers’ Needs

Get into the hottest niches simply by knowing what your website visitors would need. Are you planning on specialising in pet care? Then be sensitive as a writer. The best brick-and-mortar shops have top of the line supplies in low prices. When you keep a website, you need to have the most useful articles on hand, written in the easy, conversational English. As long as it’s useful and accessible to as many people as possible, it would be ranked as “relevant”.

Of course, salting it with a few “hot” keywords would help as well, but it’s really about pleasing the real customers. Think about human readers first before you mind anything else. If you can’t do it yourself, hire a good writer to help you out.

Label your goods properly

Be very direct when you’re labeling articles and image files. Your links should also contain keywords in them so that the web crawlers can recognize them easily. Skip the “smart titles” and go for keyword-rich article titles instead. These would help your readers navigate your website better. If you need to insert a “smart” pun in your title, either because you’re trying to be unique, or because old habits die hard and you used to do it when you were writing for a magazine, try to put this puns at the tail end of your article titles.

While you’re writing primarily for human readers, you also need to keep in mind that web crawlers prioritise their searches. Unless the vital keywords are at the front end of your article titles, they might not be indexed by search engine crawlers at all.

To further enhance your websites performance on leading search engines contact a professional SEO at Ignition Media. We offer a variety of Gold Coast website promotion packages and servers to cater all budgets.

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Uncle Bobs Bakery

Ignition Media designed the Uncle Bobs Bakery website interface along with the complete website developement which uses WordPress CMS and customised E-Commerce plugin to offer an online store. Custom Post Types are used to manage the home page sider and photo galleries are used thoughout to showcase the products.

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Global Shade Australia

Ignition Media designed the Global Shade Australia Logo and website interface along with the complete website developement which uses WordPress CMS and Custom Post Types to manage the products & Applications they offer. Ignition Media was also contracted to create the sister site, Global Shade Direct which also utilises this template.

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ShadeLink

Ignition Media designed the ShadeLink Logo and website interface along with the complete website developement which uses WordPress CMS.

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AdWrap-it

Ignition Media designed the AdWrap-it Logo and website interface along with the complete website developement which uses WordPress CMS and Custom Post Types to manage the products they offer.

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Typography in Web Design: What’s in Your Face?

Typography is an integral part of web design. A website is not a website without textual content. The presentation of this textual content is as important (if not more important) than how well the images are placed on the page.

There are two very basic families of typefaces and they are serif and sans serif. A serif is the embellishment or extra stroke you’ll see at the end of the font’s main stems. A serif font style has extra “legs” or “tails” at the edges. A sans serif font style, on the other hand, is simpler and would not have these extra strokes.

As much as possible, web designers only use one font style family in a single web page. This creates some sort of uniformity throughout the layout. Using too many font styles is also a big no-no in web design because it looks amateurish and too busy.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. For example, web designers may purposefully use a gamut of font styles to make the web design wild because it’s the mood they’re trying to express. These are very rare, though, as business websites prefer to look refined. Hence, only two or three font styles are used at a time.

Proper use of typography also involves balancing. A page is well balanced if the concentration of textual content and images are equal all throughout the page. The font’s sizes are also important. There’s no hard rule about assigning font size values. Most of the time, it would depend on the taste of the layout artist. This is why it’s very important to hire a website designer who has a good “eye” for things like these.

Outside the aesthetics, though, it’s really about readability. It’s very difficult to read from a webpage. Compared to reading from a printed page, an online page would strain the eyes more. Generally, the font size should be bigger when you’re designing a page online compared to when you’re designing a page for print. The lines and paragraphs should also have enough white space in between them. Well-spaced text is easier to read.

Another factor which web designers should consider is the color of the website’s background compared to the color of the text. To ensure readability, use a background image which has a uniform or close-to-uniform color, at least on one side of it. This way, you’ll have a place to set your textual content. It’s not advisable to adjust the color of the text body just so it can be contrasted with the background image. The text should always be more striking than the background image.

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Fan Page Risks: Handling Negative Comments on your Social Networking Page

Social networking pages are essentially “fan pages” whether they’re labeled as such or not. They work in the same way blog works, where you gain “followers” who purportedly keep in touch with your and read all of your updates. When you’re managing a store, whether it’s online, brick-and-mortar, or both, social networking fan pages can work to your advantage as long as you use the page well.

However, because of the “democratic” nature of the Internet, your contacts might not be all “fans” after all. They could be allies of your competitor who are out to get you by posting negative comments, or worse, earnestly unsatisfied customers who would like to have their qualms aired out. If this is the case, how are you supposed to handle negative comments in general?

Diplomacy is the key. If you erase the negative comment without bothering to resolve it first, your customers will feel that you’re withholding from them the right to complain. They’re also going to feel like you don’t value their opinions. You should keep your cool and try to resolve the matter in the same way you would had you been face-to-face with your agitated customer. Apologize for the inconvenience you’ve caused, ask for a report, and tell them you’ll do your best to serve them better next time. Then try to take the conversation to a more private field.

Ask your agitated customer to contact you through email. If the fault really is yours to begin with, then you can make up for it by giving your customer a freebie. If it wasn’t, apologize just the same. There’s no use getting into an argument if you can settle things with a few dollars’ worth of free item. Once the issue has been settled, you can either update the other clients who read the negative comment, or erase the comment altogether.

If you are looking to promote your website with Social Media outlets, contact the specialists. Ignition Media offer various Social Media services in their RankIT SEO packages and also offer custom solutions to match your specific needs. For a free website analysis and ranking report contact Ignition Media for a no obligation quote.

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Man or Machine: About Organic SEO and SEM

Would you want fast but short term results or long term results which could take months? Organic Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) can take up to six months to show. The long waiting time can turn off online marketers, making them think of going for black hat SEO techniques instead.

The main difference here is that black hat SEO attracts search engine spiders. These techniques think about the program (or the machine) and totally overlook the fact that the websites should actually be designed to please human beings. Relevance is measured by the frequency of a keyword’s appearance in a single text block. At the very least, the textual content of these black hat websites are annoying. When you repeat a single key phrase 12 times in a 120-word text block, though, you’re bound to come up with garbage text.

Organic SEO, on the other hand, sprinkles an ample amount of keyword into the website’s text just so the site is considered relevant enough by non-human search engine crawlers. These are programs which have no idea what subjective relevance is, so the keyword density is still the factor at play. However, the keyword density of these texts is never more than 1.5%, and if these words need to be repeated at all, they’re placed strategically so that the information in the text jives well with the keyword appearance.

Most website owners, when they’re not talented writers themselves, even hire professional writers to do this for them. The content is also information-rich, first of all, before it’s keyword-rich. A really good internet marketer would probably be able to meld the two together. After all, it’s all about crafting your articles well so that they’re useful for human readers yet optimized for search engines. It just takes a lot of thinking through. Inorganic or black hat SEO tries to go for shortcuts, but these shortcuts always backfire.

Ignition Media specialise in Organic SEO techniques to provide you with organic rankings on Google, Yahoo and Bing. If you would like your website to experience the advantages of organic SEO contact Ignition Media and ask about their RankIT SEO promotion packages.

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Bringing Old School Marketing Strategies Online

Those who were so used to brick-and-mortar stores might be a bit uneasy about putting their businesses online. While most of these websites are just complementary storefronts to their actual offline store, they still worry, and the really traditional ones won’t ever consider putting up online stores without the brick-and-mortar one.

This is a strange phenomenon because the principles behind online and offline marketing are actually one and the same. Some factors are just replaces with others. For example, instead of meeting your customers face-to-face, you talk to them over emails or char messages instead. The process is also slightly longer when you exchange money for actual goods online. Shipping can take up to half a week, so customers are forced to trust shop owners to complete the exchange. Usually, shop owners require a “deposit first” policy.

There are a lot of things that stay the same, however. For example, there’s the “customer is always right” policy. To effectively carry out business online, small business owners should try to please their customers. If they ask for minor adjustments in a made-to-order product, you may have to comply with it just to keep them interested. If they request for special packaging, or a different shipping company, it’s also better for you to bend unless your store has already implemented a strict policy about these things.

Strict policies hardly work for online shops, though. Remember, online stores have more difficulty trying to look credible for consumers, so when you’re putting up the wall too high and making sure that the terms benefit you and not your customers, you will eventually lose them. Try to keep the playing field even. Lay it easy with the profit as well. Once they find out that you’ve “robbed” them because you priced a product too high, things are going to get ugly.

If they’re nice, they won’t say anything about it. They just won’t buy from you again. Most online consumers are a bit more vocal, though, and they could start an online campaign against your store. Remember, it doesn’t cost much to keep your store when you’re selling your goods through the net. If the shipping fees are shouldered by the customer, there’s no reason for you to price your goods too high. The old marketing rule here is to trade fairly, and that’s always the golden rule whether you’re selling online or offline.

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The Principle behind Blogs and Search Engine Rankings

One of the best ways to make it through the clutter of information in the World Wide Web is to publish your writing through blogs and to do it well. Blogs have ready-made templates which makes you do away with the trouble of creating pages yourself. Blogs also have popular domain names, so as long as your article is optimised and it’s written well, it’s bound to be listed on top of search engines. Below are things you should double check, though, to make sure that you’re doing things right.

Look at your URL

Your URL’s tail might have random characters. This is what is usually generated by blog programs, but you can tweak it a bit and make it more search engine-friendly. To stress the relevance of your article, apply the whole title of your article at the tail end of the URL. This way, search engines can track it easier and list your page on top of every other page in the same niche.

Apply Internal Linking

Is one of your pages more popular than the rest? Try linking the other pages to this popular article and soon enough, all of your web pages will rank higher in search engines. Internal linking or self referencing works wonders. Anyway, most of your articles will be talking about related things, so self referencing will also help your reader find his/her way around your website.

Apply Image

Some people aren’t on the look-out for textual information, but they do look for images. Whenever you can, make sure that your articles come with useful and related images. Instead of naming them with random characters, name the image file with the most relevant keyword you can think of, or even the title of your article. Search engines will automatically provide a link back to your article when they index the image onto their databases. If the Internet user is curious enough, s/he will click on your website’s link.

Ignition Media offer various Search Engine Optimisation servers to enhance your website’s performance on the major search engines including article submissions, blog posts /copywriting, link building and on-page optimisation. To find out more, contact Ignition Media and ask about the RankIT SEO Packages.

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