Internet marketing trends change from year to year. Sometimes these fast changes leave Internet marketers and small brick and mortar businesses alike scrambling to catch up. Here’s the good news. Although 2013 is nearly half over, there’s still time to implement these five internet marketing trends you don’t want to miss out on.

1. Responsive Website Design

People visit websites from a wide range of different devices. Your site needs to be accessible to as many of these viewers as possible no matter how they’re accessing your site. In other words, you need a site that flows seamlessly for people viewing on laptops, desktops, tablets, notebooks, netbooks, and mobile phones alike. That’s what responsive website design is all about, creating a site that’s friendly on all platforms. Today, it’s not a nice-to-have feature, it’s a must have.

2. Email Marketing/Remarketing

Email remarketing is one of the Internet marketing trends for 2013 that business owners from all industries can get excited about. An important component of it is contacting people who have allowed website shopping carts to expire by not taking the final steps to make the purchase. It lets your audience know you care to hear why they didn’t make the purchase to begin with. It also helps you shore up areas of concern for customers so they’re confident enough to buy from you in the future. Start off with email marketing. Launch an email campaign and publish an email newsletter to develop a relationship with your existing and prospective customers and make your email remarketing more effective.

3. Content and More Content

Of course, a voluminous amount of content alone is not enough. You need high-quality, high-value content that is relevant to your area of business, or niche, if you’re going to really capitalize on the benefit it can provide. A content management system is a great tool to help you “feed” your website with timely and regular content and is one of the most valuable of the internet marketing trends.

4. Smarter Social Media Strategy

Social media is constantly evolving. While you may be using social media, are you using it to your full advantage to capitalize on internet marketing trends for 2013? Do you have a plan and social media strategy in place? A smart social media strategy includes social listening, engagement, call to actions, advertisements and measurement. A solid social media strategy for businesses that is reassessed every year, and not just for 2013, is a wise plan for all businesses operating on the Internet today.

5. Mobile Strategy

Just as social media is growing in prominence and importance as a marketing tool, so is the usage of mobile devices by the population at large. In fact, 24 percent of Google traffic in the fourth quarter of 2012 came from mobile devices. Those numbers are only going to grow in 2013. The current worldwide audience of subscribing smartphone users is 1.1 billion people. That’s a huge market to miss out on if you don’t have a mobile website.

If you aren’t keeping up with these Internet marketing trends your business could suffer in 2013 and beyond. Now is the time to reassess your Internet marketing strategy to be sure you’re embracing the changing way the world does business today.

It started with a simple box inviting people to subscribe. Today, Geoff Bartakovics has transformed Tasting Table to a thriving newsletter with over one million subscribers. It only took four short years and a fair amount of elbow grease to do it. Not all businesses will grow to one million subscribers. But, it’s not entirely outside the realm of possibilities. Here are seven reasons your business needs to publish an email newsletter beginning today.

Keeps Your Business Name Fresh in the Mind of Customers

Every single time you send out a news email “blast” or email newsletter to your subscribers you’re sending them a reminder that your business is the one that can meet their needs. Whatever business you’re in, this is advertising that keeps on giving – even if they don’t need your products or service today, your business will be the first one that comes to mind when they do because they consistently see your name in their email inboxes (whether that’s on their computer or mobile device).

Brings Customers to You Week After Week

You no longer have to wait for customers to come to your website when they need something you have to offer. Now, you can bring your website, products, and/or services to them with a few keystrokes and a click of the mouse. And – it’s instant! You don’t even need to wait on the postal services to deliver it.

Lets Your Customers Advertise for You

When you send consistently high quality email newsletters to your customers, the chances are good that they are going to share your newsletters through social media or with other friends and family who need the information, services, or goods you have to offer. They become advertisers for your business and all it took was for you to give them the tools to help you out via your email campaign.

Drives Traffic to Your Website

No matter what line of business you’re in, no matter how good you are at taking care of your business, your website isn’t going to be successful without traffic. Email marketing through a well-designed and well-thought out newsletter brings a steady stream of visitors to your site week after week. The best news is that these visitors are generally people who are already interested in the products you’re selling.

Helps You Build Relationships with Your Target Market

More importantly, email newsletters help you build trust with your target market. The more reliable and informative news you share with your audience, the more often they will turn to you for solid industry information. There really is no better way to build solid, trusting relationships with your customer base than email newsletters.

Establishes Your Business as an Industry Leader

For the people who subscribe to your newsletter, you are the voice of authority in your industry. The more information you provide them with, the more proof you’re giving them that this is the case. Give expert advice to your customers and they will keep coming back to you for more and more advice in your industry. Newsletters are, by far, the easiest way to share that advice.

Gives you the Chance to Provide a Compelling Call to Action

More importantly, it gives you this vital opportunity every time you hit the send button for your email newsletter. You’re not just sending one call to action. You’re sending calls to action to each and every newsletter subscriber on your list. And, they’ve invited you to do it. They want to hear what you have to say and when the timing and product is right, they are your most likely buyers on the World Wide Web (and sometimes off the Internet too).

Wouldn’t it be great if you could do all these things so easily? You can! We can help. Contact us today to to see how we can help you get your email newsletter up and running today so you can enjoy amazing results like these tomorrow.

Throughout the Internet you can find all manner of articles and blogs dedicated to telling you exactly what you need to do to create the perfect website design for mobile devices. You’ll hear different opinions on content, context, and outright design features that are a must for your site to be successful on the mobile web. However, few of these articles and blogs address the mobile website design issues that could be holding your site back, like these.

Overwhelming text

People who are using the mobile web are often people who are on the go. They want to look information up quickly and with as little pain in the process as possible. Don’t make them scroll through a ton of information they don’t need in order to find what they’re looking for. Less, really is more, when it comes to mobile website design content.

Use of Pop Ups

Pop ups are annoying in the best of times, and downright loathsome in the worst. On mobile devices, they can be completely problematic. It’s best to disable them altogether on your mobile website design for the convenience of users if nothing else.

Burying Your Call to Action

Mobile screens are small. Keep your call to action above the fold (in the visible screen people see when they land on your site) or your conversion rates will suffer.

Not Having a Responsive Design

Different devices are different sizes. You need to have a mobile website design that accounts and adjusts according to these variations. Failing to do so renders your content unreadable to some, if not most, of your target audience.

Links and Objects Too Close

Some fingers are fatter, flatter, or altogether less nimble than others when it comes to navigating around on their mobile devices. Placing links and objects too close together on the screen leads to a great deal of wasted bandwidth (a real problem now that so many characters have dropped their unlimited data options).

Buttons Too Small

Again the problem comes down to fingers. Not only do the buttons need to be large enough for the fingers to fit, but they also need to be spaced an appropriate distance apart so that fingers aren’t constantly tapping the button to the left or right of their intended targets.

Long, Complicated Forms

Mobile devices are portable, and are designed for people on the go. Often times people are in a hurry trying to get to the information they want in a timely, painless manner. Long, complicated forms make this impossible. Ask for as little information as possible from users if a form is absolutely necessary. If it isn’t necessary, save it for your desktop-friendly sites and skip it on the mobile websites.

Not Testing

Test, retest, and then test again. Test your site on multiple devices, multiple platforms, and in multiple conditions to ensure that your mobile website design is firing on all cylinders – not to mention providing a favorable experience for users on each of these mobile platforms.

These things are all small adjustments you can make in your mobile website design that will decrease user headaches and improve user experiences. Give them a try today and enjoy great improvements in response to your mobile sites.

At this month’s much anticipated Los Angeles User Experience Meetup event regarding Lean UX, Media Contour had the opportunity of conducting a round table interview with Lane Halley and Jaime Levy on the benefits of Lean UX strategies and practices for startups and enterprises.

Lane Halley is a digital product designer and UX facilitator at Carbon Five. Jaime Levy is a User Experience strategist and principal at JLR Interactive. She also teaches User Experience at UCLA Extension.They are both pioneers in the topics of User Experience and Lean Startups and offered innovative insight at this great event. Below is an excerpt of our round table.

LUKE: Hello. Our community consists of both agency UX’ers and designers, but also startups, small businesses and marketing teams within medium-to-enterprise level companies. I’d like to start with them. Let’s define Lean UX and discuss why it’s beneficial to their projects.

What is Lean UX?

LANE HALLEY: Lean Startup is a growing movement focused on customer understanding, experimentation, validated learning and iterative product releases which shortens product development cycles and increases the chance of product success. Lean UX combines elements of design thinking and Agile development practices. I think of Lean UX as the evolution of user experience methods which allow us to continue as UX practitioners in the modern world.

Lean UX is an alternative to the “waterfall” method of product development which involves distinct phases, handoffs and an over-emphasis on deliverable documents. By working in small validated cycles, teams can reduce risk and minimize waste in their design and development process.

Jaime Levy, Chris Chandler and Lane Halley discuss Lean UX at Cross Campus

JAIME LEVY: User Experience is typically practiced as a linear methodology with the output being a static product design document jammed with wireframes and functional specification. The biggest waste to me is the precious time that we creative professionals spend designing products that potentially nobody wants or needs.

LUKE:Reducing waste. How often do we end up at the final QA phase of a project only to find out that we should have done something another way? These realizations are often unavoidable growing pains of developing something new, but Lean UX can help businesses find out what they REALLY need earlier on.

Why is Lean UX Better for Businesses?

LANE HALLEY: The first question would be what does this business do and who is their audience? With that sort of foundation, you can better determine ways to deliver what meets your client’s needs without getting caught up in the hubris of what you think they need.

LUKE: It’s almost planning by doing. You don’t know what you need or what you’ve missed until some sort of final product is in front of you.

LANE HALLEY: Working in this kind of environment, you have to create a different kind of collaborative relationship with your client, where you become explorers together, and you have to recognize that all of your ideas are assumptions until they’re validated with happy, paying customers. This shift in consciousness and way of working based on this philosophy really does yield better results.

LUKE: Happy paying customers. I’m finding that it’s really important to get real user feedback sooner in the process and in Lean UX it’s a must.

JAIME LEVY:  I would add that getting stakeholders and users together as quickly as possible really applies in any type of work environment. For example, a technique I employ is bringing startup clients and potential users into an informal environment (i.e. a cafe) instead of a traditional focus group setting. We show the potential users a quick and dirty prototype as opposed to a polished product. This relaxes the atmosphere. It makes the interview more conversational, and we increase the likelihood of receiving both immediate and more thought-provoking feedback. I did these “guerilla”-type interviews with the CEO of TradeYa recently. He saw how the potential customers not only stumbled on the prototype but just did not understand the product’s value proposition. Because he sat in on the interviews as a notetaker, it allowed us to get on the same page more quickly and with a sharper focus toward product optimization and value innovation.

Adopting a Lean UX Philosophy

LUKE: Let’s shift back to agency life. For teams unfamiliar with Lean UX, how can they start implementing the Lean UX method into their practices?

LANE HALLEY: It’s really about changing the relationship between the client and the team that’s doing the production and design. The first thing is to make talking to users an ongoing part of your process. It’s not a special occasion and it’s not just at the end of the process. It’s about continual user engagement, constantly mixing that conversation into the project, and engaging the people who are making the decisions in that process too. Step two is really empowering and aligning the team around a shared vision. We use a technique at Carbon Five called “design studio.” It’s a collaborative design session facilitated by a designer where everyone sits down with pencil and paper and sketches solutions to the problem. This is a great way to get the right conversation flowing around the product that is being created.

JAIME LEVY: Well, it’s so dependent on the client because a lot of times clients come in and already have a specific idea for something. It’s also really important to do market research so you know what direct competitors are doing so you can consider what’s being done outside of that particular vertical in terms of feature concepts. This allows for new ways of approaching things and problem solving. Oftentimes, you need to shift the mental model of how a product works to something totally different. Lean UX advocates for UX practitioners to ask clients about who they think are their customers and what problems they are actually trying to solve. But UX Strategy is about balancing the validated solution against smart market research so you can find new opportunities to exploit.

Conclusion

Lean UX is defining a problem and then finding a solution by doing. By getting started, you provide your team with the opportunity to catch missing functionality that you couldn’t of otherwise caught without some type of prototype. It’s also about getting customers in front of your project as soon as possible to learn as much as you can about real user interaction.

You can start practicing Lean UX by bringing together collaborative teams and giving them tools to create working prototypes. These prototypes do not have to be complex. At our studio we use a combination of marker boards, paper sketches and Balsamiq Mockups to create working prototypes with your clients and their customers.

2013 offers exciting possibilities for business across the globe. Following the right website design trends can help change the course of your business in the coming year and beyond. These are a few of the hottest trends going on right now for website design

Responsive Web Design

People are surfing the web from multiple platforms these days. You need to design your site so viewers can access them, in a uniform layout, from whichever devices they’re using, whether it’s laptops, smartphones, tablet devices, or desktop PCs. This means you give your visitors an optimal viewing experience with minimum panning, resizing, or scrolling across a wide range of devices. Sites like Mashable.com and BostonGlobe.com are already doing it with excellent results. The better able your site is to manage multiple formats, the more attractive it will be to the overall Internet audience you’re courting. Responsive design is also convenient for people who resize their windows when browsing the Internet as the layout automatically adjusts to the window’s size.

Fixed Header Bar

The fixed header bar is not so new even though it’s one of the hotter website design trends for 2013. We’re simply seeing it used on more and more websites as the convenience of this tool for visitors gains more notoriety in design circles. Twitter, is an excellent example of a fixed header bar. As readers scroll down the page, they have access to all the navigational support of the header bar. This means they don’t need to scroll all the way back to the top of the page for navigational purposes.

Social Media Icons and Badges

We live in a social world. Websites today must make it easier than ever before for viewers to share posts and pages. Social media badges and buttons are top tools in the website design trends for the coming year because they make sharing so simple. BlogHer.com is just one of many websites that uses badges for popular social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Sparkle, StumbleUpon, Pinterest, and Google +. Don’t forget about other ways to engage customers by including icons to your RSS feed, YouTube videos, or Instagram page.

High-Quality Content and Illustrations

Quality will forever be the secret for success when it comes to website content. It’s a good thing that website design trends have finally caught up to this inescapable truth. Sites like Gizmodo.com and Cnet.com offer a great deal of quality content and pictures to go along with the information they provide. Infographics are also becoming a popular tool to combine quality content with illustrations.

Infinite Scrolling

This is a very popular feature as far as many website users are concerned and in terms of website design trends. It allows them the ability to scroll down one page in search of data and information rather than clicking through multiple pages to find the information. It creates a seamless experience. The real beauty is that it doesn’t even slow things down as you scroll down the page. Pinterest and Twitter both use infinite scrolling with great success.

Stay ahead of the competition by incorporating these website design trends into your websites. 2013 is sure to become a banner year for your business as a result.

Whether you’ve decided that it’s time to redesign your website, or perhaps you’re embarking on your very first business website design, your website is a vital part of building your brand and business, both online and off. Either way, here are 5 strategies to get more traffic to and customers from your website.

Be strategic. 

In other words, know your website’s goals, both primary and secondary. The more clearly defined your website’s goals, the easier it is for your website designer, copywriter, and blogger to meet these goals. What is the main purpose of your website? Is it to gain leads, sell products, attract new clients, ask you for a free quote request, sign up for your newsletter, provide product and service support to reduce phone calls, or read your blog a few times a week?

Make it user friendly. 

Are your visitors able to interact with your website in a way that is meaningful to them? Intuitive navigation, easily recognizable hyperlinks, strategic information design, optimized search function, scannable and readable text, fast page load times, functioning keyboard shortcuts, and good use of white space are all features of a user-friendly website design.

Make it mobile friendly. 

According to GoMo News, 25 percent of mobile only internet browsers rarely or never browse the web using their desktop. Think with Google further reports that by 2015, more individuals in the U.S. will access the internet through their mobile device than through a desktop personal computer. What’s more, one in five mobile website visits leads to a user taking action. Building a mobile compatible website while also avoiding elements that frustrate mobile users is critical for businesses to take advantage of the exploding mobile world we live in today.

Incorporate fresh and captivating content. 

Regularly supplying your website visitors with fresh and engaging content will incite visitors to return to your site again and again. Encourage comments or participation in polls to have your visitors interact more with your site. Utilize a call to action to ask for blog or newsletter subscribers, provide captivating high quality images, and be sure to integrate social media into your website and blog. Whether it’s your blog, product updates, galleries, multimedia, or company or industry news, deliver useful, entertaining, and valuable information — consistently.

Utilize analytics. 

At the very least, get to know Google Analytics, which your professional web designer can provide and incorporate into your website. This insightful tool can tell you what pages on your site your visitors are reading, how long they are staying, where they are located, what browser or device they are using, what their entry and exit pages are, and so much more. Learning more about your visitors and their behaviors can help you better target them.

None of these business website design strategies are a quick fix. They require effort, persistence, and time. But the investment not only provides cumulative benefits, but also takes your business to the next level.

Among the most successful business and corporate websites out there are those that manage to incorporate blogs and social media into their overall web presences. Doing so requires quite a bit of thought. It also requires diligence. These three elements can mix very well, but you do need to make certain that you exercise a bit of control.

Overly Personal

Back in the day when newspapers were the primary venues for getting information about business out there, public relations firms would constantly send press releases to reporters about promotions within a business, personnel who had won some sort of award and other like stories. More often than not, these press releases got ignored. The reason is simply that most people aren’t interested in this type of information about a company.

One of the best ways to utilize blogs and social media presences is to tie them into the corporate websites and to make certain that it’s all business. To put forward a more human face for the company, consider offering value rather than uninteresting information. For example, people will be much more interested in getting some technical information about a product that your company sells than they will about who got an award for being a particularly reliable employee.

Controlling the Message

Message control is a big part of public relations. If you have a blog set up, make certain that the company that sets it up for you gives you ways to control the posts that visitors make and the posts that the people actually filling the blog make. There should be some sort of approval process for both. Where people making the updates are concerned, it prevents blog posts from going up that may reflect negatively on the company. Where user comments are concerned, controlling the comments prevents the blog from becoming filled up with spam. Web designers can provide you with both automated and manual ways of achieving these goals for corporate websites.

Social media, blogs and corporate websites can all be linked together and can function very well as a coordinated effort. There still needs to be some level of control exercised over all of them, however. At the very least, you should have technically savvy marketing people in charge of these endeavors and make certain that there is accountability built into the system. This can prevent embarrassments, accidental leaks of proprietary information and other pitfalls from becoming issues.

In any field involving design, there will always be trends. Sometimes, these trends offer easy ways for designers to make certain that one of their creations looks contemporary. In other cases, these trends are destined to be short-lived and may not really offer anything to the end result. Website updates generally will follow some dominant design trends in the Internet world but, that being said, it’s important to understand what types of website trends may constitute wastes of time and money.

Layout Trends

Today’s websites tend to be much more content rich on a page by page basis than were the websites of the past. In fact, multicolumn designs allow website designers to pack pages full of information.  This is an example of an effective website trend. When this is done right, your website visitors won’t have to click through a lot of different pages to get to the information they want. When it’s done incorrectly, your visitors won’t be able to figure out what part of the page they should be looking at to find what they’re after.

If you are expanding your website from a one-or two-column designed to a multicolumn design, make certain that you’re doing so in a way that makes life easier for your visitors, not more complicated.

Graphic Trends

One of the very noticeable website trends in design over the last few years is that graphics have become more functional than they ever were before. For instance, rather than having a pretty picture on a page to keep visitors interested, most images on webpages these days are very specific to the content on the rest of the page. For businesses, rather than looking for a nice image to put on a webpage, the current trend – and this has been a trend for a while – is to utilize the branding theory as much as possible in image selection.

Branding is an example of a good website trend as far as design is concerned. It comes from the accumulated knowledge that marketers and businesses have built up over years of being on the Internet now.

Too Trendy

Remember not to get too trendy with your website design. You may notice that a lot of websites are starting to adopt a particular design style that appeals to you. Your website designer can help you to take advantage of what’s good about these website trends but, if they’re a very good website designer, they will also show you how you can be different and original at the same time.

According to many different sources, the percentage of overall webpage views made on mobile devices goes up year after year. It’s important to understand what a mobile device is for most of the people who own one. They might not be surfing the Internet in the traditional fashion but they are most certainly visiting webpages, seeking information and performing many of the same tasks that they could only do at their desktop computers before mobile devices became Internet-enabled. This means that making your site mobile compatible is, indeed, a priority if you’re serious about reaching out to people.

Is it Complicated?

There are, in the broadest sense, two ways that you can go about making your site mobile compatible. One way is to use a responsive design. This means that your website will detect what type of device it is being viewed on and that it will automatically adjust the size and orientation of the elements on the page to make your page more accommodating to the smaller screens on mobile devices. The second way  to ensure that your site is mobile compatible, is to have a separate mobile site developed by a web designer. Either provides a workable solution.

Using the mobile site isn’t any more complicated than using your regular site. There’s nothing that the user needs to do. In fact, you can verify this for yourself by visiting just about any well-known site on a mobile device and then visiting it on your desktop computer. You’ll notice that, when you show up on your mobile device, you get a differently formatted webpage than you do when you show up on your desktop computer. Selecting the appropriate site is done automatically for you.

Choices

Well-designed mobile compatible websites generally do give the user the option of viewing the full desktop site, if they so choose. Users on devices with larger screens, such as tablet computers, may well choose to visit the full site, as the usability is not compromised by their device in any regard. Offering the choice, however, is important. Your users should have the option to use the mobile site.

Mobile device usage is going up very quickly. At the same time, the speed of mobile carrier Internet connections is increasing and more people are choosing to have Internet access on their phones. This means that, to be ready for the future, you do have to have some sort of mobile compatible site set up as an option for your visitors.

If you’re going to update your website, one of the things you’re going to want to do for certain is to take advantage of what social media has to offer. There are some elements of social media websites that are vastly overblown in terms of how their advertising potential is described. There are other elements of the sites, however, where the realities do live up to the hype. Here are some of the feeds you will definitely want to have connected to or displayed directly on your own website.

Image Feeds

Flickr and other image sharing websites can sometimes be added to your own website in the form of a stream. If you happen to be a photographer, this is a sensible and useful addition to your website. Many photographers use these websites because it allows them to store a huge number of photos online without having to have those photos stored on their own server. Ask your website designer about having your photo feeds included when you update your website.

Twitter

Twitter is definitely a service that you will want to include as you update your website, if you use it for your business. Twitter is used by many businesses to offer customers coupons, promotional offers and real-time information about what’s available at their retail establishment, restaurant or eCommerce site. Remember that some of your visitors may be visiting your website but not following your Twitter feed. If this is the case, including that feed on your website enables you to get more out of the money and time you spend updating it.

Facebook

You will most certainly want to post any content that you put on your Facebook newsfeed on your website, as well. You’ll also want to make certain that you make it easy for people to share your website content on their Facebook news feeds. Having this sort of cross connectivity between Facebook and your website can be enormously useful. It also helps you to keep Facebook useful for advertising, as some changes to the terms of service for businesses have made it more difficult for businesses to reach out to their followers without paying.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is so strongly associated with people’s professional lives that you will definitely want to include this when you update your website, as well. If you have a LinkedIn profile, it should be easy for your visitors to get to it from your website. Your website designer can take care of this for you when you update your website.

There was once a time when updating a website – even doing a very minor update – required you to have a working knowledge of HTML. That time has long since passed. Today, website designers can provide you with ways to update your own site using a content management system that makes it just as easy as updating the newsfeed on your social media profile or updating your Twitter feed. Here’s how it works.

Content Management Systems

Content management systems are backend features for websites that make it easy to add content to pages. They include well-known names such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla and others. These content management systems give you an interface that is very similar to what you see when you update a social media feed.

Using a content management system properly does require a few steps. For instance, before you add written content to your website, you’ll want to write that content into a word processing program, so that you can do a spell check, proofread it and take all the other necessary editing steps before you actually put it online. There are simple proofreading features built into many content management systems, but it’s still a good idea to use a word processor first.

Efficiency

A content management system also provides a great deal of efficiency. For example, with a good content management system, you can actually upload a great deal of content and have it posted on a schedule. This completely automates the process. This is a great way to cut down on the amount of work that people have to do to keep your website updated and, of course, it’s also a great way to make certain that any vital information you need to have posted on your website on a particular day isn’t overlooked.

A good web designer can integrate content management into your website. This allows you to update your content whenever you need to without having to worry about ruining any of the code that underpins your site. It also allows you to spend your money with web designers on updates that are complicated and that require the services of a professional, rather than having to contract a web designer to do very minor updates on your site. Using these systems, it really is just as easy to update your website content as it is to add more information to your newsfeed, your social profile or any other social media feed.

It’s safe to say that, when most people think about web design, they think about appearances more than they think about anything else. Web designers do far more than make an attractive website for their clients, however. It’s also safe to say that most people are probably aware of the fact that some websites are dangerous to visitors. A good web developer can make certain that your website does not pose a risk to your visitors and implement techniques to prevent against hacking as you update your website.

Avoiding the Dangers of DIY Sites

Some companies and individuals who have websites set up for business purposes try to have the website designed in the house or try to do it on their own. Designing a modern website is a task that requires the skills of several different types of people. This is also the case as far as the effort and team needed to update your website.  Graphic designers work on the looks of the site, developers work on the code and other professionals handle their own elements of the site.

When people try to do it themselves, they oftentimes end up using premade plug-ins and other features to increase the interactivity on their site. The problem with this is that the people adding these features oftentimes don’t understand web programming enough to know when there installing something that could pose a threat to their visitors. Some of the worst threats on websites don’t come from the website that the person is actually looking at: they come from websites that are linked to through malicious add-ons or advertisements. Good web designers can help you avoid falling victim to this as you update your website, and prevent you from getting a reputation as someone with a dangerous website.

Membership Sections

For any type of business, one of the worst possible public relations events is having your member’s credentials stolen by hackers. The people who steal this information sometimes go as far as to offer it for sale on certain websites.

A good website designer can make certain when you update your website that your website is secure, rather than just appearing to be secure. Understand that security is an ongoing effort.. Security isn’t a goal that you reach, it’s a constant battle between security experts and the hackers trying to exploit people who use websites. With a good web designer, you can make certain that your website is always updated so that it is ready to handle the latest security threats out there.

As is the case with most security issues, website security comes down to knowledge. When you are ready to update your website or if you’re having a website newly built , be sure you’re using a knowledgeable firm.

If you’re not a particularly technical person, it’s always a little bit intimidating to go into the offices of a service provider and discuss what you need. If you are looking to update your website, here are some things you can do to make the process easier and to facilitate better communication with your website designer, ensuring that all of your needs are met and that the website designers themselves are aware of those needs.

Meet In-House First

If you don’t own and operate a website on your own, there are probably quite a few people involved in maintaining your website. You want to make certain that you meet with all of these people first so that they can voice any concerns they have so these are taken in to account when you update your website. In particular, talk to the people who are responsible for updating your website. You need to know if they are having any issues that are making work difficult for them that can be resolved as you update your website.

Survey

If you’re already working with a website designer, consider asking them to put a small survey on your site so that you can ask your visitors themselves what they would like to see changed about your website. This is a great way to get some ideas as to what you need the web designers to do as you update your website. Most web designers can add such an element to your website fairly easily and it would be well worth the modest cost to do this, particularly if your website is a venue for delivering products and services.

Write Down Ideas

When you have a good idea, write it down or e-mail it to the designer so that you don’t forget to bring it up. It’s a lot easier to spend a little bit of extra time meeting with the web designer and bring up all of your ideas than it is to start throwing ideas at them after they’ve already started developing your site.

Remember not to be intimidated when you go to meet your web designer. You don’t have to be technically versed in how websites work to get what you need out of the web design firm. All you need to be able to do is to give them some solid ideas about what how you want to update your website, be ready to take in some new information about how those ideas will be realized and to keep in a creative frame of mind when you’re dealing with the web design firm.

The display quality of desktop computers, mobile devices and just about everything with the screen on it is increasing constantly. Lately, HD and retina displays have become standard features on just about every new device. These displays have some beautiful resolution. Watching videos on them is amazing compared to what it was before the new generation of displays hit the market. The iPad and other Apple mobile devices, in particular, are known for their tremendous display quality. This has some important implications for when you update your website.

Old Graphics Don’t Cut It

Some companies have been using the same graphics for many years, porting them to their new websites when they have them redesigned. This worked very well for quite a while but, with the new display qualities available, older graphics tend to look rather amateurish and shouldn’t be reused when you update your website. Updating a website isn’t a one-size-fits-all procedure. Some companies will only need content updated or maybe a few features added here and there. Other companies, however, particularly those who have been recycling a lot of their content over the course of several updates, may want to take a serious look at updating the graphics.

The danger in having dated graphics on a website is that it tends to make the entire website look cheap. No matter how much work was put into layout, navigation and all the other elements that make a website excellent, the presence of graphics that look pixelated, that have gaudy or ill-chosen colors and that have ragged pixels where smooth lines should be will inevitably detract from the visitor experience.  Take this in to strong consideration when you are ready to update your website.

Working with a Designer

A web designer may very well want to revamp your graphics when you update your website, nearly from scratch. They may want to put bitmap graphics into a format called scalable vector graphics, which allow the graphical elements of your website to be enlarged or reduced in size without any loss of quality. It’s hard to convey just how much of an advance in web design capabilities this is. One of the biggest hindrances to getting excellent results that graphic designers faced was the fact that much of their work would end up degrading in quality when it was expanded or reduced into different screen resolutions and screen sizes. Today, the scalable vector graphics offer a good solution for a world where mobile devices are rapidly becoming almost as popular as desktop computers for browsing the Internet.

A great deal of your website impact is based on what visitors see. As you update your website, take into account that today’s monitors, mobile devices and other screens allow visitors to see a whole lot more than they used to be able to.

Spam is one of the greatest threats to your website.  Luckily, there are strategies you can employ to help fight spam as you update your website.  Today, there are more types of spam than there were in the past. In the past, the term referred specifically to unsolicited commercial e-mails, but today it refers to blog posts that are designed to advertise something rather than to inform or entertain, pages that provide links to sites that have no value to the person clicking them and to other online scams that trick people into clicking on something that is malicious, deceptive or otherwise undesirable.

Fighting against spam oftentimes employs technological and human solutions. Here are some basics that you should understand.

Form Spam

Sometimes, spammers will use web forms as ways to propagate their schemes. The best way to fight against this as you update your website is by using what’s called a captcha. A captcha is something you’ve probably seen before. It consists of an image that contains text that the bots that spammers use cannot read. In order to submit a form, the user has to fill in a field that verifies that they’re human beings by proving that they can read the letters in the captcha. A website designer can implement these on your site very easily as you update your website.

Forum/Blog Spam

Spamming forums and blogs is one of the most established ways that spammers go about their business. The way it works is that they will post a reply to something posted on the blog or forum and fill that reply with links to sites that they make money off of or thinly concealed advertisements for products. Sometimes, the links will go to sites that present a genuine hazard to the people who visit them. It’s important to control this.

Depending on what type of blogging technology you use, your website designer will be able to install automatic systems that look for spam and eliminate it when they find it as you update your website. These, however, are only part of the solution. The other part of the solution is human control over what goes up on the blog. Having posts reviewed and replies reviewed before they go online is the best solution to this. Your website designer can set you up with a system that makes it easy enough to do.

If your website gets a reputation as a place where people are at risk due to spam, they’re going to quit showing up to it. It might be because of irritation or a legitimate concern for their safety. As a website owner, you should take advantage of any technological and procedural methods of controlling and eliminating spam and employ these when you update your website.

There is a great deal of marketing information these days that has to do with social media. In fact, social media, in some regards, is being played up to the extent that businesses may be becoming a bit too grand in their expectations of what it can do. It’s important to remember that the website you actually own is much different than any social media site in an important regard: you have complete control over it. If you’re updating your website, you may want to do so while keeping in mind that you can update your website in a way that takes social media into account but that does not make your entire marketing effort dependent upon social media.

News Feeds

The general consensus about direct advertising on social media websites is that it’s not worth the money. Advertisement on social media sites gets very low return on investment figures, in the vast majority of cases. Businesses quickly found out, however, that they could get good results by updating their newsfeeds with information about their products. Facebook has since adopted a paid system that has taken away the ability to do this for free.

You can update your website with features that allow you to push updates on your website to your social media feed. Depending upon what type of program you’ve taken advantage of from your social media account providers, these feeds may or may not be visible to the people who follow you. They will, however, be visible on your website. By making the website the main venue for the information that you are putting out, you’re putting that information out in an environment where you have complete control over the advertising ecosystem.

Like and Share

As you update your website, it’s a very good idea to have any website updates you undertake include updates that allow your visitors to share or like your posts easily. People do this almost reflexively these days when they find something interesting. If you want to take advantage of this somewhat Pavlovian response to things that people like, make sure your web designer includes “Like” or other sharing icons when you update your website so that people can share your content. You will most certainly want the “Follow us on…” links on your site, as well, so people can add you to their friends list without having to hunt you down on the social media site itself.

When choosing to update your website for social media compatibility, convenience is a major factor in the usefulness of any update.

Poor website design can make your website look outdated. There are very real consequences to this. For example, if a customer has the option of shopping on your website or a website that looks much more current, it’s likely that they’re going to pick the current site. Here are some ways that web design can make your company look as outdated as your website and the importance of refreshing your design as you update your website.

Security Issues

Everybody who uses the Internet understands that security is a major issue. When your website looks outdated, it’s a natural conclusion for people that your security is probably outdated, as well. If they’re asked to enter their credit card number on a page that looks like it was designed in 1997, they’ll likely have some justifiable hesitation.  This why it’s important to update your website with a fresh design.

Keeping your site fresh looking gives the impression that your company spends a lot of time developing and redeveloping what they put on the web. If you have a well-designed, modern site, it’s a lot easier for people to have confidence in it.  Keep this in mind when you are ready to update your website.

Never Updated

Websites that look like they have never been updated make it look like the company may well be out of business. If they don’t give that impression directly, there’s still a good chance that they give the impression that your company is probably one person working out of a basement or something similar. Keeping your site fresh with a new design as you update your website ensures that people know that your website is, in fact, updated regularly and that your business is very much alive. Having an outdated website makes your business look like it failed a long time ago and that it might not be the most reliable choice to do business with.

No One There

Outdated websites also make it look like a company may be a truly fly-by-night affair. Most companies these days spend a lot of time keeping their websites up to date. If you have an outdated website, it looks like you’re not even taking care of this, very basic, requirement of doing business in the 21st century. This is the last impression that you want to make with customers.

Outdated websites, make no mistake about it, make your business look bad. You don’t have to put out the cash to have a huge website built or to update your website effectively.  Simply having a web designer make a few improvements here and there and bring your site up to more modern standards can go a long way toward making the right impression on customers.

Last week, Janine Warner (@janinewarner), self-described Digital Alchemist, presented Understanding Content Strategy to the Southern California Web Designers & Developers MeetUp group at Huge, Inc.’s new LA Office. Janine gave us a top level look at Content Strategy. Below you will find a brief overview of her presentation and a few links to resources that can help you with your content strategy.

After Janine’s presentation, I was able to sit down with her and talk a little more about the Los Angeles design community, helping clients create content and how we can become better at Content Strategy. Read the interview →

What is a Content Strategist?

According to Janine, a Content Strategist might be a 6-7 headed mythological creature that is likely an ambitious kapelophile. Or in the real world… a Content Strategist is a person who can wear multiple hats through the content creation process. Experts in the Content Strategy field help plan, organize, manage, and create content for websites and other projects. Content Strategists work with clients to discover the best way to communicate key messages that best serve company goals. They also keep the projects on track.

Tools of the Trade

Keeping tabs on a site’s content strategy can be a daunting task that really comes down to organization. Janine showed us some of the tools Content Strategists use to keep everything in check.

Flow Charts

Also known as site maps, flow charts outline how a user will navigate a website. This is also a good way to track of all your pages in the structure of your website. On big projects, content strategy professionals will usually work closely with an information architect to create flowcharts or site maps. On smaller sites, a content strategist may be expected to do this task as part of managing content integration.

The flow chart above was created with MindMap, a free mind-mapping tool.

Content Inventory

Most content strategists start a project by conducting a content inventory, a detailed document designed to assess the current content on a site and to keep track of each page’s content, importance and overall goal. It can also be used as a checklist to make sure nothing was missed.

Check out Maadmob’s free template to get started with your content inventory.

Gap Analysis

A Gap Analysis is a great way to find out what is missing on your website and what actions are needed to take place to fill those ‘gaps.’ It generally involves sitting down with the client, the Content Inventory and your client’s goals for the website. Is everything listed in the Content Inventory facilitating those goals? If not, add it to the Gap Analysis worksheet and assign team members to fill in the gaps.

Crafting Content for the Web

Source: http://www.digitalfamily.com/tutorials/content-strategy-the-inverted-pyramid/

Using a similar approach to journalism, the content strategy for the web should be developed in the model of the inverted pyramid, a technique that prioritizes the most important content first rather than in chronological order. Similarly, Janine recommends that you limit each paragraph to one idea and write headlines that clearly convey the meaning of the story and include keywords for better search engine optimization.

3 Seconds or Less

As web designers, we often fall victim to knowing our clients too well. In the process of working with a client, we should get clear on their goals and their backstory. But never forget that visitors may not see a webpage the same way as you do. Janine recommends a 3-second test. Show your website to friends and potential visitors and make sure they can identify the goal and purpose of the site in 3 seconds or less. Make sure that headline says what your client does!

Don’t Forget the 404!

When was the last time you redesigned a 404 page? If you are a designer, Janine hopes you respond with, “Last project!” The 404 page is one of the most overlooked and underrated pages on a website. Done well, the 404 page can serve as an opportunity to demonstrate your client’s voice and even be a bit silly if the mood calls for it. You can also create a better user experience by giving the site’s visitors the option to search for new content or to visit a new page.

Find more inspiration at http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/35-creative-404-error-pages

You can watch Janine’s course on Content Strategy on Lynda.com at http://www.lynda.com/Web-User-Experience-tutorials/Creating-Effective-Content-Strategy-Your-Website/109764-2.html.

Or visit her website at http://www.digitalfamily.com to learn more about her books, videos, and consulting services, as well growing collection of free tutorials on web design.

Lastly, I would like to thank Mario Noble (@mndtwit), the organizer of Southern California Web Designers and Developers, for putting on this event. I recommend checking out his next event. No matter what your level expertise you will get something out of it. And, Mario is always great for a good laugh. Thanks Mario!

Janine Warner recently presented Understanding Content Strategy to the Southern California Web Designers & Developers MeetUp group at Huge, Inc.’s new office in LA. After her presentation, I was able to sit down with her and talk a little more about LA, helping clients create content and how we can become better at content strategy.

Tell our readers a little bit about what you do.

I’m an author, web designer, content strategist… like many people in this business, I wear many hats. I am also the creator of digitalfamily.com which is an interactive design and training agency.

Your site has a lot of great content targeted towards small and medium-sized businesses.

Thanks. I created DigitalFamily.com to provide additional resources to people who buy my books and training videos and now it gets quite a bit of traffic on its own. Most of the content is basic web design 101, but you’ll also find tips on social media and, of course, content strategy. Because I’m the author of every edition of Dreamweaver For Dummies, you’ll also find a large collection of tutorials on Adobe Dreamweaver. It’s a good place for clients to begin their journey in web design and a place where I help people who want to create their own websites on important topics such as content strategy.

Are there advantages to working with small businesses?

In many ways the smaller clients are the most fun to work with because they haven’t figured out their content yet and that’s really where you get to do your best work if you’re into content strategy.

Sometimes it allows for more creative direction as well.

Definitely.

We see that you’re a fellow Angeleno. How do you use the city to motivate your work.

I often say Los Angeles is a city that you can choose to love or hate and I choose to love it. What I most love about LA is the diversity and the vibrancy, the great museums, the art scene and the creative talent you find here in every shape and form. And in large part because I run my own business, I get to choose where I get to live and work and I don’t have to commute every day in LA traffic! [laughs] That definitely makes people hate LA! I avoid rush hour whenever possible!

You’ve written a lot of books about the Internet. How has writing helped you become am expert in content strategy?

I studied journalism, and I remember one of my professors said, “If you want to be a great writer, the first thing you have to do is write hundreds of thousands of sentences. It almost doesn’t matter what those first two hundred thousand sentences are about. It’s more of a right of passage.” So after writing 25 books, I think finally know how to write [laughs]. I say that with great humility and passion for writing!

“If you want to be a great writer, the first thing you have to do is write hundreds of thousands of sentences…”

I call myself a journalist turned geek. I went from being a traditional reporter to being really interested in the internet, and then I realized that most people as techy as I am couldn’t write very well —some couldn’t communicate their expertise at all, so I found a niche for myself somewhere between technology and journalism, and that set me up well to become an expert in content strategy today.

If you can bridge the worlds of writing and technology, content production and development, and you understand something about multimedia and all the different forms of storytelling that exist today, you are in a really good position to work as a content strategist and guide the creation of content in the increasingly complicated world of content design and publishing.

I received similar advice from an art teacher, “First make 10,000 paintings and give them away to your friends. Once you’re done with that, you can then become an artist.”

[Laughs] So it sounds like we received similar advice. For me, there were two parts to it. One, it was great practice. But the other is maybe more related to my profession today in that much of working in technology is about learning new things all the time. In a funny way, writing books gave me an opportunity to go deep into a topic and thoroughly study it so that I could write a book about it. Writing books has afforded me the time to get new expertise that I could later use with clients and apply in my own business.

So the fact that I spend about half my time writing books, creating training videos, and teaching — and the half working with clients and doing fairly technical development myself works well for me. That way I’m constantly learning new things as an author, writer, researcher and constantly testing those theories out in practice with real clients.

Starting content for a new website can be intimidating. Where does one start for optimizing content strategy?

All big tasks are best done when broken down into little pieces. The same is true for content strategy.  The first thing I do with a client is sit down and put together a production schedule with a lot of milestones. And one of the things I learned early on was that content development had to be started early in the process. I usually take a three-pronged approach to developing a website. One of them is getting the content started, the other is design, and third, developing the technology and programming. Some people wait to do the content until after the design and technology have been finished, but I think that is one of the biggest mistakes in web design. You really should be thinking about the content strategy from the start.

I think a lot of why content strategy is getting more attention today is that people are starting to realize that you need to think of content up front and the best websites are designed with a very holistic approach, developing some content and getting started with the message — what are the key things we need to get in — and then designing around that content so you create a design and content strategy that work well together.

“Some people wait to do the content after the design and technology have been finished, but I think that is one of the biggest mistakes in web design.”

Did I answer your question about getting clients started? [Laughs[ Content isn’t free and doesn’t grow on trees. There is an investment in time that someone has to make. But I think breaking it down into pieces can be helpful when it comes to content strategy.

In last night’s presentation you suggested having the client get away from the office when they’re having trouble writing content. When content creation stalls, how do you get the ball rolling again?

When you get the client away to a place without all the distractions, having a list of interview questions can help. I’ve seen this with videos, biographies and websites, if you just start by “What goes on the website?” the client kind of gets lost, or if you point a camera at someone and say, “Talk!”, it’s really hard to do. But, if you feed them some questions and just start a conversation, you can bring out those gems that can help start to shape the heart of the most important content.

So I’ve developed questionnaires that I use with clients. For example, What are your top goals? Who are you customers? What do you want people to do as a result of visiting your website? And the more specific you get with those questions the more you start walking them through a process that leads to creating content that is the most valuable for their site and a successful content strategy. If you can capture some of their answers in an interview format, then with a little editing and revising, you can massage it into content that you can use on the website.

“Clients need deadlines…”

One more thing. This might seem obvious, but client’s need deadlines the way everyone else does. Sometimes we think the client is boss and we should follow their lead, but most clients need to know that content strategy and creating content is an important part of the process. From my experience, client’s benefit when deadlines are set for them.

I will set up a schedule with milestones then I will reassure them that all they need by the first deadline is the first draft. It takes them off the hook just a little bit so that they can get something out, knowing that it doesn’t have to be perfect. One of the misconceptions for people have that haven’t written hundreds of thousands of sentences, is that they think it has to come out perfect the first time. It rarely does. The best writers revise and revise, and then have really good editors revise their writing some more. If writing and editing is not your skill set, consider hiring a writer or editor to help them.

If you’re not a professional writer you may underestimate how much everything you read has been edited. Every book I write has 3 or 4 editors that work on it with me. There is a technical editor who reviews all the technical aspects, a copy editor who makes sure everything is spelled right and that the commas are in the right place. Then there is a product editor who looks at the overall message and makes sure it is appropriate for the audience. And finally there is a proof reader who gives it a final review.

On small websites, most people don’t have a team like that. But leverage whatever you have. For example, get the administrative assistant to write the first draft, then have a good editor go over it, and finally let the client review it.
Part of being a Content Strategist is being able to training other people how to create good content. If there is no one on your team with writing and editing experience, you may need to find a freelancer to fill in that gap and part of what you may want them to do for you as part of the content strategy is to teach others how to develop content, too.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. We like to give our readers a tip they can take to work with them tomorrow. What advice would you give our readers to become better at content strategy?

One of the best ways to become a better writer and to become experiences in content strategy is to read a lot. A great way to make better websites is to look at a lot of websites and really study what they do right and where they fail. Companies like Apple and Mint have done a pretty solid job of summarizing complex concepts in a few words, illustrating them visually, and walking their audience through the points that tell their stories quickly and succinctly. Seeing how other content developers distill complex messages into a few works is a powerful way to learn to develop great content yourself. Just like readying a lot of fiction is a great way to write a better novel.

“Companies like Apple and Mint have done a pretty solid job of summarizing complex concepts in a few words, illustrating them visually and walking their audience through the points that tell their stories quickly and succinctly.”

It is very easy for us as web designers to get caught up in the projects we’re doing and forget that we should go out and surf the web every once in a while. One of the reasons I got my iPad is so that I can get away from my desk and sit and search and read and think and study for a while. It’s a very import part of keeping your skills up-to-date and integral to optimizing content strategy for any project.

Practice through imitation. Is there anything you would like to add that we haven’t covered?

Content Strategy is a hot new job category and a hot new term people are talking about, but it’s a skill a lot of people have had for a long time and a skill that has been evolving for a long time. You’ve probably been doing this for a while, but just didn’t have a name for it.

“It’s a pretty cool career for a lot of people.”

One of the things to recognize about content strategy is that it is an emerging specialty because it is increasingly needed, increasingly important and increasingly complicated because we have so many different kinds of content and publishing channels today.
But at its core, the skill set of content strategy is relevant for an audience is what a lot of us have honed over the years and many people do in related professions. Since a lot people in web and digital design come from the world of print or broadcast media, they bring these skills already they just don’t necessarily recognize that they and many are already pretty qualified for a Content Strategist position. They might just need to supplement what they know about content strategy with a little more understanding, a little more vocabulary, a little more experience, a little more thinking about how you tell a story in multimedia. It’s a pretty cool career for a lot of people.

Being in charge of content strategy and creation also brings you in a little earlier in the process. Being able to orchestrate all these pieces gives you a lot of creative opportunities.

In my own experience, projects that had someone in charge, whether it be the project manager, art director or an administrative assistant, typically were more successful than those that did not.

I’ve seen a lot of web designers run into trouble because they start into a project and they get stuck waiting on a client to deliver content, and it never happens. The more successful web designers tend to take a very proactive role in helping clients develop content and I think that is part of where this specialty is coming from. Many web design firms, and big businesses that produce a lot of content, have realized that not everyone is good at creating content.

“The more successful web designers tend to take a very proactive role in helping clients develop content…”

I think there is a lot of overlap between what traditional Creative Directors have done and what Content Strategists do today. It’s not just about writing copy, it’s about thinking through what the goals and objectives are considering what kinds of content will help move an audience towards those goals and objectives. Content Strategy takes a lot more than writing. It takes business sense and strategic sense and a deeper understanding of the audience and the company’s goals. It can definitely become a time consuming part of any web project.

I think that creative content strategy is an exciting area to work. Developing a brand’s voice and how it can lead a client toward their goals is a rewarding endeavour. Thanks Janine!

You can watch Janine’s course on Content Strategy on Lynda.com at
http://www.lynda.com/Web-User-Experience-tutorials/Creating-Effective-Content-Strategy-Your-Website/109764-2.html

Or visit her website at http://www.digitalfamily.com/ to learn more about her books, videos, and consulting services, as well growing collection of free tutorials on web design.