Anchorage Alaska Web Design: 2015

Saturday, May 30, 2015

5 SEO Strategies for 2015

Nowadays, most people know what SEO (search engine optimization) is and how it helps a business successful. There are some strategies that worth spending time to update them.

1. Increase site speed

Google has made that site speed matter in search rankings since 2010. The faster sites not only get better on search rankings but also improve user experience. You can test site speed with Google Page Speed Insights

There are few ways to speed up your site:

Optimize images – compress images and crop images to correct size
Reduce the number of plugins
Minify CSS and JavaScript

2. Create and optimize for mobile users

Having a mobile-friendly site impacts your SEO. Recently Google adds a “mobile-friendly” label to mobile search results for better user experience. The mobile-friendly means a user can view the website’s content without to zoom in or horizontally scroll to read. You can see if your website passes Google’s mobile-friendly test.

I’ve gathered some important data about online searchers’ expectations:

Local searches lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores (Search Engine Watch)
72% of consumers expect brands to have mobile-friendly sites (adweek)
48% of mobile visitors who visit a site that is not mobile-friendly felt that the company just didn’t care about their business (Reach Local)
9 out of 10 mobile search users have “taken action as a result of a mobile search, with over half leading to a purchase." (Search Engine Land)
Studies show that by the year 2016, mobile searches will overtake PC searches for local search (Reach Local)
3 out of 5 consumers search for local businesses on their smartphone (Reach Local)

These are some reasons why your website should be mobile-friendly.

3. Grow Natural Links

According to the Moz 2014 Local Search Ranking Factors Survey, one of the top five factors is link signals to the site or the specific page.

These steps can help you build backlinks to your site:

Create a local business listing on Google Places
Create backlinks by having the account in social media like LinkedIn, Google + or Facebook. Try to update your company activities or what you’ve done for community on daily basis in those accounts. When users or your followers see it helpful, they will share your content.
Have a high quality and frequently updated blog that is relevant for your audience.

4. Unblock JavaScript and CSS from Google Fetching

From Google webmaster central blog

For optimal rendering and indexing, our new guideline specifies that you should allow Googlebot access to the JavaScript, CSS, and image files that your pages use. This provides you optimal rendering and indexing for your site. Disallowing crawling of Javascript or CSS files in your site’s robots.txt directly harms how well our algorithms render and index your content and can result in suboptimal rankings.

If your website have experienced block JavaScript and CSS from Google fetching. It’s time to fix this problem. How Google see you? and How to allow Google to view my CSS & JavaScript

5. HTTPS as a ranking signal

Google announced that HTTPS would now become a ranking signal. That means websites use secure, encrypted connections may get a boost in Google rankings.

But there are costs to enable HTTPS for your website.

Host with a dedicated IP address
Buy a certificate
Activate the certificate
Install the certificate
Update your site to use HTTPS

However, Google said “For now it's only a very lightweight signal.” But they may decide to strengthen it over time. For an informational website that doesn't handle any customer data, at this point there's probably not enough SEO value to make the switch.

In the end SEO is an ongoing process, however keep updating your SEO strategies will help your website success for many years to come.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

About NWDS - founded in 2003 by six software engineers, NorthWest Data Solutions (NWDS) provides custom computer programming and systems design services. NWDS creates many types of software, including e-commerce, financial, defense, engineering, logistics, aviation and more. www.nwds-ak.com

Friday, May 8, 2015

How to choose colors that fit your brand

Color increases brand recognition by 80%, and 85% of shoppers place color as a primary reason for why they buy a particular product, according to a infographic from KISSmetircs. It is essential to choose a color or a combination of colors for your brand.

Color meaning

Red – exciting, strong, energizing, fast

Orange – sociable, adventurous, affordable, warm, optimistic, cheerful

Yellow – happy, uplifting, creativity, challenging

Green – reliable, sympathetic, generous, adaptable

Turquoise – idealistic, creativity, compassionate, healing, self-sufficient

Blue – loyal, caring, reliable, conservative, idealistic, devoted

Indigo – responsible, obedient, sincere, structural

Purple – individual, creative, inventive, psychic, mysterious, fantastic

Magenta – loving, supportive, innovative, artistic

Pink – unconditional, understanding, warm, innocent, feminine

Gold – wealthy, luxurious, victorious, beautiful, attractive

Silver – modern, sleek, scientific, distinguished, calm, imaginative, feminine

Black – powerful, protective, comfortable, sophisticated, mysterious

White – innocent, pure, equal, simple, neat, open

Grey – intelligent, classic, mature, refined, conservative, neutral

Brown – practical, comfortable, reliable, friendly, humble, natural, organic

Source: Empower Yourself with Color Psychology

How to select your color

Choose a color that best describes your brand’s personality.
Brand’s personality is like human’s personality. Choose colors that represent your brand’s personality; your brand is strong, sophisticated and mysterious; adventurous, optimistic and self-confident; or idealistic, creative and inspiring.

Know the impact of colors to consumers.
The research shows colors have a significant impact on the logo and the brand.

The study revealed that blue logos invoked feelings of confidence, success and reliability; green logos invoked perceptions of environmental friendliness, toughness, durability, masculinity and sustainability; purple logos invoked femininity, glamor and charm; pink logos gave the perception of youth, imagination and fashionable; yellow logos invoked perceptions of fun and modernity; and red logos brought feelings of expertise and self-assurance.

Consider cultural interpretations.
For example, blue is the most preferred color across cultures. Red is the color of happiness and celebration in China, often seen red is being used in New Year or wedding. Black associates with death in Thailand.

Here are some resources you may find useful:

NWDS Alaska Web Design

How Website Design Affects Your Business

Here are some reasons how the design affects your business.

1. Credibility

According to Stanford University, the study shows 46% of people judge the credibility of a business based on the design.

It's not enough that you just have a website but you must have a professional-looking design. Since many people now search for information online before making a purchase, your site may be the first chance to make a good impression to potential customers.

2. Responsive design

Why does responsive design matter? A responsive website is designed to fit any size of screen when someone is using to view your website (desktop, tablet, smart phone, etc.). Here why responsive design matters to your business.

The number of smartphones globally used will reach 2 billion in 2015. The number of smartphone users is growing each year. If your website is not responsive, you risk losing a big number of visitors to your site.
Google released the mobile friendly update on April 21st. The update will potentially give a ranking boost to mobile-friendly pages in Google’s mobile search results.
Responsive design provides the better user experience for each device. The better your website pleases visitors; most likely they will come back again.

3. Slow loading web pages

40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. Once visitors find you on search results, they click your website. You have only 3 seconds to have your webpage load, if not you have very high chance to lose potential customers.

4. Good content

If your website do good jobs for all of above reasons, but you don’t have good content. That will be huge impact to your website.

Write for fast reading. People tend to be in research mode when they are reading online; use one concept per paragraph, make sure the key idea is at the beginning, and remove redundant words.
Have content that relevant to your business.
Provide useful information and images that visitors expected.

Your website is part of your business. You may use it as one of your marketing tools and with some other reasons. It should give you the best results to your business.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

Monday, February 16, 2015

How do I design a logo?

Logo design is not just creating an identity or brand, but it needs to be scalable, memorable, versatile, and appropriate.

Some rules that I always stick with when designing a logo.

1. Simple

A simple logo makes it easier to recognize and remember than the complex one. The other reason is the more shapes being used the harder to keep them clear in small size.

2. Memorable

Logo Design Love.

3. Versatile

A good logo should look good in black and white as well as color. It should stay effective when print on different kind of mediums.

4. Appropriate

Your logo must be relevant to your target audience. A logo is designed for a lawyer should look and feel professional and conservative, which is opposite feeling with a child day care logo.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

9 Ways Your Website is Driving Customers Away

You want your website engage new customers, but these mistakes could drive them away.

1. Registration form

There are some websites like Real Estate Listings; register users only will be able to see their properties. Asking users to register right away can just drive them to your competitors.

2. Auto playing music or video

This is unexpected. Music on websites is not a good idea. If you need music on your site have a link to turn it ON/OFF as an option. The same applies to video. Disable auto play on your videos, have users control what they want.

3. Looks old and outdated

Take a look at your website. Does it look old and outdate compared to your competitors? Does it look good on all devices? If not, maybe it’s time for a website redesign.

4. Stale information

If your website offers a free tool kit but already expired last year. That’s not a good sign for your potentials and repeat customers, they probably won’t come back.

5. It’s hard to find information

Make it easy to find what you do and what you offer. Ensure users can contact you if they need more information or problems. It’s a good idea to have phone number and email address in the footer on all pages.

6. It’s hard to navigate

Make sure you main products or services are easy to find in 5-10 seconds after your users arrive. Users are not going to click through several pages to get to the information they want. If your navigation is confusing, users will leave your website. And that will affect your bouncing rate higher also.

7. Content problems

Large blocks of text that are difficult to read. You can portion into small chunks and surround it with white space.
If you’d like your users to read easily on your web pages, avoid black background with light color text or text is too small.

8. Slow loading web pages

KISSmetrics shows 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less. If your web pages take more than a couple of seconds to load, most likely users will go to your competitors’ website.

9. Annoying ads

The ads that follow users around make it impossible to read the content. It leaves only one option for users is get out of the website. The study in Journal of Marketing Research reveals

The practice of running annoying ads can cost more money than it earns, as people are more likely to abandon sites on which they are present. In addition, in the presence of annoying ads, people were less accurate in remembering what they had read.

The key to have an engaging website is to provide users with an excellent experience. If you think your website may have one or more of these mistakes that drive users away. It may be time to update your site to be better.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Log in Design for Regina Airport Authority

Regina Airport Authority is a non-profit corporation which operates Regina International Airport under a 60-year lease from Transport Canada. Their mission is to manage and operate their airport in a safe, secure, efficient, commercially viable and environmentally responsible manner.

Screen shot of existing log in page.

First Design

I’d like to have the login page looks similar to their current website. So I took one image and incorporated it to my new design. In order to turn it to the nice background image, I made it blur with Photoshop Gaussian Blur. And I decided to center all elements. Then added color to username, password, and login boxes with their logo color scheme. The rest of the content, I wrapped with slightly transparent white background.

Screen shot of first design.

Second design

The second design, I used the image from current login page. But half of this image had very bright light. It could draw users’ eyes to it so I decided to cover with login form. It turned out great since the bright part helped to draw attention to the form. Besides that, I relocated “REGINA AIRPORT AUTHORITY’S SMS PROGRAM” to the left side which pointed to the form. The rest of the content left on white background made it easy to read.

Screen shot of second design.

Both designs are looking good now. We will have our client make decision which one should be their new login page.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

Do you need a new logo?

A logo is one of the most important aspects of your business. It is not just making a good first impression. But it represents your business on every medium like your website, business cards, letterheads and etc. If done well, a logo can boost sales and recognition.

Here are some of the reasons you may need a new logo.

1. Created by an amateur

If your logo created by someone who doesn’t know about logo design. Your logo may use clip art or created with raster graphic like photoshop. And you don’t have other formats beside jpg or png, so you should consider having a new logo. A good logo should be created by a vector-based like illustrator, which allows for reproduction in all media and all sizes.

2. Is your logo readable in all sizes?

When a logo tries to add too many details, it becomes fuzzy and unreadable in a small size. A logo should be simple and easy to read in all sizes.

3. It doesn’t work in all formats

Your logo should work well for both prints and online uses. It should be effective in black and white as well as full color.

4. Does your logo feel clichéd or overused?

You want your logo to be unique and memorable. Do not use fonts or elements that overuse. A clichéd or generic logo won’t make your logo stand out from the others.

5. The nature of your business changed

Businesses evolve over time, your brand and logo should reflect that. It may be time for a new look of your growing company.

NWDS Alaska Web Design

Why does your website need SEO?

It’s about 91 percent of users use search engines to find information on the web. And 75 percent of them never look further than the first page. If your website is not on the first or second page of results (preferably page one), most likely your prospect clients will not find you. In that case, your website needs to be optimized immediately.

What is SEO?

SEO stands for the process of “search engine optimization”. The purpose of SEO is to help search engines find, index, and rank your site.

Some good practices for SEO

Summarized pages’ content and fill with some keywords on meta description

Unique and descriptive title to tell your users and search engines what your page is about

Every page should be reachable from at least one text link

Create a useful information content on your pages

Include words that users would type to find your page

Every image should have descriptive “alt” tag

Avoid embedding important text inside your images

Good user experience: Make it easy for users to navigate around. Users find content easy for what they are looking for otherwise your bounce rate will increase

What should you do after get website optimized?

You may see the result rank higher after your optimized your site, but it won’t last long. You should add new content to your site often because search engines reward websites that continuously post new and engaging content.

SEO is complex, but most people can easily understand the basics. If you’d like to learn more or get helped, contact us for more information.

NWDS Alaska Web Design