The Official Website of Every Time I Die

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In case you are not sure what the difference is between these two types of pages here is a quick explanation;

1. The sole purpose of a landing or sales page is to either sell a product get someone to opt in to your mailing list or preferably both of these options. This page needs to be dedicated strictly to achieving either or both of these aims and should not have anything else on it that is likely to distract your visitor from its purpose.

Although this squeeze page is part of your website it will not be embedded into the rest of the site. This sales page exists separately from your main website and its sole purpose is to achieve one or both of the options available on that page.

2. Now the main function of an article page is to add valuable and relevant content to your internet based business that will not only get your site to rank highly on the search engines such as Google but will generate targeted traffic for you and the more traffic you get to your website the more sales you are likely to make.

The beauty of content pages is that each page can be linked to all the other pages on your website and this makes it easy for your visitors to explore and become familiar with the products and services that you have on offer. Remember when linking through from page to page that you should also hyperlink the keyword phrases that describe the purpose of the target page.

If you want to get the best chance of getting maximum attention from Google then you need to keep your articles as unique as you possibly can. Something else that will increase your SEO rankings is to be sure that both your article headline and any sub-headings, as well as your closing paragraph are key-word optimised.

These two pages are the main types of pages to be found on websites, but there is also a third type of page that is extremely important and that is the homepage of your internet based business website.

Although this page should also be designed with the purpose of persuading and informing, its main function should be to keep your visitors up to date on the available content and encourage them to look further to find the information and services that will benefit them and to get them to willingly give you their name and email address.

So keeping this in mind it would be worth your while to include any links to your most recent articles or any news updates on products or services so that people can easily click through to find them. Always ensure that your opt-in form is displayed in a prominent place on your homepage, so that visitors can leave their details for you without having to search.

Finally but of great importance is to be sure that all of your content pages including your homepage are linked to your sales pages as the reason for doing all this work is so that you can get as many of your interested visitors as possible to click through to your sales pages and purchase your products.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

There are Two Different Types of Pages Required for Your Online Based Business Website

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Public API status to see if a website is operating normally

Sites like:

• Amazon AWS S3
• Bing search API
• bit.ly shorten API
• Delicious update API
• Digg API
• eBay shopping API
• Facebook API login
• Flickr API
• and much more…

http://api-status.com/

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SlideDeck aims to make it easier for users to digest and understand the content of a website. It was designed to replace the web’s current model of text heavy services pages, unclear product tours and confusing process diagrams with a fun, quick and beautiful way to interact with websites.

When viewing a SlideDeck, you can index the content at first glance by reviewing the vertical sliders. You can take a holistic approach with the SlideDeck by progressing through each slide in order to understand the complete concept. Or you you can jump ahead to the topic you are interested in. Each slide can contain simple HTML text and images as well as rich content such as flash, videos, screen casts and presentations.

A SlideDeck can be custom designed to blend in perfectly on your website as a header or navigation system. It can also be contained within a button, waiting to be clicked and opened in a lightbox view. Think of all the content you can express to your user in a simple, elegant and fun interface. SlideDeck adheres to web standards and is great for SEO as it is entirely indexable via search engines.

SlideDeck Lite is a limited version of the feature-rich SlideDeck Pro. It’s a great way to give SlideDeck a try and immediately improve the performance of your website. SlideDeck Pro ($299 usd each) includes all the features listed below as well as free upgrades for new functionality. Now, you can have a chance grabbing a SlideDeck Pro for Free. Simply leave a comment under this post. We will randomly select 5 lucky people and announce the winners on 27th Jan. What are you waiting for?

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

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• 25 Beautifully Dark Website Designs
• 25 Beautifully Dark Website Designs – Part II
• 25 Beautifully Dark Website Designs – Part III
  

Nue(me)dia

Red Crown Studio

Lucky Rabbit Films

Radiiate

Idea Foundry

Reinvigorate

Anderbose

In2media

Artifice Studios

To Write Love on Her Arms

Creative State

Kinetic Kreations

Internet Dreams

Tap Tapas

Buzapp

Mana Music

Delicious CSS

Toni and Guy Opticians

Atebits

Phusion Passenger

MephoBox

No Sleep for Sheep

Point&Anchor

Mighty Dream

Harry J. Husni

Red Interactive Agency

Takeover Studio

h2desk

Joint Medias

Phunk’n Creative

For more design inspiration please see:

• 40 Beautifully Designed Navigation Menus
• 37 of the Best Web Designs from the Travel Industry
• 25 Magazine-Style Layouts for Your Design Inspiration
• 25 Outstanding Church Websites – Part III
• 35+ Horizontal Websites for Your Design Inspiration

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Social Media is “media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques” (Wikipedia), and if that doesn’t make sense I don’t blame you.

Basically everyone these days is interacting through online groups on Facebook, real-time feeds on Twitter, real-time searching with One-Riot and getting their website-of-the-day from automatically generated lists such as Newsified. A web article that was hot one day probably isn’t going to be hot the day after because there will be another one in its place. Social Media changes shape every day, in fact it’s changing the web every second!
Your website needs to utilize Social Media effectively in order to get a leg-up and be recognized in this constantly-shifting web cosmos. As a follow up to my previous article, I wanted to share a few tips that might help your website or web application grow. Since launching Project Bubble I have seen massive growth which I attribute mostly to the use of social media and I’m sure your website too can benefit from this.
A good place to start is to learn to understand Social Media by subscribing to blogs like Mashable and staying on top of the latest trends by following key people on Twitter. Once you get inside the world of Social Media and begin to understand it the following tips will make a lot more sense to you and you will be able to apply them to your website.

Build Community

A lot of websites are static, with a few simple pages and a contact form. The owner of the website only knows if someone has visited based on the tracking statistics (such as Analytics) and they can only communicate with their visitors if the person visiting fills in a contact form. Also anyone else visiting the website won’t be able to interact with other visitors, let alone find out if anyone else is interested in the products or services offered by this website.

Building social community features in to a website will spark life in to your online presence and make it change a lot more often. A site that you might have only updated every six months will suddenly get updated by your community every day, providing you can get the traffic. Your site will look a lot more active, but also by capturing your visitors’ information (such as email, name, country, likes, dislikes etc) you can collect a lot of data on your audience which will be really useful to you (make sure you have permission to capture your visitors’ information with a clear privacy policy).

Community features such as allowing comments on a blog will let your visitors say what they think about your products and services. A forum feature will allow users to network with each other, as well as being able to discuss a recent event in your business. Building a sign up feature to your site will let users be able to return to your website and have their preferences saved, and you will be able to store the contact information and data of those who regularly visit your site. Most of these features are fairly easy to implement and can make a world of difference.

Get Feedback

It’s important to get feedback from your users, especially if your web business is new. Don’t be ashamed of any bugs or small issues that might happen on your new website because if you can prove that you are listening to your users, and that you can fix these issues quickly – that will outweigh any problems or bugs people find.

A feedback system will let you know about issues that you might not have otherwise found through your usual testing methods, for example a recent one that came up in Project Bubble is Japanese and Russian characters. Someone reported the issue (and I would never have known about this) then straight away provided a fix. I learnt a lot about UTF-8 that day! Finally, providing a channel for feedback shows that you care about your customers and you are willing to change things based on what people report. This builds loyalty to your brand and will help with user retention. Tools for getting Feedback could be: UserVoice and GetSatisfaction.

Offer Interaction

Not only do you want to capture the users who visit your site and build a community, you want to offer them the facility to interact with you and vice-versa. Interacting with your website users will build brand loyalty and people will see that you’re not just a big corporate identity but are actually real people behind all the PR gloss. Get your users to talk to you, and when they do make sure you talk back to them straight away.

Tools such as simple web forms are absolutely essential in providing your users with quick, clear and targeted contact methods. Studies have shown that the more work you have to make your user do on your website, the less likely they will do what you want them to do. So, for example in the case of web forms – if you don’t use them and you rely on “mailto:” email links it means that people have to do much more work, whereas with a contact form all they need to do is quickly fill in their name,  email, select a subject from a drop down and then type out a simple message there and then. Also web forms allow you to find out data such as where they came from (based on the I.P. address), what page they were looking at when they visited the web form and so on.

Other tools you should look at to enhance user interaction are blog comments as mentioned before but most importantly Twitter. There are other articles on Woork that you can read which describe the power of Twitter so I won’t go in to detail here, but I’ll just say that it is absolutely essential for any web based business. You can not only find out who is following the developments of your business, but you can talk directly to them and involve everyone as you do so.

For example, you have just launched a new home page design and you announce it on Twitter, then somebody replies saying they can’t view it properly on their browser. You can fix the issue, reply back to them and then not only will they be informed of this fixed but so will all of your followers. The person who reported the issue will likely be very pleased that you fixed their problem so quickly they will praise you on Twitter, then you can re-tweet this feedback to all of your followers. So you have an issue reporting tool, but also a testimonial tool – all for free! A Facebook page is a great way of providing real-time interaction with your user base. Set up a Facebook page and publicize it just as you would a Twitter link.
People use Facebook every day (in some cases all day!), so the minute you post a status update you will likely get comments back straight away. Also because of the real-time feed system people will see your new update pop up just as they look at their other feeds. You can also allow users to upload photos, join in a discussion through forums and install loads of different modules such as a Poll system with just a few clicks.

Offer the Best Customer Service

As mentioned earlier, customer service is crucial to the success of your business. Your customers will want to see that you are active and in-touch with them. They will want solutions to their problems as soon as possible. The quicker you can turn-around with these solutions, the better people will rate your customer service. This will in turn create buzz about your company throughout the social sphere (Twitter, Facebook etc).

Let Your Users Create the Buzz

Make it easy for your users to create this buzz. As mentioned before you need to make it really easy for your users to do the things that you want them to do. With regards to creating buzz, you can add buttons and ‘widgets’ to your web pages that allow them to do this easily.
Such as TweetMeme or Topsy (offer a retweet service so your page will get easily posted on Twitter), Add to Delicious (allows users to add your page to their Delicious favorites), Digg This (allows users to add to their Digg bookmarks), Add This (allows users to add the page to every social website out there). The more times people add your web page to a social media site such as Digg, Mixx and so on the more likely your site will get featured on their home page. So it’s important to have these facilities in place if you are expecting a surge in traffic at any time, for example after doing a television, radio or magazine advert.

Good luck!

I hope these tips help. I personally think that social media is a lot of fun, and because there’s always something new to read every day it makes the web so exciting. Maybe your website will be in my RSS aggregator tomorrow as I read the Delicious most-popular list?

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Keyword Research – You’ll need to do your keyword research. Decide what’s important and divide your content into different categories: evergreen content, primary content, secondary content, head & tail content, current events, and possibly even linkbait/social media content.

Evergreen Content – Some people call it evergreen content, some call it flagship content. Whatever you want to call it, this is the best content your website will have and should be written by your best writer. This will also probably be the most expensive content to produce, so you’ll have to do it in stages. Every time I put a piece of evergreen content up, I use  a plugin like crosslinker to automatically create internal links for specific words. Sure I could create the links manually, but crosslinker saves me time and picks up every instance in the past and any in the future. Little steps like this can reduce your maintenance.

Primary and Secondary Content – Look at your keywords and try to prioritize this content in order of importance. This will help you schedule the content production out over the next few months/years. Sometime I’ll use crosslinker for these posts but sometimes I won’t. It’s a case by case decision.

Head & Tail Content – I’m sure there’s another name for this but that’s what I call it. Let’s say I want to create an article titled “Best Family Friendly Restaurants in New York City.” In that article, chances are good that I’m going to have some editorial content to open and close the article, but the middle will have a brief description highlighting individual restaurants and links to those restaurants. But what if, instead of  linking to the individual restaurants, I linked to another internal page on my website with a more detailed review of the restaurant? If I wrote each of the individual restaurants (tail pieces) first, then writing the head would be a lot easier. Also if I gave the “head” article a social/linkbait feel it can increase the number of page views, since most social media articles tend to be hit and run type of traffic. As a result, this tactic gets me more bang for my buck.

Current Events – Having an editorial calendar is really a must IMHO. You can keep track of events that affect everyone like national holidays, but you should also include specific things to your vertical, like the Daytona 500 for your racing website. You can also branch out and look for other non traditional tie-ins (maybe a celebrity in your field is a contestant on Dancing With the Stars this year). By knowing what is coming and when, you aren’t living on the edge.

Social Media and Linkbait – While this is a lot more competitive than it was in the past, IMHO it’s still a no-brainer. It’s the most cost effective way of driving links, traffic, and sending social signals that people are visiting your website to search engines like Google. You need to work linkbait into your content creation schedule. Use situations like current events and head and tail creation wherever possible. If your industry can support it, you can create it as often as once every 1-2 weeks. At the other end of the spectrum once every 2-3 months is the longest I’d let it go. Some websites like Weburbanist go with 100% linkbait. It’s important to find the right time frame that works for you.

Schedule Content Creation – Now that you have an idea of what content you need and the order of priority,  if you need any of it on specific dates, you can start sending content out to your writers. I’ve had great results with the ProBlogger Job Board in the past. I like to send out a month’s worth of requests at a time. I also like to use a plugin like WP Status Notifier to send an email to myself or anybody else involved in the final review process (such as an editor) whenever a new post is uploaded and moved from “draft” status to “pending” status.

Scheduled Posts – If you’ve scheduled your content creation, once the article posts are ready it’s easy to schedule them in advance. This is another really important time saver and a way to cut down maintenance on your website. I use a plugin called future calendar, which puts a calendar on my post page and color codes the days that have posts scheduled. I like to keep things scheduled 2-8 weeks in advance. If you travel a lot like I do or just don’t like living on the edge this makes it much easier to sleep at night. You wont be able to do this 100% of the time as there are news/current events items that will have to be posted live/realtime, but otherwise it’s really helpful.

Dashboard Tools – I have a few plugins I use on the dashboard that help me keep and handle on things. Dashboard Scheduled Posts shows me a list of the next scheduled posts. Dashboard Pending Review shows me posts that are pending review. I’ll line up scheduled posts, pending review, and recent drafts one on top of the other on the dashboard, it gives me a quick glance of the editorial status of the website.

Comments – I’m not a big fan of comments, but other people feel they help build community. I see them as a maintenance point. The choice is up to you.

Sitemaps, Spiders and Crawling – Providing a clean and easy crawling path is one of the hallmarks of a site that is SEO friendly. The Dagon Sitemap generator automatically creates an HTML sitemap for your site and updates it every time you add a page or post (it’s all about reducing maintenance). Google XML sitemaps generates an XML sitemap and pings all of the services every time you add a post page (working towards zero maintenance again). If you want to track spiders crawling, spider tracker is helpful, but I wouldn’t leave it on all the time. Two other plugins that can help with crawling are wordpress breadcrumbs and robots meta plugin, both from Joost de Valk. If you haven’t already I highly reccomend reading his SEO for wordpress guide and subscribing to his newsletter. Both are excellent.

Errors and Links – Any site that has been around for more than few months will likely have things that moved and/or throw errors. The redirection plugin will let you set up redirects and also give you a 404 report, and set up redirections in one spot. I also use the broken link checker plugin to identify outgoing links  that don’t work anymore. I can edit the link or just remove it.

Utilities and Tools – Here are a few miscellaneous tools I use. Insights plugin lets you do searches and create links from the post page without opening a second tab. Optimize DB helps clean up your WordPress database. Photo Dropper searches flickr for creative commons photos inserts and links them quickly and easily from your edit post page. WP Email and WP Print adds email a friend and printer friendly pages utilities to your website.

Logo – One of the easiest things you can do to make your website is give it a professional logo. Patrick Winfield of 10e20 created the logo on this website, and I love it. I’ve also used Prizelogos.com in the past and been very happy with the results. If you are on a tight budget GotLogos.com is another option. They charge $25-$100 depending on your needs, but they can be a bit hit or miss though. I’d recommend trying to get a square element somehow that you can use for a favicon and social media icon. It’s all about the power of branding.

Design – Having a clean, professional-looking design can go a long way toward making your website look more authoritative and trustworthy. I’m a huge fan of using Thesis as a starting point (read the full thesis review for more info). Thesis is a framework but it also has a lot of design elements built in. Also by building up a library of hooks and thesis customizations, you can leverage your work for future projects.

Backups – Having an automated backup solution is key. My favorite plugin is wp db backup. It can be used for on demand backups or scheduled backups that get sent to an email. The other thing you’ll want to backup is your theme and uploads file. I’ve seen plugins that do both automatically but once your blog gets big or the directories get large the plugin fails, so set yourself a once a month reminder and you’re all set.

That’s my big plan for how I set up and keep a wordpress website running. If you’re running wordpress you might also want to check out How to Speed up WordPress, WordPress SEO Plugins, or some of my other wordpress posts for some more tips.

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I know that there are many other hosting companies out there on the internet. Thousands of them! So if you know one that has a fantastic design and that deserves to be on the list and shared with the readers of WebDesignDev, then please feel free to drop in a comment. Enjoy!

Beautiful Hosting Site Designs…

Media Temple

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Eleven 2

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Sustainable Websites

* * * * *

This Web Host

* * * * *

Heart Internet

* * * * *

Think Host

* * * * *

A2B2

* * * * *

Rackspace Cloud

* * * * *

UK2

* * * * *

Wired Tree

* * * * *

Streamline

* * * * *

123 Reg

* * * * *

Hivelocity

* * * * *

Single Hop

* * * * *

iWeb Hosting

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As you already seen in our previous posts about Single Page Website Designs that showcase your work in single page design is a hot trend now days. It’s kind of ironic to see what designers can do with single pages as modern age designers love to experiment with things and observe how people interact with their work. Even though this is not a common trend to follow but still as the new design styles come up, and as more and more designers notice them and make use of them in their work, this kind of trends emerge.

In this presentation, you’ll find a variety of highly-creative, beautiful and most importantly inspirational designs which is following the same trend of single page designs. The main purpose here is to stimulate your creativity and to inspire your imagination to create your own design trend because your website represents you and your brand.

You may be interested in the following modern trends related articles as well.

• Single Page Website Designs For Design Inspiration – Part I, Part II
• 55 Excellent WordPress Site Design for Design Inspiration
• 99 Creative And Beautiful Looking Portfolio Designs
• 60+ Amazing Examples Of Illustrative Web Designs
• 50+ Beautiful Website Designs Using Office Stationery
• Grid Style In Modern Web Design: Showcase and Resources

Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links related to other trends that our readers may like.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates.

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There are many elements that go into the creation of a website. A website is the best medium to communicate with users from all over the world. It is therefore essential, it should be designed in such a way that users should be attracted and be engaged on the site. This is when a website can reach its users effectively.

Designers have often wondered about the secret ingredient to make a website appealing. The combination of design and functionality is something every designer wishes to implement in a site. Many successful websites have one main secret ingredient, not every designer is aware about. That element is website interactivity.

What is Web Interactivity?

A simple example can illustrate this point. Picture this: 2 shopping stores are right next to each other. However, one attracts more customers than the other although both have the same goods. This is only because of one reason. The one shop that attracts more customers uses the concept of interaction with people. This is in terms of consumer suggestions, attractive offers, contests and displays. The whole scenario draws people as the overall environment makes a customer feel more comfortable.

In terms of web design, the concept can work in the same manner. The trick lies in a subtle use of web interactions to attract users and cause them to engage on a page.

Here, we can take another example. A radio button or hyperlinks are elements of a web interface. Contrast these with a 3Dimensional Cube or a 3Dimensional Flip Book, both being examples of interactivity. They are complete experiences of doing stuff that engages users with web pages whilst the user is going through the information displayed on the website. This is what makes these examples stand out. The use of interactivities woven very creatively with website content makes them successful in capturing user-attention.

How does one achieve website interactivity?

There are many elements that can be focused upon to achieve web interactivity that attracts users. The main subject of the website should be taken into consideration. This can give a clue as to the kind of interaction to be used. For example, a product website will have various categories on display. The range should be presented in an interactive manner rather than plain rows of products. A 3Dimensional Flip Book can be used to its advantage to showcase a range of products with the relevant information. A user gets engaged whilst flipping through the book.

The creation of these website interactivities requires time to be spent on technical details. However, in the recent times, designers can create these interactivities within minutes without any programming with rapid interactivity software that is available in the market.

Examples of great interactivity websites

Infinit Colours
This example shows the creative use of design and content. The design of the website is such that it engages users from the first moment itself. A user can change the background of the website. Besides, the menu is simple and hangs freely at the bottom area. It can even be dropped down if required. The color and layout used is clutter free. The text is neat without seeming too overpowering yet giving the message to be conveyed. The company is an advertising based company that conveys to users about the abundance of creativity.

Starbucks Coffee at Home
This brand sure does know how to impress its users with loads of creativity that is used generously on its site! A user can simply know the kind of coffee taste he/she is more suited to by taking a simple Find my Perfect Coffee quiz. It makes browsing the site fun and interactive. A user can view the different types of coffee available by moving the cursor over the coffee packets as shown in the image.

Square Circle
This creative agency does know how to connect with its users. Prospective clients are bound to be impressed with the way the site engages the users; one needs to pan through the page and zoom in to view details.

Roth Aniko
This artist manages to display the portfolio in an interactive manner. In this website, users can find a good balance of color, layout along with the interesting presentation of information that engages users.

Harry Potter
Harry Potter lovers will surely love this interactive site which has used interesting elements for display. The picture gallery is used in an interesting way with the pictures revolving around the main figure as shown in the image.

Cathy Beck Communication
The home page of this website involves little interaction. But as a user clicks on the tabs, the layout unfolds into an interesting layout with a zoom panel in the corner; a user can zoom in and out and is engaged on the site!

Magnivate Interactive Boutique Agency
This creative agency has used a unique approach on their site. The site has a cartoon character which takes a user through the various segments in a very interactive way.

Data Fisher
The company information is presented through an interactive 3Dimensional book. This book has a very creative mix of visuals and company information, the combination of which makes the content very readable!

Mercedes A-to-S
This site is one of the perfect examples of a creative and intelligent use of interactivities. The various features of the Mercedes car are explained through a very intelligent use of Flash. The quality of leather can actually be ‘felt’ once the cursor is clicked and dragged over the surface as shown in the image.

Nokia 3110 Evolve
This Nokia website has a very interesting and engaging interaction, where in a user can move the cursor over the mobile phones and the entire angle of the phone changes.

In the same website, a click on the phone enlarges it, as shown in the image. The phone can be viewed in a 3Dimensional way which definitely appears more interesting as compared to a display of images.

Aparte Graphique
The website has a great combination of interactivity. There is a cartoon character along with an engaging way of presentation of information.

Monoface
This creative agency knows how to display its creativity rather than talk about it! The main image can be played around with, by changing the facial features to try many funny combinations!

Unfortunate Events movie
This popular movie needs no introduction as it is full of creative effects. The website is created on the same lines; users can move the cursor over the elements to know details. These are shown in a very creative fashion keeping in mind the concept of the movie.

Website interactivity thus forms to be a very important ingredient for web design. Has this idea made you have a second glance at your website? I would love to hear your response about website interactivity.

Let us share our experiences right here, keep the comments rolling in!

About Author: Poonam works as Product Manager at Harbinger Group and looks after Raptivity Web Expert. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering and is an active blogger.

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As an affiliate marketer using these 3 tips will help your chances of success with your online marketing business. Using these 3 tips will help your online business survive the competition that is found in an online based business environment.

1. Give your readers free reports.
Either place these reports where they can be easily seen near the top of your website or alternatively give them as an incentive to visitors who are will to give you their name and email address.

Use a unique squeeze page, in other words one that is different from what everyone else is using, to offer your reports in exchange for their email address and make sure that you have an opt in box on that squeeze page that goes to your auto-responder account.

It is a known fact that the majority of people will not purchase anything the first time they see it. Normally it will take a minimum of seven views for them to make the purchase. Keep in mind that usually people are more willing to spend money with a person that they believe is trustworthy and has taken the time to build a relationship with them, they need to know that they are not just dealing with some faceless website but a real person who is willing to help them.

If the only connection is the product on your website, not only will you not build a list, but chances are that even if someone is interested in the product you are selling they will move on and in the end buy it from someone else.

2. Promote each product on a separate web page.

If you use this method of marketing your products you will be keeping the reader focused on one thing at a time and they will become less distracted than if there were too many things on the one page.

Help the reader to make a decision on each product by having a review for each one on your website. This not only gives it a more personal touch but also helps to encourage a sale. If you are able to get some testimonials from any of your previous customers who have already tried the product then this is something that you can use to your advantage.

Just be sure that those customers are happy to allow you to use their name and if possible their photo.

3. Aim to generate a lot of targeted traffic to your website.

There is absolutely no point in getting people to visit your site who have no interest whatsoever in the products that you are promoting. Write articles and submit them to ezines and article directories and focus on the niche that you are promoting your products to. There is no point in spending your time promoting your affiliate internet business where no one is interested in what you are selling, but writing articles and publishing them in article directories is a great way to become known and brand yourself and your business and the best thing is that this type of advertising will not cost you any money.

If you want to benefit from marketing your online business by using article marketing you will need to write a minimum of 2 articles every week. If you continue to do this consistently you will see that over time your traffic will increase and it will be people who are interested in your products and what you have to say.

None of these tips are really difficult to follow and take action on it just needs some time and thought from you. Try using these tips for a few of your affiliate internet based business programs and see how they will help your opportunity to survive as an online affiliate marketer. Another great thing about this is the increase in the pay checks you will be receiving.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Use These 3 Tips so that Your Online Income Affiliate Business can Survive

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If you want to share more fantastic examples of flash websites so please comment about them below. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at  smashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

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The Wrong Door, BBC3’s new comedy series set on The Asteroid

Silenzio

A movie poster maker and marketing agency. The website is directed by Unity, Web artistic direction Jocker / CREAKTIF(Axel Corjon), development, motion design Lab9.

Falcon’s Treehouse

Headquartered in Orlando, Florida, Falcon’s Treehouse is an experienced design company specializing in master planning, attraction design, special venues, destination resorts, theme parks, media production, museums, science centers, and more.

SeymourPowell

SeymourPowell Product Design Consultancy are experts in Product Design, Product development, Consumer Product research and industrial design consultants. This Product Design Company is based in London UK.

Martin Anderle

Fruit Shoot

Browse the new Fruit Shoot website with how-to videos for beat boxing, soccer skills and much more!

Breathe Architecture

Quality and style are central to Breathe Architecture’s unique sustainable designs. We expertly combine environmental and aesthetic principles to create stunning buildings with a lighter footprint.

History of Flight

Know Your History. Soar through Michael Jordan’s amazing career at History of Flight.

The Sound of Orange RockCorps

You can create your own unique track with your mates and unleash it online. You can also connect to your facebook and you can see which of your friends have already taken part.

Saab Change Perspective

When you look beyond the obvious, you open up to alternative ways of seeing things. As you gain a different perspective on the world, you also bring a certain attitude to everything you do. To Saab, this means building cars unlike any other. Here you can share this view.

addidas outdoor

Real Casual

Cartelle

Cartelle is a creative unit based in Amsterdam, founded by Johnny Slack & Stevijn van Olst. With a small agile team of professionals, Cartelle delivers high quality interactive experiences. Constantly looking for fresh solutions, we offer new creative approaches in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

Cloudy Meat Balls

Columbia Pictures’ and Sony Pictures Animation’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs will be the most delicious event since macaroni met cheese. Inspired by the beloved children’s book, the film focuses on a town where food falls from the sky like rain.

JPEG Interactive

Jam is a creative director, an experienced web designer, a veteran Flash developer and the co-founder of Shanghai-based web creative agency 01media.

Imagining Mozambique

The traveling art show collective, ‘Imagining Mozambique’ is a fundraising drive for ASEM, a non-profit organization that helps the children of Mozambique.

LBi Atlanta

LBi Atlanta is a leading full service digital agency. They have developed a successful business by fusing strategy with creativity, and technology to create highly effective marketing and business solutions.

Shinkansen and Love

2Advanced

Coca Cola Zero

Coca Cola Zero – Real Coke Taste, Zero Calories. The official website of Coca Cola Zero. Watch Commercials. Play Games.

Parasol Island

Parasol Island is producing nationally and internationally awarded film, animation and interactive projects for exclusive client portfolio – ranging from companies in the lifestyle and entertainment, as well as, consumer industries.

Hobnox Audiotool

SoInteractive

DigitalKick

Mercedes AMG

Toyota iQ

Toyota iQ – Virtual Test Drive.

Nissan Cars UK

Ocean Recon

Royal Australian Navy Submariners – DefenceJobs

Want to know what goes on inside a Collins Class Submarine? Dive below the surface for a unique view of the inner workings of Australia’s silent fleet. Complete real-life missions to earn your submariner dolphins and experience life beneath the surface.

Oddo Design

This is an award-winning graphic design firm that helps companies build stronger brands, increase sales, improve customer retention, and educate customers and employees. Now located in the Texas Hill Country, just outside of Austin, Texas, the firm was originally established in 1989, in Houston, by Tommy Oddo.

Dvein 2009

Motion and Interactive Studio based in Barcelona, Spain. DVIEN creates Live Actions, Motion graphics, 3D Animations, Flash, and Films.

Sony Bravia

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If you have any more that you would like to add to the list, then please feel free to drop us a comment below.

Stunning Coming Soon Pages…

Media Loot

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Creative Decor

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Design SVN

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Minute Glass

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Cube Frog

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Silverback App

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Bontq

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Chk Chk Boom

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Foundation Six

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Irava

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DJ Kiss

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Meal Nation

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FavMovie

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Gigdom

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Kreaville

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Afterlife Notes

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Designatr

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My Nite Life

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Lilly Stable

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Moses Mehraban

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With the click of a keyboard shortcut, a cropping interface appears where it is possible to:

• set the area of the screenshot
• make it fullscreen
• copy to clipboard
• upload to the net & get a link
  
• edit it on a web-based service

Most of the similar tools instantly take a screenshot of the area you selected before clicking any approve button. LightShot makes it kindly, waits for you to arrange the area, shows you the size of it & a click is required which is better to prevent wrong screenshots.

The tool can work in every computer as it comes as a Windows desktop application, a Firefox add-on & an Internet Explorer add-on.

Special Downloads:
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Tags: Firefox, IE, Windows

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• Automated Browser Refresher For Developing Easier: XRefresh
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• Website Reachable Alert Firefox Plugin: Mr Uptime
• Wappalyzer: Find Out Apps. Used On A Website
• Test Your Website Design In Different Browsers In Minutes

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This easy-to-use website lets you create and record phone surveys.

• Design your survey on the web.
• Record your voice.
• Upload your phone list.
• Get results in real-time.

http://www.precisionpolling.com/

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This is an era of products galore. Each product and producer is trying to outdo the other. Marketing costs are turning out to be more than production costs as marketing has an ability to take products and services to a new high, or bite the dust. Without marketing, a product is as good as non-existing. At the same time, clients and consumers do not have enough time to go around looking for everything that is offered. Clients want it all on their fingertips. Keeping this in mind, internet or online marketing has quickly come to the rescue. It bridges the gap between your service or product and client or consumer.

Having your own website has become an important marketing tool. Almost all products and services have their own presence on the internet in the form of a website. However, there are numerous websites trying to affect the decisions of clients. So, website marketing has become an important and integral part of every business’s marketing strategy. Let’s understand the five most important steps to website marketing.

Understand client requirements

Understanding what your clients are looking for is the key to effective website marketing. Amidst a plethora of websites on the same subject, a client will most likely stick to the sites that are focused on her unique requirements and give her exactly what she’s looking for; e.g. if a client is looking for a website on alternative medicine; the website must focus solely on the various alternative medicines and not generalize on all types.

Get the right design and content

The rightly designed website will catch and hold more eyeballs. Your design should not only have right aesthetic appeal but also facilitate easy navigation. To many flashes, to bright colors running at the same time, plus disturbing pop-ups are sure fire turn offs. Clusters of information placed on the homepage may dumbfound the visitor. At the same time, too little info will dampen her. Your site should strike the right balance of information and placement.

Once you’re done with the designing part of your website, comes another important part, content. Your content should always be current, crisp and clear. It should convey exact information without being verbose. It should be logical, smooth, and flowing. The language should be set keeping the client in mind. The quality of your content should reflect a professional attitude.

Make it user friendly

Once on your website, the client should get important information like variety of products, possibly with their images, price ranges and product availability. Your website should facilitate ordering products online with great ease. It should also give requisite information like contact numbers of the home office or representatives, firm’s location, previous track record and after the sale service.

As customer choices and preferences are always distinct and all of them cannot be addressed on the site; provide for direct contact with your customer service department in order to answer their queries. In case of an email, a prompt reply must be assured.

Blow your trumpet

Once you are done with your website, it is high time to get on the rooftop and tell people that you’ve arrived! What’s the use of a wonderfully designed, beautiful looking site that few know about or catches hardly any eyeballs? Avail other mediums of advertising viz. seminars, articles, television, newspapers,ect… to widen your client base and reach every possible client. Get press releases distributed. A good advertising campaign is essential to attract initial traffic to your site.

Utilize the internet to its fullest. Begin blogging about your site and products/services. Forward links to as many other websites as possible. Get links on social networking websites. In simple terms, talk, talk and talk more about your site.

Action backup

The types of services and products that you offer on your website must be put into action by an efficient team. Your client must feel she is getting a good value for her money, and also her time spent. This will assist to establish a reputation for your business and create your brand image. Website marketing will only be effective if and when your promises are fulfilled in reality.

And yes! Do not rest on your laurels. Continue updating your website with any new developments and also, continue to support it with on going action.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Top 5 Steps to Website Marketing

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The document contains tips, discusses different approaches, and includes a few sample e-mails to show you what a message describing an accessibility problem can look like. Shawn Lawton Henry talks about the initiative a bit more in Take a few minutes to encourage web accessibility. You can make a difference. on the W3C Blog.

Read full post

Posted in Accessibility.

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Google wants to fill its index with quality, error free websites that are beneficial and targeted to their searchers. Enter Google’s Webmaster Central Tools ….. http://google.com/webmasters . If you’ve never heard of it, it’s Google’s way of helping you with your website’s indexing. Not too long ago, it went through a redesign and upgrade process which made it more useful and easier to use than ever.

First thing you’ll need to sign in with is a Google account. Google requires an account to be able to use all of their free services, including Blogger and Analytics, so if youdon’t have one, now’s the time to register.

If you have multiple websites to list, that’s no problem. Up to 500 sites can be added all under one roof. You will need to perform what Google calls “site verification” for each site submitted. This proves to Google that you are the owner of the site before they release detailed information to you. At one time it was a lengthy process of cutting and pasting code into the head section of your index page or uploading a separate HTML file. Now they’ve streamlined the process and it’s all done with one click of an email.

If you use Blogger.com, “Webmaster Tools” can be enabled from within the Blogger dashboard under tools/resources. Once your sites have been submitted, you’ll have access to a whole suite of useful tools. The website is broken up into three main sections.

1. Site Configuration (Information about your site)
2. Your Site on the Web (Google data re: your site)
3. Diagnostics (Any problems Google had while indexing your site)

If your website has never received a decent ranking with Google, these numerous reports will help you in tracking down the problem. It’s truly an “eye opener” to see your site through the eyes of a search engine.

On the “Crawl Errors Page”, any errors Google encountered while crawling your site are revealed. The url’s not listed, and the types of problems such as restricted by robots txt, url’s that timed out, and unreachable url’s will be uncovered. If numerous pages of your site are not indexed, Sitemaps can also be submitted to help Google find and crawl all of the pages of your site.

If your website is not showing up in Google’s index, or you think it’s being penalized for some reason, you can contact Google from within the “tools interface” with a “reconsideration” request. This will ask Google to take another look at your site. Before submitting, make sure you’ve cleaned up any errors, and that you’re not in violation of any of Google’s webmaster guidelines.

Here’s a small sample of some other tasks that can be performed.

• Keyword Research: The keywords page lists the most important words Google found when indexing your site. So you know what keyword/phrases your site is ranking for.
• Who’s linking to your website.
• Page rank for individual pages can be reviewed.
• Change of address feature, which is useful when moving domains to let Google know.
• Data can be downloaded in spreadsheet format in order to be analyzed and tracked.
• Any RSS feeds can also be submitted as sitemaps.
• Parameter Handling- Allows you to tell Google which url’s you want them to ignore.
• Emails from Google’s Webmaster Tools can be forwarded to any email address you specify.

Contrary to popular belief, Google wants you to succeed online which is why they give you the tools needed to fix any problems, and make your site a search engine’s indexing dream. That’s not just good business for Google, it’s good for your website too.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Improve Your Website with Google’s Webmaster Central Tools

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If you know of any other 3D flash websites that you think deserve to be featured on the list, feel free to drop a shout-out in a comment. Anyway, enjoy the compilation and don’t click on too many. My browser crashed!

The Showcase…

WhiteVoid

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Prism Girl

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The Profiler

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Nitro Group

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SimCity DS

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Motorola Motorazr

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Erguvan Platin

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Bandit 3

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Play Smart

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Coca Cola

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Me In Tru 3d

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Audi RS6

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Markez Models

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Redkeds

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Stokes Croft 3d

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A Glass And A Half Full Productions

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K2 Inavi

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Ecodazoo

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Karim Zariffa

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New Work City

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Media Boom

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Planet In Need

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100 Best Films

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North Kingdom

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13 Flo

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Creaktif

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Pritt

* * * * *

DM09 Stockholm

* * * * *

In An Absolut World

* * * * *

Sony Vaio

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We had a laugh with this one. Totally Looks Like is a website that makes comparisons between well-known people/things and less well-known people/things. We gathered here a collection of the funniest and most obscure comparisons we found so you guys can start off the week on a good note.

Some of these can get downright ridiculous but all in the name of good fun! I think my favorite is the second to last one, haha. Oh, and scroll all the way to the last one for our very own celebrity lookalike

1940s Farmer Totally Looks Like Robin Williams

Bill Ayers Totally Looks Like Justin Timberlake

John McCain Totally Looks Like Chipmunks

Rivers Cuomo (Weezer) Totally Looks Like Verizon Guy

Jordan Pundik Totally Looks Like Quentin Tarantino

Gordan Freeman Totally Looks Like Dr. House

Ancient Statue Totally Looks Like Michael Jackson

Llama Totally Looks Like David Bowie

The Pope Totally Looks Like Darth Sidious

Bradley Cooper Totally Looks Like Ralph Fiennes

Hetty Lange Totally Looks Like Edna Mode

Ozzy Osbourne Totally Looks Like Penney Marshell

Young Albert Einstein Totally Looks Like Shia Labeouf

Charlemagne Totally Looks Like Burger King

Eddie Murphy Totally Looks Like Cruz e Souza

Hillary Clinton Totally Looks Like The Joker Mask

Joe Jackson Totally Looks Like Ludo from Labyrinth

Michael Phelps Stretching Totally Looks Like Raw Thanksgiving Turkey

Prince Totally Looks Like Jafar

Sting Totally Looks Like President Grant

Susan Boyle Totally Looks Like Bird Lady from Home Alone 2

Tim Burton’s Mad Hatter Totally Looks Like Madonna

Whoopi Totally Looks Like Lil Wayne

Zombie Horde Totally Looks Like Twilight Fangirl Horde

And our very own lookalike:

Fabio Sasso Totally Looks Like… James Franco?

That’s right, ladies…tweet him up!

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These aims differ slightly for some sites, like non-profits, blogs and communities; however business sites in general aim to generate revenue by one of the above methods.

Sometimes the client will split up these functions between two separate businesses – the website development will be taken care of by "Best Ever Web Designers Incorporated", while the marketing is done by "Your Ad Here Pty Ltd". However, if the push towards action (marketing) is created at the web design level, rather than externally, it is much more effective. The more effective your client’s website, the happier they will be; and the happier your clients, the better your web design business thrives!

More than that, you can create an additional ongoing revenue stream that requires a little effort each month at your end but can provide a significant benefit to your client in the form of increased sales or sales leads for their business.

Here we look at how to determine which aspects of your web design work is most effective to help the client’s website achieve its aims, by a process known as split testing.

What is Split Testing?

In website split testing (also known as A/B testing), a software application splits the traffic between two or more variants of the same web page, measuring whether there is a difference in the effectiveness of that page in achieving the website’s goals. Every time a visitor takes the desired action on a website, such as making a purchase or submitting a form, it is called a conversion.

Web designers might check whether:

• A landing page with a graphic of a person encourages better conversion rates than one with a graphic of the product
• A different positioning of the shopping cart button encourages more people to click it
• A form with fewer elements, or different elements, encourages more people to finish filling it out.

Just about every aspect of a website can be split-tested.
Split testing involves a single element of a page being changed at one time. A different type of split testing is sometimes used to achieve faster improvements with a shorter number of tests; multivariate testing. In this type of testing, multiple variables are changed within a single web page. So, rather than having multiple versions of the same page, multivariate testing rotates different elements on the same page, for example, the headline, the call-to-action, the image and the opening paragraph.

The advantage with multivariate testing is that you can find the optimum combination of website elements in a shorter space of time and achieve significant improvements in the website’s performance; the disadvantage is that it takes a considerable amount of traffic to get accurate results.

For most websites, A/B split testing will be the optimum method of improving a website’s conversion rate over time.

Why Bother With Split Testing?

Split testing is what separates elite web designers from the rest because it provides them with the knowledge of which combination of website elements will produce the optimum results for the client and they can demand a higher rate as a result. Split testing can help:

• Get visitors to stay longer on the website
• Get visitors to interact more with the site
• Get more visitors to request a consultation or join a newsletter
• Get more visitors to buy from the site

It can also achieve these aims (depending on what the site is set up for) at a lower cost per action (CPA) than competing sites in the same niche. In some ultra-competitive online markets (home loans, insurance, accommodation, SEO, online dating, etc) split testing is the only way to guarantee that you will be heard above the noise of the competition.

Split testing also helps ensure that when it comes to advertising, you are maximising each and every dollar. If your website doubles its conversion rate from 1% to 2% using split testing techniques, you have just doubled your revenue using the same marketing budget. You will be able to spend more on advertising your site and earn a better return on investment (ROI) from each dollar you spend. Sounds like you’d be crazy not to, doesn’t it?

It becomes even more exciting when you start to examine the numbers. Many untested websites have conversion rates that run around 0.25%. This means that it takes 400 visitors to get one sale. With split testing, you don’t need to increase the number of visitors, just the rate at which they convert. Many success stories tell of conversion rates upwards of 10%. That would be the equivalent of a 40-fold increase in visitors, all of a sudden giving you 40 sales or sales leads out of 400 visitors, instead of 1.

Who Should Be Split Testing?

Ideally, the web designer should start split-testing as soon as the site launches, as they are the ones who have designed the site and have all of the source files on hand. Even if the owner feels that the website is performing well enough, the benchmark for "good" performance could be moved even higher through using split testing. Just keep in mind that split testing does require an established traffic flow because you need to people visiting your site to be able to split-test web pages.

Why is it ideal that the designer does it at the launch stage? Because it is much easier to keep the site as a work in progress after launch, not only visually and structurally, but in terms of its goals. It is infinitely harder for a third party to come along later and change things around, and in many cases, you wouldn’t want them to. That site’s your creation!

Doing the split testing yourself, as a designer, also gives you a real-world feel for what elements will work and what ones won’t. It adds an extra dimension to your sense of aesthetics, removing the guesswork that you necessarily engage in during the design phase. You are no longer doing what you think will create conversions, but implementing what you know produces measurable results. And this knowledge alone will increase the value you bring to your future projects.

Setting Up a Split Test with Google Website Optimizer

Google Website Optimizer is an A/B split testing and multivariate testing platform that allows you to easily see the effects that making changes to page elements has on your website conversion rate. It’s a free platform, and is robust and user friendly. One of the major advantages, though, is that you can use the Google Website Optimizer with existing web page URLs (e.g. yourdomain.com); some other split testing applications require you to use a custom URL (e.g. yourdomain.com/tracking.php) which makes it very difficult to split test non-paid website traffic, such as SEO traffic, referral traffic or direct traffic.

Google Website Optimizer serves different pages to different users, with hundreds of variations possible. In our experience, using the website optimizer tool does not affect your rankings and does not cause duplicate content issues. Here is the process for setting up an A/B test with Google Website Optimizer:

Identify the page or pages you want to test (usually the home page or pages that receive a lot of traffic).

Define which element you want to test. In A/B testing, you’ll only test element one at a time. Commonly tested elements are the headline, sub-headline, opening paragraph, image, call to action, and the submit button (look and/or placement).

Add tags to the original page, the variation page and the conversion pages to allow tracking.

Enter the website URLs you are testing into the Google Website Optimizer.

Preview how the pages will look before sending them live.

Google Website Optimizer will rotate the page that is displayed for every visitor, so that the first person sees version 1, the second person sees version 2, the third person sees version 1 and so on.

You can access the results and reports of various statistics within Google Website Optimizer to see which variant is the most effective.

What Should You Test with Google Optimizer?

These are the most commonly tested elements of a web page:

• Headings
• Sub-headings
• Opening paragraph
• Images
• Call to action
• Offers
• Hyperlinks
• Submit button
• The location of different elements
• Colors

The first six elements are the ones which generally have the most impact on conversion rates, and the ones you should test first. Google once tested 41 different shades of blue for their pages. They have the luxury of doing this because they get more traffic than any other website, and they have the drive to do this because performance is their life. They thrive on it! You don’t need to go to this extent but if Google places so much value on it, shouldn’t you?

Knowing When a Split Test is Finished

The number of conversions needed to garner a reliable indication of future traffic varies incredibly with different types of sites. If the business you are designing for is a high-customer volume, low-value spend store, you should test until you have 70 or so conversions for one variant. If it is a low-customer volume, high-value spend store, aim for 20 conversions.

If the set conversion is further from becoming an actual "profit" for the store (i.e. a conversion creates a lead from a visitor, rather than a sale from a lead), you may want to be more certain that one variant is working better than the other. You may also want to test more different variants of the same element, or do multivariate testing … within the limitations of your traffic volume.

Determining statistical significance at the conclusion of a test

For you to have a high confidence level that the test results aren’t just a fluke, you can apply a simple formula to determine whether the difference in results is statistically significant. This rule is:

The numerical difference between the two results must be greater than the square root of the sum of the two results.

Or

Y-X>√X+Y, where Y>X

Sounds like a nightmare from before your high school maths exam, doesn’t it? It is easier to understand with an example:

• If the result of page A was 20 conversions, and the result of page B was 30 conversions, then the difference between the two is 10.
• The sum of the two results is 50
• The square root of that sum is 7 (rounded down)
• The difference (10) is greater than the square root of the sum (7), so the result is statistically significant.

If the two results had been 22 and 28:

• The difference between the two is 6
• The sum of the two results is 50
• The square root of that sum is 7 (rounded down)
• The difference (6) is less than the square root of the sum (7) – the result is not statistically significant.

If the results of your split test are not statistically significant, you can either:

• Keep testing and see if a more definite pattern emerges
• Decide that the element doesn’t make a difference to conversion in this case, and test something else.

Tips for Ongoing Split Testing

Either you, as the designer, or the website owner, should be implementing split testing constantly, on all your high traffic web pages. It takes time to get test results, and in the meanwhile customer preferences and market sensibilities are changing, along with the season and your stock.

It is important to note that not all split tests will be successful. In fact, if you have a 20% success rate where one in five split tests improve the overall conversion rate of the site then you are doing well. The key point to remember with split-testing is that every success forms a new baseline, with considerable website performance improvements achieved after a number of different split tests.

The easiest way to manage all of the split tests is to set one day per month when you review results and then set up tests for the coming month based on those results. Every month you should track your results in a spreadsheet to avoid accidentally re-testing the same elements over and over again. This also provides a point of reference for when you are starting new projects – you can see which placements and copy types are most effective in which industries.

If your website grows to the point where you have upwards of 1 million visitors per month, you can use multivariate testing.

And don’t forget to check what competing sites in the same niche are doing, and test the same elements on your site!

Once you start split testing you’ll find that what you thought would perform better doesn’t and you’ll be very surprised with some of the results. The best part about split-testing is that the confidence you will gain from split testing will help you with your future web development projects because you will have an increased knowledge of what produces results and what doesn’t. Consumer behavior is a specialized field and web designers can get on a steep but exhilarating learning curve for it by engaging in split testing on their own and their clients’ websites.

Related Content

• 15 Tools for Monitoring a Website’s Popularity
• 7 Incredibly Useful Tools for Evaluating a Web Design
• 6 Tools to Help You Analyze a Web Host
• Related categories: User Interface and Web Design

About the Author

Alex Cleanthous is the Head Online Strategist of Web Profits, an Australian-based online marketing firm servicing Australasia, the US and Europe. He keeps Web Profits on the cutting edge in all aspects of online marketing. Alex writes an industry blog about success online. Follow Alex on Twitter: @AlexCleanthous.

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Today, almost any type of photo we can dream of exists in the web. And, thankfully, there are many stock photo websites which helps us find them easily.

Here is a list of 12 free stock photo resources that you must bookmark:

stock.xchng

stock.xchng is probably the most popular service which provides free stock photos.

It has 1000s of high-quality images which are very well categorized. Usage requires a free membership.

MorgueFile

MorgueFile lets you to download photos without registration & it has a very open license to use images on almost any type of work.

Besides the free photos, it has an online classroom which teaches about photography & a crowded community discussing in its forums.

openphoto

openphoto is a very straightforward website with no details & extras. It simply presents the photos in categories.

Most of the images are licenses with CC:Attribution-ShareAlike (photo used).

Photo Rack

PhotoRack is a great resource for stock photos where all images can be used in any type of work.

It surprisingly lacks of one thing: a search function.

unprofound.com

unprofound.com is an awesome site which is ran with an amateur spirit.

There are lots of free stock photos to browse, they can be filtered by colors & they are totally free.

Freerange Stock

The site offers thousands of photos which can be used in commercial projects as well.

Photos can be browsed quickly, a popular images page shows you what's hot & more. Download requires free membership.

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

FreeDigitalPhotos offers both free & paid versions of images where the free versions are limited in size and requires a link back to the photographer.

Photos are categorized in detail & no registration is required.

FreeFoto.com

FreeFoto is a huge resource with a bunch of categories & their sub-categories.

Licensing is mostly offers an attribute for online use or a non-commercial offline use (photo used).

FreePixels

Although FreePixels isn't the biggest website, almost every photo included are high quality & beautiful.

They can be used in any type of projects an attribution is required (written or visual).

Public Domain Photos

The website has ~15,000 free stock photos & cliparts listed. No registration is required.

And, as the name states, the photos presented are very open-licensed.

DesignPacks

The website is relatively different than others. It offers downloads as design packs of 15 images.

Although it doesn't have a large database yet, the sets presented are pretty impressive.

Everystockphoto.com

Everystockphoto.com is a website which indexes images from other stock websites.

They are currently offering a search for ~5 million images.

Other Resources:

Here are more amazing resources which has great photos but can only be used in non-commercial projects.

• Stockvault is a stock photo sharing website where photographers can upload any number of images & others can use them for free (only non-commercial)
• Woophy is a photo community which focuses on geographical categorization of photos with an interactive search map.
• Historical Stock Photos is a nice resource for finding, mostly black & white, historical photos.

Is your favorite resource missing? Please share them in the comments and we can add them to the list as well.

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For more inspiration from minimalist web design please see:

• 25 Beautifully Minimalistic Website Designs
• 25 Beautifully Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 2
• 25 Beautifully Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 3
• 25 Beautifully Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 4
• 25 Beautifully Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 5
• 35 Beautifully Minimalistic Website Designs – Part 6

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For over a month we have been preparing this epic scale event in your favor. This giveaway represents $60,000 worth of goods from some of the leading services in each genre. We can all thank the wonderful and cool sponsors for their commitment and cherished gestures. As a thank you to them, please visit their sites to check out why they are the best in their field. Believe me, they truly deserve it!

This “Epic Giveaway” will end on the 16th of January, 2010. We will then review every participants entry and select the most unique one for each prize. We will announce the winners on the 18th of January, 2010. The winners will be put in contact with the sponsors for delivery.

So what do you have to do in order to bring home one of these prizes? Well, it’s rather simple really. To be a valid participant in this epic giveaway all you have to do is to follow these rules:

Rules

1. Explain why you should receive a specific prize and what you would use it for in the comment area of this article. Also add the prize ID at the top of your comment. If a sponsor has more than one prize, be sure to specify which one you are interested in by typing “Prize: List specific prize“.  At the bottom of your comment be sure to include your twitter username.

2. Tweet this:
I just participated in @bitrebels Epic Giveaway for some free stuff! You can too! | http://www.bitrebels.com #EpicGiveaway

3. Add a link to Bit Rebels and the sponsor of the prize you have chosen on your site. Include “Link Added” at the bottom of your comment. This step is optional but adds to your chances of winning your favored prize.

So, what are the giveaway prizes? We are happy to announce that we have 28 different companies on board for this giveaway and their commitment is just outstanding. In the list of prizes there is everything from free business cards to free hosting services, free vector graphics to complete free website designs.  These prizes represent pretty much everything you need to start the year of 2010 off with a bang for your business.

We have two categories of sponsors. “Premium Prizes” and “Sponsored Prizes“. Both categories deserve your full attention but our “Premium Prizes” come from our valid sponsors of this site. These companies are the ones that unconditionally support the continued life of this blog.

Premium Prizes

If you are serious about winning the ultimate prize, these four companies in our Premium prize section have taken the time to make sure you will be hooked up with the best of the best stuff!  Visit their websites and check them out.  You don’t want to miss these.

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ID: Premium Prize #4
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DPD is fully affiliate enabled allowing you to run your own full-featured affiliate program. DPD is also the only download cart provider that allows you to create multiple carts and sell downloads on multiple sites, run multiple affiliate programs, and more- all under one account.

Sponsored Prizes

You are going to be very impressed when you check out all of the valuable prizes here in our Sponsored prize section.  These companies are graciously giving you lots of valuable things to make your life easier!

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Music is a very important aspect in design. It can influence your thoughts, ideas, movements & so much more. I had a talk with 10+ awesome designer & Illustrator like Pete Harrison and discussed this topic. Plus you will get some tips about how to use music.

For me music is very close together with design. Most of my design ideas come while listening to music. Beats and melody set the mood of my images and lyrics and speed influence my movements when designing. There is no way I can design wihtout music. It also motivates me and entertains when the im bored painting.

I decided to gather some opinions and ask several top designer how they got influenced and touched by music. Im happy that I got some really good artists who have been working in the design scene for a couple of time and really know what they are talking about. I asked every one the same question.

“How does music inspire you and what music do you listen to, while designing?”

Magomed Dovjenko

website http://iammago.com/

Music inspires me in any aspect – it sets the mood of my work when working while listening to music, it’s inspiring the colors and the overall look of my work. Most of the time I listen to Rap/Hip-hop – like Jay-Z, Kanye West, Cassidy, Young Jeezy ,Lil Wayne and so on.I can’t work without listening to music – it’s just much more fun when you hear those beats banging while you’re creating.

Anton Shineft

website http://clor.net

It seems to me, that music and visual art are inseparable parts. As soon as something new and interesting appears in music, styles, directions – the great number of works of modern artists, representing these changes appears. Music is the best help for imagination. I am very inspired by the spirit of such projects as Flying lotus, Fever ray, AFTA 1, Toro Y moi, Lone. In my opinion, that’s a one of the icons of todays zeitgeist. It all reminds me of the presentation of modern people focused on the interaction with the spiritual world. You can clearly see rhythm and direction. It helps me understand some streams.

Rik Ooestenbrooek

website http://nkeo.deviantart.com/

I cant design without music, music gives me the rest I need while working on a piece. The Type of music depends on the mood I’m in. Back in the days while I made lots of colourfull photomanip’s mixed with abstract I used to listen to Vocal trance. The colours I use are basicly based on the type of music I listen. Less colour means more emotive beats, more colour means happy songs”

Robert Shields

website http://www.robshields.net/

Personally I am obsessed with finding and buying new music every week but I often design in silence. The inspiration I get from music often has more to do with the emotional content or a message that I remember. There is also a coolness factor that comes from music which helps me gauge whether or not an idea I have is over played. Otherwise I don’t really feel that the territories exactly overlap. It’d be like saying I have to look at a beautiful picture every time I try to write a song. To me that’s really not what its about.

ABOVE

website: http://goabove.com

“Music is an extremely crucial aspect of my day to day life. Not only when I am creating artworks but when I am grocery shopping, digging ditches, or skydiving, music always helps. When I create artworks I aim to have the music X3 times as loud as the high powered electrical tool I use. Table saws can be loud but my James Brown Funk, or Acid Trance House music always sing louder. Sometimes I get carried away and start dancing while I’m painting which can make for some interesting artworks to say the least. I’d rather be deaf than blind, but not being able to hear while looking at live music would be suicidal. I am greatful I still have my 5-senses.”

Keith Garrison

website http://www.behance.net/NoirMaybe

Just like most other things in my workspace, I consider music a “tool” of sorts. A lot of times I find it to distracting and can’t start or work on a project with it. Other times I need it to give me that boost of energy or keep me from being distracted by my environment. Most of the time I just need it to get in that sort of “Trance” where I barely notice the world around me and soon forget the music is even there.

From Ryan Clark, Invisible Creature

website http://www.invisiblecreature.com

Music is inspiring to me in many ways. It’s inspiring to hear people create new and interesting things, and that stimulates my desire to create things of my own, be it something visual or something musical. Music can inspire me subconsciously, playing in the background while I work, and it can also influence me in very specific ways, if I listen intentionally. Sometimes I’ll listen to music that may directly correlate to something I’m designing, but ordinarily I just listen to something based on my current mood. Brit pop/rock (ie: Elbow, Doves, The National, White Lies, Editors) is usually the first thing I go to.

Pete Harrison

website: http://www.aeiko.net/

I listen to a variety of music..and music is always on when im designing. Usually its something fast like drum and bass..something to keep me ticking, recently a lot of hospital stuff – London Elek, High contrast, Mistabishi, Logi, Danny byrd etc…but I also love faster stuff such as Spor, Sigma, Fresh, Sub Focus..its background music but keeps me working, especially in the early hours. I also love chillout and ambient sounds, for example the Desktopography albums, Tycho, Enya, BOC, Nuuro and Freshcut. Sometimes the piece that im working on can influence the taste in music, and I will try and get into the mood of what im designing at the time and just roll from there, feeling the flow.

Alex Beltechi

http://www.behance.net/alexbeltechi

Music and Design are two faces of the same coin for me. An image is something you see, and music is something you hear, though I use both to communicate a message. Just as I appreciate and create images, I listen to and compose music. Nevertheless, I see design as my career and music as my passion. The tablet is my job and the piano key is my hobby, though I do enjoy both very much. I also tend to be critical on both. When I see a poster, I sort of critique it in my head. The same applies for music, and you’d be surprised to see that design principles apply to music as well. They really are one and the same thing, so it’s no surprise that so many designers get involved in music, or at least feel a special connection to it.

I usually listen to music when I design, because it drives and inspires me. My music choice is usually a range of classical, neoclassical, movie soundtracks or solo piano music.

Perttu Murto

website http://www.perttumurto.com/

I usually listen music always when I work. It’s kind a part of the design project in my opinion! It is a great way to close “the other world” on my mind while I work and helps me concentrate 110% on the artwork itself. I kind a like all kind of music (except R’n'B!) so it’s up to my own mood what I am listening while working. It could be really hard rock or some chill out electro stuff. It doesn’t really effect to the out come, it just have to be good music! Good music is always inspiring!”

Where to listen to music

It sometimes appears that everything in your music library you heared thousands of times and you need fresh new stuff or it appears that you dont even have a music library. Well, thanks to the internet there are several ways to get some audible inspiration. There are online music services such as Deezer or Lala, which are really good. My favourite is Grooveshark where you add the song you’d like to listen to, to a current playlist and it’s really fast.

And now it is your part to tell us what music do you listen to? And how does the music inspire you? Place a comment and I am happy.

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By Robert Hartland

In this article, we’ll showcase website layouts and navigation structures that really break the mold. The designers of these websites have seen dozens of clone websites out there but have sought their own way. The unusual website layouts and navigation that results can either be very successful and innovative or disorienting for visitors. You decide. When you browse the showcase, think not so much about functionality as about why you design and develop the way you do.

Unusual Layouts

Breaking industry conventions is not always easy. Still, many designers push on to find fresh ideas and ways to innovate. Have you ever driven down a street where the homes perhaps have different-colored paint on the shutters but essentially look the same? The Internet can be the same, with designers cloning the same layouts day in and day out. But it is amazing what can be accomplished by a simple shift in the placement of website elements, while keeping the website familiar and easy to use.

Unusual Layout Best Practices

There are no “standards” for designing your own unusual layouts, only guidelines to keep you on track. The style is defined by freedom from conventional standards and by placing items where visitors are not trained to find them. Here are some ways to achieve an unusual layout:

Let your content articulate the design. Try even five or more columns without aligning everything perfectly. Prioritize usability, with layout as a secondary consideration. Let things flow naturally.

Let your users view content horizontally or vertically, without making additional content hard to find. Bring an element of surprise and excitement when presenting crucial content.

Keep in mind that users tend to focus on faces. Guide them with visual imagery to help them find content. Also, make sure the layout does not disorient visitors. The experience should be new and delightful.

India 60 has a layout that seems successful for every section of the website but “Videos.” Identifying the different content on the website is easy, but no matter how large your monitor (mine is 24″), you still seem to need to scroll.

Big Kid has a series of windows and photos that wrap to your browser window, helping you navigate the content. An effective yet slightly disorienting approach.

26000 Vodka takes an abstract and innovative approach to layout. Even with the parts moving constantly, you still manage to find content and enjoy your visit.

Red Mccombs Media has several different levels of navigation on its landing page and internal pages. While the page design is pleasing to the eye, it can be confusing and frustrating if you are not sure what you are looking for.

Tiny Team has a very simple layout that replicates how folders are opened on a computer. You can easily navigate back and forth through sections after some trial and error. One feature that is lacking is direct access to a specific part on the website.

Max Haus puts its navigation and search at the bottom of the website, with all options initially hidden. Once you leave the home page, returning is nearly impossible.

Webbli World has a very creative layout. All of the main content is hidden from non-members. The unique layout of the Webbli creator and registration form, though easily lost, get your attention.

Jan Sochor has a three-column layout that adapts to each section. The website feels very natural even though it contains at least four different layouts.

Sursly has an interesting take on horizontal navigation; each page contains only a small chunk of information. While the layout as a whole may not be unusual, the dark frame containing the content is.

Gavin Castleton’s layout has a split personality but helps you quickly identify your needs. Once on the website, you are presented with obscured content against a transparent background. The navigation transitions are appropriately nauseating.

FMCS has a five-column layout that is not often seen. While plenty of content is displayed, you are never overwhelmed or confused. Content is easily findable, even if a bit hard ro read when crammed into the left column.

AntiSweden has a full-screen video layout, accompanied by a two-box navigation to the right. When you navigate to a new page, the simple navigation scheme remains.

Samsung has stylized navigation to the right that changes with the photo. The layout is easy to use, though occasionally confusing when new elements are introduced.

Love Bento groups its navigation in the lower-left with the bento box of content. While the website may appear overwhelming at first, you quickly realize understand how to find what you’re looking for.

Unusual Navigation

Developing a unique navigation scheme that does everything but conform can be a huge task, almost the Mount Everest of Web design. Not many people take on the challenge, and not many who do succeed. In this section, we cover both the victories and defeats. Unusual navigation requires a balance between innovation and practicality. If you lean too far towards innovation, the navigation can become frustrating and even unusable. The goal is to make the navigation intuitive enough for the website to be perfectly usable.

Unusual Navigation Best Practices

Unusual navigation has no set rules. Just think differently and try something that does not look, feel or function like your everyday website. And follow these guidelines:

Let your navigation float freely within the content, rather than using the typical “Z pattern” that helps users scan. Make sure the navigation is still clear and self-explanatory, even if it doesn’t sit in the usual location at the top. Make it intuitive yet simple, maybe with just a few symbols that expand into many options.

Use imagery instead of, or in addition to, text. Allow users to use the mouse buttons and click wheel as alternatives (with instructions, of course). Also allow keyboard navigation as an alternative (instructions again, please).

Finally, include arrows that visitors can use to cycle through the main sections without using the main navigation. Allow users to drag items to reveal new content, while maintaining usability and accessibility.

Lucuma displays some great art, but the initial lack of content is a bit confusing. The horizontal scrolling is also interesting, although the pages are so short that you can see multiple pages at once.

Okay Dave puts its navigation at the bottom, while the different images point to the same content.

Marc Anton Dahmen combines mouse and keyboard options for navigation. Making the keyboard interact with the images and text is definitely unique. The configuration stands out while remaining practical.

Andreas Smetana lets you use your mouse wheel or the arrows to navigate through photo thumbnails.

Snuggle Fux takes a curious approach to layout and navigation, with functional expandable windows and no main navigation to be found. If you are looking for something in the 15 most recent topics, you should be fine; otherwise you will certainly give up and move on to another website.

Cypher 13 has expandable navigation supported by photos and text. This style is interesting, functional and at times comical.

Im Design lets you use your keyboard arrows and a few other keys to navigate the on-screen portfolio items. Some of the keys are not Mac-friendly, and visitors are forced to use the mouse on several occasions.

Mandchou offers a small content area designed mainly for viewing the portfolio, complemented by thumbnails at the bottom of the viewport.

Studio Stemmler has a plain landing page. But as soon as you select a category, the interface changes and you have multiple ways to access content.

Lab for Culture has a unique and very interactive style of navigation for its case study section. After clicking through several types of navigation, the final presentation is useful and interesting.

Salinas has a great “Wow” effect when you first select a section. Upon leaving the landing page, the appeal is lost, with the slow-loading content and awkward page transitions.

Got Milk puts its navigation front and center and never budges, although the icons become text on hover.

Ian Wharton uses a combination of navigation and arrows to let you cycle through content, with the option to view full-screen. The interface changes on interior pages, with the main navigation disappearing, leaving only a “Back” button.

Eric Johansson lets you drag the slider at the bottom not only to access different pages but to discover content, too.

Johnny Slack has a fun interactive navigation style that shows all of your options up front and then gives you the option to identify an item by category. When viewing projects, you are presented with expandable images.

Yodabaz has a fresh and pleasing feel for its navigation, and you can find all the controls you would expect from a portfolio.

OFIS borrows from the periodic table of elements for its navigation. It is minimalist yet useful, and it adapts when you enter a new section.

SensiSoft has a familiar-looking information stand to help users connect with its unique style of navigation.

Thibaud not only lets you drag with your mouse but takes a page out of the Pantone color book. Designers are familiar with this and know what to expect.

When Unusual Becomes Unusable

Not all unusual designs are as intuitive as their designers would like to believe. SOme can be more of a nuisance than a convenience. MIT offer some usability guidelines for websites, which are not detailed but still useful as a quick checklist. If your website’s purpose and content are not immediately understood, you may want to rethink your design. Your content’s structure does not have to be conventional, but it should be logical. Few things are more frustrating to a user than not knowing how to navigate content.

Think of your website like a brand new vehicle. It has some things you are used to: a steering wheel, gears, a seat, etc. When you first sit in it, you immediately recognize certain items, but not others. If the gear shift has been moved from between the seats to behind the steering wheel, you might be confused at first. Not knowing how to shift detracts from the vehicle’s functionality. So, the vehicle’s controls should be clearly labeled and feel natural to use. The relocation of the gear shift is one of the more drastic advancements in the usability of automobiles in recent years and feels quite different from the “layout” of typical car.

While creativity, uniqueness and pushing boundaries always benefit the Web community as a whole, usability is far more important. Your layout and navigation must be intuitive and easy to use to be successful.

About the author

Robert Hartland is a professional designer and photographer with over seven years of experience. He owns his own clothing company Envee Apparel, a creative theme-based lifestyle t-shirt company and accepts freelance work through his portfolio web site Aether Design.

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Let me know what one you like the best. I think the Heinz empty bottle is one of the most creative. Also, I’m sure there are many other cool error 404 pages out there and we would love to hear about them. If you find any more creative ones, please drop us a comment!

Error 404 Compilation…

Heinz

* * * * *

Martin Korner

* * * * *

Suspended Animations

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404 Train

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Red Tag

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Error 404

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Renet Web

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Error 404

* * * * *

404 Not Found

* * * * *

CSS Tricks

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Home Star Runner

* * * * *

404 Error

* * * * *

24-7 Media

* * * * *

WP Beginner

* * * * *

Fotolia

* * * * *

Frye Wiles

* * * * *

Jack Fig

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Fortune Cookie Error

* * * * *

iStock Photo

* * * * *

Apartment Home Living

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I will be quickly moving across several topics so feel free to add your own tips in the comment section.

1. Have a solid plan

The saying "failure to plan is planning to fail" rings all too true in web design and development. Having a game plan is essential in creating successful websites, but more importantly, when trying to make sure a developer understands your expectations.

One great way of avoiding this miscommunication is having a developer review your wireframes before you invest any time in designing.

This is a great stage to ask your developer questions like, "Is this possible within our budget" or "do you see [insert your concern here] being an issue?"

2. Hand off a good mockup of your web design

Before firing up Photoshop and starting on a design, there are graphical elements to be mindful of.

Grid system

We want to ensure that our site will be compatible across different resolutions, so utilizing a 960px grid system is a great way to avoid any surprises when the finished website is viewed on various monitors. Using a grid system will also provide a structure for you and your developer to make sure your design stays perfectly aligned. Using a gridded layout is the easiest and best way to get pixel-perfect web designs. Grid-based layouts also provide a way for you to streamline your design processes because a lot of guessing and obsessive tweaking is removed from the workflow.

Layouts that scale with the growth and changes of a website

One important point to be aware of is that your website, once it’s launched, will take on a life of its own. Whether a client has additional content they want to add, or the site is ready for the next phase of development, it is important to have an idea of how your site will scale and grow.

How will your layout be affected if five more paragraphs of text are added? Does your navigation allow for additional pages to be added? Theses are some questions to ask yourself and have answers for once you begin working with your developer.

Organization of the mockup

There is a lot to be said about a well-organized Photoshop document. Organizing your document in a clear and consistent manner allows your developer to easily locate and disassemble your design. This can be done by organizing your Photoshop document with web related naming classes. For example, you may want break your design down to elements such as header, main content area, footer, and sidebar. You may also want to group your graphics accordingly in a logical manner.

Additionally, a well-arranged and modular Photoshop document means that you should be conscious about separating elements as much as possible into layers; there’s nothing worse than trying to isolate a piece of the design, only to find out that it’s merged with other design elements.

This may seem obvious, but you might be surprised how much development time will be saved by staying organized.

On this note, it’s also essential to make sure that you strive to provide your developer with all the imagery and links your design may need upon launch. These items can include items like various states of the navigation system (normal state versus hovered state), interface buttons like Call to Action buttons, etc. (Learn how to create an animated call to action button).

If you have any other specific notes you would like to share that you feel are essential to your design, you may want to use an application such as Skitch. Skitch allows you to mark up your design with notes that can help communicate points that otherwise might be hard to put into words. (See a list of other web-based collaboration tools that you can use).

3. Learn about UI functionality

When designing with elements that will have special behaviors and actions, take the time to find examples and supporting documentation to give your developer an idea of what you are talking about.

Developers are not mind readers and may not meet your expectations if you are presenting elements in a static state with zero notation. Search around, there are great documents, demos, and tutorials on virtually every type of action and behavior – you’ll be glad you did, even if its just for your edification. (For inspiration, check out this huge list of interface techniques and tutorials).

4. Give good feedback

Once your developer has completed coding your design, there will likely be revisions by you and your client. It’s rare that anyone hits it out of the park on the first try and now you have the task of presenting the revisions in a clear manner. You will want to strive to be as specific as possible to avoid confusion. Keeping tabs on how many revisions will help you and your developer keep tabs on version control. (Read the ultimate guide on version control for designers).

Conclusion

Taking the time and effort to stay organized will pay off in the end. If you’re a designer new to website development, never let an opportunity to learn something new pass you by. Ask your developer questions and learn from your mistakes to ensure your next project will move along on schedule and your design will come off as planned.

Related Content

• The Evolution of Web Design
• How to Use Retro Colors in Your Designs
• Inspirational Tips and Tools from a Designer
• Related categories: Web Design and Project Management

About the Author

Chris Spada is a designer living in Danbury, Connecticut. By day, he works for Plaid, a design and branding agency. He is passionate about studying new techniques and styles emerging in web design. Check out Chris’ latest work at chrisspada.com. Connect with him on Twitter: @spadachris.

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This showcase will consist from 50 3D Flash websites, which really stood out from crowd, have received unique attention and got awards! Don’t think this is just another list – you’ll find here endless inspiration in these websites, where each one of them is a huge masterpiece!

1. Element

Hard to describe how cool this website is! Very stylish intro and superb 3D animations combined with great looking website.

2. Ge

Cool website with beautiful 3D objects and animations. Every page has its own good looking 3D objects.

3. Gears Of War – Emergence Day

Brilliant peace of art! Massive 3D scene with animations. Beautifully made 3D fade-in, fade-out transitions for every page.

4. Audi A6

Simple but very good looking website with 3D menu and 3D transitions.

5. Summer Festival

Good looking website with fantastic 3D balloons and stunning animations. And also it has a great feature – if you just wait for some time and do nothing, then after some period of time a jet-man will run out of fuel and will fall from the sky with interesting animation. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

6. Coca Cola

What’s that? Hey, it’s Coca Cola! Very creative website which consists of many different sub-websites where every website is different from each other with its own style, design and animation.

7. Optus Whale Song

Beautifully made website. Great underwater 3D scene. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

8. Martini Asti

Very classy website with 3D graphics and animations. Also it has cool 3D transitions.

9. White Void

Very beautifully made 3D menu. This 3D portfolio is very good representation of the style called “minimalism”.

10. The Eco Zoo

Well made 3D website. This website consists not only of some 3D elements but whole website is like a 3D world and almost every animation is in 3D. Good work.

11. Premiyum

Beautiful 3D website with great 3D effects. Fantastic. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

12. Get the Glass

Interesting Flash website with brilliant Flash intro which has tons of 3D elements.

13. Sensi Soft

Beautiful work with beautiful 3D scene and animations. Consists of many different 3D scenes where each scene is like a different period of time.

14. Plantate

Beautiful and cartoon style website. A 3D planet in the middle of website which you can rotate using your mouse.

15. Soft Whiteroom

Beautiful website. Everything is in 3D and very nicely responds to mouse movements.

16. Ha-py Island

Very cheerful website. Whole website is in 3D where you can walk around with bear. It feels like you are playing some 3D game. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

17. Hatica

Beautiful and simple website with 3D object in the middle of website.

18. The Egg Republic

Beautifully made website. It has great 3D animations and transitions from one page to another. It’s also great that every page responds to movements of your mouse. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

19. Foxtel I am uniQue

Social networking website where you can create your own unique 3D portrait. Fantastic idea with great work of 3D.

20. Cortex Design

Good looking 3D photo gallery with beautiful reflections. Just clean and simple.

21. The Morph

This website is brilliant! Turn on your webcam and see how all 3D objects follow your motions. Or if you don’t have a webcam then this website also responds to movements of your mouse.

22. Twist and Drink

Cartoon style 3D website with mini games and that kind of stuff for children. Very well made, amazing!

23. Chuyue

Great piece of work! Beautifully made 3D menu and animations. You can even choose 4 types of 3D menu layout.

24. Mr A

Very cool website with awesome 3D work. Great 3D reflections and effects and there is also a mini game in the background of this website.

25. Dasai

A simple website with 3D navigation menu as a planet. Good use of Papervision3D.

26. Orange

Great piece of work. Everything is in 3D. You walk from one page (room) to another. Well made 3D animations.

27. TBC

Very simple website with pretty cool 3D menu as a library. And also it has a cool animation when you choose something in this 3D menu.

28. New Work City

Pretty interesting corporate website with some 3D animations. It also has a stunning design. Great work.

29. Off The Street Club

Interesting website with many 3D objects which can be rotated.

30. Eight Interactive Studio

Just clean and simple website with 3D animations, beautiful!

31. Ecsw

Great 3D website with cool Flash intro, and one of the coolest 3D features this website has, is that you can walk around the building by yourself.

32. Zeebee visual communications

A small website with 3D effects which looks brilliant. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

33. Thinking Space

Flash website which has a menu with very interesting 3D effect. Good looking 3D transitions.

34. Domenico Tedone design

Clean and simple 3D website. Very well made. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

35. Silenzio

This is like a 3D movie library with beautiful 3D transitions. Every animation is very smooth. Good work.

36. Philter Design

Simple and clean 3D website.

37. Rule the Stars

Interesting way of how to draw something – draw it in the sky with stars! Great 3D work. Can also be like a nice little present for your girlfriend/boyfriend (your drawing of course) – she/he will like it, I promise. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

38. LBi Atlanta

Good looking website with very cool 3D navigation menu. Just hit “Browse” on the right side of the website to see 3D navigation menu.

39. 3spin

Very good looking website with awesome 3D navigation menu where you fly from one page to another.

40. Comcast Town

Very big and cheerful flash website with many interesting 3D elements.

41. Fendi

Website with 3D photo gallery. Looks very good.

42. Roca Meridian

Cleand and simple website in 3D cube.

43. Air Canada Leaveless

Beautiful corporate style website with some 3D elements. Very smooth 3D animations, for example, smooth animation when the card flips over.

44. Grillhelden

Website with 3D background which responds to mouse movements. Good looking website with greeat use of Papervision3D.

45. 13flo

Good looking website with 3D menu. You can choose 4 different layouts of this menu.

46. Inavi 3D

Great piece of work. Almost whole scene is in 3D with awesome 3D transitions.

47. Njoore

Completely 3D website with very cool and entertaining loading as a mini game. I really enjoyed this little cheerful mini game. This website was awarded as “site of the day” on FWA.

48. Cristof Echard

Portfolio website with beautiful 3D transition effects.

49. X-Prime

Very cool Flash website with 3D elements. It has an interesting 3D menu.

50. 3 Words Game

Very cool 3D navigation menu. You can choose even a layout of this menu.

Related posts:

1. 50 Gorgeous Flash Websites You Definitely Should See
2. Beverage companies: Excellent artworks and Flash designs
3. 30 Sources To Get Your Web Design Inspiration
4. 35 Websites To Teach You How To Use CSS Effectively
5. Showcase Of 50 Best Inspiring Gaming Websites

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I think my favorite has to be the Electricurrent design. What do you think? If you have any more designs you know of that feature people, then feel free to drop in a comment for critique.

cPeople

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Gavin Castleton

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Tierra Virtual

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Brooklyn Fare

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Urban Originals

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Uni Qlo

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Galante

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Celly Shop

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Michael J Fox

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Envirenew

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Hitachi

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ToLingo

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Practice Cafe

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Woolshed Grove

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Health Angle

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MediaStroika

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Dental Plan Cards

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Electricurrent

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Rocket Club

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Billy Hughes

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Flash sometimes makes websites look cool, attractive at the same time professional. The main glitch in Flash is nothing but using the software to piece the perfect website as it consumes a lot of time and money. Here is a quickfix for that problem: go shopping for to find your favourite flash apps at these places. Although they are not free, but some of them are really bargain, which can saves you hours of development time.

1. Digicrafts

Digicrafts is an excellent place to start shopping for your flash apps. It offers templates, banners, menus and other flash items for sale. They gallery is categorically organised under different creation tools like Flash, Lightroom, Dreamweaver etc as well as in application form type like templates, logo, clip arts etc. It also offers an excellent integrated search options that can reduce your shopping fatigue. The site also provides freebies as well as tutorials for their applications.

2. JumpEye

JumpEye really makes your eye jump! The website offers a very simple interface to browse through their repertoire which contains a wide range of flash components. They also package these apps as a unit which can assist you if you are looking for a complete makeover of your website. Their FlashEff software which is an action script viewer for Flash, where you can create as well as edit their components. They also offer many web apps like Media player, Text Box, Interactive Map to just name a few popular ones.

3. Flash Components

The eBay of flash applications. You can easily set up your account and start bartering your flash applications. This website contains a huge variety in flash applications and components to suit a wide taste as well as the pockets. The site is very methodical in its organisation which gives users a hassle free experience. The site also has an exhaustive integrated search service as well as a strong community who can help you at any time!

4. FlashLoaded

FlashLoaded is loaded with flash apps that can blow your brains out. They offer integrated flash packages to suit specific website requirements as well as individual flash components to help to tune your website. The website is visually appealing as well as logically organised which can assist you in your quest to find the best flash apps in the world ofInternet. The website also covers domain of Flash Movies, Video loops, Font as well as sounds.

5. Advanced Flash Components

Advanced Flash Components (AF Components) is a site of advanced flash action scripts components to help make your website more awesome. In nerdy terms, these components help extend functionality of your website, speed up your websiteprocesses and assists in delivering a high quality product! They offer components for advanced functionalities like media player, slide show, interactive menus etc. Their Interactive Map has created a huge buzz around theInternet community as it is the most advanced map of the world.

6. FlashSources

FlashSources.net is an excellent online source for flash apps and now they are on sale! They provide a gamut of basic flash website components from effects to menus to help you with your very exactingrequirements. On top of it, they offer 24×7 support for all of their products.

7. FlashEff

FlashEff is an acronym for Flash Effects, it helps creates tools for flash applications without the trouble of scripting all together. It has an virtually library of unlimited components and allows to edit them as well add new to the FlashEff database. The version 2.0 has improved user interface and better performance compared to previous versions. The FlashEff database has an amazing array of tools to help you tweak flash apps to suit your needs.

8. Ultrashock

The Craig’s List of Flash applications. You can buy or sell anything related to flash here. Ultrashock offers a comprehensive database on professional images, vector art or flash files. The website provides a super easy navigation experience and a well organised database so that you can get what you want in the least time as well as the easiest way possible.

9. Yahoo! Astra

This is Yahoo! flash components developer network which by itself gives users a wide selections components under the BSD license. You need to download their Yahoo! Astra Components extension (.mxp) in Adobe Flash CS3 to get access to their database. Moreover, you can get easily access to action scripts of the application in order to edit it as well as develop new code. The website offers a succinct view of their components.

10. HotScripts

HotScripts contains a huge database of components in flash which can be used for any and all website needs. At HotScripts, you will be able to get tools for any website requirments and can even fit in your wallet. The search provided here is basic, but you can never find this huge collection of flash components anywhere else in the whole wide web since 1998!

11. FlashJuggler

An online marketplace for flash tools, the flash juggler provides access to gamut of flash tools. The plethora of applications can put some of the new shoppers in a conundrum, and FlashJuggler has juggled this problem by keeping track of application popularity. Moreover, the site provides access to freeware. If you are a developer, then FlashJuggler offers a sweet deal; you get 50% of sale price and 10% of referrals. Start juggling your cash!

12. FlaBell

FlaBell has a flair for Flash applications, in complete packages to meet your software requirements. The FlaBell provides an intuitive interface to help you search through their comprehensive database tools. It offers search criteria as per downloads, most viewed, most popular etc to give the buyer a circumspect of an application.

13. BuyStockFlash

Buy Stock Flash offers platform for anyone to market their flash applications. From the shopper point of view, this increased competition gives them a wide selections as well as competitive pricing. In layman, It is a farmer’s market. The website providers also provide user with views on most popular items, most downloaded ones, new additions etc.

14. TexEff2

Words! Words! Words! Words can colour images that cannot be expressed in pictures and a good flash text effect tool can give life to your pictures. The TextEff 2 is the best among flash text applications and offers a lot of tools to assist you create real moving texts that can create an impact with users.

15. FlashMint

FlashMint is an exclusive flash templates website, from where you can buy flash templates. Unlike other websites, the FlashMint deals exclusively in flash based website templates and has accrued a large repository of templates. The website is well organised and provides an excellent search options which can help you navigate through their resources with ease.

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

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Specs of a mysterious new HP tablet showed up on an eRetailer’s website today, spoiling the surprise for HP. It doesn’t appear that it’s the new Microsoft Courier (which is being developed by HP), instead, this is a completely different new tablet that the manufacturer is releasing.

(…)
Read the rest of HP TM2 Tablet Leaked [Tablet Specs Leak Early, 12-inch display, Intel Core 2 Duo, Not the Courier]

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Tip: Create a profile of your target audience.

You could easily spend hours optimizing your pages for every browser from the first iteration of Mozilla forward. At some point you have to ask yourself, who is using this?

Does your website cater to contractors and DIY homeowners who may use their cell phone for texting, but are more comfortable surfing the net on a PC? Are you trying to reach C-level execs who have their iPhone surgically attached to their hand?

Think about their native technology environment, and prioritize your compatibility efforts based on the technology your audience prefers. The idea is to shape your message to their medium, or browser in this case.

Tip: Do not guess about what your audience is using.

Research and prioritize intelligently, and be prepared to back up your decisions with facts. Everyone loves seeing statistics.

Let’s say your client or your boss asks you to make the website compatible with their pet platform. You need something more compelling than, “Your browser is out of date; you should upgrade.” Let them know you mean business. “Your browser currently represents .5% of global browser users,” carries the weight of authority. And you can back it up.

Fun W3Schools Usage Statistics as of November 2009:
95% of browsers have JavaScript enabled
90% use Windows family operating systems
62% use Windows XP

Tool: W3Schools – Browser Share Statistics

W3Schools has the latest numbers for browser share past and current. They offer a monthly breakdown of the most popular browser platforms, including which versions garner the lion’s share of users. Firefox and IE ( versions 6, 7, and 8 ) are the most common browsers. At the back of the pack, Google Chrome has captured 8.5 percent, with Safari holding 3.8 percent. These statistics are extracted from W3Schools’ log-files, but W3Schools monitors other sources around the Internet to assure the quality of these figures.

W3Schools – Browser Share Statistics

Tool: W3Schools – Browser Display Statistics

This breakdown will show you what screen size visitors will most likely use to view your website. You can also see how colors will be viewed on your site.

Surprising, most computers are using a screen size of 1024×768 pixels or more, with a color depth of at least 65K colors. Remember the old standby screen size of 800×600? Only 4 percent of visitors actually use that setting!

Keep in mind, this data comes from W3Schools, a website catering to web technology hounds. Definitely a tech-savvy audience there. Your mileage may vary.

W3Schools – Browser Display Statistics

Tip: Website audiences are unique.

Global averages are helpful, but the important thing is how your users see your site. Website audiences are unique as a fingerprint. Some web site users favor the latest technology, while others have grudgingly accepted email as a universal form of communication. Dig into your website analytics to find out what technology your visitors use to access your website.

“First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure,” – Mark Twain.

Tool: Google Analytics – Browser Capabilities

Google has a fantastic (and free!) tool to analyze your own Browser statistics. From your dashboard, select Visitors > Browser Capabilities to access this tool. You can view by Browser alone, or look at the OS driving the browser technology.

This Analytics section provides very detailed information about your visitors. You can view typical screen resolutions, screen colors, operating systems, and so much more.

Wondering how your latest Flash creation or JavaScript app will play with your audience? You can see which version of Flash your visitors are using, and how many have JavaScript enabled.

Another useful feature of Analytics enables you to look at visits, time spent on site, new visits and bounce rates for these various browser segments. You can also view goals and conversions for each type of browser, OS, and screen resolution. See how these technologies affect your goals for the site.

Google Analytics

Tip: Do not idolize statistics.

In the immortal words of Oscar Wilde, “The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

Keep in mind, many statistics may have incomplete or faulty browser detection. It is quite common by many web-stats report programs not to detect the newest browsers.

Also, if you find that a small segment of your traffic is extremely active or spending a lot of money on your site, you may want to optimize for them. Even if they’re a small part of the overall pie, they could be crucial to the success of your site.

“You cannot – as a web developer – rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.” – W3Schools

About the Author

Jessica Cox explores the far reaches of the Internet, researching the latest marketing, web design and development techniques for Aqua Vita Creative. Sign up for our newsletter for more news, tips and updates. @jessicafcox

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Having your own iPhone app for your website or blog is becoming an increasingly common way to promote and extend your brand.

However, actually creating that application and getting it into the App Store can be a lengthy and expensive process, especially if you have little development experience. Today PointAbout is launching a new product called AppMakr, which is designed to make creating your own iPhone app simple and inexpensive.

AppMakr is a streamlined system that creates a native iPhone application out of your existing RSS feeds. You can customize elements of the app and the artwork and then submit it directly to the App Store. You can even embed ads from places like AdMob directly into the app.

AppMakr made this demo video showing off how fast it was to create an app for Mac|Life.

Paint-by-Numbers iPhone Apps

We’ve covered some other paint-by-numbers iPhone app services in the past — like Swep Apps and MobBase — and while this sort of approach doesn’t make sense in all cases, it is especially attractive for businesses and sites with existing content, but without the time or budget to commission a custom app.

What we like about AppMakr is that the content it displays can be stored offline (so this isn’t just an App Store wrapper on a mobile website) and it has the ability to integrate lots of different types of feeds into the mix.

Pricing and Special Mashable Launch Discount

AppMakr has two pricing options, $199 for AppMakr to publish your app — which means you don’t have to have your own Apple Developer Account (AppMakr gets credit in the app’s opening splash screen) or $499 if you want to use your own Apple Developer Account, but still have AppMakr take care of the provisioning and management features.

However, from 1/4/2010 (today) through 1/6/2010, you can take $150 off the $199 option by using the code “MASHABLE” at checkout.

Have you created an iPhone app for your website or blog? Did you do it yourself or use an outside service or company? Let us know!

Tags: app store, appmakr, iphone

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Stribe is a plug and play service to instantly create a social network on any website.

Stribe is the first service that allows any website or blog to create a branded and customized social network in 5 minutes.

http://www.stribe.com/

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Before we start, this is not a guide to creating the perfect brand. This is a post about my experience of creating the branding for my companies website. It is important to share experiences and compare them against your own. Creating an effective brand that represents your business or a company your creating it for can sometimes be a lot harder than you think.
When we created our brand we went through lots of unique ideas and colour schemes before we finally decided to go a head with a brand that represented the business we are in but also did not restrict us from expanding on it. If you haven’t already got a company name, try and use something that people will remember. When clients always hear our name for the first time they find it a bit amusing but its very memorable for a web design company.
Research your competitors. See what they have come up with and try to find the pattern all the companies in your sector are following. Once you have found the pattern, improve on it with your own interpretation.
Before we go any deeper, here are a few resources when choosing your colours and trying to digest some inspiration.

Colour Lovers – Excellent for colour schemes, palettes and trends.
Adobe Kuler – This requires the latest flash plugin.
Logo Pond – Very inspirational Logo Designers showcase their brand ideas.

The Initial Attempt

Our initial ideas for our brand were to be friendly (we’re always friendly), modern and a lot more colourful than the website designers already patrolling the google ranks. Our first design was a bit too friendly and aiming towards a very cartoony brand. This design wasn’t going to attract the audience we wanted and sent us straight back to the drawing board.

It’s important that when people look at your brand they take it seriously.

Amend or Surrender

After assessing our original attempt and realising everything we wanted in our next design, the next key element to creating our successful brand was realising everything we also didn’t want. We decided to surrender and start from scratch. All the elements of the original design didn’t possess a strong enough message to represent our business. Our next design featured a more rounded font and logo design that wasn’t going to get us featured on a children’s cereal box. There was progress from the original design but it didn’t spark a light with what we wanted to achieve.

Our Rocket was Ready to be Branded

8 Starbucks coffee’s and 7 strawberry smoothies later (business partner is not a fan of the good ol coffee beans) We had struck gold and come up with a brand that we could work with, a brand that gave us instant inspiration to build a website that was going to push our talents and business forward. The power of a great brand inspires you to push forward.

Ask your self the following questions about your current brand: does it represent our company well and fit in with our business sector? Does it have essences of creativity but also present its self well as a business? Does it appeal well to our audience?

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These popular articles are not listed in order of popularity, but rather date of publication.

30 Most Incredible Textures for Vintage Style Design

One of the most important aspects of a good vintage style design is the use of authentic looking textures. Since most of you probably don’t have time to browse the local antique shop, and your grandmother’s attic is miles away, we’ve put together a list of some of the best vintage textures we have ever seen.

40 Super Sleek Fonts for Clean Web Design

Creating grungy designs can be fun, but sometimes a site requires a cleaner approach, one where artsy design elements take a back seat to clear presentation of content. Typography plays a big role in this type of design.

The Best Social Media Icons All In One Place

The ability to easily bookmark or share content on popular social media platforms is now a must have feature for web sites. It’s also important that this feature isn’t over looked by web site visitors. So it’s always a good idea to use icons when linking to social media sites. They get peoples attention and the logos are immediately recognizable.

All the Small Icons You’ll Ever Need

Big highly detailed icons make great eye candy, but small icons can be very useful when designing websites. They are great for styling lists and giving links visual flair that is eye catching and meaningful. It’s amazing what can be said visually in a 16 x 16 pixel area. In this post, you will find a large collection of small icons that should fit most of your design needs.

10 Best Content Management Systems for Designers

There are a lot of content management systems out there, but many of them are overly complicated and require a certain level of technical expertise. However, there are a select few that focus on simplicity and ease-of-use, but still give the designer flexibility in templating features and customization. In this article, we have listed ten of these CMS’s. Some of them are well known, while others you may have never heard of, but deserve a look.

20 Do’s and Don’ts of Effective Web Design

When you are creating a website (or hiring a web/blog designer to create one for you), there are specific items you need to be aware of. Things that normally wouldn’t cross your mind. For the average person who wants a website or blog for their business, they are after one very important thing – sales. Now, they may tell you that they want the big flashy logos, or the overdone textures/gradients, but it is the job of a well skilled web designer to steer their clients in the right direction.

404 Error Pages for Your Viewing Pleasure

Error pages are easy to create, so there’s no excuse to avoid them. Even with the most solid website, you never know when someone might mis-spell a URL link and hit a page that doesn’t exist. Be prepared when that happens to you, even if by no fault of your own. Let these great error pages be your inspiration to creating your own.

Most Used and Abused Web Design Trends of All Time

The year is 1999. You’ve just watched the Matrix, and it’s blown your mind. You sit down in front of your computer to work on a web design and then create or download an animated Matrix background for your Geocities website. You’re so cool. Fast forward 10 years, and you say to yourself, yikes, what was I thinking?! We’ve all been there. As a matter of fact, I’m personally guilty of copying many of following trends.

The Definitive Guide to About Me Pages

One of the most important and least used aspects of any website is the “About Me” page. It’s not enough to have an interesting site and great product if your visitor can’t find a way to relate to you.

Web Design Trends for 2010

Although this list isn’t a drastic departure from what was popular in 2009, it marks different trends that will be expanded upon and made better as a result. As you think of how you will incorporate new trends into your designs, focus on the main idea of each trend. Be encouraged to dabble into these trends so that you become part of the movement.

The Four Key Components of a Great Web Design

There’s a lot that goes into creating a web design, but I believe it can be broken down into four main components. If you’re able to execute on all four, you will have a hit web design on your hands. However, if you come up short on one, the entire design will suffer.

33 Creative and Beautiful Logos

Logo design, like any other design process, sometimes requires some inspiration to spark creativity. If you’re in need of some logo design inspiration, here is a collection of 33 creative and beautiful logos. These all have varying styles, but possess the same high quality.

30 Website Navigations that Make You Wanna Click It

The navigation might be the single most important aspect of a web design’s usability. Without a navigation, you would be stuck on the home page for a very long time. I believe a navigation or menu must be easy to use, but this doesn’t mean it has to be boring. In fact, it helps to add a little flair to your navigation. It entices visitors to click and hang around your site a little longer.

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The US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched Distraction.gov, a website that teaches you about the dangers of using your electronic gadgets while driving a car. The site is chock full of stats about the dangers of texting while driving, and legal warnings.

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Read the rest of US Government Launches Distraction.gov [New Website Teaches You About The Danger of Texting, E-Mailing, Talking While Driving]

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