Archive for the ‘Design’ Category

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User-Friendly Free Font Finder

In Design,Marketing on Oct 16 by jason

FontsFinding the perfect free font for a flyer or newsletter can sometimes be arduous. There are many free fonts sites out there, but usually they’re very difficult to browse. Check out Better Fonts for a nice user-friendly solution.

Better Fonts has built a clean interface that allows you to quickly choose the font you like. It displays legible thumbnails of fonts categorized by name. It also allows you to change the preview text. That way you can see exactly what your headline will look like.

A few other free font sites:

Rather have desktop font software?

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Color for the Uninspired

In Design,Marketing on Oct 11 by jason Tagged:

Paintbrush Even for the creative, visually oriented folk, choosing the right colors can be difficult at times. It may be colors for a new listing flyer or postcard. Or maybe you’re trying to redesign your whole look. Whatever the case, and especially if you’re ever feeling uninspired, try predefined color schemes.

A great concept that is soon to be launched is Daily Color Scheme. Once launched, the website will offer a daily dosage of coordinated color schemes.

I’ve tried their beta and it looks good. As of today there are about 19 schemes released since July 2006. The different schemes aren’t distributed daily yet, but it’s still a valuable resource.

If you want more choices and rather flip through paper, get Color Index. Color Index touts over 1100 color combinations that include formulas for both web (RGB) and print
(CMYK).

Looking for more info on color? Here are a few excellent resources.

  • Color Matters: Great info on understanding color theory, emotional effects, symbolism, etc.
  • Color Wheel Pro: Although commercial software, their site provides good information on properly coordinating colors.
  • Visibone: Color charts galore; If you’re designing for the web be sure to check out their free Color Scheme Lab.
  • Color Schemer: I really like this one. It’s a simple yet flexible online color schemer (free).

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Prevent a lawsuit and get up to web standards

In Design,Marketing,Technology on Feb 26 by jason

Web standards are the wave of the future. And if you don’t jump on board, you better jump ship. You’re at risk for lost visitors, lost reveneues, and even potential lawsuits.

The downfall without web standards

Many small businesses do what they can to get by and create a website using the easily accessible software that they’re comfortable with. This typically includes software such as FrontPage, Publisher, or some canned web template software from their hosting provider. Unfortunately, these types of programs are usually the worst when it comes to maintaining web standards.

When a site does not conform to standards, you immediately limit your potential visitors. You’ll have issues with accessibility and compatibility. And with all the new web-enabled devices out there, you want to be sure that your site works on all of them.

Accessibility

Accessibility is a website’s ability to be easily accessed by those with disabilities. According to the WAI,
Web accessibility encompasses all disabilities that affect access to the Web, including visual, auditory, physical, speech, cognitive, and neurological disabilities.

Compatibility

Compatibility is a website’s ability to be correctly rendered across multiple browsers, operating systems, and devices.

Benefits of Web Standards

Web standards says to create a site that is accessible to all no matter what. This is ideal, however, there are many more reasons to get rid of your table-based layouts (With standards, tables should only be used for tabular data). Here are a few more benefits to moving your site to web standards.

Future Proof

New browsers are being developed with web standards in mind. You won’t have to recode your website to accomodate the new stuff. And as standards are refined, upgrading your code becomes much easier.
Cost Effective Cross-Compatible Everything

Standards-based websites will be immediately viewable by any up-to-date browser. Your content will be available to visitors no matter what browser, operating system, PDA, or smart phone someone uses. This all happens without having to develop different versions of your site (although you still can!)
Improved Search Engine Indexing

Although it’s arguable, standards can help with higher search engine placement. By using web standards, robots are fed exactly what they want—highly structured content.
Lightning fast design changes

Content and design remain separated. This allows for site-wide design changes to happen with a simple change of CSS. The CSS Zen Garden is an excellent example of how CSS can be used to create different designs (colors and layout) using the same content.

Standardize your website

It’s always easier to have standards compliance when you’re starting a project from scratch. But we don’t always have that luxury. If you’re ready to make the leap, here’s what you can do.

  1. Verify proper HTML tag usage. HTML tags are for developing document structure, not font sizes or layout. It should be common sense… Use header tags for headings. Use list tags (ol, ul, dl) for lists. Use tables for tabular data and not layout.

  2. Separate design from content. An standalone HTML document (without CSS) should be only content. It should not include fluffy images that are irrelevant (i.e. background images and borders). Images that are pertinent, such as a product’s image on the products page, are considered part of the content and should be included.

  3. Test, test, test. Use validation services to check your code for accessibility, coding errors, and more. This will help to ensure you have content that is available to any visitor, including search engine robots.

Do you need more help in identifying how your site can improve? Rather have someone else do the work? Hire me!

Do you have other tips or links that maybe helpful? Please comment below.

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Prevent AdSense Click Fraud

In Blogging,Design on Feb 20 by jason

Did you know Google can freeze your account if you’re suspected of click fraud? Well, they can and they do. Here’s one tool that will help to protect you (Firefox users only).

Michael Hampton‘s GreaseMonkey script prevents your browser from following Google ad links on your website. This is one of common types of click fraud. Once installed into your browser, you’ve added one layer of protection for yourself and you’ll be free to click away on anyone else’s site (but please don’t get them in trouble!).

Protect yourself from click fraud

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

  1. Get Firefox and use it!

  2. Install the GreaseMonkey extension

  3. Install the Adsense Prevent Accidental Clicks script

Happy [non]clicking!

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Color Coordinated Website

In Design on Feb 19 by jason

Color Schemer Unless you’re a professional designer or somehow familar with color theory, picking the right color combinations for a website may not come easy. Try Color Schemer‘s free online color scheme generator.

Color Schemer is an application available for Windows and Mac to create professional color combinations. With the easy to use interface, you pick a starting color and it does the rest.

Here are a few other applications that are worth trying:

Do you have an application, book, or method that works for you? Please comment and share your insights.

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Holiday Website Makeover

In Design,Marketing,Real Estate on Feb 14 by jason

Are you tired of your website’s look? If you are, your visitors might be tired of it too! Time for a makeover!

Have you ever noticed how Google will change its logo to match the day’s current or historical event? For example, throughout the 2006 Winter Olympics, their logo changes according to the popular Olympic event of the day. Yesterday, the Google logo sported a half-pipe and a snowboarder (maybe Shaun White?). This little changing logo has created enough buzz around my peers that I’m certain, it’s at least one way to attract new visitors on other types of websites.

Website Thematics

A North Central Idaho Real Estate team (Higgins Team) makes simple color and graphic changes to celebrate relevant current events, holidays, or seasons. These changes keep the site fresh for visitors and also helps to maintain a personal touch on their site. During the past few months, they’ve changed their color scheme to celebrate Fall, Winter, Christmas, New Year’s, and Valentine’s Day. If you visit their site enough in the next few weeks, you’ll be able to see their designs for President’s Day, St. Patricks Day, and Spring.

Although the changes may seem drastic and time consuming, they’re not. Because their site is standards-based they can easily change their whole site by using a different external style sheet. They’re only changing site colors and their banner graphic, so the effort is minimal.

Like most marketing tactics, you’re experimenting. You need to experiment with different (and minor) changes to determine which ideas will turn your website into a lead generator and cash cow. In the case of the Higgins Team, the experiment has evolved into an important routine. Why? Lots of new visitors who become buyers. Their website traffic has increased 36% during a time of typically slow activity.

There are other factors that contribute to their improved numbers including excellent search engine marketing. But this is just one more thing that you can do to keep those repeat and referrals coming to your website.

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Common Blog Templates: Bad Idea

In Blogging,Design,Marketing on Feb 02 by jason

Real Estate BloggingI came across a post by Denise Wakeman that mentions her reasons for choosing TypePad over Blogger. In her post, she argues that TypePad has more features, is more customizable, and stable (actually she makes a reference to how Blogger may periodically delete posts). All this and TypePad is worth the five to fifteen dollars per month.

Professionals Need Professional Templates

I’d have to agree that TypePad is more flexible, which is a definite must for professionals. Unfortunately, many of the real estate blogs (i.e. professional blogs) that I see out there are on the more limiting Blogger and use default templates. Although a few have customized their templates (kudos to them), the standard templates often make the site appear too common.

Common isn’t always bad. But when you’re trying to stand out from the crowd, common makes it a little difficult. When I’m looking for professional information (i.e. real estate info), the more it looks like a cookie from a cutter, the more likely I am to leave the site in less than 10 seconds. The more customized a site is, the more likely I am confident in the information I am about to read… and stay a little while.

Your Blog Template and You: The Stumbling Presenters

You see, when I’m looking for good information, I [mostly subconsciously] assume that the person that shares the information will put some time and effort into presenting the information well. Have you ever gone to a conference where the keynote speaker was obviously not skilled in public speaking, stumbled over their words, and misplaced their notes? If you have, you would have lost some confidence in the speaker. Fortunately for the speaker, they have a little more than 10 seconds before you decide to walk out.

Spend the Time to Customize

When it comes to websites (blogs included), the overall design will induce a certain expectation. If your site template is common, the visitor might expect common information. If you spend time developing your content, yes, they will come. But if you spend a little more time in customizing your templates, they will stay.

Just getting started with blogging? See my recent post on Real Estate Blogging.

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