Google’s Mobile Playbook and why you should read it

Have you checked out themobileplaybook.com yet? It’s a neat little online ebook published and maintained by Google that explains all the reasons you should get onto mobile, if you haven’t already. It goes on to show several amazing and innovative things that various brands have done in the mobile space. This is a must read.

But if you don’t have time to read through the whole thing right now, don’t worry. We’ve read it and distilled it into its main points for you to browse. You’re welcome. Read more →

The Marriage to Online Success – Part 2: How to Run Social SEO

How to Run Social SEO

All Starts with Research

Like all great marketers know, a good marketing campaign starts with good marketing research to gain insight to your audience and your brand power on the internet. Followed by exploring your own website’s SEO requirements by performing an awesome SEO Audit. Lastly, all online marketing campaigns need keyword research, which forms the basis of your SEO and SMO (even SEM) effort.

Optimize through Your Blog

Blogging is a God-send to us SEO personnel. We now have an organic way to offer content after content with optimized keywords. The way to optimize a blog is the same as how you would optimize your webpages: Meta Data, header tags, linked keyword content, etc. Read more →

Design for Modern Browsers — A Swan Song for IE6

This is an issue that everyone should know about. Chances are you already do since few who work in the Web industry have yet to realize that the elderly browsers cling ever stubbornly to life, albeit by a thread. Allow me to explain:

Internet Explorer is on the verge of extinction. Let’s celebrate! Or wait… can we? Let’s look at some numbers.

First, let me amend my statement above by clarifying that only CERTAIN Internet Explorers lie on their deathbed – okay, okay! Just IE6. The fact of the matter is that there are very few people still using IE6 and we can finally consider resigning support. With that said IE7 and above still have enough support to last them a few more years. Read more →

Designing for the Ultimate Conversion

It’s not uncommon for designers to put the cart before the horse. What I’m referring to is leaping right into the design stage before considering the user experience and ultimately the desired outcome. Please don’t fault us, we’re just big nerds who get easily excited by design, trust me our hearts are in the right place. However, I recently read a post on the Smashing Magazine blog titled “Stop Designing Pages and Start Designing Flows” by Morgan Brown, and it reminded me of the value of stepping back and looking at big picture before jumping straight to the pretty stuff.

In a nutshell the article talks about designing user flows rather than designing page-by-page. A user flow is the path or funnel a user takes from the initial acquisition to a point of conversion. A conversion may be signing up for a newsletter, downloading an e-book, or making a purchase. To start designing user flows it’s important to define both the user and business objectives. From there you can start building flows in order to reach both parties goals.

Two examples of user flows for e-commerce and subscription websites. (Photo courtesy of Smashing Magazine)