May
6
Contributed by Eric Bryant, SEO specialist, Gnosis Arts
One of the ways to help decrease website load time and improve website performance is by the use of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs). A CDN is a service that hosts certain web elements and objects, such as images, video or audio, and serves up those images to your website. CDNs are often effective because they are a network of servers which caches large portions of your website throughout the entire network. This way, the end user is receiving your website from the nearest location possible to him or her, rather than having to go out to your web server to retrieve your website, thereby speeding up the time it takes to load your website into a browser.
One drawback of a CDN is price. CDNs can be very expensive, and are often outside the budget range of small business websites. However, there is one free CDN service we want to make you aware of.
The Coral Content Delivery Network
The Coral Content Delivery Network is found at coralcdn.org. This is a free service. Coral works in two primary ways. The first is by appending “.nyud.net” to the end of any URL. This activates Coral’s proxy server networks. They cache your web page in their network, and then subsequently each time that URL is requested, it is served up from the Coral CDN network instead of your origin web server. This will sometimes decrease that page’s load time.
We tried this version, but honestly found it wanting. Appending “.nyud.net” to the end of our web pages didn’t enhance the performance of our website. On the contrary, it actually slowed them down. Although we are still testing it out, our SEO team surmises that the reason for the slowdown is due to the fact that we already optimized our site’s load time quite significantly via .htaccess, GZIP and OpenDNS methods, prior to utilizing the Coral CDN. Too many different DNS systems handling requests, we think, has the opposite of the intended effect.
The Second Application of Coral CDN
So, we tried the second version. The second way of using Coral CDN is to prepend “http://coralize.net/” to your web page. For example, if your URL is www.domain.com, then to use the Coral CDN, you would attach http://coralize.net to the front of the original URL: http://coralize.net/http://www.domain.com.
We tried this method for a few web pages, but the response time was really no better.
Then we tried “Coralizing” only certain HTML objects instead of entire HTML pages. We chose relatively large objects, such as audio (.mp3) and large image (.jpg, .gif) files. And Bingo! We struck gold!
Conclusion: CDNs Work Best on Objects, not Entire Pages
Our conclusion is that utilizing CDNs can help decrease load time, but not always. In fact, for sites which load sufficiently fast, A CDN may not help at all. Relying too heavily on them will actually work against you. When we used CDN delivery on entire web pages, we found an increase in load time. Not the desired effect.
However, when we used the CDN to deliver only large object elements, such as .mp3, .avi or Flash files, we noticed a substantial improvement in load time.
Feb
28
Are Designers also Marketers?
Filed Under Design General | Leave a Comment
Kathy Sierra says we’re all marketers:
“In this new open-source/cluetrain world, I am a marketer. And so are you. If you’re interested in creating passionate users, or keeping your job, or breathing life into a startup, or getting others to contribute to your open source project, or getting your significant other to agree to the vacation you want to go on… congratulations. You’re in marketing.”
Read this excellent post @ bokardo.com
Feb
15
Using Wordpress as a CMS
Filed Under Design General | Leave a Comment
Step 1. After installing Wordpress (WP), there are some plugins I would install before I go any further. I always use the following;
- XML Sitemaps : Automatically updates your XML sitemap when you add a post or page, and notifies search engines.
- Top Level Categories : Removed the “category” slug from your blog. I go into the importance of this later on.
- Headspace 2 : An amazing plugin. Lets me create my own Meta keywords, title, and description. Also lets you easily install code into the header site-wide, and provides an easy way to add google analytics, yahoo site explorer meta, MSN webmaster metas, and much more.
- Page Menu Editor : How does anyone live without this? When you want a long title for your page (ie, “Contact the Philadelphia lawyers at Dewey Cheatem & Howe”), but a short title for the navigation (ie, “Contact”), you need this plugin.
- Contact Form 7 : If your using your WP as a CMS, you might want a contact page. I’ve used this one in the past as its easy to install and use in multiple places; however, if you like to track goals with Google Analytics, this won’t work for you.
Step 2: Configure permalinks. Don’t operate a blog without permalinks configured! In case you don’t know, permalinks converts your url from http://www.example.com/?p=3 to http://www.example.com/cat/my-page-or-post/. Use custom option and enter /”%category%/%postname%/. Its important to use the plugin “Top Level Categories” because when you post any blog entries, WP will add a ‘base category’ (default = “category”) to your url, so blog posts will look like “www.example.com/category/cars/VW-jetta”/. For SEO, I would remove the base cateogry (”category”) or change it to “blog”, depending on the structure of your website.
Step 3. If your plugin has an enhanced homepage (look for a file called home.php), you can skip this step. By default WP will display your blog on the index page. Under normal circumstances, when using WP as a CMS, we will want to have different content on our home page. First, create a page in WP with the content you want on your homepage. Give it a title relevant to your content. We don’t need to call it ‘home’ if you have the “Page Menu Editor” plugin installed; you can set that separately. In the admin, go to Settings > Reading and change “Front page display” settings to display a page of your choice as your homepage.
Step 4. If you will be having a blog as a feature on your website, create a page named “blog”, go back to Settings > Reading and change “Front page display” settings to display your blog on the blog page we just made. If you are using a blog, you might want to just rename the base category (under the ‘permalinks’ setting) to “blog” instead of removing it with the plugin above.
Step 5. Customize your themes widets as desired. i like to hard code my pages into the header with a horizontal navigation, and drop a quick contact form into the sidebar. If you have a blog feature, you might list the blog categorys in the sidebar instead.
Done. Yeay! Now it’s easy for anyone to make changes or add content to your website.
Jan
7
Chosing an Appropriate Color Palette for a Legal Website
Filed Under Design General | Leave a Comment
I’d like to start this post by discussing color palettes that are NOT appropriate for any legal professional’s website. Let’s take a look at a few websites where the color is actually distracting from the information and services a website is designed to convey.
While the color scheme here certainly captures the eye, bright colors with little contrast can be hard to look at for an extended period. Black text on a grey background can contribute to users leaving your website in search of your easier-to-read competition. The somewhat sophomoric color scheme makes me think I’m looking at a day care website, not a personal injury attorney’s website.
Again, bright colors doesn’t convince me this attorney is professional. There’s nothing ‘above the fold’ to really bring me in to the site.
This site, while not terrible, is just impossible to read. Dark text on dark background should be included in the top ten sins of web design. The right navigation has no distinction from the main content.
Overall, these examples help illustrate the importance of making a website’s design appropriate for the client and services offered. Law is a serious profession – having a website that will reflect your professionalism should be a strong consideration when finalizing your design. All the SEO in the world can’t change a first impression.
Avoid:
- Highly saturated colors
- Dark text on a dark background
- Colors or layouts that may distract from the overall message
- Purple & Pink
Suggested Color Schemes:
- Brown, taupe, khaki, tans
- Navy, grey, off-white
- Maroon, wine, nude
- Sky Blue, Gold, Black
Dec
13
I recently read this article on how type affects a company’s image. Most of us have a good feel for what is appropriate for a serious company such as an accountant or lawyer, versus what a restaurant or daycare center might use for a logo or font on a website. However, The Software Usability Research Lab really breaks it down scientifically. Good read.
From the article summary:
This study investigated the effect of website typeface appropriateness on the perception of the site’s company. Results indicate that typefaces that are high in appropriateness should be used for websites. Neutral and low appropriate typefaces significantly decreased the perception of the company as judged by professionalism, believability, trust, and intent to act on the site.
May
30
Web Design Color Swatches
Filed Under Blog Design, Design General, E-commerce Design | 2 Comments
Ever get ‘creative block’ when you’re just desperate for inspiration, and need that little boost to get you started? Check out these graphic color swatches. Feel free to use as you wish. Post what you come up with and send me a link.
Apr
14
Why we Should Ban Splash Pages
Filed Under Design General | 5 Comments
Splash pages often appear on every SEO and web designer’s “#1 No-No’s” list. Why?
Splash pages lack content, a primary ingredient in SEO. They usually link to your “real” home page, and to the homepage only. Do you really want google thinking your most important page is related to “click here to enter” (often the only anchor text on a splash page)?
Splash pages lack navigation. internal site linking and site structure are critical to SEO, not to mention the poor usability of a site that returns you to a splash page every time you want to get back to the homepage; the frustration is libel to cause ‘office rage“.
Imagine if you have to view an ad before being able to get to your content – then imagine your competition ’sans-ads’. Who gets the customer? Think of splash pages as ‘ads’. (In fact, this is the only time someone should use a splash page – if you require your user to view an ad before entering, and they are willing to do so for content they otherwise couldn’t get elsewhere – think forbes.com or NYT.com).
First impressions are lasting impressions. Or, to be more specific, the last impression your client will get before going to someone else’s site when the first thing they see is a splash page. Studies show reports of analytic funnels showing 25% of traffic immediately leaving the site when they are presented with a splash page. When attempting to provide users with the info they are looking for, why make it more difficult for them?
Feel free to comment if you feel that you have a legitimate excuse reason for a splash page.
Mar
28
SEO & Navigation
Filed Under Design General, Usability | Leave a Comment
A websites navigation is an important part of on site optimization. For SEO, any / all navigation should be coded as text, not images; these will become your most clicked on anchor text, and helps SE’s see what your categories are all about.
First, a few notes; avoid using AJAX, Javascript or Flash for your navigation. When you view the source of your page, you should see your links within the code – pulling that navigation (for example, with drop down navigation occasionally seen in e-commerce stores) from an outside file won’t help you.
For usability & SEO, do yourself a favor and put your navigation in the traditional places users would look – on the left or at the top. Google puts more weight on the content that appears at the top of a page, and the user is much more likely to stay on a page thats intuitive to navigate.
Please, at all costs, avoid Mystery Meat Navigation. Even worse, avoid not using any navigation and putting all your content on one page.
Now that you have your navigation designed, take a look at the site architecture and URL structure before coding.
Now that thats out of the way, Lets play “Guess where the navigation is?“
