Thanks to everyone who attended our latest webinar, "Top Website Design Trends for 2012". We had a phenomenal turnout and lots of fantastic questions!

Our hosts, Shaun Scholtz, Interactive Art Director at Station X Communications and Richard Sharp, VP of Marketing at Marqui, provided their insights into the 2012 web design landscape, exploring 11 popular trends that can keep your web design visually compelling, and in support of your business objectives:

1. HTML5, CSS3 and JQUERY
2. Mobile Compatibility and Responsive Layouts
3. Typographic Layouts
4. The Grid
5. Large Background Images
6. Perceived Affordance and Metaphoric Design
7. Social Media Integration
8. Illustration
9. Single Page Websites
10. Parallax
11. Elegant Modal Boxes

If you'd like to know more, check out the full webinar here.

Thanks again to everyone for attending, and stay tuned for our upcoming e-book, "The Definitive Guide to a Website Redesign". Coming soon!

It’s that time of year again!  As 2011 draws to a close and you prepare for your 2012 web marketing strategy, there’s no better time to evaluate your organization’s most powerful marketing tool: your website.
 
Join us on Thursday, December 8 at 10:30am PST for a sneak peak into the 2012 web design landscape. If you're looking for insight into which website design trends can engage your visitors and help you meet your business goals in 2012, this webinar is a must-see!

Register now to reserve your spot - we hope to see you all there!

If you find this blog useful, check out our webinar, Mobile Web: A Crash Course.

In 2011, the explosion of mobile internet consumption has brought with it an unprecedented wave of developments in mobile website design. In just one year, the mobile web landscape has changed dramatically, and the growing popularity of HTML5 and CSS3, amongst other developments, has played a pivotal role in expanding the realm of design possibilities.

With that in mind, here are the top mobile website design trends for 2012:


1.    Fingertip Optimization

When taking a survey of current mobile websites, it's more than evident that many are being built for fingertip navigation. Many elements including search fields, menus and images are created large enough to accomodate finger-clicking.
The tactile nature of today's mobile web experience should always be kept in mind when designing a mobile website.







 

 

 2.     Simplicity

Capturing the interest of today's attention-deprived mobile user is no small feat. Complicated mobile websites are clumsy and difficult to navigate, making it difficult for users to access the info they need on-the-go. For this reason, current mobile websites feature functional, minimalist layouts. With a fraction of the navigational choices offered by the full website, these scaled-down versions make the internet experience much more accessible to mobile web users, who are more demanding and time-constrained than ever.





 
 3.     White Space

 White space is a must for any good web design,  and its importance takes on special meaning in 
 the mobile realm. An instant detractor from any  mobile website, visual clutter can be distracting  and frustrating (picture those times when  you've clicked on the wrong link because there  isn't enough whitespace!). The most          compelling mobile website designs today are  built with this fact in mind.







  


4.    Increasing Number of Videos
       and Images                                                                  

With a rising number of unlimited data plans and the growing popularity
of the 4G network, concerns around loading times and data consumption are not as prevalent as they once were. Although it is always important to keep these factors in mind, today's mobile web designers have found more flexibility in creating visual interest. With this, there's a growing trend towards video galleries, image sliders and other forms of dynamic content on mobile websites. 







 
 5.    Designs Borrowed from Apps

 With the success of touchscreens, 
 mobile  website designers have used the 
 app layout, adapting menu items into
 buttons or icons similar to those found in
 apps. The result is a clean, icon  
 driven design that many mobile users  have grown accustomed to.













 6.    Social Networks Integration

The nature of mobile usage is incredibly social, so lots of mobile websites are 
catching onto this wave by incorporating links to all their social media channels,
along with incentives for "liking" them on Facebook or "following" them on Twitter. Whether they're waiting in line at the grocery store or having lunch with friends, the mobile web allows your business to establish a social, casual connection with your customers, one that's interwoven into the fabric of
their daily lives. 


 






 7.    Introductory Pages

 Many mobile websites feature an  
 introductory or opening page  
 containing only branding and a
 large background image. This tactic is a
 good way to instantly capture  
 interest and set the tone of the
 mobile website experience without  overwhelming your visitor with unnecessary  text or  calls-to-  action.









It's always important to note that while you need to keep aware of ever-changing trends, all aspects of your mobile website design should align with your larger mobile marketing strategy. To remain competitive, and to truly evolve your digital marketing presence, any mobile website design initiatives you take on must be firmly rooted in your business objectives.

All mobile screenshots were taken from mobileawesomeness.com.


If you're looking for more info on mobile websites, check out how Marqui can help you with your mobile web design and build, along with mobile website content management .

* INTERESTED IN WEB DESIGN TRENDS? REGISTER NOW FOR OUR WEBINAR ON DEC.8 : TOP WEBSITE DESIGN TRENDS FOR 2012 *

Every year new trends emerge within the web design industry and  staying on top of these trends and utilizing them in your own web designs can help to keep your website eye-catching and current. While having a beautiful web design is important, often these design trends have other benefits in terms of marketing. In today's post we've chosen out top website design trends for 2011 based on their popularity, their visual appeal and their ability to help your marketing initiatives.

So, without further ado, here are the trends:

HTML5 and CSS3. We're sure that some of you out there will debate whether this can be called a "trend" or a new emerging standard in web design, but the bottom line is that HTML5 and CSS3 are something to watch out for, and will only grow in popularity in 2011. If you don't know what they can do for you, then you may fall behind the curve. HTML5 and CSS3 make it simpler to build modern web elements into your web designs including smarter forms, beautiful typography and social tools like wikis and drag and drop functionality.

Using typography as a design element. Why is typography so important? Well it's one of the main ways that you communicate with your audience on your website. In the past getting rich typographic elements meant resorting to creating beautiful images that were neither search engine or website optimization friendly. Now, using tools like Typekit, web designers can find web-friendly fonts that can help you communicate with your audience in a visually appealing way, while still optimizing for search engine rankings.

 

Editorial-style layouts. Do you have a website with lots of frequently updated content? Then this type of website layout may be for you. By using a grid for the website's design layout, organizations can optimize the space on their website by leaving lots of areas for content. The more content that you have visible on your main pages, the more of it your visitors are going to find quickly and easily, not to mention the added benefit that fresh content has for your SEO strategy.



Minimalist layouts and color schemes. These are great for smaller organizations with less content for their website. Minimalist layouts take fewer resources to maintain and manage, they load faster (which is great for SEO) and can often be developed and implemented more quickly than larger, more complex designs. Many organizations are beginning to favor the clean, neat and easy-to-use navigation of these style layouts.



Large and interactive website headers. Making a good first impression for your website is essential for convincing your website visitors to stick around long enough to convert. Having a large website header where you feature important information like calls-to-action, latest promotions and offers can go along way towards convincing your visitors to convert.



Link-rich footers. This type of footer is an excellent example of website design supporting website usability. Having a website footer that is full of links makes it easier for your users to navigate while at the same time improving your SEO.


Mobile compatible websites. This is becoming less of a trend and more of a necessity for many organizations. So many internet users are choosing to access websites and online information through mobile devices that it's a very good idea for companies to make sure that they have a website that renders nicely for mobile.

Wider layouts. Make the most out of the space you have available to you! That's one of the biggest motivators behind having large website designs that are designed for larger screen resolutions, but still scale nicely for those (few) people who are still using smaller ones.



Full-image backgrounds. Do you want a website that immediately grabs your visitors' attention? Well having a beautiful image as your entire background is a good way to do that. These types of sites are growing in popularity, especially for organizations with portfolio-friendly work.We think sites like these can be especially effective for higher education institutions that often like to have image galleries showing their campus. Why not just make those images the background instead?


It's always important to remember when your designing or redesigning a website that your website is mean to support your overall business goals. That means that it needs to help you get found more easily, it needs to convince your visitors to convert and it needs to communicate your message effectively. No matter how beautiful your website is, if your design doesn't support those initiatives, then it's not worth the time or money it takes to create the design. Make sure that when you are thinking about a new website, you are using a firm that will design your website as part of your marketing strategy.

If you like this post, make sure that you take a look at our webinar on the same topic, "Top Website Design Trends for 2011."

We just finished our webinar on what we think the top website design trends for 2011 will be, and hopefully you all found it useful and informative.

As usual, here’s the recap from the webinar for those of you who didn’t get your questions answered because we ran out of time, and for everyone who couldn’t make it today.

1. What is more important: website design or SEO? Both of these web tools are extremely important, and they should work together to help your website reach its optimal ROI. If you have a beautiful website, but it doesn’t get found online, then it’s not effective. If you have a website that gets found, but is visually unappealing, then it won’t be as useful as it could be. What you need to do is design a website that supports your SEO goals and vice versa to ensure that your website is attractive to visitors and helps you achieve your traffic targets.
2. Where does a CMS fit into a website redesign? A content management system (CMS) is, in our opinion, an essential part of a redesign. If your organization doesn’t currently have a CMS, then we suggest implementing one during the redesign process, and if you are already using one, then you need to make sure your new website is built in such a way that it complements the capabilities of your CMS. Your CMS is meant to help make your website management and updates easier, and if your website isn’t designed to be used easily with your CMS, then you’re not doing yourself any favors. 
3. What aspect of a website design do you give the most priority to? Usability. At Marqui our website redesign process has a huge focus on website usability requirements. While eye-catching design is a good way to draw your target audience in, if your visitors find your site difficult to use, then your design won’t matter because they will get frustrated and click away to a site that meets their requirements more quickly and easily. 
4. How do I figure out the best website trend for my organization? Every website has different goal and different requirements. Establishing what the needs of your organization are will help you to determine which website trends will help you meet them. For instance, if you have a website with lots of content that you’d like to highlight and get on your homepage, then an editorial-style (grid) layout may be for you, because it allows space for a great deal of content that is updated frequently.
5. We are creating a new website but working with a separate SEO company, separate designer and separate website development company, any tips? Normally, this is one of the things we warn against when a company is starting a redesign, because there is so much room for poor communication between the different elements. Our best recommendation is to make sure that all of the different companies your working with are communicating with each other, and make sure that your own marketing department is aware of the progress to make sure that every aspect of your redesign is working to meet your online goals.
6. Can you elaborate how using typography can help with your SEO?  In the past to get attractive fonts many organizations used images for text which was bad for SEO because search engines couldn't read the text within the image. Using typography as a design element, and using newer techniques like SiFR and Cufon, as well as tools like HTML5 can give you text that is both visually appealing, communicates your message, improves website usability AND is readable by search engines.
7. Can you give us an example of a website in higher education with a mega menu? Two education sites that have nice examples of mega menus are BCIT and University of Southern California's School of Pharmacy

Our next webinar is our, “Definitive Guide to a Website Redesign,” and it will we taking place on December 16th at 10:30 am Pacific. You can register for that event here. Everyone who registers for that webinar will receive our website redesign toolkit (not yet available to the public) with our newest e-book, a whitepaper and checklist to help you with your next redesign.

If you'd like to view a recording of today's webinar, you see it, and our previous web marketing webinars on-demand in our resource section

Earlier today I read an interesting post on Erik Askin’s website, discussing the ways in which designers can discourage user behavior by developing designs that annoy the user or make usability difficult. The post uses the example of a cigarette carton and shows how by designing the carton away from its usable rectangle shape it might actually discourage users from smoking in general by making their lives more difficult. The post is looking at the design for the package of a consumer product, but the post got me thinking about how designing for or against user behavior can help or hinder design for the web.

Now, I’m not a web designer, and I’m by no means an expert on the subject, but I am a marketer, and because of that, I have experience using behavioral models to try and influence users to take action on a website.  As Joshua Porter says in a recent blog post, “One of the guiding principles of interaction design is to support existing behavior. This means to figure out what is already happening, what activities, tasks and interactions people are already doing and to build support for them into software.”

Humans are logical creatures and they make logical connections and decisions when they’re on a website that lead to action, just like in any other aspect of their lives. If the website a user arrives at discourages certain behaviors by say, having poor usability, then most users are going to logically decide against interacting with the website or taking the actions that the organization would like them to take on the site.

For a website design to be effective it needs to meet the needs of your audience and if it doesn’t, then it discourages them from returning or interacting with it in the first place. These needs are often several fundamental expectations that a user expects to find when they arrive on a website including being able to browse and navigate efficiently, to find the website in the first place, to interact and access information easily and to return without difficulty.

The way that a user interacts with your website will be motivated by different triggers and influencers that they come across on your website. According to a recent paper by BJ Fogg, a Stanford Researcher, understanding your target audience’s triggers and incorporating them into your web design is important if you’re trying to target specific user behavior, like filling out a form for instance. If you want a user to take an action, they need to feel motivated and encouraged to do so and this can be influenced by design.  A website designer can help this process by focusing on usability and behavior models to help influence your users to take the action you’d like them to take. Is it simple for your users to find your content and fill in forms? Is it easy for them to find your contact information and submit queries? According to Fogg, “The implication for designers is clear: Increasing motivation is not always the solution. Often increasing ability (making behavior simpler) is the path for increasing behavior performance.”

People are lazy, and they want you to make their lives easy. By ensuring that you have a web design that supports their behaviors and motivates them to take action you can increase your conversion rates on the actions you want them to take. Having what Fogg refers to as, “poorly timed triggers” (pop-ups for example) don’t generally influence users to take action and often discourage them from continuing to explore your website because it’s not providing something that meets their wants or needs, or makes it easy for them to interact with your website.

So, the big question is, have you designed your website to help or hinder your users’ behavior? If you’re not sure if your website is make it easy for your users to take action then it probably isn’t optimized for conversion rates or usability, which can have negative effects on your overall website ROI.

Image by Zawezome on Flickr.

Are you sabotaging your website without realizing it? There are some big (and unfortunately, common) website mistakes that we see that we would like to help make you aware of and hopefully eliminate all together!

1. Doing an unnecessary redesign. There are lots of strong reasons to do a redesign, but there are alost many bad ones. Before jumping into a complete overhaul of your website, it’s important to make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons (and because you’re bored with your current site isn’t a good reason). Just because you look at your website everyday certainly doesn’t mean that your visitors do, so it is important to look at your site through the eyes of a first time visitor and see if your site still come up lacking. If you’re trying to decide whether or not to do a website redesign, why not check out our blog post with some good reasons to redesign your website. 
2. Not using web analytics. If your business has a website, then it should also have website analytics in place. If you’re not monitoring the success of your online marketing efforts, then you can’t be sure what’s working and what isn’t, and you’re certainly not giving yourself the best opportunity you can to succeed on the web. If you don’t currently have any web analytics in place we suggest checking out our post on, “Getting Started with Web Analytics," or viewing our recorded webinar, “Web Analytics 101.” 
3. Assuming that as long as it’s there, it will be seen. This is a big mistake that we see quite often. Just because you have a corporate website built definitely doesn’t mean that you will actually get traffic to arrive at it unless you’re actively promoting it. How can you do that? First things first, implement a solid SEO strategy and start getting involved in blogging (if you’re not already) and other social media. These certainly aren’t the only ways to increase traffic to your website, but they are some of the quickest fixes. If you want to learn more about increasing your website’s traffic, you might like to attend our upcoming webinar, “How to Turn Your Website into a Demand Generation Machine,” on September 9th.

Image by Screenpunk on Flickr.

Over the last few months we’ve put together a blog series on redesigning your website. The inspiration for this series was our own site redesign which we released in early February. Our site redesign has been great and it served to remind us what it’s like to be in our customers’ shoes during a redesign. As a result, we thought it would make everyone’s lives a little easier if we put together a blog series to walk through the steps of a redesign, covering everything from why you should do one, to building an SEO strategy once your site is up and running.

Today’s post is the final one in the series, and it focuses on keeping the website up to date once you’ve gone through the effort of redesigning and optimizing your new site. The reality is that if you’re site isn’t up to date then it isn’t going to have a positive impact on your lead generation initiatives, and could even end up being detrimental.

Keeping a website up to date can be a large job, but that doesn’t mean it has to be an overwhelming one. By taking into account the following tips, you can ensure that your website is current, relevant and that it is doing all that it can to generate more leads for your business.

So what can you do to ensure that your website stays current?

1. Allocate the appropriate resources. Often companies make the mistake of thinking that once their site is up and running, it will become an automatic lead generation machine. Realistically, the redesign is only the tip of the iceberg. Once your site is published, you need to make sure you have the needed resources from people to time, to make sure that you have the ability to keep your site up to date.
2. Content, content, content. We wrote an entire post during this series on content creation strategies, but we thought it was important to emphasize it here. You don’t just get to create website copy and enough content to get your site up. You need to be continually creating, re-purposing and renewing content to ensure that your website is always fresh and relevant. 
3. Make sure you’re measuring for improvement. The only way to successfully monitor your new website and to understand the effectiveness of your web marketing efforts is to incorporate website analytics into your marketing strategy. At the end of the day, the only way that you can continue to improve your website is to understand the areas where you’re falling short and analytics can tell you that.  We suggest using Google Analytics because it is free, feature-rich and not too complicated for beginners. If you want to learn more about how you can implement web analytics into your strategy you can check out our blog post on “Getting Started with Web Analytics.”

You can view the rest of the posts in the series via the links below:

1. Start Fresh in 2010: A How to Guide on Redesigning Your Website for the New Year
2. Website Redesign How to Step 1: The Website Audit
3. Website Redesign How to Step 2: Website Design
4. Website Redesign How to Step 3: Content Creation Strategies 
5. Website Redesign How to Step 4: Website Usability Planning 
6. Website Redesign How to Step 5: Building an SEO Strategy 

Image by julianrod on Flickr

This is a guest post written by Randa Codron, a Marketing and Communications Specialist for WaterTrax, one of Marqui's SaaS partner companies.

Anyone who has a business online should know that the internet is one of the first place prospects turn when they are evaluating vendors for different products and services and with so many vendors available on the web, first impressions are everything.  Your website needs to catch your visitors attention, convey the integrity of your brand and express the quality and reliability of your business immediately. Having a proper design is an integral aspect of capturing your prospective clients' interest. Whether you are a designer yourself, or your company is in the process of hiring a design firm, here are 5 things that you need to know about effective website designs. 

1. Pretty with Punch
Pretty pictures and designs can be nice to look at, but you need more than that to really grab your website visitors’ attention.  Make sure that your pretty pictures pack a punch, that they don’t just draw on an emotion, but also create a solid connection to your objectives. If you are designing a website, make sure you are creating context for understanding within the overall flow of the content. Your job is to bring it all together.

2. Let It Breathe
Don’t overcrowd your pages with too much “stuff”. Give your headings, your keywords, your callouts and your images enough space to breathe.  

3. Orchestrate a Story
You only have a few moments to capture the attention of your website visitors, but also cater to their intelligence. Tell your story across the page, share the visual cues generously and cleverly in a way that flows and engages your visitor.

4. Ease of Use Drives Consumption
This applies to anything and everything that you do. Make it easy to consume email marketing  and click through thru rates will improve.  Design a website that is easy to use and people will use it. Create a website with simple navigation, visual cues, callouts and so on and visitors will love it. Design with a focus on BEHAVIOR and you’ll be amazed at the results.

5. Nourish Your Imagination
It is too easy to forget how important it is to get out from behind your screen. Go for a walk. Go ride a bike and come back inspired!  Take a moment out of the day to feed your imagination and pass the inspiration on to your website visitors through an engaging  creative site.

Often one of the most overlooked aspects of a redesign, usability planning is actually one of the most significant ways you can get visitors to return to your site. If your visitors can’t easily navigate your site, chances are they won’t return a second time, they'll just move onto a site that can give them what they want quickly and easily.  You need to make sure when you’re redesigning your website that it is accessible to the majority of people, it is easy to use, and that it delivers on its promises.

First things first, what exactly is website usability?

Usability is an attribute that is used to describe how easy a website's interface is to interact with. It is often used to indicate the ease-of-use for a website visitor and should be tested during the design phase of a website's creation.

Why is usability important?

In an extremely competitive market like the internet, usability is a necessity for your website’s survival. If a website is difficult to navigate, people will click away to a site that is more user friendly.

What can you do to help ensure that your website is easy for your visitors to use?
 
Here are a few tips that we feel are essential to planning the usability of your site:

1. Test your old site and get familiar with your competition. This is one of the best ways to ensure that your new design is easy to navigate. By testing your old design, and even your competitors' sites, you can get a good idea of what interfaces work best from a customers’ viewpoint.
2. Compare your site to what works. By comparing your design to relative established usability guidelines you can get a good idea if your website's design is on the right track.
3. Understand who your customers are. You want to make sure that you are communicating effectively with your target audience. This increases the usability for them, and after all, they’re the reason why the site exists!
4. Keep your layout simple. Everyone wants to have an appealing, eye-catching website, but be careful not to let this take away from the way users interact with your site.The busier your design is the more difficult it is for your visitors to use it quickly and easily. When in doubt, a simple layout is a better choice from a usability standpoint.
5. Cut it down to size. If you have done your research, and really understand your audience, then you’ll know what kind of content your audience is looking for. By trimming the content on your website down so that you only have the content they need, you can make it easier for them to get to what they’re looking for efficiently. 
6. Let them search! Search functionality is one of the first features that a visitor will look for if they begin to get lost, can’t find what they are looking for, or are just in too much of a hurry to explore your site in detail. If you have this feature, it means they are less likely to leave your site to find the information they need, and more likely to return in the future because you’ve made it simple for them to find what they’re looking for. 
7. Make navigation a no-brainer. Finding information on your products and services is essential for a visitor to know whether what  your company offers is a good fit for them or not. The entire purpose of your navigation is to make it as simple as possible for your visitors to get the information they require about your company. Having a clear navigational structure that is consistent throughout your website makes it easy for people to get to where you want them to go.
8. Be like Hansel and Gretel. Leaving breadcrumbs for your visitors to follow is a great way to increase the usability of your site. This way, users can keep track of where they’ve been, where they are, and how they can return to previous pages of interest. 
9. Let them come to you. Having your company’s contact information, and “contact us” forms in an obvious place, makes it more likely that users will take the time to get a hold of you and turn themselves into conversions.
10. Watch page loading time. Your visitors hate to wait. Having pages that load slowly, reduces the likelihood that a visitor can navigate your site in a reasonable amount of time.
11. Keep animated graphics to a minimum. Lots of animation can be distracting, and confuse visitors making your site difficult to navigate.
12. More is better—when it comes to webpages that is. It is usually a good idea to have less information per page, and have more webpages on your site, than trying to cram all of your information into a few over-filled pages. Having a clean, basic design and keeping the content on each page to a minimum, stops your visitors from getting overwhelmed.

Website usability planning might seem  like a complicated process, with lots of different aspects, but it doesn't need to be an overwhelming task. It really just comes down to keeping things simple and intuitive.

If you liked this post, make sure to check out the other posts in this series:

Start Fresh in 2010: A How to Guide on Redesigning Your Website for the New Year
Website Redesign How to Step 1: The Website Audit
Website Redesign How to Step 2: Website Design
Website Redesign How to Step 3: Content Creation Strategies

Have you ever wondered what exactly siFR is or why you should use it? Have you ever had a burning question about siFR that you just never asked? Well we took the 6 most commonly asked questions we get about siFR and we've broken down the answers here, so you never have to worry about your understanding of the technology again.

What exactly is siFR?
Scalable Inman Flash Replacement (siFR) is an open source technology that allows you to replace text elements on a screen with Flash equivalents. SiFR uses JavaScript to read in HTML text and render it in Flash instead so that text elements can be styled in whatever font the web designer chooses, without the user having that font installed on their machine.

How is it pronounced?
According to one of the key developers involved in siFR’s creation, Mike Davidson, siFR is meant to be pronounced as “siffer."

Why should I use it?
SiFR has some key benefits for web designers including:

1. SiFR is accessible, selectable and most important, cross-browser compatible.
2. It does not violate end user license agreements (EULA)  or copyright laws since the font is contained within the SWF object.
3. SiFR is SEO friendly, provided that keywords appear in the text.
4. Implementation of siFR adheres to semantic XHTML and accessibility standards. Sites which use siFR are fully accessible to screen readers and other assistive technologies.
5. SiFR is scalable which means that if a user has modified font size within their browser, it will fluctuate accordingly.
6. Last but not least, you can create beautiful typography for your web page.

What are the downsides of siFR?
SiFR is often criticized for the fact that it can cause pages to load slowly and is not supported by some mobile devices including the extremely popular iPhone. It requires both javasript and Flash to be enabled.  

Will it hurt my SEO?
SiFR can be a fine technique with regards to your SEO as long as your keywords appear in the HTML text and it is used in moderation. However, extensive use of siFR can be interpreted as a poor site quality signal by crawlers, eroding SEO.

This is an example of siFR in action:


What alternatives are there?
This section gets a little technical (we apologize in advance) but for those who want to delve a little deeper into their options, here they are:

• Facelift Image Replacement (FLIR) is similar software to siFR but instead of using flash, it embeds plain images that are generated automatically from the text on the webpage. This way, even if the user doesn’t have a Flash plugin installed, they will see the text replaced by FLIR. FlIR is also compatible with EULA and copyright laws since the font is rendered as an image. Unfortunately, FLIR requires that a website host is capable of running PHP with the GD enabled, which is even less accessible than Flash plugins and text cannot be selected.

• Cufon is also a text replacement solution that doesn’t use Flash. Cufon consists of two individual parts: a font generator which converts fonts to a proprietary format, and a rendering engine written in javascript.  Cufon is basically an improved version of the popular, Typeface.js with a focus on faster, easier implementation. Cufon works on every major browser, and there is almost zero configuration needed. Unfortunately, there are some deficiencies: not many fonts are permitted to be rendered in this method, the JavaScript files used for the font can be easily reverse engineered and “stolen” which violates EULA  and copyright laws, and you cannot highlight or copy and paste text.

• Typface.js allows you to show your site’s graphic text in the font you want without using Flash or images. Instead, you can use typeface.js and write in plain HTML and CSS, just as if your visitors had the fonts installs locally. Typeface.js is another alternative to using Flash, and is fairly simple to use. However, this option can slow down page load times significantly, it cannot be read by screen readers and it isn’t compatible with all browsers.

The actual design of your website is obviously one of the most important aspects of a redesign, but it isn’t just about having an eye-catching, appealing site.

Your website’s design should capture your visitors’ attention while at the same time, supporting your web marketing and business objectives; ensuring that your site is fully compatible with different browsers; scaling so it can grow with your company; and enhancing your site’s usability. When done correctly, your website design can help improve your company’s credibility and get more visitors to convert into leads.

A large part of a designer’s job is to understand your company, and then to find a way to reflect what they’ve learned into a layout that delivers results. When designing a layout to suit your company, the designer will work hard to understand the message you’re trying to present and will translate that into the site’s overall look and feel, usability, and scalability. When designing a website, a designer will look at three major aspects of the layout:

1. Overall Look and Feel: This is the part of the website that creates the visual appeal. This aspect of the design represents your brand and should be cohesive across your entire site. The look and feel will help to give your visitors’ their first impression of your brand, and should reflect how you want them to perceive you. To help determine this, a designer will look at the examples you’ve brought them, and try to understand your company’s objectives for the site. By understanding who you are as a brand, your target audience, and what appeals to you from other sites, a designer should be able to create a template for you that represents your brand accurately.


2. Usability: This is a crucial aspect of the site’s design because it will affect the way that visitors navigate your site. A well organized layout should help customers find what they are looking for in an intuitive way. By focusing on the information architecture, a designer should be able to guide visitors to the areas of the site you want them visit, and at the same time help them to easily locate the information that they need. Complicated navigation makes it difficult for visitors to explore your site, and if they can’t find the information they are looking for easily they will most likely click away to a competitor’s site. When meeting with a designer, it is their job to help manage your expectations between look and feel, and usability. While you may want the most attractive “flashy” site you can get, a designer should help you understand how they can find a happy medium between the visual appeal of your site and its usability. 


3. Scalability: A good designer will always be designing your site for the future needs of your company. Most companies with an active web presence have realized that content management is an essential aspect of their web strategy. As a result, proactive designers should encourage you to redesign your site based on a content management system (CMS), if it isn't already. Websites, especially those that use a CMS are very organic and so the design needs to be able to scale as you add content and develop  your communication and messaging. You want your website to be designed as a platform for evolving content and ideally a designer will model your site with the capabilities of your content management system in mind so that you have ease of maintenance and your site can grow and evolve in cohesion with your content creation. 

The first step in a website redesign, a website audit, is crucial for helping you determine the direction that you want your new website to take. It can also help you discover the problems that your site is currently experiencing and help you determine where you rank compared to your competition.  A website audit can be performed by your own marketing team (depending on its experience/size), but ideally it should be done by a web consultant, a web designer, or both.

The goal of a website audit is to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of your site and to determine what changes need to be made. A comprehensive audit should look at the site’s design, content, programming, structure and SEO.

Sometimes a website assessment checklist, like the one we created for our customers can help you keep track of all of the different aspects of an audit like those listed below.

There are several things that a website audit should help you establish including:

1. How to improve your website’s information architecture, accessibility compliance, layout and navigation for an enhanced customer experience.
2. How your website’s design is affecting your SEO strategy. Discovering the mistakes your current designer/developer has made that could be affecting your rankings or possibly blocking your website from being indexed by search engines is important for the optimization of your redesigned site.
3. Whether your site is compatible with multiple browsers. Depending on how long it’s been since your last audit or redesign, your website may no longer be compatible with some newer browsers or make the most of common screen resolutions and web technologies. 
4. The effectiveness of your content. A website audit should establish, from a user’s perspective, how relevant your content is. While you may understand the message you’re trying to communicate, it doesn’t necessarily mean that your visitors will.
5. Your site’s current support of your brand. It is integral for your overall business strategy for you to know how well your brand is defined, how consistent your brand is across your site, and how clearly your brand message is communicated.
6. The strength of your conversion tactics. How successful are your calls-to-action? The audit should assess the copy for calls-to-action on your pages, the performance of your products and services and your conversion rates.
7. The quality of your participation in social media. Is your site social media friendly? The way that you approach social media can greatly affect your overall web presence and how you are perceived by your target audience.
8. How you stack up compared to your competition. Potentially the most important part of your website audit, a competitive comparison should help you establish which of your competitors has the most successful web presence and why.

We know that this may seem like a lot of work before you even get started on your redesign—but remember—without explicitly understanding your current site, it will be very difficult to create a new site that drives your business rather than just looking attractive.

Stay tuned for the next post in our website redesign how to series, "Website Design".

If you want some quick tips for optimizing your current website, check out the slides from our most recent web marketing workshop our "Live Website Optimization Webinar".

We held our webinar on planning for website success today, and it went great! For those of you who couldn’t attend (we’re sure you did your best to try and get there) I've included the main points from the webinar below:

• Who is the intended audience?
• What is your audience looking for?
• When do visitors seek information?
• Where do your visitors come from?
• Why should visitors consider you?
• How do they prefer to build relationships?

Understanding the points above can help you optimize your website for success. While website design is important, it should play a secondary role to the 5 Ws of your site. If you use keywords, SEO, web analytics, and personas to establish information about your audience and their needs, you can help meet your visitors’ web expectations, engage with prospects and improve your website’s ROI.

You can see the full webinar recording of 5Ws of Website Success here.

Recently Marqui went through a complete web redesign to better represent who we are as a company and what products and services we can offer to our customers. We’re ecstatic about how it turned out. To celebrate our new website we’re going to write some consecutive posts with input from our entire team on the six crucial aspects of a website redesign to help anyone else out there who is planning a redesign for 2010. Today’s post is just a brief introduction about what we will be talking about in the future, and little bit about why you should think about redesigning your site as well.

Any website needs continuous improvement to be a worthwhile marketing tool. Too many sites on the web today look old and obsolete, which does nothing but degrade the company’s web presence and their brand authority in general. If you feel that your website is detrimental rather than advantageous for your brand and marketing strategies, perhaps it’s time for a redesign.

Before undertaking a redesign, it is important to determine why you’re doing one (and because you’re bored with your current site isn’t a good reason). Just because you look at your website everyday certainly doesn’t mean that your visitors do, so it is important to look at your site through the eyes of a first time visitor; does your site still come up lacking? If you’re not sure whether your site is still competitive or not, here are some good reasons to do a website redesign: 

1. The size of your website has grown dramatically. Most websites will continue to grow with your business. If your company and subsequently your website have grown significantly but you haven’t redesigned your site, some important information may be buried where potential customers won’t be able to locate it. 
2. You need to introduce a content management system (CMS). A website redesign is a good reason to revise and review the current content on your site to make sure it is still relevant. Implementing a CMS can help you keep your content fresh and compelling and can help your site get found more easily by search engines. 
3. Your website is too hard to navigate. If you’re beginning to feel like this is the case it is almost certainly time for a redesign. Often, navigation issues arise when the amount of content on a site grows but the website design doesn’t. You need to evaluate how easy it is for customers to locate information and take the next steps towards buying your product. 
4. Your site design doesn't reflect your current business objectives. As companies expand and evolve so do their business objectives and brand. Does your current website communicate the depth of your business? Does it portray your current brand message? If you have changed your services, added new products or changed the scope of your business in general and are still using the same site design, you’re not doing your business justice.

There are many reasons to redesign your site, but no matter what your reasons, a website redesign shouldn’t be undertaken lightly. If you think that your company is ready for a new site, and is willing to do the required leg work to pull it off, then you should keep in mind these aspects of a redesign that are essential to creating a quality web presence.

1. Website Audit
2. Site Design: Brand and Theme
3. Content Creation Strategy
4. Usability and Navigation Planning
5. SEO Strategy
6. Maintenance Schedule

We’ll be discussing each of these steps in more depth over the next couple of weeks so make sure you come back and read them all to get a comprehensive, in-depth look at the different stages of a redesign.

Lately we've been getting a lot of questions from our customers about optimizing their websites in 2010. We know that planning a new website, or redesigning an old one, can be a daunting prospect and it is easy to quickly get bogged down by conflicting opinions or technical debates over the latest web development trends.

To help clarify this topic, we're hosting a web seminar to help you ensure your website succeeds in delivering results that you can measure, including:

• Using personas to develop relevant content and navigation
• Ensuring your website supports your sales process
• Making a connection with social media

The webinar is scheduled for Thursday March 4th, at 10:30 am Pacific / 1:30 pm Eastern and you can register here.