Fit and Finish: Insight from the Ironworks User Experience Group

A Few SEO Predictions for 2012

2012-01-05T12:54:42-05:00

Google was in the news a lot last year. From Panda to Google+, I think we can come up with some reasonable predictions for the upcoming year. Let’s go out on that limb, shall we? It’s 2012 and time to jump on that “what could happen next in SEO” bandwagon. Increased Scrutiny of the Link Graph Google’s Panda updates and subsequent assault on content farms points to an increased focus on quality. There’s no reason to believe that this wouldn’t apply to your link profile. Yes of course, to some degree the search engines have been doing this for years....

When to Use rel=”next”, rel=”prev” and Canonical Tags for Pagination

2011-12-29T09:17:31-05:00

By now, we should all be aware of the canonical tag and how it gets used to help prevent duplicate content issues. For example, you might have URLs like this: Domain.com/article-name?sessionid=123456 The canonical tag would read something like this: Let’s say you had a site selling various kinds of widgets. Your initial widget category page URLs might look something like this: Domain.com/widgets Domain.com/widgets?page=2 Domain.com/widgets?page=3 In an effort to avoid the appearance of duplicate content on the subsequent results pages, many webmasters have placed this tag on the “page=n” results pages: The idea...

Domain and Brand Authority – Earning Trust from the Search Engines

2011-12-02T11:21:40-05:00

2011 has seen one of the more significant updates to Google’s search algorithm in recent history. One key goal of Google’s on-going “Panda” update is to clean up its index and devalue sites that seemed untrustworthy or were just plain-old content farms that offered very little value to visitors. Removing or devaluing these sites, in theory, makes Google a better search engine by offering up higher-quality websites more often to its users. Google has done this, partly, by promoting a concept that can be called “brand authority” or “domain authority.” Essentially, they want to answer a query with the most...

The Last Post About Social Media You’ll Ever Have to Read, Ever

2011-08-16T19:06:35-04:00

Or Why Still No One Is Reading Your Tweets About Grape Jelly A classmate from grad school recently shared a link to the page below with the caption “Saddest Twitter page ever.” The concept was a Twitter feed from Smuckers Jam, which pointed only to the obvious conclusion, that no one wants to read a Twitter feed from Smuckers Jam. Or do they. For those of us who work with clients everyday creating digital strategies, one of the most oft' heard questions--and one asked with the most trepidation--is “what should we be doing for social media?” At best, this is...

Scrollbars and Swipe Gestures in Mac OS X Lion

2011-07-21T14:43:00-04:00

I use both an iPad and a MacBook Pro on a regular basis, and I have always found scrolling pages using finger gestures a bit awkward when switching between the two devices. On an iPad you are directly manipulating the page on the device’s touch screen, so it only makes sense that the page moves in the same direction as the movement of your fingers. The opposite is true when scrolling a document using a Mac multi-touch track pad. If you do a two-finger swipe down, the document moves up. This becomes confusing when rapidly switching between the two devices....

Webinar Recap: Know What Works - How Testing Can Save You Time, Increase Conversion, and Improve Morale

2011-07-18T13:09:05-04:00

Today, organizations still make far too many decisions on their website based on imperfect information, with no way to measure effectiveness. With proper data collection and analytics tools by way of A/B and/or multivariate testing, experiments can be a powerful way to help your organization make better, more informed decisions. In a recent Ironworks and Sitecore webinar, “Know What Works – How Testing Can Save You Time, Increase Conversion, and Improve Morale,” Geoff Harper of Ironworks and Peter Fogelsanger of Sitecore walked attendees through real-life scenarios on how A/B and multivariate testing can help your organization: Save time by building...

Building Windows 8

2011-06-02T08:52:40-04:00

Microsoft has released some first looks at the new Windows 8 operating system. Some highlights: I love that the design studio walls are covered with design artifacts. Keeping these artifacts visible facilitates a shared knowledge of all design concepts and directions amongst the team. The new touch interface look interesting. I like that they are doing something different than Apple. We will see if it is as easy to use and effective. The "thumbs" keyboard for tablets is a cool feature. Instead of having a keyboard that fills half of a tablet screen, it has a smaller split keyboard that...

Rethinking The Gender Question

2011-05-31T16:37:06-04:00

http://bagcheck.com/blog/01-the-gender-question In his blog post at Bagcheck.com, Luke Wroblewski (@Lukew) explores how sites typically handle gender questions on sigh-up forms. He analyzes this issue and provides a design solution that not only collects the required gender information, but also communicates to the user how the gender information will be used by the site.

The Future of Web Design Will Be Responsive

2011-05-02T10:58:35-04:00

Responsive web design, a term and technique developed by Ethan Marcotte, is an approach that ensures a web page looks good on any screen size or orientation. This approach is becoming especially important considering the wide variety of devices that might display your web page today and in the future. Today, a user may be viewing your site on everything from a 320 x 480px smart phone all the way up to a 1680 x 1280px wide-screen monitor. Throw in all the upcoming tablet sizes (4.5 in, 10.1 in, etc.) that can be used in either portrait or landscape, and...

Ironworks 2011 Interactive Summit

2011-04-29T09:10:37-04:00

Stepping Back to Look at the Biggest Issues Facing Clients in the Year Ahead Is your web design "Responsive" enough to look good on tablet displays that haven't been invented yet? Do you have an analytics plan in place to capture usage data beyond the "page" level? And just what exactly is your digital strategy for 2011? Interactive teams from Ironworks' multiple offices met this month to discuss answers to these questions and more. Join us as we recap our latest thinking on Web and Mobile Strategy, Responsive Design, and Analytics. To learn more about responsive web design as mentioned...