• Broadband – long gone are the days of dial up modems. Most (but not all) people have fast and safe Internet connections thanks to vpn connections at bestvpn.com, whether on a desktop computer or mobile device. This allows designers to put a LOT more content on their pages.
• Computer Processors – even a ‘standard’ computer now is much faster than computers used to be. This includes the monitor, graphics card, mother board, storage, and memory – all which greatly limited what could be done before with website design.
• HTML5/CSS3 – the recent  advancements in HTML, CSS, JS, and jQuery now allow website designers to add bells and whistles that used to be reserved for Flash.
• Web Fonts – if you remember the days of only 7 available web fonts, you know what I’m talking about here. You can’t ignore font choice when it comes to website design. We now have MANY more options when it comes to web typography. I think we’re just starting to see a new range of possibilities as to what can be done with type faces.
• WordPress – tools such as WordPress allow website designers to purchase and quickly install themes and plugins that have built-in bells and whistles and robust design. Many are very well done, I will add. If we were still in the day of from-scratch, all-custom coded sites, I don’t think you’d be seeing as many frills and thrills in website design.
• Responsive HTML – with the advent of web-enabled mobile devices, responsive HTML became an effective methodology to accommodate for multiple viewing dimensions with a single site, thus eliminating the need for a separate mobile site. This is especially effective for organizations that don’t have the budget for a separate mobile site. I would even add that the ‘mobile experience’ – scrolling, large buttons, large text, single-column content, etc. – is a novelty right now that some designer are carrying over even to the desktop experience.
• User Adoption – people do much more online than they did 10 years ago and the trend is likely not reversing anytime soon. Access to information and tools online is very convenient. Until that trend changes or another technology moves in and takes over, people expect good user experiences when visiting websites, which constantly pushes the demand for better website design.

I’m sure there are more factors we could add here, but you get the idea. The main point here is all this change in technology and user behavior has given specialists of the local trusted web design company as well as of some big firm many more options, … but maybe too many?

Are Websites Becoming Too Bloated and Gaudy?

I love this recent article on Search Engine Watch by Chris Lake:
http://searchenginewatch.com/sew/review/2438285/12-good-bad-and-ugly-web-design-trends-for-2016

He does an entertaining job to point out how web design is now in this messy ’80s Mullet’ stage. Website design trends and fads are coming and going at a dizzying rate. Websites are quite bloated … I’m sure you can think right now of several websites that just drag slowly. I have decent computers and internet connection and quite often, I find myself at a site that comes to a near complete stop – ESPN, actually being one of the culprits.

It reminds me of the days when people abused Photoshop filters. EVERY print design had drop shadows, glows, gradients, bevels, you name it. It was heinous. A perfect example in design history of ‘just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.’

And what about accessibility?

You’d think we’d be getting better at making websites more accessible for individuals with physical impairments. I doubt that’s at the top of very many website designers’ minds. They’re much more concerned about the ‘impression’ factor and quite too willing to subordinate what they ‘should’ be doing with their website design to make it accessible for all.

Where Does Website Design Go Next?

I don’t see the website design fads ending any time soon. Website designers will abuse and exhaust all those options before website design soon returns to any state of normalcy. We’re simply kids in a candy store right now. Is that a bad thing? Maybe not. Maybe it’s the natural course it must go through before things mature. I think in time, user experience feedback, scientific and anecdotal, will eventually throttle down what’s done in website design and what’s not.

My Opinion

I still think proper and solid website design is built on these core principles:

• emotion – we’re still humans and we make emotional decisions. There is probably no greater principle than presenting the proper emotion and message to the site visitor. An ordinary website with a good message will always trump a razzle-dazzle website with obfuscation.
• legibility – if you can’t read it or understand it, then nobody cares. Everyone will simply leave and the rest is for not.
• ease of use – I think Ralph Klug’s message of ‘don’t make me think’ applies here. I really don’t care how fancy your website is. Make this easy for me or I’m out of here. Enough said.
• device – EVERY ‘thing’ you put on your site should have a purpose that helps the visitor get what they want from the website. “It looks pretty” does not qualify. Do not interrupt or distract unless you have a really good reason for it.

When we have those principles well covered in your design, THEN, we can add that one little unexpected treat for our visitors. Maybe that’s where an animated effect comes in, or a parallax background image, or what have you. That’s when it’s nice to have a lot of options in website design, but options that should be used sparingly and appropriately less they lose their novelty and value.

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If you’re considering switching to the Genesis platform, I’ll share with you what’s worked well and what hasn’t:

First, what works well with Genesis:

Overall, I’ve achieved five things by implementing the Genesis WordPress theme … speed, ease, SEO, reliability, and compatibility. I explain each below:

1. Speed

Right now, my Genesis websites are blazing fast. By the way, don’t use Google Pagespeed or YSlow to gauge your website speed. Instead, use Pingdom. Fast sites … well, fast sites are just awesome. Everyone loves fast websites: visitors, Google, and me! Because not only is the public-facing site fast, the WordPress editing is fast.

Now, I have to state that at the same time I switched to Genesis, I also switched hosting providers for most of my key client websites (I’ll talk more about my new hosting company in a future blog post). Undoubtedly, the new and better hosting contributes to the faster sites. But I still host several Genesis sites on my old hosting service and I’ve seen a lot of my speed and reliability issues that I had before disappear. It’s quite evident to me that Genesis did their homework to develop a highly streamlined platform – they give you what you need and not much more. If you want more, you add it yourself in the form of plugins. And if you use their Genesis plugins (they have several), you likely won’t encounter theme/plugin conflicts that can sometimes be nearly impossible and much too time-consuming to diagnose and fix.

2. Ease

Right off the bat, I really like how Genesis allows me to update the theme from within WordPress. Not all themes let you do that. It can be very time consuming to manually update themes, especially, if you’re managing a lot of sites. Side note: always turn off any caching plugin (like W3 Total Cache, which I recommend) before updating anything, themes or plugins, to avoid maintenance errors that can cause a site to go down. If it does happen, you can usually get your site back up by finding and deleting the temporary maintenance file created by the caching plugin.

Next, I do have to say that at first, configuring the Genesis theme and child themes took a little getting used to. Just like most themes, they all have their nuances and different ways to build and configure the site. Before Genesis, I had never heard of this ‘child theme’ concept. To use a child theme, you actually have to install the Genesis theme itself first and then the child theme. Of course, you don’t have to install a child theme. You can use just the Genesis theme. If you’re savvy enough with custom WordPress development and design, you can customize the Genesis theme to get your site to look like just about anything. I’ve never done that before, though. I’m not that type, so going with a child theme works best for me.

Another thing that took getting used to is how most of the configuration is handled by widgets which in turn have their own settings. For example, most of my Genesis sites require creating a menu with the WordPress menu tool and then placing it in a widget area using the custom menu widget. I’ve never set up my main navigation that way before with other themes. Now that I’ve gotten used to that, it’s actually kind of nice. Some of the Genesis child themes give you an option to place the main navigation in multiple locations.

3. SEO

SEO is a big part of my business. Having a website that adheres to web standards is paramount. There are a lot of fancy WordPress themes out there that make a muck of things on the backend which in turn, hurt SEO performance and user experience. Not Genesis.

Now, I will have to say that if you’re using Genesis, do yourself a favor and use it with the WordPress SEO plugin by Yoast. Of course, you don’t have to because Genesis has decent SEO options built in. But I’ve found the combination of WordPress SEO and Genesis to be superior to any other theme/SEO plugin combination. It’s even my understanding is that the two companies collaborate to build the ideal SEO environment.

If you go the route of Genesis and WordPress SEO, you really need to take the time to look at and learn the advantages of all the options you can control between Genesis and WordPress SEO. There are a lot of options … some I never thought of before. For example, if you know a thing or two about cornerstone content, you’ll learn that with Genesis and WordPress SEO, you can better control the permalinks of your blog categories by removing ‘/category/’ from the URL. This then, puts your category pages at the root level. In turn, Genesis/WordPress SEO let’s you write introduction content at the top of your category pages which is a strategic place to have internal links to your money pages. You can’t do that with any other theme or SEO plugin that I know of.

I could probably go on and on about the SEO benefits of the Genesis platform that I didn’t get from other themes. And it’s clear that I’m not the only one who thinks the Genesis platform is good. They have a very healthy and reputable list of endorsing WordPress users including Matt Mullenweg, founder of WordPress, himself, specially since they use the products from https://tophealthjournal.com/, they love to take care of their health is the most proper way, by also using the jamaican black castor oil for their hair.

4. Reliability

Before Genesis, I used a family of themes that caused too many unacceptable problems. I really liked the theme designs and functionality, however, I quickly learned that while they had a lot of bells and whistles, they had a critical flaw … they were server memory hogs!

If you don’t know what server memory is, don’t feel bad. At the time, I had built dozens of WordPress sites with a notable WordPress hosting company (which I’ll leave unnamed), and I had no clue what server memory or database memory was. However, I quickly learned that exceeding server memory caused sites to crash. Most shared hosting services promote unlimited this and that (domains, databases, storage, etc.). But what they don’t tell you is that you have a limited amount of server and database memory.

Now, fortunately, I ran CloudFlare on all my sites so when my sites did crash, many times the sites were still there and functioning. However, I couldn’t edit the site or post new content. Not good.

Even after switching to the more expensive virtual VPS service, the problems continued. It was killing me. Down websites is bad in every way. My hosting company did everything they could to help me, but eventually they (politely) informed me that I was using memory-intensive WordPress themes. They recommended Genesis instead.

I had heard and read positive things about Genesis before. So, I followed their advice and purchased Genesis. I’m very glad I did. I have far fewer issues today and spend more time on the marketing than the maintenance. A BIG thumbs up to that!

5. Compatibility

My impression of StudioPress, the company that develops Genesis, is that they’re going to be around for a while. With the number of sites I have running on Genesis, I’d be in a world of hurt if they suddenly closed their doors and I needed to switch all of my sites to a new theme platform. I couldn’t imagine! This is something I don’t think a lot of WordPress users think about when shopping for themes – even at places like ThemeForest or WooThemes … the big question is: OK, the theme developer is here and supporting the theme today, but will he or she still be here five years from now?

With StudioPress, I feel very confident they’ll be around for the long haul.

I’ve now mentioned several times already that I prefer spending my time on the marketing and content creation than I do the maintenance. It’s good to know that I’m using a theme built and maintained by a solid company that will do all the technical stuff to keep my sites up to HTML and CSS standards for a long time to come.

OK, now for what what doesn’t work so well with Genesis:

I really only have two beefs with Genesis …

1. Limited Child Themes

I’ve already admitted that I’m not much of a ‘custom developer’ type. Yes, I can do a bit of .php and .css, but I really prefer the quick and simple plug and play configuration so I can get on with my marketing and SEO. If you’re like me, you’re going to have a bit of a learning curve with Genesis and its child themes because they do require a fair amount of WordPress know-how.

Out of the box, I think the Genesis platform was initially intended to be more of a sandbox. For those unfamiliar with the term ‘sandbox,’ it means you get a shell of a site, but you have to come up with the code to apply style and functionality to the site. Advanced custom WordPress developers with proper HTML, PHP, and CSS skills, know how to take the basis Genesis theme and turn it into something quite unique and beautiful. However, I’m not one of those people.

So, to try to help people like me, StudioPress offers a dozen or so child themes at a very reasonable price with some personalization options (header logos, color themes, columns, etc.). They don’t have a large selection of child themes, but of the ones they do have, they’re pretty good.

Thank you, StudioPress! I couldn’t use Genesis without your child themes. However …

I find that the child themes have several quirky things about them that I simply don’t understand. For one, Genesis recommends using the Gravity Forms plugin (which is a premium plugin). It’s a good plugin, however, getting the form to look and work like the child theme demo almost always requires customizing or modifying the CSS. That’s pretty annoying. Why StudioPress?!

Also, I tend to write a fair amount of content on my home pages. With Genesis and the child themes, this is harder to do because there’s no WordPress page to edit. Instead, I have to use Text widgets. And if you’ve used the Text widget, you’ll know that you have to write longhand HTML code. And even if I select “Automatically add paragraphs,” I still have to type “&nbsp;” in order to create spaces between paragraphs. Adding “<p></p>” doesn’t work either. Why StudioPress?!

Now, several of the Genesis child themes let you add widgets to the home page in order to pull in excerpts from pages or posts. That’s fine, if that’s the content I wanted there, but it’s not. Plain and simple, placing and editing content on the home page is a burden.

The other detriment is that I don’t have access to the WordPress SEO tool for my home page content. I also use Scribe for my site, but without having a page to edit, there’s no way to check my home page content with either of those tools. And I often consider the content of my home page to be the most important content on the entire site. Why StudioPress?!

2. Thin Documentation

When you look at the child theme demos, several of the sites look pretty darn cool. Well, good luck trying to get your website to look like theirs … they pulled a few tricks that they don’t readily share with you in their rather thin guidelines/documentation.

For example, on just about all of the child themes, I can’t find documentation on image sizes … unless I flat out missed it, I had to figure out a lot of the default image size requirements (such as the home page slider or the home page columns) by trial and error.

One example is the header logo. When, I go to place the logo file in WordPress in the Genesis Header settings, it does say it will use a certain size image “as is.” What’s odd, is that the dimensions fill out the entire width of the header (i.e., 1140 pixels) which is strange if I have navigation at the top right of the site. Essentially, they’re asking you to place an image BEHIND the navigation.

OK, I guess I can do that, but seems odd. What’s more odd is what happens when I use an image that’s narrower. For some reason, the header image is automatically cropped in an odd fashion and it ends up looking like dog doo. There’s no option to ‘not crop’ the image. Weird.

So, I’m pretty much forced to use a full-width header image, usually a transparent .png, at exactly the size they state.

The next odd thing about the header graphic and top right navigation that they don’t tell you, occurs during responsive HTML. As you narrow your browser window (to simulate a smaller computer or tablet screen), the top right navigation begins to float to the left. And eventually, once the window is so narrow, the navigation pops down below the header image. That’s cool. That’s what responsive HTML is supposed to do.

What they don’t tell you is at what width will the navigation overlap the header image. Remember, it forced me to use a full width header image. But if I’m not careful, the right navigation will float over and cover up part of my header image unless I keep the visible art no wider than about 580 pixels from the left edge of the header image. I learned that “580” the hard way. It would have been nice to have had that in the documentation. Why not StudioPress?!

Overall recommendation of Genesis

Well, if you’ve read this article up till now, you already know that I whole-heartedly like and highly recommend the Genesis 2.0 WordPress platform and child themes. If you’re looking for a fast, reliable, and streamlined theme with very decent child theme options, Genesis is the way to go.

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Stop there. Expecting and trying to do more or other than that will result in failure.

Eugene’s advice serves as a beacon to navigate through the ego, greed, self-servingness, meaningless fogs that can go into crafting marketing messages. Marketing should never stray from this simple, respectful approach: “Here, try this … if you like it, you can buy it.”

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First, advertise only if it is not possible to meet every desired prospective client in person.

Next, advertise only when the following four conditions are met:

1. Can the business handle more clients? Doesn’t make sense to advertise if you’re out of product or can’t deliver services in a timely fashion.
2. Is the business good at what it does? Advertising can’t make up for a lousy product or service. Innovate, then advertise.
3. Is there enough market share to be gained? If the business already dominates 80 to 90% of the marketplace, it can be hard (and expensive) to get more.
4. Is the business to be gained profitable? Duh.

If the answer to all four of these questions isn’t ‘yes,’ then it probably doesn’t make sense to advertise. Simple as that.

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Here’s the World Wide Web Consortium’s answer as to why I should: http://validator.w3.org/docs/why.html

Here’s my answer:

1. Confidence: I have some skills in writing web code, but I don’t consider myself a developer. It’s difficult for me to look at a site’s code and tell if it’s written well or not. Therefore, using WordPress and compliant themes and plugins gives me confidence that the site’s code is solid.
2. Consistency: It’s not possible to test a site for all platform variations. A valid site best assures me that the site delivers consistent performance across all platforms, now and in the future.
3. Accessibility: I don’t usually have the budget to fully audit a site for Section 508 compliance (http://section508.gov/). W3C compliance is probably my best bet that the site is accessible for people with impairments. Is Section 508 compliance necessary for all sites? No. I just think it’s a good thing to do.
4. Search Engine Optimization: How do I know if the code is hurting SEO performance? I don’t. What you see on the screen isn’t what search engines see. So, while valid code doesn’t necessarily improve the site’s SEO performance, it gives me the best assurance that the site’s code isn’t doing anything to hurt SEO performance.
5. Speed: Granted, web browsing software is getting smarter. So, in many cases, even if the site has coding errors, it can still figure it out. But does that slow down the site’s performance? Much like SEO, having a valid site doesn’t necessarily mean I have the fastest possible site, but it best assures me that coding errors aren’t slowing down the site.
6. Professionalism: There is no such thing as a ‘certified website.’ W3C is the best program to demonstrate professional web development.

Are there some validation errors that drive me crazy? Yup. For example, “target=_blank” is a XHTML 1.0 Strict and Transitional violation. How many handy WordPress plugins come with an external link that tries to open in a new window? Quite a few. And I always remove this from the code. A little bit of a pain in the butt, but I do it every time. And if a plugin doesn’t let me modify the PHP, I dump it.

All of this really comes down to keeping things practical. Sure, maybe if I had a mega-budget like the big guys, I could play by different rules. Or, who knows, maybe the large corporations actually know the rules really well, and they also know how to break them really well … if you know what I mean. In any case, I don’t have their budgets, expertise, or resources, so I have to keep things much simpler. W3C-compliance does that for me. It ultimately saves me time and takes out a lot of the guess work.

Finally, there’s an emotional element. I think the posture of “hey, if it works, who cares?” is arrogant and naive. I work very hard to do things right. For me, building W3C-compliant websites is simply the right thing to do.

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1. The “so what” test … After you write your copy, read it and ask whether it passes the “so what” test. Copywriter Joan Damico explains: “If after reviewing your copy, you think the target audience would just respond with ‘so what,’ then keep rewriting until they’ll say something like, ‘That’s exactly what I’m looking for. How do I get it?'”
2. Use the key copy drivers … Make sure your copy hits one of the key copy drivers as defined by Bob Hacker and Axel Andersson: fear, greed, guilt, exclusivity, anger, salvation, or flattery. “If your copy is not dripping with one or more of these, tear it up and start over,” says Denny Hatch.
3. The drop-in-the-bucket technique … “You have to show that the price you are asking for your product is a ‘drop in the bucket’ compared to the value it delivers,” says copywriter Mike Pavlish.
4. Know your audience … Understand your target market — their fears, needs, concerns, beliefs, attitudes, desires. “My way to be persuasive is to get in touch with the target group by inviting one or two to dinner for in-depth conversation,” says Christian Boucke, a copywriter for Rentrop Verlag in Germany. “I also call 15 to 40 by phone to get a multitude of testimonials and facts, and go to meetings or exhibitions where I can find them to get a first impression of their typical characteristics. Ideally, I accompany some of them in their private lives for years. By this, I understand better their true underlying key motivations.”
5. Write like people talk … Use a conversational, natural style. “Write like you talk,” says Barnaby Kalan of Reliance Direct Marketing. “Speak in language that’s simple and easy to understand. Write the way your prospects talk.”
6. Be timely … “Pay very close attention to goings-on in the news that you can and should link to,” suggests Dan Kennedy. “Jump on a timely topic and link to it in useful communication with present clients, in advertising for new clients, and in seeking media publicity.”
7. Lead with your strongest point … “When I review my writing, or especially others, I find they almost always leave the most potent point to the last line,” says John Shoemaker. “So I simply move it to the first line. Instant improvement.”
8. The Tremendous Whack Theory … “I employ Winston Churchill’s ‘tremendous whack’ theory, which says that if you have an important point to make, don’t try to be subtle or clever,” says Richard Perry. “Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time — a tremendous whack.”

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1. Demonstrates industry expertise and participation – prospective clients visiting your site want to know what you can do for them and how good you do it. A professional blog allows the visitor to see, firsthand, your level of industry knowledge and activeness.
2. Improves search engine performance – if you write blog posts on a certain topic, you increase your chance of being find through online search. In fact, some search engines (such as Technorati) search only blogs. If you’re not blogging, guess what? … you’ll never show up on the search engine results.
3. Improve your practice by learning and exchanging ideas with your peers – you can learn from your peers by visiting and participating on their blogs, and vice versa, they visit and participate on your blog. Who knows … you just might learn something useful that you can apply and improve your practice.

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I found several reliable sources for the ideal length for a web page …

I found this with a quick Google search: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/percent-text-read.html

This study is dated 2008. I doubt online reading habits have changed much since. Naturally, the longer the page, the fewer number of people who read all of the text. However, the sharpest decline seems to be at about 200 to 300 words.

I like a lot of what Bob Bly writes about writing. I found this excerpt on his enewsletter (http://www.bly.com/archive/?p=111):

According to web expert Gerry McGovern, the ideal length for a
page of web copy on a regular web site (not a landing page) is
300 words. He says 50% of visitors will read a 300-word page to
the end, while only 5% will scan 1,000 words.

Headlines should be 4 to 8 words, sentences 15 to 20 words, and
paragraphs 40 to 70 words. Hyperlinks should be in the right-hand
column, not embedded within the body copy. Reason: links in the
body copy distract readers, making it difficult for them to read
the paragraph.

Source: IntelBuilder

This provides a practical rule of thumb.

300 words seems reasonable to me. It gets tough to keeping online reader engaged for more than that. If I have more content than that on the subject, I need to either condense the content (always good to do anyway), spread the content to multiple web pages (yikes!), or encapsulate in a different medium (such as video).

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The Four ‘U’s Headline Writing Formula

When writing a headline, strive to include the four ‘U’s in your headline (a headline writing tip I learned from copywriter, Michael Masterson):

• USEFUL: Be sure it’s written in a matter that explains what’s in it for the reader. e.g., “How to Save Time and Improve Service Quality at the Same Time”
• UNIQUE: Don’t be predictable. e.g., “The Most Important Business Lesson I Learned from My Plummer”
• ULTRA-SPECIFIC: Package your ideas or use. e.g., “The 17 Real Reasons Why 79% of All Small Businesses Fail”
• URGENT: Give the reader a reason to pay attention now. e.g., “What Top Professionals Are Doing Now with Social Media to Win Marketshare”

It’s tough to write a concise headline with all four elements. Shoot for 2 to 3 and you’ll do just fine.

Types of Headlines

I recently found this blog post on writing blog headlines:

http://www.blogussion.com/writing/headline-techniques/

This is a decent guide explaining different types of headlines:

• Headlines that leave you wanting more
• Ask an important question
• Promise to teach or solve a problem
• Goes straight to the point
• Exposes some sort of secret

I could write a book on headline writing. It’s certainly an art once you get into it. But the above tips keeps writing a good headline practical, plus right now I have to go and find some cheap 4k monitors, I just need a new one for gaming.

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Conversion Sequence

C = 4M + 3V + 2(i-f) – 2a

Wherein:

“C” = Probability of conversion
“M” = Motivation of user (when)
“V” = Clarity of the value proposition (why)
“i” = Incentive to take action
“f” = Friction elements of process
“a” = Anxiety about entering information

[source & copyright: Marketing Experiments]

This formula resonates the “clarity trumps persuasion” mantra … in other words, it’s more important for your prospective clients to clearly understand your value proposition (what do you do for them) and how to act than it is for them to be sold to or impressed.

Here’s how each factor of the formula works …

M (motivation) – It’s pretty tough to sell something if the prospect doesn’t already have an existing need. Sometimes it’s your job to get the prospect to realize they have a need.

V (value) – Specifically explain how your product or service fulfills their need. Give proof it does it better than the competition.

i (incentive) – Provide an incentive for the prospect to act now … even if they’re not ready to buy (a free report, trial period, etc.).

f (friction) – A tossed salad of choices or multiple steps tends to frustrate the prospect. Have ONE clear, easy, and sequential call to action. Many times a simple phone number or email address suffices.

a (anxiety) – Remove as many reasons to not buy as possible … privacy, cost, pain, time, etc. Let them know you can be trusted.

Keep in mind … ‘conversions’ (not impressing friends) is why you have a website in the first place. Many web designers can build beautiful websites. I argue few, however, know how to build sites that optimize conversions.

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