Our last redesign was completed in May of 2008 and as nice as it was, it was definitely time for a fresh look. The new design adds the Seattle skyline to the header, signifying our recent move.

We have also added some additional information about the products we have released over the past year, including Affiliate Theme (launched in March of 2009), Squeeze Theme (November 2009) and Sales Page Theme (February 2010).

A new eBook – Squeeze Pages 101

If you have been following our new theme, Squeeze Theme, then you may be aware of the recent eBook we released – Squeeze Pages 101.

On the homepage, we added a video with an opt-in to download our new eBook.

Squeeze Pages 101 is all about to how marketers use squeeze pages as a tool to increase their customers and prospects. Don’t miss out – this eBook will only be available for a limited time!

You can download the eBook by signing up for the UBD newsletter on this page (at the top of the sidebar under ‘Stay Up To Date’.)

Some new clients in our portfolio

Over the past two years, we have been fortunate to work with a number of well-known companies and people including MySpace, Yahoo!, Nike, and even the personal lifestyle coach, Tony Robbins.

We have updated our portfolio with some of the new designs we have recently completed.

Check out the portfolio to see these new designs.

Social media integration

As Twitter and Facebook become more popular, it made sense to increase our interaction with each service. The obvious thing to do was to add links to Facebook page and Twitter at the top of each page.

Of course, offering exclusive content/information to each community is a great way to incentive joining/following, so please make sure you follow us on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and exclusive content from UBD.

Most importantly, what do you think of the new design?

Losing data (your blog posts and design) is a nightmare that many bloggers have. Commonly, servers will crash in mid-step when making changes to your blog. This will undoubtedly cause you, or your webmaster, to have a throbbing headache. Knowing that server crashes and data corruption is a problem, you’ll want to do something about it.

We’ve worked with almost every major hosting provider out there in the past 16 months, and have learned quite a bit when it comes to identifying the strengths and weaknesses of blog hosting.

Here is a list of five things that Unique Blog Designs looks for when working with a hosting provider:

• Daily data backups
• Great customer service – both on the phone, and via email
• WordPress support and “one-click” installations
• Great bandwidth and robust server response
• Easy to use admin panel (C-Panel or Plesk)

To be honest, there is only one provider that we recommend for WordPress users. That would be Bluehost!

They contain all five of the characteristics seen above, and they aren’t too bad when it comes to pricing, too. We strongly recommend that you migrate to BlueHost, if you want to make things easy on yourself!

Who do you host with, and do you have any horror stories to share?

Although the UBD team has been on Twitter for quite a while now, we hadn’t setup a company account until now. We have a lot of exciting things planned for 2009 that will definitely surprise you!

In Q1 2009, we have something very special to show you and we will be announcing it first on Twitter. We also plan to use Twitter for exclusive contests, promotions and giveaways.

Our good friend and blogging mentor, Yaro Starak, has released the free Roadmap Report – which is a guide to becoming a successful blogger.

I know that when I started blogging, almost two years ago, I could have benefited HUGELY from reading a report such as this.

Yaro and his new partner, Gideon Shalwick, have also released a series of 10 free Become a Blogger Videos. The videos are easy to watch and very informative. If you are trying to grow your blog, I am sure you will find them worth watching.

In the Roadmap Report, Yaro promises to explain “how he stumbled upon the “X-Factor” For Blogging Success, and how it turned upside down everything he thought he knew about blogging….”

We’ve been following Yaro’s blogging methods for over a year now, and he is one of the few people that really understands how to grow a successful blog.

10 Easy To Follow Videos Showing You How To Create Your Blog From Scratch!

Tweeting has proven itself to be an incredibly useful and important tool for communication, rivaling both instant messaging and blogging. In fact, it’s almost a mixture of the two.

If you haven’t set up your free Twitter account, do so now here. You won’t regret it.

Blogging

Blogging allows you to reach out to those in your community as well as your potential customers on a personal level. This is one of the main advantages of having a blog. Your potential customers can get to know you and your company, before actually speaking with you. Thus, creating that much needed rapport.

Instant Messaging

For those of you who use instant messaging to communicate with friends, colleagues, and clients, you know that IMing is mostly informal. You don’t have to worry as much about being grammatically correct, spelling, etc. Instant messaging is largely direct communication with one other person.

Twitter – Bridging the gap between Blogging and IM

One of the most important aspects of using Twitter is the informality of connecting with others. It is not invasive to respond to someone’s tweet whom you have never met. Even if that person is a thought leader in your industry. In fact, I would recommend it (just don’t overdo it)!

Building relationships within your community can take your business to “the next level.” Twitter is a fantastic and informal way to do so. If you can strike up a conversation with a person over Twitter who has a large following, there is a good chance some of those followers will start following you.

You can also use Twitter to let your clients, colleagues, and friends know what you are up to throughout the day. It is a great way to stay connected with all of them.

My favorite aspect of Twitter, is the ability for me to get a peak into the lives and insights of those I respect. I am able to follow the leaders of my industry and others. This is actually quite amazing.

Most of the people that I follow provide a great deal of value to my day. Sometimes I am not able to read all of the blogs that I want to, but I am able to keep up with most everyone on Twitter.

Sending Traffic to Your Blog Via Twitter

As with writing a great tittle to your blog post, tweeting about your blog posts, requires the same attention to detail. You want to get those who are following you on Twitter to go read your posts right? Well, then make the tweet interesting and grab there attention.

One thing that you want to be careful of is not tweeting so much that you are seen as a spammer. Keep in mind that while Twitter is more informal that your blog, you should still be seeking to provide value and insights to your followers.

The more that you are involved with Twitter, as with most other things, the better results you will have. There are tons of really useful tools, such as Twitterrific, that help you manage and get the most out of your Twitter experience.

There are lots of different reasons why Twitter is having “hockey stick” growth right now, and I recommend you start using it as soon as possible.

Are you already using Twitter? If so, what tips do you have for new Twitter users?

Here is a list of popular blogs and tools about Twitter to help you get started:

• TwitTip – a blog all about Twitter written by Problogger
• Free Twitter Buttons
• Twitteriffic

P.S. Make sure you are following the UBD team on Twitter:

• Josh Mullineaux (that’s me)
• Matthew Blancarte
• Nate Whitehill

I recently had a chance to sit down and talk about copywriting for blogs with Allison Nazarian. Allison is the founder of Get It In Writing. Her business provides copywriting services, among other things, to bloggers! She also writes on her personal blog AllisonNazarian.com

Allison has worked, written and consulted for hundreds of publications and organizations, including Bloomberg News, J. Walter Thompson, Ruder-Finn, Business Wire and a wide range of health, financial and law professionals, women’s organizations, service providers, communications companies and individuals.

In this podcast, we go over topics such as business blogging practices, choosing the right topics, and optimum posting frequency.

Click the PLAY button below to listen to the podcast. Enjoy, and feel free to leave any questions in the comments.

When we do consultations with our clients, prior to starting the design, colors are always a paramount piece of information that we must have. Choosing a color palette for your design can be a daunting task. Not everyone has an eye for design, which is why I’m going to put up a few resources that will take the guess work out of finding a color palette.

Color Blender

Color Blender is a very cool, free tool that will automatically choose five matching colors to your main color choice.

The interface is designed with an RGB (Red Green Blue) slider, and a group of seven small variants which will allow you to make small changes to your main color choice.

Once you’ve chosen the color palette for your design, simply copy the color is either RGB format, or in html hex code. Check out the screenshot below:

Let a Picture Inspire You

This is definitely one of the easiest ways to choose colors for your design.

All you have to do is find a cool picture that you like, preferably one that you think would go well on your blog or site. Once you’ve found the picture, you can simply copy the url of the image (right click on the image and click “copy image address” or open the image in a new window) and then watch as it automatically chooses your color!

You can use this color picker for free, at DeGraeve.com!

Well, That’s Easy!

That’s the beautiful thing about it. Using one of these two color pickers, or something similar, will save you time and effort. That of course means you can spend that time elsewhere!

Have you already been using a cool palette tool, or can you recommend one? I’m interested to hear what everyone has been using.

Establish What You Want to Convert

The first order of business is to figure out what exactly what offer(s) you’d like to call action to.

Often, site or blog revenue is the most sought after benefit, so go ahead and start there in your quest for conversion.

Ask yourself simple questions such as: Do I need leads, or maybe even email addresses so that I can employ targeted marketing? Do I need RSS subscribers? Do I need people to click on a large button so I make affiliate commissions? What are my competitors doing and is there any way for me to verify their success or failure?

As a side note, it can help to ask other web masters or people in the know for their opinion on what you should be calling to action. They may have insight into what you can make the most money with.

Once you’ve figured out what exactly will be your main conversion focus, it’s time to prioritize them. Be careful, though, you don’t want to be a cannibal! This concept is further explained after the three rule-of-thumb steps.

Properly Place and Implement

Now that you have an idea of exactly what offers you’ll be employing, it’s time to implement the offers so that they’ll convert best.

The easiest way to go about grabbing eyeballs is to put your offers in the most in-your-face places as humanly possible. Take our good friend, John Chow. If you’re new to his site, there is a pop-up that will literally darken the rest of the screen and force you to read his newsletter offer. Who wants to place a bet that his conversion increased after he implemented that feature?

That is an example of extreme call to action. Now, consider something more subtle. How about that blank spot in your header… or the top of your sidebar? People often scan their eyes from left to right, then move down, and then scan left to right. Knowing this, wouldn’t it make sense to put your call to action in the header, or at the top of your content area?

Chew on that for a bit while we move forward…

Disclaimer: THERE ARE ALMOST ALWAYS IMPROVEMENTS THAT CAN BE MADE! NEVER SKIP THE NEXT STEP!

Testing, Testing, Testing

I’ve written and spoken about how important this is many times. You will not improve, or see the most return possible from your site, unless you closely monitor your traffic for conversion. If you know what your readers/visitors are or aren’t doing, you can make INFORMED decisions about how to improve.

We make changes to our site very regularly, and they are often small changes. That being said, we sometimes get very big results…

Here are a few links to awesome testing software:

• Crazy Egg
• Google Analytics

I know a few of you “in the know” folks are screaming, “WHERE IS GOOGLE WEBSITE OPTIMIZER???” Well, it doesn’t work so well with WordPress… yet.

So How Do Cannibals Play Into This?

Well, now that you’ve followed steps 1,2, and 3, you’ll have a nice little set of data to work with.

The “cannibals” on your site are the links, calls to action, and anything else that stands in the way of you properly converting.

Find these cannibals, and exterminate them! If you have 3 offers, and two of them are performing poorly… get rid of them and only have the 1 offer! The two bad offers were cannibalizing your good offer, and it’s almost a sure bet that you’ll see improvement after you’ve removed them.

Make sense? Now, make dollars.

Take advantage of our blog, and ask a question if you don’t understand! If you’ve already been there, done this, then go ahead and comment on your method!

The Low-Down

Once you’ve signed up for SocialSpark, head over to their Affiliate Opportunities page.

Here are a few details about the affiliate program:

• It’s the first affiliate marketplace designed exclusively for bloggers.
• Required in-post disclosure on all affiliate links and 100% transparency.
• Bloggers get paid for generating sales and signups.
• Advertisers control ROI through performance based pricing (CPA).

That means that you choose a product that you’d like to advertise, write about it, and then simply disclose that it’s an affiliate offer. How easy is that?

What Should I Expect?

Expect a slew of AWESOME products to advertise! You can choose from straightforward affiliate deals, sponsorship opportunities, paid posting, and more!

As always, Izea and SocialSpark are creating awesome opportunities for all of us bloggers to earn some cash and grow our blogs! Head over and get started!

You know that having a lot of subscribers is great for your brand, regardless of the online presence you carry. It denotes authority on the blog or site’s topic, which then translates into even more subscribers!

The following are five tips and tricks to help you convert your visitors into loyal blog subscribers:

1. Should I display my subscriber count?

Let’s say that you’ve just started your blog and you have written ten great posts. Within that time, you’ve managed to reel in a solid 75 RSS subscribers and the trend is looking up-up-up. Should you show your count?

No.

It’s better to have your readers wonder how many subscribers you have than to show them you have very few.

Wait until you’ve reached several hundred to display the rss chiclet.

2. Clearly display the RSS call to action.

This one is a pretty simple concept. Put your RSS call to action in a place where people can see it. If people can’t find it, you won’t convert.

I prefer to place RSS subscription elements in the top right corner of the blog, with a graphic that catches the eye.

3. ALWAYS provide an email subscription option.

Not everybody uses an RSS reader such as Google Reader. Make sure that you are providing the option to have your posts sent to them via email.

You might be shocked to hear that you can convert email subscribers at a rate of 3x or more in comparison to normal subscribers by using tip #5.

4. Use plain english.

Try to avoid metaphors or figurative speech for the RSS headline. If you keep it simple with something like, “Receive Blog Updates” you will draw appropriate attention.

Not everybody understands what RSS is, so make sure that you keep your readers’ profiles in mind.

If you are running a blog on tractors and dump-trucks… it would be safe to say that your readers won’t be tech-savvy. Thus, you won’t convert if you say something like, “Get your RSS right here!.”

5. Offer exclusive content.

This is by FAR the most effective way to increase your RSS subscription. If you can offer to your readers something special, something that they can’t get any other way than signing up to your list.

If you can couple that with using a service like Aweber then you are golden! There are a few, very distinct benefits to this strategy:

• email capturing for your own list (building an email list is a MUST)
• thought-leadership
• people who sign up for the exclusive content count towards your rss following

The people that sign up to receive exclusive content from you are your target market. Get them into a list and then offer them your products or services of value.

If you employ these tips, I can assure you that you will see results. That being said, these certainly aren’t the only ways to increase RSS subscription. Don’t be shy, share your tips below!