Five Solid Ways to Speed Up Your Site

1) Use a CDN – Whether it’s Amazon Web Services (AWS), or some other network, a CDN can run laps around your server, speeding your content to your visitors. Plus, a CDN’s distributed model keeps the unexpected traffic spike from a TechCrunch mention from bringing your server to its knees.

2) Try Cloudflare – Cloudflare optimizes the performance of your site by doing a whole bunch of cool things, simply by installing their code on your site. You get the speed enhancements of a CDN, code optimization for reduced server load and latency, and security protection that squashes spam and protects you against malicious attacks. Check out their overview video to learn more.

3) WP Super Cache – If you’re running a WordPress install, WP Super Cache makes caching your pages a breeze. That way, when you hit Techmeme for your war of words with MG Seigler, the tech community doesn’t bring your website to it’s knees. W3 Total Cache is another plug-in that gives you more control, but takes a bit more know-how than Super-Cache to set up.

4) Go Easy on Plugins – Do your research before you add a new social widget, toolbar or WordPress plugin. Look at the number of downloads and ratings to make sure what you’re adding is legit and functional. And take it easy on the social icons, those code snippets can take a while to load and can slow up everything in the process. Let go of the TweetMeme button – it will be ok.

5) Use Minify – Minify is a PHP5 app that helps cleans up javascript and CSS code and caches them to optimize performance. By stripping out unnecessary characters and spaces it reduces the overall file size and, therefore, download time. If you use W3 Total Cache, minify comes bundled – score!

6) Bonus Time! – Here’s a freebie. Be sure to check out Yahoo!’s Best Practices for Speeding Up Your Website. Their developer team has come up with 35 great tips for ensuring high availability under all traffic conditions.

Those are just five of many ways you can make your site run faster. And remember, fast wins. So give your site a kick in the you-know-what and watch your metrics respond in kind. A fast site makes for a better user experience and a better user experience makes for more repeat visits, more conversions and more happy people all around. So what are you waiting for, slow poke?

Have an optimization tip to share? Leave it in the comments and educate us!

Have you ever had a creative block that was difficult to overcome? Ever find that your normal go-tos for stimulating inspiration just weren’t doing the trick? This article is the first in a series we’ll be continually unveiling that explores different approaches that can help spark that “Eureka!” moment that you’ve been searching for.

Making Sparks Fly

Recently, I came across a great video on the subject of “Where Good Ideas Come From,” by Steven Johnson. He explores a brilliant concept that promotes creativity and innovation: that evolving ideas often require collaboration with other evolving ideas in order to fully develop.

Creative block is a problem that many of us face when we have this fuzzy, almost-formulated concept that we’re trying to bring clarity and conception to. We can, however, overcome a creative block by exposing our almost-formulated concepts to others who can then collaborate and pitch in with their own almost-formulated concepts. What happens at this point is that one idea provides a missing perspective or connection to another idea, thus sparking an “Aha!” moment which then leads to a real breakthrough.

Now, this phenomenon is rather ordinary and common in any creative environment. At its most rudimentary level, sparking inspiration through collaboration is what you attempt to do when you browse through an “inspiration collective” website. In this case, you have a loose idea of a concept in your head; combing through inspiration collections allows you to collaborate with others’ ideas. Inevitably, this continued exercise of collaboration leads to you finding an idea that connects the final missing piece of your concept thus bringing clarity to what is now your fully matured idea.

Two To Tango

The beauty of connective collaboration is that it’s easy and accessible to anyone. You simply need to make a connection with someone else who might also be harboring their own “almost-there” idea.

Unfortunately, when working in our crafts we often isolate ourselves, hoping that focused individual thinking and perseverance will lead us to the elusive finish line. Instead, what frequently happens is that we experience burnout; we settle for “almost-there;” we put the project off for another time and hope that the Eureka moment will eventually come to us.

But why not be proactive about it? Why not try to find a catalyst for that Eureka phenomenon?

Bringing Your Ideas to Fruition

Sometimes, in order to bring your incubating ideas to full fruition, you need to explore their synergy with the other peoples’ ideas. In other cases, once you think your ideas have reached maturation, these ideas are driven even further forward through the inspiration of others. In either situation, you connect with other people to explore new perspectives, ideas, and approaches.

You’re not trying to connect with someone so that they can give you the final ingredient; instead, you’re trying to trigger a new perspective for your own idea to flourish from.

Whether you reach out and connect with a member of your professional community or a close friend, you will open doors that can potentially help your ideas grow. With the web and social networking being so integrated into our lives, we are living in the best period of time to take advantage of connective collaboration. So the next time you try creating that “Eureka!” moment, try connective collaboration as a catalyst to advance your ideas.

Ways to Collaborate

Here are a few suggestions for making connective collaboration happen:

• Talk to your fellow coworkers and bounce ideas off of them. Don’t expect to get the answers from them; instead get inspired from their input and then innovate your own ideas
• Visit communities that foster open discussion and promote personal growth. (i.e., Behance, Quora, Forrst, DesignersCouch)
• If you’re a freelancer or work alone, consider bringing fresh eyes into your project to get a different perspective. Go to design events, co-work in a creative space, chat up friends in the industry
• If you don’t want to reach out, try finding others who have. This is a sort of secondary level of connective collaboration but it could very well bridge that answer that you’re seeking so long as you empathize or relate in any way

This tip is brought to you by Dan Trenkner, our art director here at DT.

So you’ve just finished getting all the flows, sitemaps, moodboards, and wireframes of your latest project approved, and now it’s finally time to dive into design. Yet, whether you’ve got endless inspiration or none at all, you find yourself suffering from an onset of design paralysis.

So how do you finally dive into the design and get yourself in the zone?

Many creatives start their work by identifying foundation elements to which they mold the rest of their project around. For example, an interior designer might find a bright yellow couch from the fifties and design the rest of a room to complement the mood that the couch brings. Or a fashion designer might be drawn to a unique steampunk necklace which they then craft the rest of an outfit around.

So, start by identifying a design element or aesthetic that you’re excited about, whether it’s a header image, an awesome font, a texture, a button style, or a color palette. This element will become the foundation of your design project that you will then build upon.

Take inspiration from an existing logo and color palette

From this design element, move outward and build upon it. Maybe your foundation element has enough style in it to give you a stylistic direction of how to treat your images or typography.

See if you can create a style to complement your foundation elements

And if you get stuck, try either moving onto a different section or tackling steps that don’t require as much inspiration, such as flowing content in or laying out smaller design elements like links and forms. By doing this, you’re still keeping the momentum going; plus, by doing so, you’ll find sparks of inspiration to bring to other elements of the design.

Laying out chunks of copy can be encouraging in seeing progression on a design

The key is to keep the momentum going. Draw upon your foundation elements for direction and inspiration; as you move onto different parts of the design, keep building upon that foundation little by little. Before you know it, you’ll have most if not all of your design created and ready for final polishes!

In a fast-paced work environment, it can be difficult to stay connected to your fellow coworkers, even if they’re just a few desks away. It gets even harder if you have remote workers or multiple offices. In order to bridge this gap, we’ve been utilizing Google+ as an extension for internal communication and it’s yielded great results.

Here’s why we love Google+ in the office:

1. It’s free, convenient, and intuitive to use (and if you’re using Google Apps for your business, it’s easy to create an account tied to your work email)
2. It reduces email inbox clutter
3. It keeps everyone in the loop and promotes camaraderie
4. It’s a great resource sharing pool
5. Its photo albums are perfect for displaying a large collection of visual content
6. Its interface has a multitude of built-in tools to promote collaboration and communication
7. You can go mobile
8. It provides a great means for searchable content

1. It’s free, convenient, and intuitive to use

Sure, there are many applications out there that provide dashboards, collaborative methods, and networking feeds for internal office communication. We’ve tested out a bunch of these options ourselves; however, they’ve all fallen short in one way or another – from cluttered interfaces to excessive payment plans. Google+ offers an intuitive interface, a simple no-nonsense network feed, an effective grouping system (Google+ circles) for selective content sharing, and convenient built in tools (such as image album sharing). And to top it off, it’s all free.

2. It reduces email inbox clutter

Depending on how you utilize your inbox, internal email conversations can be daunting to wade through and keep track of. By keeping the more superfluous conversations out of your inbox and into your Google+ feed, you can keep your inbox under control AND be up to date on internal conversations on your own terms and time via your Google+ feed. Plus, if you want to keep track of a certain conversation in your Google+ stream, you can get (unobtrusive) notifications by either +1 the post or having the original author +your name.

3. It keeps everyone in the loop and promotes camaraderie

The Google+ stream is a great sounding board and support area for recent accomplishments, big or small, made throughout the day. Whether it’s a revision to a recent design or a finished piece of functionality for an application, the stream provides a megaphone for anyone’s use. In our case, this is incredibly insightful and fantastic since it allows our designers and developers to enjoy and be supportive of one another’s efforts that might have otherwise gone unnoticed and unacknowledged. It also allows for individuals who aren’t as knee-deep in certain projects, such as project managers or coworkers from remote office locations, to be in the loop on what’s going on.

4. It’s a great resource sharing pool

Everyday, great inspiration and resources cross our radar. However, if everyone went around emailing the entire office their most recent finds, we’d quickly find ourselves buried in mounds of links piled sky-high. By keeping these shares to the Google+ stream, however, you can quickly skim through these great resources without being overwhelmed. Furthermore, you can utilize your Google+ circles and target specific pools of people (like developers or designers) and share specific resources that are relevant to only those people.

5. Its photo albums are perfect for displaying a large collection of visual content

This feature is especially great if your office deals with a lot of visual deliverables and products. Google+ offers a great visual interface to view images via its photo albums. It’s easy to view large snapshots, make comments, or +1 images. Albums also allow you to organize images by projects or iteration cycles.

6. Its interface has a multitude of built-in tools to promote collaboration and communication

With Google chat and huddles, communication and collaboration is easy to access. Both of these features are seamlessly built into the interface of the Google+ home screen and allow for easy one-on-one or group conversations. Use Google chat for a quick question or try Google hangouts to have group video conversations with people in or out of the office.

7. You Can Go Mobile

With the Google+ mobile app, anyone can stay tuned into daily activities as well as actively participate in discussions, such as commenting on design comps. And while it’s one more notification to your mobile, it’s a fun one that you can look forward to!

8. It Provides a Great Means for Searchable Collaboration

With Google’s internal search engine, it’s easy to go back and pull up old design comps, brainstorm conversations, or links without having to sift through piles of emails or chat logs. Everything you do on Google+ stays recorded and easy to reference which is a great benefit for collaborative sharing on the Google+ stream.

So there you have it; these are some of the main reasons why we love using Google+ in the office. Do you also use also use Google+ in your work environment? Or are you planning on giving it a try in the future? Whatever the case may be, we’d love to hear more about your experiences or thoughts on the subject in the comments!

Never ones to shy away from helping you improve your business, we’ve put our heads together to create a handy list of tips for growing your email audience. Read on!

1. Encourage Sharing

If you’ve invested significant time crafting high-quality content for your newsletter, it makes no sense to limit its distribution by not including Forward to a Friend functionality in your messages. Most email service providers such as ExactTarget offer this feature, and others such as MailChimp even include the ability to directly share your newsletter on social networks.

2. Offer an incentive

Although creating and curating awesome content is one way to attract people to sign up, it can be equally, if not more effective to provide a free incentive – aka, bribe them. The right brib- ahem, incentive, can convert strongly for you when done correctly. It can be anything – a free ebook with useful information, a free trial of one of your products, or maybe even just access to an exclusive video. The key is that the incentive has to have value, and get the relationship off to a good start, thereby increasing the chances of your next newsletter finding a receptive audience.

3. Use the foreshadow

In general, people don’t do well with uncertainty, so showing previews or screenshots of your emails prior to the act of subscription enables visitors to make an informed choice about what they’re actually signing up for.

4. Come clean

This is another area where providing transparency can help you. By clearly articulating your mailing list policy in human-readable language, you avoid en masse unsubscriptions by people caught off-guard by how you’re using their contact information.

5. Tip of the iceberg

Asking for less information upfront allows for a more frictionless subscription experience for your visitors. Nothing can be more daunting online than being faced with 15 required questions. Remember that besides the actual email address itself, almost any other information can be either deduced, researched or outright requested from your subscribers. Get the address, and the rest can come later.

6. Make ‘em feel special

By opting into your mailing list, your subscribers are entrusting you with a direct line to their attention, so you should reward that trust with exclusive content they can’t get anywhere else. You can then turn around and show anyone else who’s on the fence about subscribing all the wonderful content and perks you’re providing to your audience.

7. Plug the leaky bucket

Mailing list attrition is a fact of life for any email marketer, but oftentimes subscribers can be retained if you empower them with the ability to tailor their subscription to their liking. For example, if Joe just bought a patio furniture set, he probably isn’t interested in the giant sale you’re having in lawn furniture, and would perhaps prefer to hear about living room furniture instead. By letting Joe indicate that preference, he gets to hear about products relevant to him, and you get to keep him as a subscriber and potential paying customer – everybody wins. Oh, hey, look at that: we just posted about best practices for unsubscribe pages. How convenient!

8. Cross-promotion is key

Many marketers are pedalling away to cultivate their audiences across multiple channels, but a large proportion of them are speaking in silos – their Twitter followers aren’t their Facebook fans, who in turn aren’t their email subscribers. A little cross-promotion can drive these engaged audience members to coalesce around your mailing list, where you can arguably forge a deeper relationship with them.

9. Partner up

Sometimes it’s a cold, lonely world out there for a lone email marketer, so partnering up with others can help share the burden of hunting for new subscribers. The odd promotional callout in a relevant partner’s message (and vice-versa) can work wonders for you both, as both lists benefit from a reciprocal influx of new subscribers.

10. Sweepstakes

A good giveaway can net you a large haul of new subscriber addresses, but how you handle them afterwards is important. Many of these subscribers may just be in it for the prize, so you have a precious small window to persuade them to stick around and become mainstays of your list. Communicate early and often with these folks to give them a full taste of the very best your mailing list has to offer, before their interest wanes!

11. Encourage walk-ins

Make sure to place subscription forms on the landing pages or blog posts you’re directing your subscribers to in your emails. It’s all good content, and unless you’re specifically barring non-members from seeing this content, you can always leverage some of the organic traffic arriving there to add some new people to your list.

12. Paper, plastic, or signup?

Catching your customers just before or after they checkout from your site can be an easy way to leverage the warm fuzzy feelings that result from a good website experience and successful transaction, and pick up some new subscribers. Adding a simple checkbox confirming their desire to opt-in may be all you need.

13. Return of the popup

Recently, many blogs have clued into the effectiveness of time-delayed popup modal windows that encourage visitors to subscribe to their newsletters before gaining access to the actual page content. This can be a double-edged sword, as you may turn off a lot of your existing readers, but can be a way to get a quick hit, or draw attention to an incentive you’re offering in return for email addresses.

What other effective methods have you found for collecting email subscribers? Let us know in the comments!

Despite your best efforts, and countless hours spent arguing over subject lines, call-to-action placement, and list targeting criteria, your subscriber has rolled their eyes upon receiving your carefully-crafted message, and clicked on – *gasp* – the unsubscribe link. Oh well. These things happen, I suppose.

But wait! Catching your precious subscriber with one foot out the door isn’t the same as permanently bidding them arriverderci. Handled correctly, your unsubscribe page can actually snatch a loyal subscriber from the jaws of…whatever the opposite of that is. As luck would have it, we’ve compiled a list of best practices to show you how:

1. Give my people (profile) options!

For many subscribers, the choice to unsubscribe is forced upon them due to a lack of granular options that accurately reflect their desired subscription status. They may have changed their primary email address, or the circumstances under which they subscribed may no longer apply. By allowing your subscribers to adjust and refine their subscriber profile, you avoid forcing them to opt out. Typical options that resonate well with subscribers include:

• Frequency – maybe they would prefer a weekly summary email instead of daily messages? Sending fewer messages is still far better than sending none at all
• Content – Those daily deal coupons may not be compelling, but perhaps someone would like to continue getting just the newsletter?
• Email address – Why lose an active subscriber just because they can’t update their email address in your system? Better yet, why force them to sign up again and potentially lose all their valuable profile data?

2. Find out why

Always ask your unsubscribers why they’re leaving – you’ll need this information in order to make your content better. Oh, and don’t just route these responses to your nearest “info@” catchall address – closely monitor the replies you receive for significant trends or red flags that are causing your subscribers to bail. If your email service provider doesn’t offer this feature, consider using KISSInsights’ excellent little survey tool to give your subscribers a chance to voice their concerns.

3. Part on good terms

Don’t make unsubscribing an overly complicated process, or skimp on the UX of the page just because it seems your subscriber no longer wants to hear from you. Partly, this is just good manners; also, if you attempt to prevent subscribers from leaving through the front door, they’ll do the equivalent of blowing a gaping hole in the wall instead – hitting the spam button and possibly harming your deliverability to those subscribers you do have left. Be a gracious host, and leave the door open for them to leave and return as they please. Groupon takes this idea and runs with it – completing the unsubscribe process shows the ramifications of your decision for one unfortunate Groupon employee. You heartless monster. Luckily, they immediately allow you to undo your horrible mistake by resubscribing – how thoughtful!

4. Set expectations

If your setup takes some time to process unsubscribe requests (CAN-SPAM allows up to 10 business days), be sure to set this expectation with your unsubscribers – the last thing you want is for them to think you’re wilfully ignoring their request if they happen to receive an automated drip email message from you the next day.

5. Brand it

Eliminate the confusion generated by a sparse, unfriendly and unbranded page, and make it clear that visitors are in the right place. Most email service providers allow you to put your logo on these pages. So do yourself a favor and take the 15 minutes necessary to make it your own.

6. Let them know you’re a person, not a machine

Most users will have no problem saying goodbye to an automated mailing list that sends weekly emails to them. However, if you let them know you’re a human that they’re saying bye to, they might actually be less swift in hitting that “unsubscribe now” button. Try throwing in a small heartfelt letter or polite, human-sounding message that lets them know that your team will miss the relationship they had with the unsubscriber, much like TellTale Games’ amusing, yet simple approach.

7. Don’t use the one-click unsubscribe

Simply put, it’s just too easy for your users to accidentally click and inadvertently unsubscribe, costing you a valid customer you worked hard to acquire. Make sure you truly understand their intent, before honoring it.

8. Pre-populate their info

Given that you know their email address, you should be able to pull in all of their other profile info in order to expedite the unsubscribe process. Again, it’s a politeness thing – don’t force your subscriber to work in order to leave your list.

9. Don’t give up

You can always win them back. A little creativity in an area typically devoid of it can go a long way – just look at the numerous examples of great 404 error pages out there, and the amount of attention they get. Here’s a great example of a creative unsubscribe page from Charity:Water. They simply make a gentleman’s agreement with the user – if we entertain you even momentarily, will you reconsider leaving? It’s a wonderful human touch, and very effective.

10. If not this, then that

The modern web offers dozens of ways to push updates out to your audience – so why cut them off if they don’t subscribe to your email? On the way out, why not offer up other ways to keep in touch? RSS, Facebook, Twitter… it’s all out there, waiting to be taken advantage of. Just because a user doesn’t want email from you, doesn’t mean they want it replaced with silence.

What do you think? Are there some best practices we’re missing? Let us know in the comments!

These days, we know such “wisdom” not to be the case. Getting customers to your online doorstep is only the start of the battle to win them over. It sounds like a monumental uphill struggle, but every journey consists of smaller steps. So, we pooled together a list of simple tasks you can start completing today that’ll help you optimize the conversion rate of your website.

17 ways to reach conversion rate Nirvana

1.  Check your wording
Check the language you’ve used in the different pages of your funnel – does it make sense to people unfamiliar with your company/product?

CASE STUDY

On the SlideDeck pricing page, we named one of the license tiers “Multi-site license”. But when we got more literal, and changed the wording to “10-site license”, we saw an immediate and significant bump in sales – people had a better understanding of what they were getting for their money, and felt more comfortable completing the purchase.

2.  Clear calls to action
We can’t emphasize this enough: your call to action must be prominent and clear. Everything should be either subordinate to – or supportive of – elements that enable visitors to take the action you intend them to.

3.  Speed
Is your site loading slowly? We all know that today’s internet user has the patience of Christian Bale on set. Make sure your site is snappy and responsive or else they’ll, uh, Bale (sorry, couldn’t resist). For more on this, check out Fred Wilson’s golden principle of speed.

4.  Make your customers feel safe
Anytime your website and your users are exchanging info, trust and credibility is key. For ecommerce sites, ensure that you’re providing your customers with a secure HTTPS connection on your checkout pages, and prominently show your Verisign/Thawte/Geotrust, etc. certificate to show them that their transaction is protected.
This extends to your content, too – accreditations and certifications can help get your users over the skepticism barrier.

5.  Optimize your checkout form
Remove friction from your checkout process with forms that are thoughtfully-designed and well-built. Have you checked that the order of your fields’ focus when tabbing through them is logical? Do your fields have clear labels? Is your error messaging and validation located in an intuitive place within the form, and human-readable? Paying careful attention to all of these little things add up to a frustration-free experience.

6. Remove distractions
Also be sure to remove distractions like ads from your checkout pages. They’ve already made their decision at this point – why try to change their mind?

7.  Check for broken links
It’s good for all of us to have the occasional “Duh!” moment, every once in a while…

8.  A/B test pages in your funnel
A/B testing is a huge topic worthy of its own blogosphere, but as a general idea, try testing out small changes to specific elements in your conversion funnel and monitor the results of these changes. If you’re not seeing any substantial changes, you can also try introducing different layouts and concepts that might improve your conversion funnel.

If your challenger design loses, try testing another that takes a completely opposite approach to the content/desired action. You may find that your users’ rejection of your first design is actually a big clue as to what they do want! For example, let’s say you’re testing a product page that has a small testimonials section, versus a challenger version without them. If the challenger yields a lower conversion, you may find that upping the emphasis on these testimonials will net you more conversions.

9. Craft your funnels
Look through your landing pages to make sure their content is tailored toward the people most likely to arrive there. For example, if you’re attracting developers to a certain page, don’t skimp on the technical details – likewise don’t send your newbies running for the hills by confronting them with giant blocks of code on pages . Our own Morgan Brown and Chuck Longanecker have a great post on designing user flows over at Smashing Magazine.

10. Differentiate
Ensure your products are distinct enough from one another to help customers to make a clear choice.

CASE STUDY
Our SlideDeck team saw a big increase in conversions when they included a set of new themes with the Multi-site license. Until that point, the only difference between Multi-site and the other pricing tiers was the number of websites it could be used on.

11. Don’t use Flash for critical content
Although Flash is nearly ubiquitous on desktop PCs, that’s far from the case in the mobile landscape, where the flash-less iOS holds a commanding share of the market. Make sure your critical call-to-action either avoids using flash, or you have a reliable fallback for incompatible devices.

12. Audit your website’s accessibility
According to a Pew Research report, 2% of adults in the US have a disability that interferes with their ability to use the Internet. That’s 6 million people who could benefit from your website embracing accessibility standards! [View source]

13. To .js, or not to .js?
Ensure your site degrades gracefully when Javascript is turned off – are critical elements/links hidden or rendered useless? A recent Yahoo! survey pegs the number of users with javascript turned off at around 2% of US internet users. As with auditing your website’s accessiblity, there’s a significant audience of people who may benefit from taking a “progressive enhancement” approach to using Javascript for interactivity on your website. [View source]

14. Offer instant utility
For software products and web applications, consider building a free demo that seamlessly onboards visitors into becoming users. Instant utility is another of Fred Wilson’s 10 Golden Principles of Successful Web Apps.

CASE STUDY
Our Hello Bar team recently experienced the benefits of instant utility by building a live demo into the homepage of hellobar.com. Visitors can quickly configure their own Hello Bar, and preview how it looks on their website – and if they like it, they can save it to their account simply by signing up right there. The demo converts visitors into users at the rate of 20%!

15. Paper, or plastic?
Accepting a wide range of payment types – from eChecks to Bitcoin – in addition to the standard Paypal/credit/debit card issuers will only help you avoid customers hitting a critical roadblock right at the point of checkout.

16. Benefits, vs. features
Adjust your copy to talk about benefits, instead of features. As espoused in the classic usability tome “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug, use your content to tell customers why they should convert, instead of expecting them to figure it out on their own, based on a list of bullet points about what your product can do.

17. Optimize for organic traffic
A quick glance at your analytics package of choice can tell you which keywords are driving organic traffic to your website, thereby giving you some insight into what they’re looking for. Once you know what they want, give it to them!

Of course, conversion rate optimization is a far deeper field of study than just the above methods. So what did we miss? Share your favorite CRO tips in the comments, and help us add to this post!

Our small contribution was the Stop PIPA Hello Bar, a free version of our notification bar that websites could add to the top of their site to voice their opposition to the bills and educate their visitors about the damage this legislation could cause to the Web. More than 1,000 sites added the Stop PIPA Hello Bar, and more than one million visitors saw the bar that week. Shortly after January 18th both pieces of legislation were pulled from consideration. We all cheered as someone Tweeted “Internet 1, Congress 0.”

To date, the Stop PIPA Hello Bar has been viewed more than 1.5 million times across the Web. What started as a modest attempt to pitch in and do our part took off. It hit the top of Hacker News within an hour of us sharing it, was featured on Boing Boing, Alexis Ohanian (founder of Reddit and Hipmunk) added the bar to his site and Bread Pig, and to top it off, Radiohead used it to show their opposition to the bill on their site. We were flattered and humbled.

So thank you Internet. Thank you for embracing our contribution and for rallying to stop these bad pieces of legislation. It was quite a thrill and an honor to play a small part in winning the day. Unfortunately, the fight is not over, as other legislation threatens the Web. We must stay vigilant and ensure that we protect the Internet and everything it does for us individually and as a global community. We’ll be here ready to contribute where we can, and we’re hard at work figuring out how to make Hello Bar a tool that causes can deploy whenever they have a need, to reach and activate people who have a passion for the causes that matter to them most.

Over the past few months here at dt, we’ve been internalizing the concept of Continuous Betterment. The idea is that having this ingrained as a standard operating procedure of our team empowers us to function in the absence of a concrete set of to-do’s, and still be moving in the same direction – kind of like a north star by which we can all navigate. At this point, any one of us can look at a project, or product, and simply go about “making it better”, without needing instructions – it’s a pretty cool feeling!

A couple of weeks ago, our designer Jessica Moon wrote a great post about the snowball effect of continuous betterment – or rather, how an ongoing process of incremental improvements builds on itself over time. In it, she asked a very important question: this new year, what would happen if we skipped the tired old tradition of resolutions and instead established a practice of betterment in our lives?

Apparently that question resonated, and we decided as a team to answer it. In the dying days of 2011, we gave each member of our team one extra vacation day, a budget of $1,500, and a challenge: pick one thing that you’ve always wanted to do, and tell us why it would make you better – permanently.

The Rules

• The cost can’t exceed $1,500, and you have to actually do it at some point in 2012 (sorry, no time to save up for Virgin Galactic tickets)
• We had to pitch our ideas by the end of the first week of 2012
• After we have our experience, we have to make a presentation to the rest of the team showing how we made ourselves better

The Ideas

We’ve had some killer ideas come in, so we thought it might be interesting to share some of them.

Jason | Product Manager

“I’ll always remember the day I first got in trouble at school. I was 7, and put in detention for repeatedly making faces at my teacher. Turns out, I was squinting, because I couldn’t see the board clearly – I’ve been entirely dependent on glasses & contacts since then.

For my betterment bonus, I decided to get LASIK surgery, because I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to clearly see the world with my own eyes, especially now that I work in design. I can’t wait to see the world in HD!”

John | Developer

“My choice was to take piano lessons. I have always wanted to do it, but really never had the resources. I have always had an appreciation for music, and used to play a few instruments in the past. Still toot away on a penny whistle every now and again. Music helps me relax, and reduce stress.

Apparently empirical evidence shows that it can help improve coordination and memory, as well as fine motor functions. Also, I have a few friends and family that play music, and being able to jump in and “jam” would be awesome. Piano lessons also are really great for children, and so I see it also as an extra benefit to have something to share with my kiddo – maybe get some dad points!”

Jessica | Designer

“I’m going to New York City to immerse myself in the arts. Carnegie Hall, New York Phil, Broadway shows, Japanese Cherry Blossom viewing at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, MOMA, MET, etc…

It makes me better because the exposure offers an endless amount of inspiration for me to draw from for the rest of my life. I get my best inspirational bits from the little things in life and I know that my NY trip will definitely fill me up for a good couple decades.”

Brian | Developer

“I’ll be heading out this summer to ride motorcycles across Italy. I’ve always wanted to get my motorcycle license, and I’ve been dying to go to Italy (where my mom’s side of the family immigrated from). I’ve also never been out of the country, so it’ll be a trip of firsts. I’ll be signing up for motorcycle lessons here in the states, and spend a few days renting bikes to get the hang of it.”

Dave | Developer

“My wife and I are taking a trip to Washington D.C. in August for our anniversary. We chose Washington for a few reasons, namely that it’s the seat of our nation, filled with history and I’ve never even been to the east coast (let alone the capitol). We had been planning on taking a trip like this already, but that was going to be a few years off. This betterment bonus has given us a great opportunity to enjoy this trip now.”

Jamie | Developer

“I’m heading to Vegas with my wife! It sounds like a party, but to be honest I’m not much of a party-guy or gambler. I’ve never been to Las Vegas and droves of people have told me that I have to see it. In the spirit of betterment, I am hoping that Vegas makes me appreciate scale and makes me think to myself “I didn’t know that was possible/I didn’t know you could do that”. Craft is also a big part of UI design and UX in general and from what I’m told, a lot of the experience in Vegas is very crafted due to the high demands of the tourists and the exorbitance of the place.

While there I’m also going to see two cirque du soleil shows in an effort to bend the mind and again, make me think “I didn’t know that was possible!”"

“I will be going to Oahu to go surfing on the North Shore. The North Shore is arguably the best surfing in the world. It is something that I’ve always wanted to do. Traveling to new places makes you better, experiencing something that you’ve always wanted to do makes you better, challenging yourself makes you better.”

Pretty awesome, right? We’ll be sure to post the presentations as they come in over the course of the year, but in the meantime, tell us: how would you like to permanently better yourself this year?

When we think of best practices for user experience in web design, we think of clear messaging, great aesthetics, and easy site navigation. And when it comes to creating intuitive navigation on a website, we aim for a user experience that lends itself towards familiarity and clarity. As a result, however, we end up seeing the same typical navigation bars that reside in a list on either the top or side of our page.

Navigation isn’t an Obstacle, it’s an Advantage

Usually, it’s a list of words that we’re trying to fit into our near-completion design layouts. Or maybe it’s an awkward arrow that we don’t want covering up our content. More times than not, navigation bars are “necessary evils” that we reluctantly use to help ease the usability of our sites.

Yet, we should be proactive about site navigation and utilize this design ingredient to our advantage. When used right, navigations can enhance a site’s usability, aesthetic, and efficiency. So take a look below and see how you can utilize your next navigation section to your benefit.

http://www.graydenpoper.com

Why it’s different:

• The general site navigation is out of the way and allows the user to immediately enjoy the visual layout and content of the site
• The navigation tab extends the branding of the site
• Upon opening the navigation menu, a user is presented with a very intuitive and highly visual way of browsing the portfolio of the site

http://www.tdhcreative.com

Why it’s different:

• This navigation is positioned in a familiar area to users; however, it is designed to carry out the site’s general design aesthetic. The style of the navigation also draws the user towards exploring different areas of the site

http://madebygrave.com

Why it’s different:

• This site introduces keyboard navigation functionality, thereby allowing a user to fully experience the site for how it was designed and presented
• The minimalistic design of the navigation is unobtrusive and simple to understand
• The flyout subnavigation of the individual portfolio pieces allows for quick scanning and jumping throughout the site

http://neverbland.com

Why it’s different:

• The simple bottom navigation that is different from the traditional top navigation allows for a visually pure and simple viewing experience
• In addition to its position, the navigation tab also fades in opacity to reduce visual clutter when viewing different sections of the site

http://www.archikon.nl

Why it’s different:

• The unique and spread out design of this layout rings true to the style and brand of their site. Their layout makes the navigation the star of the show and tempts the user to interact with the navigation links to see what the site will present the user with

http://www.mccormackmorrison.com

Why it’s different:

• This site also utilizes keyboard navigation functionality with minimalistic vertical and horizontal navigation. Its restricted navigation allows the user to be fully exposed to the site’s story and messaging

http://www.pixelbaecker.de

Why it’s different:

• Iconic and creatively positioned navigation elements make this site unique and stand out in a user’s mind
• Furthermore, the navigation elements are well-integrated into the site design so that they assist in guiding a user through the page’s linear flow. As a matter of fact, each illustrated character is tied to a specific section of the site, but the position of the character moves depending on the section being viewed

http://www.hellostudios.com.au

Why it’s different:

• While this navigation leans more towards the traditional ways of side navigation; its usage of visual icons give aesthetic value and an efficient tie-in to the site’s brand identity

http://hatbox.co

Why it’s different:

• While the main navigation is short and simple, this site does a good job of enticing a user to play with the portfolio sub navigation below the main header. The high contrast iconographic tab navigation makes it painless to browse the author’s portfolio

http://www.castirondesign.com

Why it’s different:

• While this navigation is also at the top of the page, the navigation blends into the design of the header, thus guiding the user towards exploring the content of the site more before jumping around the rest of the site

Navigation can be unobtrusive and advantageous if designed with intent. It not only aids in usability, it improves aesthetics and general user experience. So the next time you’re designing navigation for your site, think about how you can position your navigation to lead your users towards an unforgettable and satisfying experience.