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WordPress Web Design Maximizes Lead Generation by Distributing Content

Michael Cordova — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:27:04 +0000

WordPress Web Design

WordPress web design coupled with powerful content distribution is a major sales lead generation tool. WordPress is a very popular web design and content management system (CMS) platform. It is used to design websites with a high usability factor that load fast and are professional and attractive. Complete custom website designs are possible, and sales lead generation is a major benefit.

One major advantage of WordPress as a web design platform is that WordPress is free. When you consider the many free plugins that allow you to add powerful functionality to your site at no cost and the awesome search engine optimization (SEO) capabilities it is a no brainer to use a WordPress website as your primary tool for lead generation and brand elevation.

When designing a new website from the ground up (a custom website designed by a professional) keep these usability web design factors in mind.

WordPress Content Distribution

The “push” nature of WordPress content publishing and content distribution broadcasts your message to tens or hundreds of thousands of content points – if you configure it correctly. If you regularly post blog articles, search engines will index your content more often. Search engines love fresh content.

When configured correctly WordPress will distribute your content to many authority sites. WordPress distribution points can be:
1.Ping Hub sites that distribute and ping many other Internet content sites and distribution points.
2. RSS feed sites that host your feeds for others to subscribe to. They also host links back to your own site if you write your blog posts correctly. This raises your sites keyword focused search engine rankings if done correctly. See our post on writing content for maximum SEO rankings: http://www.21stsoft.com/how-to-write-website-content-for-top-seo-rankings/
3. Search engines – when you add a blog post the websites sitemap.xml file is updated and the top search engines are pinged causing them to pick up your new content.
4. Social media sites – Facebook recently reached over 1/2 billion members. If your content is pushed onto the wall of relevant friends at Facebook, connections at Linkedin, followers at Twitter you can be top of mind when they are in need of services like yours.

Social Media Sites and SEO

To get the maximum benefit from WordPress content distribution your social media connections must be relevant. Why wouldn’t you want to put your message in front of hundreds of thousands of relevant and interested people looking to buy your products or services?

When your blog posts are linked to categories and tags, the SEO value of your message is increased dramatically thus increasing their visibility in Google, Yahoo, Bing and the other search engines.

In addition, WordPress content is simple to maintain, which makes it an excellent choice for web designers for use with clients who are not technologically savvy.

WordPress should be a serious consideration as your next website sales lead generation tool, content management system and content distribution system.

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Web Design Usability How-To Quick Reference Guide

Michael Cordova — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:13:19 +0000

Web design usability improvements can double sales and visitor satisfaction, and website visitor satisfaction means more return visits. A company’s website is many times the first experience with that company so usability and a quality user experience is critically important to your company’s online success.

Typical websites have usability issues which deter potential clients and customers leaving them with confusion and frustration. It can all be fixed. This how-to quick reference guide is intended for anyone about to design a new website, or those that have a website that doesn’t perform to their expectations.

Usability – The Numbers

* Forrester Research studies estimate that approximately 50 percent of potential sales are lost because visitors can’t find information and 40 percent of visitors do not return to a website when their first experience is negative.
* According to usability expert Jakob Nielsen, website re-design based on usability standards can increase online sales by 100%
* Usability projects can return 5-10 times their cost in the first year.
* A comprehensive usability project can improve website results by 83%. Since your competitors will probably incorporate some of the changes you implemented, this can settle out to 68%.

Page Layout And Structure Usability

* Web design quality enhances credibility – just do it
* Error free HTML (or XHTML) and CSS ensures consistent cross-browser page rendering. A discombobulated website will kill your credibility.
* Whitespace usage increases comprehension by 20%
* Golden Triangle is important. That is the top-left of the page above the fold (before scrolling). Jakob Nielsen’s user scrolling study showed that only 23% of visitors scroll on their first visit to a website.
* Faces not looking at you – if a face image is looking somewhere other than directly at us, we’ll also look in that same direction. Take advantage of this by drawing your users’ attention to the most important parts of your page or ad.
* Search box size counts – 27 character search box shows all search text in 90% of searches according to Jakob Neilsen
* Header and footer should be separated in design from the main body of the page

Website Navigation Usability

* Consistent navigation – make sure navigation appears in the same location on web pages
* Text is king – use descriptive text in navigation links, not images, java applets or flash
* Location feedback – provide the user with information about where they are with headings, breadcrumbs and/or styles in menus. If you use colors then a large portion of your visitors may not be able to differentiate the colors due to color-blindness.
* Sitemaps – provide a visitor sitemap with a website outline and important links
* Call to action or navigation boxes should not look like ads because visitors automatically skip over them
* Homepage navigation placed on the top of the page performs best
** One more extremely important point on text color: do not make any text color the same as the defined background color of a page. This is an old way of hiding tons of SPAM text on a page. If you do this will be construed as SPAM and you’ll be severely penalized by the search engines.

Text Characteristics Usability

* Dominant headlines will immediately draw the visitors eye
* Headlines first words must grab your attention immediately. If they are keywords then you also get an SEO benefit out of it.
* Headings, subheads, phone numbers and date/times should be used and formatted consistently. Using a logical progression of h1, h2, h3, etc. tags helps the readers understanding of the page information hierarchy and is also a good accessibility feature.
* Standard fonts of 12 points or more maximize reading speeds
* Black text on a white background increases reading speeds up to 32%
* Sentence case (only first word capitalized) is important for reading speed and comprehension
* Bold and italics should be used sparingly, and ideally to emphasize keywords relevant to the topic

Link Definitions Usability

* Blue links are the most standard color for links
* Underline links – this is also standard and good for accessibility reasons
* Visited links should be a different, more pale color
* Link hover color should light up the link with brighter colors
* Red or green links should be avoided due to the preponderance of color-blindness
* Don’t underline text that is not a link
* Don’t show normal text in link colors
* Don’t use bold-facing as a hover effect. Making the font wider will cause the text to re-align.
* Link titles can be used for the hover effect to describe where the link is going – also a great accessibility feature
* Link text should describe the page they are linked to
* Tabindex is a great method for defining logical tabbing through elements
* Menu links should usually not follow the rules above

Writing Standards Usability

* Write for scanning – internet readers don’t read long paragraphs. Keep paragraphs to 3 sentences, group logically and provide ample but not too much information.
* Bullet points should be used as much as possible
* Bold and italics should be used for your most important words. This is also a big SEO factor – search engines take more heed when you emphasize keywords and will consequently rank you higher for them.

Miscellaneous Usability Items

* Jakob Neilsen points out that tests with 5 users will find 85% of site problems and 15 users will reveal them all.
* If you run Google Adwords campaigns then use the free Google Website Optimizer to test your campaigns
* You might also try the Vertster testing tools: http://www.vertster.com

Usability Resources

There are many online usability resources. I recommend the following sites for further research:
Jakob Nielsen’s Website – He is a major usability expert: http://www.useit.com/

US Government Usability Website and Resource

http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/

Smashing Magazine:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/09/24/10-useful-usability-findings-and-guidelines/

http://www.problogger.net/archives/2009/05/20/11-striking-findings-from-an-eye-tracking-study/

Other Usability Numbers and Quotes

http://www.optimalusability.com/quotes.php

About the Author

Michael Cordova writes about technology and builds WordPress SEO websites. He has been doing Internet marketing, search engine optimization since the beginning of the Internet. BEFORE YOU GO call Michael at (303) 744-2178 for a free initial SEO website evaluation or contact him from the links above.

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Desktop Security Software Automates Logins, Form Completion, Text Editing

Michael Cordova — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:32:03 +0000

Dangerous desktop viruses that steal your passwords can easily be thwarted by using these desktop security tools. The automation is gravy! The biggest danger is when a virus captures your username and password by storing and forwarding your keystrokes. Use the following Windows tools to avoid having to enter passwords every time you login to a website.

Roboform – this tool will put wheels on your online life. With one click Roboform form completion will:
1. browse to a page
2. enter your login details
3. click the submit button

You can also use Roboform to securely save important information like SSN, and security sensitive logins like bank accounts.

Roboform is extremely secure. There is one master password that gets you into all of your accounts, and the timeout setting is determined by you. So, there is a security hole if you use keystrokes to enter your master password – which leads us to the next tool…

MultiMacro – This macro tool allows you to save keystrokes without typing them. With one keystroke you can enter large blocks of text, or the master password used in Roboform. There are many types of macros you can create as well as use VBScript to customize the application.

G Data InternetSecurity 2010 – lastly, you need a solid antivirus tool. Recently I was on the phone with a friend when he guided me to a website he had recently completed. We both browsed to the site and he said “Wow, that’s weird. The page opened then went away and now my computer is doing strange things.” On my end Firefox popped up a window that said my antivirus stopped me from opening this page. It took his IT team a whole day to clean the virus off of his computer. Buy G Data InternetSecurity 2010 for safe browsing and computing. This G Data product took top honors in the PC World Antivirus review.

About the Author

Michael A. Cordova writes about technology and has been practicing SEO, Internet marketing literally since the beginning of the Internet. For a free initial evaluation of your SEO needs and website you can call him directly at (303) 744-2178 or email Michael and he will be in touch within 24 hours.

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Speeding Up Page Load Time, Usability, SEO – Tools of the Trade

Michael Cordova — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 02:59:38 +0000

Do you see a visible delay in your websites page load times? Even worse, do you find yourself tapping your fingers as the pages of your website load? If so, then you’re dead when the Google Caffiene algorithm goes live after the 2009 holiday season. This isn’t conjecture or my opinion. Matt Cutts, Google’s spokesman has made this clear.

Page load times are a critical addition to the new Google page ranking algorithm.

Page load time is the time it takes for your page to fully render in a browser after it is requested. Page load time is important to your search engine rankings, SEO and website usability. Many of the sites I analyze have focused solely on aesthetics and in so doing have left out many of the website features important to their success. Page load time is one of them.

Consider the following, if it takes 5 minutes to load the content of your web page do you think the search engines will stick around to get your content? Don’t think so. So, how long do expect the search engines to stick around to extract the content from your page before they leave to the next web page? Search engines don’t publish these numbers. I can tell you this though: If it takes less than 10 seconds to entirely load your pages then you’re probably safe. This knowledge comes from measuring the load times of the sites we build and their search engine ranking success.

The usability factor is, current wisdom says that if your website visitors aren’t convinced that they are at the right site within 5 – 8 seconds then they’re gone. The page load time usability factor directly affects sales and conversions.

Google has recently included page load time in its landing page Quality Score for their Adwords campaigns. Pay attention to it.

So, how do you speed up your page loads?
Fortunately there are great tools to measure page load times and a solid list of techniques to speed up your page loads.

To measure and make accurate decisions on speeding up your page loads these tools are must-haves:
* IBM Page Detailer – it’s a Windows desktop app. An online tool to create similar charts can be found at:
http://www.uptrends.com/aspx/free-html-site-page-load-check-tool.aspx
* YSlow Plugin for Firefox – this great tool requires that you first download and install the Firebug javascript tool (on the same page). YSlow was created by Steve Souders of Yahoo. He also wrote the book:
* High Performance Web Sites: Essential Knowledge for Front-End EngineersIf you’re serious about speeding up your page load times then get the book. I read it 3 times before I embarked on this topic of speeding up page load times.
* Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction If you are a serious software developer then this book should be read entirely, understood and practiced in all of your work. Keep it beside your desk.

If you are interested in the subject of this blog post then you’ll definitely be interested in using Firebug. More on that later.

Here is an example of the charts that the IBM Page Detailer creates:

It shows a row for each item (image, CSS file, html file, flash object, etc.) loaded in your page and shows how much time it takes to load each object.

There is an item to note in the above diagram. It is the page load time of our home page. The Navy Blue objects are images loaded from our servers. On most sites only 2 can load at a time, but we have tweaked the site architecture so more than 2 can load at a time. This alone speeds up load times to be in the very reasonable range.

Here is an example of what the YSlow Plugin displays.

YSlow has 21 categories that it grades your web page performance on from A to F. It also describes what can be done to improve each section.

There is a real science in speeding up your page load times. Start with these tools and you’ll easily see your pages loading in less than 5 seconds.

About the Author

Michael A. Cordova is a website performance specialist to include conversion optimization. Google’s Caffeine algorithm was released in early 2010 will weigh heavily on fast page load times and real-time relevant content. Ignore this at your company’s peril! If you’d like to have assistance in speeding up your page loads or providing real-time informational capabilities for your website then contact us today and Michael will be in touch with you personally within 24 hours.

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