Hey! If you’re reading this post, congrats! You know that blogging is important, and you’re willing to invest the time to do it well. But understanding the importance of blogging is just the beginning. There is far more that goes into a blogging strategy that effectively attracts strangers to your website and converts those visitors into leads. I recently did…
Amazon is everywhere. It occupies the first half of most Google search results, it subtly reminds you of those tennis shoes you were looking at the other day while you’re on Facebook, and it emails you letting you know your favorite clothing brand is on sale. With over 244 million active users, Amazon is doing more than just something right. Here…
We’ve tried a lot of different tools and strategies for project management and internal communication, but one of the most effective things we’ve done is watch some TV. We mounted a TV in a common area of our office that displays a rotating dashboard of metrics about our business. It changes over time, but we’ve displayed things like: Number of…
One of the joys and pains of being a software developer is choosing the right tools for the job. Technology moves so fast, and everyday there are new frameworks and libraries being shared with the world to help you do your job better. You would think this would always be a good thing, but choices can be hard. The best…
CSS allows you to customize web pages and change various element properties. One of the more powerful things you can do with CSS is animation. CSS animation can bring your website to life and enhance your users’ experience. If you’ve ever worked with CSS3 you might see properties like transform or transition in a stylesheet. CSS3 includes many new ways to dynamically transform your…
I’m sure you’ve been told at one point that popups are the worst thing you could ever put on your site. They irritate visitors and discourage them from returning. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth. When popups are used correctly, they are the best way to convert website visitors into customers and/or subscribers. Even the most aggressive popups…
For small to medium, local businesses, going to Google and typing in their products and services can be discouraging. Major national companies like Amazon and Trulia often dominate search results, making smaller businesses feel like it’s impossible to compete. But there is one thing they have over the big boys – their location. Google now places a huge emphasis on…
Google Sheets is one of my favorite web applications. It’s quick, lightweight, and easy to use. For those of you not familiar with Google Sheets, it’s Google’s web-based spreadsheet application. While creating tabular data is the main function of this application, did you know that you can also create dynamic, embeddable charts based on these data values? Let’s take a…
Shooting your own photos is a great way to create authentic content for your website while showing off your work. You don’t always need a professional photographer or special equipment to take great photos, either. Knowing some photography basics can help you take high quality photos with a basic digital camera or even your phone. This is part one of…
It’s not a secret that photographs provide a nice visual experience for people, and text helps convey the message you are trying to communicate. That is why the pattern of placing text on top of large photographs has been a prominent technique in web design for the last few years. However, it’s not as simple as it sounds. There are…
