Where is the Party
With hundreds of millions of individuals now online, social networking sites are among the most popular sites. To attract groups, try using a blog, twitter, flickr, digg, YouTube or even create your own podcast. Let your creative side show with these emerging technologies and let the party begin.

Navigation is Everything
It actually is the web site. With bad navigation and poor site structure your site will be confusing and hard to navigate. Most users typically spend 30 to 60 seconds on the homepage. If they spend most of that time trying to figure out where to go next chances are they will go to another web site that is easier to use. You will want to have simple navigation if you want to build a good website.

Keep Your Message Short
Studies show that over 80% of people online don’t read, but they scan. Take the text you planned on using for your web site and cut it in half, then take that and try to cut it in half again. Only include important and relevant information. You want your message to be meaninguly and memorable.

Less is More
Your design, especially the homepage, should be clean and not cluttered. If your site is too busy it may scare off or confuse the user. Web users are busy and they want to get straight to the facts or order a product. (see billboard design)

Billboard Design
You want your homepage to be like a billboard. Imagine driving down the highway and spotting a billboard, you only have a few seconds to look at it, process the information, decide if it is for you and what to do next; call or visit their web site. Your homepage should be the same way; the user should know what you are about within a few seconds.

Nice Address
You will want to try to get a domain name that is either short, easy to spell, or easy to remember. Also, try to buy the .net .us .info etc. extensions if your budget permits. Try to include keywords or company name in the domain if possible.

Tie it All Together
You want your web site to match and flow with your current identity and other materials. Additionally, you will want to put your web site address on all of your printed materials.

Spiders See Things Different
Your web site may look easy to comprehend on the outside, but to a search engine spider it looks completely different. A web site should be both people friendly, (Good Design, Usability, Navigation, and Content) and search engine friendly, (Keyword Density, Page Names, Site Structure, META Tags, Links, Site Maps and more). High ranking on a search engine is a huge asset.

Measure The Results
Having a popular web site is great but is all that traffic converting into sales or leads? How is everyone getting to your site? Is there a section of the site you could improve upon? With analytics strapped to your site you will be able to make decisions to improve your site and business based on fact not theory.

You Get What You Pay For
You could have your neighbor or secretary design your web site, but owning a computer doesn’t make them a web design firm, just as owning a first aid kit does not make someone a doctor. It’s best to leave design and programming to a web design agency that knows what they are doing.

I have recently seen the photo for this banner ad on a couple of different websites (Facebook and Yahoo) in a few different layouts. One ad is to encourage people who make less than $45,000 a year to go back to school, the other I saw was for Dads to go back to school, both could qualify for Financial Aid.

I have to say this is probably the worst photo I have ever seen used in and advertisement. At first I thought it was a joke, that no serious ad could use a photo that looks this out of place.The guy looks like a member of Al Qaeda. I doubt a person like that would be surfing online looking to go back to college to better their life. The title should be changed to something like you may qualify to be on the US Most Wanted list.

I would of loved to sit in on the design review for this project when they presented this to whoever was in charge of making decisions to see their reaction or hear what they had to say about it “ok that looks great, it really captures our target audience, go ahead and send that out”. Though they may of chosen this photo to get a reaction out of people or at least cause them to look at it for a few seconds loner than they normally would of.

I wonder how well this ad is actually doing. I’d like to find out.

Twitter keeps gaining popularity at an alarming rate. I was doing research this weekend for an upcoming trip I am taking to Europe and came across two interesting groups using the popular micro-blogging service.

First was the US Consulate in Munich Germany had their own account. It makes sense as they could post information relating to travel and security information. The second group I found kind of surprised me. I was looking up information about Buckingham Palace and right on the homepage of the official Royal site was the infamous twitter logo. Somehow it seemed out of place with the regal feel of the site and what it represents. I had a little laugh imagining the Queen tweeting from her iPhone. However I do think it is cool to see larger establishments taking part in the craze, if the people are here their leaders should be as well. After all the Obama administration has an account so why shouldn’t the British Monarchy.

I also set up a new twitter account for Local Mojo which we will be using for the official twitter for Mojo. So go ahead and follow that to stay up to date on the progress of the company and then for useful information relating to local search and small businesses.

I worked on creating a lot of the social media profiles for Graff Toyz. We are excited to be a part of this project. Jay and I have been talking about this for years and finally have it underway. Over the next few months we are going to be working hard on this and will start to release more info about what exactly it is. In the mean time follow Graff Toyz on twitter and get ready for some cool stuff!

Local Mojo is finally up! We’ve been working on this behind the scenes at AgencyWeb for the last several months. I designed the front end of the site and built the css framework. Again we worked worked with Luke and his guys who built all the amazing features that make this platform work. It’s currently in soft launch but ready for some businesses to sign up for. It’s the perfect blend for most businesses. We found that a lot of companies don’t need or can’t afford a full blown web marketing agency like AgencyWeb, or they need something more then a directory listing like National Online Directory. Along came Local Mojo.

Local Mojo provides businesses with free local sites that provide the standard directory style information such as location with maps, hours of operations, payment options, services etc. But they allow you some “mojo” by having the ability to embed your own YouTube videos, Flickr photos, Twitter updates and more. Local Mojo also gives the user to track everything with powerful state of the art analytics and the option to buy targeted localized traffic to get even more visitors to your site.

So if you want a free website to help your local business check out www.localmojo.com and if you want to really have some mojo sign up for some of the enhanced features.

So we finally broke down and created a Twitter account. www.twitter.com/digital_skratch

I have to admit I always thought it was rather silly but have been using it the past couple of months for iHoops and starting to use it for AgencyWeb and some other projects, so my views have changed haha. So I created one today and applied a custom background to it as well as iHoops.

We just received our business cards from BlackBooks and they look sick! I was blown away with how cool they actually are. These photos won’t do them justice as you need to feel the cards. They are on a nice thick cardboard type stock and the etching is amazing. The back of the card features a circle pattern that feels cool to touch.

They are expensive for business cards but well worth it if you are trying to impress a client or potential business prospect. As a web design agency it is critical to have a professional and creative image and these cards help with that.

I also came across a cool free set of watercolor brushes for Photoshop today and used them in a mock up for a project.

We seem to be blogging quite a bit lately, maybe we can keep it up! So keep checking back and tell your friends!

A few weeks ago we ordered some stencils of the Digital Skratch circle logo and have some custom etched business cards coming soon from BlackBook Stencils. They are a cool company located in Fort Lauderdale that specializes in stencils, die cut business cards, etched books, sticker kits, basically anything relating to stencils and graffiti. We will be painting some skateboard decks with our DS stencils and will post pics when those are complete. We also worked with BlackBooks for the signs at our office for AgencyWeb.

We are going to be working with them and my good friend Jay on an upcoming project that we have been talking about for years. It’s exciting to finally get that going. Should be pretty creative and a nice long term thing we can really sink our teeth into.

I’m so excited our app is finally up! I’ve been working extremely hard on this project the last few months over at my other company AgencyWeb. This was a fun project as I got to be the project manager on it. This was the largest project I have been in charge on and really enjoyed it. I worked closely with Luke from Group Zero on a daily basis which was great. I made sure the app and back end of the website was easy to use and navigate while still maintaining nice aesthetics. I designed the front end of www.ihoopmadness.com and skinned the blog at www.ihoopmadness.com/blog.

We have had the app complete and ready to go for a week or so but have been in talks with BURGER KING® about sponsorship of iMadness 09. Thanks to them we are able to offer the first 100,00 downloads for free! So go download the best NCAA Basketball Bracket app for the iPhone for free while you can. Make sure you tell your friends so you can make leagues and fill out a bracket for the 2009 college basketball tournament. If your friends don’t have an iPhone or iPod touch they can still play along with you. Simply register for free at our site.

Also give our post a Digg to help get things started!

iMadness 09 is Available on the iPhone App Store

The marketing or web department at CBS knows what they are doing. On the television show “How I Met Your Mother” they seamlessly work websites into the shows plot that are actual sites and adds some interaction and content.

During a recent episode Lilly and Marshall needed extra money to pay for some improvements on their new apartment. So Marshall creates a website to sell his wife’s clothes. They mention the address on the show lillyandmarshallselltheirstuff.com and again after the show. Rather then just having it be another promotional site for the show they are actually doing some good. The website sells items from the show for a fundraiser for the LA Children’s hospital which I thought was very cool.

Also in a previous episode about Robin and her embarrassing past as a teen pop star in Canada, they showed her second music video. When I was watching it I was wondering if they would have a link to it on youtube or another website. At the end of the episode it said go to myspace.com/robinsparkles to see the rest of the video. I thought that was a brilliant way to showcase the video, and create more content and information about the fictional 80′s pop star.

This is a great example of how some subtle cross promotion mixed well into the plot of the show can help extend the following of the show beyond the television and to the internet.