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.

Now some apps are being rejected due to third party content that the developer has no control of. Apple pulled these apps claiming it violates their policy of no adult or hate related content. It is impossible to police everything on the internet and the fact that some user could sabotage an app which costs thousands of dollars and weeks or months to develop seems unfair. As long as the app adheres to Apples policy I don’t think third party content brought into the app should be made to follow the same guidelines as long as their is proper warning that the content is being delivered from the internet not the app itself. What is the difference of launching Safari and going to an adult website on the phone. There is none.Yet Apple has allowed controversial apps to be approved in the past. I want to know who dropped the ball on the Baby Shaking app which Apple initially approved and then later removed.

Searching for apps also presents problems. Apple needs to incorporate some type of better search algorithm. It seems as if old school black hat seo tricks of the web work on the app store, such as keyword stuffing, and unrelated content about other apps. I recently searched for an art type of application and though the top results were related to my search after the first couple of apps they started to become totally unrelated. I clicked on the apps to see why and found out that in the description text listed hundreds of other popular apps at the bottom. To me this seems so out dated. If I am searching for “Graffiti” why would “Coed Spring Break” come up ahead of iGraffiti. Just because they have the name in their description? Come on, take a page from Google and learn how to filter results better and not let simple tricks such as unrelated keyword stuffing determine the results. If it takes so long to get apps approved why not take a few minutes and have the person approving the app actually read the description to make sure it is in line with what the app claims to do and not allow unrelated content.

I am one of the biggest Apple supporters out there and love pretty much anything they do. But I feel they need to invest more time and money into their app store to streamline the process, deal with third party content in a better way, and improve their own search capability. There are just too many inconsistencies with the app store and apps in general.

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.

Last week I searched for “clean web design” and Digital Skratch came up in posistion #54. After deciding to optimize for that term I checked the results every few days. At first we dropped to position 72, and then regained to spots 54 and 53. I checked it today and found our site listed at the bottom of page 1 in the #10 spot!

Again this is proof that proper SEO and ongoing website maintenance should be at the top of your list if your website or online marketing is important to your business.

For Club Flyer Design we were not in the top 10, then when we got ranked it was on page 9. A few days after that we moved up to page 5. In addition to that we have several other first page rankings and some #1 positions as well.This now means that SEO should be an even bigger part of your online marketing strategy because it is so fast paced. If you do not stay up on it your competition will be able to take advantage of this and gain position. This is done with a good strategy of on-site and off-site SEO. Please contact us for more information regarding our Design and SEO services.