SEO Firm and Web Design Blog

While there were numerous reports of Amazon being one of the few retailers who were positive this holiday season. One of the things that was didn’t receive a tremendous amount of press was the release of Amazon’s iPhone application. This program harnessed the power of the mobile platform, turning a mobile phone into a portable [...]<p>This post originally came from <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/about-graywolf/'>Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consultant</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/mobile/amazon-iphone-app-revie/">How Amazon Turned a Mobile Phone into a Cash Register</a></p>

I was reading Google’s guide to SEO (pdf) , and it’s actually pretty good from a website or business owner perspective. However here’s a quote I found interesting, this is something they recommend NOT to do on social media websites: involving your site in schemes where your content is artificially promoted to the top of these services. For [...]<p>This post originally came from <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/about-graywolf/'>Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consultant</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/google/google-guide-seo-social-media-links-death-row/">Google Guide to SEO - Are Social Media Links on Death Row?</a></p>

Hi there. I suppose since this is a guest post, I should start with a little introduction. I’m Tim Woodin, and I’m going to talk about how to use social media to make money. Firstly though, let me give you a bit of background info. About five years ago, I created a course on copywriting. I [...]<p>This post originally came from <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/about-graywolf/'>Michael Gray</a> who is an <a href='http://www.wolf-howl.com/information/consulting/'>SEO Consultant</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.wolf-howl.com/guest-posts/money-social-media/">Who Else Wants to Make Money from Social Media?</a></p>

<p>I've been thinking about what might lie ahead for web designers in 2009. Here are a few <del>educated guesses</del> predictions.</p><h2>Hand drawn web sites</h2> <p>Hand drawn will continue to remain a popular web design style through much of 2009, but will start to die off later in the year as designers start to see it as being very '2008.'</p> <h2>Mobile web design</h2> <p>Mobile web use will still be a small percentage for most web sites. However, it will continue to grow and highly trafficked web sites will be expected to have an 'iPhone version.'</p> <p>Web designers who wish to remain on the cutting edge will enable their sites for mobile use by creating streamlined versions for mobile devices, even those these devices will increasingly have fully functional web browsers.</p> <h2>Social media</h2> <p>In 2009 it won't be enough to simply create a web site for a client.</p> <p>Web designers will need to implement a farther reaching strategy that includes the main social media web sites. For example, creating Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter pages for a customer or product.</p> <p>They will also be required to set up ways to automatically distribute content to and from this network of sites as well.</p> <h2>JavaScript libraries</h2> <p>Thanks to the popularity and ease of use of JavaScript libraries such as JQuery and MooTools, more and more web sites will add interactive touches and effects for good and for ill.</p> <p>Signs of over-saturation in the use of these techniques will start to show towards the end of the year with a backlash regarding their use arising from some designers.</p> <p>However, they will continue to be hugely popular.</p> <h2>Online video</h2> <p>Site owners will increasingly want to engage their visitors with video which will be delivered via Flash.</p> <p>Web designers will need to know how to create pages and channels on popular online video sites such as YouTube and Vimeo.</p> <p>They will also need to know how to deploy video on their own web sites, employing the sorts of social media features that users expect such as ratings, comments and sharing.</p> <h2>Interaction design</h2> <p>With more and more people using web apps and interactive widgets, designers who are expert (or even competent) at interaction or UI design will be highly in demand.</p> <p>Indeed, as web sites in general become more interactive they will become much more difficult to design and build as the user experience becomes vastly more complex.</p> <p>During the design process, web designers will need to be able to show not just how something looks, but how it works.</p><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=pVtQ4g.P"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=pVtQ4g.P" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=8rBWLG.P"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=8rBWLG.P" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=8telzl.P"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=8telzl.P" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=2RRlBl.p"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=2RRlBl.p" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/smileycat/~4/502516427" height="1" width="1"/>

<p>In doing research for some ecommerce work I wanted to see how online retailers approached the layout of different types of store pages.</p> <p>Perhaps my Google skills were lacking, but I couldn't find any examples of where someone else had done something similar. I've seen showcases of <a href="http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/07/shopping-carts-gallery-examples-and-good-practices/">shopping cart icons</a> and <a href="http://www.getelastic.com/add-to-cart-buttons/">add to cart icons</a>, but nothing where the layout of a whole page is examined.</p><p>So, I thought I'd create a showcase of great (or at least good-to-great) <a href="http://www.smileycat.com/design_elements/shopping_carts/">shopping cart page design</a>.</p> <div class="image"><img class="image" src="http://www.smileycat.com/miaow/archives/images/shopping-carts/miaandmaggie-small.gif" alt="Screenshot of Mia and Maggie shopping cart" /><p>Mia and Maggie shopping cart</p></div> <p>It certainly wasn't easy to find as many examples as I did. There are lots of examples of bad shopping cart design. Lots.</p> <p>Even when the rest of the site may be really nicely designed, the shopping cart page often feels like an afterthought or something that has been thrown together without much concern for the overall presentation of the page.</p> <p>Which is surprising to me as this page is so critical to the customer purchase process.</p> <p>Of course, it's worth noting that I have no idea whether the shopping cart pages I've singled out actually convert better than ones I've passed over. Maybe not. However, it's fair to say that they certainly look a lot better from a customer standpoint.</p> <p>It's also true that shopping cart pages by their very nature — part web app, part marketing page, part customer support tool — are very hard to design well.</p> <p>Hopefully, my <a href="http://www.smileycat.com/design_elements/shopping_carts/">shopping cart design showcase</a> will help other designers see what approaches may work best.</p> <h3>Further Reading</h3> <ul> <li><a href="http://psychology.wichita.edu/surl/usabilitynews/92/shoppingcart.asp">Top Ten Mistakes of Shopping Cart Design Revisited: A Survey of 500 Top E-Commerce Websites</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.ecommerceoptimization.com/articles/ecommerce-shopping-cart-usability-21-best-practices/">eCommerce & Shopping Cart Usability: 21 Best Practices</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.clickz.com/2245891">20 Tips to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment, Part 1</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.clickz.com/2248551">20 Tips to Minimize Shopping Cart Abandonment, Part 2</a></li> </ul><div class="feedflare"> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=QTegO"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=QTegO" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=dz2FO"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=dz2FO" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=jVuOO"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=jVuOO" border="0"></img></a> <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?a=EwAoo"><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/smileycat?i=EwAoo" border="0"></img></a> </div><img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/smileycat/~4/490250343" height="1" width="1"/>