With most of the major browsers coming out with new versions these past couple of weeks, I figured I'd write a quick post about the most frustrating browser for web designers like myself to code in. Drum roll please..... Internet Explorer 6! No big surprise there. I'm guessing if you polled 100 web designers on which browser they hate coding for the most, it'd be IE6.
IE6 is almost 10 years old now and it's still being used by 12% of all Internet Explorer users. You'd think now that IE7, 8 and 9 have been released most of those people would update, but that's just not the case. From the way it doesn't render transparent PNG's as transparent or the way it handles the general layout of CSS and DIV based designs IE6 is just awful.
Even Microsoft themselves are trying to get people off of IE6 starting this website about a month ago; http://ie6countdown.com/. If you're using IE6, please update to a newer version or better yet, jump over to Firefox or Chrome. They're better browsers anyway!
Monday 28 March 2011
Monday 21 March 2011
Google Looks Into Celebrities For YouTube
Before I went to sleep last night, I came across an article about Google that I found pretty interesting. The article was written in the New York Times and spoke about how Google is moving from a search advertising company to a media advertising company. You can find the article here; http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/business/media/21carr.html?_r=1&ref=technology.
The point I found most interesting was this; "There have also been reports that Google has set aside $100 million for incentives for well-known celebrities to program their own “channels” on YouTube to increase the amount of high-profile content on the platform."
I'm not sure why this hasn't been looked at more closely by people in the media business. I think this could be the key to YouTube gaining even more popularity (if that's even possible).
The reason Google has "set aside" 100 million for incentives for well-known celebrities is because Google understand what makes Twitter so successful. That's right, it's celebrities. Most of the people who sign up to Twitter sign up for two reasons; 1) to follow their favorite celebrities more closely or 2) promote their business, themselves or to do social marketing for another business.
No one signs up for Twitter to follow what their friends are saying or doing, that's what Facebook is for. No one signs up to get news either, Google, Yahoo, NYTimes and local online newspapers handle that. No my friends, the main reason Twitter ever took off was because of Ashton Kutcher and his celebrity friends.
What's my point? My point is, if Google/YouTube can somehow get celebrities posting home videos from their webcams, cell phones or HD recorders they'll strike gold. People will jump onto YouTube even more than they do now, and it's all because of the celebrities. Google will laugh all the way to the media advertising bank.
The point I found most interesting was this; "There have also been reports that Google has set aside $100 million for incentives for well-known celebrities to program their own “channels” on YouTube to increase the amount of high-profile content on the platform."
I'm not sure why this hasn't been looked at more closely by people in the media business. I think this could be the key to YouTube gaining even more popularity (if that's even possible).
The reason Google has "set aside" 100 million for incentives for well-known celebrities is because Google understand what makes Twitter so successful. That's right, it's celebrities. Most of the people who sign up to Twitter sign up for two reasons; 1) to follow their favorite celebrities more closely or 2) promote their business, themselves or to do social marketing for another business.
No one signs up for Twitter to follow what their friends are saying or doing, that's what Facebook is for. No one signs up to get news either, Google, Yahoo, NYTimes and local online newspapers handle that. No my friends, the main reason Twitter ever took off was because of Ashton Kutcher and his celebrity friends.
What's my point? My point is, if Google/YouTube can somehow get celebrities posting home videos from their webcams, cell phones or HD recorders they'll strike gold. People will jump onto YouTube even more than they do now, and it's all because of the celebrities. Google will laugh all the way to the media advertising bank.
Sunday 13 March 2011
Many Small Businesses Missing Out On Mobile
Does your small business have a website? Does that website get a lot of traffic from mobile web devices? And the most important question of all, is your site optimized for a mobile web device?
From the research I've done on most of the small businesses in Windsor Ontario that have websites, I've found that less than 15% of them had a site that was optimized for mobile. That could potentially mean big losses for those companies because the mobile users aren't able to view your site on their iPhone, Blackberry, Android phone etc.
Most web designers will build you a website without ever thinking about what it looks like on a mobile phone. Chances are if you go to your website right now on a mobile device, you'll get frustrated and leave.
With so many people surfing the web with their phones nowadays, it's silly not to have a web designer build you a mobile version of your site. A mobile version is usually a much easier to navigate, with larger text and links. When I build mobile web designs, I usually tell my clients to put only the most important info on the mobile version. I've found that many mobile web users are only on the site for less than 5 minutes. They login to your site, they get the info they need and they're gone. They aren't sitting in front of a PC for 20 minutes at a time surfing through all the pages of your site. They want it quickly and easily, without having to zoom in or zoom out to view content.
If you're interested in having a mobile web design built for your small business, please contact me. I'll gladly set you up with a free quote which rarely ever exceeds $500.00
From the research I've done on most of the small businesses in Windsor Ontario that have websites, I've found that less than 15% of them had a site that was optimized for mobile. That could potentially mean big losses for those companies because the mobile users aren't able to view your site on their iPhone, Blackberry, Android phone etc.
Most web designers will build you a website without ever thinking about what it looks like on a mobile phone. Chances are if you go to your website right now on a mobile device, you'll get frustrated and leave.
With so many people surfing the web with their phones nowadays, it's silly not to have a web designer build you a mobile version of your site. A mobile version is usually a much easier to navigate, with larger text and links. When I build mobile web designs, I usually tell my clients to put only the most important info on the mobile version. I've found that many mobile web users are only on the site for less than 5 minutes. They login to your site, they get the info they need and they're gone. They aren't sitting in front of a PC for 20 minutes at a time surfing through all the pages of your site. They want it quickly and easily, without having to zoom in or zoom out to view content.
If you're interested in having a mobile web design built for your small business, please contact me. I'll gladly set you up with a free quote which rarely ever exceeds $500.00
Monday 7 March 2011
Web Design Review - ArcheryBuff.com
I had lunch with a friend of mine who I went to college with last week and we started talking about what we've been doing lately. He told me he's moved on from being a web programmer to being someone who designs Blackberry themes. He mentioned that he had started a site a couple years ago about archery and he asked me to check it out and give it a review. Keep in mind that my friend is more of a web developer than a designer!
As far as the design goes, I'm really not a fan of this site at all. The good news for my friend is that he's one of the few Windsor web designers who'd focused on archery so the site does fairly well traffic wise.
When I wrote him back this week about the site, I told him I thought it could be much better. I thought he should get a cleaner, less busy logo and header. I also think the site should be a different color, I've never been crazy about that color brown for a site. I understand he was going for a forest/nature look, but there are ways to do that without making the site look so dark.
I would make his links a different color than the text (both are black right now, could get confusing) and lastly I'd make the Adsense ads blend in with the rest of the site.
He may have me re-do the design of the site while he works on the web development side of it, so if that happens I'll update this post!
When I wrote him back this week about the site, I told him I thought it could be much better. I thought he should get a cleaner, less busy logo and header. I also think the site should be a different color, I've never been crazy about that color brown for a site. I understand he was going for a forest/nature look, but there are ways to do that without making the site look so dark.
I would make his links a different color than the text (both are black right now, could get confusing) and lastly I'd make the Adsense ads blend in with the rest of the site.
He may have me re-do the design of the site while he works on the web development side of it, so if that happens I'll update this post!
Wednesday 2 March 2011
Google's Latest Algorithm Change
I'm beginning to really wonder what effect, if any, this latest Google algorithm change had on their search results. Since I'm a web designer who is into search engine optimization, I try to keep a close eye on what happens when major changes are made to the search algorithm.
I had read reports that cheap article sites like eHow.com had been hurt by the latest change, but then I did a search today for "hamburger patty recipes" and the first result was a lame article from eHow. The link was titled exactly what I had typed in. I was actually fairly surprised to see that it was still there, so I clicked the link to see if the information was useful. NOPE. Not at all. Just another article listing about nothing. You can clearly tell this site was optimized for the search engines and not end-users like myself.
I guess it may still be early to tell, but it seems to me that Google needs to continue to work on getting these content farms out of the top 10 of their results. As a website designer, it's always frustrating to see a clients site pushed down because of some crummy written search engine only optimized article.
I had read reports that cheap article sites like eHow.com had been hurt by the latest change, but then I did a search today for "hamburger patty recipes" and the first result was a lame article from eHow. The link was titled exactly what I had typed in. I was actually fairly surprised to see that it was still there, so I clicked the link to see if the information was useful. NOPE. Not at all. Just another article listing about nothing. You can clearly tell this site was optimized for the search engines and not end-users like myself.
I guess it may still be early to tell, but it seems to me that Google needs to continue to work on getting these content farms out of the top 10 of their results. As a website designer, it's always frustrating to see a clients site pushed down because of some crummy written search engine only optimized article.
Tuesday 1 March 2011
Welcome To My Windsor Web Design Blog!
I wanted to make my first post to welcome everyone to my Windsor Web Design blog. My name is Sebastian and I've been a web designer in Windsor Ontario Canada for almost 10 years.
I decided to start this blog for a few reasons. One reason was I heard Blogger was a great platform to get yourself or your business out there. Another was because I've always been a Wordpress guy and I wanted to see what Blogger was all about. Lastly, I thought it'd be a great way to share ideas, thoughts and information about web design, search engine optimization, mobile web design and much more.
Free free to comment on my blog and share your ideas. If you don't like my ideas or think I'm way off base, tell me and we can have a discussion about it!
I love learning new things about web development and design and I'm always open to working with new people. I look forward to hearing from fellow web designers!
I decided to start this blog for a few reasons. One reason was I heard Blogger was a great platform to get yourself or your business out there. Another was because I've always been a Wordpress guy and I wanted to see what Blogger was all about. Lastly, I thought it'd be a great way to share ideas, thoughts and information about web design, search engine optimization, mobile web design and much more.
Free free to comment on my blog and share your ideas. If you don't like my ideas or think I'm way off base, tell me and we can have a discussion about it!
I love learning new things about web development and design and I'm always open to working with new people. I look forward to hearing from fellow web designers!
