10 Tips For Communicating With A Difficult Client

As a web designer you are bound and determined to at one point and time come across a troublesome client. There are know-it-all clients, the low-tech clients, the day-late clients, and many more. No matter what their nature may be they exist and seem to come by all too often. Learning how to communicate with these clients can immensely change the outcome of your day-to-day productivity as well as your overall success.

Above All, Communication is Key

1. Start With a Fresh Slate

Carrying an attitude with clients is quickly going to ruin your career. Every time you approach a discussion, email, or call from a client you should do so with a good attitude and a positive mindset. Working with a bad attitude is only going to produce bad results and further fuel the flames. Keep your head up!

Ultimate Checklist for Designing A Non-profit Website

Part 1: Content

One of the goals behind a non-profit website should be to inform visitors and provide them with valued content, ultimately motivating them to take action or to be encouraged by your undertaking, accomplishments, and possibilities.

Does the website:

18 Domain and URL Best Practices for SEO

Place Keywords within URLs and Filenames

As URLs are typically one of the first things read by a search engine using keywords within them is one of the most consequential SEO details.

Maintain Your Website

If your website is hosted on a server that constantly crashes, or if you have pages that are blocked or no longer exist make sure you take the proper measures to maintain your website. When a search engine comes to index your website you want it up and running at its peak. Keeping your website maintained is the best way to do so.

Make Your Visual Media Search Engine Friendly

Use JavaScript Wisely

Using JavaScript to display content can add great features to your website. However, in the long run, it can also make content harder to be reached by search engines. When using JavaScript do so wisely and keep the code clean.

Make Use of Image <alt> Attribute

Text only websites are typically dull and image based websites are unrecognizable to search engines. Find a good balance between related content and images, and always make use of the image <alt> attribute. However do not keyword stuff the <alt> attribute as this will hurt your rankings.

Content is King!

Good Techniques

Use Original Related Content

The more original content (directly written for your website) you have on your website the better. This is for many reasons, however one of the most direct being, more content equals potentially more keywords and the more keywords the better the rankings.

Consistently Add New Content

Adding new content to your website is not only preferred by search engines but by users as well. (Blogs perform extremely well because of this.) Making minor updates to previous content is not considered as adding new content.

The Most Unique and Inspiring Google Logos

Google does a lot of interesting things, of which one of the most popular being periodically changing their logo to reflect current events. In the past 10 years we have had the pleasure of seeing quite a few fascinating and delightful logo designs. Most often we see these imaginative logos around holidays, including Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and other popular holidays. We are often surprised to see new logos unexpectedly, most recently for the 40th anniversary of Comic-Con. Outlined here are over 300 of the most brilliantly designed Google logos.

2009

40th Anniversary of Comic-Con – July 23, 2009

10 Usability Rules You Need to Follow

Present Information and Media in a Recognizable Manner

Provide Text Alternatives – Any images, videos, or non-text based media presented to the user must have a text alternative or accompanying text.

Make Content Adaptable – Today information is spread across a wide spectrum including computers, mobile devices, and so forth. Make sure your content is adaptable to all of these spectrums without losing information or composition.

Japanese Web Design As Compared to American Web Design

On a recent trip to Japan I had the opportunity to analyze Japanese web design and development first hand. I have compiled a gallery of some of the most popular websites in America and matched them up to their Japanese counterparts. Please enjoy!

Adobe

Checkout Process: Designing Profitable Websites Part 6

The checkout process has become widely known over the years on the internet and making purchases online is fairly common for most households. With such popularity you would think the checkout process has been nearly perfected, however astonishingly 59% of all users abandon the checkout process. This could be for a number of reasons but the most important being users are not given a clear direction through the process. This leads users to get confused, frustrated, and abandon the process. Ideally an easier, friendlier, and dependable checkout process will do the trick and increase conversions.

Checkout processes are fairly dynamic and span across multiple pages. Making a change to one step may affect another. While designing a checkout process it is important that you take all of the steps into consideration and design the checkout process all the way through, not skipping any steps in-between. A few design suggestions to take into account include:

Acknowledge common checkout process goals.

While the checkout process is most commonly used for the exchange of money for goods or services, it can also be used to accept donations, take membership payments, or to even transfer money into a virtual equivalent. Make sure you know the primary goal and function of your checkout process.

Forms: Designing Profitable Websites Part 5

Forms are the biggest areas of abandonment on the internet. Reason being they are boring, ask for too many personal details, and are only a step toward the end. However much of the internet is widely based around forms including everything from login to contact forms and online purchase to social networking comment forms. All in all the more satisfying forms you design and the easier they are for users to complete the better results you will see.

Forms are supposed to be practical and serviceable, not an artistic expression. The main purpose behind designing a form is solving a problem including how to get users to input their information in the easiest way possible. It is not to say that forms should not be pretty, they should. It is all a matter of putting everything together. A few suggestions to follow when putting together a form include:

Acknowledge common form goals.

The main goal for any form is to be filled out and submitted. Different forms will have different specific goals, for example a newsletter subscription form has the primary goal of obtaining marketing information, especially an email address. Be aware of the forms broad and specific goals.