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Web 2.0 Studios Tasks

• Web Development
• Design & Layout
• SEM / SEO
• Server Administration
• Marketing

> View the Project

Web 2.0 Studios Tasks

• Web Development
• Design & Layout
• SEM / SEO
• Server Administration
• Marketing

> View the Project

Web 2.0 Studios Tasks

• Web Development
• Design & Layout
• SEM / SEO
• Server Administration

> View the Project

Web 2.0 Studios Tasks

• Web development
• Server Administration

The Internet, of course, from inception is a powerful tool to reach markets. It is for that reason that we are proud to announce our new addition of web design and web marketing capabilities. Whether you are looking for an inexpensive stock template, custom design, complex web application, or web marketing & social networking, we’ve got your covered!

Designers that think influence and constantly exposing yourself to great designs isn’t that important tend to believe that brilliant work comes from within and that it can be turned on at will. But as creative block—which gets the best of us—shows, creativity is a finicky beast. And a lot of outside factors subconsciously dictate how and when your best designs are created. Therefore, it’s important that you feed yourself great designs. It’s what can help inspire your best design work—whether for yourself or for your clients—as well as keep you going during the creative down periods.

Without further ado, here are 3 reasons why you need to feed yourself great designs:

1. Good Goes In, Good Comes Out

Think of your design work as a body: when good design inspiration comes in, good work comes out. It’s similar to your body where when good ingredients come in, a good body and day comes out. You’re more energized, better rested and alert, healthier, stronger, and so forth.

It’s no different with your design work. Creativity is a ridiculously fragile thing – when you feed it anything but the best inspiration, your output quickly plummets. You really can’t be messing with it. Think about it: after watching some mediocre show or browsing through fairly average blogs or listening to safe-and-nothing-special music, did you get really excited and have inspired ideas start running through your head? The answer is probably ‘no’, and with good reason – bad ingredients went in, so it’s only natural that mediocre work would come out if you attempted to design afterwards.

Keep your design creativity in tip-top shape. Healthy, strong, alert, energized. By feeding yourself great designs, you increase your chances of also creating great designs. Good goes in, good comes out.

2. Get an Energetic Jolt During Uninspired Moments

Creative block happens to the best of us. Minimize it by feeding yourself some great designs. You’ll then get an energetic jolt. Perfect for those uninspired moments when you can’t seem to come up with any cool designs – or if you have to force yourself really hard just to finish an existing design project.

If you live in a city with some great public art, architecture, or museums or shops nearby, you can take a break and simply walk around outside. You’ll come back to your computer re-energized. Or you can flip through some design magazines, or browse some design showcase websites. Or do whatever that’ll expose you to some great, inspiring designs. But get away from your design work in order to feed yourself these designs. Even if just for a bit.

The energetic jolt you’ll get can help inspire you, and you can come back to your design work filled with creative energy and ideas.

3. Keep Yourself Going Longer Creatively

Creativity is like a sprint runner – inspiration usually happens in spurts for most. But by constantly feeding yourself great designs, you can help make your creativity more like a marathon runner so that you can keep yourself going longer creatively.

Now, that doesn’t mean being like a robot that never stops creating or being inspired. That’s simply not possible – plus, not many would really want that, anyway. No, keeping yourself going longer creatively just means that you can minimize the uninspired down times and extend your creative designing times. In other words, keep yourself going in the zone longer – when you’re inspired and your ideas and work is flowing.

Similar to #2, you’re not only shortening the uninspired moments but by extension helping yourself be inspired more often. The higher frequency of inspiration can help you keep designing in the zone for longer periods of time. You’ll have so many ideas, or you’ll be energized by some many great designs you just saw earlier.

Feed Yourself Great Designs

Again, you might be thinking this is forehead-slapping common sense. Of course you should feed yourself great designs rather than mediocre ones, and by doing so more frequently you’ll be inspired and in the creative zone more often, right? Yet it’s easy to forget the most simple of things and succumb to wasting hours on YouTube or playing games when you’re uninspired and feel like procrastinating on your latest design project. When all it could’ve taken to get you back on track is a little bit of time with a great design magazine, or a brief walk around town, or anything where you expose yourself to great designs.

Rinse and repeat, and you’ll help yourself be a better designer and create inspired designs more frequently.

Hopefully you now see how important feeding yourself great designs is. It’s not just for pleasure, or something to do to pass the time, or influence to take lightly – it’s what can help keep your creative engine well-oiled and fueled so you can run better and longer with your design work.

To recap, here are the 3 reasons why you need to feed yourself great designs:

1. Good goes in, good comes out
2. Get an energetic jolt during uninspired moments
3. Keep yourself going longer creatively

Now get out there and start feeding yourself all sorts of great designs.

How have you been feeding yourself great designs? What are some of your favorite sources of inspiration, especially outside of web and visual design?

Overall it takes a strong designer’s eye to create something extraordinary. Product landing pages offer fantastic insight towards deeper psychological marketing techniques. Here we’ll look into some great strategies for a sales page and what you can do to entice more sales.

Distinct Headlines and Ad Copy

Society has almost become numb to the classic ad copy sales pitch. After a while the general consensus of Internet users will shift and a broader understanding of marketing can be shared. In this regard it’s important to consider some of the creative opportunity in ad copy.

For example EdwinSoft’s Article Demon offers an interesting take on a squeeze page. The header offers some graphics which pertain to the brand and describe what you can expect. The large, bold red text is used to attract your attention immediately, and also entice you to scroll down further to learn more.

The ad copy throughout the page is also very well written. As you can imagine the writing process takes a long time and can be grueling. Just keep your message clear and to the point, there’s no reason to add convoluted language and it’ll either confuse or annoy your visitors. Also be sure to bold and underline your essential messages to help them stand out.

Include Relatable Media

Digital media can encompass quite a wide variety of information. The most common are including (but not limited to) audio recordings, podcasts, video presentations, or infographics explaining the growth process or benefit from your product.

When it comes to direct page images it takes a special craft to define them just right. Stock imagery in the category of businesses or modern people don’t often perform very well. The reason being they don’t present any underlying message or explain what your product does, or even why it’s useful.

The purpose of a landing page is to present a product or group of products and provide as much information as required to hook a sale. This means each area of page space should be utilized to its fullest in presenting your message. For software or template development it’s much easier to work in page graphics. However, when it comes to smaller products (for example e-books) you would need to create much of the design and branding personally.

It isn’t always worth the money to hire a professional, but when it comes to selling anything branding is important factor number 1. You should consider what type of message you’re sending out with your product and how you want visitors to feel when coming onto your page. Illustrations and icons are useful in both filling empty space and giving your page a pleasing look.

Keep Action Above the Fold

Anything that’s truly crucial to your sale should be introduced right away. Visitors can be finicky with their time and shouldn’t be expected to scroll down to find the information they need. In fact many studies have shown visitors will leave your page within the first few seconds if the actions seem too confusing.

By this it’s meant to say visitors are looking for something to do on your website. If they can’t find anything interesting to read, watch, listen to or interact with they will probably leave just as quickly as they came.

This is why offering a plan of action is so crucial. Visitors interested in your product will likely be excited to offer you their e-mail address for updates. Placing just a small signup form towards the heading on your page will spur dramatic interest and lead to increased sales in the long term.

Consider also working your brand into social networking opportunities. The chance to build a large network of followers is possible on major hubs such as Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube. Once you have profile links created you can share them with those who land on your page. Popular execution methods can involve social media icons and small marketing campaigns to increase your profile activity.

Working with Colors

In both digital and physical design, color choice is everything. Colors invoke a set mood into those perceiving a piece of art, and a landing page website is no different.

Your choice of colors will vary based on your end goals. Black and green offer simulations of power and wealth. Green is also one of the easiest colors for the eye to process. By this reason it’s used by many popular financial institutions and eco-friendly corporations.

Blues create a sense of security and trust. It can be seen as the most common and professional color. Purples can be calm, soothing, often referencing beauty or glamor products. Similarly red can be used to produce an energetic sensation, leading to more visitor interaction.

Yellows and oranges behave similarly to bright colors such as red, but can be toned down and not so vibrant. Yellows appeal to youthfulness and grab attention quickly. Orange in a similar manner can be placed towards a call-to-action button for grabbing the visitor’s attention.

All of these are situational and should be used with precision. These tips are great for getting the initial juices flowing in designing a product page. Carefully created user interface elements will also surely draw attention to your finer points.

Always keep in mind the end goal of your process. Sales should be figured into the starting plan and tested thoroughly through refined analytics tools. Consider other landing page designs for inspiration on your own. There are many techniques available and you can learn a lot by networking with other Internet marketers and digital artists.

No matter what your practice, be it web design to freelance writing, there is generally some form of legal contract you’ll need to create with your clients. Networking comes with the freelance territory, and within that is contracts and due dates for project completion. Below we’ll be considering some great tips for legal actions and pursuing your own career further in freelancing.

Always Draft up Contracts

Why are contracts so important? This question has been asked countless times throughout the decades and doesn’t come without a strong answer. Business has always been a shady game. Unfortunately levels of trust are indicative of a strong professional relationship. Unfortunately, not all clients will be so easy to work with.

Building a contract and having both parties sign from the start sets in motion a state of initial working values. These could include a timeline of project work, when and how much you’d be getting paid, along with other details you may find pertinent. These should be nailed out between you and your clientele until a reasonable agreement can be achieved.

It’s important to include each aspect that you’re both concerned with inside a single document. This will be your go-to primer for any difficulties which stem from project work. It’s an important document to not only cover your client in case of project failure, but also protecting you in the case of your client backing down from the work and payment.

Always Set Dates

Having a scheduled calendar is just another strong framework keeping you from drifting too far off task. An agreeable schedule of dates is something both parties should be able to look at and consider a reasonable amount of time for each task.

So for example, you may quote 1-2 weeks for a website mockup and graphics/icons designed. At this point the client would look over the designs, suggest any changes, and you’d plan for another 1-2 weeks for frontend development. This type of timeline is very lenient and doesn’t provide specific dates for when a piece of work must be done. This won’t work with all of your clients, although it’s a much more lax environment for creativity to flow through.

If it’s easier you may want to consider sketching out a small calender with weeks shaded in based on task completion. I have seen a few demos of these from past freelancers and it’s a great way to draw the attention of your client. This proves to them you not only understand what you’re doing but hold the creativity and business sense to plot out a course timeline for their project!

It may also be useful to set up meeting times to share information face-to-face. The frequency of these would vary depending on the type of project being worked on. A from-scratch new website infrastructure may require 3 meetups weekly while an icon set design may not even require face to face interaction. Keep your schedule loose and ready for anything, but once you’ve got something solid ensure you get it down in writing.

Follow-Up Clauses

One of the big pet peeves we see in freelancing today is the client base looking into running the show. If you’ve done any work as a freelancer you have probably run into this countless times in the business world. After creating a perfect mockup design your client may say “yeah it’s okay, but can you update changes X, Y, and Z? Oh and let’s scrap ideas A and B while we’re at it…”

This is not only very frustrating for you but will also mess up your pre-planned timeline of events. It’s important to include a clause about revisions and a detailed policy on work updates. There are no set rules here, but it is important both your client and yourself agree upon the terms.

You may charge extra for more time spent updating colors/layout spacing. However, if your client isn’t aware this is going on they may have an awfully difficult time forking over any cash. Alternatively I know many freelancers who include the first 2-3 revisions for free and will charge after that based on an hourly rate. It’s all up to you regarding how you’d like to structure your overtime. Just be sure to include something.

Final Products and Delivery

In the wacky world if web design it is often possible for confusion to settle when it comes towards a finished product. There are so many freelancers offering icons, animations, Flash graphics, videos… from a client’s perspective who doesn’t understand much of technology this can be awfully confusing.

It should be discussed before even starting the project work what is expected to be delivered as a final result. This could include multiple things, however for a general website design it’s often only a handful of graphics and coded HTML/CSS documents.

If your client is looking for something slightly more convoluted such as WordPress theming or plugin development include a few sentences referencing the types of files to be shared. These could be .css, .php, .js libraries, or anything else which may be included inside the projects’ files.

If easier just draft out a bulleted list of the files to be returned and at which stage the work will be ready for client’s eyes. This shows a sign of trust that you actually know what you’re doing and will be able to deliver quality code! If you’ll be personally uploading all files into the web server this may not be necessary, but still good practice to include just to avoid possible confusion.

Conclusion

These tips on legal writing should get you pointed in the right direction. The career path of a freelance web designer is not easy, especially entering into business for yourself. There are plenty of tools to help out with invoicing and paper trails, so make use of these whenever possible.

If you’re just getting started I’d also recommend building up a small network of clients to get some buzz going around your name. Here are some tips on finding local freelance clients if you’re looking for a way to break into the market. At the end of the day legal structures are all about protecting both parties of a freelance project to ensure they will deliver their regards on-time and respectably.

Of course, not all content is created equal. While over-optimizing content for search will make it less than user-friendly, focusing too much on usability can compromise its searchability.

So how can your content walk the line between SEO and usability? Well, there are 5 easy tips you can follow when trying to walk your content down that fine line between SEO and usability.

1. Length of On-Page Content

The ideal minimum length of page copy for SEO purposes is 250 words. So where your user experience permits, you should have 250 words (or more) of actual inline content – i.e. not headers, not sidebar content.

That being said, 250 words is just a minimum. As a general rule, the more content the better. In fact, I’ve personally noticed that when a page has 1,000+ plus, it has a much better chance of ranking for the keywords that it’s optimized for.

Of course, there are pages where it doesn’t really make sense to have so much content. In such cases, 250 words of content would disrupt the user-experience and push interactive features below the fold.

Some examples of this are a category pages on blogs or ecommerce sites. In these cases, you might want to optimize the categories for a certain niche/vertical of keywords, and added 250 words of text at the top of the page would help.

But from a usability standpoint, categories exist so that users can navigate/browse products or content within a category. So adding 250 word of text would disrupt the user-experience by pushing those product/article links below the fold.

A decent compromise in such cases is to insert a bit of static content at the top of main-content area of your category pages. Generally, 300 characters (about twice the length of your page’s meta-description) is enough to (1) get some descriptive keywords on the page, but (2) keep the category links/listings well above the fold.

2. Scanable Line Paragraphs

Knowing that you want at least 250 words on each page, how do you make that content as usable as possible? That is, how can you make it scanable so that users are deterred from actually reading it?

As a rule, you should aim for 3-4 line paragraphs (2 sentences). Of course, in some circumstances, a paragraph warrants more than 2 sentences. But by keeping paragraphs within 3-4 lines (5 lines max), you can create a text-experience that users can easily scan, making them more likely to actually consume the content.

3. Headers

Now, what do you do if you have more than 250 words on a page? If you’re talking about more than one product or service? How do you keep the user engaged?

Well, you do that by structuring your content. Basically, you should section off your content using header tags (e.g. <h2> and <h3>). This will create a break in the content that (1) makes it seem easier (i.e. ‘not as long’) to read, and (2) provides visual cues to pull the user’s eye through the content.

From an SEO perspective, moreover, the keywords in headers help you clue search engines into what your content is about. For example, three headers might tell search engines that three different (but related) topics are being discussed on the page.

4. Keyword Density

Keyword density is how often a keyword appears on a page. Depending on who you ask, the ideal keyword density is anywhere from 2%-5%.

The only problem with this is that even at the low-end, this can make for unnatural prose. For instance, if a keyword makes up 3% of all words on a page, the user will probably notice that that keyword appears quite often. In fact, it will make your copy seem robotic, non-compelling, and generally spammy.

Where you can fit in these extra keywords, however, is in your header tags. Indeed, by using keyword variation to draw up optimized header tags, you can gain an extra 1% of keyword density without making the actual copy seem contrived and unnatural.

5. Bullet Lists

One of the biggest copy tradeoffs between usability and search is bullet lists. While bullet lists help make content more scanable, search engine regard them as “broken content” – meaning that they don’t quite count as much as other page copy when it comes to their keyword density. There are two ways to get around this.

First, you can use a bullet list at the top of the page to outline the page’s content. This will help cue the user into what they can expect as they read through the page, which will help them better navigate the content.

If you do go this route, however, make sure that (1) you have 2 sentences/3 lines preceding the bullet list, (2) you have another 2 sentences/3 lines following it, and (3) there is a minimum of 250 words of “unbroken” content on the page. This will not only put the bullet list in context for user, but it will help ensure that search engines properly index the page.

Alternatively, you can simply place a bullet list further down in the content, as part of the one of the subsections. If sufficient content precedes a bullet list, that bullet list is less likely to factor large into how that page is indexed.

Content: Kings & Jesters at Court

A general rule to mitigating tradeoffs between search and usability is developing content for humans, not for search bots. After all, at the end of the day, search engines are out to provide users (real human beings) with the most relevant content available.

If you take every possible step to optimize your site for search, chances are you’ll produce some rather non-user-friendly content. And the paradox there is that the less user-friendly content is, the less engaging it is, and the less likely it will be to attract backlinks or go viral.

So you should always think of the user before you think of the search bots. But always keep in mind that there are some elements you can add to a page that both increase usability, and help optimize your page for SEO purposes.