Cameron Olthuis

The other night I attended a local web design meetup and the discussion topic for the night was ‘the benefits of CSS’. Unfortunately we didn’t end up in the private room in the restuarant that we usually get so it wasn’t quite as easy to carry on a roundtable discussion. I noticed that most of the designers that showed up where fairly new to CSS and didn’t fully understand all the positives. In fact most of them seemed to think there wasn’t any benefits, and I even overhead a few say that tables are better.

Well the fact is there is a lot of benefits of using CSS. I’d even go as far as saying I can’t really see any negatives to layouts based on Cascading Style Sheets. The only thing that could possibly be a negative in my opinion is so called browser issues, but once your skills improve it shouldn’t really be a problem. Anyways, here’s some of the benefits that I could come up with, if you have anything I miss please contribute.

Maintenance – Maintaining websites with CSS based layouts is a hundred time easier than maintaining ones that are table based. Seriously! If you’re not making any content changes to the site all you really need to do is update one file, of course that all depends on the size of the site. But even if it is a large site it would still only be a fraction of the total pages.

Accessibility – The W3C says…

CSS benefits accessibility primarily by separating document structure from presentation. Style sheets were designed to allow precise control – outside of markup – of character spacing, text alignment, object position on the page, audio and speech output, font characteristics, etc. By separating style from markup, authors can simplify and clean up the HTML in their documents, making the documents more accessible at the same time.

I’ll also add that it’s far easier to make your site accessible using CSS. Think about all the people using cell phones and other wireless devices to connect to the interent now. Don’t you want to make your site accessible to them?

Cleaner/Less code – CSS generally requires less code than tables, a lot less. This make your code both lighter and a lot cleaner. Clean code makes a huge difference in maintaining your site.

Faster – Your pages will load quite a bit faster with CSS, and for a number of reasons. This also cuts down on your bandwidth, if you have a site that gets a lot of traffic this can make a huge difference in your bottom line.

Easier – When I was first learning to design based on CSS I struggled a lot. But I caught on very quickly. In the beginning you would’ve never catch me saying that CSS is easier. But now, I truely believe that it is. Because you’re only using a fraction of the code it’s so much easier to design with CSS. If you’re still having a hard time don’t worry, once you catch on it will be so much easier. I would even recommend that anyone that’s just starting to learn web design to learn CSS before tables, I believe the learning curve is much quicker.

Creativity/Limitless – We’ve all seen CSS Zen Garden, and if you haven’t go check it out now. The idea behind CSS Zen Garden is…

The code remains the same, the only thing that has changed is the external .css file. CSS allows complete and total control over the style of a hypertext document.

So many more possibilities with CSS. There literally no creativity bounds design wise.

Professional – It’s my belief that if you’re a professional web designer (in other words, you exchange money for your services) then you should be building sites strictly with CSS. If not for the reasons above (which are all more than enough reasons as a professional) then do it to keep up with the current standards and trends in the industry. If you don’t start now it won’t be long before you’re left in the dust.

As you can see there’s a quite a few benefits to CSS. If you’re still not convinced to use CSS then you probably never will be, so let’s just leave it at that. Again, if you have anything to contribute please do.

CSS, Web Design

There’s a lot of really cool things that can be done using CSS and I’ve found some of the following resources to be very helpful to inspire ideas and learn new techniques. There’s a lot of good CSS tutorials out there so it’s pretty hard to narrow it down to only the 10 best. So instead of taking this list as the top 10 consider it as a collection of 10 great tutorials. I recommend having a good working knowledge of CSS/HTML before trying any of these on your own site.

Great selection of Halloween Costumes and more at Halloween Mart.

continue with the tutorials Read the rest of this entry »

In order for your brand/website to be successful you need to build trust and credibility with your target audience. Without it, people will take their business elsewhere. Building trust and credibility takes open communication that goes both ways. It takes to time to develop but will only take seconds to lose. What takes years to build can be lost over night. Here’s a few tips to help you build trust and credibility online.

Website
What impression does your website give? There’s a good chance your website will be the first time a potential customer comes in contact with you or your company. Needless to say it’s pretty important that it makes a good first impression. You wouldn’t setup a retail store in an old dirty building, so why would you even think of doing that with your website? Would you meet business associates for the first time wearing grubby clothes? I sure as hell hope not.

Your website is not a place to skimp on your budget, yet some many people still do it. They think saving a few bucks asking their nephew to design their site is a smart decision, when in fact it probably ends up costing a lot of money in lost business down the road. A professional looking website is a must.

Marketing
What kind of marketing messages are you sending? Are you annoying people with spam such as; unsolicited email blasts, pop-ups and pop-unders, spyware, or other in-your-face sales techniques? If you are and you want a credible brand you should stop, immediately. These do nothing but piss people off.

How visible is your site? When people search for your company or keywords relevant to your website are you easily found? The more someone sees your brand around the web the more they will trust it. It’s important to invest money and time into your search engine marketing. Not only will this bring an increase in business, but it will build the credibility and trust. How can your customers trust you if they can’t even find you on Google?

Build alliances with other credible third parties.

Assurance
This is one that also deals with your website. There are little things you can do on your website that tells customers your are a trustworthy company that can easily be contacted if something goes wrong. So with that said, make the contact info prominent on your site, don’t try to hide it and don’t even think about leaving it off altogether. Make sure you have a well written ‘about page’. Let your customers know that you’ve been around awhile and you know what you’re doing.

There’s plenty of other little things you can and should do as well. For example, display your security certificates in prominent locations. Make it easy for your customers to see that you take security seriously. Are you a member of the BBB? If so then you should display the logo on your site and link it to your profile. Ask for testimonials and proudly display them on your site, often times customers are happy to do this, especially if you’ve pleased them.

You’d be suprised at how far these little things go, they really do give peace of mind and comfort to your customers.

Communication
Communicate early and often. You must be willing to admit(and take responsibility for) mistakes, deliver bad news, and openly share information. Don’t be afraid to apologize if necessary . Acknowledge and listen to what your customers have to say, let them know that you care and value their feedback. Speak in a language that is easy to understand. If problems arise then take care of them.

Bottom line: Don’t let you website fall victim to a crisis in consumer trust. Build and maintain trust and credibility and keep the lines of communication wide open. Building trust after you lose it is a hard thing to do and takes time, make sure this doesn’t happen to you.

Do you have anything you would like to add that you’ve found helps build trust and credibility.

branding, user interface, marketing, branding

How do you increase the conversion rate on your website?

Neil Patel says

The key is to create your pages with a spectrum of detail and features so you have something for each type of visitor. The Mac Mini page on the Apple.com website serves as a perfect example of this concept.

I would like to add a little to that. Not only is the key making your website appeal to everyone, you also need to make it as easy as possible for these people to take the necessary actions on your website. It’s one thing to serve them up the information they’re looking for but you also need to close the deal and make it as painless as possible for the customer. Think simplicity. Don’t make your customers give you two phone numbers when one will do.

If you have a shopping cart on your site that takes 5 pages to checkout you risk losing a lot of customers. Every time a user has to take an extra step to complete the appropriate goals on your site is a chance for them to abandon your site. In fact, I bet if you have the analytic data to see what pages people are abonding your cart you will notice at each step your are losing customers. Each time a user want to take an action and they can’t easily do so is a chance of losing them.

Apple’s website does a great job because it’s very simple to use. All the information is displayed right there for you at your fingertips. They also do a great job of creating a feeling that they’re something special. It’s simple and beautiful, and like Neil says, no matter where you are on there site you can easily get to the next place you want to go, whether that’s making the purchase or learning more about the products.

You need to be careful though. There’s definitely a fine line you don’t want to cross. When you’re trying to offer something for everyone remember to only try and do so to your target market. If you selling home furnishings don’t try and offer something for people looking for a mortgage. I think you get my point.

Instead of trying to reach out to a broader market focus on serving all of your current audience first. For example, add the information that the tire kickers are looking for, but don’t make me read if it I just want to make a purchase and get out.

Make it as easy as possible for every person that comes to your site to complete the goals they had in mind when they came.

Scott Heiferman has a great post called 50 Reasons Why More People Aren’t Using Your Website

3. Because it won’t help them with their problem
7. Because they just don’t care about what they see
11. Because it doesn’t make or save them a ton of money
12. Because it doesn’t save them a ton of time
24. Because you don’t tell them what you want them to do
38. Because they tried to use it, but something got messed up
39. Because they’ve never heard of it
48. Because it doesn’t tell them why to use it

Here’s a bunch of my favorite web design resources that I use everyday. The following resources have been a huge help to me and I highly recommend them. Whether you’re already a professional web developer or you’re just getting your feet wet there’s plenty of information that can help you.

What resources have you found helpful? I’m always looking to add to my resources so please share your favorites in the comments below. Read the rest of this entry »

Ok, so you’ve spent a lot of effort building a web site and even more effort getting people to come to your site. Now what? Because none of this matters if you can’t actually get these people to use your product.

You only get one chance with a potential user you so you better make it count. If they don’t immediately have interest in your brand and what you’re selling then you’ve lost your chance. It’s like fishing, once the fish nibbles on your bait you have to set the hook before you catch it. If you wait to long the fish will move on.

In a recent post, Most Home Pages Really Do Suck, I mentioned that the first thing your homepage must tell me is; “who you are, what your site does, and how I use it.” This is like the nibble, and the set is actually keeping them around after you’ve told them what you’re about.

So once you get a potential user to “nibble on your bait” how do you set the hook? You need to effectively sell the potential user on your service, because if you don’t your competition will. You always need to be one step ahead of your competition, don’t play catch up.

Here’s 5 6 things that will help you keep visitors coming back again and again.

Read the rest of this entry »