Latest Stories

Landing pages for product sales can be seen everywhere. Affiliate marketers are constantly examining some of the newer techniques to mastering digital e-commerce. When the situation involves just a small market segment, the rules for landing page design can change.
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.

While both languages for HTML5 and CSS3 aren’t fully complete yet, taking the time time to familiarize yourself with some of the pointers in this post can really help you achieve that clean look and feel for your site. Let’s take a deeper look at them.

HTML5

HTML5 is the latest version of HTML or Hypertext Markup Language. It is currently only fully supported by a handful of browsers but the next year should see a large increase in usage. It isn’t expected to be completed until 2014, but the features that are available now are a great way to become acquainted with HTML5 and add some cool elements to your website.

Steve Jobs famously refuses to allow Flash on the iOS due to the many bugs and crashes it experiences, therefore, learning how to use the more intricate features of HTML5 is going to be a must for those who want to develop apps and iOS-friendly websites. With Google rolling out an HTML5-friendly version of YouTube, many developers are starting to see how important this system will become in the near future. However, with Firefox resisting some of the advent of HTML5, developers and designers are still feeling the need to cover all of their bases when implementing new features on a website.
The idea behind HTML5 is that it’s not one large entity, but rather made up of smaller parts that work together to create something innovative and advanced. Each browser may support different features of HTML5, which makes it important for those interested in coding to figure out which features they need and which will be supported by different browsers.
HTML5 simply builds upon the widespread success of HTML4. That means a coder doesn’t have to throw away the existing markup, but rather build upon and improve the old one. For example, forms can be updated to allow for new features such as a better email input for those using a mobile device. However, viewers stuck in IE6 will simply see it as a text field and still be able to use it.
Here are some examples of HTML5 in use:

Features

• Any HTML5 syntax requires a doctype to be specified so that the browser can render the page in standards mode. The good news though is that the doctype declaration has also been simplified from previous HTML. It is now just: <!DOCTYPE html>
• The audio and visual support in HTML5 is outstanding. As soon as it’s fully running and all browsers support HTML5, you will find it easy to add audio and video to websites without the need for outside plugins.
• Editing the content of your website is simplified with HTML5. Using the contenteditable attribute, you can quickly and painlessly change your text by adding contenteditable=“true” to any element.
• The canvas element makes it possible for you to bypass Photoshop to make your 2D images and directly place them in your code.
• The application cache enables you to navigate web applications while you are offline.

Why Use It

• HTML5 will load much quicker than its older brother because it implements WebSockets.
• Mobile phone applications will be much more accessible if written in HTML5 because you will not have to write applications for a specific brand of phone but rather can create universal applications for all phones.
• You have more flexibility in creating your website.
• Video, audio and images are all easily written right into the code, eliminating the need for any third party software.
• This language is growing and will only result in more, new, better and faster features that will leave old websites looking outdated.
• HTML5 simply builds on HTML4, so the old markup can stay in place as you develop the new features.
• HTML5 and CSS3 together will give you some serious designer credibility.

CSS 3

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) offer increased flexibility in the presentation of website content. In essence, it just makes everything prettier. Although CSS3 isn’t supported by all browsers yet, it’s becoming increasingly popular because it makes these changes so much easier than trying to get the same effect using something like a Javascript plugin or creating slightly different versions of the exact same image.
One drawback to using CSS is the requirement to implement filters to change how something will appear onscreen using different browsers. Although Internet Explorer is known for bugs, CSS can still be incorrectly interpreted by Firefox or Chrome. As such, some web designers have created different CSS codes to be sent to different browsers, or use filters to cut off CSS delivery completely.
CSS3 offers some exciting new features to enhance the appearance of a website. Although these features might not be absolutely necessary to the functionality of a website, users are coming to expect a website to look awesome as well as operate cleanly. CSS3 makes it easier for designs that will make visitors “ooh and aah” over them to be implemented.
Some features, such as menus, are necessary in almost any website. But with CSS3, the functionality and aesthetic appeal increases exponentially. Submenus upon hovering, horizontal menus, menus with rounded edges, submenus with tabs, submenus with descriptions, and menus with submenus with rounded edges with descriptions on hover are now all possible with some tweaking. Users will appreciate the ability to see a little more of what that page is about before potentially wasting loading time.

Cool New Tricks

Box-shadows – This could allow the main content to slide beneath another area, such as a footer, or cause the area to look as if it’s coming out of or sinking into the website. CSS3 makes this happen without requiring the coder to create a new image or use a Javascript plugin. Another technique is to cause the shadow to appear upon hover.

Text shadows – Sounds exactly like what it is: provide a drop shadow underneath HTML text elements.

h1 {
     text-shadow: 0px 1px 1px rgba(0,0,0,.2);
}

Easier font additions – To add a new font, simply upload the file to your server, link to the CSS file and create a font family.
Multiple backgrounds – Overlaying multiple backgrounds to a page is possible with this code:

body {
     background:
     url(../images/bottom-left.png) top right fixed no-repeat,
     url(../images/bottom-right.png) top left fixed no-repeat,
     url(../images/top-left.png) bottom left fixed no-repeat,
     url(../images/top-right.png) bottom right fixed no-repeat;
     background-color:#ffffff;
}

Border images – Rather than simply using a stodgy old plain border, CSS3 allows you to upload an image to use as a border.
Opacity levels – Before, you had to create a new image or use a CSS filter. Now, simply input “opacity: 0.5;” or another desired number to get the effect.
RGBA coloring – Rather than using hex colors and memorizing them or referring to a cheat sheet, this technique allows you to choose the amount of red, green, blue and opacity in your design and doesn’t require any browser extensions.
Transform – This code allows you to choose how big you want an area to become during hover.
Rounded corners – Prior to CSS3, these used to be tricky, but now you can get rid of those sharp corners without using images..

div {
     border: 2px solid #434343;
     padding: 10px;
     background: #e3e3e3;
     -moz-border-radius: 10px;
     -webkit-border-radius: 10px;
     width: 500px;
}

Note: Moz stands for Mozilla, while webkit is for Safari and Chrome.
Resizing elements – This code works in Safari to provide a small resizing triangle that allows users to…resize.

div {
     resize: both;
}

Handling the legal side of freelancing could possibly be one of the more annoying tasks required for the job. Having worked as a full-time freelancer I can attest the amount of legal paperwork and information can become overwhelming, especially for newbies entering the field.
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.

You hear it time and time again: content is king. It’s king because it’s what users want, and it’s king because of SEO – i.e. if you don’t have good content, you’re not going to rank.
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.

The popularity of jQuery continues to grow. This means that we’re seeing it used on more websites these days, and there are more developers coming up with new ways to use it. The great thing about that is many of these developers are sharing what they learn though tutorials and plugins. We’re always on the look out for this new jQuery stuff. So for this post, I’ve gathered 10 tutorials and plugins that will help you learn and implement some fresh jQuery effects in your projects.

Beautiful Background Image Navigation

This tutorial will teach you how to create a beautiful navigation that has a background image slide effect. The main idea is to have three list items that contain the same background image but with a different position.

Quovolver

Quovolver is a simple extension for jQuery that takes a group of quotes and displays them on your page in an elegant way.

Lettering.js

Lettering.js is a lightweight, easy to use jQuery plugin for radical Web Typography.

imgAreaSelect

imgAreaSelect is a plugin for selecting a rectangular area of an image. It allows web developers to easily implement image cropping functionality, as well as other user interface features, such as photo notes (like those on Flickr).

An HTML5 Slideshow w/ Canvas & jQuery

This tutorial will help you create a progressively enhanced slideshow with a fancy transitioning effect, which is perfectly functional in older browsers as well.

Tiny Carousel

Tiny Carousel is a lightweight carousel for sliding html based content. It was built using the javascript jQuery library. Tiny Carousel was designed to be a dynamic lightweight utility that gives webdesigners a powerfull way of enhancing a websites user interface.

jQuery Panel Gallery 2.0

jQuery Panel Gallery is a plugin that converts a set of images into a slideshow with fancy transitions.

Collapsing Site Navigation

Learn how to create a collapsing menu that contains vertical navigation bars and a slide out content area.

Style my Tooltips

Style my Tooltips is a simple jQuery plugin to better style native browser tooltips.

jQuery Mega Select List

The jQuery Mega Select List is a plugin that converts a long select-list into a mega-menu style display, which makes it easier to find and select the right option.

jQuery is the premier library for coding JavaScript page effects. Most popular content management packages run jQuery for both admin and frontend design effects. As a web developer jQuery can be a fun library to spend some time learning and offers tremendous design potential.
It seems there are so many references and guides out there it’s easy to get lost. Below we’ve compiled 19 unique jQuery tutorials to help develop your skills as a frontend developer.

Form validation from scratch

Develop a simple and powerful jQuery script for common HTML form validation.

Incredible jQuery Login Form

Learn how to code a structural jQuery login form with sliding animation. Hide your form out of a visitors view until clicked.

Creating a Digg Style Signup Form

Digg has been an innovator for web apps for years. Learn how to develop a dynamic registration form similar to their signup page.

Color jQuery & CSS3 Sliders

Here you are taught about using jQuery and the new transformation features brought by CSS3 to create a dynamic slider effect.

Working with Events – Part 1

Part 1 of a detailed series teaching about events in jQuery. Here you’ll learn the bare-bones of the jQuery library and how to use events to construct your own functions.

Ajax-based Form Submission

Here you’ll learn how to submit a web form and display the submission result with some fancy fadeOut or slideUp effects. You’ll utilize both jQuery effects and Ajax for form submission.

jQuery Fade-in Spoiler

Practice designing a spoiler system with a fade-in effect using jQuery. This can be helpful in hiding tips or potential plot spoilers in website comments.

Dynamic Page Content Replacement

Design a unique content replacement script with a fade effect. You can run small tabs or links on your page to switch betweet content settings.

Simplify Ajax development with jQuery

Here you’ll learn about the jQuery syntax, discover its features and functions, perform some common Ajax tasks, and find out how to extend jQuery with plug-ins.

Simple Toggle with CSS & jQuery

jQuery can be difficult when first learning about open and close states. This tutorial guides you through the basics of mastering the jQuery toggle states.

Create a unique Gallery with z-index

jQuery development can be combined with the CSS property z-index to create a unique photo gallery effect.

Design Skype-style buttons with jQuery

As a very powerful JS library jQuery can do almost anything these days. Here you’ll create some unique Skype buttons with only some basic jQuery and CSS.

Apple-style Slideshow Gallery

Using basic HTML/CSS and jQuery development we’ll create a simple Apple gallery slideshow effect. Beautiful to fit into any webpage.

From PHP & XML into jQuery

Getting back into PHP backend programming here you’ll learn how to connect data retrieved through the backend and place it into jQuery and Ajax effects.

Manipulating the DOM(code snippits)

Working with jQuery to manipulate the Document Object Model is a powerful skill to understand. Here there’s 10 fantastic code snippits in working with jQuery and the DOM.

Semantic Blockquotes with jQuery

In this tutorial we identify text needed as a quote and using the DOM insert it into any area content. This helps avoid duplicate content and works well with mobile browsers.

jQuery Basics with Google Maps

In this tutorial you’re guided through how to get started using jQuery inside the Google Maps environment. You can create amazing mashups and creative designs with a simple connecting to the Google Maps API.

Create a Live Updating List

Creating a dynamic list in jQuery is a simple effect which goes a long way for user interface. Here you’ll learn the basics of creating a dynamic jQuery powered list.

Flickr CSS Menu Design

Here you’ll learn a simple step-by-step way to implement an Flickr Horizontal Menu Demo in jQuery and CSS.