AWR Web Design Blog

Here is a great article posted by Mandy Barrington on Sitepoint.com on February 13, 2012 If you want traffic from search engines, you know that you need to optimize your page for your target keywords. But where on the page should you place your keywords? Imagine your target keywords are seeds: will you throw them in the air and hope they grow wherever they fall, or will you place them precisely where they’ll get the most sunlight (and capture the most attention)? When you look at the big picture, popular search engines like Google have been so successful because they are able to determine the most relevant websites for the keywords queried, while penalizing sites using spammy tactics. This has led to a more satisfactory search experience for users, and a more challenging experience for web marketers and developers. Read full article...

Written by Magdalena Georgieva, Feb 13, 2012 on HubSpot.com Calls-to-action (CTAs) are one of the most important elements of lead generation, and they should be used in each and every one of your marketing tactics: emails, social media updates, press releases, trade shows ... the list goes on. In fact, whenever you want to ensure your team is moving in the right direction, pose the question, “What’s the call-to-action we're using to drive people's behavior?”Read Full Article...

February 6th, 2012 by Mirko of www.designer-daily.com This is a recurring issue for designers around the globe. No matter if you are a graphic or web designer, you will sooner or later run into a client that finds the layout of your design too “empty”. This is a quite natural reaction for a non-designer. I remember in graphic design school, most students would add more elements in their layouts than needed, or they would make these elements bigger because they were afraid of too much white space. Read Full Article...

By Zach Ball | January 24, 2012 | for SitePoint.com When creating a landing page for your website, it is important to make sure that it is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and free of errors. This article will tell you the five unbreakable rules of landing page design that can make or break your website. Read Full Article...

Web designers love to build websites and often struggle to find new clients to build for.  Today, there are increasingly more and more web designers of all skill levels available for potential clients to choose from. This makes client retention even more important than it was even a few years ago.  There are several things that a web designer can do to keep clients longer, such as providing great customer service.  However, let's talk about something that will help you retain those clients longer and at the same time improve your bottom line. Let's face it, today there are more people who are willing and asking for the ability to maintain their own content.  This has led to the increase in the use of Content Management Systems (CMS) such as Wordpress, Joomla! and Drupal.  These systems are beneficial to the designer because they can be implemented quicker and managed easier.  Clients...

By Lee Odden of TopRankBlog.com Online Marketing is all about information. And people. Making connections that solve marketing problems in today’s environment of social and technological innovation can be challenging. Like many readers of this blog, a big part of what I do as an Internet Marketer centers around being able to consume large amounts of information or better, the right information, synthesizing it and using insights to help others make sense of the challenges and opportunities they face with marketing on the web. Read Full Article ...

Search Engine Optimization is one of the hottest topics these days in web design.  The reason is that everyone wants to know how to improve the ranking of their site in search engines like GoogleTM. Increasing your ranking will increase the likelihood that someone will find your website.  The purpose of this guide is to explain how you can improve your search engine ranking using some techniques that are not gimmicks.  Yes, it's true, there is no "magic pill" for SEO.  Actually, using techniques that attempt to fool search engines, are easily detected today and will actually hurt your ranking even more as search engines will penalize sites that use these types of methods.  The techniques described here are all legitimate and proven ways to improve your ranking. Is this a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) project or should I leave it to a SEO Professional?  The answer to this question is based on...

Posted on WebDeveloperJuice.com "Everybody makes mistakes, but there are some mistakes that are considered cardinal sins. Smart web designers need to distance themselves from these mistakes as much as possible. This is because; these are the mistakes that lead to the failure of the website to create the right impression in the minds of the website visitors. So, let’s take a look at these mistakes..." Read Full Article...

Written by Pavel Gorenitsyn "The most successful and important proposal in my life was a quick win. With the ring decision aside, it was based on three fundamentally important ingredients: clarity, timeliness and problem-solving power. My intentions were clear and unambiguous, the offer was made in due time and solved a relationship evolution dilemma that all couples inevitably face, sooner or later...." Read Full Article...

By Morgan Brown  "For designers, it’s easy to jump right into the design phase of a website before giving the user experience the consideration it deserves. Too often, we prematurely turn our focus to page design and information architecture, when we should focus on the user flows that need to be supported by our designs. It’s time to make the user flows a bigger priority in our design process." Read Full Article...