A client recently asked me if we could get sitelinks for our site in Google. I mentioned google sitelinks back in my series on Google Webmaster Tools (Part 4, specifically), but it was time for a closer look.

Just how does Google decide to put sitelinks on certain sites in their search results?

Well, as usual with Google, they don’t really tell you. Google says that the sitelinks are automatically generated using a secret algorithm. They are designed to help users find what they want on the site without having to click down into the site. (more…)

By Karen Morrill-McClure

Recently I got sucked into this situation: a client asked for a quick estimate on a catalog site. I gave a quick, off the cuff estimate, assuming just a home page, listing the products for sale, and an individual page for each product, driven by a database of all the products. I’ve made a couple of sites like this, using Paypal to take orders. They’re pretty easy to set up and they work well for a simple online store.

The client said go ahead, so I asked some questions about who the audience of the site was (and didn’t get real firm answers, which should have been a warning sign in itself). I make a rough layout and send it to the client and get back some notes on the layout talking about customer sign in.

What? (more…)

Beth Dillon at our sister blog Notes on Game Dev wrote a very personal post yesterday about her frustration with the subtly chauvinist attitudes in the game industry and issued a call for other women in her business to share their experiences. Beth recounted how, again and again, she would hear the same line from by recruiters at industry events: “You should come work for us, we could really use a woman on the team”.

“They don’t care what I actually do, what my credentials are, what genres I’d like to work in or what audiences I know best.” Beth writes, “I’m a woman, therefore I know what all women want, and I can give them the secret key into awhole new market of money. Oh, that and it looks good for them to have a woman on the team if they’re going to make games for women.

If we’re so precious and have some special knowledge, why aren’t we getting paid as much as men? On average, we get about 10k less per salary, although this changes relative to the position.”

The post immediately elicited a slew of passionate and eloquent responses. Which made us think that women in the game industry are probably not the only ones that feel stereotyped by a male-dominated tech industry. So we would love to hear what women
in the web design and design business have to say. Please join the game dev women and post your comments here

Findability and Search Engine Optimization have been on my mind lately (and on everyone else’s I suppose). Some SEO experts seem to look at the whole thing as a game that you win by getting your page ranked number one on a search result with particular keywords.

I do appreciate that search engine ranking is a concrete result (for that moment in time, at least) and it’s easy to point to (look, we rank number 2 for this keyword). I feel a certain satisfaction when a client’s site ranks high on the keywords we are targeting.

But it seems like the SEO experts (and their clients) often see the search engine (most usually Google) as the enemy, something to beat or trick.

There’s one big problem with this view. (more…)

Well, really I mean when users’ needs conflict. How do you design a site that meets the needs of two different groups of users? Mostly I run into this with the sites I create for non-profit organizations.

Who are the two groups of users?

One group is the people that the organization helps. These are the ones I think of first and foremost and I try to design an easy to navigate site with lots of good information for them. This group often has some technology limitations (face it, most non-profits aren’t helping the folks in Beverly Hills with fios internet connections and the latest desktop computer). So, I make my pages lightweight and fast loading, I try to limit the graphics, and I keep in mind older computers and monitors. (more…)

Look out, Fashion Week and Restaurant Week, there’s a new week on the block! This summer, the City of New York will celebrate its thriving internet community by introducing the week-long festival New York Internet Week from June 3 – 10. The event is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in cooperation with the The Mayor’s Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting. Just like web itself, Internet Week will be open for anyone to attend events and throw events without a fee. (They will also be spread out all over.) Conferences and seminars that are scheduled so far will feature topics such as applied cryptography and network security, marketing and videos for online magazines. The schedule is also sprinkled with high-profile parties like the official launch festivities on June 3rd, the 12th annual Webby awards gala on June 12 and a host of smaller networking events. Unlike the internet, the first two aforementioned bashes are not open to the public, but perhaps that just makes it all the more fun to hack your way in.

I recently switched web hosts for a client. I hate switching hosts, but it seems like a lot of hosts that start out great (good price, good customer service) hit a certain size and then go down hill rapidly. I’ve had that experience with Frogee and now with Midphase.

So, I looked at the site, checked what email addresses we needed and what services we needed, then tried to figure out the best way to do this switch with no downtime. In theory, I could switch them over without visitors even noticing, but having accounts at both hosts, so that the web files would be up in both places, when the DNS (domain name server) switched from pointing to the files at Midphase and pointed instead to the files at Network Solutions, no one but me and the DNS server would notice the difference. (more…)

If you’ve looked around in Google’s Webmaster Tools (See Part 4 of my series of posts on the tools), you’ll see where you can upload your sitemap file for your web site.
Now, if you’re an inquisitive person like me, you might be asking yourself some questions, namely:
What are Sitemaps? What does the sitemap do for you? Do you need one?
In this post I will address these questions and hopefully provide satisfactory answers for them. (more…)

No doubt you already know the value of tracking your site’s traffic. You know to look at visit totals. You know to look at what sites your visitors are coming from. You know never to rely on the number of hits. But there can be even more interesting information found in common site statistics that you can use to track down ne’er-do-wells or enhance your content.

1) Look at traffic to image files. Don’t just take note of which pages are visited most, but which images. When you see a spike on a specific image file that doesn’t mesh with the traffic on the page the image is located on, that file might be hotlinked. That means someone is using your image on his/her own site, and using your bandwidth to do it. (more…)

Though it seems like something we should have figured out by now, it is amazing how often the subject of whether to underline or not underline links comes up in design process (or, alternatively, how often links that should be underlined are not underlined). From a design standpoint, underlining links, especially when there are quite a few of them, can create visual clutter and thus is often disliked from this perspective. Links, however, are the lifeblood of any website, so it is crucial — more crucial than a good design, in many cases — to ensure that these links are inherently obvious to users. And, despite the fact that most of us reading this blog are likely people who live on the internet and need little help determining what is a link and what is not, in many cases we still need to design for people who are only familiar with the most basic internet conventions (i.e. text that’s underlined is clickable) and/or use the web infrequently.

Guideline

If it looks like a link without an underline, it probably doesn’t need to be underlined. If it doesn’t look like a link, it probably needs to be underlined.

Though many qualified user experience designers can probably follow this vague-but-simple rule successfully, it may be beneficial to break down into more detailed guidelines, especially as a communication aid to use with designers who may be less familiar with user-centered principles.

Always Underline

When in Doubt: This may seem a tad obvious, but it’s worth repeating. If you aren’t completely sure, underline. It doesn’t look that bad, and it confirms for all users that this is indeed a link.
When You Can: Similar to my last point, if you can underline a link without causing too much of a design problem, you should. It never hurts to make things abundantly clear for your users.
Within Blocks of Text: Absolutely underline all links that are contained within sentences, paragraphs, etc. As users scan text (online, people rarely read from start to finish — they scan for key terms), underlines signify key works to read. Color is important too — but using both color and underline is the clearest, most obvious way to call out the links to users. If you just need to call out a word that isn’t a link, use bold or italics in the same color as the base text to reduce confusion.
Isolated Links: Links that are on their own within a section of a page should be underlined when possible. (more…)