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When you’re building a website it’s all well and good embracing a fancy design and making plans for strategic SEO, however what’s also vital is that you ensure your site is built to convert.
Below we take a look at five high-converting sites and investigate what it is that makes them so successful.
As a creative professional, you need a repository of your work that you can show other people. This is called a portfolio. Since we now live in the internet age where anyone can access anything anytime, it is imperative that you have an online portfolio. The only real problem is figuring out where to put your work – there are so many online portfolio tools and communities, it can be challenging to determine which one will work best for you. I’ve written this article to help you decide how to get your portfolio up and running ASAP.
Dribble is a portfolio networking platform where designers share “shots,” small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on. All types of creatives are welcome here – Dribbble is designed for show and tell – to promote, discover, and explore design.
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As we all know typography is a very important part of every design. So in this roundup we have collected some awesome typography for inspiration. If you like these beautiful you might also want to check out our previous posts below.
45 Creative Typography Print Ads
One year ago we launched the Freelance Starter Kit, which has become our most popular product at Vandelay Premier. We launched the product to provide freelancers with easy access to important resources like contract templates, invoice templates, proposal templates, letterhead, informational ebooks on different aspects of the business of design, and interviews with successful designers.
Over the past year we have added to the kit and more than doubled the size and value. To celebrate the first year and to make the resources accessible to even more people we’re offering a limited time promotion to save $20 on the Freelance Starter Kit. The regular price is $49, but through April 9, 2012 we will be offering it at just $29 (more than 40% off)!
Our goal with the Freelance Starter Kit is to help designers with the business side of things, freeing up more time for actual design work. Many of our customers find the contract templates alone to be an invaluable resource, but there is much more included to help you market your services, communicate with clients, and learn more about running a successful business. Here is a look at the resources that are included.
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With so many options of video players out there, it’s hard to choose which application will be best for you. I would suggest keeping things simple and avoiding future headaches of video player upgrades, new features, and bug fixes. Stick with an online based video player that will take care of all of that for you and make your job easier. If you are in to easier ways of doing things and keeping things simple, you may also want to check out www.wix.com.
Wix is an easy drag-and-drop online system that is unveiling a free HTML website builder on the 26th of March, 2012. Wix has already gained widespread popularity for their drag-and-drop Flash website builder that allows users to easily build complex, powerful, and stunning websites. Whether you’re looking for an easy way to put together site with a full screen background, or display your portfolio online, Wix is certainly worth checking out. It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned web developer or an ambitious do it yourself-er, creating a free HTML website or SEO friendly Flash website has never been easier.
Ever since Google’s Panda Update last year, many website owners have become concerned about duplicate content–which they should be, but there is more to it than that.
At the heart of what Google does, is ensure that quality results are shown for searchers. Part of the drive behind the Panda Update was to eliminate not only duplicate content but also “thin content” that has little or no value.
At the core, thin content is basically not enough information on a website page. Content needs to have enough to it to engage a visitor and drive them to take action. When a site page doesn’t engage or answer primary questions, it fails. It is hard to answer most questions effectively without writing an average amount of text. The same goes for action. There needs to be enough trust gained via the text to make the action worthwhile.
Since it is hard for Google bots to gauge quality from a human perspective, Google uses a rudimentary approach and measures the amount of words on a page. Although no one but Google knows the exact amount of text to have on the page to look good to the bots, the 300-500 word mark is a good number to target. This is based on what works for regular blog posts to be effective with SEO as established by Copyblogger and others.
Would the real Michael please stand up? (Source: CA Technologies)
There is a reason a book has no duplicate pages and a machine has no duplicate parts. They’re not needed.
This is just how search engines view content. It’s not very usable or informative for search results pages to contain multiple copies of the same thing. This is why your website may not be listed if a search query turns up other pages with content exactly like yours. However, there are grey areas to this, and you may not be aware it’s even happening to you.
Here are some of the main types of duplicate content that can occur on a website and what you can do to avoid them.
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Open-source content management systems like WordPress and Drupal get a lot of attention on design blogs, but they are not the only options when it comes to choosing a CMS. There are a number of hosted CMSs available that are popular with designers and their clients.
While the features vary form one hosted CMS to another, several of the primary benefits are common to all or most of them. Things like having the hosting included, the possibility for designing and developing sites very quickly, availability of pre-designed templates, and support tend to be listed among the benefits of choosing a hosted CMS.
Some hosted CMSs allow designers the opportunity for a private label, meaning that designers can brand the CMS as their own. In this case clients will see the designer’s branding rather than that of the company behind the CMS. In many of these cases the designer can also earn a commission on monthly hosting fees, which provides a nice stream of residual income for designers who use the CMS with a number of clients.
Any Road Will Take You There
As 2011 closed and 2012 is upon us, let’s remember some of the best of last year.
This list contains some of my favorite posts from our blog writing staff and also some of the hot topics on the web, that resonated with our readership and clients.
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Making a transition from employed designer to freelance designer can be intimidating for even the most talented of designers because there is so much more involved with being successful as a freelancer. As a freelancer you’ll be responsible for every aspect of your own business, and it’s those aspects aside from the actual design work that typically create the most significant challenges. While the transition is rarely easy, if you take a look at the mistakes that are commonly made by other new freelancers you can prepare yourself and avoid those potential pitfalls.
In this article we’ll take a look at 7 mistakes that many new freelancers make. The purpose is to help those of you who are in the process of moving into the world of freelancing, or considering it. By knowing these challenges ahead of time you’ll be better prepared to avoid them in your own business.
This mistake often happens even before making the move to full-time freelance work. If you are planning to try full-time freelancing there are a lot of uncertainties about how much money you will earn, especially during the first few months while you will likely need to work harder to find clients while establishing your business. In order to avoid financial problems and more stress than needed, ideally you will have at least enough money to cover a few months of your living expenses in case things start slowly.
Search Engine Optimization
