Quite often, we’re so focused on helping others that our own sites suffer. That can have a negative impact on your business. Without compelling content of your own, it can be difficult to win over new clientele.

It’s not so difficult, however, to spruce up the content on your site. All it takes is setting aside some time to do the work.

So, clear an hour or two from your busy schedule and follow these tips for creating great content.

Note that our focus here won’t be on listing your projects or styling them in some unique way. Rather, we’ll look at the other areas of a designer’s site that are often neglected. Yet, they’re just as important.

Tell Your Own Unique Story

Sometimes, it can feel like if you’ve seen one designer’s site, you’ve seen them all. So many of us tend to follow the same formula. But prospective clients want to know what separates you from the competition.

Therefore, it’s important to make yourself stand out. To do so, take advantage of your company’s most unique asset: You.

While other designers may have similar skills, they haven’t had the same experiences. They also don’t have your character traits or your signature style.

So, instead of settling for generic “marketing speak”, show the world who you are. Talk about your passions and how they inspire your work. Share why you love your job and what led you to become a business owner. Use imagery and colors that reflect your personality. Post a photo of your family or a favorite pet.

For some of us, it can be difficult to market ourselves in this way. In my case, it took a while to become comfortable with putting myself out there as a “brand”. But it can be an incredibly effective way to reach your audience.

The key is to show your human side. After all, you’re not just a robot writing code all day. In essence, anyone can do that. By allowing people to share in your journey, you’re making a more personal connection. In turn, this provides visitors with a more positive vibe than a standard corporate website.

Advocacy Through Walls by Tubix UX

Position Yourself as an Expert

Of course, sharing your love of video games alone won’t have clients beating down your door. You also need to demonstrate that you know what you’re doing.

Again, it’s best to avoid generalized skill descriptions. For instance, those ever-present graphs that tell the world you’re 50% proficient in CSS won’t help your prospects. If anything, they’re a major turn-off: Why would anyone want to hire a web designer who doesn’t fully understand CSS? It sends the entirely wrong signal.

Instead of simply listing your strengths, it’s wise to do something a bit more creative. Having your own company blog, for example, can be a terrific way to showcase what you know.

Indeed, it’s hard to find the time to write entries (my own experience confirms it). But there’s no need to pressure yourself. Even if you can only write a few posts per year, that still counts as original content. And, they may just bring in some new visitors via search engines and social media.

As for subject matter, write about what you know and the experiences you’ve had. Maybe you just learned something exciting at a conference. Or perhaps you recently helped a client improve their online sales.

You don’t have to go incredibly in-depth or get too technical. Something short and to-the-point is often the better way to go and can be quite effective.

Honesty in Service

One of the more disappointing events in a web designer’s life is opening an email from a prospective client, only to find that they’re looking for something you don’t offer. The sound of cash registers ringing quickly turns to those horns of despair from the Price is Right.

While you might not be able to fully rid yourself of such emails, you can lessen them quite a bit. Surely, you’ll want to list the services you provide somewhere on your site. But it might also be worthwhile to point out any specific services that you don’t offer, as well.

It may sound like an unusual step – and it is. However, showing that honesty in what you are and aren’t willing to do serves two purposes. First, it helps to avoid any mutual wasting of time. Second, it positions you as someone who is truthful and trustworthy.

As a personal example, I like to mention the fact that I don’t generally take on the maintenance of sites that were built by someone else. It’s not a situation that I feel comfortable with and I state it upfront. This has not only cut down on the number of those types of requests I receive, it has also started some conversations that led to redesigning a site for a new client.

Sometimes it feels like honesty is sorely missing in our society. By providing it, you’re increasing your chances of forming a great relationship with your clients.

Provide a More Genuine Experience

Put yourself in a client’s shoes. Who would you trust more? A web designer who shares their knowledge and invites you to learn more about who they are? Or what about someone who just throws tired slogans and meaningless buzzwords at you?

It stands to reason that people are more likely to work with someone who is genuine. A great website is an investment, after all. If you’re going to spend your hard-earned money, you’d want someone you can trust and that has the experience to do the job right.

These are the qualities that need to come through in your portfolio website. Show visitors who you are and give them a reason to become clients.

The post How to Create Compelling Content for Your Portfolio Site appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

But even as we continue to improve in a multitude of areas, that change doesn’t always reflect in our business. Because we’re often designers first and businesspeople second, we don’t always consider what our own personal growth means for our business. Therefore, we keep plugging away in same manner we always have. This could be a costly mistake.

So, instead of doing things as you’ve always done them, it may be time to make some changes in what you do and how you do it. Let’s take a look at some ways that your design business can evolve along with you.

Choose Clients More Carefully

When you’re just starting out in the design world, you often work with whoever is willing to work with you. That’s not a bad thing as we all have bills to pay. But as you gain experience, you have to become a bit more discerning.

If your business is in a place where you can start commanding a higher price for your work, it’s up to you to make it happen. A talented and busy designer should charge accordingly.

In my career, this is one of the hardest lessons I’ve had to learn. Always wanting to be the “good guy” who is willing to give breaks has undoubtedly cost me over the years. But I’ve come to realize that, if I’m going to manage piles of work, then I should at least be well paid for it.

Still, this isn’t just about money. There are other reasons to look more closely at who you work with. You should also consider the types of projects you get the most enjoyment from. Even a high-paying gig can seem worthless if you’re not having any fun.

It’s also worth looking into factors such as whether or not a client has a relatively clear vision of what they want, how a project affects your work environment and how much overall stress it’s going to put on you. If one or more of these areas isn’t to your liking – is it really worth taking on the job? Unless you’re in a truly dire financial position, then the answer is probably “no”.

Prioritize What’s Important to You

It’s difficult to build and maintain a successful business. There’s a lot of hard work and long hours involved. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with putting in maximum effort, you also need to find some balance in your life. Becoming a workaholic will only have the opposite effect.

Once you’ve reached a certain comfort level in your business, it makes sense to adjust your workload. This doesn’t mean that you stop working hard or that you get to spend all of your time at the beach. But it should mean that you cut back on those extra hours – the ones above and beyond the regular workday. The big question is how do you know when you’ve reached that sweet spot?

Earlier, we talked about increasing your prices to reflect your talent and experience. I’d say that, once you have made this type of change, you should also be in a position to take a second look at how you’re working. After all, a business should work for you just as much as you work for it.

One would think that price hikes would naturally weed out a lot of the lower-priced (yet still highly-stressful) types of projects. Surprisingly, I’ve found that raising prices over the years hasn’t necessarily led to a decrease in project opportunities. Instead, the bigger challenge has been learning how to avoid overloading my schedule.

While there aren’t any one-size-fits-all types of answers, there are some things we can do to keep our sanity. For one, learn to say “no” when you have to. If there’s no way to fit in a new project, be honest about it. Maybe there’s a way to postpone it until the future or perhaps you could send it to another trusted freelancer.

Just remember that, while you may be a design rock star, you shouldn’t try to be a superhero. We’re all human and have our limits.

Look for Opportunities to Implement Changes

Enacting major change in a business isn’t something you just wake up one morning and do. It requires some planning in order to do things the right way.

In the case of changes to rates and policies, you probably won’t want to make them effective immediately for existing clients. Instead, give them fair warning at least a month or two in advance. This will give them some time to prepare for the effect it has on their business.

When it comes to bringing on new clients, it’s often a prime opportunity to test changes out before implementing them on a broader scale. For example, if you’re looking to streamline how clients get in touch with you or provide feedback, it might be worth trying on a single project. This way, you can work out any bugs before rolling out the new system to everyone.

Another benefit of implementing changes on the micro level is that it places less of a burden on you. We’re often resistant to making changes due to our own fears of how to make it all work. Doing this on a small scale means that you’re taking less risk. Once you see what works and what doesn’t, you can make the necessary adjustments and feel more confident in the process.

Sameness = Stagnation

The beauty of a freelance design career is that you have the ability to shape your business in a way that fits your personality and style. And, just like you, a business should make positive changes over time. Otherwise you’ll find that things can stagnate – making your job less fulfilling.

Changing what you do and how you do it isn’t particularly easy, but it really is a necessary part of being successful. If you’re not moving forward, you’re falling behind.

Take a look at how you and your skills have changed since you first started out in web design. Then, think about some changes you can implement that will keep you moving in the right direction.

The post How to Change Your Web Design Business Strategy appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

The results are impressive. Think of all the careers kickstarted by online publishing. I am living proof. Writing and web design have provided me with income and a platform. I’m forever grateful.

However, the rules of content ownership seem to be changing before our eyes. And it’s not the familiar trope of a spammer copying your text and images.

These days, large companies are trying to stake a claim. Social media has been doing this for years. And now artificial intelligence (AI) is putting the practice into overdrive.

Not everyone wants to own our content outright. Various platforms are looking to profit from what we create, though. Let’s take a look at what’s happening and what it means.

A Misunderstanding That Made Creators Think

Imagine a tool that helps you create compelling content. It then takes your content and profits from it. A recent change to Adobe’s Terms of Use seemed like it might do just that.

Users were up in arms regarding the revised language in the agreement:

“4.2 Licenses to Your Content. Solely for the purposes of operating or improving the Services and Software, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free sublicensable, license, to use, reproduce, publicly display, distribute, modify, create derivative works based on, publicly perform, and translate the Content. For example, we may sublicense our right to the Content to our service providers or to other users to allow the Services and Software to operate as intended, such as enabling you to share photos with others. Separately, section 4.6 (Feedback) below covers any Feedback that you provide to us.”

I’m no lawyer or legal expert. But it sounds like the company is permitting itself to use your content. Theoretically, Adobe could use content created in Photoshop to feed its AI model.

Adobe has since clarified that this is not the case. The changes relate to allowing their cloud-based AI tools to modify your content – at your request. Furthermore, the language is there to facilitate the sharing of files via Adobe apps.

Perhaps it was all an honest misunderstanding. But can you blame anyone for being suspicious of the change?

Content Isn’t Just for User Consumption

The relentless pace of AI is making some people uncomfortable. Tools are scraping our websites to feed their models. Opting out isn’t straightforward.

It’s also different from social media. The workaround there has been to create content on a platform you control (a website) and promote that content on social media. We’re merely funneling traffic from a proprietary platform—not allowing it to own our creations.

AI has changed the game. The platforms are meeting us where we are. They’re indexing what we’ve published to improve their product.

All of this happens in the background. It may not be a big deal to some. If you can’t see it happening, what’s the harm?

We may not immediately see the effects. But the long-term ramifications could be significant.

What happens when a company chooses AI instead of a copywriter? Or let ChatGPT generate all of its custom code? Or replace a graphic artist with a text-to-image tool?

These things are already happening. Maybe they haven’t impacted you just yet. But pessimists will see this as feeding the machine that will take your place.

Rethinking the Role of Apps in Content Creation

I can’t say that I ever considered the role apps play in what I create. For example, I’ve used Photoshop since the 1990s. It was a great tool that helped me accomplish my goals. It still is.

The misunderstanding surrounding its Terms of Use has me wondering. How far will an app go to serve us and itself?

It’s no longer paranoia to think a software company would use our content for profit. And governing bodies can’t act swiftly enough to stop it. It’s the wild west out there. Companies will experiment and go as far as they can.

So, perhaps it’s no longer about using the most powerful tool for the job. Now, it’s about using tools that respect users.

App developers should be clear about their intentions. And, if they are feeding content to AI models, they should allow users to opt out. The process for doing so should be simple.

There’s a market for apps with a privacy-first focus. We see this with web browsers like Firefox and DuckDuckGo. That’s a roadmap for creative apps and publishing platforms to follow.

The New Reality of Content Creation

There’s always been some risk when publishing online. Anyone could copy your work and call it their own. Or they could redistribute your work in an unapproved manner. It’s frustrating, for sure. But we’ve learned to live with it.

These days, the concern is how and where we create. Do we own our content – or are we expected to share ownership? What rights do we have? What does all of the legalese in the Terms of Service mean?

The answers may deter some of us from publishing. That’s a shame because the internet is the perfect medium for sharing ideas.

In reality, we should think twice before using a tool or platform. As creators, we need to know what we’re getting into.

The situation also underscores the importance of free, open-source software (FOSS). Platforms like WordPress ensure content ownership and portability. Integration with AI is optional – even if blocking content scrapers isn’t automatic.

The bottom line is to do your homework. Find tools that respect your privacy and rights to ownership, and avoid the ones that go too far.

We can’t control everything in this industry, but we can make informed choices. For now, it’s our best option.

The post The Fight to Own Your Creative Content appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Most web developers figure out the best format through trial and error – and sometimes the experience isn’t always an easy one because most people don’t understand how these formats work.

In order to understand how to find the best format for your images, let’s take a look those commonly in use today – as well as some next-generation formats that are gaining adoption momentum.

Universal Image Formats

JPEG

In use for more than 25 years, JPEG is a standard that has stood the test of time. JPEG is very good at compressing continuous-tone images, like photographs, which feature many colors and smooth transitions between them. JPEG, however, is not ideal for compressing images with crisp edges or high-energy, noisy textures, and will result in rings around sharp edges or fine detail being blurred out.

GIF

In the early days of the web, if an image wasn’t a JPEG, it was a GIF. The GIF format is good at compressing images that have large chunks of identical or repetitive data. As a result, images that only have a few colors, in broad swaths, with sharp transitions between them can be stored efficiently and losslessly as GIFs. In addition, the format supports transparency and animation.

Because it has a hard 256-color limit, GIF should not be used when compressing images that have even a moderate number of colors. Converting an image with more than 256 colors into a GIF results in lossy posterization, which will not look good. So, while GIF was initially used for a variety of images, today it should be considered only if you need animation.

PNG

PNG excels with the same sorts of images as GIF, but it offers some added benefits. For example, there is no 256-color limit and the format features superior compression. It also supports alpha channel transparency, which enables a pixel to be partially transparent, and not simply all-transparent or fully-opaque.

In the end, PNG will be better than GIF for images with crisp edges and broad swaths of solid color or precisely repeated patterns. However, it will perform worse than JPEG when it comes to photographs.

Next-Generation Image Formats

WebP

WebP is an offshoot of Google’s WebM video format. It takes the simple predictive strategy used by the PNG format to the next level. WebP uses one of up to sixteen different prediction strategies for every (variable-sized) block in the image, and can either losslessly or lossily compress the residual difference between the predicted and actual values.

As a result, WebP offers a lot of flexibility. It is good for a wide variety of imagery (both graphic, if you choose its lossless settings, and photographic, if you go lossy), and generally offers better compression than either PNG or JPEG. The downside: it is currently only supported in two of the major browsers: Chrome and Opera.

JPEG-XR

Microsoft’s next-gen-format-of-choice is JPEG-XR. It layers a bunch of new techniques on top of the basic mechanics of JPEG compression, enabling lossless compression, more efficient lossy compression and alpha-channel semi-transparency. Like WebP, JPEG-XR is a lot more complex, performant, and less-well-supported than its predecessors. Right now, the format is only supported in Internet Explorer and Edge.

These next-generation formats offer a lot of promise, but because of the limitations on their support, it will be important to serve JPEG or PNG backups to ensure all visitors to your website can view images. You can either do this on the client side, using the new <picture>/<source type> pattern or on the server, using HTTP Accept headers for Content Negotiation

Conclusion

Whether you’re using legacy formats or delivering the formats of the tomorrow, today – picking the right format for your images is one of the first, simplest, and best things you can do for your site’s performance. Choose wisely!

You might also like to learn how to optimize images on websites to improve performance and UX.

The post Selecting the Best Format for Image Content appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

That was then, this is now. The Digg effect is now nearly nonexistent, paling in significance to the other social networks. Digg, like Stumbleupon and Reddit, is just a bookmarking system with some added kudos. Whereas things like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and Linkedin are far more robust systems that offer a heck of a lot more interactivity and functionality.

So what is vogue at the moment?

The current vogue, is Pinterest. Pinterest is a nice looking jQuery Masonry implementation with a bunch of images that promote comments and link clicks. All very nice, but is it useful?

In a word, YES. I used to think it was a flash in the pan, but the more I see how people and businesses are using it, the more I see its potential as a massive traffic driver. Apparently, 9% of US-based major online stores are already using Pinterest, as well as many magazines that are choosing to have specific Pinterest editors that keep their community feed with many new images added every day.

The main winners seem to be companies that post women’s products like fashion and accessories. Companies that share menus and recipes, magazines (again women’s magazines), and photographers. As for mainstream media, it should be noted that Mashable chose to add Pinterest to its interactive floating sidebar links, suggesting that Pinterest is a real winner.

The main problem for implementation is getting the right image shared. When sharing a page with the interactive share button of Pinterest, the author chooses the image that is shared rather than the viewer. This is a bit of a shame as we are not all the same and see different things of interest.

Other new entrants to the market

Klout

Klout is another new entrant to the market worthy of note. Although immature and really not perfectly accurate, it is a nice bit of fun to be able to gauge your social network presence against others.

By hooking into the social networks you’re a member of, Klout tries to gauge a number of factors, including reach (total people who view your stuff), amplification (how many people share what you have made/shared), and impact (how much what you say influences others).

While this is a set of noble ideals to have information on, it’s really not implemented fully. For example, it only details a single Facebook and Twitter account. Should you be a marketeer, the system breaks down automatically as your alter-egos will not be accounted for.

Also, it really is immature at the moment as it doesn’t cover all social networks, doesn’t cover what you blog, doesn’t cover what you guest blog and the perks system has been implemented with limited perks that don’t relate personally to most.

So what is it good for? It’s good for Friday night down at the pub when you try to prove that you’re more important than your buddies in a web popularity contest. It’s also slightly better, in my opinion, than kred, which only deals with your Twitter account.

In the future, both Kred and Klout will probably improve and may grow to maturity in a year or two.

Lockerz

If you think you might have the influence, then you might want to hook up with Lockerz.

Made by a former Amazon Exec, this tool allows you to try to influence your social network friends and followers into buying products you recommend. In return, you get points that can be traded for prizes.

I can see this website growing into a system of home shopping queens trying to influence their friends so that they can get that dress for free. There have been some rumors, though, that the prizes are often gone too quickly to actually use your points.

Interestingly, to try to market their platform, Lockerz has brought in AddToAny as a method of disseminating their products. That’s not a bad idea, but it appears the average person now doesn’t want to use their social networking tool because of the number of tracking cookies it has.

Incidentally, this will soon be illegal in the UK without first asking the viewer if they agree to having tracking cookies used (see UK PCER).

What you really need to know and use for sharing

It’s all about the big four. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, and Google+.

In truth, these are the only social networks that you need to have on your site, no matter where you are in the world. On top of those, you need to consider local differences, such as Hyves in Holland or vkontakte in Russia and so on.

There is nearly always a local social network in the local language that is worth adding for sharing. When I say worth adding, you have to look at the number of users and see if it’s less than 5 million. If it is, then forget it. In the case of larger countries, if less than 1/4 of the population uses it, forget about it.

Some will argue that networks that relate to the website business are also relevant, like Slashdot, a site that deals with code. To them, I say, why bother when LinkedIn has 150million users, of which approx 40% are in IT/Web positions?

Rather than wasting that valuable screen space (real estate as some like to call it) on secondary networks, focus on what will bring in the mass numbers.

It’s not just about sharing; it’s also SEO

Last year, Google changed its SEO rules to include factors that pertain to social networking shares as a measure of popularity. On the whole, this was done because of Google+. As you can guess, Google wants to do everything in its power to make Google+ a success.

To enable this, it made +1’ing a page a factor in the SERP (Search Engine Results Page) rankings. As they could not count only their own network without massive outcry, they included the major social networking sites as well. Put simply, pages that have been liked, +1’ed, tweeted, or shared will get a higher position than other pages.

To like or +1 is not to share

When you like or +1 a site, you are not sharing it. You’re giving it your stamp of approval.

In truth, this isn’t what you want. You want your pages/site to be shared so that it appears in news feeds and does not end up on a secondary page where people have to search to find out what it is you approved.

If you’re really into getting the most reach from your site, don’t offer the like/+1 button. Offer the share button instead. Some systems cloak a share button in the form of a like button to give people the feeling that they’re using interactive buttons.

Do bookmarking sites have a place anymore?

Even the big ones like Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon are losing ground.

In fact, if you look at those sites that do use many interactive buttons, you’ll see share counts like the following again and again:

• Twitter : 1000
• Facebook : 250
• Linkedin : 125
• Google+ : 7
• Digg : 1
• Stumble : 2
• Reddit : 1

You can be sure that most of the share count for the last three was mainly created by the site owner. Of course, you can feel free to use these bookmarking sites if you want to; just know that most others don’t.

Sites and API’s often die

Even with an unlimited budget and countless staff, social networks die every day. The greatest example of this is Google Buzz. It closed its books for the last time back in December 2011. Yet, on many sites, it still exists as a method of sharing.

There are sites that sit in the top 500 that still display the icon for sharing on Google Buzz, but they just don’t work.

A classic example of this is Business Insider. They still offer a Google Buzz button. It would be much more clever and show the knowledge to be inside a business if they’d swapped that share option out for Google+.

The other thing that happens is evolution. For example, last year, Twitter stopped supporting some of its earlier API integration techniques in favor of its new API. This meant that some sites no longer had a working Twitter share button. Even if you think you have your social networking situation sorted out, you really have to review it every month or so by either checking which share APIs have changed or what sites are now defunct.

What about Following?

If you want to use any social network or website to host your information, go for it. If you’re an artist, consider Deviantart or Dribbble. If you’re busy helping others, show it off on stackoverflow. They’re all good in one way or another. Don’t be shy to give them a go.

Just don’t expect your site to do better because of it. Expect your reputation to do better because of it. The same can be said of YouTube, Vimeo, or any other video-sharing site. They should be on your site as a place to follow you or your channel. It’s up to you to put links in the description back to your site to add value.

Also, due to the DMCA, SOPA, PIPA, and ACTA actions of late, music sites/blogs are now under intense scrutiny from the law. My advice to you if you’re a DJ or musician is not to host your own music or mixes anymore. Instead, put it on a site like Sound Cloud. They’ll deal with the royalties and other issues without you needing to worry. They want to stay online and safe.

You can still use sites like Mininova (hosted self-made torrents) as a distribution method, but don’t rely on file-sharing sites such as Mediafire, as that kinda of thing has the eyes of the law all over it.

Why should you listen to the Author of this post?

I deal with social networking on a daily basis.

Not just sharing and following, but setting the strategy for companies from Global Corporations down to local businesses. On top of that, I’ve created one of the most popular social networking tools for WordPress, as well as many social network applications and site integrations.

I’ve only scratched the surface of social networking, but I trust you can see sense in my advice and will apply it to your customers.

The post Where Should I Really be Sharing Content? appeared first on Speckyboy Design Magazine.

Most of the usability rules for content sites might seem obvious but if you have designed mainly corporate sites, the switch might be an uneasy one. In order to assist you in the transition, here are some rules to bear in mind. These rules are not arranged in order of importance because if they were, there would have been 3 or 4 Number 1 positions, 4 or 5 Number 2 positions, etc.

1. The Content Is the Centerpiece

This rule sounds just like common sense but since we seem to (sometimes) miss it, let’s start with it. Basically, it means that your content, be it articles, images, videos, etc., is in the very center of the page (above the fold, of course) and is the first thing users see when they land on your site. Some webmasters are tempted to place ads in this place because this presumably increases their earnings but since content is the reason why users come to a site, I doubt this strategy works well in the long term.

Image Credit: Word collage on black on ShutterStock.

2. Be Consistent in Your Navigation

Content sites usually have hundreds or even thousands of pages and if the site navigation is inconsistent, it is very easy to get lost. This is why you need to be consistent in
your navigation. For instance, always include a Home link. It is even better, if you include one Home link in the menu at the top and one more somewhere at the bottom of the page.

Consistency in navigation also means to have the same navigation items in the same place on each page – i.e. to page specific menus or menus that change their place on different pages. Additionally, always use the same menu items on each page. In those cases, when you use section-specific menus (i.e. an expandable second-level menu with items specific for the particular section), make these consistent (i.e. use the same menu items for all the pages in that section), too.

Image Credit: Compass on ShutterStock.

3. Make the Text Readable

Another common mistake I’ve noticed way too often, especially with content sites with a lot of text, is the use of small font sizes. It is true that 8px or 10px font size allows
to accommodate lots of text on one page but this is at the expense of readability. At such small sizes, the text is barely readable and for long chunks of text, it becomes a huge strain on the eyes. Of course, you can’t please everybody but if you give users the option to resize the text as per their liking, this is enough.

Long lines of text are another readability nightmare. If necessary, use two columns of text, but don’t have wide columns because they are harder to read, especially with smaller font sizes. On the other hand, two columns, when they are longish and require vertical scrolling aren’t better, so you need to avoid this as well. Fortunately, in addition to your main content, you usually have other items on page, for instance one or two columns with ads. These also take space and basically the content space gets limited anyway, so there might be no need to use two columns for text.

Image Credit:Lupa.

4. Pick a Good Contrast Color Scheme

In addition to font sizes, the color contrast also affects text readability. Low contrast text could do for headlines but for body text, it is totally unacceptable. This contrast calculator is an indispensable helper when wondering if the color scheme you plan to use provides enough contrast or not.

5. Always Show Related/Similar Items

As a rule, on a content site, there are many similar and/or related items. No matter how good your navigation is, don’t leave it to users to search for them the conventional way. Always show related/similar items for a content piece. For instance, if you have an image gallery and the user is on a page with palms, you can show other tropical paradise photos. Similar/related items not only ease the user but they also increases pageviews as well, so it is a win-win.

6. Test Cross-Browser

Cross-browser issues are a problem with content sites, too. While it is best if your content site displays perfectly in every browser you can imagine, very often the effort is
not worth the reward. Therefore, it might make no sense to strive for perfection but always make sure that at least the major functionalities display properly. For instance, if the thumbnails don’t display in a major browser, or the Resize Text gadget doesn’t work, this is unacceptable and you need to fix it.

One good tool you can use for cross-browser testing is Browser Shots. This tool will give you an idea how your site looks across various browsers and operating systems but you can’t test functionality here – i.e. if JavaScript is not working in some browser you won’t know it from this tool.

7. For Images, Use Thumbnails

Another rule that usually goes in the common sense category is to use thumbnails for images. However, when I say thumbnails, don’t take it literally. A thumbnail the size of a
thumb nail is basically useless because it doesn’t show clearly what the image is about. Use large thumbnails – this is what helps. For instance, Morgue File is one of my favorite stock photo sites but it used to have really tiny thumbnails (or maybe they are still using the same size but I simply got used to it?) where I couldn’t see what the picture is about. When a photo has lots of objects, you won’t see much detail in a thumbnail anyway but when you can’t see what the image is about, then what’s the use?

8. Optimize Your Pages to Load Fast

Most of us have fast Internet and fast computers but this doesn’t mean we enjoy a page that loads forever. For article pages, load times are usually less of a problem simply
because all equal articles are text and unless there are dozens of images or videos in the article, it loads more or less in seconds. Sometimes the load times are slow because of the load times for ads and in this case you might have to switch to an ad network that can serve fast.

However, with images and especially videos, it is a different story. Even when the image/video itself is small and/or compressed, when there are dozens of them on a page, this leads to slow load times. One approach is to manipulate the images/videos themselves, so that they are optimized for fast loading. Another approach (in addition to, not instead of the first) is to allow the user to choose how many images/videos per page to be displayed. This way users with fast Internet/PC, will be able to load more images at once rather than scroll through numerous pages, while users with slow Internet/PC won’t have to wait for ages for a single page to load.

9. Take Ads into Account

The presence of ads is another huge difference between a company site and a content site. Unlike company sites, content sites are usually monetized, so no matter if we like it or not, ads are here to stay. It is not an exception, though it is hardly admirable, for ads to take half or more of the space on a page. What is more, they usually take some of the best spots because there they are more visible and the revenue is higher. Additionally, as I already mentioned, ads take time to load and you can’t neglect this either when you think about the usability of your content site.

10. Don’t Forget to Include a Good Search Functionality

One more item that is more or less mandatory for a content site is a good search functionality. While it is common to have search functionality, it is even more common to have bad search functionality. In 2012 it is still way too frequent to find sites with poor search functionality – i.e. the search results you get are totally irrelevant. This is not only irritating but it also makes you lose visitors.

Of course, many users know they can use Google to search for results from a particular site only but don’t rely on this alone. Yesterday I was trying to find something on a site I used to frequent in the past but their search returned unusable results. To make things worse, the pages they had indexed in Google weren’t an option either because when clicked, they were redirecting to the homepage of the site. I guess this was something to do with the URLs they used, or with poor redirection but the result is that I couldn’t find what I wanted even with Google.

The site I was browsing was mainly an article site and still it was pretty depressing. I guess with images/videos the task is even harder because their contents doesn’t get indexed by Google directly. This means the site master must provide meaningful text descriptions of images/videos to be used for searches. I agree this is extra work but if you care about your users, don’t skip it.

11. Make Your Site Mobile-friendly

Finally, since we live in 2012, you can’t afford to miss mobile users. While it is best to have a separate mobile version of your site, in many cases it is not worth the effort. But if you do have lots of mobile traffic, or your site is in a niche that is popular with mobile users – i.e. news, stock quotes, ring tones, etc. – go the extra mile and make it mobile-friendly, or even better, create and maintain a separate mobile version.

Rounding-Up

Usability and user experience is something we frequently forget about but they are even more important than astonishing designs. Of course, you can never make all your users happy, even if your site is a usability masterpiece but if you don’t stick to the basic rules at least, then you certainly aren’t doing a great job. I am perfectly aware that there is much more to know about how to make a content site usable but I hope that even this small bunch of usability tips will help you make your sites more usable and more professional.

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