PicMonkey and me

In short, PicMonkey is a web based app you can use for free, to edit photos and create designs. However, that brief description does not do the app justice. Not even close.

PicMonkey has become an invaluable resource for my blogs and websites. Just to qualify that, since last winter, almost all the graphics you see on this blog were either created or edited using PicMonkey.

From Photoshop to PicMonkey

Previously, I used Adobe Photoshop to compress images, resize images, fix images and place text on images. Photoshop is one of the best pieces of software out there and has an almost endless number of great, professional features. However, for someone like me, who just needed to quickly make images for blog posts, using Photoshop was like using a Formula 1 car to go to the shops.

With PicMonkey, I can do everything I need in a fraction of the time. Also, because it’s web based, there’s no need to install (or buy) software for all my devices. I just visit the site and am working in seconds. This also means that it works fine on Windows, Mac and Linux.

How free is PicMonkey?

Some products offer a free version, which is either time-limited or so scaled down as to be of little real value. With PicMonkey, the majority of the features are available free of charge.

In many cases, people will upgrade, not because they need the premium features, but because they want to show their support for what is a superb service. I use it daily and have not found anything I have needed to do, which required a premium account.

I can not recommend this amazing app highly enough. It’s fast, easy to use and a superb productivity tool. Give PicMonkey a try.

If you are a blogger, or want to make images for Facebook, Google+ etc, it could be just what you’re looking for.

You can connect with the PicMonkey team on Twitter via @PicMonkeyApp and on Facebook here.

If you are a fellow PicMonkey user, let us know what you think with a comment.

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“Lightroom is the essential tool for busy professional and discerning amateur photographers, who are uncompromising in the pursuit for image quality or searching for artistic expression,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president of digital imaging products, Adobe. “The Lightroom 5 beta is highly valuable in ensuring the new features support and address the needs of our customers and we look forward to hearing feedback.”

Lightroom 5 has a number of new features and enhancements that promise to make the photo editing process easier than ever:

• Advanced Healing Brush allows customers to heal imperfections and remove distracting elements
• Upright tool analyzes an image to automatically level horizons and straighten objects like buildings to correct a keystone effect
• Radial Gradient tool creates off-center or multiple vignette effects
• Smart Previews allow customers to edit images without needing the original raw file
• Video slideshow enables customers to combine still images, video clips and music in a creative HD slideshow
• Upgrades to the Book module enhancing the ability to create, customize and order elegant photo books using a variety of tailored templates

The Lightroom 5 beta will be available on machines running Windows 7 SP1/8 and Mac OSX 10.7/10.8. You can grab the free beta here.

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“It-That-Won’t-Be-Named”

Since I started out in (and was first known in) the search engine marketing industry (when it was called “web site promotion” and “SEO” and PPC/PPI were just babies), I kept that as my base. It’s easier to network and connect with people who know you and realistically, as a single working mom, speaking at conferences and traveling to network with the usability side was not in my budget. Nor was getting to SEO functions, but thanks to the generosity of friends and my willingness to volunteer for free access, I got a start.

I have few friends from the usability side because to them I’m too closely aligned with marketers. What they don’t realize is the SEO camp threw me out too because I use these words when I write about my work:

“usability”, ”user experience”, ”web design”

and because, unlike Tim Ash, Roger Dooley, Shari Thurow, Bryan and Jeff Eisenberg, I’m not a book author who have written about landing page conversions, user behavior and marketing, and searchability and persuasive design.

I just do this stuff for a living.

Build a Raft

Some larger corporations learned that web site design is a unified team project and that each contribution is vital to the whole. They don’t start a project until the user experience people and search engine marketing people have a few beers first and shake hands.

Some SEO companies incorporate some form of usability review. Typically these are basic standards compliance only and never go beyond that into analyzing the data from a user experience and behavioral perspective. They also leave out information architecture, accessibility, mobile testing, forms, software application and shopping cart testing.

Because, of course, nobody in their right mind wants to market to ALL the people who use web sites.

Meanwhile, user experience people have been punching holes in all kinds of directions and I’m not just talking about the little donuts here folks. Search engines and companies like Amazon are so fascinated about how you buy stuff, like stuff, hate stuff and use stuff that they’re creating software to track behavior, algorithms to figure out credibility and chasing anyone who studies the brain to see what they can tell us about how we make decisions.

Not including user interface engineering and usability in a project plan from the very start is like shooting clay pigeons with a blindfold on while standing on one foot.

If you are hiding in a search engine marketing bunker somewhere looking to shoot the next person who utters the word “usability”, congratulations on your 15 seconds of page rank success and I hope you have more trees for the money you’ll invest in those ads that don’t convert. PS. Does your nicely ranked web site page or well placed ad that cost a small fortune click to a page or site that works on mobile devices and screen readers? Thought so.

If you’re sitting on the high human factors mountain where all things are magically sold, you believe that keywords are nonsense, search engines will “eventually figure it out” and you have no interest in helping a site owner make money, develop a brand, pay their mortgage and hire people to help the economy, have fun in you next life with karmic burden.

If you are one of the Silent Ones who agree with me that user experience and internet marketing can share a house together, please find the courage to come forth and express the benefits (of which there are countless) of applying techniques from both practices.

I need help building the raft.

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“As Adobe continues to focus on delivering world-class innovation through Creative Cloud and digital fulfillment, we will be phasing out shrink-wrapped, boxed versions of Creative Suite and Acrobat products. Electronic downloads for Creative Suite and Acrobat products will continue to be available—as they are today—from both Adobe.com, as well as reseller and retail partners. We are in the process of notifying our channel partners and customers, as plans solidify in each region.”

Since last year, Adobe has put considerable marketing muscle behind its Creative Cloud subscription service. For $49.99 a month, subscribers get access to all the software included in CS6 alongside development tools for games and Web pages.

Phasing out its retail presence makes perfect sense as Adobe pushes for more subscribers. After all, a few hundred thousand subscribers paying $50 a month for years to come will make them far more money than single time purchases of CS6.

So, what if you really want to own a boxed retail copy of CS6? TechHive says that stores will carry boxed copies of CS6 until April 30. After that, you’ll either have to buy digital copies or sign up for a Creative Cloud subscription.

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Let’s start at the beginning.

Plain English

When someone lands on your website (assuming they are English) their eyes will automatically be drawn to the top left and scan in a left to right motion, from top to bottom.

The first thing they’ll want to know is that they’ve arrived at the right place. That’s why your company name and strapline must be at the top of your website. After that there should be some well written words highlighting what you can do for them – yes, afraid so, this isn’t the place for a long essay on how great your company is.

It’s essential your opening gambit is powerful as this will determine whether the visitor will remain on your site to find out more, or navigate away to find another website.

But powerful doesn’t mean ridiculously complex words and sentences in an attempt to show your intelligence – it won’t.

What it will do is show you as a company that is far more interested in its own importance than it is it’s customers. That’s why you should always use plain and simple English to get your point across succinctly.

Clear navigation

The ability to easily navigate around your website is vital to enhance the user experience.

For example every website needs an “About Us” page so the user can learn a bit about the company they may be about to do business with. The name “About Us” fits this purpose perfectly. So why then do you find websites that use other, more obscure names for this page?

If you have a page that talks about your services, call it the “Services” page – it’s not rocket science.

By keeping your page names simple and obvious your visitors will be able to find their way around your website with ease – don’t make them hunt for information.

The other aspect of your navigation is to keep it to a minimum. There’s nothing more frustrating than landing on a website that’s full of hyperlinks – how will your visitor know where to click? Make sure your navigation is clear and simple to make moving around your website as intuitive as possible.

Readability

Earlier we mentioned the importance of using plain, simple English on your website, but you also need to make sure that it’s laid out in such a way that reading it is effortless.

The best way to achieve this is by including plenty of white space on your page. Taking this post as an example, you can see that I’ve used lots of short paragraphs and sub headings to help you, the reader, find the information you need.

The white space breaks up the text making it appear easier to digest. But it’s not just layout that you need to consider, colour also comes into play.

Have you noticed the number of websites these days that are using grey text on a white background? Yes, they look very modern, but for some readers this can pose problems because of the lack of contrast. Try and stick to high contrasts, like black on white, to make it easier for people of all ages to read what you have to say.

Prioritise your information

As with everything in life the most important stuff should come first.

When laying out your text, prioritise the order in which it will appear with the main benefits first leading on to the features and finally any other supporting information you have.

This will make sure the reader is hit with the important facts (the benefits) first, which will ultimately help them make their buying decision.

If you leave these until the end, you run the risk of losing them before they reach them.

As you can see, an effective website is a lot more than just an eye-catching design. Every aspect of your site, from its content to it’s images, layout and navigation, will have an impact on its success.

Take a few minutes out now to look at your website. Does it tick all the boxes, or is there room for improvement?

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Like the other Chrome Experiments before it, this latest one is another great case study for the continued development of HTML5 and open Web technologies. The tornado segment is an especially awesome example of the kinds of technical marvels developers and designers are now able to achieve with Web technologies that could barely render 2D sprites only a few years ago.

If you’re more interested in the development work that went on behind this latest experiment, hit up the Chromium blog to see all the technologies used. To get even more in depth, you can check out UNIT9′s case study at HTML5 Rocks.

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As this also plays a vital part in your ranking success, it’s about time I gave it some coverage. However, a word of warning, I’m not a web designer or coder, so this is all stuff I’ve picked up along the way (i.e. it won’t be really technical).

I guess a good a place to start is your website’s navigation.

Navigation

Q: What is the purpose of your site’s navigation?

A: To help your visitors find their way around your site easily and for the search engine spiders to crawl your site easily.

Did you see that? The word ‘easily’ featured twice in that sentence – that should give you a clue as to where this is going.

There are 2 main things to say here: the first is that your navigation should be coded in such as away that it’s easy for the spiders to crawl it (i.e. not in Flash or JavaScript); secondly, think about how deep your website is.

Uh?

Depth is basically a measure of how many clicks people need to make to reach the inner pages of your website. The more layers they have to click through, the harder it is for them to navigate.

People (and search engine spiders) like to find the information they need quickly and easily and don’t take kindly to having to dig deep to find it. So, if possible, make sure your website only has a maximum of 3 clicks to find the information needed. This will help your rankings (in conjunction with your other SEO activities) and reduce your bounce rate.

That’s why it’s vital you plan your website’s navigation and structure from the outset rather than just letting it evolve.

Internal linking

The depth of your site thingy is OK if you’re a relatively small company, but what happens when the size of your business demands a big website?

That’s where good internal linking comes in to play.

There are 2 types of links relevant to SEO:

• External backlinks – those than point to your website from one unrelated to your site
• Internal backlinks – links that connect pages within your own website

Why is it important to link between your own pages?

Well they have a number of SEO advantages: such as decreasing the number of clicks need to access information deep within your site (benefiting the spiders and readers); giving you the opportunity to use keyword rich anchor text links; improving user experience.

So, whenever you add a new blog post, page or article to your website, make sure you use relevant anchor text links to link it to other related information within your website.

URL

The last item on my list is your URL structure.

Using your keywords within your URL structure will definitely help your SEO, so make sure all your sub-pages use keywords relevant to that page.

Not a lot more to say about that one.

Over to you

That’s a very quick, non-techy perspective on website structure and search engine optimisation.

So come you on techies out there, what have I missed out?

If you can offer some nuggets of wisdom, leave a comment below and enlighten the masses.

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Sheibley became Foursquare’s first designer, and therefore had a huge role in the app you know and love.

Here’s some more from her farewell blog post:

That “project” was called Foursquare. It was about recording where you’ve been, sharing with friends and discovering new places. For someone like me who used to record all the bars I had been to in a word doc, it was perfect. I could tell there was something special about Foursquare from the very beginning. The energy and excitement that Dennis and Naveen exuded was infectious and the product was addictive. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t pay me, I just wanted to be a part of something I believed in.

Almost four years later I’ve watched Foursquare grow from two guys working out of Think Coffee to a company employing over 150 people across three offices on two continents. In that time I’ve drawn hundreds of badges and icons, designed UI for web, Android and, most notably, iOS. I’ve watched the product evolve from a simple check-in service to a robust recommendation engine. I’ve designed t-shirts, hand cut fake tattoos, co-founded Tie Tuesday, and oversaw the design side of a massive company-wide app redesign. It’s been a wild ride, but like all good things, it must come to an end.

Here’s what a current Foursquare designer had to say about Sheibley on Twitter:

Follow @mrdavenport

Zack Davenport
@mrdavenport

I’ve learned so much, thanks @Mari18. RT @Mari18 Bidding a fond farewell to Foursquare as I go on to new adventures: http://t.co/oswEcIPV

Follow @Mari18

Mari Sheibley
@Mari18

@mrdavenport Thanks Zack! You’re super talented and I can’t wait to see what you produce for 4SQ in the coming years!

 Reply  ·  Retweet  ·  Favorite
2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

[via TechCrunch]

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For some that term might simply mean better visual appeal, more pleasing to the eye or stylish.

To me it means better communication.

The primary thing I have to offer is information and better design allows me to communicate that information more effectively and more profitably.

I’m not suggesting that aesthetics of better design aren’t important, but of equal importance to me is hierarchy of information, white space and information way finding that is delivered with the right fonts, spacing and appropriate use of size and color.

Good design costs money, but so does poor design, clutter and confusing information.

As you may have noted if you’re reading this on my site, ducttapemarketing.com has undergone a total redesign and now runs on a custom theme on the Genesis framework. The design was completed by Rafal Tomal and Josh Byers of Studio Press, part of the Copyblogger Media.

The redesign was badly needed as my site had sort of become like some of the Christmas trees I remember as child where my brothers and sisters would just keep putting more and more stuff on the tree because, well, we could.

The overarching goal of the redesign was to more effectively communicate and more effectively deliver information. Comments from readers suggest we made huge strides in that aim.

Statistics also reveal site traffic is up 22% over the previous six month trend, page views are up 104%, time on site and bounce rate have both made significant improvements and sales of our core product, with any change in promotion, are up 219% over a six month trend.

Invest in better communication through better design – it always pays when you get it right.

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