Online Marketing Blog

Discovery, Insights, and Wonderings On:

Online Marketing – Letting the world know you exist, what you have to offer,and why they should buy it from you
Search Engine Optimization, SEO – Getting higher ranks in Google, Yahoo, Bing
Website Development – Making your website look and work the way you want it to
Online Conversion – Turning visitors into customers

What Is The Best Screen Resolution To Design For?

March 4, 2013 By Leave a Comment
Most Used Screen Resolutions

Ever wondered, "What is the best size to build a website?" As a developer I get this question all the time, typically from graphic designers looking to make a site that lasts at least a few years. One good resource to answer the question is StatCounter's Screen Resolution Data. It gives a nice interactive graph with the latest screen resolutions in use throughout the web. Here's how it looked for January 2010 through December 2012. Of course, the answer will likely be different for … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web Design, Web Development Tagged With:

CloudFlare vs BlueHost Performance: Is switching worth it?

January 4, 2013 By 3 Comments
CloudFlare

A few months back (around September 2012), BlueHost and others started advertising--maybe even pushing--CloudFlare to its users. The promise was/is that CloudFlare will speed up your website using a content delivery network (CDN). They say it's a relatively easy thing to set up and BlueHost even has an integrated piece to facilitate it smoothly from with their own control panel. "I'm thinking of switching to Cloud Flare. Is this a good move or can this end up being a disaster? I've not read … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web Development, WordPress Development Tagged With: ,

WP Google Fonts Plugin

December 18, 2012 By Leave a Comment
WordPress Google Fonts Plugin

I had the pleasure of getting involved with the development of the excellent WP Google Fonts plugin by Adrian Hanft starting with version 3.0. Adrian reached out to see if I'd be interested in helping take WP Google Fonts to the next level by integrating it with the Google Webfonts API. Prior to v3.0, the plugin used a list of fonts meticulously and manually updated by Adrian. Since the plugin's conception, the Google Fonts foundry came alive with new fonts being added at an ever increasing … [Read more...]

Filed Under: WordPress Development Tagged With: , , , ,

The Best Full Screen Background Image Sizes for Web Design

October 9, 2012 By 7 Comments

I frequently get questions on the best size for background images from designers I work with. Full screen backgrounds have become more and more popular in the last couple of years and, I think, will remain so for at least a few more. The question asked is usually something like: "If I want to put a background image on a website that will span the background regardless of the display size a user is using, what would be the pixel dimension of the image?" I've considered this question before … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web Design, Web Development Tagged With:

“This is a business, not a bathroom” and Other Lost Opportunities

September 4, 2012 By Leave a Comment

My family and I recently completed a summer road trip driving across 5 states in the great Northwest, visiting friends, some of America's lesser known hot spots, and middle-of-nowhere businesses along the way. One thing we can all agree on is that road-trippers everywhere--especially those with small children--have need of convenient roadside bathrooms...probably more often than us bladder control champion dads care to admit. We covered a couple thousand miles, so we were lucky enough to test … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Business in General

Relating Posts, Pages, and Custom Post Types in WordPress

June 27, 2012 By 1 Comment
DB Relating Many to Many

I received a question from a fellow WordPress designer/developer recently on how I was able to bring content from related pages and posts into any page, post, or custom post type. "I like the way you pull in posts featured images and also page featured images on the bottom of pages.  It keeps the site hoping.  I wasn't able to find a plugin that would pull in featured images on both posts and pages and all of them seemed to be recent posts or random.  And then I tried to use categories in … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Web Development, WordPress Development Tagged With: , ,

Should We Be Blogging

May 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment

"More people have read this shirt than your blog." This is one of the most common questions we get asked. It's a hot topic and it applies to everyone from new businesses to well-established ones. Starting a blog is a pretty easy thing. Figuring out how to use it to your advantage is a bit tougher. Blogging is great for your website search engine optimization and creating a customer touch point. If you do it right. 65% of daily internet users read a blog. About 46% of daily internet users … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Social Media Marketing Tagged With:

Online Marketing Minute: How Can Social Media Help My Business?

January 20, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Business people, did you know that about half of direct mail is never opened? And, that over 200 million of us have joined the no-call list. We are also great at deleting spam with blinding efficiency. How can businesses reach their customers then? One way we can reach our customers is through social media marketing. We are inherently social creatures. We work, live, talk, and play together. Social media is a blending of technology and talking to each other...anywhere, anytime, with anyone. … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing Tagged With:

Online Marketing Minute: Why do search engines matter to my business?

January 12, 2012 By Leave a Comment

You may already think you know the answer to, "Why do search engines matter to my business?" But let me take a minute to show you why they don't just matter, they really matter. By the Numbers As of 2011, 92 percent of US Internet surfers use search engines. In December of 2011, 18.2 billion searches were conducted with the major search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo. (Google alone had a staggering 12 billion, followed by Bing with 2.7 billion, and Yahoo! with 2.6 billion. Google has … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Marketing, Search Engine Optimization Tagged With:

Online Marketing Minute: What is online marketing?

January 5, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Hearing a lot of hype lately about online marketing? What is online marketing? Online marketing uses the web to tell people who you are, what you offer, and how they can get it. Instead of offline options like newspaper, fliers, and radio, online marketing uses websites, email, social networks, and more to get and keep your customers. Nearly 80% of the US uses the Internet! That includes everyone, kids through seniors. 97% of us use the Internet to research products and services in our local … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Online Marketing Tagged With:
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