Design Notes

09 Jun

Contact Form for Wild Apricot

POP has been a Wild Apricot partner since the program began. We’ve gotten a lot of inquiries over the years, and we still love the platform and the work that we�[...]

30 May

Working Where We Like

In the early 1990s, I wrote a regular monthly column called “Travel Lite.” Back then, the portable field consisted mainly of laptop computers using the familiar clamshell design ju[...]

22 Mar

The Many Advantages of Choosing Wordpress

If you have written Wordpress off as just a site for the casual blogger, it is time to take a closer look. We have been creating websites for many clients, throughout all industries, using Wordpress b[...]

22 Mar

Low Budget Video

Adding video to your site can enhance the experience your clients have when they visit your site and engage your visitors with something memorable. Video can create a lasting impression for your compa[...]

22 Mar

Finding Real Value in Web Hosting

Note: This post was updated on January 6, 2014. One of my web design clients wanted my help finding a cheaper web hosting option. Her colleague, also a client, had recommended she try hosting with [...]

22 Mar

The Agency Download

I think there's a tendency among designers to create design concepts before they've spent enough time getting to know the client's business. They get so fixated on an idea that they start throwing tog[...]

22 Mar

Becoming Mobile Friendly Using Responsive Web Design

With the vast and growing popularity of smart phones, tablets, and other mobile web devices, web designers have certainly had their hands full developing sites that will look great when accessed from [...]

22 Mar

Technology and Creative Design

We live in an age of remarkable technological advances. The microchip keeps getting smaller and more powerful. Flat-screen TV's keep getting sharper and less expensive. Smartphones keep getting smarte[...]

22 Mar

Designing a Website That Will Attract High Volumes of Traffic

Almost every single business has their own website now. No matter what industry you are in, it is next to impossible to stay ahead of your competition without having at least a decent web presence. No[...]

22 Mar

Exploring Your Ecommerce Hosting Options

The advantages that accompany moving your business online are certainly bountiful. By using Ecommerce, you can open a virtual business that is not only open 24/7, but it is also capable of reaching cu[...]

22 Mar

Creating an Online Marketing Video That Will Go Viral

Literally billions of YouTube videos are viewed every single day. Viral videos are an online phenomenon that attracts thousands to millions of viewers. Can you imagine the amount of traffic that could[...]

22 Mar

What Google’s New Algorithm Means for Your SEO Strategies

Google is always making changes to its algorithm. As a business owner with a website constantly dropping in the search rankings, you might find these changes quite the nuisance. In reality, these chan[...]

22 Mar

Does Social Media Marketing Work?

Social media marketers believe that you need to build a dynamic and ongoing presence on Facebook and Twitter to build awareness and attract new customers. There are definitely some success stories, bu[...]

22 Mar

Online versus Print Advertising

It's sobering to see how much money is spent every year on advertising. Through Google I found estimates in the realm of half a trillion dollars. General Motors alone spent over $4 Billion on advertis[...]

22 Mar

Creating a Personal Dialogue with Your Customers

A few months ago, I wrote a post asking "Does Social Media Marketing Work?" While it doesn't always, there are cases when it does work quite well provided you approach it as part of a vital brand stra[...]

22 Mar

Mobile Web Searching to Surpass PC Searching

Recent studies have shown that mobile web searches have experienced explosive growth over the past few years alone. Google, along with Cisco, Gartner, and Compuware, have all released similar reports [...]

22 Mar

Introducing the Profile Series and Adrian Frutiger

This will be the first in a series of profiles. I'm not interested in rich famous celebrities, or deceased legends. When choosing a person to profile, I do not consider whether the figure is alive or [...]

22 Mar

Revitalizing Your Website With a New Design

It can be quite disheartening to launch your new web site and watch it go unnoticed. Your website showcases all of your hard work, your brand, and your business. But instead of receiving an explosion [...]

22 Mar

The Other Social Media Company: Google+

When the search engine and marketing goliath, Google, announced the launch of a social media platform in 2011, people were understandably excited. The hype surrounding Google+ was monumental, and mill[...]

22 Mar

The Science of Choosing the Perfect Color

Whether you choose to believe it or not, the colors you use in your designs can have a major psychological impact on your customers. This science is called color psychology. Color psychology is the id[...]

22 Mar

The Project Style Guide

Professional academic writers often use style guides. These guides help the writer ensure that every paragraph and every page follows the same rules for formatting and for citing information. Followin[...]

22 Mar

Solving Difficult Scientific or Mathematical Problems While Playing Videogames

The idea that video games are a complete waste of time is being proven wrong in the world of science. When scientists and mathematicians are struggling with a difficult problem, they are turning to a [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #1: How to Respond to Negative Reviews

If you do business on the Internet and participate in social media, at some point you will field reviews and comments from your customers: both good and bad. Often however, businesses run into the tro[...]

22 Mar

Approaching Unstructured Data Using Structured Strategies

We are awash in data and like a town hit by a tornado we don't know where to begin. In the past few years, the volume of unstructured data — video clips, blog posts, forum threads, social media [...]

22 Mar

The Role of the Creative Brief

Designing a website is a very creative and imaginative process. But to ensure a successful outcome, it helps to write down the structure, style, content, strategy and other requirements in clear langu[...]

22 Mar

Is It Necessary to Pay for Advertising?

Great advertising can make a positive and indelible impact on your customers. But when compared to search engine optimization and public relations, does paid advertising achieve better results? The an[...]

22 Mar

Should I Build an App for my Business?

The short answer to this question is yes. Any way that you can improve your visibility to users of mobile devices is a plus because this is a demographic that is growing substantially every year. The [...]

22 Mar

The Benefits of Using HTML5 and Hype

Move over Flash and Dreamweaver; Tumult’s Hype is living up to its own hype. Many creative professionals, such as animators and designers are switching from Adobe’s Flash to this newer program to [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #2: How to Build Backlinks the Right Way

Backlinks are well known as one of the best ways to boost your WordPress page’s ranking on search engines. Businesses, however, all to often go about this the wrong way. More than ever, search e[...]

22 Mar

Could Your Next Car Become an Engine for the Environment?

California has certainly been at the forefront of the green movement, with the government and the citizens always striving toward renewable and sustainable resources, but could their be a way that we [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #5: Maintaining Your Business’ Facebook Page

Following up from last week, it's not enough to have a Facebook page for your business; you need to tend to it as well. Having an effective Facebook page shows that you're engaged with your cu[...]

22 Mar

When Facebook Ads Actually Work

They may not have invented social media, but Facebook is certainly the most popular platform by any metric. Even though this social media network attracts the most users, their investors are far from [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #6: How to Install SEO All-In-One For WordPress

Of all of the plugins available for WordPress blogs and websites, “SEO All-In-One” is perhaps the most popular. It makes optimizing your WordPress blog or website for search engines much e[...]

22 Mar

The Open Directory Project

When it comes to locating valuable information on the Internet, you may come across terms like search engine or web directory. While both terms refer to platforms that help locate relevant information[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #7: How to Get More Twitter Followers

Perhaps moreso than Facebook, Twitter provides an excellent venue for boosting your business’s visibility and for gaining social media traction. On Twitter, it’s simply easier to share you[...]

22 Mar

Should You Translate Your Web Content into Other Languages?

Having your own websites provides you with amazing business opportunities around the world; it only makes sense to take advantage of those opportunities in the fullest ways possible. While having your[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #8: How to Prevent Keyword Stuffing

Google and other search engines are always updating their algorithms, and they are increasingly shifting toward privileging “quality content”. Because of this, it’s getting harder an[...]

22 Mar

Making Free-to-Play Videogames Part of Your Marketing Strategy

It seemed like a natural choice for me to create an interactive Flash dress-up game for the Isabella and Friends license, given the fact that the target demographic would be young girls, but this expe[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #9: Best Practices for Internal Links

Every week I send out a genuine tip that will help you improve your site's search engine visibility. If you would like us to review your web site, please feel free to contact us. The initial consu[...]

22 Mar

Industry Marketing Series: Community Banks and Credit Union Marketing

NEW: Check out our new web site package for community banks! Click here. At POP, we understand that marketing is certainly not a one-size-fits-all industry. In order to have your ad campaign see th[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #10: How to Make an Effective Facebook Ad

Advertising through Facebook is becoming an increasingly important part of every business’s online strategy. Not only can advertising through Facebook help to sell more of your products and serv[...]

22 Mar

Perfecting Your Positioning Statement

While the creative brief provides direction and guidance to your design agency, the positioning statement clarifies your value proposition: the unique quality that sets your offer apart from others. C[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #11: How to Create SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

If you are using Wordpress, Weebly, Wild Apricot, or another platform with a built in blog function, you’ve likely already taken more than a few steps to ensure that your on-site optimization is[...]

22 Mar

Does it Make Sense to Use a Domain Buy Service?

Have you every brainstormed for hours trying to think of the perfect domain name for your new venture? When you finally come up with a catchy, searchable, brand-able domain name are you crushed to lea[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #12: Common SEO Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

This week's post is aimed more at Wordpress users, but the principles apply to every platform. If the terms are unfamiliar, just send me an email and I'll see if I can help sort it out. Wor[...]

22 Mar

Experts Wanted: Driving Traffic by Building a Content Rich Site

You may have heard in the past about Google implementing the Penguin update or the Panda update, which sounds adorable, but could actually be disastrous for your search rankings if your website does n[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #13: Is Your Website Mobile Friendly? Use Google To Find Out!

Have you been dragging your feet about getting your website ready for the mobile world that we’re entering? Well, you’re running out of time! Mobile isn’t just becoming important for[...]

22 Mar

Do-It-Yourself Videogame Development

The videogame industry has experienced a steady decline since the start of the recession, but the economy is not solely to blame. There are actually many different factors that have shaped this downwa[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #14: How to Avoid Duplicate Content Penalties

First thing’s first. If you’re currently duplicating content across your domain in order to improve your search engine ranking, then this is a practice that you will want to discontinue immediatel[...]

22 Mar

Profile Series: the Legendary Coco Chanel

This is yet another entry into the POP profile series. While this edition does highlight a famous icon, the individuals profiled will not always be well known. The primary purpose of this series is to[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #15: The 6 Biggest SEO Myths Part 1

Search engine optimization happens to be a topic where there are a lot of opinions drowning out the facts. Because of this, there are a number of myths that have cropped up in the SEO community. Some [...]

22 Mar

Should I Consider Advertising on Yelp?

Many businesses are wondering if it makes sense to advertise on Yelp. Yelp is a very unique site that combines reviews with social networking. It has become progressively important for consumers to be[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #16: Mythbusters: The 6 Biggest SEO Myths Part 2

How did you feel about the last three myths that we explored? Were they ones that you’ve fallen victim to, or are they ones you know some of your colleagues believe? We’re in the business [...]

22 Mar

Have Business Web Sites Become a Little Stale?

The short answer is yes, a little. If you think back to ten years ago, you will remember that web sites had interesting animations and other functions that made the pages more fun, useful, and excitin[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #17: 4 Common Mistakes You Make With Your Mobile Website

Everyone keeps saying it, but are you truly listening? Mobile is the future. The rate of growth in mobile users, and, in turn, their use of the Internet, is absolutely staggering. And, it only seems t[...]

22 Mar

Logo Idol

Logo design used to be a well-paid, honorable, even memorable profession. But these days, for about the price of a 16GB memory upgrade, you can get a logo designed for your business. Logos have not be[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #18: The 3 Best SEO Tools You Can Get Right Now

Search engine optimization is tricky, tricky work. Even for those who have been in the field for many years, staying on top of all the latest developments and getting every little thing right can be q[...]

22 Mar

Find Dad a Better Search Solution

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much he had learned in 7 years. Let’s face [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #19: Tell a Story

Once I was out to dinner with some friends and their son, who was about to graduate from college. He was getting a degree in English literature, and was looking for a job in advertising after graduati[...]

22 Mar

Using iPrint and Cloud Print

Back when I edited Portable Computing magazine, I met often with representatives from the different tech companies to discuss new products. There was one memorable encounter with HP. This was ar[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #20: Creating a Great Call to Action

Since it’s usually the last piece of writing you’ll add to a bit of content, sometimes the call to action gets short shrift. Sometimes it even gets skipped altogether! Instead, try to come[...]

22 Mar

Crowdfunding with Kickstarter

Note: This post was updated on January 10, 2014. Last year the videogame industry faced stark financial realities in light of the shift toward free or low-cost games available for download from App[...]

22 Mar

Web Storyboarding and Dynamic Site Maps

Like any art form, web development takes practice, skill, training, and focus. Wait a minute, you say. I’ve got a team for that and they really know what they’re doing? Don’t kid you[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #21: Writing Great Content is about Answering Questions

Ultimately, the goal of writing content is to grow your readership. It seems simple enough, but it’s not exactly the easiest thing to accomplish. There are, of course, a number of different ways[...]

22 Mar

Working with Wild Apricot

The Santa Barbara County Psychological Association (SBCPA – www.sbcpa.org) is a client of mine in Santa Barbara. They were having problems with their previous developer and they hired me to, amo[...]

22 Mar

Santa Barbara Artist Directory

The Santa Barbara Artist Directory has officially launched: http://www.sbartistdirectory.com This is a new searchable online directory that is open to all artists who reside in Santa Barbara Cou[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #23: 3 Myths That You Believe About Keywords

Keywords are funny things. Obviously, they’re important when it comes to attracting the right kind of traffic to your website through search engines, but so much attention is paid to them that p[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #3: 7 Free Steps to Improve Your Website&#039;s Ranking

WordPress may be the most popular platform for making SEO-friendly websites, but any technical errors with your site's code may penalize your site's ranking. Go through the following 7 s[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #24: The 4 Most Important Aspects of Mobile-Friendly Design

As mobile continues to grow in importance, more and more people have questions about how to best design for the platform. There is, of course, a lot of nuance to the subject; however, there are &ndash[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #4: How to Set Up a Business Facebook Page

More than ever, having a presence on social media is important for businesses. Simply, if you’re not managing your business’s reputation on social media, then you can bet that someone else[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #22: The 7 Facebook Meta Tags You Need

Unless you take direct action to control how your website appears when it’s linked to on Facebook, you’ll be at the mercy of whatever Facebook decides to do. However, taking control of how[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #25: SEO Success Factors: What Business Owners Should Know in 2015

Businesses hoping to build a successful online presence should definitely understand SEO best practices, but given that they change from year to year, just keeping up with the times can be difficult. [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #26: Your URL Format and Why It Matters to Online Success

A great deal of focus is given to optimizing your website content, and that’s as it should be. However, there are many other elements that go into building a strong online presence for your busi[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #27: Google Drops Rankings on Non-Mobile Friendly Websites

Google’s become a fan of taking serious action when necessary, and the search engine giant’s latest such move had a massive impact on businesses across the country (and around the world, t[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #28: What You Need to Know about SEO in 2015

SEO continuously evolves as Google, Bing and other search engines strive to provide consumers with a better experience and more accurate search results. While there have been several new consideration[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #29: Localize, Don’t Translate – Tips for Global Marketing

For companies hoping to take advantage of the “world wide” aspect of the World Wide Web, translation is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Sure, English might be the internationa[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #30: Tips for Localization - Enhancing Success

In a previous post, we touched on the topic of localization rather than just translation. We talked about how localization ensures that you’re reaching your audience in other countries in the la[...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #31: Understanding Shares and Links

Look, I'll be honest. I don't think there are any shortcuts to building great content. Not all of us are media savvy, look good on camera, or have a way with words. But I can provide a little [...]

22 Mar

POP SEO Tip #32: Don’t Base Your Marketing on Alexa or Other Prediction Sites

Traffic prediction websites have been around for years now. Alexa is probably the most visible of them, but there are actually several out there. They’re routinely used in a wide range of endeavors,[...]

22 Mar

New Site Launched - sbfilmfestivals.com

I'm really proud of our latest site launch: www.sbfilmfestivals.com This is a companion site to the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, one of the top film festivals in the world. Attendees [...]

Design Notes

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