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Mobile Web and Web Design

January 28th, 2011 6 comments

Businesses that want to stay ahead of the curve will have to start considering mobile device compatibility in their web design. Mobile devices are very popular and, at this point, the venerable cellular phone is more laptop than it is phone. This means that a lot of your visitors will be hitting your website on their mobile devices. Normal webpages do display on mobile devices, with some significant limitations, but it’s best to have a mobile version of your site. Your mobile site will benefit from being of use to people in the city.

A mobile web design is more compact, less flashy and distributes information across the screen space differently than does a traditional web design. When you see a regular website on a mobile device, the fonts are usually very small and moving around the page and, most especially, clicking on links is very frustrating. Any business can have both a mobile and regular website. Routing the devices to the right sites is not hard to do and your designers can take the design of your existing site and port the most definitive features over to the mobile site, allowing you to keep a consistent image across the technologies.

Having a separate web design for mobile devices can give you a significant advantage over businesses that do not. For example, your visitors will immediately be presented with a site that’s easy to navigate and that’s easy to read when they open it up on their phones. They’ll also have exactly the experience you want them to have. If you have a lot of different animations and multimedia areas on your main website, your visitors won’t necessarily see them on their mobiles. Having separate designs ensures that problems like this are avoided.

DoubleDome Web Technologies is an Atlanta web design company that provides a full range of Internet Marketing services including Professional Web Design, E-commerce Web Design, Mobile Web Design, Flash Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Email Marketing Service, Website Support, and Web Hosting. DoubleDome is a single point-of-contact for all Internet marketing services for corporate websites, Ad Agency Outsourcing, Business web design and retail e-commerce across the country. For more information about DoubleDome, please visit their website: www.doubledome.com.

Web Design Concerns for 2011

January 27th, 2011 1 comment

Businesses around the world have to constantly adapt to a shifting Internet business environment. While keeping your site from looking dated or out of step is important, there are still other areas of concern for good web design looking forward. Making your site local will become increasingly important in the year to come, as consumers use the Internet to look up local businesses on their mobile devices when they’re out and about. This means that at least some of your web design should be centered on providing a mobile version of your site.

For example, if you’re an Atlanta, Georgia business, you’ll want to make sure that your site is easy to connect with the area. There are many different ways to go about this; one of the oldest and most common is to have a photograph of a local landmark on your site. You can also add content that’s specific to your local area but that is far more useful than a simple picture. Developing an image of expertise on your site can to a long way toward people seeing your site as a resource and toward making an impression on them that sets you apart from the competition a bit.

A more specific example would be, if you’re an Atlanta, Georgia restaurant and you want to give your site a local feel, you could put information on your site regarding the culinary traditions of Georgia or, if you’re one of the many restaurants in Atlanta that offers food from exotic places around the world, you can put something up about the culinary traditions that apply in your case. This gives people a reason to consider your business more than the other options and, of course, it makes a difference if your site does a good job of invoking the feel of the local community.

DoubleDome Web Technologies is an Atlanta web design company that provides a full range of Internet Marketing services including Custom Web Design, E-commerce Design, Mobile Web Design, Flash Design, Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing Service, Website Support, and Web Hosting. DoubleDome is a single point-of-contact for all Internet marketing services for corporate websites, Ad Agency Outsourcing, Business web design and retail e-commerce across the country. For more information about DoubleDome, please visit their website: www.doubledome.com.

Bing and Yahoo! combined U.S. market share rose to 29% last November According to Compete

January 5th, 2011 10 comments

In November 2010, the Bing and Yahoo! search engines had 14.4% and 14.6% market share, respectively, which means the combined market share of the search engines rose to 29% , according to Compete’s search data.

Bing.com also saw the highest growth in the number of unique visitors, with a month-over-month increase of 7.4 percent (Yahoo?s number of UVs actually declined .3 percent). In November 2009, Bing’s market share was just over 10%, according to Compete.

What Is Google Instant And How Will It Impact SEO

December 15th, 2010 6 comments

Google recently announced a major modification to the way your search box works. It’s called Google Instant, and their goal is to speed up your searching process. In a nutshell, Google Instant is predictive searching based on the letters you type into the box. As you type a phrase, you are show a range of possible search queries in grey to refine your options before you hit the search button. According to Google, this will save an average of 2-5 seconds per search.

Here’s what Google has to say about the Google Instant feature:

“Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. We are pushing the limits of our technology and infrastructure to help you get better search results, faster. Our key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.”

What does this mean for your Search Engine Optimization?

While it’s a bit too soon to know for sure, there are two lines of though on the issue. There are those who believe that the new Google Instant feature will increase the importance of long-tail search terms. They reason that a searcher can continue to keep typing until they find the exact term they were looking for.

The other camp believes that Google Instant will kill the effectiveness of long-tail keyword search engine optimization. Why would people continue to type when Google is recommending different options. If Google is recommending a search term to select, who is going to continue to type an obscure or unclear term.

Only time will tell, but our guess is that targeted keyword research and effective search engine optimization will become more critical as people learn to search differently over time.

DoubleDome Web Technologies is an Atlanta web design company that provides a full range of Internet Marketing services including Custom Web Design, E-commerce Design, Mobile Web Design, Flash Design, Search Engine Optimization, Email Marketing Service, Website Support, and Web Hosting. DoubleDome is a single point-of-contact for all Internet marketing services for corporate websites, Ad Agency Outsourcing, Business web design and retail e-commerce across the country. For more information about DoubleDome, please visit their website: www.doubledome.com.

Google Introduces A New Advanced Search Feature Termed Reading Level

December 14th, 2010 33 comments

Google introduced a new advanced search feature this week that will allow you to filter your search results by reading level. The reading level required to comprehend your web pages does influence the position of your site in Google’s index?

What is the Google Reading Level Feature?

This is Google’s official posting about the new feature:

We made it easier for to you pinpoint exactly the information you need with a new advanced search feature that categorizes results by reading level.

For example, if you’re writing a college paper on [herbivores] you can refine to see only advanced material, or if you’re a grade school teacher preparing for a class on [herbivores] you can refine to see only basic material.

To try it out, click ?advanced search? to the right of the search box and click in the new reading level section. You can filter to see only results that are basic, intermediate or advanced, and annotate results with reading levels.

What does “reading level” mean?

Reading level refers to the readability of your web page copy. Readability is defined as the effort required to read and comprehend your content. Research has shown that text that is easy to read improves comprehension, retention, reading speed, and reading persistence.

The better the readability of your web pages, the more people will understand your marketing message.

DoubleDome Web Technologies is an Atlanta web design company that provides a full range of Internet Marketing services including Professional Web Design, E-commerce Web Design, Mobile Web Design, Flash Design, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Email Marketing Service, Website Support, and Web Hosting. DoubleDome is a single point-of-contact for all Internet marketing services for corporate websites, Ad Agency Outsourcing, Business web design and retail e-commerce across the country. For more information about DoubleDome, please visit their website: www.doubledome.com.