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I build a lot of WordPress websites for small businesses that use digital marketing best practices over at my agency, WP SiteKit. Most business website are very similar in regards to wanting more traffic and converting more visitors to leads. So here are the core set of WordPress theme and plugins I use at the start of every project. Hosting Hands down WP Engine has…

I spend a lot of time moving back and forth between Austin, Texas and Tamarindo, Costa Rica. I make the trip at least 4 times and year and spend half the year in each city. As a full time web designer I need more than just a laptop to work on. I need a full 27″ monitor, separate keyboard and mouse, and external hard drives….

Since my wife and I have been living in Costa Rica for a couple of years now and have lots of friends and family visit, we’ve become pretty good at giving advice on Costa Rica travel recommendations. I even started a Cost Rica travel website with a lot more information. But in this article, I’ll sum up travel recommendations I usually give my friends as someone…

I’ve been building websites for small businesses for over 15 years and am always optimizing my tool belt. My goal is to analyze the users/customers and build a website using best practices for visitor engagement and conversion. There’s no reason for complex setup and technical issues when building a standard website in this modern age of the internet. The market is full of cheap (usually…

What Brought Me Here Raised in a home of graphic design influence and the privilege of having some of the first Macs around the house it’s no surprise I’m where I stand today. I took my high school’s 2 year immersive AV course using news room quality equipment. Then though the Art Institute of Dallas’s curriculum to get an Associates Degree in Computer Animation and…

Great presentation by Travis McCutcheon of Leap for Mankind at the Lean User Experience Austin meetup titled Interview Hacking. Lots of good tips and a DIY work flow for interviewing. Here are my notes: Experiments are the core of the Lean process. Setup a pipeline of interviews. They take a lot of time to setup so always have some in queue. Your first experiment will probably be a wash. Use it to make your second experiment more…

I recently attended 5 one hour sessions overviewing the discovery, design and development process on creating for digital and web. The classes were though Hour School and held at the AC4D building. Introduction to UX: Personas, Scenarios and Storyboards By Ruby Ku Takeaways A persona is a fictional user profile based on real data from research. Personas should include: backstory, motivations, frustrations, their ideal experience…

I attended a few of the events for Austin Startup Week. For a first year event it was packed with enthusiastic entrepreneurs, website demos, and plenty of networking events. It reminded me of being at SXSW Interactive. Austin Startup Weeks revolves around the Capitol Factory Demo Day which I’ve heard is a little tricky to get into. I see Austin Startup Week becoming a bigger…

I saw Shawn Collins speak at the Austin Internet Marketing Meetup about his favorite traffic sources on April 13, 2011. He’s an affiliate marketer and helps run the Affiliate Summit conference.  He plowed through a long list of good ideas on getting web traffic. I wrote them down and did a little followup of the good ones. Here’s my notes from his presentation. Many sites…

This was my fifth year in a row at SXSW Interactive. As usual very inspiring and educational. This year’s big trends seem to be HTML5/CSS3 and the evolution of online Groups. I bounced around this year to different topics, meeting people and writing down anything new and interesting. Here are my notes. Dribbble – a show and tell for creatives. http://dribbble.com Layer Tennis – Two…

I recently attended the AIGA Austin Chapter discussion panel titled Finding Work. There were some nice tips that I’ll share here. The speakers were all very helpful and engaging with the audience. Panelist Scott McAfee – Sanders Wingo, SVP & Executive Creative Director Eric Buchanan – Talent Acquisition Manager Jocelyn Lai – T3, Recruiter Marie Bevione – T3 Chief Talent Officer Kelley Toombs – Kelley…

I just saw a good presentation by Annette Priest today on conducting user research with little or no budget. It was titled You Don’t Know Me At All! User Research for the Cheap and Lazy. Here are a few good takeaways. “No one really knows what the company goals are, take a stab at it.” On this point she talked about how the manager you…

Here’s how I built my computer workstation with a few simple elements. It’s big, comfortable, easy to get to equipment and came out looking pretty sharp. The core pieces are an uncut door, files cabinets and table legs from Ikea. The monitor stand is 11 x 30 inches held up with 2 x 4s. I stained both the same color. The leg plates are fastened…

Here are my top picks of books that have influenced my web design career and that I would highly recommend to anyone in the field. Design The Elements of User Experience: User-Centered Design for the Web “A single book that can enlighten ‘suits’ about user experience issues while at the same time teaching designers, information architects, and usability specialists about the necessity of understanding the…

Here’s my list of web tools, apps and services I use and recommend. Top 10 Rackspace Cloud – web hosting Great for hosting dozens of client websites. Includes client management, client billing, quick hosting setup and easy control panels for owner and clients. Best support team I’ve every worked with. FreshBooks – invoicing Simple and effective invoicing. You can create and send invoices by email…

I was hired to design a homepage of a SaaS (software as a service) website, so I examined 10 of the more popular sites that came to mind. In this research exercise I screen grabbed 10 websites, uploaded them to my Flickr account, drew a note box around each element and defined it. Below is the list of website element definitions in 3 categories of…

While doing some research on methods to obtain inbound links, here are some key takeaways from my notes. Inbound Link Tools Buzz Stream http://www.buzzstream.com Finds link opportunities (about 1% worth pursuing from my experience) Acts as a great CRM tool to manage link acquisition conversations Automatically checks the links you have made to make sure they are still active $29 a month Lotus Jump http://www.lotusjump.com…

It will look like this Use the Photoshop line tool. Use these settings Draw a very short line at about 11 o’clock. Add a Layer Style with these settings  

I’ve been building websites since the dot come bubble. I’ve also been designing websites for the real estate industry fore a few years now. After seeing success rates of many website tools out there I can say WordPress has been a life saver for me and my clients. Using WordPress for real estate clients is the only system I set up these days. Some of…

Research findings from needing to automatically check the rank of several websites. There are many SEO tools that do several SEO related tasks. I needed a program that would check several site’s ranking on specific keywords automatically. I could not find an app that just checked rankings. I found several programs that had a ranking checker feature built in to it’s tool set. They all…

Web Design for ROI is an excellent book for reviewing all those website elements that help convince the user to click on the call to action button. As I read the book I’m creating my own checklist of website elements that should be considered for every website. Below is my list, I reccoment reading the book for better a more indepth understanding. Web Design for…

Here are some raw notes from the conference this year. Trends and future trends * Communication between countries – Global corporation and partnerships are growing and language barriers are a common problem that need to be solved. * Online Reputation Management * More video * Social Media Optimization * Cross channel delivery methods / widgets * Implementation of Happiness from a scientific approach – In…