We are talking and reading a lot about responsive Web design (RWD) these days, but very little attention is given to Web applications. Admittedly, RWD still has to be ironed out. But many of us believe it to be a strong concept, and it is here to stay. So, why don’t we extend this topic to HTML5-powered applications? Because responsive Web applications (RWAs) are both a huge opportunity and a big challenge, I wanted to dive in.

Read more from smashingmagazine.com.

The post Facing the Challenge: Building a Responsive Web Application appeared first on Simply Design Group.

The post Think Social Media is a Fad? appeared first on Simply Design Group.

With so many social media B2B strategies for your business, the options can sometimes get a bit overwhelming. Read more from webdesignerdepot.com.

The post How to Use Social Media B2B Strategies appeared first on Simply Design Group.

A viral app is the highest achievement on iTunes and Google Play. It’s an app that customers eagerly share across the Internet, through social networks, email, chat and word of mouth. It’s like rocket fuel, and it is the best case scenario for an app developer because word of mouth is far more powerful than any paid advertising. Ad clutter is everywhere, and people just ignore it. Read more from smashingmagazine.com.

The post Key Ingredients to Make Your App Go Viral appeared first on Simply Design Group.

The layout is the foundation of your website. It guides the user through the sections and tells them what is most important. It also sets the aesthetic of the website. Therefore, you need to carefully think through how you lay out content. Read more from smashingmagazine.com.

The post Be Creative With Your Website appeared first on Simply Design Group.

A recent Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) study revealed that online advertising accounted for 3.7 percent of the United States’ gross domestic product (GDP) in 2011.

At a loss for words? It could be the case that your ads are too.

Marketers are competing with millions of other advertisers for audience eyes. Website visitors see a lot of online advertisements, and unless you’re paying attention to the subtleties in your copy, your efforts may go unnoticed.

If you’re struggling to find the right words, here are 20 to kickstart your brainstorming. No thesaurus necessary.

Read more from blog.crazyegg.com.

The post 20 Power Words that will Electrify Your Online Advertising appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Do you know why book stores are closing at a frightening pace? Because people don’t read books anymore. They say they do, but overruns on actual books are killing publishers… and distributors and stores.

It’s a sad fact but what does it have to do with my website/blog content? Everything, because it’s a trend a savvy businessperson will heed—consumers aren’t reading!

This isn’t a condemnation of digital devices. I love them! But I also love reading. It was my love of reading that led me to the love of writing… and the realization that I needed to edit myself more and more. Some experts claim people only finish 65% of an article, and then only if it was really interesting; anything over 300 words is a waste of valuable space and effort. It’s not the rule but it’s a growing factor in content creation and how humans continue to communicate.

Read more from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/03/the-secrets-of-successful-website-content/

The post The secrets of successful website content appeared first on Simply Design Group.

You may know Instagram as the place for sharing selfies, but it is one of the fastest growing social media platforms with over 200 million users. It gets 15 times more user engagement than Facebook and 40 times more engagement than Twitter.

So, how can you and your company leverage this fast-growing social site?

To help you answer that question, I’ve created an infographic that breaks down exactly what you need to do in order to get maximum engagement on Instagram.

Read more from http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/08/01/how-to-increase-instagram-engagement-by-182/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email

The post How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement by 182% appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Actually, it’s you that’s hurting you business but no one likes to blame themselves so let’s shift our focus to Google momentarily. Feels better right? This week Google released an update to its algorithm that will give preference to sites that have a desktop version AND a mobile friendly version. Why? It’s simple – web searches on mobile devices are poised to surpass searches made on a desktop computer. Think about your day for just a second. Think about how naked you feel when you don’t have your phone. It’s your little buddy, your safety net when the stop light is too long, and your ever-ready pacifier (parents, here is where you say “amen!”). The reality is that because you (and your customers) have your phone with you at all times, you are already using it and searching on it more frequently than on a desktop. And EVERYONE has a mobile device – your customers and your potential customers.

So what does that mean for you? Simple – you need a strategy for capturing users who are searching for your products or services on a mobile device. Otherwise, your site will lose it’s ranking in Google’s search results. Now that competitor across town whose website used to be dominated by yours in the search results, just pass you up because their is mobile friendly. So in essence, Google is providing you with an opportunity to get more exposure and potentially more business. They are helping not hurting. It’s your call now.

PS – If you need a refresher on what “mobile friendly” actually means, check out this post >

The post How Google Is Hurting Your Business appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Mobile website, mobile friendly, responsive, adaptive, app…these are all the same right?  Not really.  Here are our definitions of those terms and the different mobile site types to help you better understand the landscape of mobile.

1.  Mobile Friendly or Adaptive – The key to this type of site is the screen size and device type.  This type of mobile site can change it’s layout and content depending on the device and screen size.  Ex:  iPad version, iPhone 6 Plus version, iPhone 4 version.  Now, this doesn’t mean you need fifty different versions of your site, it just means that your design and layout must adapt to different screen widths and show appropriate content based on those screen widths.

2.  Responsive – Responsive is great, until it’s not.  If you’re website is currently a desktop version only, this is a great “stepping stone” in the right direction.  Responsive refers to the action of a website shrinking and expanding to fit the size of the web browser window, so that no matter what size computer or device you are on, your site displays within that browser size.  The downside to this method is that usually responsive sites just reposition and shrink your content into a confined space.  So all those awesome case studies and client testimonials you have on your site just get squished into a smaller space.  And let’s be honest, who visits a site on a phone to read testimonials?  I’m not knocking responsive, it’s better than nothing.  But it does have some down side.  The upside is that depending on who or how your site was built, your site may be responsive already.  So kudos to the guy that built it!

3.  Separate Mobile Site –  This is a completely separate website that is designed, developed, managed and maintained separately from your desktop website.  The great advantage to this type is that you can create a unique and customized mobile experience.  This kind of site is strategically designed and developed to accomplish specific marketing goals.  Typically these sites have custom homepages, limited content, defined user paths, and obvious actionable steps for a user to take when browsing.

The bottom line is that the web is universal and so accessing content should also be universal.  Additionally, Google is now ranking your site based on whether or not it has a mobile version  (of any kind).  For more details read this article.

PS – Just because your website can be viewed on a mobile device DOES NOT make it mobile friendly…c’mon people!

The post What Exactly Is Mobile Friendly? appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Do you know why book stores are closing at a frightening pace? Because people don’t read books anymore. They say they do, but overruns on actual books are killing publishers… and distributors and stores.

It’s a sad fact but what does it have to do with my website/blog content? Everything, because it’s a trend a savvy businessperson will heed—consumers aren’t reading!

This isn’t a condemnation of digital devices. I love them! But I also love reading. It was my love of reading that led me to the love of writing… and the realization that I needed to edit myself more and more. Some experts claim people only finish 65% of an article, and then only if it was really interesting; anything over 300 words is a waste of valuable space and effort. It’s not the rule but it’s a growing factor in content creation and how humans continue to communicate.

Read more from http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2014/03/the-secrets-of-successful-website-content/

The post The secrets of successful website content appeared first on Simply Design Group.

You may know Instagram as the place for sharing selfies, but it is one of the fastest growing social media platforms with over 200 million users. It gets 15 times more user engagement than Facebook and 40 times more engagement than Twitter.

So, how can you and your company leverage this fast-growing social site?

To help you answer that question, I’ve created an infographic that breaks down exactly what you need to do in order to get maximum engagement on Instagram.

Read more from http://www.quicksprout.com/2014/08/01/how-to-increase-instagram-engagement-by-182/?utm_source=email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=email

The post How to Increase Your Instagram Engagement by 182% appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Actually, it’s you that’s hurting you business but no one likes to blame themselves so let’s shift our focus to Google momentarily. Feels better right? This week Google released an update to its algorithm that will give preference to sites that have a desktop version AND a mobile friendly version. Why? It’s simple – web searches on mobile devices are poised to surpass searches made on a desktop computer. Think about your day for just a second. Think about how naked you feel when you don’t have your phone. It’s your little buddy, your safety net when the stop light is too long, and your ever-ready pacifier (parents, here is where you say “amen!”). The reality is that because you (and your customers) have your phone with you at all times, you are already using it and searching on it more frequently than on a desktop. And EVERYONE has a mobile device – your customers and your potential customers.

So what does that mean for you? Simple – you need a strategy for capturing users who are searching for your products or services on a mobile device. Otherwise, your site will lose it’s ranking in Google’s search results. Now that competitor across town whose website used to be dominated by yours in the search results, just pass you up because their is mobile friendly. So in essence, Google is providing you with an opportunity to get more exposure and potentially more business. They are helping not hurting. It’s your call now.

PS – If you need a refresher on what “mobile friendly” actually means, check out this post >

The post How Google Is Hurting Your Business appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Mobile website, mobile friendly, responsive, adaptive, app…these are all the same right?  Not really.  Here are our definitions of those terms and the different mobile site types to help you better understand the landscape of mobile.

1.  Mobile Friendly or Adaptive – The key to this type of site is the screen size and device type.  This type of mobile site can change it’s layout and content depending on the device and screen size.  Ex:  iPad version, iPhone 6 Plus version, iPhone 4 version.  Now, this doesn’t mean you need fifty different versions of your site, it just means that your design and layout must adapt to different screen widths and show appropriate content based on those screen widths.

2.  Responsive – Responsive is great, until it’s not.  If you’re website is currently a desktop version only, this is a great “stepping stone” in the right direction.  Responsive refers to the action of a website shrinking and expanding to fit the size of the web browser window, so that no matter what size computer or device you are on, your site displays within that browser size.  The downside to this method is that usually responsive sites just reposition and shrink your content into a confined space.  So all those awesome case studies and client testimonials you have on your site just get squished into a smaller space.  And let’s be honest, who visits a site on a phone to read testimonials?  I’m not knocking responsive, it’s better than nothing.  But it does have some down side.  The upside is that depending on who or how your site was built, your site may be responsive already.  So kudos to the guy that built it!

3.  Separate Mobile Site –  This is a completely separate website that is designed, developed, managed and maintained separately from your desktop website.  The great advantage to this type is that you can create a unique and customized mobile experience.  This kind of site is strategically designed and developed to accomplish specific marketing goals.  Typically these sites have custom homepages, limited content, defined user paths, and obvious actionable steps for a user to take when browsing.

The bottom line is that the web is universal and so accessing content should also be universal.  Additionally, Google is now ranking your site based on whether or not it has a mobile version  (of any kind).  For more details read this article.

PS – Just because your website can be viewed on a mobile device DOES NOT make it mobile friendly…c’mon people!

The post What Exactly Is Mobile Friendly? appeared first on Simply Design Group.

(not pictured – me)

There’s nothing like being one of the first skiers to the top of the mountain after a fresh dusting of white powdery snow.  It acts differently.  It feels like pillows beneath your skis.  It brings out the essence of the sport.  You, your skis, and the snow.  No icy patches to slip on, no tracks from other skiers (except for the few who beat you to the top) no bumpy spots, just fresh white powder.

A clean slate can be a good thing, but it can also be a little scary.  It’s an opportunity to rebuild, do things better, and make an impact like never before.  It’s also a break from what’s comfortable, what you know works, and what your used to.  But in order to grow and get better, sometimes we need to be first to the top of the mountain.  We need to make our own tracks in the snow on a fresh mountain of powder.

In 2018, Simply Design Group is doing just that.  Re-thinking, re-working, and re-organizing on a clean slate.  We’re striving to be the best we can be, so that our efforts make you the best you can be.  We want to strive for the top, not just for ourselves, but for you too.  Stay tuned and follow along as we make new tracks in the snow…

The post Fresh Powder appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Nothing like a negative headline to get you interested in a blog post right?  Well, in case you were wondering, this psychological “hook” tactic plays into your innate need to protect yourself losing money.  So, of course you’ll read it!  Now that we have you all hot an bothered wondering how many other ways this blog is going to mess with your head…..nah we’re just messing around.  Here’s the point:  WordPress can be one of the most cost effective web development platforms on the market, or the most costly – it all depends on how you maintain it.

By now you’ve probably heard the terms “website maintenance plan” or “website care package” from your web guy or agency.  And while it may seem as fluffy as your Apple Care plan, we all know that the second your iPhone slips out of your hand into the bowl of soup you were just enjoying, you’re going to Google “Apple Care.”  These plans are, in fact, offering you the best way to get a good night’s sleep if you worry about your website getting hacked, crashing, or (like one customer I met with this week) disappearing.  Yes, that’s right, a customer (whose hosting company shall not be named) lost their entire WordPress site because it had been hacked due to not keeping it updated and when they contacted the hosting company as to what happened, they simply responded that the site was hacked and had been deleted.  (Insert record scratch)  Huh?  Deleted?  By the hosting company?  You’re probably thinking, what I was thinking, “There’s a back up right?”  Nope.  Not even one.  As a result, they are having to rebuild a perfectly good website.

So, what’s the answer?  A spending more money on a monthly maintenance plan?  Not necessarily.  The most cost effective thing to do is set a weekly reminder to login to your WordPress dashboard and check for updates and run them.  But before you do that, make sure and have a nightly (or weekly at the least) scheduled backup that creates a copy of all your files and stores them.  Check out Backup Buddy for a good backup solution.  The reality is that most organizations do not have the expertise or time to properly maintain a website, so naturally that leads us to the maintenance plan conversation.

Benefits of a monthly maintenance plan:

1. Worry free (the good night’s sleep) – you don’t have to think about when to update or if this update is going to break your site.  Let the experts deal with that.  You can rest easy knowing that your website is getting updated & backed up on a regular basis.  This is the #1 key to keeping money in your pocket.
2. You can enjoy the latest enhancements to WordPress, your plugins, and theme now that those updates are actually happening.
3. Eyes on the site – the good providers will take a moment to review your site and make sure it all looks good.  If not, they will let you know and offer a solution
4. Content Updates – If you don’t have time to run software updates on WordPress, chances are you don’t have time to update the content either.  Often times maintenance plans will offer a fixed number of hours each month that you can utilize to add blogs, photos, products, or other content to your site.

Conclusion

By not updating your WordPress core files, plugins, and themes, you’re site is living on borrowed time.  It will have problems if you ignore the simple steps to keeping it updated.  You might as well right the check today for your new site and just leave the date blank, because it’s going to happen.  We’ve seen it too many times.  Keep your site updated, and keep your money!

The post Why Your WordPress Website Is Costing You Extra Money appeared first on Simply Design Group.

WordPress powers more than 30% of websites with a huge fanbase all over the world. WordCamps are local gatherings for WordPress users, professionals, fans, and beginners alike to learn from each other and talk shop. This year, we attended WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth and enjoyed sessions that addressed everything from fixing broken websites, to business development, to programming and more.

While we saw and learned a lot, there’s five things that really stick out.

Local SEO for Local Businesses

Most business owners aren’t doing everything they could to appear more often (and more prominently) in Google search engine results pages. There are three really simple things we can all check today to improve local SEO.

• Google your city name plus your business category (or “what you do”). Does your business show up? Do you like what you see?
• Update or claim your Google My Business profile to make improvements.
• Choose business categories on your Google My Business profile that are accurate and match what you want to be found for.

There aren’t any tricks to local SEO. The first step is truly just taking advantage of all the tools available to ensure your information is listed completely and accurately.

Messaging Matters

One of the surprising things about WordCamp is how much everyone talks about advertising and marketing. Not only are we interested in programming effective, excellent websites, but we’re interested in making sure the words on these sites are amazing, too! If the words don’t work, then nobody will get into your website, no matter how good it looks.

In-between sessions and after the conference, the Simply Design Group team reviewed our own messaging, tweaked the site, and made notes about how to help our clients with their next projects!

WordPress Is Mainstream, But the Passionate Contributors Remain

An incredibly large number of businesses and organizations run their websites with WordPress. In October 2018, 32% of all websites used WordPress. Pretty popular, if you ask me. Even mainstream. Certainly there’s hundreds of thousands of people in the community who make their living each day with WordPress. Many of those folks aren’t coders or programmers. They’re consultants, musicians, media moguls, craftsman, teachers, and more!

But after spending a weekend with this diverse community, I’m really encouraged to know there’s still a committed group of original contributors devoted to improving security, usability, and accessibility for everyone.

See You Next Year!

Simply Design Group was one of several sponsors of WordCamp DFW 2018. We’re so thankful for the warm welcome from organizer Mark Gratch and the conference team. Thanks for bringing together experts and beginners, young and old, marketers and developers, and making a great space for everyone to learn from each other.

Photo by John-Mark Smith on Unsplash

The post Three Striking Insights From WordCamp DFW 2018 appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Changes to the WordPress editing experience are closer than ever before. For nearly two years, the skilled developers at the heart of maintaining and improving WordPress have toiled over a new editor named Gutenberg.

Gutenberg will completely replace the “out of the box” editing experience with a new interface designed to make exciting, visual posts easier and faster to create.

While a November 2018 release was ruled out, a new date has not been set. However, look for it after the holidays, most likely in January 2019.

Create Better Posts With Gutenberg

The WordPress editor has remained essentially the same for many years now. When users add a new post, they must type their content into a large, open text field topped by a formatting toolbar. This is similar to many email programs and word processors.

However, most websites are far more advanced than simple emails or text documents. Gutenberg will open up beautiful design possibilities for WordPress users without requiring additional plugins or add-ons.

Gutenberg uses specialized blocks programmed to treat your content in special ways. Make an in-depth list or outline automatically formatted for a clean look. Embed YouTube videos, slides, images, and other rich content with the bare URL. No embed codes! Make your text and images interact in compelling fashion without programming or knowing any code. Advance from typing text to creating rich content.

Gutenberg Will Not Break Your Website

You might wonder if updating your website to the latest version of WordPress with Gutenberg will cause it to break. What happens to all your existing posts? There should be no change to your current content. But when your site is updated, the default post editing experience will be different.

Many WordPress websites already replace the default post editor with page building tools or custom fields. In most cases, Gutenberg won’t interfere. If you already use an alternative editor to add your post or page body content, you will keep using that. The immediate impact will be on sites configured to use the original, default editor for adding body content to blog posts. Even then, WordPress provides a path to continue using the “classic” editor.

While the Gutenberg update should be low-key for everyone, you will hear a lot more about it the next time you redesign your site. Smart programmers and designers are just starting to find ways to integrate this editor with other robust layout and design tools. When you next redesign your website, expect Gutenberg to be an integral part of the experience.

Next Step:  2 Easy Tasks to Prepare For Gutenberg

Do you regularly login to your WordPress site to create new blog posts and other content? If so, I highly recommend digging into the growing body of Gutenberg resources. Explore the Gutenberg demo. Decide now if you will install the plugin to retain the “classic” editor for now or if you’re ready to jump in with Gutenberg.

Do you depend on outside help to maintain your website? Go ahead and reach out to them. Ask if they will choose the “classic” editor for you or if they will start using Gutenberg when it comes out. Even if you never use Gutenberg yourself, this discussion may reveal opportunities to improve your website content.

Yes, there are changes coming to WordPress. Gutenberg is the most talked about, potentially biggest, update in the platform’s history. But with the option to keep the “classic” editor and a WordPress community that already uses a great number of alternative editors, Gutenberg opens up even more opportunities.

Recommended Resources

• Live Gutenberg demo site – https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/
• Developer-focused WordPress news. Watch for latest on Gutenberg. – https://wptavern.com/wordpress-5-0-rc-1-released-gutenberg-passes-1-million-installations
• Gutenberg overview by WPEngine – https://wpengine.com/blog/getting-ahead-gutenberg/
• Gutenberg overview by some of the builders – https://yoast.com/what-is-gutenberg/

The post Big Change Coming To Your WordPress Editor appeared first on Simply Design Group.

Can you feel your website sinking? The phone rings a little less often and you think you are in a natural dip. Online leads have dropped-off, but that’s just Facebook messing with the algorithm again. Right? Don’t take a chance with your online presence. Take a moment today to learn about three avoidable problems that could be dragging you down.

Let’s talk about your appearance in local searches.

Fix Your Phone Number On Google

When customers search for your company name, or your name is returned in a search, a phone number and address is almost guaranteed to show up with a map of the address

To initially fill up this directory, Google’s automated systems scrounged for information about you wherever they could. Did you ever go in to make sure this info is correct? This is easy to miss, but obviously critical to getting calls! Plus, potential customers are turned off by wrong numbers and missing info. They just assume you’re out of business.

For more information about claiming your business listing and correcting your listing information, visit Google’s info site at https://www.google.com/business/. Once you’ve gained control of your listing, check the phone number and other important contact information.

Fix Your Website Backups

So, maybe you hate your website. Still, it’s something! You’ve put money in already. Sure, there’s more to do. But you need to protect what you have. What happens if you get hacked today? I’ll tell you what happens when your competitor goes down. He restores his site from a backup. It’s as easy as clicking a button, or calling your IT guy to click it for you.

Backups are a snapshot of your website taken at regular intervals. When you get hacked, restoring a backup means choosing a snapshot from before the incident and bringing it back. True, you might lose some work or even some customer orders if you have E-commerce. However, hopefully you have more records of those orders in your email or other systems.

Are you backing up your site? I hope so! It won’t be a pretty sight if you go down with no way back.

Fix Your Headlines

Many websites suffer from a lack of marketing strategy because the web designer turned up and said, “What do you want this to say?” but offered no suggestions and no pre-planning. Put on the spot and without any time to plan, a lot of people seem to say “Ummm… We’re Number One!” Yikes.

Customers truly do not care about your ranking, your awards, or your story. Not on the homepage. There’s a time and place for that. In fact, proving your expertise is critical! But your homepage headline should speak directly to the customer’s need.

For examples and more headline writing tips, check out our guide “Three Steps to Boost Your Website”.

Can you fix a sinking ship? Addressing these problems is just the start. But you can do it! Fix your local search appearance, start backing up your site, and make those headlines more customer-centric. Work on all of those today to get yourself back above water.

You want to take things further, right? Work with your web team to plan achievable goals and improvements. And if you’re looking for more help on your web design, contact us online or call 214-217-4407. Let’s fill those gaps!

Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash

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