What is navigation? Well, you could say that it’s the element of your website which allows your customers to find what they’re looking for, or you could say that it’s a way to lead your customers to the most important …
How to Write Successful Copy
“Web design is 95% typography” according to Marc Schenker of Web Designer Depot. Blogs, homepage copy, social media, and even the content underneath videos is all written matter. This means that people who visit your websites are likely going to …
Why You Should Update WordPress
Why should you update WordPress? Aside from putting in new content, there are some very important reasons you should keep your WordPress core software and plugins up-to-date. Rachel McCollin discusses these issues in her article “Why You Should Have The Latest Version …
Could You Have Too Many Plugins?
The 8 Second Rule states that a user is likely to abandon your website if it takes 8 seconds or longer to load. Current research suggests that the time users are willing to wait for your website to load is continually …
Tips for an SEO Friendly Blog
There are no set solutions for successfully search engine optimizing your blog, and there is a large amount of complex information to make sense of. In researching SEO optimization, I’ve seen quite a bit emphasis placed on the quality of the post’s content …
How to Give Helpful Feedback to Your Web Designer
It’s easy to look at something and say whether you like it or don’t like it. We’ve been trained to do it our entire lives, whether it’s choosing an outfit to wear, a team to pull for, or a new piece …
The Best Forms Plugins for Your WordPress Website & How to Use Them
Below is the presentation I did last week at the Digital Marketing for Business 2015 conference in Raleigh, NC. It’s a fantastic conference, and this year they had an all-WordPress track for WP lovers like me to share the good …
Why We Use Style Tiles
Style Tiles aren’t a new thing in the web design world, but they’re not a standard tool used in most firms. Style Tiles were created by Samantha Warren, a designer from the beautiful city of San Francisco who decided that …
Best Practices for Managing Your WordPress Website
Earlier this year, the fantastic resource WPMU published “Best Practices for Managing Your WordPress Website: The Ultimate Guide,” one of the best and most comprehensive articles we’ve seen on keeping your WordPress website up-to-date, relevant, and secure. Here are the …
What is User Experience (UX), Really?
It’s no secret that we love Paul Boag and pattern ourselves after his UK company, Headscape. They are down-to-earth, passionate, and compassionate experts who (like AndiSites) believe in making the web world a better place and providing the best possible …
Things to Consider When Hiring a Website Pro
It’s easy to find people and companies who will build your website. Finding the right one…not so easy. Consider these when evaluating a possible partner for your website project: Look at their previous work This seems obvious, but be sure …
The Basics of Good Information Architecture
Information architecture is the roadmap of your website–the structure that makes it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. It includes: How content is organized and presented on the page How content is labeled and expressed in navigation …
How to Stop WordPress Spam
Comment spam and registration spam are incredibly frustrating. They stuff your inbox with notification emails, and the bogus comments can damage your online reputation. Thankfully, spam can be thwarted in just two steps: Properly configure your WordPress Discussion settings. Install …
How to Lower Your Bounce Rate and Keep Users on Your Site
According to Google, “Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). There are a number of factors that contribute to a high bounce …
Increase Security by Changing Your Email Password
Tighten Up on Email Security Ring in the new year by taking a few easy steps to increase your website’s security, starting with your email account. It only takes a few minutes of your time, and it’s always better to be …
How to update WordPress without breaking stuff
WordPress releases new versions regularly (around once a month or so) to increase security, add features, and respond to the ever-changing ways of the Internet. Plugin and theme authors (the good ones, anyway) release updates to work with the new WordPress …
Color Theory and UX Design
From Adrienne: Having been in advanced art since 3rd Grade (when I was bussed to the nearest high school just for art class), the color wheel and all of its aspects–complimentary colors, hues, schemes, etc–was an all-too-familiar part of my …
5 UX Myths and Why They’re Wrong
White space is wasted space White space is absolutely necessary in web design. Without out, your website could look overwhelming, cluttered and be hard to read. White space also helps draw the users eye from one element to another. Aesthetics …
Why we prefer responsive design over mobile apps
App fever is easy to catch, and we hear clients all the time asking if they should have a mobile app, or even or a “mobile version” of their website. At AndiSites we prefer building (or rebuilding) websites using responsive …