Information posts

Web analysis tools can be used to scrutinize various aspects of your site, in order to gather data for market research, and help to  focus you on specific areas of the site.

These tools might show you anything from traffic to age demographic, and are invaluable as a part of any Admin’s arsenal, especially since there are so many revolutionary ways nowadays to measure your site statistics, besides the...

Content strategy has increasingly become a part of the web design conversation and in large part due to Kristina Halvorson, who has become a noted content advocate and activist.

Kristina is the founder and president of Brain Traffic, an agency specializing in content strategy and writing for the web, author of the groundbreaking book, Content Strategy for the Web, and a frequent speaker at web design conferences worldwide. Over the past months, she and co-author, Melissa Rach, have been hard at work on the second edition of the book which is due out on New Riders in February...

I recently added to my top ten most embarrassing moments of my professional life. No, I won’t be listing the top ten but this one was extremely disturbing because it affected a lot of people and basically went unnoticed and pushed out the truth and replaced if with a falsehood that had become the truth. I’m referring to an article I wrote about a famous designer but the images of the fantastic work weren’t actually his.

It was not my intention to prank or scam readers but I used the wonderful World Wide Web to gather my information and that was a blunder I should have seen coming. It wasn’t until a reader pointed out that the designer did not do the work, that I scrambled to find out the truth. At first, I thought, by the way the comment was worded, it was just a spam scam for a website and...

Hiring a web designer is like sorting packages. Hundreds of applications filter in. Before you can even get to the good stuff, you have to sort through all the ones that might not be a good fit.

And even though you may not judge a book by its cover, hiring managers most certainly judge potential applicants by their résumé. And if you’re looking for a job as a web designer, there’s even more pressure to make your résumé stand out among the cardboard boxes.

At our company, we have a step-by-step process when we’re hiring a new designer. We’ll sort through résumés to find someone that meets some basic qualifications. We’re not picky: We really just want to get the applicant on the phone. Then, we’ll have an initial call screening. We ask questions about their work experience, life and the process they use to design. We ask some questions that will make them think quickly.

The goal is to determine if this person is what they represent on the résumé,...

A few years ago, blogging was the be-all and end-all of online content creation.

Individuals and companies alike all wanted to get in on blogging, and they saw it as the best way to reach people.

Blogs about blogging sprouted up everywhere, telling people how to create better blogs, how to make money from their blogs, and how to get more traffic.

But has the blogosphere grown so large that there are, simply put, too many...

The Internet holds a wealth of information on virtually any topic one could think of. With a simple search, you can gain access to knowledge about almost any subject out there.

In fact, you can often get so much information returned that it’s a little intimidating even knowing where to start. Information overload gets more and more common as ever-growing amounts of information go online.

At its worst, information overload can be paralyzing. Too much information can leave us feeling overwhelmed and unable to make decisions. It can leave us more confused than if we’d never had the information to start with.

The...

The content of any website is paramount to a site’s success.

High quality content, regardless of whether the site aims to inform, entertain, or sell a product, will increase the site’s likelihood of converting visitors. But beyond providing high quality content, a site also needs to organize that content in a way that makes it accessible to visitors.

Prioritizing your content is one of the best ways to make sure your visitors are finding the information you want them to find, and that they want to find. But figuring out what content is most important and how to arrange it to reflect that can get confusing, fast.

In many cases, designers...

Defined as ‘the structural design of shared information environments’, information architecture focuses on bringing the principles of architectural design to the online world.

Just like the blueprints of a dream home or the outline of a well-written article, good website structure organizes information in a way that enhances the user experience and delivers pertinent information as quickly as possible.

In fact, most website visitors only become aware of information architecture...

Learning new information quickly is very important to both designers and developers.

That being said, regardless of your profession and whether it’s for school, work, or personal improvement, being able to retain the information without the need to spend hours studying is an incredibly useful skill.

One of the best methods for learning new information quickly is to use the scan-absorb process method.

This consists...

The information bloggers choose to put out there often has a huge impact on how they’re perceived and what others online think about them.

And what many bloggers don’t realize is that information they put on their blogs can have a direct legal impact.

Even if what you’re posting to your blog isn’t breaking any laws, it may be considered unethical by others, which can often be just as damaging.

Here’s a guide to free speech and freedom of information specifically...

Einstein once said, “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.”

The same could be said of intelligence. What they don’t tell you is that the “smart” people of the world are, in most cases, just better at researching and learning things than everyone else.

But researching is a learned skill, not something you’re born with.

And while some people might be predisposed to learn things more easily than others, it’s generally not enough to make a measurable difference.

By learning how to research, you can quickly and fairly easily become knowledgeable about...