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Web Design

Weekly Links Roundup – Product Descriptions, Button Design, Accessibility, Low-cost Marketing Ideas

June 19, 2020 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

Selling online? Check out this detailed post on how to write a good product description. A persuasive product description might be the very last chance you have to convince a potential customer to buy – just like high-quality photos are critical for ecommerce sites, so are well-written product descriptions.

Here’s an interesting post about button design that I found when working on a new theme this week. Have you ever thought about the differences between rounded vs. sharp-angled buttons – especially if you use a plugin for creating lots of different types of buttons? There’s more to it than you might think – the shape of a button can send a subtle message to your user. Learn how to have more control over your messaging.

While there are some plugins and overlays that claim to make websites ADA-accessible, think twice before relying on them. Lawsuits are being filed against some sites using these quick-fix tools. Learn why there is no silver bullet for making a website accessible.

Looking for low-cost marketing ideas for your business? Here are 14 small business marketing ideas you can execute online today.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Ecommerce, Self-Promotion and Marketing, Web Design Tagged With: marketing, design, product description, buttons, accessibility

Weekly Links Roundup – WordPress History, Domain Names, Tracking Clicks, Product Photos

October 18, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

I know it’s been a long time (about 6 weeks!) since the last post. Today’s post I hope brings an end to that unplanned break.

It’s been a crazy summer that included a death in the family, a broken elbow and hand, a sad lack of paddle boarding, and a badly-needed vacation. But now that things have settled down, I plan to get back to weekly blogging (or thereabouts).

Just for fun – here is the history of WordPress in 4 minutes. If you’re a long-time WordPress user, you’ll get a kick out of this. Maybe. I did.

Looking for a domain name for your new business venture? It’s more important than you might think to make a solid decision. Learn about domain names and how to choose the best one for your organization.

Tracking link and button clicks in your site is an important part of understanding site traffic, yet Google Analytics doesn’t let you do this very easily. Setting it up to track in Analytics is a tedious process. This tutorial shows you how to use the MonsterInsights plugin to track those clicks. This will help you do things like track clicks on a phone number or on a link that goes outside your own site.

Finally… The importance of having high-quality product photos for your ecommerce site can’t be overstated. Learn how to take great product photos that really entice your visitors to buy.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Resources, SEO, WordPress Info, Ecommerce Tagged With: wordpress, domain names, tracking button clicks, product photos

Weekly Links Roundup – Content First, Free Plugins, FAQ Plugins, Gallery Comparison

August 9, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

One thing that often surprises my design clients is the immediately request for their content when their website project starts. Often, especially for a first website, they have no clue what content they’re going to have. This makes my job as a designer much, much harder. Having all the different types of content that will be on the site up front (at least the types, if not the actual content) is absolutely necessary, as the content drives the design. A site that is all about news articles on the home page will be designed very differently than one with a lot of products to sell, for example. This is why we start the design work with a mockup showing the different types of content that are planned for a given page. To help illustrate, here’s a post about the Content-First Method.

If you’re hiring someone to design and build a new website, do yourself and them a favor and spend some time developing your content strategy before jumping right into the look-and-feel. It will save time and money during the project. Realizing you’re missing important content pages or sections after the design is done or the theme is built can be expensive to remedy.

Here’s a collection of purposeful, generalist free plugins for WordPress sites. I don’t agree with all the choices, but it’s good to get different opinions – there are many plugins to go around for most uses and what works well for one user may not fit the bill for another. The ones in this list I use regularly are Yoast SEO and CoBlocks.

If you get a lot of the same questions over and over from clients and prospects, consider adding an FAQ page. You can collect all those questions and answers in one place and create a very useful resource for customers, while saving yourself time. What’s not to like about that? Here’s a roundup of the 8 Best WordPress FAQ Plugins – I’ve used Accordion FAQ several times and like that one for ease of styling with CSS.

If you’re looking for a gallery plugin for WordPress, two of the most popular are FooGalley and Envira Gallery. I’m a big fan of FooGallery and use it often, but I’ve also heard good things about Envira Gallery. Here is a head-to-head comparison of these two top gallery plugins so you can compare them before deciding.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Web Design, Website Content, WordPress Info, Plugins Tagged With: faqs, gallery plugins, foogallery, content first

Making a Custom Slideout Menu for Genesis

May 4, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

Slideout menu screenshotI’ve been designing and building custom WordPress themes from scratch since 2009. Back on January 1 I switched to custom theming using the Genesis framework – not a huge transition but still something of a learning curve!

A few months ago I needed to create a sliding toggle menu for mobile browsers for a client’s site (see the final version to the right). I’d done this for other frameworks numerous times and had the code snippets for it. But getting it working in Genesis took some extra steps. Here we go…

I’m assuming here you’re already familiar with the Genesis framework, know how to properly enqueue scripts in WordPress, and know how to add elements to functions.php. I’m using a custom theme based on the Genesis Sample Theme.

Here’s a CodePen showing a simple version of the slideout menu:

See the Pen Slideout Menu based on Slideout.js by Debbie Campbell (@kanjigirl) on CodePen.0

1. Let’s start by registering a new custom menu for the slideout for mobile devices.

// Register new side menu
function register_side_menu() {
   register_nav_menu( 'side-menu',__( 'Side Navigation Menu' ));
}
add_action( 'init', 'register_side_menu' );

2. Then let’s build the function for adding this new menu to the site.

The #menu will go just after the opening body tag. Below that, everything else needs to be enclosed in the #panel div.

// Custom Slideout mobile menu
function custom_side_menu() { ?>
    <div id="menu">
        <div class="wrap">
            <!-- Side Menu Header -->
            <div class="menu-header">
                <span class="close-icon">Close</span>
            </div>
            <!-- Nav menu -->
            <div class="nav-menu">
            	<?php wp_nav_menu( array( 'theme_location' => 'side-menu' ) ); ?>
            </div>
        </div>
    </div>

    <div id="panel">
<?php
}
add_action( 'genesis_before', 'custom_side_menu' );

Using the ‘genesis_before’ hook drops this code into the page right after the opening body tag. We use media queries to hide the desktop menu on mobile and vice versa.

Notice we open #panel at the end of this function to enclose everything else below this point. So, we also need to add a closing tag for that div:

function close_panel() { ?>
    </div><!-- close Panel -->
<?php
}
add_action( 'genesis_after', 'close_panel' );

Using ‘genesis_after’ drops this code in just before the closing body tag.

3. Get the Slideout script and enqueue it in WordPress.

You’ll find it here: https://slideout.js.org/.

4. Add this code snippet to the Footer Scripts section on the Genesis Theme Settings page.

<script type="text/javascript">
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
  var slideout = new Slideout({ 
    'panel': document.getElementById('panel'),
    'menu': document.getElementById('menu'),
    'padding': 256,
    'tolerance': 70
  });
});
</script>

5. Your slideout  menu will need some CSS styling.

The CSS from the Slideout site is a good starting point.

body {
  width: 100%;
  height: 100%;
}

.slideout-menu {
  position: fixed;
  top: 0;
  bottom: 0;
  width: 256px;
  min-height: 100vh;
  overflow-y: scroll;
  -webkit-overflow-scrolling: touch;
  z-index: 0;
  display: none;
}

.slideout-menu-left {
  left: 0;
}

.slideout-menu-right {
  right: 0;
}

.slideout-panel {
  position: relative;
  z-index: 1;
  will-change: transform;
  background-color: #FFF; /* A background-color is required */
  min-height: 100vh;
}

.slideout-open,
.slideout-open body,
.slideout-open .slideout-panel {
  overflow: hidden;
}

.slideout-open .slideout-menu {
  display: block;
}

And now you should have a functional mobile Genesis slideout menu. Don’t forget to add media queries to control the display of this menu vs. the regular desktop one. 

Please let me know when you use this tutorial and if you have any problems, post in the comments.

Filed Under: Tutorials, Responsive Web Design Tagged With: mobile design, genesis, slideout menu, mobile menus

Weekly Links Roundup – Old Redirects, Nonprofit Sites, Calls to Action, Hacked Sites

March 8, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

When is it safe to remove old redirects within your site? The answer may surprise you – it could be ‘never.’ Learn how to judge if it’s okay to remove that old redirect or not.

Do you have a nonprofit website? If you do, this post is for you! Read about the 10 features every nonprofit site should have, including:

  • Ways to donate or become a supporting member
  • Members-only content
  • Clear calls-to-action to get people to join or donate
  • If you recruit volunteers, easy access to volunteer info

Check out the linked post for more ideas for your nonprofit site.

And speaking of calls-to-action, how do you know if yours are as effective as they can be? Read this guide to the best calls-to-action for your target audience.

If your WordPress website got hacked, how would you know? This infographic shows you 7 key signs of a hacked site. If you need help keeping your site secure, please get in touch! Prevention is almost always less expensive than recovering from a hack.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Security, Self-Promotion and Marketing, SEO, Web Design Tagged With: call to action, nonprofits, hacked site, 301 redirects

Weekly Links Roundup – Site Speed, Product Pages, Contact Pages, WordPress Security Myths

February 22, 2019 by Debbie Campbell

The top website and online marketing links of the week.

You know your website is slow. It’s always been like that. But do you really understand what that slow site could be costing you in terms of customers and conversions? A recent report shows that 70% of buyers are influence by a site’s page loading time. The average site loads in about 15 seconds – but a number of studies show that the majority of online shoppers will leave a site if they have to wait more than 3 seconds. If you need help making your site faster, check out our Performance Optimization service or get in touch with questions.

Learn how to take your product pages to the next level with this great post on design elements to make product pages soar. Start with inviting, high-quality photography – this is really critical – and then polish your text descriptions to make your product seem irresistable. Be sure to have a clear call-to-action (Add to Cart) and don’t pack the page with too much information. Never get in the customer’s way!

Here are tips for making an effective contact page – including having a contact form (form submissions are something you can measure in Analytics). But don’t make your form too long – studies show that the more questions you ask, the less likely people will fill it out (that’s really true for general contact forms, and doesn’t necessarily apply to all types of forms).

Finally… it’s always fun to debunk WordPress security risks, and here are the top 5 for this week. WordPress is no more or less secure than other online platforms. The biggest security problem for a WordPress site is the negligent site owner who fails to keep plugins, themes and WordPress updated, making their site a prime target for hackers. Don’t be that person! Be better and keep your site safe.


Did you find this information useful? Please share with your friends and colleagues! And comment below with questions or observations.

Filed Under: Ecommerce, Security, Website Performance, Website Forms Tagged With: wordpress, performance, security, contact pages, product photography, page loading time, product pages

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