Archive for the ‘Web & SEO’ Category
Aug
12
Twelve Horses’ client, Monterey County Convention & Visitors Bureau receives more industry recognition for their website design.
37 of the Best Web Designs from the Travel Industry
Published August 10th, 2009 in Galleries
“Travel websites often feature large, attractive photos because of their emphasis on visual appeal. In this post we’ll look at 37 well-designed sites from the travel industry for your own design inspiration. Some are state or government tourism websites, and others are for hotels or business involved in the travel industry.”
Source: vandelaydesign.com/blog/galleries/travel
Posted in Atlanta, Las Vegas, Reno-Tahoe, Salt Lake City, Travel & Tourism, Web & SEO
Aug
10
Ah, it’s Monday. While enjoying my first cup of coffee, I thought I’d choose a WordPress plugin to play with and see what I could do with it. I stumbled across this WordPress Survey Tool and figured I’d use it to judge Facebook usage.
A note about WordPress survey tools: some are better than others, some take more time to use, some are compatible with older releases and not new ones. But sometimes it is just about getting a job accomplished, developing some insight, and moving on to the next item on your list. Either way, they’re free! I’ll let you know what I think of this one.
Answer to the best of your abilities, and if you have any other questions you would like to see added please comment on this post. I will share the results of the survey one month from today. Hope you have a good week!
Posted in Web & SEO
Aug
4
As social media marketing becomes more prominent for internet marketers one challenge is to determine how to track success of a social campaign. One easy way to gain some insight into your social media marketing campaigns is to setup a specific campaign in Google Analytics to track traffic from these sites. This will give you insight after you push social strategies online if they are bringing in more traffic to your website or not. Google Analytics already tracks visits from social sites but you can easily setup some filters to put them all together in one campaign so you can see the overall health of your social strategies without having to look at them individually.
Follow these steps in Google Analytics so setup social media marketing filters:
- Click on ‘edit’ to the right of your website profile on the main login screen.
- Click on ‘Add Filter’ in the ‘Filters’ section on the next screen.
- Name the filter something like ‘Social Media Grouping’
- Select ‘Custom filter’ as the ‘filter type’
- Select ‘Advanced’ from the radio button options list
- *In ‘Field A -> Extract A’ select ‘Campaign Source and enter the social media marketing sites you want to capture in the text box, see below for more information
- ~In ‘Output To -> Constructor’ select ‘Campaign Medium’ or ‘Campaign Name’ and enter ‘social’ in the text box, see below for more information
- Leave the rest of the ‘yes/no’ boxes as-is and save the filter
- You will have to wait 24 hours to start seeing the traffic being filter in the manner you just setup
* Note: for convenience sake you can copy paste this text to add some of the most prominent social type sites on the internet to your filter: twitter.com|facebook.com|myspace.com|flickr.com|linkedin.com|Wordpress.com|blogspot.com|youtube.com|stumbleupon.com
~Note: this will change the ‘campaign medium’ from ‘referral’ to ‘social’. There is one drawback to this as you will not be able to see the referring website url from traffic coming from your tagged social media marketing websites anymore. There is an alternative to this. Instead of marking the campaign medium as ‘social’ you can mark the ‘campaign name’ as social. Then to see your social traffic you will have to go to ‘traffic sources’ -> ‘referring sites’ -> select a site -> filter by ‘campaign name’ to see your ‘social’ traffic.
Screenshot 1: Setting up the filter
Google Analytics Social Filter (above)
Screenshot 2: Viewing Social Site Traffic
Social Filter Website Traffic Screen
Posted in SEO, Web & SEO
Jul
20
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When it comes to an online presence, libraries across the nation are notoriously out-of-date and lack a certain modernity needed to get people excited about reading and research. With Washoe County Library we took a new approach to the website design and functionality. What you will find with this site launch are a few different personalities – within one primary website – geared towards the varying demographics that make up any library system.
The Good – The Bad – The Needed
To start, we sent the client a questionnaire, or survey if you will, to get them thinking about where they wanted the website to go. They came back to us with keywords and messaging they associated with the site, as well as other websites they liked and specifics about them. After establishing the client’s expectations we moved to the design phase.
Design & Website Functionality
To lay the foundation for each site we first constructed the individual logos, and then it was on to the manufacturing of the website designs.
The homepage is based primary off of the serif fonts from old literary books. As lead designer Christine Harcinske explains,
“I wanted to capture that classic literary look.”
We think she nailed it along with the other demographic portals. The Kids Zone went for more of the picture book effect. Christine drew the majority of it in Photoshop and Illustrator.
The Teens Site is a reflection of what is going on graphically at present in various media outlets and retail locations for this demographic. It is also supported with social media interaction such as Flickr, Facebook, and MySpace.
The Senior Central is tailored to their preferences with applicable graphics and content.
Each site required the functionality needed to display the age specific, demographic content with the homepage acting as an aggregate for all. Nothing a little XML parsing and displaying can’t handle!
We hope you enjoy the feel and functionality of the new Washoe County Library website. It was a fun project made even better by the fact that, despite being web creatures, we love books and even better, free WiFi!
Posted in Reno-Tahoe, Service Industry, Web & SEO
