Old design standards emphasized keeping as much relevant content above the fold as the space allowed for. That said, above the fold rules are mostly old news today. Most visitors are comfortable scrolling a web page these days. Consequently, design emphasis has shifted toward optimizing aesthetics and form styling in recent years. A longer home page is now acceptable and offers some strategic advantages as well. Including 3-5 sections on your home page helps point visitors to key areas of your site. It also creates a more seamless user experience for your visitors.

Tip: Here’s a list of the key elements you should consider including in the sections of your home page:

• An elevator pitch (brief about us)
• A compelling value proposition
• An introductory video
• An overview of your products and/or services
• A list of features and benefits
• Testimonials or press mentions
• Case studies/success stories

 

RULE #7 – Make Effective Use of White Space
Believe it or not, white space is a critical design element. The term refers to the areas around your page elements that are empty and lack content or visual items.

White space improves readability and helps you compartmentalize your content. It also tends to decrease the apprehension level of new visitors. A page stuffed full of text and/or graphics with minimal white space generally appears busy or cluttered. This diminishes your user experience (UX) and typically leads to a high bounce rate.

As far as your color palette is concerned, the key is to pick a single palette and strictly adhere to it. ALL of your marketing communications materials should maintain the same color palette. Consistency is extremely important when it comes to creating a cohesive color palette for your website and your other mar-comm materials.

A three-color palette is a good rule of thumb. That said, adhere to basic best practices in color theory no matter what color scheme you choose for your brand.

Tip: If you’re a design novice, a number of free online tools and resources are available to point you in the right direction. For color palettes, we recommend Adobe Creative Cloud’s Color Wheel and Paletton. For font type selection, check out: Adobe Fonts, Wordmark and Type Scale. 

 
RULE #11 – Maintain Fresh Content
The expression, “content is king” is widely-used these days in digital marketing circles.  So, what exactly does it mean?

For starters, it refers to the fact that the search engines place a premium on new content.  Indeed, the quality and relevancy of your content is essential in determining your page's position in search query results.

Simply updating or refreshing your pages on a regular basis doesn’t make your site “fresh” and more likely to rank effectively within the search engines. Similarly, adding new pages just for the sake of increasing the size of your digital footprint won’t necessarily boost your site on the freshness meter.

Google employs a tool referred to as "Query Deserves Freshness" (QDF) to rank and prioritize new content. This tool monitors search query activities and identifies trending topics that stand out from normal activity. When QDF is triggered, Google looks to see if there’s any fresh content on the topic and then gives that content a boost in their search results.

In other words, if you have fresh content on a trending topic, you’ll likely enjoy a ride at the top of the search results for a period of time. Once the QDF boost wears off, your page generally shuffles back to its original position in the search results.

If you’re a savvy and nimble organization, the QDF algorithm provides opportunities to generate a significant competitive advantage. For example, if you create relevant and robust content in pulse with the hottest trends in your market, you can quickly establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry.

Tip: Follow these five simple guidelines if you struggle to create fresh content:

• Get involved In the conversation - Social media platforms and discussion groups  are great for keeping a pulse on trending topics in your industry.
• Monitor your competition – Get an idea of what, when and how your competition communicates. Build off their model and take the things that seem to work for them one step further. In other words, beat them at their own game.
• Archive inspirational ideas – Broaden your interests beyond your industry category. Identify best practices from other industries and adopt them into your business model. If you’re running dry on fresh ideas, refer to your archive for inspiration.
• Leverage existing web resources – There are several online tools designed to kick-start the creative process. For example, BuzzSumo allows you to analyze content trends in a variety of industries and identify what works well for various market segments.
• Employ a copywriter – Copywriters often offer a fresh perspective. A good copywriter will identify fresh content opportunities from your target audience's perspective and keep your organization on the cutting edge of your industry.

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​RULE #12 –Utilize High-Quality Images and Graphics
Eye-catching visual elements that complement your branding have a tremendous impact when used properly. Here are a few factors to consider when selecting graphics and images for your website:

• Thematic images that represent your products or services
• Photos that create emotional effects relating to the value of your brand
• Proprietary photos (i.e. high-quality images of your location, your team members, your products, etc.)
• Images and graphics that complement your brand standards (color palette consistency, theme, etc.)
• Maintain a consistent look and feel to the elements throughout your site

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​(e.g. a belief that you products and/or services are low-quality or that you're unlikely to deliver on your brand promises).

Ideally, your organization should use proprietary photos from a professional photographer and customized graphics from a professional designer. That said, there are plenty of affordable stock image sites  to choose from if you happen to have tight resource constraints (e.g. iStock, Adobe Stock, Wikimedia Commons, etc.)
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If you do decide to use stock images instead of proprietary artwork, be careful to ensure that every image you select matches your brand persona and correlates with your written content. Also, you want to establish a unique brand identity and protect your site from having a generic look and feel, so be sure to avoid popular images if you can.

Tip: Remember that page load time factors in to your site’s search rankings. This is especially true for mobile. Therefore, you’ll want to pay close attention to the size of your image files. Familiarize yourself with Google’s “Image Optimization” guidelines if you want to completely optimize your images.
 
 
CONCLUSIONS
As we stated earlier, your website is often your organization’s primary public persona. It holds enormous influence over your target market’s perception of your products and/or services. More often than not, healthy and flourishing organizations tend to have effective websites; while struggling organizations often have ineffective websites.

Investing in the quality of your website tends to pay substantial dividends over the long run. It’s a direct investment in your brand; and there are countless case studies available online which attest to the bottom-line results that successful branding efforts often achieve.

Subjectively, prudent investments in your brand assets often create a variety of strategic advantages. For example:

​We were on a call today discussing the changing landscape in social media and web media in general. Suffice it to say, it was a pretty interesting discussion. If you're not aware, the major social media networks have been criticized in recent months for censorship of conservative voices. Other web media giants, like Google, have also been accused of similar practices in content prioritization recently.  The basic assertion by those affected is that the politics of the these web media giants is trumping free speech, free expression and free dialog.  

While concerns over censorship began with the far right, mainstream conservatives have also expressed frustration and dissatisfaction with the policies and practices of the major web media companies as of late.  Surprisingly, even voices on the left, like Bruce A. Dixon, are starting to express concern that specific political narratives are driving what people see in their Facebook / Twitter feeds and  Google / Bing / YouTube search results. 

As a result of the growing backlash, a number of promising social media startups have cropped up recently. They aren't necessarily catering to conservatives. Rather, they're building platforms that are firmly rooted on 1st Amendment principles. It seems the free market also favors our basic freedoms. They're starting to get attention in from venture capital world too.  

Gab, a direct competitor to Twitter, launched in August of 2016. It recently raised nearly $500,000 through the crowdfunding platform StartEngine. Reports suggest that Gab's membership base is ramping up fast. Consequently, VC's are starting to look for other promising startups in the in the web media arena. 

​In late August of this year, a new social media platform called InfinitySN will launch. Their business model is designed to attack Facebook with a vengeance. As one InfinitySN insider stated today, their aim is "to turn Facebook into the modern day MySpace" by 2020.  One of their founders had an interesting (and historically accurate) perspective on their chances of success. To paraphrase, "It doesn't necessarily pay to be first to market. Others learn from your mistakes, build a better product, and push you out of the category."

Athough there has been a little buzz on social media discussing InfinitySN and what their promising to deliver, it appears the startup is waiting until launch to hype the product through traditional PR channels.  They're currently flying under the radar screen and seem to be banking on the fact that growing dissatisfaction with the social media behemoths by  the general public, combined with positive word of mouth, will fuel interest in the platform.

InfinitySN started as a social media platform for the Colorado community. They saw an opportunity to expand their market, retooled and will launch globally August 29th. It'll be interesting to see if InfinitySN will live up to the hype we heard on the call. That said, we left the call scratching our heads and wondering why it's taken so long for a serious competitor to enter this market?

You can read an old press release from InfintySN relating to their Colorado launch here.