We’ve got another Tower After Hours podcast coming your way. Join Kelly, Alyssa, Mike, and Chris as they step up to the microphones and attempt to inform and entertain. In this episode, we’re focused on spring cleaning – tossing out old misconceptions, letting go of outdated techniques, and giving your online presence a refresh.
Chris’ Rant on Stuff He Doesn’t Like That He Sees On the Internet: 2:14 – 15:15
Chris is witness to a lot of passing trends in the design and development of websites. Some of those trends, he’s really not fond of and now you’re going to hear about it!
- Design Over Development – Elements added to a website that don’t serve a real purpose and, instead, hurt your page load speed and user experience. Video backgrounds are a big offender!
- Social Media Icon Overkill – If they’re in the footer, you’ll be fine. Give your user some credit, they will know where to look. There is no need to add them in the header and body copy as well.
- Complex Load Screens – Pre-load animations are called out as major time killers, especially when they continue running long after the page has finished loading.
- Time Delayed Module Pop-Up Ads – You know what he means, and you hate it too!
- Too Much JavaScript and jQuery – A lot of times this negatively impacts load speed and mobile browsing and can cause errors when plugins don’t agree with each other.
Clinging to SEO: 15:30 – 19:00
We’ve preached a holistic internet marketing approach before (putting SEO, social, and content to work together) and Mike impresses the point once again. It’s very hard for your brand to get optimal results when you put all your eggs in one basket.
Fun with Fonts: 19:07 – 25:00
Did you know?
- The font choices you make for your website or printed materials can evoke an emotional response.
- The spacing between letters is important because our brains take a mental break every 7th word or so. It’s not until this break that we fully absorb what we’ve just read.
- Choosing just a few anchor fonts will make a web page seem less overwhelming to your users and they’ll stay longer.
Listen in for more fun facts on fonts!
Keep It, Toss It, or Update It: 25:02 – 39:28
Kelly throws out several well-established marketing strategies and the team decides if we should keep, toss, or update them going forward.
- Stock Photography – Keep It / Update It – just please make sure it’s modern.
- Hamburger Menu – Keep It – but only if your navigation is lengthy enough to necessitate it.
- Keyword Rankings – Update It – there is a lot that can affect your keyword rankings, so instead of looking at each individual keyword try grouping them by similarities and see if, as a whole, the group of keywords rise.
- Content Packed with GIFs – Toss It
- Guest Posts – Keep It – but only if you can get someone else to guest post about you, instead of you posting about yourself.
- Mobile Apps – Keep It – if you can do it well, keep it, but if your app messes up even once, it may hurt you more than help you.