But once in a while, I need to sort of cheat and pull off some design-y type things and I have found several online tools that help me do this in a competent way. Plus, most of these tools are just super-fun to play with!

Web-based Color Palette Tools

Need to pick a font color for a website that will match the overall look and feel? Or maybe you need to introduce an additional color that will match. These handy tools will let you upload a logo or any image and generate a color palette of complementary colors.
Color Palette Generator
This is very simple to use – just paste in the url of a logo or image and it will generate some colors.
Adobe’s “Kuler”
tool does a few more things. It has some preset color schemes which can be useful if you’re starting from scratch, or you can create your own based on a color you select, or an image. It also presents versions of the color schemes based on mood or other criteria.

Browser Add-Ons for Color Palettes

The Firefox add on Rainbow Colors lets you analyze a website and extract a color palette right from your browser, from any website. It’s slightly buggy to use, but overall does a nice job.

For Chrome you have a couple of good options.

The Palette for Chrome extension creates a color palette based on an image on a website. As you’re browsing, you just right-click (CTRL+Click on a Mac) an image and select Palette For Chrome, and it will whip up a color palette in seconds.

The Colorzilla extension (by the makers of the useful CSS Gradient Generator ) does a few different things, but the feature I like the most is the ability, much like Rainbow Colors, to generate the color palette from any website you are browsing, without having to identify a specific image.

Fonts and Typography

In addition to being creatively impaired, I’m also a bit of a design snob. This is a really unfortunate combination! I want to come up with really elegant and cool font combinations (because of course I look down upon poor typography as if I were a pro) but it’s really hard for me to do that when left to my own devices. But once again, there are some really nice tools available that can help the common-a-garden snob such as myself.

Ever see a nice font and want to know what it is? What The Font lets you identify a font based on an image that you upload. Or if you see it on a website, you can just paste in the exact url for the image.

My personal holy grail and what lead to this list of resources was a search for a free online tool into which you could select a font and it would suggest complementary fonts that would look good with it. I was not able to find exactly this, so if someone out there knows of its existence, please leave a comment!

All the tools I’ve listed in this post are free, but if you are really into fonts, you should look into Type DNA which is a paid application.It not only helps manage the fonts on your computer but will actually help you choose fonts and find complementary fonts.

In my hunting I did find several articles showcasing various examples of font combinations that work really well. So you can use these as inspiration and examples:

40 Best Typeface Combinations in Web Design

10 Great Google Font Combinations You Can Copy

Top 19 Font Combinations

40 Font Pairings

25 Examples of Beautiful Typeface Combinations

Font Combinator is a really cool way to test out how different fonts from the Google Fonts directory will look together.

TypeTester.org – this is similar to Font Combinator, although it gives you 3 columns of text side by side to play with. Type Tester has a broader range of fonts than Font Combinator and you can also play with things like word spacing, alignment, and both font and background color.

Esperfonto is the closest I could find to the holy grail I was looking for – a tool that would suggest font pairings. It works pretty well but seemed a tad limited. It’s connected with the MyFonts.com directory of fonts, but when I tried typing in something like Museo, which you can find on MyFonts, Esperfonto couldn’t find it. But it will let you specify certain characteristics you are looking for (e.g. Modern, Traditional, Cool etc) and then make suggestions based on that.

How To Make a Landing Page

Ever need to put together a one-pager for a specific product or project? It always seems like it should be simple, but there’s an art to creating a good landing page. Let these smart people guide you:

Formstack’s ‘Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page’

50 Effective Landing Page Templates

Examples of Effective Landing Pages

Call To Action Graphics

Another apparently simple task which is tricky to do well for the non-designer, is making buttons or graphics for things like “calls to action” – you know the kind – Click Here, Download This, Subscribe Now etc.

Hongkiat.com has a really great resource that includes many free  PSD templates that you can easily customize to make your own buttons.

In WordPress, there is a really handy button maker plugin called: Max Buttons which generates pure CSS buttons for your site.

You can also create CSS buttons using this awesome tool from CSS-Tricks.com

And for a general resource for all things free and design-related, keep your eye on this freebies page from SmashingMagazine – they offer all kinds of free resources for icons, fonts, images, etc.

What resources have you found that should be on this list? Or what are you currently looking for that should be included here?

header image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/songallery/4592139716/

One of the reasons why WordPress is so awesome is because it makes building powerful websites pretty easy. Pick a theme, add some content, hit Publish and there you have it. Lack of technical know-how is no longer a barrier, and the array of shiny, sexy themes that are available along with the inexpensivenss of it all can make it dangerously easy to under-think the process of building a website. But while WordPress and its eco-system have made many parts of the process simple and taken the grunt work out of making a site, the one thing that YOU still have to do, is the analytical thinking and planning behind your site.

For your site to be an effective business tool, it must reflect the core goals and missions of your company. Whereas many of us start the planning of a site by looking at the available WordPress themes and letting those designs sway our decisions, we really need to be starting from a more strategic point of view and making decisions about themes, plugins etc, based on the bigger picture.

So before you put pixel to screen, or start buying themes, consider the following.

1) What are the values and overall mission of your company?

For your website to ‘feel’ right at a fundamental level it must be a reflection of the driving force behind your business. What are the values that you want to convey? What is it about your business that keeps you motivated to run it every day? What is it about your business that your customers connect with?

2) What are the business goals of the company?

This is a key point that should influence everything from site development to marketing strategy . Get clear on what the specific goals of your company are. Sure, everyone wants to increase sales and profits but perhaps there are specific areas of your business that you are trying to grow, or areas you are moving away from. Your goals may change over time, so it’s good to review them periodically and make sure your site is still in alignment with your business goals.

3) Who is your desired clientele?

Do not try to be all things to everyone. Just because you CAN provide a certain service or make a certain product doesn’t mean you should prioritize it on your site if it’s not what you ultimately want to do. So focus on catering to the customers you really want to attract to ensure you are building a business that will serve you financially and emotionally.

4) If your site was an employee, what would its job description be?

In order for you to know whether your site is successful, it has to have a clear purpose with defined outcomes. How will you know if your site is working for you? What would the results be? More product sales? More leads? More email subscribers? etc Outlining clear goals and benchmarks will help craft the site and provide focus for design, content and tracking results.

5) What do you want visitors to do at your site – what are the actions that count?

Considering points 1 – 4 above should have brought you clarity on the purpose of your site, and therefore what steps you actually want your visitors to take upon arriving at your site. Your website should always be guiding your visitor toward what you want them to do next. Knowing what actions you would consider to be significant and tracking them, will help you understand if your site is effective or if it needs tweaking.

6) Your homepage is only one page, not the entire site.

Your website is more than just your homepage. Your homepage should provide guidance for those who land there, but it is not the be all and end all of your site. Not everyone will come to your site through your homepage – internal pages will act as landing pages for search engine visitors, so make sure that no matter what page people land on, you are providing the appropriate message and information for that visitor to take the next step.

Once you are clear on these points, the theme, graphics and text that you use will end up serving your purposes precisely. The more clear your sense of direction, the better result you will get out of your site.

*header image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bluekdesign/4890727263/

Below are the slides from my San Diego WordCamp talk on “Treat Your Blog Like A Business”. I discussed a few common monetization strategies, and the ins n’s outs of each. My overall premise is that in most cases, monetization doesn’t just happen to you, you have to be prepared and have a strategy that will help you take advantage of opportunities that may arise. The more value you build with your blog, even before thinking of monetization, the better prepared you will be. Don’t wait until you actually want to make money before building an email list or developing your social networking efforts.

Although in the beginning you may feel that no-one is reading your blog (it may well be true!), it’s important that you blog anyway! You are building a library of useful content that will not only help you attract search engine traffic and readership, but over time you WILL have readers, so the content you write now will eventually find eyeballs – so make it good!

Step-By-Step Search Engine Optimization For Your Blog/Website

Thursday July 14th, 7:30pm – 9:30pm, $40

@ Blankspaces

5405 Wilshire Blvd (2 blocks west of La Brea)
Los Angeles,
CA 90036
free parking is available – see Blankspaces website for details.

You’ve set up your website, now what? How will anyone find you? How will you attract the targeted traffic you need for your business? Search engines are one of the most powerful sources of traffic if you know the basic principles. This class will teach you the fundamentals of search engine optimization so that you can develop a thriving and effective business website or blog.

This class is designed for those with little or no understanding of search engine optimization, or anyone who is not getting the results they expect from their SEO.  The examples will skew toward self-hosted WordPress users in terms of implementation, but the principles and techniques apply to all types of sites.

We will cover the fundamental step-by-step process to improving your website’s rankings:

• What keywords should you target and how to do the research
• How to find out which keywords you can rank for and which are too competitive
• How to optimize your content for find-ability and relevance.
• How search engines see your site and what keeps them coming back.
• How  Google determines how relevant your site is. Make sure you’re sending the right signals!
• Why SEO goes beyond just installing a plugin
• No blog is an island- why links are important
• How new changes by Google can change the game – and your strategy
• Essential resources for further learning

All participants will also receive a pdf covering all the info from the class.

* Please note this class is not WordPress-specific. The principles of SEO apply to all websites no matter what platform they are built on.

Some kind words from clients and previous workshop attendees:

“You Rock!!!! Thank you, so much, for everything! You made me “get” the web, which is not that easy:) I am SO excited about starting my own website. You are SO informative and have such a great way about you.”
– Turon

“Lucy is hands-down one of the best teachers I have ever had and I’ve had quite a few. Her communication skills are clear, which made my learning process faster and easier. Two words – Lucy ROCKS!”
– Stephany Alexander – Author, Internet Entrepreneur and Relationship Expert

Google describes it as:

a way to connect authors with their content on the web. We are experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results.

For now it seems more relevant for large sites that have multiple authors, rather than for individual blogs. In the case of a multi-author site, when an author posts a piece of content, they can use the “rel=author” atrribute in a link that points to their author page on the same site, which gives Google a way of understanding that multiple pieces of content are by the same author. Additionally from that author page, the “rel=me” markup can be used in links to other sites that belong to the author such as their personal site, social profiles, etc. What this does is allow Google to better understand how this author is connected to their other content on the web, and eventually Google will  have an understanding of that author’s online influence.  So for individual bloggers, it could end up being a way network your guest posts for other sites and develop a whole new infrastructure that Google can process,  based around your name and authorship.

Mediapost describes these implications as follows:

This attribute allows authors to claim pieces of content as their own, so that Google can begin to identify and accrue additional social signals. This support is initially limited to a single domain, but will eventually allow guest bloggers/columnists to claim their work across multiple domains.

This is significant for a few reasons. The first is that this signals Google’s desire to further understand influential voices online. Many attendees referred to rel=author as “personal PageRank,” a nod to Google’s PageRank algorithm which identifies authority web pages based on backlink profiles. It appears that online authority will no longer be housed at the domain or page level; specific authors will now send relevancy and credibility signals that will be accounted for.

Overall this would seem to be another tool in Google’s waged war on content-scrapers, content farms and other producers of low quality content. I’m sure those unscrupulous types will find ways to game this, as they do everything else, but even in these initial stages, this does seem to have the potential to help authors identify themselves as the original owner of a piece of content, and thereby demonstrate to Google that the credit (ie. search engine ranking) belongs to them and not some lousy content scraper that stole your blog post!

Thoughts? Opinions? A potentially useful development? Or just another annoying way in that we bloggers have to worry about more code than we’d like?  Leave a comment!

** image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/keso/108805307/sizes/o/in/photostream/

The web world has a serious case of trying to keep up with the Jones’, or rather the Zuckerberg. This week both Twitter and Google have launched features that mimic Facebook. The other day I mentioned Twitter’s new “Follow” button and since then Google have also launched their “Plus 1″ button.

Why “+1″?

Google wants you to use the  +1 in order to give your public vote of approval for a website, in a similar way that you may click the “Like” button for Facebook. Of course, while everyone and their Grandma’s Chihuahua has a Facebook account, not everyone is so used to using their Google account as a social tool. But for this to work, people will have to be logged in to their Google account so that when you click the +1  (see the button at the end of this post), Google can see who you are and keep track of your preferences. Google currently tries to show you who from your social circle has shared the websites on their search results pages, but you need to have connected your Google account to others like Twitter for that to work properly (and let’s face it, how many people know that you can even do that?!) so “+1″ is probably a more direct way for them to actually own some social data about you. Web publishers will  see the benefit, or actually the need, to adding the button in order to keep up in Google’s rankings. But will regular users understand how or why they should use or click this button? That remains to be seen. 

What happens when you “+1″  something?

A couple of things will happen based on your interaction with a “+1″ button. Firstly, your friends that you are connected with via your Google Account, will start to see your ‘votes’ show up in search results, attributed to you. For example, “Lucy  +1′d this” will appear in Google search results pages. Google thinks you want to see what your friends recommend, right there in the search results pages. I’m curious – do you? I don’t, but I tend to be a bit weird, so I’m not sure I represent popular opinion!

Secondly, it will affect how Google ranks websites. They will look at +1′s as signals of value and popularity, probably meaning that sites with lots of “+1s”  will rank higher (more thoughts on this to follow in a separate post).

For now, if you are a web publisher you need to get yourself a button. It’s quite easy to install with some copy/paste code from Google here. Then head over to Yoast’s site to see how to integrate Google Analytics tracking on the button.

View Google’s video introducing +1:

So what’s your take on this? As a publisher and/or a regular Google user, do you think this feature will be useful? Do you care to see what your friends have voted for when you are Googling for something? Leave a comment!

*header image is part of a hilarious animated cartoon you can find at BLaugh

It’s true that there can be many confusing intricacies to the science of Search Engine Optimization, but what’s also true is that most people get tripped up on the basics, before they even get to the complex stuff! In working with many entrepreneurial and small business clients, I’ve come to see a few common trends in the way that people look at SEO and why they are often not getting the results they want. Improvement typically begins with some fundamental shifts in the way you think about the process.

1)   Forget Sex, Specificity Sells!
Lack of clarity about your business offerings and target market will lead to lack of clarity in your search marketing efforts and you will either attract clients that aren’t a good fit, or you will have trouble converting your web traffic. Your search engine strategy should be based on a clear picture of who your ideal client is and exactly what you can do for them. Then make sure that you are effectively communicating that on your website.

2)   Are you in alignment?
Don’t try and target every keyword on every page – create specific pages or groups of pages for specific keyword groups. That typically means you’ll create specific pages for each service/product you provide. Make sure your pages are in alignment:  the main elements – title, url, content,headings etc  - should all reflect the target keyword for that page.

3)   The Way You Search May Not Be The Way Your Prospect Searches
There may be specific ‘insider’ terms related to your business which you know about and take for granted because you’re an expert. But a prospect may not yet know those words – how else may they be looking for your service? Doing your keyword research may reveal alternate and more popular ways that people think and search for your service/product, so be prepared to adapt your language where necessary. Listen to the words your current clients and leads use when talking about your business or service, and incorporate them into your keyword research.

4)   Quality Not Quantity – Conversions Are The Real Point
It’s not just about the amount of traffic that you get, but how qualified it is. There’s no point getting bucket loads of traffic if they don’t end up buying or taking the next step. You’ll build a more viable business based on very targeted traffic rather than trying to only get huge numbers. So make sure you’re targeting ‘long tail’ phrases that may have a smaller search volume but deliver very specific traffic.

5)   Don’t just think about how well your website performs, but how are your individual pages performing?
Your homepage is not always the most relevant or effective place that visitors can enter your site. By looking at your Google Analytics reports you will be able to see if visitors are landing at the most appropriate page for their search. If not, you may need to re-optimize some pages. Do your most popular pages have a clear call to action or next step?

6)   On-Site Optimization Is Only Half The Battle!
To really perform well in the search engines (especially if you have a lot of competition), you must get your content out there and build quality links back to it. There’s always something else you can be doing to find a new audience for your information such as networking with bloggers in your field and getting your content exposure on other websites.

What are your biggest challenges in making your website an effective business tool? Leave a comment below!

This post is a taste of  what’s to come in my forthcoming Google Analytics Ebook. Sign up to be notified of its launch and for a special promotional price.

Internal Link Tracking Using Google Analytics

On your blog or website you may have multiple links –such as icons or calls to action in different locations – leading to the same page, product or piece of content – but do you know which link placement and type is most effective?

Heatmap software and services such as CrazyEgg will give you this type of information in great detail and in a visual format. But there’s usually a cost involved and for a lot of cases it might be overkill if you just need simple comparisons. So while not as elegant, you can use Google Analytics to do some simple testing and comparison.

Warning – Don’t Use Link Tagging!

Google Analytics offers a link tagging feature  which allows you to label links with a referral source, and other tracking info. On first glance you might think you could simply use this to tag your internal links in a similar way. However link tagging is designed to track promotional campaigns with traffic coming from external sources. If you use it for internal links, you will screw up your data. If someone arrives at your site via a link from another site, this would be tracked in GA as a referring site. However if that visitor then clicks an internal link that you’ve tagged, it erases that referral source and replaces it with whatever you’ve used in your link tagging.

Use Event Tracking

Event Tracking is probably the simplest way to track internal links. I use Yoast’s Analytics Plugin for WordPress, so the basic code is already included in the set-up, (if you check the box ‘track outbound clicks & downloads’) making tracking links a breeze.

Event Tracking Vs. Virtual Page views

Event tracking is generally preferable because it won’t artificially inflate your page view numbers. However if you want to include certain pages as Goals in GA, you will need to use virtual page views.

Implementation

All you have to do is add a little bit of code to the link you want to track. The general format is:

Onclick=”javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','category', 'action', 'opt_label', 'opt_value'];”)

So your standard link code looks like this:

<a href="http://www.example.com”>link to content</a>

A link with event tracking looks like this:

<a href="http://www.example.com" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','ebook','homepage','button']);">link to page</a>

In this example, ‘ebook’ is the category, ‘homepage’ is the action and ‘button’ is the label. You have to include a value for each of category and action, but the 3^rd and 4^th values are optional if you want to add further data.

To compare this link’s effectiveness with a text link on the same page you might add this code to that link:

<a href="http://www.example.com" onclick="javascript:_gaq.push(['_trackEvent','ebook','homepage','textlink']);">link to page</a>

See The Results

You will see the results under Content > Event Tracking in your Google Analytics reports.

So by adding Event Tracking code to 2 links that go to the same page, you will be able to compare which one is more effective.

Do you have questions about this, or perhaps other experiences with how you use Event Tracking? Leave a comment below!

Other resources:

Justin Cutroni, who has literally written the book on Google Analytics, suggests rigging the site search feature  to track internal links. I found Event Tracking to be a little easier to set up for my site, but you can find his method here.

Header image courtesy: http://www.flickr.com/photos/8669065@N06/2058473079/

Small Business CEO have published my guest post – “Kickstart Your Online Community With Your Offline Customers”. The post was written with small businesses in mind that already have a customer base and offline touchpoints such as a physical business location, call center etc. This offline base can provide an excellent foundation to start building online community, but it takes some planning and training of staff to integrate the steps needed to bring those customers online, into your everyday business processes. Read the full article

Perhaps the biggest news this week in the online world is that Seth Godin announced he is giving up on traditional book publishing and is going all-digital. Seth has the following and the leverage to make this an exciting development for digital publishing. This could be a big step in mainstreaming electronic publishing and changing the consumption of “books.” He has published 12 bestsellers in the traditional manner, so it’s possible he will be the reason some consumers start buying digital products.

Google announced their Google Voice service, which allows you to place calls to other Gmail users, right from your inbox, for next to nothing – free domestic calls and 2cents per minute for many international locations. Sounds like a cool feature, although PC World suggests it’s more about convenience rather than a game-changer, and definitely not a Skype killer.

In other Google news, their Realtime search feature now has its own homepage at google.com/realtime
Realtime results are pulled from sources like Twitter and Facebook status updates. These results were previously only accessible by clicking on the “Updates” link on the left of the Google search results page, or for ‘trending’ topics they are integrated into the main search results. So it’s not a major breakthrough, but will perhaps raise the profile of realtime search a little more. They’ve also added a couple more features such as integration with Google Alerts, and access to the full conversation that an update may be part of.  ReadWriteWeb has a nice summary of the good and the bad of this announcement.

Has Google dropped Yelp reviews from their Places listings (those are the local map results you get typically when you search for a local business)? Techcrunch believes so. Catch up on the drama.

Digg launched their new re-design this week which, according to VentureBeat gives a more personalized experience and “makes it easier to find new sources to follow and connect to friends via Facebook, Google and Twitter accounts.” I barely use Digg at the moment, but if you regularly use it, I’m interested to know how you like the new design and if it means you will be using it differently in any way now.

Finally, a couple of awesome and stream-enhancing Tweeters to follow this week:

@Alizasherman

@Suzannevara