Reading Time: < 1 minYesterday at the A Brighter Web Meetup, we had a great discussion about website accessibility, why it’s important, and steps to take to get started. You can download the slides as a PDF, or view them all here: Website Accessibility: Help your users, help your rankings from Mickey Mellen You can also check out this […]
Websites
Does your website pass “The Grunt Test”?
Reading Time: < 1 minWhile building a proper messaging strategy for your company can take some time, an easy place to start is with “the grunt test”, as popularized by Storybrand. Put simply, can someone look at your content, with no prior experience with your company, and quickly understand what you do? Specifically, they should be able to find […]
Speeding up this blog
Reading Time: 2 minOver the past day, I’ve done a few things to speed up the load time of this site. It wasn’t particularly slow to begin with, but these changes should help make it a bit snappier. Here’s a before and after of the speed scores for the site: Hosting The biggest change I made was with […]
Thinking through “A Brighter Web”
Reading Time: < 1 minWe’ve been running various aspect of A Brighter Web, an educational arm of our agency, for quite a while now. We’ve hosted our Meetup every month (sometimes more) for about nine years now, we have a reasonably active Facebook group, and we’ve played with podcasting and other media. So what’s next? To be honest, I’m […]
“Designed by” is a big red flag
Reading Time: 2 minIt’s generally not a good idea for a web designer to put a “designed by” link in the footer of websites that they create, and they usually know it too. The main reason is Google; putting that link down there will hurt the site that it’s on. It’s a tiny amount, but it’ll still hurt. […]
Why do I care if your company is 50 years old?
Reading Time: 2 minWhy do I care if your company is 50 years old? I don’t, really. At least not yet. Yet many websites continue to lead with something like that at the front of their site. When a users visits your site for the first time, they don’t care about you — they just want to know […]
Making RSS about people
Reading Time: 2 minI’ve been talking about RSS feeds for about 13 years now, and have been using them much longer than that. I recently suggested that most everyone should be using them, and you can see how they fit into my larger system here. That said, I’m constantly adjusting how I use them, which is part of […]
The best design is invisible
Reading Time: < 1 minThere’s a running joke with I.T. folks that they’re seen as expendable, because people often only see them one of two ways: All systems are running great, so why do we have I.T.? Things are broken, so why do we have I.T.? Similar are sound techs at a concert. They’re completely invisible, and often underappreciated, […]
Thomas Edison was bad at math
Reading Time: 2 minThomas Edison was famously bad at math (he said he had a “distaste” for it), but math was essential to much of the work he did. Rather than force himself to learn it better, he focused where he excelled, and hired mathematicians to assist with his work. Who built your mouse? Related, Matt Ridley has […]
Social media is vapor
Reading Time: 2 minIf you’re reading this post in 2021, there is a good chance you found this post via social media. If you’re reading this at some point later, you probably didn’t — at least not from a social post of mine. My posts about it have come and gone, just like millions of other posts every […]