'Net Features : Disney

The Web's Most Gorgeously Designed Websites

Administrator — Thu, 09 May 2013 17:00:00 GMT

:: By DJ Miller ::

Stagnant websites simply can't keep up in the continually evolving online world. Those that update often and experiment bravely with an eye to gorgeous, yet functional design are sure to grab visitors' attention. These top sites feature striking design elements that help them stand out at the head of the pack.

BBC – Design Across Platforms

Image via BBC.com

BBC's most recent page design features a look that's strikingly similar to what you expect in a mobile app. Don't be surprised if you're tempted to swipe your finger across your computer screen, even though you don't have a touch-screen monitor. The Web page features eye-catching images that quickly grab your attention and pull you into the stories. The site uses this same design across all platforms including tablets and smart phones.

Elysium Burns – Bold Typography

Image via elysiumburns.com

A diverse choice of eye-catching sans serif fonts gives Elysium Burns a memorable look. Article titles and site headings sit against subtle CSS image backgrounds. The simple white on charcoal color scheme really allows the shape and flow of the typography to take center stage on this page.

Disney – Highly Responsive Video Design

Image via disney.com

Responsive design is essential for any site, but creating a page that's user-friendly on any platform is more difficult for some features than others. Disney's site prominently features high-quality videos, so the challenge of their redesign was maintaining video size and quality across platforms. The result is a simple streamlined design that showcases video beautifully on any device.

Web Design Ledger – Where Serif and Sans Serif Meet

Image via webdesignledger.com

The intriguing look of Web Design Ledger combines both serif and sans serif fonts. The striking difference in font styles throughout the site effectively draws your eye to certain features, such as reader comments. Though this is an unconventional choice of typography styles, it works well in this simple text-heavy layout.

Combadi – High-Impact Images

Image via combadi.com

A growing number of sites now use large, high-impact images on their home pages to draw customers in. Though typography has its place, designs like these allow the eyes to rest a bit and take in something refreshingly different. Combadi features both a large image at the top of the page and a series of smaller images for added eye candy further down.

The Verge – Story Collage Layout

Image via theverge.com

The Verge features a story collage that highlights top features in a clean and visually pleasing way. Each headline is given ample space in its own candy colored box so the titles don't crowd each other out. Though the site has lots of content, visitors don't feel overwhelmed thanks to this simple design choice.

USA Today – Customizable Experiences for Every User

Image via usatoday.com

USA Today's design is simple and clean, making it easy to browse massive amounts of information in a short amount of time. This rigid layout is perfect for a site where readers want to navigate to items of interest as quickly as possible. One of the highlights of USA Today's site design is the viewing option, which allows readers to choose from a list or grid format. This allows for fast and easy customization to suit the tastes of each visitor.

A List Apart – Extreme Readability

Image via alistapart.com

With so many flashy and colorful design options available, it's easy to get swept away in the visual aspects of site design and forget about the finer points of readability. This is where A List Apart truly excels. The headlines, subheadings, quotes, and article body all feature clean fonts chosen with reader comfort in mind. The content itself is well-organized and flawlessly edited as well so your eye travels easily from one short digestible paragraph to the next.

Mea Cuppa Sweets & Coffee – Striking yet Simple Color Choice

Image via meacuppa.be

The stunning color choice of Mea Cuppa immediately grabs the visitor's attention. With a clean palette of black, white, and yellow, the imagery doesn't take away from the content, but rather makes the viewer want to hang around and feast on the delicious visuals for a while longer. This design proves that less is more and simplicity isn't inherently boring.

Postable – Fast Functionality

Image via Postable.com

Postable's purpose is simple. Users sign up for the free service which sends links out to their friends and family asking for updated contact information. Fittingly, the site design for this service is simple and easy to use as well. Three points clearly lay out everything the service does and a short sign up form lets you start in seconds. There's no clutter, no confusion, and no excess in this functional design.

Oliver Russell – Sleek Graphics and Simple Color Choice

Image via OliverRussell.com

Oliver Russell's page highlights his marketing services in a sleek design that speaks to his professionalism and Web expertise. The palette features bold warm oranges and yellows with a bright touch of cyan. Finding what you want is easy so visitors never get lost on this well-designed page.

University of Notre Dame – Strong Graphics and Cutting-Edge Design

Image via nd.edu

The University of Notre Dame handily broke out of the college website mold with their new design. Bold images highlight the campus in a visually enticing way that can't help but draw visitors in. A simple static toolbar at the top makes navigation easy from anywhere on the page. The responsive design looks just as striking on mobile phones as it does on a standard desktop.

Starbucks – Meeting Mobile Needs

Image via Starbucks.com

Not surprisingly, Starbucks found that a growing number of visitors were accessing the site on mobile devices. In answer to the clear need for a better mobile site, they moved to a responsive design that's equally functional across platforms. The images are simple and deliciously enticing while the functionality is everything users need, allowing visitors to find a store or check gift card balances right on their phones.

Web design is a continuously evolving field and innovation is essential for any business to stay at the top. Browsing these beautiful sites will give you plenty of inspiration for enhancing your own page design.

Author Bio:

DJ Miller is a graduate student at the University of Tampa. He is an avid gadget geek who spends most his time writing on anything tech related. His specialty is Web design and optimizing sites for mobile devices and ultrabooks. You can follow him on twitter @MillerHeWrote.

12 Effective Corporate Blog Designs

Michael Garrity — Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:35:00 GMT

In the age of likes, retweets and shares, content marketing has suddenly become the best way to spread the word about your brand to bring in new customers and rack up conversions.

However, since social media has its limitations, in terms of both branding and the type of content that companies can offer, many businesses have taken to blogging to provide insightful and valuable information to their customers, while also producing likeable and sharable content that can benefit their SEO efforts.

Look, plenty has already been written about how blogs can improve a brand’s content marketing campaigns or increase leads, but we’re here to be a little more superficial than that. While content is undoubtedly and absolutely the most important aspect of a valuable, successful blog, it’s not the only thing that matters. After all, we’ve all heard about the effect that a good (or bad) first impression can have on new consumers. That’s why all of that great content on your blog should look nice, as well.

If you’re in need of some inspiration, we’ve compiled this list of 12 of the most effective corporate blog designs on the Web. Each of them takes a different approach; some are design-heavy and visually striking (e.g. Whole Foods, Southwest), while others take a simpler, less bold approach that is more in line with what the brand offers (e.g. LinkedIn, Bigelow Tea).

Which designs are your favorites? Let us know in the comments section, or share some other great corporate blogs that you know about!

Bigelow Tea Blog

The Official LinkedIn Blog

7Gen Blog by Seventh Generation

eBay inc. Ink

Disney Parks Blog

Whole Story by Whole Foods

The Cleanest Line by Patagonia

Nuts About Southwest

The Dropbox Blog

All Songs Considered by NPR

TOMS

Ice Cream Journal by Turkey Hill Dairy

Political Campaigns & Digital Marketing: Did They Miss the Mark?

Administrator — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:30:00 GMT

We all know how online marketing and social media can be a goldmine of potential consumers.

Brands like Whole Foods Market and Samsung have succeeded on Twitter with as many as 3 million followers each. Coke triumphs over Pepsi on YouTube with about 108 million views and 83,700 subscribers. Among media brands, Disney dominates with nearly 38,700,000 Facebook fans. In 2011, Netflix’s display advertising received 36.9 billion ad impressions and was cited as one of the top 10 display advertisers in the United States.

But when you look at political spending, campaigns are still spending more on traditional media platforms than online. Consumer brands are learning how to harness online and social media, but political marketers can take a lesson from those finding success with digital marketing. Online and social media is an advantageous investment if political campaigns wisely use online channels, especially their analytics tools.

But if online and social media are so powerful then why are the presidential candidates and Super PACs not investing more into online advertising? Why are campaigns and Super PACs less interested in social media than offline?

Traditional media is still the force in political spending. True, online spending is six times higher for this year’s election than it was in 2008, but for political advertising, TV is the main medium—approximately $7.3 billion dollars for broadcast TV, cable and radio versus $159 million for online, according to Borrell Associates.

Historically, political campaigners had two rivals in the final stretch on an election: a Democrat versus Republican, and those two camps spent money on their campaigns. Now, Super PACs have flooded the ad market, driving up the competition and the inventory price within paid search advertising. For instance, if there are only two people bidding on keywords, there’s a limited competition with keyword bidding. However, if you have 10 people bidding on the same keywords, it drives up the price of inventory and increases the cost-per-click.

Obama advisor, David Axelrod, may have put it best when he said that local TV is “still the nuclear weapon” within an election. This doesn’t mean, however, that political marketers are not concerned about the digital battleground. One of the biggest wins is the investment by the Obama campaign in its social and online media. By numbers alone, Obama leads in many fronts on the digital battleground—from Twitter, online display ads and paid search marketing. But you need more than mere numbers to be successful. Candidates, like consumer brands, can better leverage online and social media to keep and win supporters.

First, test, track and analyze your political messaging in the digital space. For instance, let’s say you have a rally in the battleground state of Ohio and want to ensure high voter turnout. Social and online marketing are useful to engage and motivate your base, as well as communicating with your base quickly and in real-time. As you gather your online following, you can test and track which messages resonate with those people before creating a costly TV ad or making a speech. That’s a competitive strategy that marketers can use before going to market.

Second, marketers should invest marketing dollars into online display ads to target undecided voters. Marketing is not solely about the size of your budget but who’s going to spend their budget more intelligently. Display advertising or banner ads can be the tipping point because of its granular level of targeting. Within this channel, you can find such information like demographics, geography, and user behavior, making display ads far superior than TV and allowing marketers to gain more precise and targeted reach.

Third, think like your competitor both online and offline. Some people believe that “big data” can solve many marketing problems but that’s a misconception. Like any amount of information, you need to gather, organize and properly analyze it. You need the attention to detail and objectivity to find any missed opportunities or big wins – for you and your competitor. By investing more resources into data analytics tools (Google Analytics and Adobe SiteCatalyst), you have greater insight into the effectiveness of your online advertising than with other medium, such as how many donations are you receiving from a banner ad versus a paid search campaign.

To sum it up, it might not be that political campaigns are less interested in digital marketing. They also need to consider if they are investing their ad dollars where it counts—through quality analytics.

About the Author: Jon Morris is the founder and CEO of Rise Interactive, a digital marketing agency in Chicago, specializing in digital media and web analytics.