In that time I've experimented a bit and read about the different approaches. Until maybe the last couple of years (at least in my crevasse of a memory) the choices seemed limited. Part of that was due to technology.

For a while - and even still today - many sites would detect what kind of device a user was visiting the site with ("browser sniffing"). There are a few ways to do this but they're not 100% reliable. From a development perspective, that essentially meant having two or more sites. From a client perspective, that meant a serious increase in costs.

But even if browser sniffing was the route chosen by any given site, there's also the additional debate about whether a mobile site should have a way to get to the full site. I'm of the opinion that yes, it should. And it should take you to the exact same page you were on before. Which brings up another issue - two or more URLs for the same piece of content. It happens. And it's no good.

Often when I'm using my Twitter app on my phone, I'll click a link and get directed to a mobile version. Okay, that's fine. It's when I try to copy and paste that link into another app (like email for instance) that it becomes a bit of an annoyance. The URL might look something like this:

m.domain.com/some-cool-article

But not everyone clicking on that link will be doing so on a mobile device.

So what's the solution?

It seems like now the debate is whether to provide mobile users a dedicated but mostly limited experience, or a full site optimized for mobile (i.e., responsive web design)? Its only been in the last 5-6 months that I personally have been leaning toward the responsive design side. It's certainly not perfect - its got plenty of its own issues, including serving full images regardless of device (on a mobile device images can eat up bandwidth limits real quick). But there are workarounds. And as a consumer I'm much more at ease with a site that is the same on mobile as it is on the desktop in terms of content.

Josh Clark said it best in this .net magazine article:

We've all had the experience of going to a website on our phones and getting bumped to the mobile version. It looks great except, wait a minute, they've removed the exact feature or piece of content that I'm looking for. You know the drill: swipe-swipe-swipe, there it is: the "full desktop site" link. And then suddenly you're swimming in this giant design that undoes all the clever thinking that went into the original mobile layout. This is frustrating, it's wasteful of network bandwidth, and it suggests that the business doesn't care about that content.

Clark's solution is to use the technology we have at our disposal (i.e., responsive design, adaptive design, progressive enhancement, etc.) to unify the content experience between desktop and the various flavors of mobile, rather than, as Jacob Nielson has suggested, attempt to create a separate site for every platform.

And I agree with Josh Clark. Because while designing for mobile sure as hell isn't easy, responsive web design is a lot easier than having to build multiple versions of a site. And let's not forget what the differences in options means for clients who are footing the bill. Responsive design is going to cost less than having to iterate five different versions of the same website.

Of course, cost is just one side of the coin. What we need to remember is the user experience. Which translates into how they experience any given site's brand. For clients, this should be just as critical as costs involved.

So for me, the answer, at least for the time being, is what I basically (and perhaps somewhat inaccurately) call a mobile-friendly site. That's a simple way of saying one site using responsive/adaptive web design and progressive enhancement techniques.

In the Q & A I talk about our team's favorite CMS, ExpressionEngine and what it's like working with it (virtually daily).

Created by Q Digital Studio in denver, Meta Q is a "webzine that seeks to dig deep into the world of design, to fascinate readers with inspiration and creativity, and to display all things web."

Head on over and read the article!

But here's the truth: people who haven't been living under a rock for the past 20 years don't get all that annoyed with scrolling. Unless you're on Facebook in which case, the endless scrolling is downright ridiculous. But I digress.

Scrolling is not an unreasonable request on any site visitor. Avoiding scrolling is. There are just too many screen sizes to take into account for these days to make any given web page not have any scrolling whatsoever.

Take Mr. Company CEO, for instance, who may have a 30" monitor where scrolling is non-existent on certain sites, assuming his browser window is open to full-screen. But Jane, his secretary, might be on a 17" monitor and keeps her browser size to much less than full-screen so she can multi-task. Then there's the Marketing Director's hipster intern who has a sticker-covered 11" MacBook Air. Oh, and there's Sue who, due to her constant eye problems, prefers to have her screen resolution low so that everything on the screen is much bigger. And let's not forget the head of IT who uses some crazy set up of 3 or more monitors, each set at portrait (vertical) orientation with a high resolution so everything is tiny and scrollbars rarely show up. Except on his shiny new Windows phone that he uses when he's not muttering stuff about people's idiocy.

In every single case, the cut-off point (or fold (http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/blasting-the-myth-of)) for any given website is different. Every single one. Multiply that by, well, pretty much any number you want and maybe you'll start to see why avoiding scrolling is virtually an impossible task if you expect your website to contain anything more than your logo and 5 words.

All this means that elements toward the top of your site will need to more important. But even then the size of the "top" is variable so obsessing over that is essentially the same unwinnable battle.

So what's the solution then? Easy… don't worry so much about scrolling. It's as normal as clicking on links. And like with most things in life: everything in moderation.

1. Make sure your blog lives on your site

For some businesses, their blogs are hosted on some free third-party site somewhere, such as WordPress.com, Blogger.com or even Tumblr. The logic for some boils down to money – they aren't willing to pay their web developer to add a blog to their site. Sound logic from a purely financial perspective, at least in the short term. And damaging in the long term when it comes to 1) a company's brand and 2) a company's SEO efforts.

Not integrating your blog into your existing site (and thus its design) waters down whatever brand equity you have to begin with. Your branding should always – ALWAYS – be as consistent as possible. Just throwing your logo up on a page isn't enough. Having a different look and feel to your blog from your main site can easily cause confusion and make people wonder whether the blog is legit or not.

With a separate domain for your blog you now have two sites. That's two web properties that you now have to optimize for search engines. That's double the effort, double the costs, and you have the added "bonus" of having to compete against yourself. Not good.

2. Keep the posts coming!

If your blog has been sitting there without a new post in some time, you're killing its effectiveness. Blogs need new posts (content) on a regular basis to be effective for search engines and useful for people. Ideally, the more frequent, the better, but that's not always possible of course. So even if it's once or twice a month, set a schedule for writing new blog posts and stick with it. You'll reap the rewards in the long-run.

3. Avoid being nothing but a sales pitch

Everyone likes to talk about themselves – it's normal. Highlighting your successes and products is also normal (and required to some degree) in the business world. But for a blog, it can quickly become a major turn-off for your readers, especially if every other blog post is nothing more than a sales pitch for your product or service.

Instead of writing an obvious sales pitch for your blog, consider writing more thought-provoking or data-driven posts that relate to your product, industry and/or customers' needs. Content like that is much more likely to garner attention and will continue to build up your expertise in your industry.

4. Optimize for search engines

As you may have noticed by now, blogging can be powerful when it comes to search engines. But if you're not optimizing your posts for search then you're not taking advantage of one of the easiest ways to rank for a variety of keywords that your main site can't. Blog posts give you hundreds of pages to focus on a keyword or two, so it's not a huge leap to understand that more indexed pages (blog posts) means more opportunities for keywords. Just be smart and don't stuff your posts with keywords or you may end up with bad search engine joo-joo.

5. Optimize for lead generation

One of the key ingredients in any marketing campaign is a call-to-action (CTA) – something that gets the viewer to make contact with you, your site or your business somehow. And since your blog is part of your marketing strategy, having clear calls-to-action within each blog post is important.

Some marketing folks will tell you that every single blog post should have a CTA. I don't fully agree with this as it can start to lead toward a point previously mentioned about being too much of a sales pitch. That said, having a couple of CTAs in your blog's sidebar (for example) is a good idea. Or you might consider linking to another page on your site right within your blog post somewhere that contains more information about a product or service. The key is to not overdo it.

6. Keep tabs on stats

Looking at and analyzing your blog's stats or analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/) on a regular basis is important to make sure you know how your blog is performing. Doing provides incredibly valuable data on what does and doesn't work on your blog, including helping you determine which types of blog posts work best and/or their topics.

What specific metrics you should be paying attention to is going to somewhat depend on your blog's goals, but a few key ones will help get your started: monthly visitors, keywords, comments, social media shares and incoming links.

Hopefully you've read through this and have already implemented these six things. If not, take one at a time and see what you can do to apply it to your blog on a regular basis. And if you need help getting started, let's chat – we just might be able to help.

Head on over and give it a read!

1. Show shipping costs and options early in the checkout process

Obviously, the trade-off for shopping online is paying for shipping. Shoppers know this, so it's the first thing they'll look for (either before they start or once they've started adding items to their cart). Unfortunately, a lot of online retailers make the mistake of keeping this tucked away in a later step in the checkout process rather than making it available early on. If you make it clear what the shipping costs might be early on, the better completion rate you'll have.

2. Offer free or reduced shipping

Related to the previous point, shipping charges in and of themselves are a pain. But they're also a reality for many online stores, so it becomes a delicate balancing act. If you can, offer free shipping whenever possible. If not, keep your shipping as low as your business margins will allow. This might just give you an edge over competition in addition to keeping your customers from ditching your cart altogether.

3. Allow guest checkout

Stop and think about how many website accounts you have. Chances are it's more than 3-5 and each of those are probably for sites you access on a regular basis. Now, I hate to burst your bubble but as much as you'd like people to visit and shop on your site as much as they visit say, their bank website, it's not likely. So forcing them to register to checkout is forcing them to perform several extra steps for quite possibly a one-time purchase. Instead, make it easier on your customers. It's better for brand image/perception as well as shopping cart conversions.

4. Allow customers to save items for later shopping

Yes, the idea is to keep people form abandoning their carts altogether and instead, complete their purchases in one go. Unfortunately that's not always possible. Giving customers the ability to save items for later can be a great way to get them to come back and purchase from your store instead of someone else's!

5. Show inventory availability

It's incredibly frustrating for customers to find your store, add several items to their cart, get ready to checkout, only to then be told that one or more items in their cart are sold out. Keep that frustration at bay by showing some sort of inventory count. While you may not be comfortable showing an absolute count, the most common thing to do is show when inventory for that item has dropped below a certain number and if it's at zero, clearly mark it as out of stock. It seems obvious but even in 2012 some sites still make this mistake.

6. Show multiple large photos

Shopping online can be difficult because almost all the regular signals that help us make decisions are absent – we can't touch the product to get a feel for weight, texture and even quality. This is why showing large photos of your products on your online store are critical. But one photo is not enough anymore. Multiple photos to show different colors and/or angles help answer some questions about the product that would otherwise potentially cause a visitor to change their mind about purchasing.

7. Customer reviews = social proof

People love what's popular, whether we admit it or not. So in addition to having multiple photos, customer reviews on products are good to have as well – they're a good indicator for visitors on what they are purchasing. But there's also a bonus: the reviews will also give you an idea of what works and doesn't work for a given product. No one wants bad reviews, but those bad reviews can easily be turned into something positive.

Photo by Ronald Eikelenboom

Don't believe me? Read this blog post over at DaleTing.com about how a newspaper ad raked in returns much better than Google AdWords did and for the same monthly cost. Go on, I'll wait. Don't worry, it's a short blog post.

Back already? See, I told you it was a short blog post. :)

So you might be wondering why the print ad they ran worked so well for them but didn't for your business or product. Or your friend's business or product. Was it the copy in the ad? The headline? The photo?

The answer: None of the above.

It worked for them because the newspaper was highly targeted. In other words, the people who regularly read that publication are the exact kind of people that would buy the BBQ that Tremore is selling. Really, that's all there is to it. Of course, that's easier said than done.

I know how tempting it is to put an print ad campaign together and get it out to as many people as possible. The argument seems logical:

If I market to everyone, more people will buy!

Well, no. You see, not everyone is looking for what you're offering. Let's break it down into basic math.

We'll start by putting a number on a few things (all of which are arbitrary and round for example sake). Let's say the print ad you're putting out costs $1000 for one run and has a reach of 250,000 people (we'll pretend that it will actually be seen by 250,000 pairs of eyeballs).

Next, let's say that of those 250,000 people, 1% are the kind of people that would be interested in the widget. That's a pretty realistic percentage, so let's go with it. That would mean that out of 250,000 people, 25,000 are people interested.

Even within that 25,000 not everyone will be ready to buy. Let's say only 10% of those folks are ready to buy. That reduces the number to 2,500.

2,500 widgets sold at $1 a piece, means $2,500 revenue; still not bad. But we can't forget that not every single one will become a customer. Some will no doubt go to your competitor(s) for some reason or another. Let's say that half go to your competitors and/or just not buy. The new number is 1,250.

So out of 250,000 you might get 1,250 customers. That's 0.5%. So from a $1000 ad, you gained $1250 in revenue. Subtracting just the ad expense, that's a profit of $250. Meh.

Now let's say that you put an ad out that's targeted to just those 25,000 that would be interested in the widget in the first place (leaving out the 175,000 that couldn't care less). And let's say that ad, because it'll be in a smaller / less circulated publication, costs $250. Assuming you still end up with 1,250 customers, your ROI – return on investment – is higher. You get 50% of the audience at a profit of $1,000 – 75% higher than with the ad with a reach of 250,000 people.

In all fairness, the above example is very simplified, but it does serve to demonstrate how critical targeting your marketing efforts really are. The difference is like trying to catch fish in an ocean versus a small lake. You may have to figure out which lake the fish you want swim in, but once you've done that, you'll catch more fish.

So does this apply to just print advertising? No way! All successful advertising works on the premise that the better targeted the ad, the more you'll reap the rewards. Keep that in mind next time you're putting together a new ad campaign.

Duplicate Titles? Don't you mean duplicate content?

From an SEO standpoint, duplicate content can have a very negative effect on your site's rankings, whether it's getting stuck in a low ranking spot, not getting ranked at all, or getting dropped from search engines altogether (rare but it happens once in a while). Most people will address a page's content when discussing duplicate content. That is, the text on each page should be unique and not a duplicate anywhere else on the web. One thing that gets overlooked, however, is the title tag. This guy:

<title>Your page title here</title>

That powerful little tag is critical to any SEO efforts and having duplicates can potentially hurt your rankings. If you don't have duplicate titles on your site, good on ya. Carry on and skip this article. :)  We, on the other hand, found dozens of duplicate title tags on our site.

Finding Duplicate Titles

I'm a Pro member over at SEOmoz and using their tools I found the offending pages. You don't have to be an SEOmoz member though. Most SEO tools will have a way to find any duplicate titles within your site. If in doubt, use Google Webmaster Tools.

In any case, I found most of our duplicate titles were in two sections on our site: our design portfolio and the design blog.

In the case of the portfolio, it wasn't too bad. There were only a small handful of portfolio entries that had duplicate titles. This was a result of using the client name as the title only rather than being a bit more descriptive (which is good SEO anyway) and unique in the title tag. Since we use (and love) NSM Better Meta, this was an easy fix. After identifying which portfolio entries contained duplicate titles, I headed into each one and tweaked them in the NSM Better Meta tab.

The blog was a little bit more involved. The entries/posts themselves weren't the issue. The issue was in the pagination of each category. For instance, the URL to the "Around the Web" category looks like this: http://420creative.com/blog/category/web_development. We have several posts in that category, so depending on the page you're on within that category listing, you'll see "Next" and "Previous" links (i.e., pagination). So the issue came up with the subsequent pages within the category listings. On page two, for instance, the URL looks like this: http://420creative.com/blog/category/web_development/P6  (You may think that it should have "P2" at the end there but EE is a little odd in how it handles pagination in the URL.)

In both cases (and subsequent pages within the category), the title tag read like this:

Web Development Blog - 420 Creative

Both were the same. And that's a problem.

I determined that to make each one unique it would be best to add "Page n of y" (where n is the current page number and y is the total number of pages) so that we ended up with something like this:

Page 2 of 53 - Web Development Blog - 420 Creative

In ExpressionEngine, the only way to really get that text to show up is to use the Channel Entries tag. In the template that renders the category listing pages, we use an embed to call in everything from the opening <html> tag to the closing head tag. The embed, at its simplest, looks like this:

{embed="_global/_head"}

In that embedded template lies the NSM Better Meta tag and code.

I should note that we use one template to handle the main blog page and the category pages. We do this with conditionals:

{if segment_2 == ""}
  {embed="_global/_head" title="[our main blog page title]" description="[meta description here]"}
{/if}

{if segment_2 == "category" && segment_4 == ""}{embed="_global/_head" title="{segment_3_category_name} Blog"}{/if}

{if segment_2 == "category" && segment_4 != ""}{embed="_global/_head" title="
  {exp:channel:entries site="420" channel="blog" disable="member_data" limit="6" paginate="bottom"}
  {paginate}Page {current_page} of {total_pages} - {/paginate}
  {/exp:channel:entries}
  {segment_3_category_name} Blog"}
{/if}

Admittedly it's not the prettiest or most sophisticated solution, but it works well. I'm not a huge fan of using a ton of conditionals if it can be avoided due to their overhead. But our pages are still pretty speedy so this works fine for this site. We may end up changing this to use either Switchee or Ifelse – both really great add-ons by Mark Croxton – to improve performance a bit.

The second and third conditional you see in the code above is where the duplicate title issue is resolved:

{if segment_2 == "category" && segment_4 == ""}{embed="_global/_head" title="{segment_3_category_name} Blog"}{/if}

That conditional tells EE that if the URL is the main category page (i.e., there's no pagination number/ID in segment 4 of the URL), grab the code from the embedded template (_head in this case) and apply the category name – which is in segment 3 – for the title followed by "blog". (We use Low Seg2Cat to grab the category name from the segment.) Easy enough.

(The title variable in the embed is used in conjunction with NSM Better Meta.)

Next, we tell EE that if the URL is not the main category page (because there is a pagination number/ID in segment 4 of the URL), grab the code from the embedded template and modify the title:

{if segment_2 == "category" && segment_4 != ""}{embed="_global/_head" title="
  {exp:channel:entries site="420" channel="blog" disable="member_data" limit="6" paginate="bottom"}
    {paginate}Page {current_page} of {total_pages} - {/paginate}
  {/exp:channel:entries}
  {segment_3_category_name} Blog"}
{/if}

Within the title variable you can see I added a condensed version of the code that displays the entries and pagination on each category page. Here it is by itself:

{exp:channel:entries site="420" channel="blog" disable="member_data" limit="6" paginate="bottom"}
{paginate}Page {current_page} of {total_pages} - {/paginate}
{/exp:channel:entries}

Since the paginate tags are dynamic, each category page then automatically adds the correct current page number out of the total number of pages. I made sure that the parameters in the Channel Entries tag are identical as the ones where this code shows up later in the template. The reason for this is so that the pagination output (the numbering) is identical to the page itself, otherwise it may end up spitting out incorrect numbering.

Again, this isn't the most elegant solution since we've essentially added to the overhead of the page by adding yet another query by using the channel entries EE tag. It works, but it may not be a good solution for sites that are more complex or heavily trafficked.

Unique Titles FTW!

So what does this all work do in the end? Well, in terms of SEO efforts, it's mostly just being a perfectionist. In terms of search engine ranking, there is an impact. How much, I can't really say. But it is a basic premise of good SEO, so there's no reason to be lazy about it really.

In any case, I hope I've helped any EE devs out there with a penchant for good SEO with this post. Got any other ideas or solutions to this? Post them in the comments!

Not a secret, often overlooked:

"Keep your promises."

If you say you'll show up every day at 8 am, do so. Every day.

If you say your service is excellent, make it so.

If circumstances or priorities change, well then, invest to change them back. Or tell the truth, and mean it.

If traffic might be bad, plan for it.

Is there actually unusually heavy call volume? Really?

Want a bigger brand? Make bigger promises. And keep them.

I say seemingly obvious because for some of us, keeping promises is second nature. You say you're going to do something, then you do it. Plain and simple.

Sadly, however, there's a bad reputation in the web design industry surrounding this very premise. (Seems like especially when it comes to freelancers.) I don't know how many times I've spoken with a potential client only to hear some version of how their previous designer didn't do their job completely. Or they never returned a call. Or didn't communicate well despite specifically saying they would.

I do realize and believe that designers and developers aren't always to blame fully. Sometimes disgruntled, unhappy clients will say things like this, not so much out of malice, but out of being disgruntled and unhappy with their previous experience. It's a big of a help sign, if you will. And sure, there is the occasional client that is incredibly difficult to please or what have you.

Still, that doesn't completely take designers/developers off the hook. We as designers and developers call ourselves communicators and problem solvers, yet this is how many treat their clients? We expect our profession to get more respect as a whole and yet this kind of snooty attitude is exactly what's causing the disrespect.

It's real simple guys, keep your promises. Do good work. Appreciate your clients. Have patience.

Then again, don't do any of the above. We'll just take your clients once they've realized working with you was a bad idea. :)

Based on my industry reflection, I've come to the conclusion that there are two areas business owners really need to start paying more attention to this coming year.

Social media

You've probably heard about how popular social media has become over the past couple of years. Well, I've got news for you – it's not going to slow down. And if you're a business owner purposely ignoring social sooner or later, you're going to be left behind. I can practically guarantee it.

I've heard plenty of excuses from clients on why they don't want to get into Facebook or Twitter or whatever. And every single one is an excuse, not a reason.

I don't see the value. (Often combined with: I don't care what people had to eat/did over the weekend/or whatever.)
Then you're being shortsighted. Yes, some people use social media to declare their eating habits but not everyone does. A lot of news gets posted and passed around; people within the same industry connect and form good relationships; contests to win cool stuff are often held solely on one of the two most popular social networks (Twitter, Facebook); customer relations; branding; etc. In short, there are plenty of smart business uses for social media.

Teenagers aren't my target audience.
Perhaps not, but they aren't the only ones on social networks. In fact, 41% of Twitter users were age 36 and above in 2011. 50% (!) of Facebook users were age 36 and above (source). Don't write social media off as "something kids do" – it clearly isn't.

I don't "get" social media.
This is a weak excuse. Perhaps the weakest here. Social media isn't rocket science. There are plenty of resources out there to understand it, from websites dedicated to teaching the stuff to hiring social media strategists or a web studio.

I'm too busy.
Another weak excuse often disguised as a reason. As business owners we're all busy. Very busy. If you look at social media as part of your marketing strategy you'll make time. Because that's what it is: social media is part of your toolset in your marketing arsenal.

So instead of making excuses, get your business out there and start connecting! It won't bring you immediate ROI, but long-term? Oh yeah, it'll help.

Mobile devices

The statistics are out there: more and more people are using mobile devices to get their news, communicate with friends and colleagues, view videos, visit their favorite websites, and even to shop, among other things. That means your website had better be mobile friendly.

It doesn't have to be mobile-specific right away (that takes time and planning with a good web design team), but it should be accessible via the mobile web. That includes the iphone, the iPad, Android devices, Windows phones and more.

"Yeah, but my target audience doesn't really use their phone to visit our site." Really? Prove it. Don't assume that's the case, especially if your target audience tends to be made up of affluent and savvy people.

Stop assuming and instead look at the data. Your data. It will give you a clear indication of visitors' browsing habits, including via mobile devices. Even if you don't have a large number of visitors viewing your site on a mobile device, you can at least start to see a trend or pattern. That's something to pay attention to this coming year.

So there you have it, two areas that the small business owner should be paying attention to in 2012 (and beyond). What do you think? Agree? Disagree? Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments!