SEO - A Beginners guide

All righty then, time for a more technical blog post from moi! Let’s tackle some basic best practices to help optimise your website. Considering this is a beginner’s guide I guess I should explain the term Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). In a nutshell SEO helps search engines find your site when a user types a search term into the search engine (the most popular of these being Google). There are a variety of techniques you can use to achieve the best possible result, which I will discuss individually.
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Due to an ongoing major BT fault in the area our phones are still not working, main supply lines have been stolen and have cut off many businesses, we have been informed by BT that they hope to have things fixed on Monday. (more…)

Due to a problem with BT, our phone lines are currently down, as is our internet connection. According to BT, this will be the case for the next 48 hours, but we will try to get back online as quickly as possible. If you require technical support, please email support@ihm.co.uk and we will endeavour to respond as soon as possible. We will keep you updated via this post.

Context is King

All Hail the King
He stands in His honour
And speaks what is true
He is the King of Context

We’re all aware of the adage “Content is King”, but just because we’ve always been taught this, is it necessarily the case? As designers we are beginning to take a more holistic approach to web design and we are also beginning to explore a myriad of different factors to determine what makes a website work well and convert results (I hope!). (more…)

An example of minimal web design

A lot of my recent articles have talked about simplifying your website and reducing unessarry elements in order to deliver a clearer message. Well this post talks about the key to this issue: minimalism. In an age where the client often pushes more and more content upon you, it can often seem a herculean task to produce a minimal design. But even in this situation we can apply principles of minimalism to improve the design. (more…)

A typical istock image with an additional layer of cheese

The case against I-stock imagery is growing by the website and we are in now in real danger of producing faceless websites which reek of staleness, mediocrity and laziness.

You now the theme; ethnically diverse suits shaking hands with ridiculous Colgate smiles… (Does this even happen?). I don’t even think the majority of these people look real…they are so polished they almost look fake. Would you do business with a fake? Strong images should evoke emotion and be thought provoking; i-stock images are the polar opposite of this. (more…)

Continued from Part 1…..

Similarity breeds good design:
“Things that are similar are perceived to be more related than those that are dissimilar”

#5 Colour
The most obvious technique in design to create attention is to use colour contrast. To create contrast you obviously need to choose dissimilar colours. Contrast is a fundamental technique in web design and key elements like CTA’s and buttons should carry more contrast in colour in order to draw more attention. Also you can categorise elements by using the same colour. (more…)

**Announcement**: Okay I don’t want to scare too many of you away with another design psychology based article but as I’ve said before I think it’s imperative that we should use psychological techniques more in our designs. I’m not saying design is completely scientific or mathematical, but I do believe the best design comes when proven theory works in harmony with art. We as designers need to understand the implications of our actions and by understanding psychology we can truly begin to discover the effect our designs will have; this isn’t a game of chance. (more…)