Content Management Systems

Are you using a Content Management System (CMS) for your website? If not, you should be!

Here is a breakdown of what a CMS is, three of the best CMS platforms available, and why not using a CMS can hurt your website’s functionality.

What is a Content Management System?

A content management system (CMS) is a computer program used to track and manage every piece of content on a website—much like a library keeps track of books and stores them. A CMS substitutes having to write lengthy versions of code and allows for storing, publishing, content modification, and search and retrieval functionality from a single back-end interface. A CMS can house and index video, audio, photographs, graphics and other data contained on your site, and provides plugin applications—plugins are tools that provide custom functions and features to tailor your web design to your specific needs.

There are many benefits that can be achieved by implementing a CMS for your website. These include:

• - Streamlined content creation and management
• - Improved site traffic and SEO
• - Improved site navigation/visitor experience
• - Improved conversions and sales
• - Reduced site maintenance costs (Webmaster fees, etc.)

A CMS provides publishing abilities that allow the appearance and page layout of your site to be applied automatically during publishing, and allows the same content to be published to multiple sites. A CMS is particularly handy because anyone can create, upload and modify content quickly and easily, even without a lot of technical skill or web design knowledge; i.e. authors who may not know HTML and can’t publish content without the intervention of a Webmaster.

A CMS’ publishing feature provides a preselected template or set of templates in which to upload content into HTML or PDF formats. Once published, management (or an acting editor) can use keywords to search and retrieve documents and make changes instantly—even if the content is live. And once the content is saved, the document is archived. No more having to track what articles/blogs were published last week, or last year.

That is the basics of what a CMS is and how it can be used to help your website. Now, here are three CMS platforms that are among the best available based on ease of installation, usability and extended functionality over time.

1. WordPress

WordPress is probably the most popular CMS out there. PHP platformed, WordPress has carved out a niche for its ease of use and performance satisfaction from beginning bloggers to uber-tech web designers. This CMS comes with a lightning-fast installation wizard and provides auto update versions for plugins without having to download a thing. WordPress provides large support communities, both onsite and off, and has the widest selection of plugins and themes (template designs, etc.) to choose from.

2. Joomla

Joomla is known for its great functionality, and installing/getting started with this CMS is a breeze due to common shared hosting packages and the compatibility of its software. Joomla is a complete CMS and comes with comprehensive drop-down menus and support for access control protocols like LDAP, OpenID and Gmail.com.

Joomla hosts more than 3,200 extensions—an extension is a file containing programming that extends the capabilities of data available to a basic program. Unlike WordPress, however, Joomla themes and extensions rely more on paid plugins and themes, so if you’re looking to customize with such additions, you’ll probably have to pay for them.

3. Drupal

Like Joomla, Drupal is more of a complete CMS and doesn’t focus on blogging as a platform—like WordPress. Druple has a basic installation and offers features such as user forums and OpenID. One of Drupal’s most popular features is the Taxonomy module. Taxonomy allows you to connect and classify your website’s content through categories, tags, or metadata. This is handy for everything from view and display options to menu and navigation schemes. Like WordPress, Drupal has a large support community to help answer questions regarding plugins, multimedia formatting, etc.

Want to learn more about how a CMS can help your website? We’ve got answers! Get in touch with us for a free consultation to learn more about San Diego web design and lots of cool tricks of the trade: info@skyboxcreative.com. Or call us at (619) 381-3825.

by Skybox Creative

Discover the 7 biggest web design mistakes to avoid them!

1. Not Including Video

Online videos are powerful marketing tools. Video allows your visitors to get a more intimate look at your business in a way that is deeper than simply reading through your website, and can help your site rank higher in search engine result listings. Although you can host videos on your own server, it’s a good idea to use video directories such as YouTube and Vimeo in conjunction. Not only is it super easy to embed videos through these portals on your site, you can tap into the social/viral aspect that posting on these sites can bring.

Be sure to keep the message in your videos short, interesting and to the point. This will keep your visitors engaged and likely to return—not to mention the possibility of having your video go viral via shares.

2. Not Including Social Media

Social media interaction is now a critical factor in web design and can literally make or break your marketing strategies. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube—and bookmarking sites such as Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon—can catapult your visibility and should be used daily. Make sure you embed social media buttons on your website—Facebook “like” buttons, Twitter feeds, etc. This will help to keep your content fresh and updated, and keep your visitors engaged.

3. Not Having a Blog

Video is an important ingredient to successful web design, but not having an interactive blog can cause the recipe to fold. Blogging ties in with your social media marketing efforts and can act as a newsletter, is great for branding, and can provide a place where you can connect with your visitors on a regular basis—weekly or even daily is recommended, but once a month at the minimum.

Blogging also provides lasting benefits because its home is on a web page that can be optimized and indexed for SEO. The key here is to blog regularly and consistently with new, updated and (always) interesting content. Websites that have more frequent updates get crawled and indexed more often.

4. Not Having a Contact Form

Make sure to embed contact forms, contact buttons, email addresses, etc., on your site to make it as easy as possible for your readers to get in touch with you. Contact forms are also great places for your visitors to leave comments and suggestions, as well as their name, email address, and phone number. This allows for you to accumulate a list of visitor contact information for present or future use.

Be sure to check your contact forms/links regularly to ensure they’re working, as providing a faulty contact form is worse than having none at all.

5. Not Having Clear, Easy Site Navigation

Your readers don’t know your website like you do and might experience difficulty finding information if you don’t provide clear and easy site navigation. Planning a well thought out primary navigation and sub navigation, via drop downs, can make all the difference in user experience. If you make it easy for your visitors to travel through your site, you’re sure to increase effectiveness and conversions. Also, provide a good search feature and a site map to let visitors know where they are and where else they can go on your site.

6. Putting Too Much Competing Information

Your web design should not only direct visitors to your site, but also provide them with a smooth and enjoyable experience once they’re there. A high-tech layout with too many competing design elements is not only annoying, it’s confusing to navigate through, and can increase your site’s bounce rates. Make sure to narrow down the information that is most valuable to your visitors—and the information you most want to get across—in a clear and concise way. Use color and space on your site to present content easily and effectively, and provide uncomplicated ways for your visitors to contact you.

7. Not Having a Strong CTA (Call to Action)

Having the best designed website is useless if your visitors are not compelled as to how/why/when/where they should obtain your services. Whether the target of your site is to receive sign-ups, buy products or receive information, you need to provide a strong call to action: this can be in the form of a “buy now” button or “sign up today” link, etc.

Encouraging your visitors to contact you and inquire about your services should be prevalent on every page of your website—this gives readers a chance to convert at every turn. Provide contact forms and accessible phone numbers, and again, check the functionality of your links frequently—dead contact links typically mean dead business.

Want to learn more about San Diego web design and how to take your website to a new level? We can help! Get in touch with us for a free consultation: info@skyboxcreative.com, or call us at (619) 381-3825.

by Skybox Creative

Hands down, video is the best way to connect with your audience online!

If you own a business or work in a marketing department, there’s a lot of compelling evidence to suggest that online video marketing should be a major focus of your advertising and marketing budget.

If you’re not using video marketing, you’re missing out on a huge market opportunity. It’s not just the number of people who are watching videos that’s important – it’s the reasons why they watch it.

No other medium communicates MORE in LESS TIME with BETTER RESULTS than online video!

Does it matter what kind of video is being used? ABSOLUTELY!

Get in touch for a free consultation angelina@skyboxcreative.com or call us at (619) 381-3825

by Angelina Sereno

Nearly everyone has a website or a blog these days, and most of them run off an open source CMS platform like WordPress, Drupal or Joomla. This provides a great opportunity to build an easy-to-manage website without investing in a custom developed backend. However, since these platforms are free, and are easy to use, they have become very popular across the web. This can, unfortunately, make them potential security targets.

Sad to say, there are malicious hackers out there. They create scripts that troll the internet, visiting various websites to look for security holes and specific files on your server to gain access to your website.

It can be a little scary out there on the world wide web. But it’s a place where we all have to try to peacefully coexist . And try to avoid the people who aren’t so interested in peaceful living. So what can be done about this?

There are a lot of things you can do. They all take a little time and effort. But I’m sure you’ll agree that in regards to something as public as your website, a little extra security and peace of mind go a long way to reduce stress levels.

Disclaimer: Although improved security goes a long way to keeping bots and casual hackers out of your website, absolutely nothing is guaranteed when you are on the internet. Take a look at Sony for an example in that.

Here are a few things you can do for increased security:

1. Keep things updated! If you have a static site, you probably don’t need to worry about much more than scripts like jQuery, and those don’t need to be updated very often, if at all. But for CMS / Content Management Systems like WordPress, Drupal and Joomla, these allow an extreme degree of flexibility and access with full-fledged systems for login and backend setups. With all this ease of use and flexibility comes more areas, more scripts, and more ways for  potential unauthorized access to your website.Updates to CMS’s like WordPress generally bring new features, which is great to have, but they also bring security updates and improved code. Seems like a win-win, right? But maybe your web developer told you not to update anything! Why the contradiction? Just like updates to your computer or various other programs, sometimes things don’t go as… smoothly as you would hope. 99% of the time it’s a painless process to update WordPress, but once in a while, your setup is slightly outside the realm of predictable updates, so the upgrade doesn’t finish 100%, and suddenly you can’t log into your website. So much for that security update! This leads us into why #2 is so important for so many reasons:

• 

  Keep your backups online and offline. A backup here, a backup there, a backup everywhere!

  Backup regularly! This is something we’ve been counseled on by our computer-literate friends for years and years. Many people have learned to keep backups of their important work files, cherished family images, and anything else they deem valuable (and usually this is because they learned that lesson the hard way). Isn’t your website valuable? Of course it is, so why wouldn’t you keep backups of it?
  It may have already been a headache to figure out how to backup files on your own computer in a sane way, nevermind dealing with a website connected to a database hosted somewhere out there in the depths of the web.
  Fortunately there are smart people out there who have developed plugins and various other ways to make complete backups of your website. They vary depending on your CMS, so you’ll have to figure out which one works for your setup.
  Regular backups will help in case you are hacked, or in case an update doesn’t go smoothly. How often you back up your website will depend on how often you update or use it. Do you post once a month or less? Perhaps a monthly backup would suffice. Are you on there every day? Might have to schedule it daily, then.

• Take a few security precautions – The list of things you can do to fortify your website is endless, but there are some rather basic ones that are pretty universal, and surprisingly are not followed very often. Your password – please don’t use just your company name, or your name, or a few numbers. Try to create something a little more complex than that. Someone trying to gain access may start with common words, or they may start with words found on your site, and try any variation of that. It may not take long to get access to your site if it’s something predictable.
  Also try to search for common security fixes for your particular CMS. For WordPress, it’s good practice to change the default “admin” login. Or better yet, keep admin, but give it a difficult password, and change the role to “Subscriber”. WordPress hackers often start with the admin user. If they get in, they won’t be able to do anything if the admin user is only a subscriber.
• Keep up to date with your CMS of choice – This is very useful when an update may be more than simple bug fixes and security updates. If a large new version is ready to be downloaded, why not see what it offers? Visit the forums, or check out what people around the community are saying about it. Is it stable? Is it a mess? All good things to know before you go off and install it.
• Do some more research – there are hundred’s of books you can read to get you up to date with advanced security on your website. There are even more websites with articles like this one, as well as more advanced tutorials and walkthroughs.

There is a lot you can do make sure your website is more difficult for a hacker to breach. Does all that sound like a lot of work? Of course it does, because it is!

But just like with your car, your website needs regular maintenance to keep it running well. And just like a car, you can do a lot of that maintenance yourself, but it requires a lot of time and effort. Most people take their car to their mechanic for regular maintenance.

Similarly, if you don’t have time to manage your website security, we offer maintenance packages that cover all the bases. Skybox Creative would be happy to take care of all that extra work for you. We actually enjoy all this nerdy jargon, so contact us to get your site tuned up and hacker-resistant!

We have retainer options to fit every budget. Get in touch to learn more! info@skyboxcreative.com or 619-381-3825

by Kalen Johnson

In today’s ever changing world of the online experience, it’s essential to make sure that your users engage the site on the platform they prefer. That means your design needs to work on tablets, smart phones and traditional desktop displays.

UX design is meant to perform effortlesslty into the how the reader interacts with the site. If done properly the user will never notice the ease of use of using the site. Instead, they will remember how simple it was to find what they were looking for.

The user experience (UX) process is just starting to gain real traction within companies large and small. Many organizations are beginning to realize that by adopting the process of UX they can dramatically increase the quality, time to market and overall pipeline of projects.

Companies are leveraging the UX practice to manage resources and break down bottlenecks in communication in order to increase the speed of accurate validation with users and stakeholders. Currently, well trained people who are masters of the UX process are hard to find and in great demand.

Professional UX designers add immense value to the entire lifecycle of interactive design and development. From the production of efficient documentation, leveraging best practices of UX, and adding their experience into the project, the UX designer increases efficiency on all projects they partake in.

One of the most under appreciated skills of a user experience designer is thier ability to produce documents and prototypes which illustrate a coherent vision that will ultimately translate to success for your entire project. When a roadmap is clearly in place, it makes it easier for all involved to achieve their goals.

In summary, a UX designer will often times be asked to provide the following:

1. Lower risk through advanced interactive prototypes for internal and external testing prior to development sprints.
2. Lead interactive UX discovery sessions utilizing mental modeling, mind mapping and real-time collaborative wireframe iterations.
3. Discover the intent of users and systems to help satisfy needs of the user.
4. Be proficient in front-end development and lightweight table-less integration.
5. Knowledgeable about HTML5 semantics and the future of the intelligent web.
6. Dedicated to conforming and coding to emerging trends and standards without being too blue sky. Keep within the limits of established technology.
7. Focus on creating clean and scalable user experiences based on extensive user testing for deployment to small select groups or to millions of users.
8. Leverage conceptual and application development skills while working directly with diverse teams from concept to final implementation.

These elements of user design and experience are what separate a gret web site from an anverage one.

Here at Skybox Creative, we apply these best practices to all of our design projects. To learn more, contact us today by email or phone: info@skyboxcreative.com or 619-381-3825

Urban Angels teams up with Skybox Creative to create a Harlem Shake video – the viral video craze that’s gone global!!

Connect with your audience by having fun and creating viral video content!

Get in touch to learn more: info@skyboxcreative.com or 619-381-3825

by Angelina Sereno

Skybox Creative works with many B2B companies, including Technology, Medical, Engineering, Biotech, Commercial Real Estate, Non-Profits and many more. This infographic is full of relevant and timely information for our clients to develop a successful online marketing strategy for 2013.

Why do we focus on Organic SEO vs Paid Search (or PPC)? The stats don’t lie… people trust organic results… Organic Search is the #1 driver of traffic for B2B sites. If you aren’t focused on Organic Search, I guarantee that your competitors are.

Google continues to rise as the primary driver of search traffic… why? Because they spend countless hours developing algorithms to bring people relevant search results. This is why SEO has evolved to the level it has in recent years. It’s no longer just SEO (manipulative search engine tactics such as aggressive link building), but an overall marketing strategy.

Check out the stats below and discover what 2012 taught us!

Source: Marketing Tech Blog

Get in touch with us today to discuss your online marketing and SEO strategy for 2013! We are equipped with the knowledge and skills to get you results and keep your business buzzing all through the year. We only sell SEO because we believe it can transform your business. It has for ours and many of our clients. Get in touch to learn more!

Contact us at info@skyboxcreative.com or 619-381-3825

by Angelina Sereno

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When starting a web development project, it is important to undergo a discovery process where the client and web team define functionality and required user information based on the business objectives. It is then the web team’s job to take that information and create a blueprint-style plan – meaning sans design – that develops a structure for the website around the highlighted information. This is a website wireframe, and the homepage comes first, as it filters users throughout the rest of the site.

Think of the Wireframe as a Blueprint for Your Website

We often use the blueprint analogy to define a website wireframe. You can’t see what the kitchen looks like, but you know where it is located in the house based on the blueprint. This is the same idea for a website. You don’t know what the slides on the homepage look like, but you know there is a slider included, where the slider is located and its approximate size. The wireframe defines the elements of interaction: a news feed from the blog, a Twitter widget, portfolio or featured images, call to action buttons, etc. These website elements are all crafted out spatially into the wireframe, traditionally in black and white or grayscale. This way, it is easy to see what is being highlighted (big, above the fold, in the navigation), and the client can help collaborate if some additional information needs to be added or taken away from the structure. The entire wireframe often includes the homepage and 2-3 interior pages depending on the website’s flow and complexity.

Our team at Skybox Creative worked on the wireframe during the web re-design of Sunless, Inc. – sunless.com. The project required expanded interior wireframe layouts, since there were complex ways to filter multiple user groups. In this case, the groups included owners of tanning salons and sunless tanning consumers. Each group would be accessing the site for a variety of different reasons, so both user experiences had to be crafted in a harmonious and simplified fashion. Helpful call to actions and pop-ups that pushed users in specific areas helped achieve this, as well as defining multiple pages that would speak to both groups. Below are examples of several wireframes and the layouts that were created from these “blueprints.”

Ease of Use

One of the most important elements in a wireframe is making sure that it is EASY for a user to access areas of the site: sign up for services, buy products, social media interaction, video, promotions and account information, to name a few. These should all be drafted into the wireframe before ever moving to the design. Why? It saves A LOT of TIME and rounds of revisions. You already know where and how you will be directing users, just without the fun, glossy, shiny, beautifying part. One of the biggest trends today is simplifying the wireframe so that you have bigger buttons, more direct text and a concise navigation.

On-Site Search Data and Wireframes

Some wireframes are defined off previous or user tested on-site search data. For example, if the web project is a re-design of a current site, specific pages or areas of the site may be used in a more prominent role due to current search traffic or expected search traffic. Landing page testing can also help define these search parameters if the project is a new website or business. Check out Mashable’s discussion regarding on-site search data here: http://mashable.com/2012/02/08/get-more-from-on-site-search-data/

For more information on our web design and development services, please get in touch today! Contact us at info@skyboxcreative.com or 619-381-3825

Drive traffic and encourage sharing with infographics: Our 5 Step Process to market your infographic works like a charm!

Google Insights shows a significant increase in search volumes for infographic related terms. This trend is due to an over-abundance of information online… people have ever-shortening attention spans and want information fast! Check out the stats below…

Now is the time to get on board with this trend!

Bold, fun content gets shared!

The following funny infographic created by Skybox Creative for the purposes of website traffic, social sharing and brand recognition took off. We have seen great results in all areas including thousands of ongoing website visitors!!

A professionally designed and promoted infographic has huge benefits for brand recognition and industry authority.

The 5 Step Process is quite simple actually (it can take a lot of time though)… Here it is:

1. Design an infographic unlike any other
There are a lot of infographics out there. Make one that is valuable to people and looks awesome so they want to share!

2. Write a blog on your site
Add the infographic to your blog with an explanation of the concept as well as a snippet of code for visitors to embed it on their site. Don’t forget to ask for shares, comments and likes!

3. Share on social media outlets
Social sharing is a huge part of the process! Share your blog URL (driving people to your site) on Social Media sites like: Visual.ly, Google+, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest (pin from your blog), Tumblr, Flickr, Digg, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Etc. There are too many sites to count, but the ones listed above matter the most! Don’t forget to hashtag infographic related terms!

4. Write a Press Release
We use PRweb.com for our infographic Press Release and distribution, we recommend the mid-tier priced option, $199-369. This helps for SEO but more importantly pushes your content to news sources like Yahoo News and others to give your brand a national push!

5. Send an eBlast
Follow up with an email blast to your contact list (we do not recommend buying lists) to let them know about the release and what they can learn from your infographic – link to your blog URL. We recommend a service like MailChimp which is free for lists of up to 2,000 and is very user-friendly.

Get in touch with us today to craft a beautiful and powerful infographic that gets your company results! Infographic Design starting at $999.

Contact us at info@skyboxcreative.com or 619-381-3825

by Angelina Sereno

The Website Redesign Challenge

Skybox Creative and our design / user experience team were hired to create a new web design for a storage facility with two locations in San Diego County. This company did not want to be lumped into the national storage chain image. With an emphasis on customer service, human connection, safety and comfort, this storage company is unlike many others.

Morena Storage and Solana Beach Storage, now utilizing the tagline and corporate moniker of 5 Star Storage, are a different brand of storage. There is always someone to greet you at the facilities. Free water, coffee and treats for kids. They have increased double-lock security and offer one of their trucks and movers to help customers. They call it “boutique” storage – a business style that was molded through over 40 years of experience.

Their web presence and photography were dated and differentiating factors weren’t clear. Overall the website didn’t reflect the quality and professionalism that the company stood for. The website redesign was aimed at showcasing their excellence in service and safety.

The Website Redesign Solution

This goal drove the website wireframe and concept process. Skybox was brought in to art direct a preliminary photoshoot, which defined the image library for the site’s overall look and feel. Skybox also worked on refreshing the design for the current brand identity, as it was lacking some cohesiveness between locations.

Using a color palette that was inherited by the existing brand identity, Skybox Creative adjusted the colors to keep it from looking Christmas-y.

Our design team created slides for the homepage that were animated with Javascript to tell the story of a “full-service” storage facility. Call to actions are included throughout the website to provide helpful information to users. We highlighted the company’s excellent Yelp reviews and videos, which give web visitors a transparent and clear picture of the facility and its professional, clean atmosphere.

The website was built on WordPress as a CMS – this platform gave us the flexibility to create a modified homepage for both locations – Morena Storage and Solana Beach Storage – with the individual phone numbers, testimonials, social links, location-centric slides and location-based imagery.

The Website Redesign Results

The new website launched this week and it is already gaining momentum. Staff members are excited about the content management backend that is consolidated for both locations, making it easy to add promotions and additional pages. The new site highlights the individual locations (through interior pages and unique homepages), and provides interaction with users through the integration of a blog, social media links and the ability to reserve and pay online.

View the live site here!

Get a quote for your web redesign project info@skyboxcreative.com or call 619-381-3825

by Skybox Creative

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