Your website’s primary goals are to provide information, interact with visitors, and, eventually, set them on the road to conversion. Of course, “conversion” can mean many different things: Providing an email address, downloading content, receiving a quote, or even purchasing a product outright.

The web has come a long way from the clunky gifs that would often fail to load on Geocities. CSS animation has been building a reputation for itself as a design industry darling for some time now and not without good reason. There are unique benefits to using CSS animation in your web design in regards to functionality, UX design, and style.

The nav bar isn’t a complicated concept. It’s really just a list of links designed to point your viewers around your page. But this simplicity belies its importance; in truth, it’s one of the most important aspects of your website design.

A nav bar can be considered the navigational “anchor” of your web design. It’s a crucial part of each viewer’s UX, but it’s also an influential design element that contributes to time spent on-site, bounce rates, and conversions.

Remember the rapturous joy you felt last time you were contacted by a telemarketer? Sure, you were stretched thin at work, and your home life landed somewhere between Hurricane Katrina and Bosnia circa 1995, but – get this – you might be overpaying for your family minutes!

Ok, take a deep breath.

By now, most of us are familiar with minimalism in web design. It’s the idea that you can say more with less and create a visual style through strategic use of simple elements:

• Hidden navigation/menus
• Simple, clean layouts
• Understated color palettes
• Preference for visuals over text
• Generous white space and room to breathe

The first major Google update that put the spotlight on local SEO came in 2016 with Possum. Multiple iterations since have continued to refine algorithms that affect local SEO with increased focus. The rules of the game are in a state of perpetual flux, which is why you need to stay informed on what lands hits in your area. Some of your work starts right on your homepage with on-site SEO, part of it involves reaching out, and the rest is about using the tools that Google provided to make your local search just a bit friendlier.

What’s the point of a website?

Is it to provide information to your customers? Is it to engage with them? Is it to show off your brand’s persona?

Sure, all of the above is true. But to borrow from Star Trek, none of these goals are your Prime Directive. The Prime Directive—your website's guiding principle and number one goal—is to generate quality leads. Everything else is secondary.

Your website is an investment, and you’ll achieve a strong ROI only when you maximize your website’s ability to collect information, convert visitors, and bring these users into your marketing funnel.

The best way to do this is through a simple and understandable conversion path.

The SEO community presents few authoritative voices amidst the endless crowd of upstarts, self-proclaimed gurus, and DIY enthusiasts. Taken in combination with the regular updates to Google algorithms that fuel constant shifts in SEO, the inevitable result is a community plagued by rumors and misconceptions. To help clear the muddied waters, here are a few SEO myths that belong up there with Bigfoot and fan death.

Who really "owns" a website?

Is it the business that sponsored its creation?

Is it the web design and development team that actually designed and built it?

Or is it someone else?

As a website owner, you probably believe that your website is yours. It’s not!

In truth, your website doesn’t belong to you—it belongs to your audience. They’re the consumers; the primary market for everything you do. As such, your web design and development project isn’t really about building what you want—it’s about using deliberate and stylistic choices to help you hit your mark.

Let’s review a few ways to make it happen.

Eighty percent of people will only read the headline or first few lines of an article and move on. So, with that in mind, keep your content to the point and have a nice day.

Ok, headlines matter. That doesn’t come as much of a surprise to anyone, but the reality is that people have different expectations of the content that they engage with. Target market, industry, and the nature of the content all factor into the expectations users have about length. Context is key. So with that in mind, here are several key considerations about content length.