Must Design

Canonical URLs Explained
The Yoast post provides an easy way to understand why rel=canonical is a powerful new SEO tag. Yoast has a dog in the hunt. They make a Magento plugin that easily writes the rel=canonical tag into a product page's head.

The explanation about WHY canonical URLs are so important is only half right. We have a million ways of expressing and sharing URLs these days. Without rel=canonical we end up duping content to distraction.

Here's the rub. All ecommerce sites dupe content. They must. When I was a Director of Ecommerce a single product accounted for 50% of our profits. You better believe I merchandised that product into every nook and cranny our site offered. I duped that product and it's content to distraction.

There are other ways to limit duplication including:

* Use of your Robots.txt file.
* Locking content behind a firewall.  

* Use of blockquotes & rel=canonical tags. 
* Rewrite duplicated content so it's not as duplicated (lol). 

We included our email output into a folder with a "no follow" line in our robots.txt. You may think such a move is enough. It isn't. Be sure NOT to drive links from spiderable content INTO that folder or you eliminate the effectiveness of the robots.txt.

In the end every ecom site worth it's salt MUST duplicate content. Rewriting sounds like a good strategy, but it isn't. Content = time and time = money when managing million dollar commercial sites. You will be duping content.

Best to use rel=canonical because it shows Google you aren't trying to STEAL anything. Reminds me of what a friend shared about the disavow tool (used to deny inbound links or signal they may be untrusted).

 My friend was using the disavow tool daily on his clients accounts. "So you are brown-nosing Google," I kidded him. "Exactly," was his answer. Rel=canonical tells Google you are TRYING to do the right thing and sometimes that is enough. 

We asked several developers what their favorite sources are for web design and code inspiration, and they pointed to these 17 wide-ranging sites.

Marty Note
I like several of these designs including Web Design Ledger and The Source for their creative balance between images, copy and headlines. There are so many things dancing on the head of a pin on any homepage such as:

* Your desire to SHARE everything.

* Their (visitor's) desire to find what they want.

* Navigation.
* Images.
* Headlines & Copy.

Getting all of these dancers to tell a coherent story in 9 seconds is the challenge. Usually as content being shared increases understand decreases. Several of these designs manage to present a lot of options intelligently.

Which one is your fav?

Mondrian Grids
First website I created in 1999 used a Mondrian grid. FoundObjects.com had SO MUCH information we needed a grid. Since we sold artist inspired gifts and cool stuff such as Magnetic Poetry Kit I worked hard to write the HTML to create a Mondrian grid manually.

There are "new designer" mistakes such as too many fonts and over selling the click I wouldn't make today, but maybe it was worth figuring out how to write the html to do those lines (took weeks and was named in my divorce lol).

I'm not alone in love for Mondrian as this link shows.

Storytelling Web Design
How can a website tell a story? By rethinking websites as related content capable of telling a story in either direction and on their own we see the difficulty we face when telling stories using websites.

Websites go forward and backward in time because any page can become a "homepage" based on links or search. A webpage needs to be self sufficient - telling a story on their own - and connected in a dasiy chain where each step along the chain reinforces the chain's connections and "storyline".

This post discusses ways to use tools such as videos and arresting visuals. Graphics are a HUGE and helpful device online. If your story includes icons you've created a navigational language teaching readers to look for symbols when they want to move through the deck.

This is one of the reasons I love icons. Icons aren't fixed in space or time and their connection to each other can be strong or weak. The key is to keep readers reading. The challenge is thinking about information architecture that can easily pay off on its own and point in different directions based on how readers consume the content.

Best storytelling sites I've discovered include:

http://www.robinhood.org/

http://www.redcross.org/

http://www.ihadcancer.com/

Notice a trend? Nonprofits tell better stories in general and their websites  function more as great story telling aids than most for profit companies. If you have favorite storytelling websites please share and we will curate in.

There are a many aspects of good web design, and whitespace is certainly one of them. Whitespace is the empty space around design elements such as images, text,

Charlotte website design and marketing firm Fame Foundry is a trustcasting agency dedicated to helping businesses grow.

Paul & Shark's new flagship store demonstrates how design can refresh a brand...

Rejuvenating a brand speaks volumes about the brand identity, its USP and its projected future, all rolled into a single wholesome experience. When B+H Architects were asked to work on the new flagship store in Hong Kong to augment the launch of Paul & Shark into the Asian markets, they capitalized on two aspects: fine craftsmanship and innovative spirit of the brand.

Marty Note
Appreciate India Art & Design sharing this post. The post is about how Paul & Shark used design to rebrand their stores and it gives us a chance to discuss one of our favorite aspects of web design.

All the world is a stage.

When team Curagami (http://www.Curagami.com ) helps design an ecommerce website NOTHING is left to chance. In an ideal world we TEST everything before we pull triggers.

Ideal world's rarely exist, so we model many core details based on other similar tests or intuition (influenced by thousand of tests, reading and stealing from those we know test a lot lol).

NOTHING is left to chance.

Just as a store wraps around its shoppers websites wrap around visitors. Great ecommerce websites such as REI.com or Threadless.com understand HOW they set the stage frames the play. Websites as stage are far from a passive communication medium.

When you walk into a store the store's stage communicates a million messages to our "shopper brain". One day standing in Nordstrom I looked UP. Thousands of lights carefully directed reinforced store as stage. Nordstrom's display team must spend HOURS directing those lights (look up next time you visit a big box store).

Web designs use COLOR as "light". Color is a web designrer's klieg lights. Images come and go, but color is forever (lol). Online color creates excitement, awareness, a desire to take an action and chances shoppers will join, buy and share.

Look HARD at how B+H used color to reinforce Paul & Shark's "Brand Ideals", Unique Selling Propositions (well articulated in the article) and what we call Unique Customer Aspirations or UCA (how customers want to use a brand to actualize their aspirations and dreams for themselves) and ask yourself, "Does our web design do that too?".

Marty Note
Food Websites are great places to learn key elements of web design such as:

* Sensual and romantic images.
* Great mouth watering headlines.
* Visual marketing storytelling.

I like http://www.whitmansnyc.com/ and Soup Peddler. Whitmans BRANDS a hamburger beautifully. Food is HARD to shoot. Food can easily look TERRIBLE in a picture especially a picture with limited web resolution. Whitmans solves that problem creatively with a thin transparent layer between us and the burger. Well done!

Soup Peddler, in the example shown, is the ONLY site that includes PEOPLE. Foodies have "widget-itis" worse than techies. Widget don't sell as well as PEOPLE.

The SINGLE possible exception to that rule might be a foodie site, the one in 10M foodie sites that creates INCLUSION with their food. Whitman's is close since a hamburger is a universal thing, but the site remains a tad sterile due to lack of community.

If you scroll down below Whatman's hero you will see another pet peeve. WHY do web designers EVER let someone show an interior image WITHOUT PEOPLE.

Yes the lines are clean and the emptiness is sort of beautiful, but think about the NONVERBAL communication sent by an empty room. How long do you stay in an empty room when there is a party going on next door?

Food Heroes
So, foodie sites need people. There are several ways I would work people into the equation so the story being  told feels more inclusive and fun:

* Chef as Hero.
* People with SMILES looking UP at chef or waitstaff.
* Fan as hero (with story).

Food heroes (largest image on the page = hero) need to be QUIET and CONFIDENT. Too much NOISE or any WEAKNESS and we don't trust a website (or eat their food).

The CHEF is a hero that WORKS for any restaurant. Seeing Wolfgang Puck creates a brand. Seeing a chef wearing whites with a slightly stained towel over his (or her) shoulder says, "My food is so amazing you haven't LIVED until you've eaten here".

Instead of EMPTY rooms the picture is smiling, well dressed people looking up at the Chef or waitstaff listening in rapt attention. Better if dishes are gone b/c signals meal is over and everyone is still smiling (a tacit endorsement).

DON'T STAGE THIS PHOTO. Shoot it when a group is in for dinner (with permission and releases). Share the event and caption the photo. NEVER stage actors in food websites. Canned art + food says NO TRUST and DANGEROUS.

If your fans are MODEL good looking TELL THE STORY of the event that prompted the picture. What was being celebrated, shared or discussed. If the group is a nonprofit your restaurant supports MORE THE BETTER as you can tell 2 stories in one (risky but worth it).

Finally, you can feature a fan in your hero, BUT same "no canned or artificial" photos here either. ALSO, click me through to a page of pictures of other fans and stories (why they wanted to share their picture and story about FOOD i.e. make sure people know they aren't related :).

Food is SO individual, what I like and what you like can be very different, so think about the 5 stories you need to tell that "star" your content (i.e. tells the stories that cover the rainbow of your food's tribes).

One story shares love of sauces and sweet. Another story tells the visual romance story. Another might discuss meeting the chef and getting to know the "people behind the scenes".

Sharing different and strategically savvy stories creates the "like me" connection with the different tribes your food, restaurant and content should attract. Every restaurant has a passion. Share that passion.

Also share the reception the food creates, the passion others have for the food. Tell those stories in those ways and your foodie (or other) website wins hearts, minds and loyalty.

Flat design is a concept that was pretty popular a couple years ago and it's back with full strength this year, causing some interesting buzz around the so