Websites Archives - Dowitcher Designs

Revisiting Internet Relics, Part One

Oh, 1996. The year when every other woman had “The Rachel” haircut, big overalls and tiny backpacks were in fashion, and The Wallflowers kept reminding us that we could drive it home with “One Headlight.” Well, a lot can change in 20 years. For example, ladies have moved on to styling their hair in “The Monica” (okay, just kidding). But while big overalls and...

How to Lose that Website Weight Fast!

Well, once again summer is over. The days are getting shorter, the nights a bit chillier. Soon, all you’ll feel like doing is curling up on the couch with a stack of blankets and a stash of treats. But with indulgent holidays on the horizon, now seems like a good time to remind you to watch your weight. Your website weight, that is. Website obesity is becoming an epidemic of sorts. And while...

Top Non-Profit Blogs We Love

Driving traffic, improving SEO, establishing thought leadership — we all know blogs are good. But it’s challenging to put a good blog together, and blogs for the nonprofit sector can sometimes be more challenging than others. Why? There’s generally more information to organize and present. A typical nonprofit sector blog has a lot of categories, a lot of feature stories, and a...

Smaller Website Images = Bigger Returns. These Compression Tools Can Help.

True story: Last week I was on a small retailer’s website, my cart loaded up with goodies. Ready to buy, I walked through the checkout process, finally hit “purchase” and… nothing. It just hung there, loading. After a minute I got impatient and tried refreshing the page, which sent me all the way back to square one. So I retraced my steps through checkout only to have the...

How to Target Long-Tail Keywords for Better SEO

What is SEO, anyway? SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. SEO is a web marketing tactic that’s applied for the purpose of increasing the visibility of one’s website in search engine results. Long story short, the goal is to be one of the first websites that potential customers lay eyes on as they scour the internet for what they’re looking for. However, this can be a tough feat given...

Is Your Low-Contrast Design Costing You Clients?

Web design trends come and go. Do you remember the 2000s, when websites were textural? Backgrounds looked like torn paper in a scrapbook. Text tended to be blocky and bold. Call-to-action buttons were so glossy they looked wet. Drop shadows erupted in every direction, trying desperately to make graphic elements pop up off the page. A few years ago, designers decided that look was over, so they ran...

Quick Tips for Earning E-Commerce Trust

Here at Dowitcher Designs we’ve helped a number of clients take their businesses online. And from experience I can tell you that one of the most important elements of e-commerce is establishing credibility. Without credibility, you may as well close up shop. Customers who make purchases online are savvy enough not to share their personal and banking information with a store they can’t...

Nine Common E-Commerce Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Untitled (Shopping Cart) by Doug Aitken The phrase “shopping cart abandonment” might make you think of a lonely cart sitting in the middle of a vast, empty parking lot. And while that’s quite a sad thought, it’s not quite as sad as the real meaning of the phrase: when online shoppers add items to their carts but leave before they begin or finish checking out. In other words,...

The Rise of “Native Advertising”

We’ve heard of all types of advertising — but what the heck is native advertising? If you’ve never heard the term before, don’t worry: it’s only recently been widely adopted by the advertising community. But get ready to hear a lot more about it, because native advertising will define the next phase of our collective user experience online. What exactly is it? Well,...

The Secret Door: A Social Media Marketing Win

No doubt you’ve played with Google Maps’ Street View before. It can be handy when looking up addresses, or for checking out neighborhoods you’re interested in living in, or even for scoping out the places you used to live. But what I didn’t fully understand until recently was how limiting of a name “Street View” actually is. Over several years and with the help...

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