Redswish

Carefully crafted banter

Designing from the inside out: Part 1 – Content Before Design


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This is the first article in a 3-part series that looks at how we design and build websites from the base up, focusing on the raw data and content that needs to be accessible to everyone before considering design and progressive enhancements. In part 1 I’ll be discussing the content-out approach, why it’s important to order content sensibly with markup and how to do it so. Part 2 and 3 will look at semantic markup, microformats and how to write future-proof XHTML before finally discussing progressive enhancement and how it can be utilised to help ensure an enjoyable, appropriate user experience for all.

Content before design?

When I say ‘content before design’ I’m not saying start playing in TextMate or Dreamweaver before picking up a pencil and paper and building ideas and visuals with Photoshop. There are plenty of different methods people use and recommend to approach project development. Some designers find it easier or faster to use XHTML Prototyping or Agile development, however I would never consider writing a character of HTML before I had a solid design and a confident vision of the final product.

Content before design means that the structure of your markup is written in a way that logically makes sense if reading it without styles or any form of dynamic behaviour.

This may seem an obvious thing to do, but the fact is that most websites built today, regardless of whether they are valid, built with divs and have nice alt attributes on every image, are still structured in accordance to their design. A lot of the time this may not make a huge difference if the website design features elements in a sensible order, but often is the case that in the markup – headers will all over the place, menu lists and blockquotes may be thrown in the weirdest places, because that’s where they appear in the styled layout.

Stripping Redswish

What better an example to use to demonstrate my point than this very site. Of course you should practice what you preach but in my defence I built this layout before I learnt these techniques and methodologies.

When you view Redswish with no styles, as may be the case with screen readers or all manner of devices, you are presented with the following:

First we are presented with the search box, then a secondary navigation, the logo image, the subscribe image then the first post on the page. To view the site yourself with styles disabled, in Firefox go to View>Page Style>No Style. If you’re in Internet Explorer I offer you my sympathy.

If you carry on down, you’ll discover that the primary blog menu is almost at the bottom of the page. Well, what use is that to someone wishing to navigate your site? The reason the unstyled Redswish site is in such an illogical, unusable order is because I built the content and the presentation alongside each other. Thus, my XHTML markup is structured in the order in which visual elements appear on the page, as opposed to a sensible order of content.

The content-out approach

When building a website, you should work from the inside out. Focus on the stripped-down, bare-bones content displayed in headers, paragraphs, lists etc before building containing and structural elements around this content to style. CSS is incredibly powerful and manipulative and can almost always be used to position and style elements anywhere on the page, regardless of their position within the markup. The most popular and functional example of just how far CSS can be exploited to transform the same XHTML can be found at CSS Zen Garden.

However, don’t let this restrict you. There will still always be instances where an extra div or span may have to be used, or perhaps one element placed before another in order for them to be composed well into the design. CSS isn’t perfect, but by building from the content out you should be able to use as few divs and containing elements as possible, whilst still achieving the same end result.

Get in line

The diagram below shows the order in which different blocks of content are displayed in the current Redswish site when styles are disabled. The right diagram demonstrates a more sensible approach to the order of this content:

Some may disagree with this, and I probably would as well. But difficulty arises because there are often presentational factors and different information design priorities that overrule the order of the basic content.

For example, on the current site – the sidebar features categories, archives, a subscribe block,feeds and blog meta data. From a usabilty standpoint – categories and archives take a priority over the other elements because they’re necessary for site navigation and are primary page elements. However, for the sake of the design, they can’t be separated too much from the secondary elements (eg. feeds and blog meta-data) otherwise it would be nearly impossible to keep them together visually with CSS.

Sometimes the best bet is to find a happy medium, where you can still easily control your site’s visual layout with CSS whilst non-visual browsers, screen readers and such will still provide the user with a logical, easily navigable content structure.

Optimising content order

Writing your markup in a sensible order is not rocket science. WCAG guidlines dictate that “when content is organised logically it will be rendered in a meaningful order…” – this is regardless of stylesheets.

So, ensure that headers take precedence, that navigation is in the correct order and that the order of information is ordered based on logical order and priority. An example of restructuring some basic elements so they make sense, regardless of stylesheets and visual presentation:

Don’t replace tables with divs!

Building sites with a content-out approach should allow you to style your pages more organically. By creating structural blocks first, before including the raw content, you can sometimes default back to what is virtually a tabular layout. Div’s simply become table cells and try as you might, your HTML will still represent the presentational layout, not the optimal content order.

In the next part of this series I will look at semantic markup, HTML naming conventions and microformats, how these techniques can be employed to help create more sensible, meaningful content structure, and how this can benefit your user’s experiences.

UPDATE – Check out part 2 here >

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What is the purpose of your site?


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Here’s one of those ‘less talk, more listen’ posts. You don’t get many from me! I want to know a bit about your websites and your approach and attitude towards their purpose. Is your site(s) designed to make money, inform and educate, publicise a product/service/person or is the purpose unclear – perhaps it’s just for fun. For each case, how do you achieve your goals?

Design and Usability

How does your site design contribute to the end goal? With regards to user experience, what do you feel takes priority – enabling visitors to get to where they need to be as quickly as possible, or to provide an enjoyable experience. Or both? And how do you go about achieving this?

How much do you feel design contributes towards the overall user experience? Would you prefer a site that is easy to navigate and view, with well written copy and clear structure but features a minimal or unattractive design? Or would you rather a beautiful looking site with fancy dynamic functionality and gimmicks, but ‘makes you think’ a more? What about a balance of the two. How do you feel you can work to create a website that is fantastically well structured and presented, whilst revealing some tasty eye-candy?

Measuring success

How do you measure your site’s success? What do you determine to be ‘success‘? Site traffic? Perhaps a deeper look at your site’s analytis; what do you feel takes precedence? Length of visit, repeat visits, countires visited from, pure volume of traffic? How do these statistics vary depending on your site’s purpose? Perhaps you feel the best measure of your site’s success is more organic than statistical – the comments you receive, RSS or email subscribers, contact form feedback or a combination of the lot.

What do you feel is more important; your visitors experience or the site stats and revenue made?

I want your opinions

Please take the time out to comment below. This post isn’t about me or Redswish, I want to know what other people think. Get your site URL in there to get some coverage. I’ll be summing up everyone’s responses in an article in a few weeks.

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Speaking at Manchester WordPress User Group


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My first real speaking engagement, how exciting!

Next Thursday I’ll be talking about WordPress Custom Fields (in light of the popularity of this article) at the MDDA offices in Manchester. The evening solely focuses on WordPress (because it’s so darn cool) and will also feature a talk from Simon Wheatley on the structure of WordPress plugins.

For more information about the group you can join the MWUG Google Group or give me or Alan Holding a shout on Twitter.

If you wish to come along it’s at the MDDA offices on Portland Street, starting at 6.20-6.30ish. Be there or be square!

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Managing Brand Consistency


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There’s no debating the fact that an online presence is essential in today’s market. Indeed there are only a few niche industries that do not rely upon or are affected by the global transition from workplace to web.

When it comes to doing it right, anyone with an ounce of knowledge of the way the Internet works will agree that representing your business or product online is by no means as simple as throwing up a website and claiming your territory in a small corner of the web.

Aside from the many factors that make a ‘great’ website, such as careful usability consideration, good aesthetic design and well-written copy; there are the numerous other external variables including SEO, PR and email marketing etc that help to promote your website, and in turn your brand.

What is a brand

Well, it’s just your logo and stuff isn’t it? Not at all. A brand is the representation of a business that is portrayed through a range of mediums – logos, product names, colour schemes, slogans, the style of language used to promote a product or service and much more. For a more verbose description, Wikipedia offers us this:

‘A brand is a collection of images and ideas representing an economic producer; more specifically, it refers to the descriptive verbal attributes and concrete symbols such as a name, logo, slogan, and design scheme that convey the essence of a company, product or service.’

It’s often found that as a company grows, the general acknowledgment of the value of it’s branding grows and becomes more apparent. Ideally this shouldn’t be the case, it’s irrelevant whether you’re a new start-up or a multi-million dollar corporation, your company’s image should always demand a level of priority.

However, creating a solid brand can take a lot of time, decisive and objective thinking, creative input and usually a lot more money. Thus many smaller business fail to see it’s relevance; ‘maybe a quick logo mock-up in Microsoft Word and some cheap template flyers should do the trick’. This is not a concept that should be promoted.

Losing sight of your brand

When it comes to web design, many businesses loose sight of their objectives and company image. I’m primarily referring to those that have transposed to the Internet, who already have a physical brand.

There are a plethora of reasons that explain this. Sometimes it’s a misunderstanding of the Internet’s potential which leads to carelessness, also the idea of building a nice new website can cloud judgement and obscure the realistic goals and objectives of a business. This isn’t helped by the appeal of free website templates and WYSIWYG editors that are far cheaper than investing in a professional designer.

Unfortunately taking this approach can cripple your existing image. Preset themes aren’t built around your branding and are almost impossible to manipulate to accurately represent your company.

At the other end of the spectrum, designers can also cause trouble. Even though we, as designers, are supposed to have a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t on the web; we can also get carried away by our own creativity and artistic input – which in turn can tar our client’s branding that they may have created and built over time, purely because we feel our method is better or our opinion more valid.

New website – let’s rebrand!

Another popular trend is to completely rebrand to correlate with the launch of a new website. It’s often unclear to see what business do this, unless the rebrand came first and a new website is therefore a necessary measure. Some people get bored of their current image too easily, some believe it a positive, refreshing step to rebrand every so often, like a spring clean. But let’s remember that building a strong company image relies on consistency and recognition, which is impossible to attain if logos and colour schemes are changing every 6 months.

There can sometimes be a fine line between evolving a band and recreating it. You must step back and ensure that, when updating your image, you can guarantee that it still reflects and resembles the old look and feel – that it maintains recognition. The process of rebranding should be done in one of two ways:

  • Gradual evolution, one small step at a time, over a long period of time.
  • Complete transformation – a full, across-the-board revolution that demonstrates a strong step forward.

Maintaining your brand’s consistency

David Airey’s article on the top aspects of successful branding concludes that consistency is by far the most important factor in maintaining and growing a great brand. This means ensuring that your image is immediately recognisable wherever it is, and on whichever medium it’s found.

Take some of the most globally recognisable logos:

The topic of what makes a good logo is a discussion for another day, but what has helped to establish these logos as such undeniably iconic symbols is the fact they have remained consistent on print, clothing, packaging, TV and on the Internet.

Who’s the new kid in town?

What’s your reason for changing or developing your image? Is it to help pull your company into the current times, to motivate your workforce or bring in new clients? Are you changing your corporate image to transform people’s perspective of the company, perhaps to express a higher level of quality or when trying to enter a new market?

If you choose to redevelop your branding – make sure you’re clear of the reasons why you’re doing it. If it’s a half-hearted or foolish move, it can greatly damage your image and general recognition.

Rebranding across the board

When it’s time for a rebrand, make sure it’s definitely time for a rebrand – don’t do it for the sake of it. Your first step is to decide whether to gradually rebrand or change everything in one fell swoop. Once you’re settled on that account, it’s time to get as many heads together to brainstorm and construct a solid plan for change. Make sure everyone involved in the process is on the same page, understands the end target and is comfortable to express their opinions that may contribute to the process.

  • Rebranding is not just a new logo. Mocking up a new logo is not rebranding – in fact it really serves no purpose at all if it’s not backed up by a full, fresh direction that incorporates new slogans, mission statements, business and marketing strategies, colour schemes, typography and imagery usage guidelines, print media (business cards and letterheads etc), occasionally new staff members and much more.
  • Project manage the rebranding process. Treat your in-house development as you would a client’s project. Set deadlines, make sure staff are sticking to the deadlines and are on task, set someone in charge of the operation to ensure it runs smoothly and this will help generate a better overall outcome.
  • Aim for originality, push some boundaries. Some of the most popular rebranding campaigns have been those that have boasted originality and new ideas. This can be a case of using an arrangement of the letters in your company name to build an adaptable logo that works on several levels, like the famous FedEx logo, where the space between the E and X forms the shape of an arrow – representing direction and haste. A similar idea is used in the Amazon logo, where the arrow underneath points from A to Z and also resembles a smiling face.

The main point is that if you’re going to rebrand, do it properly – consider all the elements and ensure that they relate to each other and don’t contradict the overall message.

Bridging the offline-online gap

When taking your branding to the web, many of the same rules apply at to print and other medium. Sometimes we’re held back by current technologies or accessibility and cross-browser considerations, such as a restricted number of typefaces. However – colour, imagery, copy and print design elements can be recreated or manipulated to suit the web.

A method to help retain brand consistency over different mediums is to create a brand guidelines document. This sets in stone various rules that must consistently be applied when developing any form of branding, such as what typography to use, colours to use and on which backgrounds, the kerning and spacing around letters, block content and imagery, how and where the logo is meant to be used and much more.

When creating a website design based on a company’s current image, I surround myself in print media and any form of branding I can find to help transform those elements to the web.

Don’t forget, the objective is to maintain consistent brand recognition. When a visitor arrives at the website – it needs to be immediately apparent where they are.

On your way to creating a stronger company image

Creating a strong company image is about more than just the visual essence you project. It relies on a well-crafted product, effective marketing, good customer service, in some cases a great portfolio or catalogue and lots of time and effort.

When making important design and business direction decisions and strategies – don’t rush into anything, take your time, research and gather as much opinion (especially from within the business) as possible.

For more ideas and information on branding visit David Airey’s blog and the Venture3 blog. I would also recommend ‘Graphic Design that Works‘ from Rockport.

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Location Independent Living (and working)


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While on my little trip at the moment I met a Scottish couple and, aided by a few German beers, we got to know each other a bit. Amongst the hours of gradually blurrier conversation we talked about what I do for a living and the ability my line of work affords me to actually work anywhere in the world.

By this I mean that I could be in a small Thai village or on a Caribbean island but, providing I have an Internet connection, could still technically do my job. This may sound simple and in some aspects it is, but it can still be a scary step to take when you’re settled in a cushty regular job or of course if your line of work requires you to be within a certain location.

This lifestyle is indeed job-specific, and lends itself very much so to online entrepreneurs and designers, SEOs etc. I’ve never met my previous 3 freelance clients, but to be honest I don’t need to. We’ve spoken over the phone and via email and the work has been completed successfully and if anything at less expense.

Full-time job – meet Location Independent Living

So – interested in becomming an LIP (Location Independent Professional)? Well, it’s still quite a relatively new and unusual concept (in the respect that not every man and his dog is doing it) and to be honest – it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, you’d stuggle to find much of a mention on WIkipedia but the leading authorative on the subject would have to be www.locationindependent.com.

Is anyone really doing this?

Why yes they sure are. Some big names to throw out would include Elliot Jay Stocks and Collis Ta’eed. Collis and his partner Cyan have been milling around Hong Kong and Canada and who knows where else while maintaing their online presence and business interests – see here. And Mr. Stocks (of Carsonified fame) took time out up in Norway earlier this year while setting up his own business – see here.

So what are the benefits?

  • Live and work in exotic, different locations. Why work and/or live in the city center? You could be relaxing on a beach with laptop on knee and a cocktail in hand, or getting cosy in a cottage in the countryside in front of your iMac with a big mug of hot chocolate.
  • Make the most of currency conversion rates. When I was in Thailand I offered some folks my design services, but thinking back – there’s no way they could have afforded my prices due to the value of the Thai Baht to the British Pound. But what about the other way around? By living in a different country while working for clients in other countries – you can actually earn far more, just because of different countries economic climates (etc) and could, in effect, live like a king!
  • Be your own boss. This pretty much ties in with just going freelance but LIL really opens up the ability to choose where you want to work, when you want to work and the only person you really have to answer to is the client – when you want to.
  • Seek new inspiration. Working in the same environment, or even culture can get repetitive at times. Imagine working from Japan or South America or anywhere really that isn’t home and all the new ideas, inspiration and people you’d meet that would help to influence and surely help improve yourself.

And of course – the negatives?

  • Missing family and friends. If you decide to move away or travel while working, chances are you’ll be by yourself or maybe with a partner/friend. Saying goodbye to everyone can be pretty tough.
  • Possible issues with paying taxes and bank accounts.
  • Lack motivation to actually work. If you’re surrounded by distractions it can be easy to loose interest in working and go off doing something else.
  • It can get lonely. The lack of a social environment supplied by working in an office or while freelancing for companies can cause some loneliness at times. MSN and Skype only go so far to compensate for human companionship!
  • More expensive than living at home. Especially if you’re travelling, backpacking or moving to a new country – the costs will be a lot higher than simply retiring to your home office. The temptation with moving to new places is to get out and explore and have fun but if your living depends on continuing working then you’ll have to maintain focus – or at least save up lots of backup cash before you leave!
  • Time zones! Don’t forget, if you’re working and living on the other side of the world to your client – you can’t go ringing them in their sleep! Working in completely different time zones may require you to adjust your working patterns to fit with your clients at times.

So, is it worth it?

Well I’m not intending on going anywhere soon. I’m comfortable working at Flame and am learning too much and having too much of a good time to throw it away right now. But it’s always a possibility for the future. If anyone’s interested in becomming an LIP or is already travelling or living and working ‘location independently’ at the moment – give us your 2 cents in the comments section – I’d love to hear from people with experience.

But, a word of advice I would offer anyone before throwing all their clothes and Macbook in a suitcase is to research properly before you go anywhere. Although there, quite surprisingly, isn’t much on the subject out there – the best resource without a doubt is Location Independent Living. I also recommend checking out Executive Hacks and The 4-Hour Workweek.

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10 SEO elements all websites should have


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As I’m on holiday this week, tripping around Europe, I’ve little time to be writing blog articles. But fear not! Jerry Low has kindly stepped in to supply his top 10 SEO elements that all websites should have. Enjoy!

Seriously, you don’t need an expert to optimize your website for better search engine rankings. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), after all, is not rocket science. It is something you can learn and do it yourself – all it takes is some serious readings and hard work.

However, there is something we need to know before we start any real SEO work – the direction of our entire SEO campaign – What we are trying to achieve? What are our targeted keywords? Who are our competitors? That led us to the most important preparation work before any SEO campaign get started – keyword research.

Keyword research is crucial as it acts like a compass for your website or blog. A proper keyword research reveals the supply and demand trends in your industries thus giving general idea on which keyword you should focus on.

In brief, here is how you can do a keyword research:

  • Get a list of related keywords using Google Keyword Tool
  • Search each keyword to check how many websites turned out on the search engine result page (SERP) – this fits in as the number of supplies.
  • Websites topping the SERP are your major competitors, study them well.
  • To learn what are the demands, check number of searches for each keyword using keyword tools.
  • Tool suggestion for keyword research: Word Tracker and Keyword Discovery – these two are my favourites.

Well, now you have a rough idea on your competition. The smart approach is to be a big fish in a small/average pond – for starters, you should focus your work on keywords with moderate demands and low competition.

Besides supply and demand, keyword research also offers valuable information for your web designs. Take example that you are selling shoes online, I am sure you’ll have questions like: What are the popular brands searched online? How shoes should be categorized – based on brand, occasion, or sizes?

All these can be answered as you run down the keyword research work. You’ll see searches come in based on brands, like ‘DC shoes’, ‘jordan shoes’, ‘nike shoes’; in the same time, searchers are also looking for shoes for different activities or occasions, like ‘ballet shoes’, ‘safety shoes’, ‘bowling shoes’, ‘prom shoes’, and so on.

By the end of your research work, you should be able to generate a list of target keywords. And now it’s the time to focus your SEO work on them. To get started, here are the 10 key elements that will improve your blog or website’s SEO quality immediately. 10 key elements that improve your website SEO quality immediately:

1. Index-able and Keyword-rich URL

The power of a keyword rich URL is often overlooked by bloggers and webmasters. In case you have yet to registered your domain name, try include your primary keywords in your domain; while for those who are already running a website, a keyword rich URL (example: abc.com/keyword) still helps a lot. One might complains that domain name with keywords faces branding problems and hard to be remembered; but that’s the dilemma every webmaster/blogger has to face.

Also, a good SEO practice is to avoid complicated dynamic URL that is hard to be indexed. Try limit your URL to 2 – 3 variables, excessive usage of ?, $, &, +, % characters as well as cgi-bin redirect will only do you harm.

2. A reliable web hosting

Website with poor uptime will never rank high on search engines. Let’s imagine that you are the search engine, how would ranking a down website on top of your search result page looks like? Awfully bad, don’t you think? Hence, hosting your website on a reliable web hosts – dedicated or shared, is very crucial.

To pick up the right web host, you can always hang around reputable hosting forums like WebHostingTalk.com or you can read my personal hosting reviews here.

3. Keyword-rich title and heading tags

A keyword-rich page title is as crucial as a keyword-rich URL for a few reasons.

One, a keyword-rich title tells the search engine bots what the page is about thus grouping your webpage into the right category; second, most search engines will bold your keywords in title whenever that particular keyword is searched. Common sense, the bolding effect will definitely draw extra attention from the searchers and thus, brings more clicks into your website/blog.

Heading tags (example <h1></h1>) is hard to be missed in old times. Not now anymore. As more and more websites are built solely on blogging software like Typepad and WordPress, heading tags are often put in the wrong use.

Take WordPress (WP) templates for example, WP themes designers often use heading tags for sidebar titles without relevant keywords (example: Achieve, Categories) which bring no SEO value at all. To make sure your blog is well SEO-ed, one top thing to do is to remove or modify these headings into keyword-rich headings.

4. Alt tag on images

In term of SEO, putting descriptive alt attributes with your image places additional relevant text to your source code. Search engines like this and the more relevant text you have the better chances you get to rank higher.

As an additional benefit, a descriptive image alt tag helps users to understand your image when it fails to load.

5. Proper structured internal linking

Search engines pay a lot of attention to links – both internal and external. As internal links are those that can be controlled by you, make sure your website internal linking is proper structured and filled with relevant descriptive keywords. A plain anchor text like ‘click here’ and ‘read more’ are not clever; ‘click here for more Jordan shoes’ and ‘read more about ballet shoes’ are.

For website owners, make sure there are plenty enough of internal links pointing to your primary pages; for bloggers, mentioned and linked to your previous blogpost whenever it’s appropriate, this give extra link juice to your previous blogpost (hence better rankings) plus it enables your readers to catch up what they missed.

6. Inbound links

Link development is an inevitable process if you want your website to rank high. The keypoint, however, is not to obtain links blindly from spammy websites and directories. Always emphasize quality on top of quantity when you’re building links.

There are wide options for your link building campaign: from submitting your sites to reputable directories to asking for a link exchange; from buying text link ads to writing guest blog post in your industries – some of these methods can be risky (of search engine’s filter and bans) and some are not. What you need to do is to pick a series of method you feel comfortable with and pour some sweat in the link building campaign.

7. XML sitemap

XML sitemaps is used for search engine bots indexing. It runs as a list of all pages and posts along with related information like priority of each page and the date of creation. These elements help search engine bots to crawl your websites/blogs as well as learning the importance level of each page.

While XML sitemap is not a must for a website to rank high, it is however good practice for web and blog owners to have it on site.

8. WWW/non-WWW Canonical Issue

Originally, all websites built can be viewed in two versions: the WWW and the non-WWW version. In normal cases, the search engines should be able to recognize the issue and rank the websites accordingly but occasionally it fails. This led to serious problem where websites are penalized (especially on Google) due to content duplication. Even if there’s no penalty imposed, the web page indexed twice will have hard time to rank high as the back links are (PR/anchor text) shared over two web pages.

The solution of this problem is simple. One, you can login to Google Webmaster Tools and tell them which version (WWW or non-WWW) of the website is preferred. Alternatively, a simple 301 redirect code in your .htaccess file is sufficient to solve the problem.

Example code:

To have your website in WWW version

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com $
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

To have your website in non-WWW version

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^ example\.com$
RewriteRule (.*) http:// example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

9. Robots.txt

Robots.txt simply tells search engine bots what to crawl and what not to. It might not help that much in website rankings but it prevents irrelevant objects to be related to your website – which is good for your website to look focus (in search engine eyes) and professional.

10. Content is king

Users do not search for fun, they search for information and solution to a problem. If your website or blog does not offer what the users want, they will move away. As what had been widely covered by Nathan’s post about increasing and maitaining blog traffics, you should know attracting traffics via SEO is just the beginning; the key point of having a successful website is always having an informative website that solves human’s needs.

About the author

Jerry Low is the guy behind Web Hosting Secret Revealed. He offers unbiased hosting reviews to help make your decision easier. In case you are looking for a web host, why not start reading his recommendations – Hostgator now?

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Buying and Selling Blogs


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Initially, the concept of ‘selling’ or spending large quantities of money on a virtual database-powered 2D on-screen entity may seem absurd. But let’s face it – blogs make money, therefore they have value and in turn become a commodity that can be sold or used to make more money!

Although the blog marketplace may seem like a far off notion to most bloggers, there is a surprising amount of currency to be made by building up high profile, high traffic blogs and trading them off for a tasty sum. Take this story from Problogger for example. And there are similar stories of bloggers selling off their hard work for up to millions of dollars.

Before you get carried away, creating a worthy blog that draws in mass traffic becomes a full-time occupation and can even require several writers. It takes time and hard work, but the pay-off can be huge. Here I’ll discuss some of the pros and cons of buying and selling blogs, whilst examining the market in more detail.

Selling up

For many of us, especially part-time and one-man (no sexual discrimination intended) writers – the concept of selling sounds far more appetising than buying. This could be down to the vision of a huge paycheck, and also based upon a love of blogging – why buy someone else’s work when you can create? The flip side is why sell a blog that you’ve put so much love into and that’s probably already making a consistent profit through advertising and whatever other means?

Often, the idea of selling their blog may never even cross people’s mind – until someone pops up with an offer, then everything changes…

…Sell your blog, buy a new car and take a break on a cruise then come back with some extra pocket money and start again. New blog, build it up and maybe sell that?…

…and thus it practically becomes a business.

Sometimes the primary objective from the start is to develop a blog and sell it, yet sometimes the blogging process just becomes too time-consuming, tedious or difficult and instead of letting their blog go to waste – it can be worth trying to reap some reward for the time and energy put into it. At some point hosting fees, domain renewal and advertising fees will creep up, and if your blog is losing traffic or making less revenue then the practical option is to try and sell up.

Buying blogs

Selling your blog seems straightforward enough – it’s about making money. But at the other end of the spectrum, someone has to buy what you’re selling, so why buy?

The target is still to make money. So expelling intial capital sounds like a step backwards? But there are indeed many great reasons for buying up blogs:

  • Fast-track ahead. No matter how diligently you work and how good your SEO skills may be – building up blog traffic and recognition takes time. Buying a blog that already has a consistent reader base and high regular traffic gives you a head start.
  • If a blog is already making money, this assures a cashflow from day one. You then have the ability to work and improve the blog to increase traffic and income. A lot of the initial hard work has already been done for you.
  • Obtaining another advertising platform. If you already have other blogs or products making money, buying into a popular blog provides you with a means to reach far more people for free to advertise and promote your other products.
  • Buying security. Aside from just obtaining an asset, you’re also getting the knowledge and security that it works. It’s not always as simple as creating a new blog and it will develop in time – some things don’t work out. By buying into a proven concept you’re negating that risk.

Well, that’s all dandy. But it can’t all be great? Of course plenty of downsides and risks to buying a blog:

  • Obviously – the cost element. Spending a lot of money doesn’t always guarantee a continuously successful blog with a promising future. At least starting a blog from scratch can be almost free and allows more control over it’s image, direction and target audience.
  • Typical online sales risks. Selling a virtual creation can always be a daunting task. A very secure and agreed transaction should take place, yet it’s still so easy for someone to run off with the details for a site after being paid, or misrepresenting a blog’s true value. It’s essential to research both the blog and the seller well before parting with any money.
  • Keeping loyal readers happy. Regulars are regulars for a reason. They like the style of certain blogs – perhaps it’s the design, the tone of voice, the quality or quantity of the articles or the community it promotes. If you storm in and change everything – you may loose lots of valued visitors and regular traffic which can undo all the hard work of the previous owner, and potentially destroy your investment.

So, when buying – research well, respect the theme and readership of the blog you’re buying into and be prepared to work hard to keep it running at the same, or a better pace.

How do you value your blog?

If you’ve decided to sell, or have been made an offer – that’s great. But how on Earth do you value a blog? You can’t exactly take it down to the local jewellers or do an Ebay search. You can however glimse the competition at sites such as Performancing.com and the Sitepoint Marketplace.

Valuing your blog is not something to rush. And as blog sales aren’t feverishly common – there’s no set RRP or rules that dictate exactly what’s worth what. Valuation is subjective and so the selling process lends itself to auctions and even bartering. However, there are still plenty of factors to be taken into account to help reach realistic values.

  • Traffic. One of the best measures of a blog’s success is it’s traffic. The 2 key aspects to consider are consistency and rate of growth. If traffic is still on the up then it’s most likely a good time to pitch it to a potential buyer. Use an accurate, unbias analytics package. I’d recommend Google Analytics because as well as being a fantastic piece of free kit – it’s a reliable name that should ensure a level of confidence.
  • Readership and Subscribers. The other respectable method to analyse a blog’s popularity is it’s audience. Not just random traffic, but regular, repeat traffic that have a purpose in visiting your blog. The best way to assess this is through RSS subscribers, registered users and email subscribers.
  • Inbound links. The more high quality inbound links – the more alternate entry paths to your blog. Don’t just aim for the homepage but try and obtain recognition for deeper level pages and important traffic sources that will aid your search engine rankings.
  • Current earnings. If your blog is already making profit through whatever means, this will be a huge selling point and seriously help to assess your blog’s value in it’s rawest format – money.
  • The full package – design and content. Aside from all the statistics – when you’re selling your blog, you’re also selling all the design work, code and developement that’s gone into it. If you were to build a website for a client and charged a £1,000 – a similar sized blog should effectively hold such a value. Don’t forget this when valuing your blog or website, it’s not just about traffic and popularity. The chances are a better design and more considerate, functional blog will fetch more money.
  • Domain name. A single string that may have cost no more than £5 originally can become extremely valuable when paired with a recognisable brand or website. Domain names alone have been known to go for millions. An easy-to-remember, snappy and recognisable domain name can contribute immensely to a site’s success and it’s worth.

Adding it all up

The way I look at it, the way to calculate a blog’s value is to estimate how much it would cost to create everything again from scratch – if every element had a value. Without trying to get too mathematical, my personal formula works out something like so:

But, before you rely on the above diagram it’s worth noting that I’ve yet to sell a blog and will most certainly not be selling Redswish any time soon – so experts on the subject may use different techniques.

My key advice would be research, research, research. Don’t rush into anything.

Considerations when changing hands

When selling, the main concern is receiving the money before full control is handed over. When buying, it’s more complicated. Transferring a sum of money can be a simple procedure, but transferring the keys to a blog requires several considerations:

  • Domain and hosting will need to be transferred.
  • Whois information requires changing.
  • Site information will need amending, such as about and contact page and any mailto links.
  • CMS access, database and possibly server details may need to be changed or transferred.
  • Any external accounts that directly tie in with the blog will need to change hands. Eg – Feedburner, Technorati, BlogCatalog etc.
  • Google Analytics or tracking scripts may need to be changed to the new owner’s details.
  • Advertising accounts, adwords etc need to transfer to the new owner’s bank details.

So – before buying or selling, bear in mind the many other factors in the transaction. Could you imagine spending hundreds or thousands of pounds on a blog, only to forget to change the affiliate account bank details over and the revenues continue to go to the previous owner?

Keeping in touch

Selling your blog isn’t always the end of the line. You may be kept on as a writer, or have to teach the new owner’s how to use the CMS or blogging platform. However don’t forget to charge for this. Bigger blogs with regular visitors may miss your blogging style or presence and may not care much for a direct changeover.

Blogs represent a lot of different things to different people. Some are purely to present information make money, whereas some are an outlet of personal expression and opinions that contribute and help others. Think before selling – is it really worth it? Think before buying – can you continue to make this work and recoup your intial investment?

Play safe, have fun! Discuss…

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A note on accessibility – body background colours


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Accessibility (dare I say it) guru (oh dear I said it) Jeffrey Zeldman recently pointed out on his blog that very few (and I’ve tested this, it is very few) websites actually specify CSS body background colours. Some of you may think “What? How stupid of them!” and some of you may think “What? Why the hell does that matter?“, well believe it or not it does matter.

Users, and I do not mean disabled users, visually impaired users or accessibility freaks but all users have the ability and many take advantage of the ability to specifiy default body background colours, font colours and font sizes among other things. This can aid readability, help colourblind users, satisfy personal preference and hell; some people just love to mess around. The problem is, by forgetting or neglecting to specify a body background colour – your website could appear as so:

User specified background colour

An exaggeration? No, not really. If you don’t believe me check out some of the reliable comments on the respective article. A surprising number of users choose to maintain a default browser background colour other than white.

Good news!

Let’s face it, all you have to to avoid this (assuming your site’s background colour is white) is to slip the following into your CSS:

body {
background-color: #ffffff;
}

No way! Yes way. Just a little something to remeber.

A note on font sizes

As I mentioned above, users can specify default font sizes and colours as well as background colours. So it’s also important to take this into account. The chances are you’ll specify a font colour naturally to suit the site, but people often dictate font sizes in pixels (and yes, I’m no exception). Always try and use ems to describe your font sizes – for more information on typography accessibility you can check out my recent post on Accessible Web Design or this fab article on A List Apart.

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