Resources – Tips for your Website

Work from home productivity tips

uacit — Sun, 06 Jun 2021 02:09:14 +0000

With all the lockdowns from the COVID pandemic forcing more and more people to work form home it has been become more important than ever to stay motivated and productive. Here are some great tips to help you increase your productivity.

1: Set Up Your Workspace Right

Don’t work from your bed or in your bedroom if you can help it. It will encourage midday napping and ruin productivity.
Have dedicated “work from home” clothes. So you aren’t in your normal “power suit” or your pj’s but you are in something professional but comfortable.
Tidy off your desk. A clear desk is a clear mind!
Invest in a quality work chair if you haven’t already so you won’t or give your self an RSI be distracted by back pain.
If you are in a noisy environment or their other distractions use headphones to eliminate them.
Get a second monitor to increase your productivity

2: Before You Start the Work Day

Get a “please knock/come in” sign for your home office door.
Make a personal ritual to indicate you are starting the workday
Shower and get dressed. A clean body will give you a fresh start to the day.
Do 10 minutes of exercise at least to get your blood flowing and your brain ready to work.
Eat your normal and hopefully a proper breakfast to keep you going to your first break.
Make a work productivity checklist to help you stay on task.
Shut off social media notifications.

3: Make a Schedule and Stick to IT

Start and finish your workday at the same time every day
Set an achievable daily goal and achieve it. This is provide you with positive reinforcement
a Schedule out a 15-minute break every hour and a half.
Take at least a half-hour lunch break every day.
Schedule phone calls for the afternoon between 1pm and 3pm when you are most likely
to receive an answer and it will help to break up your day.
Don’t ignore the schedule or you will blur the lines between work and home life

What are your top tips?

Photo by Nelly Antoniadou on Unsplash

another great free Image site pexels.com

admin — Fri, 19 Jan 2018 04:59:11 +0000

Pexels.com is another new free image resource that have photographers contributing their images to. You can . “pay them back” 3 ways. By giving the photographer a Tweet or instagram follow and comment or a link back- which is all too easy 🙂 The copyright licensing is all CCO Licenced so you know exactly where you stand and what you can and can’t do.

The site itself makes it very easy to search for images and download them. There is no need to sign up for an account and be bombarded with the spam. So check them out at Pexels.com

Another great free image resource site www.stockio.com

admin — Mon, 25 Sep 2017 22:41:40 +0000

Stockio has not only free images but also vectors, videos, icons and fonts. You don’t even have to open an account but the advantages of opening an account are that you can create your own online image library of resources.

Standard copyright rules apply such as you can’t onsell or use any of the images in products that are onsold for example website templates, calender’s etc

Free Images from freeimages.com

admin — Sun, 20 Aug 2017 03:32:13 +0000

Free images has a great collection of free images as well as links to stock image library’s such as istock. You do need to create an account (no payment details or anything required) in order to be able to download the images but based on the fact that the images are free and only require attribution when used in editorial works then it is a small “price” to pay.

As per most image library’s terms of use you can not use them in any type of product which you are onselling eg website templates, calenders etc but you can use them in your own and clients commercial work.

19 SEO Tools all in one place

admin — Thu, 13 Apr 2017 00:31:55 +0000

Search Engine Reports has a very useful suite of paid tools but it also has 19 free SEO tools which cover areas such as Search Engine Placement Results, IP checkers to image optmization tools which everyone wanting the best results from their SEO will find useful. I haven’t tried them all but the ones I have I found very useful without a million pop up windows trying to get you to subscribe. A major negative though is that the free tools if you are checking any kind of SEO placement such as keyword placements or SERPS is that it the free tools only check google.com not any local version which can lead to not the most relevant results

SmallSEOTools.com also has the same tools plus quite a few more and allows you to localize the results to google.com.au rather than just google.com which is very happy but the only issue I have with it are all the ads but hey its free so I shouldn’t complain 🙂

And here is 7 more tools https://blog.kissmetrics.com/seven-free-seo-tools/

Standard website ad sizes

admin — Wed, 17 Aug 2016 01:33:36 +0000

Standard Web Banners (in pixels)

(explanation of what are banners ads at the bottom of this page)

Size	Style	Target File Size
468 x 60	Full Banner	20 KB
728 x 90	Leaderboard	25 KB
336 x 280	Square	25 KB
300 x 250	Square	25 KB
250 x 250	Square	25 KB
160 x 600	Skyscraper	20 KB
120 x 600	Skyscraper	20 KB
120 x 240	Small Skyscraper	20 KB
240 x 400	Fat Skyscraper	25 KB
234 x 60	Half Banner	15 KB
180 x 150	Rectangle	15 KB
125 x 125	Square Button	15 KB
120 x 90	Button	10 KB
120 x 60	Button	10 KB
88 x 31	Button	10 KB

Other Less Common Ad Sizes

Size	Style	Target file size
120 x 30	Button	10 KB
230 x 33	Small Banner	15 KB
728 x 210	Large Leaderboard	30 KB
720 x 300	Large Leaderboard	25 KB
500 x 350	Pop-up	30 KB
550 x 480	Pop-up	30 KB
300 x 600	Half Page Banner	35 KB
94 x 15	Blog Button	10 KB

Example ads in action

What are banner ads?

A banner is simply an online image ad. Many popular websites funding model is based on displaying these types of ads to derive their income. This images or ads usually contains a link to the advertiser’s website or landing page created specifically for that ad.

Generally the websites displaying these ads are part of a display network such as Google’s Adsense. The ads on this website are displayed via Googles Adsense. I have place the Adsense script in the place where the ads are to appear and Google Adsense decide the most appropriate ads to display based on the page content or the what other websites the person viewing the page has been to.

Here is a great article with tips on making your ads more clickable https://99designs.com.au/blog/tips/14-design-tips-for-more-clickable-banner-ads/

Free images and videos from Pixabay

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 09:40:56 +0000

All images and videos on Pixabay are released free of copyrights under Creative Commons CCO. You may download, modify, distribute, and use them royalty free for anything you like, even in commercial applications. Attribution is not required.

Pixabay does have some premium images in their results but these are clearly marked with the shutterstock watermark so you can’t accidentally download and use an image that is not available for use under the Creative Commons license.

As with the other image resources we have listed on this website (www.tipsforyourwebsite.com) you don’t even have to sign up for an account.

Free image resource stocksnap.io

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 09:27:17 +0000

stocksnap.io is another awesome website which you can download free images from and you don’t need to attribute where they come from or the photographer (although I think it would be nice if you did 🙂 and they are copyright free.

All their photos that are uploaded to the site are released under Creative Commons – CCO and do not require attribution. Basically it means that you can copy, modify, distribute any photo on the site, even for commercial purposes, all without asking permission!

All of the images are high resolution and definitely big enough and of good enough quality to use in a web project.

3 Elevator Pitch Templates

admin — Wed, 13 Jul 2016 03:01:15 +0000

If you aren’t a natural salesman then the thought of having to deliver an elevator pitch of less than 30 seconds can take you a life time to prepare but the 3 templates below from the Shopify blog and specifically Braveen Kumar a “content crafter” (don’t you just love the names new jobs are being given:-P ) can really help you get onto the right track quickly. You also find the original article here with some other great tips.

As Braveen states in a comment reply “The goal of an elevator pitch is to earn your audience’s interest before you lose their attention, and that means strategically communicating critical information in a way that makes them curious to learn more.” I love how in this statement he succinctly explain and demonstrated the value and purpose of an elevator pitch.

The All-Purpose Pitch

Your generic elevator pitch, this format provides you with a clear and intuitive way to cover all your talking points, letting you easily expand upon and cut out parts depending on your audience at the time.

Template:

My name is [YOUR NAME], founder of [YOUR COMPANY]. We offer [PRODUCT/SERVICE] for[TARGET MARKET] to [VALUE PROPOSITION].

Unlike [THE COMPETITION], we [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR]. And we recently [RECENT MILESTONE].

[CALL to ACTION]

Example:

My name is Braveen Kumar, a writer at Shopify. We offer a platform that enables both the early entrepreneur and the large enterprise to build and run their own stores.

Unlike most marketplaces where you can sell your products, Shopify lets you build and brand your own online store with the tools to sell across a variety of channels, manage inventory, start small and scale fast.

The Pixar Pitch

This pitch is aptly named because it invokes the traditional storytelling structure—something Pixar excels at.

Stories are all about transformation and empathy, and if you can explain the journey your customer takes from point A to point B, you can get your audience to step into your customer’s shoes even if they’re outside your target market.

Give this approach a try if your product solves a very real and relatable pain point for your customers.

Template:

Once upon a time [INTRODUCE CHARACTER AND CONTEXT]

Every day, [ESTABLISH THE WAY THINGS WERE].

One day [INTRODUCE PROBLEM/INCITING INCIDENT].

Because of that [CHALLENGE].

Because of that [SEARCH FOR SOLUTION]

Until finally [FINDS SOLUTION]

Now, [ESTABLISH THE WAY THINGS ARE BETTER NOW]

Example:

Once upon a time, there was a full-time blogger named Andy.

Every day, you could find him happily typing away on a computer, rushing to meet his clients’ deadlines.

One day, he started experiencing chronic joint pain in his fingers and wrists, a consequence of the years he’s spent typing for hours on end.

Because of that he couldn’t write as comfortably or as fast, and it was affecting his ability to deliver to his clients.

Because of that, he needed a better way to support his wrists so that they could support his livelihood, but he could only find temporary fixes.

Finally, he came across Type-Aid, a therapeutic glove that supports his wrists and combats the joint pain in his fingers due to extended typing.

Now Andy can resume his work with confidence, doing what he loves, distracted less by the pain in his hands and focused more on working magic for his clients.

The Sales Pitch

Sometimes you find yourself speaking directly with a potential customer. In this case, you know that focusing on them and their needs is the best way to position your product.

Opening with a rhetorical question lets you establish how qualified they are as a prospect from the start, potentially tease more information from them by actively listening, and personalize your approach according to how they identify with the pain point you’re proposing a solution for.

Template:

Have you ever [SITUATION AUDIENCE CAN RELATE TO]?

[WAIT FOR RESPONSE]

[COMPANY NAME] offers [PRODUCT] for [TARGET MARKET] such as yourself to [BENEFIT].

Unlike [KNOWN ALTERNATIVE/COMPETITION], [YOUR PRODUCT] is [KEY DIFFERENTIATOR].

[CALL TO ACTION].

Example:

Have you ever found yourself up at night reading and starting to nod off, only to realize you still need to get up and out of bed just to turn your lights off?

BrightLight offers more control for the smart home owner such as yourself to turn on and off all the lights in their home from any device with our app installed.

Unlike other smart lightbulbs, BrightLight is designed to consume 30% less energy saving you money in the long-run.

You can buy them now in our online store.

Which one do think will work for you best ?

2 Great Free Design Repositories

admin — Mon, 16 May 2016 23:37:50 +0000

These days so many websites make available good free design resources that you can use in any design project- commercial or otherwise as long as the project is not to be on sold for example in a website template (as opposed to a website), calendar etc. The list below is to websites that are easy to use and have quality resources. At the time of compiling this list none of the sites contained links to malware or other spammy rubbish but it is the internet so I can not vouch for the websites in perpetuity 🙂 But as I will be maintaining and updating this list frequently as I use it myself I will remove any websites that do not live up to a high standard.

Free Design Resources is a great repository which has new download every day. They have web and design templates, layouts, addons such as photoshop addons, photos and graphic elements, fonts and pretty much everything design related.

Creative Market has 6 free Weekly Monday downloads and if you sign up to their newsletter they will let you know what is available that week- saving you the trip to their website unless you see something you want.