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Wide emails often require horizontal scrolling, especially when there’s a large image. This case study by Campaign Monitor explains how emails can be optimized for mobile devices using media queries and offers a couple of useful techniques and snippets to be used right away.

There has been a long-running war going on over the mobile Web: it can be summarized with the following question: “Is there a mobile Web?” That is, is the mobile device so fundamentally different that you should make different websites for it, or is there only one Web that we access using a variety of different devices? Acclaimed usability pundit Jakob Nielsen thinks that you should make separate mobile websites. I disagree.

Companies often flush away millions upon millions on worthless, pointless, “fix it once and for all” website redesigns. All types of organizations are guilty: large government agencies, Fortune 500s, not-for-profits and (especially) institutions of higher education.

Think about what your audience wants. People want to hear answers and to learn something new, so give them what they want.

When users look for information, they have a goal and are on a mission. Even before you started to read this article, chances are you did because you either had the implicit goal of checking what’s new on Smashing Magazine, or had the explicit goal of finding information about “Navigation Design”.

Inbound marketing is no cakewalk. Marketers who are embracing inbound have a variety of different channels and tactics to master, including content creation, SEO, social media, lead generation, lead management, and analytics. It's no wonder that marketers new to inbound end up feeling overwhelmed and wondering what to tackle first.

When editing critical papers during my undergrad, I was constantly mindful of backing up every claim I made in writing. Describing a protagonist as “yearning for a return to childhood” wasn’t enough to convince a professor unless I could refer to a passage where this was suggested.

As many people who work in a creative field like design and development may already know, sometimes our clients just do not understand what it is that we are trying to achieve. The boundaries that we are seeking to push are not ones they approve of for their project, so our creative ideas get backburnered until we can find an appropriate project as well as an agreeable client where you can flex these creative muscles freely. In fact, the standard business processes, especially the ones we allow ourselves to be strapped into, tend to work against us in this aspect.

Ever write a blog post, hit publish, and feel like all you hear are crickets? If your content isn't remarkable, it's not shareable. Search is social. So whether or not your content gets shared makes a huge difference in your blog's traffic and lead generation.

Your website is the hub of your inbound marketing efforts. Every piece of content you create or campaign you run should be designed to drive traffic to your website and landing pages, giving you the chance to convert visitors into leads and customers.

OK, you've got a great new site and planned out a fail-proof content strategy. You're going to be posting all sorts of interesting and insightful blog posts and newsletters, and everyone is going to come to read it. Then they are going to hire you to do work. Right? If you build it they will come. Isn't that the way it works?

Google’s search results aren’t what they used to be. Need proof? Just look at its results page. No longer solely comprised of traditional, organic site matches, Google now lists local maps, images, videos and social cues as well — and it’s affecting more than just what you see. If you rely heavily on search engines for pageviews and sales, as many businesses do, Google search results will drastically affect how your customers find you. If your business needs to be seen and clicked, take into account the following six search engine tips.

There are dozens of great CMSs out there. Regardless of what type of site you’re building, there’s probably one perfectly-suited to it. The problem is that most designers and developers don’t want to spend time learning a bunch of different CMSs. They want to learn one, or maybe two, and use those for all of their sites. That means they need something that’s both flexible and powerful.

Google+ platform is not about competing with facebook, but it will revolutionize how people and brands share content.

Twitter is a tool for "micro-blogging" or posting very short updates, comments or thoughts. In fact, since Twitter was designed to be very compatible with mobile phones through text messages, each update is limited to 140 characters. Truly, a micro-blog. Another way to think of Twitter is like a cross between instant messaging (IM) and a chat room, because it is an open forum, but you restrict it to the people with which you connect.

By now, most small business owners understand the important role the Internet can play in helping to raise and drive interest and demand for their products and services. With all the innovative online technologies out there, it’s easy to feel tempted to rush into things. Please, for the love of your business, slow down.

This past week, Facebook launched a subscribe button, which allows you to choose on a user by user basis "whether you'd like to see all updates, most updates, or just important updates from another user." It also allows you to open up your profile to subscribers who are not your friends on Facebook.

Without a doubt, email marketing can be a powerful lever in your inbound marketing mix. It can help you nurture prospects, connect with existing customers, distribute your content, and yes, generates tons of coveted leads for your business.

Last month the first International Conference on Green Computing took place. The conference agenda included a broad range of topics but, in essence, was eagerly addressing issues surrounding the carbon footprint of computing and how computers can contribute to the well being of our world. So what better time to raise a few questions about green web design. What is our role in contributing to a greener computing world?

Practically everyone reads blogs now, whether they’re “official” news blogs associated with traditional news media, topic-based blogs related to one’s work or hobbies, or blogs purely for entertainment, just about anyone you ask has at least one favorite blog.

Leveraging local SEO can be a great way to get your business found by local searchers. And if you're a brick and mortar business, having a great local SEO presence can also afford you some additional foot traffic from people who are searching for you on the go. In order to take advantage of local search at the most basic level, your business website needs to be optimized for your geo-targeted keywords. Standard SEO practices apply here.

As an undergraduate of my university’s advertising program, every year, I’d have some sort of Super Bowl function that was centered around watching the commercials. After all, as an ad student, this was kind of a big deal and would be absolutely relevant to the next week of classes.

One of the biggest advantages of using a content management system (CMS) is that it allows developers to empower site owners with unprecedented control of their website.

Over the past few years, mobile web usage has considerably increased to the point that web developers and designers can no longer afford to ignore it. In wealthy countries, the shift is being fueled by faster mobile broadband connections and cheaper data service. However, a large increase has also been seen in developing nations where people have skipped over buying PCs and gone straight to mobile.

Despite the somewhat provocative title, you shouldn't really stop designing aesthetics. Gradients and colors and contrast are all good, but there's a more important side to web design that many people overlook most of the time: Designing emotions.

User experience designers are great at making software friendly and usable for new customers. We design clean, clear sign-up forms, smooth on-boarding experiences, and even helpful blank slates once users are inside the app. Once customers have used the software for some time and have integrated it in their workflow, their relationship with the software becomes more complex. UX designers have no stencils for designing “how the customer feels about the software after six months.” This matters because the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model depends on loyalty, on the idea that customers won’t flinch when they see your monthly charge.

It's hard to imagine a form that could be simpler: two fields, two buttons, and one link. Yet, it turns out this form was preventing customers from purchasing products from a major e-commerce site, to the tune of $300,000,000 a year. What was even worse: the designers of the site had no clue there was even a problem.

In this article, we’ll review a few techniques that will help Web designers and UI professionals improve their error pages in order to engage visitors and improve the experience. As C.S. Lewis said, “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.” Website designers should take this to heart.

In content strategy, there is no playbook of generic strategies you can pick from to assemble a plan for your client or project. Instead, our discipline rests on a series of core principles about what makes content effective—what makes it work, what makes it good. Content may need to have other qualities to work within a particular project, but this list is limited to qualities shared across all sorts of content.

People who don’t understand the true value of graphic designers will try to take advantage of them, especially if they’re newbies. Others will try to calculate the time and effort involved in designing and then assume you’ll meet their expectations, however unrealistic. This can wear on you both financially and mentally, so you have to find ways to protect yourself. Here are four ways to keep your work and your clients in check.

Whether or not a project can accommodate new HTML5 and CSS3 features, we still turn to JavaScript to provide users with rich and meaningful experiences, including inline form validation, error handling and live page formatting. The key difference between JavaScript and traditional HTML and CSS is that the former is a programming language. Thus, JavaScript is capable of powerful results and tricky logic but is less friendly to sloppy coding and human error. This latter characteristic leads me to my main advice about using JavaScript on your new website.

Last night I got my first look at Google+, I spent just over three hours diving in and playing with all the features they have to offer. For those of you who already have access, please share your thoughts in the comments and those without access, enjoy this preview and share your thoughts on what this new social network could mean for SEO.

Content strategy is planning for every aspect of content to get results. That goes far beyond writing the copy. When getting strategic about content, focus on three key areas: analysis, editorial and architecture. While explaining content strategy in detail literally requires a book (or two or three), I’d like to share with you a concise introduction to each area in this article.

Mobile development is all the rage, and the interactive industry is in great turmoil as countless tablets and smartphones come to market.

Mobile app development gets most of the attention, while the mobile web somewhat quietly creeps along. But the mobile web is making progress every day as more and more developers launch mobile-optimized interfaces.

Compare the two posts below, both written by the exact same SEO expert and each containing around the same number of words. Without knowing the subject, can you guess which post earned more links?

You don’t get to 600 million friends without doing something spectacular. Mark Zuckerberg knows this more than anyone. But I wonder: do we have any hope of achieving similar success?

A number of techniques and elements can be used in Web forms to turn them from abject failures into successful conversion points. In this article, we’ll present some interesting examples and useful guidelines for Web form design.

Over the past few years, "QR codes" -- those square, mobile barcodes -- have started to show up in some U.S. advertising. hile QR codes are cute and novel, and may be big in Japan, they're not the future of advertising here. So it's time to drop them.

As web designers, we all seem obsessed by HTML5 and CSS3 at the moment. Endless posts, tutorials and discussion about them dominate the blogosphere. But how much are we learning that can be applied today?