Design has always carried an artistic notion, and many designers (i.e. web designers), have artistic backgrounds. By applying the artistic principles, such as shiny buttons, colorful logo’s, and fancy backgrounds, is an interface being created?  One could approach the problem from the other end, and ask if programmers throwing data onto a page creates an interface. An interface is an interconnection between systems, equipment, concepts, or human beings. IDEO has become successful because they are able to bridge this gap and create a path for the user to easily access the system. This missing gap that has been ignored for so many years is finally being grasped and integrated into traditional academic learning, such as with Stanford’s D.School. Interface design is no longer an afterthought, but rather a specific role that bridges a graphical front-end to the underlying information. Web designers are starting to question the placement of buttons, form fields, text layout, and use colors, various fonts, and gradients to create an eye-flow with end goals such as signing up for a newsletter or purchasing a product. The most successful companies are not the most elegant, but rather have a superior underlying system and a usable interface.

Google and Apple are all two companies with excellent interface design. Each is successful because it not only has a superior product, but a user can access the information. A powerful system and a well-designed interface rely on each other, and are equally important. A robust feature set is pointless if it is not usable, and a beautifully designed interface needs to bridge somewhere. One could argue Google’s products, such as its search homepage are boring, but it has the ingredients for success. Apple is an often-studied company for its excellence in design because it can boast exceptional interfaces throughout its computer software and hardware. The interfaces, both tangible and intangible, are both easy to use and understand. But why? Simplicity. Critics often claim Apple’s products are for novice users and Apple “dums down” the products, yet that’s the innovation behind a well-designed interface. It breaks down a complex information structure and allows one to easily interact with it, understand it, play with it, access it. How useful is a feature if no one can use it? It’s fair to argue one can do more with a simplified interface such as a Mac, than a complex, difficult, “advanced” interface, such as a Microsoft Windows. To design an elegant and usable interface, designers have begun to design from the bottom-up.

Wireframes, focus groups, card indexing exercises, and paper prototyping have all become rising stars amongst software and web design. Designers are beginning to use the artistic aspects of design to enhance an interface. An exercise I conducted recently for a client began by ranking their company colors by brightness, for brighter colors have a greater ability to pull the eye: green, orange, and gray. I had several target users vertically rank/sort every page element the client had requested on the page, and asked what they wanted to see first, down till the webpage element they wanted to see last. Site title was first, followed by site navigation, page title, and so on. After they ranked the items, I designed a wire prototype largely based on this feedback using a layout program called Omnigraffle. The design was pure layout, and was still black and white boxes. After I designed the layout, I had the same users group each page element into three categories: very important, somewhat important, and least important. I went to my wire frame layout, and applied the most eye-catching palette color (orange), to any “important” page element, the secondary palette color (green), to any “somewhat important” element, and finally the tertiary palette color (gray), to the least important elements. The result was a page layout designed to flow with the eye, but used color to highlight the most important items as the eye shifted from left to right, top to bottom.

A bottom-up approach to interface design? I think so!

Site Profiling 1 Hour
Create website profile and cull data such as backlinks, pagerank, site strengths/weaknesses, broken links, analytics breakdown, industry or product information, and competitor analysis.

Keyword Analysis 2 Hours
Research and create a full list of relevant keywords and long tail phrases to use for keyword content, PPC campaigns, Google Trends, and meta data rewriting

Rewrite Meta Data 2 Hours
Using keyword analysis create page specific dynamic page titles, description, keywords and other page meta data.

Fix HTML Tags 3 Hours
Add HTML tags to pages. Key tags include alt, title, abbreviation, link, heading, paragraph, and (no)follow.

Optimize Page Content 3 Hours
Add keyword density to page content (under 3%), create fresh content section, rich product descriptions, reduce text in images, check for duplicate content, and optimize intra-site linking.

Robot Profiling 2 Hours
Run Lynx robot browser test, create and submit XML sitemap, robots.txt, rewrite page URL’s, 301 redirects, custom 404 errors, specify canonical URL, and setup Google Web Master.

Basic Directory Submission 2 Hours
Add website listing to general directory list, specifically DMOZ, as well as research and submit to niche industry directories.

Estimated Total: 12-15 Hours

Also if you have a WordPress blog there’s a lot you can do that is specifically for the publishing platform, and I’ll post more details about that later.

If anyone is interested in SEO work for their own website please contact me, and I can create a proposal along with a cost estimate.

• art project due tomorrow.. need to think of a place in san diego that is vacant yet regresses #
• saw slumdog millionaire last night and really liked it. the credits killed it though, left a bad taste in my mouth #
• really could use an lcd monitor for my laptop.. 13.3″ is becoming eye torture #
• accidentally clicked “publish” on a drafted blog post… oops #
• coolest business card ever: http://is.gd/kBYJ #
• been doing a lot of research and working on a blog post about tips for succeeding during a recession, check my blog tomorrow #
• RT @mashable Top 8 Tips For a Recession - http://bit.ly/L0JN2 #
• http://billshrink.com to save on your cellphone or credit card payments. pretty cool app #
• my blog is now apart the mindpetals.com network! #
• typical California sunnyvday today.. and off to balboa park with the fam! #

1. Invest Your Money - Now is the time to throw your savings account into the stock market. Consistently performing companies like Apple and Microsoft are significantly undervalued. Once the market makes it’s cyclical burnout prices will return to pre-crash levels. Quick and safe gains can easily be made by investing in any company that will survive.

2. Expand Your Network - Spend time meeting new people, start Twittering, attending local business meetups, and growing your contacts. During tough times people are more open to meeting new people, collaborating, and sharing ideas.

3. Help Others - Do favors for those who are hurting, especially those in your immediate network. When they are back on their feet they’ll remember and lend you a favor when you need it most.

4. Learn - As businesses are downsizing and employees are taking forced vacation, more free time than ever is available. Don’t waste it and instead increase your value by taking classes at a local college, apply to MBA programs, read instructional books, or even consider completing the Personal MBA.

5. Expand Your Business - During recessions companies are liquidating assets for pennies on the dollar hoping to live another day. An example is Sirius Satellite Radio which was forced into a very high interest rate loan to stay afloat. Look to acquire office equipment, divisions of a business, whole businesses, and even top performing employees all at significant discounts as businesses aggressively downsize.

6. Take a Vacation - Your opportunity cost is at its smallest during a recession, and your time is least valuable. Take the time to explore and take those trips you’ve always been holding off, and look for deals as tourist destinations are offering substantial discounts off regular rates as they seek to remain at operating capacity.

7. Look for Ways to Earn Extra Cash - Desperate times call for desperate measures. Dust off your old toys or unwanted possessions and list them on CraigsList or eBay, donate plasma to the Red Cross for $20-30 per visit, list your freelance services on CraigsList, participate in scientific experiments at local universities or research labs, donate sperm for $30-200 per vial, or donate an egg for $5000+, or sign-up as a mystery shopper. There are plenty of ways to pad your pocket and compensate for that reduced bonus, cut hours, or lost job.

8. Create an Emergency Fund - Avoid using a credit card for those rainy days and hopefully you have an emergency fund already in place. If not, put aside a set percentage of your paycheck to prepare for the drop in income.

The last two recessions averaged eight months and while they certainly aren’t fun, knowing how to navigate the choppy waters can make for a bearable, or even successful recession. While others might be hurting, this is an opportunity to succeed for those who are prepared.

When I was 16 (2004), my then online ecommerce store PurFiveAudio received a near traffic influx. It was a Sunday night and a media representative from Good Morning America contacted me and conducted a quick phone interview about teen entrepreneurship and inquired about my online store. The correspondent told me to brace for large amounts of traffic-the show wanted to do a live interview with me at 6AM the following morning via their San Francisco affiliate. After hanging up the phone I quickly called my web host, LunarPages, and told them of the possibly increase in traffic. Such web hosts who cram thousands of clients onto a single server have no way of managing traffic spikes, and after my tip of possibly server overload, the technician was helpless other than suggest I upgrade to a dedicated server. A grid-based server, such as MediaTemple’s (which I now use and highly recommend) is setup to handle traffic spikes and spread server loads over multiple computers. Although the technology is still new and is maturing, it is well worth the drawbacks. Having a grid-based host braces your website for high server loads, and avoids the unthinkable downtown when you often need it most: a Digg front page, a TechCrunch article, or other heavily populated blogs. Not being able to catch these new viewers is detrimental and mirrors or caches are not adequate substitutes and only hinder any concentrated readership or user growth.

After being technologically prepared for a traffic influx, the next step is to harness the spike by keeping the bounce rate low by encouraging these visitors to explore other pages on your website, and to capture these visitors and get them to return. If you have a blog, implementing the following techniques will give you a better chance of capturing a visitor:

1. Use the similar post plug-in for Wordpress. This is known to decrease the bounce rate 10-12% overnight, and your one hit post can double or even triple page views. Demonstrating value on more than one page on your website helps justify a repeat visit, and will increase the chances a visitor will bookmark or subscribe to your blog.
2. Use FeedBurner for RSS subscriptions. It’s the most popular and powerful way to push your RSS feed to visitors, and is the easiest to use as it has all of the popular subscription links on an external and trusted third-party website.
3. Setup your posts for comments. Try to leave your blog posts open for debate, end with a question. You want feedback, community interaction, and engagement. An engaged visitor will return to check on the comments, especially responses to their own comment.
4. Allow threaded comments. This is an option in WordPress and if you have a significant amount of commenters, which is likely if you are receiving significant amounts of traffic for a single blog post, it creates a forum-like atmosphere instead of a list of comments which hinders structured discussions. TechCrunch and Engadget have had increased comments after employing such techniques because it encouraged longer, more in-depth discussions instead of one-off comments.
5. Encourage word of mouth. If your website already has social media traction and momentum, keep the momentum. After the social media craze, services like ShareThis popped up which allow your visitors to share or save your content to their favorite social media websites. If each visitor shares your website with more than one person (a viral growth coefficient of greater than one), your on your way to exponential growth!

Hopefully these techniques will better brace your website for traffic influxes! Any other tips I left out?

In my scenario, I would own my web design business if I had a salesperson who marketed PixelTorch, worked with clients, and managed the programmers; a programmer; and a designer. The business could run on autopilot, and I would essentially oversee the operations and make adjustments. Instead at PixelTorch, I am the designer and the salesperson, which instead of makes me a freelance web designer, as opposed to a business owner.

Do you guys think a freelancer is considered an entrepreneur (a person who undertakes and operates a new enterprise or venture and assumes some accountability for the inherent risk)?

1. Develop power Digg and StumpleUpon accounts and promote companies blog content
2. Build solid blog rolls and network with relevant blogs or websites
3. Develop company twitter accounts for each store to become a resource for customers as well as push visitors to the blog content

Gaming Digg is an often discusses social media practice and I figured it wasn’t too hard. I researched the topic for hours, and my initial conclusion was that it’s no longer worth the time-investment. A year ago, the Digg community was significantly smaller, and there were less “power users”. I read several interviews by the top Digg users, and read as they discusses their decrease in influence throughout 2008, and how the promotion power of Digg is being spread so thin. One to two years ago, a power account could be established after a month of 15-20 solid daily submissions, but in todays community requires 2-3 months of skilled content promotion.

The method for gaming Digg is so sought-after, and attempted so many times it is no longer achievable. Also the ratio of content promotion between Digging other content versus your own is likely around 1:100. A once targeted social media practice has become diluted, and now the only cost effective method for significant Digg traffic is to unfortunately purchase influential Diggs through existing power users.

My new start page method is to feature only important feeds, including email, on my NetVibes homepage tab, and then I created an extra NetVibes tab with less crucial feeds to avoid distraction. My homepage tab now only features my email feed since it’s time sensitive, and also other boring feeds such as weather, stocks, and a to-do list. Now when I am interested in browsing blogs, news, etcetera, it takes an extra click to get there. At the same time they are all hidden, yet only one click away which makes them less distracting. So now when I use Safari to check or look something up online such as a homework assignment or a sports score, juicy stories no longer try to grab my attention.

Have start pages made me more productive? Yes. Are they a distraction? Not anymore

Here is the criteria that a co-founder must fit:

• He or she must offset your skills. It’s important to have a co-founder who has different strengths than you, because it would be wasteful to have someone who has the same skills as you. It’s essentially giving away half your business because if you can do everything your co-founder can offer, than you should just do all their work yourself.

• Strong relationship. You can’t just meet someone online through a forum and start a business. It just won’t work. In one of Paul Graham’s essays, he writes that it’s important to know your partner for at least a year. I agree with this as well. The idea is that if you need to know your partner’s tendencies, you need his or her trust, and you need a strong relationship. Creating a business is no easy task and knowing and being able to trust your business partner is crucial to a business’ success.

• Have time. An easy way to kill a startup company is to have one person do a lot of the work, while the other person is busy with other projects. Lopsided time investments can easily kill any business, and its certainly happened to me. Here’s the story: I was super excited about a business, and worked long hard hours for about 2 weeks. I was getting tasks done, setting things up, etc. My partner was busy and had other activities, another job, and loved our business and was dedicated, but just lacked the time to invest. I became frustrated because I was doing all the work, and basically things dissolved quickly. Case in point: Work with someone equally dedicated.

• Motivation/Optimistic. Both partners must be motivated. I have been in both sides of the situation. One startup I was very motivated and passionate about the business, while my partner lacked such motivation. His lack of motivation killed my motivation, and the startup died. Another startup, it was vice versa.

Here is an excerpt from Paul Graham’s essay titled “Why to Not Not Start a Startup“:

Not having a cofounder is a real problem. A startup is too much for one person to bear. And though we differ from other investors on a lot of questions, we all agree on this. All investors, without exception, are more likely to fund you with a cofounder than without.

We’ve funded two single founders, but in both cases we suggested their first priority should be to find a cofounder. Both did. But we’d have preferred them to have cofounders before they applied. It’s not super hard to get a cofounder for a project that’s just been funded, and we’d rather have cofounders committed enough to sign up for something super hard.

If you don’t have a cofounder, what should you do? Get one. It’s more important than anything else. If there’s no one where you live who wants to start a startup with you, move where there are people who do. If no one wants to work with you on your current idea, switch to an idea people want to work on.

If you’re still in school, you’re surrounded by potential cofounders. A few years out it gets harder to find them. Not only do you have a smaller pool to draw from, but most already have jobs, and perhaps even families to support. So if you had friends in college you used to scheme about startups with, stay in touch with them as well as you can. That may help keep the dream alive.

It’s possible you could meet a cofounder through something like a user’s group or a conference. But I wouldn’t be too optimistic. You need to work with someone to know whether you want them as a cofounder. [2]

The real lesson to draw from this is not how to find a cofounder, but that you should start startups when you’re young and there are lots of them around.

Working with a business partner instead of working alone increases your chances of success because often an entrepreneur will have a period of no motivation, doubt, or fear of failure about his or her business, and having a business partner can counter those feelings that could potentially kill a startup business.

Related: What’s The Optimal Number Of Co-Founders For A Startup? 2.09!